“Your father’s still alive?”

“Oh, sure. Hale and hearty. Daisy says she put his name on the list of people you should talk to. I don’t think he knew Violet-I mean, he knew her-everybody knew Violet, but mainly because she and Foley hung out at the Blue Moon. Pop’s a part owner now.”

“Isn’t that the Blue Moon where the Sullivans threw some of their big screaming fights?”

“That’s it,” she said. “You can ask the bartender, BW. He witnessed most of ‘em. In fact, he and Pop pooled their resources and bought the Moon not long after Violet disappeared. They’ve talked me into taking over the management, if I move back to town.”

The crowd was picking up, and after Tannie brought my sandwich, I left her alone to tend to business. In my bag I had my index cards, so while I ate, I shuffled through my notes, trying to get a sense of where I was and where I needed to go next. The wall of years between me and Violet Sullivan felt as impenetrable as ever, but I was catching glimpses of her.

9

Chet

Wednesday, July 1, 1953

Chet Cramer was late getting back from lunch, having spent an interminable three hours in discussion with Tom Padgett about a partnership in his heavy-equipment business. In Chet’s opinion, Padgett was a fool. He’d married a woman fifteen years older than he was. Tom was forty-one now, which put her somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty-six years old, a shriveled-up old bag. Everyone in town knew it was her money he was after. She’d been widowed after twenty-five years of marriage to Loden Galsworthy, who’d died of a heart attack. Loden owned a string of funeral parlors, and Cora not only inherited those, but the rest of his estate, which was valued at a million dollars and included the house, two cars, stocks, bonds, and life insurance. Tom was a man with big schemes and precious little in the way of common sense. He’d hit her up for one loan in order to set up his business in the first place. He’d borrowed an additional sum from the bank. He admitted he’d been underfunded from the get-to, but now he wanted to expand, capitalizing on the inevitable demand for John Deere equipment as Santa Maria grew. The builders had to lease from someone and why not him? Chet could see his point, but he didn’t much like Padgett, and he sure as shit didn’t want to go into business with him. His suspicion was that Tom had a big balloon payment coming up, and this was nothing more than a push to find the dough before the note came due. Cora must have put her foot down and refused to bail him out.