I gave a quick summation of my intentions, then asked if there were any questions.
“Seems like it’s taking you an awful long time,” Sissy said. “The rest of the chapters are done. We need these books out before summer. That’s our busiest time in the museum.”
“I’m working as fast as I can,” I said, trying to keep my voice from sounding too crabby. “I’m only one person.”
“Maybe you should get some help,” a voice down in front suggested.
“Great,” I replied. “I’ll gladly accept help from anyone.” You could have heard an eclair drop. I wasn’t surprised to find that everyone wanted to tell me how to do it, but to actually get out there and sit for hours listening to people ramble on about old memories, then organize those thoughts into a readable account, was quite another story.
“I’ll do the best I can,” I said, from behind gritted teeth. “I’ll enlist help somewhere.”
“Good,” Dove declared. “Meeting adjourned.” She slammed the gavel down and the flock of old ladies crowded back around the refreshment table like parking-lot pigeons fighting for McDonald’s french fries.
“See you later.” I patted Dove’s arm and started for the door.
“Just a minute, young lady,” she said, grabbing my sleeve. I recognized the tone of voice and my first instinct was to deny it and run. My mind moved swiftly over the last few days, searching for what I could have done to get myself in trouble.
She pulled me aside and looked me straight in the eye, her face serious. “I talked to Gabriel this morning,” she said.
“How nice for you both,” I said. “Is he well?”
“Don’t get smart with me. He says you’re getting too involved in Brady and Rose Ann’s murders.”
“No, I’m just—”
She held up her hand. “No back talk. This time I think he’s right. They don’t know nothing about why they were killed and that crazy person is still out there.”
“But—”
“I trust him, Benni. He knows what’s best for you.”
“You know, I already have a father, and since I haven’t heard from him, he is apparently the only one who thinks I am capable of deciding what’s best for my life.”.
“You are without a doubt the orneriest piece of business in town. I don’t know who raised you, but they are going to have to answer to the good Lord for their sins.”
I laughed and hugged her. “Don’t worry about me, Dove. I’m really not as involved as he’s leading you to believe. It’s just hard not to be curious, me finding them and all. Tell me, can you think of any reason why someone would kill Miss Violet and Mr. O’Hara?”
“Honeybun, there’s at least a hundred people who’d want to kill Brady and no one I know who’d want to kill Rose Ann, irritating as she could sometimes be. Like I said, you’d better leave all that to Gabriel. It’s what we pay him for.” She turned and started back toward the refreshment table.
“Who called who?” I said to her back.
She turned around, her expression guarded. “What?”
“Did you call Gabe or did he call you?”
She hesitated a split second too long.
“Don’t lie to me,” I warned.
“Depends.” Dove’s face looked as guilty as an egg-sucking dog’s.
“On what?”
“On which would make you madder.”
“Spill it,” I said.
“He called me.”
“Thanks, that’s all I need to know.” I started for the door, my temper gauge well on its way to boiling. Who did he think he was? Dove was genetically entitled to her constant interference in my life, but Gabe was quite another matter.
“Now, Benni ...” Dove’s voice trailed after me. I lifted my hand in good-bye and kept going. It was clear that Chief Ortiz was going to have to be set straight on where the authority granted him by the good city of San Celina ended.
When I reached the bottom step, another voice called out to me. Sissy Brownmiller looked both ways, as if checking for traffic, before carefully picking her way down the five stone steps. I waited on the sidewalk, wondering what she could possibly have to say to me.
“I heard you and Dove,” she said, moving close enough for me to smell her White Shoulders perfume and see the damp pockets of beige powder settling in the filigreed lines of her face.
“Yes?” I said warily. She and Dove had carried on a feud of sorts ever since I could remember. There were times when Dove about drove me to drink, but I’d be whipped with barbed wire and dragged through a cactus patch before I’d be disloyal to her.
“I know something about Rose Ann Violet that no one else does.” She puckered her lips and sniffed daintily. Gossip was Sissy’s main source of entertainment and one of her few talents. And she wasn’t one to hide her talents under a bushel basket.
My first inclination was to walk away. I wouldn’t put it past Sissy to make something up just to cause trouble. On the other hand, I couldn’t take a chance. I’d learned from experience the information you need sometimes comes from the most unexpected places.
“Well, what is it?” I asked impatiently, a bit ashamed at myself for even listening to her.
“Not here,” she whispered, though she and I were the only ones on the sidewalk. “Come by the store later this afternoon.” Sissy and her son, Mel, owned a stationery and gift shop downtown. She was apparently going to draw this out as long as she could.
“Sissy, I’m real busy. If you have something to say, just say it.”
She gave me a sour look, then turned and peered furtively over her shoulder. “All right, I just don’t want anyone to see us talking.”
“Then I suggest you tell me what you know and we can both get on with our day.” I agreed with her on one thing. I didn’t want anyone, especially Dove, catching us talking. She would pry out of me in ten seconds whatever Sissy told me. I had never been able to successfully lie to Dove and I doubted that at this late stage in my life I’d be able to start.
“It happened when I was ten,” she said, then paused.
