Fast Friends (Iris Thorne Mysteries Book 3) Page 6

  Just beyond the eucalyptus trees, the chaparral-covered hill sloped down steeply. A narrow road was cut into the dry hillside and it spiraled around and around, growing increasingly narrow, until it ended at the ranch house at the top. Farther down the hill, where the slope became gentle, was the citrus grove. The workers’ house, where Gabriel Gaytan lived, stood in a clearing in the middle of the grove. Iris could see its red-tiled roof and its covered patio.

  At the edge of the grove was the chain-link, barbed-wire-topped fence that encircled Las Mariposas. Just beyond it was the Thorne property. In the backyard, Iris could see the neatly planted rows of her father’s vegetable garden.

  Skippy and Perro lolled near Iris, their pink tongues dangling from the sides of their mouths. In the two days since Gabriel’s murder, Perro had taken up tagging along with Iris’s dog. He seemed lost. Iris felt a bit lost too. Humberto had died of his injuries that morning. Iris would have liked to have talked to someone about it, but everyone seemed to have something else to do.

  Paula was busy with her new hobby, Mike, and her old hobby, developing bad habits. Iris’s father was at work and her sister was gone. Her mother was home. Iris could see her hanging clothes on the lines strung across the tiny backyard. But her mother sometimes made Iris feel as if she were underfoot.

  Iris had told her mother about seeing Humberto being beaten. Rose insisted that Iris had simply seen Humberto being restrained when he resisted arrest. She warned Iris not to tell anyone about it anyway. Not because she believed Iris’s recounting of the incident, but because she didn’t want Iris to be caught spreading such a terrible rumor. It wouldn’t look good. It occurred to Iris that maybe her mother didn’t want to believe her. Maybe she already had too many things on her mind. But Iris took her advice and didn’t tell anyone, except Paula, of course.

  So Iris retreated to Las Mariposas. Unlike everyone else, Dolly always seemed glad to have her around. The ranch and its two houses were infinitely more interesting than Iris’s house and yard. And from the top of the hill, her house looked small while the world looked big.

  The DeLaceys’ L-shaped ranch house was a stone’s throw from the eucalyptus trees. Three bedrooms and a kitchen had been added to the original adobe structure, which remained as the front of the house. The adobe had low ceilings and tiny shuttered windows. Its thick walls were coated with a crust of limestone that had cracked in spots, revealing the clay and straw bricks underneath.

  A detached two-car garage stood at the side of the house. In the driveway, Junior leaned inside the open hood of his Ford Falcon and worked a wrench at the engine’s guts while listening to a transistor radio.

  Bill DeLacey opened the ranch house’s heavy wooden front door and let it slam closed behind him. He walked with his legs slightly bent as if a broad stance was required to support his belly. It gave him a crablike appearance. “Junior! Time to collect the rents. Then we’ve got to take Gabe’s will to the attorney.” He smiled his toothy yellow smile. “Not much longer now.” Junior smiled back, a bit tentatively. He was always tentative around his father. He was much shorter than Bill, taking after his mother more than his brother or sister did. “When are we going to break ground on DeLacey Gardens?”

  “The will’s got to go through probate and now I’ve got to fill out some goddamned environmental impact report the goddamned liberals in Sacramento have got us into. Three months, I’d say. I think I can hold the investors off that long.”

  “They’ll be happy to get their fifteen percent.”

  “I’ll deliver the checks personally.” DeLacey raised his index finger. “It’s that personal touch that’s important in this business, Junior. Never forget that.” DeLacey smiled at Junior as if pleased with him.

  Junior, elated but embarrassed by the unfamiliar attention, quickly climbed into the car and started the engine. It backfired twice.

  DeLacey was still smiling when he said, “You call that a tune-up?”

  The words slapped the smile from Junior’s face.

  “When I ask you to do something, I expect you to do it right. Or maybe you can’t do anything right.”

  “I can,” Junior protested.

  “Well, you don’t act like it and you don’t look like it.”

