Mariner's Compass (28 page)

Maybe the answers were in my mother’s letters to him. The miles back to Morro Bay seemed endless. I kept glancing over at the manila envelope, tempted to pull over and read them immediately. Instead I drove as fast as I dared, fighting the evening wind buffeting the truck.

I parked the truck haphazardly in front of the charred garage and rushed through the back gate, expecting an enthusiastic welcome from Scout.

The yard was empty. I called out his name a few times while circling the house. There was no way for him to get inside because I’d locked the dog-door, certain that somehow it would provide a means for Duane or Cole to do something destructive. Just in case, I checked through the house, only panicking when finding the last room empty. I’d owned Scout long enough to know he was not the type of dog to wander off. He was so well trained that not even cats could tempt him to venture off his own property.

“Next door,” I said out loud, relieved. “He’s probably visiting Rich.”

Rich said the last he’d seen of Scout was about two hours ago. “I walked down to the bookstore on the Embarcadero. He was lying on the front porch when I left.”

Panic turned my mouth to cotton. I licked my lips, salty with fear. “Rich, he wouldn’t run off.”

“First, let’s not jump to any conclusions. We’ll drive around and look for him. Maybe he’s just acting out because he’s mad you left him alone.”

For the next two hours we drove around Morro Bay searching for him, including the narrow, rocky hills across the highway where houses clung to the rocks like barnacles. It was dark when Rich convinced me that we’d be better off going back home and calling the county animal shelter. Maybe somebody had picked him up.

After a call to the animal shelter came up dry, a thought occurred to me. “Duane and Cole are involved with this. I bet they have him.”

Before he could stop me, I rushed across the street to their little saltbox house. One light shone through a front window, but no one answered my urgent knocking. I called Scout’s name through the window, listening for his frantic bark. The house was silent. I tried the back gate. It was locked.

“Benni, don’t you think . . .” Rich started to protest as I climbed the wood stake fence surrounding their backyard. I was over it before he could get the rest of his words out.

He was standing in the front yard, his arms folded across his chest when I climbed back over the fence. “Nothing back there,” I said, ignoring his disapproving expression. “I know they have something to do with it. I’m going down to Tess’s store and find out where they are. Don’t try to stop me.”

“Benni, I wouldn’t even try to, but I am going with you.”

“Fine, the more manpower the better.”

Tess was sitting behind the counter on a metal stool, reading a
Good Housekeeping
magazine when I burst through the door. Shell wind chimes hanging next to the door clattered from the sharp whoosh of evening air. Her head jerked up from her magazine with a sharp, startled gasp. No one was in the store, though the other Embarcadero shops were crowded with tourists. The room smelled pungently of dust, old mold, and grease from the fish-and-chips restaurant next door.

“Where are Duane and Cole?” I demanded. “They took my dog and I want him back.”

Her expression turned into one of practiced denial. “My boys wouldn’t do that. They liked Jake’s dog.”

“Scout is my dog, and he’s gone. You know he’d never wander anywhere, and your boys have been harassing me for a week. I’m warning you, if they’ve done anything to Scout . . .”

She tossed her magazine on the counter and slipped down from her stool. “I told you my sons liked Jake’s dog. Besides, they wouldn’t hurt an innocent animal. They—”

“Where are they? I want to ask them myself.”

She pressed her painted orange lips together tightly and didn’t answer. From behind me, Neely’s voice called across the store. “They’re over at the Masthead saloon like they always are on Saturday nights. Now leave her alone.”

I turned and watched her walk across the store toward us. Her shaggy brown hair was pulled up with a plastic hair clip. In the fluorescent lights of the store, her face was as pale and emotionless as a clamshell.

“Keep cool,” I heard Rich murmur behind me.

“You know about this,” I snapped at her.

Neely’s face stayed calm. “I told you where they are, now get out.”

“If I don’t find them there, I’ll be back.”

Her glittery laugh was sharp as glass. “Don’t worry, they’ll be there.”

Out on the street Rich caught my arm to keep me from darting in front of a van full of college students.

“Slow down, kid. We need to think this thing out before we go barreling into a dive like the Masthead.”

