Thirty minutes later, Lana pulled up in front of the Central Coast Land Trust offices. She had been to Santa Cruz only once, in December, for an ill-advised consultation with a nutritionist who extolled the healing powers of bee pollen and raw turmeric. The town struck her as defiantly dirty, with women who didn’t shave and grown men strolling around in sandals and tie-dyed socks. But at least it had ample free street parking.
Lana sandwiched her Lexus between a late-model BMW and a dusty pickup truck. Her mind wasn’t done sifting through what Diana had told her. But she had to focus. Her left arm still felt limp, so she used her right to straighten her wig and take a swig of water. After a coughing fit followed by thirty seconds of slow breathing into her tote bag, she was ready to go.
The woman at the front desk was Lana’s least favorite kind: young and beautiful. In Lana’s experience, women like this receptionist—perky breasts, French-tipped fingernails—were hostile toward older women, using wanton cruelty to mask the fear that they too might someday become undesirable. But this one was all smiles. Her name was Gabriella-call-me-Gaby, and her voice was even breathier in person than it had been on the phone. She beamed at Lana, then cranked it up another notch when Lana told her she was there to see the director. Gaby placed a quick call to the back, then offered Lana an armchair, a water, a coffee, a tissue, and a magazine. Lana suspected the girl might offer her a pony if Victor Morales didn’t get to the front soon.
A few minutes later, Victor was holding Lana’s hands and kissing both her cheeks.
“It’s a pleasure to see you again,” he said. Victor had on the same silver belt buckle as at the wake and a different pair of cowboy boots, black with golden lions pawing at the sides.
“Gaby, this is Lana Rubicon.” He rolled the r slightly, lifting it to the light. “She is in the commercial real estate business in Los Angeles. But she wants to learn about our work. Thinking of joining us on the side of the angels, no?” He winked at Lana. “Shall we?”
The land trust may have been a nonprofit, but they’d spared no expense on their offices. Behind Gaby’s desk was a large, sun-filled room with bamboo flooring and exposed redwood beams overhead. The windows at the far end framed a small grove of spindly eucalyptus trees and coyote brush behind the building. Everything was tasteful and well lit, including the taxidermic eagle in mid-flight above their heads. “It was electrocuted on a power line over a property we manage,” Victor explained. “They are endangered, of course, but when one dies . . .”
He walked Lana past a herd of attractive twenty-somethings on ergonomic chairs, hard at work in ironed canvas shirts. The reward for giving away your land, apparently, was a naturalist with good hair and an amber bracelet handing you a cappuccino.
They reached a solid oak door on the left side of the office, and he ushered her in. “Our library,” he announced. “Also our only meeting room. The architect was obsessed with open plan.”
It was an elegant den of cushy chairs and low light, the kind of room where you could cement a clandestine arms deal or sign away the deed to grandma’s orchard. Two walls held floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a third was covered with hand-drawn maps, and the fourth had a low window looking out at a parking lot.
Victor whipped a curtain across the window to hide a single rusted Toyota Corolla on the concrete. “I tried to convince the neighbors to let us plant a garden,” he said. “I wanted to do heritage native crops, rare ones we’ve been reintroducing in the field. But no luck.” He shrugged. “They say they need the parking.”
Once settled at the table—sustainably logged teak, Victor assured her—Lana took out her legal pad and water bottle, and palmed an extra-strength aspirin for easy access.
“Thank you for seeing me today,” she cooed. It came out with more croak than she’d hoped for. “It must be a distressing time, and I’m hoping I can be of service.”
His left eyebrow lifted. “What were you imagining?”
Despite her interest in the arguments over the Rhoads ranch, Lana decided to focus on what was most important. “I’ve been looking into the events that led to Ricardo Cruz’s passing.”
Now his right eyebrow joined the left. “You are assisting the police?”
“More of a personal service opportunity. I don’t think the detectives are doing a very good job.” This opinion was solely based on their unwillingness to return her calls, but heck, they were terrible at that.
“They came here,” Victor said. His eyes were grim. “Early last week. The older one, the man, he was more interested in Ricardo’s immigration status than anything else. And insisting this must be our fault.”
“Why?”
“The land neighboring Se?or Rhoads’s ranch to the east belongs to the land trust. The shore closest to where Ricardo was found, we manage it. They took half our property management tools for testing. Shovels. Sledgehammers. Potential weapons.” He shook his head. “They threatened one of my naturalists, a colleague of Ricardo’s, implied he might have been the one to hurt him. When I tried to protect him, they turned their ridiculous accusations on me.”
Lana nodded in commiseration. “It’s a kind of abuse, the way they’re jumping to conclusions. I want to find a real suspect, to refocus the detectives away from innocent people like your naturalist. Like you. I’ve come here hoping to get a more complete picture about Ricardo. What he did, who he spent time with. That sort of thing.”
Victor held her gaze, his eyes calculating. He rose from the table and turned to the wall. “Do you know what this is?” he asked, pointing at a large, framed map with ornate lettering at the top.
Lana reluctantly left her armchair and joined him for a closer look. She recognized the coastline and the shape of the western United States. But the words and symbols portrayed a different place. There were lakes where there should be deserts and mountains where there should be valleys. The words “ALTA CALIFORNIA” stretched from the Pacific across the Colorado River. Lana picked out a few names along the coast she recognized—Puebla de los Angeles, San Diego, Monte Rey—and many more she did not.
“This map was made by John Frémont in 1848,” Victor said. “The year California became a US state. Before that, this was part of Mexico, New Spain. And before that, Native land. Every time an individual makes a claim on a piece of land, there is someone standing behind him who was there first. Land is fought over. Land is sold. Land is stolen.”
Lana rubbed her right temple. Either Victor was going to get to the point soon or she was going to ask Gaby to get her a Diet Coke.
Victor waved his hand across the map. “Here at the land trust, we believe there is another way to hold space together. To hold it in trust. For everyone, past, present, and future.”
“And Ricardo?”
“Ricardo was a true believer. More than a believer. The boy was a prophet.”
Lana remembered the photograph of the long-haired, bright-eyed young man in hiking sandals. “What do you mean?”
Victor looked back at the map. “It takes most people many years to learn this business. Conservation science, land use technicalities, legal paperwork, and of course the delicate relationships with our land stewards, our donors. For Ricardo, it was instinctual, like he was choreographing a dance between land, owners, and lawyers.”