by Mary Marks
He stood stiffly with his hands shoved in the pockets of his Levi’s. Except for the green eyes, he bore only a vague resemblance to the photograph of Quinn in the silver frame, the one Giselle had given me the first day we met. His gaze darted from my face to the ground and back again. The muscles in his face were tight and guarded, but he managed a small smile. “Martha?”
I offered my hand and drew him over the threshold. “Thank you for coming.”
After introductions, Giselle blurted out, “You could’ve saved us a lot of trouble if you’d just let us speak to your mother. Instead, Sissy and I went through a lot of trouble and almost landed in jail.”
Carlos sat on the other end of the sofa and accepted the frosty bottle of Heineken Crusher offered. “I was protecting her.”
Giselle leaned forward and pointed her finger at him. “Protecting her from what? You told the police you were too young to remember anything. But I don’t buy it. I think you know a whole lot more than you’ve admitted.” She flopped back against the sofa cushions and crossed her arms, never taking her eyes off his face.
Carlos ran his fingers through his hair. “You don’t know what you’re asking. I’ve never talked about my dad to anyone. Not even my ex-wife.”
Afraid that Giselle’s confrontational attitude might stop him from talking, I stepped in. “Maybe if you tell us what you do remember, it would help the three of us. After all, he was our father, too.”
He gazed downward, as if he were attempting to dig up secrets buried beneath the floor. “For many years, the last thing I remembered about him was when I saw his face on the news one night. They said he was missing. Mom told me not to worry. She said her department had put her in charge of the investigation and they were doing everything they could to find him. Then she made me promise to never tell anyone he was my dad. She said she’d get in trouble and they would take me away from her. That really scared me into keeping my mouth shut.”
How despicable. To frighten a little boy like that.
“A couple weeks later, she told me he’d gone to Australia and was never coming back. I believed her. And that’s all I remembered for years.”
My ears pricked up. “But your memory changed?”
He took a deep breath and nodded. “When I went away to college, I walked into the men’s shower room at my dorm, right after the cleaning crew left. A strong odor of bleach hung in the air. Suddenly, I was walking into our living room at home. Mom had spent the whole morning scrubbing it with bleach. Then the vision vanished, and I was back in the showers again. The sensation was so strong, I felt like puking.” He paused to take another pull at the bottle.
Repressed memories could bubble up in bizarre ways, sometimes distorting the facts. I wondered how much of his account was real. “Did you remember more?”
“God, this is hard.” He closed his eyes and blew out his breath. “The next time something happened was when I came home for Christmas break that first semester. I was in my bedroom when Mom called to me from across the house. I don’t know what she wanted, because hearing my name shouted out triggered another memory.”
He gazed into the distance, as if he was watching something the rest of us couldn’t see. “I heard my mom and dad yell at each other in the living room. I heard my name a couple of times. The image passed, and the next thing I know, Mom’s standing in the doorway asking me about dorm food.”
“Did you tell your mother what you were beginning to remember?”
Carlos shook his head. “No! I knew better than to discuss my dad. He was a closed subject as far as she was concerned. Anyway, that night I had a dream where I heard them arguing. Then I heard a slap and something crashed on the floor. A broken lamp. Shards of green pottery.” His eyes brimmed with sadness. “Dad shouted, ‘Wait!’ Then I heard a loud bang. Then silence. After that I heard Mom crying.” He swiped the tears from his cheeks with the back of his hand.
Had Carlos just described Quinn’s murder? “Did you think the dream was real?”
“I hoped it was just a false memory, that my mind was playing tricks on me. I didn’t want to believe she could’ve shot Dad. But as time went on that first year away from home, I remembered more and more about that day. Me being told not to leave my room. The bustle of Mom cleaning and always the smell of bleach. The sound of her dragging something heavy across the floor.
“I was sick with anger. At him for being a lousy creep who took advantage of Mom and failed me as a father. But I was most angry with her. She put a nine-year-old kid in the position of either sending his mother to jail or keeping their drama a secret. Who does that?”
