Caught Red-Handed (4 page)

“Does she know I'm a junkie and a hooker?”

“Ex-junkie, and I'm hoping, ex-hooker. Up to you, Mouse. But she's not afraid of your history, if that's what's worrying you.”

“What is she, some kind of nun?”

He laughed. “No. Her name is Althea Fremont. Her son ran away from home and joined a biker gang. She can't do much for him, so she decided she'd give other runaways a safe place to stay while they sort things out.”

“I could have used a place like that a couple of years ago.”

“I knew you'd see why it's important. What do you say?”

“She really wants me to be there?”

“Really.”

Frank saw a look of longing come over her face.

“What if I fuck up, Bear?”

“Not the end of the world. Humans fuck up all the time. You're a survivor, Mouse. And if you don't like it there, give me a call. I'll drive down there personally and help you work something else out.” He reached into his roll of dimes and held up a pair of them. “Before you leave, I'll give you my number and a couple of emergency dimes. You lose the dimes, you can call collect.”

She stared out the windows, tears rolling down her face. “Okay,” she whispered. Then louder, she said, “Okay, I'll do it.”

As they drove toward the place where they were meeting the detectives and the prosecutor, she said, “You never told Frank what was so funny after you got off the pay phone.”

Bear laughed. “The person who is giving you the ride to Las Piernas is Irene Kelly. She's a young reporter, new here in town.”

“He's been trying to get me to meet her,” Frank said.

“So far, he's been cleverly sabotaging my efforts. Anyway, she's on the police beat, and she won't be able to keep hold of this story—too big for a new reporter, so it's already been taken from her.”

“You told a reporter about this?” Frank asked, appalled.

“Hell, no. No need to. She heard the call for the meat wagon on the scanner and went out to the trailer park, where she got very little of the story until she talked to one Mrs. Erkstrom.”

Frank groaned.

“Before anything was on the television news,” Bear went on, “she was over at the Starlight Arms, the snazzy apartment building O'Keefe used to manage. She goes door-to-door, good little news hound that she is, breaking the news to the tenants and asking about O'Keefe, when all of a sudden she hits pay dirt.”

“I'm afraid to ask,” Frank said.

“One woman turns pale as polar ice and says, ‘Oh my God! I never thought this day would come. Wait here.' And she goes back into the apartment and comes back with a shoebox full of cassette tapes. She says, ‘Donnie told me that if he ever died under mysterious circumstances, I was supposed to turn these over to the newspaper. I thought he was being overly dramatic, but I humored him.'”

“And?”

“Chief used to keep a mistress at the Starlight Arms. He used her place to meet some other—‘associates,' let's say. Mistress used to drive Donnie nuts, and he knew she wanted him out of the job. So Donnie bugged her place, and thought at first of using the recordings as a threat—until he figured out what kind of people he'd be threatening. So he decided instead to have this lady who was fond of him keep the tapes as a kind of insurance, in case something happened to him. Tapes may not be admissible in court, since the taping couldn't have been legal, but they will still cause him problems. Plus, they included one Donnie made himself, saying he was afraid Chief Cross would have him killed for what he knew about him.”

“
The
Bakersfield Californian
has them now?” Frank asked.

“Contacted the DA's office about them almost immediately.”

“Almost?”

“Made copies first, of course.”

“Wow. I could almost feel sorry for your reporter friend. Would have been a big story for her.”

“You feel bad about what happened to the big case you worked on today?”

“No. I'm not ready for a homicide case. I'd rather see the bad guy get what's coming to him.”

“I have a feeling Irene would understand that exactly.”

Darryl Cross said that the
death of O'Keefe was accidental. He liked O'Keefe, who had set him up at the trailer park and kept his identity a secret, so that he could have a place to have a little fun without his dad watching his every move. He'd been cleaning a gun when it discharged, and the stray bullet had gone through the wall of his trailer and into O'Keefe's. When he saw that it had killed O'Keefe, he panicked and staged a suicide scene.

No one believed him.

Which might not have been fair, Frank thought, but the privilege of being the SOC was backfiring on Darryl in a big way. Frank wasn't going to waste sympathy on him.

“You wanted to kick his ass that night, didn't you?” Bear asked when they heard of his arrest.

“So hard he'd have to find a new way to shit.”

“What made you change your mind?”

“Something my dad once said to me.”

