Janice, Mrs. Branford, and I looked at each other. So Richie had seen him, which meant a day ago Hank Rivera was okay. I was the one who spoke up first. “Did he have anything with him?”
“Yes! Good thought.” Janice looked excited. “Did he have a suitcase?”
Richie circled his eyes up at the ceiling in thought. “Now that you mention it, he did toss something into his truck. Not a suitcase. Maybe a duffel? I’m not really sure.”
I looked around, noting the details of the house’s interior. Like the outside, it was in need of a spruce up, but overall, it was pretty nice as boarding houses went. At least from my knowledge of what a boarding house should look like, which was only based on old movies. The whole thing seemed to have been remodeled and didn’t resemble the cut-up interior of a traditional Victorian-era house. The heart of the house was the combined kitchen-family room. From what I could tell, bedrooms shot off to either side of the center. A staircase on the right of the foyer led upstairs, where I imagined there were more bedrooms. If I didn’t have a home of my own, this would be exactly the type of place I’d want to live. It needed some TLC, but it was still warm and welcoming. “How long has he been living here?” I asked.
“About a month,” he said just as an elderly man emerged from a room down the hall and shuffled into the foyer, pushing a walker. His gray sweatpants and T-shirt were both baggy, hanging on his thin, hunched frame like clothes on a hanger, showing no form underneath. His navy corduroy slippers smacked against the tile floor as he walked, the heels of the slippers pressing down so they were more like flip-flops. He had thin and spotty gray-streaked hair swept across his head, but not offering nearly enough coverage of the balding dome. If I had to guess, I’d place him in his eighties, but he wasn’t spry and energetic like Mrs. Branford was; he looked every one of his years.
“Why, hello there, Mrs. Thompson,” he said, and just like that, the strength of his voice and the suggestive note in his tone made me rethink my first impression of him. Tsk-tsk-tsk. He was an older man wanting to try his luck with a younger woman.
But Janice didn’t seem to mind. She gave him a warm smile. “Mason, you’re looking well. Ivy. Penny. This is Mason Caldwell. Mason, these are some friends of mine. Ivy Culpepper and Penelope Branford.”
He did a little two-step, his hands gripped firmly on the sides of his walker to help him keep his balance, and then gave a little bow. “Ladies.”
Janice nodded with approval. “Mason, you’re such a gentleman.”
“Why, thank you, madam. Care to tell me more? You can join me for a night on the town, although I’m afraid you’ll have to drive.”
Mrs. Branford had been staring at Mason. She took a step forward, cocking her head to one side, considering him carefully. “Mr. Caldwell. Room three-fifteen. Chemistry.”
The elderly man spun his head to look at her. “That’s right,” he began, but then he stopped.
“Penelope Branford? Ha! I’ll be damned. Room one-oh-one. English lit.”
They both laughed as recognition hit. Mrs. Branford made a sweeping gesture with one arm. “Both retired,” she said wistfully.
“Thank God!” Mason bellowed. “I can’t imagine having to explain to all the angst-ridden teenagers today that I am not, in fact, Walter White, and we won’t be learning anything about making meth. That might have done me in. Instead, I get my state retirement, my Social Security check, and I have not a care in the world.”
From the window in the other room, Bernard turned to us and laughed. It was a robust and exaggerated bellow, followed by a knee slap. “Mason a funny man. You not Walter White. You Mason. You funny, Mason.”
“Thank you, Bernard,” Mason said matter-of-factly.
Bernard turned back to the window, staring out into the darkness. “You come back, see Mason be funny,” he said.
“Who’s he talking to?” Mrs. Branford asked.
“To himself,” Richie said. “You get used to it.”
“So Janice,” Mason said, “how about that date?”
“Mason,” Richie scolded. “We talked about this. My mom is off limits.”
Janice laughed, more lighthearted than her son, but she echoed his sentiment. “He’s right, Mason. That’s quite an offer, but you’d be robbing the cradle with me. That wouldn’t look good for you.”
