“Sorry, I can’t discuss it with you.”
His leaned closer, man to man. “Come on,” he pleaded. “We’re both on the same side here—we’re both concerned with enforcing the law.” He offered me his hand. “Look, I want to apologize for the way I spoke to you up there. He’s my father and, as you can imagine, I’m worried about him, out here on his own.”
I went ahead and shook his hand, and I felt a little twinge of aversion.
“I’ve got to get back to the office,” he said. “Here’s my card. Call me if you need anything.”
I pocketed his card. “Will do,” I said. “I’ll just say ’bye to your father.”
Norman’s SUV roared to life as I walked back toward the house. He gunned the engine, spitting gravel in his wake.
John D had nodded off again. Our date with Sister Rose was still a few hours away, so I decided to test my new phone out here in the boonies. I strolled to the far side of the yard and called to check on Freda.
Wesley answered on the first ring. He must have stepped outside the hospital for a smoke or something.
“How is she?”
“The same.”
“How are you?”
“The same.”
There wasn’t much else to say after that.
Then I left a message for Mike. He’d be waking up soon. “Send me any contact information you have on that actor Jeremiah Star Trek, and his wife,” I told him.
Finally, against my better judgment, I tried Julie again. This time, she answered.
“I was just about to call you,” she said. “I’m off tomorrow. How does homemade minestrone and crème brûlée sound?”
“Dangerous,” I said. “I have to warn you, minestrone is my favorite, but I am almost always disappointed by it. And as for crème brûlée, well, I grew up in Paris.”
“Oh, goody. A challenge,” she said.
I sat cross-legged with my back against a tree and recounted my day, starting with the fennel and ending with the forthcoming assignation with Sister Rose. Julie made me laugh with her culinary escapades. I made her laugh with my tale of Josecita’s earmuff hazing. It felt nice to have someone to download my life with, besides Tank.
We talked until the sky grew dark. I looked across the yard. John D was up, moving around inside his lighted living room.
“Time to go,” I said. “’Bye now.” I waited for Julie to end the call. Her soft breath told me she was doing the same with me.
I smiled, letting the silence linger between us.
“On the count of ten, Ten,” she finally said, but she hung up before I got to two.
Inside the house, John D was tipped back in his recliner, studying the photograph of himself with his two sons.
“Sorry about Norman,” he said, without looking up.
“Hey, not to worry,” I answered.
John D set the picture aside. “You still got your parents?”
“My father,” I said. “My mother died a few years ago.”
“You close to them?”
How to answer that question?
“Not really,” I said. My mother’s beautiful, haunted face flashed before me.
Valerie. Born and raised in Middle America, a free spirit trapped in a Midwestern, upper middle class world. She hated everything about her life, everything, that is, but the trust fund she inherited at 18. Bye-bye parents, hello India: she wanted to “find herself,” like any self-respecting child of the ’60s. Instead, after guru-jumping for two years, she found my father in Dharamshala, and found herself 20, pregnant, and too proud to return home. There was no question of her staying with my father; that became clear very quickly. So she moved to Paris to have me, still determined to live the bohemian life. Which in her case meant drinking herself to an early death.
A wave of sadness engulfed me. I had loved my mother desperately, but there was always a thick, hazy curtain of booze and pills hanging between us.
John D was watching me, his eyes kind.
“My mother was kind of a mess, and I don’t think my father has known what to do with me since the day I was born. I spent my early years shuttling between her apartment in Paris and the Dorje Yidam Monastery in India, where Apa was an abbot. After Valerie died, I lived full time in the monastery. Sometimes I’d catch Father staring at me, from across the dining hall, or during group sits, and clear as a bell, I’d hear him wondering, Who are you? Where did you come from? And not in a good way, you know? When I left for California, I’m sure he was filled with relief.”
John D looked at me, his eyes troubled. “Maybe. Or maybe he was filled with regret. It’s not always what you think it is.”
