Strawberry Sunday Read online

  “Do the camps have some connection with Rita?”

  “Not that I know of. Not the ones over here, at least.”

  “Then I’ll take a pass.” I put out my hand. “Thanks for your time. And good luck with your efforts.”

  “Thank you.”

  “By the way. Do you know a family named Vargas? Homero and Maria and a daughter named Consuelo?”

  “I believe Rita mentioned them once. But I don’t remember why and I know nothing more about them.”

  “Does the Gelbride family do much business over here?”

  She shook her head. “All their fields are in Salinas. This is Driscoll and Naturripe and Coastal Berry territory.”

  “Did Rita mention anything about Randy Gelbride in her talks with you?”

  “Just that he trolled for young women in the labor camps over there, and she warned me to be on the lookout for him.”

  “So that’s it as far as Rita’s concerned?”

  “I’m afraid so. Sorry I can’t be more help.”

  “Well, thanks again.”

  Liz Connors turned away, then turned back. “If you find out that Rita was killed by a farmworker, please let us know right away.”

  “Why?”

  “So we can prepare a counter-statement.”

  “A denial, you mean?”

  “More like an explanation of how a person can be driven to a murderous sense of outrage by the system of labor employed in this valley. How a person may not be criminally responsible when that system deprives him of his dignity, his heath, and his ability to earn a living wage. And how such a system poisons the victimizer as well as the victim.”

  “But in this case the victim wasn’t a grower, the victim was on the side of the workers.”

  “Craziness makes it impossible to recognize your friends from your enemies,” she said. “It’s why the workers in these valleys live in constant fear.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I drove back to Haciendas, my mind still oscillating between Jill Coppelia and Rita Lombardi. They were polar opposites in some ways—the former bold and erotic and naughty, the latter wholesome and generous and sweet—but they were alike in their bravery and their candor and their commitment to causes beyond their own self-interest. I guess that’s what attracted me to both of them, because such people are becoming an endangered species.

  Since it was Sunday, there weren’t many options open to investigation, but one of them might be the police department. I pulled up in front of the multipurpose municipal building a little before eleven, the air still cool from the fog, the town still sleeping off the night before, memories of my time with Jill still buoying my spirits and rewriting my fantasies.

  The officer who was occupying Sal Delder’s chair told me the chief was in back in his office. Because he offered no indication that it was unusual for Mace Dixon to be working on Sunday, the chief kept inching up in my estimation.

  After getting clearance to pass, I headed toward the back of the building. The door was open so I tapped on the jamb and looked in. “Tanner,” he pronounced when he saw me. “Stumble over any more corpses?”

  I shook my head. “I was wondering if you’d made any progress with the last one.”

  “Mona Upshaw? Afraid not. She was a saint, according to everyone who knew her.”

  “I hear the same about Rita Lombardi.”

  “Guess it’s still a hazardous occupation.”

  “Maybe that’s how they’re connected,” I said.

  “I don’t get it. Some sort of church thing, you mean?”

  I shook my head. “Maybe they were both trying to help the same cause.”

  “What cause was that?”

  “A family named Vargas.”

  The chief flexed his bicep, checked to be sure it retained its impressive dimension, then looked back at me. “Who are these Vargas people you keep talking about? I know a dozen families named Vargas.”

  “This is Homero and Maria. And a daughter named Consuelo, who looks like a young Rita Hayworth.”

  The chief leaned back in his chair. “That one.”

  “That one,” I agreed.

  “Come to think of it, the Lombardi girl did talk to me about her.”

  “Talked in what way?”

  “She told me the girl might need police protection.”

  “From whom?”

  The chief paused. “This doesn’t go out of this room.”

  “Fine.”

  “I mean it, Tanner.”

  “So do I.”

  He thought it over, then nodded. “Randy Gelbride was the name she mentioned.”

  “Police protection from what?”

  “Sexual harassment, it sounded like. Maybe even assault. Like father, like son,” was what I thought he muttered next.

