[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
"We talked a little, and she told me she was in college down there, in El Salvador, studying botany, and
here she was waiting tables, and that's all she'd ever be able to do. I told her about the gardens, that
maybe she could get a job here, and gave her the address, but she laughed at me. She thought I was
kidding, and she told me to get out of all that stuff, to leave, because they'd kill me sooner or later."
"So you came here," Sarah said finally. "Do those people know where you are? Have they been in
touch?" "They couldn't know," he said, sounding desperate.
"They knew the name Drexler, not Kellerman. I never dreamed anyone would make the connection and
cause trouble." He was close to tears.
But Maria knew, Sarah thought, and abruptly she stood up and started pacing the room again. From the
front window she said to him, "You think that's what someone told Dad, that's what he was having
investigated?"
"What else?" Virgil muttered.
What else? she echoed silently, tracing her finger on a tabletop.
But this was an opening, she thought then, something that could be looked for, an event, a series of
events, a bust down at UCLA; something might have appeared in print.
When she turned back to the room, she saw that Winnie had moved, all her righteous anger gone, and
she was now holding Virgil's hand protectively. Another scene superimposed itself: they had started a
fire in the back yard when Virgil was no more than six, Winnie nine, and when, the fire department had
come and gone, the excitement ebbed, Sarah and Blaine had gone looking for the two children and had
found them exactly like this, Virgil looking terrified and miserable beyond words, and Winnie, equally
terrified, holding his hand.
There was no follow-up memory of the incident, no memory of their punishment, lectures, nothing except
this one glimpse into the past.
It had brought her to tears then, and it threatened to do the same now.
Briskly she said, "Virgil, I want the names of everyone who ever was connected with that scheme,
everyone. And dates."
He looked at her blankly. "Why?"
She sat down then and regarded her two children. "I have to try to find out what was being investigated.
We have to know. Tomorrow afternoon I'm going over to Sacramento, and I'll stay a day or two and
see if I can turn up anything. What I want you both to do is stay here and do exactly what you've been
doing, your work, the photos, everything you're supposed to be doing. And if anyone wants to know
where I am or why or anything else, you just say I'm taking care of some business. No more than that."
"I know what she was investigating," Virgil said morosely.
"We don't know. Not for certain. Now fill in the gaps, after you left UCLA were you still in touch with
Maria?"
"No. I went back to the restaurant once, but she was gone, no forwarding number, nothing. I didn't see
her again until she showed up here last year and asked for a job."
Sarah did not press him about Mafia. "All right, you left UCLA, and then what did you do, where did
you go?" He told it haltingly with omissions that he backed up to explain, then leaped forward again.
It was hard to follow, but when he was done, Sarah felt a great relief, there had not been time for him to
become involved with alien smuggling or drug smuggling during the past two years.
He had come here, worked through the summer, and in the fall had enrolled at Chico State. She knew
that already; she had written the check for his tuition. What she hadn't known was how he attended
classes, only those few that seemed relevant to him: some botany classes, some business classes, some
marine biology. He audited most of them, he said in a low voice, no grades, no credits because they
hadn't allowed him to enroll without a number of prerequisites that he skipped.
He had lived here, he added, had driven over to Chico in the morning, had classes, and had come home
again to work or study.
No credits, no transcript, no records, Sarah thought near despair, her relief of only a minute ago
forgotten; there was no proof of where he had gone all those days he had left early and returned late.
She rubbed her eyes; for days a headache had threatened, receded, threatened again, and now it had
arrived with a throbbing intensity.
When Virgil finished, Winnie jumped up. "What we all need is something to eat," she said. "Come on, I'll
make pancakes. Maybe Rosa has some huckleberry syrup stashed away."
They trailed out to the kitchen, where Virgil offered to help, and Winnie pointed to the table. "You sit
and start dredging up names out of that murky mire you call a mind." She flashed her quick and crooked
grin at Sarah. "And you sit and egg him on."
Later that night, unable to sleep, waiting for aspirins to take effect, Sarah made a list of things to do; she
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]