Doug Allyn - The Best American Mystery Stories 2003

“So this is just some kinda blind hope?”

“No. I can help you.”

“How?”

“Drive me up to the Merchant ranch outside of Santa Barbara.”

I grinned then. I don’t know why. Maybe it was the idea of a long drive in the country.

Lymon Merchant was known as the Strawberry King, that’s what EttaMae told me. But there wasn’t a strawberry field within ten miles of his ranch. Lymon lived up in the mountains east of Santa Barbara. The dirt road that snaked up the mountain looked down on the blue Pacific. We strained and bounced and even slid a time or two, but finally made it to the wide lane at the top. The dirt boulevard was flanked by tall eucalyptus trees. I rolled down my window to let in their scent.

“This the place?” I asked when we came to a three-story wood house.

“No,” Etta said. “That’s the foreman’s house.”

The foreman’s house was larger and finer than many a home in Beverly Hills. The big front door was oak and the windows were huge. The cultivated rosebushes around the lawn reminded me of Bonnie. I felt the pang in my stomach and drove on, hoping I could leave my heartache on the road behind.

The Merchant mansion was only two floors, but it dwarfed the foreman’s house just the same. It was constructed from twelve- and eighteen-foot pine logs, hundreds of them. It was a fantastic structure looking like the abode of a fairy tale giant — not for normal mortals at all.

The double front doors were twelve feet high. The bronze handles must have weighed ten pounds apiece.

Before we could knock or ring a bell the front door swung open. I realized that there must have been some kind of private camera system that monitored our approach.

A tall white man in a tuxedo appeared before us.

“Miss Harris,” the man said in a soft, condescending voice.

“Lawrence,” she said, walking past him.

“And who are you?” Larry asked me.

“A guest of Miss Harris.”

I followed her through the large foyer and down an extremely wide hall that was festooned with the heads and bodies of dead animals, birds, and fish. There were boar and swordfish, mountain lion and moose. Toward the center hall was a rhino head across from a hippopotamus. I kept looking around, wondering if maybe Lymon Merchant had the audacity to put a human trophy up on his wall.

We then came into the family art gallery. The room was twenty feet square, floored with three-foot-wide planks of golden pine. Along the walls were paintings of gods and mortals, landscapes, and of course, dead animals. In one corner there stood a white grand piano.

“Easy, come on,” Etta said when I wandered away from her lead.

There was something off about the color of the piano. The creamy white seemed natural and I wondered what wood would give off that particular hue. Close up it was obvious that it was constructed completely from ivory. The broad lid and body were made from fitted planks, while the legs were formed from single tusks.

“Easy,” Etta said again. She had come up behind me.

“They must’a killed a dozen or more elephants to build this thing, Etta.”

“So what? That’s not why I brought you here.”

“Does anybody ever even play it?” I asked.

“Willis did now and then when they had cocktail parties in here.”

“He played piano too?”

“Willis was as talented as he thought he was,” Etta said with motherly pride. “That’s why it broke my heart when he talked about his dreams.”

“If he got the talent, maybe he’ll get the dream.”

“What drug you takin’?” Etta said. “He’s a poor black child in a white man’s world.”

“Louis Armstrong was a poor black boy.”

“And for every one Armstrong you got a string of black boys’ graves goin’ around the block. You know how the streets eat up our men, especially if they got dreams.”

She turned away from me then and made her way toward yet another door. I lagged back for a moment, thinking about a black woman’s love being so strong that she tried to protect her men from their own dreams. It was a powerful moment for me, bringing Bonnie once more to mind. She loved me and urged me to climb higher. And now that I was way up there, the only way to go was down.

The next room was a stupendous kitchen. Three gas stoves, and a huge pit built into the wall like a fireplace. Cutting-board tables and sinks of porcelain and a dozen cooks, cooks’ helpers, and service personnel. The various workers stared at me, wondering, I supposed, if I was a new member of the hive. A man in a chef’s hat actually stopped me and asked, “Are you the new helper?”

“Yes,” I said. “But I only work with one food.”

“What’s that?”

“The jam.”

The next room was small and crowded with hampers overflowing with cloth. Even the walls were covered in fabric. The only furniture was a pedal-powered sewing machine built into its own table and two stools, all near a window that was flooded with sunlight.

On one of the stools sat a white woman with long, thick brown hair. She was working her foot on the pedal, pulling a swath of royal-blue cloth under the driving needle.

“Mrs. Merchant,” Etta said.

The woman turned from her sewing to face us.

She was in her forties, but young-looking. Etta was in her forties then too, though I always thought of her as being older. Etta’s skin was clear and wrinkle-free, but the years she’d lived had still left their mark. Etta was a matron, while the white woman was more like a child. Mrs. Merchant’s face was round and her eyes were gray. She’d been crying, was going to cry again.

“Etta,” she said.

She rose from her stool. Etta walked toward her and they embraced like sisters. EttaMae was much the larger woman. Mrs. Merchant was small-boned and frail.

“This is the man I told you about, Brian Phillips,” Etta said, using a name I had suggested on the drive up.

The white woman put on a smile and held out her hand to me. I took it.

“Thank you for coming, Mr. Phillips,” she said.

“I’m here for Etta, Mrs. Merchant.”

“Sheila. Call me Sheila.”

“What is it you need?” I asked.

“Hasn’t Etta told you?”

“Your daughter has run away with one of your employees. That’s really about all I know.”

“Sin is a full-grown woman,” Sheila Merchant said. “She didn’t run away, she just left. But she also left a note behind for her father, informing him that she was leaving with Willis. That poor boy has no idea what game she’s playing with him.”

“Now let me get this straight, Mrs. Merchant,” I said. “You’re worried about the black man? His well-being?”

“Sin is like a cat, Mr. Phillips. She’ll always land on her feet, and on a pile of money too. This is just a game she’s playing with her father. She doesn’t believe he loves her unless she can make him mad.”

“I guess shackin’ up with a poor black hobo is about as mad as he’s gonna get.”

“He loves Sin more than any of the other children,” she said. “It’s really unhealthy.”

I waited for her to say something else; maybe she wanted to, but at the last moment she held back. I noticed then the errant strands of gray in her hair.

“When Etta told me about your daughter and Willis,” I said, “I told her that there wasn’t much I could do. I mean, L.A.’s a big town. People around there move from house to house like you might go from one room to another.”

“I know something,” she said. “Something that neither Lymon or Abel are aware of.”

“What’s that?”

Sheila Merchant looked from side to side as if there might be spies in her sewing room.

“There’s a big bush next to the left-hand post that marks the beginning of the eucalyptus drive. It bears red berries.”