  “What does that mean, Chief?”

  “Nothing.”

  “It didn’t sound like nothing. It sounded like genetics.”

  “Forget about it.”

  “Gus Gelbride assaulted some woman sexually?” I persisted.

  The chief reddened like a raspberry and shook his head. “No fucking comment.”

  “Okay, let’s take the names out of it. Sexual advances by growers toward female field workers aren’t uncommon, are they?”

  “Unfortunately no.”

  “Had Rita ever talked to you about the problem before?”

  “No.”

  “But she did with the Vargas girl.”

  “Yep.”

  “So why her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I reminded him of our pact. “It stays in the room, Chief.”

  He rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Look, Tanner. It pisses me off to no end that two women have been murdered in this town and I have no idea who did it, but I still don’t know what was going on with Rita Lombardi and the Vargas girl.”

  I didn’t know whether to believe him but I also didn’t know how to make him tell me more if there was more to tell. “What did you tell Rita you’d do about the Vargas situation?”

  “I told her there was nothing much we could do without locking Randy up before he did something wrong and we wouldn’t do that because it’s called preventive detention and we don’t operate that way in this county.”

  “At least not with the Gelbrides.”

  The chief slapped his hands on the desk simultaneously, creating a minor earthquake. “You keep implying there’s more than one kind of justice in this town. I don’t like it. I don’t like it enough to tell you to get the fuck out of my office.”

  I stayed put. “If apologies are in order, I apologize.”

  “That’s no apology, that’s lawyer talk. Hit the road, Tanner. I got better things to do with a Sunday than listen to you insult me.”

  “I take back what I said about the Gelbrides.”

  “Fuck you. Get out of here before I have Lopez put you in a cell.” He picked up some paperwork to give his fury something to work on but me.

  “A couple more things and I’ll be gone,” I said peaceably. “Do you know of any connection between the Vargas girl and Nurse Upshaw?”

  “Not a one. You through now?”

  “What about my original hunch?”

  “Which was what?”

  “That Nurse Upshaw might have heard or seen something important the night they brought Rita in.”

  “We’re not idiots, Tanner. We talked to everyone on duty down at Mercy that night. No one heard anything because there was nothing to hear—the Lombardi girl was a heartbeat away from being DOA.”

  “How about what they saw?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. I thought maybe they might have seen someone odd down there that night. Someone out of place.”

  “The killer, you mean?”

  “Why not?”

  “In my experience, life’s seldom that simple. Plus it’s a hospital. Sooner or later we’re all going to be in there for something, so who’s to say what’s
out of place?”

  I walked to the door, then turned back. “What did Rita say when you told her you couldn’t stop Randy Gelbride from tormenting the Vargas girl?”

  “She said she’d have to stop him herself.”

  “What do you think she meant?”

  “No idea.”

  “There are people who think Rita was threatening to make trouble for the Gelbrides.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Trouble you stop with a gun.”

  “That’s pretty hard to visualize.”

  “Would give a Gelbride a motive for getting rid of her if the trouble was big enough to shut them down.”

  “I need more than guesses, Tanner.”

  “You’re saying you’ve got no leads at all?”

  “Not any worth mentioning, which I wouldn’t necessarily if there was.”

  Which meant the chief wasn’t playing square. Otherwise he would have told me about Mona Upshaw’s surprising bank balance and the evidence that she’d underwritten Rita’s surgery, the kind of connections that lead to relevant evidence in a murder case. So all bets were off. Somehow it made me relieved.

  “How about you?” the chief went on sarcastically. “I figured a private eye from the big city would have the Lombardi thing wrapped up by now.”

  I sent his words back in the same envelope of condescension. “In my experience, life isn’t that simple.”

  “So you’ve come up empty?”

  I shrugged. “I hear a lot of bad things about the Gelbride boy.”

  “So do I.”

  “But no charges have ever been filed?”

