Less Than Frank Part 6

"Cool. Okay if I come over this weekend? I'm pretty sure the apartment will be a lot quieter than the dorm to study in."

"Be my guest. We can study together. Now go drink that before it cools off."

"Yeah, definitely. Thanks, Mom." He reached halfway over the counter and gave me a brief hug.

Given his height he could reach that way much easier than I could. It felt good watching him stroll off looking happy again. I prayed silently asking G.o.d to keep him safe, and to help bring to light what really happened to Frank Collins, for the sake of his family and my own. Somewhere there was a family for whom the truth wouldn't bring peace, but for many of us knowing the truth would be the only peace we'd get out of a bad situation.

While I mused over that and made a couple of lattes for two professors who barely looked up from their discussion with each other to take them, Linnette sidled up behind them. The profs finally retreated to a table to continue their conversation and Linnette came up to the counter. "Six-thirty at Sally's Deli. Is that okay with you?"

"Sounds great. I'll meet you there," I told her. Sally's was a big place where the menu went on for pages, so everyone could get what they wanted. It also had lots of booths and tables off in little nooks, meaning we could talk without constant interruption or worries of anyone overhearing what we said.

The rest of my shift was just busy enough to make the time go by, but I wasn't ever overworked. Maria came back soon after Linnette's last visit and at six Rico, one of the student workers, came to take my place at the counter. We exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes and then he got busy and I left.

Sally's Deli wasn't all that far from campus and traffic around Rancho Conejo was surprisingly light for rush hour on a weekday. I made it to the restaurant in plenty of time. When I went in, Linnette waved from a secluded corner table, where I joined her. She handed me a menu that looked like a small-town phone book and we discussed what we might get for ten minutes until Dot joined us. I'd gotten into the salad section when Linnette looked up over her reading gla.s.ses.

"I just realized that you weren't there for the start of the meeting last week."

"That's right. Did I miss something?"

"One thing that I keep forgetting to tell you. We have a different meeting schedule in December. We'll meet the next two Sunday nights instead of Wednesdays. It frees everybody up for Christmas and travel that way."

"Works for me," I told her, just in time to see Dot heading for the table.

"Hi, ladies. It's great to see a couple of friendly faces." She sat down at the table, probably still wearing the outfit she'd worn to Frank's funeral. The tailored pants outfit was a deep green that suited her well. Still, Dot looked tired, with faint dark smudges under her eyes.

"Was the funeral that bad, or has there been more today?" Linnette asked.

"It was mostly the funeral. I took Lucy, Candace's roommate with me, which felt odd without Candace along. Oh, and I saw that young reporter again. He mostly sat in the back and seemed to take notes. I didn't see him talk to anybody."

For that I felt thankful. Sam wasn't the pushy type, but n.o.body should have reporters intrude on an event like a funeral. Dot went on with her story. "After the services I took Lucy back to her place while those that wanted to went to the cemetery. Eventually I met up with them at Frank's mother's house." Dot wrinkled her nose and looked longingly at my water gla.s.s.

I pushed it over to her. "Go ahead. I haven't touched that one yet and the server will bring another one as soon as we get his attention."

"Normally I'd argue, but I'm tired and thirsty so I'll take you up on your offer." I didn't want to press her for details of her day, knowing that Linnette is even better than I am at leading questions. Besides, Dot didn't usually need to have many questions directed to her. Once she rested a little and ordered dinner, she'd tell us anything we needed to know.

We got Dot her own cold drink and replaced my water when the server came back, and then Linnette and I proceeded to order while Dot looked at the menu another minute. By the time we had finished ordering she was ready as well. "Just soup and a dinner salad," she told the server. "I'm saving room for dessert. Something large and chocolate."

After he had left the table I looked at Dot. "Okay, now I know it must have been a rough day, if you're already antic.i.p.ating chocolate therapy."

She grinned. "You bet. After dealing with Ruth Collins and her sisters, there probably isn't enough chocolate in this restaurant to really make me feel better, but dessert is a start."

