The Color of Light

by Wendy Hornsby

  “I can’t imagine anyone having anything crude to say about that lovely woman.”

  “At the time, I really didn’t know what it meant. But Beto understood well enough to take a swing at Larry. God, Gracie, you should have seen it. Beto connected with a roundhouse punch right to the kisser. Then he ran like hell. Our Beto was little but, God, he was fast. Larry was mortified, so he challenged Beto to a real fight, Beto’s gang against Larry’s gang.”

  “Beto had a gang?” The notion seemed to amuse her.

  “Sure. All of the fifth graders on our street.”

  “As I recall, Beto was the only boy your age on your street.”

  “Yep. It was a dozen girls and Beto against Larry and five or six middle-school bullies. In the end, it didn’t amount to much. I took down Larry with a few cruel words and it was over.”

  “Sticks and stones,” she said. “It began and ended with hurtful words.”

  “All day I’ve been bothered by what Larry said that started it all.”

  She put her hand on my knee and smiled sweetly. “So my darling Maggie has come over to ask her old Auntie Gracie a bouquet of questions about Larry Nordquist?”

  “Not about Larry, but yes, lots of questions.” I stuffed the end of the rugelach into my mouth, chewed fast and washed it down with lemonade.

  “Gracie, I really know nothing about Mrs. B except that she was very sweet to all of us, very tolerant of the noise and chaos when we were around. But who was she?”

  “How do you mean, dear?”

  “For one thing, how did she end up with Big Bart Bartolini?” I said. “When we were kids, Mr. and Mrs. B were just Beto’s parents. But when I think about it now, they were an odd couple. She was beautiful, refined, gracious, young. And Bart? None of the above. How did they ever get together?”

  “Your mother is probably the best source for that information. She and Tina were quite close, you know,” she said. “They worked together with Father John at your church, helping out Vietnamese refugees after the war over there ended.”

  “I’ll talk to Mom later. But I wondered what you might know.”

  “Not very much, except that Tina and Bart met in Vietnam. He was a cook in the navy and her father was a food broker of some kind, and that’s how they connected. For all of the differences between them, I can say that there was abundant love in the Bartolini household.”

  “Ah yes, love.”

  “You doubt it?”

  “No,” I said. “I saw it for myself. But when you said that, you reminded me what I said that made Larry cry.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told Larry that if he hurt Beto, no one would love Beto any less. But everyone would hate Larry more than they already did. I asked him if that’s what he wanted.”

  “Oh, sweetie.”

  “I was ten, Gracie.”

  “Dear girl.” She cupped my chin in her cool hand and turned my face toward her. “That poor boy went into a battle of the wits unarmed, didn’t he?”

  “I just didn’t want to get socked by some pimply-faced boy, okay?”

  “Okay.” She began to rise. “Will you help me put away nature’s bounty?”

  She led the way, carrying the plate of pastries. I followed with the lemonade pitcher and the garden bag. In her kitchen as we rinsed the vegetables, conversation remained superficial while I tried to form the big question I had come to ask in a way that she might deign to answer.

  “When is your cousin Susan arriving?” Gracie asked as I spun lettuce dry. “What’s her last name now?”

  “Haider,” I said. “She’ll be here sometime Sunday afternoon.”

  “I remember her from visits years ago. Nice girl. Pretty girl. Is she coming to help you with the house?”

  “In a way. I asked her to look at some things from Mom’s family while she’s here, in case there are pieces she wants. She’s been down in Livermore all week, taking a sommelier course at the Wente Vineyards.”

  “Studying wine?” Gracie frowned, skeptical. “I thought Susan had a very responsible job in Minneapolis.”

  “She does, something in marketing. But wine is a passion for both her and her husband. Bob took their daughter, Maddie, off trekking in the Rockies for a couple of weeks, so Susan flew out here for what she calls wine camp. She’ll be with me on Sunday and then her book club friends will join her Monday for a wine-tasting tour.”

  “That does sound like fun. Maybe I’ll tag along.”

