“What happens to the ranch when your mother dies?”
A crease plucks the fortune-teller’s brow. “I couldn’t say.”
“Do you ever plan on going back to stay?”
“I don’t think so. I’m not that monastic.”
Frank nods. “She said you stopped going when you were a teen.”
“Yeah, my life was in town. I didn’t want much to do with her, or the ranch.”
“And now?”
“Now that I’m a little older, a little wiser, and a lot more scarred, I appreciate them both, I know it hurt her that I didn’t want to be with her. And at the time—rotten little shit that I was—I was glad it hurt.”
“How so?”
Suddenly Parker gets cagey. “I thought you came here to ask about my grandfather.”
Frank grins into her tea. “Sorry. I did. I just find your mother fascinating. And the ranch. Celadores. What your mother does, which I’m still not even sure what that is.”
“I thought you were a skeptic,” she teases again.
“I thought so too.”
“Have you used the deck I gave you?”
“Can’t say I have.” Frank’s not even sure where it is.
“Well, like I said, I’ll be glad to finish the reading any time you want.”
“I’d like that.”
“Really? Let’s do it right now.”
Parker starts to get up, but Frank stops her before she can blur the line between the personal and professional even further. “I really am here on official police business.” Setting her tea down, she continues, “Miss Parker, do you remember anything about the time your grandfather disappeared? I mean, anything you may have heard about that time?”
“Miss Parker,” she laughs. “Please. Call me Cassie.”
Frank nods.
Cassie only reiterates what little Frank already knows about him and when she asks how her grandmother died she confirms that, too.
“Why do you think no one ever looked into her cause of death?”
Cassie flips her hair over a shoulder. “What could they do? He wasn’t even around to press charges on. And it could have been an accident. She might have fallen. It’s one of those things no one’ll ever know.”
“Did your mother ever tell you that she went down to LA looking for him?”
“Yeah, she and Aunt Cass went on a drunken wild goose chase to find him.”
Frank tries, “Did she ever tell you what they did when they found him?”
Cassie looks momentarily startled. “I don’t think they ever did.”
“Can you think who might have wanted to hurt him?”
“Apparently he was an ass when he drank.” She adds remorsefully, “And that was the gift I got from him. It could have been any number of people he was at odds with.”
Frank prods, “Can’t think of any family grudges, arguments with the Mazettis, anything?”
She shakes her head.
“Has your mother ever mentioned anyone who might have had more than a spat with him?”
“Not that I can recall. Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Frank snaps her notebook shut. “It was a long shot.”
She stands and Cassie walks her to the door. “So you like the ranch, huh?”
“Yeah, it’s . . . it’s enchanting.”
Cassie laughs. “That’s a good word for it.”
Frank reaches to shake her hand but Cassie wags her head. “I see things when I touch people.”
“Like your mom.”
“Yeah.”
Cassie opens the door for her. “When would you like me to finish your reading?”
Frank smiles. “I’ll give you a call.”
“You do that. You’ve got my number.”
The sun is down behind the canyon and they stand in the purple dusk. Frank thinks to give Cassie her business card. “Call if you can think of anything. No matter how trivial it might seem.”
Cassie studies the card. “I will.”
Neither woman says anything and neither seems inclined to move.
“Alright,” Frank breaks the stupor. “Thanks for your time.”
“Sure. Don’t forget to call.”
“I won’t,” she says, walking to her car. Bending to unlock the door, she glances back.
Under the bower of dusky greenery, Cassie leans against the railing, her gaze steady on Frank. For an instant in the twilight she looks like a young Sal. Déjà vu overcomes Frank and she clings to the car; she has already been here, in the narrow, gravel drive, unlocking her car, glancing up at Cassie on the porch beneath ghostly pale blooms, the sun a shadow behind the hills.
Of its own accord her hand lifts to Sal’s daughter. The gesture is returned, and this too has already been lived.
