Figurative language, Rese hoped but was … not completely convinced. Star in a fury took on mythical proportion. She collapsed onto the bed sobbing. “I believed him.”
Rese sat down beside her. “What did you believe?”
“He had the contacts. He said once they saw my work—” Star clenched her teeth. “He loved me until he realized …” She rolled to her side. “I challenged him at first. His style changed, improved. But he couldn’t stand that.” She raised upon one elbow. “ ‘Company, villainous company, hath been the spoil of me.’ I can never paint again.”
Rese worked a red, knotted strand of hair free with her fingers. “Don’t say that, Star.”
“My muse is dead. He strangled her.” Star’s head collapsed to her shoulder.
Rese drew the tangled sections out and let them fall. “She’ll come back. You’ll see.”
“Why can’t I be like you?” Star sprang up and grabbed her shoulders. “You don’t need anything.”
Right. The only perfectly autonomous person on the planet.
“It’s because your mother died, while mine…” Star blinked away the tears. “I wish mine had died.”
“I know.” This was old ground. Star found Mom’s death miraculous, a freedom from hardship, while Star’s had continued. No explaining would change that view.
“Can I stay here?” Star smeared her palm under her nose.
Rese stroked her shoulder. “I’m hardly going to kick you out.”
“I’ll clean or something.” Star wiped her face with her shirt.
“You might find a different job.”
“I can’t look yet. I just can’t.”
“Okay.”
Star moaned, rocking. “I wanted to be through with this. The Looney Toons.”
Rese stiffened. She hadn’t thought of that in a long time. Maybe Mom’s death had freed her from some of it. “We’re not Looney Toons.” Rese made Star look at her and bored the truth in. “We’re no crazier than anyone else. Everyone has junk.”
Star hugged her fiercely. “I can’t live without you.”
“Yes, you can. You’re stronger than you think.”
Star tipped her head back. “I am strong as the earth, high as the sky, deep as the sea.”
Rese smiled. “Yeah.”
Star laughed. “Hoh—I needed that cry.”
Rese sobered. She had needed to cry for too long, but until this morning with Lance … and even then she’d cut it short. Well, she and Star were different people.
“Let me brush your hair.” Rese took the brush tines gently through Star’s hair until the curls came free. They were the same age, but Star had always seemed the little sister. “Now rest. You’ll feel better.” Rese wished she had something better to offer, something that might wash away the years of selfdestruction, or at the very least offer hope and peace. But what was there? As Star drifted off to sleep, Rese stood carefully from the bed and returned to her work.
————
The evening was warm and clear, the lawn sun dappled through the draping eucalyptus, oaks, and conifers. Nearly six, and already the park plaza was filled with families and couples and seniors clustered around tables or on blankets spread with picnic food and wine. Italian influence; Lance smiled.
He walked between Rese and Star, who was surprisingly still and cogent. Cogent mainly because she hadn’t opened her mouth. From the look of her eyes she was either coming down from something or deeply upset. Rese acted as though nothing had changed, so maybe Tinkerbell had these fluctuations.
He glanced about for Sybil, but didn’t see her yet. Technically, he shouldn’t have asked Rese and Star along. He had expected Rese to refuse, but she said, “That’s perfect for Star.” And she had driven them all in her truck.
They reached the little amphitheater and Lance found a space for four. “Want something to eat or drink?” There were vendors on the other side of the city hall in the square. A farmers’ market was set up there, though he couldn’t tell specifically what the booths held. He did see a corn dog kiosk, but didn’t mention it.
Rese turned to Star. “Do you want something?”
Star’s hands rose and fell in her lap like injured birds, but she didn’t answer.
“I’ll see what there is.” Lance left them there and strolled toward the booths. Bouquets of vibrant sweet peas caught his eye on one side while another booth held poppies, daisies, peonies, and buttercups. Fresh vegetables, peaches, strawberries, and honeycomb scented the evening. An ostrich farmer set out baskets of feathers, eggs, and packages of ostrich jerky.
He came to a booth with a long line for homemade gumbo. Where he came from that was always a good sign. Rico would not frequent any place where he didn’t have to wait. Lance got two bowls of gumbo and two Italian sodas from a neighboring kiosk and carried them back in a shallow cardboard box.
