Mother Nature

by Sarah Andrews

  “Not with anyone else. Everyone knew to leave off of him because he was already injured. I remember the apple fights we’d have. All the pickers’ kids would get in on the act. Dexie, Suzanne … It’s fun, you split up in teams and throw the windfalls at each other. You only use the rotten ones, or your dad yells at you for stealing bacon off the table. Beyond that there was only one rule: don’t hit Matthew, or he’ll go crying to Mama and the game’s over. He was a real coward, you see.”

  “But Matthew wasn’t afraid of Sonja?”

  Barto shook his head, his eyes deep in the mists of remembering.

  “Didn’t anyone try to stop him?”

  “Mr. Karsh broke up the fights when he was there, made them sit apart for a while. But Sonja got blamed. Boy, what you can see in hindsight you wish you’d seen at the time.”

  “Who blamed her?”

  “Her mom. ‘Sonja, leave Matt alone.’ That kind of stuff.”

  “And her dad?”

  “He bragged about her, how smart she was, how she could really look after herself. Like that made everything else all right. Ol’ Will was telling himself it was a fair fight.”

  “And then he gave her that car.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And Matt couldn’t stand it.”

  “That bruise was as big as a saucer.”

  “And then she was gone.”

  Barto sighed. “Yeah, then she was gone.”

  “What became of the car?”

  “It sat in the barn for a year or two, and then I guess they sold it.”

  “Why didn’t she take it with her?”

  Barto turned and looked at me, surprised. “I never thought of that.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe she didn’t want to be reminded of all the fighting.”

  “So the house was empty again, and Mrs. K rented it to Jaime. Because he doesn’t own it. It’s being held in trust for Sonja.”

  “No, it’s part of his pay. Lots of farm people around here have a Mexican family living on their property, but usually it’s in a trailer.”

  “So Jaime made out.”

  “He does well. Aside from staying there free, he makes wages working on the vineyards and orchards, and makes a little extra fixing his friends’ cars.”

  That explained why the junk cars were there, and why Jaime might feel a little proprietary in guarding the place. “What does he do with the crankcase oil when he’s done with it?”

  Barto laughed dryly. “Who knows what he does? It’s not exactly an up-front business. I daresay he doesn’t charge sales tax or report his earnings to the Governor. And Jaime grew up the other side of the border; his idea of housekeeping isn’t exactly like ours. It’s pretty funny watching the liberal slicks who move in from the city. They’re all, ‘We don’t want to impact their culture’ with the campesinos, protecting their right to camp out in the blackberry brambles and get drunk in the middle of the road and all, then about two years later they start to get sick of picking beer cans out of their fancy landscaping.”

  “So how do the liberal slicks react to low-income housing projects? You know that Valentine Reeves is planning to put fifty units up that hillside where the apple trees now are.”

  Barto’s tone grew icy. “Those city folks are the problem. When I grew up here, housing was affordable. Now we got them moving in, paying big-city prices for property, running the cost of housing way up, but hey, our wages are staying the same. That’s my kids who are going to have to live packed into those new cracker boxes.”

  “So Reeves is on the level.”

  Barto set his jaw in exasperation. “Reeves is just making a living. Everyone jumps on him because they’d rather look at apple trees than houses. But hell, we’ve got a population explosion going on, don’t we? I hear that even if nobody new moved into this county, the population would still double in the next ten years because we’re so good at having kids. Me, I stopped with two, just so I could afford to feed and educate them. That hurt. I like big families.”

  I shook my head in sympathy. Back home in Wyoming, I was watching the quality of my own life slip away as hobby ranchers drove the price of land up and the value of the beef crop down. When I inherited my parents’ ranch, if my mother didn’t lose it to taxes before then, I’d inherit it with the U.S. government as a fifty-five percent death-duty partner. And there had never been enough land to parcel around to each rancher’s child; I was only hopeful because my brother’s fate had made me the only heir, “Going back to Sonja: There was a lot of talk about her messing around with an older man. Did you ever see him?”

  “At the house? No.”

  “Anywhere else?”