  “I’ll let her know you’re interested.”

  “You’ll have a houseful, Maggie. I understand your Jean-Paul is visiting this weekend, too.”

  What didn’t she know about my life?

  “We don’t have any plans beyond Friday evening,” I said. “He’s coming up for an official event.”

  “The grand opening reception of the Matisse exhibit at the de Young Museum, isn’t it?” she said. “Sounds very highbrow,” she said, feigning haughty airs. “Sponsored by a French chocolatier.”

  I knew her source of information only too well. “How’s Mom?”

  “Fine, thanks. I just spoke with her this morning. She wants to talk to you about shipping her piano down.”

  “I thought we had that all arranged,” I said. “She doesn’t have room for it in her new apartment, so she’s having it sent to my house.”

  Gracie wagged a finger. “I won’t say another word. Might spoil her fun.”

  My mom had adjusted well to her new home, very well. But she sometimes felt lonely in the evenings. I called her every night at about the time she would be sitting down for dinner so that she would have company of a sort while she ate. Otherwise, she might just skip eating altogether. Seeing the gleam in Gracie’s eyes I thought that Mom might just get an early call tonight.

  The vegetables were put away in the crisper, herbs in small vases on the windowsill, tomatoes cushioned in a basket on the counter. Gracie dried her hands, leaned against the counter, and said, “Now, dear girl, what is the question you actually came over to ask me?”

  I laughed: God bless Gracie. I pulled out a kitchen chair and sat.

  “Gracie, on the morning that Mrs. Bartolini died, my dad was out following me around with his camera.”

  She nodded, matter-of-fact. “Isabelle’s mother called to warn him to be on the lookout; Isabelle had flown across the pond again.”

  “Why did he film her?”

  “He had a restraining order, you know. But she consistently violated it. He worried about what she might do; I think you were the only girl at your school with her very own stalker. Your Uncle Max told Al he should keep a record of every infraction in case she ever tried to claim custody. What he really wanted to do was get her barred from entering the country.”

  “There might be something on that film that would have been useful to the investigators, but I don’t think Dad ever showed it to them.”

  “No, he didn’t.” She pulled out a chair beside mine and sat. “Maggie, dear, when Tina was murdered, we were all sent into a tailspin. Your dad forgot he’d even shot the film for I don’t know how long. By the time he sent it to the developer and got it back again, the police had someone in custody. Al just put the film away. Why wouldn’t he?”

  “Someone was in custody? I never heard that. Who was it?”

  “A young man. What was his name?” She scratched her head. “I’ll think of it. Anyway, the man broke into an apartment in the south campus area, raped a woman student—brutal, what he did to her—and was caught when he came back to the building a second time. He looked like a good candidate for the murder.”

  “But?”

  “The police couldn’t tie him in any way to Tina’s death so they had to drop that charge,” she said.

  “You know that my Ben worked with the police from time to time,” she said. “Over cards one night at your house—it was some months later—he was telling your mom and dad and me about how frustrated the police were. They couldn’t find any evidence that w
ould tie the man in custody, or anyone else, to the murder. Somewhere during that discussion your dad remembered the film. He wondered if there might be something there.”

  “Why didn’t he take it to the police?”

  “You know the answer,” she said sweetly.

  “Because he didn’t want the police to haul in Isabelle to ask what she might have seen.”

  “Exactly. But we took a very careful look at the film and we didn’t see anything that we thought might be important to the police,” she said. “We certainly didn’t see that particular young man. We talked it over and decided Al should just hang on to the film for the time being.”

  “If something were there, would Dad have turned the film over?”

  “Of course, dear. But as there wasn’t...” She held up her palms and smiled; no harm, no foul.

  The edges of that decision were a bit squishy, I thought. But I understood why they made it. At the time, my parents and the Nussbaums saw nothing untoward in the film of their neighborhood on an ordinary morning. But an outsider might. The passage of time makes all of us outsiders to the past. I thought that if Gracie saw the film again something might pop out that she had missed before.

