The Color of Light (26 page)

There were twelve film reels hidden in Dad's desk. ­Because they were locked in a strongbox, out of curiosity on the after­noon I found them, I went straight to the local network affiliate's studio and spent a few hours converting the Super 8 reels to digital format. I'd wanted to know why these few, out of the hundreds of reels Dad shot over the years, were hidden away. More secret mischief, Dad? I wondered when I began screening them. The first time I spotted Isabelle, I knew Dad was recording Isabelle's violations of the restraining order against her.

I had been shown photographs of Isabelle and had met her once, briefly, but I was fascinated when I first saw her on film and was able to see the way she walked and gestured and canted her head to one side coquettishly whenever she caught sight of Dad. After that first glimpse of her, I had fast-forwarded through all the other parts of all the films looking only for her. But when I came across the fight between our little neighborhood gang and Larry Nordquist and his toughs, I stopped scanning for Isabelle and bore down on that scene, that day. The fight was a like a crease in the map of time, a demarcation between life before, and life after, Beto's mother died. I pushed Isabelle aside and studied that reel frame by frame. For the last few days, I'd intended to go back through the other reels to see what I might have missed, but there had been so little time and so few private hours.

Up at the top of the street, above Grizzly Peak, the sky was beginning to brighten. Full of expectation, cocooned in my corner of the porch, I opened the computer and began watching the old home movies, one at a time. The dates on the reel headers were the dates the films originally were processed, not the dates they were shot. Estimating time frame by my hair, clothes, and body development, I didn't bother watching films that were dated more than a year before or a year after Mrs. B died. That left me with four reels. Of the four, the third reel was the closest to the day Mrs. Bartolini died.

I'm standing on the sidewalk with Sunny Loper. Dad is obviously inside the house, shooting through the window on the front door. The two girls who live up the hill come into the frame, and we join them. I'm wearing the same red high-tops I wore in the fight reel, but they are not yet as scuffed as they were on that day. How long do a kid's canvas shoes last? Considering all the walking we did and the way we played, they probably wouldn't last more than a few months.

Dad scans potential hiding places for Isabelle before he catches up to us again. When he does, there are seven of us. The Bay Laundry and Dry Cleaners van stops in front of the Miller house, so it's probably Thursday, the regular delivery day for our neighborhood. A white-haired driver hops out carrying a blue-paper-wrapped bundle and hangers with plastic-sheathed dress shirts. He knocks on the front door, hands off his cleaning, and is back in his van headed up the street in the time it takes Evie Miller to come down her front steps, cross the street and join us. Around the curve, Mrs. B waits in front of her house with Beto. She's wearing a pink pullover and a gray pleated skirt. Mr. Loper drives past in his green Volvo and waves. Lacy and Dorrie Riley come out their front door, turn and speak to someone inside, the door closes. They cross the street, greet Beto and his mom, and wait for us.

Dad steps into someone's yard and films us through a gap in some kind of foliage. Mrs. B clings to Beto a bit longer than usual before she kisses him and releases him when the rest of us arrive. She stands on her driveway, watching us walk away. The camera jerks to the right, catches Larry Nordquist following us at a distance. Larry passes Mrs. B without greeting her; she is intent on our retreating backs.

The image becomes a slurry of blurred colors as Dad runs while the camera continues filming. When the focus is steady again, Dad has crossed the street. When he walks past the Bartolinis' driveway, Mrs. B is gone. Isabelle, back toward the camera, emerges from behind a hedge and sets off in our direction. Suddenly she stops, turns, pauses for only a moment, and then she begins to run away. Dad follows her until she turns up a side street, no longer following us. The camera is still running when Dad takes it down from his eye. The neighborhood is now upside down as Mrs. B walks up a neighbor's front steps. The door opens and she goes inside.

“Bastard,” I said. I reversed the film to the frame just before the door opens and flipped it right side up. I enlarged the image of the door as much as I could without losing the integrity of the image, and ran the sequence forward in slow motion. The door opens, someone can be seen standing there. I froze the image of the figure in the door, brightened it, enlarged it one more click, captured it and sent it to Guido with a request to enhance the image as much as he could and send it back.

