Authors: Baxter Clare Trautman
Frank looks at her. “How do you know there'll be a next time?”
“Won't there be?”
Frank doesn't answer, surprised how much she hopes Sal is right.
She lifts a hand and walks to the car. Sliding the key into the ignition, she prays the faithful Honda won't start. But of course it does. She drives through the gate, refusing to look back at Sal or the guard of mountains behind.
Farther down the road she passes the store, then brakes, and turns around. The store is empty but for a new clerk, a grizzled man in a John Deere cap with a wad of chew in his cheek. She pays for a bottle of water, asking if he's ever at the store when Sal does her thing.
“Sure, all the time. Let her work on my arthritis if she's not too busy. She's a peach. Does it for free.”
“Does it help?”
He chuckles. “Better 'an what the doctors gimme. You that cop they been talkin' about?”
“Reckon I am,” she answers, adopting the geezer's drawl.
“Yeah, I heard you found old Dom Saladino, that right?”
“Yep. Did you know him?”
“Why sure I knew him, and his daddy, too. Worked with him plenty of times. Branding, gathering. He was a good hand, Dom was.”
“That's what I heard. When he was sober.”
“Well, now, nothin' wrong with a man takin' a drink now and then.”
“No, I reckon not. You go to school with his girls?”
“Aw, I didn't get much schooling. Been working all my life.”
He slaps the counter. “This here was my great-great-granddaddy's store. Built in 1868. Wasn't nothing but a tent and barrels to start with.”
“You don't say?”
“I do,” he defends proudly, and as he talks Frank sees a sagging, soot-stained canvas, tied at the corners with frayed manila ropes. Barrels stocked beneath on one side. Dry goods, boots, pants, implements arranged on long planks. A cool wind puffs the roof high. Just outside burns a fire. A woman clutching a blanket squats beside it. Black,
stringy hair hides her face. Beside her on the ground a baby chews its fists.
Frank is leaning against the counter. She interrupts the man. “Your grandmother. She was from here.”
“Full-blood Esselen,” he agrees. “How'd you know that?”
“Lucky guess,” she lies. “You worked with Dom and John Mazetti?”
“Sure did. Brandin', castratin', roundups. Worked for the Mazettis every chance I got. They always paid good and on time. And put out a good spread to boot.”
“How'd those two get along?”
He pulls at the bill of his cap. “Well, you know Dom's people used to own the Mazetti ranch, and I don't think that ever settled too well on him, taking orders from a man on what he felt was his land.”
“Did they fight?”
“Oh, you know how it is when a man gets a few under his belt. Starts talking, don't you know, and one thing leads to another.” He scratches under his cap. “You know how that is.”
“They come to blows?”
“Couple times that I heard of. Never actually saw it, though. Heard old John had enough one time. Almost ran Dom off the ranch.”
“Why didn't he? Seems like more trouble to keep him on.”
“Well, you know,” the man becomes evasive. “People have their reasons.”
“Do you know what they were?”
He spits a brown jet into a Styrofoam cup on the counter. “Let's just say there's a lot of things happen up in them mountains that should stay up in them mountains.”
“Like what?” She gives her most charming aw-shucks grin. “You're making me awfully curious.”
Probing a bent finger under his cap, he says, “I reckon you'd hear it sooner or later anyway. I ain't crazy now. You can ask anyone been around these parts long enough, they'll tell you the same thing. It's haunted up there. The first Saladino that settled here, that woulda been Angelo Saladino, he married a full-blood Esselen, just like my
great-great-grandma. There's always been Esselen blood on that land. When there's not, well, that's when the trouble starts.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“Drought. Fire. Hoof-and-mouth. Last time the Saladinos left, a lightning storm killed Ben Mazetti's baby brother. Felled an oak tree right through the nursery into his crib.” The old man shakes his head woefully. “Ain't nothin' good can come of a Saladino leaving the land. It's just a fact.”
The morning is warm and the air in the store close, yet ice ripples over Frank's spine. Her arms welt with goose bumps.
“Good to know.” She slaps the counter. “Thanks for your time.”
“Hell,” he looks around the empty store. “I got plenty of that.”
Frank walks out into the welcome light. She sits in her car, nursing the bottle of water. All her visions seem somehow connected to the mountains, and she wonders if maybe the old guy's right. Maybe they are haunted.
She checks her watch. It's barely mid-morning. She should stop in Soledad and talk to more people. She sips the cool water. A light breeze sweeps through the oak in front of the store. She admires the crisp delineation of mountain against sky. On impulse she starts the car and heads for the highway, but turns left at the first crossroad, heading north instead of south.
The two-lane road winds up dry, hilly rangelands under the aegis of the mountains, gradually pinching down to a single lane in a densely shaded canyon. She misses the mountains' tall company. Soon homes, then suburbs and towns replace the big ranches. But when the road intersects the Pacific Coast Highway, the mountains reappear on her left.
She waits at the stoplight. Carmel is straight ahead. She's never been to the ritzy seaside town. She should stop for lunch and wander around. The light changes. Frank glances at the mountains rising steeply from the ocean. An SUV behind her honks. She turns left, away from the town. Malls and businesses give way to secluded, multimillion-dollar, ocean-view homes. After a couple of winding miles, those too fade away, until the only sign of civilization is the sinuous snake of blacktop.
The mountain side of the road is sheer granite, dotted with shrubs tough enough to withstand wind, salt, drought and the constant pull of gravity. On the ocean side, a narrow shoulder drops hundreds of feet to the breaking ocean. The water lunges at the foot of the mountains and she remembers Gomez' odd gratitude that the Santa Lucias keep the ocean where it belongs. Frank drives slowly.
