“Everything will be okay, sweetcakes,” Emory said as I walked him and Elvia out to the sidewalk. He pulled me into a tight hug. I could feel Elvia’s hand patting my back.
“I know,” I mumbled into his chest. “Gabe’s just going through a tough time.”
“Call us if you need anything,” Elvia said, hugging me after Emory.
Once everyone was gone, I shooed Kathryn and Ray to bed, telling them that what little cleaning up there was to do would relax me while I waited for Gabe. Kathryn gave me a worried look, her blue-gray eyes reminding me so much of her son’s. She started to say something, then apparently changed her mind.
“Good night, Benni,” she said. “Dream sweet.”
Dream sweet. Those were the same words that Gabe often said to me before we went to sleep. When we were dating and were longing so much for each other every night, those were always his last words to me: “Dream sweet, querida.” I wondered if Kathryn said them because Rogelio had said that to her. A nighttime wish for beautiful dreams passed down from husband to wife to mother to son to husband to wife.
Gabe came home about ten p.m. Boo, exhausted, had fallen asleep against a dozing Scout. Both of them lay on the floor next to the sofa where I sat in the dark, the room lit only by the Christmas tree’s twinkling lights. I’d been staring at the lights for almost an hour wondering if I should go search for my husband. A cold burst of air followed him into the room.
“Hey,” he said, coming into the living room. Scout lifted his head, then laid it back down again. Boo gave a little puppy chirrup and snuggled deeper into Scout’s warm chest.
“Hey,” I said, not getting up.
He stood in front of the flickering tree, his face a map of sad planes and crevices. He stuck his hands deep into his pockets, appearing as if he were waiting for me to say something.
I didn’t. This time he would have to ask for my help. This time I wouldn’t push myself or my solutions on him. Ray was right; this was Gabe’s battle, and only he could punch his way out of it. After a long minute, I stood up and walked over to him, putting my arms around his waist, laying my head against his broad back. I couldn’t give him solutions, but I could give him comfort.
“I’m sorry about tonight,” Gabe said.
I didn’t answer. I wanted so badly to tell him what to do, to go talk to his mom, that time was running out for her, for all of us. That life was too short, too fragile to let his anger and his pain steal any more of his days than they already had.
“I’ll just tell everyone I had a bad day. I’ll just . . .” He let his voice drift away, knowing that the remedy wasn’t that simple.
My head against his back, I could feel him swallow, holding back his emotion. I couldn’t help it, I had to say something. It just wasn’t in me to step back from the people I loved. That was as much a part of me as Gabe’s reluctance to connect with the people he loved was a part of him.
I moved around and laid my head on his chest. “I love you, Friday. Please, do me a favor. Talk to your Mom. Who knows when she’ll come out again?”
“I’ll try,” he said, resting his cheek on the top of my head. His arms tightened around me. “I promise I’ll try.”
THE NEXT MORNING BOTH GABE AND I HAD DRESSED AND eaten before Kathryn and Ray even stirred. Gabe was rinsing our breakfast dishes and I was taking Boo out for one more potty break before heading off to work when Ray came into the kitchen.
“Hi, Ray,” Gabe said, his voice friendlier than it had been since Ray’s arrival. Ray took it in stride and said good morning.
“Where’s Kathryn?” I asked, trying to keep my face neutral. She’d better talk to her son fast, because I was not known for being able to keep any kind of secrets from Gabe. My expressive face combined with his ability to detect any kind of duplicity usually made it impossible. But he’d been so self-absorbed this morning, reliving, I suspected, his bratty behavior last night, that he didn’t notice any strangeness in my tone.
“She’s moving a little slowly this morning,” Ray said, pouring himself a cup of coffee. “She’ll be up and about directly.”
“Is Mom okay?” Gabe asked, turning to look at Ray.
I glanced over at Ray, holding my breath. His expression didn’t change one iota.
“I just think she did too much yesterday,” he said, smiling at Gabe. “You know Kathryn, she never does anything halfway.”
