by Bulock, Lynn
I pulled into the restaurant parking lot next to Ray’s unmarked unit. Since he was just getting out of the car I couldn’t be accused of being late. He looked sharp as ever in his workday uniform of white shirt, jeans and a sport coat. Today he’d even added a tie that looked as Christmas oriented as I could expect from him. It featured the Grinch, of course.
He insisted on picking up the tab for lunch. “We can call this one departmental business as long as we don’t go wild.” I wasn’t sure how one would go wild at Mi Familia with the average lunch running about six bucks. That was what my cheese enchilada special ran, and Ray’s carnitas burrito was about the same.
“Think the department will pop for an orange soda, too? I don’t want to push the limit.”
“Definitely. You could even have the high-end one imported from Mexico in a glass bottle.” His smile was positively lupine today. It was a look that made me glad that I was on the right side of this man of the law.
We settled at a table and waited for Luis to call our order. While we waited we caught each other up on the last twenty-four hours. “Tell me you didn’t file charges against Estella Perez.” Personally I thought she had enough problems facing her without legal trouble, but I wasn’t sure how the system would look at her actions.
“No charges, but she’ll probably be up for disciplinary action at the hospital. She may have ‘borrowed’ some of the supplies she used to deliver Lucy’s baby. And if nothing else, she acted in a highly unethical manner the way she did things.”
“How long had she known Lucy was pregnant? And what did she use to sedate her so that she didn’t remember anything but still had a healthy baby?”
“She figured out her sister’s condition a while ago, and didn’t tell her because she didn’t think Lucy could handle the information. I think Estella wanted the baby so much herself that she decided to keep things quiet until the baby was born. Maybe she even thought she could get away with this and somehow present the baby as one she’d adopted or something.” Ray looked puzzled by that.
“Some women want a child so badly they’ll do anything to get one.” I thought of the sorrow in Lexy’s voice when she told her stories at Christian Friends. While she wouldn’t do what Estella had done, she would certainly go to great lengths to have a baby. “So what about the drugs?”
Luis called out that our food was ready and Ray stood up to go get the tray. “She tried to explain it to me, but I don’t have a lot of medical knowledge,” he said over his shoulder. “Apparently it’s a modern version of something called ‘twilight sleep.’ She said my mother could probably explain it.”
“Anybody your mom’s age, or mine, could explain it,” I told him when he came back with the laden tray. “The old stuff was morphine and something else that took away pain, but most of all made you forget all about it afterward. I’ve heard of dentists using something like it now for phobic patients.” I didn’t add that I came close to falling in that category myself and that’s why I knew about the stuff. No reason to share my deepest secrets with the homicide detective, even if he was buying me lunch.
We ate in silence for a few minutes. Then I couldn’t resist asking a few more. “How are Lucy and the baby doing? And what about Matt? I’m sure charges were dropped against him, but does he even know that yet?”
“Lucy’s good. They’re keeping her and her daughter in the hospital another day or two, mainly to give her some parent education. I talked to somebody from Children and Family Services who seems to think that with a lot of support she could keep the baby. If she and Estella could come to an understanding, the two of them would do a fine job together raising her.”
I tried not to huff. “Either I’ve got to stop asking more than one question at once or you’ve got to get better with answers. Which is it going to be?”
“It better be you with the questions, because I’m so used to keeping my answers to myself that retraining me now would be near impossible.” The man had such a charming demeanor when he wanted to.
“Is Matt going to be okay? And will he get charged for driving without a license?”
“Once he’s all right physically, he’ll face some moving violation stuff. We’ll try to keep it as light as possible but we can’t ignore it totally. Of course if he’d told me about the scooter in the first place I probably wouldn’t have liked him for the murder for so long. The way he was acting, I figured I had a contract killer on my hands.”
“So you suspected Tracy of killing her husband?”
“I couldn’t rule her out,” Ray said. “She had the most to gain from having him dead. He was a bad, dishonest businessman and a lousy husband. With him gone, she profited financially and got rid of a guy her family had hated for years. I still thought Matt pulled the trigger for her, though.”
“What changed your mind?” With Ray doing a lot of the talking I had managed to polish off most of my lunch. I was beginning to think that maybe this time I’d spring for dessert.
“A couple things put me on another path. There’s no proof anywhere that Matt Seavers has any money outside his job on the plumbing crew. And one of the unidentified prints on the inside of the portable facility where Collins was found matched a partial on the gun, and both belong to Tracy Collins.”
“She could argue that she’d touched the gun another time, since her husband owned it, but I’ve never seen her at the job site.”
