Sleuthing Women

by Lois Winston

  “Huh?” Sometimes my dad’s little quips went right over my head. “Is that like, ‘What doesn’t kill you, should’?”

  “You’ve got the quote wrong, it’s ‘Whatever does not kill me makes me stronger.’ Friedrich Nietzsche. I paid for his retainer because I believed Eddy McBride was being framed, and that’s all there is to it.”

  “Framed? Did it ever occur to you that someone intends to make you pay for your generosity? Look at the facts: He tried to frame the daughter of the one man who paid for his attorney. While I’m at it, why didn’t you tell me, or at least try to stop me, when I took that Caddy away from Ricky?”

  The dour look he gave me spoke volumes.

  “Oh, all right, so it wouldn’t have done any good. But now it’s so convoluted and messy.”

  He held up a finger. “Bill Hollander and his car were old news by the time you came home. I didn’t even realize it was on Ricky’s car lot until after you brought it home. Besides, you’re off the hook. Caleb said so.”

  Exasperated, I dug my nails into my palms and took a deep breath. “I may be off the hook, but knowing Detective Rodney, you’ll be up for questioning next.”

  “My donation to Eddy’s defense fund was done on terms of anonymity. Eddy knew, of course, and so did his wife. I paid Sidney Griffin a nominal fee to keep my secret, as any lawyer to client would.”

  “Client-lawyer privilege isn’t going to help when they serve Judge Griffin with a warrant.” Had I stumbled on an old gang of drug runners, my father included?

  “Dad, can’t you see what it looks like? You, Bill Hollander and Judge Griffin had your own gang back then. I want to know, were you guys doing more than baiting hooks and gutting fish?”

  “We were fishing buddies, that’s all.”

  “And using your crop-dusting company as cover for a little importing of drugs from Mexico?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Okay, then. Was it because you were in love with Patience that you paid for her husband’s defense?”

  He angrily narrowed his eyes at me, then threw back his head and laughed. It was an odd sound, the laughter, probably because I seldom heard it anymore. “Oh Lord, and you thought… That’s a good one.” He held onto his sides while the laughter rolled around his insides. When I thought he was done, another rusty chuckle erupted. Finally wiping at his cheeks, he said, “Lalla, I wasn’t in love with her, I swear. If you recollect, that was a tough year. I helped Eddy McBride because he was Leslie’s friend.”

  “Leslie? My brother, Leslie? How would you know who Leslie’s friends were?” I was challenging him now, as my own feelings of neglect resurfaced.

  “I met Eddy McBride at Leslie’s house.”

  “You never told me,” I whispered.

  “Just the once. It was the spring before he died. I called his apartment and asked if I could come. I was trying to get past the disappointment of his lifestyle and just be his dad, like you said I should.”

  “I remember, go on.” I had my own painful memories. I had barely made it home in time for Leslie’s funeral. And only because I promised Jorge I wouldn’t stay longer than two days. At the funeral, seeing my dad in tatters, I decided it was time to slip Jorge’s velvet chains and spend more time visiting my dad.

  “It was awkward. Your mother understood him in a way I never did. And I was so angry. The only son I would ever have was…” Unfinished, and unable to say the words that made his son different, he pursed his dry lips together.

  I bit at a hangnail and watched my dad work at the crease in his old khakis as we climbed back into uncomfortable memories.

  He tilted his head back and, watching the stars, said, “He had a small apartment up on a hill past the university, on Clement Street. It was clean and tidy, just like he always kept his room at home.”

  Unlike me, I thought. I still kept a pile of discarded clothes in one corner, while in the other corner lay the clean clothes to be folded, hung up or worn. Juanita had long since given up on my housekeeping skills.

  “The art and architecture books I bought him were on a coffee table. He probably put them there just to please me. Neither architecture nor flying was ever going to be his life’s work, any more than flying Ag-Cats should have been yours.”

  “Dad, I—”

  He held up a hand. “Never mind. We’ll get to that subject some other time. He told me about his work at Berkeley Repertory Theatre.”