He moved to the kitchen and rinsed off two Fuji apples from the market. He tossed one to me.
“Okay, son, time to see what Sister Rose has to say.”
We hiked to the fence separating John D’s property from the Children of Paradise. Sister Rose kept her word; a few minutes later we saw her ghostly figure coming up the hill toward us.
We greeted her with smiles. Her face was expressionless. “I can’t stay long,” she said. “They know I like to go out for a walk in the evening, but they’ll get suspicious if I’m gone long.”
“Who’s ‘they’?” John D asked. She just shook her head.
“I appreciate what you’re doing,” I said.
“Sister Barbara would have done the same for me.”
We stood another moment in the darkness. The silence was peppered with night sounds: rustling leaves … the scuttle of a small animal.
I got to the point. “Can you think of any reason somebody would want Barbara Maxey dead?”
Her eyes filled. “It’s still so hard to believe …”
“I know, but we have to move fast if we want to find out who did this. After forty-eight hours, the statistics on solving a crime drop like a rock. It’s over a week now, and I’m afraid we’re going to miss our chance. If there’s anything you know or may have heard that could help us, please tell us now.”
She said, “Sister Barbara was stubborn. She was the only one who’d stand up to Brother Eldon. She came here long before he did, back when Master Paul was our teacher.” She turned to John D, almost pleading. “Master Paul was different; he loved us, even when we were bad. We fear Brother Eldon and respect him, but there is no love.”
I pictured Brother Eldon’s thick menace and Nehemiah’s querulous insistence that something needed to happen, and soon. “Has anything changed recently? Anything that would cause Barbara to want to escape?”
A branch snapped and Sister Rose startled, her eyes darting back and forth. I scanned the field. The air settled into stillness again.
“Nothing out there,” I said. “I promise.”
Sister Rose stepped close, her voice low. “Brother Eldon asked us all to get insurance. Barbara refused to sign up for it.”
My heart beat against my rib cage, a rapid, tapping staccato.
“What kind of insurance?” I said, though I already knew the answer.
“Life insurance.” Her words tumbled faster. “Barbara told Brother Eldon that Master Paul had always spoken against insurance, that if our faith was strong enough we wouldn’t get sick. And once we died we’d be with God anyway, so there was no need for any of mankind’s worldly inventions like insurance. Master Paul believed insurance was the path to greed, and the work of the devil.”
“How did Brother Eldon react when she challenged him?”
“He berated her in front of the community. I wanted to speak up for her, but I was too afraid. Later that night, Sister Barbara defied our curfew. I think she must have been spying on Brother Eldon, because when she returned to our yurt, just before dawn, she was very angry—and Sister Barbara never indulged in the sin of anger. I asked her what was wrong, but she wouldn’t tell me. Told me to go back to sleep. The next morning I woke up, and she was gone. Now she’s dead and I’ll never …” She trailed off into quiet sobs.
John D wrapped both arms tig
ht around her. She leaned into him like a child, her shoulders shaking. I added my own form of comfort, surrounding her with a blanket of compassion. I hoped she could feel it.
Her sobs lessened after a time. She pulled away, wiping her nose on her sleeve.
“Do you want to leave, to get out?” I asked.
She looked over at me. “I don’t think I can do that,” she said. “My life was an awful mess before Master Paul. He helped me get straight. And I’ve been here so long. I don’t know any other way to be.”
“I could help you find another place, someplace where you wouldn’t be scared all the time.”
“And do what? I’d rather be scared in here than scared out there. At least I’ve got a place to sleep, people who know me, accept me.”
“Did you sign up for the insurance policy?”
She nodded.
“Have you thought about what that means?”
She bit her trembling, lower lip. “It means I’m worth something if I die.”
“But to whom?”
“To the others, to my family of sisters and brothers.” Her voice rose. “Don’t you see? Even if I didn’t do anything with my life, I can do something good by dying. When it’s time for me to go, I can help build the new Paradise. A better one.”
