House of Smoke (8 page)

“They were?” the second man says. “So what?”

The lead surveyor squints, looking down. “So it’s suspicious, is what. I spotted them an hour ago, when we were on the other side of the ridge. They were sitting there, drinking beer and hanging out.”

“That’s what rich people who own yachts do.”

The lead surveyor shakes his head, the head shake of an experienced hand who knows trouble when he sees it.

“Those aren’t rich people,” he pronounces, snapping off a judgment. “Rich people don’t look like that. That’s a contract crew. There’s supposed to be security on this property. Falstaff Security’s supposed to have men patrolling this property twenty-four hours a day. Where the hell are they?”

“In town having a brew like everybody else.” The other spits, exasperated. “Who the fuck knows or cares? Come on, let’s finish up and go back. I don’t want to miss the last night of Fiesta, my old lady’s already pissed that I had to work this late.”

“This is the Sparkses’ private dock,” the first man says, stubbornly. “Those people shouldn’t be here.” He pulls a cellular telephone out of his tool belt, dials a number.

“This here’s Ron Ortega, I’m a contract surveyor. Listen up—I’m doing some surveying for you folks,” he says into the phone. “No, not the ranch, the beach property,” he barks impatiently. “It looks to me like somebody’s using the Sparkses’ private dock who shouldn’t be.” He listens for a minute, then frowns. “Because they’re off-loading some suspicious-looking packages, that’s why?” Another moment of impatient listening. “I thought somebody ought to know, that’s all.”

He punches End.

“They’ll call Falstaff—maybe.” It’s like no one’s supposed to work during Fiesta, he thinks sourly.

“You’ve done your good deed for the day,” the second man says, hoisting the transit. “If we’re going to finish, let’s do it, otherwise I’m out of here. There’s a cold margarita with my name on it sitting on the bar at the Tee-Off.”

He starts marching across the top of the ridge. Ron Ortega glances down at the dock once more, then with a final spit into the dry dust follows him across the crest of the hill.

Cecil Shugrue stands on the deck at the edge of the dark swimming pool, looking down at the city lights far below them.

“This is very beautiful,” he remarks. “Peaceful.”

Kate nods, coming up behind him with an opened beer in each hand from the stash she keeps in an Igloo behind the old pump house.

“How’d you ever find this old place?” he marvels. He’s the first person, man or woman, she’s ever brought to her secret place.

“Finding things other people can’t is what I do,” she tells him. “All the way back to Girl Scouts, I always won the most badges.”

“You must be damn good at what you do,” he praises her. “I’ll take you back-country with me anytime.”

She flushes. “It gives me privacy when I need it,” she says, feeling sheepish for no reason except her pride. “I live down there,” she adds, pointing vaguely towards the east side of the city, an area which is eighty percent Hispanic. “In an apartment.”

He smiles at her. He’s a good six inches taller than her in his cowboy boots.

“Nice to have a private place to run away to,” he comments.

She ducks her head so he won’t notice that her face is flushing, even though it’s dark out here, the only light the stars over their heads. She’s attracted to him, that’s undeniable, and he’s a nice guy, too, at least on first impression. She thinks she would like to get to know him.

When they’d had their fill of dance lessons (he wasn’t lying, he was a clumsy dancer; but willing), an internal debate started inside of her—to bring him up here or not, or to go to his place if he asked her, which he didn’t, she could tell in the first ten seconds he wasn’t going to, for whatever reason. They’d stood outside, a breeze coming up from the ocean cooling them, it was welcome after the sweat-producing dancing (sweaty because new, and his proximity to her), they just stood there for a minute or so, neither saying a word. He seemed comfortable with the silence; she wasn’t—something wanted to happen.

“I’m Fiestaed out,” she said by way of a start. She had to say something.

“I know what you mean,” he replied. They watched the procession moving up and down the street, kids six wide, drinking beer in defiance of the law and passing cigarettes around. It depressed her when she saw kids smoking, even though she had at their age, younger even. “When I was a kid I was down every night,” he adds, “all day and night. Now part of one night fills the bill.”

So he’s local. She’s lived here long enough to know that’s a big deal. People talk about being third generation, sixth generation. If you’ve got old Santa Barbara blood you have a special place in the hierarchy.

