Burning Man (18 page)

“Dottie Antonelli,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m a volunteer, but I’m here two or three days a week.”

“Is there a gift shop manager?”

Dottie shook her head. “There’s a committee of volunteers that helps the nuns. Somehow everything works.”

I handed Dottie my card; her eyelids, heavy with makeup, managed to widen some. “I guess you’re not here about parking tickets.”

“Guilty conscience?”

“Always,” she said, wagging a good-natured finger at me.

“I’m hoping I can talk with whoever might have waited on a woman that I believe was shopping here one day last week.”

“You’re talking about seven or eight volunteers that might have been working,” Dottie said, “and that doesn’t include the nuns.”

“Nuns work in the gift shop?”

“Why do you ask? Guilty conscience?”

“You know anyone with a Catholic upbringing who doesn’t have one?”

I got a smile and another finger wagging, but her fire-engine red nails sort of vitiated the tsk-tsk effect. “When we’re busy, one or two of the sisters sometimes come out to help.”

“Is there any way you can round up some of those sisters that might have been working in here last week?”

“You mean now?” she asked and then shook her head. “This isn’t a good time. The sisters are at Vespers. What you need to do is make an appointment with the prioress to talk with them.”

“Is she here?”

“She’s almost always here. This is a cloistered monastery. That means the nuns pretty much stay put behind these walls.”

“So, can I talk with her?”

“You’d be interrupting her. She’s working.”

“Working?”

“Don’t sound surprised. Nuns don’t like to be distracted from their work.”

“Making the pumpkin bread?”

Dottie laughed. “That’s more of a sideline. Their full-time work is praying.”

“They pray full-time?”

My incredulity got me a Jersey girl retort. “I find it hard enough to do it part-time. What about you?”

“You have a point.”

“It’s almost twenty-four/seven for the nuns,” she said. “They live a life of enclosure so that they can dedicate themselves completely to prayer. You’d think if you withdrew from the world you wouldn’t give two hoots about it, but they spend all their time praying for it.”

“They’ve taken on a big job.”

“You’re telling me. I don’t let anything get in the way of me and my eight hours, but the nuns even give up their sleep for prayer. They take turns getting up during the night to do their adoration and keep vigil with Jesus.”

“I am sure he appreciates their company.”

Dottie regarded me suspiciously, but I must have passed muster because she chose not to upbraid me.

I asked, “How many nuns are there here?”

“Fewer and fewer,” she said. “Nowadays there are around twenty, and most of them are as old as the hills. There certainly aren’t enough for all the praying that’s needed.”

I remembered a line I had once heard: “Too many sneezers, and not enough
Gesundheiters
.”

“You can say that again.”

I started thinking aloud. “I need to find out if anyone worked in the last week and waited on a woman that bought some pumpkin bread, as well as two pairs of bootees, one pink and the other blue. I suspect this woman was pregnant, but it’s possible she wasn’t showing.”

“Some women are like that, but not me. My three pregnancies I was out to here”—Dottie gestured to a spot beyond where her fingers could reach—“and that was after only a few months. I always looked like I was carrying a litter.”

Dottie provided me with a Sharpie, a stapler, and running commentary while I wrote up the details on my wanted poster and attached my card. When I finished up, I took an appreciative sniff of the air.

“That pumpkin bread smells great.”

“It tastes better than it smells,” Dottie said. “Usually it’s all sold out by noon.”

“I’ll take a loaf then.”

“You’ll want some of the hand-dipped chocolates as well,” she said, reaching for a box and not giving me any choice in the matter. “There’s never any left over. Today’s your lucky day.”

“You sure you don’t work on commission?”

“Bring the chocolates home to your wife and see if I’m not telling it like it is.”

“I’m not married.”

Deadpan she said, “With all your charm?”

She bagged up the chocolates. “A box of chocolates can make a woman forgive a lot of flaws. If you want to catch a mouse, you need the cheese.”

“I’m a cop, not an exterminator.”

“These chocolates are so good some woman will even put up with your bad jokes.”

“Thanks for your help and the million calories.”

“The nuns made them. How can it be bad for you?”

I gathered up my goodies. The bag she handed me was surprisingly heavy. By the feel of it, the nuns must have put the Great
Pumpkin into my loaf of pumpkin bread. We said our good-byes, but I stopped short of walking out the door. My subconscious was still mulling over why Rose’s mother had come to this spot. Sinners look to repent in different ways. Maybe the pregnant woman hadn’t known where to turn other than God. She might have been so ashamed of her condition that she had considered the need for penance in a big way. I wondered if she had come to the monastery to ask how to go about becoming a nun.

“Is it possible that our mystery woman could have talked to one of the nuns before she came into the gift shop?”

Dottie shrugged her shoulders. “Why not? The nuns might be cloistered, but they’re not invisible.”

“Let’s say she came to the monastery and asked how to become a nun here. Would she have to talk to anyone in particular?”

“I suppose the prioress. That would be the Reverend Mother Frances.”

“And you’re sure she’s too busy to talk to me now?”

“If you’re here about an investigation, I would be more comfortable getting you an appointment with her tomorrow. If you’re here about your own spiritual issues, I am sure she will see you now.”

“Late afternoon tomorrow would work best for me.”

Dottie promised to call me in the morning to confirm the time. I thanked her for all her help, but again I couldn’t quite bring myself to leave. Something was still nagging at me.

“The reverend mother’s name is Frances?”

I said it as if the name was familiar to me, even though I was pretty sure I didn’t know a single person in the world named Frances.

“You might have read about her,” Dottie said, looking rather pleased.

“What? Was she awarded Mother Superior of the Year?”

“No, the reverend mother experienced a miracle.”

“How can I top that?”

“You can’t.”

