I said, “I wasn’t in touch with her while she was in your group, so I never got the whole story of why she left.”
“Sister Barbara is in God’s hands, now,” she said. “I have nothing more to say.”
Her two companions were moments away.
“At least tell me your name,” I said.
Her head-shake was almost imperceptible. Then Lookout Man was at her elbow.
“Sister Rose, we should go.” He gave me a hard stare. I kept my expression mild.
“Yes, yes,” she said, and she walked toward a stall of apples, the two men flanking her like guard dogs.
John D sighed. “My daddy always used to say, ‘Dear Lord, protect us from Your followers.’ I think he got that just about right.”
“She knows something,” I said. “But we may never know what it is.”
“Well, Mr. Detective, what’s our next move?”
“Good question,” I said. “Let’s do some shopping. I’m sure I’ll think of something after that.”
We split up, and I went straight back to the fennel. I had no idea what one did with fennel, but I knew someone who might. I bought a big bulb of it, topped with feathery fringe. I added purple kale, parsnips, shiny flat peppers the color of red lipstick, and a paper bag of chanterelles that resembled pale sea anemones. I pictured the chanterelles sautéing in olive oil.
Why hadn’t Julie called me?
In a blink, self-sufficiency flipped into a sudden desire to hear Julie’s voice. I pulled out my iPhone and called her. I got her message again, and felt the clean cut of disappointment. She was mighty unavailable, for a single gal.
“Hey, Julie, I’m at the Antelope Valley farmer’s market, loading up on produce I have no idea how to cook. Little help, here?”
I was putting my purchases into my trunk when John D wheezed to my side. He dropped his shopping bag next to mine and leaned against the car to steady himself while he caught his breath. I noted the self-satisfied grin.
“What?” I said.
“You prolly think I was just getting supplies, Ten, but turns out I was doing a little detecting, too.”
He rummaged in the front pocket of his jeans and pulled out a little scrap of paper.
“Sister Rose slipped this into my hand before she left.”
She’d torn a corner off her shopping list. I read the girlish, looped handwriting: “Meet me on the hill tonight. 8 P.M.”
It looked like I was going to spend more time in scenic Lancaster than I had planned. Fortunately, I had a local with me. My stomach growled; sampling the occasional strawberry and tangerine section had only succeeded in making me ravenous.
“I’m starving,” I told John D.
“I got just the place,” he said. I should have known from the glint in his eye I was in for it.
I parked my Mustang between a pickup and a Prius, outside “Josecita’s Bar and Eats.” Apparently Josecita had something for every pay grade. As I followed John D into the ramshackle eatery, a rooster bumped his way past my legs.
“That’s Henry,” John D said. “Don’t mind him. He’s blind.” My eyes adjusted to the dark, saloonlike atmosphere, and I realized Henry wasn’t the only oddity. A young goat was tethered to the jukebox, a tiny white pig was roaming free, and a couple of mangy dogs lay curled in the corner. I heard a weird chattering above my head. I looked up and blinked.
“John D,” I said. “Is that a—”
“Yes, it is. A South American woolly monkey. He goes by the name of Bonaparte.”
“Hunh.” Monkeys were a dime a dozen in India, but this was my first Southern California sighting.
We found an empty table. I grabbed a seat, and John D crossed to where three coffeepots perched side by side on hot plates, like broody hens. He returned with one and filled our cups with thick sludge only a mother could love.
“House rules. You pour your own,” he said.
“John D!” a thunderous voice bellowed from across the room. An enormous woman, part brawler, part lover, loomed in the kitchen entrance, encased in a psychedelic, multicolored muumuu. “Gimme some sugar!”
Three hundred pounds of quivering love made a beeline for my friend. She wrapped him up like a burrito and squeezed. Then she caught sight of me over John D’s shoulder and spring-loaded him free.
John D recognized the avid look on her face.
