“Yes,” he said, studying his heavy black boots. One foot moved up and down in a nervous hammering.
I waited for him to elaborate. I liked Todd, but I didn’t need someone who’d overfilled his plate just because he needed money for some new lens or something.
His bottom lip jutted out in that half-defiant, half-ashamed look adolescent boys get when forced to ask an adult for a favor. “My grandfather’s store, it’s ... it’s not doing so good. He can’t really afford to pay me.”
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence. “That’s too bad,” I said. “I guess a lot of businesses are having trouble these days.”
He exhaled sharply and tossed his long silky hair. “It’s not that he’s stupid or a bad businessman or anything. It’s just that ...” He paused, his Adam’s apple moving convulsively. “My mom’s and grandmother’s funerals cost a lot of money. We ... uh ... didn’t have insurance and stuff.” He looked down and started picking at the red, raw cuticles on his brown chemical-stained fingers.
“Your grandmother?” I said, confused. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize ...”
He didn’t look up. “She had a heart attack a couple of months before my mom ... well, you know.” He brought a forefinger up to his mouth and chewed at a piece of skin.
I studied the doodles on my desk blotter, in a quandary about what to do. My heart said, Give him the job and pick up any slack he can’t handle; my head said, He’s a nice kid, but you can’t save the world and you don’t have time for this.
While I argued with myself, he avoided my eyes and played with the zoom lens on his Nikon. I knew it was hard for a boy his age to tell anyone his personal problems or to ask for help. I also knew I was taking a chance hiring him. But how could I say no? Maybe he would be a better employee than any others I’d had simply because he needed the job so badly.
“Okay,” I said, sitting forward. “We’ll give it a try. Do you know how to use tools at all?”
“Sure,” he said, his face brightening for the first time since I walked into the office. “I’m real good at fixing things.”
I stood up and walked him to the door. “Come by tomorrow at ten o’clock and I’ll give you your first week’s assignments.”
“Thanks. You won’t regret it, I swear.” He gave me a grateful smile and loped off down the hallway.
“I sincerely hope not,” I said under my breath. Getting in the middle of someone’s family problems was the last thing I needed right now. With Mac and Clay and their complicated positions in the murders of Mr. O’Hara and Miss Violet and with the cross-stitch exhibit due to open in the next two weeks, not to mention those chapters for Dove I still needed to research and write, or my tennis-match relationship with Gabe, I didn’t need an emotionally upset teenage assistant. I was seriously considering Elvia’s suggestion to post the job in the senior citizen center next to the library. She’d gotten two of her most dependable employees that way. My only hesitation was that the heavy lifting required by the job might prove to be too much for a person in their sixties or seventies. But at this point, if Todd didn’t work out, I might reconsider the seniors and work out something with the men in the co-op about the heavy lifting.
Cheer up, I told myself. At least he isn’t having girlfriend problems. Yet, said a reproachful little voice inside me.
For the next hour I tried to concentrate on the cross-stitch exhibit, but I couldn’t get Sissy’s revelation out of my mind. The only person who could clear up what happened that night and whether it had anything to do with the murders, was Oralee. I also knew I couldn’t ask her about it without talking to Mac first. He and I had been friends too long for me to be that deceitful. And I knew I’d want to horsewhip anyone who bothered Dove behind my back.
At First Baptist, his secretary, a sixtyish matron with a no-nonsense brown wool suit and a protective, motherly feeling for her employer, put me through the wringer before revealing Mac’s whereabouts. Mondays were apparently his only day off and he’d driven out to the Reid Ranch to clear brush and chop some wood. Driving over Rosita Pass toward North County, I rehearsed my explanation about why I felt it important for me to question Oralee about a fifty-year-old incident. To be truthful, I couldn’t come up with one good reason why I should be involved, something that made me increasingly apprehensive as I neared the turnoff for the Reid Ranch. I drove up the long gravel driveway resisting the thought that Gabe might be right and that I should stay out of it.
