Janet Moodie--Next of Kin

by L. F. Robertson

  14

  Beanhollow had its own park, a square block of patchy green lawn, picnic tables, and barbecue grills shaded by sycamore trees, with a play structure of swings and slides in its center. We decided to wait there until our date with Devin Schneider. The air, a little hazy with the dust of ploughed fields and exhaust fumes, was beginning to cool, and a barely perceptible breeze ruffled the leaves overhead. A few kids who seemed to me a bit old for the playground were shouting and roughhousing on the slides and ladders.

  “This would be a perfect time for a cigarette,” Natasha remarked, leaning back on the bench and resting her back on the table.

  “You smoke?”

  “Not anymore. Habit I picked up in high school, but Mari and my dad talked me into stopping.”

  I decided to dive into the deep end of social interaction. “What do you do when you’re not working?” I asked.

  “Tool around,” Natasha said. “Go to events, concerts. Hike in the mountains. Mari’s a freelance writer in her spare time, and she’s always going out to see things she might write about. She’s good; she’s had pieces published in local magazines and the LA Times. She keeps hoping someday she can afford to write full time. It could happen.”

  “What does she do now?”

  “Works for a bank. It gives us a steady income and health insurance, and she likes the fact that she can walk away from it at four thirty every day and go home and write.” Natasha made a face. “Not like me.”

  “No, this isn’t that kind of job,” I said.

  “How about you?” she asked. “What do you do in your spare time?”

  “I’m an old lady,” I said. “I have a dog and a couple of cats, and a garden and an orchard. They keep me busy.”

  “Cool,” she said, more out of good manners, I thought, than belief. “We’re hoping we can get a place someday where we can have a dog. You know, Carey has horses and a ranch near Ojai.”

  “That’s a lot of work,” I said. “She has a lot more energy than I do.”

  She nodded. “Definitely not for me. I’m too much of a city girl.”

  * * *

  The Daily Bread occupied the community hall of an old gray stone church on a corner of Gridley Avenue, the main drag of Beanhollow. The church appeared to be an active one, if barely, judging by the fact that the old letterboard next to the worn main doors advertised a Sunday service at ten. I looked for a sign saying what denomination of Christianity the church purported to serve, but didn’t see one. On the other side of the façade a sign said something in a script I didn’t recognize; I wondered if it was Hmong.

  The soup kitchen was winding down its operations for the day. Through the open door I could see some people in white shirts and hairnets lifting steam table pans from a long counter and carrying them away, and others wiping tables and putting away folding chairs. The warm air was still heavy with smells of meat and gravy.

  I didn’t have much idea what Devin looked like, aside from the fact that Jeff had called him “Red,” so I scanned the small group of downtrodden men standing around on the sidewalk, hoping to see someone with reddish hair who seemed to be keeping an eye out for us. One of the men, leaning on a cane, caught sight of us and limped over.

  “Hi,” I said, holding out a hand. “Are you Devin?”

  He rubbed his right hand on the thigh of a pair of sagging Levis before reaching up to shake mine. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. There was no sarcasm in it; he was like a boy talking to his mother or a teacher. He was fairly tall, and though already round-shouldered, he leaned down a bit to talk to me. His hair, starting to thin, was still a reddish blond, bleached on top by the sun. In a face freckled and aged by too many days spent outside, his eyes, a little unfocused, were as blue as turquoises.

  “I’m Janet Moodie, and this is Natasha Levin. Is there someplace nearby where we can sit and talk?” I asked.

  His brows knitted, as if mentally reconnoitering the neighborhood. “Things close up here early, ’cept for the bars. It’s not a great place to be at night,” he said. “There’s a little Mexican place ’bout a block that way, may be open.” He indicated the direction with a turn of his head.

  “Let’s try it, if you don’t mind.”

  “No problem.”

