I pulled into the hospital’s patient pickup area just as a large male nurse wheeled John D down the walkway to the curb. The attendant eased him into the front seat. He grunted a thank you to the nurse and a good morning to me.
“No muscle car today?” he commented.
“Not today.” I flashed on Julie’s glowing face last night as she shifted gears smoothly in the empty beach parking lot. It was her idea to practice driving the Mustang there first, before taking it into traffic.
She might just be one in a million.
“Well, I appreciate you coming all the way out here,” John D said.
“No problem. I stopped off on the way and spied on your neighbors for a little while.”
I described the heated conversation between Barsotti and Brother Eldon.
“Any idea what those two might be fighting about?”
He shook his head.
“How about yesterday? Any idea who might be behind that?”
He shook his head again, and yawned.
“So what actually happened?”
He sat back and closed his eyes.
“John D,” I warned, “if you don’t tell me exactly what happened, I’m making you hitchhike home.”
He chuckled, and opened his eyes.
“I’m just messing with you, Ten,” he said. “I’ll tell you what I can. I was out of cash, so I stopped to get some from my bank’s ATM, across the street from Dot’s Double Good Diner-that’s where I always get breakfast. I was about to cross the street when these two guys ran out of the alley and jumped me so quick I didn’t know what hit me. Or who. One of ’em grabbed my money right out of my hand, and the other one knocked me down and started boot-kicking me in the ribs. I heard someone yell from across the street. Good thing. I think the plan was to finish me off. I guess I passed out. Next thing I know, some paramedic is strapping an oxygen mask over my face.”
I asked him a few more questions, but he had nothing more to add, and I could see he really was getting sleepy. When we got to his house, I helped him into his bedroom and got him stretched out on the bed. He was sound asleep before I got his work boots unlaced.
As I left his house, something snagged the corner of my vision. I crossed the yard to his little patch of medicinal weed. The marijuana plants had all been uprooted, the earth around them trampled. At first I thought maybe it was raccoons, but if so they were fairly selective. They had left the flowerbeds and nearby tomato plants untouched. Unless there was a gang of dope-smoking voles around here, this was caused by a human. A human filled with spite or greed, who neither knew nor cared about John D’s pain.
Back came the rage, in a hot surge. This was becoming a regular habit of mine.
I walked inside and took a look around for the mason jar of buds, but I couldn’t find it, either. This was looking more and more like the work of that steadfast upholder of family morals, Norman the conservative Fun-Cop. I left a sticky note next to a full glass of water on John D’s bedside table. I included my cell phone number, in large numerals, and the words CALL TEN.
I was just pulling up to the bank when John D called, sounding a lot more chipper.
“Listen,” I told him. “I’m here at the ATM where you got jumped. I need to look at yesterday morning’s surveillance footage. I’ll have better luck if you hire me as your private investigator. I’ll even give you a special rate-you can pay me with a bag of almonds.”
“You’re hired,” he said.
“Thanks. Anything you need from town?”
“Nope. I’m gonna take my meds and maybe sleep a little more.”
I broke the news to him about his garden raid and the missing mason jar. He took it better than I expected.
“It’s irritating, but it ain’t the end of the world. I got a backup stash from last season’s crop. Every farmer knows you gotta plan ahead for the lean times.”
I decided to do a reality check on something. “I need to ask you a question, John D. Does Norman know about your tumor?”
There was a pause. When John D answered, his voice was noticeably cooler.
“Nope, and I don’t have any plans to tell him, either. He and I have been butting heads our whole lives, and lately it’s gotten out of hand. So the way I see it, my cancer is none of his business.”
His words echoed my own from this morning’s meltdown. If the subject was as sore for him as it was for me, I’d better tread carefully. I didn’t want to lose John D’s trust.
“Do you mind telling me what’s been going on?” I said.
“Give me half a minute.”
I heard shuffling, and the scrape of a struck match.
John D inhaled deeply. In the ensuing gap of silence, I pictured him holding the perfumed smoke in his lungs. He answered on an exhale.
“Three or four years back, I asked my son to look into something for me, a professional favor, you might say, having to do with the family land, and he blew me off. Then he started pestering me about selling my acreage to those pig farmers. They offered four hundred thousand for the whole parcel, but I told them they could go straight to hell. I didn’t work this land for thirty years to have it turned into a pig farm. I’m not selling, and I’m not moving.”
“How many acres?”
“Eighty.”
That was curious. From my observations of the pig farm, the last thing they needed to do was expand.
A few dots began dancing and circling each other in the back of my mind.
“Do you have any life insurance, John D?”
“Nope. Never saw a need.”
“How about your estate? Is Norman your beneficiary?”
“He was, but I just changed my will.” John D’s voice rose. “Do you know I’ve never even met his wife? Four years married, and he’s too ashamed of his own father to introduce me to her. Well, I say screw him and the horse he rode in on. I’m leaving it all to the Nature Conservancy-maybe they can turn my crops around. Norman don’t know that yet, but I can’t wait to see the look on his face when I tell him.” John D was practically panting with anger.
I backed off. I’d find out more later. Right now, John D needed to rest, and I needed to go. I said good-bye and asked him to stand by in case I required him to run interference with the bank manager.
He went me one better. By the time I was ushered into the manager’s office, John D had already paved the way. According to the elderly Mr. Acheson, they’d been doing business together since the early ’70s, when the population of Lancaster barely tipped 30,000. He was “outraged, simply outraged,” at the attack. Half an hour later, I was holding my own personal DVD of the ATM surveillance footage from yesterday morning.
I made a quick stop at a grocery store for some hummus and chips. I figured John D and I could watch the footage on his flat-screen together, and with any luck, he’d recognize one or both of the men who jumped him.
At this point, my Toyota practically drove itself to John D’s. Halfway there, I spotted flashing lights in my rear-view mirror. A patrol car was closing in fast. The siren emitted one short blast, and I put on my turn signal. I was well under the speed limit, so I knew it wasn’t that, but my heart jumped to my throat anyway, and I was flooded with a kind of shame.
Welcome to the other side of the law.
I pulled over and started fumbling for my license and registration. Then I glanced back and realized it wasn’t California Highway Patrol after all-the car was marked with the seal of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department.
A heavyset man looked in at me. His khaki uniform was spotless, and the crease in his pants could slice a baguette. His pocked nose was beaded with sweat, his eyes a striking color of blue. I put his age at just one side or the other of 50.
“License and registration,” he said. No “sir” or “please” attached.
I handed him both, keeping my voice mild. “Can you tell me what this is about?”
He glanced at the documents, and passed them back.