The long brown ranch house and peeling outbuildings appeared sad and neglected in the early afternoon sunlight. Mac’s dark blue Ford Bronco crowded the narrow driveway in front of the empty house whose brick-lined flower beds sprouted a field of crispy flower stalks and green, healthy weeds. Oralee had been gone only three months, but it didn’t take long for nature to start reasserting itself. The front lawn, once her pride and joy, was a tan, dry square with two fresh gopher hills marring its smooth expanse. When I stepped down from my truck, the sharp afternoon breeze hurled Emmy Lou Harris’ stereophonic voice over the top of the house. “I was born to run,” she wailed. In the backyard, I found Mac in a black tank top and tattered Levi’s, swinging a long-handled axe as if his life depended on it. His biceps were large and tanned, his pale nickel-sized vaccination scar visible from where I stood. I watched for a few moments just for the sheer pleasure of observing a perfectly formed example of the male half of our species using his muscles as God intended.
“Hey,” I called out. “Cut me a cord while you’re at it.”
He glanced up, startled. With an embarrassed grin, he wiped the shine off his forehead with the back of his hand and turned the radio down. “Hi,” he said. “What are you doing here?” His face grew anxious. “There’s nothing wrong with Grandma, is there? The phone here was disconnected a while back ...”
“Nope,” I said, walking toward him. “I just wanted to talk. I charmed your secretary into telling me where you were. It wasn’t easy, either.” I sat down in an old tulip-back metal patio chair. “Do you have a few minutes?”
“Sure,” he said. He leaned the long axe against the chopping block and pulled up a matching rusty chair. “What can I help you with?”
His face appeared so genial, so eager to listen, I looked down and studied my hands, unable to meet his gentle gray eyes.
“Benni,” he said softly. “Is there something wrong between you and Gabe?”
“No,” I said quickly. “I mean, yes, but that’s not why I want to talk to you. I ...”
He leaned back in his seat, his bulk causing the metal chair to give out a painful screech. “It’s about what happened at the murder scene, isn’t it?” His voice sounded weary, as if the subject were a problem he’d spent years contemplating with no hope of an answer.
“Sort of,” I admitted. “Actually, someone’s told me something that I think only Oralee can shed some light on and I wanted to ask you if it was okay if I talked to her.”
He stroked his beard, his eyes uncertain. “I guess it depends on what it is.”
Watching his face, I repeated Sissy’s story. The retelling made it seem even more improbable and dramatic. He seemed to absorb my words, his face expressionless as a sponge. When I finished, he nodded but didn’t comment. Waiting for his response, I watched a mockingbird dart from an elm tree to an oak to a dying pine, marking its territory with a concert of borrowed chirps and trills. I wished I could tell it not to worry, soon it would have the whole place to itself, at least until the land is divided up into two-acre ranchettes or planted with rows of wine grapes.
“I’m not going to forbid you to see my grandmother,” Mac finally said. “She’s lived life on her own terms for too many years for me to step in and tell her what to do. She trusts you and I trust her, so whatever she decides you should know is fine with me.” He paused, adjusted himself in the squeaky chair and continued. “I want you to know I’m going to talk to Gabe tomorrow. Putting you in the position I did wasn’t fair.”
“You
’re going to tell him what you took from Miss Violet’s room,” I said, relieved, though just slightly. I wasn’t entirely off the hook. I still had to tell Gabe I had known about it all along and try and make him understand why I didn’t tell him right away.
“I’m going to tell him I took something,” Mac said evenly. “What I took has been destroyed, so it has no power over anyone anymore.”
“That’s not going to satisfy him,” I said. “He’ll want to know what it was.”
“I can’t tell him.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t tell you that. It’s not my story to tell.”
“Is it Oralee’s?”
He shrugged and stood up, rubbing his hands on the sides of his jeans. “I do have one question for you, though.”
“What’s that?”
“Why are you so interested in all this?”
Good question. It had been a good question since the beginning of this whole business, and I wasn’t going to tell him he was way down on the list of people who wanted to know the answer. I gave him the only one I’d been able to come up with.
