Chet took the last drag of his cigarette and flipped it out the window. He took one more pull from his flask and put that away. The tractor and flatbed, deck empty now, passed him again, heading back toward the 166. On the Tanner property, the bright yellow bulldozer sat with two others, looking as big as a tank. He hadn’t been on a bulldozer since he was eighteen years old, that ball-busting summer before his father had been killed. He’d worked construction, thinking he could set aside some cash for his freshman year of college. Nowadays the union trained guys to operate heavy equipment, but in those days, you got on a dozer, fired it up, and hoped you wouldn’t drive yourself into a ditch.
He turned the key in the ignition and released the T of the emergency brake. He made a U-turn across the two lanes of deserted road. What he’d been through with Violet was the equivalent of a three-year affair compressed into three days. Beginning, middle, and end. Over and out. He couldn’t help thinking she’d made a bigger fool of him than he knew. He’d been set up, duped. She wanted the car. It was obvious now, but she’d played him well and he half-admired her finesse. She’d crooked her little finger and he’d scampered after her, as frisky as a pup. He didn’t feel it yet, the shame, but he would very soon, once the liquor wore off. He knew his humiliation was commensurate with his joy, but the joy had been fleeting while the rage would burn at his core like the fire in the bowels of a coal mine, year after year. What wounded him was knowing she felt none of his pain. Now every time he saw the car, every time Foley made a payment, he’d cringe, feeling powerless and small. He’d go home to Livia and that would be that. His life had been barely tolerable before, but what would it be like now that he knew the difference?
At the house, he pulled into the driveway and put his car in the garage. Mentally he shook himself off, struggling for control. He had a part to play. He couldn’t let Violet ruin his home life as she’d ruined his work. He let himself in the house. The hall smelled of cabbage that had cooked half a day. He wanted to weep. He couldn’t even look forward to a good meal at home. Livia, with her heavy hand and glum notions about food, served nearly inedible fare—mackerel loaf, creamed chicken on waffles, tapioca pudding that looked like a clot of egg-infested mucilage spawned by a fish. He’d eaten it all, every variation on a theme, sometimes too frightened to inquire what it was.
“Daddy, is that you?”
“Yes.”
He peered into the living room. Kathy was sprawled on the couch, her heavy legs flung over one end. She wore white shorts and a T-shirt, both inappropriate for someone her size. She had a strand of hair in her mouth and she was sucking on the end while she watched television. The Howdy Doody Show. Talk about a waste of time. A cowboy marionette with freckles and a flapping mouth. You could even see the strings that generated his movements, his wobbly boots dangling on tippy-toe as he pranced across the screen.
Chet took off his sport coat and hung it on a peg in the hall. What did he care if the shoulder got pulled out of shape? He undid his collar button and loosened his tie. He had to get a grip. But fifteen minutes later, as he was sitting down for supper, Livia made a half-assed remark, saying how ridiculous it was that the South Korean president, Syngman Rhee, called on Christians and non-Christians to pray for peace.
He stared at her, instantly incensed. “You think it’s ridiculous the war might come to an end? After we’ve lost thirty-three thousand U.S. troops? Where the hell is your head? Rhee’s the guy who released twenty-seven thousand North Korean POWs less than two weeks ago, sabotaging armistice talks. Now he’s softened his position and you want to sit there sneering at him?”
Livia’s lips tightened to such an extent he was surprised she could speak. “All I’m saying is there’s no point in non-Christians praying for peace when they don’t believe in God.”
“Non-Christians don’t believe in God? Is that what you think? Anyone who doesn’t go to your personal church and worship your personal deity is some kind of heathen? Livia, you can’t be that idiotic.”
He could tell she was offended, but he really didn’t care. Cheeks stained with indignation, she snapped his dinner plate on the table in front of him with a force that nearly cracked it in two. He looked down at the meal, which consisted of a main dish and a side of cabbage that had boiled so long all the color had cooked out. He pointed to the entrée. “What’s this?”
