“Crab and langoustine ravioli,” Nina said to the waiter at the Terrace Grill. The Terrace Grill was an adjunct to the La Playa Hotel, a lovely old place that had been a fixture for many years in Carmel. They had chosen a table outside. It was nine-thirty at night and Nina’s stomach was as empty as a crater on the moon. She had already started on the bread and butter.
Tonight the fog spared them. The warm air settled over them as softly as a veil. Birds shook the trees and flower garden nearby, settling in for the night, and the few streaks of cloud above the waterline were stained cherry.
“We’d like to start with crab cakes,” Paul said, “then I’ll have the prawns.” He studied the wine list for another moment, then ordered a Gewürztraminer, very cold.
Nina reached across the table and took his large hand in hers. Hard, craggy, experienced, she thought, and smiled. “I feel guilty.”
“Here we sit, playing violins, figuratively speaking,” Paul said, “while Carmel Valley burns. People are dying. But we have to eat.”
“The party goes on,” Nina said.
“So it does. What’s bothering you? I mean aside from Wish’s problems, Ruthie’s death, your hangover today from the party, and being tired and hungry from this whole long day.”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“Is it about Bob’s call?”
“No… it’s nothing.”
“Not true.”
“He’s okay.”
“So you’re not ready to talk about it?”
“I’m thinking it’ll blow over, Paul. I don’t want to talk about it, as a matter of fact.”
“Why not?” Paul demanded, as peremptorily as if she were a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay withholding vital information.
“It’s none of your cotton-picking business,” Nina said, her back up. Again.
“You won’t tell me?”
“I will soon.” When I have a solution, she thought.
Paul tolerated Bob, but children, in the generic, he did not like. He would not want Bob in the second bedroom he used as an office. Of course not. Fair enough.
One bathroom. Bob’s forty-minute showers. Paul’s lips would get as tight as an abalone shell at low tide.
Why couldn’t Bob follow the plan? It had been so tidy. He had insisted on going to Sweden. Let him stay and build character.
But.
He was overwhelmed. He needed to come home. Home in quotation marks. Home in the abstract. Alas, in truth, there existed no home for Bob to come home to at the moment.
“It’s Nikki, isn’t it? Nikki’s older,” Paul said. “She does things she shouldn’t and that makes her attractive to Bob. What else is new?”
Oh, not much, Bob wants to come home, Nina thought. “Nikki’s cooling off toward Bob.”
“Ah. And what’s his response?”
She decided she would go no further in this direction, especially given the interest she saw rising in his greeny-yellow eyes. Which, in spite of the glass of wine he had just downed, remained sharp. “So, Paul,” she said, licking the tip of her already-shiny spoon, “what did you think happened to Ruthie?”
He cocked his head, but let it go. “I have a few ideas,” he said. “Ruth Frost’s car was old, so I can’t be sure.”
“But…” she offered.
“Right. But…”
“Something struck you?”
“You know how when you have a hunch?”
“You never buy my hunches.”
“But I buy my own.”
“What hunch?”
“The police think because it was a cold night, she left her motor and heat running.”
“You don’t think so?”
“I think she’d run it for a while, then turn it off.”
“Because?”
“Because she was slightly cockeyed, yes; stupid, no. Have you ever noticed that if you’re an outsider, people will believe you’re capable of all sorts of unreasonableness?”
“Maybe she felt running the motor outside would be harmless. She didn’t know she would die. Probably thought the outside air would dissipate any carbon monoxide. Maybe she passed out before she could turn off the car.”
Paul said, “Witnesses say she hasn’t had a back seat in years. That she often left the motor running to get heat, when she needed it. Not smart, with leaks in the exhaust system, but she knew that and didn’t do it for long.”
“Does anyone say she threatened to kill herself?”
“No.”
“So what do you suspect? The police seem satisfied our Cat Lady died a natural death, out feeding her beloved animals in the night, trying to stay warm in her ruin of a car.”
“I guess if I was looking at the situation from the point of view that she was living a risky existence and had a bad accident, I’d be satisfied too. But there were those marks on the exhaust pipe,” Paul said.
Nina stopped eating. “Marks?”
“Maybe natural aging, maybe not. I took a few photographs and looked at them before we came here, but they don’t really prove anything. Those marks could have happened a lot of ways. And it doesn’t look like the forensics people are planning to figure this one out for us. The authorities seem pretty set on natural death.”
“You pointed out what you saw?”
“They saw what I saw. They took photographs too, but, you know, strange way to kill someone.”
“Are you sure what’s been happening around here isn’t inspiring your imagination?”
“Maybe. But maybe somebody rigged a hose into the car to help out the fumes in the back. She went out there to take care of the animals. She ran the motor and fell asleep. Someone ran a hose from the pipe into the car.”
“Without her noticing?”
“She was sleeping. And she slept on. After a while, he removed the hose.”
“Oh, Paul. That poor woman.” Nina pictured her long hair, the heap her body made on the pavement.
“Someone got to her before she died.”
“Was she hit? Did you see a bruise?”
“Nothing so definite. But there was something off about the whole thing. Maybe a hot drink put her to sleep first. Maybe a knock upside the head, then the hose inserted into a window, was the final scenario.”
