I cringed. I had hoped the repairs would entail no more than replacing the window and slapping a patch on the side panel so that I could get the truck back right away; I needed it. But now it sounded like a rental truck was in the offing. And a big bill.
Max, damn him, introduced Kevin to Jean-Paul as my first big flame. That bit of slang did not need explanation. Jean-Paul offered his hand and a few gracious words while the two men, though they stayed in place, circled each other visually, like bantam cocks in the henhouse. I slipped my hand through Jean-Paul’s arm, leaned my head against his shoulder and asked, “Can we go home now?”
“Yes.” He covered my hand with his. “If there are further questions, the authorities will call us.”
“I’m sure they will.” I felt something scratchy under my collar, gave my shirt a good shake and half-a-dozen more bits of glass fell to the pavement. Jean-Paul had a row of tiny cuts across the side of his face that showed the trajectory of the window’s explosion. He had turned his head to check on me just as the second shot went through the back window and been hit by fragments of glass as they flew past; thank God he was wearing sunglasses.
We left Kevin speaking with the Highway Patrol investigator when we climbed into Uncle Max’s rented red Cadillac, and drove out.
I sat in the backseat and listened to the two men discuss the incident.
“I believe it was a Toyota, maybe a Honda,” Jean-Paul told Max. “Silver-gray. Perhaps a Camry or an Accord. Several years old. Because of the angle of the sun, I could not see the driver, but my impression is he was alone.”
“Tall, short, dark, fair?” Max asked.
Jean-Paul shook his head. “Qui sait? I concentrated on getting out of his way, not seeing who he was.”
Max looked over his shoulder at me. “Maggie?”
I also shook my head. “I ducked. All I saw was something silver bobbing and weaving through traffic, trying to stay with us.”
Jean-Paul reached between the seats and took my hand. “I keep thinking about what that neighbor said this morning, about wishing he had a twelve-bore. So help me, this afternoon, I never wished for anything more than I did a great big gun to stop that lunatic.”
“Good thing we didn’t have one,” I said. “Who knows who you would have taken out.”
Max caught my eye in his rearview mirror. “Maggot, where is your dad’s Colt?”
“His what?”
“Gun.”
“Dad never owned a gun,” I said.
“Actually, honey, he did.”
I shrugged. “Ask Mom.”
“He certainly never told Betsy about it,” Max said. “She wouldn’t have a gun in the house.”
That I knew. I needed just a few minutes with Dad; he’d left me with so many unanswered questions.
“But he went ahead and bought one,” I said. “Why?”
“Isabelle,” he said, as if that explained everything.
“Just how crazy was she?”
“From day to day?” Max said. “Hard to say. But whenever she showed up here it was because she was off her meds and in a manic stage. Impossible to predict what she might do. Your dad caught her inside the house one night, in your bedroom, watching you sleep.”
“So he bought a gun?”
“He didn’t buy it,” Max said. “The neighbor acquired it somehow and gave it to him.”
“Which neighbor, George Loper or Jake Jakobsen?”
“It wouldn’t be Jake, now, would it?”
“No,” I said. “Jake is far too sane. But George Loper…”
“Your dad had asked the neighbors to keep an eye out for Isabelle, told them she was a former student who’d gone off the rails, which was only ten degrees off true,” Max said. “Loper came over one day and handed your dad a new, unregistered, unfired Colt Commander. Told Al that if he wanted to try it out, he should go way out into the desert and make sure he was never seen so that if he ever needed to use the damn thing he could ditch it afterward and there would be no way to trace it back to him.”
“Except George knew,” I said.
Jean-Paul had listened with rapt attention. He asked, “This George, is he in law enforcement or perhaps the military?”
“He’s a rocket scientist,” I said. “Rumor is, he’s brilliant.”
He laughed. “Bien sûr. The mad scientist next door.”
“You laugh,” I said. “But if he gave Dad an unregistered gun, you know he has one himself.”
Chapter 11
A paper effigy of a large house, and then a car and a bundle of hell money-gifts for ancestors-caught fire and burned in a flash, sending smoke and fine ash fluttering among the dozens of red Chinese lanterns strung like bright laundry above the Bartolinis’ backyard.
“Beautiful,” Jean-Paul said, looking up at the lanterns.
It was nearly sundown by the time Jean-Paul and I arrived to honor the hungry ghosts. We brought the dozen or so white roses that had survived the events of the afternoon, now arranged in a vase, and several green silk-covered boxes of decadent French chocolates, some for the living, some for the dead. A red table and chairs were set in a place of honor for the ghosts who had come to eat among the hundred or so neighbors and friends who filled the yard. We placed a box of chocolates among the offerings heaped atop the red table, and then, like the other invited guests, gave the area a wide berth so that the ghosts could feast undisturbed.
There was a soft presence beside me. “Is that you, Maggie?”
Pa, a Buddhist monk Mom befriended during her work with refugee services, seemed to have floated out of the backyard throng; his long-sleeved white robes all but covered his feet. He put his palms together prayerfully and bowed when I introduced him to Jean-Paul. Jean-Paul acknowledged the greeting with a slight bow of his own, diplomatically not offering his hand.
“I was looking for your mother,” Pa said to me as he tucked his hands into his sleeves. With quiet yet profound concern, he asked, “You brought white flowers?”
“The flowers are for Mrs. Bartolini,” I said. In his circumspect way, he was asking if Mom had died. “Mom couldn’t be here this year.”
“Your mother is well?”
“Very well.” I told him about Mom’s move south and his expression brightened. “I’ll tell her you asked about her.”
With another bow, he excused himself and floated off again.
As we ventured toward the buffet tables, I looked for Beto or his dad in the crowd. Among a noisy clutch near a beer keg, I spotted Kevin’s wife, Lacy, and her younger sister, Dorrie, both of them listing a bit, as if the lawn underfoot was a storm-tossed sea. Kevin was nowhere to be found.
Lacy’s name had suited her perfectly when we were kids. She was quick and bright then, a tiny, wiry, athletic little daredevil who plied her dimples to charm our way out of messes she generally got us into in the first place. Dorrie was as close to being Lacy’s opposite as a sibling could be. Stolid, cranky, slow-moving and annoying. A tattletale. As a grown woman, though she had become quite striking, she did not seem any happier.
Dorrie saw me, whispered something to Lacy, threw back her shoulders, and headed in my direction with an alarming air of purpose. I gripped Jean-Paul’s arm and readied myself. Before I could warn him to be prepared to hear whatever was on Dorrie’s mind, Beto pushed through the mob from behind us bearing a raffia-wrapped bottle of chianti and a stack of plastic cups. Dorrie backed away.
“What kept you? I was about to send out a search party to go find you guys,” Beto said. When I introduced him to Jean-Paul, he offered a cup from his stack in lieu of a handshake. As he filled both our cups, he nodded toward the bouquet. “Are those for Mom?”
“Yes,” I said. “They’re from an old friend of hers.”