Perhaps this was what Baker had begrudged my father.
I put the pitcher of water back on the counter and walked around the corner to the back office, a tiny room with a high window and barely enough space for a desk, a chair, a filing cabinet. The air smelled of forbidden cigarettes and used books, a mix that immediately brought me memories of long afternoons spent reading on the deck, my father sitting beside me, smoking, despite the advice of his doctor. My mother was at the desk now, still in widow’s white, hunched over a ledger of some sort. “Morning, Mom,” I said. “Did you find that note?”
“Not yet,” she said, taking off her reading glasses. “Look at this place, benti.”
On the desk around her were mountains of papers. Files jutted against stapled records and paper-clipped receipts, rising in peaks and hollowing in valleys, the glass top of the desk buried beneath it all.
“What’s going on here?”
“I don’t know what your father was doing. Nothing is in order.”
“That’s not like him.”
She shook her head and was quiet for a moment. Did she know why he had been so distracted lately? But nothing in her expression suggested it, and my heart ached for her. “I’m sure you’ll have this in shape in no time, Mom.”
“Maybe he threw it out.”
“I hope not.” The note in question was a handwritten piece of paper that had been taped to the door of the restaurant the day after the Land Rover incident. As soon as my mother had told me about it, I said we needed to find it and turn it over to Detective Coleman. It could serve as evidence. “Let me look for it,” I said.
“All right.”
My mother went back to her ledger, and I started sifting through the papers on the desk. There were payments for paper napkins and drinking straws, orders of Styrofoam to-go containers, two prescriptions for an antihistamine, a copy of the AARP magazine, but no note. I rummaged through the desk drawers, leafed through books of crossword puzzles, and checked the pockets of the suit jacket that was hanging over the back of the desk chair. Finally, on the windowsill, beneath a half-empty box of matches, I found the folded note. It was a piece of lined paper on which Baker had written, in an arthritic penmanship, PARK IN YOUR SPACES ONLY! A strip of clear tape lined the top of the page, and the word only was underlined twice. The note wasn’t signed, but to my eyes, it seemed incriminating. This was progress. “Here it is,” I said, my voice rising with excitement.
My mother came to look over my shoulder. “That’s good. Really good.”
“Can you think of anything else we could show the detective?”
“No,” she said after a minute. Then she went back to sit behind the desk. “But there’s something I need to tell you.”
“What is it?”
“Close the door.”
I closed the door and stood against it, puzzled by the secrecy. “What is it?”
“We want to sell the restaurant.”
“What are you talking about? Who is we?”
“Your sister and me. We want to sell.”
My mother said this with a finality that stunned me. I came closer to the desk, facing the piles of paper I had been sorting through just a moment earlier. “How long have you two been talking about this? It’s crazy you’re having these conversations and then informing me of your decisions after the fact. Shouldn’t we discuss this first?”
“The market is a little slow now,” my mother said, folding her reading glasses and sitting back in her chair. “But I think we can find a buyer.”
“Did you not hear what I said? We can’t sell the restaurant.”
“Why?”
“Because Dad wouldn’t have wanted us to. You know this. Salma knows this.”
“But I never wanted a restaurant. It was your father’s idea. What I wanted was a coin laundry. No employees, no big expense, no waking up at five in the morning.” She ticked off these items on the fingers of her left hand. It seemed to me she was falling back, almost with relief, into an old argument, and this time she would see it through. “But your father never listened to me. I don’t want the restaurant and I don’t want to see Baker going and coming. Every day, he’s going and coming like nothing happened. I want to sell. And your sister, too. She said she needs the money.”
“For heaven’s sake, we can’t sell. That would give Baker exactly what he’s been after all this time. He wanted Dad out of here and you’re letting him have his way. And what does Salma need the money for? Her practice is doing well.”
I saw that I had finally scored a point, because my mother was speechless for a minute. She put her reading glasses into a tortoiseshell case and slipped it into her purse. “So you want to keep the restaurant?”
“Yes.”
“Who’s going to run it?”
“Marty can. He pretty much does, already.”
“He’s not family.”
“So? It’s a job, and he’s good at it. This would only make it official.”
“No. He can’t do it alone. You want to do it?”
“But I have my own work, Mom.”
“So why do you want to keep the restaurant? Go make your music. Salma and I talked to the realtor on Wednesday and he—”
“You already talked to a realtor? Mom, will you please just wait? Let me think about it. I have just as much say in this decision as the two of you. And we have to wait for the probate to be closed, anyway. That’s going to take months.”
“We can shut down the restaurant until probate is closed.” And then, seeing my eyes widen with revolt, she said, “Okay. Fine. Think about it. Then we’ll talk to the realtor.”
It took all I had not to slam the door behind me as I left the office. The move to sell the restaurant had taken me by surprise, but it was the fact that my mother and sister had formed some kind of alliance behind my back that made it so devastating. Walking back through the restaurant toward the exit, I couldn’t help but wonder what it would look like under new owners. Would they keep the dappled mirror over the counter? Or the metal sign by the back door that said COCA-COLA: GOOD WITH FOOD? Would Rafi and Marty and Veronica still have jobs? Would Baker still start arguments over parking spaces? I didn’t like where any of this was leading. What I wanted more than anything, and this desire surprised me with its clarity, was for this place to stay exactly the same as it was when my father was alive.
Coleman
I was in the break room pouring myself a cup of coffee when Gorecki came in. It was a little after six in the morning, and I don’t think either of us was ready for the sergeant’s briefing, or even fully awake yet. He picked up a Dixie cup from the tall stack next to the sink and held it out to me like a beggar, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He was working on a college degree, in American history if I remember correctly, and this fact set him apart from the career deputies, and at times it even created some conflict, but I liked that he was kind of an outsider, like me. “How are you?” I asked as I filled his cup.
“Pretty good, actually. How about you?”
“Hanging in there,” I said, and took a sip of my coffee. It tasted bitter and did nothing for my mood. The night before, while Miles was in the shower, I had gone through his Instagram account and found, mixed in with the selfies, desert landscapes, and artsy compositions, a shirtless picture of Brandon. It had been taken after a basketball game at school, with Brandon looking straight at the camera, smiling, his arm reaching as if to touch the person taking the photo: Miles. I had a sense of what was happening, but not how to talk about it with my son, much less with his father. “A little worried about Miles.”
“His schoolwork, you mean? I thought you were helping him with that.”
“I am,” I said, catching myself. Gorecki waited for me to say more, but instead I asked about the sergeant. “How are things with Vasco?”