Strawberry Sunday Page 21

  Her eyes brightened as though I’d brought her a narcotic. “That’s amazing. No one’s ever dropped by before. Not to see me, at least. I’m flattered.”

  “It’s my pleasure. Mrs. Lombardi was moved by your concern. She wanted to be sure you knew it.”

  “Poor Louise. I know how it feels to lose someone dear to you. And poor Rita. I always hoped she would grow to be someone who … well, who of us gets what we want in this world? We get what we think we want, sometimes, but that seldom turns out satisfactorily. What we really want, what we really need, is not so easily divined. Is it? Or am I just babbling?”

  “You make a lot of sense to me, Mrs. Gelbride. We waste most of our energy in life pursuing things that are meaningless. Or even destructive.”

  She nodded briskly. “That’s it, exactly. We listen to other people instead of charting our own course. Family. Friends. The politicians. The experts. They are more than ready to tell us what to do and how to think. But no one can speak to the needs of all of us. We are all different; we are each unique. We must answer the questions ourselves.”

  “Know thyself,” I said, feeling like a Sophist afoot in the Parthenon. “The most sage advice ever given.”

  “And ‘to thine own self be true.’ Shakespeare saw it as well. Such a simple thing. Yet so difficult to achieve.”

  I nodded. It seemed smart to keep her talking, about anything and everything, to open another window into the odd antics of the Gelbride family.

  “I have spent many years asking others what I should do with my life,” she continued. “Reading books, listening to lectures and tapes, hearing what the great thinkers have to say about how to behave in the world and atone for your sins. And some not-so-great thinkers, too,” she added with a sly grin.

  “And? Have you found the answer?”

  “I have found many answers. So many I forgot the question.”

  “The question is what do I need to do to be happy. Isn’t it?

  Her lips flattened and her eyes glistened. “I think so. Yes. I think that was where I was before I got confused.” She gazed at me with the intensity of one of her TV evangelists. “You know the question. But do you know the answer, young man?”

  “The only thing I know is, the happiest people I see are the ones who spend most of their time doing things for other people.”

  “Is that you? Do you do that?”

  “Only when I get paid for it.”

  “Then you’re not happy?”

  “Not always.”

  “But sometimes?”

  I thought of Eleanor and I thought of Charley and I thought of Jill Coppelia. “Definitely sometimes.”

  “I haven’t been happy since 1973,” she blurted, then covered her mouth with her hand.

  “What happened then?”

  When they came, her words were timid and muffled, as though they were afraid of the light. “I learned that I am capable of evil. Of causing suffering to innocent people. Of committing sins beyond imagining.”

  “You’re obviously a kind woman, Mrs. Gelbride. It’s hard to believe that’s true.”

  “But it is. The world made demands on me that I couldn’t meet without forsaking everything I used to hold dear.”

  “What are you talking about exactly, Mrs. Gelbride?”

  She looked at me as though seeing me for the first time, as though reality had just caught up with us after navigating the dense tangle of the garden. “I’m talking about life to a total stranger. Isn’t that amazing? Why would I do that, do you suppose?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “The only reason I can think of is that you’re the only one who has paid attention to me in thirty years.”

  The indictment of her family echoed in the wind like taps at a gravesite. “You’re an interesting woman, Mrs. Gelbride.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “For one thing, you’ve clearly thought a lot about life. Most people don’t think much beyond their entree and their stock portfolio.”

  She offered her first smile of the afternoon. “I think about life too much, I’m afraid; it doesn’t yield me much comfort.”

  “Speaking of comfort, did you know of any problem between Rita Lombardi and your son?”

  She frowned in concentration. “Randy? And Rita? No. Not specifically. Of course Randy is not a pleasant person and Rita is charming, so it stands to reason they wouldn’t get along. He’s grumbled about her ever since the third grade. She made him feel inferior, I think.”

  “Was there any trouble between Rita and anyone else in your family?”

  “I never heard of any. Of course Rita had reason to despise us all,” she added.

  “Why is that?”

  “Because it was our chemicals that made her limbs misshapen. We poisoned her, essentially, by destroying her father’s genetic makeup. That’s what the doctor thought, anyway.”

  I tried to mask my surprise. “When Rita was born, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “What doctor was that?”

  “I forget her name. She was the ob/gyn at the Haciendas hospital.”

  “Did she tell the Lombardis that as well?”

  “I hope not. We asked her not to.”

  “And that’s why you’ve been kind to Louise over the years. Because you felt you contributed to Rita’s disability.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did Franco Lombardi find out what had happened later on? Was that why he was killed? To keep him from filing a complaint against your family for misuse of toxins in the fields?”

  Estelle Gelbride started to frame an answer to my question when the French doors on the side of the house opened and Missy stepped into the garden. “Here you are,” she said, her voice saturated with scorn. “Entertaining our snoopy guest.”

  “He’s not a snoop, he’s a friend of Louise Lombardi’s.”

  Missy glanced at me as though I’d cursed her. “That may be, but he’s not a friend of ours. I think you’d better come in, don’t you, Estelle? Before you say things you’ll regret? Before you make this family look even more idiotic and unscrupulous than we already are?”

