We saw with our eyes the vermin sink
And what’s dead can’t come to life I think.
U NDER A SPREADING OAK TREE IN the parking lot across the street, in deep shade, a woman got out and crouched. But she was not alone. Out of the woods the cats came tumbling.
Cats! Not quiet kitties, but yowlers, crowders, squeakers, meowers, pushing at each other, expressing their wild joy in fifty different sharps and flats, which ecstatic yet contentious sounds were accompanied by the scrape of many small cans being set down and pushed around on asphalt.
The woman didn’t notice Paul and Nina, watching openmouthed. All they could see of her was straight gray hair and a baggy black sweatshirt.
The Cat Lady! Nina could hardly believe their luck. Pulling Paul behind a tree, she said, “How do we approach her? Make something up? I could be looking for my lost tabby and-”
“Relax,” Paul said. “Let’s just be honest. It’s more efficient.”
“Then how come I’m going to the party undercover tonight?”
“Because an arsonist will probably be there, who doesn’t want to be discovered. The Cat Lady, well, she’s a cat lady, a special breed. Stop it, Hitchcock! Let’s get that mutt in the Bronco before he rips your arm off.”
“Anything like the sound of a cat makes his heart go pit-a-pat,” Nina said, misquoting the great Robert Browning.
Paul opened the back and patted the floor. Hitchcock gave a last yearning look and then jumped neatly in. Nina saw him press his nose against the back window and heard him sob like a puppy when he realized they were going over there without him.
“You know, I’m starting to get attached to your mutt,” Paul said as they crossed the carless street. “Hmm. How come everything I say to you sounds obscene?”
“He’s not a mutt.”
“He is a mutt. Malamutes don’t bark much, and Hitchcock does. He’s got the hair of a black Lab, the slobber of a golden retriever, and the courage of a Chihuahua.”
“Stop maligning my dog. He loves me and he brings me my paper,” Nina said. “Which is more than I can say about most-”
The cats were taking notice of them. Several fled into the woods. More stayed right at the food cans. The woman stood up. She was tall and thin, like the Pied Piper, but she had forgotten her red-and-yellow scarf. The sweatshirt said IRON MAIDEN WORLD PIECE TOUR 1983 and featured some menacing grimacing from the band’s notorious rotting mascot, Eddie.
“Did you have to do that?” she demanded. “They were trying to eat.”
“Sorry. My name is van Wagoner. I’m investigating the arson fires in this area.” Paul opened his wallet and flashed what looked like a badge, and Nina thought, Uh huh, let’s just be honest. “This is Nina,” Paul went on offhandedly. Nina shrank into the obscurity of Just the Girlfriend.
Saying nothing, the Cat Lady folded her arms. She would have been nondescript, pale, no makeup, a plain, early-wizening face, specs, stringy hair with long straight bangs, but for the fact that she was almost as tall as Paul. She bent, though, as though all her life she had been trying to hide it.
“I’m sorry, your name was smudged in the report I was given about the car you witnessed driving from the second arson scene,” Paul said in an official tone.
She peered at him and said, “Ruth Frost.” Her voice was quite certain of itself.
“Of course.”
“You could have made an appointment, and not disturbed the little ones. Some of them won’t want to come back. You scared them.”
“Can’t they catch mice or crayfish around here?” Nina said.
“Not if they grew up in a nice warm house with cat food in the kitchen.”
“It’s nice of you,” Nina said.
“They’re starving. I have to do something.” They all watched the cats as they polished off the tins of cat food. These cats were thin, unkempt, and suspicious. Nina tried not to generalize as she looked back at Ruth Frost.
“It must get expensive,” Paul said.
“I would be happy to accept a contribution.” This lady was smarter than she looked. Paul raised his eyebrows, said “It’s a good cause,” got his wallet, and gave her a twenty. She tucked it in her pocket.
“May I have five minutes of your time?” he went on.
“We can sit right here at the boathouse.” They sat on a concrete step in the sunshine. Across the street to the east the Siesta Court sign hung disreputably from its pole, and Nina could just see the riprap. Rosie’s Bridge crossed the river just in front of them.
“Your address?” Paul said.
“I live with various friends around here. I sleep in my car sometimes.” Nina glanced at the Cutlass and thought she saw a mattress in the back seat.
“Do you have a phone number where I could reach you?”
“No. I’m usually here in the middle of the afternoon. If you need to talk to me again.” She kept her eye on the cats, who were beginning to melt into the surrounding trees. “Bye, dearies,” she said.
“Where are you from, Ms. Frost?”
“Ruthie. I’ve been here forever. When I was young we lived in Milwaukee.”
“You and your parents?”
“Yes. They’re dead.”
“How do you get along?” Nina asked.
“Just fine. I’m not just a homeless person, you know. I am not a welfare case or some anonymous person to be pitied. I am a writer.”
“How interesting. What kind of-”
“I’m writing a book on political philosophy. How do you vote?”
“What?”
“Republican, Democrat, you know. How do you vote?”
“Um,” Nina said. She looked at Paul.
“How do you vote?” he asked Ruth Frost.
“I don’t. Voting is futile since both political parties are interchangeable. Here. These are my Twelve Points. The Monterey Herald published them in the Letters to the Editor last year.” She handed Paul a folded piece of paper from her pocket. “I am going to revolutionize American society when the Twelve Points are fully explained in my book,” she said. “But it’s hard to get an agent. Ayn Rand had the same problem at first.”
“I will study them,” Paul said.
“Somebody has to cut through it and tell the truth,” she said.
“Now, Ms. Frost-”
“Ruthie. I don’t like the patronymic.”
“I understand that you saw a building burn down two weeks ago here in the Village.”
“Yes. The Newbie Café. That’s what the locals called it. It used to be Village Auto Repair. The owner used to let me feed cats in the parking area behind the shop. But he lost his lease to a couple from San Jose and they opened a restaurant for rich people this spring. All on behalf of almighty Moloch. A useful business was replaced by fatty Atlantic salmon sandwiches. Which are farmed and live out their lives in unhealthy conditions. Only buy wild Alaskan salmon. That is my advice.”
She paused for a breath, then went on, “Sometimes twenty cats came. It was the middle of the night on a Thursday and I was asleep in the lot in my car. The new owners told me I couldn’t park there overnight anymore, as if they had some use for the lot in the middle of the night. What do you think of the notion of private property? Ayn Rand was brilliant, but what a rightist capitalist apologist she was. What do you think of Ayn Rand?”
“So you were awakened from your sleep?”
“My sleep in the car? Or the great sleep we all pass our lives in? What do you think of Buddhism?” She paused and smiled a little, obviously not expecting an answer. Her attitude was one of benevolent condescension, as though they were a few more benighted strays who had come from the forest to receive her help.
“Oh, you want to limit yourself to your small incident. Yes. I was awakened from my sleep. I smelled smoke and the fire exploded out the windows. Glass everywhere. I started my car and drove on Carmel Valley Road toward the fire station. A van passed me and took a hard left onto Esquiline. The windshield was covered with ash and they were running the wipers-”
“They?”
“As I reported, there were two of them. Two heads, but I couldn’t see them well, and the license plate was covered with smoky black stuff. It was an old van, beige, I think.” Paul wrote this down, his forehead a map of concentration. “I’m not much good about cars. I knew they had set the fire-”
“How did you know that?”
Ruthie rolled her eyes. “Because they threw an empty can of kerosene out the window as they turned the corner. I have reported this several times.”
“No kidding,” Paul said. “I didn’t know about that.”
“I suppose your bureaucracy doesn’t communicate with the other bureaucracies. So. They were ecoterrorists, I suppose. I am against this sort of ecoterrorism because living things perish. The issue is quite simple if you look straight at it.”
“Did you stop for the can?”
“No. I followed the bastards. I didn’t stop for anything. I was way behind them at first and I don’t think they saw me. I followed them down the hill and watched them turn left after Rosie’s Bridge. Onto Siesta Court, right across the street there. I was going after them but just then a sheriff’s car and two fire trucks came roaring down the hill and over the bridge and I had to wait. Then I turned. And I heard a door slam shut. And I saw the van or whatever it was start up and go careening around the far corner.”
“Which house was the van in front of?”
“I couldn’t tell. The other investigator asked me that. I know Danny Cervantes lives in one of those houses on that street, and I know he was killed in the latest fire, so it must have been his house. But I can’t say I saw which house at the time. Some people came out of their houses to see what the commotion was about. They stood in the middle of the street and blocked it.”
Paul chewed on the tip of his pen. “Did you know Danny Cervantes, Ruthie?” Nina said.
“He used to hang out at Kasey’s in the Village in the morning with the other laborers, looking for work. He never hassled me like some of the others.”
“Did you ever talk to him?”
“No. I can’t believe how many innocent animals have been killed in these fires. Massacres. They didn’t have a chance. Cats, squirrels, moles, snakes, bobcats, owls, wild turkeys-how many insects? The heavens shrieked.” She started gathering up the empty cans and putting them in a trash bag.
“Well. Thanks for talking with us,” Paul said.
“I hope you catch the other one. I hope he rots in hell. Hell being, of course, an absurd concept.”
“So long.” Nina and Paul walked back across the street. Nina’s jaunty mood had evaporated.
They got back into the car. Hitchcock stuck his head between the seats.
Once they were back on Carmel Valley Road, she said, “I keep thinking that if she’d been born rich, she’d be considered an eccentric grande dame. She’d be a philanthropist and receive humanitarian awards at fancy receptions. But-”
“She gave up on humanity and cast her fate to the cats,” Paul said. “I always liked oddballs.”
“I think she’ll make a credible witness anyway.”
“Then it’s someone on that block. But consider this. She’s a big woman. She makes her own rules. She could have set the fires.”
“But she loves all the animals!”
“Who knows how her mind actually works?” Paul reached into his pocket with one hand and gave Nina the folded paper. “Here’s a clue. Let’s hear the Twelve Points she gave me.”
Expelling a sigh, Nina said, “Okay. It’s handwritten. Up at the top there’s no information. It just says POINTS in caps.
“‘ONE. Obscenely wealthy people should have their wealth taken.’
“‘TWO. We’re all so hypnotized you can’t tell what the reality out there is, if any.’
“‘THREE. Men like to be passive in bed.’ ” Paul gave an incredulous half-laugh.
“Don’t get all defensive, now,” Nina said.
“She’s off her rocker.”
“‘FOUR. Women resent being violated and make sure men get punished for it.’ ”
“That does explain a lot about modern society,” Paul said.
“Listen. ‘FIVE. Cold sensationalists is what we are. At least the feudal system allowed people comforting illusions to compensate for their misery, like religion and romantic ideals.’
“‘SIX. We are miserable because we are creatures in conflict between our bodily instincts and our half-evolved minds. The truth is, we don’t think very well.’
“‘SEVEN. Abortion is terrible. It only exists because our society does not support motherhood.’ ”
“I knew it would come down to abortion,” Paul said.
“She’s right,” Nina said.
“You’re not serious.”
“Hey, abortion is terrible. That doesn’t mean we don’t need it. Let me continue. ‘EIGHT. There is a class system in America. Two classes: the exploited and the exploitees.’ ”
“Hmm. Sometimes it certainly feels that way.”
“‘NINE. They pay us as little as they can and make sure to take any extra by turning us into insatiable consumers of unnecessary things.’
“This is a long one, Paul. She goes on, ‘The income-tax deduction for homeowners benefits banks and lenders, not homeowners. The purpose is to encourage enormous loans, not ownership. Who owns their property outright? We are carefully distracted from noticing that we are actually paupers.’”
“I’m starting to like this lady philosopher. Keep going.”
“‘TEN. The stock market panics when the unemployment rate goes down. The system relies on workers’ misery.’
“‘ELEVEN. Divorce is encouraged because it leads to small households, which benefits consumerism. The ideal is for each person to buy a house, furnish it, duplicate everything. Extended families are discouraged because they share resources.’
“‘TWELVE. New products are mostly old products we already have. Unnecessary refinements are added so we’ll throw away the old and bring in the new.’ There’s one more. It says, in caps again, ‘CONCLUSION:’-” Nina stopped.
“Well, what’s the conclusion? I’m dying to hear it,” Paul said, eyes on the road as he took a sharp curve.
“That’s it. She stops right there. Actually, she wrote something, but it’s crossed out.”
“Can you make it out?”
“No, she put x’s through it and then squiggles.”
“I’m going to have to ask her,” Paul said. “I can’t stand the suspense.”
“Are you making fun of her?”
“She could use a good editor.”
“She’s half pathetic and half brilliant,” Nina said. “A seeker. I notice she doesn’t mention love anywhere.”
“She’s a political philosopher. Like Tina Turner. ‘What’s love got to do with it-’ ”
Paul changed lanes. He looked dashing in his sunglasses. Nina leaned over and kissed his cheek. She said in his ear, “What did you think of her theory that men like to be passive in bed?”
“I would debate that with her anytime, anyplace,” Paul said. “Anyway. She’s a crackpot.”
“Can I keep the Twelve Points? Someday they might be worth something, like Ayn Rand’s manuscripts.”
“Be my guest.” They came to the turning lane for the Mid-Valley Safeway. Paul went on, “An overwhelming urge has come over me. To insatiably consume some unnecessary things.”
“What things?”
“Paper towels. Rug cleaner. Some blueberries for my breakfast and some steak for my dinner, since you will be partying and I have to eat alone.”
“Go for it,” Nina said. “I’ll stay in the car with Hitchcock.” While she waited, she read over the Twelve Points again. “What do you think, Hitchcock?”
But Hitchcock, uninterested in these all-too-human epiphanies, was asleep.
“B EN?” NINA KNOCKED AGAIN ON THE door of the old bungalow on Siesta Court.
It was quarter to six on this long summery Saturday afternoon. She could hear the stream flowing behind the riprap wall and smell the inimitable pungency of charcoal lighter fluid mixed with animal fat. The party must already be starting two doors down at the Puglias’.
She felt like a narc. Paul did it all the time, but she wasn’t sure she could carry this off. Again, she mentally counted the houses on the street: David and Britta Cowan in the big house on her left on the corner, Ben’s door right in front of her, Darryl and Tory Eubanks’s roof past a fine fir tree on the right, and past that, the Puglias, then Ted and Megan Ballard, and finally the Hills. She could hear kids screaming somewhere and the thought came, maybe one of them was a kid, arsonists are often young.
Ben opened the screen. “You’re early.”
“I love a good party.” She went into the dim low-ceilinged living room with its tweed couch and shook hands with Ben, who wore a black T-shirt and jeans. Condolence cards lay on the coffee table where they had been tossed. Someone had brought a huge flower arrangement, which still sat by the door.
He didn’t smile, and his eyes still had the puzzled, hurt look that comes with the shock of sudden death. Though he couldn’t be older than his early thirties, Ben’s face was lined and the tops of his ears were red as if from a permanent sunburn. She imagined he worked outside at least some of his day at Valley European Motors. None of this made him any less attractive. “Thanks for letting me tag along,” she said.
Ben sat down and said, “Anything, if it helps you find the killer of my nephew. I can’t sleep at night. He died so young, and while he was in my care. He played the flute. See it there, on the table?” The black flute case lay half-buried by the flowers like a miniature casket. “Danny’s flute,” he repeated, shaking his head.
“We have the same goal in mind,” Nina said, sitting down beside him. “I know my friend Wish didn’t set any fires, so I don’t see how Danny could be involved.”
“What is Wish to you?” Ben asked. She apologized mentally to Paul, because she couldn’t help enjoying sitting next to him. He had warm brown eyes in a smooth face in which she glimpsed the sun-drenched walls of a Yucatán pyramid.
“He worked for me. He helped with my law-office work at Tahoe. His mother is-was-my legal secretary.”
“Why are you here instead of at Tahoe? Is that why Wish was down here, too?”
“That’s a long, irrelevant story, Ben.”
He accepted this. In his soft voice he said, “We buried Danny this morning at the Catholic cemetery in Monterey. He was sort of Catholic. I said some things.”
“Who came to the cemetery?”
“My brother and his wife-Danny’s parents-came down from Tahoe, but they had to get back to work and they left right after. A couple of his cousins came too, and my sister and her husband. We decided to keep it small, even though some of the neighbor ladies wanted to come and have a meal after.”
“I’m sure Wish would have come if he could.”
“I guess. I don’t know what went on between them, but Danny-he gets so irritable, maybe Wish just had enough. Danny had a hard time making friends. He used to go out to Cachagua and spend the evening at Alma’s with his buddy Coyote. I didn’t even know how to call his buddy to tell him Danny’s dead.”
“Cachagua? I haven’t been there in a long time. I don’t remember a place called Alma’s.”
“There’s only one bar in the place. It used to be the Dew Drop Inn.”
“Oh, sure.”
“You know it? You don’t look like the kind of person who would go there.”
“Well, I haven’t always been thirty-five,” Nina said. “Ben?” Ben had immersed himself in a sad reverie. “Do you have a picture of Danny? I’m trying to get to know him, understand him.”
“Sure.” Ben went into the bedroom and came out with some snapshots.
A long, lanky, long-haired Native American boy, she thought. She could not see his face, hidden by a baseball cap. In one photo, Danny stood by a fence post, some scrubland behind him; in another, Danny sat at Ben’s kitchen table, a beer in hand, his head down, still wearing the cap.
“That’s the concho belt?” Nina said, showing him the outdoor shot.
“That’s it. Other than that belt, he didn’t care about clothes.”
“He doesn’t look happy in this picture in your kitchen.”
“That was the day after he was laid off,” Ben said. “He was low. I told him he could get another job, but he said he didn’t want to look yet. I’d come home from work and he’d be laying on the couch watching sports, anything that was on in the afternoon.”
“Do you think he was depressed?”
“You start depressed,” Ben said. “You feel hopeless, like you just can’t make it. You don’t have money to take a girl out, get parts for your car, nothing. Finally one day, if you’re lucky, you put your head down like a bull and you get out there and try to find work, whatever it takes.”
Nina nodded. “I’ve been there,” she said, and it was true.
“I didn’t know if Danny was going to make it that far until a couple months ago he told me he was doing some yard work for George Hill. Then Mr. Cowan hired him for some odd jobs. You know, he always wanted to be part of the neighborhood. Be one of the guys. But we were the outsiders on the street.”
“Outsiders?” Nina said.
“Sí.” He’s subtle, Nina thought. That one Spanish word had explained pretty well why he and Danny had been considered outsiders. “Danny is half Washoe, half Mexican-American. His mom is a full-blood Washoe. I’m not related to her or the Washoes.”
“He wanted to belong, you said before.”
“Maybe because he never had any roots. He didn’t even have a brother or sister to fight with. Anyway, everybody in the neighborhood suddenly figured out how good Danny was with his hands. He was working thirty or forty hours a week, gardening, repairing stuff, building a shed for George, doing errands for Debbie-it was like he had a family here. He had some money in his pocket and he started living again, making plans.”
“What kind of plans?”
“Same old thing. The other thing Danny needed besides a family was to make it big. When he was feeling good, it was always about getting the money fast. One night I said, ‘For what?’ And he told me, ‘Maybe start a business you and me can run ourselves.’ ”
Nina nodded.
“I didn’t blame him. Our parents came into this world poor and they’re gonna leave poor. Danny didn’t want to do the same, but look what happened. He was murdered. He died at twenty-one. And now people think he was a bad person.”
Ben shook his head. “Is it bad to want the same thing we all want, a better life for us and our families? Enough money to live”-he looked around the cottage-“better than this? The system… it relies on workers’ misery.”