Giselle had remained quiet, letting me take the lead on questioning our brother. Now she reached over and lightly touched his arm. “What a terrible thing for you to go through, Carlos. I think it takes a lot of guts to face the truth.”
He finished his beer, and Crusher got up to bring us each another. I shoved a plate of salty crackers and an assortment of cheeses in my brother’s direction and channeled my bubbie. She would’ve said, Ess, faigela. (“Eat, darling.”) You need to keep up your strength. I said, “Did you have a chance to eat before you came? I have some roasted chicken and rosemary potatoes left over from dinner tonight. It’ll just take seconds to warm it up in the microwave.”
He managed a brief smile. “Thanks. I’m good.”
I cleared my throat. “I don’t know how else to do this, so I’ll just come right out and ask the hard question. Do you know what she did with his body?”
“I have a good idea. That evening she drove me in her Triumph to spend the night in my grandmother’s house. She usually stored the tarp that covered her car in the trunk. But when she opened it to put my backpack inside, I noticed the tarp was missing. I remembered that as we pulled away from the curb to go, Dad’s Cadillac was still parked in the driveway.”
“It’s obvious what happened,” Giselle said. “The Triumph was too small to hold a body. She wrapped Daddy in the tarp and put him in the trunk of the Cadillac.”
Carlos grabbed a dry white cracker and broke it in half. “I think she took his body to Big Bear. She grew up in the area and knew all the neat places to go camping. He’s probably up there somewhere. I think that’s why she left me at my grandmother’s the whole night. It’s almost a three-hour drive each way.”
Crusher spoke for the first time. “You know about Locard’s exchange principle? Whenever two things come in contact with each other, like a body wrapped in a canvas tarp for one and a car trunk for the other, there’s always something left behind and something taken away. A tiny bit of something. What did the missing-persons file say about trace evidence in the Cadillac?”
I rushed into my sewing room and returned with the forensic report Farkas had left behind. “It says here, ‘The trunk of the vehicle contained the following: Standard repair kit including jack and spare tire. Unidentified coarse fibers, possibly from canvas cloth.’”
“So there it is.” Giselle waved her arm in a grand gesture. “She dropped Carlos at his grandmother’s, dumped poor Daddy’s body, and abandoned the car at the airport. She probably took a taxi home from there.” My sister stopped and blinked back tears. “We’ll never find Daddy in those mountains.”
Harold circled my sister’s shoulders with his arm. “Maybe we could bring some flowers up there anyway and leave them on the side of the road.”
Crusher said, “I can do some research on unidentified DBs that’ve been found in the San Bernardino National Forest. There should be a database somewhere.”
One more thing puzzled me. “Carlos, if your mother was so meticulous about getting rid of any evidence connecting her to Quinn’s murder, why did she keep his suitcase? The one with his initials, no less?”
“She didn’t. I found it in the garbage can the next day where she’d stuffed it next to the broken green lamp. I emptied out all his clothes except for one shirt—the one I’d given him for Father’s Day the year before. Then I hid it in my room wi
th all my memories of him inside; birthday cards, a picture he drew for me one Christmas, the seashells we’d collected on a trip to the beach, and two Hot Wheels he had given me that day as a present.” His voice caught in his throat. “Those cars are why he’s dead.”
“Why do you say that?”
“When he handed me the box with the Hot Wheels inside, I begged him to stay and play cars with me. He said he had to go on a trip, but he promised to take me for ice cream when he came back.” Carlos grinned sadly. “He always did that! Promise to take me places and then never show up. Anyway, I hurled the cars across the living room and began to cry. I said I hated him and ran to my bedroom and slammed the door. The next thing I knew, Mom and Dad were shouting at each other. You know the rest.”
“How did the suitcase end up in her room at Thanks for the Memories Assisted Living?”
