The Color of Light (14 page)

“Thank you,” I said, walking into his hug.

“So happy you came,” he said. He offered his hand to Jean-Paul. “Hope you can join us again next year.”

When I asked where we could find his father, he said, “He knocked himself out getting things ready; you saw how he was. Sometimes when he's tired, he gets, I don't know, combative. So, I put him to bed to keep him from getting into trouble.”

“Tell him we had a wonderful time.”

Beto was grinning when he asked, “Did your dad have a good time, too?”

“I'm sure he did,” I said.

We left by the side gate.

“So?” Jean-Paul wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me close as we walked down the driveway past the garage. “See any ghosts tonight?”

“Many.” My eyes trailed to the vase of white roses dumped atop a very full trash barrel. “Many.”

“I can think of
only two places in this house where Dad might hide a gun,” I said. “One is his desk, but I have already emptied it. The other is his workbench in the garage.”

Jean-Paul threw his head back and laughed, something I had rarely seen him do. I looked over at him as I slipped off my jeans. “Sir?”

“My dear.” He pulled me against him and laid us back on the bed. “I am doing my very best impression of the romantic Frenchman, but, alas, apparently to no effect.”

I rolled on top and straddled him. “You're doing a fabulous job of it, Monsieur. Top drawer. A-number-one.
Le dernier cri
.”

“But?”

“Your target,
moi
, is just too damn scattered at the moment to focus fully on the program.”

“Et donc?”

“So, give me ten minutes for a quick look, and I promise that when I return I will give all my attention in mind as well as body to your fine efforts.”

“A look in the garage?”

“A quick one.” I kissed him.

His wheels were turning, thinking. After a moment, he lifted me off him and said,
“D'accord.”

I pulled my jeans back on, found my flip-flops, and hurried down the stairs through the quiet house and out through the butler's pantry to the garage. Roy and Lyle had taken Uncle Max with them to Yoshi's, a jazz club in San Francisco. Max's note said he would stay overnight and take BART back in the morning. He'd left us the keys to his rented car in case we needed wheels in the meantime.

Lyle had finished sorting through most of the drawers and bins in and around Dad's workbench before George Loper flamed out and progress halted. I rummaged through the remaining jumble, finding nothing more interesting than a book about constructing martin houses, a project Dad apparently never got around to, possibly because mosquitoes are not a big problem in Berkeley. I tossed the book into a trash bag and kept searching. Surely Dad wouldn't hide a firearm where anyone might happen upon it. So, then, where? Unless he had disposed of it.

I had a wrench in one hand and a rubber mallet in the other, standing beside the workbench, looking around for inspiration, when the door to the side yard opened.

“Larry?” I raised the wrench as a reflex when he came through the door.

“Whoa.” Larry held up both hands. “Don't throw that thing at me, okay?”

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“I saw you.” He gestured toward the window in the side door. “And I saw you were alone, so I thought, No time like the present.”

“That door was locked; I checked it.”

“Yeah, well.” Sheepishly, he held up a key. “I know where your dad hid it.”

“Have you been coming in here all along?”

“Shit, yeah,” he said, sounding almost angry. “I told you that.”

“No, you did not.”

“I told you I was looking after the garden, didn't I?” he said, as if speaking to an idiot as he aimed a thumb toward the rack of garden tools. “How the hell did you think I could do that without, oh, I don't know, maybe a rake and a hoe?”

I put down the wrench and held out my hand for the key, which he gave me. The key was old, rusty where it attached to a small metal ring, but shiny, recently oiled where it fit into the lock.

“How long have you known about the key?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Just about always, I guess.”

For a long time, the same key could open all three of the small garage doors: one to the side yard, one to the backyard, and one into the house; my parents used the garage more as a workshop and garden shed than as a place to park cars. Somewhere along the way, when I was nine or ten, Dad had installed a new lock and a deadbolt on the door into the house. Max told me that Isabelle had been found in my room one night, watching me sleep. Any parent would have changed the lock after that.

“Did you tell Isabelle Martin where to find the key?”

“Mighta,” he tossed off as if giving her access to the house—to me—were of no consequence.

“You went into the house, too, didn't you?”

“Just one time,” he said. “I thought there was no one home, but then I heard someone running the vacuum cleaner and I got the hell out.”

“No,” I said. “More recently, like night before last.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Someone broke into the house Thursday night.”

“Oh sure.” He slapped the end of the workbench that separated us. “Anything happens, just blame old Larry, the town delinquent.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “But you said you were in the house.”