  Time and progress had left Gridley Avenue stranded in Harrison’s past. The street was about as depressing as any I’ve seen. Dusty air, smelling like fried food and diesel fuel, carried the heat of the day up from the cracked sidewalks. The store windows, when they weren’t boarded up or empty except for the hopeless pleas of faded “For Lease” signs, contained a scattering of whatever the store was selling, coated with years of dust, their packaging bleached from the sun. We passed a pawn shop, an appliance repair store, a joyeria, closed, with its windows and door barred, a barber shop, also closed for the day, and a bar, from whose dark interior came cool air, smelling like whiskey and beer, and the light and sound of a television playing a sports channel. In front of some of the stores were planters that now contained only dried-out dirt and litter. The Mexican restaurant was open; the planter outside its door contained a dozen dusty plastic geraniums.

  Inside, the place seemed to be recently repurposed from a former life as a coffee shop. On the left was a Formica-topped counter with red leatherette stools; on the right a row of smallish booths with tables topped in the same worn Formica and padded benches of the same leatherette as the stools. The walls and the high ceiling were painted a plain cream color that I imagined must be sold by paint stores under some name like “Old Diner.” The place was air conditioned, though, and a couple of ceiling fans moved the cool air slowly around us. The walls were bare of decoration; aside from the menu posted on the wall behind the counter and the strong smell of tortilla chips, there was little to tell what kind of food the place sold. A pair of Mexican men dressed in work clothes were eating at a booth in the back. The aproned man behind the counter motioned vaguely toward the booths and said, “Sit where you want.”

  We drifted, by some unspoken consensus, to one of the booths and sat, Devin on one side, Natasha and me on the other. Devin worked his way into his seat with some effort, using his arms to brace himself and pulling his right leg in with his hand. The man behind the counter came out and brought us menus.

  “Would you like anything?” I asked Devin.

  “Oh, no thank you. I just ate.”

  Natasha ordered an iced tea, and I asked for a diet Coke. After the server left, we sat for a half-minute in awkward silence. The man brought our drinks; and after he left, Devin asked, “You wanted to talk to me about Todd?”

  Natasha nodded, and I said, “We’re working on the case of the woman who was accused of hiring Todd to kill her husband—trying to get her a new trial.”

  It seemed to take him a few seconds to remember the case we were talking about. “Huh—that was a long time ago.”

  “I know,” Natasha said. “But we’re wondering what you might remember about what was happening with Todd around the time the man was killed.”

  Devin lowered his eyes, brows knitted, as if Natasha’s statement presented him with a lot to process. “I don’t know how well I remember all that stuff anymore. I don’t know if Flaco—Jeff Brackett—told you, but I got knocked on my ass by an IED in Iraq. They said I was thrown thirty feet. Lost my right leg below the knee and had some brain damage. My memory isn’t so good. My mind wanders sometimes.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Natasha said, and I nodded in sympathy.

  “Jeff did say you were injured over there,” I added.

  He sighed. “Yeah. Well, it is what it is. I have good friends. Flaco and Julie—his wife—have been like family to me. Take me to the doctor, got me my benefits. But— sorry—you wanted to know about Todd.”

  “That’s okay,” I said.

  “Todd and me, we knew each other most of our lives. We’re Beanholler boys, both of us. Went to grade school, high school together, graduated the same year. We were like brothers. You don
’t know how much I still miss him.” He closed his eyes tightly and bent his head and massaged his forehead with a rough hand. When he looked at us again, there were tears in his eyes. “After we got out of school and both got jobs, we got an apartment together. We was both having some trouble at home. Well, actually, I was. Todd just felt he wanted to go out on his own after his stepdad died. Todd died in our apartment. I found his body—don’t know if Flaco told you that.”

  “No, he didn’t,” Natasha said.

  “I kept telling him he had to stop using; it was just a high road to hell. But it was like talking to a wall. It felt like there was something bothering him, and he was trying to find a way to forget it.”

  “Did he tell you what it was that was troubling him?” Natasha asked.

  Devin shook his head. “He wouldn’t talk about it. If I pushed on him, he’d get mad and leave.”

  “Was it Brittany? Did they break up?”

  “I don’t think so. He was really serious about her, and she kept calling him. I’d hear his side of some of the conversations, and he didn’t seem mad at her or anything.”

