The Rita Farmer Mystery series Box Set Page 36

  Chapter 5 – Rita Delivers Kip’s Message

  Along the way, I thought about George, and the direction of my life.

  There is true love, and there is false love, and running between the two is a lot of road. Then you throw in sex.

  I don’t consider myself a highly sexed person, but I’d turned thirty this year (prolonged scream of agony) and I knew about women losing their minds around this time, because our hormones are pumping fast and free. That last surge before premenopausal deceleration.

  I thought about George Rowe a lot. We’d gone out for a few months, and I knew he was smitten. I enjoyed him, deeply, but I needed time to decide if he was really the one. Moreover, I couldn’t devote as much of myself to the process—to him—as I felt he deserved, between Petey and law school and what acting work I could scrounge on the side. I believed then that I was finished with acting, except as it could help me get through law school.

  I cared for George, and I admired him. He was straightforward, and rugged for real. A while back I’d dated a guy who tried to appear rugged by wearing safari shirts and a stubble, but all he did was whine about drafts and his diet. George, by contrast, wore ordinary grown-up clothing, shaved daily, and had once quelled a prison riot by walking up to a crazed inmate and grabbing a loaded shotgun away from him. And when a scorpion crawled onto Petey’s backpack during a picnic in the Santa Susanas, he flicked it off with his bare hand. (Needless to say, Petey thought he was Jesus.) And oh yes, he had saved my life on an earlier occasion using a slingshot and raw cunning.

  This is not the kind of man you take lightly.

  What about sex? The thought of him could stir me almost any time of day, yet we are not all rational creatures when it comes to romance. He wanted, ultimately, to marry me. But being divorced from a guy I’d initially thought was perfect in every way, I hyperventilated just thinking about using the words I and do in the same sentence. Married at nineteen, a divorced single mom at twenty-six—that’s a heavy trip.

  I knew I ought to marry George, any idiot could see that, yet I couldn’t commit. I just could not promise him. I was desperate to feel sure about some things. And I didn’t know if I could ever completely trust a man again.

  Since it wasn’t fair to keep him waiting, I felt I had to take the risk of him being free for the time being.

  I’d started in at UCLA’s law school last year, amazingly having hammered the LSAT, helped by some great coaching by a lawyer on staff at the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office (another story, another time).

  I fully expected to have to wait a year to receive serious consideration, but I put in a late application for the hell of it. In terms of getting what you want, any university’s such a bureaucracy, the closest things we have in America to communist-bloc countries—good old communist bloc. But somehow I vaulted over a raft of poor slobs on the fall wait list and got in.

  I liked law school, and I got good grades that first year. But I didn’t know then how critically important acting would again become in my life, and how soon.

  _____

  Amaryllis B. Cubitt was baking bread. As soon as I, ushered by a female security guard named Wichita, walked into the mission’s institutional kitchen, she dismissed her two floury helpers who had just turned an Everest-sized mass of dough onto a worktable.

  She’d barely slept for two nights, but she was there, at eight in the morning. Her tall body was in a posture of emotional pain—a sort of writhe held to one side. But even the terrible calamity of her grandson taking two bullets, lying in the ICU, did not stop her from working at her mission. She had stayed at Kip’s bedside until early this morning, when the boy’s aunt and uncle had come in from Phoenix. They were sitting vigil now. Kip’s mom and dad were, evidently, not in the picture.

  “The daily bread must go on,” she explained. “Nine in the morning’s awful late to be starting on it, but my main baker called in sick.”

  The smell of young dough, tangy with yeast, was a comfort in that spotless, hard-lit kitchen. A commercial mixer hummed in one corner, its dough hook laboring in the tub.

  Amaryllis was legendary for her perpetual motion: she’d give newspaper interviews while cleaning a row of sinks, hold meetings while sorting through clothing or even sweeping corridors.

  She paused only to face me fully, wipe her hands on her apron, and shake my extended hand with a firm grip as I said my name. Her face was long and squared-off, with high cheekbones and a nose more beaked than broad. Native American blood, maybe Cajun. I remembered her eyes so well: inky-black and keen.

