I kept going until I walked over a wooden bridge spanning a burbling stream. It coursed down a few smooth stones into the small artificial lake. Mallards, seagulls, and black-and-white geese paddled around, while a cormorant perched on a rock in the middle of the water. The pond had a freshwater smell that reminded me of Lake Lemon back home.
I was watching a dozen turtles sunning themselves on a log in the shallows when a deep voice behind me said, “Robbie Jordan?”
I turned to see a tall, wiry man carrying a bike helmet. “Yes. Are you Paul?”
“That would be me.” His curly black hair formed a wild nimbus around his head. He was probably ten or fifteen years older than me and wore a plaid shirt and faded jeans with the right pants leg still rolled up from his ride.
I shook his proffered hand.
“Shall we sit?” He gestured toward a bench by the side of the lake and cleared his throat after we sat. “First, let me offer my condolences on your mother’s passing. She was a wonderful woman.”
“Thank you. She was.” I looked more closely at him. “Wait, were you at her memorial service?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you looked familiar.” His name hadn’t rung any bells when Liz mentioned it, but I’m good with faces. I knew I’d seen him before.
“I didn’t get a chance to speak to you after the service,” he continued. “I had to go straight to work. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I was pretty dazed at the time. What do you do for work?”
“I bike-deliver takeout meals for the Green Artichoke. It’s a low-carbon-footprint local foods restaurant down in the Funk Zone. They make quite good food and have a philosophy I can get behind.”
“Sounds interesting. It wasn’t there when I was growing up.” Somebody else had mentioned the Green Artichoke, but I couldn’t think who at the moment.
“Liz said you were interested in my thoughts about Jeanine.” His expression was intense, his dark eyebrows pulled together in the middle. His knee jittered up and down, and he seemed to be avoiding making eye contact with me.
“Everybody seems to think something was off about her death,” I said slowly. “This is the first I’ve heard of it. What do you know?”
“She’d been active in our group for a few years. We were working hard to get some of the most toxic fumigants banned in Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties.”
“What, like chemicals they use for termite fumigation?”
“No. They’re used in strawberry fields, which you must know are common near the coast. There’s a tiny pest called a nematode that eats strawberry roots. So the farmers essentially sterilize the soil before planting.”
“Sterilizing soil sounds awful.”
“It is. These chemicals are neurotoxins. They don’t get into the berries—or so the chemical companies claim. But when the fumigants are sprayed, it’s extremely dangerous for the health of the farmworkers and neighbors, because it’s airborne. People and animals can’t help but breathe it.”
“Wow. That’s terrible.”
“No kidding. An alpaca farmer next to one of the big strawberry farms in Oxnard says her animals got sick. The farmworkers’ health suffers. It’s bad news, Robbie.”
Oxnard was the flat, fertile coastal plain not far down the coast from here beyond Ventura. “There must be an alternative for farmers,” I said. “Something organic, maybe.”
He grimaced. “The alternative is for them to rotate their crops and use organic products. They don’t want to. Big farmers mono-crop as cheaply as they can. Grow the same product in the same place year-round. And strip the soil of any natural defenses so people all over the country can eat big, juicy California strawberries whenever they want.”
Ouch. I’d think twice next time I was tempted to buy strawberries in February. “I don’t get how this fumigant is connected to my mother’s death, though.” I glanced up at the mountains visible above the trees. The western sun had turned the craggy peaks from their usual sandy tone to a pinker hue.
“There’s a guy who’s a muckety-muck at the chemical company up in Goleta.” He gestured vaguely northwest. “At Agrosafe. Can you believe that name? They make mono-cropping safe for farmers’ bank accounts, but not for the workers or the neighbors.”
“Is it near UCSB?” The university campus, one of nine scattered up and down the state, had had a reputation as a surfer school in earlier years but had upped its research game recently, spawning a number of companies nearby.
“Right. Your mom butted heads with this dude, big-time. Name’s Walter Russom.”
My eyes flew wide. “I went to school with a Katherine Russom. I bet she’s his daughter.” Katherine, the reunion organizer. The one with a grudge against me.
“Could be. Jeanine called him out at a public meeting, said he was a murderer.”
Wow. “She never told me about him. I mean, I knew she was getting interested in environmental questions, but I never heard about her passion getting to that level.”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Russom didn’t much like it.”
When was Paul going to get to the point? “And?”
He gazed at a couple of coots paddling across the lake, their white beaks striking against their black heads and bodies. He twisted to look into my eyes. “I think Russom poisoned your mom.”
Chapter 7
Paul had said he needed to split and left abruptly. I couldn’t get his words out of my head, and I longed for a quiet place to sit and think. I walked across the street to the Unitarian church Mom had started attending after I’d moved to Indiana. Once, when I was back for a visit, I’d attended a service with her. I remembered how peaceful I’d found the church. A lovely example of Spanish architecture, the large building was a hundred years old and on the National Register of Historic Places. From the outside it had the classic mission look, with curved red tiles on the roof, light-colored stucco walls, a long main
