by Janet Dawson
Dad’s eyes lit up. “Wonderful. What a treat to see that.”
Loretta speared a wedge of avocado and looked across the table at Carl. “Someone at the market said a bear was spotted over at the county park.”
“Does that happen often?” I asked.
“We get a few every year, come down out of the mountains, looking for food,” Carl said. “Black bears don’t usually range in the Eastern Sierra. You’re more likely to see a mountain lion, but they tend to stay out of sight in the high country. Now, you might see a bear up the canyons, Lee Vining or Lundy, closer to the mountains, and the forested areas. Bears typically eat plants, roots, insects and small mammals. The only reason a bear would come down this far out of the woods is human food, garbage, or something a camper has left out.”
“We don’t have much of a bear problem here,” Dan said. “Now, Yosemite or Lake Tahoe, that’s a different story.”
“I’ve seen the damage up close,” I said. “A couple of years ago I was in Yosemite Valley, staying at the Lodge. Despite all the signs warning not to, some people left a cooler full of food in their car. The bear peeled the door off.”
Holly chuckled. “Oh, yeah. A five-hundred-pound bear can go through a car windshield or the door of a house in nothing flat.”
The conversation turned to the state’s budget woes, and the threats to close state parks to save money. Everyone in the room thought that was a bad idea.
“Hell, it’s a bonehead move,” Carl said. “It won’t save that much money. If the state parks close we’ll have poachers killing the wildlife and the damn pot growers will move in, creating all sorts of environmental damage. It’s already a big problem on national forest land. Closing the state parks will just worsen the problem.”
“We’re already stretched,” Holly said. “We need more park rangers and more fish-and-wildlife wardens.”
“You’re preaching to the choir,” Loretta told them. She pushed back her chair and picked up her plate. “Who wants a piece of carrot cake?”
She got a unanimous “yes” vote for that suggestion. We all pitched in to clear the table. While Carl and Loretta loaded the dishwasher, Dan started the coffeemaker. Pearl cut wedges of cake and transferred them onto plates. We talked as we ate the rich dessert, washing it down with coffee.
The clock on the mantel in the living room struck nine, and Holly consulted her watch for verification. “Is that the time? Goodness, I’ve got to go. I’m spending the night with a friend, then heading back to Bodie first thing in the morning.”
“Would you mind dropping me off at the Lakeview Lodge?” Dad asked. “I’d like to get to bed. I have to get up early for the birding trip.”
“Oh, sure thing,” Holly said. “Just let me get my uniform and bag, and we’ll go.”
“See you bright and early at the community center,” Dan said. “I should probably go to bed, too.”
I kissed Dad and walked with him to Holly’s Jeep. She started the vehicle and headed toward town, taillights glowing red in the darkness. I heard a series of hoots, and saw a great horned owl perched atop a nearby telephone pole, silhouetted by moonlight.
I called for Tinkerbell, who had come outside. “Come on, Tink. I don’t want you to be dinner, whether it’s a bear, a mountain lion, or that owl.” She woofed at me and we both headed for the front door.
Inside the house, Tinkerbell made a beeline for Dan, who sat on the arm of the sofa. She leaned against his legs, tail wagging as he bent over and scratched her ears. Then he straightened and yawned. “Don’t think I’m in the mood for a poker game tonight, Grandma.”
“Oh, shoot,” Pearl said in mock annoyance. “That’s just how I like my opponents, with their guard down.”
He laughed. “Some time this weekend, I promise.” He kissed her and his mother, gave his father’s shoulder an affectionate squeeze, and headed down the hall toward the bedrooms.
“I’ll play a few hands with you, Mom,” Carl said, “soon as Loretta and I finish in the kitchen and lock up.”
I helped Pearl set up the poker chips and cards on the dining room table, then I looked around the living room, at the photos I’d noticed earlier. At first I thought one picture was a younger Dan, but then I realized the planes of the face were different. Pearl came up beside me and tapped the picture frame. “That’s Seth, the youngest. He’s an engineer, works for the California Department of Transportation in Sacramento.” She pointed at another photo. “This is Elaine. Looks just like her mother, doesn’t she? She’s the middle child, works as an operating room nurse in Carson City.”
