Goose in the Pond (7 page)

“Worry not,
madrastra
. I can handle my dad.” He flopped down on Gabe’s new cordovan leather recliner, pushed himself all the way back, and crossed his feet. He wore faded blue Vans with no socks. “Don’t forget, I’ve had a lot more practice than you.” He grinned up at me.

I smiled back.
Madrastra
—stepmom. Elvia’s youngest brother, Ramon, called her that whenever she tried to mother him. A term of endearment if said in the right way. It didn’t take long for this kid to winnow his way into a person’s heart. I could only hope his irrepressible charm and the love I knew Gabe felt for him would outweigh his transgressions.

“I’ll see you in a couple of hours, then,” I said.

“I’ll hold down the fort,” he called back, his voice as confident and easy as if he’d known me forever.

Five vehicles were in the museum’s gravel parking lot when I arrived. That meant almost everyone was there. I sat in my truck for a moment and swept my eyes over the museum’s buildings. They looked spit and polished and ready for a party. The terra-cotta roof of the two-story Spanish hacienda looked especially nice since we’d cleaned all the tiles and replaced the broken ones. The bougainvillea bush hugging the top of the long wooden porch bloomed in a fiery spray of red-and-orange leaves. Thanks to a group cleanup day, there wasn’t a shrub or bush untrimmed or a wilted petal in any of the oak-barrel planters filled with wildflowers. I reminded myself to buy film for the museum’s camera and take a picture of the buildings while they were looking so great. These days, I was feeling pretty smug because I’d finally found an assistant who could keep the museum grounds looking this perfect even if acquiring him had been none of my doing. He had been recommended to me by one of our quilters, Evangeline Boudreaux.

“D-Daddy might well be seventy, but he can outwork you and me, yes, ma’am,” she’d told me about her father in her French-tinged south-Louisiana accent. “And he sure could use someplace to go every day.”

“D-Daddy?” I said, laughing. “Is that his real name?”

“Oh, his given name is Michel, but everyone’s called him D-Daddy for as long as I can remember. He’s one tough old rooster and a real hard worker. He’ll be fixing stuff before you even knew you wanted it fixed.”

So three months ago, her father, D-Daddy Boudreaux, started his second career as my new assistant, and the museum and I were both the winners. No equipment ever stayed broken longer than a day, and except for the heavy lifting, which the men in the co-op took over, D-Daddy ran the museum with the no-nonsense vigor of someone who’ d commanded a commercial fishing boat for thirty-nine years. I always teased him that he was after my job.

“Now, now,” he’d say, shaking his favorite Sears Craftsman hammer at me. “Don’t nobody can take your place, no. You just go on now and take care them artists. Let D-Daddy do what he do best.”

As I stepped up on the porch D-Daddy came out of the museum’s double Spanish doors. He ran his palm carefully over his thick white wavy hair. That hair, according to Evangeline, was his one area of pure vanity.

“He spends more money on hair products than Dolly Parton,” she said, poking absently at her own wavy black hair.

D-Daddy’s dark eyes widened with pleasure when he saw me. “
Ange!
” he said. “
Comment ça va?
A tragedy, no? Nora was such a sweet girl.”

“I’m fine, D-Daddy,” I said, smiling at the nickname he gave me the first time we met—angel. He’d said my hazel eyes and unruly reddish-blond curls reminded him of the pictures of angels in his
grandmère
’s old family Bible. “It is sad. But Gabe’s working on it now. If anyone can find her killer, you know he will.”

His dark brown eyes sparkled mischievously. “With a little help from his
ange gardien,
eh?” He hitched up his gray work pants and followed me into the museum. The storytelling quilts were all hung, and by the looks of it, he’d been polishing the framed histories of each exhibitor.

I laughed and shook my head. “No way. I don’t need a divine revelation telling this guardian angel to stay out of it. Believe me, he’ll be in no mood for anyone stepping out of line, especially now.” I told him about Sam’s unexpected appearance.

He picked up a clean white cloth and bottle of Windex. “It’s a hard road, father and son. But is good for the chief. He too shut down, that one.” He clucked disapprovingly, sprayed glass cleaner on the cloth, and ran it along the top of a frame.

“No argument from me on that front,” I said. “Is everyone here?”