“Yeah,” he said, very matter-of-fact about it, like wasn't everybody walking into the house? “But that was a whole long time ago. And it was just that one time. I mean, I tried to, but the next time the key didn't work.”

I nodded; it had been before Dad changed the lock. I asked him, “What were you looking for?”

A shoulder rose and fell. “Like I said, just to see what the house was like.”

“Why us?”

“That's the thing I wanted to tell you about.” He looked around, moved a step closer to speak in a soft, confiding voice. “I sorta looked in a lot of houses.”

“Just to see what they were like?” I asked.

“Yeah. And what people were doing,” he said. “I saw a lot of things.”

“Private things,” I said, suddenly feeling cold.

He nodded, his old cockiness coming back. “What I said to Beto that day, it was the truth. I saw it for myself.”

“You called his mother a Saigon whore.”

He smirked, head bobbing up and down to affirm that I had hit on the answer. “She was. A great big whore.”

The door into the house opened quietly and Jean-Paul, barefoot, came down the two steps into the garage; he held a gun in his hand. To distract Larry from turning around and seeing him, and possibly running off again, I made a lot of noise pulling Dad's stool out from under the workbench. I sat so that, to talk to me, his back was completely to the door where Jean-Paul stood.

“That's a disgusting thing to say, Larry.”

“Okay, but what I saw her and the guy doing was pretty damn disgusting, too,” he said. “Old Bart would be at the store and Beto was at school and this guy would come over and, jeez, like you said, ­disgusting.”

“But not so disgusting that you turned away.”

“Boys will be boys,” he said, flashing his snaggletoothed grin.

“Shouldn't you have been in school?”

“The thing is, I used to ditch a lot. Then they'd suspend me for ditching.” He sneered: “Assholes.”

“Who was the man?” I asked.

A phone rang inside the house, making Larry turn toward the sound. He spotted Jean-Paul.

“Maggie,
ça va
?” Jean-Paul asked without venturing further into the garage.

“We're okay,” I said.

Larry turned back and wagged a scolding finger at me. “I said, just you.”

“Hey, Larry, you broke into my house late at night,” I snapped. “What did you expect? That Jean-Paul wouldn't come out and check on me?”

He seemed to think that was reasonable, and did not question that Jean-Paul had brought a gun with him.

“Who was the man?” I asked again.

He shrugged. “We were never introduced, if you know what I mean.”

“But you saw him. Can you describe him?”

His gaze slid toward Jean-Paul. “Maybe I don't remember. It was a long time ago.”

“Is there something that might help you remember?”

“Could be. I'll think about it and get back to you.”

He headed toward the door. But he stopped with his hand around the doorknob and looked over his shoulder at me. “Do you remember what you said to me on that day?”

“I do. And I'm sorry that what I said hurt you so much.”

“The thing is,” he said, turning his face away from me. “What you said, it was true, too. I was pissed off at Beto, hell, I was pissed off at all of you guys and your perfect lives. I thought that if I told him what his mom really was, it would put the stupid little prick in his place.” He fell silent for a moment, sighed, before he said, “But you were right. Bringing him down wouldn't make people like me.”

With that, he turned and left, shutting the door behind him.

After he was gone, I opened a drawer in the workbench where I had seen a package of steel hasp locks and a pair of padlocks. I handed them to Jean-Paul, took out the can of screws and the electric screwdriver, and together we installed the locks on the inside of both the garage doors to the backyard and to the side yard, the door Larry said he had been using the key to open. With that same key, Isabelle had been able to access my bedroom, until Dad put a deadbolt on the door into the house.

“I'll call a locksmith in the morning,” I said.

“Probably wise.”

He picked up the gun he had been carrying when he came out to the garage.

“Where'd you find that?” I asked.

“I'll show you.”

We went into Dad's den and over to his desk. The desk I so carefully emptied.

“After you went downstairs, I began to think,” Jean-Paul said as he pulled out the bottom drawer, the same drawer where I had found the strongbox with the movies and the crime scene photo of Mrs. B. “Where would a man hide a gun so that his wife and child, and ­certainly the cleaning woman, would not happen upon it, even if they looked for it? Perhaps the underside of a drawer?”

He put his hand against the inside of the drawer and turned it over to show me the bottom. The wood was too pristine to have had something affixed there for a couple of decades.

“So, where did you find the gun?” I asked.