“What did?” Cross-stitch homilies being on my mind, I was reminded of the one about the curious cat. I hoped I wouldn’t regret hearing anything she had to say.
“You know, of course, that my father was a doctor.” She raised her bony nose and gave me a challenging look.
“Yes.” Until he died ten years ago, Dr. Brownmiller was the only doctor that Dove, as well as half the town, would consent to see even though at seventy-nine he could barely curve his arthritic hand around a stethoscope. Everyone in San Celina had loved Dr. Brownmiller almost as much as they detested Sissy.
“Well ...” Her voice went down so low, I had to step closer to hear her words. “When I was ten, he got a house call in the middle of the night to go to Miss Violet’s house.” She paused dramatically.
“So?” I said.
“I went with him because Mother was out of town. Aunt Anissa—I was named for her, you know—was sick down in Oceanside, and Mother went to take care of her baby, my cousin Stevie, who was a lawyer in Burbank before they disbarred him in ’63 because of some shady real estate dealings. I don’t really know the whole story, but apparently he bought into some time shares in Hawaii ...”
“Sissy,” I said irritably. “Miss Violet. Let’s get back to Miss Violet.”
“Don’t rush me. You know, you always were an impatient little girl, Albenia Harper. And such a trial to dear, dear Dove. I suppose it comes from losing your mother so early. Why, if you’d been my daughter I’d—”
“Sissy!” I snapped. It occurred to me that I could strangle her here on the street and there wasn’t a person in San Celina who wouldn’t be a convincing defense witness for my temporary insanity plea.
“Okay,” she said, a smug look on her face. The only thing she enjoyed more than gossip was getting someone’s goat. “This is what happened. Because it was so late, Father had to take me with him. I was curled up in the back seat of o
ur old Plymouth with my pillow and blanket while he went inside to Miss Violet’s. I was asleep for the longest time until voices woke me up. I stuck my head up just barely enough to see where we were. That’s when I realized we were at Miss Violet’s.”
“How did you know that?”
“I saw her. She was standing on the front porch talking to Father.”
“Was she okay?”
“She was standing there, wasn’t she? I heard Father’s voice get mad and start yelling and that frightened me because Father never raised his voice, so I ducked down and put my head under the blanket.”
“Could you hear anything he was saying?”
“No, but when he got into the car, I pretended to be asleep in the back and he was talking to himself to beat the band.”
“What did he say?” I wasn’t sure how, or if, any of this had to do with Miss Violet’s murder, but she had me hooked now and I wanted to hear the rest of the story.
“Something about the law is the law. You got to trust the law.”
“When was all of this?”
“Well, I was ten years old and I remember seeing Christmas decorations. It must have been just after the war started. That would be 1941.”
I stood there for a moment and looked at a complacent Sissy. I don’t know what she thought she’d accomplished by telling me this about Miss Violet. A house call over fifty years ago. How could that have anything to do with why Miss Violet and Mr. O’Hara were killed?
“Was there any record of this call?” I asked. “What was it for?” If I knew Sissy, I’d bet she was nosy enough to have read all her father’s records, a fact that would have ruined Doc Brownmiller’s career had anyone known it.
“Yes,” she said. “My father always kept very accurate records.”
“Well,” I prompted. “What did it say?”
“Cuts, lacerations, a broken hand, a prescription for pain pills.”
Then I asked the obvious question. “Who was it?”
“The name on the chart was Rose Ann Violet.”
“So something happened to Miss Violet.”
She tilted her head and looked at me oddly. “I don’t think so. She was my teacher that year and she was in school the next day, fit as a fiddle.”
“Is that it?” I asked, hitching my purse over my shoulder and starting to turn away. The information was interesting, but I still couldn’t see how it had anything to do with the murders. Sissy just liked having someone pay attention to her and I’d given her enough of my time.
“No.” The superior tone in her voice caused me to turn and look back at her expectantly. The shadows from the trees next to the old library stained the hollows of her face, giving it a feral look. “There was someone else there on the porch and they could probably tell you a lot more about what went on that night than me.”
“Who?” I asked, just wanting to get away from her before she stretched this revelation into another windy tale that led nowhere.
She gave a small nasty smile. “Why, Oralee Reid, of course,” she said, as if it could be no one else.
8
“I DON’T KNOW,” Elvia said, after I’d told her everything I’d learned so far, leaving out the part about Mac. I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do about that and didn’t want to be confused by someone else’s moral convictions. “Maybe this time Gabe and Dove are right.”
We were sitting downstairs at one of the round oak tables in the book-lined coffee house, testing her cook’s latest Drink of the Month, a concoction honoring Mardi Gras. It was made with the Café Du Monde chicory coffee Elvia bought directly from the original cafe in New Orleans, half-and-half, pecan extract and chocolate syrup. Drinking my second one, I couldn’t decide if it was good or just irresistibly bizarre.
I almost agreed with her, but I wasn’t ready to admit it. “But seriously, do you think that Sissy Brownmiller would have ever gone to the police with this information?”
“Probably not,” Elvia said, her voice doubtful. “But the story she told you doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Miss Violet and Mr. O’Hara’s murders.”
