Goose in the Pond (32 page)

“Likewise,” Jim replied.

Oneeda and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. “Pot telling the kettle it’s got too much water in it,” she said.

“Tell it to me, Sister Oneeda,” I said, holding up my hands, fingers spread. She giggled like a young girl.

“Quick, let’s split them up before they start to unionize,” Jim said, pushing Oneeda’s wheelchair toward the craft booths.

Gabe and I strolled through the crowd, holding hands, stopping briefly at each storytelling area. He patiently followed me as I surveyed each craft booth and checked on the museum and the storytelling classes going on in the studios. After taking care of my official duties and seeing that the festival seemed well on its way to settling down, for the first time in a week I felt myself begin to relax. By ten o’clock the crowds had started to thin out. The festival was open until midnight, and though I was exhausted I was determined to stay until it closed. Gabe and I walked over to the main stage and grabbed an empty hay bale in the back. Most of the seats were already taken as people waited for Dolores’s performance.

“Thirsty?” Gabe asked.

“Get me a Coke. I’ll save a place for you.”

I was looking over the crowd, trying to see who was attending tonight, when I felt the hay bale shift.

“How’s it going?” Jillian asked. She was dressed in off-white jeans, a golden-brown cashmere sweater, and chamois-colored flat heel boots.

“So far, so good.” I held up crossed fingers. “What do you think of the festival so far? Has Constance been here? I haven’t seen her.”

“She was here earlier,” Jillian said, lacing her fingers around one knee. “She’s having a party tonight with some friends from L.A. She’ll be around tomorrow. She seemed happy enough with everything.” She gave me an encouraging smile. “Everything’s going great, Benni. Don’t worry. You’ve done a marvelous job.”

“Thanks,” I said. “That’s exactly the response I was fishing for. I can’t tell you how often these last few weeks I’ve wondered if we’d bitten off more than we could chew with this festival.”

She nodded knowingly. “I felt the same watching the new library go up. I thought I’d pass out from anxiety until the last flower was planted in the patron’s garden.”

Then the lights went out. An excited murmur rippled through the crowd. The moon, as if on cue, moved behind a plum-colored smattering of clouds, giving the atmosphere an even spookier tinge.

“Dolores must have higher connections than any of us,” Jillian said, her tone slightly sarcastic.

A rattle of chains against metal sounded in the grove of pepper trees on the edge of the pasture, and the crowd instinctively swiveled toward the sound. “Beware the weeping woman!” a deep male voice called.
“La Llorona!”

A puff of smoke snapped our attention back to the stage, and through the smoke an apparition in white appeared. I gasped along with the rest of the audience. Her dress was long, silvery, and appeared to be made of layers and layers of cobwebs. Straight black hair streaked with white flowed down past her waist. Her face, a pale green white, seemed to pulsate in the flickering light of the single candle she held. Her nails were as red as fresh blood. Dolores had really started out our Late-Night Cabaret with a bang.

“Have you seen her perform this yet?” I whispered to Jillian.

“No,” she whispered back. “I’ve never even heard this folktale.”

Dolores lifted her hands, nails flashing in the candlelight, and began her story.

“Once in a small village in Mexico there was a very beautiful peasant woman. Her hair was as black as the sky’s darkest night and her lips as red and inviting as the finest wine. All the young
hombres
were in love with her. She was her parents’ only child, born in their old age, a gift from the blessed
Madre de Dios
. She was loved and cherished by all who came in contact with her. She worked for the richest lady in town, washing her fine linens in the clean, clear river. One day, when she was at the river washing her mistress’s fine lace she was spotted by a passing
hidalgo,
a Spanish nobleman of great riches who had come to town to court her mistress. But he fell instantly in love with the beautiful and innocent peasant girl. Being a man of dashing looks and flattering words, he seduced her there by the flowing green river. They met there day after day for weeks. When it became apparent she was with child, the nobleman’s visits ceased, and she was left broken-hearted to bear the child in shame. He married her mistress and took her to live with him in the beautiful hacienda that he had described to the peasant girl each day after they made love. The peasant girl returned to her parents’ small cottage and lived her life weaving brilliantly colored rugs each with a strand of green river flowing through them. When her son was three, the
hidalgo
returned to the village. The peasant girl was very happy, for she had believed in her heart of hearts that he would someday return. But she soon realized he only returned to claim his son, telling her she could never be his wife, that she was not of the right class, and that because her former mistress, his new wife, was unable to bear a child, she had given him permission to bring his son to live with them so his family name would continue. He would give the peasant girl two goats and a pearl rosary in exchange for her son.

“ ‘Let me stay with my child one more night,’ she begged him. He agreed and made plans to come back the next day. Late that night she took the child down to the river and drowned him. Laying his small body out on the bank where she and the nobleman had made love, she took a wood-handled knife and plunged it deep into her chest, the last words on her lips curses on the man who had betrayed her not once, but twice. And because of those curses, the nobleman was never able to make love to another woman, and his wife shriveled up and died from a disease that turned her skin the texture of a snake’s, her punishment for trying to steal another woman’s child.”

Dolores pointed a long red fingernail into the audience. “La Llarona still lives among us today. At midnight you can see her walking among the reeds in the marshes wailing for her lost child, weeping for the love betrayed her. You men!” She flicked her hand, and a spark of fire flew from it, causing the audience to jump then titter in nervous laughter. “Do not stay out all night drinking and seduce a woman only to leave her to cry alone as you stagger back to the woman you have left at home. La Llarona will find you, and when she does, you may lose more than the
cerveza
and tequila you have consumed. And you women who steal the hopes and dreams of your sisters, La Llarona will find you, too, and your dreams will turn to ashes in your hand, and your lying lips will taste the blood that drips from La Larona’s knife.” She held up her hand, and we watched mesmerized as blood seemed to appear and drip down her fingers. Behind us a voice screamed, and we all jumped. Another puff of smoke and the stage was empty.