“Exactly. She’s lawyered up for now and we won’t be getting any more information out of her. I hope she will confess and plea bargain down for the sake of her kids and not go through a trial, but who knows. She supposedly did all this for them, and now her husband’s mother and one of her own brothers will squabble for years over custody while she’s behind bars.”
It was a sad situation to think of, and it pretty much killed my appetite for dessert. When we finished lunch and got ready to leave, I saw a sign on the back wall that said the restaurant would be open at 7:00 a.m. on Christmas Eve so that people could pick up tamales.
“Do you get yours here?” I asked, motioning to the sign. “I’ve been really tempted to learn how to make them. It’s such a California thing.”
“Yeah and it takes a small army. No, I don’t buy tamales at Christmas. I go to my mother’s house Christmas Eve and she’d skin me alive if I ate tamales anywhere but at her table.”
“Do you think she’d welcome an extra pair of hands in the small army?”
Ray threw back his head in laughter. “You have got to be kidding. I wouldn’t bring a woman into that lion’s den on Christmas Eve unless we had dated at least six months. Even then, I’d have to be sure she could hold her own almost anywhere.”
He gave me a speculative look as we left the restaurant. “Now I could see you holding your own, even in my mother’s kitchen. Do you think if we started going out now we could talk about tamales next Christmas?”
The thought of what that meant made me stop dead in the parking lot. “Only if we talked about a lot of other things first. Like our coming to an understanding on issues of faith, because I won’t get serious about another man who isn’t a Christian.” After the pain I’d already had in my life from relationships, I didn’t want more pain of a type I could avoid.
He put his hands on my shoulders and pulled me closer. There was still space between us, but it had just narrowed considerably. “Gracie Lee, you know that even a week ago I would have turned that down flat. But I’ve seen what your faith and your trust or intuition or whatever you want to call it, can actually do. And I’m willing to at least give it a deeper look.”
“So do you want to go to church with me Christmas Eve?” I always pushed this man’s limits. Why should now be any different?
“Not this time. I really do have to spend the evening at my mom’s on pain of death. How about the Sunday after Christmas?”
“You’ve got a deal.” I meant it whole-heartedly. I just didn’t expect him to seal our deal with a kiss. It was brief, the kind of first kiss
I’d expect from somebody standing in a parking lot with people coming and going. But brief didn’t mean that it wasn’t also mighty fine. Playing back that kiss in my head had me grinning like a fool the rest of the day.
Christmas Eve services at Conejo Community Chapel fulfilled all my expectations. I hadn’t been here last year for this season and this year I was more than ready for Christmas to come. For a lot of reasons I avoided the kid-heavy services early in the evening, although watching six-year-olds go off like skyrockets from Christmas excitement did have its appeal. Tonight I wanted something a little more quiet and thoughtful.
For me the most meaningful service at Christmas is held late at night, with carols and candlelight, so that’s the one I chose. My memories of Granny Jo’s church in Missouri make me want peace at Christmas and maybe a dusting of snow. Actually, I’m fine without the snow as long as I get the peace.
Before setting out for church I’d talked to Ben. It must have been midnight in Memphis when he called, but it didn’t surprise me he was up and wanted to talk. We’d e-mailed and instant messaged back and forth more than once, but hadn’t really talked to each other since he left California. “So how’s the weather? Did you get a white Christmas?”
“Only if you count ice storms. It’s really cool to drive on if you’re in a parking lot, though. Dad’s SUV can do donuts like you wouldn’t believe.” There was a pause while Ben considered what he’d just told me. “We were all wearing our seat belts, though.”
Great. As if that was supposed to calm me down a whole bunch. Still, it was Christmas and I wasn’t going to nag at him. “So, how is the somebody Dad wanted you to meet?”
“Okay. I think she’s awful young for him. She might be thirty, maybe, but not any older. And I hate to tell you this, but he gave her a ring tonight at dinner.”
Oh, boy. Hal had gone through several semi-serious relationships since our divorce over fifteen years ago, but never remarried. “Wow. Sounds like big stuff.”
“But wait, there’s more.” Ben sounded like those awful pitchmen on late-night TV. “How would you feel about Dad moving to California?”
“Where in California?” It’s a big state. There might be room for both of us given enough distance.
“Hmm. Where would somebody live who was going to UC-Santa Barbara? I think that’s where Nicole said her school program is.”
“Santa Barbara?” I tried not to sound as ill as I suddenly felt. “That’s only forty miles north of here.” And housing prices there meant I could look forward to being in the same county with my ex-husband and his beautiful, young fiancée. I knew Hal well enough to know that not only would she be young, but she’d be beautiful as well. He wouldn’t have things any other way.
My first thoughts were unpleasant, but I held my tongue. Again, this was Christmas and I was talking to my son. For him this might be good news, having his parents close enough that visiting Dad didn’t mean a cross-country flight.
