During the morning Devon called Leo’s house half a dozen times before getting an answer at eleven o’clock when he came in from the fields for lunch. He sounded tired. Yes, he’d heard the news about Valenzuela and Carla — one of his men had told him — but he didn’t know about Mrs. Osborne’s advertisement or about the time set for Judge Gallagher’s decision.
“One-thirty this afternoon,” he said. “Do you have to be there?”
“No, but I’m going to be.”
“All right, I’ll pick you up—”
“No, no. I don’t want you to—”
“—about twelve-fifteen. Which doesn’t leave much time for arguing, does it?”
She was waiting when he drove up to the front door. Before she stepped into the car she glanced up and saw the vulture still circling in the air above the house. He was riding so high now that he looked like a black butterfly skimming a blue field.
He noticed her watching the bird and said, “Vultures are good luck.”
“Why?”
“They clean up some of the mess we leave behind.”
“All they mean to me is death.”
Once inside the car she couldn’t see the bird any more, but she had a feeling that when she returned it would be there waiting for her, like a family pet.
Leo said, “I haven’t heard any details about Valenzuela’s death, or Carla’s.”
“The newspaper called it an accident and that’s how it will go down in the record books. But it won’t be right. He was drinking heavily, they were quarreling, the car was going more than a hundred miles an hour — how can all that add up to an accident?”
“It can’t. They just don’t know what else to call it.”
“It was a murder and a suicide.”
“There’s no proof of that,” Leo said. “And no one wants proof. It’s more comfortable for everyone — the law, the church, the survivors — to believe it was an act of God.”
Devon thought of Carla telling the judge earnestly about her jinx — “Like if I did a rain dance there’d be a year’s drought or maybe a snowstorm” — and of the last time she’d seen Valenzuela outside the courtroom. He was standing alone at the barred window of the alcove, somber and red-eyed. When he spoke his voice was muffled:
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Osborne.”
“What about?”
“Everything, how it’s all turned out.”
“Thank you.”
“I wanted you to know I hoped things would be different...”
She realized now that he’d been talking about himself and his own life, not just about hers or Robert’s.
“Devon.” Leo spoke her name sharply, as though he’d said it before and she’d failed to hear it.
“Yes.”
“Whenever I see you these days we’re in a car or some place where I can’t really look at you. And we talk about other people, not about us.”
“We’d better keep it that way.”
“No. I’ve been waiting for a long time to tell you something, but the right moment never came around and maybe it never will. So I’ll tell you now.”
“Please don’t, Leo.”
“Why not?”
“There’s something I should tell you first. I won’t be staying here.”
“What do you mean by ‘here’?”
“In this part of the country. I’m putting the ranch up for sale as soon as I can. I’m beginning to feel the way Carla did, that I have a jinx and I must get away.”
“You’ll come back.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Where will you go?”
“Home.” Home was where the rivers ran all year and rain was what spoiled a picnic and birds were seagulls and hummingbirds and swallows, not gaviotas or chupamirtos or golondrinas.
“If you change your mind,” he said quietly, “you know where to find me.”
Her brief reappearance in court was, as Ford had told her it would be, merely a formality, and the moment she’d been dreading for weeks came and went so fast that she hardly understood the Judge’s words:
“In the matter of the petition of Devon Suellen Osborne for probate of the will of Robert Kirkpatrick Osborne, said petition is hereby granted and Devon Suellen Osborne is appointed executrix of the estate.”
As she walked back out into the corridor tears welled in her eyes, not for Robert — those tears had long since been shed — but for Valenzuela and the girl with the jinx and the orphaned child.
Ford touched her briefly on the shoulder. “That’s all for now, Devon. There’ll be papers to sign. My secretary will send them on to you when they’re ready.”
“Thank you. Thank you for everything, Mr. Ford.”
“By the way, you’d better call Mrs. Osborne and tell her the court’s decision.”
“She won’t want to be told.”
“She must be, though. That ad has put her in a very vulnerable position. If she knows Robert has been officially declared dead, she’s not so likely to pay some con artist ten thousand dollars for phony information.”
“Mrs. Osborne has always been quite practical about money. When she buys something, she gets what she pays for.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Devon telephoned from the same booth she’d used two days previously. This time Mrs. Osborne answered on the first ring, a sharp impatient “Hello?”
“This is Devon. I thought I’d better tell you—”
“I’m sure you mean well, Devon, but the fact is you’re tying up my line and someone might be trying to reach me.”
“I only wanted to—”
“I’m going to say goodbye now because I’m expecting a very important call.”
“Please listen.”
“Goodbye, Devon.”
Mrs. Osborne hung up, hardly even conscious that she’d told a lie. She wasn’t expecting the call, she’d already received it and made the necessary arrangements.
Chapter Nineteen
The next step was to get the house ready for his arrival. He wouldn’t come before dark. He was afraid to move around the city in daylight even though she’d told him no one was looking for him, no one wanted to find him. He was safe: the case was over and Valenzuela was dead. It was sheer luck that she’d chosen to buy this particular house. The California mission style suited her purpose — adobe walls as much as two feet thick, heavy tiled roof, enclosed court, and more important than anything else, iron grillwork across the windows to keep people out. Or in.
She returned to the front bedroom and her interrupted task of fixing it up. The cartons, marked Salvation Army in Devon’s small square printing, were nearly all unpacked. The old map had been taped to the door: BEYOND THIS POINT ARE MONSTERS. Robert’s clothes hung in the closet, his surfing posters and college pennants decorated the walls, his glasses were on the top of the bureau, the lenses carefully polished, and his boots were beside the bed as if he’d just stepped out of them. Robert had never seen this room, but it belonged to him.
When she finished unpacking the cartons she dragged them to the rear of the house and piled them on the service porch. Then she brewed some coffee and took it into the living room to wait until the sun set. She’d forgotten about lunch and when dinner time came she felt light-headed and a little dizzy, but she still wasn’t hungry. She made another pot of coffee and sat for a long time listening to the little brass horses dancing in the wind and the bamboo clawing at the iron grills across the windows. At dusk she switched on all the lights in the house so that if he was outside watching he could see she was alone.
It was nearly nine o’clock when she heard the tapping at the front door. She went to open it and he was standing there as he’d been standing a hundred times in her mind throughout the day. He was thinner than she remembered, almost emaciated, as if some greedy parasite had taken up residence in his body and was intercepting his food.