The Color of Light

by Wendy Hornsby

  “I’ll be damned,” I said, imagining Dad at his garage workbench, carefully crafting a safe place for his contraband firearm. “I’m not surprised. If Dad could hide a mistress and their daughter from his wife for a couple of years, he would certainly figure out how to hide an itty-bitty gun.”

  Jean-Paul picked up the Colt automatic and weighed it on his palm. “Not so small, my dear. This weapon was standard military issue at one time, excellent stopping power.”

  “Max said it was unregistered. Do you think it’s traceable?”

  He gave me a little French shrug and a moue while he considered. “Probably traceable from the manufacturer to first point of sale. But from there?” He turned the Colt over and looked at the serial number. “I’ll make some calls, yes?”

  “Be careful with that thing,” I said. “Is it loaded?”

  “It was, yes, but no longer.” He opened the top desk drawer and showed me the gun’s magazine and a box of .45 ACP shells. “The ammunition is very old, certainly unstable. Perhaps you might ask your Detective Halloran to have it taken away for disposal.”

  I had qualms about doing that. “If I tell Kevin about the ammo, he’ll ask about the gun it belongs to. I may want to keep the Colt if it’s unregistered and untraceable. You never know when that might be handy to have.”

  He reloaded the gun. “My dear, should I be afraid?”

  “Not you,” I said. “It might be your sweet tuchis I’ll need to save.”

  Chapter 13

  “But it was a lovely idea,” I said, peeling a red rose petal off Jean-Paul’s cheek. “Incredibly romantic.”

  “In theory, yes. There was such a large bucket of red roses, and what to do with them all, yes?” He got up to scoop crushed petals off the sheets and drop them into the trashcan he had brought in from the en suite bathroom. “But in application, a bit sticky.”

  “I think I’ll dream about seaweed,” I said.

  He laughed as he slid back between the sheets and wrapped me in his arms. “I shall leave rose petal-strewing to the movies in the future.”

  “Maybe so,” I said, picking yet another petal off his bottom. “But it was still a lovely idea.”

  He yawned, reached across me and turned off the bedside light.

  The house was quiet, all doors securely bolted, windows locked, the loaded Colt in a drawer next to the bed. I nestled down against Jean-Paul and hoped for sleep, but I still buzzed with the events of the day. Every time I began to drift off, an image, a fragment of conversation, the sound of gunfire and shattered glass would seep through and set my mind racing again. I felt restless. If I had been alone and at my own home, I would have gone for a run in the canyon below my house. But that wasn’t something I would do in the middle of the night in a dark Berkeley neighborhood. I tried to lie still to let Jean-Paul sleep. I thought he had dropped off when he kissed the top of my head and spoke into the dark.

  “Did your father speak about what he did in Korea?”

  “No,” I said. “Dad might say he hadn’t been so cold since Korea, or that if he wanted to camp out he’d rejoin the army—he’d say a hotel without room service was as close to camping as he ever wanted to get again. And I knew about his wounds; couldn’t miss the scars when he wore shorts or swim trunks. But he didn’t talk about what happened over there, and I knew not to ask because it made him sad.”

  “Oui,” he said. “Same with my father. He talked about the airplanes he flew in Indochina, but not much else. One time, he took me to an air show and told me about flying the Bearcats. Papa had far more to say about what the Germans did to his family during the world war than about what the French did in Indochina when he was there ten years later.”

  I smiled at that. My recently discovered French grandmother, Élodie Martin, had much to say not only about what the Germans did in Normandy, but also about what she and the women in her village did to the Germans: a bloody tale she told with relish, and one I was hoping to capture on film.

  “What happened to your family during the German occupation?” I asked.

  “My father was just a boy at school in Paris when the Germans conscripted him and forced him to work in a munitions factory in Belgium. His father died in a prisoner of war camp,” he said, an edge of sadness in his voice.