“Josecita, I don’t think …”
She darted behind me, and for an instant I was enveloped by two billowing breasts, hanging like warm water balloons on either side of my head. Then Josecita cackled and was gone.
My cheeks burning, I grabbed John D’s arm.
“What the hell was that?”
John D grinned. “She must like you, Ten. She just gave you the famous earmuff treatment.”
Soon she was back with two greasy menus, like nothing had happened. John D waved his away.
“I’ll have the burger, darlin’,” he said.
I opened my menu, but Josecita snatched it back. She bored in on my Asian eyes and almond-toned skin. Read me like a tea leaf.
“You one of them vee-gans?” she asked. I saw John D shake his head at me slightly, warning me.
“Well, not exactly …” I hedged, when she clapped me on the back. It was a little like getting sideswiped by a bus. I braced myself for the mockery that was sure to follow, but her face split wide with a gap-toothed grin.
“Good for you. I love all God’s creatures myself. Listen, honey, I’m no angel, and I do love my burgers, but I ain’t never turned away an animal that didn’t have a home, or a man who was hungry. I’ll fix you up, don’t you worry.”
She disappeared again, and I slumped with relief.
“Welcome to the monkey house,” John D said. He laughed, and his laughter turned into a hacking cough, which went on longer than it should have. He patted his lips with his napkin, and I saw his hand was shaking a little. A shadow swooped my heart like a barn swallow. I put my fingers on John D’s forearm.
“How are you doing?”
“Doing just fine,” he said.
“No. How are you doing, really?”
John D took a moment before answering. “You want to be careful posing that question to a person my age, ’less you’re prepared for a full-on organ recital.”
“Well, I’m asking anyway.”
He met my eyes. “Okay, then. I got a tumor down in my belly growing like weeds in summertime. They wanted to stuff me full of chemo and radiation a few months ago, back when it was about the size of a grapefruit, but I turned ’em down. If I’m gonna die, I’m gonna do it my way, not theirs.” His glare was a challenge.
I let his words settle. Probing what lay beneath, I found only certainty. “Sounds like the right decision to me.”
“You think so? I do, too. The doctors are fighting me every step of the way, though.”
“When it comes to dying, everybody gets to be their own boss.”
“Yep, that’s the way I look at it, but I can see the other side too, I guess. Doctors are trained to never give up. Besides, everyone involved can make a bundle keeping an old guy like me alive, even if it’s only for a few more months.”
“What about your son?”
“What about him? Fighting me on everything is just a habit he can’t break. How I sired such an opinionated, uptight stick-in-the-mud is beyond me. I swear he was born blinkered.”
Another father disappointed in his son. In this case, I was pretty sure I’d side with the father. Still, I noticed John D didn’t exactly answer my question straight on.
“Norman believes I’m too stoned to know my own mind about anything,” John D went on. “Wait until his body starts breaking into pieces of pain—he’ll be begging for the evil weed.”
John D was just full of surprises.
“You smoke pot?”
“Medical marijuana,” he said.
“Really.”
“Perfectly legal,” he added, with noticeable satisfaction.
“Wow,” I said. “That’s a lot of chili.”
“Eat it or wear it,” she said, and sailed like a spinnaker back to the kitchen.
I ate it. I had no doubt she would make good on the threat.
CHAPTER 18
Back at the house, John D invited me to join him on the porch while he “rested his bones.” After a few minutes of rocking, his chin slumped down on his chest. Soon he was snoring like a walrus.
I decided to do some exploring. I took a good long stroll around his property. As I weaved a path through the acres of dying almond trees, I came upon two groupings of young living ones planted side by side across the road and separated from each other by a low wire fence. The trees on one side were marked with neon-yellow plastic ties. Other than that, I couldn’t see any difference between the two groves.
On my way back, I checked out a small patch of marijuana, maybe half a dozen healthy-looking plants, tucked in the corner of John D’s backyard between the tomatoes and nasturtiums.
