Spider Web (4 page)

I passed the booth requests on to the person in charge of them, ignored Constance’s message and sent up a quick prayer for Daddy that Lyle’s sister-in-law wouldn’t scare him too much and that he might actually enjoy talking to her. After giving the rest of my in-box a promise to reconvene tomorrow, I decided to cruise through the co-op building to see if the artists needed anything. It was part of my normal Monday afternoon routine. That way if a machine needed repair or supplies needed ordering, I had all week to take care of it.

I was on my way down the stone pathway between the museum and the stable behind the hacienda that now housed the artists’ co-op when I met Amanda Landry, one of San Celina’s deputy district attorneys and our museum’s pro bono legal guru. She was also a co-op member and a wonderful quilt artist.

“Hey, girl,” she called out to me in her molasses-tinged Alabama accent. “Just the woman I was lookin’ for.” She had someone with her, a woman I didn’t recognize. “Sweetie, I desperately need a favor.”

“Whatever it is you want me to do, the answer is no. At least until next Monday. I’m swamped.”

She turned to the tall silver-haired woman behind her who wore a nubby Irish fisherman’s sweater and jeans. “Ignore her. She always gets pissy-pants on Mondays. I’m tellin’ you, this little gal owes me. I have saved her butt just too many times to count.”

“As my proper aunt Garnet would say, bull grits,” I said, laughing. “But if you bake me a maple walnut pie, I will reconsider.” Amanda’s maple walnut pies would make a fortune if she were ever so inclined to market them.

“Done. My new friend here needs some time on one of your pottery wheels. Do you think she could buy some time?”

I glanced up at the woman and smiled. “Sure, why not?”

She smiled back and tugged at one sleeve of her sweater. Silvery blonde curls hugged a perfectly shaped head. She appeared slightly older than Amanda, maybe early fifties, and matched Amanda shoulder-to-shoulder, which meant she had to be close to six feet tall. Her rosy cheekbones were natural and her eyes were almost a teal blue.

“I’m Linda Snider,” she said, holding out a hand. Her handshake was firm but not overwhelming. Two thin gold bracelets sounded a delicate jingle. “I go by Lin.”

“Benni Ortiz. You’re a potter?”

She nodded. “Not a very good one. I’m new at it, but I’ll be here in San Celina a month or so. I want to keep my hand in.”

“Are you visiting family?”

“She’s looking for a home,” Amanda said. “Just traveling around the country trying to decide where she wants to retire. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

I looked back at Lin Snider. “Really? Where are you from?”

Her smile became wistful. “Nowhere and everywhere. Army brat. Lived in fifteen cities in eighteen years. I was born in San Antonio. So I guess, officially, I’m a Texan.”

“Lots of them around here,” I said. “They seem to be more vocal around football season. You know those Dallas Cowboys fans.”

“Actually, I’m not a big football fan,” Lin said.

“That’s why I liked her right off,” Amanda said, throwing her arm around the woman. “Barbaric sport.”

An unbelievably large raindrop hit me on the nose. “Looks like the rain is starting up again. Let’s go to my office and check the schedule. I’ll make tea.”

Once inside my office, with the tea bags steeping, Amanda and I discussed the upcoming festival while I hunted for the pottery wheel’s signup sheet.

Like a human metronome, Amanda waved a long forefinger at me. “Sweetie pie, I told you months ago that you were crazy as a bourbondrunk turkey to head this Memory Festival committee. When are you going to learn that magic word ‘no’?”

“You’re right, you’re right. One of my high school friends talked me into it. Her father has Alzheimer’s and it’s just tearing her up. This festival made her feel like she was doing something productive. We were going to cochair, but then she got mononucleosis.”

“The kissing disease?” Amanda gave a roof-raising laugh. “Who gets that over the age of fifteen?”

“I don’t think they call it that anymore.” I smiled at Lin. “She’s dating herself.”

“Actually, I was thinking the same thing,” Lin said, smiling back.

“Back to business,” Amanda said. “I told you that Benni could fix you up with a potter’s wheel. Now you can play in clay to your heart’s content.”

“Thank you, Amanda,” Lin said. “Meeting you is the best thing that’s happened to me since I came to San Celina. And thank you, Benni. Whenever you can fit me in, I’d appreciate it.”