  “Papa was a reasonable man, an intellectual,” he continued. “But for the rest of his life he refused to buy anything made in Germany or to invest in any company that held German interests. I cannot tell you the scolding I got when I bought a Mercedes. He would always say, ‘Scratch a German, find a Nazi.’ And there was nothing anyone could say or do that would make him change his mind.”

  “Wars do not necessarily end when the armistice is signed, do they?”

  “No.” He stroked my back. “It is not only war we are talking about, is it, chérie?”

  “No?”

  “The police are investigating the death of your friend’s mother, yes?”

  “Kevin Halloran is.”

  “And he is competent?”

  “He seems to be.”

  “And yet, when you found a lead on a line of inquiry, you did not inform him immediately, but went yourself, first.”

  “You mean Duc?”

  “Yes, Duc, and this Larry who keeps popping up late at night.” After a pause, he said, “Do you believe what Larry told you?”

  “About Mrs. Bartolini? Sorry to say, but I do.”

  “Maggie, my dear, I hear your questions and they all seem to come back to your father. Are you afraid he was involved in some illicit way with the woman or with her death?”

  I started to deny it, a protective reflex. Instead, I said, “I think he knew something that worried him enough that he made inquiries. But he never went to the police.”

  “Because he was protecting someone?”

  “Probably.”

  “Perhaps he found what he was looking for,” he said.

  “He would have gone to the police if he had.”

  “Unless it was too dangerous,” he said, raising my hand to his lips. “And perhaps it still is. Maggie, I have to leave tomorrow.” He lifted his head up enough to see the bedside clock; it was already Sunday. “Today, actually. Please come with me. Lyle and Roy will finish the work here.”

  It was an attractive idea. I thought about it, but told him, “I can’t leave until Tuesday at the earliest. My cousin is coming this afternoon and staying overnight. We have some decisions to make before I can finish up here. There are haulers to arrange, a cleaning crew to boss around, truck repairs to see about, and—”

  “Yes, yes, but you should not be here alone.”

  “I’ll hardly be alone,” I said. “Max will be back, Guido is coming up to talk about what we’re going to do about the Normandy film, and Susan will be here in the afternoon. Her entire book club will show up Monday.”

  He was quiet for a moment.

  “I love that you are concerned, but I’ll be fine,” I said.

  “Everyone leaves again on Monday,” he said. “Yes?”

  “They do.”

  He yawned. “I have business to tend to in Los Angeles, but I’ll be back Monday evening.”

  I did not protest. Instead, I snuggled down against him, and fell asleep.

  — —

  First thing in the morning, we went for a run up Grizzly Peak Road. I had been bending, stooping, and lifting for nearly a week and cherished my early morning runs to stretch my legs, breathe fresh air, and clear my mind. Jean-Paul ran easily next to me, though I knew he was the better runner and could have sprinted ahead or run circles around me. I had hoped to show him the view from the peak of San Francisco rising like Camelot out of the Bay. But the City was shrouded by its summer cloak of gray fog, as usual, and we couldn’t even see the top of the Transamerica Building. Jean-Paul seemed more interested in the towering redwoods on the Cal campus below us than on the postcard-quality view of the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge rising up out of the gloom.

  Alt
ogether, it was a good run. By the time we returned home, my head felt decluttered, as it generally does after a good run or a hard swim. A few bits and pieces of what happened in my neighborhood thirty-some years ago were beginning to come together.

  Back at the house, after showers, we made breakfast and took it outside to eat at the big table under the grape arbor. On Sunday mornings, both of us had transcontinental phone calls to make. My college-junior daughter, Casey, was spending the summer on her grandmother’s farm estate in Normandy with about half a dozen cousins who were more or less the same age. Jean-Paul’s son, Dominic, was staying in Paris with his aunt, now gearing up for a two-year preparatory course before he entered one of the grandes écoles. It was already late afternoon in France when we pushed our breakfast dishes aside and took out our phones.

  “Mom, great, I was waiting for you to call,” Casey said with unusual enthusiasm for this Sunday ritual. “When are you flying over?”

  “Does my darling daughter miss me?” I asked.

  “What? Oh, yeah. Sure, of course. But when are you coming?”

