Going to the Bad

by Nora McFarland

  “The Law” could only mean the police. Bud had a long history of shady schemes that skirted legality, but he’d vowed off those kinds of deals when he’d moved in with Annette and her daughter. Had he relapsed?

  Bud continued, “Don’t come home till you hear from me. I’m real serious, Little Sister.” The recording ended.

  I knew that I should forward the message to Handsome. He’d be trying to build a timeline of events, and the call might help. On the other hand, it sounded as though Bud had been doing something he didn’t want the police to find out about.

  Bud’s girlfriend, Annette, arrived and interrupted my internal debate. As we hugged, I got a noseful of Chanel No. 5. It, and the nice dress she wore, reminded me of what Annette had been like when we’d first met.

  Reeling from her daughter’s terrible diagnosis, her husband’s abandonment, and mounting financial troubles, Annette had exploited a flurry of attention from the media about her daughter’s illness. I much preferred the jeans-wearing, down-to-earth woman I’d got to know as my uncle’s girlfriend. I suspected her dressing up now, before coming to the hospital, was a way of coping with extreme stress.

  Leanore kindly offered to go get coffee from the commissary while I filled Annette in on Bud’s condition. Once I’d told her the little we knew, I gently maneuvered Annette to the opposite side of the room from the officer. He couldn’t follow us without making his eavesdropping obvious.

  “Do you know what Bud was doing at my place this morning? Was he involved in anything illegal?”

  “Illegal?” The way she said the word was both a denial and a rebuke for even thinking it was possible.

  “Bud has a history. Between you and me, was he doing anything he didn’t want the police to know about?”

  “Bud wasn’t doing anything illegal, I’m sure.” She straightened the green wool fabric of her dress. “But he was upset yesterday. I’ve never seen him in such a panic.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Bud. I’ve seen him cracking jokes while narrowly escaping death.” This wasn’t an exaggeration. I literally had. “What happened to set him off?”

  “He went out shopping for Christmas presents yesterday morning. Something he saw at one of the pawnshops upset him, but that’s all he’d tell me. I don’t know what the item was or why it was so disturbing.”

  “Pawnshops?”

  She gave me a sheepish smile. “That’s where Bud likes to shop. I realize how it sounds, but he knows all the owners. He’s bought and sold for decades.”

  I didn’t want to know the origin of the things he’d pawned over the years. Bud was never himself a crook, but he’d have no problem acting as middleman for shady merchandise. “What exactly happened when he came home from the pawnshops?”

  “Like I said, he wouldn’t tell me much. Bud ran right into the bedroom and started making phone calls. Then he went out again and never came back.”

  “Where did he sleep last night?”

  Her eyes looked away as she admitted, “I have no idea.”

  “Any guesses?”

  “I had hoped he was staying with you and Rod in Oildale. Most of his furniture and things are still in that house.” When I shook my head, she continued, “And he’s got that mobile home up at Lake Elizabeth. It’s a drive, but he could have gone there.”

  I nodded. The obvious truth, that Bud might have spent the night with another woman, remained unsaid.

  Annette addressed it, without addressing it. “Bud was wonderful to me when he was around, but he always made it clear marriage wasn’t in his future.”

  “I understand.” Actually, I didn’t care. At the moment, the intricacies of their relationship mattered little to me compared with the intricacies of what got Bud shot. “Those calls he made just before leaving yesterday, did you hear any of them?”

  She nodded. “He closed the door, but at one point Bud was shouting and I heard a name that I recognized.” She paused for effect. “Leland Warner.”

  You could have given me a million years and gazillion tries and I would never have guessed Annette was about to say that name. Warner was one of the richest men in California. I’d tangled with him a year ago when a young man named Val Boyle had been shot in one of Warner’s many orchards.

  At the time, I learned that Bud and Warner had a history, but each had refused to reveal the details to me.

  “Did Bud ever talk about Warner?” I said. “I think they might have known each other a long time ago.”

  “Bud never talked about the past. He’s all about having fun right now with no baggage.”

  Leanore returned from the commissary with a tray of Styrofoam cups just as a nurse was coming to speak with us.

  The news sounded grim. Surgeons were currently working on Bud, but he had two gunshot wounds to the abdomen and had lost a substantial amount of blood. Assuming he survived, the surgery could run all day and into the evening. When I refused to sign a Do Not Resuscitate order, Annette began to cry.

  The years fell away, and Annette, with her showy emotion, transformed into my mother. Bud, unreachable in the depths of the hospital, became my father. I knew what this day spent waiting would be like. I knew how it would end. I’d already lived through it once.

  Except this time I didn’t have to wait passively while my heart broke. I was no longer a confused, helpless teenager. I could take action instead of wallowing in the things I couldn’t change.

  As Leanore tried to console Annette, I made a phone call. When I’d finished, I took Leanore aside.

  “I have to go,” I whispered. “It’s an emergency or I wouldn’t leave.” I glanced at the officer. I didn’t think he could hear me. “Can you stay here and call me if there’s news?”

  “Of course, but what’s the emergency?”

