Lifeblood (30 page)

“There’s a big festival right downtown here,” Gabe said.

“Is it during the day?” Rachel wanted to do something nice for Soledad, but would going somewhere with Gabe upset Hank? She didn’t want to do anything that might. Especially now. Even if he never found out.

“Noon on, from what I’ve read,” Gordon said.

“Afternoon is what I had in mind,” Gabe said. “It’s a great family do. Music, dancing, costumes, if it’s like the festivals in New Mexico. And great food, too.”

“If you like tacos and quesadillas,” Gordon put in.

“Authentic, not ersatz,” Gabe added. “No teriyaki tacos.”

Soledad was clapping her hands.

Irene wagged her head up and down. “You should go, dear girl. Take the day off. We never know how many days we will have. Enjoy this one.”

Soledad skipped in a little circle. “Yes. Yes. Yes?”

Rachel was thinking that the last time she took a day off it hadn’t turned out too well. Plus, what would Hank think? She was pretty sure she knew what Goldie’s advice would be.

But Soledad’s eyes were so excited, so hopeful.

Those eyes won. “Okay,” Rachel agreed. “But just for the afternoon. I have a lot of things that need doing.”

When the others had left, Soledad asked, “The woman, she is bruja?”

“Bruha? What is bruha?”

“I think…you say witch.”

“Good heavens. Irene is no witch. Why do you think that?”

Soledad picked words carefully from her limited lexicon. “La vista doble…see…mañana.”

“See tomorrow? You mean see the future?” When Soledad nodded, Rachel said, “Well, Irene does consider herself to be a fortune teller, but I don’t know how much there is to that.” Then Rachel yielded to a sudden whim and asked Soledad, “Would you like to spend the night here?”

The girl glanced about the garage.

“I don’t mean in the parking lot, silly. In my apartment.” Rachel pointed upward. “Mi casa.” Even she knew those words.

“Aquí?” Soledad asked. “Su casa? Your house, it is here? This place?”

“Yes,” Rachel said. “Sí.” And Soledad repeated the same words in reverse.

“Okay, we’ll go upstairs and call Dr. Johnson.”

Soledad skipped beside her up the ramp.

“Glad I caught you, Emma,” Rachel said into the phone as Soledad explored the apartment. “She’s fine. We had a wonderful time. That’s why I’m calling. I want to keep her for a few days…. We bought some clothes. Yes, I think it will work out.”

The evening for Rachel was like a trip back to her own childhood—a little like a pajama party, before all the storms in her life had broken loose.

They had bought everything Soledad needed except pajamas, so Rachel loaned her an old tee shirt. It hung down below the girl’s knees and for some reason they both thought that was funny.

She called the hospital, but Hank was still in isolation and there was no new information.

Chapter Fifty-eight

Rachel and Soledad were on the sidewalk in front of the garage by 1:30. Rachel wasn’t sure exactly why, but she didn’t want Gabe coming up to the apartment.

The day was balmy and clear. In her new jeans and a purple shirt, Soledad sat primly on the bench where Rachel often sat with Goldie.

Gabe pulled his car into the garage entrance, parked in his usual place, and ambled back down the ramp. He was wearing a shirt with thin red stripes, open at the collar. Rachel realized she had seen him only once before without his pharmacist’s jacket.

When he reached the sidewalk he removed the toothpick he was chewing and twirled it in short, thick fingers. “Hello, little lady. And big lady, too.” He nodded to each. “I called a taxi,” he said to Rachel. “With all the festivities, parking is likely to be impossible.”

He was putting the toothpick back between his teeth when a taxi rounded the corner and stopped, its tires scraping the curb a little. They climbed into the back seat with Soledad between them. Gabe leaned forward and told the driver, “Anywhere near César Chavez and Olvera.”

Rachel noticed that his pronunciation was more Spanish than English. Soledad was watching him intently.

“Ah, el muerto.” The driver eased the cab into traffic.

“Have you been to a Day of the Dead celebration before?” Gabe asked.

Rachel shook her head, no, but Soledad said, “I, yes.”

“I haven’t been to any here,” Gabe said as the driver took a sharp corner, drawing a honk from another car. “I assume they’re something like those in New Mexico, although our Hispanic customs may be a little different.”

“I barely know what it is,” Rachel said. “I gather it’s something like a cross between Halloween and Memorial Day.”

