State Fair (27 page)

He grabbed the toy from me and stuck it under his arm. “It’s all in the toss. The milk can’s hole is only one-sixteenth of an inch bigger than the softball. You gotta throw underhanded and give it a little spin.” He demonstrated with an imaginary ball. “Not so hard once you figure it out. Took me some practice, but I conquered it.”

“You really need to get a life, Clouseau.”

He threw his free arm around my shoulders. “You know I had a lonely childhood. Not much to do but practice at things like that.”

His voice was flippant, but there was an edge to it. I did know his story. Hud had grown up on a huge ranch in Texas, the only child of a rich, abusive father who’d died a long time ago, leaving Hud a fortune in oil wells, an institutionalized schizophrenic mother and a broken psyche. My heart hurt for the sad young boy I imagined he’d been, setting up replicas of carnival games and working for hours at winning them.

I patted the cat’s fuzzy pink head. “Well, Detective Hudson, I’m very impressed with your skills and I think we should donate Mr. Panther to the Sheriff’s Department Lost Child booth.”

“Good idea. Maisie has so many stuffed animals on her bed at my house I can barely find her in the morning.”

On our way to the booth, I told him what the Bears Quilt guys said about Dodge looking for Jazz last night. It didn’t seem to faze him.

“He’s a jerk, Benni, but so far we don’t have any tangible reason to connect him to Calvin Jones’s homicide.”

“His murder investigation didn’t even make the front page of the
Tribune
today. I bet if it had been Juliette Piebald—or one of a city council member’s family—the news and the police would still be all over it.”

He turned his head away from me. “I resent that. We give all our cases equal importance.”

“Yeah, right.” I was married to a police chief and knew the score. It was an unspoken but well-known fact that cases were not treated equally. There was no doubt that if Cal had come from a prominent family or was a pretty girl or a young child, his homicide would have garnered more attention. The unfairness of it rankled me.

We passed by the entrance to the Bull Pen. A group of ranchers—friends of my father—lingered at the door shooting the breeze.

“Hey, Benni,” one of them called. “What’s up?”

“Not much,” I called back. “Anyone see Dove?”

“Saw her over at the petting zoo,” another rancher said.

I nodded my thanks.

“I have to go exchange keys with Dove,” I told Hud. “See you later.”

“Later,” he replied curtly, obviously annoyed by my accusation.

“Whatever,” I muttered as I passed the antique John Deere tractor display. If my words irritated him enough to work harder on Cal’s case just to prove me wrong, it was worth his anger.

Dove was right in the middle of the petting zoo, encouraging the young children inside to be slow and careful while petting the lambs, goats and rabbits. The exhibit was sponsored by the San Celina Farm Bureau. Though some of the ranchers didn’t like the idea of food animals being treated like pets at the fair, Dove thought it helped teach kids to respect animals, to treat them kindly and humanely. “Children, especially those not raised around farm animals, need to know that even though they might be our supper some day, it’s our responsibility to treat them with dignity and compassion while they are in our care.”

I walked through the sawdust to where Dove was demonstrating to two little girls how to hold pellets in the flats of their palms. When a pair of hungry little goats nibbled at their palms, the girls shrieked with delight.

“Hey, Gramma,” I said, dangling her car keys with the horsehair-braided key chain. “Got your smog certification done. Your truck’s parked over by the oak tree in the back of the preferred lot.”

She pulled my keys out of her jeans pocket. “Thank you, honeybun. That saves me a good bit of time. Yours is toward the front.”

“Yeah, I saw it. What’re you doing tonight?”

She stretched, her hands massaging her lower back. “Heading home after this. Garnet wants to fix dinner tonight, so I’m letting her.” She looked up at me, sucking in her finely wrinkled cheeks. A large straw sun hat shadowed her eyes. “What’re you up to?”

“No specific plans. Just hanging out at the fair.”

“Have you seen Isaac’s pictures yet?”

“No, I haven’t. That’s a good idea. He’s showing some new ones, right?”

She nodded. “Took ’em when we went to Yosemite last January.”

“I’ll check them out.”

