The conversation was making me uncomfortable, so I merely said “I hope so.” Then I led the topic back to the reason I had come there. “Mrs. Manuela, what happened to the furnishings that were in the old hacienda?”
For a moment she looked confused. “Oh, of course. My mother took them to our new home in Santa Barbara. After she died, they were placed in storage by the lawyer, and when Tom and I finally bought our house-we lived in the big one up front, I only moved back here and rented that one out after I found I could no longer take care of it properly-when we bought it, the furnishings were shipped to us.”
“You've sold some of them, haven't you?”
“Only recently. I couldn't keep all of them here, and I decided I should let them go to people who really wanted them.”
“Do you remember a marriage coffer, one with a crucifix design around the edges?”
“Why, yes. That was my mother's, her hope chest, as they call it now. I hated to part with it, but the dealer wanted to buy the things in a lot, and the chest was part of it.”
“I think you'll be pleased to know it has found a good home.” I went on to tell her about my job, the display Rudy Lopez and I were assembling, and the auction.
Mrs. Manuela looked both pleased and interested. “How strange it is that the chest ended up in Santa Barbara once more,” she said. “The auction house I sold it to was here in Santa Monica, but I understand they conduct sales in all parts of the state. Is it because of the chest that you and Mr. Ryder became interested in my family?”
“In a way. Mrs. Manuela, what can you tell me about the religious artifacts your grandfather hid during the Bear Flag Revolution?”
The non sequitur didn't seem to surprise her. “Ah, yes-the artifacts. That is part of the family folklore. But how did you learn of them?”
I explained about the detective's report in the marriage coffer. Mrs. Manuela's faded old eyes sparkled with excitement.
“So that was where the key to the chest was,” she said. “I never knew about that little compartment. The chest was where my mother kept her important personal papers, and she always locked the drawer, since I was an exceptionally curious child, and not a tidy one when prying into other people's belongings.”
“Then, all the years you had it, you were never able to look inside the drawer?”
“No. I thought the key had been lost.”
I said, “But you did know that your father had hired someone to look for the artifacts.”
“No, I am afraid I did not. You must remember that I was very young when he died and we moved from the rancho. And my mother never mentioned anything of the sort.”
“Did she speak to you of the artifacts?”
“No, never. What I knew of them came from Maria Santiago.”
“Perhaps there would be something about them in the box of papers you mentioned on the telephone?”
She smiled, her face a fine web of wrinkles. “Of course. Come with me, please.”
She led me through the small dining ell to the door to the bedroom. Inside was a heavily carved canopied bed, obviously one of the furnishings Senora Velasquez had removed from the hacienda. Mrs. Manuela pointed to it. “There is a wooden box under there that contains the papers. Will you bring it out, please?”
I got down on my hands and knees and peered under the overhang of the bedspread. The box was a low one and measured perhaps three by four feet, with an unlocked hasp and brass hinges similar to the fittings on the marriage coffer. I grasped it and pulled; it was heavy and cumbersome but slid easily on the hardwood floor.
Mrs. Manuela said, “The box contains many of my family's papers. The lawyer had it sent down along with the furniture. In those days I was too involved with my life as a newly married woman to go through them, and in later years whenever I started to, I couldn't withstand the pain. You are welcome to look, however. Take all the time you need. I will be in the living room watching the news.”
I waited until she had left the room, then raised the heavy lid of the box. A musty odor rose to my nostrils: dust, old paper, and maybe a touch of mold. I sat cross-legged on the floor and slowly went through the box's contents.
There were shabby leather-bound ledgers full of long columns of figures that I supposed told the story of the last days of Rancho Rinconada de los Robles. A sheaf of papers showing transfer of title to various portions of the land was a sad footnote to the numbers. I set aside several bundles of what looked to be personal correspondence, letters written in Spanish in various old-fashioned hands. A Bible was inscribed with the birthdates and death dates of Velasquez family members. I studied it for a few moments, noting that Mrs. Manuela, the last entry of any kind, had been born in 1892. In addition to the record in the Bible, there were a number of fes de bautismo, certificates of baptism, and partidas de defuncion, death certificates.
Stacks of bills from Santa Barbara merchants continued the story of Senora Velasquez and the young Sofia after they had moved from the hacienda: They were for food, clothing, cordwood, medical attention. There was a deed in the name of Olivia Velasquez to a house on a street not far from mine; evidently the document had not been turned over when the house had been sold after her death. There was also a pair of books in the box: One was a heavy, leather-bound California history in which a page about two-thirds of the way through had been marked with a white silk ribbon. I opened it and saw the name Don Esteban Velasquez. The three-paragraph account praised his bravery as a soldado and described the parcel of land granted him by the Mexican government. The other volume turned out not to be a book at all but a photograph album.
I paged through it and found it was only half-full of faded, sepia-toned photographs showing men and women in heavy old-fashioned garments striking the exaggerated, dramatic poses favored in the latter part of the last century. One of the last pictures was of a man in his fifties, a woman half as old, and an infant. The parents stood on a rocky hillock covered with live oak, the child in the mother's arms. When I turned the page, the picture came loose from its hinges, and I saw on the opposite side the notation “Felipe, Olivia, Sofia.”
This, then, was the last of the Velasquez family. I held the photograph up and studied the faces of the couple, Felipe's in particular. There was intelligence in his dark eyes and a slightly selfish, aristocratic set to his mouth. As I stared at the faded print, I found myself seeing the man as John Quincannon might have, filling in the gaps that, by its nature, the detective's report did not contain. Finally I set the album aside and began to remove the few items remaining in the box.
One of these was another accounts ledger, and I was about to set it aside when I saw the ragged edges of some yellowed vellum pages protruding from its top. I pulled them out-and recognized John Quincannon's familiar handwriting.
Excited, I dropped the ledger on the floor and glanced through the loose pages; they were wrinkled and torn in places, but they appeared to be a continuation of the detective's report. Somehow they had gotten separated from the first portion and dumped in here with the other family papers. It was a wonder they hadn't been destroyed.
Hurriedly I put the papers on the bed and began to replace the other items in the wooden box. It would be rude, of course, to rush off right away after having imposed on Sofia Manuela and partaken of her hospitality, but I thought she would understand. And I could also plead the necessity of returning to Santa Barbara so I could visit my mother in the hospital.