The First Rule of Ten (17 page)

“Hoo, boy,” he said. “Will you lookie there.”

I grinned with pleasure.

Soon he was circling my car.

“You win the lottery or something? Pop the trunk, wouldja?”

I did, and stood beside him like a proud parent as he located the battery, lodged in the back. John D closed the trunk, ran his hand across the rear spoiler, and squatted to check the mufflers.

“Nice glasspacks,” he said. “V-8?”

“V-8, three-oh-six horsepower.”

He grunted and opened the driver’s side door to peer inside, letting out a long, low whistle at the steering wheel. “Mahogany, and a horn button. Lordie me, this takes me back. Override traction bars, too, I see.”

Then John D spotted the snake emblem on the glove box. He wheeled on me, his eyes glinting.

“Son, how on God’s green earth did you get yourself a ’65 Shelby Mustang?”

“Hop in and I’ll tell you.”

I spared him no detail as we drove to the market. I hadn’t had such a rapt audience since the time I was stopped on the street by a guy driving a yellow Lotus. It was the same color as mine, but not nearly as rare, therefore sexy, and the poor guy’s face told me he knew it.

“I was on patrol,” I told John D. “Got called to the scene of a drag racing accident, a bad one. One fool was doing ninety blind drunk. He swerved into the other guy, they both flipped, and that was that. Both drivers were pronounced dead on the scene. Vehicular homicide, times two. The cars were pretty much totaled, but something about one of them, a white Mustang with black stripes, caught my eye. The chassis was smashed all to hell, but I pried open the trunk on a hunch, and spotted the telltale backyard battery. The fuel tank was another giveaway—thirty-two gallons instead of the usual sixteen. And of course there was no backseat, just a fiberglass ledge, or what was left of it, for the spare.”

John D nodded. He knew cars.

“They impounded the car as evidence, until all the paperwork was in,” I continued, “but I kept my eye on it. To this day I don’t know why nobody else figured out that it was a Shelby, but when it went up for auction, I put in a quick early bid, and it was mine for just under five thousand.”

John D chuckled. “Just about what it cost brand-new, way back when. What I want to know is, how’d you know what it was in the first place? You being a monk and all.”

“Well, I’m not what you’d call a shining example of commitment to the Noble Eightfold Path. Tourists sometimes visited our monastery, and one of them left behind a classic auto magazine, which I salvaged from the recycling bin. A refurbished ’65 Shelby was featured in one of the articles, and I fell for it, fell hard. I can’t tell you how many meditations I spent trying to free myself from that obsession.”

John D looked puzzled.

“As you can see, it worked really well,” I said.

John D laughed. Then he leaned his head back, and closed his eyes.

“Darcy Forsting,” he said, finally.

“Who?”

“Darcy Forsting. My first, and prolly best, roll in the hay, which wasn’t in hay at all, but the front seat of a ’56 Corvette Stingray Coupe. Tighter than a nun’s you-know-what—the front seat I mean, not Darcy—but that didn’t stop us. It was my uncle’s, and a beaut. Painted shiny red, like one of them fireball candies. Lord, but I loved that car. Talk about muscle.”

We shared a moment of silent appreciation for first loves.

As we entered downtown, John D directed me to a lot near the bustling farmer’s market. He hitched up his pants, and off we went on our mission. Exactly what the mission was, wasn’t very clear to me, except that I wanted to get close to some of the Children of Paradise, if possible, and observe them away from their native turf. As we entered the market, John D grunted, “Over there.”

He steered my eyes down a narrow lane of vegetable stalls crowded with shoppers. At the far end, I spotted three people in robes, two men and a woman with a long rope of hair. They were bent over what looked like a stacked wall of leafy greens.

“That the woman you were telling me about?”

He nodded.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go see what we can stir up.”

One young acolyte was filling a pushcart with bunches of green and purple kale. He had bug eyes and a weak chin. I dismissed him as the peon of the group.

The other man was a different story. He stood slightly to one side, his eyes sweeping the Thursday morning crowd. His robe could not hide the fact that he was muscled and very fit. His stance was not so much relaxed as coiled, but probably no one but a detective would notice that.