  I asked, “Did he show you the pictures of the scenery he did for A Midsummer Night’s Dream?”

  “No, we didn’t get to that.” Noah blinked twice, and then plunged unsteadily into the rest of it. “He said you two saw each other occasionally. At least you went to the plays. It didn’t make up for my lack of interest or enthusiasm, but I know it helped that you did.”

  In a gesture meant to remind us of our connection, I stretched across the distance between us and touched the back of one arthritic and scarred hand. He smiled, looking a little less cranky, and continued his story.

  “We were drinking our coffee when the doorbell rang. Leslie was annoyed at the interruption, but said he’d send whoever it was away. The man was dressed nicely enough; pressed slacks, polished shoes, the collar was up, not to my taste, but I believe it was the style at the time. Leslie introduced him as Eddy McBride, a friend, nothing else. It was the smile I remembered, same as the newspaper photo, turned up at the corner of his mouth, like the other side didn’t work at all. There was an awkward moment, and then Leslie told Eddy he’d get him the costumes and left the room.

  “I was surprised when Eddy sat down and spoke so enthusiastically about Leslie’s work, sharing with me as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Yet, he knew—I know he did it because I’d never been to any of Leslie’s plays.”

  “So, you gave him defense money simply because of Leslie?”

  “That’s right.”

  It was incredible to think my tightwad father had done such a generous thing. Only problem was, that kindness had now come back to bite him.

  “What did I care if he was guilty or innocent? It had nothing to do with me.” He sighed and said, “‘Violence is good for those who have nothing to lose.’ Sartre.”

  “But didn’t it occur to you that the police might see you as his accomplice?”

  My father snorted his contempt. “I don’t know who killed Bill Hollander twenty years ago, and I don’t know who killed Eddy McBride’s wife, and I don’t care. What I do care about is you. This is a dangerous game you’re meddling with. You don’t begin to know what you’re doing.”

  “And you do?” I asked, my fears rising again. “I know you thought you were doing the right thing, helping Eddy escape, but I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

  He leaned back in the wicker chair, admiring the expanse of stars glimmering across the sky. “I’m not sorry I let Eddy McBride go. Let him make it right, not you, Lalla. You stay out of it. We’re going to work a way to prove Garth did this, you’ll see.”

  Then I thought of something else. Cigars. What was it? Oh, yeah, Caleb had a stub of one in a baggy. It was found next to Patience’s step. If I could put a voice to the elusive thought floating around in my brain, maybe I could make some sense of it. “Noah, do you ever smoke cigars?”

  “I have. On occasion,” he said. “There have been a few times when a cigar has been appropriate. You know, like weddings, the birth of a grandchild?”

  “Enough. Can we keep this on Eddy?” I said, putting up a hand to stop the direction this was going. “Will you please just consider something for me?”

  “What?”

  “You and I might as well have big bull’s-eyes painted on our backs, since we are now the gifted recipients of a once very tight little secret—a secret for which one person has already been murdered.”

  “Here comes Caleb,” he said, patting my hand in the dark. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”

  “What are you going to tell him?”


  “I’ll think of something. ‘Truth is rarely pure, and seldom simple,’” he said, winking at me. “Oscar Wilde.”

  I watched the lights of Caleb’s cruiser bounce over the potholes in our road. Poor Caleb. He’d been here three times today. I wasn’t looking forward to telling him his sore backside was for nothing.

  FIFTEEN

  At the breakfast table, my dad sat quietly drowning Juanita’s pancakes in syrup, Spike pleading for tidbits at his feet. I’d crossed my heart, promising not to reveal to Caleb that not only did we know the intruder, but after catching him shooting at his daughter, Noah let him escape.

  It made me ill to watch the recent and fragile trust between Caleb and me go down the tubes with the lies we told him last night. There we were, two artful dodgers, squirming at questions we didn’t want to answer. The evidence wasn’t in our favor, and our story was too easily dismissed. If I wasn’t disappointing my father, I was disappointing Caleb. Talk about a rock and a hard place.