“Voilà.”
He removed his hand and a wood panel fell out. Dad had made a false bottom, creating a fitted compartment for the gun and a box of ammo and a cleaning kit, and a top to hide them.

“I'll be damned,” I said, imagining Dad at his garage workbench, carefully crafting a safe place for his contraband firearm. “I'm not surprised. If Dad could hide a mistress and their daughter from his wife for a couple of years, he would certainly figure out how to hide an itty-bitty gun.”

Jean-Paul picked up the Colt automatic and weighed it on his palm. “Not so small, my dear. This weapon was standard military issue at one time, excellent stopping power.”

“Max said it was unregistered. Do you think it's traceable?”

He gave me a little French shrug and a moue while he considered. “Probably traceable from the manufacturer to first point of sale. But from there?” He turned the Colt over and looked at the serial number. “I'll make some calls, yes?”

“Be careful with that thing,” I said. “Is it loaded?”

“It was, yes, but no longer.” He opened the top desk drawer and showed me the gun's magazine and a box of .45 ACP shells. “The ammunition is very old, certainly unstable. Perhaps you might ask your Detective Halloran to have it taken away for disposal.”

I had qualms about doing that. “If I tell Kevin about the ammo, he'll ask about the gun it belongs to. I may want to keep the Colt if it's unregistered and untraceable. You never know when that might be handy to have.”

He reloaded the gun. “My dear, should I be afraid?”

“Not you,” I said. “It might be your sweet
tuchis
I'll need to save.”

“But it was a lovely idea
,” I said, peeling a red rose petal off Jean-Paul's cheek. “Incredibly romantic.”

“In theory, yes. There was such a large bucket of red roses, and what to do with them all, yes?” He got up to scoop crushed petals off the sheets and drop them into the trashcan he had brought in from the en suite bathroom. “But in application, a bit sticky.”

“I think I'll dream about seaweed,” I said.

He laughed as he slid back between the sheets and wrapped me in his arms. “I shall leave rose petal-strewing to the movies in the future.”

“Maybe so,” I said, picking yet another petal off his bottom. “But it was still a lovely idea.”

He yawned, reached across me and turned off the bedside light.

The house was quiet, all doors securely bolted, windows locked, the loaded Colt in a drawer next to the bed. I nestled down against Jean-Paul and hoped for sleep, but I still buzzed with the events of the day. Every time I began to drift off, an image, a fragment of conversation, the sound of gunfire and shattered glass would seep through and set my mind racing again. I felt restless. If I had been alone and at my own home, I would have gone for a run in the canyon below my house. But that wasn't something I would do in the middle of the night in a dark Berkeley neighborhood. I tried to lie still to let Jean-Paul sleep. I thought he had dropped off when he kissed the top of my head and spoke into the dark.

“Did your father speak about what he did in Korea?”

“No,” I said. “Dad might say he hadn't been so cold since Korea, or that if he wanted to camp out he'd rejoin the army—he'd say a hotel without room service was as close to camping as he ever wanted to get again. And I knew about his wounds; couldn't miss the scars when he wore shorts or swim trunks. But he didn't talk about what happened over there, and I knew not to ask because it made him sad.”

“Oui,”
he said. “Same with my father. He talked about the airplanes he flew in Indochina, but not much else. One time, he took me to an air show and told me about flying the Bearcats. Papa had far more to say about what the Germans did to his family during the world war than about what the French did in Indochina when he was there ten years later.”

I smiled at that. My recently discovered French grandmother, Élodie Martin, had much to say not only about what the Germans did in Normandy, but also about what she and the women in her village did to the Germans: a bloody tale she told with relish, and one I was hoping to capture on film.

“What happened to your family during the German occupation?” I asked.

“My father was just a boy at school in Paris when the Germans conscripted him and forced him to work in a munitions factory in Belgium. His father died in a prisoner of war camp,” he said, an edge of sadness in his voice.

“Papa was a reasonable man, an intellectual,” he continued. “But for the rest of his life he refused to buy anything made in Germany or to invest in any company that held German interests. I cannot tell you the scolding I got when I bought a Mercedes. He would always say, ‘Scratch a German, find a Nazi.' And there was nothing anyone could say or do that would make him change his mind.”

“Wars do not necessarily end when the armistice is signed, do they?”

“No.” He stroked my back. “It is not only war we are talking about, is it,
chérie
?”

“No?”

“The police are investigating the death of your friend's mother, yes?”

“Kevin Halloran is.”

“And he is competent?”

