“Maybe a year and a half ago.”
Continuing to pour in from the sea, the morning fog defied the sun. But there must have been some clearing inland, because jets were taking off from John Wayne Airport, the dragon roar of their engines speaking down through the fog as if from some Jurassic otherwhere.
“What about a guy named Kelsey Faulkner?”
Pogo considered, shook his head. “Never heard of him.”
“Birkenau Terezin?”
“That’s a name? Sounds like some kind of rash.”
“Ashley Bell?”
“I knew another Ashley once. Ashley Scudder. She traded surfing for corporate finance.”
“Must be some who do both, corporate-finance surfers.”
“Not many.”
“I better go, you better microwave,” Bibi said.
When she kissed him on the cheek, he hugged her fiercely. With his head on her shoulder, his face averted, he said, “When Murph called from the hospital Tuesday to say about the cancer, I closed the store, turned out the lights. Sat behind the counter and cried for an hour. Didn’t think I was gonna stop. Don’t make me cry again, Beebs.”
“I won’t,” she promised, and when he looked at her, she lightly pinched the tip of his perfect nose. “Thanks for the wheels.”
“Whatever thunder crusher you’re riding,” he said, “just walk the board the way you do so well.”
To maintain control of a board, a surfer walked back and forth on it, shifting her body weight.
Bibi went around the Honda, opened the driver’s door, and looked across the roof at Pogo. With an affection so profound that she could never have found the words to describe it in a novel, she smiled and said, “Dude.”
He returned her smile. “Dudette. Walk the board, dudette.”
Because Pogo enjoyed tinkering with cars more than attending college but less than surfing, the Honda drove better than it looked. The well-tuned engine offered good takeoff from a stop and plenty of power for hills. In spite of the joke he had made about the brakes, they were in good working order.
Calida Butterfly lived in Costa Mesa, in a neighborhood that had once been middle-class, had fallen into decline, but had begun to come back strong before the crash of 2008. In the current economic malaise, gentrification had stalled, leaving newer semi-custom two-story homes next door to fifty-year-old ranch-style residences, some well kept and some not. Seventy-year-old bungalows were in the mix, too, this one stucco and that one clapboard, most of them in need of new paint and repairs. Some properties were landscaped and neatly kept, but here and there were weedy yards and overgrown shrubs, and bare dirt scattered with gravel.
The biggest pluses of the neighborhood were its future if the country ever got back on a vigorous growth path and the massive old trees that spread sheltering limbs over the streets, an eclectic urban forest of podocarpus, oaks, carrotwood, stone pines, and more.
Bibi parked across the street from—and a hundred feet west of—Calida’s place, in the enrobing indigo shade of a California live oak. The fog had retreated somewhat from this area, although a scrim still stirred close to the ground, like a lingering poison gas that had been shelled into the neighborhood by an enemy army.
The masseuse-diviner’s house stood on a lot and a half, a well-maintained two-story bungalow with touches of Craftsman style. Bibi had been watching the place less than five minutes when the segmented garage door rose and a silver Range Rover rolled down the driveway, turned east into the street, and motored away, roiling the low fog in its wake. She had never before seen what Calida drove and didn’t know if this might be it. Distance and the vehicle’s tinted windows prevented her from identifying the occupants.
She hadn’t been sure if she’d come here to have a face-to-face with Calida or to nose around. The departure of the Rover helped her make up her mind. Nose around.
Preferring not to be encumbered by a purse, she tucked it under the driver’s seat. She locked the doors of the Honda and boldly crossed the street to the house, the small oval leaves of the live oak, dead and dry, crunching underfoot like beetle shells. When no one answered the doorbell, she rang it again, with the same result.
Without any furtive behavior, as though she had every right to be there, Bibi went around the side of the house, through a gate that stood ajar, past a patio shaded by a wisteria-entwined arbor, into the backyard, where a property wall screened her from the neighbors.