Dead In The Water (Rebecca Schwartz Mystery #4) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series) (12 page)

As for Keil, I wanted to tell him it nearly broke my heart watching him try to be a grownup and the best little boy in the world and now Superboy, and that he didn’t have to be any of that, but I didn’t think he’d believe me.

So I ended up doing what all adults probably did—giving him strokes for doing the stuff that was standing between him and being a kid, his own kid, not everybody’s perfect image of a kid.

It truly
was
amazing what he’d done. Amazingly stupid. He could have been killed. And amazingly unnecessary. And astonishingly inappropriate. But here I was praising it. And even that wasn’t good enough for Keil.

He mumbled, “I didn’t do anything.”

“Hit him, will you, Libby?”

“I can’t. He’s too wet.”

“Oh, Keil, you must be freezing.”

“I’m fine.” His teeth were chattering. I found the heater, turned it on, and drove silently, contemplating the unimaginable—that a much-loved kid like Esperanza could have problems so large she wanted to die.

Marty’s door was opened by a scared-looking Ava. “Esperanza fell in,” I said, racing past her, and no one contradicted me. Libby and I took her in the bathroom and put her under a warm shower, clothes and all, while Keil showered in his mother’s bathroom. Libby found some sweats for Esperanza, and her mother’s terry cloth robe for Julio to wear, while Ava dried their clothes in the Maytag.

While Julio showered, I went down and made Esperanza some bouillon with a chicken-flavored cube, telling myself it wasn’t really chicken soup and I wasn’t being silly, you were supposed to drink hot liquids for hypothermia, and feeling like my own mother. By this time, Ava had changed Libby’s sheets and made Esperanza get in bed.

Before I took the cup up, I had a little conference with Keil. It was agreed that for a mere $7.50, Trap Door would find a way to get Ava out of the house and keep her out for the next hour, while we all recovered.

As I mounted the stairs, I heard his panicked-sounding voice: “Grandma, could you take me to the drugstore? We haven’t got a thermometer, and we have to make real sure Esperanza’s temperature doesn’t go down.”

I couldn’t hear what Ava answered, but the next thing he said was, “Rebecca dropped it.” The boy was resourceful, no question about it.

Esperanza was sitting up on a pile of pillows, hair still wet, but otherwise looking almost normal.

“A little soup?”

She frowned, involuntarily, I was sure—she hadn’t Libby’s bent for candor.

“You don’t like soup?”

“It’s okay.”

“Hot chocolate?”

“Yeah!” She smiled. Really smiled.

Libby smiled, too, wistfully. “Me, too?”

“Sure.”

I practically fell all over myself—and did dribble soup—getting back downstairs, only to find a problem at the bottom—in the form of unexpected guests at the door. It was Warren Nowell and a woman, bearing a fat-humped platter covered in aluminum foil. Still holding the cup, I let them in.

Warren was dressed in a polo shirt and white pants. The woman wore a wrap-around skirt and simple pink blouse. She looked a few years older than he, but her hair was gray and I thought perhaps it had turned prematurely. “Hello, Ms. Schwartz.” His voice was smooth. “This is my wife, Mary Ellen.”

“Please come in.”

“We brought you a ham. We thought with the kids and all, you might not have time to cook.”

I was trying to make appropriate noises and figure out how to take the ham while holding the cup of bouillon and also how to get rid of them without being rude when Julio bellowed, “Hey, Rebecca, do we have any hair conditioner?” It’s possible I blushed. I smiled sheepishly at the Nowells while Libby hollered, “There’s a new batch in the cabinet.” I led them into the kitchen. “That’s Julio Soto. I’m afraid we’re having a little crisis around here at the moment. He took us sailing and his daughter fell overboard. Both he and Keil went in after her, and everyone’s still trying to get warm and calm down.

“I was just going to make Esperanza some hot chocolate and pour myself a glass of wine. Will you join me?”

“We’d love to,” said Mary Ellen, but I thought Warren looked unhappy. She kept talking as I poured their wine and then took milk out of the fridge and poured it into a pan.

“You know, the board met this afternoon and voted Warren acting director.”

“That’s wonderful,” I said absently. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you.” She handed me a box of chocolate—I hadn’t even heard her looking for it—and I wondered where she’d found it. I was so befuddled it took me a moment to realize she, not Warren, had accepted my thanks.

