California Girl

by T. Jefferson Parker

  Then he saw a light go on in Janelle Vonn’s cottage. Saw a man move past a window behind the curtain. One of Nick’s guys?

  Nick himself?

  Jesse Black?

  Andy moved into the shadow of the bluff. Crunched along the ice plant until he made the stairs. Took them two at a time, trying to keep from slipping on the smooth sandy steps. Legs wobbly. Made the top and stayed with the shadow to the north wall of the house. Squatted down and leaned against it. Heart throbbing against his ribs so loud the world could hear it.

  He could hear the man inside. Drawers quietly opening and closing. Closets. Cupboards. Hard shoes on wooden floors. Not urgent. Not covert, really. Methodical.

  Ten minutes of that, then nothing. Andy’s legs sore now, the circulation cut down. He moved closer to the north window, got his face up to the bottom corner of the weather-beaten frame.

  The curtain didn’t quite cover the pane so Andy got a peek in. Just a sliver but he made out the sofa and posters and part of a kitchen at the far end. A hallway leading back into the house.

  Then the man coming from the hall toward him, into the kitchen. Just a split second of face in the light: white guy, late twenties, short dark hair. Suit and tie. He turned and came into the living room, sat on the sofa. Andy could see his profile. Dark eyes, looking up at the ceiling. Thoughtful. Considered. The guy sat there and stared for five minutes. Hardly blinked. Then he stood and went to the front door, locked it. Wiped the lock and knob with a white hankie and walked out.

  Andy scrambled around the house, out of sight. Heard footsteps, a car door open and shut. The engine turn over.

  When he heard tires moving on blacktop he peeked around the corner. A white four-door pulled up to Coast Highway and made a right. Got the California plate numbers.

  He sat for a few minutes with his back against the yellow cottage. Wrote the numbers in his reporter’s notebook. Then up to Coast Highway and the pay phone at the market. Took forever for this guy with a ponytail and earrings and eyes red as rubies to hang up. Pregnant woman on the other one, feeding in dimes like a slot machine.

  Nick picked up on the fourth ring and Andy told him what he’d seen. Nick made him say everything at least twice. Taking notes, Andy could hear. He checked his watch when he hung up. It was almost one in the morning.

  Back down to the sand. Then along the moon-silvered beach to Cress Street and his home with Teresa. She was still gone. Probably closing the ’Piper, thought Andy. If Chas wasn’t such an asshole he’d be worried about her.

  He sat in the living room for a while and thought. Nick hadn’t ventured a guess as to who the guy might be. But Andy wasn’t expecting one.

  HE POURED a light drink and went into the little laundry room. His spot. Quiet with the door closed. Good light overhead. Typewriter on a rolling stand, a towel folded under the machine so it wouldn’t bang and echo too much late at night and wake up Teresa. Smell of dryer lint and detergent in here, always liked it.

  He took the manuscript out of the cabinet and looked it over. Three hundred and eighty-one pages. His third full novel. Two others too worthless to show, boxed right there in the cabinet side by side, like a couple of beds in an empty room. Proof of something, Andy believed. Stubbornness? Devotion? Vanity?

  He looked down at the paper and thought about the scene. Where the smugglers heading from Mexico to Laguna drop the Orange Sunshine and trip all the way through Baja. Don’t realize the federales are following them. Point where the adventure turns ugly.

  Strange Trippin’ by Andrew James Becker.

  He stared at the blank page for a while, tried to let his mind fill up with the story.

  But it wouldn’t fill up. He couldn’t even get interested. Couldn’t think of anything but Janelle Vonn—Baby, time will pass you by but you can catch up if you try—in the packinghouse with her head ten feet away. And the guy in her house. And his unhappy brother trying to find out why.

  Helluva first case. Now that was a story.

  13

  DAVID SET THE LADDER into the back of his work truck, then the two boxes of marquee letters. Drove slowly across the undulating parking lot.

