The Last Blue Plate Special

by Abigail Padgett

  “But the taped message claimed that this person had killed Emerald,” Pieter said, his voice thin.

  “Yes. Obviously Sword thought Emerald was a fatality, but she wasn’t. Her doctor won’t tell the police what the diagnosis was and doesn’t have to. All we know is that Emerald experienced some kind of cardiovascular event that may have been nothing more than anxiety. Sword may have nothing to do with Emerald’s illness but just be grabbing for publicity. In the case of Dixie and Mary Harriet, however, the fact that the threatening letter was mailed to the police a week before Mary Harriet’s and two weeks before Dixie’s death is too compelling to lay at the feet of coincidence. Right now that’s really all we know.”

  “It’s enough for me,” Pieter said, grasping the hand Kate had laid over his shoulder. “Please, Kate. You can run for another office next year when this monster has been apprehended.”

  I watched as Kate Van Der Elst stretched her neck and rubbed at the skin behind both ears as if something had clamped to her skull. She continued to stretch and turn her head as she answered.

  “I’ve spent fifteen years managing our homes, hostessing parties and business events,” she said evenly. “I’ve enjoyed it, Pieter. We’ve had a wonderful life. But I’ve never had anything of my own, never felt that I was important in the world as myself, only as your wife. Please don’t ask me again to give this up. I can’t.”

  “But Kate, it’s only a city council seat,” he continued, going squarely in the wrong direction.

  I wasn’t surprised when she repeated the word “only” with quiet anger and then walked away.

  “You blew it,” I told Pieter, who was again staring out the window.

  “Blue,” he said, not looking at me, “do you own a gun?”

  “What?”

  “A gun. Do you have one?”

  “Yes,” I answered. “I live alone out in the desert. I have a gun.”

  “Are you licensed to carry it in town?”

  “No, Pieter.”

  I didn’t like the desperation in his voice, and I didn’t like where I knew this was going.

  “Surely a license can be arranged,” he went on. “I want to hire you as a bodyguard for Kate.”

  If he’d looked like a monk before, Pieter Van Der Elst now looked like the corpus in a pietà. A dead body, the slack posture of despair. In the weeks I’d been designing polls for Kate’s campaign, I’d spent hours with this couple but hadn’t seen the depth to which Pieter loved his wife. Of course, I wouldn’t have. What I was looking at now seemed too intimate for anyone’s eyes but Kate’s, but there it was. He couldn’t bear the thought of harm to her, of losing her. Love has that dark side. That intolerable fear of loss. I glanced down and pretended to be looking for something in my purse.

  “Pieter, I have no training as a bodyguard and couldn’t accept that responsibility,” I said. “I’ll be happy to refer you to some good agencies. But why don’t we hold off for a few days? There may be no danger to Kate. We really don’t know much yet.”

  He leaned forward to pull something from the hip pocket of his slacks. It was a fluorescent lime-green piece of paper, folded to a small rectangle. He ran a thumb along the folded edge and then looked at me.

  “I got here first this morning and opened the office,” he said. “Kate had gone to church with Dixie’s sister and then back to their house to spend some time with the Ross family before the funeral on Wednesday. This had been pushed under the door.”

  He handed me the bilious green rectangle, which I unfolded. In the center of the page were words cut from newspapers.

  “Kate Van Der Elst will die,” it said.

  “Why haven’t you called the police?” I asked. “Why haven’t you given this to Rathbone? How long have you had this, Pieter? And does Kate know?”

  “I got here about an hour ago, and no, I didn’t show it to her. I wasn’t sure … There have been other things, Blue. A few phone threats, some nasty letters signed with names like ‘Nietzsche.’ Once someone spray-painted ‘Die Jew Nigger Faggot’ on the window. Public figures attract these things.