  “Whatever you say, dear,” Estelle said, her forthright candor reduced in an instant into a servile submission. Without as much as a look my way, she shuffled toward the door that Missy held open for her, a prisoner ordered back to her cell.

  When she reached the door, she turned back. “I enjoyed our chat, Mr.…”

  “Tanner.”

  “Tanner. I see. I knew some Tanners once. They lived in Kingsburg. Real estate, I believe.”

  “No relation, I don’t think.”

  “I see. Well, I hope you’ll feel free to drop by anytime. It’s a pleasure for me to have visitors.”

  “Get inside, you moron,” Missy hissed at her hapless mother. Then she looked at me. “Don’t even think about coming back here,” she said nastily, and slammed the door behind them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  For the second time that afternoon, I pointed the Buick down the hill, on a winding snake of a road that would take me back to the flatland that was still, in this day and age, the feudal domain of men like Gus Gelbride. Such men were innovators, explorers, risk-takers. They accomplished much, they made their mark, they left the world a better place for many if not most. But along the way to fame and fortune they left victims in their trail, victims in towns like Haciendas that few seemed to know or care about, people who were the spoils, the by-products, the necessary evils, the irritating residue of the system that put more food on the tables of this nation than any other came close to enjoying. The saddest chapter of the story is that most of the victims are children.

  As I marveled at the hardship still rampant in the modern world, the road narrowed and switched back, once and then again, creating a precipitous cliff on my side that looked to descend straight to hell. I veered to the center of the roadway, taking a chance’ that no one was coming, giving myself a margin of safety.
But there was someone coming. The ubiquitous white Dodge pickup, its Cummins diesel propelling it inexorably up the hill, occupied the center of the road just as I did, as formidable as a Sherman tank advancing squarely in my path.

  Randy Gelbride was behind the wheel, of course, squinting into the sun that sat like a searchlight at my back. Seemingly lost in thought, when he finally saw my car he started to veer left to give me some room, but when he registered who I was, he swerved back to the center of the road. If I kept going, we would collide. If I swerved right, I risked skidding off the shoulder and tumbling down the hill. If I went left, there was a chance Randy would move that way as well, abandoning his bluff at the last minute only to extend the risk. After an instant’s reflection, I placed my bet on his cowardice and kept my car on course.

  Time was impotent and elusive, punishment for past transgressions. The laws of physics seemed similarly suspended, as though Randy and I had become insubstantial, subatomic oddities that could pass through each other’s space without the slightest disturbance of either body. The basic law of common sense—the instinctual grasp at self-preservation—had been sacrificed to a mutually mad bravado.

  I knew Randy would happily kill or at least terrify me. What I hadn’t known till now was that I would as happily dispatch him to a similar fate, if it could be done in a way that would be deemed by Mace Dixon and his ilk as nonculpable. As the vehicles remained locked onto vectors of mutually assured destruction, I realized that I was a vastly angry man, angry at what had happened to Charley, angry at what had happened to Rita, angry at my persistent ineffectiveness in the face of those calamities. I gave the gas pedal a nudge and gripped the wheel as tightly as I grip my gun.

  It must have been my eyes that persuaded him, twin semaphores indicative of my gleeful anticipation of what was about to occur, beacons of a heedless rage that must have traveled faster than my car and advertised my psychosis. When the vehicles were ten yards apart and closing, Randy wrenched the wheel to the right and avoided me by inches, the Ram’s wheels squealing on the hard-pan, losing traction for an instant as the truck fishtailed past me on the left. The cackle I heard, the manic release of tension followed by an exultant roar of joy, must necessarily have come from me.

  As I slowed to a crawl and watched in my mirror the Ram’s brake lights came on and the white truck stopped at the edge of the road. I pulled to a stop as well. When Randy got out, I did too. As he stomped toward me, I remembered the gun he carried below the seat. If I’d felt like an idiot before, now I felt like an idiot squared.

  “You stupid fuck!” he wailed, the fist at his side thankfully empty, his hat back on his head as though to cool his steaming brain. “You almost got us killed.”

  “Looked to me like there was plenty of stupidity to go around.”

  “Like shit. This is my road, goddamnit. I got a right to—”

  I spoke more cavalierly than my mood. “Come on, Randy. Admit it. You panicked when you figured I was willing to go over the side if I could take you with me.”

  “Panic, shit. I saved your ass is what I did.”

  I grinned. “Not on the best day you ever had.”

  Hands in his pockets, he scuffed in the dirt like a rooster. “I been wanting to talk to you,” he mumbled after a few seconds.

  “Talk about what?”

  “What you told the old man.”

  “About you and Consuelo Vargas?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I told him you had her in your sights.”

  “And what else?”

  “Why do you think there was more than that?”

  “Because he never gave a shit about me tracking pussy before this.”

  “Maybe he got religion.”

  “He got some sort of disease all right. And you gave it to him.”

  “So?”

  His eyes narrowed in a parody of calculation. “So I figure maybe I could use the information myself.”

  “Use it for what?”

  He picked his nose and flicked the findings in the dirt. “Never you mind.”

  “Sounds to me like you’re looking for leverage. To force the old man to put you in charge of the business.”

