by Linda Seals
“Hey, you can’t be bringing me canned goods when we’re gonna be canning all morning! You’re supposed to be taking it away, not bringing it!” Marjo Catanya laughed as she welcomed me to Casa de la Mujer Fuerte, their old ranch house north of town. “But good mornin’, anyway!”
“Mornin’! No, no, they’re not canned, so I have special dispensation!” I joked back, walking in with jars of apricot preserves for her and Carol, and the kids, and grandkids. “Just apricots cooked down; they’ll keep in the fridge.”
Carol Griffin banged open the screen door behind me, letting in Patsy and Pecos, who had come along for the ride. She roughed up the fur on Patsy’s head and gave Pecos a pat on his side. They wiggled in her touch, loving it.
“Good mornin’! I’m glad you brought these guys with you, I’ve missed them! They’re keeping you safe?” she asked me with a smile. Carol looked younger than her sixty-five years as she pulled off her muddy Wellies, and hung a crumpled and stained DeKalb Seeds cap on a peg behind the door, but very much looked the ranch woman that she was with the Carhartt vest, faded plaid shirt, and pressed Wrangler jeans.
Marjo Catanya, on the other hand, looked like she’d stepped from a vibrant Rufino Tamayo painting, favoring bright magentas, oranges, and blues in her scoop neck blouses over light, long, and flowing skirts. I’d never seen Marjo in pants, but that did not deter her as she worked as hard as Carol with chores, animal emergencies, and weather surprises on the ranch.
“We worry about you, mija,” she said, handing me a mug of coffee. She still used the Latina endearments that she had been showered with while growing up, and that was one of the many qualities that endeared her to me.
Carol grabbed Marjo around the waist and gave her a hug and a kiss. “I’m cooking this morning, so place your egg orders!” She took up her spot at their ancient gas stove with five burners, a griddle, two ovens, and who knew what else.
“Two eggs, poached soft,” I piped up first.
“God, you’re high maintenance, woman!” she teased. But I knew Carol Griffin liked to show off the culinary skills she picked up as a 1960s commune cook on a houseboat in Sausalito, across the Bay from San Francisco. She still tried to put wheat germ and tofu into everything she made, too. Except eggs, thank god. She pushed the dogs away from her feet, for the umpteenth time, and started poaching.
“Can I help with anything?” I asked.
“Not really. We’re just having eggs and Carol’s good wheat bread for toast. Want some cantaloupe, too? Start telling us about what’s been happening, mija!” Marjo exclaimed.
I sat down with my coffee at the big kitchen table that filled the side of the room. The sturdy table, a purchase from a New Mexico woodworker friend of mine, had a hand-polished, thick fir top and turquoise stain-washed legs. I had a similar piece in my house, and sitting at that table in their long-familiar kitchen felt like home.
Pecos joined me at my feet, and I tried to start at the beginning. Soon the eggs were ready, and as we ate Carol’s good breakfast, we talked about what had happened at my place.
They knew about the two intrusions, and they speculated about whether they were even related, a premise I hadn’t considered. I had assumed they were. Maybe the first attempt was just to go after my tools in the shop, and maybe the second one was, too, except that time someone got in, saw the trunk right there in plain sight, and decided to check it out for valuables before stealing other things that could be pawned. Maybe it was all coincidence. Maybe thinking Bernice Thorton and Nephew were involved was all coincidence, too. It fit—I had never seen the intruder, and I had never seen Nephew, so I didn’t even really know if he was involved. I never had the chance to talk to Bernice Thorton about the incidents with the trunk, so I didn’t really know who was involved.
Nor did I know if her cruise was a sudden nefarious idea to get her out of the way, or something that had been planned by her for ages with her church group, and they were all enjoying virgin coladas on the deck of a Virgin Princess as we spoke. I could see why the police were not in a hurry to start an investigation into coincidences. I had been running along, making up these scenarios in my head; they needed facts.
“But then, where does Barry Correda’s odd behavior fit in?” I asked. “He projects the good-guy routine, quite successfully it seems. But his tone of voice, well, it didn’t fit, as if he were playing a role. He could barely remember my name. And the stuff about AA was just wrong.” They had been as surprised as I originally had been at my conversation with Barry at Binder Enterprises, since we all believed what we’d been told—that Barry Correda was a nice guy, not someone who would spread innuendos about his dead girlfriend.
“Well, you probably played right into it, you know, you egged him on. I bet you even threw in some of that fake Southern accent of yours to flavor the performance, didn’t you?” teased Carol.
