Strawberry Sunday Page 10

  Thorndike motioned for me to sit on the overstuffed chair, then took the typing stool for himself. His look was open and earnest or a good imitation of such traits.

  “If you were told I know something about Rita’s death, I’m afraid they misspoke,” he began. “It was a tragic event, of course; I still haven’t absorbed it. And so brutal. I keep thinking of the assault on the Pietà some years back, so senseless and so incongruous. But I know nothing about Rita except what I read in the papers or hear at the bar.”

  “What do they say at the bar?”

  “They think it was about sex.”

  “Committed by whom?”

  “Anyone from Randy Gelbride to Carlos Reyna to a gang rape by field workers.” He shook his head. “I’m sure when I’m not present, I make the list of suspects as well.”

  “Do you give the stories any credence?”

  “None whatsoever.”

  “Would you say Rita was sexually promiscuous?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You’re certain?”

  His jaw firmed. “Absolutely.”

  “It sounds like you knew her quite well.”

  His eyes found the window, then glazed with reminiscence. “She was my student when she was in high school. Sophomore English and Creative Writing senior year.”

  “What kind of student was she?”

  He looked back at me. “She was the best writer I ever had. Also the best person.”

  “So you held her in high esteem.”

  “The highest.”

  “Did it go beyond that?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “In the years since her high school days, did you and Rita become romantically involved?”

  “Of course not. For one thing, she was crip—” He reddened and snipped off the word, as though he was about to utter blasphemy.

  “You were saying she was crippled,” I reminded when he didn’t go on.

  “Yes.” He drummed his fingers on the desk, as fast as a Gatling gun. “It’s shameful, isn’t it, that I would let a superficial blemish override all her other qualities, but I …” He shrugged to let me complete the rationalization for him.

  “Maybe it was an easy out,” I said.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Lots of teachers have gotten into lots of trouble sleeping with their students. Maybe her physical abnormalities gave your subconscious a way to keep that from happening.”

  I’d offered him a life raft and he took it. “I like to think I would have drawn that line anyway, but yes. That made it easier.”

  “When did you see her last, Mr. Thorndike?”

  He thought it over. “Two days before she died, I think. She came by to show me her new look. She was ecstatic, needless to say. We had a glass of wine to celebrate.”

  “Did she say anything at all to indicate a problem in her life?”

  “Quite the contrary, as a mater of fact. She was eager to be back in Haciendas and working even harder for changes in the fields.”

  “What kind of changes was she talking about?”

  “I don’t know. We didn’t talk business very much, we mostly talked literature.”

  “Like what?”

  “My specialty is modern fiction, with an emphasis on the novelists of central California—Steinbeck, Saroyan, writers like that. Rita had reread East of Eden in the hospital and we talked about it quite a while.”

  “What kind of writing did Rita do herself?”

  “Short fiction, mostly. Contemporary themes.”

  “Such as?”

  “Women’s issues; social issues; cultural disparities.”

  “Did she write about the farm workers ever?”

  “Sometimes. And sometimes about the Anglos who see the Chicano workers exploited but allow the system to continue delivering its cruelties anyway.”

  I smiled at the similarity to my own musings only minutes earlier. “How long have you lived in Haciendas, Mr. Thorndike?”

  “Ten years.”

  “It must seem foreign to you. Why do you stay?”

  “It is foreign, as you say, but that’s why I find it fascinating. A feudal empire, complete with vast land holdings and immense wealth overlaying the attendant oppressions and deprivations and class distinctions, all of it operating out in the open, within the context of a twentieth-century democracy. The logical absurdities and moral inconsistencies are rampant—I hope to write a novel that captures it all one day. It would be a postmodern Mayor of Casterbridge, if I can bring it off.”

  I wished him well and he thanked me. “It would help if you told me exactly what Rita said the last time you saw her,” I said.

  He frowned with thought. “She said something like, ‘Now I have the power to make a difference. Now they must pay attention when I talk.’”

  “What kind of power was she talking about?”

  “I assumed she was talking about her legs. If it was something else, I don’t know what it could be.”

  “Did Rita write anything recently?” I asked.

  He nodded. “She gave me something she’d written after she got back from the hospital, a short story. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet—no, that’s not true. I haven’t been able to bear looking at it yet, the memories it evokes are so painful.”

  “Do you mind if I borrow it for a while?”

  He hesitated. “I don’t know if that would be appropriate.”

  “Rita’s dead, Mr. Thorndike. I’m trying to find out who killed her. You’ll feel better if you do everything you can think of to help me.”

  “I guess it doesn’t matter, anyway,” he murmured, then went to the file cabinet and rummaged through it. When he returned to the desk, he was holding a small sheaf of papers in a manila folder.

  He handed them over. “Please give it back when you’re finished. If it’s as good as her other work, I’m going to submit it to some journals. Granta, maybe. Or Grand Street.”

  I promised I’d bring the story back within a few days. Thorndike looked at his watch for the fourth time. “I really do have to go.”