I jerked my arm out of his grasp and started walking uptown. “If it’s too tough for you, then go home,” I said over my shoulder. “I’m going to find Duane and Cole and make them tell me where my dog is.”

He jogged to catch up with me, his dark face irritated. “You are as stubborn and bullheaded as a donkey, little girl.”

“Are you coming or not?” I asked, walking up the steep hill toward downtown.

“I’m with you,” he said with an exasperated sigh. “I’d never forgive myself or be able to face your husband if I didn’t.”

I stopped and faced him. “Look here, Mr. Trujillo, if you think I can’t take care of myself, guess again. I’m not afraid to go into that bar and confront them without you.”

“I know you’re not, Benni.
That’s
what really scares me.”

The Masthead was the last of the old-time fisherman’s bars built back when fish not tourists were the town’s biggest economic power. It sat on a corner in an innocuous white building. The gray, peeling sign was shaped like a barracuda. Underneath the sign were black-tinted windows, a small yellow neon light announcing “cocktails,” and the ever alluring orange and purple California Lotto sticker.

I burst through the door into a cramped, dark bar that didn’t look any different than any cowboy bar I’d ever been in, except for the fact that the music playing was rock and roll instead of country, and the multicolored gimme caps worn by the patrons promoted fishing industries rather than feed stores and tractor dealerships.

I spotted Duane and Cole across the room sitting with a grizzled old man wearing a Greek fisherman’s hat and a thin, hard-looking woman with unnaturally bright copper-colored hair. I pushed through the loud, laughing crowd, dodged a moving pool cue, and planted myself in front of their table.

“Where’s my dog?” I asked over the deafening voices around me. I felt Rich move up behind me and rest his hand lightly on my shoulder. Deep in my throat a cough from hovering cigarette smoke tickled, threatening to erupt. I swallowed saliva and fought the urge.

“What?” Cole said, his face frozen in genuine surprise. Next to him, the old man picked through a plastic bowl of stale-looking bar mix.

The woman gave a raspy laugh and nudged Duane with her elbow. “Duane, baby, this little girl’s lost her doggie. You seen it?”

Duane smiled slyly, then slowly took a sip of his beer.

“Where is he?” I asked, raising my voice an octave. No one in the deafening crowd even noticed.

“We don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cole said, his eyes darting to his brother, then back to me.

“I swear, I’ll kill you both if you’ve hurt Scout.”

Duane said in a loud voice to no one in particular, “Now, isn’t threatening to kill someone, like, some kind of crime or something? Think they’d lock up a police chief’s wife for that, or would she just get off with a hand slap? What do you think, Cap?” The man continued picking through the bowl and didn’t answer.

I leaned closer, resting both hands flat on the table. “Where’s my dog?”

Duane brought his beer up to his lips and drank. Foam dotted the tips of his thin mustache when he smirked at me. “Honey, you’re ruining our evening with friends here, accusing us of such a terrible thing as dognapping. Maybe you should use some of those same connections you used to get us harassed by the local pig squad and have them find your mutt.”

“I’m only going to ask one more time,” I said, anger rising up in me like water boiling. Rich’s hand tightened on my shoulder. “
What have you done with my dog?”

Duane looked over at his brother, who shook his head slightly. He licked his lips and said, “Like I said, if you’d just twitch that fine little ass of yours under your police chief’s nose, I’m sure he’d call out the whole force to find your puppy dog.”

I grabbed the half-full beer stein sitting in front of him and threw the beer in his face. The woman screamed and jumped up, frantically brushing at her thin silver blouse.

“Shit, you little . . .” Duane yelled, lunging at me over the wet table. Cole grabbed his shoulders, holding him back.

Laughter surrounded us as I felt Rich move between me and Duane and start forcefully pushing me toward the exit.

“Hustle your butt, kid,” he commanded in my ear. “Don’t look back.”

We were outside by the time Duane made it to the doorway of the bar. Yelling out curses at me, he was held back by Cole and another man. “You’ll be sorry,” were the last words I heard before Rich and I rounded the corner out of earshot.

Rich kept his arm around my trembling shoulders the three blocks back to my house. By the time we reached my gate, I was calmer but still angry.

“I guess I don’t have to tell you that wasn’t the smartest thing in the world to do,” he said.