“Yes and no,” Gabe said.

“Los muertos…go to…familias,” Soledad pronounced carefully.

Rachel pulled a frown. “The dead visit their families?”

“That’s basically it,” Gabe said.

“Maybe it’s me, but that doesn’t sound like much fun. The Day of the Living Dead? Like your dead relatives?”

“Sort of,” Gabe said. “Except it’s a couple days. Technically, the spirits arrive on October thirty-first and leave on November second, although lately it’s the closest weekend to those dates.”

“This close enough?” the driver asked, pulling the cab to the curb.

“Fine.” Gabe paid the man, shaking his head at Rachel’s protest that she should pay half.

The sidewalk was milling with people. Decked out for Day of the Dead, Olvera Street was an assault on the senses—the smells, the sounds, but above all the colors. Wild, untamed oranges and reds. Flowers, from big Hawaiian-lei-like necklaces, to unabashedly gaudy plastic petals, to pot upon pot of brilliant marigolds. The whole area was seething with a proud flamboyant garishness.

“Wow.” Rachel could barely absorb it all. “Sorta takes your breath away, doesn’t it.”

Skeletons were everywhere. Some huge, on stilts, some tiny and ornamental. There were dolls in lavish evening dress with skulls for heads, marionettes, puppets, and dozens and dozens of skeleton costumes bouncing along the walk, some above feet shod in black sneakers, others with patent leather shoes. Even some of the food laid out for purchase was brilliantly colored bread crowned with what was made to look like bones.

Soledad ran to a table of bright little skulls in colors of lime, scarlet, gold, and turquoise. She grinned up at Gabe, who chuckled and handed her a five-dollar bill. She handed it to the woman behind the table. “Tres.”

The woman put three shiny skulls in a bag and gave the girl a fistful of change. Soledad popped a skull into her mouth and held the bag out to Gabe and Rachel.

Rachel took one tentatively. “What an in-your-face way to deal with death. Eating skeletons, of all things.”

“That,” Gabe said, “is exactly the point.”

“It does take a little getting used to.”

Many people in the crowd sported skull masks, some ghoulish, some silly, with lace doilies, no two alike.

Gabe, Rachel, and Soledad strolled past shops and stalls. A marionette merchant was working the strings, making a doll—a dark-eyed female in a blue ruffled dress—bow and sway. Soledad fell in love with it. She looked at the price tag, and shook her head sadly.

“How much is it?” Rachel asked.

Soledad showed her the tag. Seventy-nine dollars.

Gabe spoke to the merchant in quick staccato Spanish. The merchant threw up his hands, shook his head, and walked away. But by the time Gabe had turned to walk away, the merchant was back. Soledad watched the two men, her head bobbing each time Gabe spoke.

Rachel was both fascinated and a little embarrassed.

Gabe took out his wallet and handed the man some bills. The merchant handed him the marionette.

Soledad jumped up and down and clapped. Rachel wasn’t sure whether it was praise for his performance or thanks for the doll. “What did you have to pay?” she asked. “I don’t have that much cash with me now, but I’ll pay you back.”

“No way,” he said, watching Soledad working the doll’s strings. “I haven’t had this much fun in a long time.”

“Is it fair to ask them to take less?”

Gabe laughed and dug another toothpick out of a little plastic vial he kept in his pocket. “Don’t ever travel in Mexico or the street merchants will think one of two things: that you’re a dumb, rich American; or that they’ve died and gone to heaven. They’ll probably think both. Bargaining is expected. And respected.”

They walked around a clay donkey hitched to a cart made of slats of every color Crayola had ever put in a box. The donkey wore a serape and a necklace of bows.

They reached a small square and Rachel gazed at a sign that read, Bienvenidos A La Placita Olvera. “This place almost feels like a foreign country.”

“In a way, it sort of is,” Gabe said. “But don’t let it fool you. This is a total set-up for the tourista.”

“I don’t think I care. It would be impossible to be sad here.”

Gabe pointed to a relatively small white building on the opposite side of the street. Two bells hung in a short tower on one side, a palm tree framed the other side. They crossed and went inside, where a grotto made of rocks was fronted by a mass of brilliant flowers and a long red leather kneeling bench. Flames flickered on dozens of candles, some in brightly decorated tall glasses, some small in plain glass.

“Is there someone you’d like to light a candle for?” Gabe asked.