  One glance at Leanore’s sharp eyes and I knew I had to tell her the truth. “I need to talk with Leland Warner. I think he may know something about what happened to Bud. Can you distract the officer while I slip out?”

  “Lilly, I’m saying this as someone who cares about you.” Leanore put a hand on my arm. “Sitting here is probably going to be the worst day of your life, but if you don’t face this, you’ll regret it.”

  I fought the urge to tear my arm away and instead gently lowered it. “I’m not running away from bad news. Warner may know something about Bud’s shooting that he can’t share with the police because it’s illegal.”

  Leanore looked torn, but then marched up to the officer and handed him one of the coffees. “This one’s for you.”

  He took the cup and offered her a smile in return. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  While they chatted, I made a show of asking the receptionist where the bathroom was. I followed her instructions, but kept going to the elevators.

  Downstairs, I waited just outside the main entrance. The KJAY news van arrived a few minutes later. Ted must have left right after my call.

  I opened the driver’s-side door. Ted had already slid across to the passenger seat. “Thanks for bringing my van. You want me to drop you back at the station?”

  “That would be righteous.” He caught himself reverting to old speech patterns and frowned. “I mean, that would be nice. I still have to anchor the noon and five.”

  I put my seat belt on and drove out of the hospital parking lot. “Where’s Callum? Is he covering the assignment desk? I doubt I’m going to be able to work this week.”

  “Freddy’s still on the desk. Callum’s going door-to-door in your neighborhood asking if anybody saw something. He wanted a reporter to do it, but there’s no one available.”

  “What about Rod? I’m sure he’ll pitch in.”

  “They took him to the Sheriff’s Department headquarters.”

  My head jerked from the road to Ted. “Why? Is everything okay?”

  “They threatened to arrest him if he didn’t go.” Ted looked uncomfortable with the topic, but continued anyway. “I’m sure it’s just shock and stress, but Rod was acti
ng sort of . . . I mean . . . he wasn’t being very cooperative.”

  After I dropped Teddy, I mean Ted, at the station, I stopped for gas and phoned Rod’s cell. He didn’t answer so I left a message asking him to call me. I didn’t really think Rod was in trouble with the police, but if Handsome was taking advantage of the situation to be a jerk, I wanted to know about it.

  I filled up the gas tank, but didn’t use my company gas card. I had a feeling this tank was going to be used exclusively for personal business.

  Leland Warner has several properties around the county, and probably the world, but I only knew about two of them. The first was a vast ranch out past Shafter. I’d visited it in less than ideal circumstances a year earlier. The other was a mansion designed by a protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright’s. When it was built in the 1970s, it was the most expensive structure in Bakersfield.

  Not many people had seen it since then. The land around the house was well guarded and walled off from prying eyes. Leanore had been trying for years to gain access for one of her local-history stories. Architectural Digest had actually sent someone to Bakersfield when they’d devoted an entire issue to the now-dead architect.

  I could have told them not to bother. Warner may be a disagreeable control freak, but he wasn’t a snob. If he said no to Leanore, he’d say no to Architectural Digest too.

  I drove to the northeast end of Bakersfield, where the wide, flat streets characteristic of the rest of town narrowed and sloped upward. This gentle climb came to an abrupt stop at an area called the Bluffs, where the land fell dramatically down a cliff face.

  The real estate here is highly sought after. Houses actually on the Bluffs, the only ones in Bakersfield with views, were some of the most expensive in town. When Rod had moved from LA to work at KJAY, he’d bought a house in this neighborhood near the country club. He still owned it, but I liked the grit of Oildale and preferred to stay there.

  For the first time I thought about what going home would be like. Could I stand to spend even one night in the house where Bud had been shot? What if he died? The house had been in my family for generations and I felt sick at the thought of moving. Then I thought about scrubbing Bud’s blood off the living room floor and felt sick at the thought of staying.

  The line of houses abruptly stopped at a massive concrete wall that marked the edge of Warner’s property. It still took another five minutes of driving before I reached a gate made of two enormous copper doors. No markings or street numbers identified the property. The metal doors looked dull in the gray winter morning, their natural orange blunted down to brown, but I guessed that in summer they’d reflect the sun and the heat. I stopped and rolled down my window. I pushed the call button on a pad and looked up at a camera mounted to the wall.

  “Yes?” a man’s voice said over the speaker.

  “My name is Lilly Hawkins. I’m here to see Mr. Warner.”

  The voice came back through the speaker before I’d even finished. “You may contact the media relations department at Warner Industries if you’d like to request an interview.”

  “I’m not here on business. Tell Warner that Lilly Hawkins needs to see him and it’s an emergency.”

  “This is a private residence. If you insist on loitering, we’ll call the police.”

  I was getting nowhere fast, which at least is better than getting there slowly. I was considering asking for Warner’s head of security, whom I’d met last year, when a vehicle pulled in behind me.

  After glancing in the rearview mirror, I turned full around. A little old lady sat behind the wheel of a large black pickup. She frowned at me, or rather at the KJAY logo on my van. She was a stranger, but the contemptuous twist of her mouth was not. I’d seen it many times on Leland Warner’s face.

  FOUR

  Christmas Eve, 10:37 a.m.