“Out back. They be already fightin’ like cats and dogs. You best get in there before there don’t be no storytellers to be tellin’ the stories come Friday.” He pointed upstairs where the new exhibit area displayed Constance Sinclair’s prized collection of Pueblo storytelling dolls. “I’ll be up the stairs cleaning. Anyone get outta line, you just holler, and D-Daddy come runnin’.”

“Thanks, but I think I can handle this group.”

“I’ll come runnin’,” he repeated. He took his job as my assistant very seriously, fancying himself a bit of a bodyguard.

I walked under the ivy-and-honeysuckle-covered trellis that connected the museum and the hacienda’s old stables, now the artists’ studios. The sun had emerged from behind the checkered clouds, and I could feel its heat filtering through the thick ivy canopy. It matched the hot words that assaulted my ears before I even opened the studio doors.

“How would you like this fist shoved down your throat?” It was the voice of Roy Hudson, Nora’s future ex-husband, as the song goes, and an aspiring cowboy poet. A thought occurred to me. Would he be legally considered a widower now?

I stepped into the large airy workroom. Only one of the group sitting in the circle of folding chairs acknowledged my presence. Evangeline gave me a tremulous smile. I slipped into the folding chair next to her.

“What’s going on?” I asked in a low voice.

Her gray eyes slanted down with concern. She whispered, “Ash just said to Grace that the timing of Nora’s death and the advertisement for Zar’s services in today’s newspaper seemed an awful big coincidence. Then he asked her what she was doing Sunday morning.”

“Well, it looks like we’re off to a ripping start,” I said with a tired sigh. Zar was Roy’s prize-winning Thorough-bred stud; at least he was if possession really did constitute nine tenths of the law. The horse was part of the divorce settlement that Nora and Roy couldn’t agree upon. Though Roy offered to pay her half Zar’s original cost, Nora insisted Zar was worth ten times that amount in future earnings and wanted the higher amount, which, of course, Roy didn’t have. They’d been haggling about it for almost a year. Grace had kept me apprised of the whole story as we exercised horses together at the stables she owned off Laguna Valley Road.

“Calm down, Roy Rogers,” Ash drawled. “I was just tuggin’ your choke chain. Don’t get your leather panties all in a bunch.”

Roy jumped up from his chair and started toward Ash, but was stopped when Grace threw her body directly in front of him and held him back. Her small, square hands splayed across his chest.

“Roy, honey, let it go,” she said. “He’s just trying to get your goat, and you’re letting him do it.” She was a short, stout woman with arms as muscled as a ditch digger’s from years of wrangling horses. Her abundant red hair belonged on a storybook princess—curly as corkscrew noodles and full of light. It seemed at odds with her square, solid body and strict mouth. She was wearing faded Wranglers and a new blue plaid shirt.

Roy, a lean man with tough, stringy muscles, straightened the corduroy Gator Ropes cap on his shaggy brown hair and allowed Grace to coax him back to his chair. But he continued to glare at Ash with narrowed eyes. Grace unconsciously stroked his forearm much in the same way a person might try to calm an agitated animal.

“Let’s get started,” I said, pretending I hadn’t noticed the altercation. “I’m sure we all agree Nora’s death is a horrible tragedy. I was thinking that in her honor we might think of something that we could commemorate her memory with at the festival. Any ideas?” I pulled a notebook out of my purse and surveyed the committee members.

Evangeline’s face visibly relaxed. In the six months I’d known her, I’d noticed that conflict of any type made her nervous. Many times I’d seen her walk out of the co-op studios when there was even the slightest hint of it. She was a tall woman with broad shoulders and long slender legs, but she had the grace of someone who’d come into her size gradually. She possessed the most pleasing voice I’d ever heard, clear, warm, and melodic, with a laughing quality that compelled you to move in close. Perfect traits for a storyteller.

“Perhaps we could dedicate part of the program to her,” I suggested when no one answered. “Maybe the children’s storytelling competition?” I looked around and tried to gauge their reactions. Roy wore a disgusted expression. Grace was attempting to look neutral, but the deep lines between her eyes gave her true feelings away. Peter and Ash both looked as if they didn’t care one way or the other.

“There’s a few members missing,” I continued, “but we’ve got enough to vote.” Behind us the front doors swung open.

“Have I missed anything important?” Jillian Sinclair asked. Behind her was Dolores Ayala, whose specialty was Mexican folktales and colorful, hand-painted folktale pottery.

