The Color of Light (11 page)

“I could use a shot of something a hell of a lot stronger than tea.” Larry pushed off his hood and shook out his ponytail.

“Sorry,” I said. “That's all I can offer.”

“Yeah.” He settled into his seat and looked around the room. “It's nice here. Really nice. Comfortable, you know. Not all formal like I expected. Some places, jeez, they're so done up you're afraid to touch anything. Know what I mean?”

“You've never been inside the house before?” I asked, thinking about the person in the house the night before who moved about as quietly as a shadow, as if he were familiar with the layout.

“Oh, yeah, sure,” he said, his tone bitter, defensive. He picked up a coaster from the table beside him, glanced at it and tossed it back down. “Like maybe you invited me to your birthday parties with all your prissy little friends? That never happened.”

I heard self-pity in his tone and found it worrisome. I said, “I heard you wanted to talk to me.”

“Yeah, well.” He flicked his chin toward Jean-Paul, a question in the gesture. “It's kind of personal.”

“Larry, this is my friend Jean-Paul Bernard. Jean-Paul, meet Larry Nordquist.” They exchanged perfunctory nods. “Larry, Jean-Paul is staying, and so is Rafael.”

He swiveled in his seat to find out where Rafael was.

“Why don't we just get it over with?” I sat on the sofa, facing him across the coffee table. “Before someone like Mr. Sato or Mr. Loper knocks your block off for sneaking around.”

He dropped his head, chagrined. But he remained quiet.

“Sir,” Jean-Paul said. When Larry looked up, he said, “It is quite late. Miss MacGowen has had a very long day. If you have something to say...”

Larry nodded, but seemed unable to begin. I tried to nudge him along.

“Beto told me you want to make amends to people you feel you have harmed,” I said. “You and I had a couple of run-ins when we were kids, but I don't feel you harmed me.”

Again he glanced at Jean-Paul. “Did she ever tell you she beat the crap out of me?”

“I never laid a hand on you,” I said.

“But you still won, didn't you?”

“I'm sorry I hurt your feelings that day,” I said. “Is that what you want to talk about? That fight? What you said that day?”

“No.” He swiped the arm of his sweatshirt across his glistening face, took a deep breath, and squared his shoulders.

“Maggie,” he said. “I did wrong you. And I'm sorry if what I did hurt you or put you in danger.”

“If it's not the fight, then what are you talking about?”

“I saw you on TV,” he said. “When that woman died.”

“You mean Isabelle Martin?”

“Freaked me out,” he said, nodding. “I mean, I knew her. When I saw her picture on TV and they said she was your mother I about lost it, you know? Because I knew her.”

“What do you mean, you knew her?”

“It's kind of hard to explain.” He scratched his neck, looked behind him, hoping maybe for some help to appear.

“Do your best.”

“The woman who died? Miss Martin?” he said. “Way back then, she got me to report about what you were doing all the time. She gave me stamps and paper, and I wrote stuff to her. Sometimes she called me on the phone and asked about you.”

“You spied on me for her?”

“She paid me.” He shrugged, a sheepish grin on his face. “I didn't look in your windows, or anything. I just told her about school, like the time you played some kind of bird in the school play.”

“I was an owl,” I said. “Fourth grade.”

I glanced up and caught Jean-Paul smiling. Rafael must have thought that the situation was under control. Quietly, he slipped outside to collect the bags and chocolates we had left behind. But when he came back, I heard the snick of both deadbolts shooting home. So did Larry: He watched Rafael the way that prisoners watch their keepers, always knowing where they are, always wary, afraid that they'll be called out.

“What you did was—” I searched for the right word.

“Bizarre,” Jean-Paul supplied.

“Definitely, bizarre,” I said. “But I never knew about it. And nothing happened to me because of what you did.”

“Doesn't matter,” he said. “I still needed to tell you.”

“Thank you for your honesty, Larry,” I said. “I'm sure it was difficult for you to come forward.”

“Pffh.”
Uttered with an eye roll as if coming clean were no big deal.

