by Janet Dawson
Beyond that was a big roomy kitchen where a tall woman dressed in blue pants and a long blouse was putting a quilted oven mitt on each hand. Her long gray hair had been gathered into a loose ponytail, tied with a scarf at the nape of her neck. I watched as she opened the oven door of a huge Wedgwood stove and reached in. The intoxicating aroma of freshly baked bread perfumed the air, adding to the warmth of the room. One by one she set four loaf pans on the counter to cool. Then she shut the oven and removed the mitts.
“Who was it?” she asked in a low voice as she turned. She had eyes as blue as the sky when it wasn’t raining, and when she smiled it was like sun breaking over this valley. “Hi, who are you?”
“I’m Jeri Howard, a private investigator from Oakland. I’d like to talk with you about Maureen Smith.”
The smile left Aditi’s face. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
Sixteen
HER CERTAINTY STARTLED ME. “HOW DID YOU know?” Aditi lifted her shoulders in a deprecating shrug, as though hesitant to explain why. “I flashed on it, a few weeks ago. I have these premonitions sometimes.” Viraj chimed in with the loyal opinion that his wife’s premonitions were often right on target. “There was no way to find out,” Aditi continued. “I did ask Serena, but she hadn’t seen Maureen in a while.”
“Suppose we back up,” I said. “You tell me who Serena is, and how you first met Maureen.”
“And you’ll tell us why you’re asking.” Aditi fingered the strand of varicolored beads she wore around her neck. Then she sighed. “It’s a long story. How about some tea? The kettle is already on.”
Five minutes later I was comfortably settled on the sofa by the fireplace, with a big mug of tea brewed from a mixture Aditi had concocted herself, using lemon peel and a mixture of herbs from the farm’s garden. On the table in front of me was a plate holding thick slices of the whole wheat bread she’d just taken out of the oven, a bowl full of runny goat cheese and several jars of homemade preserves. I spread a chunk of bread with cheese, added a dollop of blackberries, and savored the first bite.
“Do you sell the preserves too?” I asked.
“Sure we do.” Viraj grinned as he slathered cheese on bread. He was seated on one of the chairs opposite me. “We’re capitalist entrepreneurs. Have to make the mortgage payments on the farm. And send the kids to college.”
“How long have you been here? And how many children?”
“Twenty-five, almost twenty-six years.” Aditi joined me on the sofa. “As for children, we’ve raised four of our own and a few others.”
I’d thought that several inert lumps piled together on the sofa were pillows until I sat down, but the lumps turned out to be cats. One Siamese went off to seek a less crowded venue, while a gray tabby stretched, then curled up next to me. A black and white female climbed into Aditi’s lap. The fourth, a sizable ginger tom who looked as though he’d been in a battle or two, roused himself, stretched, and jumped from the sofa to the table, his objective the goat cheese.
“Sweet Potato!” Aditi must have been referring to the cat, since she accompanied the words with a firm swat on the ginger tom’s rump. He reluctantly abandoned his quest and jumped from the table into Viraj’s lap, circling twice before settling down.
“I suppose I’d better go first,” I said, setting my tea mug on the table. “Maureen is dead. Naomi Smith hired me to find out whether an unidentified body found in the Oakland hills several weeks ago was Maureen. It was. I don’t know yet how she died, but my guess is that it wasn’t natural causes.”
“What about Dyese?” Aditi asked, face worried over her mug.
“That’s who I’m looking for now. It would help if I knew more about the child. I don’t even know when or where she was born. So far I haven’t located a birth certificate in the Bay Area.”
“She was born right upstairs in the spare bedroom.” Aditi indicated the farmhouse’s second floor with a tilt of her chin. “Thanksgiving Day, two years ago. I delivered her myself. I’m a certified nurse-midwife. Her birth certificate’s on file in Santa Rosa.”
“How did Maureen wind up in your spare bedroom?”
“She asked me for spare change,” Viraj said with a laugh. He was like a big kid when he smiled. “I didn’t have any, so we brought her home instead.”
