The Laura Cardinal Novels

by J. Carson Black

  Panic taking over. She couldn’t drive. She was stuck in an old Chevron halfway between Tucson and the Mexican border, and she couldn’t drive.

  Shit.

  Time going by. Her breath coming high in her chest, sweat breaking out on her face, the lights going on and off at the edge of her vision.

  She’d bought herself some time, but eventually whoever was out there would knock again.

  It came sooner than she expected.

  She rinsed her face, opened the door, and nearly ran over the small woman with the tiny dog standing there, poised to knock again.

  “Took you long enough,” the woman said.

  Laura ignored her and walked across the asphalt to the 4Runner. She got in after several tries with the key, leaned back on the seat and closed her eyes.

  Ride it out.

  “You need to get that looked at,” a voice said next to her.

  She opened her eyes. Frank Entwistle sat in the passenger seat, his elbow cocked on the passenger door.

  “What’s going on with me? Do you know? Because if you know, please enlighten me.”

  “I don’t know, kiddo. But it’s not good. You need to see a doctor.”

  “Well, I can’t do it now. ”Was it her imagination or were the lights starting to go away?

  “No, you can’t do it now, but the problem with you, is once this thing clears up, you’ll try to forget it ever happened.”

  “No, I won’t.” But she knew it was true.

  “That’s the way people are. They go from crisis to crisis. They do just enough to get by, and then when things pile up and the bad shit happens, they wonder why. But you’re worse than most. You know that, don’t you, kiddo?”

  She glanced at him, sitting in the passenger seat, wearing a white guayabera shirt and those old-man polyester pale blue slacks, white shoes. His “retirement clothes.”

  The lights beginning to calm down. She leaned up and looked in the rearview mirror, and was relieved to see that she now had two eyes, a nose, and a full mouth.

  Relief poured over her like warm water.

  Entwistle stared straight ahead.

  “You’re like that guy in Sixth Sense,” she said. “He didn’t know he was dead either.”

  “Hey, I’m not stupid.”

  “Then why are you here? Aren’t you supposed to move on? What’s holding you here?”

  Entwistle shifted in the seat, pulled down the sun visor, and looked at himself in the mirror there, smoothed back the loose wave of white hair over his forehead. “I know I’m dead. That’s the difference between you and me. I know when it’s time to face facts.”

  “Facts,” Laura said. The lights were now officially gone. She looked at her watch; it had lasted twenty-five minutes. She was all right now. According to Frank Entwistle, she was now cleared to cruise onward until the next crisis.

  “You been thinking about what we talked about before?”

  “What, you mean about not throwing stones? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “The glass house, kiddo. Thing is, you’re vulnerable. You’re sitting in there in your glass house and everyone can see in, but you don’t seem to know that.”

  “You’re talking in riddles.”

  “No, I’m not. You need to slow down, figure this out, before it takes you over.”

  “What? What’s going to take me over?”

  “Your fear,” he said.

  23

  Sonoyta, on the Mexican border, was a hot, dusty, noisy town. Driving through it was like driving through the middle of a chariot race. Following the signs, Laura bore left and then right over the Rio Sonoita Bridge, following the right hand side of the Y, which turned into Mexican Route 8, a two-lane asphalt road arrowing south and west through the desert. The signs were in Spanish, the distances marked in kilometers. The speed limit signs were also dependent on kilometers rather than miles, so Laura erred on the side of caution and went slower, as the speed limit laws in Sonoyta were strictly enforced. Waiting for the lights behind her eyes to come back, relieved when they didn’t. As she drove toward the coast, the land became dryer and more barren. She passed a roadside shrine to the Virgin at the base of a cinder cone. A green and white Angeles Verdes pickup was parked in the turnabout. The Green Angels patrolled the highway to help out motorists.

  The ground on both sides of the highway turned sandy, choked with dusty-looking saltbush. To her right, although she could not see it yet, was the Gulf of California. Soon vendors appeared along the road in the shade of makeshift ramadas. Then came a few houses, then businesses: the beginning of Puerto Penasco—Rocky Point.