  Iris then watched the car, its tires spitting loose gravel, round the first bend in the hill and disappear, though she could still hear its sputtering engine. The car reappeared farther down and disappeared again, only to reappear still farther down on the narrow spiraling road, which had no barrier separating the edge from the steep hillside. It rounded the last bend and traveled past Gabe’s house before it passed the chain-link fence to the street.

  Iris walked up the ranch house’s brick steps, turned the old tarnished brass door handle, and pushed open the thick door with her shoulder. She never rang the bell here. She walked through the tiled entryway and into the living room. Squares of light from the small windows washed the delicate white-and-gold-leaf French provincial furniture with which Dolly had chosen to incongruously furnish the rustic house. Gold plaster angels and replicas of medieval tapestries hung on the walls.

  Iris walked down the low hallway of the adobe section, the air cool and musty, and peeked in a small bedroom. Dolly, her hair done in a long thick braid down her back, sat at a sewing machine that faced a window. She was pulling a length of black fabric with both hands underneath the bobbing needle. The machine’s humming reached an angry crescendo as she sped to the end of the seam. The room had been Dolly’s childhood bedroom and was her bedroom still. She hadn’t shared a room with Bill DeLacey in years.

  Iris continued walking until she reached the newer part of the house, where the children’s rooms were located. She looked inside Paula’s room. It was in its usual disarray of clothes and record albums. The bed was made. That meant that Dolly had changed the sheets that day. That was the only thing that Paula allowed Dolly to do in her room.

  Since no one was stopping her, Iris walked into Thomas’s room, which was next to Paula’s. His room always seemed chilly. Maybe it was caused by the excessive neatness. His bed was always made. Games and books were stacked in a bookshelf. On top, green plastic army men were arranged for battle. In his closet, the toy trucks and cars that he’d outgrown were lined up side by side. The old toys had been replaced by Thomas’s new one. Mounted on the wall was the rifle his father had bought him for his last birthday. Also mounted on the wall were pelts from rabbits he’d killed, skinned, and stretched himself. Assorted liquid-filled jars on top of his dresser held snakes, lizards, spiders, mice, and other small creatures that had been unfortunate enough to cross Thomas’s path on the hillside. Iris peered at them with macabre fascination.

  Iris left Thomas’s room and started to head back to visit Dolly when she noticed that Junior’s door was open. He kept it padlocked unless it was Dolly’s day to change the sheets. Dolly must have forgotten to lock the door after she left.

  Iris looked stealthily from left to right down the hallway. Since she had still been undetected thus far, she decided to indulge in a rare treat.

  Junior had several guns mounted to the wall; Bill DeLacey thought it imperative that his boys be familiar with firearms. There was a stack of girlie magazines in the back of Junior’s closet and a cache of candy bars and potato chips on a top shelf behind some sweaters. But none of those were the reasons why Junior kept his room locked or what drew Iris there.

  Positioned on a platform in the middle of the room, displacing his bed and dresser, which were shoved into the corners, was Junior’s Lionel model train set. The tracks meandered through a fairy tale pastoral landscape of villages and farms, over hills and dales and through forests all handmade by the seemingly thick-fingered, dull-witted Junior. He spent countless hours and almost all his allowance on it yet never ran the train for anyone except himself. Paula told Iris that occasionally she’d be awakened in the middle of the night by the model train as it whistled and clattered around its track.

 
Iris stared at it without touching it. It was very seductive. She understood why Junior loved it and why he kept it under lock and key. It was a dream. It was an image that resided on the surface of a soap bubble and just as fragile. Exposing it to the light of day and the comments and criticisms of others would have ruined it. She understood. If she knew how to climb into that perfect little world and ride that perfect little train, she’d do it too.

  Figuring she was pressing her luck, she turned to leave but spotted something in the bottom of the trash can near the door. She reached in and gathered the tiny torn squares of paper that had been a photograph. She squatted down and put together a few of the pieces on the floor. It was a picture of Gabriel Gaytan with one hand around his daughter, Dolly, and the other around Junior. None of them were smiling.