Now his bantering good humor was tempered by the knowledge that Maureen was dead. His big hands stroked the ginger tom’s fur. “It’s more than that. We were at the Berkeley farmers’ market on Center Street one Saturday morning. We don’t normally go to that one. We usually sell our stuff in Marin and Sonoma counties. But we happened to be there that day, and after we were done, we went to visit Serena.”
“Serena’s a friend from college. We all went to U.C. together.” Aditi helped herself to some bread and cheese. “She’s a potter, has a kiln on Eighth Street in the Berkeley flatlands. On weekends she sells her stuff on Telegraph Avenue.”
“So she’s a street merchant.” I pictured the avenue on a Saturday, lined so thickly with people and tables full of wares that it was slow progress from one end to another.
“Not all the time,” Aditi said. “She goes to a lot of crafts fairs. Right now during the Christmas season she’s doing open studios.”
I nodded, reaching for my tea. Open studios happened several successive weekends in November and December, when local artists invited the public to their studios. Their creations, whether made from glass or clay or fabric or wood, were displayed for sale.
“So you went up to Telegraph to say hello to Serena. When was this? Two, two and a half years ago?”
“Yes. In the middle of September, I think.” Aditi took a bite of her bread. “The farmers’ market finished at two. Viraj and I packed up the van, ran a few errands, and headed up to Telegraph. It was nearly four by then. Serena was ready to call it a day, so we helped her pack and load her car, then we decided to get some dinner before heading home. We were walking past Cody’s when Maureen appeared and asked us for spare change. She was such a sad little waif, obviously pregnant, even if she did look like she hadn’t eaten a good meal in quite some time.”
“So we brought her home,” Viraj said. “We couldn’t very well leave her there.”
I smiled. “Do you often pick up strays?”
“All the time.” Aditi stroked the black and white cat on her lap. “How do you think we end up with all these cats and dogs? And people. We worry about creatures who fall through the cracks. Actually, it wasn’t easy to persuade Maureen to come with us. Despite what Viraj said earlier, he did give her some money. Then we went to dinner at an Indian restaurant a few blocks away. I couldn’t get Maureen out of my mind. Serena told us she’d seen the girl off and on over the past few months, sometimes alone, sometimes with an older homeless guy. After we finished dinner, we went back to Cody’s and started looking for her.”
Viraj took up the story. “We finally found her, over in People’s Park, sitting near a campfire with a bunch of homeless kids. By then it was dark. We had a hell of a time persuading her to come with us. She knew Serena by sight, from seeing her on the avenue. But us? What would you do if a couple of people you’d never seen before said, ‘Come home with us, we’ll take care of you?’ Particularly kids like that, living on the streets. They don’t trust anyone, for good reason.”
“It was the older guy that did it,” Aditi continued. “He materialized out of the dark, like Mephistopheles coming to visit Faust.” She stopped, her mouth quirking at the description she’d just conjured up. “Very menacing. I wouldn’t want to encounter him alone. But Maureen seemed to trust him. She even called him by name. What was it?”
She thought for a moment, then shook her head. “I can’t remember. Serena might know. He acted as though he knew who we were, which was odd. Anyway, he said, ‘Go with them, they’re cool. You don’t want to have your baby in the damn park.’ Finally she agreed to come home with us.”
“And what did she do, after she had Dyese?”
&
nbsp; “She worked,” Aditi said. “All our strays do. They work with us in the fields or the dairy and they go with us to the farmers’ markets, to sell. We pay all of them room and board and a small salary.”
At that moment a girl came through the doorway from the front part of the farmhouse. She looked about sixteen, dressed in the prevailing fashion of baggy jeans and a long sweater that covered her rump. She had Viraj’s sandy hair, long and curly down her back.
“This is our youngest daughter, Parvati,” Aditi said.
I said hello and introduced myself. After a polite nod in my direction, Parvati turned to Viraj and said, “Daddy, can I use the Jeep?”
“Where you going?” he asked. “And who with?”
“Over to Santa Rosa with Jessie and Laura. To the mall, and then to a movie.”