“I don’t know. I just can’t seem to let it go. Or it can’t seem to let me go.”
“Maybe it’s easier.”
“Than what?” I looked at him, confused.
“Dealing with the real issues in your life.”
“Such as?” I said, annoyed at what sounded like a superior tone in his voice.
“You and Gabe.”
Now he was getting too personal. My throat constricted in anger. “Maybe you shouldn’t be looking for ticks on someone else’s dog, Mac. How do you justify what you’ve done with the sermons you preach on Sunday?” The minute the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them. The pain that swept across his face told me he’d spent some troubled hours wondering just that very thing.
“I can’t,” he said, picking up a large piece of oakwood and setting it in the middle of the chopping block. The muscles of his arms flexed when he picked up the axe. His face was cool, his eyes flat as primer paint. “Is that all?”
I inhaled deeply, then let it out. “Yes,” I said, still angry, but also hurt over this rift between us. “I would never do anything to hurt Oralee, Mac. You know that, don’t you?”
He lifted the axe high over his head and slammed it down, splitting the oak log in half. I jumped back when one piece landed inches from my left foot.
“I sincerely hope not” was all he said.
10
WHEN I STARTED for home, it was close to six o’clock and getting dark. Driving back over Rosita Pass in the lavender twilight, I rolled down my window and let the sweet, intoxicating smell of early spring wash over me. The hills, brown and fuzzy as a terrier’s coat, were already splattered green in spots as if some environmental artist had thrown sporadic buckets of brilliant emerald paint over them. I rested my eyes and mind on the black, turned-over fields and the sturdy young cows bunched together near water troughs, guarding their calves. In a sky that seemed too blue and heavy to hold them, hawks swept and dived for gray ground life among the uniform rows of plastic-covered berry plants. I felt a soft comfort settle inside me. Despite the human confusion that rumbled beneath us all like a separating of the earth’s plates, the cycle of seasons, like a dependable worker bee, droned on.
Mac’s dilemma was not one I envied. Whatever evidence he took, it was obvious he did it to protect his grandmother. I’m sure I would have done the same thing, but I also knew, that being a minister, he would be judged by a harsher standard than I would have been. Hating myself for even considering it, I couldn’t help but wonder how far he would go to protect his grandmother.
I swung by Baskin-Robbins for my dinner of a chocolate fudge brownie sundae, drove home and parked myself on the sofa, trying to figure the whole mess out. A part of me wanted to run to Gabe and confess everything, place it all in his competent hands and return to my artists and my samplers and my Historical Society interviews. But Mac and Oralee were like family to me. I had to talk to her before my mind could lay it to rest.
I was lying back on the sofa, attempting to push my boots off with my toes without actually sitting up, when the phone rang. In no mood to talk to anyone, I did something I despise in other people—screened the call. After hearing the message, I was glad I did.
“Benni, this is your daddy.” Daddy’s voice was stiff and he enunciated each word slowly, as if talking to a toddler or a very stupid adult. I tried to tell him when I bought the machine to just talk normal when he left a message. “What do you mean?” he’d asked indignantly. “I am talking normal.”
“Your daddy,” he repeated, in case I didn’t quite get it the first time. “You can tell that gramma of yours I will not eat that pig slop she’s been cooking one more night. A hardworking man deserves his meat and potatoes. Tell her.” The sound of his angry hang-up cracked across the room like a bullwhip.
I ate three more spoonfuls of my dinner, telling myself if I was a truly good daughter I would call him back and find out what was really going on. Five minutes later, I was still thinking about it when the phone rang again.
“Benni.” Dove’s sharp voice waited for my response. Knowing her, she probably already knew I was here. Just out of spite, I kept listening.
“Benni, answer me.” Her voice rose an octave.
“Yes, ma’am,” I called from where I was sitting. She probably had my house bugged, so why bother picking up the phone?
