Judith Krantz (64 page)

Jazz ventured a tiny glance at Casey. Even if he
hadn’t learned this in school, she most certainly had. The Junípero Serra saga was impossible for even a casual tourist to ignore, unless he never set foot outside of Disneyland.

“Now we get to the sticky part. Ha! In 1821, Spain lost California to Mexico. The local settlers, the Californios, who were a mixture of Spanish and Mexican, demanded that the mission lands be secularized, and gradually they took away the power of the Franciscans. Between 1833 and 1840 you had a land grab of major proportions. It was every man for himself, believe me. If you already owned land, like the Valencias, you had to petition to reaffirm your right to ownership by appearing in court before the Mexican governor, by petitioning the governor, by proving that you had at least two thousand head of cattle and a house, by giving every possible justification for continuation of the original grant. Believe it or not, in each case this process took an average of
thirty years
of hearings and testimony, and what was the result? Disgraceful! Most of the old owners lost their land and their money before it was over, while hundreds of new owners, many of them with political connections, took over with newly issued Mexican land grants.”

“But the Valencias held on to their land,” Jazz cried, “or they couldn’t have sold it to the Kilkullens.”

“Quite so, my dear, they were among the lucky and persistent few. Their file, the
expediente
, would have contained the petition to the governor, a crude topographical map called a
diseño
, and a copy, which they called the
borrador
. The whole
expediente
should have been kept in the Provincial Archives. All official, and as tidy as they got at that time.”

“Where would that
expediente
be now?” Casey asked.

“I can’t imagine, my dear young man. I haven’t got a clue,” he said blandly. “Anyway, it didn’t do much good to have that
expediente
, because no sooner did the Valencias think they finally owned their land fair and square when along came the United States
and declared war on Mexico in 1846. Not much of a war—the Californios surrendered the whole state in January of 1847, just before the Gold Rush in 1848—amazingly poor timing, I’ve always thought. Or amazingly good, depending on your citizenship. Ha!”

“If the Californios surrendered the whole state, how did the Valencias hold on to their land?” Casey asked evenly. Mr. White showed a relish, as he described the horrors of the landowning process, that seemed unfeeling, almost as if he enjoyed dashing their naive quest.

“They had to go back to court
again
to satisfy Congressman Gwin’s Act of 1851, which provided three commissioners to settle land claims. Within two years every single grant, some eight hundred of them, had to be submitted to this commission—believe it or not, the claims covered about twelve
million
acres. Confusion! Total confusion, my dear Jazz. I can imagine it all too well.”

Henry White stopped talking and sat shaking his head, as if he were heartily glad to have missed that episode in California history.

“But, Mr. White, the Valencias sold to the Kilkullens in 1865,” Casey insisted. “They
must
have had a valid deed.”

“Oh, I don’t question that. No, the first of the Kilkullens wouldn’t have paid up without a deed … too smart a fellow for that, I’m sure. To satisfy the confirmation hearing of the United States government, the Valencias would have had to affirm the Mexican grant with another petition, another more complete
diseño
that was approved by the Surveyor General, as well as every bit of paper they might have supporting their claim. When it was approved, all the documentation would have formed yet another
expediente
. It was copied on tracing paper, and an officer of the Surveyor General would have authenticated the original.”

“I have a feeling that I’m not going to like the answer to this question, but where would that second
expediente
be found?” Jazz asked, trying to read the answer in his expression.

“I really hate to tell you this, my dear, but most of the affirmations would have been registered in the General Land Office in—alas—San Francisco.”

“Before
the earthquake.” Jazz’s voice blended recognition with incredulity.

“Before the earthquake and, worst of all, before the fire. It would have been destroyed in the fire, I’m afraid.”

“But this is like a paper chase with no paper!” Jazz burst out indignantly. “It’s so unfair!”

“That’s probably why they don’t teach California history,” Casey said, taking her hands in his. “It’s too heartbreaking.”

“Obviously, when the land changed hands,” Mr. White added, as an afterthought, “the title, the deed to the ranch, would have been deposited in the County Recorder’s office in Santa Ana.”