I found the scheduling notebook at the bottom of my desk drawer. “It looks like there’s time free on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons this week. Both are two-hour sessions. Twenty dollars an hour.”

“I’ll take them,” she said. “Where do I sign?”

After she filled out an application and paid me eighty dollars in cash, I put the money in the petty cash box, locked it and stuck her application inside the notebook to file away later.

“Great, that’s done. Now let’s go see the museum,” Amanda said. “I want to show Lin the dead folks exhibit.”

“I wish everyone would stop calling it that.” I looked over at Lin. “The exhibit’s actual title is Moving On: Celebrating Those Who Have Left.”

Her face registered just a moment’s emotion—dismay, sadness? Not surprising. Everyone had lost
someone
. That was the reason I thought the exhibit would be popular.

“I’ll come say my good-byes once we’re finished seeing the exhibits,” Amanda told me.

About a half hour later, Amanda was back in my office. She flopped down in one of my visitor chairs. “Lin’s looking through the gift shop. Thanks for letting her use the wheel. She seems nice, doesn’t she?”

“No problem. The more it’s used, the more money we make. How did you say you know her?”

“It was just one of those serendipitous things,” she said, pulling a compact out of her purse and checking her lipstick. “I was in the health food store looking for something that would help me with my insomnia, and she just started talking about how she also has problems with not being able to sleep. We’re both of ‘that age,’ if you know what I mean, except you don’t, but you will. Anyway, we started comparing night sweat dilemmas and before you know it we were drinking green tea at the bar.” She made a face. “I don’t care what they say, that stuff tastes like someone dug up their lawn and threw it in a pot of ditch water. Cooked grass is all it is. And I don’t mean the kind we smoked in the sixties. Give me good ole Lipton’s any day.”

“You said she’s looking for a place to retire?”

Amanda scraped off a bit of shiny lipstick in the corner of her generous mouth. “Said she was traveling around the U.S. looking for a place to put down roots. She came into some money and thinks she might want to relocate to a smaller town. Lived in Seattle or thereabouts. I know what she means. It’s nice being in a place where everybody knows your name.” She winked and gave a mischievous grin.

“Right,” I said, leaning back in my office chair. “Sometimes you wish everyone would forget your name. Like, for example, when you stupidly agree to chair a festival committee.”

“There’re rumors about starting the first annual Bush Monkey Flower Festival. The committee is looking for someone experienced to take charge . . .”

“Out!” I said, standing up and pointing to the door.

“I’m gone, Miz Ortiz. See you on Saturday. I did foolishly agree to man, or rather woman, the 1960s booth for two hours. I think I have some old love beads that I can wear. It is truly the only thing that fits me from that time.” She came around the desk and gave me a rib-cracking hug. “Thanks for being nice to my new friend. Shoot, maybe she’ll end up deciding to live in San Celina. This town’s got a way of reeling people in.”

After Amanda left, I started to put away the pottery wheel notebook when Lin Snider’s application fell out. I dug through my desk and found my three-hole punch. Then I pulled down the notebook that held the applications of everyone who used the co-op, feeling very smug that I was filing it right away. Out of habit, I glanced over her information.

Her address was for a hotel in Morro Bay—the Spotted Pelican Inn. It was one of dozens of hotels in the tiny seaside town twenty minutes from San Celina. This particular hotel was popular with birders who descended upon our avian-blessed county at various times to add to their life lists or participate in official bird counts. The hotel’s lobby was connected to a wonderful French bakery called simply Pierre’s. The head baker had won Best of County awards for her unusual croissants—mango-chocolate, strawberry-mint and pistachio–cream cheese. It was one of Gabe’s favorite places to linger on a foggy winter afternoon, drinking their rich, dark coffee and reading the
New York Times.

I scanned the application. Except for her name and the hotel’s address, there was no other information. I needed to ask this Lin for her actual mailing address the next time I saw her, not that I expected that she would do anything illegal. Gabe’s voice in my head reminded me to get all her information in case something was stolen or damaged in the museum or co-op buildings. Being married to a cop had definitely changed the way I looked at people, something I wasn’t entirely happy about. But sometimes the most innocent-looking people could be people who are up to no good, and I could imagine Gabe scolding me because I hadn’t checked her driver’s license or some other form of identification before allowing her access to our buildings. I wrote a reminder to myself on a Post-it and stuck it on my telephone.

