“What do you mean?”
Kathy leaned forward to speak, but Maria Dolores interrupted her. “A man shot someone in one of the studios, about a month ago.”
The shorter, stouter policeman pushed his hat back, took a pad of paper and a pen out of his jacket, and stood poised to take notes. “Tell me about this incident.”
Maria Dolores cleaned her throat, pulling herself up to her full height of 5’3“. Her blousy dress covered most of her body as she started talking a mile a minute about the night Jerry was shot.”It was in that psychology student’s apartment; she’s a slut."
The officers exchanged brief smiles. “Nothing good ever happens in the bottom studios. That night, someone fired a shot into Inny’s, the one who is a slut, and nearly killed another’s boyfriend. They took him to the hospital…”
“Did anyone see who fired the shot?”
“I was in the front house. I saw a fancy sport car, Italian style – I know the European cars because I’m Spanish…”
“Who was in the car?” The taller policeman stared at Maria Dolores, who began to sweat.
“I don’t know. Maybe an Americano. I leaned out the window to see what model it was, and I saw a burly Americano get in. It was there, and then it was gone; and an ambulance came for Jerry. It happened very fast. I’m just the cleaning woman. I was washing the dishes…”
“But you noticed a sports car?” The policeman shifted his weight and took a deep breath.
“I always have my eyes open for anything strange in this neighborhood.”
“Could you identify the owner of the car from a photograph?” He leaned over, trying to seem less intimidating.
Maria Dolores gave him a piercing look. “I could try.” Then, she took a step backwards as she adjusted her bra strap. “But I can’t guarantee anything.”
“Will you come to the police station with us?”
Maria pulled herself up to her full height. “Of course I will. Do I have any choice?”
The taller policeman looked at Kathy, who was trying to get away to her engagement. “Do you feel safe here?”
“Yes, perfectly safe. The shooting was a terrible surprise. None of us knew who would do such a thing. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”
“Just one minute, young lady. We’re trying to solve a murder and your testimony could help us.”
Kathy looked about, startled at the thought of a murder. “I don’t know a thing, Officer. I’m a violinist in the Berkeley Symphony…” She brandished her violin case.
“Yes, that’s admirable, but what about this shot out of nowhere and now a dead body?”
“I think you need to talk to the people who live downstairs,” she said, taking a step backwards.
“I think it was the same sports car both times,” inserted Maria Dolores.
The stout officer looked down at her again. “What makes you think that?”
“Because… Because I saw it again just before Albert and Inny left for the train station.” She puffed herself up, feeling she had contributed an important piece to the puzzle of information.
Kathy pointed to her violin. “I really must go!” She gave the officers a pleading look.
“Just stick around for another minute, young lady. Who are Albert and Inny?”
“They live in the studios behind this house that I clean. He lives upstairs, next to this woman…” she gave Kathy a look. “And Inny lives downstairs, where Jerry was shot and almost died.”
“When did they leave for the train station?” The officer asked with a certain amount of agitation in his voice. He felt things might start to fall together.
“It was around eight o’clock, on December 24…”
“Did you hear a gunshot?”
“I’m not sure, but I saw that Italian sports car again.” The officers stared at her. Maria started to run her hands through her hair, trying to remember. “Maybe I heard something, but I’d been watching a TV show with a lot of gunshots, I think it was Bonnie and Clyde.”
“And did you SEE the person the car belonged to?”
“Let me think,” said Maria.
“Please let me go to rehearsal. I didn’t hear any shots and I don’t know anything about this,” said Kathy with a pleading look in her eyes.
“OK. OK. Just give us your name and address and be on your way. Go to your symphony,” said the shorter policeman. “As for you, lady, keep thinking!”
“It was bright red…” Maria Dolores ran her hand thorough her hair once again, thinking as hard as she could.
The taller policeman’s eyes lit up. “Could you identify this car if you saw it again?”
Jerry was coming down the walkway. Maria let him pass with a curt, “Good day.” Then, she turned to the policemen, and beaming like a beacon from a lighthouse, said, “I never forget a Ferrari!”
“A Ferrari! Can you come to the station now?” The officers exchanged looks of satisfaction.
