Garden of Stones (7 page)

It was night when they finally pulled off the road that bisected the flat valley between two mountain ranges. Somehow, in the miserable, fetid bus, Lucy had fallen asleep with her head in her mother’s lap, an indulgence Miyako would not have allowed even six months ago.

When the bus groaned to a halt, a buzz of excited conversation rose all around them. Lucy pressed her face to the window. In the distance a mountain peak rose up into the night, illuminated by moonlight, snow topped and impossibly vast. It was the biggest thing Lucy had ever seen, bigger than anything she had ever imagined.

And laid out in either direction along the wide dirt avenue where the bus had stopped were long, low buildings like dominoes arranged on a table. Above them the sky was bigger than it ever was in Los Angeles, and dusted with so many stars that it looked like talcum powder had been spilled across it.

“Last stop,” the driver said, perhaps joking; but after he cranked the doors open, it was several moments before anyone made a move. The air was cold here; while Lucy slept, her mother had covered her with a wrap taken from her valise. But the air that rushed into the bus was far colder. The soldiers, barking orders, made clouds with their breath.

“Are you sure this is it?” Lucy whispered, but her words were lost in the hubbub as people began to file off the bus.

“Wait,” Miyako said, her free hand clutching Lucy’s coat collar. The passengers exited and formed a milling crowd outside Lucy’s window, illuminated by spotlights coming from two tall wooden towers. She searched for Aiko’s familiar coat, but there were too many people, too many unfamiliar faces.

Eventually there were only a few stragglers on the bus. “Come on,” the young soldier said impatiently, gesturing with the rifle he held in both hands. “Hurry up.”

Miyako held both their suitcases in front of her, grunting with the effort of maneuvering them down the aisle. Lucy clutched her mother’s coat and inhaled the smell of the wool. Descending the steps, Miyako accepted the help of a stranger in a jacket and tie, and Lucy couldn’t help feeling sorry for the man, who apparently owned no warm coat. Once on the ground, she tested the soil with the toe of her shoe and found it sandy. The cold rushed under her skirt and the wind lifted her hair and swirled it around her face. It was as though the place was claiming her for its own, and Lucy stood rigid and fearful, not knowing how to resist.

8

San Francisco
Wednesday, June 7, 1978

For a moment after Inspector Torre left, the house echoed with the sound of the closing door. Lucy stared thoughtfully at the cream-and-gray-plaid Formica table.

“What the hell was that
about?” Patty asked, when she was certain Torre was well out of earshot.

Lucy shrugged. “You were here. You heard the same things I did.”

“That’s not what I mean. You
know
that’s not what I mean. Who is this guy Forrest? Obviously, you knew him well enough to remember him after all this time. Who was he?”

“Just one of the staff, Patty. And I hadn’t thought of him in ages.”

“You didn’t go see him the other morning?”

“No,” Lucy said, but she didn’t meet Patty’s eyes.

“Not just the other morning, but ever. I mean, isn’t that kind of a strange coincidence, that he lived a few streets over all this time?”

“Worked. He
worked
near here. I have no idea where he lived. And after the war, lots of people from the camps went to the cities. Those newsletters that come here, half those people are living in San Francisco.”

Patty knew the newsletters her mother was talking about—stapled, folded affairs that her mother threw away without reading, the efforts of a group of former Manzanar internees who were trying to get what was left of the relocation center made into a memorial or a national monument. But Patty knew that Lucy would never seek those people out. She was a loner, content with her own company. It didn’t matter that they’d shared an experience, a moment in history. It seemed as though Lucy would much prefer to erase the past completely.

“Mother, we have to figure this out. Someone thinks they saw you there.”

For a moment Lucy looked as though she was going to say something—she bit her bottom lip and drew herself up in her seat—and then she merely got up and went to pour more tea. “It wasn’t me. I was here, getting ready for work. Like always.”

Like always, except that Patty had been asleep in the next room.
She should have told the inspector that—that she had been here with her mother, that she’d confirm that at six o’clock Lucy’s alarm had gone off as it always did, that she couldn’t have been anywhere near the DeSoto because she’d been in the kitchen making tea.

