Spider Web (28 page)

I felt a familiar hand rubbing a circle on my back.

“Honey bun,” Dove said. “How are you doing?”

I took a bite from my muffin before answering. “Fine.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” she said automatically, though her tone was light. “Are you sleeping all right?” Her sharp blue eyes searched mine.

“Sure,” I mumbled around a mouthful of muffin.

“You look right tired.”

I swallowed, then took another bite. “Big day. Got up early.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

I wrinkled my nose at her and, like when I was a kid, opened my mouth to display my half-chewed breakfast.

“You’re a bad girl,” she said, pinching my cheek gently. Then her warm hand moved to my chin, caressing it even while holding it steady so I couldn’t look away. “Whatever you’re going through, you know you can always come to me, don’t you?”

I nodded, swallowing. The cakey wad stuck for a moment in my thick throat. “I know, Gramma. Everything’s okay. I promise.” Though I longed to tell her what was happening, I also didn’t want Gabe diminished in her eyes. A fierce part of me wanted to protect him, even from someone who loved him as much as Dove did.

I could smell the flowery scent of her Coty face powder, a smell as familiar to me as my own. “Liar. But you’ll tell me when you’re ready.” She gave my chin a tiny shake. “See you round the flagpole, Sadie.” It was how she used to say good night to me when I was a little girl.

“Yes, ma’am.”

By eight thirty, I’d toured all the booths, taken care of numerous last-minute problems and now stood on the top step of our outside amphitheater near the mission, where the children’s storytelling marathon would take place. Blind Harry’s Bookstore, the San Celina County Library and the Central Coast Storytelling Guild sponsored the all-day event with storytellers performing every half hour. Though it was still a half hour before the festival officially began, I could already tell the storytelling area would be a popular stop. Parents and kids were already filling the amphitheater seats. I bought a cup of hot chocolate from a vendor’s first batch and watched the final preparations for the storytelling marathon.

In the grassy area next to the amphitheater, Memory Mountain, a local scrapbooking store, presented a free “make it and take it” scrapbooking class for kids where they could have their picture taken with their favorite storyteller and make a scrapbook page. Storytellers mingled with the crowd. They were dressed as pirates, fairy godmothers, railroad engineers, Native Americans, cowgirls and cowboys, farmers and zookeepers. There was even a man dressed as a dinosaur.

“Looks like fun,” someone said behind me. “And that hot chocolate looks delicious.”

I turned and faced Lin Snider. She was dressed in dark jeans, a maroon sweater and a navy wool jacket. My mind flashed back to the person who had walked through the ranch house a few days ago. He or she had been wearing a dark blue jacket.

“Are you a fan of Elvis Presley?” I blurted out.

Her blue eyes widened a moment before she regained composure and smiled. “He was never my cup of tea. I’m more of a Beatles fan. Why?”

My heart fluttered in my chest. What was I thinking asking her that? I sipped my cocoa and asked, “Which storyteller do you think the kids will like best?”

She contemplated the eclectic group of storytellers. “I’d guess the pirate for the boys and the fairy godmother for girls. But that’s just what my . . .” Her words stopped abruptly, and she coughed daintily into her palm. “What my choice would have been at that age.”

A group of kids ran in front of us, accidentally bumping me. Hot chocolate sprayed down the front of my sweater.

“Dang it!” I jumped back, holding the paper cup of cocoa in front of me. “Slow down!” I called after them.

She dug through her big leather purse and produced a packet of tissues. “I hope your sweater will be okay.”

“Thanks,” I said, taking the tissues and dabbing at the fist-size stain on the corner of my sweater. “I should remember how crazy kids get at these things.”

She cocked her head, studying my face. “So, this must be a nightmare for you. All these kids, I mean. Not like the peaceful life you and your husband are accustomed to. Does it make you glad you never had any?”

I stared at her a moment, thinking, What an odd remark. “It’s not a nightmare at all. I’m glad a lot of kids are here. That’s sort of the point.”

She stuck both her hands into the pockets of her jacket. “I’m sorry, that was rather insensitive. I should know better. People always assume that those who don’t have children are irritated by them. I . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“Not having children of your own doesn’t make a person a childrenhating ogre,” I said stiffly. As another childless person, she should have understood that. The older I became, the more I was annoyed when people assumed things about me before knowing whether their opinions had any basis.