Livia sat down and arranged her napkin in her lap. “We’re having International Night. The first Friday of every month. Kathy prepared the dish and I think it’s lovely.”
“It’s Welch Rabbit,” Kathy said, happily, already lifting a fully loaded fork to her lips.
“Welch? There’s no such place as Welch. Are you out of your minds? This isn’t rabbit. It’s cheese goo on toast.”
“Would you sample a bite before you judge, or is that too much to ask after Kathy’s worked so hard?”
“This is shit! I can’t work a full day and sit down to a meal like this. There’s no meat.”
“Please watch your language. There’s a young lady present.”
He pushed his plate back. “Excuse me.” He left the table and went into the downstairs powder room, where he pulled out his flask and downed the remaining vodka in six swallows. It wasn’t nearly enough, but maybe he’d managed to survive the next fifteen minutes without going berserk.
He returned to the table and began to eat, trying to imagine how normal men behaved. Husbands all over America must be sitting down to dinners just like this, with wives and daughters like the two he faced. How did they do it? Making small talk? He could do that. Clearly there was no point discussing world peace. He glanced at Kathy, not looking too closely as she tended to chew with her mouth open. He said, “I saw your friend today.”
“Who?”
“Liza.”
“Oh.” She was so intent on stuffing her face, he wondered if she’d heard.
“Whatever happened to her?”
Kathy flicked him a look. “Nothing. Why’d you say that?”
“Six months ago the two of you were like Siamese twins, joined at the hip. She dump you or what?”
“No, Dad. She didn’t dump me.”
“Then how come you don’t see each other anymore?”
“We do. All the time. She was busy today. Is that against the law?”
“She didn’t look that busy to me. Unless a fancy lunch downtown counts.”
“Liza didn’t have lunch downtown.”
“I thought today was her birthday. Didn’t you say something to that effect here at dinner last night?”
“So?”
“So nothing. I thought she’d be spending the whole day with you.”
“We talked on the phone. She said her mother’s been sick and might even be contagious or she’d have come right over to celebrate.”
“Ohhh,” he said, drawing the word out. “Well, maybe that explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“What she was doing all dressed up with Violet Sullivan. The two had their heads bent together over shrimp cocktails.”
Kathy put her fork down and stared. “They did not.”
“Yes, they did. Uh-hum. Yes, indeedy.”
“Where?”
“The Savoy Hotel. The tea room’s on the ground floor. I saw ’em through the window.”
Livia said, “Chet.”
“Very funny. Ha ha. And where’s Daisy all this time? Did you forget about her?”
“She was sitting right there with a big bowl of buttered noodles she was slurping through her lips.”
“You’re just saying that to bug me because you’re in a bad mood. Liza might have gone out, but it had nothing to do with Mrs. Sullivan.”
“Why don’t you ask her and see what she says?”
“Chet, that’s enough.”
“I can’t call her again. I just talked to her. She’s taking care of her mother, who’s extremely ill.”
“Okay. Fine. If that’s the way you want to play it. I’d feel bad i
f things went sour between the two of you. That’s my only concern.”
Kathy retreated into silence. Meanwhile, Livia sent him dark, meaningful looks that suggested a serious dressing-down to come. Chet didn’t intend to stick around for that. He wiped his mouth on his napkin and tossed it on his plate. He got up, working to control the urge to run. He could feel the spite rising in his chest. What the hell was wrong with him? He was never going to get back at Violet by making trouble somewhere else. Why put his daughter at odds with her best friend? The pettiness of what he’d done only fueled his rage. He thought he was close to madness, irrational, erratic, out of control.
He took his sport coat from the hook and shrugged himself into it. Livia had followed him into the hall. “Are you going out?”
“Yes.”
“But I’m expecting company. This is my canasta night. The girls are going to be here at eight. You said you’d take Kathy and go somewhere.”
He walked out the front door and slammed it behind him, so choked with fury he couldn’t utter a word.