At the end of the mantel I saw a snapshot of Dan with two young children, a boy and a girl. Well, that answered the question that had been in my mind since I’d first laid eyes on him and had noticed he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. The children in the photo certainly looked like their father. It was ridiculous for me to feel disappointed. I’d just met the man. “So Dan’s married.”
Pearl gave me a speculative look. “Dan’s divorced. The kids live with his ex and her second husband, in Fresno. What about you?”
“Divorced,” I said. “No kids. Just cats.”
“Dan likes cats. Almost as much as he likes Point Reyes.”
Carl appeared in the doorway. Beyond him I saw Loretta at the dining table, shuffling cards. “Let’s play poker.”
Pearl winked at me. “Sometimes it pays to draw to an inside straight.”
We played poker for an hour or so. I had a few good hands, but Pearl was a formidable player. It was after ten when Carl threw in his hand and said he was going to bed. He let Tinkerbell out one more time, then he and Loretta retired. So did the dog, curling up in her bed as I followed Pearl to her quarters, an apartment with a living room, kitchenette and bedroom. The bathroom had a walk-in shower, and grab bars had been installed throughout the apartment.
“I move pretty good for a woman my age,” she said, using the bars to steady herself as she showed me around the place. “But I also believe in an ounce of prevention. Too many old gals fall and break a hip or a leg, and then never get back on their feet. If you can’t walk, that’s the beginning of that long downhill slide. I walk every day, whether it’s downtown or just around the yard, or here in the house when we’re snowed in during the winter. And I hold on, every chance I get. I aim to get to a hundred, by damn. Got the genes for it. My ma was a hundred and three when she went.”
Pearl opened a closet opposite the bathroom and took out sheets and a blanket. I removed the sofa cushions and pulled out the sofabed. Together we made the bed. A crocheted afghan, blue and white with a daisy pattern, hung over the back of a nearby platform rocker. She picked it up and deposited it at the foot of the sofabed. “This and the blanket should keep you warm enough. It does get chilly at night. We’re pretty high in elevation, even if we aren’t in the mountains. I’ll get you a pillow.”
Pearl went into her bedroom. I unzipped my overnight bag and stripped off my clothes, putting on my sleep shirt and striped seersucker robe. I glanced at the nearby bookcase. The shelves held an assortment of large print library books, mostly mysteries and women’s fiction. Mixed with these were books about Mono Lake, California history, and the natural history of the Sierra. A framed photograph on top of the bookcase showed Carl, Loretta, their three adult children, and Pearl. Next to this, a small frame held a black-and-white snapshot, its white borders faded to cream, showing cracks, nicks and a torn corner. A man and a woman stood close together, smiling at the camera. From the dress the woman wore, I guessed the photo had been taken in the twenties.
“That’s Ma and Pa. I must have been six or seven years old when that was taken.” Pearl had returned from the bedroom, wearing a blue cotton nightgown with a matching robe. She tossed a pillow onto the sofabed and approached the bookcase, touching the frame that held the old photo.
“Pa was a farmer in the Owens Valley. His family had been there since the eighteen-eighties. Then Los Angeles built the damn aqueduct in nine
teen thirteen and started taking water out of the river, just sucked it dry. Stole it, Pa used to say, hornswoggling people into selling their water rights. Owens Lake dried up and turned into an alkali flat. They still have dust storms to this day. Dad’s farm blew away. He and Ma had to work in town, doing what they could to put food on the table and keep a roof over our heads. Let me tell you, Los Angeles Water and Power isn’t very popular on this side of the mountains.”
“At least water is flowing into both lakes now,” I said. “Though it took years of litigation. Thank goodness for people organizing to fight the water grab.”
“The birds have come back to Owens Lake. Lots of them, Dan tells me. I haven’t been down to Lone Pine since the last of my siblings died. I’m the only one left.” Pearl sat down on the platform rocker and fixed me with a sharp gaze. “Now, suppose you tell me why you were looking for me. I’ve got a feeling it has more to it than nostalgia.”
I sat cross-legged in the middle of the sofabed. “Does the name Ralph Tarrant mean anything to you?”