Gabe surprised me by giving Ray a small smile back. “I’ll go in and say good-bye. See what she wants to do for dinner.”
After he left, I asked Ray, “Is she okay this morning?”
He nodded and sat down at the kitchen table, cupping his narrow hands around his mug as if to warm them. “Nothing a day of rest wouldn’t fix. It’s not just the disease, you know. Kathryn and I aren’t spring chickens anymore. Getting out of our routine, the weather change, the time change, plays havoc with your system.”
“I hear you.” I glanced over at the closed kitchen door, then said in a lowered voice, “Do you think she’ll tell him today?”
He shrugged and took a long drink from his mug. “I learned early in our relationship to never try to predict what Kathryn Smith Ortiz would or would not do. Actually, it’s a great deal of her charm for me.”
I laughed, totally understanding what he meant. “Like mother, like son. Those Ortizes do have a way of getting under a person’s skin.”
“And capturing our hearts.”
I picked up Boo, who was scrambling around my feet, and buried my face in his sweet-smelling puppy fur. “Well said, stepfather-in-law.”
“What’s well said?” Gabe asked, walking back into the room. “Mom and I are having dinner out tonight.” Then, realizing, I hoped, how exclusionary that sounded, he added, “If it’s okay with you two.”
“Fine with me,” Ray said.
“I’ll take Ray to Liddie’s,” I said. “He can’t visit San Celina without eating at Liddie’s.”
“Good idea,” Gabe said. “Well, off to the salt mines. You two have a good day.” He came over, kissed me quickly on top of the head and left the kitchen whistling under his breath.
“Maybe tonight will be the night,” I said.
“Let’s hope so,” Ray said in a good-natured but resolute tone.
I was pulling into the parking lot of All Paws on Board when my cell phone rang. The screen read Constance Sinclair.
“I have a bone to pick with you,” I said before she could start in on whatever it was she was going to start in on me about. “May Heinz, Pinky’s housekeeper, said that you said that I was going to go to Pinky’s house and look around.”
“When did you hear that?” Constance demanded.
“More important,” I replied, “why are you making plans and telling people about them before you contact me? I told you that I’d thoroughly investigated whether Pinky Edmondson was murdered and found that she wasn’t. Constance, you have to let this go.” Behind me, Boo was whining. He already knew what going to All Paws meant: playing with other dogs. “Just a minute,” I whispered to him.
“What?” Constance said.
“Nothing, I was talking to the dog.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” I repeated. “Why do you think me going through Pinky’s house would make a bit of difference? What do you think I’ll find?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I want you to investigate. Don’t forget, Benni, you took my check. You haven’t finished the job.”
I inhaled deeply, physically holding my lips together to stifle the scream about to spew out. I didn’t want to scare the puppy. “Constance . . .” I started.
Then I exhaled. Give it up. It would just be easier to do as she asked, at least until the holidays were over. “Okay, I’ll go by later on this afternoon. Can you please make sure that someone is there to let me in?”
“A key is in your mailbox at the museum,” she said, triumph in her voice. “Call me as soon as you’re done. I’d meet you there and help you, but
with the 49 Club Christmas luncheon tomorrow, I don’t have a spare minute.”
She hung up before I could toss in that I had very few minutes to spare myself. I was handing Boo over to Suann at All Paws when my phone rang again. How was it that cell phones were supposed to make our lives easier?
“Hey, ranch girl,” Hud said, his voice sounding crackly. “Just wanted to remind you about taking Boo to see Santa.”
Shoot, I’d totally forgotten again. “Yeah, I know. It’s on my schedule for . . . today.” I crossed my fingers behind my back.
“I’m sorry to be a pest, but Maisie’s just frantic about it.”
“Boo will have his picture taken with Santa, Hud. I promise.”
After he hung up, I turned my phone off. I just couldn’t afford to hear from one more person asking me to do something. Somehow today I’d have to find the time to have Boo’s picture taken with Santa.