I shrugged, still a little irritated. “It’s okay.” I glanced down at my watch. “Wow, it’s almost nine a.m. The festival is good to go. You enjoy yourself, okay?” Right at that moment, I needed to get away from her and the worry she’d brought into my life. I turned and started walking toward the mission.

“Benni, I have a question,” she called after me.

I turned back around, hoping I didn’t look as impatient as I felt. “You’re really busy today, so I understand if you can’t answer right away, but I’d love another couple of hours on the pottery wheel. Do you know if it’s free tomorrow?” Her face looked almost desperate.

I do not know what came over me, except that in the last few years, with my unexpected and totally innocent forays into crime solving, I had developed a bit of a criminal mind.

“What a coincidence!” I said, faking enthusiasm. “Actually, it is free at noon. I just had someone cancel last night. How long would you like?” I actually had no idea if a wheel was open, though there was a good chance that the Sunday right after an event like this the co-op studios would be empty. But even if the wheel was booked, I was ready to beg, bribe or mug someone to make sure Lin would be using that wheel. Because during that time, I was going to finally discover if she was someone for me to worry about. I would find a way into her motel room in Morro Bay.

“Two hours?” she asked.

“No problem. I won’t be there, but someone else will.”

“I sure appreciate it. My good fortune.”

I smiled at her, feeling a bit like a grifter. “Yes, it is.”

While I watched her walk away, I heard someone come up behind me. It was Evangeline Boudreux, D-Daddy’s daughter and a longtime member of our co-op. “Oh, your friend found you,” she said.

I looked up at Evangeline. “What?”

She pointed at Lin. “The lady in the peacoat was asking after you.”

“She was?”

“Well, asking about you. I was helping Princess Perfecto set up her scepter-making supplies, and your friend kind of just started talking to us. She said she’d seen me around the co-op. I guess she’s a new member?”

“Not actually. She’s renting the pottery wheel. She’s a friend of Amanda’s.”

Evangeline mimed wiping sweat from her brow. “Glad to hear that. She was asking some odd questions, and I wasn’t quite sure what her motives were.”

I felt my breathing slow down. “What was she asking?”

“Oh, just whether you ever participated in the children’s art activities and if you seemed to enjoy it.”

“That is odd.”

“Yeah, I thought so too. I almost asked her if she was investigating you to be a foster parent or something.” She flipped a strand of dark curly hair from over her left eye and laughed. “Are you?”

I gave a forced laugh, hoping Evangeline wouldn’t notice. “It would be news to me. Did she ask anything else?”

Evangeline shook her head no. “I told her that
you
were the one who not only designed all our children’s programs, but that you harassed people for donations and you finger painted along with the kids. That seemed to make her happy. Why do you think she was asking?”

“I don’t know, but thanks for the good report.”

After Evangeline walked away, before I forgot, I called the folk art museum and asked one of the docents to check tomorrow’s schedule for the pottery wheel.

“I need to know if it’s free from noon to two p.m.” Waiting, I fidgeted from one foot to the other. Finally, the docent picked up the phone in my office.

“It’s free all afternoon.”

“Thank you. Would you please write in Lin Snider?”

“Sure.”

After I arranged Lin’s session, I shoved my mounting worries about who she was and what she wanted to the back of my mind. Would I really break into her motel room tomorrow? Right now, I was ready to do so, especially after hearing how she’d questioned Evangeline about me. But would I be so gung ho tomorrow? Well, like Scarlett, I’d think about it then.

I stopped off at the historical museum and managed to wash away the worst part of the chocolate stain. I considered taking it off, but walking around in this cold weather wearing only a long-sleeve cotton T-shirt wasn’t appealing. The rest of the day ran so smoothly I kept looking for the Oz-like tornado on the horizon. But Mother Nature was kind and benevolent, presenting us with a breezy, if cold, day. A few storm clouds lingered far enough away that I wasn’t worried . . . much.

“Please, not until six p.m.,” I murmured more than once while glancing at the distant pewter-colored clouds.

If attendance was the only thing that counted, the Memory Festival appeared to be a success. People’s spirits were high, and there was an equal amount of laughter and emotional tears. Though their presence wasn’t obvious, I recognized quite a few San Celina police officers. Many of them were working plainclothes detail. It relieved me, despite knowing that if this sniper decided to attack again, the officers might not be able to stop it from happening.

I took photos at every booth to record the fair’s technical aspects so next year’s chairperson, which I was determined would not be me, would have an idea what to expect and how to plan.