  “No.”

  “Then how does everyone know there was an older man?”

  “Well, it’s just what was said.”

  “When did they say it, before she went away or after?”

  Barto thought for a moment. “After.”

  “Where did she go?”

  Barto smiled into space. “I always wondered if she went to Hawaii. She’d talk about it like it was a fairy tale and not the fiftieth state.”

  “But you don’t know.”

  Barto’s face fell into wistful repose. “No.”

  A heavy sadness was beginning to settle on my bones, but I had just one more question. “The other woman who asked you about this underground tank; did she also ask you about Sonja?”

  “No. Why?”

  “No reason. Just wondering if she knew to stay away from Matthew while she was working out there, is all.”

  Barto thought a moment before saying anything more. “I can’t see why that should be a problem. I mean, I haven’t heard of any trouble with him in years. He almost never leaves the house, and that’s half a mile away from the Ferris place. And he was just a kid back then, or a teenager, anyway. Everybody grows up eventually, doesn’t he?” he said, looking into my eyes for reassurance.

  30

  I made one final stop before assaulting the Sheriff’s Department with my data: the Sebastopol Public Library. I asked where the Analy High School yearbooks were shelved. In the 1973 Analy High School Azalea I found ample pictures of Sonja Karsh, popular girl that she was, including group shots for the Tiger Pep Band, the A Cappella choir, the Independent Study Program, and something called the Girl’s League Cabinet. There wasn’t a single girl’s athletic team back then, but there was a nice half-page shot of Sonja about to shoot a basket in gym class. Her smile was infectious, a glowing flash of young womanhood in a plain but intelligent face. I flipped to the pages for the senior class, but of course, Matthew wasn’t there. I did find him one book earlier. Where he should have been a junior, he was a freshman, his awkward bulk looming over his classmates like a thunderhead. He was already fully grown, though his flesh had not yet spread. He looked lost, his eyes focused on inner space.

  At the Sheriff’s Department, I asked to see Detective Muller, reciting inside my head a litany against losing my cool. I told myself that he was a detective doing his job just like me, and that I shouldn’t expect him to treat me as a colleague or even a human being, that I should only hope that his ears were working and his brain was in gear. But to my surprise, when he appeared at the counter to receive me, he surprised me by saying, “I’m glad to see you. How are things going?”

  “Fine. You lead the way.”

  When Muller had shown me once more into the little room with the tiny table and two chairs, I sat down and laid it out to him. “You got your tapes running? Good. I’ll name names and produce documents if you need them, but here’s what I’ve got. Item one, Mrs. Karsh’s father treated her poorly and left her inheritance in trust. Her husband’s the trustee, and he’s living with another woman and doesn’t give Mrs. Karsh enough to live on. But our Mrs. Karsh is of the old school, and thinks ladies don’t display their anger.

  “Item two, the one bit of property she has any control of is the old Ferris place. She’s supposed to hold it in trust for her daughter, who is God kno
ws where. The law firm that’s supposed to manage the trust has quaintly looked the other way for over twenty years now, neither finding Sonja and deeding it to her, nor declaring her dead and deeding it off to some old folks’ fund. Bet they make a bundle overlooking that little detail, but Mrs. Karsh doesn’t look like she sees a cent. So she’s bartered herself a handyman by letting him and his tribe live in the house. This man, Jaime Martinez, is running an illegal fix-it shop out of the barn. He’s probably throwing the waste oil and engine-cleaning solvents into an abandoned gas tank by the—” I stopped abruptly as Deputy Dexter sidled in and propped his muscly bulk against the wall. He folded his arms across his chest, making his biceps bulge menacingly.

  I sat up straighter and continued, staring straight at Deputy Dexter. “Item three, everyone treats Matthew Karsh like he’s a weakling, but he’s a full-grown man and he’s got a mean streak he doesn’t mind applying to selected people of the female persuasion. For example—”

  Dexter’s eyes shrank into dark slits, eclipsed by the hardening flesh of his face.

