Sonoma Rose: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel (7 page)

“I swore I would never tell.”

“I know that. You made me swear too. I thought maybe he…forced the truth from you.” Lars flexed his hands around the steering wheel. “Rosa, I thought he’d killed you. I raced over there fearing I’d find you dead on the floor of the adobe, the children around you, sobbing—”

“Don’t talk like that.” Rosa glanced at the backseat, where the girls slept on. “Obviously he didn’t kill me.”

“Not for lack of trying, by the look of it,” said Lars. “He’s lucky he’s safe behind bars, or I’d—”

“No, Lars. Don’t even say it.”

“I swear to God, Rosa, I’ll never understand why you continue to protect him after all—”

“He’s not the one I’m protecting,” she snapped. “If you hurt him, you would end up in jail. What good would that do you? What good would you be to me or the children then?”

From the corner of her eye she saw a muscle work in his jaw. Long ago, he had promised her that he would not harm John, and she knew he would keep that promise and all others she asked of him from that day forward as atonement for the one promise he had broken, the one that had compelled her to marry John instead of him.

They drove along in silence across the valley, past rain-soaked
fields of strawberries and alfalfa, past the large Queen Anne homes of prosperous farmers and small adobes like the one Rosa had left behind.

When Lars spoke again, the anger and frustration had left his voice. “You need to see a doctor.”

The pain in Rosa’s side had subsided to a dull ache, but the cuts and bruises on her face throbbed. All she wanted to do was find a safe, soft bed somewhere and sink into a dreamless sleep. “Ana and Miguel need to see a doctor more than I do.”

“There’s no reason why all three of you can’t see a doctor. We’ll go straight to the hospital.”

“Not tonight, please,” Rosa begged. “I can’t face doctors and questions tonight.”

Lars looked as if he might argue, but he glanced at her face and nodded reluctantly. “First thing tomorrow morning, then. I’ll ask around and find someone who’s good with children.” He paused for a moment, lost in thought, and absently patted his coat above his heart. Rosa heard the faint rustle of paper within the inside pocket. “I collected a payment for Oscar at the packinghouse, but in all the excitement I forgot to give it to him. I guess what I’m saying is that I have money for the best doctors we can find. I know Oscar wouldn’t mind.”

“I have money too,” said Rosa, suddenly remembering the valises. “Oh, Lars, John is mixed up in something very dangerous. I don’t know what exactly, or how long it’s been going on, but he’s been hiding guns and liquor and cash in the hayloft.”

Lars shot her a curious look. “Cash and guns too?”

“Yes, four crates of tommy guns and three valises full of money. We—I took two of them.”

“Why didn’t you take all three? And why not a few of the guns for good measure? They might be handy in a tough spot.”

It took her a moment to realize he was teasing her. “Lars Jorgensen, this is no joking matter. John’s breaking the law.” Suddenly something Lars said gave her pause. “You said ‘cash and guns too.’ You knew about the liquor? And you didn’t warn me?”

“I suspected, but I figured you knew more about what was going on than I did.”

“I didn’t know anything about this until a few minutes before we fled for the mesa. Lupita saw John stashing the valises, and she showed me where they were.” She studied Lars, bewildered. “What did you see that I overlooked? What made you suspicious?”

“Do you remember that day in June when Elizabeth and I came by to pick up the mail, and John and I got into it?”

“Of course I do,” said Rosa, although she wouldn’t have described the incident that way, since all the rage had come from John’s side. John had been off on one of his mysterious errands when Lars and Elizabeth arrived, and while Marta and Ana led Lars off to play, Elizabeth came into the house to post a few letters to her folks back home in Pennsylvania and stayed to chat.

Then, suddenly, they had heard angry shouts from outside. John had returned and had flown into a rage when he discovered Lars playing with Marta and Lupita in the shade of the orange trees. John had seized the girls by the arms and was dragging them away from Lars, his face red with fury. “I told you to stay away from my family!”

Lars tried to calm him down, and when Rosa intervened, John knocked her to the ground. As Lars helped her to her feet, John shoved the girls into the house and returned a moment later clutching something in his right hand. Rosa heard Elizabeth
cry out in alarm as he flung the object at Lars’s chest. Instinctively, Lars caught it. Clear liquid sloshed inside the glass bottle.