Rese handed a bowl and a cup to Star, then took her own from the box. “What about you?”
He glanced around. “I’ll wait awhile.” No sign of Sybil yet. Maybe she was looking for him somewhere else. “I’ll be back.” He headed up the concrete steps and out around the pond. Ducks assessed him for food, but when his hand was not forthcoming, they turned to better prospects.
The sweet scent of kettle corn wafted on the air as he rounded the pond and saw Sybil. Her blue ankle-length skirt was slit all the way up one thigh, but she managed to look glamorous, not trashy. Her toe-strap sandals slapped the sidewalk lightly as she approached, and he caught a whiff of perfume. But what interested him most was the folder she carried.
“Sorry I’m late. I didn’t really expect to find something.”
“But you did?”
She flicked the silky hair back over her shoulder and opened the folder. “I’m not sure what to make of this.” She took out a copy of an
Index Tribune
article and gave it to him.
He checked the date and his pulse quickened.
Local Man Shot Down
Late Monday night Vito Shepard was gunned down in his home.
Vito Shepard. Quillan’s son Vittorio?
Neighbors were jolted from their sleep as shots rang out “like war” in the early hours. “I never heard a Tommy gun before, and hope to never hear it again,” said neighbor Joseph Martino. “It’s a tragedy.”
Others feel the victim got no more than he deserved. “The Italian element has thumbed its nose at the law too long,” said one prominent citizen who wished to remain unnamed.
Police found Mr. Shepard dead in his home, amidst rumors of illgained wealth. A search of the property revealed no such cache. No witness to the slaying has come forward. Authorities are looking for Mr. Shepard’s daughter and request any information as to Antonia Shepard’s whereabouts.
Vito killed; Antonia missing. Lance lowered the paper as sorrow and a sense of injustice seeped in. Disappointment as well, with the mention of illgained wealth and the “Italian element.” Organized crime had grown out of Prohibition, and San Francisco had its own mob. It was possible members of his family had become involved, especially when the law seemed so unreasonable to people who had grown and created wine all their lives. It wasn’t about getting a cheap drunk, it was celebrating the bounty, the essence of their lives and the fruitfulness of the land.
People understood that now, with the flourishing Napa and Sonoma Valley vineyards. But in the thirteen years when Prohibition had changed the genteel inclusion of wine into the get-drunk-fast mentality of the speakeasy, people were not so understanding. Power mongers on both sides used the issue to gain control. But the feds did not gun down operators in their homes. This was a private execution.
He had joked about the guy in cement, but it wasn’t funny. That Italian stereotype lingered into the PC age, and now it seemed possible there was truth to it.
Lance looked up. “Well, that’s interesting.”
“If you like that, try this.” She handed him another copied sheet.
He recognized it as an obituary.
Vittorio DiGratia Shepard died quietly in his home Sunday night. He is succeeded by esteemed poet Quillan Shepard, father, and a daughter, Antonia. Funeral Mass, family only
.
Lance checked the date, but it matched the first one. He looked up. “Died quietly?”
“It seems that was the official version.”
His chest squeezed.
Sybil flicked the first sheet. “This was never published. I found it in the archives, but it was not printed in the paper.”
Lance frowned. “Why not?”
She shrugged. “Someone didn’t want it there.”
“So they ran the obituary and left it at that?”
“That’s how it seems. I checked the police files.”
He couldn’t help a look of surprise and respect. “And?”
She shook her head. “No smoking Tommy gun.”
Lance looked from one sheet to the other. “Could the first story be wrong? Some zealous reporter looking for a beat?”
Sybil caught her hair back and let it fall. “Possible, I guess. But I doubt it. Especially if it was archived. And your neighbor had heard it rumored. I’ve gone with less than that.”
Lance considered the information. If he raised awareness of a past wrong, would it help his case? Nothing connected him directly—yet. Rese would still not … A serious twinge seized him. He didn’t like keeping secrets. But how could he not? He needed answers, then he’d decide what to do with what he learned.
