Authors: Earlene Fowler
“Or me.”
He drained the rest of his root beer. “I went to the board of deacons on Tuesday and told them what I did. I’ve kind of thrown them into a quandary. The church will have to take a vote. Looks like I may not be living in San Celina much longer.” He stretched out his arms in front of him. “I don’t know what to do about Grandma, though. She’d hate me leaving here, but if the church asks for my resignation, I’ll have to go somewhere else.”
“I talked to her on Wednesday.”
He rested his ankle on his knee and gave a noncommittal sound.
“She wouldn’t tell me a thing,” I continued. “She said that you didn’t know what this was all about, that you were lying to me when you said you did. Were you?”
He watched the musicians and tapped the empty can on his thigh in time to the Cajun rhythms. “I can’t talk about that,” he finally said.
“Is that a yes or a no?”
He gave a sigh worthy of his wide chest and crumpled the can with one hand. “You know, it seems like in less than a week, everything I’ve spent the last twenty years learning about morality has flown out the window. I found out something about myself I didn’t like.”
“What’s that?”
“The realization that, for certain people, I would do anything, even break the law, to protect them. And if I can break man’s laws so easily, will God’s laws be far behind?
What kind of minister, what kind of Christian does that make me?”
I looked at my hands, knowing my answer would be inadequate. But it was the only one I had. “The human kind, I guess.”
He shook his head in disgust and tossed the crumpled can in the recycling bin next to the bench. “I need to walk. See you later.” He stood up and started to move into the crowd.
“Wait,” I said, tossing my can after his and dodging people to catch up to him. “What about Oralee? Are you just going to leave it like this?”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe if you and I talked to her together, she’d tell us what this is all about and it’ll help solve the murders and ...”
“Benni, just let it be.” His voice was low and sharp. “Things are bad enough... I mean it. We burned that letter ...” He stopped abruptly. “Just stay out of it,” he said and pushed his way into the crowd.
“Okay,” I said out loud. “So it was a letter. Big deal. That doesn’t tell me anything.”
I bought myself a shrimp po-boy sandwich more for something to do than hunger and walked over to Lopez Street to watch the city workers set up the bleachers and judging booths for the parade. I waved to Miguel, who was supervising the placing of the police barriers. He was dressed in the jeans, navy blue polo shirt and dark San Celina Police windbreaker that the officers wear when they’re on crowd control at the more casual city functions. I perched on the brick wall in front of Currant’s, a Danish-style bakery and coffee house, and took a bite of my French roll, gagging on the excess mayonnaise. I opened it up and started, popping the fried shrimp into my mouth, trying to decide what to do about Oralee and Mac. With each shrimp, I counted off, “get involved, don’t get involved.” That seemed to be as logical a way to make a decision as any. I was down to five shrimp and no closer to a conclusion, when the sound of knuckles on glass made me lose count.
I turned around and peered through the rippled window of Currant’s. Over in the corner, next to the smoke-stained potbelly stove, a chubby hand beckoned me. I tossed my sandwich in the trash can and went into the coffeehouse.
“Russell,” I said. “I haven’t seen you in ages. How’s retirement?”
Russell Hill, my former history professor and mentor from Cal Poly, was sitting at one of the round glass tables with Mariko Thompson and an elderly Japanese woman wearing thick horn-rimmed bifocals and a beautiful brick-red mohair sweater. He wore the same baggy blue sweater, faded corduroy slacks, brown-on-brown saddle oxfords and neat, peppered goatee he’d taught in every day of his thirty-year academic career.
“Benni Harper, that’s entirely your fault, not mine.” He stood up and with the old-fashioned manners that always endeared him to his students and colleagues, pulled out a Shaker-style chair. “Where have you been keeping yourself these days?” he asked in the low, rolling monotone that, much as they loved him, sometimes put his students to sleep on warm spring afternoons. He turned to his companions. “Forgive me, before we start reminiscing, this is Mariko Thompson, a colleague, and her mother, Mrs. Yamaoka. We are all out today to enjoy the festival and parade.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said to her mother, then turned to Mariko. “Hello again. I love your sweatshirt.” It was a bright turquoise painted with a pale Santa Fe-style cow’s skull. “Mariko and I met recently,” I explained to Russell. “A student of hers ... well, never mind, it’s a long story. She was kind enough to let me interview her for the Historical Society book.”