“I remember what you are even if she doesn’t,” John had snarled. “Crawl back inside your bottle and leave us alone.”

How Rosa had despised John at that moment, for frightening Marta and Lupita and bruising their arms as he dragged them away from Lars, for mocking Lars and the misfortunes of his past when he had struggled so hard to overcome them, for giving Lars the poison he could have used to destroy himself again. She had hoped that Lars would leave the bottle in the dirt before he drove away, but when she went out later to check, it was nowhere to be found. She assumed that he had taken it with him, awaiting the moment when he could slip off to some secluded corner of the Jorgensen ranch and drink it dry, but the next time she saw him, he had been as clear-eyed and levelheaded as ever, and had evidently not started back down the path that had once taken him away from her. She was so relieved that he had not fallen into his old ways that she never spared a thought for the bottle itself, and how John had come to have it. Liquor was not that difficult to come by, despite Prohibition, for a man who wanted a drink badly enough.

“That was a fairly pricey import, not some bathtub gin,” said Lars. “Then, when I considered that flashy Chrysler John’s been tearing around in, I put two and two together and it added up to trouble.”

“Why didn’t you warn me?”

He kept his gaze fixed on the road ahead. “What would you have done?”

“I don’t know.”

“You wouldn’t leave him when he beat you. You wouldn’t
leave him when we had another child together. I didn’t think you’d leave him over a few tenuous links to organized crime.”

The implicit criticism stung. “You know why I couldn’t leave.”

“I know why you
said
you couldn’t leave.” When she made no reply, his voice lost its sharp edge. “Anyway, I didn’t have much proof, just a bottle and my suspicions. So I turned the liquor over to the feds.”

“You didn’t drink it?”

She regretted her words the moment they left her lips. “No, Rosa,” he replied evenly. “I didn’t. It wouldn’t have been much good as evidence if I had.”

“Does John know that you reported him?”

“I don’t believe he does, but it might not matter now anyway. When I went looking for you at your place, county deputies were already there, searching the entire farm for clues. By now they’ve surely found John’s stash in the hayloft. He could be brought up on charges of racketeering as well as murder.”

“Attempted murder,” Rosa corrected him. She had to believe that Henry might somehow pull through.

“For his sake and Elizabeth’s, I hope you’re right.” Lars fell silent for a moment. “I’m sure you know that I didn’t report John to the Prohibition agents out of any deep and abiding admiration for the law. I did it hoping they would seize John and lock him up somewhere far away from you and the children. I understand that you don’t want me for a husband, but for the love of God, Rosa, you shouldn’t be with him.”

Rosa stroked Miguel’s soft, curly hair as he slept in her arms. “I know.”

But she had wanted Lars for a husband. If he had been then the man he was now—sober, diligent, steadier—she would have married him despite her parents’ objections.

They drove in silence the rest of the way to Oxnard. It was nearly midnight when Lars finally parked the car near the corner of Fifth and A Streets. “I’ll be right back,” he promised, and hurried off. In the backseat, the girls stirred sleepily, awakened by the sudden stillness. The storefronts closest to the car were dark, but light spilled from the windows of a few restaurants scattered down the street, and whenever a door opened, bursts of laughter and music punctuated the night as couples or groups of young men spilled out onto the sidewalk, holding umbrellas high if they had them, pulling up the collars of their coats if they did not. The men were loud and grinning and flushed, young and old and in between; the women were young, with short skirts and bobbed hair and high, teasing voices that rose into laughter or shrieks of dismay if they unwittingly stepped in a puddle. Rosa slouched in her seat and combed her long dark hair in front of her cheeks with her fingers, concealing her injuries, praying that the few passersby would be too absorbed in their gaiety to notice her. The sight of a woman with a bruised and battered face sitting in a car full of children downtown on a rainy Saturday night would surely linger in their memories should anyone come around asking questions later.