He got up. “Well, let’s do it. The party goes on no matter what. People come and go, but the party stays right here on this street, once a month, Saturday night.”
He stretched out a hand and Nina let him help her up. She watched him tuck in his shirt in back. He didn’t really notice her; the life had been kicked out of him for now. “Ben, I understand you’re not in a party mood.”
“I have other reasons for going. Reasons you don’t need to worry about. So, let’s get our story straight, okay? You’re my old high-school girlfriend, around for the summer. Right?”
“Right. What high school did we go to?”
“Douglas High, up at Tahoe.”
They walked down his gravel driveway to the street, turned left, and, passing the Eubanks house with its brightly lit windows, turned into Sam and Debbie Puglia’s concrete drive. Balmy evening air carried the charcoal and wood smoke drifting through the forest. The laughter of children and the clinking of glasses emanated from the backyard.
“This house has been around awhile,” Nina said.
“They keep it up. Debbie is the street housemother. She’s always around, doing her projects. She and Sam like having the block parties. They like to know their neighbors, get close. Let’s go around back.”
They climbed the stairs to a wooden gate festooned with miniature white lights, which seemed to wrap all around the big deck the Puglias had built for entertaining. Nina felt panicky, and Ben wasn’t going to help much. She reminded herself that this wasn’t her social debut. Nobody should care about her if she kept a low profile. She was there to observe and keep quiet.
She didn’t expect much. Nobody would inadvertently let fall that he was an arsonist. She couldn’t ask many questions.
But if the Cat Lady was right, tonight she might meet an arsonist.
Would she know him when she met him? Keep an open mind, she reminded herself.
“Oh, my poor Ben. Poor, poor Danny. We are so sorry.” A middle-aged woman in a Hawaiian sundress rushed over to greet them, her arms held out. Nina, with Paul, had seen her that afternoon on the deck. The woman pulled Ben to her and held him as tight as a lug nut on a tire, patting his back. When she released him her eyes were wet with tears. “Such a loss,” she said. “I can’t imagine.”
“Thank you,” Ben replied.
He had some dignity, some presence. Nina had already realized that she liked him. Hope it’s not him, she thought to herself, but he was young and strong. He could commit arson. His kindness could be a pose, and his cooperation with her could be a way of defusing the opposition.
“And you brought a date! Introduce us, Ben.”
“Uh, here’s a good friend of mine from high school. Visiting in Monterey this summer. Nina.”
“Hi there, Nina. I’m Debbie Puglia.” Debbie took a small step forward and Nina took a small step back, not wanting to suffer Ben’s fate. Debbie wore a lot of makeup and had one of those faces that exaggerate emotion. Nina thought guiltily of Tammy Faye Bakker. Debbie went on, “You know, Nina, in all these years, Ben has never brought a guest before.”
“Thanks for letting me join you.”
“I’m glad you have company tonight, Ben. Oh, it’s so awful. We stopped by but you weren’t home. Is there anything we can do? We don’t know what to think. Danny-”
“Let ’em in, Debbie. Yo, Ben. Cerveza for you. Let me guess. White wine for your friend.” A short beer-bellied man came up and slipped his arm around Debbie’s waist.
“This is Ben’s friend Nina. Nina, my husband, Sam.”
“Hello, pretty lady. What can I get you?”
“White wine sounds great.”
Sam turned to Ben. “I don’t know what to say about Danny, man. Let’s get drunk first, okay?”
“Sure, I’ll have a beer.” They followed Sam onto the deck. A hundred silver lights twinkled festively along the railing. A cluster of fluttering candles and a red vinyl tablecloth decorated the big table in the center of the deck. Some dishes had already been laid out: a big bowl of tortilla chips, salsa, and guacamole.
Branches hung over the deck and about ten adults stood around in small groups. Off the deck, in the darkening backyard, Nina watched small children flitting in and out of the trees and a pair of older kids jumping on a huge trampoline, yelling as they flipped and bounced.
Sam went over to a blue cooler and Nina saw a bulky young man who looked like a football player standing at the charcoal grill, wearing a garish green-and-red apron. He noticed her looking at him, smiled, and waved.
“That’s Darryl. He’s cooking tonight. The men trade off,” Debbie said beside her.
Ben was shaking hands with a lean young man in shorts and expensive running shoes, his ginger hair cut short. Next to him stood a tall athletic woman, her face all angles, also with short hair brushed back, also glowing with health.
“Meet Ted and Megan. The Ballards.”
“Hi.”
Ted and Megan wore the determined, agreeable look of those who come out of duty. They shook hands with Nina. “Wow,” Megan said to Ben. “We’re just floored. We’re sorry, Ben, we really are. No matter what Danny did, we are really sorry.” She and Ted stood so close they might have been one body. Both had the overdeveloped calves of fanatical bikers, both held diet sodas. They had identical earnest, sympathetic expressions.
“He didn’t do anything,” Ben said. “He was up there with his friend, trying to catch the firebug. The real arsonist murdered him.”
Megan nodded politely, but Nina didn’t think Ben’s words had made any impact on her. “I can’t believe he’s gone,” Ted Ballard said. “Did you know him, Nina?”
“No.”
“I’m not going to say he was perfect,” Ben said.
“You don’t think it was him? I mean, don’t the police have his friend in custody? It said in the paper-” Ted said.
Sam returned, holding an icy bottle for Ben and a tumbler full of wine for Nina. She sipped. Cheap plonk. It tasted like it came out of one of those gallon boxes of wine you could buy at the supermarket, but she didn’t really mind. White wine was like chewing gum for her, a guilty pleasure, and she was glad tonight to feel it building a numbing buffer between her and her tingling nerve ends.
She felt like the target of an eyeball inquisition all around her. Was it so astounding that Ben would bring a date? With her body language, she tried to tell them all, I’m not here. Pay no attention to the woman knocking back the cheap white wine.
Debbie was back. “Let me introduce you to the rest of the Siesta Court Bunch,” she said, leading Nina from her haven at Ben’s side. “It’s a sad occasion tonight, what with Danny and all. But we try to get together whatever the weather. We’re kind of cut off here on the river by ourselves, so we try to be good neighbors. Is Ben really all right?”
“He’s managing. Uh, your house is so nice, and your flowers are sensational,” Nina said, setting her glass down for the moment. A tumbler this size ought to last the evening, if she wanted to last the evening. She noticed that Sam, talking to Darryl at the barbecue, was waving a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. He poured himself a healthy dose on ice.
“Oh, I just love puttering around our place,” Debbie said. “Sam goes to his office and now that our kids are at college I have the whole day to myself.”
Hey, thought Nina, maybe Paul and I do have ESP. Debbie had just confirmed exactly the fiction they had invented for the Puglias. Somewhat encouraged by this, she allowed Debbie to shepherd her over to the couple standing at the railing.
“Ben finally brought somebody to the party,” Debbie told the couple. “This is Nina. Nina, this is David Cowan and his wife, Britta. They live on the corner.”
Nina flashed to the big concrete house with “colonnades” next to Ben’s place. The Cowans. Yellow Porsche. Hmm. Pretentious sprang to mind.
“Pleased to meet you,” Britta Cowan said. Her husband held back, smiling slightly. They hadn’t been talking to each other. Like Sam’s glass, Britta’s glass held a cascade of ice cubes, but she was already due for a refill on the whiskey. She shook her empty glass, turning full-face to Nina.
Whoa!
Nina looked back, and found herself staring straight into green eyes shining with suppressed rage. Britta was a knockout, a blond with a lush body straining against the stretch in her black minidress, curving expanses of freckled, fine skin on full display. She kept shaking the ice, swaying slightly, while the others seemed to circle around her.
Her husband was the afterthought. He adjusted his glasses. Nina got an academic impression. He wasn’t wearing a corduroy jacket with leather patches on the elbows, but he should have been.
What he wore was baggy shorts and a baggy shirt. And, if she was not mistaken, a gold Piaget Emperador watch on his wrist.
Debbie shifted her weight from one foot to another, clearly not comfortable, while Britta gave Nina the twice-over.
“I didn’t think Ben had it in him,” she said finally. “You’re not bad.”
“Excuse me?” Nina said.
“Britta, behave,” David said.
“Don’t you people recognize a compliment when you hear one?” Britta said. She sidled up so close to Nina, she could practically rub against her, and her moves suggested she intended exactly that level of invasion. “Where you from?”
“Tahoe. But I’m spending the summer down here.”
“Doing what?”
“Just hanging around for a while.”
“How nice for you. So many of us work for a living.”
“What do you do?”
“I arrange expensive, exotic trips for lazy rich people at Carmel Valley Travel in the Village.”
“Interesting?”
“No, but it gets me out of the house. Once in a while, if the boss isn’t looking and a promotion is heavily discounted, I get to do a preview. Adventure travel. Now, that’s fun.” She paused and licked lasciviously at her glass, then looked at Nina appraisingly again, and said, “You cruise?”
Nina tried to smile, but failed. “No. No,” she said. “I get seasick. And what do you do?” she said to David Cowan. Before he could speak, his wife broke in.
“Oh, he rests on his laurels. You’ll find them down there on his butt.”
Debbie let out a nervous laugh.
David Cowan’s expression didn’t change. Nina picked up her wine and took a slug. He did the same. “Actually, I’m an astronomer,” he said mildly.
“Really.”
“With the Monterey Institute for Research in Astronomy.”
Paul had mentioned that. Smart and detached, Nina thought. “Oh,” she said. “I’ve heard of it.”
“His head’s in the clouds,” Britta said, laughing gaily. She put her arm around Nina’s shoulder. “Tell me, how is Ben?”
“He’s all right. He’s had trouble sleeping. He misses-”
Britta frowned. “No, no. Forget Danny. I mean, how is Ben? How is he in bed, you know? Do you and he actually do it? Because he’s so good-looking and he lives like a eunuch.” She leaned over and whispered into Nina’s ear. “I wondered if maybe he was a-”
“God, Britta,” David Cowan said, no inflection in his voice except maybe fatigue.
Britta’s arm dropped from Nina. Her eyes swept the yard. “Wonder what Sam’s up to over there with Darryl? Ooh. I see he’s got the bottle.” She whirled around and left them.
The three left behind each took another sip.
“S O,” DEBBIE SAID, WIPING HER MOUTH with her hand. “Look, it’s Tory! Honey, you’re late.” She gave the other woman a hug. “Oh, goody, deviled eggs! Don’t they look scrumptious!”
“Poor Ben, I’m so glad he came,” Tory Eubanks said over Debbie’s shoulder.
Nina looked past them, eyes drawn back to Britta, who continued her campaign to raid the personal space of every man and woman at the party. She snuggled up, whispered, got a rise out of them, and moved on, abrupt and capricious. She had already nipped at Sam and was trying now to get Darryl’s glass from him.
Tory Eubanks looked in the same direction.
“Darryl’s Tory’s husband,” Debbie told Nina brightly, waving toward the young man in the chef’s apron.
“That bitch,” Tory said, watching Britta fawn, feint, and paw. “The kids were at the movies and got home late, so I sent Darryl over to get started.” She noticed Nina. “Hi.”
“Hi. I’m Nina. Ben’s friend.”
“He told me you were coming. Nice to meet an old friend of Ben’s. Did you go to the funeral?”
“No, I got here too late.”
“We weren’t invited either,” Debbie said. “I would have been more than happy to have a get-together at Ben’s house for his family. But they came and went so fast.”
“Hello, David. How are you?”
“Tory,” Cowan said.
There was no heat between these two, but did David Cowan actually have any heat at all? He seemed to be one of those acutely self-conscious people who make everybody feel awkward. Maybe living with Britta had done it to him. Nina couldn’t think of anything else to say to him.
“Elizabeth here yet?” Tory asked Debbie. These two seemed to be good friends. Tory Eubanks was a lot younger, maybe thirty, a natural blond with blond eyebrows, no makeup, and lashless Sissy Spacek eyes. She wore a denim jumper and Birkenstocks.
“No,” Debbie said. “But she said she’s coming. Elizabeth’s my sister,” she explained, turning to Nina. “She lives way up on the hill in a house she designed herself, the lucky duck. She’s so isolated up there. I try to get her down here to join our get-togethers.”
“Well, I guess I’ll go see what my husband is charring tonight.” Tory looked over the railing. “Hey! Justin! Don’t jump so hard with your little sister on that thing! Careful, now!” She wandered over to the table with her big plate of plastic-wrapped eggs, pushed a few things out of the way, and set them down.
Another couple appeared at the gate. More people! How would she ever remember them all! Debbie took Nina’s arm and led her toward them and away from David Cowan. Just in time, Nina thought. She had almost gotten sucked into Cowan’s vacuum back there, where you existed only as a personality-free blob of nonmatter.
“Oh, Jolene, what in the world?” Debbie asked. Jolene carried at least four dishes on a huge pewter tray. Debbie sniffed at the wrapped platters. “Yummy!” she said. To Nina she said, “Jolene’s such a magnificent cook. She makes the party.”
“It’s nothing,” Jolene said. Okay, Nina told herself, George and Jolene… Hill. Yes. The old cottage on the corner nearest Rosie’s Bridge with the great garden and the chain-link fence.
“Tell,” Debbie said, trying to peek under the foil. “What did you bring this time?”
“I tried a few new things, a spinach pie with a fancy Greek name I forget, a shrimp dish from Thailand, that mac and cheese George likes so much, and goulash,” Jolene said. She was a sprightly woman in her sixties, wearing bright earrings and a well-cut pair of slacks.
Debbie and Nina helped her unload the food on the table. They removed the foil and found serving spoons for each dish. From the smell and look of these dishes, Jolene was more than a good cook.
“Well, just look at you,” the elderly man named George said, coming up to them. “Miss Aloha 1982.” Debbie blushed like a girl.
George Hill had gone straight over to greet a couple of the men. He was carrying a black musical-instrument case. About sixty-five, he was still puffing from climbing the short stairway up to the deck. His florid face told Nina that he wasn’t well.
Sitting down on the redwood bench that ran along the railing with the case on his lap, he clicked it open and extracted a gleaming Spanish guitar. He swung it around his neck on its leather strap and let it rest on his paunch, then ran long, surprisingly graceful fingers across the strings.
He played a few chords, warming up, grinning at Debbie.
“George, this is Ben’s guest, Nina-what was your last name, honey?”
“Balzac,” Nina said, then bit her lip.
“Balzac? What kind of name is that? Hungarian or something?” George said.
“Yes, as a matter of fact.”
“Maybe you could play us a Gypsy tune,” George said. “I only play country myself.”
“I can’t wait to hear you,” Nina said, smiling. She heard a crash behind her and they all turned around to see that at the other end of the deck near the grill, Britta had dropped her glass on the deck. She was barefoot, laughing, standing in the middle of the glass.
“Sam! Rescue me!” she cried. Sam Puglia stepped over the glass in his moccasins. Lifting her into his arms, he carried her a few steps, and set her down in safety.
Debbie ran into the house. She emerged moments later with a broom and began the cleanup. Darryl stooped down to pick up glass shards, putting them delicately into a plastic bag.
“Britta’s lit,” George told his wife. He looked at his watch. “Seven o’clock. Not even dark yet. This could be a record.”
“The kids are having a great time in the yard, though, aren’t they?” the woman said. “Hi there,” she said to Nina. “I’m Jolene. I’m glad you’re here. Ben needs a good friend right now. George and I have two granddaughters out there running wild in the woods tonight, Callie and April.”
“Ah,” Nina said.
“So how do you come to know Ben?” George asked. “You bein’ a Hungarian and all.”
“We went to high school together,” Nina said.
“Where? In Tijuana?” He started laughing. “They have Hungarians down there?” He started to strum. “I know a Mex song. Marty Robbins. The best country song ever written. I dedicate this to Danny, rest in peace. He used to bring his flute over and play this with me sometimes. Good old Danny. Right, everybody? Let that boy rest now.” He played a few chords, started fingerpicking surely and nimbly, then opened his mouth and started to sing in a startlingly beautiful baritone,
One little kiss and Felina, good-bye…
“‘El Paso.’ Gave away the best part,” he said. “It’s a tragic ending. Felina, sounds like a cat.”
“I never thought of that,” Jolene said. “Shall I get us something to drink?”
“And a couple of those deviled eggs Tory always brings. Save me some of your mac and cheese, don’t forget. And don’t even think about bringing me any of that crazy yuppie guacamole Megan makes, with all that spicy shit she puts in there.”
“Well, I’m sure gonna have some,” Jolene said. She winked at Nina. George started singing about how he shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. To Nina’s surprise and delight, he was a terrific singer, gravelly and expressive.
Hearing the music, the liveliest thing happening in the yard, Britta came over to give him a kiss and flash her green eyes at him. He squeezed her waist. “Why does a blond wear her pants around her ankles?” he asked her.
“Tell me why.”
“To keep her ankles warm.”
Ted and Megan, who had also been drawn by the music, cringed.
“Why are men like linoleum?” Britta retaliated. “Because all you have to do is lay ’em, then you get to walk all over them for life.”
“Come on, Nina,” Jolene said. “I see you need a refill.”
An actual wine bottle bobbed in melted ice in a tin pail on the table. Nina helped herself.
Ben came over to join them. Jolene said, “Ah, sweetie,” and hugged him. Ben murmured something to her and she said, “We enjoyed him. He worked hard. It wasn’t for charity, honey. Now then, you takin’ care of yourself? You get that supper I put on your porch?”
“Sure did,” Ben said. “Thanks.” They started talking about the burial.
Nina wandered off, looking for Debbie. She found her in the kitchen on the phone. Hanging up, Debbie said, “That was Elizabeth. She wanted to stay home but I talked her into getting over here.”
“Is Elizabeth your older sister?”
“No, younger by a lot of years, only thirty. I try to look out for her. She’s shy, kind of like Ben. Intelligent, but she doesn’t understand people. She’s a conservationist. She’s going to get her Ph.D. next year.”
“That’s something to be proud of.”
“Is it ever. I never made it past high school. Married Sam, had our babies. We’ve been married twenty years. Our kids both went down to L.A. for college.”
Smiling, Nina said, “That’s also something to be proud of.”
“Elizabeth is special. You might like each other. She’ll be here in five minutes.”
“Food’s on the table!” they heard from the deck.
Jolene came in saying, “Where’s that mac dish?”
“Well, in the oven. I forgot all about it.”
“George gets grumpy when he doesn’t get his mac and cheese.” She put on two orange oven mitts and pulled a magnificent casserole with spicy peppers, tricolor chunks of melting cheese, and a crunchy paprika topping, out of the oven.
“Ow!”
“Oh, honey, you okay?”
“I’m going to get you some thicker mitts, Deb. Don’t worry about it, I’m just clumsy tonight. We’re all off-key because of Danny. I mean, we just got over the fire across the river, and now this. George’s blood sugar has been all over the place.”
“He’s happy tonight.”
“Yes, I think he’s feeling better the last couple days.”
“Britta’s a sight tonight.”
“I think Tory’s pregnant. She’s not telling yet.”
The two women went out, Nina trailing behind.
The children had crowded onto the deck, bringing noise and chaos along. A separate table had been set up for them. Jolene, at Nina’s side, said, “There’s my dolls. Callie’s got the red hair and April’s the smaller one.” The girls ran past them toward the food set up on the big table.
“Those over there are the Cowan boys. They run wild. Britta neglects ’em.” Two small towheaded boys filled up their plates. One wore nothing but a sagging diaper and tiny red rubber boots.
