Блейз Клемент - Even Cat Sitters Get The Blues

Tony Molina thinks grass is for suckers, so the Molina yard is landscaped with shell and beach-hardy plants. I parked in the wide paved driveway that curved around a thick clump of royal palms planted in redwood mulch. Strings of tiny white lights outlined the palm trunks, and near the front door a herd of dwarf reindeer stood in various poses. They were outlined in lights too, and methodically turned their heads side to side. Behind them, an inflated plastic Santa bathed in the beam of a floodlight waved his ballooned arms, while winged angels looked down from the rooftop. The Molina family had all Christmas bases covered.

Joe and Maria’s eleven-year-old daughter, Lila, opened the gift-wrapped door when I rang. She had a new thick-haired russet dog with her that looked like a chow mix. The dog yipped sharply and Lila bent to him.

Solemnly, she said, “This is our friend Dixie. Never bark at her.”

The dog woofed one more time to save face and then grinned at me.

Lila said, “I’m teaching him who is a friend and who it’s okay to scare.”

I said, “That’s a good thing to know. Sometimes I scare people who might want to be my friends.”

Lila smiled and motioned me toward the kitchen, where delicious odors beckoned.

“We got him at the animal shelter. He was so scared at first, he thought we might not keep him.”

Passing a table holding a large crèche scene with fuzzy sheep and a holy family dressed in velvet, I stopped in the kitchen doorway and felt a momentary pang of envy for the dog. Papa Tony sat at the round oak table in the middle of the room drinking a Tecate and reading the Herald-Tribune . Maria was at the sink chopping an onion on a wooden board, and Joe’s mother, who had become everybody’s Abuela Rosa the minute her first grandchild was born, was stirring an aromatic something on the range. A young woman I didn’t know leaned on a counter with a chubby baby balanced on her hip, and Joe knelt in the corner talking eye-to-eye to his two-year-old son.

When they saw me, everybody turned with such welcoming smiles that I was afraid I might get sloppy and cry again. I guess I still had concussion emotions.

Joe introduced the young woman, one of Maria’s sisters, and picked the little boy up.

“Say hello to Miz Dixie,” he told the kid, to which the child gave me a dimpled smile and hid his face in his father’s neck.

Joe laughed and handed off the boy to Maria’s sister, who left the room with a kid on each hip, their chubby legs gripping her backside like little monkeys. Nature’s designs are infinitely practical—a woman’s round hips attract men, result in babies, and then provide transport for them.

Maria said, “What happened to you, Dixie?”

I fingered the knot on my head. “Somebody hit me on the head and gave me a concussion. Thanks for helping me out this morning. I want to pay you.”

In unison, Joe and Maria shook their heads. Maria said, “You’ve helped us plenty of times. Don’t even talk about money.”

At the stove, Abuela Rosa spoke to the ceiling. “You see? God spoke to me this morning and said, Make menudo, Rosa . I thought, Why must I make menudo? But I do not argue with God, so I made menudo. Now I know why. It is because you have a concussion. The menudo is for you. God always has a reason for everything.”

With the same look Joan of Arc probably had when she rode off to do God’s bidding, Abuela Rosa bustled to a cabinet and got out a wide soup bowl.

Joe said, “It’s true. Menudo cures everything.”

Papa Tony folded his paper and said, “Sit, sit.”

I didn’t need to be invited twice. I sat.

Menudo is a wonderful Mexican soup of tripe, hominy, and chili in a rich, red, garlicky broth. Stewed for hours and eaten steaming and fiery, it is reputed to soothe the stomach, clear the head, and eliminate hangovers. The stuff works too. Just the steam from the big bowl Abuela Rosa set in front of me immediately tunneled through my sinuses to my bruised brain and made me feel more alert.

Maria said, “What do you mean, somebody hit you on the head?”

“I mean somebody hit me on the head. I stopped late last night at a house where I’m taking care of an iguana, and when I got out of my car somebody conked me on the head.” I spooned up more menudo and said, “I guess I should tell you it’s the same place where the guard was killed yesterday morning.”

Immediately, every spine in the room stiffened, every face took on a guarded look.

Papa Tony said, “The Kurtz house.”

“You know him?”

“I never saw him, but I took care of his grounds for a while.”

I said, “I was wondering about that. How did you get inside the courtyard?”

“The nurse would open the last garage door and we went in that way. There’s a storage room at the back of that garage, with a door to the courtyard.”

“So you know Gilda? The nurse?”

He shook his head, looking as if he wished he hadn’t said anything. “I just went there a few times, then she fired me. Said we made too much noise and upset her boss.”

“Did you know the guard?”

“Ramón Gutierrez. Yes, I knew him.”

Joe said, “They go to our church, he and his wife.”

Maria said, “She belongs to some weird religious group too.” With a wary look at her mother-in-law, she said, “The kind that’s always worried about the devil. She has too much time on her hands. Thinks she’s too good to work, just wants her husband to take care of her.”

I said, “Well, he won’t be taking care of her now.”

Abuela Rosa crossed herself and shook her head sadly. “Pobrecita . ”

Joe said, “Do you know if the cops have caught the killer?”

I took several slurps of menudo before I answered. Just in case they snatched the bowl away when I told them.

“No, but I’m one of the suspects.”

Abuela Rosa crossed herself again.

I said, “I saw Ramón dead in the guardhouse just before the Herald-Tribune man came and found him. I knew he would call and report it, so I didn’t.”

They all nodded vigorously. People with brown skin—including law-abiding citizens—understand all too well the wisdom of avoiding attention from the police when a crime has been committed.

“The Herald-Tribune guy told them he’d seen me leaving the scene of the crime, so now I’m a suspect.”

Abuela Rosa pressed both hands to her bosom and sighed.

Joe said, “They can’t think you did that!”

Papa Tony got up from the table with his face set in hard, stern lines. He stalked toward the door with an angry set to his shoulders. At the door he turned to me.

“You know those cops, right? You tell them to look closer to home. Much closer to home.”

He left the room before I could ask him what he meant, but not before I caught a look passing between Joe and Maria.

I left the Molina house with a jar of menudo from Abuela Rosa and the knowledge that the Mexican community knew something about Ramón’s murder that they weren’t telling.

EIGHTEEN

Thanks to the menudo, my head was only doing a muffled roll when I got to the Kurtz house, not big bass drumming like before. Good thing, too, because a small sign-toting crowd was now gathered on the sidewalk. A few women were on their knees, eyes cast toward the sky, hands folded under their chins. Some others were blocking the driveway. I pulled to a stop and put down my window so I could ask them to move, but they were all concentrating on a man in a cowled brown robe who seemed to be giving a sermon.

He shouted, “It is written that a vial was poured upon the earth and there fell a grievous sore upon the man who had the mark of the beast. The Bible tells us that the one with the mark of the beast has a number, and his number is six hundred threescore and six. Six hundred sixty-six, brothers and sisters! The number of this house! And hear this, brethren, it is also written that the beast worked miracles that deceived them that worshipped his image, and they were all cast into a lake of fire.”