I said, “A couple of people think you might have been sleeping in the backyard here.”

“That's bullshit,” he said with a smirk. “Why would I do that? You think I'm homeless?”

“I don't know what to think,” I said.

“The thing is, I come by now and then to water the garden,” he said. “That old Jap gardener only shows up maybe once a week. If it was left to him, the whole yard woulda dried up and died a long time ago.”

“How in the world did that come about?”

He pointed at his chest. “You mean, me watering the place?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, yeah, well, see.” His face colored. “I was always curious, you know? I mean about what it was like back there. I used to hear your family out in the yard all the time, and I always wondered what it was like on your side of the fence. So when I heard no one was home here, I just came in to take a peek.”

“You could hear us?” I asked. “I don't remember that we were especially noisy. Where were you that you could hear us?”

“That's the thing of it,” he said. “I kind of made myself comfortable in the bushes where I was tonight and sort of listened.”

“To my family?” Creepy, I thought. But he didn't seem to think it was especially strange. “Because Isabelle Martin paid you to?”

“Not exactly,” he said. “But that's how it got started. One day, you guys were eating dinner outside, the way you did. I was just hanging out in the bushes, minding my own business, when she showed up. Scared the shit out of her when she stepped on me.”

Feeling absolutely nonplussed, I looked over at Jean-Paul. He seemed thoroughly puzzled, but fascinated as well.

“Why?” I asked Larry.

“You all seemed so normal,” he said. “I only wanted to know what that was like. You know, being normal.”

“And Isabelle gave you an excuse to keep spying on us,” I said.

“Not an excuse, exactly,” he said. “When she caught me, she promised that she would tell on me unless I wrote to her about you. She scared the shit out of me, too.”

“Dear God.”

“Yeah. But what I told you already, that's only part of it.” He looked around, his glance shifting from Rafael to Jean-Paul. “I know you, ­Maggie. Or I used to. We could talk about it, you and me. But I don't know these guys.”

“They're my friends.”

“I don't give a flying fuck who they are; I don't know them.” He brushed his hand across his balding pate where he once had a pompadour and finally I recognized the old Larry. The punk. The lost boy. The bully. He checked again on Rafael and began to rise from his chair. “If you want to hear what I have to tell you, lose the friends.”

Mr. Sato was right, I am nosy as hell. I wanted to know the rest of what he had to say, but I didn't want to be alone with him, not when he was so agitated. Clearly, Larry wanted to be the one calling the shots. There was a chance, I thought, that if I could keep him talking he would change his mind and open up.

I asked, “How long did you spy on me?”

“Couple o' years.” He stayed on the edge of his seat, poised to go. “Until that day—”

“Until the fight?”

“That day, anyway.”

“Beto's mom died that day,” I said, watching his face. When he nodded, I asked, “Is that what you want to talk about?”

“Something like that.” He stood abruptly. “When you're free to talk—just you—let me know.”

“You know where to find me,” I said.

“Yeah.” He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt back up over his head and started toward the door. Rafael stepped aside; the man was not a prisoner.

“Do you need a ride anywhere?” I asked, hoping to find out where he was staying at least; Father John did not know.

“Who, me?” He had a sardonic grin. “You offering me a ride in that hearse you drove up in?”

That wasn't my offer to make. I turned to Jean-Paul.

“Certainly,” Jean-Paul told him. “Just tell Rafael where you wish to go.”

“S'okay,” Larry said. “I have wheels.”

We followed him to the door.

“Larry,” I said as I threw the bolts. “Next time you see me, don't rabbit.”

“Yeah, sorry about that.” He paused in the open door to zip up his sweatshirt. “The thing is, I've caught you on TV a couple times, but I haven't seen you in person since way back. So the other day when I saw you in the yard, you know without all that TV makeup crap on, saw just
you
, I freaked. I mean, I really lost it.”

“Why?”

“Because you look so damn much like that Miss Martin. And I know she's dead.”

He stepped outside. With his head hunched low, he checked for enemies, and quickly walked away into the night.