“I heard you were roped into working on that project,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “I think it’s great.”
“You would. Really, I am enjoying it when I can get to it. It would be more fun if they weren’t pressuring me to finish so quickly.”
“Ah, deadlines,” Mariko said, laughing. “Where would Mylanta be without them?”
“Did you look over the copy of your story I dropped off at your office?” I asked Mariko.
“Yes, I made a few additions if that’s all right.”
“That’s great. I have fifty pages to fill and, as I told you, time is running short.” I turned to her mother, remembering that Mariko said she might talk with me. “Mrs. Yamaoka, would you consider talking to me about your memories of San Celina during the war?”
“I would like that,” Mrs. Yamaoka said in a clear, vigorous voice that didn’t seem to fit her eighty-odd years.
“Great! When would be a good time for us to talk?”
“How about Monday afternoon? That gives me time to ...” She paused. “How do you say it? Find my thoughts.”
After agreeing on a time of two o’clock and getting directions to Mariko’s house, where her mother lived, Mariko and Mrs. Yamaoka excused themselves to go to the festival.
“Alone at last,” Russell said, pulling his chair closer and leaning toward me. “Now tell me the real story behind the retirement-home murders. Egad, if this keeps up, we could start having one of those sick Hollywood-type tours—famous murder spots in San Celina county. You, naturally, would serve as tour guide.”
“I really am getting a rather gruesome reputation, aren’t I?” I said, ruefully. “Sorry, but I don’t have much to tell you. All I know is what I read in the newspaper.”
“Cut a curious and bored old man some slack. I know you and the head gendarme have a slightly more than professional relationship. Brighten my day, Ms. Harper, with a tasty tidbit of tawdry doings among the elderly.”
“Look, forget that. I swear I don’t know anything, and Chief Ortiz and I are no longer a society-page item. You know, I’ve been meaning to call you. I was wondering if I could prevail upon you to read through my chicken scratches before I turn them into the Historical Society.”
“I’d be happy to,” he said. “How is it coming?”
“Okay, I guess. Between that and the job at the museum and all the other complications in my life, it seems like I don’t have two minutes to call my own these days. That’s why I haven’t been in touch with you.”
“Well, you must rectify that in the near future,” he said, patting my hand. “I miss our conversations. How’s the bovine business?”
“Up and down. It’s not as bad as Daddy would lead you to believe, but it’s certainly not what it used to be.”
“Not much is, my dear, not much is.”
“Speaking of how things used to be, can I pick your brain for a minute?”
“Whatever’s left of it after thirty years of academia is yours.”
“You lived in San Celina County during the war, didn’t you? Were you old enough to remember much?”
“I was but a lad in short pants, but yes, I remember it vividly. Why do you ask?”
“I have a question for you. What do you remember about Brady O’Hara during that time?”
He looked at me shrewdly. “What exactly is it you want to know?”
“What was he like? Was he a nice man? Did people like him?”
He tilted his chair back and folded his hands across his small paunch. “Did you know my father was mayor of San Celina during the war years?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“That meant we had a lot of people come to dinner who were very powerful in city politics.”
“Would one of them have been Mr. O’Hara?”
“Of course. Granted, I was thirteen at the time, so you have to take into consideration that any adult other than a man in uniform didn’t interest me much, but he does tend to stick out in my mind.”
“Why is that?”
“He was adamantly for the relocating of the Japanese. Right from the beginning, even before Pearl Harbor. Ranted and raved about it more than once at our dinner table. And he wrote a plethora of letters to the editor of the
Tribune
on just that subject in the months preceding December seventh.” He took a sip of his coffee. “What does this all have to do with his murder?”
“I’m not sure, yet. Look, can you keep a secret?” I was dying to tell someone what I’d found in the ledgers.
“Nasty old gossip that I am, I can usually keep myself from babbling out of turn if absolutely required. Out with it, young woman. I haven’t heard a succulent piece of scuttlebutt in ages.”
I told him briefly about the loans in the ledgers, watching his face the whole time.