  “Thank you for coming to see me, Rita Farmer.” She pursed her lips as if trying to place me. “Wichita said you wanted to talk to me about what happened on Monday.”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you make biscuits?”

  “Yes.”

  I watched her clip off a hamster-sized chunk of dough with the edge of her hand, lay it on a baking sheet, and press three fingers in to make it more or less uniformly thick. “Easier than rolling and cutting,” she explained.

  I joined in at her side, my fingers chopping dough from the mass on the table. Like pioneer women with fifteen more things to do before lunch, we worked fast. We laid out the biscuits in rows on long baking sheets. The work didn’t really bother the stitches in my arm.

  I asked how Kip was today.

  “He’s gonna make it, the doctors say.”

  “Will he…be OK?”

  Quickly, through tight lips, she said, “He might be paralyzed. They don’t know yet. You pray for him, OK?”

  “OK.” Not that I was much of a praying woman, but you don’t explain things like that every time.

  “I wish I could have saved Kip from getting shot,” I began.

  “The police say you broke up a fight he was in.”

  “I couldn’t call it a fight. He was being attacked by two guys with a hunk of lumber. I was in a police costume from a movie I was working on a few blocks away. Those guys ran, then the car came and the shooting happened. I didn’t get a look at who was in the car.”

  “It hardly matters, sister, it hardly matters. Just another testosterone-soaked day on the streets.”

  “Well, I wanted you to know your grandson wasn’t doing any violence.”

  I don’t know what it was, but the whole environment of the mission felt different to me this time. The guard, this woman named Wichita who had taken me to Amaryllis, was a hefty type who’d barely mumbled to me. Her hair was an unsettling greenish-bronze color, either a self-dye job that went wrong, or just a bad choice at the salon. Wearing a gray T-shirt with SECURITY lettered in red, she looked aggressive and a little insecure—a bad combination for a security guard, I thought, and definitely a bad combination for that part of town. And what was that part of town? Due south of the financial district by five miles and half a world: South Central, on Compton near the tracks and Slauson.

  Bums had been sitting lethargically on the steps outside.

  Even the energy in the lobby had felt different. People were still greeting each other “brother” and “sister,” and saying Amen to everything in an active-listening way, and the schedule blackboard was crowded with writing, and there were the signs saying ZERO TOLERANCE FOR GUNS, DRUGS, ALCOHOL, AND TOBACCO. ONE HUNDRED PERCENT TOLERANCE FOR LOVE.

  But there was—I don’t know, an ulterior feeling to the place. Amaryllis said, “They said you probably stopped him from bleeding out.”

  “Uh, I just used direct pressure until the EMTs came.”

  “Right there on the street.”

  “I hope Kip has a lot of life ahead of him.” Our hands flew as we kept making biscuits.

  “I thank you for coming to his aid.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  I held back, for a few minutes more. “Do you remember that you helped me once? About two years ago.”

  She paused mid-dough-clip and looked at me again. We stood there holding our dough chunks. She was so tall—close to six fee
t, I’d say, and not lissome. Large joints, long bones, enough meat on them to enable her to sling around fifty-pound bags of sugar and flour. Beneath her apron she wore a white cotton blouse with lemon polka dots and a skirt that looked like it’d been cut from a canvas sail. She wore no jewelry at all. Beneath her gray-streaked natural, her brow bunched and her eyes sharpened in on me.

  “Yes,” she said at last. “PG&E bill. Yeah.” Her eyes relaxed. “Actress. Commercials. Son named…Peter.”

  “Wow.”

  “I remember advising you to start a shoe fund.”

  I laughed. “You were right.”

  “Because,” with an edge of grimness, “the feet’s the last thing to stop growing.”

  “He’s only five now.”

  “You’re in for it, then.”

  We laid raw biscuit after raw biscuit on the rolled metal sheets. “Amaryllis, I’m very grateful to you for that day.”

  “You thanked me then, and you thanked me another time approximately one year later when you sent a letter and a check. You are thanked out.”