“We’re really going to miss Sadie. You can’t know what a wonderful person she was.”

Julio padded in, barefoot, the robe knotted around him. He held his arms open in a model’s gesture. “You think pink is my color? Oh—Warren. Mary Ellen.”

Mary Ellen said, “It’s all right. Rebecca explained about Esperanza.”

He nodded, undaunted, and continued full speed ahead. “Warren, boy, I thought you hated Chardonnay.”

“Mary Ellen wanted some.”

Mary Ellen said, “You didn’t want wine, Warren? Why didn’t you say so?”

Libby came in. “Where’s the hot chocolate?”

“Coining up,” I said. “Want to take it upstairs?”

She spoke softly, as if her feelings were hurt. “I’ll drink mine down here.”

That was puzzling. I looked my question at Julio, thinking he must have popped into his daughter’s room on the way down. “Esperanza’s gone quiet again,” he said.

“I’ll take it up.” I was glad to get away. Mary Ellen had reminded me a little of Lady Macbeth, with her take-charge manner and her proud talk of Warren’s ascendancy. I shivered a little at the analogy—there was a spot of blood on someone’s hand, and it was someone capable of jamming a letter opener into a person’s eye. Mary Ellen might have the stuff, I thought.

Esperanza had the covers over her head.

“Hot chocolate!” I sang out merrily, as if I hadn’t noticed a thing.

She peeked out, letting me see she’d been crying.

“Can we talk?” I said.

No answer.

“Honey, you learned something in the bay today. I know you did. I felt it when I was holding you on the boat.”

“What?”

“That you don’t want to die. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“I guess so.”

“Sit up and drink.” I offered the cup.

She took it and settled herself on the pillows. When she had sipped a little, I said, “You can tell me about it, really, honey. You know why? Because you’re my client. Have you ever heard of attorney-client privilege?”

She shook her head.

“Well, it means that whatever you tell me has to be a secret. I’m not allowed to tell anybody unless you tell me I can. If I do, I could be punished by the bar.”

“The bar? You mean the place where you drink?”

“No, sweetheart, there’s another kind of bar that means a lawyers’ professional association. If I told a client’s secrets, I could get in big trouble.”

She looked at me, sizing me up, deciding whether she was going to hire me. “Are you really a lawyer?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Am I really your client?”

“If you want to be, I’m taking your case.”

Tears cascaded. She fell against my breast, spilling hot chocolate all over my T-shirt.

“Ouch,” I yelled, but I could still hear what she was blubbering: “I don’t want to go to jail.”

I stroked her hair. “You’re not going to jail, honey. Honest. I guarantee it. Do you believe me?”

She sat back and looked in my eyes, assessing. This was a girl who would do well in business. I think she decided I had an honest face. She nodded.

“Sister Teresa says if you steal something, they put you in jail for it, and
Abuelita
—my grandmother—says you go to hell for it, and Sister Teresa says hell is like jail except you have to stay there forever instead of just forty or fifty years.”

“Okay, let’s start with hell. Now, not everybody believes in it; we already talked about that.”

She nodded.

“But I’m not even sure that people who believe in hell think kids can go there. And the other thing they believe is that you can be forgiven. Remember the two thieves on the cross? That Jesus forgave?”

Her jaw dropped. “How do you know about that? You’re Jewish.”

“How do you know
that
!"

“Daddy told me. I asked him if he liked you, and he said he did but you probably wouldn’t go out with him because he isn’t Jewish and you are. Is that true? You aren’t prejudiced, are you, Rebecca?”

I told my heart to be still and Esperanza that no, I wasn’t prejudiced, but I wasn’t sure lawyers could date their clients’ fathers. And then I asked my client why she was afraid of her father.

Her gold skin turned almost pale. She whispered, “I told him I found it on the beach.”

“The white thing? You told him that about the white thing?”

She stared at her feet. “I lied. I stole it.”

“And you’re afraid he’ll punish you?”

“Yes. I’m afraid he’ll be so mad he’ll send me back to Santa Barbara, and
Abuelita
will tell Sister Teresa, and I don’t know what she’ll do! She might turn me in to the police and get me sent to jail.”

I smiled. “She can’t hurt my client. I don’t know whether kids can go to hell or not, but I guarantee you they can’t go to jail.”