“Certainly odd,” he said, rubbing his chin. “Not at all what you’d expect of Brady. But do you think it has anything to do with why he and poor, unfortunate Rose Ann were murdered, and more importantly, have you informed your inamorato of any of this?” He pointed out the window.
Across the street, Gabe, wearing the same uniform of navy windbreaker and snug Levi’s as his young officers, had his mouth pressed up to a compact walkie-talkie. I watched him check the patrol officers’ work, loping through them in the loose-limbed walk he adopted whenever he wasn’t wearing a suit. He wore the Timberland hiking boots I’d talked him into buying a month ago.
“You can’t wear those old topsiders all winter,” I’d said, on our first clothes shopping trip together. “Especially with no socks. How about these? They’d be very warm.” I held up a pair of black Tony Lama bullhide boots.
He’d kissed the top of my head and laughed. “
Querida
, I’ll put on a pair of cowboy boots the same day you wear a red leather miniskirt and four-inch heels.” We compromised on the hiking boots.
I sucked on my bottom lip and turned back to Russell. “He’s not my ... whatever you called him. We’re not seeing each other anymore.”
He raised his eyebrows and smiled serenely.
“Oh, keep quiet,” I said irritably. “I think I’ll go wander around the festival some more. If it’s okay, I’ll drop those pages off at your house sometime next week.”
“Fine.” He gave me a measured look. “Benni, whatever it is you’re doing, just be careful.”
“All I’m doing is what some very special teacher once told me, something about faithfulness to the truth of history involving more than research. Some nonsense about imbuing themselves with the life and spirit of the time, being a sharer of the action.”
“Ah, yes, Francis Parkman. Virile old fellow. Lived with the Sioux Indians for a time. Was also known to be quite batty. Well, in all fairness, I must counterbalance those meanderings with words from the great G.K. Chesterton himself, “Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up.” He reached over and patted my hand. “Your curious mind made you one of my best students, my dear, but sometimes the past is best left in the past.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing, Russell, but I can’t help wanting to know why a man who distrusted the Japanese so, whose brother was killed by them, would turn around and for years after that be their biggest benefactor. Don’t you find that odd?”
“In my advanced years and small accumulated store of wisdom, I have learned to not question the oddity of man’s behavior, but to accept the good of it and mourn the bad.”
I stood up. “Well, I’ll let you know what I find out.”
“I’ll be anxiously awaiting your phone call.”
Outside, I was alternately relieved and disappointed to find Gabe gone. I had nothing to say to him, yet I longed to hear his voice. I started walking listlessly back toward Bonita Street and the festival, when Miguel called to me.
He jogged toward me, his nightstick bouncing against his thigh. His jacket blew open revealing the leather shoulder holster hugging his chest. If someone had told me fifteen years ago that the eight-year-old boy I caught cheating at Old Maid would someday be keeping law and order in the streets of San Celina, I would have choked with laughter.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“I thought you’d want to know.”
“Know what?” The sober look on his young face frightened me. “Miguel, what is it?”
“Aaron. He’s in the hospital. I guess he had some kind of attack.”
“Oh no, when? Does ...” I started to ask if Gabe knew, but caught myself. Of course he knew.
“A half hour or so ago. The chief just got word. He’s on his way over there. Look, I have to get back. I just saw you and thought you’d want to know.”
“Thanks.” I turned and walked back down the street toward the festival. What I really wanted to do was go to the hospital and be with Gabe and Rachel, but I also knew how awkward it would be. It would be obvious to her something wasn’t right between me and Gabe and she didn’t need any other pressures right now. On the other hand, I didn’t want her to think I didn’t care. Debating what I should do, I took a short cut to Bonita Street through Gum Alley, a forty-some-year unofficial city landmark. The city council’s annual vote to clean up the gum-ladened walls was always met with virulent protest from two generations of gum-chewing artisans. The two-story brick walls of the alley were decorated with a sticky collection of colorful flowers, hearts, initials, greetings, philosophical maxims and fraternity symbols. I glanced up, as always, to make sure the “JH lvs BR—1975” in traditional Bazooka-pink still held its spot. Perched on Jack’s shoulders, it had taken me almost an hour to create.