"What did they do that was so awful?" Linnette was the one to ask this time so I didn't have to.

Dot sighed. "It wasn't what they did as much as what they didn't do. I know every mother thinks her child is perfect, but Ruth is downright awful to Tracy. And the only one of the grandkids she seems to pay any attention to is Frankie."

"Ouch." Linnette reached for the breadbasket that our server had put on the table. "That has to be hard on Tracy on two counts. She has to deal with upset kids and her mother-in-law at the same time."

"And she's not managing any of it well. She mostly sat at Ruth's dining-room table and cried while I was there. I sat next to her and talked some since n.o.body else was paying her much attention. Frank's books are as big a mess as you'd expect them to be, and she's already started getting calls from people who want money."

Linnette looked up from the warm roll she was b.u.t.tering. "She could sure use some support. I know they were nominally members at our church. Do you think she'd be open to our Christian Friends group?"

Dot shook her head. "Some other group would probably be better. Perhaps one that focuses on younger women or grief issues."

"And perhaps one that I'm not in," I said. It was what Dot was thinking, I was sure. Neither Tracy nor I would be quite comfortable together if she ever found out that Ben was a suspect in her husband's murder, no matter how wrong the police were for suspecting him.

"You've got a point there. Both of you do. I think our group probably has its quota of widows right now. And Tracy would probably benefit from a group that could deal with her grief and put her on the right track to settling Frank's tangled business affairs. I'll talk to Pastor George and see if he has any suggestions."

"That would be nice." I helped myself to one of those warm rolls. I didn't really need to dip into the breadbasket, but comfort food sounded good. "What about having Lucy at the funeral? Did it feel strange just because Candace wasn't there?"

"No, there was more. We were right about one thing. The minute we got there she started looking around for Matt. When she saw him, she wanted to sit next to him. Of course I didn't mind that. I took her over to the row where he was sitting and sat there myself, a few places down from them."

Dot was quiet for a minute. I noticed that her roll was the only one untouched, except for it having been torn in pieces and pushed around her bread plate. "I suppose I should call back Detective Fernandez about what I heard and saw, but I just hate to do it."

"What do you mean?"

She looked at me and her eyes were still so tired. "After getting Ben in trouble I don't want to make another mistake. But Matt and Lucy were talking just loudly enough that I could hear them. When the service was almost over Lucy started crying as they took the casket out of the sanctuary. Matt reached over and patted her hand. 'See, Lucy,' he said. 'I promised you he wouldn't bother you again.'" She looked down at the table again. "That wasn't all, either. I saw his hand while he was patting her. His knuckles were all sc.r.a.ped and starting to heal as if he'd been in a fistfight."

Now I was worried, too. "You're probably right, Dot. Fernandez would want to know about that. But what if what you heard didn't mean what you thought it did? Then another kid goes through what Ben has."

"I know." Dot looked troubled. "I think when dinner is over we should go somewhere quieter and pray together. I need some help with figuring out what I should tell that detective."

"We can certainly pray with you, Dot. And personally, I wouldn't even mind doing it here." The server was probably a little startled to see the three of us praying together when he brought our food, but if he was he hid it well. I figured it probably wasn't the most unusual thing he'd seen in the busy deli. Besides, it gave Dot enough peace that she could have a good dinner and then split one of their huge pieces of German chocolate cake with the rest of us. n.o.body really needed dessert, but that cake was probably the highlight of the day for all three of us.

Chapter Ten.

Thursday and Friday were a giant blur. Between working on the final project that was due, and turning it in, and the two cla.s.ses that had actual final exams to study for, I either lived at school or focused on school even when I came home. It didn't help any that I had two four-hour shifts at the Coffee Corner, but Maria needed the help. Most of the undergrad students who worked for her bailed to study and take finals.

Ben showed up at the apartment far earlier on Friday night than I had seen him on a weekend all semester. Usually on Friday evenings he hung out with friends, maybe went out for pizza or a movie before coming home to dear old Mom.