19
I went back to the motel office and borrowed Mrs. Bonnet’s phone. I contacted the sheriff’s office to report the incident and was told they’d send someone out. I then called Southern California Automobile Club and requested assistance. While I waited, I called Daisy’s house and Tannie answered the phone. She said Daisy had already left for work. When I told her about my tires being slashed, she was properly outraged. “You poor thing! I can’t believe someone would do that to you.”
“Personally, I’m thrilled. I mean, on one hand, I’m peeved. I hate to be without transportation and buying four new tires is the last thing I need. On the other hand, it’s like hitting all three cherries on a slot machine. Three days into the job and someone’s already nervous as a cat.”
“You don’t think it was vandalism?”
“Absolutely not. Are you kidding? I grant you my car’s conspicuous in a parking lot full of trucks, but the choice wasn’t random. This was supposed to be a warning, or possibly punishment, but I take it as a good sign.”
“Well, your attitude beats mine. I’d be raising six kinds of hell if somebody slashed my tires.”
“Shows I’m on the right track.”
“Which is what?”
“I have no idea, but my nemesis must think I’m close to figuring it out.”
“Whatever ‘it’ is.”
“Right. Meantime, I need the name of a garage, if you know someone good.”
“You forget my brother’s in the business. Ottweiler Auto Repair in Santa Maria. At least he won’t gouge you on the price.”
“Great. I’ll call him. What about you? What’s your day looking like?”
“I’ll be out on the property with a couple of guys. If I were so minded, I could be clearing brush for the rest of my life. I’m meeting with a contractor at eleven thirty, but you’re welcome to come by.”
“Let’s see how long it takes me to get my tires swapped out. If everything goes smoothly, I’ll stop and pick up some sandwiches and we can have lunch.”
“Tell Steve I sent you. That’ll surprise him for sure. Better yet, I’ll call him myself and tell him you’ll be in.”
“Thanks.”
A sheriff’s deputy arrived at the Sun Bonnet within thirty minutes, and he spent an additional fifteen minutes, taking photographs and filling out information for his report. He said I could pick up a copy to forward to my insurance company. I couldn’t remember the amount of my deductible, but I’d doubtless end up paying for them myself. Shortly after he left, the tow truck arrived, and the driver loaded my car onto a flatbed truck. I hopped in the cab with him and we covered the fifteen miles to Santa Maria without saying much.
While the car was being unloaded, Steve Ottweiler appeared and introduced himself. He was seven years Tannie’s senior, an age spread that seemed to favor him. According to social standards other than my own, a man, at fifty, is just starting to look good, while a fifty-year-old woman is someone the eye tends to slide right past. In California cosmetic surgery is the means by which women stop the clock before the sliding begins. Lately the push is to get the work done earlier and earlier—age thirty if you’re an actress—before the slippage sets in. I could see the strong family resemblance between Tannie’s brother and their father, Jake, whom I’d met the night before. Steve had the same height and body type, lean and muscular. His face was broader than his dad’s, but his complexion was the same sun-stained brown.
I purchased four new tires, taking his advice about which brand I should buy, that being the one he had in stock. We sat in his office while the mechanic put my car up on a rack and started loosening lug nuts. Currently Steve Ottweiler was the only person in the area I didn’t suspect of slashing my tires, primarily because this was the first opportunity I’d had to piss him off. Somewhere in the last two days, I’d stepped on some toes, but I hadn’t stepped on his—as far as I knew.
I said, “You were, what, sixteen in Violet Sullivan’s day?”
“I was a junior in high school.”
“Did you know Liza Mellincamp’s boyfriend?”
“Ty Eddings? Sure, though more by reputation than anything else. I knew his cousin, Kyle. They were both a year ahead of me so we didn’t have much occasion to interact. Actually, I’m not sure anyone knew Ty that well. He transferred in from East Bakersfield High School in March of that year. By the time July rolled around, he was gone again.”
“Somebody told me he left the same weekend Violet did.”
“No connection that I know of. They were both troublemakers, but that’s about it. He’d been kicked out of EBHS and sent to live with his aunt in hopes he’d mend his wicked ways. Guess that idea flopped.”
