by Lora Roberts
The police interrogators had nothing on Claudia. She asked questions, and I answered them, compelled by the very enthusiasm of her inquiry. At last she was quiet, her hands folded on top of her cane and her chin resting on her hands.
I let my fingers trail idly through the asters that crowded beside the bench, their fringed blue petals and golden centers making a heap of brightness. Claudia’s interest in the story had been different from Bridget’s. Bridget had been distressed for me, her friend; Claudia, I could see, regarded it in an intellectual light.
“You should stay here,” she said at last, briskly. “Biddy was perfectly right, as usual; I do need someone to help me while my ankle is bad. I’ll pay you for the time you put into the garden—just a few hours a day will be enough. I’ll trade you room and board in return for you shopping and cooking—I don’t cook well under the best of circumstances. And you’ll have to tell me everything, mind you.”
“I have,” I began, bewildered by this sudden settling of my affairs.
“I mean, all the new stuff, as it happens. That Detective Drake has the brain of a codfish. Anyone can see you’re not guilty. He just needs a suspect, so he fastens on you.” She smiled at me with true warmth. “Actually, I’ve been a suspect of his in the past. It will be a pleasure to hand him the solution to his little problem long before he can come up with it.”
Vagabonds have an instinct for traps. I didn’t believe Claudia meant to trap me, but staying with her, shopping, going to bed in her house—I had lived a hunter-gatherer existence too long for that.
“I can’t impose on you so much,” I said, standing up. She struggled to rise, and I lent her a hand.
“It would be no imposition,” she said, upright again. “I really need the help.”
She didn’t look too good, leaning on her cane like some tottery grande dame. But she was sharp. She saw my hesitation and zoomed in on it.
“Of course, if you won’t help me, I might be able to find some teenager to come in.” She sniffed. “I couldn’t trust them in the garden, though. This year I’m hoping for a really spectacular result from crossing Oklahoma with Sheer Bliss.”
I had once worked at a commercial nursery. I had even had a small rose garden, before the necessity for taking up the vagabond life came along. Oklahoma was my favorite hybrid tea—its dark beauty and fabulous scent were the epitome of rose-ness.
Through the greenhouse’s open door, I could see the workbench scattered with fascinating tools. But I still argued with myself. Only a fool would fiddle with plants while murder charges swirled round her head.
But then, I’ve never claimed any particular degree of sagacity.
“I want to stay with my bus,” I said to Claudia, finally. “But I’ll park it back here by your garage. I can get the meals and help in the garden for a couple of hours in the mornings. I have commitments for the rest of the time. And the police will want to know I’m staying here; they may hang around a lot and bother you.”
Claudia, her face triumphant, waved the police away with a majestic hand. “They won’t bother me,” she said, and I could believe it. “The garage is rather dilapidated but you won’t mind that. And you can have the bathroom off the kitchen for yourself, if you’d like.” She mentioned the money she would pay, and I told her it was too much. We argued about it all the way down the path to her back door. I didn’t win. Not many do, I fancy, when they come up against Claudia.
Flushed with victory, she rested for a minute before climbing the back steps. “You should sleep in the house,” she said, returning to the attack. “More comfortable for you, and less dangerous.”
“Dangerous?” The conversation was totally out of my control now. Claudia began to struggle up the steps, and I boosted her a little from behind. “I’ve never had any problems.”
“Until now.” Claudia threw open the back door and invited me to enter with another one of those queenly sweeps of the hand. “Don’t you see? If someone has it in for you, you’re about as safe inside that van of yours as a sardine in a tin.”
Chapter 11
I refused to sleep in the house. I began to wonder if I should even work for Claudia, and, as if she saw her prey vanishing, she stopped pressing me. She was out of breath, anyway, by the time she made it into an old overstuffed rocking chair that was parked, higgledy-piggledy, by the kitchen door. At her request, I put the kettle on for some coffee.