“Darryl and Tory have four. There’s Mikey, he’s the oldest.” Nina gave Mikey a sharp inspection. The handsome Eubanks kid with sunburned skin and light eyes was shaved to the skull like his dad in the current sports-figure style and couldn’t have been older than thirteen. He couldn’t have killed Danny or threatened Wish. Scratch the Eubanks kids, she thought.
“What about Ted and Megan? Do they have kids?”
“No. They want to have all their time for their biking and sailing and whatnot.” Nina could see that Jolene couldn’t countenance this. Jolene’s lips pursed. She shook her head. She went on, “We better get our plates before it’s all gone. I’m gonna go see what else George wants.” George was entertaining them all with his guitar.
“He’s talented, isn’t he?” Nina said. She looked all the kids over one more time. They were all too young.
“Used to play in a country-western band. He didn’t get anywhere. Then we started the nursery. Sold out and retired five years ago and we thought what with the money from that and the social security we were set. Just goes to show.”
“How so?”
“Oh, you know, investments went down the tubes. Then our daughter ran into trouble. Drugs, I don’t mind telling you. She almost lost the girls. We took ’em, George and me, and my daughter moved to Oklahoma City with her boyfriend. And now we have the girls to raise. Oh, it’s fun. I love ’em to death. But George can’t work anymore, he’s got diabetes, and he worries about how to keep us.” While she kept up this nonstop narrative, Jolene had drawn Nina to the railing.
“And then I had a stroke, nothing much, really, but it added to George’s burdens, and he finally got a bright idea, that he’d subdivide our lot. It’s deep, you know, goes back from the river two hundred feet. So we’d keep the house in front and sell the area in back. Nice lot like that would go for three, four hundred thousand. We’d be set.”
“Sounds like a good plan.”
“Well, just goes to show.”
George stopped playing and beckoned to his wife. All the other men except for Ben surrounded him, plates piled high with food. In between bites, they were engaged in intense conversation, their voices low.
“Be right there, hon,” she called, and went on, “You’re gonna have a hard time believing this, but see that little old stream down there? Looks like nothing much, right? Well, this is a drought year, remember. A few years ago we had two winters in a row where it rained three months straight. The first winter, I just watched that water get muddier and faster and higher and didn’t worry at all. There had never been a flood here or close to one in the thirty-six years we’ve lived here.
“So when it happened, the fire department, the neighbors, we were all took by surprise. About 4:00 A.M. in pouring rain in February, it came over the top, where the riprap is now, and rolled down the street and wiped it out. Rolled through our lot and flooded our house, took out the garden and the fences, and rolled like the Mississippi down the next street. Took out that street, houses and all. Believe it? We had to evacuate for two days. The Red Cross set up a tent by the bridge and made free dinners and we all got tetanus shots. Took us six months to fix up the house, and the other street? Took them the whole year.”
“Amazing,” Nina said.
“Kind of thing supposed to happen once in maybe a hundred years. But the next year it happened again. Believe it? It did. This time it took out the bridge. We were all ready to evacuate, we had our stuff out of the house, so it wasn’t quite so bad as the first nasty surprise. Since then, that river has been sleepy as a baby. Probably never will get loco like that again.”
“Jolene! You get me some food!” George hollered over the din. The singing over, and whatever conversation they had going interrupted by their frequent trips to the buffet for food, the other men dissolved into the crowd.
“Comin’! So anyways, we thought we were back to normal except for that puke-producing riprap the county put in and the new bridge. So George started getting ready to sell the Back Acre, that’s what he calls it. Guess what happened. The county told us we couldn’t do it.”
“No.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Jolene folded her arms. “Right after the Green River development got approved. Some new commission passed an ordinance after the floods. George and I heard nothing about it until it happened. We sure didn’t see it coming. The new law says you can’t build, you can’t remodel, you can’t do anything within two hundred feet of the river. We can’t subdivide.”
Nina said, “Were you home when the model home across the river burned down?”
“It happened in the middle of the night. I heard the fire trucks and looked out and saw the smoke, so I woke George up and we went out to see what was the matter. Just about the whole block got up to watch it. I hate to say it, but I was glad to see it burn. And I’ll tell you something else. I hope they decide not to rebuild. For thirty-six years I’ve come out my front door and seen a green hill and willows. I don’t want to see fancy houses that somebody else got to build when we couldn’t.” Her mouth was set. “I’d be full of hate and bitterness, watching George and the girls struggling because we couldn’t do the same.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Trust in the Lord. What else can we do? Well, I know you’d like to talk to me some more, honey, but maybe later, okay?”
Jolene gave Nina a pat on the arm and wended her way toward her husband, and Nina headed toward the food, thinking that she wouldn’t want to come up against Jolene in court. That woman would be a huge hit with juries.
The adult neighbors sat down at their table, and Nina noticed they fell naturally into groups.
On the left end of the table, the Hills, the Eubankses, and Ben Cervantes.
On the right end, Ted and Megan Ballard, David and Britta Cowan.
In the middle, Sam and Debbie talked to both sides.
Even the food had been set on the table with some invisible demarcations. On one side, Jolene’s “mac” dish along with Tory’s deviled eggs and a big bowl of potato salad; in the middle, platters of ribs and chicken; on the right, in front of Ted and Megan, the Thai and Greek dishes, green salad, fruit salad, and soy milk in cartons. The liquor was similarly split into beer on the left and wine on the right, except for the whiskey glasses in front of Sam and Britta.
Sitting down next to Ben, Nina filled up her plate with starchy food. She pushed her wineglass back and Ben opened a bottle of Dos Equis for her.
Surprise, surprise, Jolene was holding forth at this end of the table, while George shoveled mac and cheese into his mouth and Darryl, Tory, and Ben listened with consternation.
“And she said she saw one of the arsonists pull into Siesta Court and drop the other one off!”
“The Cat Lady’s nuts, though. You can’t take somebody like her seriously,” Darryl said. “Remember when Debbie invited her to one of the parties and we all had to listen to her Twelve Points?”
Ben said, “I didn’t know she was that definite about what she saw.”
“Yessir, she was buying cat food at the market-they must give her a discount-and that’s exactly what she told me. She said she doesn’t know who it was but she thought it was men in the car.”
“But it wasn’t Danny,” Ben said uncertainly. “The kid, Danny’s friend Wish, says he and Danny were just trying to catch the guy.”
Tory pushed her hair back and scratched her head. “But if Ruthie saw that, and it wasn’t Danny, it’d have to be somebody else on this block.”
“That’s a good one,” George said. “Like who?”
“Like you,” Jolene said, and kissed him. “Maybe we should do a lineup,” she went on. “The Cat Lady might be able to pick out the bad guy.”
Tory looked around the table. Nina followed her eyes on each man: Tory’s husband first, big Darryl; George Hill, already tired out from playing a few songs, drooping a bit over his plate; broad-shouldered, compact Ben; Sam, ignoring his food and pouring himself another shot of Jack Daniel’s; Ted, talking animatedly to Britta and Megan about a hiking trip to New Zealand; and David Cowan, silent and birdlike at the far end of the table.
Hill broke the silence with a laugh. “It was probably Elizabeth,” he said.
“Please don’t hate me ’cuz I’m beautiful,” Tory said in a high voice, laughing too. She took her husband’s hand, and Nina saw Darryl wince.
Debbie said, “Hey. Watch what you say about my sister,” but in a joking voice.
Jolene said, “Aw, Debbie, it’s no reflection on you. It’s not your fault she’s got a burr up her ass.”
“She’s beautiful and smart and you’re just jealous.”
“She’s Miss Priss,” Jolene said, “but if she wants to come down the hill and slum with us regular folks, why, she’s welcome. As long as I don’t have to hear any more about keeping Robles untouched, now that she’s built her glass house.”
“Speak of the devil,” Tory said, and nudged Debbie. “Your sister’s here.”
At the gate, Nina saw a young woman in a soft gray sweater and black leggings, toting a leather purse. She waved to Debbie, who jumped up and opened the gate and hugged her, then led her, holding her hand, toward the table.
Elizabeth seemed unsure of her reception, and from what Nina had been hearing, she could understand why. But Darryl jumped up too, and went to her and Debbie with a bottle of beer in his hand. “Hey, there,” he said. “Glad you could make it.”
An awkward silence ensued. Tory was glaring after Darryl. Nina happened to glance at Ben and saw that he was glaring at Darryl too.
S OMETHING HAD CHANGED FOR NINA AS she ate dinner with the neighbors. Before, she had been an observer, but now she had become part of the party. It was like going to the theater and finding yourself on stage. She was involved in some sort of drama, and she didn’t know the story line yet.
Or maybe she shouldn’t have drunk that Dos Equis on top of the wine.
Elizabeth accepted the bottle. “Thanks,” she said in a low voice. “Hi, all. Sorry I’m late.” She had luminous skin and high cheekbones. She wore her shining black hair simply, in an old-fashioned straight bob with a fringe. On her the effect was ravishing.
“It takes a while to climb down from one o’ them big redwoods,” George Hill said. Jolene giggled at this.
Elizabeth went straight to Ben, sitting at the table, and put her arm around him. “I am so sorry,” she said. “Are you all right?”
“I’m all right. Thanks for the flowers,” Ben told her.
“Come sit with us-” Darryl started, but Megan called from the other side, “We saved a spot for you.”
Smiling, Elizabeth said, “I need to say hi to Megan.” She went to the group at the far side, and Ted and Megan made room for her between them. The loud conversations resumed, but Darryl seemed to have lost interest. He couldn’t keep his eyes off the beautiful woman at the other end of the table. Tory, beside him, was seething.
Why, he’s madly in love with her, Nina thought with dismay. Four kids under the age of thirteen, a devoted wife-how could he? No question, Tory must know, because Darryl was about as subtle about it as a chain saw biting into a chunk of hardwood.
Nina hoped he and Elizabeth weren’t having an affair. She had liked Darryl, before.
Ben, too, seemed distracted by Elizabeth’s presence, although he was not as obvious. Elizabeth didn’t glance down the table again. She set her bottle of beer aside and poured herself some soy milk.
“You know what?” Tory said suddenly. “I’m going home.”
“I’m not ready,” Darryl said.
“Then stay here, damn you.” Tory got up and went into the house, followed by Jolene and Debbie. Darryl started to rise, then sat back down again.
“She gets into these moods,” he said.
Nina ate some more of Jolene’s tasty pasta. The night was young, and she had a feeling that she’d better keep her strength up.
Jolene and Debbie returned from the kitchen without Tory and the party moved into a new phase as they all started moving around again. Nina helped carry endless paper plates and dump them into trash sacks while Sam and Darryl went out into the backyard, working on something. The kids ran back into the woods.
George took up his seat on the bench, picked up his guitar, and started playing, looking now and then at Britta, who hung on the deck railing.
Green eyes and white lies
Like a fool I fell in love
An’ I’m haunted by the memory of her
Soft skin… so lost in
Dreams of those few nights together
I can’t seem to forget her
Green eyes… and white lies
“That’s your song, Sweet Lips,” he said.
Megan and Ted gathered with Elizabeth and began talking intently, and Nina, reminding herself of her mission, drifted over to listen.
“He worked on David’s Porsche a few weeks ago,” Ted was saying.
“He did all kinds of odd jobs for David and Britta,” Megan said. “Jolene got George to pay him a few bucks to clean up the Back Acre. He was immune to poison oak. I saw him back there a month or so ago, tearing up the brush, working hard. He did a good job, but he was troubled. He always looked so unhappy.”
“But he’d lost his job,” Elizabeth said. “Of course he was unhappy.” She had moved aside slightly to let Nina join the group. Standing next to her, Nina smelled the strong soap she used, something expensive and fresh.
Megan said, “No, he always had a problem. But, listen, I’m being nice about this, here’s what happened that same night. Danny was out front wrapping twine around the stuff he had pulled up, and Jolene invited him to dinner. Which would be okay, except they sat on the porch and George kept feeding him alcohol. You know some Native Americans have a big problem with that. Not to perpetuate a stereotype or anything.”
“Alcohol should be banned,” Ted said, and Elizabeth and Megan nodded. “Marijuana, there’s nothing wrong with that. It doesn’t make people go out and commit crimes.”
“Wine is good for you in moderation,” Elizabeth said. “That’s not alcohol in the sense you’re using it.”
“We tasted the most incredible merlot at Galante Vineyards last weekend,” Megan said. They talked about wine for a while, and Nina was about to leave when Megan suddenly returned to her earlier topic.
“Anyway, I heard Danny tell George that George was like a father to him. Danny was maudlin. And you know what that doofus George said?”
“What?”
“He said, ‘You were my kid, you wouldn’t be such a useless little loser.’ He actually said that. Danny didn’t say a word. He went up the street past our house toward home and he was crying. I saw him.”
“That’s the saddest thing I ever heard,” Elizabeth said.
“Let’s talk about something else,” Ted said.
“How’s the new place coming?” Elizabeth said.
“Oh, the permit process was terrible.” Megan turned to Nina and said, “We’re going to move up the hill from Siesta Court soon. Green River’s going to ruin this street, so we’re building up on the mountain, about a quarter mile from Elizabeth. And it’s getting too… too… oh, you know, all the locals down here. God, the jokes tonight. I mean, get some wit.” Ted and Elizabeth laughed.
“We had such a scare,” Megan went on. “The fire on the ridge came within a hundred feet of our construction site, and we had just got the framing completed. Ted has spent every spare second up there for months. When we found out the next morning-Ted had a fit.”
“Oh, look, they’re building a bonfire,” Nina said. Just below the deck, in a clearing circled by stones, Darryl and Sam had just finished constructing a huge pile of dead wood. While the others watched, they set fire to it in several places.
“They always have a bonfire,” Elizabeth said. “It’s illegal, I think, but they don’t care. They grew up with the local cops.”
“Oh, my God, Nina,” Megan said. “Look over there. You better go protect Ben.”
“Britta keeps trying,” Ted said. “Ben’s never been interested.”
Megan lowered her voice. “I don’t know how David puts up with it. I mean, Britta and Sam last year. Debbie was so upset when she found out. Sam promised her, never again, and she stayed with him.”
Nina saw that Ben had picked up a couple of plastic chairs to bring down to the fire, but Britta had moved in on him.
As the evening progressed and Britta got drunker her eyes had taken on the wet insatiable look of a dog in heat. Ben kept his head down in defense mode. Britta worried him like one of Ruthie’s cats worrying a rat. She eyed him across the deck. She oozed close to him. His face reddened as she whispered in his ear. Then she turned, but just as he began to relax she would go at him again.
Finally she landed right in his face, saying something again, tongue flicking, plump lips moist and open. Ben must have had enough. He raised his hand and put it on her chin and gently but definitely pushed her away. She swayed in one place for a few seconds, shrugged, gave him the finger, staggered off, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and lit one to steady herself.
The other neighborhood women watched her faltering progress along the deck without comment, her eyes speckled yellow from the porch light.
The men had not noticed what had just happened. Except for Ben, who had gone into the house, they were lounging together across from the fire, hidden in moon shadows. Bursts of talk and exclamations flew into the air like hails of bullets.
“A toast!” David Cowan said from down there. The men punched their cans into the air. Britta approached the men. “What’re you guys talking about, hmm?” she asked.
“Danny,” Sam said. “We’re toasting Danny.” Britta’s hips swiveled his way, drawn like a magnet to a Frigidaire. She sailed down the stairs toward the fire.
Nina picked up her chair and started down the stairs behind her. She passed Debbie, who looked worried.
A rough circle of chairs grew up around the fire, as most of the neighbors drifted down from the deck and sat near the warmth. Nina sat down beside Ben, who had reappeared.
“Figuring anything out?” he said.
“Having a great time,” she answered.
George and Jolene sat down beside her, saying to the others, “Debbie’s all tired out. She’s gone inside and said good night to y’all.”
Across the fire, David Cowan, Sam, and Darryl had set up their chairs. Ted joined Megan and they pulled up chairs on Nina’s other side.
Illegal or not, Nina loved the big fire blazing up. It reminded her of the old days on the beach at Carmel when they still allowed fires at the foot of Ocean Avenue. But Darryl and Sam had settled back and she was wondering who was going to tend it in the liquor-soaked post-dinner hour.
Darryl’s eyes followed Elizabeth as she moved around the circle. Suddenly he got up and followed her and said something to her.
She shook her head and he took her arm. Nina heard him say “Please.” The woman shook him off and came over to sit by Megan. Nina noticed she no longer wore the soft purse over her shoulder.
“Here,” Ted said, “I brought something for the good guys.” He passed a silver flask to Elizabeth, who tipped it back sharply, like she needed a shot. Her face flushed and she said, “I understand Courvoisier is good for the heart also.”
“Absolutely,” Ted said. “Was Darryl bothering you?”
“He’s harmless.”
“He thinks he’s in love with you,” Megan said with a laugh.
“I like Tory,” Elizabeth said. “She’s dedicated to him and their family. I honor that.” They all were silent for a few minutes, and then Ted and Megan started talking with each other about their construction contractor.
Elizabeth turned to Nina and said, her head close to Nina’s so no one else could hear, “So you and Ben went to high school together?”
“Uh huh.”
“Nina Balzac, huh?”
“That’s right,” Nina said. Elizabeth’s gray eyes had a steady insistence.
“The French writer,” she said.
“I heard there was one.”
“Oh, yes. There certainly is. I did a paper on him at Stanford. Honoré de Balzac. Alas. He was not at all Hungarian.” She crossed her legs. “His family came from the South of France. His name came from the Latin Balteanus.”
“You’re making that part up for sure,” Nina said.
“I remember because of the anus part. I thought it was funny. When you’re eighteen stuff like that is funny.”
“Well, my grandfather’s family came from Budapest.”
Elizabeth looked down. “Your shoes betray you,” she said with a blinding smile. Nina looked down at her new shoes, which had seemed quite innocuous when she put them on.
“Børn shoes,” Elizabeth went on. “Hand-sewn in European style. You don’t belong in this crowd any more than I do. And you seriously don’t belong with Ben.”
“Because I wear expensive shoes?”
Elizabeth laughed slightly. “Well, let’s just say, it tells me a lot more about you than you intended to tell. Are you a Fed? Is this about the fires?”
“Whatever.” It was all Nina could manage.
“I’d like to get your phone number and talk to you some more.”
“Sure,” she said. She dredged a scrap of paper from her purse and wrote it down.
Just then Britta came down the stairs, holding tightly to the railing.
“She’s got my purse,” Elizabeth said in a voice that was stricken with sudden anxiety.
Britta picked her way around the fire. When she came to Elizabeth, Elizabeth stood up and said, “Give me that.”
Britta smiled and whispered at the woman, putting her arm around her so Elizabeth had to stoop. Elizabeth listened and laughed desperately, as if trying to ingratiate her way free.
Looking around with a wicked grin, Britta said loudly, getting everyone’s attention, “I was looking for a match and your purse was handy. But looky what I found.” She held up a square black object.
“A tape recorder!” Britta crowed. “And it was rolling! She’s been taping us!”
“That’s not mine!”
“Oh, then I’ll just keep it and listen to it and tell everybody what’s on it tomorrow.”
“Look, Britta, just give it to me,” Elizabeth said. She seemed about to cry.
“Give it to her,” Ben said. Moving to Britta fast, he snatched the tape recorder out of her hand and gave it to Elizabeth. “And the purse.” He gave that back too.
“What’s that thing for?” George boomed.
Elizabeth didn’t answer. The fire seemed to answer in her place, surging up.
“Why are you spying on us?” George said. His voice held a new note of menace.