First, find a Santa, I thought, as I unlocked the front door of the folk art museum. Then, bribe him to have his photo taken with a dog.
The minute I got to my office I realized that I’d forgotten the most important thing I was supposed to do today: pick up Abe Adam Finch’s painting at the police station. I dialed Gabe’s direct number. Maggie put me right through.
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
“I forgot to pick up the painting. Can you—?”
He didn’t even let me finish. “I’ll send a patrolman over with it right now. Anything else?”
“What service. An extra orange in your stocking this Christmas, Chief Ortiz.”
He laughed, sounding more buoyant than I’d heard him in a long time. “Anything else I can do to make you happy?”
“Sure, but that’ll have to wait until later on tonight.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” he replied. “Mom and I shouldn’t be too late. I’m taking her to Ghost Fish, that new restaurant in Morro Bay. I heard they have great Maine lobster. Mom loves lobster.”
“I’m sure she’d enjoy a walk on the Embarcadero too.”
“You and Ray have a good time.”
“We will. You know there’s always something going on at Liddie’s.”
Thirty minutes later, my favorite police officer, Miguel, came walking in carrying Abe Adam Finch’s painting. He was one of Elvia’s younger brothers and at twenty-five had been a San Celina police officer for four years now. I still got a kick out of seeing this man in uniform, because I could remember reading all the Dr. Seuss books to him.
“Hey, Benni,” he said, setting the wrapped painting down in the middle of the museum’s main hall. “Where do you want this?”
“Just prop it up over there,” I said, pointing to the spot we’d prepared for it. “D-Daddy will hang it right away.”
“So, this is the fancy-pants painting that’s going to put your museum on the map?”
I punched him lightly on his muscled shoulder. “Hey, I know it’s not as important as a signed poster of Shaquille O’Neal, but it’s a pretty big deal in the outsider art world.”
“Whatever,” he said, obviously not interested. “I’m just the delivery guy.” He stretched and scratched his close-cropped black hair. “How’s my hermana grande doing? Emory said she had a meltdown.”
“After a bit of a clothing crisis, she is back on track. I think she spent almost six hundred dollars on maternity clothes yesterday.”
“Huh,” he snorted. “Not even close to what Mama is spending for the baby. The whole house looks like a baby store. You’d think it was her first grandkid.”
Elvia had six brothers, four of whom were married and had children. Elvia’s baby would be Mrs. Aragon’s seventh grandchild.
“It’s probably because it’s her only daughter’s first baby. Maybe she’s reliving some of the experiences she had carrying all of you.”
After Miguel left, I sent one of the docents to find D-Daddy so we could hang the painting as soon as possible. I stood next to it, unwilling to even walk out of the room until we had it hung and attached to the security device D-Daddy and the alarm people had devised. It would go off the minute someone lifted the picture away from the wall. Granted, an experienced art thief might be able to disarm it, but it wasn’t the fancy art thieves we were worried about; they’d probably not bother with a small museum like ours. I was more worried about amateurs who were looking to make a quick buck.
When D-Daddy came in and readied the spot for the official hanging, I slowly unwrapped the painting. I still couldn’t get over our museum’s good fortune that, at Nola Maxwell Finch’s suggestion, her uncle had agreed to donate a painting to our permanent collection. When Constance brought Nola for a personal tour, I had no idea Nola would fall in love with our little museum, admire its simplicity and champion our statement of purpose, to celebrate the artist in all people, regardless of background.
“It’s amazing,” one of the docents said. A group of them had gathered to watch D-Daddy hang the painting.
It really was more vibrant and arresting in person than in the eight-by-ten photos we’d been sent. The tree with leaves that seemed to be half oak, half pine, was rich with subtle details, faces painted in the trunk, animals and birds peeking out of the foliage. There was so much going on in the painting that you could stare at it for an hour and not get bored.
“That’s perfect,” I said to D-Daddy, who gave the plain black frame that surrounded the painting one last nudge. “I’m so glad this is finally done.”
