Pasadena (56 page)

Mrs. Nay told Blackwood to sit on the broken bench at the court’s
side. It was clear that she wanted to continue reviving history: her face was set firmly, as if she was preparing herself for a solemn task. And indeed, Cherry felt a compulsion: she hadn’t done her part at the time—she’d been too selfish in pursuit of a story—and now, for the sake of her conscience, she wished to sort things out. George had written:
My Dearest Cherry, no one is entirely proud of his past. But it’s never too late to make amends. It’s never too late to try to change things. Even for those who are gone
.

“After Edmund’s death,” said Cherry, “he was arrested. There was a trial.”

“Arrested? Who was?”

“Mr. Bruder. I’m afraid he wasn’t very cooperative. He had hardened by then. He was on his way to becoming the man you now know.”

“Was Mr. Bruder charged with murder?”

“It was a sad day. But maybe I shouldn’t say any more, Mr. Blackwood. What’s done is done, and that’s the way it is.”

“You can’t stop now, Mrs. Nay.”

She plucked a fraying thread from one of the embroidered oranges. Then she began again. “I’m telling you, Mr. Blackwood, because you seem to want to know. You seem to recognize that the history of this ranch goes back to her.”

“And back to him.”

“Yes, and back to Mr. Bruder.” She paused. “I covered the trial as a reporter. It didn’t last more than a couple of days. There was very little evidence. Besides him, she was the only witness. There was no one else to call. She testified first, and after that the jury never heard any of what Bruder had to say.”

“You’re talking about Linda Stamp?”

“Yes, but she was Mrs. Willis Poore by then, ready to give birth, stomach swollen out to here. It was hard for her indeed, speaking against Mr. Bruder. But she did it for her brother. You can imagine what a struggle it was for her, deciding what to say. What to do.”

It was the end of the summer, said Mrs. Nay, and the trial was held in Oceanside. There weren’t many people in the courtroom—a judge with a German-sounding name (“Dinklemann,” Cherry said, pulling it up from her memory) and a porcine quality to his face, and the prosecutor, Mr. Ivory, a trim, groomed man who raised his voice as if the courtroom was large and there were people in the last row straining to hear. But that was not the case: it was a small courtroom with a glazed
tile floor and a few rows of oak benches worn smooth and brown. It was a jury of ten men and two women, both of whom had bought a special lipstick. No one but Cherry Nay and a cub reporter from the
Bee
sat through the trial, and there were times when the ceiling fan made the only noise in the room.

Lindy Poore was called to testify, and she settled into the witness stand uncomfortably. She told the court that she was expecting her first child in the early fall, but in truth the baby would arrive before the week’s end, nearly nine pounds and screaming and fully formed. Lindy had spent her final trimester in bed, receiving her daughter’s kicks, and through the hot August afternoons it had felt as if the unborn baby were boxing her mother, fists to the lining of her womb, a steady beating, Lindy’s stretched flesh rising from beneath.

“Will you be all right, Mrs. Poore?” asked Judge Dinklemann.

She had come alone, her husband grateful that the trial was held far from Pasadena, and although word had seeped through the city, staining conversations about the new Mrs. Poore, the story remained remote. The question lurked: What precisely happened that night, and how had Edmund died? There was speculation of self-defense on the part of Mr. Bruder, but it was somewhat laughable when chatter compared the physiques of the two men. Had it been an accident? “Mrs. Poore, we hope you’ll explain what you witnessed that night,” prodded Judge Dinklemann.

Of course, Bruder was in the courtroom as well, seated and under the supervision of a bailiff in a sand-colored uniform. On the trial’s first day the jury listened to Mr. Ivory’s re-creation of the events and his preview of what he promised would be Mrs. Poore’s forthcoming and convincing testimony. At the time, Lindy did not know that her words would settle Bruder’s fate, but nonetheless she sat before the small courtroom with a firm understanding of what she was being asked to do. She hadn’t seen Bruder since they’d buried Edmund, and now here he was, erect in his chair and waiting for her to speak. His gaze was upon her, and it took all her will not to begin to weep. She wasn’t well, and she blamed the fatigue and the fever and nearly everything she felt on the writhing baby, whose unborn anger Lindy feared. It was hard for her to concentrate but she would, she told herself, and she looked to the small panel window above the door, where a blood-bright bougainvillea tapped the glass. She looked to the coral-pink lipstick worn by one
of the women in the jury, and to the bow tie at Mr. Ivory’s throat. His sterling-handled cane was hooked over the arm of his chair, and he seemed too elegant of a man for this kind of work. “Your name,” he said.