“About staying calm in the face of provocation?”

“Something like that.”

Justice and its wheels ground on,
slow and fine.

They were grinding the chief's privileged life down to dust.

Alvin, without his protector to save him, was also looking at a long stretch in prison.

Mouse had mailed the dimes back to Bear, with a note thanking him. She was happy at the Casa de Esperanza, the place Mrs. Fremont owned.

One night, at the conclusion
of a long shift of what seemed like an endless walk down a hallway of human misery, Bear again invited Frank to meet his friend the reporter for dinner. Frank thanked him, but told him he had something planned.

“What?”

Frank just smiled and said he'd see him the next day.

He was starting to be curious
about the reporter, but he hadn't lied about having plans. He drove to an apartment building, where Len Meadows, the person he was meeting for a late dinner at a Denny's, was waiting at the curb.

Maybe someone else would have shunned the company of a kid who had puked all over his patrol car, but the remorse Len had later shown for his actions caught Frank's attention.

So with the gratitude and approval of Len's overwhelmed mom, he met with Len, and suggested that instead of staging drunken rampages at sporting events, it might be better if once in a while the two of them went out for a burger and Len talked to him about whatever was on his mind. Len could have turned the offer down, but he didn't. He later told Frank that he felt as if he couldn't go any lower than he had the night of the game.

Frank had seen plenty of examples of going lower, but kept that to himself. Len was a smart kid. Frank was going to encourage him to do more with his life than live it as a self-destructive protest against his father.

So even though he had decided that one day soon he was going to have to give in to Bear's pressure and meet the reporter, today wasn't that day—he had made a promise to Len, and he kept such promises.

He kept them because he owed something to Brian Harriman, a man who cared about his children and the example he set for them.

And that, Frank decided, made
him
one of the most privileged of men.

THE LOVESEAT

T
he shovel half-rang like a muted bell as it struck the metal. Leila Anderson sighed and stopped digging, wiping the back of her leather glove across her forehead. She was hot and tired, but determined to finish planting this last section of her garden.

She turned from the corner where she had been working and looked across the big backyard. It should have been
our
garden,
our
yard,
our
house, she thought to herself. Sam should be here with me.

But he wasn't. Samuel Barrington had left her for a girl of twenty-two, a girl who made mooning cow's eyes at the silly man. Before Cow Eyes—Marietta Hinchley—came into the picture, Leila had known exactly how things were going to be. She knew that after four years of being engaged, she and Sam would finally marry; knew that they would move out of the apartment they had shared and into a lovely house; knew that she would keep getting promotions at the investment firm she worked for; knew that Sam would continue to be able to pursue his doctorate in mathematics, because she, Leila, would support them, just as she always had. And most certainly, back in those golden days, Leila had known what was expected of her. Her ability to predict and her own predictability. That was Leila's life.

But Sam had surprised her. She hadn't ever been fond of surprises, and this one did nothing to endear them to her. “You're so reasonable, Leila,” Sam had said that day. “I know you'll understand.” Leila would always be his friend, Sam had told her, but in Marietta, he had found passion.

Passion! Didn't he know she, Leila, was capable of passion? Of course she had always been controlled around him. She had eschewed the sentimental, been the “reasonable” woman he had come to rely on. As logical as his beloved mathematics. The habit of it was ingrained in her so deeply, that even as he was telling her of his unfaithfulness, she had reacted just as she had known Sam would want her to react, exactly in the way he had come to depend on her to react: reasoned, calm, controlled. But that was on the outside. Inside, she raged. Raged passionately.

So used to pleasing Sam, though, she was determined not to let him know how wounded her pride was. She reasoned that at that particular moment, the only psychological weapon she had to defend herself with was her dignity, and she used it like a knife.

She had met Marietta the next day. Sam, oblivious to the tension between the two women, had begun his “let's all be friends” campaign without delay. A beautiful, slim, athletic, young woman, Marietta had tried hard to upset Leila's equanimity. She made allusions to Leila's age, which was not more than eight years above her own; she hinted that Leila was out of shape, which was untrue. Leila was not the athlete that Marietta was, but she was no slouch. Sam had seemed a little displeased with Marietta's lack of grace. And Leila knew that while Sam had been relieved and grateful that she had not fallen apart, Marietta had been hoping for a tantrum, a scene. Marietta, Leila had seen in a moment, was a bitch. Leila had smiled, certain that Sam would more than do his penance.