“I put it there. Those things were all I had left of Dad. I meant for everything to be found after she died. I was hoping that someone would discover it, put two and two together, and figure out the truth. So, when I moved Mom into the facility, I figured her closet was the perfect place to hide the suitcase. She never even realized it was there.”
“What about the pencil drawing Quinn did of her? Why did she risk keeping that?”
“She treasured that drawing more than anything. I believe she never stopped loving him. But after that day, she took it off the wall and hid it. One night when I was in high school, I woke up and heard her crying and talking to someone. I wondered who was in the house late at night. I crept toward the living room. She sat all alone in a chair, hugging the drawing. She said over and over again, ‘I’m sorry, Quinn. I’m so sorry.’ Then she kissed the picture and cried some more. Since I had blocked out the memories of that day, I didn’t understand why she was apologizing. I just figured she missed him. She never saw me.”
My heart broke at the word picture he painted. “And you never told anyone what happened to Quinn?”
“How could I? Despite what she did, I loved my mom. I never planned on someone showing up while she was still alive and figuring out the truth.”
Giselle had been leaning against Harold. Now she shifted toward Carlos and squeezed his hand. “But Martha and I did come along, which is pretty amazing when you think about it.”
“Absolutely.” I moved to the other side of Carlos and sat on the arm of the sofa. “Look at the three of us. A few short weeks ago, each of us was an only child. Yet, despite the odds, we managed to find one other. Like it or not, you’re stuck with us now, baby brother. Welcome to the family.”
Carlos threw some internal switch that lit his face with a charming TV smile, completely obscuring the man with the vulnerable secrets. “I gotta admit, learning I had two sisters really threw me. I’ve got questions of my own.”
“Ask away,” I said.
“Martha, why do you call him Quinn and not Dad?”
“Because unlike you and Giselle, I never met him. I grew up believing my father had died in a train wreck before I was born.”
“So you don’t have an emotional stake in this?”
What did I feel about the father I never met who casually mistreated those who loved him? He was a hedonist and a liar, yet he provided for his children and their mothers. It wasn’t his fault I only recently discovered the seven-figure bank account he left for me. He was preparing to give it to me on my twenty-fifth birthday but was killed two weeks before that could happen.
I could hear Uncle Isaac’s voice in my head cautioning me that Torah commands not once, but two separate times to honor your parents. So, what could I honestly say about the man who fathered me? “In the past few weeks I’ve learned that Quinn was gifted and complex. Men like that are often deeply flawed as well. He and my mother gave me life, and for that I’ll always be grateful. But while I care about him in the abstract, my true emotional attachment is to my uncle Isaac. He’s my real father.”
Seemingly satisfied with my answer, Carlos turned to Giselle. “You knew him best of all, because you lived together as a family. What kind of father was he to you?”
“Daddy may have been a lot of bad things, but he never gave me reason to doubt he loved me. And when he disappeared, my whole world collapsed. I vowed to never stop looking until I found out what happened to him. Then I met Sissy, and that’s when things really started coming together. Now, thanks to you, we have an answer.”
I had the feeling Carlos measured every word that came out of our mouths, searching for something. Was it kinship? Absolution?
Finally, he put his beer on the coffee table. “I have one more question. The two of you managed to bully and trick your way into solving a thirty-two-year-old missing-persons case. I’d like to know what to expect from you if we’re all going to be family. I mean, are you guys always this pushy and nosy?”
Giselle and I looked at each other and burst out laughing.
CHAPTER 34
We gathered in my living room the following morning on Quilty Tuesday, stitching hexagons into the Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt. Jazz and Lucy sat openmouthed as Giselle told them about our meeting with our newfound brother, Carlos Gomez, the night before.
Jazz picked up Zsa Zsa and hugged her to his chest. Today she wore a pink jumpsuit with a hole cut out for her rear end. “Oh, that poor boy! Having to keep a secret like that his whole life. Did you persuade him to go back and tell the police everything he knows?”
I looked up from the blue floral hexagons I whipstitched together. “What’s the point? Meredith Gomez can’t be prosecuted, and they might take away her police pension. Assisted living doesn’t come cheap.”