“So how’s Cai Li?” It felt like time to change the subject.
“Okay. Did you already go to church tonight?”
“Not yet,” I told him, wondering if that was the right answer or not.
It must have been. “Great. Tell her hi for me. The praise band is doing some stuff at the eleven o’clock service. I guess if you’re going to that one I better let you go.” We talked a short while longer and I even got expressions of love out of my son. Once I hung up I realized we hadn’t talked about his ratty goatee. But then if Hal had given somebody a ring on Christmas Eve, Grandma Lillian probably had enough to deal with that she might not be paying that much attention to Ben’s face.
The Morgans’ house was dimly lit when I drove past on my way to church. I knew that the family, including Candace, had gone to an earlier service. Dot had stopped by afterward to tell me that she’d heard through the grapevine that Matt was out of critical care and alert enough to talk to the police, which probably meant Ray. Matt wasn’t out of the woods yet, but the doctors thought that he probably wouldn’t have a lot of lasting damage from the skull fracture Tracy Collins had inflicted on him. It was the best news we could expect at this point.
Stars twinkled in the clear sky above Rancho Conejo and the air had just enough bite to make it feel almost like Christmas at home. The difference was that by ten o’clock tomorrow morning I wouldn’t need a coat and an ice scraper for my windshield. Knowing that, it was good to walk through the church parking lot, watching my breath make a cloud when I exhaled.
Inside the church the smell of evergreen filled the sanctuary. Lots of people had gotten here ahead of me. I made my way to the front first for a quick hello to Cai Li. She gave me an enthusiastic hug before I headed back to look for a seat in the empty spots of the back rows. Off to one side I saw people I definitely wanted to sit next to. Estella and Lucy Perez sat with an infant seat between them, and I came and got the empty chair next to Lucy. “I’m so glad that you’re here,” I told her, watching her smile shyly.
“Me, too. I wanted to come back for Christmas. This is the right place to be.”
Estella gave a wry smile. “We’re up every couple of hours anyway, so we figured the late service fit in real well. I hope it’s okay that we came here.”
“Of course. Everybody’s welcome here. Lucy could tell you that.” I looked over into the infant carrier where the baby snoozed peacefully in a tiny bright pink stretchy suit. She had plenty of dark hair like her mother and aunt, and a few days’ time had given her a chance to look much less red and scrunched up. “What have you named her?”
“Carmen for her grandmother, but we’ve been calling her something else,” Estella said.
Lucy reached out one finger and stroked her daughter’s velvet cheek. “Milagrita,” she said softly.
I know just enough Spanish by now to know that Carmen’s other name meant “little miracle.” It felt so appropriate in this season of miracles and birth we’d all been waiting for.
The last month had started with death and horror for all of us. We’d come so far in four weeks, and now the month was ending in miracles large and small in the warmth of candle glow and music. Even though all my sisters in Christ weren’t here with me I felt surrounded by their love. It was the feeling that kept me coming back here.
“That’s wonderful,” I told Lucy. Little miracle. It summed up perfectly that grace-full place we all came to on this Christmas Eve. As the service started I watched the sleeping infant, knowing she’d already lived up to her name.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What does it mean to be “shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves” as in Matthew 10:16, the scripture verse in the front of this book? Why would you want to be “shrewd as snakes?”
Gracie Lee’s son, Ben, is suspected of murder. Have you ever had someone that close to you suspected of a crime you know that person didn’t commit? How did you handle the situation?
Frank left a lot of secrets and problems for his family to discover after his death. What would you want people to discover about you only after you die?
Dot says she second-guesses herself a lot about whether she made the right decisions for Candace about health care in several parts of her early life. Have you ever had to make a life-or-death decision for someone else? What was it like to do that?
What would you say is the theme of this book? Why?
When did you first suspect who the murderer was in this book? Were you surprised?
Several of the characters in this book are developmentally disabled or face other challenges in their lives. How do Gracie Lee and Detective Fernandez treat these characters?
One of Frank’s biggest problems in life is failing to take responsibility for his actions. If you were faced with a person like Frank, what would you tell that person about what God says in regard to personal responsibility?
Gracie Lee, Dot and Estella all struggle with how much independence they should give to those they love. Have you ever had this problem? Is there a “right”
way to handle it?
Gracie Lee won’t get serious about Ray Fernandez because he doesn’t have much of a faith life or a visible relationship with Jesus. Do you think she’s right in her decision? What could she do to encourage Ray to grow in faith?
STEEPLE HILL BOOKS
ISBN: 978-1-4268-1576-8
LESS THAN FRANK
Copyright © 2006 by Lynn Bulock
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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