There was an awkward silence. Then she grabbed my hand and squeezed it. Though she didn’t say a word, I could feel her fear as surely as if she’d written it on a chalkboard. I squeezed back, knowing that any attempt at words would only annoy her.

On the way to the fine arts building to see Isaac’s photos, I decided to drop by Levi’s office and see how he was doing. Today there was only the older woman and the snoozing dog at the administration office counter.

“Is Levi in?” I asked.

The woman looked up from her computer and nodded. “Back in his office.” The dog yawned and flopped over on its side.

I started down the hallway when Jazz burst out of Levi’s office, tears streaming down her face. She rushed past me, her head down.

“Jazz, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she wailed without looking back.

I hesitated, then walked into Levi’s office. He sat behind his desk with the phone in one hand and his walkie-talkie in the other. He nodded at me to take a seat. I watched as he deftly solved a mix-up between two groups who’d somehow scheduled the Wild West Stage at overlapping times.

After a few minutes, he hung up the phone, then turned down his walkie-talkie’s volume. He leaned back in his chair and stretched his long arms above his head. “Please tell me you aren’t here with a problem that needs my attention.”

I held up my hands, showing front and back, like a magician. “Nothing, I swear. I just wanted to see how you are doing.”

He sat forward, folding his hands in front of him. Above us, I could hear the air-conditioning cycle and switch on. A cool wash of refrigerated air snaked around the small room. He inhaled deeply. “I’m assuming you encountered my agitated daughter on your way into my office.”

I nodded and didn’t elaborate. If he wanted to pursue this conversation, that was okay, but if he didn’t, no problem.

He rested his chin on one hand. “I’m a horrible father.”

“No, you are not.”

“She’s mad at me.”

“She’s nineteen.”

“No, it’s more than that. She has good reason. This morning”—he turned to stare out his small office window overlooking the fairgrounds—“I told her I was thinking about moving away from the Central Coast.”

That caught me completely by surprise. “Levi, you’ve lived here for twenty-five, thirty years? Where would you go?”

“Thirty-one years,” he said softly. “And in all that time I can count on two hands how many times my race was a problem. Maybe it was the people we hung around, but I never felt . . . threatened.”

“Levi, has something else happened?”

“Our back door. Someone spray painted swastikas on it last night.”

I felt my stomach churn. “Oh, Levi, I’m sorry . . .”

He shook his head. “If it was just me, they couldn’t pry me away from my home. They could paint a thousand swastikas, call me every name in the book. I grew up in Alabama. I’ve seen this, experienced this.” His eyes shined with agony. “But my little girl. Benni, I have to protect my little girl.”

I waited, not certain what to say.

“I told her after the fair ended, I might resign, look for a job in a bigger city. Atlanta, maybe. Or Los Angeles. I want to go . . .” He looked away. “This might be hard for you to understand, but I want to blend in. Ever since I came to Cal Poly, married Ruth, then settled down here, I’ve stood out. When I was younger, I didn’t mind as much. But now . . .”

I wished that he was revealing this to Gabe . . . or Jim . . . or Oneeda . . . anyone but me. What could I say to him? I was a small-town white woman who’d never come close to experiencing his feelings of alienation.

But I was sure of one thing. “Levi, you’re right, I can’t even begin to understand what you are going through, but I know this. This fair . . . this county . . . so
many
of us who live here, would miss you. I don’t want you to leave.”

In the heat of emotion, remembering the times my husband had been disrespected because of his skin color, I added, “Besides, you can’t let them win. If you want to live somewhere else, that’s fine. But you shouldn’t let
them
decide if or when you leave. That gives these terrible people power they shouldn’t have.”

My voice faltered. Who was I to tell this man what he should or shouldn’t do? Right at that moment, I wished that someone could beam me up and deposit me on some other planet. “Oh, Levi, I’m so sorry. That was so embarrassingly condescending of me . . . ”

He held up his hand. “You’re right. I swear, for a moment there I think my darling Ruth inhabited your body. It’s just that when you think your child is in danger, the first thing you want to do is get her away.”

“I’m sure Jazz understands that. She’s just very emotional right now.”

“I hope she does.”