“It sure as hell does.” Pearl scowled. “The whole sorry business. What in the world brought that up?”
“A chance encounter with someone who told me Grandma had a relationship with Tarrant and was questioned by the police after he was murdered.”
Pearl snorted. “Jerusha didn’t have a relationship with Tarrant. They barely knew each other. Who told you such nonsense?”
“A strange old man who calls himself Henry Calhoun, but I doubt that’s his real name. He’s not what he seems.” I described my initial encounter with the man at the movie memorabilia shop. “I wasn’t even sure Ralph Tarrant existed, but I found information about him, and his murder, on the Internet. Then I looked for some sort of connection between Tarrant and Grandma. That’s why I started reading her letters. Her sister, my Great-aunt Dulcie, kept hundreds of them. They’re fascinating. I got drawn in, all the stories about the roommates: Grandma, you, Anne. And Sylvia. Eventually I found a letter mentioning Tarrant. He sat down at the table where the rest of you were eating lunch, in the commissary at Metro.”
“I remember,” Pearl said. “And I devoutly wish he’d sat at another table. Maybe none of it would have happened. But it did, and we can’t play what-if games. Sylvia was a charity girl—that’s what we called them in those days—not too particular who she slept with. She took up with Tarrant right after we met him.”
“And when he was murdered, the police questioned Grandma. I was in Los Angeles recently and I arranged to look at the case file. Someone gave the police a tip and said Grandma was there.”
Pearl sighed. “It was one of those damned anonymous calls. Whoever made the call told the cops that Jerusha had been dating Tarrant, said she was at his house the night he was murdered, and that she drove off in a Model A Ford, just like the Gasper. But that was my car and I had it that night. Anne was out, too, so Jerusha was home alone, with no one to vouch for her during the time Tarrant was killed, except our neighbor.”
“The police interviewed all three of you,” I said. “I read your statements.”
“That’s right. Anne and I went with Jerusha to the police station. I told the cops about me having the car. Jerusha couldn’t have gotten over to his house unless she walked or took a bus. I waited in the hallway, pacing up and down, while they talked with her. I was so relieved when she came through that door. The detective who was in charge of the investigation decided he’d been given a bunch of hooey, and your grandma didn’t have anything to do with the murder.”
“So who gave the police a bogus tip?” I asked.
“I always figured it was Sylvia and that rapscallion brother of hers.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Pure cussedness,” Pearl said. “And revenge. Because we filed a police report after what they did.”
Chapter 26
Los Angeles, California, January and February 1942
“It’s gone!” Jerusha fought back angry tears as she stalked from the bedroom into the living room. “My locket, the gold and amethyst locket Ted gave me. And the rest of my jewelry, and some cash and clothes. Damn Sylvia! And damn Binky, too!”
Anne came out of her bedroom, her face furious. “My jewelry, too. Plus the cash I had hidden in my underwear drawer. She went through my closet and bureau, took my best dresses, my beaded evening purse, and my lace shawl.”
“Same here. Clothes, jewelry, my silver picture frame. Everything that was portable.” Pearl looked glum. She walked to the kitchen and returned with the coffee tin that had held the grocery money. “Empty. That’s probably the first thing they took. I had a feeling something like this would happen, after what Binky said when we kicked them out.”
“And the phone calls,” Anne said.
The phone calls had started a few days after the housemates had packed up all the Jaspers’ things and moved them out of the bungalow, aided by Pearl’s cousin Floyd and several others. That was two weeks ago. Now they dreaded the ringing of the phone in the middle of the night. The first few times they answered, they heard a low voice spewing obscenities. Equally disconcerting were the hang-ups. It got to the point where they’d take the phone off the hook before going to bed. Jerusha was planning to go to the phone company, to get their number changed.
Now this. The landlord had changed the locks on the bungalow. Sylvia and Binky no longer had keys, but they’d simply broken a window on the back porch and entered that way, to take their revenge.