Only she couldn’t actually say for certain what had happened in her mother’s little house until nearly ten, when she’d finally awoken to a throbbing headache and the sticky, foul taste of a hangover in her dry mouth. It had been the morning after her bachelorette party, scheduled midweek because that was when everyone could make it. Patty had had three glasses of champagne before switching to tequila and losing count—she may have still been a little drunk when she’d finally gotten up, honestly. A train could have barreled through her mother’s house and she would never have noticed.

“Just tell me this,” she said. “This man, Reginald Forrest, how did you know him?”

Lucy finished with her tea, pouring in the sugar and stirring until it was lukewarm, the way she liked it. “He had a job in the warehouses. All the supervisor positions—all the bosses—they were from the WRA. The War Relocation Authority. He was white, of course. He must have had a couple hundred men working for him, loading and unloading. The trucks came in every day—we used to watch them, us kids. We didn’t have a whole lot else to do.”

“That’s how you knew him? Just from hanging around the camp?”

Lucy shook her head impatiently. “No. There were ten thousand of us living there, a few hundred staff. It was like a small city. It was impossible to know everyone. But he was different. He was good-looking back then. He wanted to be an actor, before the war, and when they put on shows in camp, he would help out, direct and guest star. He coached baseball too. Everyone knew him.”

“Look, Mom...” Patty tried to keep the impatience out of her voice. “Maybe this is nothing, maybe they’ll go talk to his son or his girlfriend or whatever and figure out who did this. Or declare it a suicide or something. But we have to be ready in case they come back.”

It was the face, of course. There was simply no way to argue with someone who could describe Lucy’s face. Either her mother had been there or the janitor was lying. Both possibilities seemed absurd, but one had to be true. It was that simple. And Patty had to find out which—and why—before the detective did.

Maybe she could find this janitor, ask him questions. But as soon as she had the thought, Patty dismissed it. Why would a total stranger invent such a story?

Which left the other, far more uneasy possibility: that for reasons Patty couldn’t begin to fathom, Lucy not only knew Reginald Forrest worked nearby but had gone to see him on the morning he died. If someone really had killed the man, her mother likely knew something about it.

Patty watched Lucy unload clean dishes from the drainer and put them away. How could she think her own mother could have killed someone? She could not recall a single moment of violence or even uncontrolled anger—never a spanking, never an altercation with a stranger or at work, barely a raised voice during all Patty’s teen years.

But there was the dark history Lucy carried inside her and never shared. The horrors of the war years—being forced from her home and imprisoned, and then orphaned. Patty had never blamed her mother for trying to forget, but her secrecy had created a gulf between them nonetheless. It wasn’t her mother’s external scars that kept her outside Patty’s reach, but the ones on the inside. What if they’d finally scratched their way to the surface? What if, after all these years, her mother’s history had come back to haunt her?

* * *

After Lucy left for the grocery store, Patty rescheduled her appointment at the salon for the following week. The menu, flowers, place cards—all these details had been taken care of long ago. A chronic overplanner, Patty could coast all the way to the wedding if necessary, and everything would still run smoothly.

But none of that mattered anymore, anyway. She wanted to call Jay and tell him about the detective’s visit, but he was in Atlanta for business, some important client the firm was pitching, and the last thing he needed right now was for her to drag him into a mess that might well resolve itself in a day or two. He’d taken the red-eye Sunday just so he could take her and her mom to dinner to talk about wedding details, like how the ushers would seat the guests since his family was so much larger than hers, and who would walk Patty down the aisle since she had no one to give her away. He’d been so sweet that night—she couldn’t bear to interrupt his trip. It would wait until he was home.

With Lucy out of the house, Patty had a chance to collect her thoughts. She knew she wouldn’t get anywhere with her mother; anything she wanted to know about Reginald Forrest she would have to find out for herself.

