Authors: Jeffrey Littorno
Until that point, I had believed I was alone. A quiet chuckle drew my attention to the far corner of the room and Stoaffer leaning against the wall watching me. He lifted his hand to show something hanging from his middle finger. He shook his hand and I heard the metallic jingling.
“Really, Thomas, you should be more careful. These must have fallen out of your pocket,” he said as he tossed the keys to me on the bed. “Ready for some breakfast?” He turned and left the room before I had a chance to say anything.
I made a determined effort to fend off any thoughts about how the car keys had made their way into Stoaffer’s hand or why he had chosen that particular moment to give them back to me. Fortunately, I had plenty of practice in keeping such concerns from entering my brain and changing my behavior. I simply rolled off the mattress and got to my feet. As I headed down the hallway toward the kitchen, I could hear laughter and smell food cooking. The light tingle of déjà vu fluttered near the back of my neck.
To my relief, Stoaffer and Joey were not huddled in front of the stove when I entered the kitchen. Instead, Louis stood at the counter to the left of the stove stirring something inside a mug and Joey put plates on the table.
He turned toward me, smiled, and said, “Well, good mornin’. I thought maybe I was gonna be makin’ you lunch insteada breakfast.” He glanced toward the digital clock on the stove. The clock read 10:48. I was surprised by how late I had slept, but the thing which surprised me more was the digital clock on the stove.
Before I was even able to form the thought into a question, Stoaffer offered, “I suddenly recalled hearing somewhere that sometimes the power company simply throws the main breaker switch rather than shutting off power to an abandoned house. I found the breaker box in the garage and presto! We have electricity!” He beamed with pride.
“Helluva job! Right, Thomas?” Joey looked at me signaling that I should praise Stoaffer.
“Helluva job, Louis.” I parroted sure my lack of sincerity would be obvious. Instead, both Joey and Louis gazed at me with expressions of overwhelming gratitude. “So now that we have praised the miraculous feats of Louis Stoaffer, can we decide what we’re gonna do today?”
“Well, I believe the best way to get started is to visit my previous residence and see what we find there.” Joey dropped the plate on the table harder than was necessary, and Stoaffer looked over at him. “Of course, before we do that, we have to enjoy this wonderful-looking breakfast.”
That is exactly what we did.
Chapter 11
Joey’s breakfast tasted better than any I could remember. The enjoyment of the breakfast translated to relaxed, friendly conversation around the table. We joked and teased like old friends. After eating, we worked together to clear the table, rinse dishes, and load the dishwasher. If I had given some thought to the matter, our attention to house-keeping would have seemed a bit odd given the fact we were trespassing. At the time, everything seemed completely natural. Anyway, I felt truly refreshed after having a terrific breakfast and a hot shower.
In my new state, the present situation appeared to offer potential. True, we did not have every detail down, but sometimes minute details can actually get in the way of getting thing done. Anyway, there was no sense in worrying about things too much before we knew what we were going to find at Stoaffer’s old house. The whole thing could be seen as kind of an adventure. Besides when you cut to the bottom of it all, Joey and I had no better opportunity available.
We piled into the car still enjoying the general sense of optimism. Even the strange emptiness of the street on an early Thursday afternoon did not dampen the mood. Adding to the enjoyment, Louis played tour guide as we made our way to his old house.
“Over here on the right is where the first movie to be made in California was filmed. The film was just a fifteen minute scene of a bank robbery being foiled by a lone cowboy, but the work started talk about San Pietro becoming a center of movie making. The first movie studios even built facilities here. However, fate did not smile on San Pietro, and the dream of being the movie capitol passed the city by and moved up the road about ninety minutes to Hollywood.”
“You see that old apartment building next to the grocery store? That is where my wife and I lived right after we got married. Not much to look at now, but we were happiest living there.”