“Lindy Poore.”

“What is your maiden name?”

“Linda Stamp.”

“Who is Sieglinde Stumpf?”

“That was my name as a girl.”

“And now you are the wife of Captain Willis Poore?”

She had married Willis in a small ceremony on the ryegrass lawn. She wore a snow camellia on her breast and a veil so gauzy that she couldn’t see more than two feet before her; her new husband’s face was as obscured as if it were behind white smoke. Lolly was there, of course, in somber navy serge and a hat with black netting that hid her teary eyes. She clutched Palomar at her hip as if he were a toy of some sort, and little did anyone know that from that day on she would never, as long as she lived, release him from her grasp. Also present were a handful of 100 Percenters and members of the Valley Hunt Club, shading themselves from the sun with their Books of Common Prayer. Rosa had helped Linda dress, and she asked the trembling bride about the rash on her thigh and was told it was nothing; and Rosa, who had seen the chancre rise and kill her own mother, said, “Nothing is nothing.” But Linda insisted that Rosa not worry about her, and by the time Linda returned to the bedroom to remove the veil, she was now Mrs. Willis Poore, Rosa’s mistress, and she made it clear that her maid would not inquire into that which was not her concern.

“You haven’t been married very long?” said Mr. Ivory. He posed other questions to establish the facts of Lindy’s life, and throughout them she sat with her hands resting on her belly and tried to catch Bruder’s eye, but now he refused to look at her. She was afraid, although she didn’t know of what. She planned to tell the truth: that she didn’t know what had happened; that she’d arrived just as Edmund was falling but that it was too dark to see precisely how he had been killed. During the drive down the coast she had anticipated the prosecutor’s final question: “Did Mr. Bruder kill your brother?” Over and over she had repeated her answer: “I cannot say.”

It was warm in the courtroom, and one of the bailiffs moved to open
the window above the door with a long, clawed stick. The window tilted open and the jury shifted and mopped their throats and during this interruption Lindy found Bruder looking at her again. He was studying her carefully, almost the way she expected she would one day study her baby. Nothing about Bruder appeared distressed—or, at least, he didn’t seem concerned for himself—but while the bailiff returned the clawed stick to the corner, Lindy thought she saw anxiety for her rise in Bruder’s eye.

Mr. Ivory asked Lindy to explain what had happened the night Edmund was killed. The long summer in bed, the heat trapped in the second-floor room, had prepared her for this. Over the months she had retold herself the story many times, and nothing about it remained mysterious, except the very end—what exactly had happened, she could not say. Did she think it was an accident? This was the one question she hoped the prosecutor would not ask, for it was the one that invariably prompted her to weep. She didn’t know whether or not it had been an accident, and she feared the truth. During those first months married to Willis, Lindy hadn’t feared anything else. The brief illness that had come during her first weeks of pregnancy, and the weepy chancres lining her thighs, had faded, and she wasn’t afraid when they returned in the final months of her pregnancy: the small red pustules near her groin, the hot ache in her joints, the fever, coming and going like the Santa Anas off the desert. None of this had she feared. Her life had inverted itself and she didn’t fear any of it: not the new husband or the new sister or the new house or the city that was now hers; not even the violent baby taking over her womb; no, she had feared only the truth of what she didn’t know about that night on the beach.

“Now, Mrs. Poore. Tell us what you saw. What you saw happen to your dear brother, Edmund Stamp.”

“I didn’t see much,” she began.

“But you saw
something
.”

She explained how she had woken up and found Edmund in the barn. She was careful not to say that they had argued. “We discussed some things.”

“What things, Mrs. Poore?”

“My marriage to Captain Poore. We discussed this, but Edmund was upset, and he ran off.”

“Why do you think he was upset?”

Lindy realized that she couldn’t tell the entire truth, but she didn’t hesitate as she said, “He had recently lost the farm to Bruder. He was still angry about it.”