“Looks to me like a
string of substance abuse-related offenses.” Sergeant Richard Longshore, an old friend who works in the Homicide Bureau of the L.A. County Sheriffs, read to me from Larry Nord­quist's rap sheet. I called him first thing Saturday morning, while Jean-Paul was in the shower, and asked him to find out who I was dealing with before I tried to shake the rest of the story out of Larry.

“Petty theft, shoplifting from a liquor store, public nuisance—urinating. He did some weekends in custody for drunk-and-disorderly; looks like he's a scrapper when he has a bag on. There are some possession and possession-for-sale charges that got him county jail time, but he always bounced out early because of overcrowding. We have DUI, DUI, DUI, driving on a suspended license while under the influence. Solicitation, public intoxication.”

“Solicitation?” I said.

“Earned a buck or two on his knees to buy drugs,” Rich said. “He's a problem child, Maggie, but it was all petty crap until he went down for aggravated burglary. Because he took a firearm to that party he drew three years at Soledad and his first strike. The firearm enhancement put him in the bigs, so when he was charged with manslaughter—couple of drunks got into a fight and one died—he drew a full five years as guest of the state, and strike two.”

“Maybe going away for a while was good for him,” I said. “Gave him a chance to dry out, got him into a twelve-step program.”

“Don't hold your breath,” he said. “And take care. If he draws one more strike, he goes down for a long, long time. Guys in his position can get pretty desperate if they have something they need to cover up. And it sounds like maybe your boy does.”

“Did you find anything about Ennis Jones, the man who was once accused of the Bartolini murder?”

“Pretty much what you thought I would,” he said. “He pulled fifteen-to-life on two counts of rape, one of lying-in-wait. Served five before he was sent to a sex aversion program at Atascadero. Died six months later in an altercation with another prisoner, also a convicted sex offender. End of his story.”

Jean-Paul came out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist and began dressing in work clothes: old jeans and a T-shirt.

“Thanks, Rich,” I said.

“Maggie?” Rich said. “Don't try talking to the Nordquist guy alone, all right?”

“He said that what he has to say is for my ears only.”

“Too damn bad,” Rich said. “Unless you want your family to be doing some sad singing and slow walking, you don't go in with the guy alone. Got it?”

“Yessir,” I said, laughing. “Thank you. You've been a big help.”

He offered his usual sign-off, “Watch six,” meaning I should guard my rear.

“What did Rich have to say?” Jean-Paul asked as he tied his ­sneakers.

“Essentially what you said.”

“Smart man, our Sergeant Longshore.” He rose to his feet. “So, what is the plan of attack?”

“Le garage,” I said. “And a trip to the dump.”

His eyes lit up. “In the pickup?”

I handed him the keys, which he pocketed. He loved Mike's big truck and was happy for any opportunity to drive it. For all of his polish, he was still just a boy drawn to planes, trains and automobiles, the bigger the better.

Opening the garage door was like putting out an OPEN HOUSE sign in the front yard. As Jean-Paul and I tackled fifty years' worth of accumulated stuff packed into, onto, and around every shelf, cupboard and workbench, the lookie-loos, the curious, and the concerned from one end of the street to the other felt free to drop by to offer advice and comments, or just to chat. My mother would have served coffee.

There were a couple of invited helpers added to the mix. My former San Francisco housemate, Lyle, and his husband, Roy, arrived carrying a giant box of recyclable trash bags. Lyle, who had always been our resident handyman, started on Dad's workbench, culling useless and duplicate tools to make one good set. We were leaving those tools that the tenants might need, from wrenches to plungers. The rest were up for grabs.

My parents were products of the Great Depression. They were loath to throw away anything that might conceivably have some use left in it, especially if it was connected to an electrical cord or an on/off switch. There was, for example, a drawer full of dead batteries that someone, caught up in magical thinking, must have thought could be brought back to life somehow. The batteries were just part of a vast, sometimes oozing, collection of electronic junk. All of it was put into bags and deposited into the bed of the pickup for delivery to a toxic and electronic-waste station.

