One part of me wanted to knock Norman sideways; another wished John D would tell him to piss off. Somewhere inside, a third part, the healthy part that wasn’t attached to being right, frantically waved for my attention, telling me to just calm down. That part wanted to find out if there was anything more to be gleaned from the situation.
Without another word, I walked past Norman, crossed to his car, and leaned against it. He stared at me blankly, trying to guess at my motives. Finally he gave up and joined me.
“What’s this business you’ve got with the people next door?” Norman asked. “I assume you’re referring to that nutcase religious outfit.”
I ignored his question. Instead, I tapped the official insignia. “How long have you been with the Public Works Department?”
“Uh, seventeen years. Why?”
I chose my verb tense carefully. “I started with the LAPD nine years ago. You’ve been with the Public Works Department even longer. Maybe we can help each other.”
Narrow-minded people can’t entertain paradoxes. Their minds are like one-lane roads-they work just fine until somebody approaches from the opposite direction. Then they experience an unsolvable dilemma, caused by the limited range of their thinking. Every situation has to be win-or-lose, dominate or be dominated. Giving ground so the other car can squeeze by is unacceptable. Better to crash head-on than let go of being right.
Norman’s eyes flickered as he tried to squeeze the idea that I was a cop into the narrow alleyway of his brain. He was so busy trying to comprehend this new piece of information that he forgot to ask for my badge.
He relaxed, lowering his shoulders, and the body language told me he’d bought my story.
“So, what are you after them for?”
“You remember when they had that conflict over stealing power from the pig farm?”
“Yeah, but that got settled quite a while ago.”
“They may be involved with something else now,” I said.
“Like what?”
He seemed a little too interested to me.
“Sorry, I can’t discuss it with you.”
His leaned closer, man to man. “Come on,” he pleaded. “We’re both on the same side here-we’re both concerned with enforcing the law.” He offered me his hand. “Look, I want to apologize for the way I spoke to you up there. He’s my father and, as you can imagine, I’m worried about him, out here on his own.”
I went ahead and shook his hand, and I felt a little twinge of aversion.
“I’ve got to get back to the office,” he said. “Here’s my card. Call me if you need anything.”
I pocketed his card. “Will do,” I said. “I’ll just say ’bye to your father.”
Norman’s SUV roared to life as I walked back toward the house. He gunned the engine, spitting gravel in his wake.
John D had nodded off again. Our date with Sister Rose was still a few hours away, so I decided to test my new phone out here in the boonies. I strolled to the far side of the yard and called to check on Freda.
Wesley answered on the first ring. He must have stepped outside the hospital for a smoke or something.
“How is she?”
“The same.”
“How are you?”
“The same.”
There wasn’t much else to say after that.
Then I left a message for Mike. He’d be waking up soon. “Send me any contact information you have on that actor Jeremiah Star Trek, and his wife,” I told him.
Finally, against my better judgment, I tried Julie again. This time, she answered.
“I was just about to call you,” she said. “I’m off tomorrow. How does homemade minestrone and creme brulee sound?”
“Dangerous,” I said. “I have to warn you, minestrone is my favorite, but I am almost always disappointed by it. And as for creme brulee, well, I grew up in Paris.”
“Oh, goody. A challenge,” she said.
I sat cross-legged with my back against a tree and recounted my day, starting with the fennel and ending with the forthcoming assignation with Sister Rose. Julie made me laugh with her culinary escapades. I made her laugh with my tale of Josecita’s earmuff hazing. It felt nice to have someone to download my life with, besides Tank.
We talked until the sky grew dark. I looked across the yard. John D was up, moving around inside his lighted living room.
“Time to go,” I said. “’Bye now.” I waited for Julie to end the call. Her soft breath told me she was doing the same with me.
I smiled, letting the silence linger between us.
“On the count of ten, Ten,” she finally said, but she hung up before I got to two.
Inside the house, John D was tipped back in his recliner, studying the photograph of himself with his two sons.
“Sorry about Norman,” he said, without looking up.
“Hey, not to worry,” I answered.
John D set the picture aside. “You still got your parents?”
“My father,” I said. “My mother died a few years ago.”
“You close to them?”
How to answer that question?
“Not really,” I said. My mother’s beautiful, haunted face flashed before me.
Valerie. Born and raised in Middle America, a free spirit trapped in a Midwestern, upper middle class world. She hated everything about her life, everything, that is, but the trust fund she inherited at 18. Bye-bye parents, hello India: she wanted to “find herself,” like any self-respecting child of the ’60s. Instead, after guru-jumping for two years, she found my father in Dharamshala, and found herself 20, pregnant, and too proud to return home. There was no question of her staying with my father; that became clear very quickly. So she moved to Paris to have me, still determined to live the bohemian life. Which in her case meant drinking herself to an early death.
A wave of sadness engulfed me. I had loved my mother desperately, but there was always a thick, hazy curtain of booze and pills hanging between us.
John D was watching me, his eyes kind.
“My mother was kind of a mess, and I don’t think my father has known what to do with me since the day I was born. I spent my early years shuttling between her apartment in Paris and the Dorje Yidam Monastery in India, where Apa was an abbot. After Valerie died, I lived full time in the monastery. Sometimes I’d catch Father staring at me, from across the dining hall, or during group sits, and clear as a bell, I’d hear him wondering, Who are you? Where did you come from? And not in a good way, you know? When I left for California, I’m sure he was filled with relief.”
John D looked at me, his eyes troubled. “Maybe. Or maybe he was filled with regret. It’s not always what you think it is.”
He moved to the kitchen and rinsed off two Fuji apples from the market. He tossed one to me.
“Okay, son, time to see what Sister Rose has to say.”
We hiked to the fence separating John D’s property from the Children of Paradise. Sister Rose kept her word; a few minutes later we saw her ghostly figure coming up the hill toward us.
We greeted her with smiles. Her face was expressionless. “I can’t stay long,” she said. “They know I like to go out for a walk in the evening, but they’ll get suspicious if I’m gone long.”
“Who’s ‘they’?” John D asked. She just shook her head.
“I appreciate what you’re doing,” I said.
“Sister Barbara would have done the same for me.”
We stood another moment in the darkness. The silence was peppered with night sounds: rustling leaves … the scuttle of a small animal.
I got to the point. “Can you think of any reason somebody would want Barbara Maxey dead?”
Her eyes filled. “It’s still so hard to believe …”
“I know, but we have to move fast if we want to find out who did this. After forty-eight hours, the statistics on solving a crime drop like a rock. It’s over a week now, and I’m afraid we’re going to miss our chance. If there’s anything you know or may have heard that could help us, please tell us now.”
She said, “Sister Barbara was stubborn. She was the only one who’d stand up to Brother Eldon. She came here long before he did, back when Master Paul was our teacher.” She turned to John D, almost pleading. “Master Paul was different; he loved us, even when we were bad. We fear Brother Eldon and respect him, but there is no love.”