All three housemates were working. Pearl was at Fox, filming This Above All with Tyrone Power and Joan Fontaine. Anne was at the same studio, in Moontide with Ida Lupino and Claude Rains. And Jerusha was shooting Her Cardboard Lover at Metro, once again appearing in a picture with Norma Shearer. They’d left the house before dawn. It had already been a long day and now, on Friday evening, they’d come home to chaos. The front door was wide open and an ominous trickle of water dripped over the sill onto the small porch. Inside the little bungalow, the destruction left them temporarily speechless. Slashed sofa cushions leaked stuffing. Pictures and knick-knacks lay in heaps in the middle of the living room. The dishes in the kitchen cabinets were smashed, pieces littering the floor and counter, along with the cutlery from the drawers. Pages ripped from cookbooks were set afire and left smoldering in the kitchen sink, filling the air with smoke. A bottle of milk had been taken from the icebox and hurled at the wall, along with eggs, butter, and a bowl of leftover soup. All four kitchen chairs were tipped over, and two had broken legs and slats. Makeup smeared mirrors in the bedrooms and bathroom. Cosmetics had been dumped into the bathtub and toilet. Both taps in the tub had been turned on and water overflowed. The resulting flood had soaked the rugs in the hall and living room. Anything that was available and easy to carry—jewelry, cash, clothing—was gone.
“Water under the bridge.” Anne looked at the towels they’d put down to soak up the flood after they’d turned off the taps in the bathtub. She picked up a fork, its tines bent, and the now-empty box that had held oatmeal. “Let’s get this mess cleaned up.”
“First we call the police,” Jerusha said. “We can’t let them get away with it.”
“I’m with you,” Pearl said. “But they’ve pulled the phone out of the wall. I’ll go next door and use Mrs. Ellison’s phone. After I call the cops, I’ll call our landlord.”
Mr. Collier arrived about twenty minutes later, accompanied by his teenaged son Albert. At first the landlord stood in the middle of the living room, shaking his head in amazement. Albert fiddled with the camera he’d brought with him, sticking a flash bulb into the attachment. Then he started taking pictures. A few moments later, two Los Angeles police officers came up the walk.
It was late when the officers finished taking the report. “Sylvia and Byron Jasper, after you kicked them out, any idea where they would have gone?” one officer asked.
“When they left, my cousin drove them to a boarding house, I don’t know which one,” Pearl said. “And
I don’t know if they stayed there. Sylvia is friends with an actor named Ralph Tarrant. Good friends, if you know what I mean.”
The cop nodded. “Yeah, I get your drift. You think they’re staying with him?”
“Someone at the studio told me they were living with Tarrant,” Pearl said. “Just a rumor. But I know Sylvia’s been seeing Tarrant on a regular basis. And where Sylvia goes, so does her brother. It’s like the two are joined at the hip. I heard Sylvia just started a picture at Columbia. I think Binky might be working at RKO. You can catch up with them at the studios.”
“We’ll pick them up,” the other officer said. “Maybe we can get some of your stuff back. They’ve probably sold or pawned it.”
When the officers left, Jerusha sighed, her hands on her hips. “Now we clean up this mess.”
They started with the kitchen. Meanwhile, Mr. Collier and Albert pushed the living room furniture back, picked up the sodden living room rug and dragged it out the front door and around to the back of the house, where they hung it on the line to dry. They came back for the hallway rug. Then the landlord fetched his toolbox and nailed some plywood over the broken window on the back porch. He checked the locks on the front and back doors. “They’re okay,” he said. “Me and Albert, we’ll come back in the morning with some boxes. We can haul all this trash to the dump.”
“You’re a peach, Mr. C.” Pearl smiled. “I’m sure sorry about all this damage. We’ll pay for repairs.”
“It ain’t your fault people are idiots,” he said. “You’ve been good tenants. We can work somethin’ out.”
It was close to midnight before they got to bed. Early Saturday morning Pearl went out to fetch coffee and doughnuts. After a quick breakfast, they spent most of the morning setting the house to rights. Just before noon, Mr. Collier and his son showed up in a battered Ford pickup truck. The sofa could be reupholstered, they decided. But two of the kitchen chairs were broken beyond repair, so those went to the dump along with the smashed dishes. Mr. Collier said he’d replace the chairs with others from one of his rental houses.