Goose in the Pond (16 page)

After putting away the leftovers, I reluctantly checked the answering machine. To say she’d left me a message was an understatement. My answering machine looked like a Vegas slot machine that hit the big one.

“Honeybun, I need to talk to you. Please give your grandmother a call.”
Monday—one P.M.,
the automated voice informed me.

“Benni, I need to talk to you right away.”
Monday—1:37 P.M.

“Benni, call me NOW.”
Monday—3:14 P.M.

“Young lady, if you don’t get on the phone right now and call me, you’ll be sorry.”
Monday—3:51 P.M.

“You’ve had it.”
Monday—4:28 P.M.

I glanced at my watch. It was seven o’clock. I knew that her first day with Aunt Garnet was always the hardest. Maybe things had settled down by now. Maybe they were getting along for a change.

Then again, maybe I’d better leave the house for a little while.

7

DOWNTOWN WAS MORE crowded than usual for a Monday night. I finally gave up trying to find street parking and settled for a space on the top of the new four-story municipal parking garage. The air was pungent with the smell of coffee and cinnamon and car exhaust. Gangs of students bunched in front of every open coffeehouse and cafe. School had only been in session for about a month, and everyone was still in an insouciant summer mood. The frantic days of finals and term papers were a distant, unreal worry.

In front of Blind Harry’s, San Celina’s most infamous homeless person, the Datebook Bum, sat on the curb next to his huge canvas bag of junk. His tangled gray head was bent over a maroon leather business diary as he furiously wrote mysterious messages to himself. He was a lovable if sometimes cranky man who, like many longtime homeless, appeared ageless. His dirt-encrusted face and clothing-layered body could be anywhere from thirty to seventy. He’d stubbornly refused any help—only staying in the local homeless shelter when the weather was particularly harsh. No one had ever found out his name or whether he had any family. About six months ago, in exasperation, Elvia, who sent food out to him a couple of times a week, asked him if there was
anything
she could do for him. He shyly pointed to Blind Harry’s window display showing the latest in business books and products and asked her in a gentle, cultured voice for the maroon leather business appointment book. With the compulsion humans have for naming things, we’d taken to calling him the Datebook Bum, and in his eyes Elvia was the queen of San Celina. I dropped a dollar bill and all my change into his red coffee can. He looked up briefly and nodded.

I contemplated going into Blind Harry’s and perusing the new-book section, but I had a stack of books at home I hadn’t even started yet, so I continued walking down the crowded street all the way to the neon-lighted Art Deco Fremont Theater, where they were doing a Gene Autry Monday-night film series. I studied the old cowboy-movie posters, concluding that a movie wasn’t what I was in the mood for either. I finally ended up down at a small coffeehouse off the main drag called Coffee To Go Go. They had an outside patio with plastic chairs and glass-topped tables nature had decorated with red-and-yellow leaves from the surrounding maple trees. There was a raised concrete platform in one corner for musicians to ply their trade when the mood struck them. Some wonderful impromptu concerts were held there, especially on summer nights when the moon and stars lit it bright as the Grand Ole Opry stage. I sat down in the almost empty patio and waited for my cafe mocha to cool. It was quiet enough for me to hear the silvery rushing of San Celina Creek, which flowed next to the patio right through the center of San Celina. Across the creek, the mission’s outside lights flickered on as dusk started to lengthen the shadows of the buildings and bring a cool heaviness to the air. The falling sun turned the church’s pale adobe walls to a soft amber. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes for what seemed just a second. When I opened them again, it was almost dark. Somewhere a guitar played a hauntingly familiar blues riff that seemed to coil sensuously through the myrtle and pine trees hanging over the creek.

I threw my cold coffee away and followed the music, taking the wooden bridge over the creek. I found its source on the wide steps of the mission. Nick Cooper sat alone, playing his beat-up guitar.

“Hey,” I said, sitting down beside him. “You don’t have a hat out. Where am I suppose to put my money?”