Viraj nodded, then reached into the back pocket of his overalls and drew out a key ring. “Be careful. It’s raining pretty hard out there.”
“Take a loaf of that bread to Jessie’s mother,” Aditi said. She gently dislodged the cat on her lap and stood up, crossed the room to the kitchen, where she removed one of the loaves from its pan and wrapped it for Parvati to take with her. When the girl had departed, Aditi brought the teakettle with her to replenish our mugs, then resumed her seat on the sofa. I finished my bread and cheese and took another swallow of tea. In the interim the black and white cat had come to rest on my lap.
“Did Maureen ever say why she left home in the first place? Or how she wound up on Telegraph?”
Aditi shook her head slowly. “No. She didn’t talk about it much. I picked up on a few things, of course, things Maureen said or didn’t say. My guess is Maureen didn’t get along with her mother. Between mothers and daughters, that’s the oldest story in the world.”
“Yes, it is.” I nodded, thinking of my own mother. “Mrs. Smith is an alcoholic. She never reported Maureen missing.”
“So her concern is somewhat belated. Funny, though,” Aditi said “When Maureen left here, she planned to visit her mother.”
“She did.” I thought about the photographs of Maureen and Dyese in Naomi’s kitchen. “What about men? Did Maureen give any clues about relationships with men, or the father of her child?”
“I don’t think she trusted men,” Aditi said. “But she was needy for affection, for that human closeness. So she may have accepted that from men. Or maybe she didn’t know how to refuse. A lot of young women mistake sex for love.”
“And a lot of young men are just as eager to let them,” Viraj said frankly. “But I don’t think whoever hurt Maureen was her own age, another teenager. I think it was someone older. Like that guy in People’s Park. I had bad vibes from him.”
“So you think Maureen’s reason for leaving home involved sex, a man?”
“An easy enough assumption to make,” Aditi said. “Maureen was pregnant. I guessed that she’d conceived before leaving home or shortly after. When I delivered Dyese, she seemed to be full term. Six pounds, but she looked normal and healthy.” She paused. “I must say again that Maureen never told me any of this directly. I’m speculating. I could only sense that something traumatic had happened before. Something she wasn’t willing to talk about, even with me.”
“When did Maureen leave Mother Earth Farm?” I asked. “And why?”
“It was just after her birthday, in February,” Aditi said. “So it must have been early March.”
Exactly two years, I thought, since Maureen had run away from her mother’s house in Piedmont. Yet she visited her mother in March, briefly, then left again. Both departures brought her circling back to Telegraph, where Kara saw her this summer, near Cody’s, panhandling again.
Aditi shook her head. “I wish she hadn’t left I tried to talk her out of it. She just wasn’t ready to be on her own. Only twenty years old, and with a baby. She took all of her savings out of the bank, said she was going to get an apartment and a job. She had some skills, selling at the markets, for one. I suppose she could have gotten a sales job or something. But that doesn’t pay well, and living in the Bay Area is expensive. Add child care and transportation to housing...” Aditi didn’t finish.
“She was real good with the goats,” Viraj added with a shake of his head. “I wish she’d stayed here. But she sure had her mind made up to leave. I drove her down to Berkeley myself. She seemed eager to try it on her own. Something must have happened. Serena saw her on Telegraph several months later, panhandling again. Maureen wouldn’t talk about why. Serena tried to get Maureen to come back to Sebastopol. I wish she had. Maybe she wouldn’t be dead now.”
“Did she ever say why she decided to leave?”
“Not exactly.” Aditi sipped her tea. “As I said earlier, I guessed she may have wanted to make up with her mother.”
“Her mother was sick,” Viraj said suddenly. “That’s it. Her mother had pneumonia.”
“That could explain the visit to her mother. How did Maureen find out Naomi was ill?”
Viraj furrowed his long bony face and looked over at his wife for help. “That fellow over in Santa Rosa, wasn’t it? The guy who came to the Thursday farmers’ market He seemed to know Maureen, from before. Stopped by our table almost every week to talk with her. He told Maureen her mother was sick.”