He would do his penance, but at that moment he was too smitten with Marietta to realize what he had let himself in for. He saw Marietta as a lonely child, dependent on him for guidance. He later tried to apologize to Leila for Marietta's bad behavior, saying that Marietta was alone in the world, without family to guide her. Sam thought himself capable of teaching her manners. Leila thought it was the biggest joke Sam had ever played on himself, but said nothing.

Hoping that living well was indeed the best revenge, she went on with her life. She had chosen this house on her own and bought it. The house had been built in the 1920s, and she loved its polished wooden floors and arched windows and tall ceilings. The day after her furniture was moved in, she went to work on the garden with all of the passion she had leftover from the end of her relationship with Sam. She dug up old, neglected flower beds and planted them with bright, beautiful blossoms: impatiens and fuchsia and pansies and geraniums; a wild, unpredictable mix of anything that would give her eye a moment's pleasure. She planted pink jasmine and roses along the high stone fence that surrounded the big yard. She was glad of the privacy that fence gave her yard, her little oasis of color and fragrance.

She had saved this corner for last. A week ago, while pruning back the poorly tended honeysuckle that had overgrown this corner, she discovered something that had made her cry. Beneath the vines she had found something made of stone, broken in two parts. When she had realized it was a loveseat, it had suddenly come to symbolize her broken romance with Sam, and for the first time since the day he had told her of Marietta, she had cried. Four months of bottled pain and humiliation burst from her like champagne from an uncorked bottle, and cold, predictable, passionless Leila wept in her garden.

The relief of it had been great. Later she called her old friend, Arnie, who was a landscape contractor. Arnie, who had benefitted more than once from Leila's ability to chose investments, was happy to make arrangements to have the broken loveseat hauled off. The day after it was gone, Leila went back to work in the garden.

On this warm June day, she had dug up about two feet of soil in the area of the corner, preparing to plant a last trio of rosebushes, when the shovel had rung out. She knelt down on all fours, picking up a small hand spade, and tried to clear away the soil that covered the metal object that was thwarting her progress. Thinking of Sam and Marietta, she dug with furious movements, showering dirt everywhere, some of it landing in her hair and on her clothes. Before long, the spade struck the object as well. She scraped aside enough of the soil to reveal a dark, rusty piece of metal. Curious, she continued to dig at the soil surrounding it. It was flat and smooth. She reached a curving edge and burrowed with her hands to grasp the edge of the object. She tugged and pulled, and suddenly it came free, causing her to fall back on her rump. Dirt flew everywhere, and she laughed as she looked at the heavy object on her lap. A frying pan.

“Why would anyone bury a cast-iron skillet upside down in the corner of a garden?” she wondered aloud. It was heavy and large, but there were no special markings on it. She set it on the brick walkway which curved past the area she was working on. She brushed herself off and looked into the hole from which she had pulled the skillet. A shiny object caught her eye, and once again she used the hand spade to clear the soil away. She soon had freed enough of the soil to see that it was the lid of a jar, and could tell that the jar was still attached.

Feeling a certain mild excitement, as if she were a backyard archeologist, she carefully worked around the jar, finally freeing it. She brushed it off with a gloved hand and held it up. A Mason jar, filled with old-fashioned buttons. The glass of the jar was thick, and she wondered how old it was. She set the jar next to the skillet, trying to make sense of them, and of their burial.

Unable to succeed in solving that puzzle, she stood up and went back to work with the shovel. But she had not been digging very long, when once again the shovel struck an object. She knelt again and went to work with the hand spade. This time, she found a small, crude wooden box, about the size of a shoe box. The blow from the shovel had splintered the lid, and inside the box was a small canvas bag filled with old marbles. She continued to use the hand spade.

An hour later, she had an odd collection on the walkway: to the skillet, the button jar, and the marbles, she had added an old pocket watch, a wedding band wrapped in a linen handkerchief, a fragment of stained glass. The handkerchief bore pretty embroidery, and the initials “
CG
”; the inside of the ring was inscribed, “
Chloe and Jonathan, 2-22-41
.” There was no inscription on the watch, but the crystal was cracked and the hands stopped at 6:10. Again she wondered why this particular group of objects had been buried here. A child might bury marbles, maybe even buttons, but a skillet? A wedding ring or a pocket watch? Why hide such objects? It was unsettling.