The coffee she intended to drink was an enormous jar of instant, on the counter beside the stove. There were some tea bags in an old cardboard box; I don’t care for Lipton, but in a pinch I’ll drink it. In the refrigerator were a pint of soured milk and half a head of exhausted iceberg lettuce. The cupboard held several little tubs of Cup o’ Noodles and one loaf of bread, half-eaten, with attractive blue mold spots blossoming on it.
This last Claudia regarded with interest. “I’ve always wondered what you have to do to bread mold to turn it into penicillin,” she remarked.
“Is this all the food you have?” I looked deeper into the cupboard. There were a few crackers, some vintage Worcestershire sauce, and a jar of home-canned peaches, the top ominously domed. I threw it away.
“Haven’t been to the market for a while,” Claudia said vaguely. “Usually I walk downtown for lunch.” She glared down at her swollen ankle.
I made a list, more hindered than helped by her suggestions, and left her with the ankle wrapped in ice and a stack of ancient diaries at her elbow that pertained to her research into the life of Juana Briones, her next biography subject. She gave me a blank check to the closest market and probably forgot about me as soon as I walked out the door.
It was still fairly early—shortly after ten. My whole routine was upset. Usually by this time I would be at the library, ready to work on research, or parked near Rinconada Park, typing up a manuscript to send out. Now, in my new role as gardener/cook/handyperson/murder suspect, I was shopping. Life is strange.
Outside the Whole Foods was a pack of newspaper machines. I never buy newspapers, but I like to scan the headlines through the machines’ glass doors. The Redwood Crier had it on the front page, above the fold. I could see a tantalizing bit of headline—“Homeless Man in Suspicious Death”—and the lead: “Gordon Murphy, an often-seen character on downtown Palo Alto streets, was found dead early this morning by an unidentified vagrant. Murphy, 42, was—”
If I wanted to read the rest, I would have to buy the paper. I didn’t want to read it, to find myself referred to as a vagrant. Vagabond is a much more attractive word choice.
It was funny to think of Pigpen as Gordon Murphy. The name dignified him, took away the macabre overtones of his death, rendered it tragedy instead of melodrama. Gordon Murphy should have had a future, a family, a purpose. Pigpen Murphy didn’t even have the next bottle anymore.
I went on into the Whole Foods, trying to tamp down the apprehension that had come back in full force after seeing the newspaper. It was all real, far too real, and I was in far too deep for a person who likes to stay out of things.
The market was a good distraction, anyway. Whole Foods is like a temple to Health, with side altars to Wealth and Weirdness. I don’t usually shop there—or anywhere, having discovered how to eat with a minimum amount of spending. Generally, when I want novelty in my diet, I go to Common Ground, the seed place, and pick up something for the garden. It teaches patience.
The grocery carts were as wide as Rolls-Royces. I tooled carefully through the aisles, wondering how anyone chose which vitamins to take, which teas to use. There was an herbal cure for every disease hypochondria could conjure. They had every variety of tofu known to humanity. Strangely enough, there was a great meat counter in the back, giving the place a kind of rich, high-toned schizophrenia. The Halloween pumpkins were organic; the candy goblins and witches were made from some kind of ersatz chocolate. The bakery displayed both knobby, whole-grain health breads and brownies so sinful as to defy description.
I knew, because I sampled
everything out of little baskets set at the counters. I collected some good tea, fruits that were unavailable by scrounging, vegetables that were out of season in my plot. There was a nice-looking salmon staring me in the eye, so I got some of that, too. Drunken with the power of that blank check, I reeled through the store, adding bags of granola and half-gallons of milk and even ice cream to my cart.
“Why, Liz.” It was Delores Mitchell, wearing a suit of nubby, expensive fabric, with one of the inevitable bowed silk blouses peeking out the front. Her skirt was uncreased, her alligator pumps immaculate. It didn’t take her quick glance at my motley garb to make me feel immediately dowdy and unclean. “I’d never expect to run into you here,” she trilled, holding her shopping basket as if she was gathering flowers. Instead of blossoms, it held a carton of yogurt, a little plastic tub of deli stuff, a muffin, and a bottle of imported mineral water.