“Done my due diligence, Chief,” I said out loud.

“Who’re you talking to?” my aunt Garnet said, striding into my office.

Dove appeared two seconds later. “Hey, honey bun!”

I’d been so lost in my thoughts I hadn’t heard their not-at-all-subtle voices coming up the long hallway.

“Nobody.” I stood up, abruptly closing the notebook. “What’re you two doing here? Last I heard you were pushing some Boise basket broad off on Daddy.”

“Just finished our cane fu lesson,” Dove said, holding up her lavender and white Hawaiian print cane. “I’m starving, and your daddy needs a woman.”

“We practiced taking out knees today,” Aunt Garnet said. “Easier than one would think.”

They were dressed in identical elastic-waist jeans and flowered tops. Dove’s flowers were lavender to match her Hawaiian-themed cane. Aunt Garnet’s were navy blue. Her cane was a glossy cherrywood. She preferred a more traditional look in canes, she informed me when she bought it directly from their instructor.

When Aunt Garnet and Uncle WW moved out to San Celina last summer from Arkansas, I was a little worried about her and Dove living in such close proximity. Make that a lot worried. They’d always gotten along like vinegar and baking soda—dramatic eruption guaranteed.

Aunt Garnet and Dove were about as opposite as two women could be. We’re not talking apples and oranges, we’re talking apples and carburetors. But with Uncle WW in the middle stages of Parkinson’s disease, Aunt Garnet and Dove surprised everyone when they took to heart the Bible verse in Isaiah about beating their “swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks.” They warred no longer and had settled peacefully into a life of church activities, ranch work, Uncle WW’s various doctor appointments and now, apparently, finding Daddy a soul mate. They even enjoyed hobbies together like their weekly scrapbooking class and their cane fu class down at the senior center.

Cane fu, I’d learned, was a type of senior martial arts where a person learned to defend themselves against muggers or, as Aunt Garnet called them, mashers. I’d seen some of their moves and, believe me, you didn’t want to mess with folks trained in cane fu.

“At the refreshment table after our lesson, some of us were discussing the moral conundrum of whether we should put steel pipes inside our canes to give them more power,” Aunt Garnet said, her wrinkled face thoughtful.

“Loading the deck, so to speak,” Dove added. “My position is all’s fair in war and cane fu. If someone tries to mug me, a steel pipe upside the head is exactly what he deserves.” She brandished her cane which, I assumed by the ease with which she swung it, was empty . . . so far.

“What about turning the other cheek?” I asked, knowing full well that my comment would set her off.

“I smack that too!” Dove said.

“Amen, Sister,” Garnet agreed.

“Well, I feel
much
better about you two being out and about after dark now. I hear that the pit bull rescue is looking for people to work with their more vicious dogs. I think that should be your next project.”

The calculating expression that appeared on
both
their faces caused me to start two-stepping backward. “Just kidding, girls. Maybe you should stick with cane fu until you get really proficient at it. Change of topic: Why the sudden interest in Daddy’s love life?”

Aunt Garnet sat down heavily in one of my black and chrome visitor’s chairs. “My legs are getting a little wobbly. Has Ben been talking to you?”

Dove joined her sister, collapsing with a loud sigh. “I hear you, li’l sis. That’s quite a workout. I just love our darling little instructor though. Susie Watanabe. She’s got a black belt in karate and kung fu. She studied cooking at that fancy school in France—Cord and Blue. And she speaks fluent Chinese!”

“Isn’t Watanabe a Japanese surname?” I asked.

Dove looked at me blankly. “Yes, so?”

I waved my hand—never mind. “Daddy’s love life?”

“Pshaw,” Dove said, resting both hands on the crook of her cane. “We just want him to take a few women out to dinner. He’s overreacting.”

“Or meet them for coffee,” Aunt Garnet said. “The poor boy’s so lonely. He just doesn’t know how much.”

“For Pete’s sakes, we’re not asking him to marry them,” Dove said. “But we do need to get him settled . . .”

“Before we leave these earthly chains.” Aunt Garnet tilted her head upward like she was receiving a message directly from the Lord.

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. “Is there something you two haven’t told me? Some inside scoop on when you’re scheduled to take the A train to Jesus?”