Soledad didn’t wait. She opened her hand, which was still clutching the change from the five-dollar bill Gabe had given her. Extracting three singles, she pushed them through the slot on top of a small metal tube, picked up three small votive candles from along the side wall of rock, and handed one to each of the adults. Then she picked up a lighted candle, lit the one she had kept for herself, set it down at the edge of the flickering flames, knelt on the bench, and closed her eyes.

As Rachel and Gabe followed suit, it gave Rachel a pleasant, but almost eerie, feeling. She wondered what her Jewish mother, dead several years now, would think of having a Catholic candle lit to her memory at a Mexican Day of the Dead celebration.

On the street again, they passed a display of shocking-pink guitars. Rachel eyed them doubtfully. “People don’t really buy those, do they?”

“Maybe someone from Texas,” Gabe guffawed. “I’m sorry. I hope you weren’t born in Texas.”

“Nope. California native,” Rachel said.

“Well, through the centuries, Texas has tried more than once to take over New Mexico, so we natives of that state occasionally think unkind thoughts of Texans.”

They passed a shop with leather goods literally spilling out the door. Patch leather suitcases, Mexican huaraches, tooled belts and handbags. Rachel wanted to take a look.

Soledad tapped Rachel’s arm and gestured toward a table piled high with round loaves of bread.

“Hungry?” Rachel asked.

The girl gave a small, solemn nod.

“Can you wait a minute? I need to find someplace quiet to make a phone call.”

“Tell you what,” Gabe said. “The little lady and I will buy some bread and maybe find some burritos and meet you back at the fountain in, say, twenty minutes. That should give you time to peek in the leather shop, too. I saw the amorous glances you were casting over there.”

“Okay,” Rachel said, and watched them wend their way through the crowd, Soledad hanging onto Gabe’s hand. “Don’t let her go,” she called after Gabe. “She could get lost.”

They looked back and waved. She wasn’t sure they had heard.

The three of them had passed a big, double-deck, blue fountain twice. Was it in the plaza? She couldn’t remember for sure, but the whole area wasn’t that large.

The sound of slightly off-pitch mariachi music came from one direction, a sad sort of ballad came from another. She pulled her cell phone from her handbag and looked around. Was there any place quiet enough to make a call?

She followed a narrow walk between two buildings and found herself in what appeared to be an alley. This might do.

She dialed the hospital and asked if Hank was able to have visitors yet.

“Mr. Sullivan has been discharged.”

Rachel felt like her breath had been knocked from her. “Discharged?”

“That is correct.”

“When?”

“Let’s see….It looks like right before noon.”

Rachel clicked off the phone.

How could he have left the hospital? His car was in her parking garage, not anywhere near the hospital in Pasadena. It was a godsend that he was well enough to leave the hospital, but why hadn’t he called? Had he not got all the messages she’d left? Why hadn’t he called her to come pick him up? She had been home all morning. Surely he wouldn’t take a taxi. Who else would have picked him up?

She clicked the phone on again and dialed his home, but got only his voice mail. She had his cell, so she couldn’t very well reach him on that.

She was putting the phone back in her handbag, when a hand dug hard into her shoulder.

Chapter Fifty-nine

Rachel tried to turn around, but the hand was pushing her across the alley toward a narrow space between two utilitarian-looking brick buildings that might once have been factories.

She staggered and nearly fell, then brought her arm up. Wrenching her shoulder away from the hand, she spun around.

Two eyes stared at her through the sockets of a skull mask.

The air was like dry ice in her throat. Her heart seemed to halt, then erupted in a violent pulsing that thudded in her ears.

He was stocky and well muscled. She was hopelessly outmatched.

But she couldn’t just give up.

She rammed the side of her fist up into the throat just below the mask. He gave a gagging sound. His grip loosened. She dodged.

Run. But where to? He was blocking the way back to the plaza and Olvera Street. She took off in the opposite direction. In two beats, she heard his feet pounding after her.

A mugger? A rapist? Or—?

The buildings on either side looked like old industrial structures. Probably empty. She had to keep going. No time to try doors.

She ran a block down the alley. Looking back wasn’t necessary. She could hear the feet, and they were gaining on her.

If she could just get to a street. Somewhere, anywhere with people. How could Olvera Street be teeming with noise and laughter and here it was bare of anything living? Except her and the man behind her.