“I eat, too,” I muttered. Delores had an unfortunate effect on me, which I would like to be too well-integrated to experience. I longed for the lid to come off the yogurt carton and let the purple stuff inside trickle down her perfectly groomed front. Playground emotions, I know.
“Of course you—I didn’t mean to imply—” She looked flustered for a moment. I was a social challenge for Delores; she could cosset the old folks at the Senior Center and chitchat brightly with the down-and-outers at the Food Closet, where she also volunteered. There was no convenient niche for me. When I turned up at the swimming pool or Senior Center, or at an expensive and trendy grocery store, she had to readjust her ideas about people who live in cars as opposed to houses. To give her credit, she didn’t just brush me off.
“I didn’t see you at the pool this morning.” She smiled gaily, as if we had a regular rendezvous, instead of an occasional encounter. “My eyes positively ache from that chlorine.”
“They are a little red,” I said solicitously. They weren’t, of course. Delores had some of those excellent goggles. Her eyeballs stayed gloriously white when she swam, unlike mine.
“Are they?” She peered at her reflection in the shiny glass door of the ice-cream cooler. “Oh dear. I’m meeting someone for lunch, and I don’t want to look like I stayed up all night.” She patted at her hair. “Well, Ted will understand. He swims, too.” I felt again that unsettling mixture of guilt for having her on, and sneaking satisfaction that she was so easy to gull. “How is your class going?” She smiled kindly at me, working from the script that all those popular people have, the one that tells them to ask about the interests of others. “I’ve got more of those old dears than ever in my financial planning seminar.”
“I’m doing fine.” Delores looked understanding; she must have noticed that my attendance was down from the first quarter I took the writing workshop. It was all right with me; the ones who stuck with me were really interested in working, and the dilettantes had dropped out. The bad angel in my left brain drove me to add, “It’s you I worry about. Isn’t Federated Savings being investigated by the IRS?”
Delores looked horrified. “Oh, no! It’s not true at all!” She grabbed my arm. “Where did you hear that?”
“I think it was on the radio or something.” She was so worried by the rumor that my good, right-brain angel wanted me to confess I’d made it up, but that would have involved tedious and uncomfortable explanations. I wanted to get back to Claudia’s, have lunch and a cup of tea, maybe sample that ice cream before starting to work.
“Federated is one of the healthiest S&L’s in the business,” Delores assured me earnestly.
“If you say so.” I made a private resolve not to have any more of these conversations with Delores, not to pull her credulous leg again. “Got to get this ice cream home.”
Delores moved in the opposite direction, but I caught her questioning glance back at me as I rounded the aisle. No doubt she’d remembered that I didn’t have a home.
The groceries in my cart cost more than I spent in a month for food. The bill seemed extravagant, and yet it wasn’t out of the range Claudia had set. Perhaps, if I stayed at her place more than a few days, I would treat her to cuisine à la vagabond, where the flavor of the food is intensified by the effort it takes to collect it.
I was planning to call the police department, to tell Drake or Morales where they could find me for the next few days. That little task was not necessary, though. Drake was leaning against my bus when I came out of the store. His manner was idle, even proprietary. Not, this morning, threatening.
“Ms. Sullivan.” He greeted me matter-of-factly, watching while I stowed the grocery bags away. “Did you rob a bank?”
“Just working for a living,” I said, facing him. Delores Mitchell climbed into her BMW three cars down. She watched curiously, making a big production out of finding her sunglasses.
“Are you going to stay at Biddy’s, or are you going to the Carver Arms?” Drake sounded relaxed, but his smile was tight.
“Neither.” I fished a notebook out of my bag and scribbled Claudia’s address on it. “I’m parking here, around the back. There’s a phone, too, if you need to get in touch with me. Claudia Kaplan.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Mrs. Kaplan is a friend of yours?”
“Not exactly.” From his expression, he’d tangled with Claudia a time or two. “She needs help in her garden, and in the house. With luck, you’ll have cleared up this whole mess before I’m finished there.”
“With luck, you won’t have a new address at the county’s expense,” he said mildly.
