Wendy Hornsby - The Color of Light

“Okay.” She began to rise. “Will you help me put away nature’s bounty?”

She led the way, carrying the plate of pastries. I followed with the lemonade pitcher and the garden bag. In her kitchen as we rinsed the vegetables, conversation remained superficial while I tried to form the big question I had come to ask in a way that she might deign to answer.

“When is your cousin Susan arriving?” Gracie asked as I spun lettuce dry. “What’s her last name now?”

“Haider,” I said. “She’ll be here sometime Sunday afternoon.”

“I remember her from visits years ago. Nice girl. Pretty girl. Is she coming to help you with the house?”

“In a way. I asked her to look at some things from Mom’s family while she’s here, in case there are pieces she wants. She’s been down in Livermore all week, taking a sommelier course at the Wente Vineyards.”

“Studying wine?” Gracie frowned, skeptical. “I thought Susan had a very responsible job in Minneapolis.”

“She does, something in marketing. But wine is a passion for both her and her husband. Bob took their daughter, Maddie, off trekking in the Rockies for a couple of weeks, so Susan flew out here for what she calls wine camp. She’ll be with me on Sunday and then her book club friends will join her Monday for a wine-tasting tour.”

“That does sound like fun. Maybe I’ll tag along.”

“I’ll let her know you’re interested.”

“You’ll have a houseful, Maggie. I understand your Jean-Paul is visiting this weekend, too.”

What didn’t she know about my life?

“We don’t have any plans beyond Friday evening,” I said. “He’s coming up for an official event.”

“The grand opening reception of the Matisse exhibit at the de Young Museum, isn’t it?” she said. “Sounds very highbrow,” she said, feigning haughty airs. “Sponsored by a French chocolatier.”

I knew her source of information only too well. “How’s Mom?”

“Fine, thanks. I just spoke with her this morning. She wants to talk to you about shipping her piano down.”

“I thought we had that all arranged,” I said. “She doesn’t have room for it in her new apartment, so she’s having it sent to my house.”

Gracie wagged a finger. “I won’t say another word. Might spoil her fun.”

My mom had adjusted well to her new home, very well. But she sometimes felt lonely in the evenings. I called her every night at about the time she would be sitting down for dinner so that she would have company of a sort while she ate. Otherwise, she might just skip eating altogether. Seeing the gleam in Gracie’s eyes I thought that Mom might just get an early call tonight.

The vegetables were put away in the crisper, herbs in small vases on the windowsill, tomatoes cushioned in a basket on the counter. Gracie dried her hands, leaned against the counter, and said, “Now, dear girl, what is the question you actually came over to ask me?”

I laughed: God bless Gracie. I pulled out a kitchen chair and sat.

“Gracie, on the morning that Mrs. Bartolini died, my dad was out following me around with his camera.”

She nodded, matter-of-fact. “Isabelle’s mother called to warn him to be on the lookout; Isabelle had flown across the pond again.”

“Why did he film her?”

“He had a restraining order, you know. But she consistently violated it. He worried about what she might do; I think you were the only girl at your school with her very own stalker. Your Uncle Max told Al he should keep a record of every infraction in case she ever tried to claim custody. What he really wanted to do was get her barred from entering the country.”

“There might be something on that film that would have been useful to the investigators, but I don’t think Dad ever showed it to them.”

“No, he didn’t.” She pulled out a chair beside mine and sat. “Maggie, dear, when Tina was murdered, we were all sent into a tailspin. Your dad forgot he’d even shot the film for I don’t know how long. By the time he sent it to the developer and got it back again, the police had someone in custody. Al just put the film away. Why wouldn’t he?”

“Someone was in custody? I never heard that. Who was it?”

“A young man. What was his name?” She scratched her head. “I’ll think of it. Anyway, the man broke into an apartment in the south campus area, raped a woman student-brutal, what he did to her-and was caught when he came back to the building a second time. He looked like a good candidate for the murder.”

“But?”

“The police couldn’t tie him in any way to Tina’s death so they had to drop that charge,” she said.

“You know that my Ben worked with the police from time to time,” she said. “Over cards one night at your house-it was some months later-he was telling your mom and dad and me about how frustrated the police were. They couldn’t find any evidence that would tie the man in custody, or anyone else, to the murder. Somewhere during that discussion your dad remembered the film. He wondered if there might be something there.”

“Why didn’t he take it to the police?”

“You know the answer,” she said sweetly.

“Because he didn’t want the police to haul in Isabelle to ask what she might have seen.”

“Exactly. But we took a very careful look at the film and we didn’t see anything that we thought might be important to the police,” she said. “We certainly didn’t see that particular young man. We talked it over and decided Al should just hang on to the film for the time being.”

“If something were there, would Dad have turned the film over?”

“Of course, dear. But as there wasn’t…” She held up her palms and smiled; no harm, no foul.

The edges of that decision were a bit squishy, I thought. But I understood why they made it. At the time, my parents and the Nussbaums saw nothing untoward in the film of their neighborhood on an ordinary morning. But an outsider might. The passage of time makes all of us outsiders to the past. I thought that if Gracie saw the film again something might pop out that she had missed before.

I took my laptop case from the counter where I parked it when we came inside, pulled out the computer and held it up to Gracie.

“Want to go to the movies with me, Gracie?”

“What do you have, dear?”

“The film.”

“Good lord, did you get the old projector working?”

“I couldn’t find enough pieces of it,” I said as I booted the film. “So I had the film digitized. Tell me what you see.”

Gracie leaned toward the monitor, bobbing her head until she found the right lens of her trifocals to look through, and I hit Play.

“I don’t recognize all you girls, but there’s Tosh working on the Scotts’ yard. And George Loper backing out of his driveway. The dry cleaner’s van, hmm…” Her brow was furrowed when she looked up at me; I hit Pause. “I don’t remember noticing before. What day of the week did Tosh do yards on your street?”

“Alternate Mondays,” I said.

She nodded. “We had him the opposite Mondays. The dry cleaner only made home deliveries to our neighborhood on Thursdays.”

“Interesting,” I said. “Did they ever make special deliveries?”

“Never. If you needed something special you had to go over to their place yourself.”

“Do you remember the deliveryman?”

She shook her head. “They came, they went. No one ever stayed long enough to know his route well. I think the pay was a pittance. Maybe it was a new driver and he was lost,” she offered.

“But wouldn’t he have been lost on Thursday instead of Monday?” I asked.

“You would think so, wouldn’t you?” Suddenly her face brightened and she said, “Ennis Jones.”