The Color of Light (28 page)

After a brief conversation, arrangements with the friend were made. He would leave the City before freeway rush hour that afternoon and arrive at our door as soon as traffic allowed. After we said good-bye, I called Evie Miller at the housing office to tell her that there was a delay for some repair work. We put off her inspection for a week—it didn't seem to be a problem for her. By then, my truck should be finished and I could take care of both tasks in one quick trip.

It was early evening in France. I called my French grandmother and told her when Guido and I planned to arrive. She was delighted, especially so because the government had recalled Jean-Paul from his consular post and he would be returning to France at about the same time. “Such a nice young man,” she said. I suppose that to a woman in her nineties, a man of fifty could be considered young.

Out in the hall, there was a great rustle of plastic and hardware as the cleaning crew got ready to decamp. I was handed a bill that made my eyes water. Thank God, Mom had good home owner's insurance.

“There was a nice coat of wax on the hardwood floor,” I was told by the man who handed me the bill. “You're lucky. There won't be much of a stain at all.”

I followed them out and found Jean-Paul dozing on the porch in the wicker rocker with his feet up on the porch rail. Max and Mr. Sato seemed to have settled their issues. The plants, still in cans, were arranged in the borders as they would be planted. Mr. Sato was working on the roses I had managed to salvage so even if the colors in the flower borders would no longer follow the order of the color spectrum, at least some of Dad's beloved Chrysler roses would be among them.

Peace, at last, I thought, looking out across the lawn, enjoying the fresh breeze off the Bay, the slight salt tang in the air mixed with jasmine growing on a trellis in the Lopers' side yard. There had been a time when I knew every person on the street. During the short time I had been back, I came to understand that the big secret my family kept, namely my origins, was petty stuff compared to the secrets some of our neighbors held tight. What a terrible burden, I thought, a secret could be.

I said a silent farewell to them all, and went inside to pack.

Sometimes, when something is entirely out of place it takes a moment to realize what you're actually seeing. The red leather jewel box was lying in the middle of the upstairs hall, open and upside down. I felt a moment of panic until I saw the dragonfly brooch a few feet away and apparently intact. It was only when I stooped to pick up the brooch that all the implications of it being where it was flooded in, and real panic ensued. I pushed open the door to the room I had been sharing with Jean-Paul and saw a jumble of clothes and books and overturned drawers in the middle of the floor. All of the furniture had been pulled away from the walls and left in higgledy-piggledy disarray.

My first thought was that one of the cleaners had come upstairs looking for loot, but that made no sense. A little pilfering, sure, but not this, not a thorough tossing; a member of the crew would be sure he'd be caught. That's when I saw that a window in my former bedroom was broken. I went over and looked down, saw the ladder against the side of the house. During the cleaners' hubbub downstairs behind the plastic wall, someone had broken in upstairs. My next thought was to get the hell out. Now.

I ran down the hall, clutching the brooch in one hand while I tried to pry my phone out of my pocket with the other. He was no more than a blur, a flying tackle launched from the side out of Max's bedroom door. He dropped me on my belly and slapped the phone out of my hand as he pulled my arm behind me, bending it up toward my shoulder until I thought it would pop out of the socket. With his other hand, he pressed the tip of a knife against my throat.

I cried out, “What do you want?”

“You know damn well.” He stank of old sweat and hot fear. “Where is the letter?”

“What letter?”

“Her letter. She hid it in this house.”

“I don't know anything about a letter.”

“You do,” he said. “You showed it to my son-in-law.”

I heard what sounded like “whuff,” and suddenly his weight was off me; his knife hit the wall beside my head and skittered down the hall. I came up off the floor running.

“Maggie?”

I turned at the sound of Jean-Paul's voice. He had Chuck Riley face down, hog-tying him with the cord from Uncle Max's bathrobe.

“Did he hurt you,
chérie
?”

I shook out my arm; it hurt. “Where did you come from?”

His chin flicked toward the end of the hall. “I came up to find you.”

“But—”

“Please telephone,” he said as he bounced Chuck's head on the floor and ordered him to quit squirming.

I retrieved both my phone and the knife. Why bother with 911? I called the chief of police. “We have your man,” I told him. “Please send someone before he gets too squirrelly.” And then I called Uncle Max, who was still in the front yard, and suggested he should get upstairs, pronto.

“Chuck,” I said, keeping my distance in case Jean-Paul lost control of him. “Tell me about the letter.”

“Fuck you,” he said.

“Okay, then. Who pulled the trigger that day? You were standing behind Trinh Bartolini when she was shot. Who pulled the trigger?”

He strained to look up at me, seemed confused by the question. “How could you know that?”

“Who shot Trinh Bartolini?”

He suddenly lost his starch, stopped struggling and turned his face to the wall. Through choking sobs he said, “God, she was so beautiful.”

“Was it Duc?”

“That damn gook, he didn't have to do that.”

“He was aiming at you.”

“He was only supposed to scare her,” he said. “To make her back off. The feebs were asking questions. We needed her to stop before she fucked up everything.”

“You gave him the gun,” I said.

“So what?”

“You blackmailed him after he shot her, didn't you?”

“I couldn't let him get off scot-free, could I?”

“For killing her? Or for failing to kill you?”

“Both, I guess. But it doesn't matter anymore.”

“What have you been looking for?”

“A letter.” He raised his head as sirens approached. “She said she wrote a letter, and that if anything happened to her or to your family, the letter would come to light.”