Mason scoffed. “I don’t care one iota what things look like for me. All I care about is getting the most out of every single day. I might not have that many days left.”
But Janice wasn’t going to let him off easy. “Of course you do! Days and days and days. You’re not going anywhere, but if you tried to date me, what would your family say?”
He released one hand from his walker and fluttered his hand in the air. “Family? They don’t have anything to do with me anymore. I had the audacity to grow old, and they had the audacity not to care anymore. It’s easier for them that way,” he said snidely, but underneath it, I could hear the sadness. He’d been abandoned by the people who were supposed to love him the most, at the time when he probably needed them the most.
“Oh, Mason,” Janice said. She laid her hand on his shoulder and ushered him from the foyer to the heart of the house where Bernard stood sentry at the window.
“Students,” he said. “I have students, which more than makes up for the selfish family I am saddled with. Hank was a student.” He looked at Mrs. Branford. “Did you have him, too, Penelope?”
“Oh, yes. Quite a remarkable young man.”
“He’s been trying to move me into a retirement facility. I bet that’s where he is right now, in fact. Mustache Hank, as he’s oft called, is quite the persistent fellow.”
Richie and Janice both looked surprised. “I don’t think Hank’s checking out a retirement home for you,” Richie said.
Mason looked chagrined. “Oh, but he is. He mentioned it once or twice. He thinks there is more there to keep my mind active. I told him that I’m perfectly happy here, but he wants to take care of me. Former teacher and all that. ‘There are movie nights, clubs, dominoes, bingo’,” he said, changing his voice slightly to mimic what Hank had told him. “Like I’m going to spend my time playing bingo and dominoes.”
“Put me out to pasture before you send me to an old folks’ home,” Mrs. Branford said. She looked at me. “Ivy, you got that? Out to pasture.”
“Got it,” I said, although I had no idea what that actually meant or what I had to do with it. First off, I had no claim on her. I wasn’t her blood relation, so I wouldn’t be making any decisions on her behalf. Second off, retirement communities were costly. Mrs. Branford had told me her sons would inherit plenty, but that didn’t mean she had the means to move into a retirement community. And third off, the woman was going to live forever.
“Could he be worried for you over those?” Mrs. Branford asked, pointing her cane at the staircase.
“Certainly not. I had a knee replacement last year. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t venture up those stairs. I would come tumbling down again, much like Humpty Dumpty.”
“Mason’s room is downstairs,” Richie confirmed. “He has no reason to go upstairs.”
“Correct,” Mason said with a flourish of his hand. If he hadn’t chosen the sciences, he could have had a future in theater.
Mrs. Branford laughed. Maybe a little too hardily. I snuck a peak at her, wondering if she was hot or if the slight tinge of pink on her cheeks had something to do with the dapper Mason Caldwell.
“You should rest, Mason. Come, have a seat,” Janice said, leading him to the great room. He nodded to Mrs. Branford, and then to me almost as an afterthought. A moment later he was pushing his walker, following Janice to the couch.
“Mason really has nobody?” I asked Richie softly when Mason was out of earshot.
His eyes rolled up. “Of course he does.” He tapped his index finger against his temple, just like Janice had done when we’d first encountered Bernard. The implication was that Mason was not all there in the
head. He seemed plenty lucid to me, but maybe he was just having a good night. He could very well be the norm for the type of people who’d live in a place like this: People who didn’t have others to care for them and who were still able to function in a normal setting, even if their heads were fuzzy part of the time.
“Mason has a daughter in San Francisco,” Richie continued. “She needed a place for him while she gets a room ready for him in her house, so he’s a short-timer. I admit, I’ll miss him when he goes. He’s a kick.”
“So he doesn’t need a retirement home?”
“Not at all,” Richie said. “In fact, his daughter is supposed to check him out of here any day now.”
If his daughter was coming to get him, why did he think she’d abandoned him? Why did he think everyone had abandoned him? Was his mind that far gone? “Doesn’t he know that?” I asked.