“The new, improved Paradise, you say?” John D’s voice was skeptical.
She bobbed her head. Her eyes gleamed in the darkness. “We’re working toward the day when we can rebuild and restore our earthly home. Brother Eldon has a plan for a new city of God, right here on these hills.”
A pig farm and a field of dead almond trees didn’t seem like an ideal spot to erect this new Eden, but what do I know? Having grown up in a Buddhist monastery, I’m hardly qualified to judge someone else’s attempt at terrestrial nirvana.
I said, “But what if Brother Eldon decides you should die before you want to?”
Sister Rose jutted her chin, showing a little more spunk. “We’ve talked about that in our community meeting,” she said. “Don’t think we haven’t. If Brother Eldon does sound the Call to Paradise, he’s insisting the community make the ultimate decision by a majority vote.”
I said nothing.
John D cleared his throat. “Sister Rose, a majority vote inside a brainwashed cult ain’t exactly democracy in action.”
She wheeled on him. “Judge not, John D. Judge not, lest ye be judged!”
She started down the hill. Then she turned back, as if regretting her outburst.
“I’m really sorry about Barbara,” she said. “I hope you find whoever did it.”
We watched her pick her way across the field, until we lost sight of her among the yurts.
John D sighed. “Nobody can say you didn’t try.”
It wasn’t much consolation. I think we both felt we were watching her descend into the Valley of Death.
“Life insurance policies for a cult. I never heard of anything like that in my life. Have you, Ten?”
Unfortunately, I had. A year or so ago, bored out of our gourds on an all-night stakeout, Bill and I had listened to a long Public Radio exposé on exactly this subject.
“‘Dead Peasant’ policies, at least I think that’s what they’re called.” I dredged the memory to the surface.
“Dead Peasants?”
“Yes. From back in the feudal times, when greedy landowners used the names of dead serfs—still conveniently registered as alive, mind you—to guarantee loans. As I recall, in the modern-day version, big companies secretly insure thousands of their low-level employees, naming themselves as beneficiaries. When their workers eventually die—even if they’ve long since left the company—the bosses rake in tax-free payouts.”
“Sounds crooked as hell.”
“Nope. Completely legal. Like reverse Robin Hoods, they steal from the poor to make themselves richer. No one seemed to even know or care about this massive tax loophole until recently, when companies like Walmart and Winn-Dixie got caught with their hands in their janitors’ piggy banks. So, yes, I’ve heard of such a thing,” I said grimly.
John D shook his head.
“Poor Sister Rose,” he said.
I had to agree. Sister Rose’s intentions were pure, but in reality she was just a dead peasant waiting to happen.
Meanwhile, I had a pretty good idea who the lords might be in this feudal system.
CHAPTER 19
I woke up at dawn with something pressing against my brain, like a splinter just beneath the skin. It continued to irritate me through two cups of tea, my morning stretches, and a 45-minute run. Suddenly, near the end of my meditation, the thought surfaced: if Norman hadn’t been to see his father in two months, why did he decide to visit yesterday?
Detectives face situations all the time that strike them as odd, raising the question: Is this a coincidence or a conspiracy? After a while, most of us stop believing in coincidence. Most chance connections turn out to be anything but.
So while it was possible Norman’s visit was coincidental with mine, I had trouble believing it, especially since he’d come and gone in such a hurry. If he was there to check on his father, why did he do nothing but harass him? And why all the hostile interest in me? It was much more likely that somebody tipped Norman off, and that I was the person he wanted to check on.
If that was the case, who was the “somebody” doing the tipping off?
Maybe John D would have an idea. I made myself a tofu scramble over a toasted English muffin and washed it down with a mug of fresh coffee. Then I gave John D a quick call from my landline, a number he’d recognize. I let it ring a long time, but he didn’t pick up. I pictured him rocking outside on the porch, and I smiled as I made a note to try him later. I washed my dish and my pan, and put them both away. Fed an impatient Tank. Poured myself another coffee, and sat down at the kitchen table, facing the window.