  “What kinds of things would he say?”

  “Oh, man, I don’t remember. Probably nothing much, just ‘how are you,’ ‘I love you, too,’ ‘I’m fine, just tired,’ stuff like that. After a while, she didn’t call so much. Maybe just gave up, I don’t know.”

  “Huh. When did that all happen in relation to Greg Ferrante’s murder?”

  “That was the guy that was killed? Brittany’s stepdad, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It was all after that—at least I think so. Man, it’s been a long time, and everything is kind of jumbled together.”

  “You told an investigator Todd was having nightmares.”

  “Oh yeah. He’d start yelling in the middle of the night, and I’d have to go wake him up and tell him everything was okay and to go back to sleep. I’d ask him when he was awake what was bugging him, but he wouldn’t say.”

  “Did he ever say anything about having done something bad?”

  Devin paused for a bit, as though collecting his thoughts. “Maybe—yeah—maybe it was during one of his nightmares. I do remember something about that, but it’s all real vague.”

  “Do you remember a guy named Braden?”

  He thought. “Braden. Not sure. Was he the guy from the ranch? Some relative of Brittany’s or something?”

  “That sounds like him.”

  “He—if it’s the guy I remember—he used to come over sometimes. There were a few times he stayed the night, slept on the living-room couch. Bought us breakfast, if it was the weekend.”

  “What did he do during the week?”

  “I don’t know. I think he was supposed to be working at the ranch with Todd, or something. The owners were relatives of his. When he was with us, he mostly got high and talked about the big plans he had. He had a lot of money and said he could get all kinds of drugs, weed, meth, heroin. I thought the guy was full of b.s., but Todd thought he was great. Todd was always kind of like a puppy, needing someone to follow around.

  “You know,” Devin said, as if a thought had suddenly come to him, “the police came searching for Todd’s rifle, but it had disappeared. I wondered if that Braden guy took it. But I don’t think so. Todd would have missed it.”

  “Todd had a rifle at your place?” I asked.

  “Yeah. His .22. We used to go target shooting at the quarry, or sometimes go out in the country and shoot squirrels and rabbits.”

  “Was he a good shot?”

  “Man, the best. After 9/11 we were talking about joining up, going into the Marines or the Army together. I figured he could’ve ended up being a sniper or something.”

  “He was that good, then,” I said.

  Devin nodded. “That good. Sorry—I was talking about when the police came, right? They came by some time after Todd passed away—I don’t recall how long. I’d moved out of the apartment; couldn’t stand to live there anymore. Joined the Army. I was in basic training at Fort Leonard Wood when they came to see me. Detective came and asked me questions, wanted to know whether Todd had a .22 and whether it was still around. I told them he’d had his .22 at the apartment, but it was gone. Before I moved out I packed up his things for his sister to take, and the rifle wasn’t there. I didn’t think much of it at the time; there was too much else going on, you know. But yeah, I told them about the rifle and said I didn’t see it when we moved his stuff, don’t know what happened to it.”

  “Did it ever turn up?”

  “Not that I know of. I wasn’t around much for a long time.” He frowned, and those turquoise eyes darkened a shade. “You think Todd shot that man?”

  “We don’t know,” I answered. “But if he did, we don’t think Mrs. Ferrante asked him to.”

  The answer seemed, surprisingly, to relieve him. “Jeez,” he said, with a shake of his head. “The cops sure seemed to think he did it. But I couldn’t imagine it. He was just so normal—kind of happy-go-lucky, go-with-the-flow. He didn’t have a dark side, not like some people. I’ve known men who might be capable of killing someone in cold blood, but Todd—no way.”

  “Did Braden keep coming around after Greg Ferrante was killed?” I asked.

  “Not as much. He sometimes crashed on the couch, still, but I guess Todd pretty much drove him away, with his moods. He probably lost interest in us. He was just a rich kid, playing a game, ‘Oh, look at me, hanging out with the rough kids from Beanhollow.’”

  “Did Todd ever mention getting a check from Mrs. Ferrante?”