“I forgot about it. It wasn’t on,” Elizabeth said. “Anyway, I should go.”
“Don’t go,” Ben said, standing close by.
She looked at him and looked at Nina. “I guess I could stay for a bit.” She took his hand and walked away from the group staring at her and sat down on the steps leading back up to the deck.
“What’s going on?” Darryl asked them all. “Is she spying on us?”
Megan said, amused, “Outrageous. Who knew she cared.”
The dispassionate David Cowan looked rattled. “What exactly do you think she was trying to find out?”
Sam said, “She’s a little sneak.”
“Don’t you dare talk about her like that!” Debbie said.
“It was on,” Britta said. “Swear it was. Red light blinking.”
“I’m gonna find out why,” George said.
“George, leave it,” Jolene said. “We didn’t say a thing she shouldn’t hear a hundred times, if that’s what she wants.” Her husband leaned back. In the firelight he looked old and frightened.
The party went on. Inertia, brought on by heat and drink, captured them all. The pace of movement slowed, the talk sputtered. Only the children continued, exhausted but relentless, running and screaming.
Britta’s youngest, a three-year-old, had been crying intermittently for hours. He’d had an accident and his diapers were hanging over his little rubber boots. His parents didn’t seem to notice.
He and the other children gathered dead grass and twigs and leaned forward to toss them into the fire, while the grown-ups looked on with glazed, indulgent eyes. For one terrible moment, Nina thought the toddler would topple into the fire, but then he emerged like a dwarfish Vulcan from the smoke, black-faced but unscathed, and rushed back into the forest.
Ben and Elizabeth emerged from the house, fresh glasses in hand, and took seats by the fire near Nina. Darryl had tipped his chair back too far and now, amid general laughter, he fell backward to the soft ground.
The kids stripped sticks and some of them roasted marshmallows. Others just caught their sticks on fire and waved them around. A few feet behind the bonfire, a small group of children hunkered down. A moment later they sprang back. They had been making their own fire, outside the fire stones.
Preoccupied with their own affairs in the circle of chairs around the fire, the adults didn’t seem to notice. Nina saw Debbie at her kitchen window, rinsing dishes in a pool of light, but all around her was black sooty forest and the circle of flames.
Full dark had fallen around them. The birds no longer twittered and the stars shone indifferently through the oaks onto the pagan fire and its devotees. Nina had begun to feel hypnotized in these dark, smoky woods.
Britta, still conscious, although barely, had begun goading Sam, who had also drunk himself into mild stupefaction, with sexually pointed comments. She threw out this thunderbolt: “So do you still want me, Sammy?”
“Yes, Britta,” Sam replied, sounding weary and sardonic. He seemed to feel that further resistance would lead to gnashing of teeth, general bloodthirstiness, frightful consequences.
Britta had been gathering herself for something all evening. That time had arrived. They all knew it. She would not be denied. Nina imagined her naked, dancing on a corpse, her jeweled belt hung with skulls. What was going to happen?
Sitting a few feet from Sam, David Cowan slumped, seeming to have the strength only to lift his drink to his mouth one more time. The fire burned brighter, shooting up sparks that made George get up and move farther away, cursing. The added heat felt vivid, sharp, oppressive.
As the shower of sparks died down Nina saw through a veil of smoke that Britta, maddened by drink and boredom, had made her move; somehow she had slithered onto Sam Puglia’s lap.
She faced him, legs wide apart, dress hiked up. Slowly, she began grinding her groin against his lap. All that could be seen of her was her round gelatinous rear revolving obscenely, her freckled arms firmly hugging Sam around his chest, and the pale skullcap of her hair. Her face was buried on his chest.
Sam’s arms were raised on both sides, his right hand still holding his drink. Above her nestled head, he smiled hideously, seeming to salute them with his drink and to beg them not to notice, distancing himself from the unseemly plowing taking place below.
In the woods, the children screamed and played. Britta moved implacably, rhythmically, upon Sam. Nina couldn’t turn her gaze away, but a veil had fallen over her eyes and the movement in the chair right over there turned blurry.
Anything could have happened in those moments. Cowan could have stood up and shot his wife. The devil could have appeared in a shower of sparks. The maintenance of the universe seemed to depend on not noticing.
They all held their breaths and pretended not to notice. George Hill held on to the arms of his chair to keep them attached.
Sam kept his arms held high like a catatonic, his smile a rictus. Britta made no sound, but worked away with a will.
A few moments later, using her strange magic, Britta rematerialized through the flickering fire onto her husband’s knee, her arms around him, whispering, wheedling, and jiving. Cowan’s pallid face yielded no clue to his reactions.
After what she probably considered a respectable period, Britta resumed talking to the others.
Relief filled the air. The rest of them, Nina included, looked at one another like tattered survivors of a terrifying natural event.
They had held it together in the face of chaos. The social fabric had not been torn, all was sort of as it was.
But Britta did not play her encore for long. She slipped away, alone. She was gone for good. Soon Jolene asked, “Where’s Britta?”
“Putting her kids to bed?” someone said. But, no, Nina saw that her boys were still making mischief out there in the shadows, their faces streaked with tears and carbon.
The adults rose clumsily together, moving toward the street, calling to their kids. David Cowan disappeared too and Megan rounded up the young Cowans. Ben offered to walk Elizabeth to her car. After a querying look at Nina, and a nod back, Elizabeth accepted his offer.
Sam continued to sit in his chair, drink in hand. He hadn’t moved since Britta had screwed him into it. He might have been unconscious, but no one wanted to look closely enough to find out.
The fire still blazed, but the party appeared to be over.
“So long, great party,” Nina heard a few voices call out to whoever might hear, and she and Ben joined the crowd stumbling along the road.
T OP DOWN ON PAUL’S MUSTANG, THEY whipped past the wineries and dry hillsides on Carmel Valley Road, which had just turned into G-16, on Sunday morning. Paul took the curves too fast, and Nina held on tight. This time they had decided to leave Hitchcock at home.
They were following Danny’s routines in order to find out who had tipped him off about the fires. Ben had told Nina he hardly went anywhere, except to a bar called Alma’s in the hamlet of Cachagua, deep in the Los Padres National Forest.
“So,” Paul said, negotiating a particularly harrowing bend in the road, “you ever been up this way before?”
“I used to come here to swim sometimes when I was a teenager,” she said. “There’s a place called the Bucket along the river here. Kids used to go naked in a deep pool in the Carmel River.”
“Where exactly is it?”
“Why exactly would you care?”
“Hot day,” Paul said. “Nice way to cool off on the way back.”
“Uh huh.”
“Who did you come with?”
“To the Bucket? That’s private,” she said. Paul’s sudden interest ballooned like a semi coming at her.
“I can just see it.”
“No, you can’t,” she said. “Banish whatever pictures you’re conjuring up.”
Paul wore his khakis and a polo shirt. Nina, in deference to where they were headed, had dressed in jeans and a tank top, her hair tucked under a baseball cap. A flock of wild turkeys burst out and skittered across a field, staying very low in the air. They had already passed Carmel Valley Village and lost the houses. The one-lane road, striped with light and shade, wound around the rock banks like a narrow asphalt river.
“Well, you promised to tell me about the Siesta Court Bunch party once we hit the road. When I mention it you get this expression-what is it, disbelief? Amusement? Disgust?”
“That was some party.” Nina shook her head. “Was it ever.”
“So? What do you think?”
Nina said slowly, “I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”
Paul laughed. “That bad?”
“Lord of the Flies bad. Deliverance bad.”
“Did you learn anything?”
“Well, I learned how to lap dance,” Nina said. She wet her lips and began describing the party, from Darryl’s mooning over Elizabeth to Tory walking out; the black-faced kids screeching through the woods; George’s tasteless jokes; Ted and Megan grinning beatifically from the sidelines; Elizabeth’s tape recorder. Paul burst into laughter here and there as she talked.
“Trust me, it wasn’t funny while it was happening,” Nina said. She finished with Britta and Sam on the plastic chair. Paul laughed long and hard at that one.
“Sam’s probably still sitting there in his plastic chair, holding his drink up with that look of horror,” Nina said.
“I can’t believe I let you two talk me out of going,” Paul said. “I wondered if there were any good parties left, and here I had the chance to go to the best one in ages.”
“But I’m not sure I learned anything about the arson. I didn’t look at one of the men and say, it’s him, like I thought I would. One of them, Darryl Eubanks, is a volunteer firefighter, which I suppose gives him an automatic place on the list.”
“What did you think of him?”
“A lunk.”
“I was looking for something more precise. More profound.”
“He’s dissatisfied, though he has everything-health, youth, a family, work, a home-he was hitting on one of the other women. He’s likable, though, and I kept watching him and reminding myself that a lot of my guilty criminal clients are likable.”
“Anybody else?”
“David Cowan is alienated. He has money. I suspect he’s obsessive, and these fires may be the product of an obsessive mind. He’s secretive, that’s what it is.”
“That’s interesting,” Paul said, “in an academic sort of way.”
“Well, George Hill is used to getting his own way, and he has a concrete grievance.” She told Paul how the Hills had lost their right to subdivide. “Danny worked for him a lot. If I had to pick, I’d say George, but then again, he’s got health problems and I can’t see him climbing a steep trail. I don’t know.”
“We’ll just keep gathering information, and you’ll be able to link up those impressions,” Paul said. “I think you learned a lot.”
“I think you better slow down.”
“Anything you know about this place we’re going? Cachagua?”
“Ca-sha-wa,” she corrected.
“But a hard g for agua?”
She shrugged. “It’s how we pronounce it here. Hmm, Cachagua. I always thought of it as this magical valley in the middle of the forest, timeless, quiet, the sun always shining. It’s sensationally beautiful and remote.”
“Can’t wait to see it, then.”
“But it’s probably not so quiet at the moment. Remember Ben mentioning the old dam up there? The San Clemente? The locals fish and hike there. The village, what there is of a village, is built right next to the dam. Well, there’s talk of putting in a bigger dam.
“Ah, you think the idea of a new dam has the locals worked up,” Paul said.
“Sure it does. The Salinas Valley growers are running out of water. The locals feel like the water’s being stolen from them.”
“We’re gonna wring the earth dry before we’re done,” Paul said. “The truth is we don’t think very well.”
“Hey, Paul. That last line is one of Ruthie’s Twelve Points.”
“So it is. They’re contagious.”
“Water is the big issue in the West. The South steals from the North. Las Vegas steals from the whole state and neighboring states too. Mono Lake is suffering. Salmon die in Oregon because the Feds divert water to the farms. There just isn’t enough fresh water to go around.”
“But it’s so hot and still here. I feel,” Paul said, giving the wheel a spin, “like someone heading into the waving fields of Iowa, one of those outposts where there should be miles of untouched neat rows of corn, American frontier, peace, and no issues.”
“Visit Iowa. I’m sure you’ll find they’ve got fights about pesticides, the end of small farming, whatever,” Nina said. “Meanwhile, California’s got its water fights.”
Stiff and impatient with the long drive, they arrived in Cachagua before noon. Even the spectacular views of forest, wineries, and horses along the way hadn’t diminished the feeling that they were riding into the Wild West, visitors to a place they did not belong. The village, a clearing in the woods with a couple of mom-and-pops and a dusty county park with a tot lot, had only one gathering place of note, the bar.
“Alma’s. I could use a drink,” Paul said.
She knew he meant a real drink, the kind that actually hydrated. They parked in full sun in the dirt lot, and Nina followed him through the door of the long, low brown shack.
After the blazing summer sun, the dimness and cool inside provided a haven. Four men already sat at stools along the bar, three grizzled from years in the outdoors, and one down at the end, gray-bearded but wearing a couple of gold rings in his right earlobe. All eyes turned toward the tourists who had driven up in a fancy red Mustang convertible. Paul gave the men a nod.
“Ice water,” he said.
“Ice water,” Nina echoed. She checked the menu chalked on a board behind the bar. “And nachos.”
Paul said, “And add a couple of turkey sandwiches on wheat.”
“White’s what we serve,” said the woman behind the bar, not unfriendly, but not smiling either.
“White’ll be fine.”
When the water arrived in drizzling, cold glasses, they drank thirstily. Down the bar, the three cowboys resumed what seemed to be a comfortable, ongoing discussion, with an occasional sideways glance toward them. They griped about the lack of jobs, the drought, the divorces, and the child support, and no fact went uncontested. While heated, the conversation was peppered with peevish humor.
After a suitable time, Paul asked the bartender what was going on with the dam. She answered, “Nothing bad has happened yet,” and retired to a stool by the curtain that led to the back, but the question set off the others at the bar. Nina quickly dubbed them Cowboys One, Two, and Three, since the three sitting together wore identically battered denims and work shirts, and from the smell of them, seemed to be taking a break from a morning of arduous outdoor labor.
“Smoke, dust, traffic, blasting, medical problems, strangers in the park… that’s what’s gonna be goin’ on if that damn dam gets built.” Cowboy One wore jeans that rode too low over scrawny hips. His drooping eyes looked permanently unhappy.
“It’s a Godzilla,” said Cowboy Two, a beat-up young man wearing a hard-used tan cowboy hat. All Nina could see of him was his mouth and chin. “And we’re Tokyo. It’ll lay waste to this town.”
“You know what they want to build?” asked Three, a short, plump man who squinted as if needing to protect sensitive eyes from even this murky light. His baseball cap and sunglasses sat on the bar. “A concrete wall two hundred eighty-two feet high, quarter of a mile long. That’s four hundred feet wider than Hoover Dam. You ever seen that?”
One and Two shook their heads.
“You get to Vegas, you’re not thinking about dams,” said One.
“Well, this thing is gonna drown one of the prettiest valleys in the Ventana wilderness. The Los Padres Dam already forces the steelhead salmon that run the river here to climb the highest ladder in the country to spawn. Destroy over a hundred acres of habitat, some of it wilderness. Spotted salamander. Steeleye. We can forget about fishing.”
“Bastards,” said One and Two, drinking deeply of their drafts.
“Bastards,” agreed Three, keeping up.
They drank again. So did Paul and Nina.
“They say it’s gonna cost us a hundred twenty-five million dollars,” Three went on. “Hell, it could cost three times that.”
“Shit,” said Two. “You kidding me?”
“That’s what the Sierra Club says,” Three said, nodding.
“Bastards!” Two said.
“The Sierra Club?” Three asked.
“All of them. Outsiders. Why can’t they leave it alone? The old dam’s done the job all these years. We don’t want any more water. It’s all for people who live miles from here.”
“Somebody’s getting rich off this.”
“And there’s no tellin’ who.”
“So the damn developers can keep building until we all live up each other’s asses,” said Three. “Let ’em get their own damn water.”
“I didn’t move out here to listen to noise and deal with hammering, hollering, and hauling all day long,” Two said.
“Damn right,” One agreed.
“Somebody’ll blow it up, we get lucky,” said Two.
“I’ll do it if you’ll do it,” said Three.
This statement resulted in a long period of silence, as if the boys needed time to adjust to the change in dynamic before continuing. Down at the end of the bar, the fourth customer, the one with a gray beard, nursed a glass of ale.
He wore paint-spattered shorts and sandals, and on the floor beside his stool rested a folded easel, confirming Nina’s impression that he was an artist rather than a housepainter. She knew many of the people in the area formed a loose-knit community of artists and craftspeople.
“Let me know how to join the posse when the time comes,” the artist contributed now.
“Oh, good idea, Donnelly,” said the lady bartender from her perch in the corner.
“That’s right. Run ’em out of town,” said One.
“A hundred and eighty trucks a day rollin’ in!” Two said. “Think of it! We only got eight hundred people in Cachagua. That’s one truck per four people!”
“Not like they’re gonna hire locals either.”
“Place’ll be crawling with Mexicans,” Two went on.
“Shut up, Randy. I’m Mexican, in case you forgot,” said Three.
“Yeah, but you’re my friend,” Two said.
“And how about the Esselen Indians? Here for at least a thousand years. There are ancient relics all over the place, grinding stones, all that. The Esselens have been fighting this idea for years. Shouldn’t somebody listen to them?” Three asked.
“My sister’s husband is part Esselen. He’s all right,” said One. “I agree with you, they ought to be considered.”
“Ditto,” Two added.
Nina and Paul ate their sandwiches, paying close attention.
“You folks from around here?” asked Three of Nina and Paul. Having finished his current beer, he moved his mug back and forth along the bar, agitating for service.
“I grew up nearby,” Nina lied. She had grown up in Pacific Grove, fifty miles away in a whole different culture, but she certainly felt she knew these guys intimately. Any one of them might have been her first boyfriend, the skinny-dipper and bad boy, refocusing all his lawless youthful energy into a hard job and bar talk.
“You do look familiar,” Cowboy One said, examining her. “I think I used to see you at the Bucket.”
“I doubt it,” she answered, feeling the red creep up her cheeks and down her neck.
“No.” He showed his teeth. “I’d remember you.”
The others at the bar cast sidelong glances at her, then looked innocently back into their beers.
She could feel Paul bristling beside her, so she hurried to erase the naked frolicker who seemed to have taken up residence there beside them. “We’re looking for… a friend of a friend. Danny Cervantes?”
“Dead,” said One, his eyes gloomier than ever. “Don’t you read the paper?”
“Danny spent many a evening here, drinkin’ Coronas,” said Two.
“Seems obvious this is just plain what it looks like, a case of Danny being Danny,” said Three. On this sobering thought, the rest of the guys drank again.
“You really think he set those fires?” Paul asked.
“I don’t think he had a thing to do with those fires,” said Cowboy Three. “I ain’t gonna speak ill of the dead.”
“Last time he was in here, you sure had a different version. Started with F and ended with loudmouth asshole,” said Cowboy Two.
Cowboy Three sucked in his cheeks. “That’s because he was with Coyote that night.”
“Now, Coyote, he was Danny’s good buddy.”
“Uh huh,” said Nina.
“So what’s your interest in Danny?” said the artist.
“Actually, it’s Coyote I’d like to talk to,” Nina said.
“Why?”
How easily the lie flowed. “Danny’s uncle, Ben, found something in Danny’s room that belonged to Danny’s friend-I guess that’s Coyote, and my friend and I were coming out here anyhow to walk around the dam, so we said we’d ask around.”
This was rewarded with nods and pursed lips. Paul nodded too.
“Couldn’t be money,” Cowboy Two finally said. “Coyote sure ain’t got any of that, and Danny wouldn’t have saved it for him if he did.”
“Could you tell us where Coyote’s camp is?” Paul said.
“He’s got a camp out Arroyo Seco way.”
“Way out there,” Nina said.
“But you could just leave him a message at the one place we all go to when it all comes down.”
Nina nodded and smiled.
“Where’s that?” Paul said, and the whole bar, including Nina, said, “The Mid-Valley Safeway.”
“Ah. Right. We all have to buy groceries,” Paul said.
“Right,” Two said. “Even if he lives mainly on grilled squirrel.”
“What else can you tell us about Coyote?” Paul asked.
Two laughed. “He only talks when he’s drunk, but then you can’t shut him up. He collars you. The bar empties out when Coyote gets to talking about how he caught that big steelhead and gutted it and how good it tasted fried in a pan over a campfire.”
“How about the rest of you?” Paul asked. “You know the man?”
“He’s just… prickly. Yeah, that’s it. That’s why he yells at you if you say hey,” said Three, setting the roll of his stomach into movement as he chuckled. “Or even try to use the head, if he’s in there. He lives so deep in the boonies, he probably thinks the running water here is really special.”
“I remember he said once he grew up around Lake Tahoe,” said One. “But that’s right. Mostly he talks about hunting and fishing.”