Hours later, where the mountains flatten and become tame, she catches up to the storm that blew over the ranch. It waits in dirty gray piles over the rounded hills, and she decides to eat and stretch before driving into it.
Exiting at a seaside town, she follows signs to the harbor. She walks up and down the marina, enjoying the clanging rigging and slapping hulls. Gulls cry and wheel over the restaurants along the dock and the salt air whets her appetite. Stopping to grab her briefcase from the car, she ducks into the closest restaurant with a view. A veteran of solitary dining, she knows a single woman is usually shunted off by the kitchen, so Frank tells the host she needs a table by the water. The black-tied young man starts to explain they are all taken, but she points to one of three large, empty tables. Doubtful it is reserved in the off-season at five o'clock on a Sunday night, she says, “That one right there will be fine.”
Frank walks past the host, who has no choice but to trot behind. He lays a menu down, clearly miffed, and says her server will be right with her. She opens her briefcase and catches him talking to a waitress, who glances at her. Frank smiles and waves her over.
The woman forces a cheery response and when she gets to the table Frank assures, “I know I'm taking one of your money tables, but I'll make it up to you. I'm in kind of a hurry, so could you get me a cup of coffee, fresh coffee, while I look at the menu?”
“Sure thing,” the woman says and this time her smile is genuine.
Frank scans the menu, then opens her notepad and starts writing. She hasn't bought a laptop yet, preferring to let her imagination roam in the interplay between hand and pen and paper. The waitress returns with a pitcher of water and pours a glass, asking if Frank's decided. She orders steak and fries, then glances at the view. Fishing boats bob in a choppy, gray sea, but after all her fuss for a window table, Frank
barely notices. Between dropping in on Sal and the unexpected sleepover at the cabin, she is losing perspective on the Saladino case and is determined to make up for it. She dives into her notes, not looking up until the waitress brings her steak, but even then it's just to cut and stab her food.
She amends, adds, and comments between bites, intrigued that Sal isn't more interested in how her father died. In her experience, there are only two reasons people aren't interested in a homicideâthey either don't care about the deceased or they already know how it happened. It's possible that after forty-odd years Sal just doesn't care anymore. It's equally possible she knows more than she's telling.
Frank pushes her plate away, empty but for a few fries. She looks out over the water to check the storm's progress. It has flattened the sea into a sheet of bronze brighter than the gun-metal sky. The boats anchored on the eerie calm hold their breath as if awaiting the storm's first blow. Behind the silent bay, bruised clouds purple the hills. A faltering sun squeezes through cracks in the clouds, slashing at the hills with brilliant streaks of umber and lighting the fishing boat windows.
The waitress asks how everything was, and Frank asks for the check and coffee to go. She slides her notes into the briefcase and glances at the harbor.
The fishing boats are gone. In their place are Chinese junks, bobbing under wrinkled sails and burning smudge pots. The sepia hills glow not with the broken sun but the thousand oil lamps of a crowded city. On the skinny wooden dock, horses and drays jostle for space amid the crates and shanties of peddlers and fishmongers hawking their goods over the cacophony of scavenging gulls.
“Here you go.” The waitress sets down the bill and a Styrofoam cup. “Everything alright?”
Frank looks from the waitress back to the water. The junks are once again Whalers and SeaCrafts. Cars are parked on the concrete dock in front of taffy shops and sushi bars. The defeated sun has left the hills dark and barren.
“Yeah. Fine.”
She follows the waitress to the register and leaves an impressive
tip. Pushing through the door, she is relieved to see her car in the lot. A drop of rain smacks her face. Her hand trembles as she puts the key in the lock. She settles the case and coffee, then grips the steering wheel, glad of its solidity in what is fast becoming a slippery world.
Cell phone reception at the ranch and down the coast was spotty to nonexistent, so Frank left her phone in the car. She checks it now, seeing all the messages from the weekend have rolled in. The last is from Caroline. Frank calls, anxious to hear a familiar voice.
“Well, there you are. I thought you'd gotten lost in the mountains and eaten by lions.”
Frank squeezes her eyes against the memory of the snake rolling, flashing its pale, vulnerable underbelly. “Not quite. Awful reception, though.”
“Where are you?”
“Still up north. Morro Bay.”
“Oh.” In one short word, Caroline's disappointment is clear.
“How'd it go?” she asks gamely.
“I'm getting more questions than answers, but at least that's something. More's better than less.”
“Sounds like you're not done up there.”
“No,” Frank reflects. “I think I've barely started.”
“Damn. That means I'll never see you.”
“Not necessarily.” Franks squints at the lowering sky, the spats of rain hitting her windshield. “Got a storm up here, but I bet I can outrun it, and unless I hit traffic I should be home by eight or nine. Feel like company?”
“Sure. If you're up for it.”
“Definitely, but I better go so I can concentrate on getting home to you.”
“Okay. Drive safe. I'd rather see you later than in a coffin.”
Frank frowns; another great visual. She finds the highway and locks the cruise control onto eighty. The storm chases her all the way but doesn't catch her.
Frank lets herself into Caroline's plush condo and calls hello.
“I'm in the kitchen!”
She finds Caroline at the stove, stirring spaghetti sauce. Frank hugs her from behind and murmurs into her ear. Caroline turns into her, laughing low and rousing a tickle of desire. Frank makes small talk to keep Caroline warm against her, so that she can caress her lips along the willing neck, circle a light, teasing tip of tongue round the curve of an ear.
Caroline leans back, observing, “Aren't you the amorous one?”
“Hm.” Her lips seek Caroline's throat for a last course, then Frank gently releases her. “How hungry are you?”
Arching a brow, Caroline answers, “I could eat something that's not necessarily on the menu.”