Born To Die

Thanksgiving.

Strings of colored lights had been wound over the trunks of the royal palms, their fronds billowing in a balmy breeze blowing in off the Pacific.

Christmas in L.A.

He slid into Harding’s car. The interior of her hatchback was sweltering, and he rolled down the window. “Okay, so tell me, why do you think someone murdered Shelly Bonaventure?” she asked.

“Not sure.”

“She had no enemies, no angry boyfriends, no life insurance, no will, and less than three hundred dollars in the bank. Her biggest assets were a ninety-five Toyota and her cat. Who would want her dead?”

“I don’t know,” he reiterated as she tore out of the lot, her lead foot pressing hard on the accelerator.

“Yet,” Harding added as she sped toward Sepulveda. “You didn’t finish your sentence. You don’t know yet. You’re not letting go of this.”

“I’d just like to personally talk to the guy at the bar. He’s the last one to have seen her alive. He might remember something more.”

“Good luck with that. You’ve heard about needles and haystacks, right?”

“Right.”

She slashed him a knowing grin as she took a corner a little too fast. “That might not ever happen.”

For once, he couldn’t argue.

But he still wanted to have a chat with the mystery man at the bar.

Trace grabbed his cell phone by the third ring. As he did, he noticed that it was nearly four and caller ID listed Evergreen Elem. as the caller. Eli’s school. “Hello?” he said into the phone.

“Mr. O’Halleran? This is Barbara Killingsworth, the principal here at Evergreen Elementary. I was just calling to check on Eli.” In his mind’s eye, he pictured the woman: midforties, impossibly thin, with pinched features and a wide mouth that was forever in a tight, forced smile.

“He’s doing all right,” Trace said, glancing over at his son, who was sleeping on the couch, his arm in the cast, the television turned to some movie he wasn’t watching, the dog curled at his feet. “But I want to know who was supposed to be watching him.” He walked into the kitchen of the old farmhouse and pulled the swinging door to the family room shut so that he wouldn’t disturb Eli.

“We had several teachers on playground duty.”

“And none of them saw the potential danger in. .?” He let his question fade away and forced his anger at bay. What was the point? He knew accidents happened. No one at Evergreen Elementary was malicious or even inattentive. The kids were just messing around, and his boy got hurt. End of story. He didn’t want to come off like some overprotective jerk, and yet when it came to Eli. .

“I’m very sorry.”

“I know. Look, he’s got a double ear infection and possibly strep throat, so I’m going to keep him home for at least a couple of days.”

“I’ll have his teacher e-mail you, and tell Eli that we’re all thinking of him.”

“I will,” he said and hung up just as he heard a rumble outside. He glanced out the window and saw Ed Zukov’s truck as it rolled down the twin ruts of the long drive.

Sarge, who had been sleeping seconds earlier, lifted his scruffy head and gave a low bark.

“Shh!” Trace headed for the back door.

Ed and his wife, Tilly, were the neighbors a quarter of a mile down the road and had been friends of his father. Trace had known the couple, now in their seventies, all his life. He walked through the kitchen and back porch with Sarge at his heels.

The wind was picking up, causing the old windmill’s blades to creak as they turned and the naked branches of the trees in the orchard to rattle. Snow was falling steadily now, big white flakes swirling and beginning to cover the ground, as the old truck slowed to a stop near the pump house.

Spry as a thirty-year-old, Tilly hopped down from the cab of the ancient truck the minute her husband cut the engine. “We heard about Eli,” she said, a baseball cap covering her head as she marched around the front of the old Dodge. She was carrying a hamper, which wasn’t unusual. In the face of any crisis, Tilly Zukov turned to her pantry and stove.

“He’ll be fine.” Since Tilly was a world-class worrier, he decided not to mention the ear infections. “How’d you know?”

“I have a niece who works in the kitchen at Evergreen.”

“Small town.” Ed, a solid man with a wide girth and arms as big as sapling trunks, slammed the door of his truck behind him and followed his wife up the two stairs of the screened-in back porch. “Jesus, it’s cold!”

“Ed! Do not take our Lord’s name in vain,” Tilly reprimanded as they stopped just inside the kitchen door. In her plaid jacket and faded jeans, she was tiny, half her husband’s size, but she obviously ruled the roost. Her hair was steel gray and tightly permed, and rimless glasses were perched on the bridge of her tiny nose. From behind the lenses, dark eyes snapped with intelligence. To Trace, she said, “I brought over some stew and fresh baked corn bread, and some ranger cookies, ’cuz they’re Eli’s favorite.”

“She also brought a pie,” Ed added. He took off his trucker cap, showing off a bald spot in his snow-white hair, then unzipped his down jacket, beneath which were bib overalls and a flannel shirt.

“I had to!” Tilly insisted. “I wanted to try out this new recipe I found in the Better Homes and Gardens, last year’s holiday edition. It’s pumpkin custard with sour cream.”

Trace eyed the pie. “Sounds great. But, really, it wasn’t necessary.”

“Course it wasn’t.” Tilly was already stuffing the pie into his bare refrigerator. “But I wanted to give it a whirl before I served it on Thanksgiving. Ed’s sister, Cara, she’s pretty picky, so you and Eli are my guinea pigs.”

“Nothin’ wrong with the old recipe,” Ed grumbled.

“The one on the pumpkin can?” she demanded. “We’ve had that every year for the past forty-five years! Time to try something new.”

“It’s a tradition.” Ed was unmoved.

Tilly rolled her eyes. “Oh, show some originality, would ya, Ed?”

“Cara likes it,” Ed pointed out.

“What does she know?”

“You’re the one trying to impress her.”

“And I don’t know why,” Tilly admitted. “Ever taste her banana cream? Soggy crust. Overripe bananas. Horrible! Just… horrible!”

“Then quit tryin’ to impress her, and make the damned recipe that comes with the fillin’.” Her husband sighed broadly, his teeth stained slightly yellow from years of chewing tobacco. “I always say, if it ain’t broke, then don’t fix it.”

“You always say a lot of things, and I don’t listen to too many of ’em! Now, let’s quit bickering and I’ll heat up the stew.”

“She’s a bossy one, ain’t she?” Ed said to Trace.

“And you love it!” Despite the bite to her words, she sent him a fond glance, the kind they’d shared since high school, some fifty-odd years earlier.

“Seems to have worked out between you two,” Trace observed.

“That’s because he usually does what I ask.”

She began fiddling with the stove as her husband said, “I thought I’d help you with the livestock. Tilly, here, was frettin’ and fussin’ over at the house, worried you wouldn’t be able to get the chores done with Eli laid up.”

Tilly’s features pulled into a knot as she turned to Trace. “It’s just that I didn’t see how you’d leave the boy and take care of the cattle all at the same time.”

“Dad?” Eli called from the living room.

“Right there, bud!” Trace slipped through the swinging door and found his son in his stocking feet, looking groggy. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Who’s here?”