“Wah, yes, ah did, a little, just a smidge, yes,” I drawled. “But ah assure you that mah accent is indeed ree-al, madam! Ah am from Dall-luss!” I joked and got the laugh I was after. I was, indeed, born in Dallas to a large family of women on my mother’s side. Just as completely as my mother had been a Southern belle, I had inhabited the anything-but-a-belle role as a child.
Carol Griffin stood up, ready to get on with the day. “All the goings-on at your place seem a little strange, but you don’t really know very much at this point, Lil. Let the police handle it. Seems like coincidences to me. You know how you like to jump in the middle of things, get a story going—”
“Yeah, I know, Carol,” I interrupted, not wanting to hear that lecture again. I hated the nickname Lil, too. But not willing to lay down the argument, I continued. “But what about what Barry said about the trunk, and then he lied about the whole ThaunderX thing and—”
“Look, first of all, you don’t know that Barry knew you had the trunk. It just sounded to you like he did, in an aside or something. And second—the ThaunderX thing—the stickers? The guy was probably just making up something to sound like he knew details about his girlfriend. He probably couldn’t name her eye color, either. I’m just saying don’t let your imagination run away with you,” said sensible Carol Griffin.
What she said was rational, as usual, and I had no rebuttal at the moment. My imagination could lope out in front of me like a filly off halter; but in fact, I called on it daily, and needed it all the time. Clients loved it. But an imagination firing creativity was different than an imagination making stuff up, so maybe Carol had a point. Maybe I needed to rein it in. We finished clearing off the table and she went off to do chores outside at the barn, the dogs trotting after her.
Marjo and I prepped the kitchen for canning; she was the master canner, so I was just a willing helper. The kitchen was steamy, with pots boiling on the big range and the long table was filled with ripe tomatoes waiting processing. We put a favorite opera on the stereo—Marjo and I both loved the art, and Carol detested it, so we usually took advantage of these times together to indulge in some of our favorites—and worked away the morning. We got a lot done as we chatted and got caught up on each others’ lives. I just finished telling her about a garden that Liz and I had recently completed.
“Ah, Lily, you work so hard! When do you have fun, mija?” Marjo asked.
“I have fun every day, Marjo, you know that. I love what I do!”
“You avoid the question, mija. When do you have fun with somebody? You’re all by yourself, and now all of this scary stuff is happening, and—”
“Oh, don’t start with that again!” I laughed in mock annoyance. Family-oriented Marjo Catanya couldn’t conceive of one choosing to not be in a relationship, and about every six months she’d check in with me on my own status, even though it hadn’t changed in a long time.
“But, yeah, the break-ins,” I quickly continued. “I admit I’ve been pretending to be a little bit braver than I’m feeling; it all has kind of freaked me out. Having the dogs with me now helps me feel better, though. At least I don’t feel like s
omeone’s after me—it’s the trunk. You know, I think something is going on, I mean, two intrusions? But the cops are treating it like miscellaneous mischief. Am I crazy, or does it seem like more than some random acts?
“I don’t know. Nothing’s been stolen. It doesn’t make sense to me, mija. Carol’s the one who has the brain for this sort of thing.” She reached down to give me an enveloping hug. “I know you’re trying to change the subject about relationships! Ah, mi cielo, I just want you to be happy. We care so much about you, we want you to be happy and safe,” she said as I hugged her back, and then stood up to refill our glasses with more ice and mint tea. The sultry kitchen was like a steam bath, and I was hoping refreshments would sidetrack Marjo Catanya from her loving but misplaced worries. My solitary life suited me, so it wasn’t something I thought much about. Just Marjo Catanya did, for me.
She turned back to her job, and I lidded and set out to cool the final batch of filled jars. Soon she was ready for me to handwrite the labels and then attach them to the jars. As I worked, an idea formed in my mind about Shannon’s trunk, but I couldn’t quite put it in a mental container so I could see the whole thing. As I had asked Marjo, didn’t it seem like something was going on, and not just coincidences?
Bits and pieces of half-formed ideas, visuals, and snatches of The Marriage of Figaro in the background all ran around with each other in my mind but, despite their party, I couldn’t think of any hypothesis that would hold together long enough to think about. Come on, Lily, figure it out! I sighed. It was going to have to wait until later. All I could do was continue my work and hum along with Frederica Von Stade, if it can be said that one can hum opera.
Our job done, Marjo loaded me up with jars of raspberry jam and canned tomatoes—and more zucchini bread and zucchini. It was that time of year. Marjo gave me a good hug and a kiss goodbye, and I whistled for the dogs, shouted a good-bye to Carol in the barn, and headed out.
It wasn’t far to my house, just down a country road or two, but I had enough time to think about Carol Griffin’s opinion that all that had happened was just coincidence. Maybe she was right?
