If Walls Could Talk (5 page)

“I can get it,” I said.

“Let me,” Stan winked and waved off my protest as he rolled toward the liquor cabinet. Once hale and hearty, Stan had worked construction with my dad for nearly twenty years, until one terrible miscalculation had resulted in a fall from a roof and two smashed vertebrae. My parents had seen him through several grim months of hospitalization, surgeries, and physical therapy. When Stan was finally released from a rehabilitation center, my dad built a wheelchair ramp onto the side of the house, widened the downstairs bathroom, and moved him in. Not long afterward, Stan helped Dad cope with my mother’s sudden death from heart failure.

Stan—partly out of guilt, partly out of the need for something to do—had elected himself my “chief cook and bottle washer,” by which he meant my ersatz business manager, writing up schedules and charming clients with his exaggerated Oklahoman accent and homespun wisdom. I couldn’t get him to stop answering the work phone in Turner Construction’s home office.

“You okay, hon?” Stan asked as he handed me a shot glass of amber tequila. “You look worse’n a possum the day after.”

“Something terrible happened today,” I said, taking a fortifying drink before giving both men the rundown of the events at Matt’s place on Vallejo Street. As I wrapped up the sorry tale, I asked my father the question foremost on my mind: “Is there any way Kenneth could have done it to himself somehow?”

“There
are
cases of people committing suicide with a circular saw,” mused my dad as he sprinkled black pepper into the sauce.

“Seriously?”

He nodded.

I didn’t even want to
think
about how that would work.

“Assuming this was some kind of an accident, what’s the normal process of inquiry?” I asked. “How should the police treat it?”

“They have to file an incident report, especially in serious cases. On top of everything else, Matt’ll need a police report for the insurance claim. If it had been one of our job sites, Cal-OSHA would come in and investigate, though since this was a homeowner project instead of a legitimate contractor, they’d stay out of it. Leave it to the cops.”

California Office of Safety and Health Administration, or Cal-OSHA, was the government’s workplace watchdog and the bane of every builder. On the other hand, its mere existence saved lives by striking fear into the heart of any employer who wanted to skimp on safety measures.

“You know who you should call?” Stan said. “Graham.”

“Graham? Graham
Donovan
?” I asked.

“Yup. He’s working—”

“The last thing I need right now is to see Graham Donovan,” I interrupted, shaking my head. Graham used to work with my father, and I had a mad crush on him while I was in graduate school until I transferred my affections to my now-ex, Daniel. I hadn’t seen Graham since before I got married, which was just as well. I certainly didn’t want to open up
that
can of worms.

“Suit yourself,” Stan said with a shrug.

“The officer who responded to the call didn’t seem to be taking it very seriously,” I mused. “Kenneth—the injured guy—said it was an accident, and the cop seemed to believe him.”

Dad shrugged and started slicing a fresh loaf of sourdough for garlic bread. “Why wouldn’t he believe him? Probably under pressure to be in too many places at one time. Police officers are workingmen—they get points for closing cases, not for asking questions.”

“Workingmen and -
women
,” I corrected him automatically, leaning back against the counter and sipping my drink. “Dad, I’ve been thinking. . . .”

“Uh-oh. Serious trouble.”

“I told Matt I would take over the remodel.”

“From what I read in the papers, your buddy Matt can’t afford our services.”

Though he had passed the business on to me, Dad continued to take a proprietary interest, reflected in the use of the royal “we.” Since I stubbornly clung to a vague hope that he would step back in and take over, I didn’t discourage this.

“Luckily he has a friend in the construction business,” I said. “And this isn’t charity; Matt will cover our expenses, and then we’ll take a cut of the sales price. It’s Pacific Heights, after all.”

“Is this about your ex?”

That one came out of left field. “How would this be about Daniel?”

“He seems to inspire strange ideas. Unless I miss my guess, your plan to run away to Paris was about that SOB.”

“Moving to Paris was about
Paris
, not Daniel.”

He just snorted and shook a liberal amount of fragrant oregano into the sauce.