  “You don’t know shit, mister.”

  “What I don’t know is anything that would help you.”

  Randy rubbed sweat from his eyes and spoke imploringly. “There must be something going on. Gus threatened to ream me a new asshole if I laid a hand on that Vargas girl. I never seen him so agitated.”

  “Maybe he started paying attention in church.”

  “Whatever that means,” he grumbled.

  “That means you need to leave the women alone, Randy, especially the women who work for you. Sex isn’t in the job description anymore. Not even out in the fields.”

  Randy looked out over the valley, frowning in puzzlement much as his father had done, as though the world had taken on a different cast and was producing mutant strains far more intimidating than strawberries. “You tell me about the old man, I can give you something about Rita,” he said tentatively, as though to try it on for size.

  “What about Rita?”

  “You first.”

  “Me never. Where were you the night Rita was killed?”

  “I got an iron-clad alibi for that. Cops checked it out. Reb says there’s no way they can hang the Lombardi thing on me.”

  “You gave him the name of a woman.”

  He grinned lasciviously. “Yeah.”

  “I guess Reb forgot that guys like you usually have someone else do their dirty work.”

  “Shit, man. I got no beef with Rita except the Vargas girl. But hell. There’s pussy on every plant out there. I wouldn’t kill someone for that.”

  “How about the union?”

  “Rita didn’t work for no union. I told you that before.”

  “So you’re pure as the driven snow, is that it?”

  “I made my share of mistakes, maybe. But murder wasn’t one of them. Now you want someone had a mad-on for Rita, you need to talk to Missy.”

  “Why?”

  “Lately she was real pissed at Rita for some reason.”

  “You don’t know why?”

  “Naw. Me and Missy don’t communicate much. But likely it had to do with money or men. Money and men and booze is the only things that float Missy’s boat.”

  “Where was Missy when Rita was killed?”

  “Don’t know for sure, but two things you can count on. That time of night, one, she was drunk. And, two, she’d just been fucked by some loser.”

  Left to their own devices, the Gelbrides would have dismembered each other without qualm. “Did Missy have her sights set on Carlos Reyna?” I asked.

  “She don’t spread ’em for beaners. But Missy could kill a woman, don’t think she couldn’t. Bitch is strong as hell.”

  With that backhanded endorsement, Randy got back in his truck and drove up the hill to what passed for his home. I drove back to Haciendas and parked in the only shade on Fremont Street.

  Louise Lombardi was still dressed in her church clothes. She looked cool and collected until you got to her eyes, which were pained and panicked, as if she’d seen something in the bowels of St. Bonaventure that terrified her. I understood where she was coming from—there’s no more frightening time of the week than Sunday afternoon.

  “I told you not to come back,” she said when she saw me, leaning on the door for support and wheezing like an old dog.

  “I’m sorry, but I need to ask you some things.”

  “Seems to me you ask lots of questions but don’t get many answers.”

  “True enough. But I think I’m getting close. If you tell me the truth, it will help.”

  “Truth about what?”

  I looked up and down the street. “I’d rather do this inside.”

  She looked back at her house, then looked at me. “I don’t like you in there. You make it feel dirty. You make it feel empty.”

  “I’m sorry about th
at, Mrs. Lombardi. This will only take a minute. It’s pretty personal.”

  She led me to the living room where we sat simultaneously, with equal awkwardness. I was about to gather enough ammunition to fire a long shot, one that would do damage regardless of its accuracy, a shot stimulated by what I’d found out about Gus Gelbride and Maria Vargas and the kinds of predictions Rita had made upon her return to Haciendas from the hospital in the city. If I was right, I would have what I needed, which was a motive for Rita’s murder that fit with what I’d learned about her behavior in the days before her death. If I was wrong, no one who cared about Louise Lombardi would ever speak to me again.

  “Did you enjoy the church service?” I began, enlisting outside assistance in my cause.

  “You were there?”

  “In the back.”

  “I didn’t see you.”

  “I wasn’t trying to be seen,” I said, and recrossed my legs and licked my lips. “Father McNally preaches a nice sermon.”

  Surprisingly, she scowled. “He’s soft. He needs to be stricter, especially with the young people. He needs to tell them to behave themselves or risk damnation.”

  I wasn’t qualified to summon the wrath of the Lord. “Afterward, I talked with Gus Gelbride for a time.”

  “Yes?”

  “And Mrs. Gelbride as well.”

  “She’s a nice person.”

  “What kind of person is her husband?”

  Her shrug was massive. “There have always been stories of his cruelty, but he treated Franco fair and gave me the money to bury him. The other things I only hear about. But what does Gus have to do with Rita?”

  Her nonchalance was bothering me. She couldn’t have been that good an actress, which she would have to be if my hunch had landed anywhere near the truth.

  “Rita found out something about Gus that made her upset,” I said, determined to tough it out.

  “Found out what?”

  “That fifteen years ago Gus fathered a child by one of the field workers. A woman named Maria Vargas.”

  She shook her head. “There is nothing new in that, sad to say.”

  “Do you remember Rita talking about it?”

  She shook her head. “How would Rita know such a thing?”