  “One way or another, in a couple of weeks. What’s up?”

  “Are you bringing a whole film crew or just Guido?”

  “Probably just Guido,” I said. “Why?”

  “We had this great idea—”

  “We?”

  “David and Dom and I.”

  I turned to look at Jean-Paul, who had the strangest expression on his face. I knew he was speaking with his son, Dominic. Catching Jean-Paul’s eye, I asked Casey, “Dom Bernard?”

  Jean-Paul heard me and was nodding when Casey affirmed, “Yes. You know his grandmother is Grand-mère’s friend. She brought him to see the farm.”

  “Let me guess, his grandmother and your great-grandmother are plotting something,” I said.

  “They’re matchmaking,” she said, very matter-of-fact. “As always. Grand-mère hopes that you two will get married and move to France so you can come over every Sunday for dinner.”

  From the look on his face, Jean-Paul was hearing something similar from his son. He smiled and lifted a palm in a whatcha-gonna-do? gesture.

  “Anyway, Mom?”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “We had this great idea to film promo spots to raise awareness about the amazing local farm products. You know, globally.”

  “Sounds like fun,” I said. “Where will you broadcast your spots?”

  “We need to talk to Jean-Paul about that. Dom says that’s his area of expertise.”

  “We’ll talk more about it when I get there.”

  “We’ve drafted a shooting script. I’ll email it to you so you can punch it up.”

  “Casey, I didn’t know you were interested in filmmaking.”

  “You kidding?” she said with some heat. “No way. I’ve seen what you have to put up with. Nope, not my gig. But I am really getting into cheese making. Who knew, huh? The chemistry of it is fascinating.”

  She told me that she and some of the cousins were leaving in the morning on a road trip into the Dordogne to do some kayaking and hiking. I refrained from offering a string of maternal warnings and wished her godspeed. She promised they would be back, intact, before I arrived.

  Jean-Paul was in the midst of a business-related call when I said good-bye to Casey. I called Mom next.

  “The piano mover is scheduled for first thing tomorrow,” she told me. “Can you be there when they arrive?”

  “I’ll wait for them.”

  Mom gave me the mover’s number in case there was an issue. She updated me on her plans to move into the Tejedas’ casita, and seemed very upbeat about the prospect. After I filled her in on progress with the house, I said, “I ran into an old friend of yours yesterday, a man named Khanh Duc.”

  “Oh, dear. Duc. I was just thinking about him. Funny how that happens, isn’t it? I hadn’t thought about him for years, and then out of the blue you mention him.”

  “I don’t remember him,” I said. “But he apparently spent a lot of time with Dad.”

  “I suppose. They had roses in common.”

  “Were you thinking about him because I brought up Mrs. Bartolini the other day?”

  I heard her let out a deep breath before she said, “Yes.”

  “Is there a story there?”

  “If there is, it isn’t my story to tell,” Mom said.

  “Duc told me he and Mrs. B were from the same village in Vietnam.”

  “Maggie, you’re digging.”

  “I am,” I said. “Shamelessly. I heard something last night that cast what happened to her in a whole new light. Was there something between her and Duc?”

  “I couldn’t say,” Mom said. “I only know they lost touch after their families were evacuated to Saigon.”

  “Until she ran into him at the refugee camp at the Presidio?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did something develop after that?”

  “Can we just say that they were old friends, and leave it at that?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “There was another man from their village that I think you knew.”

  “Van Thai?” she asked. “Yes. A very angry man.”

  “Do you have any idea where he is now?”

  “None at all. Van worked for Tosh for a while. When Tosh fired him, he moved out of the area. I doubt I ever heard his name again until today.”

  The conversation was making Mom very uncomfortable. She knew something. But if Mom didn’t want to talk about it, she wouldn’t, so there was no point pursuing the issue. Didn’t matter; her reluctance to answer had been answer enough. I changed the subject to Susan’s expected arrival and news about various neighbors.

  After we said good-bye, I called Kevin. His phone went straight to voice mail, so I left a message: “I want to see Mrs. B’s murder book. And we need to talk. Very soon.”