  And just a few hours earlier, he was telling me how much he liked me. Well, I could forget about any future with Caleb after that fiasco.

  Our housekeeper offered me a plate. Maybe food would help. I demurred at the size of the stack Juanita placed in front of me, but refusing to clean my plate would have offended her, so I ate. They weren’t the elephant and teddy bear shapes of my mother’s, but they were fluffy and substantial. Before I knew it, the plate was clean and I was left with nothing to do but stare at my dad as he slowly cut each pancake into small squares, forked up two bites, dipped them into the syrup, and ate. At this rate, I could have made it to Paris and back and bought clothes I would never wear living here in bum-luck California. I sighed. With chin in palm, I watched the easterly sunshine fill the big kitchen with a rosy glow. Our kitchen was big enough to accommodate a schoolhouse full of laughing, squabbling children, but the modern white refrigerator was bare of childish artwork. For our own reasons, neither my brother nor I had produced any of the expected grandchildren. I peeked over my coffee cup at the last of the Bains men. The Nordic heritage of blond flyaway hair sat on father’s head like gray, watered silk. The long bony face and wide-set eyes easily identified us as relations, though my father carried his long nose in front of his face in a slightly predatory fashion. The hooded folds of skin above his faded blue eyes only added to his hawkish look. I knew he was harmless. Others, meeting him for the first time, weren’t so sure.

  I nodded my thanks to Juanita, ignored the dog and glowered at my dad. “You didn’t see Caleb’s face when we stood there and told him it was too dark for us to see the intruder. He saw the bullet hole in the wall on the landing. He didn’t believe a word of it, and I’ll bet my lunch money he’ll be back later today to offer up another embarrassing barrage of questions.”

  He pushed his plate aside and said, “What’s your point?”

  I’d spent most of last night worrying the covers off and on with the unanswered questions. “I have a theory about Eddy.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Please! Any figure of speech but that one.”

  “Sorry, I’m listening.”

  “If you don’t mind, here’s what I know so far. Roxy said Eddy McBride and his wife were always writing to each other, so that accounts for how he knew who I was and where I lived. Roxy told me he showed up at her cafe dressed in women’s clothes, but of course without the gun. I understand that he was friend of my brother’s and that you had met him once, but why show up at our house? I mean, did you keep up with him while he was in prison, write letters, drop him a Christmas card, that sort of thing?”

  “No, but—”

  “Until last night, when you let him go, did Eddy ever have any reason to expect you to help him?”

  “I was the one who got him the lawyer twenty years ago.”

  “Yes, and look how well that went. Did you ever tell him why you got involved in the first place?”

  He tucked his chin defensively and said, “I told you last night, it was nobody’s business.”

  Why was I not surprised? This was typical Noah Bains. Stubborn to the hilt.

  “Well, perhaps you should have. All these years, Eddy’s been sitting in jail wondering why he ever trusted your generosity. Your gesture may have been altruistic, you did it in memory of your son, but Eddy got prison. Don’t you see, Noah? He broke into our house, not because he was looking for Garth’s girlfriend, but because he wanted to see your reaction to his prank. He was making enough racket downstairs to wake the dead, but when that didn’t work, he shot off his gun. For that matter, I kinda wonder why he didn’t shoot you.”

  His gray brows went up in surprise. “Why would he want to shoot me?”

  “Oh, yeah, now I remember—it’s because you’re such a great guy and hired him that swell lawyer.”

  “Don’t be a smart-ass. It’s unbecoming.”

  Maybe the worry was getting to me, because I giggled. “I swear, could I possibly do anything more to ruin my already ruined reputation? So tell me this, whose idea was it to let him go?”

  “Well, mine, I think. Or maybe… Well, looks like it was his. But if it proved he has one person in his corner, I’m all right with it.” He scraped back his chair. “It was a stupid stunt, coming out here dressed like a woman. But, so far, the man has had no luck at all, so why should he trust any of us? If all you say is true, then I’m also satisfied he’s not a danger to this family. By the way, it’s going to rain.”

  He called to Spike, who almost neglected his duty, thought better of it, growled at me, then ran after his master.