Richie shrugged. “Sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn’t. Good days and bad days. Dementia. Most of the time he’s not as lucid as you just saw him, and he tends to make things up, but even now he doesn’t remember his daughter. I think the retirement home is all in his head.”
My heart broke for Mason Caldwell and for his daughter. He seemed so together. Feisty. Definitely what I would call a fighter, just like Mrs. Branford. To lose one’s mind . . . well, that was one of the worst things I could imagine.
“What about Bernard?” Mrs. Branford asked, glancing at Bernard, who was still gazing out into the dark night. She had fallen quiet for a little while, just listening. Thinking. I imagined she was seeing her mortality at the moment, worried that she would succumb to the same faculty losses both Bernard and Mason had unwillingly surrendered to. “Does he have anyone?”
The heels of Janice’s shoes clicked against the tile as she came back into the foyer. Before Richie could answer, Janice did. “If he does, we don’t know about them,” she said. “It is sad to see people all alone.” She threaded her arm through Richie’s and gave him a peck on the cheek. “I’m grateful for my son.”
Richie patted his mother’s hand. “Back at you, Mom.”
Mrs. Branford cleared her throat. She looked a bit pale. All the talk about dementia and lost families had clearly gotten to her. Given her age, it hit too close to home, so I couldn’t blame her. People didn’t like to imagine themselves declining in health or in their mental capacity, and Mrs. Branford was no exception to that. She’d had a few instances of forgetfulness since I’d known her, but nothing serious and nothing to indicate that she was on a similar path to Mason or Bernard. “Let’s see Hank’s room,” she said.
“Sure, sure,” Richie answered.
Janice sidestepped, turning toward the great room. “I’ll stay with Bernie and Mason. You all go on.”
As her heels click-click-clicked on the tile, Richie led Mrs. Branford and me down the short hallway Mason had emerged from a short while ago. The Victorian had clearly been remodeled, what had probably been a parlor and library cut up to be refashioned into several small bedrooms. I peeked in one of the rooms as we passed. It was sparsely furnished with a bed, a dresser, and a chair in the corner. We walked by quickly, so I couldn’t see any more than that, or make out any personal touches that revealed anything about the room’s occupant.
Richie stopped in front of the last door on the right and knocked. Mrs. Branford raised her eyebrows at him. He looked sheepish. “Force of habit,” he said. “Mr. Rivera?” he called, then turned to us and said in a stage whisper, “Just in case.”
In case what? I wondered. From what I’d gathered, Hank’s truck wasn’t here and Richie hadn’t mentioned anyone seeing him return, so it seemed unlikely that somehow Hank was in his room. Still, I held my breath and waited, as Richie had said, just in case.
But there was no answer. Richie turned the handle and pushed open the door, stepping aside so we could walk through. The room looked just like the other one I’d caught a glimpse of. A twin bed came out from the window, the dresser sat against the right wall, and, in this case, a gliding rocking chair was in the corner by the door. I spun around, looking for evidence of Hank. A picture, maybe, or a medicine bottle, or a letter. But there was nothing personal. If I didn’t know he was staying here, I’d never have been able to see that he did.
“What the—?” Richie spun around with an expression of dismay. “He cleared out on me!”
One by one I yanked open the doors to the dresser. Empty. Mrs. Branford opened the closet doors. Also empty. Had Hank had so few belongings that they’d fit into the duffel bag Richie had seen him toss into his truck? Or had he loaded everything else up without anyone being the wiser?
Either way, it was as if Hank Rivera had never been here. The thread of concern that had been loosened for a brief moment suddenly tightened again, winding its way through my insides. Something had driven Hank away. I thought back to the brief conversation Jolie had overheard at the festival earlier. Was it his finances? Was he truly in so much debt that he’d seen no other choice but to run?
Richie fumed, raking one hand through his hair. “Son of a—” His gaze swung to us and he stopped himself from finishing his rant. “I can’t believe it. Mustache Hank. I never would have thought he’d run out like this.”