“So is there a story here?”
Sybil shook her head. “Old news.” She smiled. “Now if Vito’s ghost starts to roam…”
“How do you know it’s not?”
She slipped her hand into his arm. “Is it?”
“Rese heard moans the other night.”
By her expression, Sybil’s mind had taken that statement and run. But she just smirked and said, “Well, when she sees the bullet-ridden body let me know.” She tugged him forward. “The music’s starting. We won’t get a seat.”
“I have places already.”
“How?”
“Rese and her friend.”
Sybil stopped and looked into his face. “You brought Rese?”
So it
had
been cheating. “She needed to get out.”
“Are you two together?”
He could say yes and end her pursuit, but it was also one of the only areas he could be honest. “Strictly business.” Though Rese’s expression when he sat down with Sybil was interesting. Star was still in another world and hardly responded when he introduced her. Sybil’s reaction to both women would have amused him if Rese wasn’t suddenly looking brittle. He was not getting this right, and the aftermath might be more than he wanted to face.
Surprisingly, Sybil didn’t press him for anything past the concert. Maybe because of Rese and Star. Maybe she was simply changing strategy. As soon as Lance got home, he went to his room and read over the articles again.
Nothing explained why Antonia’s father was shot down, or by whom, or how that affected the property afterward. Why had the Shepards—or the Michellis, through Marco’s marriage to Antonia—lost their land and this house where he now slept? Who was involved in the execution, and could they have driven the family away?
If the story was hushed up, changed even as far as the police files, someone in power was behind it. And if so, what chance was there that anything of value remained? Yet Nonna’s urgency suggested that something remained to be done. It had been enough to send him there, and with God’s help he’d find her secret.
I am wise for my years, seeing beyond the surface.
Angel sight, Nonna Carina calls it,
the knowing of others’ pain, others’ joy.
My heart pulses with a rhythm outside me
that I cannot ignore.
My spirit dances. My spirit grieves.
My spirit knows what my mind does not.
E
ven open to the air, the carriage house had a smell of age. Lance drew it in, wondering. It wouldn’t come from the stone walls, and the rafters and framing he had built over the last three days were new. The floor? Just stones on dirt. He sniffed. When he tried to smell it, he couldn’t. It only came when he first stepped inside the walls.
He sighed. Probably his imagination. He looked down at the floor. He had trenched and laid the pipes up to the outer wall. Now he had to raise the floor to bring them in; wedge the stones up, dig under the wall, and plumb the bath. Why was he so reluctant?
He took up the crowbar he had laid in readiness, fitted it under the first large stone and pried it loose. A pang twisted his insides. What on earth? It was only a floor, regardless of Rese’s reverence and his own admiration.
He gripped the edge of the stone and raised it. He had numbered them with chalk to make sure he replaced them correctly when he was through. Now he set the stone aside, confident he could restore the floor when he was finished. The earth beneath it was packed hard as rock itself. He would have a time digging through that to bring in the pipes. He levered the next stone up and set it with the first.
He had positioned the bathroom at the front of the bedroom side so he would disturb as little of the floor as possible. But he should grout it there. The previous artisan would understand that much. He levered the next stone and found rock, not dirt under that one, a rougher chalk-colored block. Huh. He wouldn’t be digging through that.
But there it came again, the feeling of regret. He frowned. Part of him wanted to lay the stones back down and forget having a bathroom. But that was ridiculous. He could hardly ask Rese to share hers, and the others upstairs went to the guest rooms. Whoever ended up living in the carriage house needed facilities, and he was the one to build it. At least he could give the whole process the care it deserved.
He ran a finger over the stone. It was as cool and rough as any stone not exposed to sunlight. He caught a whiff of age again and cocked his head, trying to place it and conjuring images of Italian chapels and grottos. He pictured Cousin Conchessa with her black veil and beads.
Lance shook his head. He was going off the deep end. He put the crowbar under the next stone and raised it. Rock underneath again. They had built the carriage house over bedrock. He would not get pipes through that. But then he saw the seam. Throat tightening, Lance set the floor paver aside and studied the rocks underneath. They were mortared together. Definitely not natural.