  I narrowed my own eyes in reply. “I have it on good authority he tossed his sister around most of the time she was growing up. Her father looked the other way, rationalizing that Sonja’s normal brain gave her the advantage, but that only goes for mental processes; the boy outweighed her by a hundred pounds. She got Dad’s attention, so Ma looked the other way while Matty beat her up. Then she ran off and never even dropped a card, and the whole thing’s just written off like a chapter in a bad book.” I leaned pointedly toward Dexter, added, “Everyone feels so guilty about poor little Matthew Karsh with his dented-can brain that they’ve gone blind to what’s going on here. Still. Now. Today.”

  Dexter clenched his teeth and hissed, “And just what is going on here, Miss Hansen?”

  “Mama likes to sic her boy on people who make her angry.” I yanked back my collar, exposing the lurid bruises. “I think there’s a pattern here, don’t you?”

  Dexter’s face looked like it might explode.

  Detective Muller broke in. “Why would Mrs. Karsh find you threatening, Miss Hansen?”

  “That’s item four: Sonja’s inheritance, the old Ferris place. There it sits, one of the last large chunks of land in the west county area that is zoned to be developed as more than a single-family unit. It’s probably worth a mint, but Ma Karsh can’t sell it. But aha, along comes Valentine Reeves, who’s figured out a loophole in the will: Can’t sell it? Then let’s build high-density rental housing on it, just give the trust lawyers a little slice of the action to keep them quiet. Voilà, Mrs. K can finally afford to paint her kitchen. Which brings us back to Janet Pinchon, who was performing the environmental assessment required for Reeves’ construction loan application. Janet found out about Jaime’s tank, which after twenty-some-odd years in the ground we may presume leaks like a sieve, right into the groundwater and into the Laguna, just like the tank it was put in to replace. Disclosure of that little detail would kill the loan because the banks won’t lend on a property burdened by the overwhelming costs of cleanup.” And my mind ran on, seeing the futility of Janet’s death. Reeves had found another backer who would supply private money, and all he had to do was just pump that contaminated groundwater to Occidental.

  I glanced at Muller. I clearly had his attention. He looked as cheerful as a kid on Christmas morning.

  “So?” Dexter sneered, drawing my attention back to himself. “You’ve made Reeves look bad, but he was Janet’s client, not the Karshes.”

  “But Mrs. Karsh needed that development even more than Reeves. He could build anywhere, but for her it had to be there. And Janet took her job and her profession seriously. She would have interviewed Mrs. Karsh to corroborate her information about the tank. She would have made herself an absolute pest.”

  Deputy Dexter shot me a look. I guess he figured it took one to know one.

  Muller asked, “Is the assessment public information?”

  “No, it’s proprietary.”

  “Then couldn’t they just throw the thing away if they don’t like what it says?”

  “Yes, but Janet wanted that construction project killed.” I paused, uncertain whether this was the moment to talk about Senator Pinchon and his unnatural desire to keep his connection to his daughter quiet.

  “And?” Muller prompted.

  “And Janet handed in a rough draft of that assessment to her boss. The boss immediately fired her, marched her right out the door, shredded all her notes, and scrubbed her computer files, leaving no record of her draft of the report. Kind of gets your attention, doesn’t it?”

  “Why would he want to do that?”

  “He can be bought.”

  “Lovely. But a shredded document is not a motive for murder.”

  “It isn’t, but the threat posed by Janet’s knowledge was, especially now that she no longer worked for HRC. I’ll bet she got on her bicycle and rode right out there to let Dierdre Karsh know that if that tank wasn’t out of the ground pronto, she’d report it herself, proprietary knowledge be damned. Her mistake was in going out there alone.” I waited for Muller to speak.

  He didn’t.

  “Well? Aren’t you even going to say anything?”

  Muller smiled pleasantly. “You say you can document your sources, showing that Janet knew about this tank. That’s nice. But do you have any proof that she went beyond that and threatened the Karshes?”

  “Proof? Just what do you guys need, a road map?”