I saw his eyes narrow at something across the way. A rapid series of minute but distinct responses flashed across his face. It was like watching a slide show as he shuttered through a range of feelings, from suspicion, to anger, to—and this made no sense—what looked like a kind of … vulnerable pride?

I followed his gaze to a young couple. The guy had the flat-topped buzz cut and green camouflage pants of an army man on leave. He had his arm around a young, very pretty woman. She had a wide, lumpy cloth wrapped around her waist and chest, and I realized somewhere in there a baby was tucked. I looked back at the man in the robe. Interesting; something about this scene both angered and touched him.

Lookout Man shot his eyes in my direction, as if he felt my stare, and I quickly shifted my attention to the nubby avocados in front of me. I picked one up and studied its skin.

The threesome moved on. I observed from a distance. The woman appeared to be the produce scout. She’d reconnoiter each stall, poking and prodding, and then point to what she wanted. Peon and Lookout Man loaded up the scales, and she’d pay the vendor with bills peeled off a fat roll. Then she’d move to the next stall as they piled the pushcart with enough foodstuffs to feed a small army.

I ambled closer to the woman, careful to keep one eye on the bodyguard. As I neared her, I could see that, like Barbara Maxey, she was older than she first appeared. At least 50 in her case. She had a desert-weathered face, and her lank brown hair was banded into a ponytail that reached halfway down her back. John D drew next to me.

“Definitely her,” he murmured.

She moved over to peruse a huge stall piled with root vegetables—russet potatoes, crimson and gold beets, bunched carrots, and a big pile of bulbous fennel.

We hadn’t rehearsed anything, so John D’s direct approach caught me by surprise.

“Hello there, young lady,” he called out. “Remember me? I’m your next-door neighbor, John D.”

She looked up. Sure enough, she smiled.

Her eyes cut over to me, then to her two robed companions. They were busy stacking their cart. She returned her attention to John D.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “The Prophet speaks of you often.”

John D slapped his thigh in delight. “He does? What’s he say about ol’ John D?”

“He says to be polite to you.” She glanced at me again, and gnawed on a cuticle.

John D caught her eye-flick in my direction. “This is my son, Charlie. He just got outta the navy. He used to be friends with that blond lady, the other one who came down here sometimes. What was her name again, son?”

“Barbara,” I said, watching the woman closely.

“Sister Barbara?” she whispered. Confusion rippled across her face, then panic, as if two worlds were about to collide and she had no tools for surviving the ensuing explosion.

I nodded. “She came to see me just before she died.”

“Sister Barbara’s dead?”

“We think she may have been murdered,” John D added.

She wheeled, doubling over as if to stifle an upswell of grief. Her elbow knocked a stack of potatoes, sending them tumbling. Several people moved in to retrieve the spilled tubers, and the hubbub acted as a flare to Lookout Man and his sidekick. They quickly finished filling their cart and slalomed it through the crowd. As they rolled closer, the woman used her fists to scrub the tears from her creased cheeks. She took a deep breath and was suddenly, eerily calm.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I cared for Sister Barbara. We all did. Her fall from grace was tragic.”

I said, “I wasn’t in touch with her while she was in your group, so I never got the whole story of why she left.”

“Sister Barbara is in God’s hands, now,” she said. “I have nothing more to say.”

Her two companions were moments away.

“At least tell me your name,” I said.

Her head-shake was almost imperceptible. Then Lookout Man was at her elbow.

“Sister Rose, we should go.” He gave me a hard stare. I kept my expression mild.

“Yes, yes,” she said, and she walked toward a stall of apples, the two men flanking her like guard dogs.

John D sighed. “My daddy always used to say, ‘Dear Lord, protect us from Your followers.’ I think he got that just about right.”

“She knows something,” I said. “But we may never know what it is.”

“Well, Mr. Detective, what’s our next move?”

“Good question,” I said. “Let’s do some shopping. I’m sure I’ll think of something after that.”

We split up, and I went straight back to the fennel. I had no idea what one did with fennel, but I knew someone who might. I bought a big bulb of it, topped with feathery fringe. I added purple kale, parsnips, shiny flat peppers the color of red lipstick, and a paper bag of chanterelles that resembled pale sea anemones. I pictured the chanterelles sautéing in olive oil.

Why hadn’t Julie called me?