  “The first time one of these incidents occurred I checked with ten or twelve of the campaign managers for other candidates, Blue. They all said these things are typical, that it’s just part of the political scene and I shouldn’t be concerned unless a threat was repeated. Then I should contact the police. This note under the door may just be another flare-up from some disaffected lout in the neighborhood whose father was killed in World War II and thinks ‘Van Der Elst’ is a German name. A man at a cocktail party only weeks ago asked me if my father had been in the SS. He thought my accent was German. I didn’t know what to say.”

  I didn’t, either. The man seated before me was sophisticated, European, accustomed to international travel. But not accustomed to the lethal riptides moving beneath the surface of American culture.

  You have to grow up here to understand why a Maine hunter who shot and killed a housewife as she hung laundry in her own yard was acquitted on all charges. It’s not just that the idiot mistook her for a deer, you see. It’s that she and her husband had recently moved there. They were strangers, outsiders. Had they been insiders they would have known you don’t hang laundry during deer season. The housewife, according to the community, deserved to die for not knowing one of many unspoken rules known only by the community. If she’d been part of the community, she would have known and would still be alive. In essence, she killed herself by failing to be born there.

  It’s this sort of thing I was certain Pieter Van Der Elst would never truly grasp. And in a huge city like San Diego there are thousands of such conceptual “communities,” invisible to one another but just as deadly as that little town in Maine. Thousands of rules and closely held beliefs not obvious in the normal daily social exchange, but prone to erupt in the night, when no one is watching.

  “I’m going to call Detective Rathbone,” I said, and picked up a phone from one of the desks. “And you’re going to have to show this green thing to Kate. You’re probably right. It’s probably not connected to Sword, but this is her reality and she has a right to know what the risks are. Stop protecting her, Pieter. Your wife is an adult.”

  After phoning in a message about this latest development for Rathbone, I approached Kate Van Der Elst at the back of the little storefront office. Red, white, and blue paper bunting tacked to the rear wall created a festive atmosphere not reflected in Kate’s face.

  “Pieter says you and Dixie Ross both knew Mary Harriet Grossinger,” I began as she sank into a folding chair and scowled. “I want you to think about this. What, if anything, did the three of you share? What did you have in common? I don’t mean your political beliefs. I mean did all three of you shop at the same grocery, go to the same church, use the same dentist? That kind of thing.”

  At “dentist” her shoulders moved uneasily beneath a washable silk blouse in a creamy color that precisely matched the lightest blonde streaks in her hair. Then she smiled a sincere politician’s smile and said, “Let me give this some thought, Blue. I’m sure there are places—restaurants, theaters, and the like— where Mary Harriet and Dixie and I have all been, although not necessarily at the same time. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

  “Anything,” I answered. “But especially restaurants or other places where you might eat something. Also doctors, dentists, hairdressers, manicurists, gyms. Places where others touching you is normal. Did you and the other two go to the same gym?”

  “Dixie and I played tennis at a club and worked out there as well,” she said thoughtfully. “Mary Harriet didn’t play tennis as far as I know. And If Dixie ever brought her to the club, I didn’t see her. They did more professional things together, luncheons with business groups, speaking engagements. The only time I had dinner with the two of them was almost a year ago, and it was at Dixie’s home. She’d made vegetarian chili and we had a lot of margaritas. That was the night they talked me into running for city counci
l. I can’t believe they’re both … gone.”

  “I’m sorry, Kate,” I said. “You knew Dixie Ross for most of your life, and Grossinger must have been something of a mentor for you. I know you must feel alone now, dealing with the campaign in their absence.”

  “Oh, Blue,” she said, her hazel eyes determined, “that’s why I can’t quit now no matter what Pieter wants! He doesn’t understand. He just wants me to be safe, but even if I wanted to bail out, and I don’t, I owe something to the memories of Dixie and Mary Harriet. I was following in their footsteps. Now I amthe footsteps.”

  I could see Pieter approaching, holding the bright green sheet of paper on which someone had pasted the words “Kate Van Der Elst will die.”

  “Keep thinking about places frequented by you, Grossinger, and Ross,” I reminded her. “We’ll talk later.”