Maria Dolores curtsied. “The pleasure will be all mine, señores.”
The shorter police officer with the pad starting writing down information as Maria kept talking a mile a minute. She was in her element.
Chapter 23
As the funeral procession wound its way to the Montecito Cemetery, I stared at the diamond on my engagement ring. It sparkled in the sun in bright contrast to the dark dirge Albert and I followed. His mouth was resolutely firm. I put my hand on his shoulder as he followed the car with my mother, grandmother, Uncle Jimmie, Aunt Edna, and my cousin Jimmy. My father’s suicide didn’t seem real. I saw his body; I even tried to resuscitate him, but he’d aimed directly at his brain and had died instantly. That it happened on Christmas Day made it even worse. That the police apprehended Albert hung heavy in my heart, but he hadn’t set foot in my house yet and it was a clear suicide. They couldn’t accuse him of anything other than ringing our doorbell perhaps an instant too late. Who knows what might have happened if he’d come earlier? Thoughts reeled like uncoupled train wagons, jostling and banging against each other. In a few minutes, we’d put my father’s body into the earth forever. I began to cry. Albert put his arm around my shoulder and I felt better.
Neither of us said a word.
The procession came to a halt at the foot of the cemetery. Everyone parked their cars as best they could and got out. Uncle Jimmy assisted my mother, who was dressed in black with a veiled hat, and my grandmother, also dressed in black, leaning on a cane. She’d been crippled ever since a car backed into her, but she pretended like it wasn’t that bad. Just seeing her sent a thrill of joy through me. I wanted to help her in any way I could. Grandma kept breaking down and crying. My mother tried to quiet her and keep her own nerves calm, but Grandma always was emotional and there was no stopping her tears. “He was such a nice boy,” she kept repeating. My mother and uncle stared grimly ahead. My twenty-year-old cousin whom I grew up with glanced at me and Albert. He tried to smile but fought back tears at the same time. Tears ran down my cheeks, but I tried to keep my emotions in check. The thought that we had to bury him kept running through my mind.
The oblong excavated hole in the ground, surrounded by tombstones, some quite ornate and crypt-like, didn’t help. The sun shone like a beacon on the hilly Montecito Cemetery, and the ocean gleamed in front of it. If only it were raining.
It seemed so unfair that my poor father, the one who’d never harmed anyone, caved in to the horror of my mother’s infidelity and took it out on himself. Why? I keep asking myself why. And why was my mother having an affair with my wannabe rapist, who nearly killed me, Andronicus Wyland? That it ended badly didn’t surprise me.
Albert squeezed me to him after we descended from the car and held my hand as we walked to the oblong hole with my father’s casket nearby. My cousin kept glancing at me. I’d tried to explain that Albert and I were in love, but he couldn’t grasp that at age twenty coming from Arlington, Virginia, where miscegenation still ruled. It was still illegal to marry outside of your race in the Sout
h, and Virginia was very much part of the South. My mother and grandmother walked arm in arm, consoling each other as best they could.
I heard Grandma say something to the effect that she and my sister could live with her, but Kendra refused. She had to be with her friends at Santa Barbara High School. I stared at Albert, who was the only person who hadn’t known my father intimately. He looked at me and smiled. “Go over to them,” he said. I looked at him for a long second. Then, I bolted to where the others stood. I hugged Grandma to me. We both began to bawl our heads off, rubbing each other’s backs.
“Straighten up, Inny!” commanded my mother, still composed and insistent on decorum, as usual. I found that ironic, after what she’d done with Andronicus. She’d told me it was to try to make ends meet, as Daddy was having a hard time between jobs. I’d asked her why she didn’t just look for a job herself and received the backside of her hand. Sometimes, I thought she had no conscience at all. I’d studied psychopathology in one of my classes and wondered if she were one of them. I shuddered at the thought of her naked in bed with the fleshy, ghastly Andronicus, who had recently chased me alongside the railroad tracks. I’d told her, but she didn’t believe me. “Inny, quit making things up,” she’d said. Of course, the extent of his malfeasance was not yet known.