At this point I was so tired of the whole situation involving Jacob Chandler that I didn’t care. “I know.”

“I think you should call your husband.”

“No.”

He gave me a strange look. “He has a right to know.”

“He doesn’t have a right to anything.”

“What happened between you two?”

I frowned at him. “Nothing.”

He looked at me for a long moment, his dark face calm. “I realize it’s none of my business, but I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t be. I’ve got enough problems with one overly protective man, thank you very much.”

His hurt expression caused guilt and regret at my hasty words to pull at my heart. This man had not only just ridden around with me for two hours looking for my dog, but also he was willing to try to protect me from a crowd of drunk white men, and here I was treating him like dirt. I was glad Dove wasn’t around to see me or I’d be getting a slap upside the head.

“I’m sorry, Rich, that was rude of me. I do appreciate you helping me look for Scout and for everything you’ve done. The thing with Gabe, it’s just so complicated.”

“Want to talk about it?” He pointed to my concrete steps. “As Lucy from
Peanuts
would say, the doctor is in.”

I didn’t think I did, but once I sat down and started telling him the true identities of the photographer and his wife, I found myself pouring out all my feelings about Gabe and how torn I felt about his way of caring for me, the doubts I had about being married to a cop. He listened without comment until like a worn-out battery I eventually stopped talking.

When he saw that I was finished, he spoke. “Now, don’t get mad at me, but I’m going to try to let you see things from his side.”

“I’ve already heard it,” I said, hating myself for being so ungracious, but not wanting to hear one more lecture, not even from someone as nice as Rich. “His best friend, Aaron; his captain, Jim Cleary; Jim’s wife, Oneeda. I’ve heard all the advice about being married to a cop. I just don’t know if it’s something I’m cut out for.”

“I’m not talking about being married to a cop. I’m talking about being married to a Mexican man.”

I looked at him in surprise. “What does that have to do with any of this?”

“More than you probably even realize. Don’t you know that he has to be twice as good and work twice as hard as a white man just to get people to treat him the same? On top of that, he’s a stranger in town. If he was white and had grown up around here and became police chief, his wife being involved with the things you are would be just something to razz him about at the local bar. In his case, it’s a direct reflection on his ability to handle his family as well as be a good police chief.”

“That’s ridiculous! What my family or I do has nothing to do with how well he performs his job.”

“That’s where you’re living in a dreamworld. You’re a white woman who belongs to a well-respected ranching family. You gain instant acceptance just for being born who you are. He, on the other hand, has probably had to earn every inch of respect he’s ever gotten and probably always will.”

Suddenly I felt like the biggest idiot in the world. To be truthful, I didn’t think about Gabe’s Latino background any more than I did Elvia’s, or Señor and Señora Aragon’s, or any of her brothers. I’d gone to school with them; stayed with them; been in their weddings; attended their family’s baby christenings,
quinceañeras,
engagement parties, and funerals. I’d participated in all aspects of their lives, just as they had mine. Gabe being part Mexican hadn’t ever been an issue between us. At least for me. If he’d suffered any prejudice because of his background, he’d never shared it with me, and that made me feel ashamed as well as feel like a failure both as a wife and a friend.

“You’re right, we ... I don’t make things easy for him,” I said softly, looking up at Rich’s kind face.

He put a warm hand on mine. “Just remember,
Quien mas te quiere te hace llorar. ”

“Translation,
por favor.”

“He who most loves you makes you cry.” He smiled. “And that goes for she, too. But in the long run, it’s worth it. I promise you.”

I squeezed his hand and stood up. “Thanks, Rich.”

“
De nada, mija.
”

Inside the house, it was unbearably silent without Scout’s presence. I hadn’t realized how quickly he’d become a part of my life. My mother’s letters were sitting on the counter where I’d thrown them, so I made myself a cup of hot chocolate and took them out to the patio. The lights down on the Embarcadero twinkled on the dark ocean. Morro Rock, barely discernible in the dark, was already shrouded in mist. I pulled Gabe’s leather jacket around me, rubbing my cheek a moment against the buttery collar, smelling his scent, then opened the first letter. It was addressed to Jacob Chandler, General Delivery, Flagstaff, Arizona. The postmark was Los Angeles.