  “I’m in law school.”

  “Ha! Then you must be broke again.” This with a wide smile. One of her upper side teeth was capped with gold. When it flashed it reminded me of my Gramma Gladys, who’d had a gold one up there.

  “Fall term starts next month, my second year. Money’s tight all right,” I admitted, “but I’m not broke. You know how it is. When I said I’m grateful, I meant—I was very moved by you. Not just by your generosity. But by you as a person.”

  Amaryllis said nothing.

  I went on, “I’d like to think Kip inherited that quality from you.”

  “Mm.” Her eyes were far away.

  “Do you have any idea who was after him?”

  She heaved an impatient sigh. “Sister, the police asked me all that. Things happen in this life nobody can’t explain.”

  “But—you’d like those people to be caught, right? When Kip gets better, maybe he’ll be able to help the police.”

  “Sure,” she said halfheartedly, and with an inflection that verged on irritation.

  Did her indifference come from an ingrained skepticism about the justice system? Yet she seemed like such a play-by-the-rules person.

  We worked some more. I asked, “Do you hire your security guards from outside?”

  “No, we couldn’t pay enough for that. Uniforms, benefits. Benefits,” she said contemptuously. “Our staff are folks who come here for help, then want to stay and work.”

  We had shaped about three hundred biscuits, covering all six long baking sheets. I opened the oven and Amaryllis rammed home the biscuits. “Shut that thing before the temperature kills us both.” She punched a timer.

  The way she stood there as she rested, shoulders down, eyes veiled, she was giving off the blues all over the place.

  I leaned against the worktable. “Amaryllis, I’d like to help you. I know you have lots of volunteers, but is there anything I could do for you or Kip personally?”

  Maybe she was unaccustomed to offers like that. After looking at the floor a long moment, she said, “No, honey.”

  “You seem troubled,” I said bluntly.

  She stared at me in surprise.

  I added, groping, “Above and beyond what’s currently going on.”

  She poured out a long breath. I waited. Her silence told me I was right about something. “Oh, sister,” she said, “maybe we’re finished talking. Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

  Suddenly I wondered: “Are you mad I saved him?”

  She opened her mouth but stood mute, considering what to say. Then, “You’re asking me would I rather he be dead than impaired?”

  “I wondered that just now.”

  “No, sister. I rejoice in Kip’s life no matter what he is, no matter what he does. It’s that—” She stopped, looking at the floor again. Wisps of flour lay like miniature snowdrifts along the hard gray tile. “It’s just that there’s no end to the grieving and the fear for your boys.” She looked at me closely. “Are you holding something back from me?”

  “Kip wanted me to tell you something.”

  She braced herself. “Go ahead.”

  “After they shot him, he said, ‘Tell my grandmother I’m sorry.’” Amaryllis cleared her throat and bowed her head. Her hands clenched. Then she lifted her head, fiery eyes not seeing me or the clean, productive kitchen. Her stare burned all the way through the ceiling tiles, through the floor above, and however many more floors of offices or whatever, all the way into the summer California sky, all the way up beyond that.

  “You promised!” she shouted to God. “You promised. Praise, all right. Praise to you.” Her tone fell. “But he’s not the one who let us down.”

  Silently, I said an Our Father for Kip. In spite of this drama, I felt relief: I had done what I’d come to do. I should go now.

  But I wanted to stay.

  I waited patiently, quietly, then asked, “What did Kip mean?” Amaryllis swallowed and came back to the kitchen. “Sometimes men like to trick the young ones. Like to get them in a corner. So many stunts, so much fear.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She shook her head.

  I said, “You raised Kip?”

  “From the age of five. His mother died at the time.” She kept shaking her head.

  I thought of Petey. Age five. I couldn’t imagine him doing without me. But of course he would. My aunts back home would take him in. He’d go to Wisconsin and become a little cheese-head.

  “Violence?” I asked. “Or—”

  “Brain hemorrhage. No good reason, just one of those things. Natural you might ask that.”