Exhausted, she closed her eyes and waited for Lars, but apprehension and dread kept her on edge. She had come to realize that John was not the only man who might be looking for her. The deputies who had searched the farm after John’s arrest—surely they would have questions for the gunman’s wife. They might assume she was John’s accomplice and arrest her too. How could she prove she had not known her husband had become involved with bootleggers? Who would believe her? And what if the money she had taken was not John’s payment for services rendered, but part of the cache itself? What if she had
stolen from the mob? Gangsters wouldn’t care that the police would have confiscated the valises anyway if she had not taken them. They wouldn’t care that she had meant to take John’s money, not theirs. If they tracked her down, they would punish her all the same.

Sick with dread, she sank lower into the seat—and bolted upright with a gasp when Lars suddenly rapped on her window. “I’ve taken two rooms at the Radcliffe Hotel,” he said, opening the back door and picking up Lupita. With his free hand, he gently shook Marta and Ana awake. “We’ll get you and the children upstairs first and I’ll come back for your things.”

Rosa nodded and climbed out of the car, resting Miguel’s head upon her shoulder and wrapping her shawl around them both. The air was cool and misty and smelled of rain and sodden garbage and the ocean. Lars led them to a discreet entrance off the alley and inside a two-story brick building, up a narrow staircase, and along a dimly lit hallway. About halfway down, he stopped in front of a door, shifted Lupita to his other shoulder, and fumbled to fit the key in the lock. When the door stuck, Marta came forward to help Lars shove it open, but she recoiled from the smell of mothballs and old cigarettes that wafted from the room.

“Let’s see what we have here,” Lars said, leading them inside and groping for the light switch. Blinking as her eyes adjusted to the glare, Rosa took stock of the room and noted two beds, a wooden chair, a single window on the far wall, and a bureau stained with bull’s-eye rings from old coffee cups. A narrow door to her right led to a bathroom with a toilet, a sink beneath a chipped mirror, and a clawfoot tub. That, at least, was a welcome sight.

Rosa drew the white eyelet curtains and set Miguel down
on one of the beds. Without waking, he promptly rolled over onto his tummy, fists tucked into his chest, right cheek resting on the candlewick bedspread, rump in the air. Lars lay Lupita down beside him, but as he removed her shoes, she woke and sat up. “Where are we?” she said, the words fading into an enormous yawn.

“Someplace warm and dry and out of the rain,” said Rosa, mustering up what she hoped would pass for brisk good cheer.

“When are we going home?”

“Not tonight.”

“I’ll be right back,” said Lars, pocketing the key. “Lock the door and don’t open it for anyone.”

A small, wild laugh escaped Rosa as she nodded and locked the door behind him. If pursuers really did follow so closely behind them, they were already doomed.

She knew that if she sat down she would not get up again until morning, so she stayed in motion. Exhausted and drained, her head and rib cage throbbing, she draped her damp shawl over the bathtub to dry, helped Ana out of her shoes, and murmured responses to Marta, who had assigned herself the task of determining their sleeping arrangements.

When Lars returned from the car with the feed sacks full of clothing, Rosa sent Marta and Ana into the bathroom to wash their hands and faces and brush their teeth. A bath would have to wait until morning, she decided as she and Lupita took their turns at the sink. Miguel was down for the night and she had no intention of waking him. She had the girls change into their pajamas while Lars went back to the car for the rest of their belongings, and by the time he returned, she had tucked Marta and Ana in one bed and Lupita and Miguel in the other. Lars helped her shove the baskets and bags against the wall to leave
a clear aisle from the beds to the bathroom, and then he took off his sodden hat, dug the room key from his pocket, and gave it to Rosa.

“I’ll be right across the hall should you need me,” he said, his hand on the doorknob. “I’ll come back first thing in the morning. Don’t open the door for anyone but me. I don’t care who it is—innkeeper, chief of police, your husband, the devil himself.”

Rosa promised she would not, and thus satisfied, Lars departed. Rosa had almost closed the door behind him when she suddenly pulled it open again. “Lars—”

He paused in the doorway of the room across the hall. “What is it?”

“I never thanked you. For coming after us, for seeing us safely out of the canyon, for bringing us here and finding us a room for the night—thank you. I’m ashamed I didn’t say it sooner.”

A brief smile flickered in the corners of his mouth. “It’s all right. You’re welcome.” He stood watching her for a moment. “You know very well I’m not closing my door until you close yours and I hear that bolt slide into place, so you might as well go on and do it.”