Leila continued to dig, and the next discovery brought her up short. The toe of a rubber boot. She was afraid to touch it, afraid the boot would still be attached to the owner. She stared at it, wondered if she should call the police, then smiled to herself over this unexpected nervousness. Still, when she reached down to move the soil away from it, her hand trembled.
The toe of the boot felt as if it had something in it
.

Timidly, she used the small spade, afraid to reach down into the soil with her hands. But as she made her way through the layer surrounding it, she saw no bones or rotting flesh. She pulled it free and held it upside down, spilling most of its contents on the walk. The boot held a woman's black leather shoe, and nothing more but soil. She pulled the shoe out. Further digging led to no new revelations.

Leila gathered the collection of objects and took them back to the house, where she cleaned them off as best she could. She poured a glass of red wine and sipped it thoughtfully while she took a long, hot bubble bath in her claw-foot bathtub. She climbed out when the water began to chill, and made her decision.

“I appreciate your coming by
on such short notice,” Leila said to her guest, as they reached the back patio. Alice Grayson smiled as she looked across the backyard, then back at the young woman who had invited her here. “You've done wonders with it.”

“Thank you.”

“As for the notice, I am no different than most old ladies; I have more time than opportunities. And I must admit your invitation intrigued me. Buried treasure in the backyard of the house you bought from me?”

“Have a seat, please,” Leila said, gesturing to a rattan patio chair that was next to a low table. The table, covered with a lumpy cloth, held what Alice Grayson assumed was the “treasure.”

Leila took a seat on the other side of the table and poured a glass of wine for each of them. “How long ago did you live here, Mrs. Grayson?”

“Alice. No need for formality. And it's Miss Grayson. I never married. And I never lived here.”

She laughed at Leila's look of surprise.

“This house belonged to my uncle, and then to my brother. I inherited it from him.”

“Jonathan?”

It was Alice Grayson's turn to look surprised. “How on earth did you learn his name?”

“I believe I found his wedding ring, along with a rather strange assortment of other objects.” Leila lifted the cover.

“Good Lord,” Alice said, and her blue eyes grew watery.

Leila watched her in silence, amazed at how discomposed the older woman seemed. She had met Alice Grayson only once before, when the escrow had closed, but had taken an immediate liking to her. Alice had told her that she was in her seventies, but Leila thought she seemed more lively and energetic than Leila did at thirty. Alice seemed to have liked her too, giving her a phone number to call should she have any questions about the house. Leila knew that she couldn't have expected the questions which actually did arise.

“I'll be happy to give all of these things to you,” Leila said. “They seem to mean something to you. But please, can you tell me why this particular set of objects was buried here?”

Alice dabbed at her eyes. “Forgive me. I'm sorry to be so emotional. After all these years, you wouldn't think that I could react so strongly. Yes, certainly.” She sighed. “Where to begin?”

She reached over and picked up the gold band. “This was Jonathan's wedding ring; his wedding ring from his first marriage, to Chloe Manning. Chloe was a lovely young girl. They were both young; she was nineteen years old, he was about twenty-one, I believe. It was just before the war.”

“In February of 1941? That's the date on the ring.”

“Yes. That April, our uncle died after a long illness and left this house and his store to Jonathan, who had worked for him. Jonathan and Chloe were very much in love. She was pretty, and full of life and laughter, and she spoiled him rotten. She was an excellent seamstress.

“He thought her the perfect wife in all but one regard. She was a terrible cook. But Jonathan didn't want to hurt her feelings so he always ate the meals she made for him with a smile. I lived just down the street then, and he'd come over to visit me after dinner, and groan and down bottles of antacid. She caught on, and one day gave him a large, heavy box with a big bow on it. There was a big, cast-iron skillet in it. She laughed and told him she would help him run the store if he would help her cook.”

“Do you think this is that same skillet? Why would he bury it?”

“I would be surprised to learn it was not that skillet. As for why, well, perhaps it is best if I continue to tell you their story.

“In December of 1941, they had a little boy, William, named after my uncle. He was born two days before Pearl Harbor. Jonathan was drafted. They were very brave about it, as were most people then. Chloe and I ran the store, and Little Billy kept us too busy to feel sorry for ourselves.”