Nina and Paul looked at each other.
“Hey, Donnelly, you were drinkin’ with him last week!” Three said suddenly.
Donnelly, the artist, had been watching them. He seemed to be working up some steam. “Boys, I don’t trust these people,” he said. “They come in here and they want to know where a man who likes his privacy lives. Who are you people?”
Surprised, Nina gave him her full attention. He had a twitchy, drumming presence that made Nina think about the dangers of crack cocaine. He seemed old to be abusing stimulants. In her experience older addicts preferred to mellow out.
“Just what we said,” Paul said with his innocent look.
“Lies. You’re the System.”
“The System?”
“The fucking exploiters and spies.”
“Oh, them. No, we’re just friends of Danny’s uncle.”
“IRS,” the artist said, counting on his fingers. “County sheriff. Welfare. Repo man. Child support. Which is it?”
“Look, I’m not after your friend at all. Danny left two hundred bucks in an envelope marked Coyote and his uncle wanted him to have it. Nobody cares what it’s for-drugs, loan, work, whatever. Screw it. We tried. We’ll buy dinner at the Sardine Factory instead. Let’s get out of here,” Paul said, turning to Nina and nudging her off the bar stool.
“Wait.” Two’s strong hand grasped Paul’s arm. “So it was money after all? Let’s see this envelope.”
“She has it.” Paul nodded casually toward Nina.
She opened her mouth and closed it. Opened it again. “I tossed the envelope,” she said. She opened her purse and pulled out ten twenties she had just received from the ATM and flipped the edges like a deck of cards.
“Lies,” said Donnelly. “Don’t tell them anything.”
“Oh, be quiet, Donnelly. You oughtta ease up on the controlled substances,” said Two, which brought on a hearty laugh from his compadres.
“But-”
“I said shut up. You hear? These nice folks come here to do a good deed. So shut the hell up.” He glowered at the artist, who stroked the gray soul-patch on his chin rapidly a few times and then got off the bar stool and walked out without a backward glance.
Two said, “He oughtta get some sleep. Now. About getting Coyote his money.”
“Coyote come in here regularly?” Paul asked.
Two shook his head. “Could be weeks before he stops by again. He has a younger brother he takes care of and I don’t think he likes leaving him alone.”
“How old?”
“Twelve, maybe thirteen? Less said about that kid, the better.”
“Big-time screwed up,” One stated.
“Screwed up how?” Paul asked. “Drugs?” Drugs were on both their minds at the moment.
Cowboy Three squeezed his little eyes littler, and snorted. “Drugs might have helped that kid. I’m afraid it’s probably too late to get him anywhere near normal.”
“You should meet Nate. Then you’ll have the full picture,” said One.
“Does he come in here?”
“Not hardly. You’d have to go out there to the tent to see them both, probably. But if you do that, watch it. Coyote keeps a pit bull.”
“Yeah, a real friendly animal,” said Cowboy Three, adjusting his hat back on his head. “Just like us.” That made all three of the men at the bar laugh. Hopping off his stool, Cowboy Two doodled a map on a napkin for Paul and Nina. “Go back to G-16 where it goes left around Sycamore Flat back to town. You want to take a right there instead, onto Arroyo Seco. He lives up a dirt road in Wood Tick Canyon. It’s a long way.”
This time Nina drove. She kept the air conditioner blasting on her arms while Paul dozed on the seat beside her. He slid back and forth, first against her, then against the side door as the road zigzagged around the canyons and hills of the Paloma Ridge. When they came to the main turn, she woke him up. “I need you to navigate. Pull out that map the guy gave us, okay?”
“Hey, I’m still alive,” he said, opening his eyes.
“You don’t trust my driving?”
“Of course I do or I wouldn’t let you drive.” He found the map in his pocket and studied it. “It’s irrational, this need I feel to scream when you take a blind curve fast, so I close my eyes to keep the peace.”
“So you’re letting me drive? I’m not taking a turn at the wheel as an equal?”
“It’s just a figure of speech. Lighten up, babe. I had a brainstorm when we were talking to the cowboys. Remember the one who was talking about Godzilla?”
“No. You thought of something about Coyote?”
“No, this is another verse for our monster song.” He sang in a deep growl:
I am Godzilla-and you are Tokyo
I am Godzilla-and you are Tokyo
I just can’t help it-I’ll try not to bite
I’m gonna lay waste-to you tonight
“They’ll love it at the Grand Ole Opry. Speaking of turns,” she said, “is there a turn coming up?”
It should have been right there, although almost an hour of searching nearly convinced them otherwise. The snarl of dirt roads ended in gullies, fences, boulders, and debris. They finally located the right turn, exactly where the map showed it.
“How did we miss it?” Nina said, taking the pitted road too fast, irritated and tired, feeling as dusty as the road. As the afternoon progressed it had only grown hotter. They finally spotted a distant gray tent in a clearing up ahead. Nina parked. Paul jumped out of the car, closing his door silently while Nina pulled socks out of her bag and put them on along with her hiking boots. She also pulled out a long-sleeved shirt, unsnagged her rolled-up sleeves, and buttoned them tightly at the wrists.
“Why are you doing that?” Paul asked her. He had forgotten already.
How infuriating, that he had no such cares. “You can’t see it? Paul, this forest is crawling with it.” Poison oak swarmed up the trunks alongside the road, crossing on the Spanish moss from tree to tree. Clumps of it framed the road and flourished all the way up the hills around them.
They walked up the road toward the clearing, cautious, both wary of the pit bull. Paul held a thick branch. Nina stopped.
“What’s the matter? You see something?”
Long black shadows of the late afternoon made the road ahead look like something out of a fairy tale, where threatening beings wavered, waiting for them, and trees creaked and whispered as they walked by. The silence, aside from the hysterical buzzing of insects, seemed total.
“Know something? I have no idea where we are,” said Nina.
“I’m looking forward to getting the hell back to the river. You can shake your stuff at the Bucket for me alone.”
“I don’t like it here,” Nina said, slapping a mosquito that had crept up underneath her sleeve.
The heat rose up from the road, suffocating in the stillness.
“You want to wait for me in the car?”
She visualized herself in the Mustang, alone with her imagination in this atmosphere. “No.”
“Well, then. Ready?” He waited until she started up again.
An old Chevy van blocked the entrance to the clearing. They walked around it, peering inside. Nina’s heart jumped. It looked like she imagined a kidnapper’s van might look, filthy tan, paneled, full of ratty bits of rug and trash. “Ugh,” she whispered. “Paul, the Cat Lady thought she saw a beige van.”
“I’m looking, I’m looking. Hold my stick.” He brought out his penknife and, glancing at the motionless flaps of the tent, quickly scraped something behind the front fenders into a baggie.
A boy in a plaid lumberjack shirt walked across the muddy meadow toward them, cap pulled low, head down, limp animal hanging by its ears loosely from his left hand, stick in his right, a day pack on his back. A dark stain made a blot over the pattern on the front of his shirt. As he got closer, Nina could see the animal was a skinny gray jackrabbit.
“Who are you?” he asked. Shaking hands didn’t seem like a good plan, so Nina smiled and said, “I’m Nina Reilly and this is Paul. I’m a lawyer. And you?”
“Nate. A lawyer helped my mother once. Look what I have.”
“You shoot it?” Paul said. He was looking for a weapon.
“Trapped it. Trapped it and wrapped it.”
“Make a good dinner,” Paul observed, as if he and Nina routinely ate dead animals for dinner, which they did, but Nina didn’t want to think about that right now.
“My brother makes stew.” He looked confused. “Used to. Not anymore.”
“Let’s all sit down and talk for a minute,” Paul said. “Aren’t you Coyote’s brother? Nate?”
“When I was.” Nate perched on a rock not far from them and plunged the stick into the ground. What he might be thinking, with the eyes she couldn’t see and the shaggy hair and the general air of being off-kilter, Nina couldn’t imagine.
“Have you lived here long?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Uh, just wondering.”
“It snows up on the mountains here, sometimes. Bet you didn’t know that. When it snows I stay in the tent. Bent in the tent. But I don’t know what to do now. He doesn’t like me.” He dropped the rabbit, which plopped to the ground without complaint. Nate pulled on his eyebrow and commenced an alarming series of loud moans.
“I vote we go get Coyote,” Paul said hastily.
“Nate? Nate? We want to see your brother,” Nina said.
More groans. Nate rocked back and forth.
“Where’s your brother?” Paul asked.
“Gone.” Another groan.
“Where?”
He stared at them. “That’s the mystery. My mother told me a story. About a train. Trains are a strain.”
“Let’s go look anyway, okay?” Paul said.
Nate followed with his rabbit and stick, docile enough, as they moved cautiously up the track to the sprawling tent, still emitting the occasional moan.
“Nate’s not well,” Nina said to Paul in a low voice.
“No shit.”
“Someone ought to be helping him. A doctor.”
As if hearing this, and deciding against it, Nate suddenly disappeared.
“Nate?” Nina called.
A tall, tan young man with an ugly pink-nosed white dog built like a tank stepped out of the tent about fifty feet away. He wore the kind of T-shirt her son, Bob, called a wifebeater, white and sleeveless, jeans, and a brown cowboy hat low over his eyes. When he saw them, he seemed to jump back a step, but the dog jumped forward, growling. Thank God, Nina thought, that thing’s on a tight leash. Actually it was a chain, but Coyote was holding it looped several times around his knuckles.
Nina swallowed. Paul liked her to take the lead in these encounters, saying, heck, let the sexists feel safe because you’re a woman. Why not use it to our own advantage, this sexism stuff?
“Your brother trapped a rabbit,” she said.
“So we eat tonight. That’s good.” Next to him, the pit bull at the end of the chain made no sound, waiting. “Meanwhile, I politely say, just the one time, get the hell off our property. Now.”
“Are you Coyote? We’d like to talk to you about Danny.”
“Beat it. Or I let the dog go.”
“We’re leaving,” Paul said. He swung around back toward the road, but did not completely turn his back on the man or his dog.
Nina stumbled behind. As she followed Paul back to the car, she reminded herself, “Stay away from the poison oak,” but really, all she could think about was the muzzle of the pit bull and that poor boy standing by the tent, eyes searching the distance for answers.
“Did you see?” Paul said, as they reached the Mustang, started it up, turned on the AC, and sank gratefully into its leather seats.
“See what?”
“Up in the tree.”
“See what?”
“Nate built a nest up there.”
“No. I was too busy watching Coyote’s fingers on the dog chain. He’s perfect, Paul. He’s got the van. I see him setting the fires and driving away. It’s no stretch of the imagination.”
“So who’s the second dude, then?” Paul said. “The second guy in the van? We’re operating on the assumption that the second guy isn’t Danny.”
“Doesn’t have to be,” Nina said. “Simple. Danny found out from Coyote, and decided to get the reward. He’d know to look for the van up on the ridge.”
“He was going to finger his buddy?”
“His buddy was an arsonist.”
“To tell the truth, no one could be this dude’s buddy,” Paul said. “Drinking partner, yes. But-”
“But what?”
“But who did he drop off on Siesta Court that night? Who’s his partner?”
“Someone Danny hooked him up with,” Nina said, excited. “Another reason to kill Danny.”
Paul patted the baggie in his pocket and said, “Hope this is ash.”
They drove back to the turnoff for the Bucket. The sun was low and the shadows had lengthened, but the temperature was still in the nineties.
“Look for a hole in the fence just before you see the iron gate with a Stone Pine sign.”
They got out of the car, sloppy and tired. “This it?” Paul asked.
“I think so.”
They clambered down a steep path. Following the trail, they wended their way through a fifty-foot grassy field to a fork in the path. “We go right,” Nina said. They crossed one creek, and minutes later, arrived at the rocky shore of the swimming hole Nina remembered so well. No one else had lingered so late in the day. “Oh. It doesn’t look the same.” Floods had devastated the scene, tearing at the protective foliage. “My gosh. It was all hidden! Oh, well. I’m too hot to care.”
She peeled off her jeans, shirt, and underwear.
Paul took off his boxers. He kissed her hungrily. She ran her hands down him, admiring him. High above, on the highway, those who knew to look could see the tiny embracing figures in the twilight next to the pond. Nina felt the heat rising from the stones and a late-afternoon breeze stirring on her bare skin. Birds called to each other in the laurel trees.
They slid gratefully into the Bucket’s gold-and-silver water, and the light split and shattered across its surface, then gathered itself and followed behind as they swam.
E LIZABETH GOLD’S SUNDAY TURNED OUT TO be eventful too. After packing her new Subaru with water and sunscreen, she left before dawn that morning, heading east into Los Padres National Forest, to Tassajara Hot Springs. She wanted to get the most out of her visit, and knew she had a two-and-a-half-hour trip on G-16 to get there.
She had a bad taste to expunge after her foray to Siesta Court the night before.
For the first thirty miles, she enjoyed the expanses of yellow and olive-green hillsides, the dry grasses rolling like ocean waves in the hot wind, the occasional ranchito with its grazing horses, then the forest closing in. At the tiny community of Jamesburg the asphalt ended and the warning signs began: TASSAJARA ROAD IS IMPASSABLE DURING WET WEATHER. THE MONASTERY IS CLOSED FROM SEPTEMBER TO MAY, PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB THE MONKS.
As the road climbed steeply and ruts and stones took over, she switched to four-wheel drive, slowed down, and bumped and ground her way the last fourteen miles up Chews Ridge and down into the Tassajara Creek Basin, reminding herself with each teeth-clattering lurch how much she needed this retreat.
Morning’s overcast broke and the sun began to burn hot. After checking in with a friendly student, she strolled around the monastery grounds, starting at the footbridge. She walked the length and breadth of the property, over the footbridge, up the path to the yurt, breathing in the smells of the forest around, enjoying the security of the hills that framed the central clearing.
Since the sixties, Tassajara had undergone a slow metamorphosis and now included, in addition to the redwood cabin complex built in the mid-seventies, bathhouses, plunges and hot springs, stone meditation rooms, and a large dining room and dormitory. Too remote for tourists, this serene paradise was visited only by those seeking peace.
Holding her towel and water bottle and stepping carefully in her sandals, Elizabeth picked her way to her favorite boulder next to the river, where random rocks made art of the landscape. A branch hung down and sheltered a flat spot on this river rock.
She looked up the mountain at the broad scar running all the way down its flank, from the wildfire a few years before that had forced the monks to evacuate. No fire now, just heat, the hillsides shimmering with it.
Today the temperature might top a hundred degrees. She would go inside by 10:00 A.M. During the winter and fall months, the monastery closed to all visitors, while its residents engaged in intensive, ninety-day practice periods called ango. Elizabeth had done that in September. She had mourned a lot and slept a lot. One day she had enough, and went home. Simple, like Zen.
Today, she would return home before sunset. Finding a spot in shade on her boulder, crossing her legs, she sat for a long time amid the disheveled business of her Self, not trying for anything or expecting anything, just sitting. Like a monk of old on a rock above the river, she heard rushing water, allowed patterns of light to drift through her downcast eyes.
Old thought-patterns arose and she let them in.
They had died in a head-on collision in San Francisco. She had been at home, taking a nap. Five years it has been, she thought in wonderment.
She breathed in and out on her rock.
What she couldn’t get over was that at the moment of impact she hadn’t even woken up, hadn’t had enough of a connection with them even to feel them cry out as they left the earth. A certain moment occurred and all she loved was gone. She had nowhere to go and nothing to do and several million dollars from her dead husband. From her dead daughter, May, she had only memories.
For a while she drifted around like a wraith. She went to Kyoto and Dharamsala and Mount Kailash and other holy places, avoiding people. She ended up back in the high-rise in San Francisco, seeing a shrink three times a week. May’s last moments came to her frequently in her dreams.
After a long time, Elizabeth gathered herself together again. She still didn’t think she deserved to be alive, but she made a contract with life-to spend it helping others.
And so she went to Africa for two years and gave most of the money to various groups and worked for Médecins Sans Frontières until she came down with dengue fever and had to be airlifted out. She despised herself for her lack of stamina even more, but she stayed in the U.S. this time. She joined an environmental group in Humboldt County protesting logging of first-growth forest there, and for two weeks she even sat in a tree.
During a visit to her sister and a subsequent retreat at Tassajara, she saw Carmel Valley and thought, I’ll build a home there, close to the monastery, close to a place to run to.
Then, when the home was finished nearly two years later, she again looked around for something to save.
Moving into traditional political activism and Valley conservation issues, she worked furiously and gave more money, and soon she was a member of several local boards and commissions that were trying to stop further degradation of the viewsheds and water sources into the Valley.
And finally she decided to get back on the Ph.D. track. Why? Because there were still so many nights when she sat alone in her living room, drinking brandy, thinking too much. She got a Ph.D. committee together and chose a subject, and found it gave her a reason to wake up in the morning.
Stop running the pictures, she thought. She came back to the rock, the river, and the breathing.
And fell back into her blackest place.
And let the waves of pain wash away, then return in their eternal cycle.
She didn’t know how long she sat, legs cramping, sunshine burning down through the leaves, but when she came out of the moment and back to the setting, she noticed the shadows around the oaks and chaparral had shrunken. Her arms had turned red. Her stomach growled and her back ached. The stream ran below. She reached into her bag and had a meditative smoke, then stood up, making her way to the dining room for food.
Although several others were eating their plates of rice on wooden picnic tables outside and were involved in small discussions, she avoided them as always, moving away to sit on some wooden steps, eating under the lines and shadows of a cooling trellis. She didn’t want to waste her time in group chitchat. She had had enough of that at the party on Siesta Court the night before.
After she finished eating, she soaked in the outdoor pool lined in round stones outside the bathhouse, then moved inside to the tile tub, all the time staying out of conversations. One thing about people here, they left you alone.
Lying in the hot tub, she began thinking about how the events at the party the night before might fit into her thesis.
Too bad about Britta outing the recordings. She had continued to tape anyway. Nobody expected that, so she did it. Nevertheless, last night’s Siesta Court party would be her final information-gathering session. The newbies and locals could interact without her interference from now on.
Getting out, she dried off and changed. She had the tape to transcribe and scholarly thoughts to express, objective thoughts that never got out of hand. Lapsang souchong to drink. Another day to get through.
The long drive back went quickly. She felt renewed by her mini-retreat, and the trees and hills flashed by like benevolent green presences in a beautiful world. She even thought to herself at one point, am I getting better?
Dark had come. Elizabeth turned on the light in her kitchen and found some cold brown rice in the fridge. She added some plain yogurt and that took care of dinner.
Bath time. She drew it out, shaving her legs carefully, letting all the hot water run out. She found a blue silk kimono in a bamboo pattern to wear, fitting for the day and her mood. With a towel, she ruffled her wet hair.
The silence of the house surrounded her. She descended the stairway, moving various things out of her mind, the sound of the floors creaking, the emptiness of the bedrooms. She checked her watch with a kind of despair. Nine, too early to go to bed yet. Do some work.
The biggest room downstairs was octagonal and painted forest green. There, she kept her desk and her work. And there, she stared out the window at the hillsides and the moon. Adjusting herself in her chair, she picked up the standard cassette, labeled it, and set it into the compartment of the transcribing machine she used.
The doorbell made her jerk.
She peered through the side windows that showed her who might come calling, though no one except FedEx and Debbie ever did.
She reached for the handle of the door and opened it.
“But why have you come?” she asked.
Darryl Eubanks sat on the wicker settee across from her desk. She leaned over in the Queen Anne chair, attending to the pot on the brass tray on the wooden chest. He sipped the sweet smoky tea she had handed him and grimaced.