  His mind was troubled, his heart heavy. Janelle Vonn. He had no words for what had happened. Such a sweet girl. The limitless cruelty of man. He would have to address it in his message Sunday. Without a doubt. And that was the day after tomorrow. How?

  He thought of the Wolfman Terry Neemal. And the chill that had shuddered through him when he first looked into Neemal’s tan eyes from outside the protective custody cell at O.C. Jail. The man gave off waves of madness. But that was why David performed his jail ministry for the last eight years. To keep him in touch with the unfortunate and the misunderstood. Neemal didn’t belong on the same planet as Janelle, thought David. An unholy thought. So wrong. All of it.

  David looked out at the up-slanted parking pads that had once allowed visitors to watch movies without straining their necks. Halfway across the parking lot he braked, put the truck into park, and looked back at the new chapel.

  The building was simple and functional. To David it was magnificent. To grow in five quick years from a congregation of twenty-seven to nine hundred and fifty-two was a miracle. Literally. While Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) attendance dropped almost 3 percent adjusted for the birthrate, the Grove Drive-In Church of God was flush with capital improvement and well on its way to paying off its loan.

  The new chapel seated four hundred and thirty-eight, more with folding chairs on Easter and Christmas Eve. Stained glass in three directions. An epic triptych covering the Creation, the Life of Jesus, and the Resurrection. A handsome altar and pulpit. Wonderful sound system and acoustics. Gently curving maple pews to fit the gentle curve of the big room. Plenty of light, man-made and God-made. Dark green carpet with a pattern of small orange chevrons. Two Sunday worship services in the morning at eight-thirty and eleven. An evening service at dusk. Drive in. Walk in. Come as you are.

  No more offering boxes to lug in from the exits. There was now a small offering box on every speaker stanchion. No rented organ and player. No more low snack bar ceilings or snack bar smells.

  David turned away from the new chapel, thought back to the morning that Janelle had come to worship. Drugged and dirty. Debased. He thought of the distance she had traveled in the five years since. Her growth and maturity. Her intelligence and curiosity and beauty coming through. Blooming. No drugs or booze, for a while at least. Miss Tustin. The runs to Baja to help the poor. Then the Playboy scandal. Always sexually adventurous. Lord, what you put her through. Now this.

  He looked out at the new speakers and parking spots that now made room for three hundred and fifty vehicles. And the new outside worship garden that seated fifty more worshipers during the clement months. And the playground for the kids.

  All of this upon the newly laid asphalt parking surface painted a comforting shade of sky blue. David and one of his deacons cleaned the entire lot at sunrise every Sunday morning before services using two loud street sweepers donated by the City of Garden Grove. Those, and untold donated gallons of Orange Sunshine—a new asphalt cleaning product developed by Roger Stoltz’s RoMar Industries. The product was actually made from the waste products of orange groves removed for development. It had a mild acidic action that cleaned asphalt beautifully without breaking it down. And a clean citrus smell. Orange County, then twenty-four other counties in eight other states, had contracted to purchase enough of it over the next four years to make Stoltz a comfortable man.

  But it was difficult, thought David, to find much joy in sky blue asphalt, with the body of Janelle desecrated like that. How could he even approach that event in a sermon designed to be uplifting? Or at least cathartic?

  David leaned his head on the steering wheel of the new Chevy. Prayed hard. For wisdom and understanding and words. Give me the words, dear Lord. For my business and yours.

  Then he opened his eyes and looked up at the most impressive improvement tha
t God had allowed him so far. The sole surviving movie screen was no longer a monstrous eyesore, but a hand-painted color panorama of the raising of Lazarus. Brilliant. Breathtaking. Awe-inspiring. David had commissioned the artists to enlarge and replicate the famous Rembrandt in every possible detail. The newspapers and TV had had a field day with it—three hundred and eleven days to complete. Four artists. Modern-day Michelangelo-Rembrandts hanging from scaffolds while they painted a twenty-foot Christ on a ninety-foot movie screen. Once-dead Lazarus with the breath of life blown back into him. Six months ago, early the first morning after the painting was complete, he’d taken pregnant Barbara and their two other children out to see The Raising of Lazarus in the clean light of dawn. The children had fidgeted. Barbara had noted the chill of the morning. David had slipped quietly to his knees and prayed.