Nina rubbed her forehead. “You believe she was murdered.”
“She was the only witness to the arsons. You realize that? Remember what you said happened at that party just a few hours before?”
“I’ve been thinking about that. There was jokey talk,” she said, “about doing a lineup for Ruthie, making her pick out who she saw fleeing the arson. I guess if our Siesta Court arsonist happened to be within earshot, he heard that. Maybe he took it seriously.”
“Maybe that got her killed.”
“I’m thinking, how does this help Wish? I hate to be so cold, but his arraignment’s in the morning. And it does help Wish, but we have to prove it was a murder. The theory currently is that Danny was the Siesta Court arsonist and Wish was the outside man. But Danny’s dead and Wish was sleeping on a state-issue mattress.”
“Right. So-” She let Paul say it.
“Who killed the Cat Lady?”
16
“H EY, WISH,” NINA SAID. “WHAT’S WITH your hair?”
“Nobody wears long hair anymore. It’s a symbol of the Res.” Wish looked scalped, there was no other way to put it, and Nina’s heart went out to him. He was giving way to the peer pressure of the other inmates herded together into their seats in the jury box of the courtroom.
These tough guys wore the haircuts of male Marines and indifferent expressions, but they didn’t look tough to Nina. To her these kids, minority kids mostly, looked like inmates of any gulag or concentration camp, right down to being tattooed.
“How are you?”
“Tired of this, since I didn’t do anything to deserve it.”
“I made an appointment to talk to Jaime Sandoval-the D.A.”
“So I don’t get out today?” Her exp
ression answered him and his face twisted. Nina checked her watch. Monday-morning arraignments started in five minutes.
“Soon, Wish, I promise you. Something important has happened. The main witness linking Danny to the previous fires is dead. The lady who fed cats, Ruth Frost. Carbon-monoxide poisoning when she ran the heat in her car night before last. An accident, they say.”
Wish’s back straightened. He took hold of his lip with his fingers and started worrying it, a habit he shared with his mother, and she saw with joy that the law-enforcement student had come to the foreground.
“That’s suspicious,” he said. “Paul doesn’t believe it, does he?”
“He’s getting the autopsy report right now,” Nina told him. “He believes someone may have incapacitated her before turning on the heat.”
“Somebody killed a woman who fed hungry cats,” Wish said. “I don’t know what to think.”
“I went to a block party on Danny’s street. The neighbors talked about her report.”
“One of the neighbors. Who, Nina? Someone strong who smelled burnt. That doesn’t help. Something sharp digging into my back.”
“Like what?” Nina said, latching on to a new thought. “Where on your back?”
Wish rubbed his hand on the small of his back. “I don’t know what. How many people on that street with strong arms?”
“Four. Danny’s uncle, Ben-”
“He’s got no reason. He’s cool.”
“David Cowan.”
“Danny’s neighbor on the left. He paid Danny to do odd jobs for him, but he didn’t treat Danny very well.”
“I doubt anyone likes Mr. Cowan much,” Nina said.
“What motive would he have?”
“He’s odd. I don’t understand him.”
“Danny had a thing with his wife. Mr. Cowan knew about it, but he never said a word.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Who else?”
“Ted Ballard. The Ballards live three doors down on the Rosie’s Bridge side. They ride bikes, hike, go kayaking. They both make a lot of money, I think. Right now, they’re building a new house on Robles Ridge, not far from the fire locations.”
“Burn it down for insurance?” Wish said.
“The construction is still at the framing stage. But Paul is looking into their finances.”
“I can’t see why he’d set fires.”
“Another possibility is Darryl Eubanks, Danny’s neighbor on the Rosie’s Bridge side.” The clerk came in and Nina realized they were running out of time. “He’s a volunteer firefighter. Did Danny ever talk about him?”
Wish shook his head.
“Wish, there’s another possibility. Remember the driver of the car the Cat Lady saw? The one who dropped off somebody on Siesta Court?”
“You got a line on him?” Wish said, hope in every bone.
“Ever heard Danny talk about a man named Coyote?”
“Sure!”
“I met him. He drives a minivan like the one Ruth Frost described. Danny had to get his tip from somewhere. Who else did he see regularly?”
“That’s a very good line of thought, Nina. Coyote-they were drinking buddies.”
“All rise,” the bailiff said. Wish got up with some difficulty. Nina saw with anger that he was shackled.
He whispered amid the general shuffle, “I almost forgot. Tell Paul I left his bank statements in the file marked ‘Dough,’ like he said.”
“Dough?”
Wish nodded. “Tell him to eat the cottage cheese I left in the office fridge before the expiration date.”
Nina walked swiftly to the attorney’s section and sat down with her briefcase in her lap. Wish didn’t seem to think anyone on Siesta Court had done it. And she hadn’t even had time to ask him about Sam Puglia.
This time she had to sit through an hour of other cases. Jaime and Judge Salas processed them efficiently, but there were thirty or forty of them. Resigning herself to a long wait, she observed the process. Just like old times, the first break came up at 10:15. Maintenance had left the heaters on and the courtroom felt like the Sahara on this June morning, the first record-breaking day of another California summer. If they were lucky, later the usual foggy breeze would snake its way up the river from the Pacific, but right now the lawyers sweated in their jackets and the clerk whispered urgently into the phone trying to get them some relief.
