Life to Life: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (18 page)

It's a smart machine and it knows what it
has to do to reach the goal.

You are God and you built it with those
three in mind.

But tell me, now. Tell me honestly. Which
one of those guys did you respect the most?

Chapter Twenty-Two: Echoes on the Wind

Comedians have long enjoyed the names of the
communities in the San Gabriel Valley, and they have extracted a
lot of mileage from them.

"Do you mind if I go to town, dear?"—"I
don't care if you go to Cucamonga, my love."

"No, I didn't say I wanted to lose ya. I said
I'd rather be in Azusa."

The tradition lives on,
with George Burns in a recent TV commercial where he assures us
that the Visa card is accepted worldwide...even in West
Covina.

It's all in fun, of
course, with no put-down intended. They just like the ring of the
names. All are actually very lovely communities that have moved
with the times but still provide a pleasant small-town atmosphere
at the fringe of me- gatropolis L.A.

Azusa is nestled into the
foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains just minutes east of
Pasadena. Close neighbors are the City of Hope and Santa Anita race
track. Nearby also are various recreational and wilderness areas.
And it looks like it would be a nice place to live—broad avenues
lined with stately palms, quiet residential streets with neat lawns
and riotously blooming shrubs and trees—good place to raise kids, I
would think. You still see white frame cottages nestled in with
newer stucco and brick, these neighborhoods giving way here and
there to spanking new condo and town- house developments, apartment
complexes, etc.

The old central business
district has sadly gone the way of most small towns in this area
today, defeated by the trend toward dispersal and the proliferation
of upscale shopping malls and trade centers, reduced now to the
low-rent business sector and featuring a lot of antique stores,
specialty shops, and empty buildings. But it's still an interesting
town and very much alive. It officially bills itself as "the canyon
city"—referring to San Gabriel Canyon which cuts through the
mountains at that point for access to the wilderness areas, the
north slope, and high desert towns like Pear- blossom, Littlerock,
and Antelope Center. There are Indian signs all through that canyon
but apparently nobody knows who put them there or when.

I went crawling in there
at three
a.m
. and
found a small motel on Foothill Boulevard. Had to get the guy out
of bed to rent me a room. It was clean, adequate. All I wanted was
a nap, a shower, and a shave—and that's all I got; I was out of
there at eight o'clock, had breakfast in a Winchell's Donut Shop,
then went looking for the real Ann Marie Mathison.

I found a guy at city hall who remembered
"the movie cowboy couple" who'd come from Hollywood to open a
riding academy in the canyon but he knew very little about them;
he sent me to the local historical society and they sent me to the
local newspaper office who referred me to their microfilm files at
the local library.

Everyone was very
cooperative and wanted to be helpful but let's face it, thirty-five
years is a long time and Azusa was not a one-horse town even that
long ago. I did find a one-line mention of Ann Marie's birth but
that is all I had found after a two-hour search of the old weekly
newspapers.

So I took a drive up along
the canyon road. The deep gash through those mountains was
obviously cut by the San Gabriel River from time out of mind as it
carried the seasonal run-off of melting snow from the high
elevations. In modern times there had been disastrous floods from
that river until the hand of man tamed it and corraled the waters
behind monstrous dams. Now the San Gabriel from Morris Dam south is
a dry rocky bed. The canyon road skirts high along the western face
of the wide gorge and is something of a misnomer if you think of a
canyon road as a trail that runs along the bottom of the gorge.
What runs along the bottom of that gorge is not fit for travel by
man or machine—and once you reach the first dam, which seems to
rise several hundred feet above the canyon floor, there is more
than a hundred thousand acre-feet of water backed up into several
reservoirs; the road runs high above those.

I did not travel beyond
that point—several miles above Azusa—but turned around and headed
back because there simply was no habitation in that canyon. I had
passed a couple of horse properties at the edge of town; possibly
one of those could have been the Mathison place.

I had no vibes at all. But Selma had advised
me to go to Azusa so I was there and just flailing around. And I
guess I got lucky. Because I struck vibes at the first stop.

It sat across the dry
riverbed upon a small knoll, a really beautiful spread with plenty
of shade trees and white corrals, a dozen or so horses in
individual stalls and a gorgeous two-story house behind a white
picket fence—but it all looked fairly new so I had no illusions
that this could be the place where Tony and Maizey had sought
refuge from the vicissitudes of tinseltown. I was flailing,
though, so I went on through the gate and up the steps and punched
the doorbell. I punched it several times, received no response,
decided what the hell, returned to the car and stood there gazing
about for a few seconds then leaned in and laid on the
horn.

An aged black man shuffled
around the corner of the house and laid a disgusted gaze on me;
said, testily, "Ain't nobody home here, man. Can't you see?" He
wore crisp clean overalls and spit-shined shoes, a napkin at his
throat; held a chicken leg in one hand and a biscuit in the
other.

I stepped back into the yard and joined him
in the shade of an oak; told him, "Sorry to disturb your
lunch."

"I ain't buying nothing, man," he said
defensively. "Ain't nobody else here that can. So you best just
spend your time on down the road there."

This guy must have been
eighty. Uncle Remus in the flesh, cottony hair and all, but tall
and straight and proud and a very intelligent gleam in the eyes.
That is when I got the vibe.

"I'm not selling," I told him. "I'm
searching."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"What you after?"

"I'm after Maizey McCall."

He chuckled; said, "Shit," then turned
around and walked away.

I followed him to a redwood table in the
backyard, sat down, helped myself to a tall glass of iced tea.

He gleamed at me and said, "Just help
yo'self."