  Iris tossed the pieces back into the trash and headed back down the hallway. She wandered into Dolly’s room, where Dolly was still sewing.

  Dolly raised the foot to release the fabric and pulled it between her hands to stretch the seam. She jumped slightly when she noticed Iris standing in the room.

  “What are you making, Dolly?” Iris asked. She always called Dolly by her given name even though her mother had told her it wasn’t respectful. Iris protested that that was what Dolly preferred. Iris wondered whether Dolly didn’t like being a DeLacey.

  “A dress for Paula to wear to her grandfather’s funeral.”

  Iris watched Dolly sew up the opposite edge of the fabric. “I wish I knew how to sew. I think I’m going to take it at school.”

  “Doesn’t your mother sew?”

  Iris shook her head.

  “She probably doesn’t have time. I’m lucky I don’t have to work outside my house.”

  Iris grunted scornfully. “My dad says she doesn’t make enough money doing Mr. DeLacey’s books part-time to make any difference anyway. She wouldn’t have time for me even if she didn’t work. She never has time for me. No one does anymore. Not even Paula.”

  Dolly tsk-tsked. “She’s growing up too fast. Just like me.” She took her foot off the pedal and stared out the old thick window glass, still clutching the fabric between both hands underneath the needle. “I thought I’d make everything different for my children.” She looked at Iris ardently and said, “But everything’s going to change now.” She set her jaw defiantly. “It’s up to me. I can do it,” she said, almost to herself. “I can do it.”

  Iris walked to an antique dresser of dark wood against a wall and picked up a small box covered in tufted purple velvet and gold braid.

  “I just have to stay very busy. My husband says that idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” Dolly continued sewing. “After I finish this dress, I’ll teach you how to sew, Iris.”

  “Really?” Iris was about to open the box when Dolly spied her.

  “Don’t touch it,” she warned. “That’s my good jewelry.”

  “I’ve never seen you wear jewelry.”

  “My husband gave it to me. I’m saving it for a special occasion.”

  Iris put the box back and flung herself onto the taut chenille bedspread that covered the twin bed. She leaned back on her elbows and swung her legs back and forth, kicking the bed. “Did you really see Humberto kill your father?”

  “No. I saw him running from the shed when I went to see why Perro was crying,” Dolly said as if she was reciting something.

  “I guess he really did it, huh?”

  Dolly continued sewing and didn’t respond.

  “So where are you guys going to live when they tear the ranch house down?”

  Dolly stopped sewing and turned to look at her. “What do you mean?”

  Iris continued kicking the bed and disheveling the neat spread. “Just now, Mr. DeLacey was telling Junior that it’d be about three months. That there’s some probate thing and some environmental thing to do first.”

  Dolly started rubbing her hands one inside the other as if she were washing them. “How is it possible? They haven’t read my father’s will yet. My husband doesn’t even know where it is.”

  Iris shrugged. “After he and Junior got the rents, they were taking the will to the attorney.”

  Dolly slowly stood, still rubbing her hands. Now she began to rub and scratch her arms beneath the short sleeves of her dress, rending the skin with long red marks. She stared straight ahead. “He said he was taking the will to the attorney?”

  Iris stood as well and frowned at her.

  Dolly straightened the bedspread, pulling it taut again. “How did…? But he can’t…Does he think…?”

  “Is something wrong?”

  Dolly left the room, walked through the house and out the front door. Iris followed. Once outside, Dolly ran. Instead of taking the road, she ran straight down the side of the hill, losing one of her slip-on shoes on the first tier.

  Iris picked it up and ran after her with the two dogs loping ahead. She didn’t have the guts to take the steep hill as fast as Dolly and lost her when Dolly ran into the citrus grove. She finally reached the grove and ran through the trees. “Dolly!”