He shook his head slowly and kept playing. “Free concert tonight, folks. I’ll share these blues with anyone.”

After the song was over, he laid the guitar aside and stared out over the creek. “Gabe called me and said they might be able to release Nora’s body next week and that he’d speed it up as much as possible.” He nodded slightly. “Thanks for taking care of that.”

“No problem,” I said, stretching out my legs. “How’re you doing?”

He shrugged. “Not so good. I can’t sleep. I’ve been living off coffee and glazed doughnuts. I feel like I’m walking through a fog.” His sharp laugh seemed to bounce off the shadowed walls of the mission. “Other than that, I’m on top of the world.”

I slipped my arm around his shoulders. “Let me buy you dinner.”

“Thanks anyway, but I’m not hungry.”

“I know food has no taste right now, but you need to eat.”

“Yes, Mom,” he said, giving me a slight smile.

I slapped his back playfully and laughed. “You know, I
am
beginning to sound like someone’s mother, but I have a good excuse. Let me tell you what’s going on at my house.” Hoping to take his mind off his sorrow for a moment, I told him about Gabe and Sam and Rita and Dove and Aunt Garnet and Uncle W.W. By the end of my story, we were both laughing.

“It sounds a lot funnier when I tell it to you,” I said.

“You’re lucky to have such a large, caring family.”

“We are large, I’ll give you that.”

“I’m thinking about leaving San Celina,” he blurted out.

I pulled my knees up and rested my chin on them, staring out at the dark trees shadowing the creek. “I felt the same way after Jack died. Everywhere I went, something reminded me of him. But I think you shouldn’t make that decision for a while. Everything’s too raw right now.”

He ran his plastic pick softly over the guitar strings. “Actually, I’m just wishing. Gabe pulled the old don’t-leave-town-without-reporting-to-us bit on me. He was nice about it, though.”

“I don’t think he really suspects you. Why should he?”

Nick held the guitar pick up and studied it as if it were some rare artifact. His hands were soft and white and long-fingered. “The land I’m going to inherit. I’m surprised he hasn’t told you about it.”

“What land?”

“The land that Nora owned. A little bit of dirt that’s causing a lot of ruckus with Peter and his friends.”

“Which one?”

“Bonita Peak and the land surrounding it.” He ran the guitar pick along the edge of his jaw. The rasp of his whiskers against the plastic sounded loud in the quiet evening air.

“Nora owns Bonita Peak? Since when? How did she get it?” Bonita Peak, next to Laguna Lake, where I’d found Nora’s body, was a popular hiking spot for locals. Covered with oak trees, monkey flowers, wild raspberries, and Indian paintbrush, it held a lot of personal memories for me as well as a lot of other San Celinans. From the peak you could survey the town of San Celina, watch the sun glint off Morro Rock as it protruded stark and black from the gray Pacific Ocean, while turkey vultures gracefully cruised air currents. The absentee owner had, for as long as I could remember, allowed public access. But in the last few months, something changed. A fencing crew had come in from Santa Barbara, strung barbed-wire fencing all around the bottom of the hill, and posted large “No Trespassing” signs. Local hikers, mountain bikers, and rock climbers had been attempting to find out what was going on. So far, all they’d gotten was a lot of double-talk from some L.A. law firm. Somehow one of them discovered that an expensive housing development complete with private golf course was being considered, with the peak being open only to the owners of the half-million-dollar homes.

“Since about three months ago. And she got it the same way I did,” he said, shrugging. “Someone died, and she inherited it.”

“What?”

“Let me tell you something right off that not many people know. Nora and I weren’t technically full siblings.”

“You weren’t?”

“My father raised Nora from the time she was two years old, but her biological father owned an oil company. Our mother was his secretary for a couple of years. He was married, of course, so when she got pregnant, he paid her off, and she came up here and eventually married my dad. Nora never even knew until after mom died and we found the adoption papers.”