Roy, an information technology specialist, went to work on anything computer-related. He removed the hard drives from the dead and outdated computers stacked in a back corner, and consigned the carcasses to the truck. When his corner was cleared, Roy went inside to back up and then wipe Dad's files from the computer in the den. Roy had built the system shortly before Dad died and thought very highly of its capabilities. We decided that it would stay in the house because visiting faculty might find it useful, if for no other reason than that it was connected to a very good laser printer; visiting faculty might not travel with printers.

Jean-Paul went into the cupboards and began pulling down boxes of Christmas ornaments, camping and sports gear, and various semi-rejects that someone thought were too precious to toss but not precious enough to store inside the house. He received lots of opinions from the peanut gallery on the driveway: you could sell that on eBay, you should have a garage sale, the high school might want the well-used and thoroughly outdated sports equipment, and the ­library would love twenty years' worth of
National Geographic
s. Who wouldn't?

When a Dumpster arrived—a refuse box in Bay Area-speak—for nontoxic discards, the deliverymen received a great deal of advice about placement on the driveway: Leave room for the pickup to come and go, don't block the garage door, stay out of the flower borders. Like the rest of the actual working crew, the deliverymen paid scant attention to the kibbitzers and placed the Dumpster where it would be convenient for them to pick up again.

The noise of the Dumpster delivery attracted Mr. and Mrs. Loper from next door.

“How long will that thing be there?” George wanted to know. From his tone and expression it was clear that he did not think the big, ugly metal trash box enhanced his neighborhood.

“They'll pick it up Monday,” I said, tossing in a pair of very dusty old sleeping bags. “And replace it with an empty. I hope to be finished with all of this by the middle of next week.”

George followed me into the garage, talking to my back as we walked. “I've been keeping my eye out for Nordquist this A.M. He always seems to pop up first thing in the morning, so I began to think he might be sleeping in your backyard. Last night I was out there when you drove up, hoping to catch him before he tucked himself in for the night.”

“What were you planning to do with the baseball bat?” I asked.

“Just a little inducement to stay away, if you know what I mean,” he said. “A twelve-bore would put a stop to him.”

“You don't own a twelve-bore,” his wife, Karen, admonished; she had followed us in. “Or any other firearm, for that matter. I won't allow those things in my house.” She winked at me as she tipped her head toward her husband. “Who knows what a hothead might do if there were a lethal weapon handy at the wrong moment?”

George paid no attention to her. He went over to “help” Lyle with Dad's tools.

“So good to see you, Maggie,” Karen Loper said. She had aged a great deal since I saw her last. Living with George Loper would age anyone in a hurry, but it wasn't only wrinkles and gray hair that had changed her. She held her left hand protectively and her left foot lagged a bit when she walked; a stroke?

“Sorry I haven't dropped by sooner to say hello,” she said, standing to the side while I unloaded the family's collection of outdated textbooks from shelves. Boxes and dusty boxes of them. “But you've had so much to do and I didn't want to get in your way. I was talking to Sunny last night—”

“And how is Sunny?” I asked. Her daughter had once been one of my best friends.

“Oh, she's fine. I worried when her youngest went off to college last fall. That empty nest nearly killed me, you know. But not Sunny. Since she made partner at the law firm she's been too busy to notice how empty her house is.”

“Good for her,” I said. “Say hello for me.”

“I shall,” she said. “Was that Evie Miller I saw over here the other day?”

“It was. She's working with University Housing.”

“Too bad about her and Tom.”

“Maggie?” Jean-Paul stood in front of one of the floor-to-ceiling cupboards that lined the back wall and clearly wanted some guidance about what to do with its contents. I was happy he interrupted before Karen got further into her tale of someone else's woe. While Gracie Nussbaum passed along information, Karen was a notorious and sometimes malicious gossip. I very much did not want to hear about Evie and Tom, whoever he was.

“Excuse me,” I said to her.

“Of course.” She patted my shoulder. “I'll get out of your way.”

