Wendy Hornsby - The Color of Light

“It’s official.” Jean-Paul rang the Lopers’ doorbell. “I have been recalled to France.”

I hoped no one would be home: recalled to France? We had a lot to talk about. But we heard voices and some scuffling and then George opened the door. He seemed surprised to see us but he quickly gathered himself and plastered on his men’s-club welcoming smile.

“Come in, come in, neighbors.” He offered his hand to Jean-Paul. “Karen and I saw you drive up, sir, and we were hoping you’d take us up on that rain check for a drink.” As he led us into the living room, he called out, “Karen, we have visitors.”

The preliminaries were somewhat painful, lots of smiling, some stilted small talk. While George went off to the kitchen to make martinis, Karen caught us up on her family news and the news of several other families, some of whom I did not recognize, but I smiled and mm-hmm’d as if I did, clutching ever harder to Jean-Paul’s arm. In return, I gave Karen as little information about my family as I could without sounding rude. Yes, those were piano movers at the house this morning. Mom had her piano shipped to her new place so she can give lessons again. I did not mention that Mom’s new place was going to be the Tejedas’ casita. Casey is just fine, enjoying college, and yes, she’s still as tall as my sister, Emily. I am fine, and I understand that my programs can be uncomfortably thought-provoking. Thank you for your condolences for my husband’s untimely passing, and no I don’t mind that you didn’t send a card at the time. I changed the subject when her inquiries veered toward Jean-Paul.

The topic Karen was dying to get into was the policemen’s circus at our house that morning. She told us we could not talk about any of that until George came back with drinks or he would never forgive her. But Karen, being Karen, couldn’t keep herself from nipping around the edges of it, like the kid who loosens the tape on his Christmas presents beforehand so he doesn’t waste time when the Go signal sounds on Christmas morning.

“We have heard all sorts of stories from the neighbors,” she said. “But of course, it’s all just rumor and gossip, you know. Very unreliable. The police aren’t saying anything until they’ve notified the next of kin. You can understand that we’re curious. I mean, a dead man, right under our noses.”

She didn’t offer that last as a joke.

George came back carrying a tray with crystal martini glasses, a frosty silver cocktail shaker, olives on toothpicks, and a bowl of salted nuts. As he poured the drinks, he wasted no time getting right into the topic du jour.

“Maggie, who was it the police dragged out of the Dumpster over at your place this morning?” he asked, extending a glass toward me. “A vagrant?”

“It was Larry Nordquist,” I said, watching his reaction closely. He froze in place, stooped over, glass halfway to my hand. I reached up and took it from him, but he still needed a moment for that nugget to sink in before he could unfreeze and stand upright again. Either he was a magnificent actor or he was genuinely surprised. I thought that the latter was more likely.

“I’ll be damned,” he said finally, remembering what he had been doing and getting back to his hosting duties. “I will be damned. Karen, did you hear that? It’s the guy, that juvenile delinquent, who’s been such a pest all summer. What happened to him? Overdose maybe? He crawl up in there to shoot up and never wake up again?”

“Coroner hasn’t released the cause of death,” I said.

“Of course, by the time he was found, we could smell him,” George said baldly. “I told you the other night that Dumpster would start to smell, didn’t I? But I never once thought a decomposing human would be the source.”

“George.” Karen shuddered. “Don’t talk like that.”

Ignoring her, he raised his glass. “Here’s to the poor bugger. Guess he won’t be hanging around anymore.”

“Honestly,” Karen said. She rolled her eyes at him before she sipped her drink. “You do make a fine martini, George. But please, the language.”

After a healthy quaff, she leaned forward in her chair and stretched a hand toward me. “It was very considerate of you to come over and tell us, Maggie. If you hadn’t, we wouldn’t have slept a wink tonight, worrying about some lunatic out there on the loose. It makes me think about that other time-when was that, George? No one got any sleep then, either.”

“Do you mean when Mrs. Bartolini died?” I asked.

“Oh.” The question surprised her. “Of course that was a terrible, terrible thing. But, no, I was thinking about that poor woman who was shot in her own home right in front of her children. Was that about a year before the Bartolini woman died? Anyway, a man, a Black Panther or something, just pushed his way into her house and shot her, left her for dead. It happened only a few blocks over. Your mother knew her; what was her name?”

“Do you mean Fay Stender?” I asked, appalled anew by this callous woman. Fay Stender was a brilliant attorney, a Berkeley native who stayed in town to raise her own children. During the wild and crazy 1970s, Stender became involved with the radical prison reform movement, defending underground superstars like Soledad Brother George Jackson. It was Stender who got Jackson’s prison letters published, making him a media star for a moment. The man who broke into her home and shot her was a con named Edward Brooks who may have been put up to it by the Black Guerilla Family, a deadly California prison gang, to avenge her abandonment of Jackson. She would not provide him with a gun in prison, and they parted ways.

Fay Stender did not die the night she was shot. A year to the day after, in terrible pain, she took her own life.

“Was that her name, George?” Karen asked her husband. “Fay Stender?”

“Yes,” he said, sounding sanctimonious. “She was a local, you know. Came from a good family. I knew her father. Salt of the earth.”

He stopped short of saying that Stender was “one of us,” as perhaps Trinh Bartolini had not been. I remembered well that the Lopers did not want their daughter Sunny to date Beto, though she loved him crazily. But I never knew what their objections were. Until that moment.

Karen was still going on about how they were afraid men like that gangster would burst in and murder them all in their beds when I turned my attention to George.

I asked George, “Were you really afraid?”

“Well, of course we were.”

“Afraid enough that you armed yourself?”

The question took him aback. He gave his wife a guilty glance, suggesting she did not know that he had a gun. Before she could chime in with the inevitable barrage of questions, I asked, “Is that when you gave my dad an unregistered handgun?”

He looked at me over the rim of his empty cocktail glass. “How the hell do you know that? We promised to keep that to ourselves.”

“A gun?” Karen half rose from her chair. “George, you gave Al a gun? Where did you ever get a gun?”

“You had one, too,” I said.

“You never told me,” Karen harped. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“There were kids in the house,” he snapped. “I acquired a gun and I put it where no one would run across it, but where I could get at it if I needed to. Maggie, your dad told me his was well hidden, too.”

“It was,” I said. “Mr. Loper, is that what you were looking for in Dad’s workbench Saturday when you found his Purple Heart?”

“ His , who?” he asked.

“You found Dad’s Purple Heart,” I said. “Not my brother’s.”

He picked up the cocktail shaker for something to busy his hands while that sunk in.

“I’m sorry, Maggie,” he said, sounding rueful. “I overreacted when I saw that medal just piled in with the screwdrivers and drill bits. It’s just, I’m a veteran, too, you understand. I earned a Purple Heart of my own and I know what that means. But hell, if your dad wanted to keep his medal out with his tools who am I to say anything about it?”