“I don’t live in town,” he said then, taking the initiative, “otherwise I’d ask you over for a drink, ’cause I’ve seen all I need to.”

That was enough of a break in the ice to let her make a move.

“I know this place up Mission Canyon,” she told him, “my secret garden. It’s up near the top, across from the Botanical Gardens. It’s not that far,” she added with more haste than she would have liked; she didn’t want to appear anxious.

“I’ll follow you.”

He walked her to her car, then she drove him to where he had parked his, an old Cadillac from the ’60’s, the kind back home she’d always associated with pimps. It hadn’t been washed for a while.

“I love standing up here on clear nights like this and looking down at the city and the water and everything,” she says now, as she turns toward the ocean to get a better look. “I can fantasize that I own it all.”

The only things of value she owns outright are her car and her computer. The rest she left behind.

He’s moved closer to her, his arm touching hers. It feels like a deliberate touch, but she’s not certain.

“How long have you lived here?” he asks. “In Santa Barbara, I mean.”

“A year and a half, approximately.” She moves some hair off her face that the wind’s blown over. “Before that I lived up north. Bay Area.”

“I love San Francisco,” he says. “San Francisco and New Orleans, those are my two favorite cities.”

“I lived in Oakland,” she states to him.

“Um.” He pauses. Then, slightly embarrassed (her self-conscious reading of him): “I don’t know Oakland, actually. Berkeley, a little. I can find my way to the Cal campus and Chez Panisse, that’s about it.”

She knows Chez Panisse by reputation; it’s famous. She’s never eaten there.

He has calluses on his hands; his fingernails are cracked. She thought he was a workingman.

“I was born in Oakland. I lived there my entire life, until under two years ago.”

Now he takes a good look at her. Whatever he thought she was, she isn’t—she knows that’s what he’s thinking.

“Jack London was from Oakland,” he says diplomatically. “I’m a big fan of his, I’ve read everything he’s ever written.”

Nice try, fellow, she thinks, fighting the knee-jerk hostility and resentment towards his attitude. He meant no harm, but still she feels the sting of his initial reaction, even though that’s not his fault. Anyway, she’s the pot calling his kettle black, because she isn’t living there anymore, either (although because of very different circumstances). Look at his good stuff, girl, she reminds herself. He’s a literate, attractive guy from Santa Barbara, one of the world’s true garden spots, with enough rough edges on him so that there’s an edginess, a sexy element of danger. And he certainly has class, if he frequents the places he so casually mentioned. He’s about as far away from the men she’s known in her life as she could get, she reflects. Certainly a step up. Except for his balls, which he obviously has—the way he carries himself, the way he can comfortably joke about himself, not take himself too seriously. All the men she’s seriously known in her life have been ballsy, and most of them were dangerous; in most cases, especially with Eric, way too dangerous. Ballsiness was never the problem. It was how the men in her life used it that was always wrong.

“Maybe sometime if we ever find ourselves together up there you could show me around,” he says. “It’s an area of California I should know more about, being the native son that I am.”

“I’d like to.” She feels the flush rising on her neck again. That infers a next time, the possibility of a relationship. She’s standing here with a guy she doesn’t know from Adam, three hours ago she was positive she didn’t want a “relationship,” whatever that means to her today, and yet she’s thinking about showing him around her hometown. She wants the possibility to be available, so she can decide.

“And I could show you some of what’s around here. Seeing’s how you’re new and all.” He looks at her again. “You find things, huh? What does that mean?”

“It means that I’m a detective,” she says, taking a hit from her Tecate.

“A detective?” He’s openly incredulous.

“Yeah. Detective. As in private investigator. Sometimes I’m called a dick.”

He laughs at her.

“I know. It’s funny. When I first started out I called myself a dick in training, which really cracked people up. Now the training’s over, so I’m just a plain, regular dick.”

“How’d you get to be a detective?” he presses.

“I was a cop. It just sort of happened. Everybody’s got to make a living.”

“In Oakland? That’s where you were a cop?”

“That’s right.” They’re always fascinated when they find out what she does. It gives men a sexual charge or something; this one’s no exception.

“Let’s talk about something else, okay? Anyway, I’m the one with the job asks questions.”