“You don’t like it.”
“I hafta say, I’m an orange pekoe man, myself.”
“Someone I know bought this at Ten-Lin in San Francisco. It’s the best.”
“I believe you. I’m no connoisseur. Nice photos. Wow.”
“They’re from Tanzania.”
“It’s a very impressive house,” Darryl said. He wore a sport jacket and jeans and was sober, or she wouldn’t have let him in.
“Bigger than I need. I know,” she said.
“I didn’t mean that. It’s just… teachers live in reduced circumstances these days. It makes Tory so mad, the way we’re underrated.”
“I can understand that.”
“Because she believes we deserve more.”
“She’s right. What do you teach?”
“Phys ed. Eighth grade.”
“I thought you were a firefighter.”
“Oh. I am, but it’s volunteer work.”
“Right. Do you like it?”
Darryl laughed. “It’s a duty. I dread being called out to a fire. But we have to work together or the whole forest would burn down some summer. I got called up to your neighborhood on the ridge fire. It came within a quarter mile of you. You were lucky.”
“You fought the fire? I owe you for that, Darryl. All that smoke, the sirens-”
“We almost had to evacuate you.”
“I didn’t know it came so close.”
“Ted and Megan’s new place almost burned down. Don’t know how we saved it, really. I was worried about you. I watched out for you.”
“Well, thank you, Darryl. Thanks for doing that.” They were keeping up the convention that he had dropped by after dark just because he was in the neighborhood. Elizabeth wondered what form the pass would take-would he sweep her into his arms? Get down on his knees? She felt curious and a little cruel. He had no right to be here. He had children, a wife. He was acting outside the mores, hers as well as his.
Then she thought sadly, I’m too lonely, tonight, to turn even this away.
What would she do when he made the pass?
His eyes ate her up.
Darryl was saying, “Actually, I came over to apologize. For my behavior at the block party last night. I made a fool out of myself.”
“Do you remember what you said, when you grabbed my arm and pulled me over toward the deck?”
His face went red. “To be honest, I don’t know exactly what I blurted out.”
“I’ll forget about it too, then.”
“Thanks. I’m not so good at talking even when I haven’t had a couple of beers.”
“Uh huh.”
“So,” Darryl said. He had run out of conversational gambits, so he just sat there.
“So.” Elizabeth nodded. She felt like slapping his big slow face, giving him the back of her hand a few times, to see if he could wake up. If only he would cut to the chase, because she was losing even her curiosity now.
Finally he resumed, “Britta got pretty wild there at the end.”
“It’s not the first time.”
“What was that all about? The recordings you were making? What were they?” He sounded abrupt.
“I’m… curious about people.”
“You sure had us freaked.”
“I gather information,” she said. “For my work. Just general things. I’m sorry it made everyone so self-conscious. That was never my intention.”
“You expected something to happen there? Have you always taped the parties?”
“No.” A lie. He really wanted to know, she could see that in his face, and she wasn’t about to tell him.
“I always hoped you were having fun. I always thought you seemed lonely. What kind of work do you mean?”
“Forget about it, Darryl. It was stupid of me.”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with Danny or the fires, does it?”
“Of course not.”
“What are you going to do with the tape?”
“Oh, give it a rest, will you? Do you want some more tea? Otherwise, let’s call it a night.”
“Because we’re good people on Siesta Court. Family people. Maybe you should give me the tape.” A warning, as if he felt she must be inimical to them? She wasn’t inimical, she was merely objective. Darryl was a local. He would never understand her work.
“Of course I won’t give you the tape,” she said. He shook his head in disappointment and stared at her body under the robe. He was young, strong, and not bad-looking, and she thought about him again.
“You’re widowed, aren’t you,” Darryl said. She almost breathed a sigh of relief as he finally got into it.
“Yes.” She noted clinically that she had been able to answer without a stab of pain for the first time.
“Tory and I met when we were thirteen.”
“Very young.”
“Right. And we were together for five years before either of us mentioned marriage. I left college and came back here to finish up.”
“Do you think you married too young?”
“Now I do. We weren’t really ready. Tory didn’t want to leave her family here in the Valley. I…”
“You?”
“I could live anywhere. I could live in Tanzania, teach school. I’m different from Tory.” He put his hands on his knees and his body tensed slightly.
You think you’re better than Tory? Elizabeth thought. You’re so wrong. I’ve got you all figured out, right down to clumsy adultery, if you can manage it. She felt contempt, and realized she had made her decision.
“To be honest, Tory and I have grown apart. She’s content leaving things as they are. We talk about the kids, visit family-I keep thinking I’ve missed out on some important things in life.”
“Must be hard, having a wife who doesn’t understand you.”
“Yeah.”
Moisture formed on his upper lip. She couldn’t stand it any longer. “Darryl?” she said. “Why did you come here tonight?”
“I always wanted to. You’re all alone,” he said, “and so nice-looking. I love your black hair. I love those blue eyes of yours. I don’t think I’ve seen such a shade before, ever. I love the way you live, so free.”
Elizabeth finished her tea. She poured herself another, then topped off Darryl’s cup. “You thought I seemed lonely?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Because I’m not married and live alone in this big house?”
“Because of… aw, shit. I’m not so good at this.”
“True.”
“I’m tryin’ to say… you and I could…”
“Could what?”
He pushed his foot out until it touched hers. Raising his eyes, he looked for a response in hers. “You’re so beautiful.” He leaned close enough to touch her cheek. “All my life I’ve done the things that were expected of me. Just once I want-I want-”
“You don’t know me.”
“I know a lot. I know you lost your family…” He seemed to realize that he had said something wrong. He stopped.
Elizabeth stood up. “I suppose you all talk about me behind my back.”
“Of course I know about you. I’ve had my bad times. Everybody has.”
“You with your four beautiful children. You say you envy my freedom. Maybe you also envy my money. Well, I envy you your babies. Go back to Tory,” Elizabeth said.
“Doesn’t a man have a right to pursue love in his life? I could help you. You’re so sad. We could be good for each other. I could surprise you.”
“Go home, Darryl.”
He stood up to full height. “You need a man, Elizabeth. You’re young and beautiful. You couldn’t save them, but you could still save yourself.”
“Get out!” she cried, thinking, You pompous asshole! You predatory married man! He was tall and close and burning to grab her. She stepped backward behind the study door and held it, ready to slam it in his face.
“Don’t come back!” she said.
“I’m sorry,” Darryl said. “I’ll go. I don’t know how to talk to you. But I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you, and I can’t fight it. I can’t.”
J OLENE’S SUNDAY MORNING HAD STARTED OUT peacefully. While George slept in and sun filtered through the windows, she had whisked up blueberry pancakes for the girls. April loved the ones with a face in them, Callie preferred fewer bits of fruit.
Jolene mixed them in a big green glass bowl, waiting for the griddle to get hot enough. Scooping huge spoonfuls on the iron skillet, she watched the bubbles form and pop before flipping them, spreading them lightly with butter, then calling the girls, who, like their mother before them, didn’t get up until forced.
She called. Nobody came. She climbed up the long flight of stairs, her ankles complaining. Knocking on the door to the tiny attic room with her spatula, she called again. Finally, she heard stirring. “Wha… Grandma?” said Callie.
They needed to get up for church anyway. She didn’t cater to this idea that Tory had once told her, that kids were worked so hard during the week they needed to relax on the weekend. They should get up early for chores. Children needed responsibility and a sense of purpose in this nutty world. Maybe if she had been stricter with the girls’ mother…
She stuck her head through the door. Two sleepy, curly heads emerged from the flowered sheets.
“Rise and shine,” she said. Her mother used to say that, and she said it too, hoping for good moods.
“I’m awake,” April announced. “We’ll be right there.”
“Where’s Grandpa?” Callie asked a few minutes later, sliding onto a stool at the counter, at eight years old, the older and more aware of Jolene’s two granddaughters.
“He works all week. He’s catching up on his sleep.”
“I thought you said he retired,” Callie said.
“Nobody retires from worrying. He needs a break.”
“Doesn’t he have to go to church with us?” asked April, only four years old, but already looking for angles. April’s red hair made you want to worry about her temperament, but she was nothing like Cathy, her mother, at the same age. She tended to think more in advance of any misbehavior.
“He usually does,” Jolene answered, a lie, but a forgivable one. George used to attend church in the days when he felt better, when the world helped him be his best self.
“I never saw him go. Not once,” Callie said, pouring syrup on her final, gigantic pancake. “You make the best pancakes in the world, Grandma.”
“Callie, your Grandpa’s been sick for a long time.”
“Where’s Mama?” April asked. Her face, shiny with hope, glowed, poreless, young, innocent. “Can she come with us? Why doesn’t she come see us?”
“She’ll come when she can,” said Jolene, reverting to her standard answer.
“Sometimes I have dreams about her not coming,” Callie said.
“Don’t you concern yourself like that, child,” Jolene said firmly. “Why, she’s coming in a couple of weeks.” She decided to call her daughter and insist on a visit. Cathy didn’t mean to be so mean. She didn’t intend to abandon her two darling children. But her life was so hard, she couldn’t always do the right thing.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the girls’ father were involved. Where was he, anyway? Sailing ships around the world? In prison? Whenever she asked, Cathy got canny. “He’s in the merchant marines, Mama, out at sea. Unreachable.” Or, “He’s trying to provide for us, for God’s sake. He’s just had a lot of bad luck.” Like he was really just a traditional husband, slaving away for a living wage.
George had always provided. He might be stingy, but he hadn’t ever asked her to work outside the home. His legs were really bothering him these days, and he had to stay in bed a lot. Thank goodness he could play his guitar even in bed. He got more pleasure out of that old hollow-body than most men get from their wives. He was playing it in the bedroom right now, working on a new song.
“Grandpa’s up!”
“You stay right here, Callie.”
George sang from the bedroom,
I’m at the Humble Pie Motel in Room two-thirty-three
And if you ever loved me, honey, ask the manager for the
key…
Her heart filled up with love for him. But I’m going to have to do something, she thought to herself, not for the first time. Yessirree.
Then they heard something else, a yowling Jolene knew well. George’s muffled voice trailed off. He was listening too, but he wouldn’t do anything about it. “Hey!” April said, now having fun arranging the mangled food on her plate with the contentment of a well-fed child. “I hear the kitties.”
“That woman’s a nuisance,” said Jolene. “Poor Ruthie. Spending all her money on those animals. We don’t need a bunch of wild cats roaming around this neighborhood. I wish she would just smell the roses and quit.”
“Such pretty kitties,” said Callie. “She’s my hero.”
“You know,” Jolene said, “people who feed abandoned animals aren’t doing anyone any favors. In a place like this, those animals can’t get by without being fed. They’re domesticated but they don’t have homes anymore. Cruel people have abandoned them. In nature, they would… move on.”
“But if they’re hungry?” Callie asked. “Why can’t they get food if they need it? I think the Cat Lady is right. Otherwise, they just wander around crying, they’re so sad and hungry.”
Well, naturally, she would feel that way. Maybe she remembered those days with Cathy, when none of them had enough to eat. She and George had not known about the deprivation until the court stepped in that day Cathy left the babies strapped into car seats in the car for four hours while she played house with a new boyfriend in Seaside.
Luckily, shade had come to protect the car and preserve the girls’ lives after an hour or two. A few days in the hospital and the girls were fit as red ants in August again. “Why don’t you two get yourselves upstairs now and find something cute to wear today?” Jolene suggested, not wanting to think anymore about that ordeal, which she hoped the girls didn’t remember.
Her grandchildren cleared the table quickly, well-trained by Jolene, rinsing the dishes and stacking them neatly in the dishwasher.
Jolene couldn’t ignore it anymore. Cats, making that ear-shredding yowling right outside the kitchen door. After church she planned a game of Monopoly with George and the girls. But first she needed to do something to shut up those dang cats.
“You wear the blue,” she called up the stairs to Callie. “April, how about that white dress trimmed in pink?”
“It’s too small,” April said.
“Just for today.”
“Well, okay. But something new next week, Grandma, if we can afford it. This one’s above my knees.”
The two girls trooped around upstairs quietly, whispering so that they wouldn’t disturb Grandpa’s songwriting. While they ran floods of water in the bathroom, Jolene wiped the table, still trying to ignore the keening whimpers of the cats outside.
George had said only yesterday when she remarked on the daily bedlam outside, leave Ruthie alone. Ruthie had the title of town character and what you do with town characters is you don’t molest them or stare at them, you let them sing to themselves and mutter or in Ruthie’s case feed cats and hand out leaflets.
Her Twelve Points were all over town. Jolene saw those leaflets spreading all up and down the valley, moving down to Big Sur in the pack of some Danish tourist, riding up to San Fran in some migrant worker’s beat-up truck, moving east into the forest like a flea on a squirrel… if only Ruthie had something to say. The problem was, she didn’t think very well, like most human beings.
But the cats… Jolene knew George didn’t like them any more than she did. She had heard about what contamination they might cause in a sandbox, and they had one out back, mostly for April, because at four, she still liked to dig around and dream her baby dreams.
Jolene rubbed a spot into the window with the edge of her apron so that she could see across the street, past the bridge. Ruthie’s heap of junk dominated. Obviously, Ruthie had slept in the lot over there. Someone ought to get her into an assisted-living situation. Maybe Ruthie wasn’t so old, but she was incompetent. The money she spent on those wild cats must absorb any income she had coming in.
Slamming the dishwasher door shut, Jolene pulled at her apron, locating a peg to hang it on. She would have to go out there, speak to her. Make Ruthie see sense.
She had her hair up in rollers, big ones, because she liked a softer look, but it was still early, nobody else would be out. Full of resolve, she marched across the street to the dilapidated white car.
“Hello in there,” she said. Ruthie sometimes slept in this car under a quilt made of old wool suit fabric. She checked the back, but couldn’t see inside.
“Ruthie?”
The front seat remained invisible. The car seemed covered with a fine, oily wet layer of skin, as thick as a seal’s. A gust of warm wind lifted her housecoat.
Why did she bother, she groused inwardly. Still, a horde of caterwauling cats of all shapes and sizes clustered around the car. Some moved toward her, sidling up to her ankles, purred, and began to nudge her.
Enough! she thought. She pounded on the driver’s-side door. When there was no response, she tried the handle.
The door, unlocked, fell open, and Ruthie, who never did anyone any harm, fell down out of her seat onto the hot asphalt.
Oh, Jolene thought. Oh, you poor thing. Ruthie looked so little and helpless. Her skin was bright red and her mouth hung open and she wasn’t moving at all.
Was this what death looked like?
Because Ruthie, eyes closed, otherwise looked peaceful. As if she had just fallen asleep.
Nina and Paul had been home from Cachagua and the Bucket for half an hour, and Nina was still in the shower, when Ben Cervantes called with the news. “I thought you’d want to know,” he said. “I heard it from Tory, who just got the call from Jolene. She found Ruthie’s body this morning.”
By the time Paul and Nina arrived, the police had photographed, dusted, and examined for hours. Ruthie still lay on the asphalt after all this time, cordoned off and harshly lit, while the ambulance stood by, waiting for the body to be released.
Gawkers continued to come and stare, to act as witnesses to the ritual of death. Nina recognized Darryl and Tory Eubanks. Tory was carrying her youngest. Some of the neighborhood kids ran back and forth across the street, yelling with excitement as though they were at the circus.
“Find anything?” Paul asked the detective in charge. With a weary look, the detective told Paul to back off, and in the interests of good relations, Paul did that. They waited in the Mustang while the ambulance drove off and the detectives called it a day.
Then they went back over to the parking lot. Ruth Frost’s battered Cutlass was surrounded by yellow caution tape. A deputy had been posted, but, distracted by a pile of questions from Nina, he was rendered innocuous long enough for Paul to take one good look at the car.
“Crab and langoustine ravioli,” Nina said to the waiter at the Terrace Grill. The Terrace Grill was an adjunct to the La Playa Hotel, a lovely old place that had been a fixture for many years in Carmel. They had chosen a table outside. It was nine-thirty at night and Nina’s stomach was as empty as a crater on the moon. She had already started on the bread and butter.
Tonight the fog spared them. The warm air settled over them as softly as a veil. Birds shook the trees and flower garden nearby, settling in for the night, and the few streaks of cloud above the waterline were stained cherry.
“We’d like to start with crab cakes,” Paul said, “then I’ll have the prawns.” He studied the wine list for another moment, then ordered a Gewürztraminer, very cold.
Nina reached across the table and took his large hand in hers. Hard, craggy, experienced, she thought, and smiled. “I feel guilty.”
“Here we sit, playing violins, figuratively speaking,” Paul said, “while Carmel Valley burns. People are dying. But we have to eat.”
“The party goes on,” Nina said.
“So it does. What’s bothering you? I mean aside from Wish’s problems, Ruthie’s death, your hangover today from the party, and being tired and hungry from this whole long day.”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“Is it about Bob’s call?”
“No… it’s nothing.”
“Not true.”
“He’s okay.”
“So you’re not ready to talk about it?”
“I’m thinking it’ll blow over, Paul. I don’t want to talk about it, as a matter of fact.”
“Why not?” Paul demanded, as peremptorily as if she were a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay withholding vital information.
“It’s none of your cotton-picking business,” Nina said, her back up. Again.
“You won’t tell me?”
“I will soon.” When I have a solution, she thought.
Paul tolerated Bob, but children, in the generic, he did not like. He would not want Bob in the second bedroom he used as an office. Of course not. Fair enough.
One bathroom. Bob’s forty-minute showers. Paul’s lips would get as tight as an abalone shell at low tide.
Why couldn’t Bob follow the plan? It had been so tidy. He had insisted on going to Sweden. Let him stay and build character.
But.
He was overwhelmed. He needed to come home. Home in quotation marks. Home in the abstract. Alas, in truth, there existed no home for Bob to come home to at the moment.
“It’s Nikki, isn’t it? Nikki’s older,” Paul said. “She does things she shouldn’t and that makes her attractive to Bob. What else is new?”
Oh, not much, Bob wants to come home, Nina thought. “Nikki’s cooling off toward Bob.”
“Ah. And what’s his response?”
She decided she would go no further in this direction, especially given the interest she saw rising in his greeny-yellow eyes. Which, in spite of the glass of wine he had just downed, remained sharp. “So, Paul,” she said, licking the tip of her already-shiny spoon, “what did you think happened to Ruthie?”
He cocked his head, but let it go. “I have a few ideas,” he said. “Ruth Frost’s car was old, so I can’t be sure.”
“But…” she offered.
“Right. But…”
“Something struck you?”
“You know how when you have a hunch?”
“You never buy my hunches.”
“But I buy my own.”
“What hunch?”
“The police think because it was a cold night, she left her motor and heat running.”
“You don’t think so?”
“I think she’d run it for a while, then turn it off.”
“Because?”
“Because she was slightly cockeyed, yes; stupid, no. Have you ever noticed that if you’re an outsider, people will believe you’re capable of all sorts of unreasonableness?”
“Maybe she felt running the motor outside would be harmless. She didn’t know she would die. Probably thought the outside air would dissipate any carbon monoxide. Maybe she passed out before she could turn off the car.”
Paul said, “Witnesses say she hasn’t had a back seat in years. That she often left the motor running to get heat, when she needed it. Not smart, with leaks in the exhaust system, but she knew that and didn’t do it for long.”
“Does anyone say she threatened to kill herself?”
“No.”
“So what do you suspect? The police seem satisfied our Cat Lady died a natural death, out feeding her beloved animals in the night, trying to stay warm in her ruin of a car.”