  It was getting late in the afternoon when the highway turned into the busy, palm-lined thoroughfare, Juarez. She drove past brightly colored houses, strip malls, and little parks, and turned left at the police station.

  To get to Las Conchas, an Americanized community outside Rocky Point, Laura had to take a graded dirt road. Late afternoon, the golden light distilled from the heat of the day hung like a haze over the pale saltbush clogging the roadsides. At this time of day, the undulating dunes looked like crystallized salt. The dunes seemed to stretch all the way to distant mountains, which were blue cutouts pasted against the dusty cerulean sky. She drove up to the gatehouse and explained without showing her badge that she was here to talk to Jillian North at Casa del Mar.

  The slight Mexican man in his security guard uniform nodded and waved her in. She followed a maze of wide roads through more dusty-looking shrubs, this time interspersed with squares of green indoor-outdoor carpeting and poles with flags—a golf course. To her right, beyond the two-story Spanish-style beach houses, she could see tantalizing glimpses of ocean, shimmering like a pale blue satin ribbon under the lowering sun.

  The houses were expensive but eclectic—every place was different. Money was no object, but in many cases taste was. Turrets and winding stairs and tall stucco walls, rooms that looked like add-ons, Spanish tile, lots of white and blue—everyone had built his or her own dream house. The result was a sort of Rube Goldberg version of a Mexican village.

  But the ocean, brimming in between the tall blank walls of plaster—the ocean was perfect.

  Laura found Casa del Mar on the road closest to the estuary. She parked on the sand out front, crunched her way up to the walled courtyard, and rang the bell in the gate. Casa del Mar was a modern version of a Mediterranean villa, grandiose but too new to be taken seriously. Cobalt blue tile on the roof, blue tile lining the rosette-shaped windows.

  She heard a door squeak open and light footsteps.

  One side of the door pushed open, and a sunburned blonde girl in her early twenties peeked out. Her nose was peeling.

  “Jillian North?”

  “Yes.” Then her eyes widened as she realized who Laura was. She actually started to push the gate closed.

  Laura put her foot out. “May I come in? It was a long drive down here.”

  Jillian stepped back. Petite and pretty, with long, bleached hair parted in the middle, she wore a lime-green flowered bikini that showed all her curves.

  Laura entered a bricked courtyard, a closed garage on the right and the front door on the left. A bougainvillea grew in a large olla, tied to a stake.

  Jillian led her into the house, asking her to wipe her feet first. Sand was everywhere.

  The door let onto a huge room. The air conditioner was on high. Pigskin equipale chairs, copper pots hanging over a kitchen island, Mexican masks on the walls, Talavera vases and sink bowls. Decorated by Jillian’s parents, no doubt. Photos on the wall, mostly of children from several years ago—Jillian and her siblings? But what dominated the room was the wall fronting the ocean, French doors set into a bank of picture windows. A deck outside, and steps down to the beach, the ocean only forty feet from the entrance, rolling in, deep, dark blue in the slanting evening light.

  Beach towels stretched out on the chaise lounges on the deck. Two of them.

  “Where’s Shana?”
/>   Jillian backed up a step. “She’s not here. I told you—”

  “I know what you told me.” She nodded toward the chaises. “You use both those towels?”

  “Uh-huh.” This kid was not a good liar. She was even worse in person than on the phone, her face turning red.

  “I know she’s here.”

  “No, she’s not. She just left.”

  “Left?”

  Jillian nodded vociferously. “A couple of hours ago.”

  “To go into town?”

  “No. For good. She’s not coming back.”

  “You tell her I was looking for her?”

  The girl rubbed one lacquered-toed foot against the other. “She knew you were looking for her, but that’s not why she left. We—she didn’t think you’d come all this way—she wasn’t worried about you.”

  “Why’d she leave then?”