“How did Mr. Bruder take the farm from you and your brother?”

“My father gave it to him.”

“Your father?”

“Yes.”

“Is your father not senile?”

She said that he was.

“And he signed over his only property to Mr. Bruder?”

“Yes,” Linda said again. The men in the jury had opened their coats, and a few fanned themselves with their hats and the women’s face powder was melting. Mr. Ivory stood in front of the judge, crisp in summer linen, and he was plainly proud of what he had stirred up. “I’m sure that the ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he said, “could use some help understanding the reasons a man would leave his land to someone other than his children. Would you explain that, Mrs. Poore?”

Lindy realized something. “I’m not exactly sure myself. My father never told me. But he had his reasons, I know he did.”

“Is it possible that Mr. Bruder took advantage of your father’s declining state?”

But before Lindy could answer, the question was withdrawn and Mr. Ivory asked her to proceed with her story of the fateful night: “Edmund ran off, you were saying.”

Again, Lindy looked to Bruder, and now she found his stare tender, as if the only person he was worried about was her. She tried to return the sentiment in her glance. Her eyes were moist, and she wondered if he could see the tears. “He ran down the bluff to the beach,” she said.

“And you followed him?”

“Yes.”

“Was he carrying anything?”

“A mallet.”

“Where did you think he was going?”

“I didn’t know.”

“But you know now.” She assented. “Where was that?”

“Down the beach to Cathedral Cove.” She described the inlet and the cave, and the jury sat dully, as if they couldn’t imagine such a place. But it wasn’t so far up the coast from the courthouse; hadn’t any of
them been? The baby kicked and punched Lindy, and there was a sharp pain deep within that felt as if the baby were shredding her. Lindy was certain that if someone were to inspect her womb, he would find it black-and-blue.

“Who did you see when you arrived there?” asked Mr. Ivory.

“Edmund and Bruder.”

“What were they doing?”

She explained that it was a very dark night, and the clouds were passing before the moon, and as she ran along the beach, following Edmund’s footsteps, she didn’t know what she would find. When she rounded the bend at Cathedral Cove she couldn’t make out what was happening.

“Was there a fight, Mrs. Poore?”

“I don’t know.”

“What did you see?”

“I saw my brother falling.”

“Falling?”

“As if he had jumped, or been pushed.”

“Pushed?”

“I didn’t see anyone push him,” she said. “But he was falling down?”

Lindy nodded; it had been as if Edmund had lunged and he had struggled with himself while Bruder stood by.

“What did Mr. Bruder do?”

“I couldn’t see what he was doing.”

“Did you find him next to your brother?”

She said that from far off, it had appeared that way.

“Did you see him raise his arm and bring it down swiftly while your brother was falling to the sand?”

She said that she had.

“Was there something in Mr. Bruder’s hand?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is it possible that he was smashing the mallet into your brother’s head?”

“I don’t know. It was dark. I couldn’t see much more than their silhouettes. I was at the edge of the cove.”

“Now I’d like to show the jury some pictures,” said Mr. Ivory. “And
perhaps you, Mrs. Poore, can tell us what they’re of.” In the corner was an easel draped in a black cloth, and Mr. Ivory unveiled it as if it were a work of fine art. Propped on the easel’s ledge was a board with a photograph pasted to it. It was of pieces of wood on a beach. “What is that, Mrs. Poore?”

“It looks like driftwood.”

“These pictures were taken at Cathedral Cove the night your brother was killed. Could the tide have brought in this driftwood?”

Lindy didn’t understand what Mr. Ivory was pursuing. “Anything can wash up on a beach,” she said.

“How many lobster pots did you keep in the ocean?”

“Eight.”

“Where did you keep them?”

“Straight offshore from Condor’s Nest.”

“Could these pieces of wood have come from your lobster pots?”

“I don’t know.”

He brought the picture to Lindy for closer inspection. The strips of wood were dark but dry, and it was hard to know what they had come from. “Does it still look like driftwood to you?”

“It could be.”

“Carried in on the tide?”

“That would make sense.”

“If someone were to claim,” said Mr. Ivory, “that this pile of wood was one of your lobster pots smashed to pieces, what would you say?”