  “Oh,” Devin said. “That check. No, he didn’t mention it. Police asked me about it. I remember that detective was hostile. He was sure I knew more than I was telling him. He even threatened to arrest me as an accessory or something. I was scared he’d do something that would make the Army kick me out.”

  “Did you know Todd’s uncle, Steve Eason?”

  “Ol’ Uncle Steve? Yeah, kind of. He was Todd’s mother’s younger brother—lot younger than her, but older than Todd and the rest of us. He used to try and hang out with us, when he wasn’t in jail—mostly to sell weed, I guess.” He smiled a little. “I remember we used to call him Uncle Steve, just to piss him off. Haven’t seen him in years; I don’t know what happened to him.”

  “Was Todd close to him?”

  “Not really, that I could see. I mean he was family and all, but I don’t think Todd liked him particularly.”

  “Did you ever hear that he said Todd confessed the murder to him?”

  Devin nodded. “Detective told me.”

  “What did you think about it?”

  “Made me sad. Like I said, that just wasn’t the Todd I knew. I’d never thought he’d do something like that.”

  “Do you think he did?”

  Devin gave a long sigh. “I don’t know what to think. I wasn’t there. Todd never said anything to me, and I was his best friend.” He shrugged, and shook his head. “I just don’t know, probably never will at this point. It’s painful. I don’t want to remember my best friend that way.” He stopped talking for a moment and squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It still hurts, after all these years.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” I answered. “We should let you get home; it’s getting kind of late. Thank you for being willing to talk to us.”

  Natasha said, “Can we get you something to eat later? Maybe some takeout?”

  “Nah, I’m okay.”

  “We’ll give you a lift home,” I said.

  “Thanks, I’d appreciate that.”

  In the car, Natasha took the back seat, and Devin sat in front with me. He smelled like stale sweat and oily hair. He was silent, except to point out turns on the way. When we pulled up at the line of mailboxes that marked the little compound of houses and trailers where he lived, he thanked us for the ride and climbed laboriously out, maneuvering his prosthetic leg. As we pulled away, I saw him open the doo
r of one of the mailboxes and close it again, then start down the path to the back.

  * * *

  I was sticky, tired, and hungry when we finally crossed the tracks back into Harrison.

  “What have we accomplished?” I said, more or less thinking aloud. “Despite all his friends and family saying he wouldn’t have done it, we seem to have turned up more evidence that Todd was the shooter, no?”

  “Yeah. The missing rifle; the change in Todd’s mood after the murder,” Natasha agreed. “And there’s no question about that check for five thousand dollars—never was, though. But on the plus side, there’s still nothing more solid than that to link Sunny to the killing.”

  “Well, Eason,” I said. “He’s still our biggest problem. I’m not sure whether we want declarations from the people we saw today. Let’s call Carey in the morning and ask her.”

  Natasha nodded agreement. “If you want to go back home tomorrow, I can take care of getting declarations if Carey wants them, and trying to catch up with the other people on her list. Also that friend of Brittany’s. She wasn’t home last night, either. I’ll be fine in Beanhollow. I’m not sure what Carey was so worried about.”

  “I guess we may as well make one more stop, since we’re near,” I said. “Aaron Oliveira.”

  “Oh, right,” Natasha said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.” She opened her backpack and pulled something from its depths. “Would you like half of this?”

  “Sure; thanks.”

  It was some sort of energy bar, a compressed rectangle of nuts and dried fruit, the kind of thing I almost never bought for myself because the number of calories in one bar was more than I should eat in an entire meal. I ate my half as slowly as I could, but it took a lot of effort not to devour it in a couple of bites.

  It was enough to take the edge off my appetite, and less distracted by woozy thoughts of bread and ice cream I threaded the back streets of Harrison, following the directions on the car’s GPS, until we pulled up at the Oliveiras’ rambling house, set back behind a tidy lawn on a street shaded with tall sycamore trees. There was a compact car in the driveway, with one of those metal magnets in the shape of a fish on its rear bumper. This one, to belabor the point of its religious message, had a cross in the middle, a little like the armature of a kite. I sighed.