I turned to Jillian. “What did you think—” But she’d disappeared.

“Boy, that brings back memories,” Gabe said behind me.

I turned, surprised to see him standing there. “I didn’t hear you come up. Wasn’t that amazing? Dolores certainly raised our collective blood pressure a notch or two.”

“My grandma Ortiz used to tell about La Llarona. She’d wait until my parents had gone out with my aunts and uncles and she’d tell us kids scary stories. Her version was different, though. It was more along the lines of we’d better obey our parents, or the weeping woman would get us. Hers had seaweed hair and was betrayed by a sea captain. She’d scare the pants off us kids, then warn us not to tell our parents what she’d said. My mother, for the life of her, couldn’t figure out why we’d be too afraid to go to sleep without a light for weeks after visiting California. I think my dad knew, but he never said anything.”

“That’s terrible,” I said. “He just let you go on being scared?”

Gabe laughed. “He grew up hearing those stories and he survived. I guess he figured that our fear was nothing compared to the fear he had of being in a fight between his mother and his wife.”

I laughed in agreement. “Smart man.” I looked back at the empty hay bale, wondering about Jillian.

“What’s wrong?” Gabe asked, his senses instantly alert to the perplexed look on my face.

“Jillian was sitting next to me, then she was gone. I guess she must have left during Dolores’s performance. Or right after.”

“So?”

“I don’t know, it bothers me. She and Dolores haven’t been getting along that well, kinda arguing over Ash Stanhill, and then Dolores told this story. Maybe it was a subtle threat to Jillian.”

“I think you’re letting all this spookiness get to you. Reality check,
mi corazón
.” He tapped my head with his knuckles.

“And what reality might that be, Friday?”

“Two women catfighting over some man that neither will probably want next week.”

I slugged his arm. “Catfighting? That remark is going in your permanent file under sexist remarks. Which, I might add, is getting quite extensive.”

“Oh, no,” he said, feigning horror. “Not my permanent file.”

It was after midnight when Gabe and I got home. Dove had long since gone to bed, though her evening’s activities were still apparent, with three different versions of the Bible and a Bible dictionary spread out on the kitchen table. Rita had, of course, still not come in. Neither had Sam. I’d glimpsed Rita a few times tonight with Ash and a group of people and I’d assumed they’d gone barhopping. That made me think of Jillian again. Just how involved were she and Ash? And how did Dolores fit into the equation? How were they all involved with this? Or were they? Maybe Gabe was right and the spooky stories really were affecting my imagination.

“What time should I set the alarm?” Gabe asked.

“I should be there before ten. Make it eight.” I yawned and crawled under the covers. “I don’t know if I can stay up this late again tomorrow night and still function. I don’t see how Sam and Rita do it.”

“Youth,” Gabe answered, catching my yawn.

Sometime during the early-morning hours, I woke up and with the insomnia brought on by anxiety, couldn’t get back to sleep. The bedside clock read four-fifteen. Next to me, Gabe lay deep in sleep. I eased out of bed and pulled my thick terry robe over my T-shirt. Slinking through the living room where Sam was sleeping, I slipped into the kitchen, closing the door behind me. As I heated a mug of almond milk I sat at the kitchen table and looked over Dove’s books. She and Garnet were apparently heavy into Proverbs now. I glanced at the page in the Bible subject index that Dove had marked lightly with a pencil. She’d made it as far as the
K
’s. The line she’d copied on notebook paper was under the word
Keeps
: “Proverbs 17:28—Even a fool is thought wise if
she
”—(Dove underlined
she
three times)—“
keeps
silent, and discerning if
she
holds
her
tongue.”

“Garnet’s gonna love that one,” I muttered. I wondered if it occurred to Dove that the quote could easily be thrown back at her. My eyes traveled down the page, perusing the subject headings. One intrigued me, and I read the four listings under the word.

Key (Keys)
: “Isaiah 33:6—The fear of the Lord is the
key
/Revelation 20:1—having the
key
to the Abyss/Matthew 16:19—I will give you the
keys
to the kingdom/Revelation 1:18—And I hold the
keys
of death.”

Keys,
I thought, pouring my milk in a mug. I looked down into it, staring at the light reflections in the whiteness. Why did that strike something in me?
Keys.
What do they do? They unlock things. Actually, they unlock places where people keep things. Things they think are important. Things they want to hide. Things they want to save.

Keys.
Then it occurred to me. The Tupperware container of keys I found in the homeless man’s duffel bag. His daily routine. A routine that made me think before that maybe he’d seen something. Or found something. Something he kept. I went outside to the truck and brought the container of keys into the kitchen. There seemed to be at least fifty, maybe more—all shapes and sizes. Staring at them, I drank my milk and wondered if they opened anything of significance. When I crawled back in bed, Gabe stirred.

“Everything all right?” he muttered, curling himself around me.

“Fine,” I whispered. “Go back to sleep.”

Keys,
I thought drowsily as the warm milk started working. Just before I fell asleep, the last line of the Bible index, the one from Revelation, floated back to me. “I hold the keys of death.”

For one foreboding moment, a tiny icicle of fear pierced my heart.

12

THE NEXT MORNING Dove handed me the Saturday
Tribune
. “You and Sam made front page.”

I glanced at the article in the lower right hand side. POLICE CHIEF’S WIFE AND SON ATTACKED AT THURSDAY NIGHT FARMERS’ MARKET. Fortunately there was yet another budget crisis going in Washington, so we didn’t make the bold, black headline.