“Meaning what?”
“Word had it that he’d taken up with Liza Mellincamp, who was all of thirteen. The year before, he’d knocked up a fifteen-year-old girl and she ended up dead from a botched abortion. Ty was accorded outlaw status. Very cool in those days.”
“He wasn’t disliked or avoided?”
“Not a bit. We were all big on drama back then. Ty was regarded as a tragic hero because everyone thought he and the dead girl were deeply in love and her parents had forced them apart. He was Romeo to her Juliet, only he came out of the deal a lot better than she did.”
“But is it out of the question that he and Violet might have gotten together? Two black sheep?”
“Well, it’s always possible, though it doesn’t seem likely. Violet was in her twenties and married to boot, so she hardly registered with us. We lived in a world of our own. You know how it is; the big event for us was two classmates who got killed in a car accident. Violet was a grownup. Nobody cared about her. Liza was the one I felt sorry for.”
“I don’t wonder,” I said. “I talked to her yesterday and she said she was crushed when Ty left town. What was that about?”
“The story I heard was Ty’s aunt got a phone call from someone who told her he was fooling around with another underage girl, namely Liza. That was Friday night. The aunt turned around and called his mother, who’d flown to Chicago for a wedding. She got back to Bakersfield late Saturday night and picked him up first thing Sunday morning.”
“You’d think he could have gotten word to Liza. She was dumped without so much as a by-your-leave.”
“I guess good manners weren’t his thing.”
“What happened after that? I asked, but she wasn’t happy about the question so I left it alone.”
“Things went from bad to worse. Her parents had divorced when she was eight. She’d been living with her mom—essentially without supervision, since her mother drank. When her dad got wind of her relationship with Ty, he flew out from Colorado, packed her up, and took her back to live with him. Of course that went nowhere. The two didn’t get along; she hated his new family and she was back the next year. No big surprise. You take a kid like her, used to freedom, and she’s not going to react kindly to parental cont
rol.”
“How’d he hear about Ty if he was in Colorado?”
“He still had contacts in town.”
“So she ended up living with her mom again?”
“Not for long. Sally Mellincamp died in a house fire the next year and a local family took Liza in. Charlie Clements was a good guy and didn’t want to see her sucked into the foster care system. He owned the auto-repair shop in Serena Station that I bought when he retired in 1962. Liza married his son.”
“So everything connects.”
“One way or another; it sure looks that way.”
Steve was called out to the service bay, but he urged me to stay where I was until my car was ready. His office was small and utilitarian—metal desk, metal chair, metal files, and the smell of oil. Parts manuals and work orders were stacked up everywhere. I took advantage of the moment to review my index cards, playing with the information every way I could. A moment would come when everything would lock into place (she said bravely to herself ). Right now, the bits and pieces were a jumble, and I couldn’t quite see where any of them fit.
It was Winston’s confession I kept coming back to. For years he’d kept quiet about seeing Violet’s car. Now I realized how lucky I was his wife was booting him out. Because he was pissed with her, all bets were off, and he felt no compunction about spilling the beans. If I’d talked to him a day earlier, he might not have said a word. It was a lesson I needed to keep in mind: People change, circumstances change, and what seems imperative one day becomes insignificant the next. The reverse is true as well.
My VW was returned within the hour, my tires looking as crisp and clean as brand-new shoes. In addition, I saw that someone had treated me to a complimentary car wash. The interior now smelled new, thanks to a deodorant tag hanging from the rearview mirror. I caught sight of Steve Ottweiler as I was pulling out and gave him a wave.
Heading west on Main, I realized I wasn’t that far from the neighborhood where Sergeant Schaefer lived. I took the next right-hand turn and circled back, parking out in front of his house as I had on my earlier visit. When he didn’t answer my knock, I followed the walkway around the side of the house to the rear, at the same time calling his name. He was in his workshop and when he heard my voice, he peered out the open doorway and motioned me in.