  I hit speed dial and connected with my assistant, Fergie. I gave her the little I knew about Thai Van and his father, Thai Hung, and asked her to go into the network’s news archives to see what she could find. And, if possible, find out where Van was now. As long as we were still connected to the network, I might as well use their resources.

  A call from Uncle Max beeped the line. I ended the call to Fergie and said hello to Max.

  “I’m on my way to SFO to pick up Guido,” Max told me. “Do you want me to rent you a van or a pickup while I’m at the airport?”

  “Please,” I said. “I hope I’ll only need it until Tuesday.”

  I looked at my watch as I calculated Max’s travel time. If Guido’s plane was on time and traffic on Bayshore wasn’t too god-awful, they would be here in a couple of hours. I said good-bye to Max, turned off my phone and put it in my pocket.

  Jean-Paul had wandered over to the garden. When I joined him, he was wiping bloom dust off a perfect tomato.

  “What can be done?” he said, taking a bite out of the tomato. The juice ran halfway down his arm. He shook it off. “My mother is plotting with your grandmother.”

  “It’s kind of cute,” I said, wiping his chin with the tail of my shirt. “Very teenagery. Or is it dynastic? We aren’t cousins to some degree, are we?”

  “Not that I am aware. And certainly there is no great fortune at stake.”

  “Well, let them have their fun,” I said.

  “All is well with your mother?” he asked. “I didn’t hear the usual laughter when you were speaking with her.”

  “She doesn’t want me asking her questions about Trinh Bartolini.”

  “But she should know that only makes you more curious.”

  I laughed. “You’d think she would by now.”

  He touched my cheek. “I overheard you asking Fergie to locate Thai Van. There are some resources I can call on, if you want.”

  “Would you?”

  “I should know better, but I will, as soon as I am back in Los Angeles.”

  “What time is your plane this afternoon?” I asked.

 
“Too soon.” He looked at his watch. “Rafael is coming for me in the consul’s car.”

  “Is there anything you want to see or do before you go?”

  He smiled. “I can think of a couple of ways to pass the time that might be quite interesting, but instead, I want you to make good use of me for the little time remaining so that we can lock the door and leave here by Tuesday afternoon.”

  “Well then.” I handed him a stack of sticky-note pads. “Pink is for the furniture I’m taking. Yellow is for Robnett family pieces my cousin needs to look at. Thrift store items are green and need to go to the garage for pick-up, and blue is staying here. Dad’s books also need to go out to the garage.”

  We spent the rest of the morning affixing sticky notes and hauling stuff to the garage where it would be accessible for the trucks from the thrift store and the university library to haul away. Fortunately, the kitchen was finished. Roy and Lyle had sorted the kitchen cupboards when we were at the dump on Saturday, leaving full complements of dishes, pots, pans and utensils the tenants might need neatly stowed in the cupboards. The rest was carefully packed and labeled and ready to go. There was a nearly complete set of very old Wedgwood china for Susan, my parents’ wedding china for Casey one day, and a few things that I wanted to keep. Lyle and Roy had taken with them a set of brightly colored vintage Fiestaware they had always admired. The rest we carried out to the garage for the thrift store truck that was due Monday morning.

  The locksmith showed up while we were moving things into the garage. He reminded me about Sunday rates and I told him to install good bolts on all the doors, and to check all the windows on the ground floor to make sure their locks were good. And then we left him to his work.

  When Max and Guido arrived, Jean-Paul and I took a break for lunch.

  There was a frisson in the air between Jean-Paul and Guido, most of it emanating off Guido. We were longtime co-workers, good friends and nothing more. Except for one night when we were in Central America trying to file a news report about an attempted coup while we were under fire and had only a bottle of mescal for sustenance. Whatever happened that night—both of us blamed our lack of precise memory on the mescal—was never mentioned afterward. But Guido, of the Sicilian Patrini clan, just couldn’t help being a bit possessive, and despite his efforts not to be, paternal.