  “One last thing,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “Did you ever hear Rita Lombardi discussed by any member of the Gelbride family?”

  He looked at me and reddened. “What makes you think I’m in a position to know something like that?”

  “Just a piece of gossip I heard.”

  “Well, I’m not. And even if I was, I haven’t.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you keep your ear peeled.”

  “I …”

  “You might even make inquiries. See what kind of reaction you get from the Gelbrides when you mention Rita.”

  “That is beyond your province, Mr. Tanner. I’ll do nothing of the sort.”

  In the echo of his injured innocence, he walked to the door and waited for me to use it.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I went back to my car. It had been a thousand degrees inside the Buick at midday, but now it was borderline freezing, courtesy of the surge of fog that had invaded from the west, spilling over the mountaintops like fluffy gray bunting installed to insulate Haciendas against the heat.

  The noise skipping out from the Cantina was still a raucous blend of laughter and Latin music but at double the decibels of before. The cars crawling down the streets were still stuffed with kids on missions that would include a lot of macho and a little mayhem before the night was done, but now a black and white police cruiser was parked at the curb in the next block, ready to referee. Somewhere in the distance, a train called out a mournful farewell as it rocked and rolled toward Fresno. Except for the kids, the air was tranquil and inviting. But in any neighborhood in the country these days, kids make life edgy and capricious.

  The streets were empty of foot traffic except for a trio of young girls in tight pants with flared bottoms and loose tops cut off just below their breasts, strolling toward a corner market, attracting goofy stares and inelegant propositions from
the guys cruising by in the cars. Although the girls feigned disgust at the extravagant attention, they clearly reveled in their newfound seductiveness, arching their backs and swinging their hips just a little more provocatively whenever a low rider slid by. In their semi-innocent, semiwanton aspect, at the exact point of transition from childhood to womanhood, they reminded me of Consuelo Vargas.

  I wondered if Consuelo was still in the cave in the hills or if she came to town on Friday nights to join with girls like the trio I was watching to test the reach of her sexuality in a rite of passage as old as the species. I guess I hoped not, because it was a time that got many a girl in a lifetime of trouble before they learned how to evade it, but also because it would have disappointed Rita Lombardi and Rita obviously had some special connection to the Vargas family, especially to Consuelo. It had occurred to me that the bond between the women might have something to do with Rita’s death, but I still couldn’t see the connection. Feeling as old as the species myself, I started the car and drove to Salinas and holed up in my dreary motel.

  There was nothing on TV but reruns and a baseball game, which for some reason have come to seem like reruns themselves. I’d bought a book of pulp fiction and a local newspaper on the way into town, but they didn’t interest me, either. When I called the office for messages, there was nothing on the line but an electronic insult. As I lay back on the bed I wondered who had reclined there the evening before and what kind of troubles had lain down with them. In the nature of a last resort, I went back to the car and got the envelope Scott Thorndike had given me and returned to the bed to read Rita Lombardi’s most recent short fiction.

  It was a love story, essentially, structured along the lines of Romeo and Juliet, in which a young man and young woman from different and hostile worlds try to find happiness despite the forces that pull them apart. The issue that separated the lovers in Rita’s story wasn’t family or culture, however, the issue was eyesight.

  The girl was blind; the boy was not. In their younger years the boy had acted as her guide and protector and as her mentor at the mall store where they worked, reveling in the role above all others in his life. But midway through the story, the girl’s eyesight was restored, through the miracle of corneal transplants. Her disability removed, she became accomplished and assured, enrolling in computer college at night and being promoted as the boy’s superior at the store in the mall.

  Predictably, the boy traveled in the opposite direction, losing his job, falling into debt, taking to drink and to petulance, until the contrasts were so formidable they reached the point of anger and then of breakup. At the lowest point, the girl’s newly acquired power of eyesight enabled her to save the boy from certain death by shoving him out of the way of a speeding car that was running a red light. The mix of melodrama and serendipity broke the psychic stalemate, freeing the boy to admire the girl’s achievements and see her love for what it was. According to the author, they lived happily ever after.

  The story was derivative and simplistic but the prose was lyrical and expressive; the insights sharp and telling; the characterization crisp and vivid—Rita’s talents as a writer were obvious to me and had been even more so to her teacher. But I was more interested in the story line than in the symbolism or the syntax.

  The parallels to Rita’s own disabilities and to the repairs she’d experienced in the hospital were obvious. The implication that Carlos Reyna had been threatened by Rita’s newfound physical and social attainments seemed a postmortem finger of suspicion that pointed only his way. Much as I wanted to view Carlos as a good man because of the way he spoke about Rita and the way he treated the Vargas family, perhaps that was merely a cover for the panic he felt when he sensed he was losing his fiancée, if not to another man, then to another way of life. I hadn’t even asked Carlos where he was the night Rita was murdered. In the morning I was going to have to remedy the oversight.