I said, "Okay," and took a drumstick from a
Colonel Sanders box. "Call me Ash," I said, around the
drumstick.

He nibbled at his; said, "I'm Ben," then
nibbled some more while he told me, "She was somethin' else, that
woman. But she been gone the longest time."

I asked, "Where'd she go?"

"I seen her on television once or twice. Oh
my, that's been..."

I said, "About thirty years ago."

"I guess so. Yes I guess so."

"This her place?"

"Lord no. She done sold that place when she
went back to work on television. It ain't been around here for the
longest time. They done built some new little houses on that
propitty—you come up from town?"

I said, "Yeah."

"Then you come past it. Used to be the T bar
M, best damn saddle horses west of El Paso; now it's Canyon
Country Estates or some damn thing like that. You come right past
it."

"Did you know Tony, too?"

He nibbled the drumstick clean then replied,
"He give me the job. I mean right off. He come to town one day, I
got the job the next. Best damn saddle horses west of El Paso."

"He knew horses, then."

"The best. Best I ever seen. Not like me. I
feed 'em and carry their water. That man tells them saddle horses
how to act. Let me tell you, whoo-eee, them damn saddle horses
don't give him no sass back. They just do it."

“
Too bad he had to die so
young.”

"Yah-suh, that's a fact, that man was too
young to die."

"Especially with the new baby and all."

"That's a fact." He chuckled.
"Especially..."

"What?"

"That miracle baby."

"What do you mean, Ben?"

He chuckled again and reached for another
drumstick. "Just help yo'self."

I said, "I'm fine, thanks. What about—?"

"These are nice folks here. I got my own
apartment. I got my own garage, my own car. Come and go as I
please, if'n I don't stay too long. Don't feed no horses, don't
carry no water. Don't even shovel no shit."

"What do you do, then?"

"I am ree-tired."

"Really!"

"That's a fact. Carried water and shoveled
shit for these folks for twenty years. They say that's enough. Now
I just reelax and keep an eye on the place when they gone. Like
now."

"That's great," I said. "Beats hell out of
an old folks home."

"That's a fact."

"Uh, you were telling me about the miracle
baby, Ben."

"That's what she done called it, sho."

"Why did she call it that?"

"Well, because they all done said she ain't
gonna have no babies, that's why."

"Who all said that?"

"All them fancy doctors. She seen 'em all, I
guess. One after the other. After they all get done telling her she
ain't gonna have no babies, then she up and has one all by herself
with no help from them. So that child was a miracle, she said."

"What did the doctors say
about it?"

"Whoo-eee. I guess they faces is red. Old
Doc Timkins here, he sho was."

I said, "Is Doc Timkins still around?"

"If he is he must have
both feet in the grave. That's a fact. 'Cause I got
one
in, and he always
been
old
Doc to
me."

I said, "Ben... thank you for sharing lunch
with me."

"You got enough?"

"I got plenty," I assured him.

And I went away from there convinced that I
had, even though it was no more than a word upon the winds of
time.

"Different," Selma had told me, of Ann
Marie.

How
different?

"Miracle," Ben said.

That was different enough for me. But I sure
wanted a shot at old Doc Timkins.

Chapter Twenty-Three: Shades of
Difference

I stopped at the first pay
phone and contacted Francois. He was beside himself with anger and
frustration. His legal team was continuing to battle a stone wall
in their attempts to have Annie released. Complicating that
situation further, the D.A. was now preparing to file additional
murder charges. I advised Francois that I might be onto something
and suggested that he simmer down and let due process run its
course.

Francois suggested that I
was crazy as hell if I thought that he could relax for a moment
with Annie behind bars. He also suggested that maybe I was a bit
too relaxed.

I suggested a place where
Francois might go and ended the conversation on that
note.

Then I called my own
number and told the machine to cough up my messages. There were
two: one from Paul Stewart and the other from a female assistant
D.A. named Alvarez. The message was the same from both: come in and
let's talk.

It was shortly past noon
when I made the third call, this (me to the county medical
association's physician's referral service. I was looking for
Timkins, of course, and they had two of them in their registry; one
was in Santa Monica and the other in Glendora, a community
neighboring Azusa, both in general practice.

So I called Glendora. The
woman I talked to there assured me that her Dr. Timkins could not
possibly have been in practice in Azusa or anywhere else in the
early 1950s because he had not been born by that time.

Then the doctor himself
came on the line, pleasant and helpful, wondering if maybe I was
looking for his grandfather who had practiced medicine in the area
for more than forty years before his retirement in 1964.

I said yes, that must be the one, too bad,
and when did he die.

Young Dr. Timkins corrected my hasty
conclusion, informing me that the old boy was hale and hearty at
ninety-one and from every indication would outlive us all.

That revelation sent me into a whole new set
of shivers and an interesting interview with Jud Timkins.

He still lives in Azusa,
though now in a very lovely private nursing home. He does not see
too well and does not always appear to hear what is said to him but
he gets around under his own power and the mental faculties seem
sharp enough except for occasional lapses. Stacks of medical
journals and newsmagazines in his sitting room indicate that he is
keeping up with the world about him. We move out to the front lawn
with bottles of root beer and sit beneath a giant flowering acacia;
the old boy seems delighted to have someone to talk to.

"You've seen a lot of changes in this
valley, Jud," I suggest, just to get the conversation flowing.

His voice is firm but he
has to ration the breath just a bit if he speaks more than five
words in a stream. "Sure have. Born here, you know. Mostly
agriculture, back then. Grapes. Citrus. Town wasn't even laid out
'till '87, incorporated in '98. Yes. I've seen
changes."

"You're older than the town, then."

He chuckles. "I'm older than God
himself."