“Wherever you are, when you get back, you can tell that daddy of yours if he don’t like what I cook, he knows where the pots and pans are. I refuse to fry potatoes one more time. Seventy-five years is long enough. Ahmad says Persian food is very healthy. I hear they live to be a hundred and twenty there in—well, wherever his people live.”
Beep.
Just like old times. When I was growing up, Dove and Daddy would get mad at each other and communicate through me for days. The answering machine added a whole new dimension to it, though. I’d never had one when I lived with Jack at the Harper Ranch. Dove would just come stay with me until Daddy finally came to his senses, agreed with her and apologized. With the help of modern technology, this feud could last months. I wondered what would happen if I mailed them the tape. And who the heck was Ahmad?
Past experience helped me decide to leave them to their own devices, at least for tonight. I spent the rest of the evening catching up on laundry, dirty dishes and scanning the books on writing oral histories. At eleven o’clock, just before I turned out my light to go to sleep, Gabe called to say good night. He’d fallen into the habit about a month ago and it had gradually become part of my bedtime ritual, one that made me a little nervous because I’d grown to look forward to it, even depend upon it. The loneliness of falling asleep alone had been one of the hardest adjustments to make since Jack died. That and waking up to a silent house. With all its problems, I had liked being married. As irritating as men could sometimes be, I enjoyed their unpredictability and the way, without you noticing, their strong musky scent gradually permeated the hidden corners of your possessions and your life.
“I missed you today,” he said. “I wish you were here beside me right now. I swear I’d—”
“Don’t say anything you might have to arrest yourself for, Friday.” I broke into his words with a laugh. “Besides, this time of night, I might not be able to resist.”
“That’s what I’m counting on.”
Then we laid in our separate beds, comforted only by goosedown and the sound of each other’s voices. On the same wavelength for once, we stayed away from anything about the murders. I thought about telling him what I’d learned from Sissy and Mac, then decided against it. I’d have to tell him sooner or later, but I didn’t want to ruin this peaceful truce we’d finally achieved.
“Dream sweet, querida,” he said, before hanging up. “That’s an order.” His voice was mild and sleepy. Its low, late-night sound wrapped around me with the warmth and security of an old wo
ol blanket.
“Yes, sir, Chief,” I answered, contemplating for a split second just how long it would take for me to drive my truck the three miles to his house.
The next morning, in penance for my dinner, I fixed myself some oatmeal, telling myself I could truthfully inform Gabe I’d started eating healthier. I stirred butter, brown sugar and half-and-half into my cereal, attempting to make it taste a little less like pasty water and thought about Oralee. The ladies from the Oak Terrace quilting class were being bused to the museum to start quilting on the Steps to the Altar quilt today. The quilt was king-sized and the small crafts room at Oak Terrace couldn’t comfortably accommodate a quilt rack of any size. Maybe I could pull Oralee aside and casually ask her about Sissy’s story concerning her father’s late-night house call.
I pulled on jeans, a red and blue plaid flannel shirt, then walked out on the front porch to check the temperature and decide what sort of jacket I’d need.
“Hey, Mr. Treton,” I called to my neighbor. He looked up from the hedge that separated our two yards. It had been trimmed with precision that befitted his thirty-year stint in the Army. “What’s new?”
“Have you talked to your young man yet?” He pointed his wooden-handled clippers at me. “About the electric company?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “It’s on his list of things to do but maybe, just to jog his memory, you should give him a call.” I laughed to myself, picturing the conversation between them. “I’ve got to go now. Have to get down to the museum and turn on the heat for my quilting class.”
He grunted and went back to his pruning.
On the way to the museum I stopped at The Donut Corral to pick up a few dozen doughnuts to serve with coffee and tea during our mid-morning break. The sky was thick with clouds, some white cotton, others mottled a foreboding coyote gray that blatantly disregarded the forecast earlier in the week for clear skies. Apparently the weather today would be a toss of the coin. Even Angus Al’s weather report on KCOW this morning straddled the fence—“Maybe rain, maybe not. Your goose is as good as mine.” He honked his squawky blooper horn. They were inordinately fond of barnyard humor on KCOW.
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