In a blink, self-sufficiency flipped into a sudden desire to hear Julie’s voice. I pulled out my iPhone and called her. I got her message again, and felt the clean cut of disappointment. She was mighty unavailable, for a single gal.

“Hey, Julie, I’m at the Antelope Valley farmer’s market, loading up on produce I have no idea how to cook. Little help, here?”

I was putting my purchases into my trunk when John D wheezed to my side. He dropped his shopping bag next to mine and leaned against the car to steady himself while he caught his breath. I noted the self-satisfied grin.

“What?” I said.

“You prolly think I was just getting supplies, Ten, but turns out I was doing a little detecting, too.”

He rummaged in the front pocket of his jeans and pulled out a little scrap of paper.

“Sister Rose slipped this into my hand before she left.”

She’d torn a corner off her shopping list. I read the girlish, looped handwriting: “Meet me on the hill tonight. 8
P.M.
”

It looked like I was going to spend more time in scenic Lancaster than I had planned. Fortunately, I had a local with me. My stomach growled; sampling the occasional strawberry and tangerine section had only succeeded in making me ravenous.

“I’m starving,” I told John D.

“I got just the place,” he said. I should have known from the glint in his eye I was in for it.

I parked my Mustang between a pickup and a Prius, outside “Josecita’s Bar and Eats.” Apparently Josecita had something for every pay grade. As I followed John D into the ramshackle eatery, a rooster bumped his way past my legs.

“That’s Henry,” John D said. “Don’t mind him. He’s blind.” My eyes adjusted to the dark, saloonlike atmosphere, and I realized Henry wasn’t the only oddity. A young goat was tethered to the jukebox, a tiny white pig was roaming free, and a couple of mangy dogs lay curled in the corner. I heard a weird chattering above my head. I looked up and blinked.

“John D,” I said. “Is that a—”

“Yes, it is. A South American woolly monkey. He goes by the name of Bonaparte.”

“Hunh.” Monkeys were a dime a dozen in India, but this was my first Southern California sighting.

We found an empty table. I grabbed a seat, and John D crossed to where three coffeepots perched side by side on hot plates, like broody hens. He returned with one and filled our cups with thick sludge only a mother could love.

“House rules. You pour your own,” he said.

“John D!” a thunderous voice bellowed from across the room. An enormous woman, part brawler, part lover, loomed in the kitchen entrance, encased in a psychedelic, multicolored muumuu. “Gimme some sugar!”

Three hundred pounds of quivering love made a beeline for my friend. She wrapped him up like a burrito and squeezed. Then she caught sight of me over John D’s shoulder and spring-loaded him free.

John D recognized the avid look on her face.

“Josecita, I don’t think …”

She darted behind me, and for an instant I was enveloped by two billowing breasts, hanging like warm water balloons on either side of my head. Then Josecita cackled and was gone.

My cheeks burning, I grabbed John D’s arm.

“What the hell was that?”

John D grinned. “She must like you, Ten. She just gave you the famous earmuff treatment.”

Soon she was back with two greasy menus, like nothing had happened. John D waved his away.

“I’ll have the burger, darlin’,” he said.

I opened my menu, but Josecita snatched it back. She bored in on my Asian eyes and almond-toned skin. Read me like a tea leaf.

“You one of them vee-gans?” she asked. I saw John D shake his head at me slightly, warning me.

“Well, not exactly …” I hedged, when she clapped me on the back. It was a little like getting sideswiped by a bus. I braced myself for the mockery that was sure to follow, but her face split wide with a gap-toothed grin.

“Good for you. I love all God’s creatures myself. Listen, honey, I’m no angel, and I do love my burgers, but I ain’t never turned away an animal that didn’t have a home, or a man who was hungry. I’ll fix you up, don’t you worry.”

She disappeared again, and I slumped with relief.

“Welcome to the monkey house,” John D said. He laughed, and his laughter turned into a hacking cough, which went on longer than it should have. He patted his lips with his napkin, and I saw his hand was shaking a little. A shadow swooped my heart like a barn swallow. I put my fingers on John D’s forearm.

“How are you doing?”

“Doing just fine,” he said.

“No. How are you doing, really?”

John D took a moment before answering. “You want to be careful posing that question to a person my age, ’less you’re prepared for a full-on organ recital.”