“That must have been such a shock.”

He leaned back on his elbows and stretched out his legs. “It was, but she handled it pretty well. After the initial discovery, we never talked about it again. As far as I’m concerned, she is . . .” He paused. “Was my sister. Period. Then a few months ago Nora got a letter from a law firm in Los Angeles telling her that her biological father had died and left her some land. Apparently he felt guilty in his old age. It turned out to be Bonita Peak and the land surrounding it.”

I gave a low whistle. “That land’s worth a fortune.”

“You bet, and she was determined to sell. The rumors about that housing development are true. The papers were being drawn up this week.”

“Why would she sell Bonita Peak to a developer? She grew up here. She knew how much it means to the people of San Celina.”

He sat up. Anger shadowed the planes of his face. “It was the only thing in our life that we ever really disagreed on. All our lives we depended on each other. Dad died when I was only eleven and Nora thirteen, and that’s when Mom started drinking. We had to grow up real fast and somehow we sensed early that fighting against each other would only make things harder. I was so happy when she inherited that land because I thought she felt the same way I did about it. But Nora went crazy after Joey died. She got it in her head if the hospital had only had the right trauma equipment and staff, Joey wouldn’t have lapsed into that coma . . . that he’d still be alive today.”

“Would it have made a difference?”

“Who knows? General Hospital had taken a lot of cuts in the last few years. You know they closed their trauma unit down five years ago. The closest one is in Santa Barbara now. The doctors won’t say, of course. All they’ll say is it never hurts to have the type of personnel and equipment trauma units provide. Who’s to say if they’d had all the latest equipment that Joey wouldn’t still have died? But when she inherited the land and the developer told her how much he was willing to pay for it, she decided to sell it and donate a big chunk of money toward revitalizing the emergency room at General Hospital and some to an AIDS hospice for children down in L.A. She got involved with this group of parents who lost children, and went down there to tell stories to the children four or five times. She said that it helped her to see that there were worse ways for Joey to have died.”

“Both are good causes.”

He turned troubled eyes on me. “I know. But I understand what the GreenLand Conservancy is saying. If we develop all our open land, we’ll end up looking like Los Angeles or San Jose—all concrete and shopping malls. What kind of legacy is that for the next generation?”

“I guess none of that matters when your child is dying.”

“I guess not.” He drew in a deep breath. “I don’t know what to do now that I’ll have the responsibility of the land. Either way I’m going to look like a jerk. Nora had already told the hospital and AIDS hospice they could expect big donations. And now that the decision is mine, I’m not so sure that Peter and my beliefs are the right ones. Even if one child’s life was saved because of the equipment that money could buy . . .” He cradled his head in his hands.

“You don’t have to make a decision right away, do you?”

He shook his head. “No, but everyone’s pulling at me. The lawyers are going to try and rush this through probate so I can make my decision. There’s no way I can afford the taxes, so I’ll either have to sell it or donate it to the conservancy.” He stood up and slung his guitar over his shoulder. “I can’t talk about this anymore. If you hear anything, let me know.”

“Sure,” I said, watching him walk down the mission steps toward the bridge.

I started walking myself, my thoughts a confused jumble. The words
common good
kept repeating in my head. Both things in this situation were for the common good. So which one was more worthy? Deep in my gut the thought of Bonita Peak being turned into an upper-middle-class housing project made me sick. But what about the suffering of people still alive? If I knew the money went toward saving the lives of accident victims or making the last days of children with AIDS easier, would I be able to overcome my distaste over seeing more of San Celina’s pristine open land turned into stucco houses? And what about my stand on personal-property rights? Didn’t Nora have the right to make that decision? Wouldn’t I give up the ranch, even everything I owned, to save Gabe’s or Dove’s or Daddy’s life? I loved our land, but I loved the people in my life more. Personal rights versus common good. Where does one draw the line?