  David put the truck in gear and drove through the exit. He’d had a new marquee built just four months ago, a larger and brighter model. Purchased Roman-style letters, the most biblical-looking ones he could find. In black. They went beautifully with the neon Grove Drive-In Church of God sign above, an indigo blue cross draped by a garland of bright oranges with light green leaves.

  He parked next to the marquee. Got out and looked up at the pithy slogan he displayed each week, just under the “Sunday’s Message” announcement. These short statements were often harder for him to come up with than an entire sermon. He subscribed to Independent Ministries magazine, which supplied dozens each month for ministers in a pinch. But this one was David’s own:

  Offer the Lord what’s right, not what’s left

  Above it was the sermon title made irrelevant by the death of Janelle Vonn.

  KEEPING YOUR HEART YOUNG THROUGH GOD’S LOVE

  He set up the ladder, took down what letters he could reach. Moved the ladder and took down more. Stood there a minute when he was done and remembered all those years ago, how the marquee had bothered him so much. Because he feared it was just like his future: empty.

  How silly that fear had been. His life was full. His ministry. His health. Barbara. Two children of their own and one adopted.

  Emptiness is Janelle Vonn. No. Emptiness is who did that to her.

  David got a Bible from the cab, then swung down the tailgate and sat. The morning was warm and clear, no breeze. He could see the cars out on busy Beach Boulevard, just one street over from the church.

  He still had two days to write the message, but only one hour left to get its title onto the marquee. He turned to the Song of Solomon, looking for inspiration, comfort, and a title.

  With great delight I sat in his shadow,

  and his fruit was sweet to my taste…

  O that his left hand were under my head,

  and his right hand embraced me!

  No, not that. He sighed, rubbed his temples, tried Psalms. Then Matthew, then Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.

  All he needed was a title. So people would know his topic for this Sunday. What few words could do justice to a young woman, bright and lovely and troubled and murdered before she had had enough time to truly live a life?

  Who had trusted him with her secrets as he had trusted her with his?

  Then it came to him. First heard at the Sandpiper a few months ago, in the company of Janelle Vonn. From heaven through Jesse Black to David and his marquee:

  Sunday’s Message

  A WAVE THAT NEVER MADE IT QUITE TO SHORE

  TWO DAYS later David stood at the pulpit in his new chapel and looked out at his eight-thirty congregation. Face pale. Eyes burning in sadness. Not one empty seat, not even the folding chairs he’d set up because his heart told him that all three services would be full.

  His parents were there. Nick and Katy and the kids. Andy and Teresa.

  Karl Vonn and Ethan, out from Florida. Stone faces. Black hair slicked down. Somehow darker than the people around them.

  Congressman Roger and Marie Stoltz in from Washington. Assemblyman Hennigan from Sacramento. The mayors of Tustin, Orange, and Anaheim.

  Press all over the place and news crews from Los Angeles outside with video cameras and microphones.

  David began by making the worshipers see that Janelle had been just like them. Beautiful and flawed and human. He told them how he had first met her in an orange grove back when he was just a boy and she a very little girl.

  And how their families had become acquainted through the death of Janelle’s mother. How the Vonns were the first family in need that he had ministered to as a young divinity student at San Anselmo’s.

  He told them about some of her troubles as a young teenager. The way she’d fought and changed and held on to what was good inside her.

  He spent a long time on all of her good qualities, her humor and her creativity and her gentleness. Her generosity. How it pleased her to help people less fortunate than she was. How she’d always take the underdog. Some of this David knew from personal experience, some examples he had gotten from her family and friends.