Chapter 24
For the next two weeks, Pintar is on vacation. Frank and Lewis run out of local leads, and it is late October before Frank can get back to Soledad. The tumbling, happy hills east of the highway are steeped the color of aged malt whiskey while the western mountains remain unchanged—an impenetrable, evergreen maze of cliff and canyon. Frank leans over the steering wheel to take in as much as she can of the craggy range, and is filled with a hunger, an almost erotic longing for them. She shakes her head at the incomprehensible desire and sits back, eyes on the road.
When she checks into her hotel, the young woman behind the counter greets, “Well, hi, welcome back.”
“It’s good to be back.”
In her room she places a chair at the window, props her feet on the sill, and eats a sandwich in front of the darkening mountains. Content to share the evening with them, she doesn’t bother with lights. After the sun is well and truly set, she brushes her teeth in darkness and slides into the crisp-sheeted bed. The window remains open.
First thing in the morning, she tracks down the leads Gomez gave her. Two of them are Domenic Saladino’s pals from grade school, and as Gomez warned, neither is particularly interested in cooperating with the Five-Oh. Her third and last lead is the owner of Soledad’s oldest bar. He is retired but likes to work the lunch shift. Frank hopes as she walks into the tiny, windowless bar that he will prove more fruitful than Saladino’s friends.
Though it’s barely noon, regulars in ball caps sit at the bar nursing beers. Behind them, four men walk around a pool table with barely enough space to line up their shots. The barkeep, as round as a cue ball and just as bald, gives Frank a cold eye.
His voice issues thick and phlegmy from beneath a silver handlebar mustache. “Whatcha want, hon?”
“Frankie Avila?”
“Yep.”
She flashes her badge. “I need a couple minutes.”
He doesn’t move from his straight-armed stance against the bar. “License is on the wall.”
“Nothing to do with your business. I’m Homicide, LAPD.”
The drinkers all look up from their glasses and the men at the pool table lean on their sticks.
“Don’t know nothin’ bout any homicides.”
“I know.” She takes the next stool down from the drinkers. “But you do know about Domenic Saladino.”
He grunts. “That’s going back a ways.”
“I hear he was a regular.”
“Regular as that chair you’re sitting on.”
“Every night?”
Frank orders a Coke and softens Avila up with questions she already knows the answers to. The men next to her return to their conversation and the pool balls crack. She gets the barkeep telling stories.
He asks, “I figure you know our Chief of Police?”
“I’ve talked to him.”
Avila chuckles. “He mention the night ol’ Dom dressed him down, right about where you’re sitting?”
“Larry Siler?”
The old man’s chuckle turns into a deep cough. When it clears, he smoothes his mustache and launches into another tale.
“We used to be a lot more flexible with the drinking age back then. Hell, we
knew these boys, where they came from. They weren’t no trouble. Just liked to have a drink or two with the men now and then, made ’em feel growed up. We’d serve ’em as long as they had the cash and kept their cool. So ol’ Larry and a couple of his pals are in here playing pool one night when in comes Dom, madder ’an a bull comin’ outta the chute. He walks right up to Larry, taps him on the shoulder, and decks the poor son of a bitch. No warning or nothing. Larry’s laying there on the floor wondering what the hell just hit him and Dom tells him to stay away from his daughter. Ol’ Larry’s ear swole up about the size of a grapefruit and he—”
“Wait a minute. Which daughter?”
“The dead one. What was her name?”
“Cass.”
“Yeah, okay. That one. Larry had the hard-on for her. Way I heard it, he proposed but she turned him down. Hell, prob—”
“Larry Siler proposed to Cass Saladino? Dom’s daughter?”
“Yep. Made Dom madder ’an a pissed-on hornet. Told Larry to stay the hell away, that he had plans for her. Way I heard it, he wanted her to marry Pete Mazetti and get the ranch back.”
“Did Larry stay away?”
“Far as I know. But I’ll tell you something.”
He leaned as close as his belly would allow.