“You say it, ange,” D-Daddy said, stepping back and letting the small crowd move closer to the painting. He said out of the side of his mouth, “Now maybe Miss Constance will stop hanging around so much.” D-Daddy was patient with Constance and always went to great lengths to appease her, but like me, dealing with her took up time he’d rather spend working on the museum.
“We still have the opening on Wednesday night,” I answered back in a low tone, “so we’ll probably have her hanging around until then. But once that’s over, she’ll move on to something else.”
He slipped his hammer back in his tool belt. “I’ll be in back working on the bathroom sink. Someone, they pour paint down it again.”
“I’ll post another note on the bulletin board,” I said.
We had an industrial-size sink in the back of the woodworking shop, but often people didn’t want to walk that far and used the tiny bathroom sink instead. It was often clogged up, trying D-Daddy’s patience. Things like that were as much, if not more, a part of my workday as unwrapping and hanging famous paintings.
I was giving my speech one more edit when the phone rang. I almost let the answering machine pick it up, then decided since I’d turned off my cell phone, that probably wasn’t a good idea. It actually might be something important.
“Benni, is that you?” It was Constance.
I took a deep breath. I shouldn’t have answered. “Yes, ma’am.”
“We have a lunch date with Nola Finch and Dot St. James at The Brambles restaurant in Cambria.”
“Is that the royal we?” I asked deliberately being facetious. She wouldn’t have a clue what I was implying.
“What are you talking about?” Her voice was impatient, sharp. “I have a reservation for eleven thirty. Dress nice.”
I was tempted to say “as compared to my normal manure-caked clothing?” Except sometimes my boots did reek of, as Daddy would say, “the smell of money.”
“Okay,” I said, glancing up at the clock in my office. It was ten thirty now. That meant I’d have to make a quick trip home, because I’d thrown on faded Wranglers and an old Cal Poly sweatshirt, thinking that I’d spend most of the day either in my office or giving the museum one last spit shine. “What’s the purpose of this lunch?” I foolishly asked.
“What?”
Did I use any words that weren’t in her vocabulary? “Why are we having lunch with Nola and Dot?”
“Because they want to,” she said, as if my question were the oddest thing in the world.
The house was empty when I stopped by to change into black wool slacks, a simple white shirt and a black sweater. I looked at myself in the mirror and realized I looked like I was ready to serve dinner in an upscale restaurant, so I added a turquoise and black bolo tie in a six-pointed star design. That touch, along with my good Lucchese cowboy boots, made me look a little less like the person serving lunch and more like one of the ladies eating lunch.
I left a note for Kathryn and Ray telling them I’d be home by six o’clock. I added, “Hope you’ve had a fun day! See you later. Love, Benni.” I felt a little funny putting love, but I couldn’t think of what else to sign.
As I drove the twenty or so miles out to Cambria for the second time in as many days, I decided that after lunch I’d make good use of my time and also go by Pinky’s house. Though I hadn’t a clue what to look for, at least I could tell Constance I’d done as she asked. If she weren’t the person who paid a good deal of the running costs of the museum, I would tell her to take a flying leap into the Pacific Ocean that churned to the left of me for most of my drive to Cambria.
Normally, it was a beautiful trip, one that I enjoyed despite having to stay aware of the crazy drivers weaving across the yellow strip dividing the two-lane highway. Today, all I could think about was getting through this lunch, making a cursory walk through Pinky’s house, and possibly getting back to San Celina in time to find a Santa Claus who’d consent to having his photo taken with a certain little corgi puppy.
“Maybe I should move that to tomorrow,” I said out loud. I could always lie to Hud when he called . . . and he would call again. No, he could always tell when I was out-and-out fibbing. Maybe after Ray and I had dinner we could swing by the house, pick up Boo and find us a Santa Claus somewhere. Surely the mall had one? It had been a long time since this had been a problem for me. I think the last kid I took to see Santa Claus was Miguel when he was three or four, right before his brother Ramon was born.
Tumbling Blocks Page 18