“I guess if I was looking at the situation from the point of view that she was living a risky existence and had a bad accident, I’d be satisfied too. But there were those marks on the exhaust pipe,” Paul said.
Nina stopped eating. “Marks?”
“Maybe natural aging, maybe not. I took a few photographs and looked at them before we came here, but they don’t really prove anything. Those marks could have happened a lot of ways. And it doesn’t look like the forensics people are planning to figure this one out for us. The authorities seem pretty set on natural death.”
“You pointed out what you saw?”
“They saw what I saw. They took photographs too, but, you know, strange way to kill someone.”
“Are you sure what’s been happening around here isn’t inspiring your imagination?”
“Maybe. But maybe somebody rigged a hose into the car to help out the fumes in the back. She went out there to take care of the animals. She ran the motor and fell asleep. Someone ran a hose from the pipe into the car.”
“Without her noticing?”
“She was sleeping. And she slept on. After a while, he removed the hose.”
“Oh, Paul. That poor woman.” Nina pictured her long hair, the heap her body made on the pavement.
“Someone got to her before she died.”
“Was she hit? Did you see a bruise?”
“Nothing so definite. But there was something off about the whole thing. Maybe a hot drink put her to sleep first. Maybe a knock upside the head, then the hose inserted into a window, was the final scenario.”
Nina rubbed her forehead. “You believe she was murdered.”
“She was the only witness to the arsons. You realize that? Remember what you said happened at that party just a few hours before?”
“I’ve been thinking about that. There was jokey talk,” she said, “about doing a lineup for Ruthie, making her pick out who she saw fleeing the arson. I guess if our Siesta Court arsonist happened to be within earshot, he heard that. Maybe he took it seriously.”
“Maybe that got her killed.”
“I’m thinking, how does this help Wish? I hate to be so cold, but his arraignment’s in the morning. And it does help Wish, but we have to prove it was a murder. The theory currently is that Danny was the Siesta Court arsonist and Wish was the outside man. But Danny’s dead and Wish was sleeping on a state-issue mattress.”
“Right. So-” She let Paul say it.
“Who killed the Cat Lady?”
“H EY, WISH,” NINA SAID. “WHAT’S WITH your hair?”
“Nobody wears long hair anymore. It’s a symbol of the Res.” Wish looked scalped, there was no other way to put it, and Nina’s heart went out to him. He was giving way to the peer pressure of the other inmates herded together into their seats in the jury box of the courtroom.
These tough guys wore the haircuts of male Marines and indifferent expressions, but they didn’t look tough to Nina. To her these kids, minority kids mostly, looked like inmates of any gulag or concentration camp, right down to being tattooed.
“How are you?”
“Tired of this, since I didn’t do anything to deserve it.”
“I made an appointment to talk to Jaime Sandoval-the D.A.”
“So I don’t get out today?” Her expression answered him and his face twisted. Nina checked her watch. Monday-morning arraignments started in five minutes.
“Soon, Wish, I promise you. Something important has happened. The main witness linking Danny to the previous fires is dead. The lady who fed cats, Ruth Frost. Carbon-monoxide poisoning when she ran the heat in her car night before last. An accident, they say.”
Wish’s back straightened. He took hold of his lip with his fingers and started worrying it, a habit he shared with his mother, and she saw with joy that the law-enforcement student had come to the foreground.
“That’s suspicious,” he said. “Paul doesn’t believe it, does he?”
“He’s getting the autopsy report right now,” Nina told him. “He believes someone may have incapacitated her before turning on the heat.”
“Somebody killed a woman who fed hungry cats,” Wish said. “I don’t know what to think.”
“I went to a block party on Danny’s street. The neighbors talked about her report.”
“One of the neighbors. Who, Nina? Someone strong who smelled burnt. That doesn’t help. Something sharp digging into my back.”
“Like what?” Nina said, latching on to a new thought. “Where on your back?”
Wish rubbed his hand on the small of his back. “I don’t know what. How many people on that street with strong arms?”
“Four. Danny’s uncle, Ben-”
“He’s got no reason. He’s cool.”
“David Cowan.”
“Danny’s neighbor on the left. He paid Danny to do odd jobs for him, but he didn’t treat Danny very well.”
“I doubt anyone likes Mr. Cowan much,” Nina said.
“What motive would he have?”
“He’s odd. I don’t understand him.”
“Danny had a thing with his wife. Mr. Cowan knew about it, but he never said a word.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Who else?”
“Ted Ballard. The Ballards live three doors down on the Rosie’s Bridge side. They ride bikes, hike, go kayaking. They both make a lot of money, I think. Right now, they’re building a new house on Robles Ridge, not far from the fire locations.”
“Burn it down for insurance?” Wish said.
“The construction is still at the framing stage. But Paul is looking into their finances.”
“I can’t see why he’d set fires.”
“Another possibility is Darryl Eubanks, Danny’s neighbor on the Rosie’s Bridge side.” The clerk came in and Nina realized they were running out of time. “He’s a volunteer firefighter. Did Danny ever talk about him?”
Wish shook his head.
“Wish, there’s another possibility. Remember the driver of the car the Cat Lady saw? The one who dropped off somebody on Siesta Court?”
“You got a line on him?” Wish said, hope in every bone.
“Ever heard Danny talk about a man named Coyote?”
“Sure!”
“I met him. He drives a minivan like the one Ruth Frost described. Danny had to get his tip from somewhere. Who else did he see regularly?”
“That’s a very good line of thought, Nina. Coyote-they were drinking buddies.”
“All rise,” the bailiff said. Wish got up with some difficulty. Nina saw with anger that he was shackled.
He whispered amid the general shuffle, “I almost forgot. Tell Paul I left his bank statements in the file marked ‘Dough,’ like he said.”
“Dough?”
Wish nodded. “Tell him to eat the cottage cheese I left in the office fridge before the expiration date.”
Nina walked swiftly to the attorney’s section and sat down with her briefcase in her lap. Wish didn’t seem to think anyone on Siesta Court had done it. And she hadn’t even had time to ask him about Sam Puglia.
This time she had to sit through an hour of other cases. Jaime and Judge Salas processed them efficiently, but there were thirty or forty of them. Resigning herself to a long wait, she observed the process. Just like old times, the first break came up at 10:15. Maintenance had left the heaters on and the courtroom felt like the Sahara on this June morning, the first record-breaking day of another California summer. If they were lucky, later the usual foggy breeze would snake its way up the river from the Pacific, but right now the lawyers sweated in their jackets and the clerk whispered urgently into the phone trying to get them some relief.
Outside Courtroom Number Three of the old Salinas Courthouse, the town had come to life after the weekend. A few blocks away at the Steinbeck Center, the staff would be holding a meeting to figure out a way to dredge up more money. Closer by, red beans would be frying in steaming metal skillets at Rosita’s. Young mothers pushed their strollers toward the thrift stores on Main. The Hartnell College students hurried to class. All around the town the early-summer lettuce and strawberry pickers would be bending over in the fertile fields, faces covered to keep out the pesticides.
Fifteen miles west of Salinas, on the coast, weekday life would be picking up. Nina imagined the denizens of Carmel: rugged retiree ladies throwing sticks into the water for their purebred retrievers at Carmel Beach, athletic graybeards chatting with each other at the post office, the chic tourists unloading their hard-earned money. In Monterey, there would be lawyers and insurance types clicking their pens in preparation for another week of rooking people out of this and that; and in Pebble Beach, Japanese golfers already finishing their eighteen holes, looking forward to sipping mimosas at Club XIX.
Funny, Nina thought, two societies so close and so separate. She didn’t agree with the Cat Lady that there were only two classes, the exploiters and the exploitees, but the enormous difference in wealth did seem at the heart of the social schism.
Her mind returned to the Twelve Points. Who can say what is a successful life? Ruth Frost had expressed her opinions in the newspaper, no doubt influencing some people. She had saved the lives of some animals. She had been free and she had done some good. Nina wondered what would happen to the cats.
The bailiff called Number Thirty-Five on the docket, People v. Whitefeather, the big case for today, the homicide. As Wish was brought to the counsel table shuffling in his leg shackles, lurid with his shaved head and the orange jumpsuit that made the defendants resemble Halloween janitors, the reporters in the second row woke up.
Wish would not be going home today, not with bail set at a million five. Nina pulled out the chair for him and helped him sit down.
Judge Salas, like everybody else, observed them; he stared at Wish, the star today, if not the hero. Wish wasn’t a head-hanger; he paid attention, his eyes jumping back and forth.
Nina glanced down at the official charges Jaime had just handed her, conscious of the mundane sounds and sights of the courtroom around her, the bailiff lounging against the wall by the defendants in the jury box, the clerk shuffling her papers, somebody reading a newspaper in his lap in the back, the yellow light, the clock on the wall.
Salas read the charges out loud. Daniel Cervantes had died on or about June 9, a Tuesday.
“In the county of Monterey, California… How do you plead?”
How do you plead? Do you get down on your knees and beg?
They were standing. In the moment before Wish had his first chance to say a word, Nina and Wish looked at each other. Nina felt flustered, as if something had jerked in her reality, as if her mother had reached down from heaven to tap her on the shoulder. Wish, standing next to her with his forehead furrowed and his hands clenched together in front of him, gave Nina the same look her mother used to give her, the one that said, Nina-pinta, they won’t get us down. We can survive anything.
Not just his expression, but the way his eyebrows drew together, the way he put his chin up and firmed up his mouth, moved her. Nina thought with a pang, He trusts me completely. He thinks there’s no danger.
Passing her fingers lightly over her forehead, she pulled herself together.
“How do you plead?” Salas repeated.
Nina nudged Wish. “Not guilty.” His voice didn’t waver.
Nina couldn’t say a word about Ruth Frost. Now was not a time to raise a defense, unfortunately. The rest of the arraignment ritual commenced.
Jaime asked her again for a waiver of time, this time in front of Salas. He had been flabbergasted when Nina had explained several days before that she would not waive the ten-day rule. Wish had a right under the Penal Code to have a judge examine the charges in a court hearing, even in a murder case, within ten court days.
But no defense counsel in a murder case ever refused to waive time. The information passed on to the defense was usually overwhelming, and the defense attorney wouldn’t want to miss anything. Even in the Robert Blake Hollywood murder case, the defense was still complaining bitterly about the volume of information and asking for more time before the prelim, eight months after the arraignment.
Nina had her own ideas about the conventional defense-counsel wisdom, however. She had noticed that if she worked very hard during those ten court days, she could master everything the prosecution had and still mount a defense of sorts. California district-attorney’s offices had gotten lazy about prelims, which they liked to process like widgets on the factory line. The deputy D.A. couldn’t put the time in that she could. The evidence was much more fluid, the witness statements more subject to attack, than at a later trial.
So she would refuse to waive time, attack at the prelim, be well prepared, and cut no slack. This caused unpleasantness with the D.A.’s along the lines of, don’t come asking us for any favors. Like a good deal for the client.
So it was usually a trade-off. Jaime would give her a hard time if she needed a plea bargain. But a plea bargain would never happen in this case, because Wish was as innocent of evil as Jimmy Carter.
They set the prelim for June 30, a Monday, Salas shaking his head, giving her a hard look, and asking her how long she had been practicing law. The clerk wrote the date down and gave the lawyers their copies.
The bailiff grabbed Wish by the elbow. Hauled up like a dolphin in a tuna net, Wish lost whatever dignity he had left. Nina decided to complain to Jaime about showing more respect handling the defendants.
The next defendant stood up, ready to get started, and Nina looked over at Wish once more, saying with her eyes, just a few more days, hang on.
With recess finally announced, Nina went out into the hall.
“Ms. Reilly!” Salas’s clerk called to her. She had followed her out. “Judge received a phone call.”
“Yes?”
“For you. Apparently this person didn’t know how to reach you and called the court instead.” She handed Nina a note.
“Thanks.” Nina walked outside, reading.
The almost-incoherent message had apparently been transcribed verbatim from an after-hours tape.
For Miss Nina Reilly. He makes me eat bad things. Maybe you could come get me. Liar liar pants on fire and choir singing in tire. His hands are bloody but you can’t see it he hides them in the forest and silver things aren’t his. Thieves do that. And he said one more the big one it will be done. So please set me free, yours truly, my mother said always to say that at the end.
She knew immediately who it was. She called Paul on her cell phone. “Busy?”
“I have the autopsy report and some news. Are you finished at court?”
“Yes. Nate called.”
“Coyote’s little brother?”
“I think he needs help.”
“I’ll meet you at the condo. We’ll talk there. How did it go with Wish?”
“As expected. I’m going to call a psychiatrist about Nate and read him this note the minute I get back.”
N INA HUNG UP THE PHONE IN the living room and reported, “Dr. Cervenka says it’s typical schizophrenic speech, but he can’t tell whether there is actually an external problem. Nate may be unhappy, he may be in danger, or he might just be expressing some inner reality.”
Paul pushed back in his chair, crossed his legs, and put his hands behind his head. “I don’t think we should interfere,” he said.
“You think that boy is adequately cared for in that tent he lives in? By that hostile man he lives with?”
“Coyote’s his brother,” Paul reminded her. “Kept him alive this long. You could call the county and ask for a Child Welfare check.”
“That might take weeks. They’re so far out in the country. I’ve been thinking about Nate, about what you called his nest.”
“And he hadn’t seen a kind woman for a long time, I bet,” Paul said. “So he’s been thinking about you ever since too.”
“Think how hard it must have been for Nate to find a phone number that might reach me-he has to be desperate! He obviously has no one else. We have to do something,” she said. “I don’t want to read in the paper that something happened to him.” She pulled her jeans out of the suitcase.
“He’s not your problem or responsibility. Wish is. And, Nina, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but things are falling apart around here. We need a couple of hours to do chores and get things in shape. And I have the autopsy report on Ruth Frost. We need to talk about it.”
“On the way. I want to go back to Arroyo Seco.”
“Since when do you have to take every sad case in the world under your wing? He’s not your problem, Nina. You’re like the Cat Lady, picking up strays. You need to focus on this case. We owe it to Sandy to get Wish out of jail, and fast.”
Nina finished lacing the boots and hung her purse on her shoulder. “I’m going,” she said. “He has come to my attention. That makes him my problem.”
“Suit yourself.” Paul stretched and went back to his computer.
Nina clumped down the steps and onto the street, where her truck was parked. Climbing into the Bronco, she strapped in and opened the glove compartment to look for the Monterey County map. Paul’s face appeared at the passenger’s window and she rolled it down. Hitchcock leapt at the door.
“I was thinking, we ought to go check on the kid,” he said.
Nina smiled. “I’ve got bottled water and cold drinks in a cooler, and the tank’s full.”
“We can talk about the autopsy report along the way.” He climbed in beside her. “Hitchcock too. He needs the exercise.”
“Same rules? You expunge all evidence of poison oak from his fur?” Nina said, opening the back door and scratching the dog between the ears.
“He’s the first dog I ever met that loves the hose, a real sport,” Paul said, clipping on the seat belt. “I wonder what he is.”
Nina started up and lowered the back window a couple of inches so Hitchcock could stick his nose out. “How many times do I have to say it? He’s a malamute!”
“There’s no such thing as a pure black malamute. Plus they don’t bark, they howl, and Hitchcock barks. He’s part Lab or something.”
“Will you stop? He’s got that curling furry tail. And he smiles like a malamute,” Nina said. Hitchcock showed no interest in their ongoing argument over his origins. He only gave a brief whine, which meant, let’s get going, shall we?
They drove out the Valley Road, each curve of which was becoming familiar to Nina, Hitchcock no doubt getting carsick in the back. Paul had brought the autopsy report. As they careened around the turns he said, “Now may I take up a few minutes of your time to discuss this latest homicide?”
“Let’s hear it.”
“Ruth Frost had a hematoma on the side of her head the size of a plum. It wasn’t visible when we saw her, because she had so much hair. Now, even law enforcement agrees. Somebody hit her hard, turned on the ignition and the heat, closed the windows tight, and left her to die. The coroner says so. Is that going to be enough to convince the D.A. to let Wish out?”
“I don’t know. But who else would want to harm her but the arsonist? Who is heading up the investigation?”
“The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office.”
“Does Crockett know about all this?”
“I faxed him the report while you were in court, to be sure he’s staying in the loop,” Paul said.
Nina’s hands clenched the wheel. “It has to be somebody from Siesta Court, afraid she could identify him.”
“Let’s talk about a few thoughts running around in my head,” Paul said as they rolled through Carmel Valley Village. The school bus flashed its red lights, and Nina stopped. A group of children with the name of a day-care center on their T-shirts jostled one another into a beautiful afternoon, bumping across the street in front of them to meet waiting parents. They called laughing good-byes to one another as they ran shouting toward TVs and backyards.
The sun burned a yellow hole in the cloudless blue sky. They passed a Smokey the Bear sign telling them that the fire danger today was Very High. “I’m listening,” Nina said.
“Okay. First, ask yourself about the MO used to kill Ruth. Ruth had a defective tailpipe that billowed exhaust fumes into the trunk area, and no back seat to prevent it from drifting into the passenger compartment. She had to drive with all the windows open, and I just don’t believe she’d go to sleep with the windows closed and the motor running.”
“You said something about a hose.”
“There’s no evidence of a hose at this point. The marks I saw turned out to be natural.”
“Somebody knew about the exhaust problem, then.”
“Ben Cervantes repairs cars.”
“So do a hundred other people around here.”
“He works at Valley European Motors in the Village,” Paul said. “I went up there and talked to his boss before the cops got there. He was upset about Ruth. He’s known her for years. He said Ruth would bring her car in there and they tried to keep it going without charging her.”
Nina said, eyes on the road, “I like Ben. But I’m willing to look at him.”
“This isn’t just about Ben. Turns out Ben replaced another guy, a part-timer who drank on the job and was fired. This guy’s name is Robert Johnson. He’s half Washoe, like Danny.”
“So?”
Paul squeezed her thigh. “So Coyote’s real name is Robert Johnson. Watch it, there’s a truck coming.”
Nina pulled to the side and let the truck go by. “So Coyote probably worked on Ruth’s car at some point.”
“There you have it.”
“Then she probably knew him, Paul. If he had been in the car she saw, wouldn’t she have recognized him?”
“She told us she didn’t see well enough,” Paul said. He drank some water out of a plastic bottle. “But if-let’s follow it through-if Coyote was in the car, he might have been worrying about Ruthie. Maybe so worried he thought about that broken exhaust pipe and the lack of a back seat, which would let the fumes in and kill her.”
“He had the means and maybe the motive,” Nina said. “The minute I saw that van at his camp I was sure he was involved in the fires.”
“So let’s take it further. Let’s say Robert Johnson-Coyote-was the driver that night in his van, and he dropped someone off on Siesta Court. Like the Cat Lady said.”
“Okay.”
“Who did he drop off? Assuming it wasn’t Danny?”
“Danny had a tip,” Nina remembered.
“Right. Smart girl.”
“Ben Cervantes and Coyote?”
“My thinking exactly. Danny knew who they were climbing up the hill to photograph.”
“He would turn in his uncle? His uncle was doing this with Coyote?”
“Maybe. Or maybe just Coyote.”
Nina said slowly, “But instead Coyote saw Danny and Wish first and Coyote killed Danny on the mountain. And tried to kill Wish.”
