Cliff Hanger Read online

  Brian and David had been thrilled when I told them they’d each have their own room for the summer. Our typical Spartan vacation budget meant they normally shared a tent or a room—with mixed results. When one wanted to sleep in, the other would be anticipating a dawn fishing trip. I’d enjoyed summers of overhearing laughter as they whispered to each other past lights-out. Rumbling older voices now conversed well into the night, replacing those early giggles. Mostly, they got along. But proximity also brought fights. Hurt feelings erupted regularly, particularly when they were tired. The three-bedroom condo was a luxury we’d all enjoy.

  According to Tess, a third-floor ocean-view unit meant we’d wake up to share our breakfast with chance sightings of surfing dolphins, breaching whales, and playful seals and sea otters cavorting in the waves just steps from the building. It was my idea of paradise.

  Wooden staircases over the dunes marked the beach-side entrance to each condo building, and I counted them off until I spotted the sign to Building F half-buried in the dune grass. I climbed the steps and looked for our unit. But when I took the stairs to the top level, the numbers were higher than I’d expected. I checked the key and the unit number again. There was no third-floor, ocean-view unit that matched the key Vik had given me.

  I trudged down the stairs, discouraged. Had Vik handed me the wrong key? Had Renée misrepresented the promised accommodations? Had a problem developed that she’d neglected to warn me about? Until Renée surfaced, there was no way to know.

  Still, while the third floor would have been a dream, all of the condos were steps from the beach and within earshot of the waves. Living on a lower level would make it easier to unload the car, bring groceries in and out, and keep up with Belle’s bathroom needs. I tried to stay positive.

  I hunted the shaded lower floors for the apartment number and found it on ground level, where the view would offer beach grass instead of open water. Disappointed, I quickly tried to adjust my attitude. Beach access was beach access. And most of the time we were indoors we’d be asleep. On the first floor, I wouldn’t have to worry that the boys’ clomping feet would disturb downstairs neighbors.

  But as I unlocked the deadbolt and pushed open the door, I feared we’d have to contend with something far worse than a second-rate view. The smell alone had me gagging, and that wasn’t the worst part.

  Chapter 2

  This tip is a bit of a stretch for a professional organizer, but as a mom, I celebrate the efficiency of wetsuits, pioneered locally to increase year-round ocean access. The Pacific in Northern California is bitingly cold. While wetsuits may seem pricey for vacationers, their value should be measured by the recreational time they allow. Rentals are sometimes available. One caveat: mashing small kids into wetsuits is a chore. For kids, buy wetsuits at least one size larger than what is likely to be suggested by surf-shop personnel.

  From the Notebook of Maggie McDonald

  Simplicity Itself Organizing Services

  Monday, June 17, Early afternoon

  A quick look round while holding my breath confirmed my initial impression. The now-empty condo had once housed a chain smoker and a slob. Flies circled plates half-filled with food. Untended garbage pails swarmed with maggots. The stench was overwhelming. Dust covered every surface. Piles of clothes or lengths of fabric lay jumbled at one end of a grubby sofa. Packages of fiber fill spilled from a cardboard box. Styrofoam balls and safety pins mingled with dust bunnies under the coffee table. Someone was a crafter, but this apartment was no vacation rental.

  Based on the smell and my past experience, I hunted for a dead body. Relieved to discover that the flies were chowing down on a rotting hamburger, rather than a corpse, I left as quickly as I could. I sat on the steps facing the ocean, sucking in fresh salt air to clear my lungs and calm my breathing before phoning Renée.

  Was this the last straw? It came close. The apartment didn’t meet expectations in any way. Not in size, location, or basic standards of cleanliness. If this dreadful condo was any indication, the rental association needed to attend a customer-service boot camp. Renée was in way over her head and the organization’s problems were more than I wanted to tackle.