My “office” was now open for business. I picked up my multitasking cell phone and got to work.
First things first. Sister Rose’s mention of the saintly Master Paul, aka Paul Alan Scruggs, reminded me I’d never really looked into his death. I did a search, using his full name, to see what I could find out. Within moments I had everything I needed to know.
According to a short obituary in the Antelope Valley Press, Paul Alan Scruggs had died suddenly three years ago, after a brief illness. “Brief illness” could mean a lot of things. Buster died after a brief illness. So did Jeremiah Star Trek. And Freda, too, was comatose after just a brief illness. Coincidence or conspiracy?
Or murder, plain and simple.
I caught Bill on his cell driving down the 101 toward police headquarters.
“Administrative meeting downtown,” he groused when I asked what he was up to.
“You don’t sound too excited about it.”
“Let me put it this way: if I could choose between going to a meeting on crime statistics and getting a prostate exam, I’d say ‘Give me the finger, please.’”
“I understand. Let me give you an opportunity to do a good deed, then,” I said.
“You haven’t gotten yourself in trouble, have you?”
“Nothing like that,” I said. “I just need some information about a guy who died out in Lancaster three years back. He was only in his fifties, so I’m guessing they did an autopsy.”
“What’s your interest?”
“The obit says he died after a short illness. I’m thinking there’s more to it than that. I’d like you to talk to the medical examiner who did the autopsy and see if he found anything suspicious.”
Bill said he’d see what he could do.
I took Tank outside and played “climb the tree” with him—a man can only sit cooped up in an office for so long.
Tank must have been an inside cat for the first few years of his life. While he can scoot up just about anything, including tree trunks, he never quite learned how to get down from a tree, so I give him lessons every once in a while. While I had him trapped on a high branch o
f the eucalyptus, I told him a little bit about Julie.
“You’ll meet her tonight,” I said. “I think you’ll like her. She’s a whiz at opening cans.”
Then I gave the Mustang a bath and buff. As I ran a cloth over the steel wheel hubcaps, I rearranged information in my mind, looking for a pattern, any pattern at all, that made sense. Florio, Barsotti, and O’Flaherty. Key man and Dead Peasant policies. Pigs and Paradise. How did they all connect?
Two hours later, Bill called back.
“What’s the prognosis?” I asked.
“The administration is full of crap, like always,” he said. “But I did get hold of the ME on the other matter.”
“And?”
“And I got nothing.”
“Hmmm,” I said.
I heard a horn honk, and Bill mutter “Asshole” under his breath. I waited. I knew he wasn’t finished with me yet.
“Strangulations. Pig farms. Dead musicians. You going to tell me what this is about, partner?”
“I wish I knew,” I said.
“Any chance we can meet for a beer later?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I’m a busy man.”
“Asshole,” he said again, but this time his voice was smiling.
My phone beeped, indicating another call coming in. I had no idea how to put Bill on hold with this new phone, so I just left him stranded. He’d forgive me. What else are partners for?
A crisp, businesslike female voice said, “Is this Tenzing Norbu?”
I said it was.
“Nancy Myers, Nurse Supervisor at Mercy Hospital. We have an elderly gentleman here named John D. Murphy, and he put you down as both emergency contact and next of kin.”
My stomach lurched. I walked out to my deck, pulling deep mouthfuls of air into my lungs. The brisk voice continued.
“Mr. Murphy has suffered three broken ribs and some facial contusions. He’s doing fine, but we’re going to keep him overnight to make sure things are stable.”
“What happened?”
“Mr. Murphy was attacked by two men this morning, on his way to breakfast, he told me.”
John D attacked? A narrow bolt of energy crackled from my brainpan to my coccyx, and back. Whoa. Down, boy.
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