“Tore him up when that one died. He’d just gotten his badge a couple months earlier, and he and ol’ Huey were first on the scene. That was tough on Larry. Real tough.”
She interrupts again. “First on what scene?”
“The accident. The one Dom’s daughter died in. Him and Huey. What you call first responders nowadays. I can tell you he spent plenty a nights in here after that.”
Avila shakes his head. “Tore him up.”
Frank pays for the Coke she didn’t drink and walks the couple of blocks to the police department. “Afternoon.” She flashes her ID at the duty officer. “Chief in?”
“Uh, let me check. Hold on.”
The cop comes back a minute later, the chief behind him.
“Lieutenant.”
Neither extends a hand.
“I need a minute.”
He tilts his head, indicating she should come back to his office. He shuts the door behind them. “I’m pretty busy.”
“Understood. Why didn’t you tell me you were first on the scene at Cass Saladino’s accident?”
Siler walks behind his desk and sits. Frank settles into a hard chair. Pulling on his chins, Siler explains, “It’s not something I like to talk about.”
“Why is that?”
“She was a friend, for Christ’s sake. A good friend. I went to school with Cass. I grew up with her. I was just a snot-nosed rookie when we got the call. It was my first fatality involving someone . . . I cared about. That’s not an easy thing.”
“No.” Frank has had plenty of such fatalities. “It’s not. But I need you to describe it for me.”
“What in hell does the accident have to do with Domenic Saladino?”
“Something. Maybe nothing. I won’t know for sure until I have all the facts. You know that.”
“Well, I can’t see how Cass dying had anything to do with her old man’s disappearance.”
“I can, but I might be wrong. How’d it happen?”
Siler gives her a hard look. “I told you. She was drunk.”
“When you got the call, did you know it was her?”
His edge fades and Larry Siler looks like the old cop he is. Even from the remove of almost fifty years he saddens in the telling. “No, I did not. Donny Aliotti called from the pay phone at the gas station. Said he saw a truck out on 16, out in the wash by the Landons’ place. My partner and I tore out there. I was excited as hell, thought it was probably some tourist on their way up to Carmel.”
He strokes his chins.
“Boy, I can tell you, when we walked out that wash and I saw whose pickup it was, I didn’t want to go anywhere near it. ’Course I had to. The cab was empty. We shined our lights around and just when I was thinking the girls must have just crashed and hitched home, we found her. She was thrown a good 150, 175 feet into some willow scrub. She was a mess. Still breathing, though. Couldn’t be sure which girl it was until we found her purse. We called the ambulance, but she died before they could get to her. My partner was an old-timer name of Huey Caine. He insisted we be the ones to go up to the Mazettis and tell Sal. Boy, I’ll tell you, that was a long drive. Only good thing was that the Mazettis ended up breaking the news to her. I don’t know that I could’ve done it.”
She nods.
“Did she say anything before she died?”
“She never came to.”
“Did Soledad help CHP with the investigation?”
“Wasn’t anything to investigate. She was just a dumb kid all liquored up and driving too fast. That’s all there was to it.”
“So Soledad PD handled it alone?”
“No, 16 is CHP jurisdiction. They came and wrote it up. Nothing to it.”
“They measured the skid marks, all that?”
Siler tugs under his jaw. “Weren’t any that I recall. Drunk as she was, she just plain didn’t see the curve.”
Frank nods. “You loved her?”
“Look, I just said we—”
“You proposed to her.”
“Who the hell told you that?”
“Apparently it wasn’t a secret. And when Dom Saladino heard, he beat the crap out of you.”
“Like I said, I was just a kid. I couldn’t get near Cass, but I gave it a shot. Figured it might keep me from gettin’ drafted.”
“That’s the only reason?”
“No.” Siler sighs. “I loved her. Hell, half the boys in the Salinas valley did.”
From the long reach of Siler’s memory, she extracts the time frame of his proposal, Sal’s refusal, and the beatdown he got from her old man. They all back up what Avila told her. “One more thing. You knew Saladino roughed his wife up from time to time.”