I didn’t like to think about that. “Have you found out anything more?” I kept my notebook open, just in case he decided to shake some information loose. Delores Mitchell drove slowly past us and out of the parking lot, so intent on my conversation with Drake she almost ran over a grocery cart.
“When I find out something you need to know, I’ll tell you,” Drake said, smiling a little to take the sting out of his words. “But I did wonder if you could help me. We’re looking for a guy who was a drinking buddy of Murphy’s—Alonso Beaudray. Do you know where he can be found?”
“Alonso.” I thought about it for a minute, tucking my notebook back in my bag. “I told you already, they were part of the underpass gang. Maybe they had some other place, too.” It would be all over the street soon that I was being followed and questioned. “They might know. I didn’t hang around with that group.”
“Who did you hang around with?” He made it sound like a casual inquiry.
“Nobody,” I smiled sweetly. “I’m a loner, Mr. Drake.”
“But you weren’t always, Ms. Sullivan. Or should I call you Mrs. Naylor?”
I thought I had prepared myself for it—the police’s discovery of my unsavory past. And yet the sound of that name made my heart stop and start again in slow, uneven jerks. Through the fog that seemed to veil my eyes, I could see Drake’s face, his smile changing to concern.
“It’s always best, when you run away,” he added lamely, into my frozen silence, “to do more than just use your maiden name. We traced you very easily.” He cleared his throat and added gruffly, “Guess I know now why you hate men.”
Words wouldn’t come out through the dryness of my throat. I swallowed and fought my face for control.
Drake watched me, his glasses winking in the sun. “We know what happened to you,” he added. “You must see that it makes you more interesting to us.”
“Did you—did you tell—” This time I managed to speak. It hurt.
“We didn’t interview your ex-husband.” There was a flash of uncertainty behind the glasses. “He won’t know where you are.”
“He’ll find out.” I rounded the front of the bus, Drake at my heels, and climbed into the driver’s seat. “He’s very good at that. He’ll find out.”
“Look, Ms. Sullivan—Liz. I’m sorry. But you didn’t come clean with us, and you should have. Then we wouldn’t have had to ferret around.” He shuffled his feet. “Listen, just let us know if there are problems, okay?”
He was still standing in the parking lot when I left. I drove back to Claudia’s as fast as I could, and I wasn’t worried about the ice cream.
Chapter 12
Claudia was still sitting at the kitchen table, but she had switched to the bucket of hot water with Epsom salts. She was deep in a pile of photocopies, her elbows on either side of the stack, her face bent territorially over it.
I set two bags of groceries down with a muttered hello, and went back for the third one. My hands had started shaking again as soon as I’d let go of the steering wheel. I felt numb, as if all my synapses were paralyzed.
“What’s the matter?” Claudia ceased to focus on her papers, and turned her sharp eyes on me. I avoided them as long as I could, but at last the cans and bottles were all put away, the bread stashed, the refrigerator stocked. I shut the freezer door and turned to look at her.
“Nothing.” I didn’t know yet what I’d tell her, how I’d get away. I needed time to think.
“Has there been another murder?”
“Not yet.” I had planned a fancy salad for our lunch, but now I set out bread and sandwich fixings and let it go at that.
Claudia made herself an immense tower of cheese, tomatoes, sprouts, avocado, and lettuce—everything I’d put out. I stuck my spoon into a carton of yogurt and pretended to swallow.
“Are you a vegetarian?” Claudia’s question broke the silence. “I notice there’s no meat here.”
“I bought salmon for dinner.” Fresh fish was no longer exciting. In fact, visualizing that dead eye, that slack jaw, I felt positively queasy about the salmon.
There was something wrong with my mind. It took ordinary things, like the yogurt I was trying to eat, and used them to remind me of hideous events in the past. Yogurt was a lot like the vanilla pudding Tony had shoved my face into, the time he said I hadn’t put enough sugar in it. Raw meat was what I’d seen the night he’d laid my arm open with the bread knife. He’d accused me of sneaking around with his best friend. My denial had just enraged him. The blood calmed him down some; there was quite a bit of blood.