“Got some proof of that?”
I showed her my ID.
She studied it and handed it back. “Just wanted to make sure you weren't a reporter. I despise them because they once did a story on my dogs and painted me as a nut.”
She touched her sharp chin. “Little Hope. I don't claim to remember all my students, but I remember her. Okay, come on in.”
She began walking to the house, leaving me to open the gate for myself. The Bouvier had ambled nearly to the back of the property but as I turned the latch, it wheeled around and raced toward me.
“He's okay, Lee,” said Elsa Campos. “Don't eat him. Yet.”
I followed her up the porch and into a dim parlor crowded with cheap furniture and feed bowls. Shelves full of pottery and glass, the smell of wet fur and antiseptics. A cuckoo clock over the mantel looked more Lake Arrowhead than Switzerland.
Small room, the kitchen was three steps away. She told me to sit and headed in there. On the counter sat a blow-dryer, several squeeze bottles of canine shampoo, a microwave oven, and a plastic dog-crate. Inside the crate was something small and white and still. On top were glass ampules, plastic-capped syringes, rolls of bandages.
“Hey,” said Elsa Campos, sticking a finger through the wire door. The little dog stuck its tongue out and whimpered.
She cooed to it awhile. “Little girl Shih Tzu, one year old. Someone cracked her head with a stick, paralyzed the rear quarters, left her on a trash heap. Her legs got infected. When I got her she was a bag of bones, the pound was ready to gas her. She'll never be normal, but we'll get her adjusted to the others. Leopold will see to that. He's the alpha— head dog of the pack. He's good with weak things.”
“That's great,” I said, suddenly thinking of Milo's heavy face, black brows, bright eyes, slow movements.
“Something to drink?”
“No, thanks.” I sank into a gray-slipcovered easy chair. Feather cushions soft as warm tallow shifted to encompass me. Flanking the cuckoo clock were faded photos of nature scenes. The curtains were brown chenille, the overhead light fixture dusty bulbs in a tangle of yellowed staghorns.
She pulled a beer out of an old Kelvinator fridge. “Worried you're going to catch something because I run a zoo?” Popping the top, she drank. “Well, it's a clean zoo. I can't help the smell but just because I take in hurt animals, why should it mean I want to live dirty?”
“No reason.”
“Tell it to those two.”
“The Botulas?”
“The Botulas,” she said in that same mimicking tone. “Monsieur and Madame Sherlock.” She laughed. “First week they got here, they started driving around in that old car the county gives 'em, as if they had something to do. Like Dragnet—you're probably too young to remember that.”
“Just the facts, ma'am,” I said.
Her smile was briefer than an eyeblink. “What kind of facts are you going to have here? The weeds grew another two inches? Send samples to the FBI?” She sipped more beer. “What a pair. Driving up and down, up and down, up and down. First week they passed by here, saw my herd playing out front, stopped, got out, started rattling the gate. Needless to say, the herd got excited. I had a Golden with three legs back then, really liked to bark, what a symphony.” Smiling again. “I came out to see what the ruckus was all about, there they were trying to count heads, write it down. Then she looks me up and down and he starts reciting the health code— more than such and such in one place means you need a kennel license. I laughed and went inside, had nothing to do with them since. They'll be gone soon enough, just like the others.”
“How many others have there been?”
“Lost count. County sends them over from Fresno to serve a year in Oblivion. No action, no McDonald's, no cable TV, drives them crazy and they're out of here first thing.” She laughed, then turned serious. “The fifty-channel generation. God help the animals and everyone else when they take over.”
She peered inside the crate. “Don't you worry, baby, soon you'll be running with the best of them.”
She shook her head and her braid swung. “Can you imagine anyone wanting to hurt something so harmless?”
“No,” I said. “It's about as unthinkable as murder.”
Straightening, she rested her hand on the counter, put her beer down, and picked up an ampule of medicine. After reading the label, she put it down and came into the parlor. Taking a ragged cane chair, she sat, planting her heels on the linoleum floor.
“Hope, murdered. Do you know what the Greeks did to bad-news messengers?” She ran a finger across her throat.
“Hope you're not Greek,” I said.
She grinned. “Lucky for you, no. I used to teach all my classes about the Greeks but not in the usual way— not that they were cultured and noble and had great mythology and started the Olympics. I used them to make the point that you can be cultured and outwardly noble and still do immoral things. Because they pretty much brutalized everyone they came into contact with, just as bad as the Romans. They don't teach morality anymore in schools except how to have sex without dying from it. Which I guess is okay because what chance do you have to do any good in the world if you're six feet under? But they should also look at other things— what do you expect to learn from me?”