“Sorry I’m late,” Dolores said. “It was busy down at the restaurant.”

“Hi, Dolores, Jillian,” I said. “We were just discussing what we should do to honor Nora Cooper at the festival this weekend. Why don’t you both take a seat, and we’ll continue?”

Only two seats were free, one next to Ash and one on the other side of Evangeline. Dolores and Jillian reached the seat next to Ash simultaneously, and for a split second they stared at each other. Jillian pursed her bright coral lips and calmly sat down. Dolores turned and crossed the circle, her face blank, but her eyes flashing angrily. She dropped down next to Evangeline. Ash leaned over and patted Jillian’s silk-trousered knee with a familiarity that seemed to confirm what we’d all speculated—even the sophisticated Jillian Sinclair had at some time fallen for Ash’s line.

In the next hour we finally agreed on sending flowers to Nora’s funeral, whenever that might be, and giving a short testimonial in the opening ceremonies rather than during the children’s storytelling competition.

“Children see and hear enough violence,” Evangeline wisely pointed out. “I think we should honor Nora, but not at the expense of the children.”

As the meeting broke up, Ash and Dolores huddled in a corner discussing, I assumed, their tandem-storytelling performance and workshop at the festival. Though her specialty was Latin-American folktales and she did have a performance scheduled in both Spanish and English on Saturday, she and Ash had worked up an act using local San Celina history. Dolores’s face was animated as she showed Ash a book she pulled from her old green backpack.

“Aren’t they just the cutest thing since the Captain and Tennille,” Jillian commented, walking up beside me. A strong cloud of expensive perfume filled the air around me like tule fog.

I shrugged, not sure how she meant the remark.

She touched my hand lightly, her nails tickling my skin. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. That old green animal strikes again. She’s very pretty. And talented.” She grimaced in a delicate, practiced way. “And young.”

Her honesty disarmed me, and I smiled. “Yes, she is. But you’re no wilting violet yourself.”

“Thanks,” she said, smoothing back a strand of platinum chin-length hair. “I turned forty this year, and I’m feeling a bit left behind.” She was thin as a marsh reed with tiny features and a skittishness about her, like a finely bred horse. She was a lot like her aunt Constance—intense, perfectionistic, high-energy. But she differed in one significant way. She wasn’t a snob. Although a trust fund made her wealthy enough to buy us all out twenty times over, she was a hard worker and didn’t “hold airs,” as Dove would say. She had been the director of the library for the last three years, a job she was given because of familial connections. But detractors had to reluctantly admit, she was highly qualified for the job, with impeccable credentials from USC and experience at libraries in San Francisco and Sacramento. She apparently ran the place with the grace of a born diplomat and, according to Nick, was the most completely fair boss he’d ever worked under.

“Have you talked to Nick yet?” I asked, drawing her attention away from Dolores and Ash, who were laughing softly at some shared joke.

She scratched a corner of her glossy mouth with a polished nail. “Just briefly on the phone. I’m dropping by his house after this. He’s going to need time off, and that’s certainly going to wreak havoc on the budget. But never mind, that’s my problem. Have you been to see him?”

“No, I’m going to try and get by there today. I know he and Nora were very close.”

“The only ones left in their family,” Jillian said softly. Then I remembered that her whole family—mother, father, and brother—had been killed in a plane crash when she was ten. She came to live with Constance, her mother’s only sister, who’d never had children of her own. With five years’ difference in our ages, Jillian and I never ran in the same crowds, but she, according to my uncle Arnie, had been popular in school with both sexes. To add tragedy upon tragedy, Jillian’s husband, a talented architect who had helped design the new library, had left her a few months ago for a younger woman he’d met at some marathon in Hawaii. “Sent her a ‘Dear Jane’ telegram from Honolulu,” Nick had told me. “Quit his job the same way.”

“At least Nick has all of us,” I said to Jillian.

She gave her hair a minute toss, as if mentally shaking off her personal troubles, and smiled. “That’s right, and we’re going to be there for him. After I see him I need to start thinking about what I’m going to say to my employees Monday morning. Is there anything you can tell me about the progress of the investigation?”

“Sorry. They’ve just got started. I’m sure Gabe will talk to you if you give him a call. He’ll let you know what you can say.”