“I don’t mean to be indelicate, hon”—Lucy shifted in her seat—“but what about your father’s body?”
“Yossi’s looking into that for us. Over the years, the police have recovered various human remains from those mountains. Most of them go unidentified and are eventually cremated. If Quinn’s remains were recovered, and if it was after the nineties, when they started keeping DNA samples, we might find a match. It’s a long shot.”
I didn’t want to dash my sister’s hopes, but privately, I had no illusions. Without testimony from Meredith Gomez, the chances of finding Quinn’s bones in that vast wilderness were almost zero.
“I’ve been dying to ask you this.” Jazz cupped the side of his mouth with his hand and lowered his voice to a stage whisper. “What about all that money your father left you?”
“I haven’t had a chance to do the paperwork yet. They say it might take a couple of months to transfer the funds to my account.”
“I’ve got a bit of disappointing news,” sighed Lucy. “I talked to Birdie this morning. She and Denver won’t be able to make Quincy’s wedding.”
Birdie Watson, the other member of our Tuesday morning quilting group, had been absent for the last month because she’d been traveling with her new husband, Denver, in their Winnebago.
Jazz looked stricken. “Why not?”
“You remember how she refuses to fly?” Lucy asked. “Well, she and Denver will be on a transatlantic cruise ship at that time, headed for Rome. Denver is being awarded some kind of medal from the Italian government for his invention of an improved tractor rototiller thingy. Apparently, it revolutionized Italian farming.”
Zsa Zsa jumped down and ran toward my orange cat, Bumper, who must have been sending mental signals to her from the kitchen.
“On a happier note,” Jazz said, “Quincy’s coming to my shop tomorrow for a fitting. I found the most divine ivory silk charmeuse for her wedding dress. It’ll drape beautifully over her baby bump. I’m constructing the princess bodice with underwires. When I’m done, she won’t have to worry about a bra.”
“Is it the strapless design you showed me?” Giselle asked.
A resigned expression dulled his face. “If only. Quincy insisted on a more modest dress for a traditional Jewish wedding. So, the neckline will cover her collarbone and the sleeves will be long.”
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br /> “What?” Giselle snorted. “I’m only beginning to learn about Judaism, but in every religion, getting pregnant before marriage isn’t exactly modest or traditional.”
She was right. My daughter was living proof of the conflict between modern lifestyles and cherished traditions with their old mores. “No argument here. I’m just happy they want to make it official. Some couples have multiple children yet never get married.”
Lucy reached for a piece of mandel broit, the almond biscotti I’d picked up from Bea’s Bakery earlier that morning. I made sure to get the ones with chocolate chips she loved.
She asked, “Do the kids know the sex of the baby yet?”
“It’s a little girl.” I beamed with the anticipation of holding my first grandchild in my arms.
“Have they picked out a name?”
“Quincy likes Sarah. But Noah says he’s suddenly fallen hard for the name LaWanda.”
My friends joined me in a laugh.
* * *
Four weeks later, the late-August heat wasn’t noticeable inside the air-conditioned Eagan mansion. Upstairs in a blue and gold rococo bedroom, I helped Quincy dress for her wedding. Her copper-colored curls had been skillfully tamed by Giselle’s Beverly Hills stylist into an updo, with tendrils cascading down the back of her neck. Subtle makeup accentuated her green eyes.
I helped her slide the soft silk gown over her head so she wouldn’t wreck her hairdo. The ivory fabric cascaded over her growing belly and lay in folds in all the right places. As a concession to Jazz, she’d allowed him to make the long sleeves and the top of the bodice out of unlined lace, her bare skin slightly visible underneath.
I pulled a cloth bag from my purse, removed my bubbie’s pearls, and fastened them around her neck. “Something old,” I said, referring to the tradition of dressing the bride in Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, and a sixpence in your shoe. It wasn’t a Jewish custom, but I loved it.