“Sorry,” he says. “Didn’t mean to pry. It’s interesting. I’ve never met a woman detective before, not a private one.”

“We’re few and far between.”

She’s a woman, a person. A detective is what she
does
, not who she
is
. Not anymore, she doesn’t have that cop mindset anymore. Thank God. She doesn’t want to be an “object” of any kind, detective or otherwise. She walked out of that life, she had the courage to take over her life, stop that from being her work, instead of her, whatever she, Kate Blanchard, is. She’s in command, she isn’t about to give that up, not to anyone, certainly not to some cowboy named Cecil who finds what she does interesting. Find
me
interesting. The
who
, not the
what
.

Maybe finding her interesting is too much to ask. It could imply a closeness beyond this guy’s capabilities. Maybe there’s another woman. Which would be why he threw out the lame excuse about not asking her over because he lives out of town. And not just any woman, that would never do. No; a specific woman: a wife. Kids. A white picket fence, roses.

Her emotions are running away with her, she can feel them as palpably as she can feel her breathing. Don’t chicken out on your impulse. Life is short and maybe this can’t work, but maybe, she forces herself to acknowledge, I should try it. Isn’t that why she pulled up all her roots and hit the road, to start a new life, to expand her horizons, all that good shit the therapists back in Oakland, especially Dr. Whitcomb, harped on, over and over? To know how much strength, real inner courage, you have, and not to run away from it?

Give it a shot, she pep-talks herself. You can handle any cowboy.

To get to
Desierto Cielo
, the awesome (even by Montecito standards) mansion which is home to Laura’s parents, you drive clear to the top of Picacho Lane, taking a left turn off the road by the huge transported saguaro cactus onto a private driveway (after calling security via the phone box and being cleared to have the gate opened), which winds serpentlike another half-mile through several acres of gardens, both tended and wild, until the compound, consisting of the main house, two guesthouses, the pool and poolhouse (and some utility buildings), all of which have sweeping, heart-stopping views of the Pacific, comes into view.

The party is a big, sprawling, outdoor gala, a couple hundred people, carefully selected and approved by Miranda Tayman Sparks, who has orchestrated this gala; even the special invitees of Miranda’s mother-in-law, the great dowager Dorothy Hawthorne Sparks, have to pass Miranda’s muster, although Miranda generally doesn’t sweat the small stuff when it comes to dealing with Dorothy—staying on the right side of her husband’s mother is something she learned to do years ago; even before she and Frederick were married she’d figured out the lay of the land.

The guest list is a mixed bag of money, old and new, other classes of important people, artists; most of them guests of Frederick, Laura’s father, a fine amateur photographer and watercolorist, who is to many of this set a major patron; and a smattering of influential local leaders, like Sean Redbuck, Santa Barbara County’s Third District supervisor, a Santa Ynez rancher who’s one of the family’s good friends and allies.

Few of these people (except the politicians, who have to) give a damn about the real Fiesta activities. That’s for ordinary people. They float above it all, rarely venturing down into the heart of the city during these five days.

Miranda works the crowd, playing the charming and gracious hostess. She’s dressed in a Spanish-style skirt and blouse, with her hair piled up on her head. Twelve hours ago she was fucking a lover on the front porch of her family’s Santa Ynez Valley ranch house, biting his cheek so hard she almost drew blood. Now she flits from group to group, making sure everyone is having a good time, her uninhibited laughter ringing across the property.

She spots Dorothy arriving fashionably late with some of her old friends. The old guard, she thinks with disdain, the dying breed. Miranda knows she is too down-home for her mother-in-law’s taste, too earthy. For all of Dorothy’s liberalism, her causes—homeless shelters, AIDS hospices, dozens of such do-gooder works—she’s still a Yankee WASP at heart: moderate, conservative, always self-effacing. She expects those around her to have those same qualities, and since Miranda doesn’t, never has, there’s always been tension between the two women, both powerful and headstrong.

The most important component in their relationship, as much an element of their world as nitrogen or oxygen, is the bottom-line truth that Dorothy was born rich while Miranda married it, married Dorothy’s only child, something neither of them has ever been able to get beyond, because Dorothy has always, in a million subtle (and occasionally not-so-subtle) ways, played the caste card.