  I got out and walked to the pickup. Instead of rolling down her window, the woman glared at me.

  “I need to see Leland Warner,” I said.

  “You’re wasting your time.” Her voice was muffled by the glass, but I could tell she spoke in short, clipped tones. “No interviews.”

  “I’m here for personal reasons, not as a journalist. My name’s Lilly Hawkins and it’s an emergency.”

  Something crossed her face at the mention of my name.

  I guessed she knew what had happened last year when I’d first met Warner. “I’m the one who was involved in the murder at Happy Valley Farms last December.”

  She lowered the window just as the copper gates began to swing open. “What did you say your name was?”

  Two uniformed Valsec Security guards rushed out.

  “Lilly Hawkins.” I put my hands on the truck door and leaned in. “Please, I need to see Warner. It’s an emergency.”

  “Leland’s sick,” she said. “Even if you’re here for legitimate reasons, you can’t see him.”

  The guards hurried around my van. This was probably my last chance. “If you don’t help me, I’ll go on TV and tell everything I know about Warner and his family.”

  The guards stopped a few feet from us. They had their Tasers out.

  “We’re sorry about this, Miss Warner,” one said to her. “Go ahead and drive up to the house while we take care of this situation.”

  “I know a lot,” I said to her through the open window. “Stuff Warner wouldn’t want on television.”

  She didn’t react to my threat. Instead she calmly said, “And you say your name is Hawkins?”

  “That’s right.”

  One of the guards moved behind me. “This driveway is private property. If you don’t leave, we’ll forcibly detain you until the police arrive.”

  “Perfect,” I said. “There’s all kinds of things I can tell the police too.”

  The old lady leaned her head out the window and spoke to the guards. “Stand down. Miss Hawkins is coming to the house. She has business with the family.” Miss Warner turned to me. “Get in. You can leave your van here.”

  The guards watched in surprise as I retrieved my blue jacket from the news van and got in the passenger seat of the pickup.

  Miss Warner, as the guards had called her, had short, thin gray hair cut in a practical style. That and her plain jeans and sneakers contrasted with the exotic red tunic she wore. She looked to be in her seventies and made no effort to hide that behind makeup. I realized with a slight shock that her clothing was similar to my work outfit—jeans, red shirt, and practical shoes for traction and the unexpected.

  “Why do you need to see my brother?” She hit the gas and expertly maneuvered around the news van.

  “I know I just made a lot of threats, but I’m not the enemy.”

  “That’s not what I asked.” She drove the truck with a confidence that appeared to be second nature. She easily cleared the gate and then accelerated past a small guard post. “Why do you need to see my brother?”

  I pretended to be distracted by the terrain on this side of the wall while I considered how much to tell her. “Is this a dirt road? I’m surprised the land is so wild and undeveloped. I thought Leland Warner would have spent money on landscaping.”

  She didn’t take her eyes off the road. “Are you related to Allan Hawkins?”

  My mouth fell open, but I quickly caught myself. “If you’re talking about my uncle Bud, then yes. How does your family know him?”

  “Your uncle Bud? You don’t really call him by that stupid nickname?” The question must have been rhetorical because she didn’t wait for an answer. “If Allan is really your uncle, then you must be William’s daughter. Your father was a little boy last time I saw him.”

  The words were friendly on the surface, but her expressing knowledge of my family felt like a show of power, especially when I was so in the dark.

  “My father, William, is dead. And you haven’t answered my question. How does your family know Bud?”

  “You’re the one who hasn’t answered my question. Why do you need to see my brother?”


  I debated trading information with her. My instinct was to keep Bud’s business as private as possible, especially since he might have been doing something illegal. “I need to speak with your brother before anyone else. I don’t know the full situation yet myself. There may be things that, for Bud’s sake, I simply can’t talk about.”

  “I’d like to give you the benefit of the doubt, even if you won’t give me the same.” She glanced at me from the road. “Allan worked on our father’s orchard when he was a teenager. He and Leland were best friends.”

  I took a moment to digest that nugget, then asked, “What’s their relationship now?”

  “There isn’t one. They haven’t seen each other in decades.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No.” A smile filled out her thin lips. “Why do you think I brought you up from the gate?”

  “I thought it was because I threatened to go on TV and embarrass your family.”

  “I could care less about that. I don’t even live in this country anymore.” She said it as though the United States and her family were both distasteful memories. “But I am curious to find out what Leland may be doing with Allan after all these years.”

  For some reason her calling him Allan bugged me the same way her knowledge of my father had. “Why do you keep calling him that?”

  “Allan? That’s his name.”

  I managed not to say that Bud must prefer the “stupid nickname” since he’d been using it my entire life. “When was the last time you saw Bud?”

  “Over fifty years ago.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, what was your relationship?”

  “I already told you,” she snapped. “Allan was Leland’s best friend.”

  “That’s what he was to Leland. What was Bud to you?”

  “I don’t like your tone.”

  “If you don’t like my tone, then what I’m actually thinking would really offend you.”

  She laughed. “I have a pretty good idea what you’re thinking. You’re not exactly a difficult person to read.”