Seven Sisters (24 page)

“How’s life treating you?” I asked.

“Can’t complain. Got job security and a new recliner. Life’s good.”

I laughed and gave him a quick hug. “I have a question for you. Where’s the Brown section?”

I didn’t have to say which Browns. His bushy gray eyebrows raised in question told me he knew who I was talking about.

“That family’s sure had its sorrows,” he said, scratching his cheek absentmindedly, leaving a thin streak of black oil on a cheek as weathered as barn siding. “Then again, haven’t we all?”

“Yes, we have.”

“How’s that grandma of yours? Tell her I’m sure looking forward to Christmas and some of her delicious fudge. I dole it out to myself a piece a day to try and make it last longer.”

“She’s feisty as ever. I’ll tell her to make you a double batch this year.”

“And your daddy?”

“He’s good. Been having trouble with some new heifers he bought up north. Prolapsed uterus and some leg problems in one. It’s getting better now, though. His arthritis has been acting up a little.”

“I hear you there. I tell you, getting old isn’t for weaklings. You give him my sympathy.”

“Sure will.”

“Heard your cousin’s back in town.”

“Yes, sir. He works for the paper.”

“He was a good, respectful boy, I remember.”

“Yes, he was. He’s grown into a nice man, too.”

“Well, that’s real fine.”

I could hear Detective Hudson shift behind me, then let out an impatient breath. I ignored him. The one thing about Mr. Foglino was you couldn’t rush him.

“So,” Mr. Foglino said. “Hear you got yourself involved with another family’s hullabaloo.”

“Not on purpose. I was just there when it happened. I...” Then I grinned at him. “Well, yes, I guess I have. But I’m doing my best to stay away from any large falling objects.”

He chuckled and wagged a crooked, dirt-stained finger at me. “You’re a trial to that husband of yours, missy. You know that?”

“So I’ve been told a few times.”

“How’s he doing?”

“Ornery as ever, but I guess I’ll keep him.”

“He’s a good police chief. We’re lucky to have him.”

“I think so.”

I heard Detective Hudson shift behind me again and clear his throat. I turned around and frowned him silent.

Mr. Foglino looked back down at the engine of the rider mower. “Over east of the pyramid, and there’s a restroom over there, too, for your ants-in-the-pants friend.” He looked up, his pale old eyes amused. “I’m assuming that’s why he’s dancing around like that.”

“Thanks,” I said, winking at him. “I’ll give Dove and Daddy your regards.”

“That was a waste of a good half hour,” Detective Hudson grumbled.

I cut across the springy graveyard grass weaving around gravestones. “You know,” I said over my shoulder, “you’d get a lot more information out of people around here if you learned how to chitchat a little.”

He grunted in reply.

We passed by the famous pyramid mausoleum with the single name WYLIE on the front. Made of concrete and patterned after the real Egyptian pyramids, it was an incongruous monument among the sedate white headstones and moss-covered angels that decorated most of the older graves. It had been there since the forties, and, as usual, there was scattered around the base the remnants of a teenager’s late-night visitation, half burnt incense sticks, empty beer and soda cans, candy wrappers, crispy matchsticks. I remember sneaking out here a few times myself when I was in high school, spurred on by giggling friends and the natural attraction of being scared common in most people under twenty. It was regularly patrolled by police officers who calmly shooed its nocturnal visitors away. From the base, you could also see with great clarity the last drive-in theater screen in the county, a mute but irresistible draw to cash-strapped students looking for a cheap date.

“What’s the story behind this thing?” Detective Hudson asked.

“From what I was always told, some rich rancher moved here early in the century and built this for his wife and three sons. The youngest son got in a fight with the father and left the ranch to find his fortune in Alaska. The other two stayed home, never married, and worked the ranch. All of them eventually died, leaving no heirs. They were entombed here according to the father’s wishes. Everyone except the third son. According to the terms of the will, the monument can’t be permanently closed until the last son’s body is reunited with the family.”

“Which is probably the last thing on earth
he’d
want,” Detective Hudson said, his voice suddenly bitter.

I glanced over at him, surprised.

His face stared at the pyramid with a raw, angry look that hardened his farm-boy features. He caught my glance, and just as quickly a smile replaced the angry look. “Time’s a-wastin’, ranch girl. Which way?”