A minister intoned words from the Bible over my father’s casket after it was lowered into his final resting place. I saw my aunt and uncle wipe tears from their eyes. Uncle Jimmy, tall, with dark, curly hair and handsome as any movie star, and my father, shorter but almost as good-looking, with his trim, slender build and well-chiseled features, used to eat themselves silly at Grandma’s Sunday dinners, resplendent in Southern cooking – fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and gravy with all the trimmings. Then, they’d go off and chat for a while and end up on sofas at opposite ends of my grandparents’ sumptuous living room. The sofas were inexpensive, but the house was large and welcoming, like my grandmother, whose hand I clung to for dear life right now. I looked over at Albert, standing aloof at the foot of the burial site, kissed Grandma on the cheek, and walked over to him. He took my hand and I smiled into his face.
“You can’t marry a nigger!” said my mother.
Albert straightened up and said, “I am a Negro, Mrs. Johnson.” He squeezed my hand. “With Egyptian blood.”
My mother stared at Albert. “A nigger is a nigger. I don’t care if you’re related to King Tut. You’re not marrying my daughter! I will not have black blood in the family.”
I went over to my mother and said. “I’m sorry that you don’t approve of our union, Mother, but the decision is mine, not yours. I’m an adult, and know what I’m doing. I’ll continue my studies at Berkeley. After I graduate, I’ll get a job and send you money from my paychecks.”
Undaunted, my mother said, “I don’t want his money.”
Albert blinked and said, “Inny said she’d send you her money, not mine.”
“Shut up, you, you…” My mother fell to the ground and started writhing around. We all tried to calm her. She shouted over and over, “My life is ruined! What will your little sister do?”
“We’ll help you, Iris,” said my grandmother as she leaned her shrunken, stout self over to try to embrace my mother, which was nearly impossible, as she stood up and ran. We ran after her. Albert got to her before she reached the cliff of the Montecito Cemetery, which stood some thirty feet above the ocean.
“Don’t!” he said, grabbing her by the arm.
“Don’t touch me, you… you nigger!” She pulled her arm away and tried to hurl herself over the cliff, but my cousin had run after Albert and grabbed her by the other arm.
“Aunt Iris,” he cried, “don’t do that!”
She wrested herself free and ran to the edge of the cliff, the tranquil Pacific Ocean below her. Albert and Uncle Jimmy ran after her with the rest of us holding our collective breath.
Lovely blue waves rolled onto the narrow beach below. A few sandpipers ran about, burrowing their beaks in the sand for food. How nice my mother would look, sprawled on that beach, ran through my churning brain after she had repudiated Albert, calling him a nigger even.
My mother sat down and started to slide over the cliff. Albert grabbed her arm as she slid. She looked down at the narrow beach below, which had some rocks on it. She looked back at Albert. Her face had changed to one of terror.
“Let me help you, Mrs. Johnson,” begged Albert. “You don’t want to die.”
She looked at the sand, rocks, and water below. She stopped struggling and let Albert start to pull her back to the edge of the cliff. Once he had her on solid ground, she said, “Your skin isn’t that black.”
“I’m part Egyptian, Mrs. Johnson.” Albert turned his aquiline profile for her to examine. She moaned and stood up, brushing herself off. “Inny, you’re going to pay for this!”
A scream pierced the air. We turned to see my little sister hurl herself onto my father’s coffin, which had just been lowered into his grave. “Kendra!” shrieked my mother, suicidal impulses milked from her mind in a fleeting instant.
We ran to the gravesite to extricate my sister. She was bleeding from where her head had hit the hard coffin, which was made of chrome that gleamed in the sun. Jimmy pulled her out with the help of his father. She was conscious, but she’d hurt herself. I staggered, feeling faint. I felt Albert’s arm steady me. I looked up into his face, his brow furrowed, tears forming in his eyes. We were both on the brink of tears. It was then that I saw my grandmother sit down hard on the rolling hill of the Santa Barbara Cemetery.