“You’re leaving Ben out, but I can understand your squeamishness. You liked him, I could tell. I’d also prefer to think Ben didn’t help kill his own nephew. But…”
They had hit the hairpin turns in the road. To one side, a fenced golden meadow waved, and on the other, a glorious old oak forest rustled, maybe some of those same trees surviving from Steinbeck’s time, when he loved this same land. In the midst of all this beauty, someone out there was burning trees and killing people. She felt sick thinking that Ben Cervantes might be part of it.
“I don’t think it’s Ben.”
“Because?”
“I just don’t. I don’t think he could lie that well to me.”
“Ah, Nina.”
“Anyway, Coyote is probably a very dangerous man,” Nina said. “We have to check on that boy.”
“That’s why I came along, even though I think it’s premature. Because my woman insisted on coming.”
Nina glanced quickly at him and saw that he had unconsciously patted his shoulder holster. “I’m glad you came. Maybe we’ll get lucky and Coyote and that saw-toothed dog of his will be busy somewhere else hunting deer together.”
They drove on through the buzzing forest, immersed in their separate thoughts.
Eventually, tired and hot again, but this time more sure of the way, they found the tent in the clearing in Wood Tick Canyon. Once again, Nina avoided the malevolent poison oak, mature vines thick as her wrist, coming hungrily at her from the branches and bushes she passed. She took some satisfaction when it crackled underfoot, but then realized she would have to ask Paul to detoxify her boots along with the dog.
Outside the tent were few signs of activity-a stump with an ax stuck in it alongside a fresh stack of kindling, and a dead geranium in a black plastic container. The canvas door was lashed down. A tin bowl half full of water sat under the nearest tree, with a long chain wrapped around it once, the other end lying on the ground.
No sign of a car. No pit bull, no sign of Coyote. Nina expelled a breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding. Paul put Hitchcock on a leash. They picked their way to the tree where Paul had noticed the boy and Nina saw, where three stout branches intersected, Nate, huddling on a pile of branches and rags. He had been watching them for some time.
“Hello.”
“Hello, Nate.”
“Did you come to get me? I made a call. Mother taught me to call.”
“Would you like to come down and talk to us?” Paul said.
“I’m not allowed. Loud and louder until you want to scream like I scream. Ice cream. Never get any anymore. More.”
“I brought you a Coke,” Nina said, holding up one of the cans they had brought along. “It’s cold too. But I can’t get up there.”
“But I can’t come down. So, so, I need to sew my pants, they’re ripped.” But he made some movements, as though he were trying.
Paul bent down, examining the tree. “Shit,” he said. “Look here.” In the back, screwed into the tree, was a ring with a chain welded to it. The chain led upward.
Nina looked, following the chain up into the tree, where it ended at Nate’s nest. Down in the ground at the foot of the tree, she spotted signs of disturbance, signs of a struggle. “That’s it,” she said. “He’s coming with us.”
Paul drew her aside. “Listen,” he said in a low voice. “I’m not too up on schizophrenics, or whatever the current parlance is, but I have a feeling nobody is making sure this kid takes his meds. He’s going to be unpredictable. We should call the sheriff.”
“We’ll take him to the sheriff. This is child abuse. I won’t stand for it another minute! Look, let’s get him out of here before Coyote gets back. Let’s avoid an incident. Anything could happen. Please, Paul.”
Paul said, “Just stick him in the back seat? I don’t want him behind me.”
“In the front seat.”
“Where he could grab the wheel?”
“Okay,” Nina said. “I’ll drive and you two sit in back where you can keep an eye on him.”
“That ought to be a pleasant journey.” But he took hold of the ring and tried to pull it out. “I get the feeling Coyote did not want Nate to be able to take this thing on and off easily. Can you talk him down so I can look at the other end?”
Nina moved out so she could see Nate better, and said, “Can we take you for an ice cream, Nate? Will you come down so my friend can take off the chain?”
“He’ll be mad, mad, mad. Oh, he’ll be mad.”
“We’ll keep you safe.”
“Can I tell him you made me?”
“Sure you can.” The boy seemed to shake his nest and then a skinny leg appeared and positioned itself on a branch. He hauled himself out of the pile. His leg bore a heavy shackle that looked a lot like the one Wish had been wearing in court that morning. The rest of the chain swung down suddenly, clanking, and pulled him off-balance, but he managed to hang on. He slid down and his feet came close enough to Paul for Paul to grab him. In a moment he was on the ground.
“Here I am. How do you do.”
Nina held out a hand to steady him while Paul knelt down to examine the shackle.
Nate was skinny and short, but the beginnings of adolescent stubble and the Adam’s apple confirmed to Nina that he was just past puberty, about thirteen, as the cowboys at Alma’s had said. He looked Native American. He still wore the dirty flannel shirt with his narrow chest exposed in front, his jeans were in shreds, and his feet were bare. He smelled bad. The chain gave him about ten feet to wander around the base of the tree.
Paul hurried back to the Bronco for Nina’s tool kit, while Nate and Nina waited. Nate seemed nonchalant, as though he had placed his fate totally in their hands. He looked around, surveying everything, without anxiety, with an expression of wonder and pleasure and something else, a light in his eyes that made Nina uncomfortable. He drank down the soft drink thirstily and Nina noticed that he was missing some teeth. Hitchcock sniffed him and Nate backed away. “Go lie down,” Nina told Hitchcock.
Paul came back and knelt with his toolbox by the shackles. Pulling on leather gloves, he took a small hacksaw and began sawing.
Hitchcock’s ears pricked up and his head swiveled toward the Bronco. Nina thought she heard something and looked anxiously down the dirt road that came off Arroyo Seco.
A car.
“Uh-oh,” Nate said.
“Hurry!” Nina said.
“I hear it.”
Nate said, “Ow!” Just as Coyote’s tan van pulled into the clearing, the shackle fell away. The pit bull in the front seat of the van was already growling, its bullet head extended out the car window.
The van’s motor died. Coyote sat inside, about a hundred feet away, not moving. Afternoon light behind him made his face indistinct. Paul straightened up. He picked up Hitchcock’s leash and handed it to Nina, saying, “Hold on to him. Nate, you stay with Nina.”
He walked slowly toward the van, his boots kicking up miniature dust storms behind. The sun beat down hard in the clearing, making a minidesert out of the setting.
Nina, leash wrapped around her hand, stood beside the boy, fighting off her fear for Paul.
The pit bull leapt out of the half-open window and came at Paul. At the same time, Hitchcock leapt forward, teeth bared. She could have held him-could have stopped him-but she let him go, to fight.
The pit bull, seeing Hitchcock, veered behind Paul and the two dogs met in a snarling, snapping fury, rolling over and over in the dirt. Paul backed away and pulled out his gun, but he couldn’t do anything with it. The two dogs made one whirling blur. Nate pressed against Nina, whimpering. She pulled him behind the tree.
Coyote sat in his van, unmoving. Paul picked up a piece of cut firewood from the woodpile and ran up to the dogs, who snapped and bit, completely beyond command. Looking for his chance, Paul held the piece of wood up and hit the pit bull on its back. It let out a shrieking sound, but it had its jaws embedded in Hitchcock’s neck now and would not let go. Paul hit it again.
Out of the van’s window a rifle barrel appeared, growing longer as it extended out. “Paul!” she screamed. Concentrating on the maddened dogs, he didn’t hear her. She kept her eyes on the rifle, now pointed directly at Paul-what could she do? “Paul!”
Paul hit the pit bull on the skull. Its jaws opened slowly. It let go of Hitchcock, rolled over, and lay still. The rifle swiveled, following Paul’s movements. Again, she screamed. This time he heard her. With a movement so fast she barely registered it, he threw himself facedown to the ground, then began crawling rapidly into the brush.
But Coyote didn’t shoot. Suddenly, the ruckus quieted, the bugs and animals seemed subdued, the air was still. Paul, lying in some manzanita, had his gun aimed toward the van. The rifle barrel caught a glint of sun. The wind died. Hitchcock crouched, whining, near the body of the pit bull. The picture froze. She would never forget it-the rank smell of the boy clutching her, Paul’s expression, hard and terrible, the blinding sun-
Small sounds started up. Hitchcock, still whining, hurt. Her own harsh breathing. Meanwhile, the rifle never moved, frozen in space. She couldn’t see the man behind it, just the outline of his head in a cowboy hat.
The roar of the engine caught her by surprise as the van started up. The rifle disappeared and the van bucked backward and turned. Wrapped in a robe of dust, it accelerated out of the clearing.
He was gone. Nina ran to Hitchcock, who crouched like a sphinx. Wounds on his neck and ear actively bled. Paul had gone to the other dog, stick at the ready, but it didn’t move. He poked at it. Nina saw its muzzle, flecked with saliva and blood.
“Dead,” Paul said.
Nate stayed back. “Dead dog,” he said in a high, anxious tone. “Hedgehog, there are wild boars around here. They rush out of the bushes with tusks. Or mothers with babies all in a row behind them.”
Paul came over to stand beside Hitchcock. He knelt down. “I’ll get the picnic blanket out of the back,” Nina said. They wrapped Hitchcock up and put him in the cargo area of the Bronco.
“I’d like to search the tent while Coyote’s gone,” Paul said.
“No, Paul. Please.” She didn’t say, it’s illegal. All bets were off, but they had to get Nate out of there safely and get Hitchcock to a vet. “Hop in back,” she told Nate, and he did.
Paul studied the tent.
“He almost shot you,” she said. “I don’t know why he didn’t pull the trigger.”
“I killed his dog.”
“You had to. Paul, if-if you want to go in there, I’ll wait out here with Nate and Hitchcock.”
“Stay here.” He jogged to the tent and entered. In about three minutes, which amounted to three years of nail-biting fear in Nina’s life, he came out.
Nina got in front and Paul climbed in back. Reversing, she drove them all out of there.
T HEY SWERVED THROUGH THE CURVES, NATE curled up in a corner of the back seat. He did not warm to Paul, who after a few minutes decided that Nate wouldn’t do anything rash and leaned over the front passenger-seat headrest to watch the road.
“Where should we take him?” he said eventually. “You got this figured out?”
“The sheriff’s substation,” Nina said. “Carmel Valley Village is the closest.”
“He might have relatives.”
“The authorities can notify them. And screen them. I’m not taking any chances. Nate? Nate?” Nina rolled up the windows and turned on the AC, so the Bronco was quieter. “Is he asleep, Paul?”
“No, he’s looking out the window. Hey, kid, Nina wants to ask you a question, okay?” In the rearview mirror, Nina saw Paul tap Nate’s knee. The boy turned that wondering, anxious, otherworldly face to them.
“Nate? You talked about your mother. Where is your mother?”
“Are you my mother?” His head cocked.
“No, where is your mother?”
“Home.”
“And where is home?”
“Markleeville.”
“Markleeville!”
“Did I say something wrong? Ring, rang, wrong. The mission has a big bell.”
“Nate, are you Washoe? From the Washoe tribe?”
“My mother says Washoe all the time. Washoe my shoe. It must be dirty.”
“Paul,” Nina said, “it would make sense. Danny was half Washoe. He would have hooked up with other Washoes who lived down here.” She was excited. Sandy was a Washoe elder. The tribe could help Nate. He would be identified, claimed, and protected by the tribe.
She asked questions, trying to find out how Nate had come to that godforsaken clearing in the woods to live with his brother, but Nate didn’t seem to know the answers. He would try to explain, but got sidetracked so quickly she couldn’t get the sense.
“We’ll call Sandy tonight and find out about him,” Paul said.
“Yes. Nate, Paul and I-we won’t let anyone hurt you. We are going to see that you have a bath and food and…”
“Ice cream!”
“Ice cream. And nice people to stay with while we call your mother.”
“But you’re the one that I love,” Nate said, sounding frightened.
“I’ll see you again soon.”
“He’s going to take some children.”
“What?” Paul said.
“He is. Take them in the van someplace. I heard. Who are they?”
Nina almost ran off the road. When she could, she slowed, pulled off, and stopped the car, then twisted so that she could see Nate. On his face was an expression of innocent inquiry.
Paul showed many emotions. He held up his hand, keeping Nina quiet, saying, “Nate, listen to me. Okay? Are you listening?”
Nate nodded.
“Coyote is going to take some children?”
“That doesn’t sound right. Did I say that?”
“How did you find out? About taking children?”
He appeared more confident. “He talked on the phone. Then he saw me and put me in the tree. Nailed me to the tree.”
“What did he say on the phone?” Nate looked out the window, and Paul tapped his knee again and repeated the question.
“He said nobody stiffs him and you better have the money ready next day.”
“What else did he say?”
“He said, you goddamn little weasel, you were listening to me. And put me in the tree. At night there are sounds.”
“Is that all you heard? All he said?”
“Birds. Squirrels. The sounds acorns make when they fall. Wee-zull. Weasel. Please freeze. Ice cream.”
That was all they could get from him. After ten minutes during which Nate degenerated into complete nonsense, Nina started up again, driving them to the sheriff’s department in the Village. Inside, Paul let her handle it. She quickly put on her invisible lawyer togs, insisting on talking to the station captain, insisting on filling out statements, insisting on having Child Welfare contacted while she and Paul waited.
They left Nate in the care of a sympathetic female deputy. He hadn’t had his ice cream yet, but they made a solemn promise he would get his wish soon. The sheriff’s office would talk to the D.A.’s office about getting a search warrant for the campsite and an arrest warrant for Robert Johnson, aka Coyote, for child endangerment.
“Don’t worry,” Nina said one last time, as Nate was led away.
“Mother told me, say yours truly. Yours truly,” the boy told her calmly. The police officer opened a door to a room where he could rest and Nina gave him a wave. He didn’t wave back, just observed her until the door closed.
Nina looked at her watch. Seven-thirty in the evening, darkness outside. “I think it’s safe to fall apart now, Paul,” she said. She opened the back door. Hitchcock woke up and wagged his tail, but his head was crusty with blood. “Good boy,” she said. “Brave boy.”
“I’ll drive home. Here. Climb in. Put your head against the window. You’re tired. Here’s my jacket. Use it for a pillow.”
“Should we have taken Nate back to the condo? I hate to think of him in that sterile-”
“He needs a shrink. He needs medication. He’ll get what he needs. You can check on him.”
“I’m so tired and so concerned about Nate.”
“We’ll check on him.”
“Coyote’s going to take some children. We have to do something.”
“We did what we could. We told the deputy. I’ll call Crockett’s office tonight and leave a message there too. Meanwhile, let’s get you home and get Hitchcock to the vet, honey.”
The next morning, Nina woke up without a memory of getting out of her clothes and into bed. She had fallen asleep in the car and had only a vague memory of Paul reassuring her about Hitchcock’s condition. Clouds hovered in the skies outside the windows and a brisk breeze ruffled the trees outside the bedroom window. She was alone.
Remembering Nate and Hitchcock, she sprang out of bed.
In the kitchen, Paul talked on the cell phone, stirring eggs. He wore the black silk boxers she had given him. The laundry must be getting dire. “That’s it,” he said. He hung up, said “Crockett,” and leaned over so she could hug him. The condo felt warm and safe.
“I got hold of the vet who saw Hitchcock last night,” Paul said. “The mutt needed seven stitches on his ear, and six on that nasty neck tear. They put him under, but we can pick him up later.”
“He’s all right?”
“His ear will be permanently cocked.”
“Poor fellow.” Nina sat down at the table. “I’m so relieved that he’s going to be all right. What time is it?”
“Ten-thirty.”
“No! I haven’t slept that late in years. I’d better get dressed.”
“Relax. Have your coffee. A lot of people are working on this.”
“Nate?”
“May soon be in a foster home. His mother’s name is Susie Johnson. She lives in Markleeville. She’s a Washoe tribe member. Sandy knows her.”
“You’ve been busy.”
“Yes. Sandy says Susie’s husband died recently in a farm accident. Coyote is her oldest kid. He told her he was doing fine in Monterey County and held a big job with the Forest Service. Susie has two younger daughters besides Nate. So she sent Nate to live with him.”
“She should have known better!”
“It’s puzzling. She says Coyote always treats Nate gently and loves him a lot. Also, Nate was on meds when he went down there and has gotten into this state since then.”
“Coyote gentle? That’s a good one. The mother needed to persuade herself that Nate would be taken care of.”
“And he sure isn’t an employee of the Forest Service. After he lost the part-time work at Valley European, he did day labor on ranches and vineyards out there.”
Nina ate, leaving Paul the cleanup. He was efficient in his tidy kitchen. They didn’t talk, like old married folks, but one issue they should be talking about weighed heavily on her heart.
What was she going to do about Bob? The moment was quickly arriving when she needed to discuss this issue with Paul. She should buy Bob’s airplane ticket. She should call him, tell him where they would be living.
She had no idea.
She needed more time.
She shelved it and was relieved when Paul kicked shut the pots-and-pans drawer and said, “I have to go talk to Crockett. We have to find Coyote before he hijacks a school bus.”
“You’re going to report on what you found in Coyote’s tent? But we haven’t discussed it yet. I told you, you have some exposure there. You could possibly be charged with obstructing justice or-”
“Don’t worry, honey. I’ve got it covered.”
“It’s a legal matter and I’m a-”
“Yeah, you’re a lawyer, I noticed. But I know Crockett. If I’m fair with him, he’ll be fair with me. The sooner I tell him about the conchos I found, the better.”
“I agree.” Nina spoke coldly. He wasn’t consulting her, and this insulted her self-pride.
“That’s good,” he said shortly. She interpreted this to mean lay off.
“You didn’t mention telling him about the deposit slip you stole from the bankbook in the tent,” Nina said, because she was unable to let him go in peace.
“I decided not to mention that. I’m leaving the deposit slip here.”
“Want the benefit of my legal advice?”
“No.”
“Good decision.”
He went into the study and came out with his envelope. “See you later.”
“Call me if you’re wrong about Crockett and need to have bail arranged.”
“No worries.” But he lingered. They both felt that they had just spoken to each other from a distance, and it pained them. Nina went to him and laid her head on his shoulder. After a moment she felt his hand stroking her hair, and breathed a sigh of relief as the moment of conflict passed.
“I’ll hold the fort,” she said.
“Just rest today.”
“I’ll be fine. Paul, uh, I just wanted to say, you’re a prince. Yesterday, with the dog-you saved Hitchcock. I couldn’t have helped Nate on my own.”
“No problem.”
“For so long I’ve done everything by myself…”
They had separated and Paul was examining his gun by the front door. He replaced it carefully in the shoulder holster before responding. “Me too,” he said. “Eat my eggs alone, face the dishes alone, pass out in front of the tube at night. You’ve made this place feel like home.”
“Okay, then,” Nina said. She offered him her biggest smile.
“Eat up the pineapple in the refrigerator.”
“Go save the world.”
“Back asap, world all saved.”
She blew him a kiss. “I love you,” she said.
“Love you too.”
The day passed. Afflicted by a strange paralysis of the will, she slept, read, worried about Bob. Night came on. Sometimes she heard creaks from the wind, chittering, distant voices. Nina got up and sat at the kitchen table.
Who was Coyote’s partner on Siesta Court?
Had they understood Nate? Was there really a threat to some children?
Frustrated, she got up to sort laundry. She threw in a load of whites that tested the limits of the washing machine. She emptied pockets of pens and miscellanea, marveling at the things Paul stuffed into his pockets, reading each crumpled business card and receipt for clues to his inner self.
Wish’s half-burned jeans and jacket and socks were lying on the floor of the laundry room in the corner. She didn’t have time to deal with them now, so she rolled them up and left them there.
Paul didn’t return. Rain began falling on the roof. Sometime past eleven, Nina finally fell into troubled sleep.