I had to agree. Based on everything I’d heard about him, it seemed very out of character. Mrs. Branford seemed equally puzzled. She swung her cane to and fro, her wrinkled brow furrowing in consternation. We looked at each other, both of us frowning. Suddenly the lighthearted attitude we’d had toward sleuthing took on a new seriousness. “The Hank I know wouldn’t do this,” she said. “Something must be terribly wrong.”
With nothing more to discover in Hank’s room, Mrs. Branford and I thanked Richie and Janice, and then left. Before long, I was curled up in bed with a glass of wine, a book—which I couldn’t focus on—and my thoughts zipping haphazardly around my head.
The phone call from Emmaline came about an hour later. She launched in the second I answered. No pleasantries. This wasn’t Em, friend from high school. Nor Em, girlfriend of my brother. She was calling as Deputy Sheriff Davis, and she was calling with a specific purpose.
“Ivy,” she said, not mincing words. “We found Hank Rivera’s truck.”
“What do you mean, you found his truck?” I asked slowly.
“We got a report about a pickup truck parked at a gas station just outside of town. It’s Hank’s.”
I mulled this over for a few seconds. “What do you think it means?”
“It’s a truck in a parking lot without its owner. What do you think it means?”
“Well, it could mean that he met someone there and left his truck behind.”
Emmaline grunted as if she didn’t believe that scenario for a second, but she had to look at all possibilities. “Could be. We’re canvassing the area. So far nobody saw anything.”
“How long has the truck been there?”
“From what we can surmise, sometime yesterday. The day manager noticed it when he left last night, and it was still there tonight.” Which fit what Richie had said about Hank leaving the boarding house the day before. Had he gone straight to the gas station for some sort of rendezvous? I told her about my visit to Richie’s boarding house and Hank’s empty room. She let out a lengthy and audible breath.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
Emmaline had a logical head and wasn’t afraid to tackle things head-on, but she sighed. Heavily. “I’m thinking Hank Rivera is officially a missing person.”
Chapter 10
I spent the next morning at the bread shop with Olaya. It was an ordinary day filled with ordinary baking, which I was glad for. The news that Hank Rivera was officially missing put a somber pall over us. We worked without talking for the first few hours, mixing dough, putting it aside for a long rise, rolling out croissants, forming baguettes. I’d realized some time ago that baking had a level of creativity that most people didn’t recognize. Sure, a lot of people could follow a recipe, but you had to f
inesse dough to make it do what you wanted it to do; you had to have patience to let the flour and yeast do its magic. Baking well was like painting a picture that had layers of colors and shadows and negative space, all done to elicit a reaction from whomever was looking at it.
We wanted nothing more than to prompt a response—an emotion—from the people who ate what we created. I’d seen it in action: Almond bread to bring forth wisdom and prosperity. Anise to fight nightmares. For someone searching for love, anything with apples did the trick. Olaya’s bread shop was special, her bread magical. That I was a part of it filled me with a level of satisfaction I hadn’t experienced from anything else, not even from my photography. The photos I took affected people. They affected me. But the bread . . . the bread was just as powerful. Maybe more so.
Not even the bread we baked could bring Hank Rivera back to Santa Sofia. It couldn’t, but it did make me feel a little bit better.
Finally, I couldn’t take the silence any longer. I needed to talk it out. To process through what little we knew and what we might figure out. I was still trying to be optimistic.
“Maybe we’re seeing something ominous when we shouldn’t. What if Hank is seeing someone?” I asked as Olaya placed another round of dough on a tray for a long rise. She paced her baking throughout the day so there was always fresh bread until closing. And she timed it all just right so there was very rarely anything left over. Any unsold bread was donated to a local women’s shelter called Gladiola House.
She turned the next ball of dough onto the floured board she used to knead and dug the heels of her hands into it. “He is a divorced man,” she said as she began to work the dough.
I followed her lead, kneading my own round of dough. “Right, so it’s possible.”
“I like that theory. If he’s with a woman, he will come back at some point. But if he did not leave with a woman, then where is he?” Olaya asked.
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