Outside Courtroom Number Three of the old Salinas Courthouse, the town had come to life after the weekend. A few blocks away at the Steinbeck Center, the staff would be holding a meeting to figure out a way to dredge up more money. Closer by, red beans would be frying in steaming metal skillets at Rosita’s. Young mothers pushed their strollers toward the thrift stores on Main. The Hartnell College students hurried to class. All around the town the early-summer lettuce and strawberry pickers would be bending over in the fertile fields, faces covered to keep out the pesticides.
Fifteen miles west of Salinas, on the coast, weekday life would be picking up. Nina imagined the denizens of Carmel: rugged retiree ladies throwing sticks into the water for their purebred retrievers at Carmel Beach, athletic graybeards chatting with each other at the post office, the chic tourists unloading their hard-earned money. In Monterey, there would be lawyers and insurance types clicking their pens in preparation for another week of rooking people out of this and that; and in Pebble Beach, Japanese golfers already finishing their eighteen holes, looking forward to sipping mimosas at Club XIX.
Funny, Nina thought, two societies so close and so separate. She didn’t agree with the Cat Lady that there were only two classes, the exploiters and the exploitees, but the enormous difference in wealth did seem at the heart of the social schism.
Her mind returned to the Twelve Points. Who can say what is a successful life? Ruth Frost had expressed her opinions in the newspaper, no doubt influencing some people. She had saved the lives of some animals. She had been free and she had done some good. Nina wondered what would happen to the cats.
The bailiff called Number Thirty-Five on the docket, People v. Whitefeather, the big case for today, the homicide. As Wish was brought to the counsel table shuffling in his leg shackles, lurid with his shaved head and the orange jumpsuit that made the defendants resemble Halloween janitors, the reporters in the second row woke up.
Wish would not be going home today, not with bail set at a million five. Nina pulled out the chair for him and helped him sit down.
Judge Salas, like everybody else, observed them; he stared at Wish, the star today, if not the hero. Wish wasn’t a head-hanger; he paid attention, his eyes jumping back and forth.
Nina glanced down at the official charges Jaime had just handed her, conscious of the mundane sounds and sights of the courtroom around her, the bailiff lounging against the wall by the defendants in the jury box, the clerk shuffling her papers, somebody reading a newspaper in his lap in the back, the yellow light, the clock on the wall.
Salas read the charges out loud. Daniel Cervantes had died on or about June 9, a Tuesday.
“In the county of Monterey, California… How do you plead?”
How do you plead? Do you get down on your knees and beg?
They were standing. In the moment before Wish had his first chance to say a word, Nina and Wish looked at each other. Nina felt flustered, as if something had jerked in her reality, as if her mother had reached down from heaven to tap her on the shoulder. Wish, standing next to her with his forehead furrowed and his hands clenched together in front of him, gave Nina the same look her mother used to give her, the one that said, Nina-pinta, they won’t get us down. We can survive anything.
Not just his expression, but the way his eyebrows drew together, the way he put his chin up and firmed up his mouth, moved her. Nina thought with a pang, He trusts me completely. He thinks there’s no danger.
Passing her fingers lightly over her forehead, she pulled herself together.
“How do you plead?” Salas repeated.
Nina nudged Wish. “Not guilty.” His voice didn’t waver.
Nina couldn’t say a word about Ruth Frost. Now was not a time to raise a defense, unfortunately. The rest of the arraignment ritual commenced.
Jaime asked her again for a waiver of time, this time in front of Salas. He had been flabbergasted when Nina had explained several days before that she would not waive the ten-day rule. Wish had a right under the Penal Code to have a judge examine the charges in a court hearing, even in a murder case, within ten court days.
But no defense counsel in a murder case ever refused to waive time. The information passed on to the defense was usually overwhelming, and the defense attorney wouldn’t want to miss anything. Even in the Robert Blake Hollywood murder case, the defense was still complaining bitterly about the volume of information and asking for more time before the prelim, eight months after the arraignment.
Nina had her own ideas about the conventional defense-counsel wisdom, however. She had noticed that if she worked very hard during those ten court days, she could master everything the prosecution had and still mount a defense of sorts. California district-attorney’s offices had gotten lazy about prelims, which they liked to process like widgets on the factory line. The deputy D.A. couldn’t put the time in that she could. The evidence was much more fluid, the witness statements more subject to attack, than at a later trial.
So she would refuse to waive time, attack at the prelim, be well prepared, and cut no slack. This caused unpleasantness with the D.A.’s along the lines of, don’t come asking us for any favors. Like a good deal for the client.
So it was usually a trade-off. Jaime would give her a hard time if she needed a plea bargain. But a plea bargain would never happen in this case, because Wish was as innocent of evil as Jimmy Carter.
They set the prelim for June 30, a Monday, Salas shaking his head, giving her a hard look, and asking her how long she had been practicing law. The clerk wrote the date down and gave the lawyers their copies.
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