  Only the ghost of my brother remained. We sat at our usual places at the breakfast table. The corn silk hair of my father’s stood on his head in its usual morning disarray. The brown eyes of our mother crinkled with amusement. Ten years older, Leslie taught me to ride a bike and catch frogs. He was my biggest fan, and after our mother died, he was the nearest thing I had to a mom. It never occurred to me why his mothering skills were so good and mine were so poor. At least it didn’t until it was too late for all of us.

  “So what d’ya think, big brother? Did Dad get his money’s worth? Or was he sucker-punched?”

  The ghost of my brother laughed at me. Without any real answers, I assuaged the gnawing unrest with more breakfast pancakes, blinking salty tears of regret into the syrup.

  ~*~

  By seven a.m., I was on the way out to the office. I lifted my nose to the air and sniffed. Dad was right, it did smell like rain, though the sky was still an innocent blue. Then from out of the south came a deep, droning sound. What looked like a squat bumblebee grew into a big yellow Ag-Cat. It was lumbering north with a full load of chemicals and desperately trying to outrun a dark squall rolling up behind it.

  As if on cue, the outside office bell signaled phone calls needed answering in the office. Anxious farmers worried that the weather foretold impending doom. I ran into the office and picked up the receiver, pencil and pad ready to handle the deluge, and spent the rest of the morning silencing our alarmed clients. Every farmer my father ever had was on the phone or lining up in front of my desk, trying to save their crops against the fickle August weather. It was going to rain.

  I keyed the mike on the VHF radio and called the pilots, alerting everybody that it was going be a longer day than expected. With a combination of threat and the promise of a bonus, I shanghaied two more off-duty pilots. Since pilots are paid by the acre, everyone was happy to have the hours. Everyone except Brad, who swaggered into the office, pulling off his gloves and grumbling about the extra-long hours cutting into his plans for his day off. For once, he wasn’t thrilled about the extra time. Why not? He was cocky and generally too big for his breeches at twenty-eight, and I could understand his having the energy to go out at night, but after one more long day like this one, I would be prostrate on the bed at seven instead of eight. His youth could account for some of that boundless energy, but I wasn’t convinced. I was beginning to wonder if he was doing uppers. I�
��d written him up for his annual and put it into his bin for pickup. He was duty-bound to comply, but so far I didn’t see any evidence of either drug use or that he’d been to his exam.

  I looked from Brad to the pile of work orders spread across my desk. “You finish those peaches yet?”

  “Been pulling that money handle all day, babe,” he said, strolling toward the bathroom.

  “Don’t call me babe,” I muttered, thumbing through the pile of work orders. “So if you’ve finished the peaches, then you can start on Montecello’s almonds. It’s the northeast corner of Nonpareils. Here’s the map.”

  He stopped at the bathroom door, then turned back to smirk at me over his shoulder. “But babe, I’m not through with the peaches.”

  “Didn’t I just say…? Then what are you doing back here?”

  “Getting fuel and taking a pee,” he said, grinning.

  I was tired, irritable, and sorely out of patience with this boy’s lip. I followed him into the bathroom where he was twisting at the combination of his locker. “Here,” I said, handing him a stapled invoice with its attached coordinates. “Here’s your next job. Don’t come back till you’re out of fuel or you’ve got those peaches done.”

  He grunted, looking down at the pages I had thrust at him. “Man, that’s tight. When am I supposed to take a pee?”

  “We’re all behind, Brad. Pee off the wing,” I said, pushing him out the door and in the direction of his fueled and waiting aircraft.

  Brad got up on the wing, unzipped his flight suit and sent a long yellow stream arching over onto the ground. The ground crew thought it hilarious. He zipped up, took a bow, and started his engine. As he lifted off, I wondered how I was going to replace him.

  By four p.m., work was done, and I was sprawled out on the office couch, an empty Burger King box and Coke can on the floor, and my cast propped up on an armrest. I was just drifting into a nice little nap when the door opened. Oh, please, God, not another farmer. I lifted my arm away from my eyes. “Yeah?”