This week, though, everybody must be in study mode. Since he'd gotten there so early I sprang for pizza for the two of us and we spent most of the evening with our various textbooks spread out in the living room. Ben commandeered the couch and I took over the armchair while we listened to music and studied. It was a strange and new thing to work on academic projects in the same room with my son without helping him with his homework. I figured some time during the weekend we might quiz each other on things. That would be even stranger than studying side by side.

Sat.u.r.day morning found me in Dot's kitchen after kennel ch.o.r.es, having coffee and cinnamon rolls while we talked about our kids. I mentioned how odd it was to study with Ben like contemporaries. She nodded thoughtfully.

"I didn't have much of that with Candace, but we had our moments. She learned to sew in a cla.s.s at school and we'd work on things together. Eventually she got tired of sewing and moved on to other things, but for a while we had fun. We even made a quilt together."

"Neat. Do you still have it?"

"She does. It's on her bed in Camarillo. Her 'real' bed, as she would say. We keep one bedroom set up for her here when she comes for a weekend, but our house doesn't feel like home to her anymore." Dot sipped her coffee. "But then I guess that's a good thing. That's what parenting is all about, raising kids to go off on their own as much as it's possible."

"Sure. That doesn't mean that it's all fun and games, though. I waver back and forth between missing the little boy I used to have and marveling at how much Ben reminds me of his dad, when I met him at college. Except that Ben's got more common sense."

Dot laughed. "Consider who raised him, my dear. What were Hal's parents like?"

"Wealthy. Divorced by the time he was in college, and both of them spoiled him rotten to get back at each other. If I'd looked critically at his parents, I might have thought twice about marrying their son. But at Ben's age while I may have had some common sense, I didn't have as much as he seems to have now."

"I'd like to meet your mother some time," Dot said. "Considering the way you turned out, she must be a pretty neat lady. Do you think she'll ever come out for a visit?"

"Maybe she will eventually. She actually likes the Midwestern winters, so it won't be anytime soon. She honestly doesn't understand why I don't want to go there for Christmas. Personally I feel like thirty-six white Christmases were enough, thank you."

Dot nodded. "If I wanted a white Christmas I'd go to Big Bear, where I can come back to decent weather in a day or two. Maybe we'll look better to her around February."

I shuddered. "Definitely. Even my mom can't love February in Missouri. That's the grayest twenty-eight days you can imagine."

"How do people live back there without sunshine? I don't know how I'd handle it, myself."

I wrapped my hands around my coffee mug. Just thinking about February in Missouri made me chilled. "If you're like me, you'd handle it poorly. You'd grouse a lot and dream of vacations someplace like this, and be very, very unhappy when you had to chop ice off your car for about the twelfth morning in a row."

"Not for me. I'll take California even if we have to put up with mudslides and earthquakes."

"So far I still think earthquakes are better than tornadoes. Especially since there aren't any bas.e.m.e.nts to speak of out here. I can still remember sitting in the bas.e.m.e.nt with Ben listening to the tornado sirens go off. At least that was back in the days when he felt safe just being with me. I'm afraid as your kids get older you just don't hold that power anymore."

"That's the truth. I think that not being able to keep her safe has been the hardest part of watching Candace grow up. When she was little I could fix most of the hurts, even when somebody teased her at school or she got sick. When she got older there was so much out there I couldn't protect her from anymore." Dot sighed. "But then, the hurts I couldn't fix started early with her because of the mistakes I made while I was carrying her."

I looked at Dot, and could tell that she was serious. "Surely you don't think that something you did while you were pregnant caused the Down syndrome?"

"No, not that. But I had a rough time the whole pregnancy and my doctor put me on something to keep me from miscarrying. It was years before we found out the drug he used was a bad idea."

"What was it?" The only problem drug like that I could think of was thalidomide, but that was before my time, much less Candace's, wasn't it?