I looked up when I heard the Lopers' back door open, the soft clang of a trashcan lid, and the door close again.

“I think, from the look on your face,
chérie
, that something is up.” Jean-Paul was perched on the porch rail, watching me. “Should I worry?”

“Possibly.” I gestured for him to come closer. “Look at this.”

I ran the film sequence again. When he saw Mrs. B go into the house, he nodded.

“I see,” he said. “You think she is not going in for a visit and coffee, yes?”

“Yes.” I turned off the computer. “Do you think it's too early to call on the neighbors?”

“In what time zone are these neighbors?”

I pointed to the Loper house next door. He smiled his upside-down smile and held out his hand to help me up. Before we went next door, we went inside to tell Chief Wasick why I wanted to go see the Lopers. I started at the beginning, with Dad's film, and told him about Larry's history of spying on the neighbors and his recent mission to make amends, the extortion of Trinh Bartolini for both money and sex and that Larry saw her with another man. He winced when I brought up Lacy Riley Halloran shooting at us on the freeway Saturday.

“You think all of that—any of that—has some bearing on what happened here last night?”

“I do. Let me show you something.” I opened my computer to the sequence I had shown Jean-Paul. As Mrs. B walks across the street, I froze the image and asked him, “Do you know who that is?”

He took a close look and shook his head. “Should I?”

“That's Trinh Bartolini.”

“I only know the case in broad outlines,” he said. “Kevin's been working on it, but I'm not up to speed on the details. That's her, huh?”

“Yes.” I restarted the sequence. When the neighbor's front door opens, I froze and enlarged the frame. “Now, do you recognize
him
?”

His interest perked. “You said she was being extorted for sex, and that Nordquist saw her with someone. You saying it's that knucklehead?”

I closed the computer. “We may know more when Kevin gets the report on the DNA found on Mrs. Bartolini's shirt. But until then, a good place to start is next door.”

Maybe he was just tired, or maybe he wanted to get us out from underfoot, but with some caveats he agreed that we could go.

“Hello, neighbor.” George Loper, clearly surprised to find us knocking on his back door at the crack of dawn, pushed open the screen and welcomed us into his kitchen. He wore shorty pajama bottoms and a T-shirt, his sparse white hair standing up in random spikes. There were dark circles under his eyes; he, too, had been robbed of peaceful slumber. “Come in, come in. Glad you've come over, Maggie, Jean-Paul. Gladder yet to see you're okay. Karen and I were just real worried when the paramedics showed up last night; no one would tell us a damn thing about what happened. We headed over to check on you, honey, but the cops told us to go home in no uncertain terms. We're getting pretty used to the police being over there regularly, but seeing the paramedics, well... Just glad you're okay. Karen was so upset she had to take a sleeping pill. Sit down, coffee's fresh. Whatever happened?”

“Another break-in,” I said, pulling out a kitchen chair.

He paused, holding mugs in both hands. “For cryin' out loud, what is this neighborhood coming to? Who got hurt?”

“The intruder,” Jean-Paul told him, which was true enough for the moment.

Before George could launch into the inevitable barrage of follow-up questions, I asked him, “Those guns you said you got from Chuck, did he give them to you?”

“Give, as in give for free?” He chuckled at that as he poured coffee. “You know Chuck, always working a deal. No, we paid for the guns. Less than sticker, but we paid for them. Why do you ask?”

“You told me he showed you four guns,” I said. “But I was wondering how many he had to sell.”

“You'd have to ask Chuck.” After he said that, a sudden thought seemed to jolt him wider awake. “What happened over there last night have something to do with those damn guns?”

“Perhaps.” Jean-Paul took the mugs from George's shaking hands before he could spill coffee all over. “The man who broke into the house last night had a Colt from the same armory shipment as Maggie's father's, and perhaps your own.”

“I'll be damned.” George had to sit down. “I'll be goddamned.”

“When was the last time you saw your gun?” I asked him.

The question seemed to baffle him, but after a moment he pointed toward the ceiling. “I keep it where I can put my hands on it quick if I need to. I checked it when I heard the sirens, just in case, you know. It's where it's supposed to be. You weren't thinking my gun—”

“Just making sure,” I said.

