Mindy grinned at him with delight, and so did Zebulon. Zeb would much rather have her thoroughly trained by a professional, than to do a bad job himself.
It was that night, during supper, that the earring appeared.
Supper was a tamale pie that Charlie had taken from the freezer, and a salad that Mindy made. They had just sat down when they heard Jimmie McFarland’s car pull up in front, parking next to Max’s truck. Charlie let him in and asked him to join them. He was carrying a small white box. He said he had eaten, but accepted a slice of lemon pie and coffee. Jimmie, glancing kindly at Maurita, held out the box to Max.
“Dallas found this, just a little while ago. Or, Joe Grey found it.”
“Joe Grey found it,” Max said in a flat, uneasy voice. Charlie’s stomach lurched. Max said, “Let’s hear it,” in that same suspicious tone.
They all knew the Saks crime scene extended from the store itself to the pile-up of cars being hauled away on the highway; but that it also included the motel rooms where the burglars had stayed as they posed as limo drivers. The sun was setting when Detective Garza and Jimmie McFarland went to work on that part of the scene. At the same moment, Joe Grey was running the rooftops, working off some of his grieving before they all returned to the Pamillon estate to bid Courtney a last good-bye. Racing the shingles among the smell of restaurant suppers, he saw a squad car and Jimmie’s car below him and yellow crime tape strung around the motel and parking lot. He backed down a young acacia tree and was about to slip into the motel to see what Jimmie was doing, when, deep in the flowery ground cover, he stepped on something that hurt.
Something hard but delicate, buried deep among the blooms. He pawed it gently out.
There was the earring.
The ornately fashioned gold loop looked, indeed, as if it had been made by Peruvian hands, like pictures of that ancient jewelry he had seen, an intricately carved crescent moon hanging from its center. He was sniffing at it when he heard footsteps.
Dallas Garza stood over him.
He looked up at Dallas and pawed at the earring as if playing, as would a kitten with a toy. Dallas looked back at him with all the suspicion he’d ever felt about Joe Grey. Not cold, cop suspicion, but startled disbelief.
The detective turned away, fetched a small box from his glove compartment, emptied it and lay the earring inside, then slipped the box into a small evidence bag. Returning to Joe, he called Jimmie over. “Take this up to Max. He went home early.”
Now, at the Harpers’, before Jimmie tied into his pie and coffee, he handed the box to Max. “Dallas found this near the motel. They’re finished with it, fingerprints, DNA, photos—didn’t take long. He thought Maurita might want it.”
As long as DeWayne was dead, and Maurita hadn’t wanted to press charges, there wasn’t much point in keeping this one piece of evidence. They had the bloody pictures, the doctors’ reports, the other, smashed earring. And DeWayne’s accomplices had plenty of other charges against them, in case they were involved.
Max took the box from Jimmie and opened it. He studied the contents, then held it out to Maurita. She accepted it, looking sick. The earring lay on a clean cotton pad, it was battered only a little, an ornate gold loop with an intricate crescent moon suspended inside. She touched the scar down her torn ear, felt the surgeon’s stitching. She sat looking at the earring for a long time, thinking, then looked up at Max. “Do you have a spade, or a short shovel?”
Max rose from the table. But Jimmie said, “I know where they are,” and he was out through the tiled mud room that served as the house’s one entry. Heading for the stable, the two big half-Danes leaped all over him barking and licking his face. Jimmie ruffled their ears and told them to get down. They obeyed him, watching as he put a shovel and a spade in his car, then stood waiting for Maurita.
“We won’t be long,” Maurita said in the doorway as she stopped to hug Charlie. “I’ll do dish duty tomorrow, and I’ll cook.” Zeb and Max watched her with interest. Already she looked stronger, as if doing a day’s work, as if beginning to make a new home, was already driving back the weakness that had overwhelmed her.
In Jimmie’s car, they turned north up the highway, then left down Ocean Avenue to the beach. Here it was darker as thick fog rolled in, hiding the last of the sunset. Jimmie opened the trunk while Maurita prowled the sandy park, stepping carefully, looking down at the sand and the way the fallen trees lay. When she had her bearings she took the shovel, and slipped the spade in her belt. When he moved to help, she looked at him with an expression he couldn’t read.
“I want to do this, Jimmie.”
She dug for a long time, but the sandy dirt was soft. She dug nearly as deep as she could reach, then she used the spade to make a tiny hole. She dropped in the box. She wrote nothing on it, she said no word. She filled in the little hole, pounding the dirt with the handle of the spade, then shoveled back the dirt she had removed. She smoothed it over roughly with the shovel, then walked across it a few times, kicked some grass across it and tossed on a few small stones so it resembled its surround, matching the rest of the park.
She cleaned off the tools with a tissue and put them back in the trunk. He closed the trunk and took her hand. They walked across the little road that ended where the beach began; the waves were high, crashing in. They climbed the cliff high above the sand, sat hand in hand, in silence, Maurita’s long black hair blowing in her face. Her expression was a church kind of look, deep and thankful. As if she had buried the last of her hatred. As if her anger and resentment would lie there deep beneath the earth until time ended, completely removed from her. She looked past the breakers to the soft blanket of fog, and she leaned silently against Jimmie.
29
It was dark when the cats gathered in the mansion’s north grotto, deep down but where, in one adjoining alcove, their human friends could crowd in. Those who could speak to them, who could say good-bye to Courtney and the ferals. The ferals had, most of them, promised to return. Courtney made no such promises. She said only, “I’ll try. I think I will come back.”
Lucinda and Pedric Greenlaw had picked up Dulcie and Courtney and Wilma at her cottage. Ryan and Clyde and Joe Grey had squeezed John and Mary Firetti and the two boy kittens in the back of Clyde’s Jaguar. Kate and Scotty had walked down through the ruins and were already in the cavern. Charlie was absent but she had sent a loving message by way of Ryan; there was no way she could leave her new guests tonight when they needed the warmth of friends around them. And no way she cared to leave Max when he was still scowling with suspicion about Joe Grey.
Dulcie was crying as they gathered in the grotto. Kit was crying so hard she had to keep wiping her nose on Pan’s golden fur, which didn’t please him. His own eyes were both sad and yearning. He’d very much like to go back with Courtney, as would Kit. They had traveled to the Netherworld, they had thrilled and shivered at its wonders and they were sharply drawn, now, to return with the calico and the ferals.
But Kit couldn’t leave Lucinda and Pedric a second time, nor could Pan. How many years did their old couple have left? When she watched Courtney’s two brothers licking and snuggling their sister and listened to their sad mewls, it was too much. Kit yowled until Pan cuffed her and she went silent, pressing against him; and Courtney watched them all with painfully mixed feelings.