“Just up the street here is the Plaza del Pietro, where in 1768 Father Junipero Serra established Mission San Pietro. One of the earliest missions built in California for the purpose of converting the child-like local Indians to the ways of Christianity. Unfortunately for the monks, the local Indians were not quite as docile as they appeared. The monks had a habit of bestowing
very
special
attention on some of the Indian women as well as a few young boys. This did not go unnoticed by the men of the tribe. They also noticed the monks rarely participated in the heavy tasks or tedious chores involved in building and running the mission. Instead, at times of such labor, the monks suddenly became preoccupied with prayer or took a supervisory role. Eventually, the Indians had enough and locked all of the monks in the chapel of the mission and burned the place to the ground.”
“What a cheerful story, Louis,” I commented. “Thanks for sharing!”
“Just trying to give you some local color,” he replied and smiled into the rearview mirror. “Oh, we have arrived.” Stoaffer nodded toward a large Spanish-style house on our left, and I started to pull over to the right curb.
“We oughta drive down the street a little, donchya think?” Joey said.
I smiled at my own foolishness and drove down a few houses. We all twisted around in the car to look at Stoaffer’s old house.
The place looked well kept. The lawn had been mowed recently, and the rose bushes under the front windows were trimmed. The multi-color roses all looked freshly bloomed, and the ground beneath the bushes was covered by fresh, dark, moist peat moss. I was wondering how they kept the old leaves and dried flower pedals from falling into the peat moss. Then the idea struck me that the plants sort of looked like they were artificial. My reflections on landscaping were interrupted by Joey’s voice.
“Okay, so this is step one o’ the master plan, right?” His voice carried more than a hint of ridicule. “Wake me when it’s over.” Joey made a show of interlocking his fingers, putting his hands behind his head, and leaning back against the seat as if preparing to sleep.
As if on cue, the door of the house opened. No one appeared in the doorway. Instead the space stayed vacant and dark like some yawning mouth. When it seemed the mouth would remain empty, a figure emerged from the darkness of the doorway.
This was definitely not what I had expected Theresa to look like. Louis had told us enough about her and how she set him up for the murder of his friend that my mind pictured a middle-aged woman with heavy makeup and a bit of a hard edge. The woman in front of the house in San Pietro looked to be about twenty-four years old if even that. I saw no hint of a hard edge. Even from several hundred feet away in the driver’s seat of a 1957 Chevy, I found myself captured by the fresh, innocent or perhaps naïve glow of an optimistic and attractive young woman with her strawberry blond hair pulled back into a long ponytail. She had a small red book bag hooked over her shoulder. Her gray sweatshirt and blue jeans completed the distinct look of a student. It occurred to me that maybe this young woman was someone other than Theresa, but I was unable to take my eyes off of her long enough to ask Stoaffer.
The young woman stepped out onto the porch and turned to lock the door. When she turned back around, I would have sworn she looked right at us. Her light blue eyes seemed to focus directly on me as she smiled brightly. I reflexively scrunched down in my seat to hide from view. I noticed my companions did the same. I peered through the bottom of the car door window to see Theresa standing in the driveway as the garage door slowly rose with a hum.
The dark red little truck and a baby blue newer model Ford Mustang had room to spare in the huge garage. The blonde-haired woman with light blue eyes got into the Mustang, started it up, and was out of the driveway and down the street before the garage door was halfway closed.
Everything in the car stayed silent for a few seconds, and then Joey let out a whoop. “Shit, Lou! You ol’ devil! You never said you robbed the cradle! Yer ex is friggin’ hot!”
Stoaffer appeared distracted as he looked at Joey and flashed a smile that looked less than genuine. “Yes, she is, isn’t she?” He eyes stared off into the distance as if remembering something.
I did not say anything. I was just watching Stoaffer. A picture of the woman’s light blue eyes was stuck in my head and made this whole scheme feel somehow off balance. I watched Stoaffer and wondered what was going on in his head. He was fidgeting, and his lips trembled slightly. He started to say something but snapped his mouth shut before a word escaped his mouth. I kept watching him as he appeared ready to say something. Finally, he let out a long sigh and shook his head slightly as if to mark surrender in finding any suitable comment.