“Something about Hope's background that might help explain her death.”
“Why would her background explain anything?”
Her black eyes were locked into mine, sharp as a falcon's.
“There's some indication she might have been abused as an adult. Sometimes that's related to abuse as a child.”
“Abused how?”
“Physically. Pushed around, bruised.”
“Was she married?”
“Yes.”
“To whom?”
“A history professor, quite a few years older.”
“Is he the one who abused her?”
“We don't know.”
“Is he a suspect in the murder?”
“No,” I said.
“No? Or not yet?”
“Hard to say. There's no evidence against him.”
“A professor and a psychologist,” she said, closing her eyes, as if trying to picture it.
“Hope was a professor, too,” I said. “She'd become pretty prominent as a researcher.”
“What did she research?”
“The psychology of women. Sex-roles. Self-control.”
The last phrase made her flinch and I wondered why.
“I see. . . . Tell me exactly how she was killed.”
I summed up the stabbing and told her about Hope's book, the publicity tour.
“Sounds like she was more than prominent. Sounds like she was downright famous.”
“During the last year, she was.”
Her head moved back an inch and the black eyes got narrow. I felt like corn surveyed by a crow.
“So what does her childhood have to do with it?” she said.
“We're clutching at straws. You're one of them.”
She stared at me some more. “Famous. That's what I get for not reading the papers or watching the idiot box. Stopped both years ago . . . interesting.”
“What is?”
“Her getting famous. When I first got her as a student, she was shy, didn't even like to read out loud. Do you have a picture of her as an adult?”
“No.”
“Too bad, would have loved to see it. Was she attractive?”
“Very.” As I described Hope, her eyes softened.
“She was a beautiful kid— I can't stop thinking of her as a kid. Little blondie. Her hair was almost white . . . past her waist, with curls at the end. Big, brown eyes . . . I showed her how to do all the braids and twists with her hair, gave her a book with diagrams for a graduation gift.”
“Sixth-grade graduation?”
She nodded absently. The cuckoo shot out of the clock and beeped once. “Medicine time,” she said, standing. “Got two others in the bedroom
even worse than the Shih Tzu. Collie hit by a truck out on Route Five and a part-beagle choked unconscious and left in a field to die.”
She went to the kitchen, filled two syringes, disappeared through a rear door.
I sat in the dim room until she came back looking grim.
“Problems?” I said.
“I'm still thinking about Hope. All these years I haven't thought much about her, assumed she was fine, but now her face is right here.” Tapping her nose. “Thank you for brightening an old woman's day.”
“You assumed she was fine,” I said. “Meaning you worried she might not be?”
She sat down and laughed. “You are a psychologist.”
Her eyes drifted to the clock and stayed there for a while.
I said, “You don't remember all your students but you do remember her. What made her stand out?”
“Her intelligence. I taught for forty-eight years and she had to be one of the smartest kids I ever had. Maybe the smartest. Grasped things immediately. And a hard worker, too. Some of the gifted aren't, as I'm sure you know. Rest on their laurels, think the world's lining up for them. But Hope was a good little worker. And not because of her home environment.”
The skin around the black eyes tightened.
“No?” I said.
“No,” she said, but this time it wasn't mimicry. “Not because. Despite.”
26
She got up again. “Sure you don't want a drink?”
“Something soft, thanks.”
Swinging the fridge open, she took out another beer and a can of orange soda. “This okay?”
“Sure.”
Popping both tops, she sat down and immediately started tapping her feet. Then she straightened a slipcover, pulled her braid forward, unraveled it, and began to retie.
“You need to understand something,” she said. “Things were different back then.” She looked down at her feet, kicked aside a pink plastic feed bowl. “Hope came here with her mother when she was just a baby. I never saw any father. The mother said he was some kind of sailor, died at sea. . . . This professor husband, what makes you think he beat her?”
“We don't know that he did. It's just a possibility.”
“Why's it a possibility?”
“Because husbands are usually the ones who do that.”
“Does he have a raw temper?”
“Don't know,” I lied. “Why?”
“I've had two husbands and neither would classify as brutal, but both had their tempers and there were times I was afraid. How much older is he than Hope?”
“Fifteen years. Why do you ask?”
The beer can rose to her lips and she took a long time drinking. “She was always mature for her age.”
“Where did Hope and her mother come from?” I said.
She shook her head and took a longer swallow. I tried the orange soda. It tasted like candy mixed with cleaning solvent. I tried to produce saliva to wash away the taste but my mouth was dry.