  I was surprised the neighbors hadn’t complained about the stench from the apartment’s rotting garbage. Or maybe other owners and visitors had protested and management had failed to respond. Renée still hadn’t phoned me back. No part of this situation made any sense, and I wondered how hard I wanted to work to untangle the mess. I had plenty of customers at home I could be working with.

  I looked up and down the beach for Belle and the boys, wondering how I’d break the news to them that our summer plans had tanked.

  I couldn’t spot them anywhere, but my cell phone chirped before I had a chance to wonder where they could have wandered.

  “Mom!” Brian yelled when I answered the phone. “Call 9-1-1. We’re okay, but this guy is in bad shape…” He wheezed, struggling for breath.

  “Are you and David okay? Who’s hurt?”

  “Hurt doesn’t cover it. We need an ambulance. Maybe a helicopter. It’s that guy we saw with the ultralight. He crashed.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know any of these landmarks. We’re up in the cliffs where it’s really steep, maybe half a mile north—towards Santa Cruz from the state park.”

  “Are you near a lifeguard station? What can you see?”

  “Mostly ocean and strawberry fields.”

  “Did you try 9-1-1?”

  “Of course,” said Brian. “I had a terrible connection. You may need to call on a landline. I don’t know if I got through. There was no voice response from their end. I told them everything I could anyway, in case they could hear me.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  “Call for help first, Mom. This guy”—His voice broke. “He may not make it.”

  Brian ended the call before I could ask more questions. I dialed 9-1-1 and waited, wishing I knew whether Santa Cruz County 9-1-1 connected locally. Early on in the history of cellular phone use, emergency calls from mobiles were answered by a centralized dispatch system in Sacramento—two or three hours distant. All law enforcement operations had realized the problem with that scenario immediately, but I didn’t know whether changes had been made across the state.

  “Santa Cruz County Sheriff,” the dispatcher said. “What is your emergency?”

  I gave the deputy my name and location and asked if he’d received a call from Brian McDonald about a severely injured ultralight pilot who’d crashed on the cliffs near Sunset State Beach.

  “Units are responding.”

  “Is there anything else you need to know? My son asked me to call and follow up because he had a bad connection.”

  “Can you pinpoint the location?”

  “I’m not with them,” I explained. “My son said it’s very steep and first responders might need a helicopter to reach the injured man in the cliffs about half a mile north of Heron Beach”—

  The telltale beat of rotor blades and turbines made it impossible to hear the dispatcher. I shouted into the phone anyway. “A chopper is here. Is it yours?”

  The aircraft moved further away, and my hearing recovered.

  “Ma’am?” said the voice on the other end of the phone.

  “Sorry. Was that your helicopter? Did it spot my kids? The ultralight?”

  “We’ve found it. A search and rescue team is on scene. They can reach the injured man with their climbing ropes and bring him up using pulleys. An ambulance is en route.”

  “Thank you.” I assured the dispatcher I would join my boys as soon as I could and started jogging down the beach as we finished the call.

  After a few hundred yards, I slowed to a walk, my heart pounding less from fear than from skipping too many workouts. I rounded an outcropping and spotted the bright nylon fabri
c of the ultralight’s wings caught in the sparse branches of a cypress tree that clung precariously to the steep hillside.

  Belle spotted me and barked, then bounded toward me, occasionally losing her footing and somersaulting before regaining her balance and sliding a few more feet on her rear. How the boys in their stiff wetsuits had reached the pilot, I couldn’t imagine. Climbers in orange vests and sturdy boots used ropes to guide a rescue basket from the top of the bluff toward the crash site.

  I stepped up my pace to reach Belle and then the boys as quickly as possible, but had to stop several times to catch my breath, regain my footing, and grab hold of shrubbery I hoped wasn’t poison oak. The boys had referred to the location as a cliff, and I decided that was probably the most accurate descriptive term. From the flat farmland at the top, there was a precipitous drop about 250 feet to the beach. Locals referred to the cliffs as sandstone. Geologists used the term mudstone. Either way, the terrain amounted to an overgrown sand dune, prone to sliding anywhere the soil wasn’t held firm by vegetation.