Puzzled by his swift change of emotion, I pointed to a group of expensive headstones behind the pyramid. He strode away from me, whistling a tuneless melody under his breath. I watched him, wondering what family situation he’d truly left behind in Texas.

We glanced over the fifteen stones that made up the Brown family plot. Inside the square concrete edging around John Madison Brown’s and Rose Jewel Brown’s large, dark granite headstones were the four tiny headstones of the babies who’d died. Just the baby’s names and a small lamb were carved on each one—Daisy Jewel Brown, Dahlia Jewel Brown, Beulah Jewel Brown, Bethany Jewel Brown. I stared at the tiny headstones while Detective Hudson went from headstone to headstone looking for something that resembled the grave rubbing.

“Not a lily to be seen, carved or otherwise,” he called.

On Rose Brown’s stone her name and birthdate were already chipped into the black shiny granite. The only thing left to fill in was her day of death. I wondered if it bothered her to have a headstone with her name already chiseled in. I knew death was inevitable for all of us, but that was just a little too organized and concrete for me. I’d bought two plots side by side when Jack died, having been encouraged to do so by the mortuary, but buying and carving a headstone—that was a little too obsessively neat and tidy. Look at me now, married to Gabe. Where did I want my earthly remains to rest? Next to Jack or to Gabe? Which was more appropriate? Should Gabe be buried next to the mother of his child to make it easier for Sam and his future children to visit their graves? And really, did it matter? Multiple marriages sure made the business of dying complicated.

Oh, honeybun,
Dove’s voice sang in my head.
What does it matter where your old bones are when your soul is dancing with Jesus?

“Nothing even close here,” he said, coming back to where I stood. “What’re you looking at?”

“Just these tiny headstones. Wondering what it was like for a mother to lose four of her seven children.”

“Guess that’s how it was back then. Even the rich didn’t have access to very good health care.”

“No one ever mentioned what they died of.”

“With no antibiotics and horrible sanitary conditions, it could have been something as simple as the flu or as complicated as TB or diphtheria. It’s a wonder as many people lived as they did. Dangerous times to be a kid . . . or an adult, for that matter.”

“On the other hand, we’ve got drug-resistant bacteria and AIDS now, so who’s to say it’s any better?”

“Good point.” He pushed his cowboy hat back on his head. “So, this didn’t tell us much. Let’s try the next one.”

“Let me see that list,” I said when we were situated back in his truck. “We should do this in a methodical way so we’re not wasting time running all over creation. Do you have a map of San Celina County?”

He nodded over at the glove compartment, and I pulled out a large, detailed map. In a half hour I had the quickest route planned for sixteen of the nineteen cemeteries.

“Three of these I’ve never heard of, and they’re not on the map,” I said.

“Deborah Schlanser, the very kind and gracious public librarian who looked them up for me, said six were inactive. A couple for quite a while.”

“That might be why they’re not on this map. They’re probably old pioneer cemeteries.”

“Maybe she could tell us where they are. There must be some record somewhere.”

“There probably is, but I say we should check the ones we can today and keep our fingers crossed that what we want is in one of them.”

“Sounds like a plan. Hope you like country-western music. That’s all my truck plays.”

“As long as it’s the old stuff.”

“My kinda girl,” he replied, putting on Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys.

We decided to start with the cemeteries closest to the Seven Sisters ranch then work our way north. By three o’clock we’d only investigated six with no luck. It was beginning to look like this would be more than a one-day undertaking. I had to force myself not to linger over the headstones, reading the inscriptions and wondering about the life of the person who died. The number of children’s headstones amazed me, and by the early afternoon the constant reminder of the delicate thread by which our lives dangled started depressing me. Apparently it was starting to show after our seventh cemetery when Detective Hudson found me after going through my assigned section, sitting on the open tailgate of his truck hugging Scout.

“I think we need a break,” he said. “You hungry?”

“Kinda.” I glanced around the pine-shaded cemetery we’d just traipsed through. It was northeast of Paso Robles, an old cemetery that surrounded the Estrella Adobe, one of the many old adobes scattered around San Celina County. “No McDonald’s out here. Guess we’ll have to go into Paso Robles. The Paso cemetery will probably take us a long time. It’s pretty big.”