John D was still asleep. I tiptoed inside for a drink of water. I paused at the photograph on the mantel he’d showed me the other day. The blossoming branches and smiling faces made me a little melancholy.
I walked back outside and got my own rocking chair going, enjoying the shady coolness. I closed my eyes. Embracing the motto “Whatever works,” I used the rhythmic snort and snuffle of John D’s snoring to settle into a meditation.
Sometime later, his snores tapered off. I opened my eyes just as John D woke up. He looked around, confused for a moment before comprehension clicked in. He gave himself a back-cracking stretch and lumbered to his feet.
“Coffee?” he asked. I told him coffee was an excellent idea. I followed him inside to observe. He dumped several scoops of dark, oily beans into a cast-iron hand-grinder clamped to the counter. He cranked the beans into the consistency of cornmeal and loaded them into an old-fashioned percolator.
“Now, here’s the secret to a good cup of coffee,” he said. He broke off an inch-square piece of eggshell from a bucket by the sink and dropped it into the ground coffee. “Don’t ask me why, but it mellows out the taste.”
The coffee was strong and rich but without any acid bite or bitter aftertaste.
“Delicious.”
“Toldja,” John D said. “Now bring your brew and come sit with me while I take my medicine.”
He opened a cupboard and removed a corncob pipe and a mason jar containing dried marijuana, the buds frosted white with THC, the active chemical component of the plant. He followed me outside and sat again, wincing with pain. He packed the stubby pipe, fired it up, and took a prodigious hit of smoke into his lungs. He held the pipe out to me. “Want some?” His voice had the strangled tone of an experienced stoner.
If there’s a “Private Investigator’s Rule Book” somewhere, I’m sure it says something about not partaking of cannabis on the job, but the opportunity to get high with a guy like John D didn’t come along very often. Anyway, what was I going to do? Fire myself? I took the corncob and sucked in a mighty puff.
“I saw your backyard supply,” I said, holding the smoke in.
“Yup. Been growing it for years. Legally, like I said. It’s the only thing that helps with the pain, especially now that I got the cancer. I tried that stuff the doctors pass out like candy—Vicodin, Oxycontin, whatever—but it just makes me feel like I got a head full of mud. Pot’s better.”
He took another long inhale, trapped it tight, and then let the smoke stream from his nose. “Norman thinks I’m turning into a dope fiend. I say bring it on. What do you say, Ten?”
I told him I had long ago forfeited my right to disapprove of anyone seeking relief from this world’s pain. I told him about coming of age not far from the Kulu Valley in India, where the locals have been growing world-class pot for thousands of years. I confessed that as a teenager in the monastery, I would on occasion sneak out myself, late at night, for a little “herbal entertainment.”
“No kidding.” John D said. “Well, okay, then. I guess I don’t have to worry about you warning me about the evils of smoking weed.”
“How about this for a warning? John D, if you keep smoking that pot, eventually you are going to die!”
“What are you,” he said. “Some kind of prophet?”
We got a pretty good snicker going over that, so good that we didn’t hear the crunch of gravel on the driveway until it was too late. A white SUV rolled to a stop.
“Oh, shit!” John D gasped, and he shoved the mason jar and pipe under his rocking chair, looking so much like a kid with his hand in the cookie jar I let loose another round of laughter.
“Stop, stop!” John D gasped, waving his hands around. “He’ll see!”
“Who’ll see?”
“My son, the fun-buster.”
I turned to look. The vehicle was marked with an L.A. County Department of Public Works insignia. A chunky middle-aged man in a white shirt and dark tie clambered out and huffed across the yard to the front steps.
“Hey, there, Norman,” John D said.
“Hello, Dad.” Norman looked back and forth between us.
I decided to introduce myself. I was afraid hearing John D’s intoxicated butchering of my name would set me off again. I stood up and offered my hand.
“Tenzing Norbu. Most people call me Ten.”