"Have you ever heard of DES?" Dot clasped her hands on the table like a schoolmarm about to give a lesson. "But no, you probably haven't. Unless somebody you were close to had taken it, it wouldn't be an issue. It seemed to be a great drug at the time, but once those babies grew up a little there were all kinds of problems."

"You're right, it's one I haven't heard of," I told her. "What kinds of problems did it cause?"

"Reproductive issues, mostly. And for women there were increases in some kinds of cancer. Once we found out about the risks for Candace we were extra-careful about her having a yearly Pap test, even as a teenager. That was hard to explain to her."

"I imagine. How did she take it all?"

"Pretty well, considering." Dot paused for a moment. "We all handled it okay until one year her test was suspicious. She was put on an even more vigilant watch after that, and at nineteen she had surgery that removed the threat of cancer, but also left her unable to have children. That part of her problems I still feel that I could have changed if I'd only known."

"Maybe you could have." I patted her hand. Dot looked more forlorn than I'd seen her before. She was usually one of the most upbeat people I knew. "But who's to say? We can't second-guess the past or the future."

"I know. It's all in G.o.d's hands anyway. And when we explained it all to her, Candace said it was okay with her because she didn't think she would make a good mommy anyway. It hardly ever comes up anymore."

"And she's stayed cancer-free since the surgery?"

"She has, so that's a blessing. All in all things could have been much worse. And there's part of me that knows that my guilt isn't really rational. I guess it's just that I'm a mom and I worry and I feel responsible for things like most of us do."

"I know what you mean there. I asked myself for years if I'd done the right thing not fighting the divorce when Hal and his parents were so adamant that it was the best thing for all of us. In hindsight, I think they just wanted him back in Tennessee. I was sure that the whole mess would leave Ben permanently scarred, even though he was so young when it happened that he hardly remembers a time when Hal and I lived together."

"Does he see his father very often?"

"They talk on the phone a lot. And for several weeks every summer he's there, as well as alternating holidays. This year he'll spend a good chunk of Christmas break with his father and grandparents and their various spouses." I didn't tell Dot that in all honesty I wished Ben spent more time with his father, but less with his father's sc.r.a.pping, blended family. It wasn't the blended nature that bothered me, but the constant arguing. There never seemed to be a time when everyone was speaking to each other, and it made for some mighty contentious visits for Ben.

"So how do you feel about that? Is it hard to share him with them?" Even without me telling her the whole story, Dot seemed to know how I felt.

"It was a lot harder when he was younger. I wasn't happy about Ben flying alone, even as an unaccompanied minor on reliable airlines, until he was eleven or twelve. So there were quite a few uncomfortable meetings at midpoints between St. Louis and Memphis where Hal and I would be stiff and just barely civil to each other at some restaurant right off the highway as we traded Ben back and forth."

Dot shrugged. "At least you tried to be civil. I've seen too many cases where that didn't happen."

"Whatever other faults I found in Hal over the years, I have to say he put Ben first most of the time. After the divorce was final, that is." I shook my head to clear it. "But this is a pretty grim topic of conversation. Why don't we talk about something else?"

"That's a good idea. What are you going to bring to the Christian Friends holiday potluck next Sunday? I'm trying to decide between green bean ca.s.serole and broccoli salad."

I made a face. "I have to check with Linnette to see what I signed up for. I have no idea what kind of dish I'm supposed to bring." So the conversation drifted on to more pleasant things and eventually I drifted back to the apartment with a couple of cinnamon rolls that Dot sent with me for Ben.

Of course when I got back there I could hear Ben showering. It was after 10:30 in the morning, but before noon; a reasonable time to expect a college freshman to roll out of bed. After a short while-at least short for him as far as showers go-he came into the living room. Damp hair curled around his temples making him look boyish, but the Pac-Oaks hoodie and that awful goatee were both pure college man.

If the kid asks me what I want for Christmas, I'm tempted to tell him that a clean-shaven son would be wonderful. I can't imagine that happening until after the New Year begins, though. The only one who will be more aggravated by his facial hair than I am is Hal's mother, and unlike me, she will let Ben know frequently what she thinks of it all. I imagine he'll keep the goatee through the holidays just to vaguely aggravate his grandparents and give them a topic of conversation.