  I took my laptop case from the counter where I parked it when we came inside, pulled out the computer and held it up to Gracie.

  “Want to go to the movies with me, Gracie?”

  “What do you have, dear?”

  “The film.”

  “Good lord, did you get the old projector working?”

  “I couldn’t find enough pieces of it,” I said as I booted the film. “So I had the film digitized. Tell me what you see.”

  Gracie leaned toward the monitor, bobbing her head until she found the right lens of her trifocals to look through, and I hit Play.

  “I don’t recognize all you girls, but there’s Tosh working on the Scotts’ yard. And George Loper backing out of his driveway. The dry cleaner’s van, hmm...” Her brow was furrowed when she looked up at me; I hit Pause. “I don’t remember noticing before. What day of the week did Tosh do yards on your street?”

  “Alternate Mondays,” I said.

  She nodded. “We had him the opposite Mondays. The dry cleaner only made home deliveries to our neighborhood on Thursdays.”

  “Interesting,” I said. “Did they ever make special deliveries?”

  “Never. If you needed something special you had to go over to their place yourself.”

  “Do you remember the deliveryman?”

  She shook her head. “They came, they went. No one ever stayed long enough to know his route well. I think the pay was a pittance. Maybe it was a new driver and he was lost,” she offered.

  “But wouldn’t he have been lost on Thursday instead of Monday?” I asked.

  “You would think so, wouldn’t you?” Suddenly her face brightened and she said, “Ennis Jones.”

  “He was the driver?”

  “No, dear. That’s the name of the man who was arrested, the rapist. Ennis Jones.”

  Chapter 3

  Walking away from Gracie’s, I dialed Kevin’s mobile phone.

  “Detective Halloran,” he answered, though I knew my name came up on his caller I.D.

  “You’re busy,” I said.

  “Go ahead,” was his cryptic response.

  “Gracie Nussbaum picked out something interesting on the film I showed you,” I said. “I thought you should know.”

  “What was it?” Someone in the room with him, a woman, wanted to know who he was talking to. He shushed her.

  “It was the wrong day for the dry cleaner’s van to be on our street.”

  “That’s a tough one,” he said. “But I’ll check it out. Anything else?”

  “Yes, but it can keep. Sounds like you’re in a meeting.”

  “This is as good a time as any.” The woman volubly disagreed. “Go ahead.”

  “Do you remember Toshio Sato?”

  “The gardener?”

  “Yes,” I said. “He told me that he’s caught Larry Nordquist hanging out in Mom’s backyard a couple of times.”

  “Larry? At your mom’s house?” Again he shushed the woman when she demanded to know whose mom. “What was he doing there?”

  “Hanging out, apparently,” I said. “Mr. Sato called the police last week. But Larry showed up again today.”

  “Were you there?”

  “I was.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Nothing, really. Mr. Sato shooed him away,” I said. “You told me Larry was out on parole. What did the police do with the call?”

  “I’ll check it out and get back to you.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Sorry to interrupt.”

  It was a beautiful day, and it was nice to be outdoors. Instead of going straight home, I walked across the western end of campus and went into town. I had missed breakfast and lunch, unless you count one rugelach. I was hungry, there was nothing at home except garden vegetables to eat, and I wanted to see Beto. Not to tell him about the film—I wasn’t ready for that yet—but just to spend a few minutes with my old friend.

  Bartolini’s Deli and Italian Market on Shattuck Avenue was busy, as always. Located half a block from the BART station, about equidistant between the Civic Center and the massive Cal campus, even at two o’clock in the afternoon there were seven people ahead of me when I pulled a number tab from the machine on top of the refrigerated deli cases.

  Beto was hard at work behind the counter, serving customers and supervising three young clerks, sending orders to the kitchen, overseeing plates coming out of the kitchen, slicing and wrapping meats and cheeses as ordered, dishing up take-out containers of salads and casseroles and precooked entrees. He was so busy that I gave up on any notion of having any sort of chat with him. But I was still hungry.