  He shook his head. “Lots of conversation, though. Words to the wise, you might say.”

  “Is he wise enough to take them?”

  “Not so you’d notice. Now get out. I got things to do that don’t involve bullshit.”

  I walked into the hall, then walked back, feeling like a Columbo impostor. “One favor.”

  He looked up. “This isn’t a gift shop.”

  I persevered. “I was hoping you could get me in to see Gus Gelbride.”

  “How was I going to do that?”

  “Beats me.”

  “Hell, the only way I’d get in to see Gus myself is with a warrant in my hand.” The chief looked at the clock on the wall. “I were you, I’d get my ass over to St. Bonaventure.”

  “Why?”

  “Gus and the family will be at eleven o’clock mass. Never miss, probably because they got so many sins to slough off. Maybe the homily will make him charitable enough to talk to you.”

  I thanked the chief and left the building. Five minutes later, I was in the parking lot at St. Bonaventure, watching the Gelbride family file into the side door of the church, a privilege that seemed reserved entirely for them.

  The whole family was there—Gus, Estelle, Randy and Missy—dressed in their Sunday best, clutching rosaries and prayerbooks, trudging sullenly across the asphalt as though they were on their way to a hanging. The women wore hats; the men wore neckties for what looked like the first time in their lives. They seemed devout in every respect but the expressions on their faces—if it were any place else, I’d have bet they’d break out in a brawl.

  When the family had disappeared inside the church, I went around to the main entrance. Given the size of Haciendas, there was a surprisingly large crowd gathered for the service, most of them Latino but not nearly all. Carlos Reyna was escorting Louise Lombardi up the steps just behind Consuelo and Maria Vargas, who looked more ethereal than anyone in their simple cotton frocks. Clean and pressed and precisely draped, the dresses implied an effort to maintain respectability within the confines of a cave that made the more sumptuous store-bought finery of the Gelbrides seem piddling by comparison.

  As Carlos and Mrs. Lombardi entered the church, Sal Delder trotted up the steps to their rear, pausing only to cover her head before ducking inside. After her came Scott Thorndike, the English teacher, who seemed to have lingered in the yard to allow Sal to enter before he did so himself. Then came Thelma Powell and an older woman I assumed was her mother. When everyone had found seats, I slipped into a vacant slot in the back row.

  I’m not Catholic. I was born Presbyterian but haven’t followed that or any faith for years. I don’t think I believe in God, down deep, even though I converse with Him on occasion, usually when I’ve screwed up. But I do believe in the belief in God, at least for the poor and downtrodden, for whom faith can be, if not the opiate that Karl Marx suggested, at least an effective antidepressant. And there is something about a church, whether a simple chapel or a Gothic cathedral, that suggests there is a path of righteousness of some dimension that could be profitably pursued by us all.

  The service washed over me the way a brook washes over a rock. With Father McNally presiding, the hymns, the prayers, the genuflections, the mysterious rites at the altar, and the simple homily about personal responsibility in a universe of divine omnipotence, seemed matters of gravity and significance, yet somehow mechanical and incoherent. I prefer to engage spiritual issues on my own rather than with the aid of experts, even when the experts are priests and scripture. Plus, I sensed the mass had delivered a more potent punch back when it had been rendered in Latin. Even if the congregation could only incompletely understand its meaning, it may be that in matters of the spirit, literalness gets in the way of a deeper grasp of truth, that revelation comes more powerfully through the heart than the head.

  I stayed seated all the while, attracting a couple of hostile stares and a few more curious ones when I abstained from kneeling and from taking communion as I kept my eye on the people in the crowd whom I knew. Which turned out to be difficult, since at one point or another they all exchanged glances with each other with the exception of Louise Lombardi, whose effort was expended in keeping her sobs to herself so as not to disturb the other worshipers. Carlos Reyna teared up as well, and so did Thelma Powell. The Gelbrides’ faces, in contrast, would have worn well on Mount Rushmore.