She got the phone book from the hall table.
Forrest, Reginald R.
—there he was, plain as day. On Oliver Street, number 225½; Patty pulled out a map and discovered that he lived only eight blocks to the west, dipping into the Outer Sunset, not the best neighborhood. She pulled her hair into a ponytail and put on her running shorts and shoes. She was just going for a jog, she told herself; what could it hurt to just take a quick look at his house from the outside?

When she found the address, she was out of breath and perspiring. The lot was overgrown, fronted by a row of palms shedding dusty brown fronds all over the sidewalk. The house itself was half hidden behind misshapen shrubs and overhanging branches. She located the house numbers, the metal
5
upside down on its nail, and figured Forrest’s apartment must be in back.

Patty slowed to a walk and looked around; the street was empty. No one would notice, and she’d just duck in for a moment. The gate had lost its latch, but it squeaked as Patty pushed past, her feet crunching on dried leaves and pods.

A cracked and broken sidewalk led around the side of the house. Patty shoved branches aside and tried to be quiet. Someone could be home in the front of the house, despite its neglected appearance. She wondered if there ought to be police tape somewhere, draped across the door perhaps, or strung between tree trunks, but then again this was only where Forrest had lived, not where he died.

The backyard was tiny, a patch of dead grass separating the house from a leaning detached garage. Broken glass littered the garage window’s sash and glittered on the ground below. A trio of disintegrating beach chairs was arranged around a rusted hibachi. A bony cat streaked past with something twitching in its mouth.

She tried the back door and found it locked. Peering through a grimy window, she saw a small kitchen with an old-fashioned fridge, a neat row of empty beer cans on a short strip of countertop, a healthy-looking houseplant trailing leaves from a macramé hanger in the corner.

“You the girl?”

The voice came from the side of the house. Startled, Patty whipped around and saw a pair of old, cracked-leather brogues, no socks, skinny legs. A figure emerged from behind the untamed oleanders: an old lady with gray hair clouding around her shoulders. She wore a man’s work shirt and a skirt that hung on her hips. “You that girl?” she repeated. “Kinah’s friend?”

Patty’s heart had begun pounding the second the old woman spoke, but now she saw that there might be an opportunity. Maybe she could find out something about Forrest from his landlady.

“Uh...” she said, stalling.

“’Cause I expected you yesterday.” A bit of spittle arced from the woman’s mouth. Patty stepped back.

“I’m sorry I’m late.”

“I found his boxes in the garage yesterday,” the old woman continued, as though Patty hadn’t spoken. “I called Kinah and I told her, you come get these or I’m going to throw them out. She acted like she was doing me a favor. The trouble he caused me, police coming around here—and he still owes me two hundred and sixty dollars. I suppose I won’t ever see
that
money. You got a car?”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re gonna need a car for the boxes. They’re
heavy
. I don’t want that junk on my porch.”

Patty thought of Jay’s car, his beloved red TR7. Its tiny trunk was already full of his soccer gear, and besides, he’d driven it to the airport and left it in long-term parking. “I thought I’d just take a look first, maybe, see what was there?”

The old woman frowned. “I told her I’m going to throw it out. I’m going to leave it on the porch, and if it isn’t gone by tomorrow I’m going to put it in the can. Don’t be knocking later when you come back—I got my bridge ladies coming.”

“All right. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to trouble you. Can I just take a look for now?”

“Okay, but I have to get ready. I don’t have time to stand around. You come back and take all that stuff, you hear? And tell Kinah to quit calling me.”

The old woman stumped back up the path, and Patty raced to help her, holding back branches as best she could. Around front, the landlady made her way up the steps to the cracked and peeling porch, pausing at each step to drag her leg up, holding on to the rail with both hands. Next to the front door, Patty could see two water-stained cardboard boxes overflowing with junk.

“I don’t know what’s even in there,” the old woman said, steadying herself with a hand on the doorjamb and breathing hard. “He had it down the cellar six, maybe eight years. I forgot it was there when the cops were here. I’m just glad he did it at work instead of in my house. I’d never get the blood out of the carpets.”

“You think it was suicide?” Patty asked, sifting through a tangle of electric cords, a trophy, a metal stein with a beer logo etched on its surface.