  When he noticed me he flashed me his big smile and called out, “Hey, Maggie.”

  “Hi, Beto.” I gave him a little wave, took a bottle of cold water out of a drinks cooler, and found a table near some freestanding metal racks filled with imported pastas and delicacies and waited for my number to come up on the board.

  While I was waiting, Kevin called. Without preliminaries, he said, “Patrol officers responded to Mr. Sato’s call. Larry was picked up and brought in. He was released to his probation officer, but it was Father John who picked him up.”

  “Father John?” I said. “Our Father John? I thought he had gone off to Outer Upper Gadzookistan or somewhere.”

  “He’s back in the parish,” Kevin said, followed by “I have to go.”

  I thanked him, wondering about his abrupt tone. Something was up with him.

  “Yo, is that my favorite TV lady?” Old Bart Bartolini, Beto’s dad, came out from the kitchen when he spotted me. He kissed me on both cheeks. “Beto said you was in town.” He lowered his chin. “Sorry to hear about your mother, honey. Betsy was one nice lady.”

  “Mom is fine,” I said. “She moved down closer to me so you won’t be seeing as much of her, but she’s just fine.”

  He furrowed his brow, seemed confused; we’d had exactly the same conversation two days earlier.

  “I thought you retired,” I said, shifting the topic. “So why are you wearing that big apron?”

  “Just helping out the boy,” he said, sitting down heavily in the chair beside mine, grimacing as if his feet hurt. “You know, only till Beto gets the hang of running the place.”

  “Seems to me he’s doing just fine.” No need to remind him that Beto had worked in the store for most of his life.

  Mr. Bartolini beamed as he looked over at his son. He could behave like an old curmudgeon with his employees and with overly demanding customers, but where Beto was concerned, there was nothing but sweetness and light.

  “What a kid, uh?” He pulled a towel off his apron string, picked up my sweating water bottle and wiped the table under it. “Always a good worker, that one. I just wish his mom...”

  His eyes filled, just a
s they had two days earlier, when he’d said exactly the same thing.

  Mr. Bartolini was somewhere in his eighties. When he moved to Berkeley about forty years ago and opened his deli, he was a retired navy cook with a much-younger Vietnamese bride and a baby boy. If Beto was the apple of his eye, his wife, Tina, was the entire apple orchard. I could only imagine the pain her death inflicted on him. On both of them.

  When I lost my husband, Mike, to cancer a little over a year ago, it felt as if the San Andreas fault had opened up and swallowed me whole. I would have given anything for a little more time with him. But Mike decided for himself when he’d had enough, and left this world on his own terms at a time of his own choosing. As much as I missed him, I accepted his decision. But someone else, a stranger maybe, had made that decision for Tina Bartolini. And that was not fair.

  Mr. B took a deep breath and looked up at me from under his thicket of eyebrows.

  “Everyone’s sure gonna miss your mom,” he said, patting my hand. “She was one of the finest ladies I ever knew. You know, when she first met my Tina, I thought there might be some, ya know, resentment, her being Vietnamese and your big brother dying over there.”

  “My parents would never associate Mrs. B with what happened to my brother.”

  “Yeah? Well some people did. Gave her a hard time.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.

  “But not your mother. She helped Tina get registered in some English classes over at the JC. Then when the war over there went all to hell and refugees poured into this area, your mom hooked her up to the refugee assistance programs. You know, to help people coming in from Vietnam to get what they needed.” He began to choke up again. “That was real important to my wife. Being able to help out like that.”

  During the entire conversation, Beto kept an eye on his father. When Mr. Bartolini reached a certain emotional state, Beto handed off the customer he was serving to one of his staff and joined us. He wrapped an arm around his father’s shoulders and leaned down close.

  “How you doing, Papa?”

  “Good. Good.” Mr. Bartolini wiped his eyes with the backs of his big hands and gave his son a game smile. “I was telling Maggie how sorry we were to hear she lost her mother.”