  By the time the service had finished I was certain that Scott Thorndike and Missy Gelbride were lovers, that Randy Gelbride still lusted after Consuelo Vargas, that Gus Gelbride was nettled by almost everything his son said or did, that Missy Gelbride had some sort of active issue with her mother, and that Estelle Gelbride had genuine compassion for Louise Lombardi’s loss of her only child. What the rest of the sidelong glances meant was far less clear, but the possibilities were intriguing.

  When the service ended, I was the first one out the door. As the Gelbride family filed out the far side, silent and in single file like losers trudging back to the locker room, I sidled up to Gus. He was short and ruddy, exuding power and primacy in the manner of a battered prizefighter, with huge hands and a huge nose and a crease in his sun-baked bald skull that looked like someone had edged a knife on it.

  I steeled my nerves. “I’d like to speak to you sometime at your convenience, Mr. Gelbride,” I began sotto voce, in hopes none of the others would overhear.

  He started as though I’d pricked him with a pin. Like most royalty, he wasn’t used to being addressed by commoners. “Who the hell are you?”

  “He’s a PI,” Randy said, stopping so we caught up to him. The women hesitated, looking at me with more trepidation than I usually generate, then continued toward the car. “He thinks we have something to do with the Lombardi girl’s murder,” Randy went on.

  I smiled at Gus. “Do you?”

  “Don’t be dumb,” Gus muttered, irritated but seemingly as much by his son as by me. “I don’t talk business in church—what do you think I am, a heathen? You got a problem, speak to Randy.”

  “I already spoke to Randy. He didn’t enjoy it, evidently. Some of his boys rolled my car last night.”

  Randy reddened to the color of his father’s forehead. “Bullshit.”

  I looked at Gus. “I’d like to keep this private, Mr. Gelbride.”

  Gus regarded his son the way he would regard a panha
ndler. “Go.”

  Randy started to resist, then shrugged, then ambled toward the car as though that’s what he wanted to do in the first place.

  I kept my eye on Gus. “Randy also told me that none of you had anything to do with Rita’s death.”

  “So? It’s true. As God is my witness.” He glanced warily back at the church, as if to make sure God wasn’t eavesdropping.

  It was time to play my trump, one I’d concocted during the mass, built on scraps of facts and hints of emotion and the cryptic comment of Chief Dixon. “Randy’s about to cause you a problem,” I said softly.

  “Randy causes lots of problems.”

  “This is a big one.”

  “What is it?”

  I paused for effect. “The problem is, he doesn’t know about the Vargas girl.”

  Gus stopped walking and lowered his voice. “We have handled such problems before.”

  “Not this kind. Randy has his eye on a girl named Consuelo Vargas. She’s fifteen years old. If he has his way, he’ll have committed statutory rape before the week is out.”

  “Vargas?” Gus swiped the back of his hand across his lip. “Randy’s a grown man. He does what he wants. I got no control over him any—”

  “That’s the Vargas girl over there,” I interrupted, pointing her out, “next to the woman in the blue dress. The woman in blue is her mother.”

  Gus squinted. “So? What do I …” His words trailed off, as though his question had been answered by divine intervention.

  “Rape isn’t the only crime Randy would be committing, is it, Mr. Gelbride?”

  He looked for a long time, at Consuelo for a while, but even longer at her mother. Then he turned to me. “You tell anyone else about this?”

  “No one.”

  He measured me for truth. “Keep it that way.”

  “I will if I can talk to you about what happened to Rita Lombardi.”

  He thought over my quid pro quo, his eyes turbulent and troubled as though it was his first bout with a dilemma. “How’d you know about me and the Vargas woman? She tell you?”

  “No.”

  “The husband?”

  “No,” I repeated, then invented an explanation that couldn’t be traced. “I saw how you looked at Maria in church and the resemblance between you and Consuelo. Maria must have been as beautiful as her daughter fifteen years ago.”