She wandered out to talk to another neighbor on the driveway, and I went to see what Jean-Paul had found.

Inside the cupboard, among other things, there were two large plastic laundry baskets filled with little developer's boxes full of old family slides and movies. I groaned.

“I will leave them to you,” Jean-Paul said, smiling as he moved on to old paint cans, paintbrushes, and household chemicals that needed to go to the toxic waste dump.

I pulled the laundry baskets down, knelt on the floor beside them and started looking at the notations on the film boxes. There were photos and movies of family trips and school plays, Christmas pageants and birthdays, and roses—many roses—and they needed to be at least looked through. But later. The baskets would have to come home with me to be sorted on some lonely rainy night.

As I shifted the baskets to the corner of the garage designated for things I was keeping, I noticed a handwritten notation on the end of a slide box: GARDEN-CHRYSLERS, and a date. Dad was proud of his Chrysler Imperial roses, to be sure, but what interested me was the film developer's date stamp. I began pawing through the basket, looking for more boxes dated around the time that Mrs. Bartolini died.

“What the hell is wrong with you people?” George Loper shouted, waving what looked like a small jeweler's box perilously close to Lyle's face. Lyle stood looking back at him in stunned silence.

I jumped to my feet and saw that Jean-Paul was already rushing toward the tool bench where George was fulminating at poor Lyle.

“Dammit,” George spat. “A young man gives his life in service to his country, and this is how you people honor him?”

“George!” Karen snapped, coming back into the garage. As she tried to make haste to intercept her husband, her limp became more pronounced.

I put myself between George and Lyle, who stood mute, ashen. “What's the problem here?”

“This.” He opened the little box and pushed it close to my face. I took it from him so I could see what had upset him so.

My brother Mark's Purple Heart. It was given to my parents, along with some other medals and a tightly folded flag, during Mark's funeral.

“Where did you find this?” I asked George.

“In a drawer with a bunch of—” He sputtered, trying to get the next word out. “Crap.”

“I can't imagine why you were going through my father's drawers,” I said quietly, closing the box. “Or why you are so concerned about what he kept in them.”

He had more to say, but I didn't want to hear it. Looking into his eyes, watching his red and angry face, wondering if he would explode like a character in a cartoon, I said, “We can manage from here, Mr. Loper. Thanks for dropping by.”

Karen was at his elbow. “Honestly, George.”

He spun on his heel and stormed out.

“He's a veteran,” Karen said, attempting to apologize for him, or to explain something about him, but gave it up with a shake of her head and walked out behind him. The other neighbors in the drive, perhaps sharing chagrin for being snoopy, drifted away.

“Sorry, Lyle,” I said. I heard my voice break. I knew he was upset, even though he said he wasn't. But he went inside to check on Roy's progress just the same. Jean-Paul took me in his arms and I buried my face against his shoulder, taking a minute to catch my breath. Like my mom, I wear grief for my big brother close to the surface, and George had no business scratching at it.

“Some work crew.” I knew the voice; my Uncle Max had arrived. “Everyone standing around snogging when there's work to be done.”

I looked up over Jean-Paul's shoulder. Uncle Max stood there with his arms akimbo and a grin on his face, a welcome sight. I asked, “Where did you come from?”

“I'm told I was born in Duluth,” he said, ever the smart-ass. “But I was too young to remember. So, what was all that fuss and feathers I walked in on?”

“Snoopy neighbor. Not to worry.”

“Says you.” He tapped Jean-Paul's shoulder as if he were cutting in on a dance floor. “You have a monopoly on the lady's hugs now, Bernard?”

“A lovely thought,” Jean-Paul said, releasing me.

Uncle Max enveloped me in a bear hug and smooched my cheek. Holding me at arm's length, he said, “I got an interesting call early this morning. Very, very early.”

“Did you?” I said, pulling free.

“From Paris. Canal Plus wanted to talk deal. Something about backing your Normandy film project.” He gave Jean-Paul a pointed glance. “Anyone here know anything about that?”

I turned to Jean-Paul. “Does anyone?”