“The mother's name was Charlotte. Everyone called her Lottie. She and the child just showed up one day with one of the migrant picking crews. Lottie was nice-looking but she had the face of an Okie, so maybe she was one. Or maybe she just had Okie heritage— know anything about the Okies?”
I nodded.
“Where are your folks from?”
“Missouri.”
She thought about that. “Well, Lottie seemed like pure Okie to me— pretty, like I said, but skinny, rawboned. Twangy accent, not much education. I know it's a derogatory term, now, but I'm too old to start worrying about shifts of the wind. Back then they seemed fine being called Okies so they're still Okies to me. My own family's part Californio but I've been called everything from taco-bender to greaser and I've survived. Know who the Californios were?”
“The original settlers from Mexico.”
“The original settlers after the Indians. Before the New Englanders came out west to find gold. I've got both in me— tamales and boiled supper but I don't exactly look like DAR so I've been getting wetback comments my whole life. I learned to close my ears and go about my business. Lottie Devane was an Okie.”
Two more swallows and the beer was gone.
“She was quite a nice-looking girl— slim figure, good bust, legs. But she'd seen some wear. And she could walk, make it look like a dance step. Natural blond, too. Not the platinum stuff she started using a month after she got here, wanting to match Hope. More of a honey blond. She favored blue eye shadow and false eyelashes and red lipstick and tight dresses. Everyone wanted to be Marilyn Monroe back then, whether it was realistic or not.”
She looked away. “The thing with Lottie was she came with the picking crew but she never went out to pick. Despite that she managed to pay rent on a two-room cabin over on Citrus Street.” She hooked a finger. “That's three blocks over, we used to call it Rind Street 'cause the migrants took the oversoft fruit home to make lemonade and the gutters were full of skin and pulp. Rows of cabins— shacks. Communal bathrooms. That's where Lottie and Hope lived. Except soon they got upgraded to a double cabin. When Lottie was in town, she tended to stay indoors.”
“Was she gone a lot?”
She shrugged. “She used to take day trips.”
“Where?”
“No car, she used to hitch. Probably up to Bakersfield, maybe all the way to Fresno, 'cause she came back with nice things. Later, she bought herself a car.”
“Nice things,” I said.
The skin around the black eyes tightened. “My second husband was assistant general manager for one of the lemon companies, knew everything about everyone. He said when Lottie hitched, she stood by the side of the road and lifted her skirt way up. . . . She and Hope lived here until Hope was fourteen, then they moved up to Bakersfield. Hope told me it was so she could go to high school close to home.”
“All those years of paying the rent without picking,” I said.
“Like I said, she knew how to walk.”
“Are we talking a steady lover or business?”
She stared at me. “Why does everything nowadays have to be so overt?”
“I'd like to bring back information, not hints, Mrs. Campos.”
“Well, I can't see how this kind of information can help you— yes, she took money from men. How much? I don't know. Was it official or did she just lead them to understand they should leave her something under the pillow, I can't tell you that, either. Because I minded my own business. Sometimes she went away for a few days at a time and came back with lots of new dresses. Was it more than just a shopping trip?” She shrugged. “What I will say is she always brought clothes for Hope, too. Quality things. She liked dressing the child up. Other kids would be running around in jeans and T-shirts and little Hope would have on a pretty starched dress. And Hope took care of her things, too. Never got dirty or mixed in with rough stuff. She tended to stay inside the cabin, reading, practicing her penmanship. She learned to read at five, always loved it.”
“Was there any indication Hope knew what her mother did?”
She shrugged and passed her beer can from one hand to the other.
“Did Hope ever talk to you about it, Mrs. Campos?”
“I wasn't her psychologist, just her teacher.”
“More kids talk to teachers than to psychologists.”
She put the can down and her arms snapped across her chest like luggage straps. “No, she never talked to me about it but everyone knew, and she wasn't stupid. I always thought shame was why she kept to herself.”
“Did you see her after she moved to Bakersfield?”
The arms tightened. “A year after, she came back to visit. She'd won an award, wanted to show it to me.”
“What kind of award?”
“Scholastic achievement. Sponsored by a stock-and-feed company, big ceremony at the Kern County Fair. She sent me an invitation but I had the flu, so she came two days later, with photos. She and a boy student— smartest girl, smartest boy. She
kept trying to tell me I deserved the award for teaching her so much. Wanted to give me the trophy.”
“Mature sentiment for a teenager.”
“I told you, she was always mature. It was a one-room school and with most of the older kids out working the crop, it was easy to give her lots of personal attention. All I did was keep supplying her with new books. She chewed up information like a combine.”
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