  At Gabriel’s house, Iris walked onto the patio. The macaw was out of his cage, which lay on the ground where it had fallen in the earthquake. The bird had made a perch of the wood handle on top of Gabe’s barbecue. His head anxiously bobbed and weaved as he danced back and forth and flapped his great wings, iridescent turquoise blue lined with brilliant gold.

  The green Amazon parrot’s cage was still upright. He frantically worked his strong beak at the lock on the cage door. The black myna bird’s cage had fallen over and its decorative dome had rolled off. The smashed cage was empty. Thomas was sitting on the ground, holding the dead bird in his lap and stroking its shiny black feathers.

  The sheets that had draped the cages had easily slipped off during the temblor and were salted with whole and halved sunflower seeds from the birds’ spilled food cups. Shattered crockery from potted plants that had toppled from the patio wall was strewn about. The plants’ exposed roots looked fragile and forlorn.

  The parrot and the macaw jutted their chests out and reared their heads back as they watched the two dogs sniff around the patio.

  “Look at this,” Thomas said as he touched the dead myna bird’s black eye. It shone dully beneath the partially closed crepey eyelid. “Isn’t it bitchin’?”

  “It’s disgusting.”

  “It wouldn’t let you do that if it was alive.”

  “Did you see your mother?”

  “She went in Grandpa’s house. You want to know a secret?”

  “Sure.”

  “I can’t tell you.” He continued stroking the bird and looking coyly at Iris. “I’ll tell you if you let me look under your shirt.”

  “Creep!”

  Inside her father’s bedroom, Dolly pulled open the door of the small closet. She cried out and covered her head with her hands as items stacked on the closet’s shelf, which had shifted during the earthquake, spilled out. It seemed as if everything was against her. A tear rolled down her face. A second tear followed, too easily.

  “You’ll be all right, you’ll be all right, you’ll be all right,” she chanted like a mantra.

  She took a deep breath, reached between the few garments that hung from the rod, and spread them apart. The safe was on the floor behind them. She crouched down and spun the lock. The combination was easy. It was the day of her mother’s birth, then her own, then her father’s. Her father had made her promise not to tell the combination to her husband and she hadn’t. Still, it was easy enough for him to have figured out for himself. That’s what she was afraid of.

  She took a stack of envelopes from the safe and rifled through them. One said: WILL. It held several pages of lined white notebook paper, handwritten with a blue ballpoint pen. Dolly skimmed the document, running her index finger down the pages, mumbling to herself as she read passages aloud.

  ‘“I, Gabriel Gaytan, resident of Los Angeles, California, declare that this is my will…I n
ame Dolores Maria Gaytan DeLacey as my personal representative. I have one child, Dolores Maria Gaytan DeLacey. I have these grandchildren…If I do not leave property in this will to one or more of the children or grandchildren I have identified, my failure to do so is intentional. I give $15,000 to each of my grandchildren, my coin collection to my brother, Raymondo…’ Here it is, here it is. ‘To my son-in-law, William Cyril DeLacey, I give one square foot of Las Mariposas to be dug up and placed in a box so he can always keep what he wanted most in the world near him. I give my residuary estate to Dolores Maria Gaytan DeLacey. If Dolores does not survive me, her living children shall take my residuary estate.’”

  Dolly refolded the papers and put them back in the envelope. She closed the safe and arranged the clothing on the rod to cover it. She looked around her father’s bedroom.

  “What should I do? Hide it. Hide it until I think of something.”

  A large framed picture had tipped over on a nightstand beside the bed. She picked it up. It was her mother’s and father’s wedding portrait. Her father wore a dark suit and a bow tie. His black hair was short and slicked close to his head. Her mother was wearing a white satin gown with a long train swirled about her feet. She held a bouquet of white roses and orchids. A crack snaked across one corner of the glass.

  Dolly touched their faces and again involuntarily started to weep. She pleaded with an invisible assailant. “Please no. I have to take care of my family. Please.”

  Her tormentor didn’t listen and the weeping escalated to sobbing.