cards. He checked the card assigned to Annabelle Crowe and then punched her pager number into his phone. A recorded message said the pager was no longer in service.
He clapped the phone closed and looked at the card again. The name and number of Annabelle Crowe’s agent were listed at the bottom. He decided that the agent might be the one tie she wouldn’t sever.
He put the phone and cards back into his pockets. This was one inquiry he was going to make in person.
Chapter 13
McCaleb made the crossing by himself, The Following Sea arriving at Avalon Harbor just as darkness did. Buddy Lockridge had stayed behind at Cabrillo Marina because no new charters had come up and he wouldn’t be needed until Saturday. As he arrived at the island McCaleb radioed the harbor master’s boat on channel 16 and got help mooring the boat.
The added weight of the two heavy books he had found in the used-books section at Dutton’s bookstore in Brentwood plus the smaller cooler filled with frozen tamales made the walk up the hill to his house exhausting. He had to stop twice on the side of the road to rest. Each time he sat down on the cooler and took one of the books out of his leather bag so that he could once more study the dark work of Hieronymus Bosch – even in the shadows of evening.
Since his visit to the Getty, the images in the Bosch paintings were never far from his thoughts. Nep Fitzgerald had said something at the end of the meeting in her office. Just before closing the book on the plates reproducing The Garden of Earthly Delights she looked at him with a small smile, as if she had something to say but was hesitant.
“What?” he said.
“Nothing really, just an observation.”
“Go ahead and make it. I’d like to hear it.”
“I was just going to mention that a lot of the critics and scholars who view Bosch’s work see corollaries to contemporary times. That’s the mark of a great artist – if his work stands the test of time. If it has the power to connect to people and… and maybe influence them.”
McCaleb nodded. He knew she wanted him to tell her what he was working on.
“I understand what you are saying. I’m sorry but at the moment I can’t tell you about this. Maybe someday I will, or someday you will just know what it was. But thank you. You have helped a lot, I think. I don’t know for sure yet.”
Sitting on the cooler now, McCaleb remembered the conversation. Corollaries to contemporary times, he thought. And crimes. He opened the larger of the two books he had bought and opened it to a color illustration of Bosch’s masterpiece. He studied the owl with black eyes and all of his instincts told him he was on to something significant. Something very dark and dangerous.
When he got home Graciela took the cooler from him and opened it on the kitchen counter. She took three of the green corn tamales out and put them on a plate for defrosting in the microwave.
“I’m making chili relenos, too,” she said. “It’s a good thing you called from the boat or we would’ve gone ahead and eaten without you.”
McCaleb let her vent. He knew she was angry about what he was doing. He walked over to the table where Cielo was propped in a bouncing chair. She was staring up at the ceiling fan and moving her hands in front of her, getting used to them. McCaleb bent down and kissed both of them and then her forehead.
“Where’s Raymond?”
“In his room. On the computer. Why did you only get ten?”
He looked over at her as he slid into a chair next to Cielo. She was putting the other tamales into a plastic Tupperware container for freezing.
“I took the cooler in and told them to fill it. That’s how many fit, I guess.”
She shook her head, annoyed with him.
“We’ll have one extra.”
“Then throw it out or invite one of Raymond’s friends over for dinner next time. Who cares, Graciela? It’s a tamale.”
Graciela turned and looked at him with dark, upset eyes that immediately softened.
“You’re sweaty.”
“I just walked up the hill. The shuttle was closed for the night.”
She opened an overhead cabinet and took out a plastic box holding a thermometer. There was a thermometer in every room in the house. She took this one out and shook it and came over to him.
“Open.”
“Let’s use the electronic.”
“No, I don’t trust them.”
She put the end of the thermometer under his tongue and then used her hand to gently bring his jaw up and close his mouth. Very professional. She had been an emergency room nurse when he met her and was now the school nurse and an office clerk at Catalina Elementary. She had just gone back to work after the Christmas holiday. McCaleb sensed that she wanted to be a full-time mother, but they couldn’t afford it so he never brought it up directly. He hoped that in a couple of years the charter service would be more established and they would have the choice then. Sometimes he wished they had kept a share of the money for the book-and-movie deal but he also knew that their decision to honor Graciela’s sister by not making money from what happened had been the only choice. They had given half the money to the Make a Wish Foundation and put the other half in a trust fund for Raymond. It would pay for college if he wanted that.
Graciela held his wrist and checked his pulse while he sat silently watching her.
“You’re high,” she said, dropping his wrist. “Open.”
He opened his mouth and she took out the thermometer and read it. She went to the sink and washed it, then returned it to its case and the cabinet. She didn’t say anything and McCaleb knew that meant his temperature was normal.
“You wish I had a fever, don’t you?”
“Are you crazy?”
“Yes, you do. That way you could tell me to stop this.”
“What do you mean, tell you to stop it? Last night you said it was just going to be last night. Then this morning you said it was just going to be today. What are you telling me now, Terry?”
He looked over at Cielo and held out a finger for her to grasp.
“It’s not over.” He now looked back at Graciela. “Some things came up today.”
“Some things? Whatever they are, give them to Detective Winston. It’s her job. It’s not your job to be doing this.”
“I can’t. Not yet. Not until I am sure.”
Graciela turned and walked back to the counter. She put the plate with the tamales on it into the microwave and set it for defrost.
“Will you take her in and change her? It’s been a while. And she’ll need a bottle while I make dinner.”
McCaleb carefully raised his daughter out of the bouncing seat and put her on his shoulder. She made some fussing noises and he gently patted her back to calm her. He walked over to Graciela’s back, put his arm around the front of her and pulled her backward into him. He kissed the top of her head and held his face in her hair.
“It will all be over soon and we’ll be back to normal.”
“I hope so.”
She touched his arm, which crossed her body beneath her breasts. The touch of her fingertips was the approval he sought. It told him this was a rough spot but they were okay. He held her tighter, kissed the back of her neck and then let her go.