“Grandma!” I ran to her. I sat down next to her to try to console her. Her cane had fallen with her. Our whole family was coming apart at the seams. Since I was the oldest daughter, I felt it was up to me to try to steady the ship, but I was feeling far from steady. I saw tears streaming down her face under the veil of her little black hat, no doubt bought in a bargain basement. All her years of sacrifice for her family, and now she had to witness this. It was so unfair. I held her to me as tight as I could. I could feel her old heart beating next to mine. I thought of the heart attack Grandpa had died of a few years ago. Not Grandma, too! Incongruous thoughts spun through my head. Then, I felt Albert’s sure hands lift us up. Grandma looked into his dark face and began to smile. “Thank you, doll baby,” she said. It was so out of context that we laughed.
Aunt Edna and Uncle Jimmy had staunched Kendra’s head wound with a stocking that Aunt Edna took off. Kendra sniffled, but she stood upright and looked like she’d be okay after some medical attention. But how could she and my mother continue to live in Montecito? There was so much to be determined, way too much.
I looked at my father’s gravesite out of the corner of my eye while trying to also keep an eye on my sister and mother. Overwhelmed by the enormity of my father’s suicide, they’d lost their minds. I hoped they’d be able to regain their senses. My mother would have to find a job, something she hadn’t done since she married Daddy. My head reeled. Albert steadied me. I reached out for my grandmother’s hand, who limped over to my mother and said, “I can give you money, Iris.” Grandma always gave and often got taken. My mother nodded, although I don’t think she really understood that Grandma had just offered to make a tremendous sacrifice for her.
My mother walked over to us, her veiled hat askew and hair mussed up, her dark dress rumpled. “How much?” she asked, ever practical, even after a suicide attempt.
Grandma squinted up at her, the sun beaming brightly on her wizened, wrinkled old face. “As much as I can afford, Honey,” she said.
My mother’s face brightened. “Kendra’s still in school. The house isn’t paid off yet…”
“Don’t worry, Iris, I’ve saved a lot that I intend to leave you and Edna.”
My mother smiled while Aunt Edna perked her ears at the sound of her name. “You’re always giving your money away!” said Aunt Edna. We knew that Aunt Edna hadn’t spoken to Grandma since she found out that she was paying hal
f of Margaret’s rent in a small apartment she’d rented after Grandpa sold the family home and moved her to Lake Worth, Florida to be near his sisters. Grandma had tried to make amends by offering Aunt Edna money, but Aunt Edna was a proud woman. She tore Grandma’s checks in half and mailed them back to her. When Grandma came to visit her relatives in Arlington, she no longer stayed with Aunt Edna, but rather Margaret, the country woman whom she’d rented a room to for over twenty years. Grandma rented her daughters’ rooms after they left, mostly for the companionship. My grandfather already spent most of his time on a dairy farm he’d bought with mistresses although we were told he was helping the Robey’s run the farm. Somehow the truth seeped out, as truth tends to do, and Grandma took in boarders out of loneliness.
The caretakers had finished covering my father’s grave, but no one paid attention, though I glimpsed them put the final shovelful of dirt and sod over it. I tried to disengage myself from my grandmother’s arm to place the flowers Albert and I had brought, but she held on to me for dear life.
The Methodist minister stood over it, holding the Bible, his jaw agape. He’d never seen a funeral like this before. And my father wasn’t really Methodist. His father was a Mormon, so Daddy had no religion, although he’d gone to church with the rest of us.
“May Craig Grant Johnson rest in peace,” the minister said.
We turned and chorused, “Rest in peace.” I looked down at Grandma, who held onto her bargain basement purse with both hands, like a little bird gripping a branch for dear life, and then up at Albert, who squeezed my arm and smiled.
“It’s going to be all right,” he said. I nodded my head, hoping he was right.
The minister picked up his raiment and turned to leave. We continued to tend to our family members, now riven by shock and sadness. My grandmother walked over to my mother, who started mutely at the gravesite, freshly covered with sod, and said, “Iris, you know I can help you and Kendra.” My mother turned her head and looked out at the ocean. She was in another world. I couldn’t imagine her without my father. My sister held her head and wept next to my aunt and uncle. My cousin tried to jostle her arm to make her feel better, but she pulled away from him.
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