  “Bobby came and got her.”

  “Bobby Burdette.”

  “Uh-huh.” Jillian sailed over behind the cooking island. “Can I get you something to drink? Ice water? I think there’s some sun tea somewhere.”

  Laura glanced at the granite counter. Three blown-glass margarita glasses, their dark green rims frosted with salt but otherwise empty.

  “Margaritas look good.”

  Jillian glanced guiltily at the glasses.

  “How did Bobby know where Shana was?”

  “She called him.” Mild defiance.

  “She called him? I got the impression she was trying to get away from him.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “I thought Shana was scared of Bobby.” A shot in the dark, but what the hell.

  “If you mean they had a falling-out, well, yeah.”

  “What do you mean by a falling-out?”

  “He, uh, slapped her. She said that was it as far as she was concerned. So I asked her if she wanted to stay with me for a while, and she said yes.”

  Something not right here. “If that was it, why did she call him?”

  “She missed him. Besides, it was only a slap. It wasn’t like he beat her up or anything.”

  “But bad enough for her to say ‘that was it'?"

  “She was upset. But they decided to make up, and now they’re more in love than ever.”

  More in love than ever.

  Laura could picture the conversation, and it gave her a pang. She remembered what it was like to be completely immersed in guys and wanting to look like a magazine cover. Spending a half hour putting on makeup, figuring out what to wear. Talking to friends about boys boys boys, getting racier and, let’s face it, dirtier, as they grew older. Getting drunk and crying and wishing that they could run away to Vegas and get married, that somehow it would all work out.

  Her mind turning to her own tangled feelings about Tom Lightfoot. “You really think they’re in love?”

  Jillian shrugged. “She sure acted like it.”

  Laura could see them: two beautiful girls at the age where they were as close to perfect as possible, like living Barbie dolls, lying on beach towels on the deck, toasting their belly buttons in the sun and talking about love. Getting each other worked up. A margarita turning to two, then three, turning the world into a fantasy.

  Egging each other on, wanting what they could not have.

  Shana, beguiled by the bright sun, the sparkling waves, the alcohol, the distance. Forgetting why she was scared. Thinking: All I have to do is pick up the phone and call, and I can hear his voice.

  In her alcoholic haze, spurred on by a like mind, Shana would be lulled into a sense of security. I’ll call him and just hear his voice. That’s all. Just talk to him. That couldn’t do any harm, could it?

  And Bobby, who didn’t strike Laura as stupid, would convince her that he should come and get her. A tarnished knight on a white horse.

  Laura could see it; she’d fallen prey to the same kind of delusional thinking herself. God gave young girls beauty and brains and free will, but he also gave them peer pressure, insecurity and a desperate need for validation from the other sex.

  “When did Shana call Bobby?” Laura asked.

  “Last night.”

  “Did you have margaritas then?”

  “No. We were drinking gin.” Defiant look: We’re grownups now. “I’ve got to hit the head, all right? Be back in a minute.” She ducked into the bathroom off the main room.

  Laura found herself looking at the photos ranged along the walls. Most of them were family photos, blown up into eight-by-tens. One picture in particular caught her eye, two rows of boys and girls, four to a row, the boys in suits and the girls wearing white dresses.

  She heard a toilet flush. Behind her Jillian said, “That was Natasha’s First Communion.”

  “Natasha?”

  “My little sister.”

  Laura was more interested in the girl sitting next to Natasha. “Is that Erin Wingate?”

  Jillian walked up and stared at the girl. “Uh-huh.”

  “You know her?”

  “I should know her. She spent more time at our house than she did at her own. My mom baby sat for Erin’s mom when she was a doctor at the health center.” She wrinkled her nose. “Little brat.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “She was always getting Natasha in trouble. Daring her to do things, and then Natasha would get the blame. She always liked to be the center of attention.”

  Laura remembered the listless child who showed only slight interest in her new horse. “Sounds like she was hell on wheels.”