  So when he told them what had happened to her, even though every single person in the room knew already, the recognition issued through them all. Janelle was the wave that didn’t make it quite to shore.

  Then to the dangerous part of his message. The part that David believed but had trouble expressing.

  He stated that what had happened to Janelle was a blessing for every person in this room. Maybe a miracle. Because it did not happen to anyone else. Because God had chosen Janelle for this work. Just as God had chosen Noah and Moses and Jesus, verily every one of us, for some special work on earth.

  Throughout all this David sensed the doubt within the worshipers. Chosen? Me? For what? Not for something like that. He could see them recoil, each person just a fraction of an inch, but the inches became a communal mile of retreat. He looked out at them, said nothing. He let them think. Let them wonder what God would choose them for. He didn’t tell them it would be for something glorious or grand, because not everything God did could be glorious and grand. Sometimes it was small and humble.

  So when David suggested that for right now, for this specific moment, God had chosen for them to be here to worship Him and love one another, he could feel the relief wash through the room in one huge exhalation. The worshipers moved forward fractionally and the mile of retreat was reclaimed.

  Then he moved into the heart of his message: that in God’s hand a tragedy was a tool used to make a shape for love. The sculptor’s chisel. The painter’s brush.

  “And we are the raw material,” he said. “The rock and the canvas.”

  He had never heard a more inspired rendition of “Amazing Grace,” not an easy song for a congregation to sing.

  “Let us bow our heads in prayer.”

  When the prayer was over David heard the chorus of car horns from outside. The car worshipers were for the most part a younger and occasionally rowdy crowd. Sometimes the honking would last ten or fifteen seconds.

  One minute later the last horn stopped.

  David stood outside the chapel and shook hands with the worshipers.

  “You healed my heart,” said a white-haired man.

  “God healed your heart.”

  “They hit us with mustard gas outside Calais and I saw half our men get cut to ribbons by machine guns. Now I know why they died and I didn’t. I’ve been going to church and praying for sixty years. You healed my heart, Reverend Becker. You did.”

  He took David’s right hand in both of his, held tight and shook.

  The woman next in line shook his hand and wiped a tear from her eye. “Mine, too.”

  Then hustled away.

  THE SERVICE drained him. They all did, but this one was almost exhausting. Took the spirit right out of him.

  He was lying on the couch in his new office, rearranging his thoughts for the eleven o’clock worship, when Barbara knocked and cracked the door.

  “Nick’s here, honey.”

  “Terrific,” he said softly. Sat up. Nick didn’t
look terrific at all. He looked tired and hungry. “Come in, Nick. Where’s Katy and the kids?”

  “Outside at the playground.”

  David stood and offered a tired smile to his wife as she softly pulled the door closed behind her.

  “Sorry, David. But just one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Your sermon made my scalp crawl. It was that good.”

  David smiled again, more energy this time. “Hard to do, get a cop’s scalp to crawl. How are you holding up, brother?”

  “Fine. Katy’s fine. Everything’s fine. So, you know Jesse Black.”

  “Janelle introduced us.”

  “Yeah, he told me. I talked to him yesterday. Nice touch, using his lyric as a title.”

  “I didn’t think he’d mind.”

  “Think he’s got any violence in him?”

  David plunked back down to the couch. “None whatsoever.”

  “When do you mail the worship programs?”

  David turned to face his brother. “Wednesday mornings. Why?”

  “Janelle had today’s program in her house on Thursday morning. But even if the U.S. mail got it there in twenty-four hours, she wasn’t alive Wednesday to bring it in from the mailbox. So she got hers on Tuesday.”

  David’s heart shuddered but he lay back down on the sofa. “Then she got an early copy. They print them up late on Tuesday afternoons.”

  “Who picks them up?”

  “Well, this last Tuesday it was Deacon Shaffner.”

  “I have to talk to him.”

  “I understand. You’re trying to catch the bad guys. I’m trying to help the rest of us. Ask Barbara for his number. Better yet, here…”