“I read the coroner’s report. The doctor who did the death investigation.”
Vinnie smiled wickedly. “That’s where they cut your body open, take out all your insides, and cut them up in little pieces.”
Tessa went white. Clyde looked like he could happily take the coroner’s knife to Vinnie. What can you expect? Ryan thought. Look how Debbie was about Hesmerra’s death, hard as nails. Her own mother. She reached back and took Tessa’s hand. “Your grandmother is in heaven. When she died, she left her body behind. She flew right out of that body, she doesn’t need it anymore, she’s an angel now, and she can fly free.” This might be unorthodox, might seem trite to an adult, but it was what four-year-old Tessa needed to hear—and it was infinitely effective. Tessa clutched Ryan’s hand, looking up at her, her brown eyes trusting, wanting very much to believe her.
“Do you know how a caterpillar makes its little nest?” Ryan said.
The child nodded. “A cocoon. They showed us in Sunshine School.”
“That’s right, it wraps itself all in silk and goes to sleep. And do you know what happens when it wakes up?”
Tessa wiped at her tears.
“When it crawls out of its silk nest, it’s no longer a caterpillar. It has turned into a beautiful butterfly, as beautiful as a princess. It spreads its wings and flies away on the soft wind.” Ryan stroked Tessa’s hair. “For a person to be dead is just the same. When your gran died, she slept for a little while all warm and safe just like the butterfly. She woke up in a most beautiful place, and she had turned into a lovely young woman, even more beautiful than when she was young, in this world.” Ryan didn’t dare look at Clyde; she could feel him raise an eyebrow. She only knew that she believed what she said, she believed something like that happened—and that right now, Tessa needed to believe it, she needed not to dwell on her sister’s ugly interpretation.
“Mama doesn’t want a funeral,” Vinnie told them. “She said—”
“That’s enough, Vinnie.”
“If there’s a funeral she has to see Aunt Esther. Mama says no one can choose what kind of sister or relatives they get.”
Ryan sighed. “I’m sure that’s true. If Tessa could choose her sister, she’d surely choose a kinder and more caring child than you.”
Vinnie glared, and turned away scowling, fiddling with the button on her sweater. She looked up again only when Debbie passed by the pickup wheeling a grocery cart full of bulging paper bags, heading for her car. Clyde put his hand on the door meaning to get out and help her, but Ryan stopped him with a scowl. She didn’t enjoy being cruel, but if you gave Debbie an inch, she was all over you. They watched her cram the bags into her car, into the spaces the children had left when they changed cars. The meal choices Ryan could see sticking up looked to be all boxes of crackers, cookies, and quick-fix meals full of unpronounceable chemicals. No sign of fresh fruits or vegetables, the items that would ordinarily be on top. When the car was loaded, Ryan headed for the day-care center where Debbie meant to park Tessa while Vinnie was in school. Their two vehicles paused before the one-story redwood complex only long enough for Debbie to take a look, then they led her on up the hill eight blocks to the rambling elementary with its dark-shingled roofs. Location, close proximity to where she’d be living, was apparently far more important to Debbie than the safety and quality of either establishment. Ryan had pointed out where the school bus stopped, and then headed on up to the cottage.
Two centuries earlier, this hill had been open grazing land, part of the vast open ranges inhabited by longhorn cattle, and by deer, cougar, and grizzly bear. When civilization overtook the wild, when the land was broken up and cross-fenced into smaller ranches, and then later into farms, this hill had become pasture for dairy cows. In the nineteen thirties, several small adjoining hillside farms were bought up by a retired civil engineer who thought to construct a community of vacation cottages and rent them out. He built the little houses solidly enough, but without any discernible imagination. As he grew older he had sold off many of the cottages as second homes or income rentals. Some of the buyers added porches, second-floor bedrooms, walled patios. In subsequent years the houses were turned over again and again as the market inflated. Everyone made a profit as real estate prices soared. Then suddenly, under changed federal laws, mortgages were easier to obtain: One hardly needed a down payment or any collateral at all. A buying frenzy began among families with little or no savings. Soon the new owners were maxing out their credit cards on new cars, a motorcycle, an RV or fast boat, trusting the government to bail them out when they let their mortgage payments slide. There was always tomorrow, they and the government were in this together, Uncle Sam would help them out. Thus was the beginning of the financial landslide, repeated a million times over combined with more complicated economic manipulations, at government level, until the bottom fell out, the stock market dropped, businesses began to close, folks lost their investments and lost their jobs.
When the default on home loans mounted, homes were repossessed and the occupants left the area. Folks who had kept cash and real assets at hand began to buy up abandoned, repossessed homes. Ryan and Clyde bought three cottages with cash from the sales of the antique cars Clyde had so lovingly restored. They meant to improve their purchases, wait for the market to pick up again, make a good profit, and leave something nice in the place of neglected and empty dwellings.
Erik Kraft was one of the first and heaviest buyers, making purchases all over the village. Though he had made no discernible improvements in the shabbier places, he had already turned over nearly half of them at a profit. He’d give a place a rough mowing and trimming and, in the worst cases, a coat of cheap paint. Ironic, Ryan thought, that Erik’s estranged wife would be living—practically in poverty, as she put it—in the very area where Erik must already have made a couple of million dollars’ worth of clear profit.
But the saddest victims of the downturn, Ryan thought, were the abandoned pets left behind like broken toys for trash pickup, innocent animals who had become victims of a vast financial war. So far CatFriends, her volunteer group, had taken in nine dogs and trapped twenty-three abandoned cats, settling them all in volunteer foster homes until new and permanent homes could be found. Ryan wasn’t sure how many creatures the local Animal Friends group had saved, as well, but the two organizations tried to help each other. Yet even with the work of over two dozen volunteers, the police continued to field complaints about stray cats.
Calls came in not only about abandoned animals around the empty homes, but about the cottages themselves. Often, lights came on late at night in empty, unoccupied houses, then soon went dark again. Rented houses had half a dozen decrepit cars parked in the drive and on the street, and many had trash piled up in the yards. And then, of course, there was the meth house, bulging black trash bags stacked in the side yard, to be hauled away in the small hours. That was why the department had been alerted, the black plastic bags smelling strongly of chemicals. Strangest of all, perhaps, was a FOR SALE sign going up in the weedy yard of a decrepit cottage, soon to come down again as if the house had been sold, but then to be replaced a week later. Another FOR SALE sign. Another apparent sale, then soon another sign, in a seemingly endless two-step.
Ryan’s sister, Hanni, had bought one of the cottages early on, before the blight was apparent, and had at once set about restoring it, contracting with Ryan to do the heavy professional work; Hanni was an interior designer, not a builder. When events in the neighborhood began to make her nervous, still she moved ahead. Now, the renovation was almost finished, waiting for the interior hardware and window shutters, while Ryan and Clyde hadn’t yet begun on their own remodel. At least now their shabby investment would have an occupant. When Ryan pushed the front door open the cold, damp wind caught it, slamming it against the wall. She stepped aside so Debbie could enter, directly into the living room.