I noticed the jar was getting low. My mother used to gather herbs from her lush garden every year, hanging them to dry from the exposed beams in the kitchen. When they were ready, she would strip the leaves and store them in fat little marmalade jars that still sported labels written in her fluid, rounded handwriting. I smiled, feeling her presence for a moment.

My mother’s passing was a tragedy for our family. But its aftermath also became a major stumbling block in my attempts to move on with my life, post-divorce. After eight strife-filled years of marriage, travel, and academic striving—Daniel and I were both anthropologists, he a professor at UC-Berkeley, I a lowly contract worker—I had come to the conclusion that, in general, people seemed kinder, more intelligent, and more interesting when I couldn’t actually comprehend what they were saying.

So during the last excruciating death throes of my marriage, I had come up with a plan: I would run away to Paris, where they appreciated women of a certain age and where I wouldn’t be able to understand anyone. Retreating to an obscure, anonymous pied-à-terre
,
I would indulge myself in licking my still-tender psychic wounds. From time to time I would emerge to eat my fill of
glacé aux cerises
, stroll along the Champs Elysées
,
loiter in the galleries of the Louvre, and maybe even take some handsome, monolingual French man as a lover. But otherwise I would return to my Left Bank refuge to continue my exquisitely solitary pity party. I figured if I kept my expenses low by not eating, this sort of behavior could go on for years.

But with my mother’s unexpected death, all bets were off.

My father, who had remained strong and resilient through two tours in Vietnam, fell apart. His business languished; clients threatened. Stan took me aside and told me he didn’t think my father would be able to resume the responsibilities of the job anytime in the near future. So I had stepped in, fully expecting my stewardship of Turner Construction to be a temporary fix.

Just a few months. A couple more. We were going on two years now.

As my many employment-challenged friends would be more than happy to remind me, being handed a successful, profitable business during these difficult economic times didn’t exactly inspire sympathy. But I hadn’t asked for this. I wanted to become a hauntingly thin martyr in a tiny Paris apartment; I wanted my ex-husband to feel guilty for as long as possible; I
wanted
to be left utterly alone for a year or ten.

But as the song says, you can’t always get what you want.

“I also found some cartridges,” I said, changing the subject. “Thirty-eight caliber.”

“Was someone shot?”

“Not that I know of. But it seemed odd to find the bullets at Matt’s place, what with everything else going on.”

“This sort of thing wouldn’t happen if we had some form of logical gun control in this country,” Stan declared.

I sighed inwardly. The mention of gun control was bound to send my father off on a tirade concerning the Second Amendment, and judging by the wicked smile on Stan’s face this was precisely his goal. Stan’s paralysis had radicalized him, and with the rare verve of the recently converted, he had become a self-appointed champion of the masses, demanding access to health care and opportunities for all. I imagined that my father, outwardly disgusted at this turn of events, was secretly thrilled. There was nothing he liked better than arguing politics.

Saved by the arrival of two fifteen-year-old boys.

They shuffled in through the back door, dressed nearly identically: jeans sagging low to show off plaid cotton boxers, oversized T-shirts under dark blue UC-Berkeley hoodies, baseball caps on sideways, longish hair falling over their eyes. The only difference was that my stepson, Caleb, was dark, while Dylan—Matt’s son—had his father’s sandy hair and bright blue eyes.

“Hey,” Dylan said to no one in particular.

“Hey,” echoed Caleb, lifting his chin in greeting.

The deep, grown-up timbre of Caleb’s voice always took me by surprise. Try as I might to move on, I still remembered him as the five-year-old I had come to know and love when I married his father, or as the thirteen-year-old who cried, begging me not to leave when we divorced two years ago. The man-child in front of me was achingly familiar, yet so like a stranger. My fingers itched to pull up his pants and brush the chestnut hair out of his near-black eyes.

Caleb opened the refrigerator’s freezer compartment, foraged for a moment, and pulled out two ice-cream sandwiches. He handed one to Dylan.

I waited, but neither said a word, much less offered an explanation of what they were doing here. Caleb knew he was always welcome at my house, but without wheels Oakland was a long haul from San Francisco. He had to take BART—our local version of a subway—and transfer to a bus to get to me. Usually he called first and tried to cajole a ride.