  I woke in a postcoital sweat, the product of a vaguely remembered romp with a woman who looked enough like Jill Coppelia to make me wish it hadn’t been a dream. After washing off that and other residues, I ate a quick breakfast at the ersatz diner down the road, hatched a plot over a Belgian waffle, then spent the rest of the breakfast amassing the courage to pursue it.

  Back at the motel, I put in a call to Jill’s office, realizing belatedly that no one would be home in the bowels of the government—there’s no sense working for peanuts if you’ve got to work weekends to boot. I cursed the forces of evil that had nipped my plan in the bud and got ready for another day in Haciendas.

  Halfway to the car, I remembered the card Jill had given me the last time I saw her, when she’d estimated the origins of the Klee in my office. The front side was nicely engraved with the seal of the county and the title of Assistant District Attorney but on the back was a handwritten number and the word home scrawled above it. I smiled and returned to my room.

  It took her a long time to answer. When she did, she was puffing and panting and not in the mood to chat.

  “Hi,” I said. “It’s Marsh Tanner.”

  “Who? Oh. The detective with the art.”

  Her detachment was enough to deflate me—the plan hatched over the waffle was already close to abandonment. “Sounds like my painting made more of an impression than I did,” I grumped like a professional sourpuss.

  She laughed. “Your painting is world-class.”

  “And I’m not.”

  “Let’s just say I haven’t had the opportunity to make that assessment.”

  A sudden crash was followed by a curse, followed by dead silence. “Sorry,” she said finally, gasping for air. “The grocery bag fell off the table and I was afraid the wine might have broken. But it’s fine. Wine bottles are pretty sturdy, I guess.”

  “They design them to stand up to falling down drunks.”

  She laughed easily and happily. The plan was revived, at least temporarily.

  “I suppose that’s it,” she said, then spoke with inflated formality. “Are you calling to convey official information in aid of our investigation of police corruption in this city, Mr. Tanner?”

  “No, I’m calling to ask you to dinner.”

  She gave me time to make it a joke. “Really?”

  “Absolutely.”

  She was flustered and showed it. “I don’t … I mean I’m not … Well, sure. I guess that would be okay. I’m sure it would be nice, in fact. Are we talking tonight?”

  “Yes we are. Unless you have plans.”

  “No, I don’t think so. Do you have somewhere specific in mind?”

  “I was thinking about Salinas.”

  “Hmmm. I don’t know it, I don’t think. Wait. Is it that place in the Outer Mission everyone’s talking about?”

  The plan was going to take work. “It’s not a restaurant, it’s a town.”

  She paused again to sense my seriousness. “That Salinas?”

  “Yep.”

  “Why there?”

  “Because that’s where I am.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Working on a murder case.”

  “Oh. Right. You told me about that, didn’t you? A friend of yours was killed or something.”

  “Right.”

  “Is it going to have anything to do with my office, at some point?”

  “Not a chance.”

  She paused to put it together. When she did, she didn’t seem to like it. “Let me get this straight. You want me to drive all the way to Salinas for dinner?”

  “It’s outrageous, I know. Completely out of the question.”

  “Wouldn’t Carmel be more exciting? At least from a culinary standpoint?”

  “It would be. Indubitably.”

  “But you’re sticking with Salinas.”

  “Yep.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not a Carmel kind of guy. But we could go to Carmel on Sunday. For brunch or something. They eat lots of brunch in Carmel.”

  “So now it’s a weekend, not jus
t dinner.”

  “If you want it to be.”

  Her breath sang like a teakettle. “That’s kind of an important decision, isn’t it? I mean, weekends mean something. At least they used to.”

  “Still do, probably. But you don’t need to decide now. You can play it by ear till after dinner.”

  “I’m not good at playing by ear; I like to have the sheet music.” She hesitated again. “How far is Salinas from here?”

  “Hour and a half. Maybe a tad more.”

  “What time should I be there?”

  “Sevenish?”

  “What kind of clothes?”

  “Comfortable.”

  “This is strictly social? Nothing about the SFPD or Mr. Sleet?”

  “Not a peep.”

  “I don’t know. It sounds sort of …”

  “Slick. Manipulative. Unfair. Underhanded.”

  “It’s not underhanded,” she corrected. “It’s totally overhanded as far as I can tell. Which is to your credit, I suppose. And it’s not that I—”

  With a whiff of success in the air, I tried to make my proposal more palatable. “I don’t usually do this kind of thing, Ms. Coppelia. In fact I never have, not with someone I’ve only known a few days. But I dreamed about you last night so I thought maybe we could … you know … get to know each other or something.”

  “You dreamed about me?”

  “Yes I did.”

  “That’s funny.”

  “Why funny?”

  “Because I dreamed about you, too.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I majored in psychology in college,” she said with high seriousness. “I don’t kid about dreams.”

  “It wasn’t a nightmare, I hope.”

  “Quite the contrary.”

  “Good.”

  “Me, too. I hope. That you had a nice dream, I mean.”

  “The nicest,” I said.

  “Good.”

  “Though we probably mean different things by nice when it comes to dreams.”

  “Probably.”