“He seems to be.”

“And yet, when you found a lead on a line of inquiry, you did not inform him immediately, but went yourself, first.”

“You mean Duc?”

“Yes, Duc, and this Larry who keeps popping up late at night.” After a pause, he said, “Do you believe what Larry told you?”

“About Mrs. Bartolini? Sorry to say, but I do.”

“Maggie, my dear, I hear your questions and they all seem to come back to your father. Are you afraid he was involved in some illicit way with the woman or with her death?”

I started to deny it, a protective reflex. Instead, I said, “I think he knew something that worried him enough that he made inquiries. But he never went to the police.”

“Because he was protecting someone?”

“Probably.”

“Perhaps he found what he was looking for,” he said.

“He would have gone to the police if he had.”

“Unless it was too dangerous,” he said, raising my hand to his lips. “And perhaps it still is. Maggie, I have to leave tomorrow.” He lifted his head up enough to see the bedside clock; it was already Sunday. “Today, actually. Please come with me. Lyle and Roy will finish the work here.”

It was an attractive idea. I thought about it, but told him, “I can't leave until Tuesday at the earliest. My cousin is coming this afternoon and staying overnight. We have some decisions to make before I can finish up here. There are haulers to arrange, a cleaning crew to boss around, truck repairs to see about, and—”

“Yes, yes, but you should not be here alone.”

“I'll hardly be alone,” I said. “Max will be back, Guido is coming up to talk about what we're going to do about the Normandy film, and Susan will be here in the afternoon. Her entire book club will show up Monday.”

He was quiet for a moment.

“I love that you are concerned, but I'll be fine,” I said.

“Everyone leaves again on Monday,” he said. “Yes?”

“They do.”

He yawned. “I have business to tend to in Los Angeles, but I'll be back Monday evening.”

I did not protest. Instead, I snuggled down against him, and fell asleep.

— —

First thing
in the morning, we went for a run up Grizzly Peak Road. I had been bending, stooping, and lifting for nearly a week and cherished my early morning runs to stretch my legs, breathe fresh air, and clear my mind. Jean-Paul ran easily next to me, though I knew he was the better runner and could have sprinted ahead or run circles around me. I had hoped to show him the view from the peak of San Francisco rising like Camelot out of the Bay. But the City was shrouded by its summer cloak of gray fog, as usual, and we couldn't even see the top of the Transamerica Building. Jean-Paul seemed more interested in the towering redwoods on the Cal campus below us than on the postcard-quality view of the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge rising up out of the gloom.

Altogether, it was a good run. By the time we returned home, my head felt decluttered, as it generally does after a good run or a hard swim. A few bits and pieces of what happened in my neighborhood thirty-some years ago were beginning to come together.

Back at the house, after showers, we made breakfast and took it outside to eat at the big table under the grape arbor. On Sunday mornings, both of us had transcontinental phone calls to make. My college-junior daughter, Casey, was spending the summer on her grandmother's farm estate in Normandy with about half a dozen cousins who were more or less the same age. Jean-Paul's son, Dominic, was staying in Paris with his aunt, now gearing up for a two-year preparatory course before he entered one of the
grandes écoles
. It was already late afternoon in France when we pushed our breakfast dishes aside and took out our phones.

“Mom, great, I was waiting for you to call,” Casey said with unusual enthusiasm for this Sunday ritual. “When are you flying over?”

“Does my darling daughter miss me?” I asked.

“What? Oh, yeah. Sure, of course. But when are you coming?”

“One way or another, in a couple of weeks. What's up?”

“Are you bringing a whole film crew or just Guido?”

“Probably just Guido,” I said. “Why?”

“We had this great idea—”

“We?”

“David and Dom and I.”

I turned to look at Jean-Paul, who had the strangest expression on his face. I knew he was speaking with his son, Dominic. Catching Jean-Paul's eye, I asked Casey, “Dom Bernard?”

Jean-Paul heard me and was nodding when Casey affirmed, “Yes. You know his grandmother is Grand-mère's friend. She brought him to see the farm.”

“Let me guess, his grandmother and your great-grandmother are plotting something,” I said.

“They're matchmaking,” she said, very matter-of-fact. “As always. Grand-mère hopes that you two will get married and move to France so you can come over every Sunday for dinner.”

From the look on his face, Jean-Paul was hearing something similar from his son. He smiled and lifted a palm in a whatcha-gonna-do? gesture.

“Anyway, Mom?”

“Yes, dear.”