“You think it's in this house?”

He dropped his face to the floor, defeated. “I know it is.”

“You broke in to look for it.”

“Old George Loper was afraid someone would find Al's gun,” he said with a smirk. “Fuck the gun. That letter is a bomb. A nuclear bomb with my ass in its sights.”

“Jean-Paul.” I snuggled against
him in the backseat of the San Francisco consul general's Town Car, happy that Rafael was driving us to the airport. “What is it that you really do? I mean, what did you do before you accepted the consular appointment? I know what you've told me, but you're always just a bit vague about it.”

That shrug again. “I'm a businessman. A quite boring businessman.”

“That's what you always say, but I don't believe it anymore.”

“No?” He smiled, a funny little smile that was full of secrets.

“No. Exactly what kind of business are you in that you can make a call and someone tells you that Thai Van, an obscure man, died in a jungle shootout thirty years ago? You traced a very old shipment of guns, with serial numbers, from the manufacturer to the U.S. Army by placing a call. Another call and someone faxes equally old records of Khanh Duc's international bank transfers from a bank in Berkeley to an account in the Cayman Islands, and from there to Bangkok, as well as regular payments to his ‘employee' Chuck Riley. Quite boring businessmen don't have that variety of contacts no matter where they went to school.”

“But, my dear, it was a very good school.”

“But a school of a very certain sort,” I said. “They also teach whatever form of martial arts you used to take down Riley?”

“When a man sees the woman he loves held captive with a knife to her throat, who knows what he is capable of doing to free her?”

“You never quite answer the question, do you?” I said. “Monsieur Bernard, when you go back to France and pick up where you left off, exactly what will you be doing?”

“I won't pick up where I left off at all,” he said, smooching my cheek. “I will be with you, a fresh start.”

“Okay,” I said, pulling a slender book out of my carry-on bag. “Let's trade information. I will give you this book if you give me a straight answer.”

He looked at the title and laughed:
Opticks: Or, a Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions, and Colours of Light
, by Isaac Newton. “This is what you have to bargain with?”

“All things are not what they seem,” I said. “Pure sunlight seems to have no hue, no color at all. But in fact, it has all the colors that exist. You wear the mantle of a quite boring businessman, but we both know you are anything but; you are, my friend, very colorful. The same can be said for this book.”

“You find this book fascinating?”

“No, quite boring,” I said. “Difficult to read, especially for a child. After my father read it with me when he was teaching me about optics, he could be very confident that I would never open that book again. But, like you, it holds a very interesting secret.”

He pressed the book between his hands, felt the cover, and then he smiled. “
Bien sûr
. May I open it?”

“Will you answer my question?”

“Of course, my dear. If we're to share a life, you will need to know everything.”

“Then go ahead.”

He opened Newton's treatise and thumbed through the pages before he flipped to the inside of the back cover, ran his fingers around the edges, found the tiny slit Dad had made near the spine, and slipped out an envelope.

The day before she died, Trinh Bartolini mailed a letter to my parents. She apologized for getting angry when Mom advised her to report the extortion to the authorities. She wrote,

Where I come from, officials are not to be trusted. I had hoped that in this country that would not be true. But I have found that it can be. It is an official who asks of me a price I would rather die than pay. But, for the safety of my husband and my son, I will continue to do what I know I must. I beg you not to turn against them because of what I have been forced to become. And I beg you to tell no one, especially the police.

Help me protect my dear husband from ever learning my shameful secret. I am afraid for what he might do. A man from the FBI came to my house today and I had to tell him that you were mistaken. Please help me and do the same. If they investigate further Bart will find out and others might become dangerous.

Whatever happens to me, please look after my Beto. Tell him his mother will always watch over him.

Jean-Paul read through the letter twice before he slipped it back into its envelope. “She was afraid.”

“She had reason to be,” I said.

“Is this what Riley and Duc were looking for?”

“It isn't what they thought it was, is it?” I took the letter from him and slipped it back into its hiding place.

Jean-Paul watched the San Francisco skyline slide past his window. After a moment or two, he turned to me. “How did you know where to look?”

“I took one last walk-through before we put the house into the hands of Lyle's friend. I was thinking about Dad and what he would have said about the flower borders now—pretty enough, but what's the point of the pattern?—when I saw Newton's
Opticks
on the shelf. I couldn't bring myself to put it in the library's book sale, and it isn't special enough for the university, so I left it for the tenants. But in the end, I couldn't abandon it. One day I might be a grandmother and I might want to teach my grandchildren about the nature of light.”

He smiled his upside-down smile. “Nothing gets past you, does it?”

“I might be slow on the uptake, but I usually get what I'm after,” I said. “So, I showed you mine. Now it's your turn. Jean-Paul, what is it that you actually do?”

He wrapped me in his arms and pulled me against him. “Well, to begin...”

Edgar Award-winner Wendy Hornsby is the author of ten previous mysteries, eight of them featuring Maggie MacGowen. She is a retired professor of history at Long Beach City College. She welcomes visitors and e-mail at
www.wendyhornsby.com

Also by Wendy Hornsby

The Maggie MacGowen Mystery Series

Telling Lies

Midnight Baby

Bad Intent

77th Street Requiem

A Hard Light

In the Guise of Mercy

The Paramour's Daughter

The Hanging

Other Mysteries

No Harm

Half a Mind

Nine Sons
[stories & essays]