  Breathless, I scrambled to reach the boys. Belle, with four-footed stability, thought this was a fantastic game. She darted between the boys and me, barking encouragement.

  As I drew closer, I could hear staccato statements of static-filled information passed between the search-and-rescue climbers and their unseen counterparts at the other end of their radio connections.

  Brian and David perched on the hillside, out of the way of the rescue workers, their long legs braced against sliding, and their gaze glued to the scene. Perspiration coated their upper lips, though they’d unzipped their wetsuits, leaving their torsos and arms free. The top portions of their suits dangled from their waists.

  I couldn’t see much of what was happening, even as I drew closer. I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Discarded wrappers for medical supplies fluttered in the wind. I grabbed a few and stashed them in my pocket to reduce the litter. I planted my feet firmly to keep from losing any of my hard-won ground. Brian sat and leaned into me. Belle licked his face. David remained standing, but his downhill leg slid until it was braced close enough for me to pat it in what I hoped was a reassuring gesture.

  I felt his muscles tense, and I turned to glance over my shoulder when one of the EMT’s shouted, “Get that chopper back here stat. He’s a fighter, but we’re losing him.” One of his partners shook his head grimly. “What is he, twenty-something? A kid.”

  David groaned.

  “Get those boys out of here,” the EMT added.

  The rest happened in a rush. If pressed, I wouldn’t have been able to recite the order of events with any accuracy. A park ranger helped me stand and handed us each his card. I gave him one of my own, but not without sliding several feet further down the hill while I rummaged in my backpack. He stashed my card in his breast pocket. I read his: “Charlie Adams, Supervising Ranger, California State Park Peace Officers.”

  “I need to stay here for now, but I’ll be in touch later,” Adams said. “We’ll want to know as much as you can tell us about what happened here.” He looked back over his shoulder as a helicopter landed on the cliff top, stirring up sand and soil that made me squint against the gritty air. “Thanks for calling it in. The victim’s in good hands. Let’s get you down the hill and out of this dust.”

  He offered me his hand. I waved him off, fearing I’d pull us both down. “We’re fine. We’re staying at Heron Beach”—I hesitated, as I wasn’t sure exactly how long we’d stay. “For a few days, at least.”

  “For the summer,” David corrected.

  I slid further, and decided now was not the time to discuss the equally precarious nature of our summer plans.

  “We’ll talk later,” Adams said. I nodded, and followed Belle as she bounded, rolled, and slid to the level sand of the beach. Before the boys and I joined her, the helicopter had taken off again. The thup thup thup of the rotors was a sound I felt as much as heard. Without thinking, I associated it with the beat of the injured pilot’s heart. So much so that I had a moment of panic when the helicopter noise faded. I prayed or wished for his heart to continue at a steady pace.

  “What now?” Brian asked as he pulled up the top of his wetsuit and struggled with the zipper. “Did you get into the condo? Is the view great? I want a hot shower, hot chocolate, and a grilled-cheese sandwich in that order. There’s a Giants game tonight.”

  I half-smiled. Brian’s plan sounded fantastic. And easy. But then I cringed, remembering the state of the condo I’d seen. No child of mine was going to shower or eat in that unsanitary pit.

  “Do you think that guy’s gonna make it?” David asked, his voice quavering.

  “I hope so.” I turned and eyed the cliff face where the nylon wings of the battered ultralight still fluttered in the strengthening wind. I was surprised the law-enforcement team hadn’t already collected the aircraft, but then wondered if they needed special gear or a trailer to transport it. Or were the pilot and his family responsible for cleaning up the wreck? I didn’t know. It wasn’t important. I needed to focus on getting the boys settled.

  “One thing’s for sure,” I said, giving David a quick hug. “Without you two, he didn’t stand a chance. All the first responders confirmed that. I’m proud of you.” I glanced at my cell. “My phone’s almost out of charge. We’ll call Dad as soon as I get it plugged in.”