  Outside again, I retrieved Brontë from my truck and snapped a leash to her collar. Then we made a wide loop through the residential streets behind University Avenue and came out on the corner next to the Aphid Gallery. I hadn’t planned this, but since I was there I went in. A young man at a desk in the forward gallery, dressed from head to toe in fashionable black, eyed Brontë approvingly. His hair had been shaved to the skull and it was clear that he regarded my dog’s choice of fur as a fashion statement.

  “Are you interested in anything in particular?” he asked.

  “The black-and-white photographs in the small gallery at the back. Do you have a sheet on the photographer?”

  He opened a drawer in the desk and took out a file labeled “Current Exhibits.”

  “The photographer’s name is Greave,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Black-and-white photos. An art critic for one of the local papers described them as possessing ‘an eerie efficiency reminiscent of Edward Hopper.’”

  “Is that all you have?” I asked. “What about the photographer? Who is ‘Greave’? I saw the photos at a political fundraiser here Friday night and would like to know how old they are, where they were taken, the usual.”

  “Um, we don’t seem to have much. The collection is part of a larger photography exhibit organized over a year ago by a company in Los Angeles. Apparently they bought the photographs for the exhibit and then went bankrupt. After the show, the bank holding the loan broke up the exhibit and leased it out piecemeal to a bunch of galleries, trying to recoup the loss. Some here, a lot to Laguna and the beach communities between here and L.A. The Greave photos go to Laguna after this. Guess the bank’s just rotating the show in pieces through a series of Southern California galleries. There really isn’t any way to get information on the artists because the original purchaser doesn’t exist anymore. I’m sorry.”

  Brontë’s nails clicked against the hardwood floor as we walked to the pocket gallery where Friday night I’d seen the photograph of a crumbling adobe building blasted by light. The photo was still there and still compelling. A card tucked into the lower right-hand corner read “$250.00.” The young man in black had followed at a courteous distance and was making a production of adjusting one of the track lights.

  “I’m sure Aphid has a discount policy for collectors,” I mentioned, still inspecting the framed photo.

  “We discount framing,” he answered. “People usually don’t want the original frame.”

  The original frame was a matte-finish metal, black. It looked fine to me.

  “How about a discount for wanting the original frame? Saves a lot of negotiating.”

  “Two hundred twenty-five dollars,” he said.

  “Two hundred.”

  “Two-ten if you don’t want it packed in a box. You walk out with it, as is.”

  “Deal.”

  In the noon glare on University Avenue I inspected my purchase. A roadside building at sunset somewhere in a high desert. The angle of light, the blast of light obliterating one side of the building as the other lay in shadow. And the signature in spidery black ink. “Greave.” Something about the photo continued to frighten me. And something about it had the sizzle of my own screwball philosophy. Fate, God, fortune, disaster—to me these are just flashes from some huge grid on which everything moves at lightning speeds. I do think this grid has a sort of consciousness, although nothing like ours. I think its nature is irony. And I was sure the strange photograph in my hands had significance to my life in some way I might never know.

  But then again, I might.

  “Come on, Brontë,” I said, “we’re going to a revival.”

  7

  The Land of Oz

  The police department had reserved two press passes I was to pick up at a ticket kiosk. After allowing Brontë to run in a canyon near the community college stadium where Ruby Emerald would “revive” thousands, I picked up the passes, stamped SDPD in red ink. I tucked one rakishly into the scarf on my hat. Then I looked around for BB.

  He was waiting near a sign that read FACULTY PARKING ONLY, his dreadlocks hanging wild over his shoulders. Were it not for the cream-colored V-neck varsity sweater he wore over a red polo shirt and tan corduroys, I was sure he would already have been arrested on suspicion of something. Anything. Or else it was the saddle oxfords.

  “Don’t tell me, let me guess,” I said after hugging him. “You borrowed the outfit from a wardrobe for Bye-Bye, Birdie.”

  “Blue, you so retro,” he replied, smiling broadly. “Try the stage show for Rocky Horror. This Brad’s costume. You know, the ofay dude who—”

  “BB, nobody has said ‘ofay’ in twenty years at least.”