At the historical society’s oral history booth people were asked to fill out a “Where were you and what were you doing?” questionnaire about their memories on various common incidents in our country’s history like the bombing of Pearl Harbor, John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., the
Challenger
explosion and the death of Elvis Presley.

Down on Lopez Street, the VFW’s booths, which emphasized military memories, took up almost a block. There were so many men in eclectic uniforms milling about that you would have thought someone was filming a movie. The background music of Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey and the Andrews Sisters caused more than one older couple to break out in spontaneous dancing, much to everyone’s delight. A wiry man in a World War II leather bomber jacket and a chevron cap pulled me into a quick jitterbug, maneuvering me with expertise. He had no doubt been quite the ladies’ man in his time. Or maybe still was.

The Vietnam and Korean war veterans seemed a more casual group, more sober than those of World War II, maybe because their memories were less softened by time. Some men dressed in immaculate uniforms, others with long, shaggy hair wore tattered camouflage military jackets with purple hearts pinned to their chests. The music from their CD players was more familiar to me, though I’d been in elementary school during most of the time they were fighting in Vietnam—Iron Butterfly, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” even the song “Last Train to Clarksville” by the Monkees.

At the Vietnam War booth, a woman with short auburn hair wore dark green fatigues and shiny black combat boots. Two pairs of scissors were tucked into her shirt’s front top pocket and pens filled a pocket on the upper part of her left sleeve. She wore a stethoscope around her neck and was talking to three teenage girls dressed in almost identical tight narrow-legged blue jeans, black Nikes and midriff-baring sweaters in bright sixties prints showing peace symbols and doves.

“You were only twenty-one when you went to Vietnam?” one girl exclaimed. “That’s, like, so young! I’m nineteen! That’s, like, only . . .” She turned to her friends, her glossy mouth open. One ear was rimmed with tiny gold and silver earrings.

“Two years older than you,” the woman said. She appeared to be in her early fifties with sun-roughened skin. Her shirt had the last name, Bennett, written over her breast. She gave a high, quick laugh that didn’t reach her dark eyes. “I graduated nursing school only two months earlier. I wanted to get away from home. I wanted to be on my own. I wanted adventure.” Her laugh was more cynical this time. “Boy, did I get adventure.”

“Was it, like, scary?” one of the girls asked, sipping from her sixty-four ounce Taco Bell drinking cup.

The woman nodded. “Very scary.”

“Like how? Did you, like, get shot at? Did you see gross stuff?” The girls exchanged looks, poked each other and giggled.

“Our hospital came under fire many times. Yes, there was lots of gross stuff.” She rubbed the side of her nose and glanced over at me.

“Did you kill anyone?” the tallest girl asked. She wore her blonde hair long and straight and parted in the middle. She thrust one hip out in an arrogant stance. “My dad protested against the war. He, like, told me that people who went to Vietnam were not all that smart. That they totally wasted their lives.”

Her words made me gasp.

“Britney!” one of her friends exclaimed. “You’re such a mean girl.” Then she giggled and shoved Britney as if they were kindergartners.

The woman looked calmly at the girls, her expression neutral. “It was gross beyond your imagination,” she said, her voice as unemotional as if she were reading from an instruction manual. “There were maggots and rats and snakes and lice. There were times when I couldn’t see the floor because it was covered in sticky blood. Did you know blood was sticky? It reminds me a little of maple syrup.”

One of the girls gagged. Blonde-haired Britney just stared, openmouthed.

The woman continued as if she were talking about a day the beach. “I saw hundreds of boys die, screaming, full of maggots, their guts spilling out of them like spaghetti from a jar. There were piles of bodies and trash cans filled with amputated legs. That’s what we did with the legs, you know, throw them out. What else were we going to do with them? Boys burned by napalm stank and screamed and cried for their mothers and they died in the few minutes it took me to type their blood. Then we just moved on to the next one. Because there always was a next one. Vietnam was hot and sticky and dry as dust and dirty as shit and it was the most beautiful land I’ve ever seen. When I got home, people thanked me by spitting on my shoes and calling me a baby killer. I didn’t kill babies. On my days off, I went to orphanages and took care of babies. I immunized them and cleaned their sores and I rocked them to sleep. There are men walking around today who are here because I helped save them. The boys who went to ’Nam did so because they were told it was the right thing to do for our country. It was a war started by men who were forty years older than the boys carrying the guns. Like most wars, it was just a pissing contest between old men with naive young men and women paying the ultimate price. Oh, and just for the record, your dad is an ass.”