Madeline sat him at the end of a long dining room table and took the head for herself. On the walls were framed paintings of old California-Spanish missions, vaqueros, bullbaiting, horses. Hood watched the oddly muted play of the paint lit by the electric candles of a chandelier.
The long table was dark oak and appeared old, and Madeline folded her hands on the wood and looked down it at him.
“Are you a policeman or her friend?” she asked. Her voice was slow and mannered. Like an actor, thought Hood, or a person used to being listened to.
“I’m both. What does she say?”
“She trusts but doubts you.”
“I grew up here, too. Bakersfield High, class of ’ninety-eight.”
“Tennis.”
“Well, I made the team.”
“Then law enforcement.”
“College at Northridge-political science-then Sheriff ’s Academy, then the navy, now L.A. Did you grow up here, Ms. Jones?”
“Mexico City. A Spanish family-my mother was an actor and my father was her writer. My father died years ago, and as you saw, my mother lives here with me. I fell in love and moved to Hollywood when I was very young. I married an unlucky writer, Jones.”
“I met Ernest.”
“Like Suzanne I’ve left a collection of interesting men behind me. We’re drawn to good lovers and good fathers. A very rare combination. It makes for a life of ecstatic disappointment.”
“Where is she?”
“Why should I tell you? The last time she accepted your protection she was nearly murdered by a man with a machete.”
“Because without my protection he’ll find her again.”
“Who is this man? Why does he want Suzanne?”
Hood told her about Miracle Auto Body, Barry Cohen and the missing diamonds, Lupercio Maygar.
Madeline nodded. “I find it hard to believe that such a small coincidence-seeing a man from your car, in the course of your travels to visit a sister-in-law-can lead to a sentence of death.”
“In some worlds it’s common,” said Hood. “Suzanne entered that world without knowing it.”
“What has this civilization come to? Why can’t you guardians guard the innocent?”
“We try, but we need help. That’s why you should tell me how to contact her. She has a new cell number by now. That would be a good place to start.”
She looked down the table at him. “As a girl she was rebellious, like her mother and her mother’s mother. I tried to instill two things in her: courage and independence. As a young mother I wanted Suzanne to make history. As an adult, she wanted to teach it. Neither one of us ever saw the value of compromising our desires, if there is any value in compromise at all. So, I became her captain and she became my mutineer. This is the story of every mother and daughter.”
“She’s a bright and beautiful woman.”
“Do you believe that beauty is a curse?”
“It can open doors that should be left shut.”
“Are you one of them?”
Hood shifted his weight in the heavy old chair. Down at the other end of the table Madeline stared at him, her eyes reflecting the light of the chandelier.
“I don’t know if I’m better left shut. I’m pretty much what I seem.”
“She says you have secrets.”
“I think she does, too. I’m not sure that Suzanne is what she seems.”
Hood sensed the stillness at the other end of the table.
“Explain,” she said.
“I can’t explain one thing about your daughter. I don’t even have a number to call.”
“You need to know who you’re looking for.”
“I need to find her.”
“I can show you what she was,” said Madeline. “Here, come with me, Mr. Hood.”
He stood and took a better look at the painting on the wall as he pushed in his chair. He saw that it was not a painting at all but a print.
He followed her to the entertainment room, now awash in full morning sun. She pointed him to a leather couch and handed him two big, heavy scrapbooks from one of the bookshelves, then sat down not far from him. Hood looked through the pages of the first volume-a birth certificate, baby and toddler pictures, birthday and holiday pictures, soccer and swimming certificates, a record of baptism, report cards and class pictures from kindergarten, first and second grades. From what Hood could see Suzanne had been a skinny, big-toothed tomboy: Suzanne holding a snake, Suzanne with a fishing pole, Suzanne in a white martial arts uniform breaking a board with her hand and a grimace and a Bakersfield Hapkido Federation emblem on the wall behind her.
The next page contained a report titled: A Day in the Life of the Outlaw Joaquin Murrieta. By Suzanne Jones. The cover was orange construction paper, and the title was printed in a large old-fashioned typeface, like a wanted poster from the Old West. Below the title was the same image that Dave Boyer had used in his TV special the night before-Joaquin Murrieta with his long hair and his wild eyes.
Hood looked up at Madeline. She had leaned closer, and her closeness startled him. He thought that her eyes looked like Joaquin’s with less wildness, and that Suzanne’s eyes did, too.
“Fourth grade,” she said. “California history.”
Hood lifted the plastic protector and turned the orange cover.
Joaquin woke up with the sun that day as he always did. He could hear his beloved mount, Jorge, neighing in the barn. His young wife, Rosa, slept with her head on a pillow and her mind in dreams. It was a glorious morning outside the small town of Coloma, California.
“She liked this outlaw,” Hood said.
“She talked about him a lot back then. But you will learn someday that children talk about a lot of things. Her best friend wrote about Father Serra and mission life. This bored Suzanne. Suzanne always chose the underdog, the outlaw, the doomed. Later, she became interested in Frank James-Jesse’s brother-who lived out his life in Los Angeles and died in 1915. She visited his home there. Then there was Tiburcio Vasquez, the outlaw who hid in the rocks north of L.A. Of course we visited the rocks, spent a night there to communicate with his ghost. When they tried O.J., she was eighteen. I couldn’t get her to turn off the TV. Hours, days, weeks watching that trial. I don’t know how she kept her grades up.”
“What did she think of O.J.?” Hood asked.
“He fascinated her. She thought he did it.”
Hood turned pages.
Then Joaquin watched as they hanged his brother. His black eyes burned with an anger that would never leave them until the day he died. In spite of Joaquin’s great strength he was helpless against the Anglo ropes that held him.
“She tried to put herself into his mind,” said Hood.
“Like a writer or an actor.”
Hood closed the report, lowered the protective plastic cover and turned the next pages of the scrapbook.
He saw Suzanne’s rush of adolescent growth in junior high school. When she graduated from eighth grade, she looked more like a high school junior.
Hood set aside the book and looked through the next one. Suzanne was still swimming and playing soccer her first year of high school at East Bakersfield. She still worked out at hapkido, but the yellow belt of her youth had turned black. She wrote sports reports and movie reviews for the school paper. She attended several dances, never with the same date. She looked lovely and bored. She went to the junior prom with a boy who looked very much like her son Bradley. Most of her sophomore year was missing. Because of the birth of Bradley, thought Hood. But there were no pictures of the young mother and her son. There were snapshots of her at work: Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, Subway.
Allison Murrieta’s favorite haunts, thought Hood.
Her junior and senior years of high school were scarcely represented at all-school photographs, a graduation announcement and her diploma from Vista West Continuation. Busy with the baby and work, thought Hood. Amazing she’d gotten her diploma.