  “Weak signal,” said Brian. “The phone uses up battery as it hunts for a better connection.”

  I wasn’t sure I understood how that worked, but I believed him. We’d have to be extra careful about charging up the phones this summer if I was going to give the boys the freedom I’d promised them. And if we were able to stay. But that was a concern for later.

  “Let’s head back to the car at the state beach,” I said. “There’s a great place for dinner about a half-hour south of here. With outdoor tables so Belle can sit with us.”

  “But showers. Hot chocolate. Cheese. And the Giants. The rookie’s pitching.” Brian’s voice took on an uncharacteristic whiny tone—an outward sign of his internal exhaustion.

  The wind whipped my hair in front of my face, giving me a fuzzy mouthful as I tried to answer. I gathered my hair into a ponytail and yelled into the increasingly howling wind. “I’ll explain when we get to the car. It’s too hard to hear. Let’s hurry, though. I’m starving.” I checked my watch. No wonder I was hungry. It was nearly six o’clock. We’d spent more time on the cliff face than I’d realized.

  Belle’s tongue drooped and she dogged my heels as we all trudged down the beach in the soft sand that remained safe from the incoming tide.

  We picked up the boogie boards, towels, and beach blanket. Pure strength of will got us back up over the sand dunes to the changing area at the park where the boys shed their wetsuits. I urged them to forgo the chilly outdoor showers. “A little sand won’t hurt anything. If we’re going to be here all summer, the car will see more than that. Besides, no single shower will take care of all the sand that helicopter kicked up. My hair and ears are full of it.”

  We piled into the car with me driving. I sighed. “I know I told you about that great restaurant south of here, but let’s save that for another night. A half hour suddenly seems like a long time to wait for dinner.”

  “There was that sandwich shop next to the gas station at the freeway exit,” David said. “Will that do?”

  “Perfect,” I said, backing out of the parking spot.

  I’d only just exited the state park and crossed the low bridge over the slough when Brian leaned forward and spoke over the seat back. “Why’d you tell the ranger we might be here only a few more days? What happened? Aren’t we planning to be here all summer? Isn’t Dad coming on the weekend? What’s going on?”

  I switched on the car’s headlights. Not only had the sun set, but the thick marine layer of fog had rolled in, obliterating any moonlight. I steeled myself to give the boys
the bad news.

  Chapter 3

  A rental with easy access to laundry facilities will simplify packing for your California coastal vacation. Choose layers adaptable to vacillating temperatures and conditions. Leave your dressy gear at home. As long as you’re not accepting an Academy Award, you can get away without glitz almost everywhere.

  From the Notebook of Maggie McDonald

  Simplicity Itself Organizing Services

  Monday, June 17, Early evening

  The boys reacted better than I thought to the news that our vacation might be over before it had begun. But they were full of questions I wasn’t sure I could answer about what would come next.

  “As soon as we get some food,” I began, stopping to get my chattering teeth under control, “and some hot drinks, we can figure out our next step. Ideally, Renée will have called to straighten all this out and the promised three-bedroom apartment will be ready for us. If not, we might be able to rent one.”

  “That guard said dogs aren’t allowed,” Brian said, putting his arm around the relentlessly upbeat retriever. She thumped her tail against the back of the seat.

  “I’m sure there’s a hotel in town that takes dogs. Particularly if we don’t let them see how sandy she is. A hotel with hot showers, fluffy towels, and a TV we can tune into the Giants game.”

  The boys went into the sandwich shop, which was really just a corner of an overgrown gas station. While they ordered, I tried again to reach Renée in the management office and Vik in the guard house. Both calls went to voicemail. I was neither surprised nor disappointed. At the rate this working vacation was unfolding into an unmitigated disaster, I was about ready to pack it in and head for home. But not tonight. Tonight, I had an appointment with a hotel pillow. Regardless of why Vik and Renée weren’t answering, I’d be much better prepared to deal with almost anything after a good night’s sleep.