Jonathan Kellerman - The Clinic

“No car, she used to hitch. Probably up to Bakersfield, maybe all the way to Fresno, 'cause she came back with nice things. Later, she bought herself a car.”

“Nice things,” I said.

The skin around the black eyes tightened. “My second husband was assistant general manager for one of the lemon companies, knew everything about everyone. He said when Lottie hitched, she stood by the side of the road and lifted her skirt way up… She and Hope lived here until Hope was fourteen, then they moved up to Bakersfield. Hope told me it was so she could go to high school close to home.”

“All those years of paying the rent without picking,” I said.

“Like I said, she knew how to walk.”

“Are we talking a steady lover or business?”

She stared at me. “Why does everything nowadays have to be so overt ?”

“I'd like to bring back information, not hints, Mrs. Campos.”

“Well, I can't see how this kind of information can help you- yes, she took money from men. How much? I don't know. Was it official or did she just lead them to understand they should leave her something under the pillow, I can't tell you that, either. Because I minded my own business. Sometimes she went away for a few days at a time and came back with lots of new dresses. Was it more than just a shopping trip?” She shrugged. “What I will say is she always brought clothes for Hope, too. Quality things. She liked dressing the child up. Other kids would be running around in jeans and T-shirts and little Hope would have on a pretty starched dress. And Hope took care of her things, too. Never got dirty or mixed in with rough stuff. She tended to stay inside the cabin, reading, practicing her penmanship. She learned to read at five, always loved it.”

“Was there any indication Hope knew what her mother did?”

She shrugged and passed her beer can from one hand to the other.

“Did Hope ever talk to you about it, Mrs. Campos?”

“I wasn't her psychologist, just her teacher.”

“More kids talk to teachers than to psychologists.”

She put the can down and her arms snapped across her chest like luggage straps. “No, she never talked to me about it but everyone knew, and she wasn't stupid. I always thought shame was why she kept to herself.”

“Did you see her after she moved to Bakersfield?”

The arms tightened. “A year after, she came back to visit. She'd won an award, wanted to show it to me.”

“What kind of award?”

“Scholastic achievement. Sponsored by a stock-and-feed company, big ceremony at the Kern County Fair. She sent me an invitation but I had the flu, so she came two days later, with photos. She and a boy student- smartest girl, smartest boy. She kept trying to tell me I deserved the award for teaching her so much. Wanted to give me the trophy.”

“Mature sentiment for a teenager.”

“I told you, she was always mature. It was a one-room school and with most of the older kids out working the crop, it was easy to give her lots of personal attention. All I did was keep supplying her with new books. She chewed up information like a combine.”

Springing up, she left the parlor without explanation and disappeared in the back of the house again. I went over to the battered Shih Tzu's crate and wiggled a finger through the mesh door. The little dog showed me pleading eyes. Its breathing was rapid.

“Hey, cutie,” I whispered. “Heal up.”

Shaggy white ears managed to twitch. I put a finger through the grate and stroked silky white fur.

“Here,” said Elsa Campos behind me.

She was holding a small gold-plated trophy. Brass cup on a walnut base, the metal spotted and in need of polishing. As she thrust it at me I read the base plate:

THE BROOKE-HASTINGS AWARDFOR ACADEMIC EXCELLENCEPRESENTED TOHOPE ALICE DEVANESENIOR GIRLS DIVISION

“Brooke-Hastings,” I said.

“That was the stock company.”

I gave her back the trophy and she placed it on an end table. We sat down again.

“She insisted I take it. After my second husband died I put things away, had it in a closet. Forgot about it til just now.”

“Did Hope talk about anything else?”

“We discussed where she should go to college, what she should major in. I told her Berkeley was as good as any Ivy League school and it was cheap. I never found out if she listened to me.”

“She did, got a Ph.D. there,” I said, and that brought a smile to her face.

“I was already taking dogs in, and we talked about that, too. The virtue of caring. She was interested in life sciences, I thought she might very well become a doctor or a veterinarian. Psychologist… that fits, too.”

She began playing with her braid. “Want another soda?”

“No, thanks.”

“No more beer for me or you'll think I'm an old wetback rummy… Anyway, she was a polite girl, very well-groomed, used beautiful language. This was a tough town but she never seemed part of it- as if she was just visiting. In some ways that applied to Lottie, too… Even with her… behavior, she carried herself above it all. Hope also told me what Lottie was doing in Bakersfield. Dancing. You know the kind I mean, don't make me spell it out. Place called the Blue Barn. One of those cowboy joints. They used to have a whole row of them as you left the city, out past the stockyards and the rendering plants. Pig-bars they called them. Country-and-western plus bump-and-grind for the white boys, mariachi plus bump-and-grind for the Mexicans, lots of girls dancing, sitting on laps. Et cetera. My second husband went there a few times til I found out and set him straight.”

“The Blue Barn,” I said.

“Don't bother looking for it. It closed down years ago. Owned by some immigrant gangster who dealt cattle with questionable brands. He opened the clubs during the sixties when the hippies made it okay to take off your clothes, raked in a fortune. Then he shut everything and moved to San Francisco.”

“Why?”

“Probably because you could get away with even more up there.”

“When was this?”

She thought. “The seventies. I heard he made dirty movies, too.”

“And he was Lottie's boss.”

“If you call that working.”

“Must have been hard for Hope.”

“She cried when she told me. And not just about the kinds of things Lottie was doing for a living, but because she thought Lottie was doing them for her. As if the woman would have been taking shorthand except for having a child. Let's face it- some women are not going to take the time to learn a real skill if they can get by with something else. The first day Lottie arrived in Higginsville, she went into her cabin and came out that night wearing a tight red dress that advertised her.”

“Did she move to San Francisco with the club owner?”

“I wouldn't know, but why would he take her, with all the young hippie girls running around? By then she'd have been too old for his type of business.”

“What was his name?”

“Kruvinski. Polish or Yugoslavian or Czechoslovakian or something. They said he'd been a foreign general during World War Two, brought money out of Europe, came to California, and started buying up land. Why?”

“Hope worked with a doctor named Milan Cruvic.”

“Well, then,” she said, smiling. “Looks like you've got yourself a clue. Because Milan was Kruvinski's first name, too. But everyone called him Micky. Big Micky Kruvinski, big this way.” She touched her waist. “Not that he was short, but it was his thickness you noticed. Thick all over. Big thick neck. Thick waist, thick lips. Once when I went up to Bakersfield with my second husband, we ran into him eating breakfast. Big smile, nice, dry handshake, you'd never know. But Joe- my husband- warned me away from him, said you have no idea, Ellie, what this joker does. How old's Dr. Cruvic?”