“We had this great idea to film promo spots to raise awareness about the amazing local farm products. You know, globally.”

“Sounds like fun,” I said. “Where will you broadcast your spots?”

“We need to talk to Jean-Paul about that. Dom says that's his area of expertise.”

“We'll talk more about it when I get there.”

“We've drafted a shooting script. I'll email it to you so you can punch it up.”

“Casey, I didn't know you were interested in filmmaking.”

“You kidding?” she said with some heat. “No way. I've seen what you have to put up with. Nope, not my gig. But I am really getting into cheese making. Who knew, huh? The chemistry of it is fascinating.”

She told me that she and some of the cousins were leaving in the morning on a road trip into the Dordogne to do some kayaking and hiking. I refrained from offering a string of maternal warnings and wished her godspeed. She promised they would be back, intact, before I arrived.

Jean-Paul was in the midst of a business-related call when I said good-bye to Casey. I called Mom next.

“The piano mover is scheduled for first thing tomorrow,” she told me. “Can you be there when they arrive?”

“I'll wait for them.”

Mom gave me the mover's number in case there was an issue. She updated me on her plans to move into the Tejedas' casita, and seemed very upbeat about the prospect. After I filled her in on progress with the house, I said, “I ran into an old friend of yours yesterday, a man named Khanh Duc.”

“Oh, dear. Duc. I was just thinking about him. Funny how that happens, isn't it? I hadn't thought about him for years, and then out of the blue you mention him.”

“I don't remember him,” I said. “But he apparently spent a lot of time with Dad.”

“I suppose. They had roses in common.”

“Were you thinking about him because I brought up Mrs. Bartolini the other day?”

I heard her let out a deep breath before she said, “Yes.”

“Is there a story there?”

“If there is, it isn't my story to tell,” Mom said.

“Duc told me he and Mrs. B were from the same village in Vietnam.”

“Maggie, you're digging.”

“I am,” I said. “Shamelessly. I heard something last night that cast what happened to her in a whole new light. Was there something between her and Duc?”

“I couldn't say,” Mom said. “I only know they lost touch after their families were evacuated to Saigon.”

“Until she ran into him at the refugee camp at the Presidio?”

“Yes.”

“Did something develop after that?”

“Can we just say that they were old friends, and leave it at that?”

“I'm not sure,” I said. “There was another man from their village that I think you knew.”

“Van Thai?” she asked. “Yes. A very angry man.”

“Do you have any idea where he is now?”

“None at all. Van worked for Tosh for a while. When Tosh fired him, he moved out of the area. I doubt I ever heard his name again until today.”

The conversation was making Mom very uncomfortable. She knew something. But if Mom didn't want to talk about it, she wouldn't, so there was no point pursuing the issue. Didn't matter; her reluctance to answer had been answer enough. I changed the subject to Susan's expected arrival and news about various neighbors.

After we said good-bye, I called Kevin. His phone went straight to voice mail, so I left a message: “I want to see Mrs. B's murder book. And we need to talk. Very soon.”

I hit speed dial and connected with my assistant, Fergie. I gave her the little I knew about Thai Van and his father, Thai Hung, and asked her to go into the network's news archives to see what she could find. And, if possible, find out where Van was now. As long as we were still connected to the network, I might as well use their resources.

A call from Uncle Max beeped the line. I ended the call to Fergie and said hello to Max.

“I'm on my way to SFO to pick up Guido,” Max told me. “Do you want me to rent you a van or a pickup while I'm at the airport?”

“Please,” I said. “I hope I'll only need it until Tuesday.”

I looked at my watch as I calculated Max's travel time. If Guido's plane was on time and traffic on Bayshore wasn't too god-awful, they would be here in a couple of hours. I said good-bye to Max, turned off my phone and put it in my pocket.

Jean-Paul had wandered over to the garden. When I joined him, he was wiping bloom dust off a perfect tomato.

“What can be done?” he said, taking a bite out of the tomato. The juice ran halfway down his arm. He shook it off. “My mother is plotting with your grandmother.”

“It's kind of cute,” I said, wiping his chin with the tail of my shirt. “Very teenagery. Or is it dynastic? We aren't cousins to some degree, are we?”

“Not that I am aware. And certainly there is no great fortune at stake.”

“Well, let them have their fun,” I said.

“All is well with your mother?” he asked. “I didn't hear the usual laughter when you were speaking with her.”

“She doesn't want me asking her questions about Trinh Bartolini.”