“What’s up, Goose?” I asked. “Dylan?”

Both boys grunted and acknowledged me with slight lifts of the chin. In hopes it might improve the tenor of our conversation, I reached over and pulled at the white cords hanging from their ears, releasing the ever-present iPod earbuds.

“What are you guys doing here?”

“Mom’s out of town, and I’m not supposed to stay at my mom’s house alone.” Left unsaid was Caleb’s disdain for his father’s new wife, Valerie. As long as she was at Daniel’s place, Caleb didn’t stay there if he could help it.

“I thought you were spending a few days at Dylan’s house.”

The boys exchanged a significant look. They could be sullen and quiet, and were quick to revert to grunting behavior, but they weren’t usually evasive with me. No need. As a former stepmother, I had no legal rights to Caleb; our ties were pure affection. I was in no position to mete out punishment, and they both knew it.

“Can’t,” Caleb said finally. “Dylan’s mom is in Europe, and his dad . . .”

“Is something up with Matt?”

“Yeah. Dad was, like . . .” Dylan said, trailing off with a shrug.

“What?”

“Kind of, like . . . arrested.”

“M
att was
arrested
?”

“I guess.”

“For what? When?”

Dylan shrugged and stuffed the last half of his ice cream sandwich in his mouth.

“He might not be totally arrested,” Caleb said. “It was sort of, like, they wanted to ask him questions. But they were, like, probably he wasn’t gonna be home tonight. I was thinking Dylan and me could stay here.”

“Dylan and
I
,” I corrected him. “Of course you can. But, Dylan, does anyone know you’re here? Matt must be beside himself.”

“He called,” Dylan said, sticking his hand deep into his jeans pocket and rummaging around. The search process took a while. Finally he brought out a balled-up scrap of paper and handed it to me. “This is his lawyer’s number. Dad told me I could hang here with Caleb if it was okay with you.”

“Of course it’s okay with me. You can stay as long as you need to. But did your dad say anything about what happened?”

He shook his head, his young brow sketched with worry despite his nonchalant demeanor. Dylan was one of those kids raised in economic privilege but emotional famine. Matt was devoted to him, but Dylan’s flighty mom had primary custody, and he was too often left to fend for himself. I imagined he was wondering who would be in his corner if his dad landed in prison.

“I knew that whole do-it-yourself thing sounded like a bad idea,” mumbled Dylan. “Some guy died at that house he’s fixing up. That Kenneth guy.”

“Kenneth?” My voice shook.

“Yeah.”

“Kenneth
died
? When?”

Dylan shrugged again and looked away. I tried to meet Caleb’s dark gaze.

“We’re gonna go watch something, ’kay?”

“Okay . . . sure,” I said, temporarily giving up on the hunt for info. “Are you hungry?”

“I guess. Maybe later,” Caleb said as they both trailed out of the room.

My dad met my eyes for a long moment before handing me the portable phone.

“I’ll put on some more pasta,” he said.

 

A series of phone calls yielded the information that Matt was being held in the prosaically named “Jail Number Two,” but that no official charges had yet been filed. His lawyer, a fast-talking New Yorker, arranged for me to speak with Matt at nine the next morning. After a restless night, I tried to act as though I visited friends in the slammer every day while I fed the boys breakfast and drove them into San Francisco.

Halfway across the bridge I rushed to flip the radio off, but not before Matt’s name was mentioned as a person of interest in the suspicious death of his “business associate” Kenneth Kostow. I glanced at the rearview mirror to see whether Dylan had noticed. He was looking out at the bay; white strands hung from his ears, and his mouth moved silently, as though reciting rap lyrics along with whatever he was listening to on his iPod. Good.

Unfortunately, Matt’s high-profile celebrity status meant that most of the boys’ schoolmates would have heard the news by now; we’d be lucky if it wasn’t already splashed all over the local newspapers and the Internet.

I dropped the boys off at University High, their exclusive private school in Pacific Heights, not far from the scene of yesterday’s terrible discovery. I doled out money for lunch, buses, and BART, and watched as they pulled their laden backpacks onto their young, slouching spines. Worried, I told Dylan to call me on my cell if he needed anything at all.