Siler nods. “That was something we heard.”
“So Saladino has a history of beating his wife, he takes off, and she dies a few days later. No one thought that was suspicious?”
“Hey, when all that was going on, I was just a snot-nosed, high-school kid worried about staying out of ’Nam. And besides, this was a small town with very conservative, independent roots. It wasn’t as common as it is nowadays for the law to get involved in domestic matters. What a man did with his family back then was his own concern.”
“Even if he killed her?”
“I’m sure if there was reasonable suspicion that he’d killed his wife the authorities would have investigated. One dead body’s not enough, you’ve gotta resurrect another?”
“Not trying to resurrect anyone, just looking for motive for who’d want to whack him.”
“So what have you got?”
Frank ticks names off on her fingertips. “The girls, for one. Pete Mazetti.”
Siler grunts and shakes his head. She ignores him.
“And Mike Thompson. They were both crazy about the girls. And any of Mary Saladino’s brothers. They all threatened to kill him.”
“Says who?”
“Sal. Carly Simonetti.”
“Ah.” He flaps a meaty hand. “Doing and talking are two different things. Thank God. Else I’d be a hell of a lot busier than I already am.”
Frank continues, “John Mazetti. I hear things were strained between them.”
“Strained doesn’t lead to homicide.”
“You.”
“Me?” Siler laughs. “You think I killed Old Man Saladino because he punched me in a bar?”
“I’m just telling you who has motive.”
“Well, you keep looking, Lieutenant.”
“Oh, I will.”
Siler stands and opens the door.
“Anything else you’ve kept back?”
“You’re the big city detective. You tell me.”
She considers a minute. “You don’t really give
a shit who killed Saladino.”
Siler sighs. “It’s not that I don’t give a shit, it’s just that you’re missing the mark. What happened is, he was probably drinking in some dive after work, pissed off the wrong guy, and ended up dead. Saladino was a drunk and a pain in the ass. If you want motive, Christ, probably half this town had motive at one time or another, me included.”
Frank nods. “Half the town, indeed. Appreciate your time.”
Chapter 25
The day has been productive and Frank wants to get her thoughts down while they’re still fresh. She takes a taco combo back to the hotel room and writes while trying not to get carnitas grease all over. When she has her ideas on paper, she gets up and watches college football for a minute. But even the classic UCLA/USC rivalry can’t keep her attention. Frank wanders to the window, where the sun bleeds out behind the mountains. She stands in the last of the russet glow. The eastern flanks of the Lucias are already shrouded in darkness. In concealed dens and hollows, coyote and cougar stretch the day from their bones, ready to feed. The mountains gather the twilight close. Occasional lights hold the night back, but mostly canyon and ridge blend into a single stygian hue. Wind from the Pacific has threaded its way steadily through gap and pass to find its way to her window. It blows softly upon her cheek and as if it is a lover’s kiss, Frank closes her eyes to receive it. The breeze caresses her overheated skin and she lifts her shirt to feel more, then steps back. She removes her clothes and stands with the smooth, rushing hands of the wind upon her—and she is in the dark on a bed of pine leaves under a blanket of stars. A sickle moon cleaves the branches overhead and washes her clean in its silvery light. She turns her head to see many figures stretched and sleeping near.
Beyond the window out on the freeway, a truck sounds its basso horn. Frank shivers and rubs her arms. She shuts the curtains and turns to her room, to the game playing silently on the television, the papers arranged on the shiny bedspread. Highway sounds seep through the curtain, tempting her to return to the window, but she picks up her clothes and folds them. Contemplating the mute football players, she lets the starlit ridge ebb from her system. When she has fully returned to the present, Frank takes a long, scalding shower. She dresses in an old T-shirt and sits propped against the bed pillows. Pulling binder and notepads close, like papery talismans, she concentrates on the murder of Domenic Saladino.
Hold of the Bone Page 16