“No need for McDonald’s. I brought lunch.” He went around to the cab and brought out a small cooler from behind the front seat. “Do you want beef or turkey?” He held up two wrapped sandwiches.

“Beef.”

He handed me the roast beef sandwich and a can of Coke, then joined me on the tailgate. Though it was in the high eighties, a light breeze blew through the stand of dusky green oaks the truck was parked under, and the air was scented with wildflowers and pines, smelling sugary and slightly burnt, reminding me of the Mexican sweet breads Elvia’s mother baked at Christmas.

We ate without talking, occasionally feeding bits of our sandwiches to Scout. It was so quiet we could hear animal life rustling in the cottonwoods and scrub brush around us. When I tossed the last bite of my sandwich to Scout, I started picking burrs off the bottoms of my Wranglers, my thoughts drifting to all the mothers who’d lost so many babies. Was it worse to have one and lose it or never to have one at all? The old poet was convinced that loving and losing was better than never loving at all, and at twenty years old I probably would have agreed with him. There were times now I wasn’t so sure.

Detective Hudson stood up, causing the pickup to raise slightly, and dusted his hands off on his thighs. “Ready to get going again?”

“Sure,” I said, giving up on the dozens of burrs. It’d been so long since I’d been out hiking this time of year, I’d forgotten about these irritating little things.

I sat inside the cab, staring out the window as Detective Hudson chattered about something to do with a dalmatian he once owned. A thought was niggling at the back of my mind, just beyond my reach, and I couldn’t grasp it. Something that wasn’t right, about either something we’d just seen or something Mr. Foglino said. Detective Hudson’s conversation switched to something about the Thursday-night farmer’s market, and I continued to half listen and stare at the passing golden fields. In Paso Robles, we stopped at a mini-mart so I could buy some water for Scout. The detective watched as I poured water in my hand and let Scout drink.

“You’ve been too quiet. What’s going on in that devious mind of yours?” he asked when we got back into the truck and headed up the hill toward the cemetery.

“Nothing.” Which wasn’t exactly a lie. I was thinking about something, I just didn’t know what it was.

Paso Robles’s cemetery was the second largest in San Celina County. It overlooked the city and the rest of the valley. In the distance, the mountains you had to drive through to get to Bakersfield and Fresno were sharp-etched against the cloudless sky. We divided up the rows and agreed to meet back in front of the adobe-style restrooms when we finished. There was one small funeral going on down near the entrance, but nothing in the areas we would be concentrating on.

I was walking up and down the rows looking for a carving that resembled a lily of the valley, studying marker after marker, going over each Brown family member in my mind—means, motive, opportunity, then trying to imagine each of them coldly shooting Giles. I hated to admit it, but the only one who had all three and who I thought capable of pulling the trigger was Cappy. But would she kill another human being just to protect her horses or her lifestyle? Then again, what about her sisters? JJ had said all the women knew how to shoot. Was I just being naive by assuming that Willow wouldn’t kill for her political career or her granddaughter’s reputation or Etta for the winery, or for that matter, Arcadia out of that age-old reason, jealousy? If Giles fooled around on her as much as people implied, she could have just gotten fed up that night and shot him. Happened all the time. Except it didn’t fit with the conversation I heard or the fact that someone had called the paper and said there would be something “big” happening at Seven Sisters that night. I ruled out Arcadia. If she’d shot him because of his affairs, it made more sense for it to happen at another time, though I was the first to concede that many homicides weren’t planned, but were emotional, spur-of-the-moment acts.

That still left Susa to consider—her peace-loving, hippie persona notwithstanding. What did anyone really know about her? After what JJ said about Giles coming on to her and Bliss, maybe there was something he did that caused their mother to lose her gentle manner for a split second. Though she had spent most of her adult life away living on a commune, she was still raised by Capitola Brown, who would not have allowed shrinking violets to grow on the Seven Sisters ranch. Then there was Chase, certainly capable of pulling the trigger, though, as far as I could see, no reason to. Then again, he was the one left with the cute little tasting room girl in the tight red jeans. Could it have been an argument over something as trivial as who gets her next?