“What!”

“Oh, I assumed you must know that, or I would have mentioned it earlier. Yes, yes indeed, the purchase of the Rancho Montaña de la Luna by Michael Kilkullen would have had to go to the County Recorder, to be enforceable, you know, to be legal. Ha! All those original documents we’ve been talking about are nonessential, irrelevant … quite irrelevant …”

Then why didn’t he say so in the first place, Jazz thought furiously. Why did he have to put us through all the nonessentials instead of just sending us off to Santa Ana? But Henry White hadn’t finished talking, and Casey had a firm hand on her arm so that she couldn’t jump up and rush out to the car and drive off.

“On the other hand,” Henry White mused, taking off his glasses and looking at the ceiling, “titles, deeds, maps—they’re often not the only pieces of the puzzle, are they? That’s why we have historians and librarians and curators, not just real-estate lawyers. Ha! Yes, you could always try the Bancroft Library, up at Berkeley, you know, or the Archives of the San
Diego Historical Society, or the Department of Manuscripts at the Huntington in Pasadena, the Orange County Historical Society or even the San Juan Capistrano Historical Society … never know what you’ll turn up. They have all sorts of bits and pieces … old papers … bits and pieces …”

“Thank you, Mr. White,” Casey said firmly. “You’ve been extremely helpful. Jazz and I are very grateful.”

“Anytime, Mr. Nelson, anytime. It’s always a pleasure to give young people a little history lesson. I can’t think when I’ve had such a pleasant morning.”

“Oh, there you are, I’ve been looking all over for you two,” Valerie said in irritation as she discovered Fernanda and Georgina having lunch out by one of the two swimming pools of the Ritz. “You might have left a message for me, Fernie. I’m starving and I didn’t want to eat alone.”

“Sorry, Val. I thought you were off to Los Angeles with Jimmy.”

“So did I, but it turned out that he and John had a meeting about some other business deal. Nothing to do with us. I hate it when everyone goes off in different directions without telling me!”

Valerie spoke with more indignation than the subject deserved, but she was still angered by her conversation with her husband earlier in the day. Billy simply did not seem to have factored her new position as an heiress into his consciousness. He treated her the way he had always treated her, as good old Valerie, that taken-for-granted spouse of many years, who happened to make a little handy money of her own.

William Malvern Jr. had had nothing but complaints. The cook was leaving, a maid had quit, the fridge wasn’t working properly and the ice cubes were half water, each one of their three daughters had a different problem she expected him to solve, he was sick and tired of being an extra man at parties, Valerie had been hanging about in California far too long, one petty bit of foolishness after another, as if Valerie
were still the person she had been before her father’s death.

Go live in a hotel, she’d wanted to scream at him, eat at your clubs, tell the girls to stop being idiots, and, for God’s sake, stop nagging! But she’d held her tongue and tried to smooth things over, without actually promising to come back to New York that very day, as he had wanted her to.

A plan had been forming in the back of Valerie’s mind, but she wasn’t ready to act on it yet, and until she was, she wasn’t about to confront her husband, for almost twenty-two years of marriage had disciplined her to appreciate the high value of possessing an attractive, agreeable man, irritating or not.

Her plan involved burning bridges, burning every God damned bridge that linked the disgusting, filthy, overcrowded island of Manhattan to the rest of the United States, and burning them so thoroughly that unless Billy Malvern decided to follow her to the far side of the bridges, she would never see him again. She wasn’t at all sure that she was ready; she didn’t know yet if she had the courage to take a step that would possibly end in having to leave behind her marriage and everything else she had thought was important.

But, oh, how tempted she was, how deeply, almost atavistically tempted she was to throw away everything she had striven for, and retreat—for retreat it would unquestionably seem to everyone she knew—to Philadelphia and a life of different pleasures, of milder habits and reduced reference points, a life in which it was impossible to buy status.

