Wendy Hornsby - The Color of Light

“Last week, I sure did,” he said with righteous conviction. “I saw what kinds of mischief that knucklehead was capable of when he was just a punk kid. Who knows what he might do now?”

“You know him?”

The question surprised him. “You didn’t recognize him?”

I shook my head.

“That’s the kid you made cry that time. Remember?”

Impossible. “Larry Nordquist?”

“That’s him,” he said, thumping me on the back. “I pulled his dad’s crabgrass out of half the lawns on Euclid. He didn’t control his kid any better than he did his weeds.”

“Mr. Sato, can I offer you a cup of coffee? I’d like you to take a look at something.”

“I was hoping you’d ask. Your mom makes a good cup of coffee.”

“She taught me how.”

He followed me into the kitchen and helped me move some boxes off the table so there was room for us to sit. While he stirred cream and sugar into his coffee and chose a few cookies from the tin of shortbreads I offered him, I downloaded the film I had shown Kevin onto a laptop. When it came up, I paused it and turned the monitor toward him.

Mr. Sato took a pair of reading glasses out of his pocket and scooted his chair closer. “Whatcha got? One of your TV shows?”

“No. One of Dad’s old movies.”

“Hah!” He snorted again. “Your dad, crazy with that little camera, following you all ovah the place.”

I was surprised: “You saw him?”

“Oh, sure. He had me watching for that girl. The French one. Me and the Nussbaums.”

“Did you ever see her?” I asked,

“Oh, sure. Every time I see her, I go tell Al, he chases her away for a while.”

“I didn’t know.”

He leaned forward, tapping my hand with a crooked finger as he grinned like a conspirator. “That was the idea, honey.”

I took a breath; he took two more cookies and refilled his mug, perfectly comfortable in that kitchen.

“So, what’d you want me to see?” he asked.

I hit Play and the images began to move.

“Look at all you kids,” he said, smiling. “Whole buncha little troublemakers, huh? Played hell with my flower borders, runnin’ all over the place.”

When the parade of girls passed a house where a gardener was mowing a lawn, I hit Pause again.

“Is that you, Mr. Sato?” I asked.

“Let’s see, now.” He adjusted his glasses on his nose and peered closely. Grinning, he said, “Looks like my truck; good truck, that one. Looks like my hat, too, so I’d say probably the handsome guy under the hat was me.”

I fast-forwarded to the first frame that showed Tina Bartolini and Beto.

The sound he made when he saw them was something between a sigh and a groan. He said, “Poor little boy, lose his mother so young.”

“Mr. Sato, Dad shot this movie on the same day Mrs. Bartolini died.”

Eyes on the monitor screen, he sat back in his chair, nodding. No questions, no argument. No surprise.

“You took care of the Bartolinis’ lawn, too, right?” I asked.

“For a while. But one of the guys I had working for me said something that the lady didn’t care for. She was a very fine-looking lady, you know? Can’t blame a man for noticing, but whatever he said he shouldn’t of. I didn’t blame Big Bart for hiring someone else. A cousin or something.”

“Any hard feelings afterward?”

He shook his head. “I fired the guy, and that was it. Hired someone else, a better worker. Never a shortage of guys who need a regular paycheck.”

I nodded toward the image frozen on the monitor. “Did you see Mrs. B that day, or speak to her?”

“I might have, you know, just coming and going. I don’t remember; it was a long time ago.”

“Did the police ever ask you about that day?”

Slowly he shook his head. “Not the police, no. They never asked me nothing.”

The way he looked at me from the corner of his eye made me wait. I thought he was deciding whether he wanted to say something more. I topped off his mug, still waiting.

“Friends tell you something because they need your help,” he said. “Ask you to keep it to yourself, you keep it to yourself long as it doesn’t hurt somebody. You know, if your dad asked me to help him sneak that French girl into the house, I’d say, fuck yourself, Al, out of respect to Betsy. But he said, Tosh, help me keep that girl away from my baby, so that’s what I did.”

“Did the French girl have anything to do with what happened to Mrs. B?”

“No, no, no. ’Course not. But that’s the thing, you know. Al asked me what I saw, and that was exactly nothing except maybe aphids on the Lopers’ roses. If the cops asked me, I’d tell them the same, because it was the truth.”

“No strangers lurking around, other than the French girl?”

“If I saw anyone, I woulda said. But I didn’t.”

“What did Dad ask you to keep to yourself about that day?”

“Just that he was out there with the camera,” he said with a nod toward the computer. “We looked at the movie, but we didn’t see anything the police would want to know about.”

“Did Dad talk to your helper, too?”

He held up his hands, shrugged. “Dunno.”

“What was his name?”

“Good question.” He crossed his arms over his chest and gazed toward the ceiling as if the answer might be written there. After a moment, he laughed softly, tapping his forehead. “Almost… It’ll come to me, maybe.”

“Give me a call if it does.”

“Yeah, okay. How come you’re asking so many questions?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Sato.” I closed the computer and set it aside. “Curiosity?”

“Nosy.” He grinned at me. “I see you on TV, you know. All the time nosing around about stuff. You was always like that, pestering about why, why, why before you could hardly talk.”

“Dear God,” I said, feeling heat rise on my face.

“I gotta go.” He finished his last bite of cookie, washed it down with coffee, and picked up his hat. “My daughter-in-law has me picking up the kids from lacrosse camp. But first I gotta top the green beans.”

“I’ll give you a hand.” I followed him out, grabbing a sun hat and a muslin shopping bag from the hook by the back door on the way. “Do you need something to take veggies home with you?”

“No. I brought a box,” he said.

“I thought I’d pay Gracie a visit. Is there anything in our garden that she doesn’t have in hers?”

“Gracie likes the herbs and tomatoes best,” he said. “But she didn’t plant a garden this year.”

“Just zucchini?” I said.

“Not even. Zucchini planted itself, hitchhikers from last year.”

In the middle of the garden, Mr. Sato had constructed half a dozen six-foot-tall tepee-shaped frames out of bamboo stakes for the green beans and peas to climb. The vines, heavy with crop, had grown to the top of the frames by June and were now putting out tendrils that waved in the air above. While Mr. Sato cut the stray tendrils, I snipped beans and peas and distributed them between my bag and his box. The young beans were so beautiful that I picked one, broke it in half and ate it; sweet and crisp and delicious.

“When you was little,” he said, grinning at me, “you always ate those beans just like that. Sneaking ’em, like you was stealing ’em.”

“They’re so good.” I popped a pea pod open and offered him the contents. With a thumbnail, he scraped the row of firm sweet peas into his mouth. “Better than candy.”

“Is your little girl as crazy as you were?”

“My little girl isn’t so little, Mr. Sato. She’ll be a junior in college next year.”

“She gonna come and help you out here?”

“No,” I said. “She’s spending the summer in Normandy with her French cousins, getting to know them and learning how to make cheese.”