While Ben was still polishing off one of the cinnamon rolls and a cup of coffee as he studied, I heard a car door close outside. When I looked out there was a familiar unmarked sheriff's department vehicle in the driveway with Ray Fernandez standing outside. Of course, what would a Sat.u.r.day morning be without a visit from the detective?

He went toward the front of the Morgans' house. I figured it was probably only a matter of time before he came back around this way. Sure enough, about twenty minutes later there was a knock on the door. I'd already warned my son that Fernandez was in the area, so Ben wasn't surprised when I opened the door and welcomed him in.

"I've got a fresh pot of coffee on. Would you like a cup?" I asked as soon as the pleasantries were over. "Ben, why don't you clear off half of the couch so that Detective Fernandez can sit down?"

"I'll take you up on the coffee, but don't pour me a full mug. I don't have time to visit today after I'm done asking the two of you a couple questions."

I noticed that Fernandez wasn't back to his "call me Ray" routine. Maybe we were back to formalities since he considered Ben a suspect in this murder. That was fine with me-I didn't really want to be on a first-name basis with anybody who thought my son was capable of something like that. I would, however, continue to offer him coffee. That's sort of like the "cup of cold water" we're supposed to offer folks, I figure.

I went in the kitchen and poured him the requested partial mug of coffee and brought it back into the living room. Fernandez was showing Ben a group of photographs. Ben shuffled through them, brow slightly wrinkled in thought.

"Yeah, definitely, that guy was here all the time. He was Frank's helper. He was usually here every day but Friday," Ben said, stopping at a picture of Darnell.

"Unless the surf was running just right somewhere between Santa Barbara and Malibu," I chimed in, putting down the coffee in front of Fernandez on the coffee table.

"That's already been pointed out to me," he said. "How about the guys in the other pictures?"

Ben flipped through the stack again. "These two I can't say for sure. Maybe Mom will have better luck telling you. But this guy, definitely. He wasn't here nearly as much as Darnell or anything. I think he worked with the plumbing crew."

Fernandez took the photos Ben handed him, holding them in such a way that I couldn't see which ones Ben indicated were parts of the crew or not. He shuffled them a little and pa.s.sed them to me. I sat down in the armchair next to his end of the couch. "What is this all about?" I thought I knew, but it was better to have things clarified.

"I wanted to show you and Ben some pictures to see if you recognized some of the young men that we've identified as part of the construction crews. All of the people I'm showing you worked for one contractor or another, but not all of them necessarily worked on this job. Mrs. Morgan was very helpful, but as the actual tenant of the apartment, you might be able to add details."

He took a sip of his coffee and looked at me while I began to study the pictures. Those golden brown eyes could certainly focus with an intensity that made me antsy. I tried to get my attention on the photos instead of the man watching me. I looked through them, reordering the group. The first two were easy. "Ben's right, Darnell was here all the time. And if this second guy was here at all, I don't remember him." I handed back those two photos.

The other two were more problematic. "I have to admit that I'm not sure how often I saw this young man on the job here, but I know who he is. I met him at the funeral home during Frank's visitation, and I'm pretty sure that I'd seen Bob Leopold around here on at least one occasion with his dad's plumbing crew."

Fernandez looked at me over the rim of his coffee cup. "Okay. Fair enough," he said, putting it down. "What about the fourth one?"

I studied the remaining photo. The young man was incredibly ordinary looking, with brown hair and a thin sort of face. His eyes looking out at the camera seemed to be focusing on a point in the distance and he wasn't smiling. He could have been any one of a dozen kids that came through the Coffee Corner on a daily basis or were part of one of the construction crews. "Honestly, he looks familiar but I can't tell you exactly why. I couldn't tell you that he was definitely working on the apartment, Detective, because I'm not sure where I've seen him before."