His handshake was unenthusiastic. “Norman Murphy.”
John D giggled. “Most people call him Norman Murphy.”
Norman looked at his father sharply. He was still standing at the bottom of the steps. I noticed John D hadn’t asked him to sit and join us. I reclaimed my chair until further notice.
“What’s his business here?” Norman asked his father. His tight little mouth barely moved when he spoke; I had the thought that he’d been weaned too early and was still pissed about it 50 years later. I stifled a snigger. Man. Marijuana was stronger than I’d remembered.
Then John D said, “What’s your business what his business is with my business?” and I had to bite the inside of my cheek to quell the rising hysteria. My eyes watered from the effort.
Norman gave up on John D and turned to me. “I’m sorry, why are you here?”
I took a deep, steadying breath and prayed for self-control.
“I just met your father the other day,” I said. “I had some business with the people next door and struck up a conversation with him. He invited me to his home. I’ve been hearing all about the almond business.”
Norman’s eyes narrowed. He opened his mouth as if to delve deeper, then seemed to think better of it.
“Right. The good old days,” he said, his voice laced with bitterness. He turned back to his father. “So Dad, are you going to invite me to sit down?”
“Ain’t nobody stopping you,” John D answered.
I started to rise, but Norman parked his ample butt on the top step. Unfortunately, this put him directly opposite John D’s rocking chair. It took Norman about two seconds to spot the pipe and jar of weed underneath.
Busted.
Norman’s face reddened. “I knew it. Have you already been smoking that stuff today?”
“Yep,” John D said, “and I plan to smoke plenty more before the day’s done. Want a hit?”
Norman glared at me. “What about you? Are you doing drugs with this old man? Are you that pitiful?”
Heat suffused the muscles of my upper back and neck. Some people have a smarmy self-righteousness that begs for retaliation. Norman was one of those people.
“Maybe I should go,” I said. “Let you both talk in private.”
John D reached over and patted his son’s knee. “Norman here hasn’t been out to say hello to me for close to two months, so I’m pretty sure he don’t have anything I want to hear now.”
Norman stood and dusted off his pants. He directed his parting wo
rds at me. “I don’t know what the hell you’re doing here, but I want you to leave my father alone.”
One part of me wanted to knock Norman sideways; another wished John D would tell him to piss off. Somewhere inside, a third part, the healthy part that wasn’t attached to being right, frantically waved for my attention, telling me to just calm down. That part wanted to find out if there was anything more to be gleaned from the situation.
Without another word, I walked past Norman, crossed to his car, and leaned against it. He stared at me blankly, trying to guess at my motives. Finally he gave up and joined me.
“What’s this business you’ve got with the people next door?” Norman asked. “I assume you’re referring to that nutcase religious outfit.”
I ignored his question. Instead, I tapped the official insignia. “How long have you been with the Public Works Department?”
“Uh, seventeen years. Why?”
I chose my verb tense carefully. “I started with the LAPD nine years ago. You’ve been with the Public Works Department even longer. Maybe we can help each other.”
Narrow-minded people can’t entertain paradoxes. Their minds are like one-lane roads—they work just fine until somebody approaches from the opposite direction. Then they experience an unsolvable dilemma, caused by the limited range of their thinking. Every situation has to be win-or-lose, dominate or be dominated. Giving ground so the other car can squeeze by is unacceptable. Better to crash head-on than let go of being right.
Norman’s eyes flickered as he tried to squeeze the idea that I was a cop into the narrow alleyway of his brain. He was so busy trying to comprehend this new piece of information that he forgot to ask for my badge.
He relaxed, lowering his shoulders, and the body language told me he’d bought my story.
“So, what are you after them for?”
“You remember when they had that conflict over stealing power from the pig farm?”
“Yeah, but that got settled quite a while ago.”
“They may be involved with something else now,” I said.
“Like what?”
He seemed a little too interested to me.
The First Rule of Ten Page 14