“Have you told Hud about the graffiti on your back door?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t have time. There’s been one crisis after another since I woke up this morning.”

“You need to let him know.”

He ran his hand down his face. “I’ll put it on my list. Really, I promise.”

I was worried it would take a backseat to other problems and started to say so when his phone rang and a second later, a voice came over the walkie-talkie. He stared at both of them like they were snakes he’d like to kill with a shovel.

I stood up. “You’re busy. I’ll catch you later.”

He mouthed “thanks” and answered the phone. “Levi here. Can you hold a second?” He flipped on the walkie-talkie and was speaking into it when I slipped out of his office.

Would he tell Hud about the vandalism? I wasn’t sure, but I knew it was something that had to be reported. Once outside, I tried Hud’s cell phone and got his voice mail.

“Benni here. Call me back right away,” I said.

Being married to a cop, I knew how important it was to photograph a crime scene as soon as possible. But, except for telling Hud, it wasn’t my place to contact the authorities. So I decided to do what I did feel comfortable with, telling my husband. I tried his cell phone and after four rings it went to voice mail. So I tried his office, surprised when Maggie answered.

“He’s not here,” she said. “Didn’t he tell you he was going to dinner with Father Mark?”

“Yes, he did. Maybe they’re in a noisy restaurant and he can’t hear his phone. What are you doing there so late?” It was past six o’clock.

“I’m just finishing up a couple of things. Want me to try and reach him? He still wears his pager.”

“No hurry, I’ll catch him later at home.”

“Is there something I can help you with?”

Should I tell Maggie? In for a penny, I thought. “Just talked to Levi.”

“What about?”

For a split second, I contemplated not telling her
everything
I’d said to Levi. I was still embarrassed by my presumption. But Maggie and I were good friends, had bonded over the joint responsibility we shared in dealing with my complicated husband. I hoped I wouldn’t insult her when I told her what I said to Levi.

“I totally agree with you,” she said. “I didn’t know his wife, Ruth, very well—I was a kid when she died—but from what I remember Mama saying about Ruth, she would have told him the exact same thing. And I bet she wouldn’t have let anyone run them out of town, especially the kind of coward who would spray paint someone’s back door.”

“That’s pretty close to what Levi said. I know I spouted off to him without thinking and that my experience and Levi’s is about as opposite as two people’s could be. But I was raised that you don’t let anyone bully you.”

Her laugh over the phone relieved my embarrassment. “Sometimes a man, no matter
what
color his skin is, needs a woman to knock some common sense into him. I know Jazz and she obviously has her mama’s stubborn streak. That’s probably why she’s mad. She feels like someone is trying to force her from her home, the only home she’s ever known. I know how she feels. If anyone ever tried to run me off my land, they’d have a fight on their hands.”

I leaned against the wall of the administration building. It felt like a heating pad turned on high. “Thanks for not making me feel like an idiot, Maggie.”

“You are by no means an idiot, girl. Has Levi told anyone else about the vandalism?”

“I don’t know. He said he’d put it on his list of things to do, but between you and me, I have a feeling he’s going to ignore it.”

“Someone needs to know about it right away.”

“I agree, but Hud’s phone went to voice mail. I can’t get a hold of my husband. I don’t feel right about telling anyone else.”

“Jim’s here. Want to talk to him?”

“That would be great. I know Levi might get annoyed, but if I don’t tell someone in authority and something happens to him or Jazz, I’d never forgive myself. I’d like to tell Jim in person, though. I can be there in thirty minutes.”

“I’ll let him know you’re coming.”

There was no one Gabe trusted more than Jim to take charge whenever he was out of the office. He once said to me that had Jim’s life been less complicated with Oneeda’s MS and the town a little more progressive, Jim probably would have gotten the police chief position years ago. I wondered if he and Jim ever talked about that.

Jim’s office door was open, so I called out, “Knock, knock.”

He stood up behind his wide, oak desk, a twin to Gabe’s. “Come on in and sit yourself down.” He was dressed in his usual tweedy jacket, dark slacks, white shirt and colorful tie. His short, curly hair was more salt than pepper these days, something that had occurred in the last two years.