At the same time, I was doing my own calculations and quickly realized the numbers did not add up. I was going over the details of the story Louis had told us on the way here. He and Theresa had been married six years. They had dated for about a year. Louis said he spent eight years in prison. All together that made at least fifteen years. Fifteen years ago, the woman Stoaffer had just pointed out to us could not have been more than a child much less the conniving bitch he had described earlier.
My thoughts were once again clear to Stoaffer who asked, “Thomas, do you have a question for me?” His voice and face made his irritation clear.
“I think you know my question, Louis,” I answered trying to keep my uneasiness from showing. “How could the woman you showed us be Theresa? Unless you got married when she was ten, she just doesn’t look old enough to be you ex-wife.”
Stoaffer chuckled, but the sound had no humor to it. “You are certainly very astute, Thomas. However, you are not quite correct.” He paused to be sure that he had my attention. With a forced smile, he continued, “You are mistaken. The delightful young woman you just saw is indeed Theresa. However, you are correct in your conclusion that she is not my ex-wife.” He enjoyed my obvious confusion.
“What the fuck’re you talkin’ about, Lou?” Joey spun around to glare at Stoaffer. “Is she yer ex or not?”
I turned around to get a better look at him as he leaned back in the seat and flashed an expression of amusement and self-satisfaction.
“Please allow me to apologize,” Louis began with the words which usually pave the way for a less than sincere apology. “I have not been completely forthright with the two of you. You see, my ex-wife’s name is actually Rebecca.” He grinned like a little boy who had been naughty.
I could hear Joey’s breathing getting faster and knew that this signaled an eruption.
“You fuckin’ lied about her name?” Joey was practically screaming and looked as if he was ready to launch himself from the front to the backseat. “Why’d you lie about her name?”
“And if you lied about that, what else are lying about, Louis?” I added.
Honestly, I do not have much of a temper, but that smirk on Stoaffer’s face made me share Joey’s notion of jumping into the backseat and beating Louis Stoaffer to a bloody pulp. In fact, I had a picture in my head of doing just that. I could feel the old man’s nose give way beneath the slam of my fist. The cracking sound was even there. There was the thud of my blows to his stomach. His jaw slid out of place with a pop as I swung my elbow full force into his face. The image brought a smile to my face as I focused once more on the grinning old man in the backseat.
The expression suddenly shifted into one of shame as Stoaffer lowered his eyes and replied, “I deeply regret misleading the two of you. However, I can only hope that you might forgive me once you have heard the truth.” The old man suddenly appeared weak and weary as he looked at us with sorrowful eyes. “As Jesus said, ‘the truth shall set you free’.”
“Can you just tell us the truth without mentioning Jesus?” Stoaffer’s biblical reference as distraction and excuse was irritating. “Now what’s the
real
reason that we’re in San Pietro?”
Louis lifted his eyes meekly and quietly said, “Yes, of course, you need to know why we are here. Well, it’s not really too much different than what I told you.”
“Yeah, so how’s it diff’rent, Lou?” Joey demanded impatiently.
Stoaffer turned his eyes toward Joey and flashed a smile hoping to find it returned. After a moment, it was. Joey’s lips curled upward seemingly against his will.
“There you go, Joey. I knew we could turn that frown upside down,” Stoaffer said cheerfully. “So here’s the full story of why I brought you to San Pietro.”
“That would be nice.” I commented sarcastically. Joey nodded in agreement, and Stoaffer again looked down. “Okay, let’s hear it.”
“All right,” Louis began quietly. “We need to go back to my marriage and business partner.”
“Yeah, about yer marriage, Lou…you…you weren’t married to Theresa. So what the fuck?” Joey offered his insightful observation.