“Maybe not, but I’m going to have to talk to Oralee about it, if only to satisfy my curiosity. Then I’ll tell Gabe everything and forget it.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it,” she said dryly. She took a tiny sip from the foamy drink in front of her and grimaced. “I think I’m going to tell Jose to pass on this one.”
“Gee, I kind of liked it.” I peered down into my empty glass mug.
“There’s certainly no accounting for some people’s taste.”
“Who has taste?” Ramon clumped down the scuffed wooden stairs in unlaced black combat boots, baggy jeans and a flannel shirt washed almost plaidless. Todd, Nikon in hand, dogged his heels in clothes so similar they could have come from the same derelict. Ramon slipped an arm around his sister’s shoulders and gave her an exuberant hug.
“Not you, that’s for sure, m’hijo,” Elvia said fondly, reaching back and tickling his stomach lightly. “What are you two muchachos up to?”
He perched on the wooden arm of her oak chair and grabbed her drink, making a face after taking a gulp. “Don’t tell Mama—”
She drummed her long peach-colored nails on the table. “Famous last words.”
“We’re cutting class,” Todd finished for him.
She twisted around and gave Ramon an irritated look. “You little flake. What class are you cutting?”
“Nothing important, madrastra,” Ramon said. “Just history. Who cares about what happened a hundred years ago? Live for today, that’s my motto.”
“You’d better live it up then, because there’ll be no tomorrow for you if Mama finds out you aren’t going to class.” Elvia folded her arms across the front of her peach and cream Donna Karan suit.
“She won’t if everyone keeps their mouths shut,” he said, ignoring her scowl and flashing me the captivating white smile that earned him the nickname of “Ramoneo” from his five older brothers. “Help,” he mouthed.
I held up my hands. “Don’t get me involved in this family squabble. I have enough problems of my own, thank you very much.”
“Have any reporters talked to you yet about finding the bodies?” Ramon asked eagerly. “One interviewed me, you know. It was so cool.”
“One called me at the museum. I gave him the facts, then told him I’d bite anyone who tracked me down for any more interviews.”
“Whoa, harsh lady,” Todd said.
“Not harsh, just too busy for yellow journalism.” The antique mantel clock sitting on one of the bookshelves chimed softly. “Speaking of busy, I need to get to work. Got a ton of things to do today.”
“What things?” Ramon asked. Having known him since he was born, I was wise to his ploy. The longer he kept me talking, the longer he avoided Elvia’s lecture on the importance of a college education.
“Some interviews, some work at the museum. Just stuff.”
“Interviews? Like for what?” He arranged a wonderfully fake look of interest on his face. I couldn’t remember what his major was, but he wouldn’t go wrong considering a change to Theater Arts.
“For the Historical Society. They’re putting together a book about San Celina during the war years.”
“You mean, like the sixties?” Todd asked.
I rolled my eyes at Elvia and we both laughed. Another reminder of our advancing age. It was hard to believe there was a whole generation of kids who when they heard the word “war” instantly thought of Vietnam. “No, World War Two. I’m doing the section on how the Japanese-Americans were treated in San Celina during that time.”
“Wow, are you going to talk to Todd’s grandfather?” Ramon asked. “He’s Japanese.”
“Did he live on the Central Coast during the forties?” I said, turning to look at Todd.
He shifted the camera from one hand to the other, looking uncomfortable. “I guess. He’s owned the fish store a long time. Since before I was born
.”
“It’s that one in Old Town, right? I forget the name.”
“Morita’s.”
“That’s right. Gabe shops there once in a while. Do you think your grandfather would talk to me?”
He shrugged noncommittally. “Grandfather doesn’t talk much about the old days....”
“Well, maybe I’ll drop by sometime and ask him. Don’t worry, it won’t offend me if he doesn’t want to. There’s lots of people who don’t like talking about that time.”
Looking relieved, Todd nodded at Ramon. “Ready to split?”
“Just a minute,” Elvia said. She stood up and pointed an elegant finger at her brother. “I want to know just how bad you’re doing in history.”
Ramon jumped up and started backing toward the stairs. “Gotta go.”
“Ramon.” Her stern older-sister voice stopped him in his tracks.
“I’m not flunking or anything,” he said. “It’s just that today we were supposed to give a progress report on our history projects ...”
“We’re partners,” Todd put in.
“And we’re sort of, well, kind of ...” Ramon threw everything he had into his smile. She didn’t fall for it.
“You haven’t done a thing on it,” Elvia finished.
He laughed and blew her a kiss. “Smart women are so sexy.”
“Ramon, Ramon,” she scolded. “Don’t you realize how important a college education is?”
He moved behind her and flapped his hand in a quacking motion, like he did the other night. Since it wasn’t directed at me this time, I couldn’t help laughing.
Elvia frowned. “You’re not helping things, Benni.” She turned back to Ramon. “What exactly is your project?”
“Well, that’s sort of a problem,” he said, looking like a puppy who’d missed the newspaper. “We ...”
“Don’t have one,” Todd finished. “And it’s due in two weeks.”
Elvia’s black eyes flashed with anger. I knew Ramon was in for a real tongue-lashing unless someone intervened. Like so many times when he was growing up, I jumped in to save him.
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