  Detective Muller spoke calmly. “I am sorry, Ms. Hansen; your story is very interesting, but your evidence is circumstantial. We would need more than circumstantial evidence to make an arrest. And we have none.”

  “None? What about the chaos in my motel room? Whoever attacked me tore that room to shreds. Surely you’ve measured his tracks and processed the prints by now.”

  “I’m sorry, but you are wrong. Worn carpeting like that does not preserve footprints, nor does rainy pavement. And while your motel room, like all motel rooms, was a veritable library of fingerprints, we found nothing we could use.”

  “Nothing?”

  “We found your prints.”

  Dexter spoke, one corner of his mouth curling with pleasure. “People think we can get prints off shit.”

  Muller’s gaze flicked from me to him. “You will excuse us, Deputy,” he said quietly. When he was gone, Muller turned back to me, spoke soothingly. “Please, Ms. Hansen, I wish you would go on out to your aunt’s ranch and get some rest. We’ll be in touch with you. And rest assured we are doing everything we can.”

  I felt deflated. I rose to go, but stopped. “How did you know where I’m staying?”

  “We ran a make on your aunt’s plates. I had a cruiser spin by last night to make sure you were safe.”

  “Oh.”

  As he walked me out through the lobby, past those blank governmental counters and the photographs of Sheriffs present and past, Muller murmured: “Oh, and to answer your questions, the lens to the video camera is hidden in the corner, and the microphone is behind the light switch. Have a good afternoon.”

  31

  Proof. It’s a difficult thing to come by sometimes.

  I went back out to Frida’s. She was gone somewhere, so I set myself up in her kitchen with the phone book and made some calls. I called Lucy McClintock at the Sonoma County Environmental Health Department and reported the outlaw tank at the old Ferris place. She was avariciously ecstatic to know of its existence, assured me she’d put it on one of her lists, and was certain something would be done about it by the end of January. Christmas holidays, you know: everyone would be out of the office for weeks.

  With this cheering bit of news, I tried to call Pat Ryan but got no answer. Curt Murbles, I had no intention of phoning.

  Needing something to do to justify my existence, I went through the tack room and oiled the leathers and polished every bit of brass I could find. They hadn’t really needed it. Neither did the animals seem
to need attention; all were freshly combed and watered, but I curried a nice-looking mare anyway, and cleaned the sawdust from her hooves with a pick. As evening drew near, I saddled her up and set out on a ride, but was soon turned back as the skies ripped open and emptied huge, sodden drops of heaven down my collar. So much for the Christmas season in California. Cold and miserable, I returned to Frida’s, took a hot bath, ate a cold dinner of leftovers and beer, and went to bed. I won’t say that I slept.

  * * *

  THE NEXT DAY was the winter solstice. I never saw the sun; it was clouded over the entire day, even when it wasn’t oozing rain. The air was mild, so I spent the day exercising horses in the ring in the hope that putting my body to work would free my brain to discover a solution to my troubles.

  By dusk I was still a woman with no proof or strategy to find it, and the tension was about to drive me wild. Normally riding puts me in a deep state of relaxation, but on this one occasion the rhythmic motion of horse and rider was one more thing that wasn’t happening fast enough.

  I had one more appointment. It was one I had not been certain I wanted to keep, but I was antsy for something to do, and fate sometimes conspires to move a restless soul to the place it needs to be. I took a shower, put on clean jeans and a turtleneck shirt I’d borrowed from Frida, fired up that beautiful truck, and headed out in search of Suzanne Cousins and her drumming circle, Goddess help me.

  The night was damp and cool, and the windshield kept fogging as I struggled to master the controls of the ventilation system. Giving up, I cracked my window a ways.

  When I got to the duplex, I found that I was the last to arrive. I hurried inside, forgetting to close the truck window. Suzanne didn’t look very glad to see me when she opened the door to her candlelit living room, but Trudy intervened and pulled me into air thick with heat and incense, placed me on a cushion on the floor jammed in with a dozen or more unsmiling women, and put a stick in my hand and a skin drum in front of me. I had just enough time to glance around among the dimly lit faces to see if I could recognize a few others.