Ah, but could she, who had earned her solid credentials in the toughest town of them all, could she, Valerie Malvern, who was counted as one of the most durable figures of the New York establishment, be content to turn into a Main Line lady? After so many years at the white-hot center of fashion and glamour, at the American equivalent of Versailles at the peak of the reign of Louis XVI, would life on the sidelines be a terrible letdown? What if her feelings about Philadelphia
were romanticized because she didn’t live there and know the reality of daily life, as opposed to occasional visits? Perhaps New York was more addictive than she realized and Philadelphia would prove as tedious, as flat, as country chateau life had appeared to the French aristocrats who, exiled from Versailles, pined away quickly.

Once you’d abandoned New York, you were quickly forgotten. There were women as rich as she would soon be in other cities all over the United States—but no one had ever heard of them in New York, no one photographed them or wrote about them except in their local society pages. Their one brief and unimportant moment in the sun, as far as New York was concerned, came when
Town and Country
decided to devote an issue to their city, and included them. If such women visited New York, their arrival barely made a ripple, they had to depend on New York friends to entertain for them, and when they left, they disappeared immediately from the New York consciousness.

Valerie sat down at the table with Georgina and Fernanda, ordered a shrimp salad and began to eat it without attempting to join in their conversation, which seemed, of all things, to be devoted to a discussion of the merits of different jams and jellies.

Valerie tried to take stock of her new position in the city where the last decade had been a constant strain to seem to be as rich as people had assumed she was.

Now she was about to possess endless resources. Her family background was as good as that of any other woman’s in the city … no,
better
actually, now that she thought about it seriously. Her style had never been questioned. Money, family, style. She had everything to make her queen of New York without her lifting a finger to bring it about.

But, Christ, how competitive it had become!
All those other people, jammed together in a constantly photographed pack, dressing competitively, giving to charity competitively, buying art competitively, entertaining
competitively, vacationing competitively—did she truly want to be queen of those people?

Billy Malvern would enjoy every second of it, she couldn’t doubt that. He’d never see it as clearly as she did. Would Billy agree to move? Could he be uprooted?

“Valerie, why so silent? Don’t you approve of our tearoom plans?” Georgina asked.

“What tearoom?”

“The one Fernie and I are thinking of opening,” Georgina said, shaking her head incredulously. “That’s all we’ve been talking about, ever since you sat down.”

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying attention. I have phone calls to make.” Valerie got up hastily. She would not endure silly, silly people like Georgina with her silly decorating business, or Fernie with her silly husband problems, no, not for another minute. It was too much to expect her to listen to some utterly silly scheme for opening a tearoom. “I’ll see you two later,” she said savagely.

“Was it something I said?” Georgina asked Fernie. “If so, remind me to say it again.”

“Val gets that way sometimes. Her husband phoned her this morning and she’s been in a snit ever since.”

“Husbands …” Georgina said, on a thoughtful note of reserved judgment.

“Why did you marry Jimmy?”

“Fernie, darling, what a question!”

“Well … I just thought that knowing how you felt about men so early in your life … you might have, oh, I don’t know, not bothered?”

“You mean that since I didn’t need a man for my love life, I didn’t need a man at all? Fernie, you’re such a child! First of all, Jimmy’s rather a pet, and since it’s far more convenient to marry than not, he was a good choice. The money was frightfully important … my papa is not one of the rich earls, rather the contrary, and there are a lot of us children to see settled. So my parents were terribly pleased when I
accepted Jimmy. Nobody would ever have understood it if I hadn’t married. Worse yet, they might have begun to wonder about me, even, eventually, to suspect. A husband’s the most convincing camouflage of all. And, who knows, eventually I might want children, just like every other woman.”

Georgina’s lips curved gently, tenderly at the idea of children. One day, why not, after all? She had the best of all possible worlds.

“And then,” she continued, “there’s always that inescapable escort problem. Mobs of men always wanted to take me out, take me to parties, be at my beck and call as it were, but naturally each one of them thought that after a while he deserved more than a good-night peck on the cheek. So I’d have to drop him. It became too predictably dreary for words. I got a reputation as a heartless flirt—we couldn’t have that, could we?”