  Framed by curly lashes, his brown eyes grew wide as he did a Mr. Bones imitation. Both hands beside his face, fingers spread wide. I had no problem imagining the white gloves.

  “That’s the point,” he said. “This a college, right? White folks’ revival at a college. Figured the boy-cheerleader look the only way to go.”

  “But saddle oxfords? Bet you don’t have the argyles to go with them.”

  “Wrong,” he said, tugging up a corduroy pants leg to show red, blue, and cream socks in the traditional diamond pattern.

  I should have known.

  “BB, tell me about revivals,” I said as we moved with the crowd into the stadium.

  “They all about sex,” he answered.

  “Huh?”

  “Sure. Figured that out down in Mississippi, used to go with my grandma and my aunt.”

  Like many blacks with southern roots, BB pronounced “aunt” as “ahnt.” It sounded oddly Victorian and formal, coming from a Bob Marley look-alike in a cheerleader costume.

  “Lotta things like that,” he went on. “Get a bunch a people together, start slow, and then get ’em heated up, get ’em all riled and nervous, needin’ somethin’, needin’ that release, y’know? Then come the screamin’ and moanin’ and touchin’, folks cryin’ and fallin’ out. Hallelujah time.”

  “You mean it’s like an orgasm,” I said as we located our aisle seats in the sixth row. Where I come from, “orgasm” is not a word used in normal conversation, or any conversation. I wondered whether my casual use of the term meant I was incredibly worldly or merely gauche.

  “Yeah, big O in the head,” BB agreed. “Don’t nobody understand sex ain’t jus’ a dick thing. Sex a head thing. Oughtta see some a them revival preachers they let in prisons! Same thing. Get goin’ and pretty soon see hard-core killers with they eyes rolled back, twitchin’ all over for the Holy Ghost. Hey. Sex be sex. Don’t always have to come from the crotch, y’know?”

  “Um,” I answered as we took our seats and a small orchestra onstage began to play something I would have sworn was “Danny Boy.” BB was right, of course. Also right that very few people can deal with the information.

  “BB, you’re smart,” I told him.

  “Hey,” he replied, grinning and stretching his long arms in front of him, “I been knowin’ that!”

  The orchestra segued into an upbeat rendition of “Come, Thou Almighty King” as a choir in brightly colored r
obes filled risers at the back of the stage, singing. When they were all in place the colors of their robes replicated a rainbow. Then a man with big gray hair in a tight black suit jogged onstage. I could see his lapel mike and knew it ran to a power pack clipped to the back of his pants under his jacket. No mike wires. Ruby Emerald had spared no expense in equipment for her show.

  “This is the day the Lord hath made, and it is BEE-YOOTIFUL!” he yelled, extending his arms toward the sky. The upbeat message was somewhat confused by the fact that the man was weeping. At the time I just chalked his tears up to some sort of religious fervor, an assumption that would almost immediately prove false.

  At his wrists I saw white French cuffs and those lumpy gold cuff links jewelers make by melting leftover snips of gold together in clumps. The crowd responded by yelling, “Yes!” Okay, crying older man in Blues Brothers suit and garish jewelry saying, in essence, “It’s a nice day.” So far this didn’t even seem interesting, much less threatening.

  “My name is J. R. Jones and I’m here to introduce you to the world God means you to have!”

  “Yes!”

  “To join you in singing his praise!”

  “Yes!”

  He was almost convulsed with grief now, eyes streaming, nose running.

  “To bring to you, right out here on this stage, none other than HIS messenger with everything you need to know about God’s plan for YOUR prosperity, the Reverend… Ruby … Emerald!”

  The man jogged offstage, his shoulders heaving with what appeared to be uncontrollable grief, as the crowd cheered happily. Then the orchestra and choir lit into “Oh, Happy Day” as a woman in a pale green robe swept onstage. Multicolored pin-lights directed at her mane of blonde curls refreshed my original impression of her as a Christmas tree angel.