“They can’t?” She looked utterly unbelieving. “But Sister says—”

“Sister’s wrong. But don’t worry. Your dad’s not going to send you back.”

She was alarmed. “You won’t tell him, will you?”

I must have looked flustered. She’d caught me in a conflict of interest. I had a responsibility to let her parent know that nothing was seriously wrong—nothing by adult standards, that is. Didn’t I?

“You promised! Attorney-client privilege.”

That settled it. My responsibility lay with my client.

“Of course I won’t tell him. No problem. Now tell me about the white thing. You know, the law distinguishes between different kinds of stealing. There’s petty theft and grand theft, for instance. Between you and me, legally petty theft isn’t much of a crime. Of course, morally’s another matter, but I’m your lawyer, and the law isn’t allowed to get into moral questions. Now, even if they sent kids to jail—which they don’t, I can’t make that clear enough—what you did isn’t the same as stealing a car, say. That would be grand theft, and a grownup might get a few years for that, but—” I shrugged “—a random white thing probably isn’t worth very much.”

About halfway through this speech, a change started to come over her face. I thought it was just worry, but it had congealed into misery by the time I finished.

Her voice trembled. “What if it
is
worth a lot?”

This was getting frustrating. “Darling, do you think you could tell me what it is?”

“I’m not
sure
what it is. That’s why I gave it to Sadie. So she could tell me.”

“Well, what does it look like? Besides a brain, I mean? What do you
think
it is?”

She was very solemn. “A pearl of great price.”

“Ah. It must be a freshwater pearl. Those are the ones with little wrinkles—like convolutions in a brain.”

She shook her head. “My mom has a necklace made out of freshwater pearls. They look more like Rice Krispies than brains. This one’s different. It’s not very round either, but it’s more like a rock—and it’s a
whole
lot bigger.”

“How big?”

“A little smaller than a golf ball.”

“It couldn’t be a pearl then, honey. Pearls don’t come that big.”

“Oh, yes, they do. I did a report on them.” There was authority in her voice. She straightened her spine and began to recite. “The largest pearl ever found was called the Pearl of Allah. It weighed fourteen pounds. A native from an island found the humongous white thing on the inside of a giant clam. The only problem was, the clam closed both of its shells while he was looking at it, which killed him. That was in 1934.”

She was adorable, but I had to laugh. I was utterly charmed out of my mind, and laughing my head off. I couldn’t understand why she’d stopped and purposefully furrowed the spot between her brows, disapproval personified.

“You don’t believe me!” If she’d been standing, she’d have stamped her foot.

“I do, I do, it’s not that at all. I’m laughing because you’re so cute.”

She summoned every bit of her ten-year-old dignity. “I
prefer
to be taken seriously.”

“But I do take you seriously. It’s just that my boyfriend—”

“Your boyfriend!”

I could see the idea distressed her. “My ex-boyfriend does exactly what you’re doing, that’s all. Only he’s out of school, so he doesn’t write reports. He’s a newspaper reporter. He writes news stories and then quotes himself. He’s very cute when he does it, too.”

“Oh.” Still hurt. But I was touched by the way she hated the boyfriend talk. She really wanted me to date her dad. Oh, well. It was an odd thing to do for a client, but if she insisted—

She said sullenly, “It was an
oral
report. I was
supposed
to memorize it.”

“Could I hear the rest of it?”

“I guess so.” She drew up her spine again. And suddenly I saw a chance to make points.

“Hold it a minute. I’ll teach you something. Want to see how a lawyer makes the jury listen? When you talk to me, make me vibrate.”

“Huh?”

“
Imagine
you’re making me vibrate. It’s a trick for projecting your voice.” (Naturally, I didn’t mention I’d learned this, not at Clarence Darrow’s knee, but in my acting class.)

“Two years after the horrible tragedy,” she resonated, “a man who came to the island cured the chief’s son of a terrible disease, so the chief gave him the pearl. The man was an American. But the chief told the man he shouldn’t ever sell the pearl, or a great catastrophe would strike his family.”

I vibrated like crazy on “catastrophe.”

“So naturally the man kept the pearl, which was known far and wide ever after as the biggest pearl in the whole world. He could never sell it even though in 1971—no, I think it was 1972—no, ’71. In 1971 the Guinness Book of World Records said it was worth four million dollars.” Her stage presence dissolved. “You think that puts it in the grand theft category?”