  “I’m sorry. Was she your daughter?”

  “No, my son Nathan Cubitt is Kip’s father. Prison,” she said in answer to my questioning look.

  “Oh.”

  “Sister, what do you care?”

  I was not put off by this roughness. “Amaryllis, I held your grandson in my arms. Our blood fell together in that street. I care.”

  “You mean you’re curious.”

  “Sure I am. Is Nathan in for—good?”

  “Oh, he’s not a lifer. No, he ought to be out by New Year’s, anyway. He pulled ten months for getting drunk at his own birthday party.” She stopped, waiting for me to give her the straight line.

  Which I supplied. “Well, a man’s got a right to get drunk on his birthday, doesn’t he?”

  “Except he got into his car and drove three blocks until a parked police cruiser got in his way.”

  “Oh, my.”

  “Totaled both cars, no one hurt, but the police—”

  “Went and got all sore?”

  She smiled sideways. “Amen. He wanted me to come get him out, you know.”

  My memory cells began firing. Something about this had made the papers, or else Amaryllis might have mentioned it on her radio show. “But you wouldn’t post bail?”

  Having rested enough, she now went over to the commercial mixer in the corner, peered at the dough, then flipped off the switch. “These are gonna be dinner rolls, for with their hot dog or soup tonight.” She hauled that dough over to the worktable, and I thought we were going to set to chipping out rolls. But she stopped and put her hands on her hips. “I said to him and I said it publicly, ‘You do the crime, you got to do the time.’ No ‘yo momma’ on this one. I would have been mortified to bail him out.”

  “Sounds like he’s not a bad guy.”

  Amaryllis’s love for her son burst out all over her face. Her spine straightened. “He’s a good boy. It’s just that the brains skipped a generation.”

  My mouth fell open.

  She added, “Sometimes you love the dumb ones more.”

  God, isn’t gut-level candor like that refreshing? I gestured questioningly toward the dough.

  “No,” she said, “you’ve done enough. Time for you to run along.”

  She walked me toward the mission’
s cool tiled lobby. The building had originally been a junior high school. Rounding a corner to the main corridor, I saw Wichita talking with another security guard, in their red-lettered T-shirts. The other guard passed what looked like a thick roll of money to Wichita. They dropped their voices when they saw us, and Wichita crammed the roll into her jeans pocket.

  I glanced sidelong at Amaryllis, who did not appear to have noticed. Looked odd to me, but what did I know of the inner workings of an urban rescue mission? Maybe there were special customs I was unaware of.

  I stopped at the doors to say goodbye. I felt reluctant to leave.

  Was I drawn to the Iron Angel’s special spirit? Was I morbidly fascinated with the strange energy of the place? Carried away by my drama with Kip?

  “Um, Amaryllis, maybe I could come back and do some work.” She took my hand in her warm, strong grip.

  “I told you, you’ve done enough.”

  “I don’t feel I have.”

  She stared at me, hard. “Is God,” she asked, “calling you to this place?”

  I looked out to the white glaring street. “I don’t know.”

  She lifted her shoulders in her polka-dotted blouse. She clasped her hands behind her and eased her spine. She straightened.

  “Well then, you can come and serve soup Saturday noon. We’re gonna be short that day.”

  Chapter 6 – Life With Gina

  The head-banging squeal of a garbage truck in the alley woke me at five the next morning. I got up and checked on Petey, who was profoundly sawing them off in his little bed, with Trikey, his stuffed triceratops, at his side. He had burned through his Spider-Man mania and gone on to dinosaurs just as most of the licensed Spider-Man merchandise I’d bought him was starting to wear out or get too small.

  My son, I realized, was going to be a snorer. His five-year-old bronchial tubes were already configuring themselves that way, loosening from his chest wall, vibrating freely like the tailpipes on a tiny Harley. So be it.

  I wondered if he’d start asking for dog pictures and models. The dog thing, I hoped, would pass soon, because I don’t like dogs very much, not that I’m therefore a cat person. I tend to feel animals belong in the barn, or the woods.