  “You got that right. Finally my mom had enough and said she couldn’t come to our place anymore.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  She shrugged. “Oh, a couple of years ago. You know what happened to her mom and dad, don’t you? They died in a car accident. I hear Erin’s with her grandmother now.”

  Laura nodded. “Erin’s not doing too well these days.”

  “I’ll bet. She worshipped her mom.”

  “No, I mean she’s sick.”

  “Sick? What, does she have cancer or something?”

  “They don’t know what it is, but she’s been sick for a while.”

  “Well, that’s too bad. I remember she used to get hurt sometimes—kid stuff—probably because she was always doing something. One time she broke her arm. But sick … hard to think of her lying around in bed all day.”

  “Do you mind if we go out on the deck?” Laura asked. She thought that being outside would make Jillian more comfortable, bring the interview down to an intimate level—two girls talking. The idea of soaking up the sun and watching the water wasn’t so bad either.

  Laura asked her, “What do you think about Shana and Bobby, as a couple?”

  Jillian sipped her ice water—Laura suspected it was the only drinkable water in the house—and looked out toward the gulf. “Well, you know, I don’t know what she sees in him. But love is love, you know?”

  “You don’t like him?”

  “It’s not that,” she said hastily. She didn’t want to appear disloyal. “But he is a lot older. Some girls like older men, though, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “So the reason she left Bobby and came down here was because he slapped her?”

  “Well, there was other stuff. She thought he wasn’t really in love with her. That maybe he was stringing her along. But that worked out.”

  “What do you mean it worked out? How did she know he really loves her?”

  Jillian tossed her mane and shaded her eyes with a slim hand. “It really was romantic, you should have seen him. He didn’t get down on his knee or anything like that, but he took her out here—I was in the house, but I saw it all—and he gave her the ring.”

  “An engagement ring?”

  “Yeah. She was so excited.”

  “You’re sure it was an engagement ring?”

  “She came in and showed it to me.” Jillian made a little face. “It wasn’t very big—you know, carat-wise
? But Bobby never had much money and it’s the thought that counts. Besides, he said it was just a first ring, you know? That down the line he’d get her something really nice.”

  “So off they went. Did they say where they were going?”

  Jillian shrugged. “Back to Williams? That’d be my guess. I’m sure Shana wants to show everyone her ring. Plus, she said there was stuff she had to do.”

  “Stuff?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Any idea what she was talking about?”

  Jillian shook her head.

  Laura tried another tack. “So what’s going on with Shana these days? With the kids and everything?”

  Jillian continued to stare out at the gulf, but her eyes narrowed. “She isn’t much into her kids. Hardly ever talks about them. If I had a kid, I’be talking about them all the time. I wondered what happened with the kids while she came down here, and she said they stay with Ronnie and his parents.”

  Laura realized that Jillian didn’t know her friend very well. Maybe it was the physical distance between them—Jillian living in Tucson now.

  “Did she talk about Dan?”

  “That was so awful. He was such a nice guy.”

  “She must have been pretty broken up.”

  “Oh, she was. One night we were out here, drinking margaritas, and she started telling me how awful it was. I mean, they were really close. He was more of a best friend than a brother, and she felt so guilty.”

  “Why would she feel guilty?”

  Jillian shrugged. “I don’t know. She was saying crazy things—we were both pretty drunk. How it was all her fault. Well, you know she didn’t mean that.”

  “Did she say anything specific? How it could be her fault.”

  “No. Just that sometimes she hated herself, that she could have maybe done something—to save him? But when I asked her what she could have done, she didn’t answer me.”

  “Do you think she was hiding something?”

  “Maybe. She just got this scared look on her face and said she was just sad because her brother was gone. And that was it.”

  “What then?”

  “We went to bed. Well, actually, I went to bed. She sat out here a while longer, just crying? I thought I should leave her alone, let her cry it out. She was still asleep on the chaise when I came out the next morning.”