“Is that what Chuck was yelling about out there earlier, someone ask him about his gun?” He didn't wait for an answer. “I could've gone out and shot him myself when he started in. I'd just got Karen calmed down—you know how Karen likes to keep up on her neighborhood and she was not one bit happy that the cops sent her home—but as soon as we heard him, she wanted to go out there and get into the middle of things, probably make a nuisance of herself. I know my dear wife rubs some people the wrong way, Maggie, and a lot of folks think she's just plain nosy. But Chuck, he tells her what's going on and lets her talk his ear off. The comings and goings at your house the last couple of days have kept their jaws pretty busy.”

“I can only imagine,” I said.

“You gotta give Chuck credit though. He's been keeping an eye on your place all summer. Says he's worried about squatters. Vacant house, you know, can be a magnet for mischief. And he wasn't wrong. That Nordquist character was hanging around, and no one wanted that, least of all Chuck. You know, because of the boy's criminal background.”

“Did Chuck ever confront Larry?”

“Funny thing,” George said, shaking his head about something he obviously did not find funny. “But it happened the other way 'round. They had a pretty good shouting match out here one day, but it was Nordquist who confronted Chuck. Chuck told Karen the guy was just venting an old grievance about an arrest Chuck made years ago when Nordquist was still in high school. Happens to cops all the time; some people just can't seem to let go of bad feelings, you know.”

Under the table, Jean-Paul squeezed my knee. Larry had apologized to me, but he also wanted me to make amends for pain I caused him. Did he ask Chuck for an apology? Or did our Peeping Tom have something else on his mind to discuss with Chuck? I covered Jean-Paul's hand with mine and smiled at George; Karen wasn't the only Loper who could talk your ear off. I did not interrupt his flow.

George reached around for the coffeepot and topped off our mugs. “Chuck told me that the other day when he was on duty at the bank he spotted Nordquist hanging around Bartolini's deli. He said he went over and told Nordquist to scat, but Beto came out and said it was okay, said the guy was waiting for you. Well, that made Chuck nervous, thinking about what the con would want with you. So when you showed up he caught Nordquist's eye and made like he was going for his gun and the guy took off running. Chuck got a kick out of that.”

“I wondered why Larry ran away,” I said, remembering Larry lurking along Shattuck behind me; he was dodging Chuck, not me. I had a hunch Chuck was more worried about what Larry might say to me than he was concerned for my safety.

“Did Chuck ask you to keep Larry away from me?” I ask.

“Well, sure, honey. We look after our neighbors, you know. There was no reason for you to be bothered by that overgrown delinquent. I can't tell you how many times I had to shoo him off the property.”

It was so easy to get information out of George that I almost felt guilty—almost—when I fed him another question.

“Your roses are beautiful this summer,” I said. “Did you ever meet Dad's friend Khanh Duc?”

He furrowed his brow, shook his head, and then the light dawned. “Duc? The guy with the big wholesale nursery?”

“Yes, Duc.”

“Sure.” He nodded with some enthusiasm. “Whenever I want anything for the garden, Chuck takes me down to Duc's nursery, gets me a good price. Have you seen his place, south of San Jose? It's huge, covers lots of prime real estate. That Duc's a real enterprising guy, gotta give him credit for putting together something like that. The specialty there is roses, but he carries just about everything you can imagine. If you need some plants to fix the mess all those people trampling in the yard made of your Dad's flower borders, you go ask Chuck to hook you up with Duc.”

“Chuck and Duc are good friends?”

“I wouldn't say they're good friends exactly,” George said. “Not backyard-barbecue good friends, anyway. Chuck told me he was an early investor in Duc's business and he didn't mind letting Duc show his gratitude from time to time. But friends? No.”

“Interesting,” I said, squeezing Jean-Paul's hand. “Very interesting.”

From somewhere above us, Karen called out, “George?”

“You'll have to excuse me, folks,” George said, pushing himself back from the table. “I better go see what the wife wants. When she takes a sleeping pill she wakes up a little disoriented. Don't want her to fall again.”