“I remember him,” Aditi said. “An older man. Well, younger than us but older than Maureen. Slick, a bit of a dandy. Given to tweed jackets with leather patches on the elbows. If I had to guess, I’d say he was a teacher at the university. He certainly looked the part.”
“Can you describe him?”
Even as she did, I knew she was talking about Douglas Widener, who said he’d seen Maureen only once or twice since she left home. It seemed the professor had bought vegetables far more regularly than he’d claimed.
Seventeen
“YOU LIED TO ME, PROFESSOR. I DON’T LIKE IT WHEN people lie to me.”
When Douglas Widener finally opened the door to his Santa Rosa apartment and saw me in the hallway, he looked taken aback. At least he didn’t ask how I’d found him. He was listed in the phone directory, full name and address. My words bothered him more than my presence.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he finally managed. He stood in the space between the barely open door and the jamb. I detected movement behind him.
“Who have you got in there?” I asked with a jerk of my head. “One of your students? That’s your pattern, isn’t it? Much younger women. The kind of stuff that could get you bounced from Sonoma State, the way you were bounced from that college down in Southern California.”
His too-handsome face darkened. “What the hell do you want?”
“Maureen Smith, Widener. Turns out you were a regular customer, buying vegetables from that blue van down at the Thursday farmers’ market. You saw Maureen almost every week. You told her Naomi was ill with pneumonia. But that was last February, not during the fall. Is there anything else you’ve lied about?”
“Christ, you just won’t quit, will you?”
“Some people consider it one of my strengths.”
“I consider it a pain in the ass.” He fiddled with the lock on his front door, then stepped out into the hallway and closed the door behind him. “All right, I saw Maureen several times during the fall and winter. She seemed fine. In fact, she looked happier selling vegetables out of that van than she ever did at home. I told you the truth when I said I didn’t know the child was hers. It just didn’t occur to me.”
“Why did you lie the other day at the university?”
“You came on so strong, I figured I’d hedge my bets and not tell you everything.” He sighed, a gusty sound full of exasperation and annoyance. “I’m telling you, I had nothing to do with Maureen’s disappearance. Or her death. I don’t want to be involved in this.”
“You’re already involved,” I told him. “How did you know Naomi had pneumonia?”
“I was down at U.C. Berkeley, attending a conference. Some of my colleagues a
nd I were having breakfast at a place in North Oakland. I ran into Ramona Clark. She lives in the neighborhood. She mentioned that Naomi had been ill. So the next time I saw Maureen, I told her.”
“Did you tell Ramona that you knew where Maureen was?”
“Yes,” Widener said. “I thought she and Naomi should know that Maureen was all right. I don’t know if Ramona passed that information along to Naomi.”
I didn’t know either. All I knew at this point was that Ramona Clark had lied to me as well. She’d told me she had no idea where Douglas Widener was, or where Maureen Smith went after she left home. Now it appeared she’d had answers to both questions. Why had she kept this information from me?
“Anything else you’re not telling me?” I fixed Widener with a sharp glance. “You know I’ll be back if you’re holding out on me.”
“That’s it,” he insisted, spreading his hands wide.
“If I find out you had anything to do with her death, Widener, I’ll hang you out to dry.” I left the professor standing in the hall outside his apartment, protesting his lack of involvement and looking like Hurricane Jeri had just swept over him.
I made it back to Oakland around six o’clock. Abigail was ready to eat dinner when I came through the front door, which was nothing unusual. Black Bart, however, was waiting on the patio, crouched near his empty food dish. He gave an impatient mew when I appeared at the back door, as if to say, “Where have you been?” Good, I thought as I poured kibble into the dish. He’s gotten to expect the food. That will make catching him easier. I sat on the step and stroked his back several times as he ate. When he finished, he didn’t stick around for more physical contact. Instead he retreated to the safety of the bushes.
Back in my warm kitchen, I reheated some leftover pasta in the microwave, tossed it with some tomato sauce and parmesan, and sat down to eat. Then I changed clothes and sped over to the Calvin Simmons Theatre at the Kaiser Auditorium on the other side of Lake Merritt.