CHAPTER 11:
TOTALLY FUBAR

For dinner I had the pumpkin bread and most of the chocolates. Both were as tasty as Dottie had promised. I told myself it was a balanced diet, and that I was getting my fruit and vegetables in the pumpkin bread. As it turned out, it was a good night. These days my definition of a good night is when I don’t burn. In the morning my alarm sounded and I got out of bed actually feeling refreshed. That was lucky for me, because today was my day for going back to high school.

I drove to the coast, making my way to a peninsula known collectively as Palos Verdes, which the locals refer to as PV. Although PV doesn’t have the reputation of Beverly Hills, the beach community is every bit as affluent.

Palos Verdes High School is only half a block from the beach and sits on some of the most expensive high school real estate in the country. I arrived early enough to take Sirius for a walk along the coast. There was a no-dogs rule on most of the area’s beaches, so my partner and I had to be content to do our walking within sight and sound of the surf.

After the walk, I picked up a coffee and went to the agreed-upon meet-up spot near the front of the high school. While waiting, I drank my coffee and took in the view. Even over the noise of arriving students, I could hear the sounds of the ocean. PV is less than twenty miles southwest of LA, but it feels like a different world.

Troy Vincent had told me he didn’t have a class until eight and had agreed to meet with me at half past seven. At twenty of eight, a young man approached drinking a Coke and eating a Slim Jim sausage. He had a deep tan, and his long, wet hair had natural blond highlights from the sun. His garb was beach casual: board shorts, a T-shirt from a local surf shop, flip-flops, and white-framed, smoky-lens sunglasses.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “I was out with the dawn patrol and the waves were awesome.”

He didn’t offer a hand to me but did to Sirius, saying, “How’s it going, Bubba?”

Sirius casually sniffed the offered hand and then licked it, either for a taste of sea salt or Slim Jim.

“Where were you surfing?”

“Haggerty’s,” he said.

I nodded as if I knew the spot. In truth I had heard of it, but my awareness was limited to oldies radio. Haggerty’s was part of the lyrics in the Beach Boys song “Surfin’ USA.”

“When we talked yesterday you were reluctant to speak ill of the dead,” I said.

Troy shrugged. “Why mess with bad karma?”

“Wouldn’t it be worse karma if you didn’t help, and by doing that someone got away with murder?”

He took a bite of his Slim Jim, considered my words, and finally offered a shrug and noncommittal nod.

“Tell me about the lacrosse game where you and Klein went at it.”

“He was a dude with a ’tude,” said Troy. “He was acting like he was the big kahuna out on the field. During the match there were some infusions going on, you know? That’s part of the game, so when the two of us collided he got all hot and told me I rammed his space. So I told him, ‘Brah, that’s not my way,’ but he still had a pile of sand in his shorts and I could tell he was ready to go aggro. I didn’t back down, though, and told him if he wanted to barnie, then we should do it, but he just gave me the stink eye, or that’s what I thought until a little while later when I got acid-dropped.”

“You were hit from behind?”

He nodded. “It was totally fubar.”

Translation: fucked up beyond all recognition.

“But you didn’t actually see Paul Klein hit you?”

“That’s right, which is what made it so nitchen. Instead of manning up, he did a sneak attack and made sure no one was looking. And then he lied about it.”

“His coach said you coldcocked him.”

“That’s totally bogus. That dude made up that story.”

“Did your teams meet up again?”

“Not on the field. That was one of the last games of the season.”

“Not on the field?” I asked. “Did something happen off the field?”

Troy turned his gaze to the Pacific and said, “I’m still not sure if I should narc on him, seeing as he’s dead.”

I didn’t say anything; I was pretty sure Troy would spill if I was patient. He took a bite of his Slim Jim, pulled the last bit free from the wrapper, and asked, “You think Bubba wants to finish it off?”

“I have no doubt of that. But I have to share a car with Bubba.”

“Sorry,” Troy said to Sirius and finished the last bite, chasing it with his Coke.

How is it that surfers can eat like that, I thought, and still look so healthy? It wasn’t a question I asked him; bad karma or not, Troy had decided to give up the rest of the story.

“So, a month or two after lacrosse season’s over someone came to my house late at night and set a surfboard on fire on our front lawn. The board must have been really juiced, because it was flaming everywhere, and our lawn got this huge burn spot.”

“You think it was Klein?”

“No doubt, man. He must have soaked some gas in the grass in order to leave me a personal message. Even though the lawn got all charred, you could still make out the letters BH.”

“I assume a police report was filed?”

Troy shook his head. “Because of the black patch from the burning surfboard, it took a few days for the letters to show themselves. Before then I was sure this Torrance dude had done the burning because of a run-in we’d had at Rat.”

Rat was the name of another surfing spot. A surfer friend once told me that Rat wasn’t named for a rodent but was a spot designated by PV surfers as Right After Torrance. Some of the most impassioned territorial disputes in SoCal are between local surfers defending “their” waves.

“I should have known it wasn’t another dankster, though,” Troy said. “Not even a durfer would set a board on fire. That’s too fubar.”

“Yeah,” I said, “that’s too fubar.”

As I was pulling into the parking lot at BHHS, my cell phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number but I did the voice. Dottie Antonelli said, “Hey, Joe Friday, I’ve been doing your secretarial work all morning.”

The old Michael Gideon, the one before I lost my wife and did my fire walk, had enjoyed repartee. The ghost of Gideon tried to reprise that role. “Just the facts, ma’am,” I said. It either wasn’t a
very good Jack Webb imitation, or Dottie chose to ignore Joe’s and my request.

“So, wasn’t that pumpkin bread as good as I told you?”

“You’re assuming I even tried it.”

“I’m assuming you ate the whole thing.”

She was right, but I wasn’t about to tell her that. “It was very good,” I admitted.