Read A Killing in the Valley Online

Authors: JF Freedman

Tags: #USA

A Killing in the Valley (6 page)

“I guess. If they don’t there’s a deli on the corner. What kind?”

“Whatever. Something decent. If we’re forced to eat pizza we should at least drink good beer.”

Sophia walked back into the living room. She looked around at everything strewn about or in yet-unpacked boxes. “This is such a cool apartment,” she enthused. “This is how I want to live, when I have my own place. Next year, if I go to Berkeley, maybe I could move in here with Wanda.”

Kate looked at her. They were so close, those two, she thought, with a pang of envy. Wanda had chosen Stanford over Brown because she hadn’t wanted to be far from her sister. Until Sophia had moved to Santa Barbara the girls had spent at least two weekends a month together, Sophia going down to Palo Alto and camping out on the floor of wherever Wanda was living, Wanda coming up to the city to stay with Sophia at her aunt Julie’s place.

Kate thought, still too much, of how things might have been—should have been, could have been—different among the three of them. She had been especially hard on herself about her deficiencies as a mother, as a parent. But that was the past, which she couldn’t change. She was going to do the best she could from now on, and try not to beat herself up over her failures.

They sat on the floor, eating pizza out of the box. Kate looked around the apartment. “This was such a lucky find. It’s a great location.”

“Which I’ll appreciate when I’m here, which will be almost never,” Wanda said. She stretched out on the floor. “First year of med school. Only the strong survive. The rest get MBAs.”

“Well, you’ll certainly be one of the survivors,” Kate said loyally.

“I know, Mom. I’m not worried.” Wanda looked out the bay window to the street below. “So are you guys going to stay over tonight?”

Kate shook her head. “Sophia’s already missed two days of school, and it’s only the first week. She has all APs, she can’t get behind.”

Sophia was sitting on the floor, next to Wanda. Kate reached a hand down to help her up. “Time for us to hit the road, kiddo. You’ll sleep on the way back.”

Reluctantly, Sophia got to her feet. She looked at Wanda, at her mother, then back at her sister. “Mom? Can I ask you a really,
really
big favor?”

The anxiousness in Sophia’s voice flew by Kate. “Sure, honey. What?”

“Can I stay here?”

Kate sighed. “We can’t, Sophia. You’ve got to be in class tomorrow, you know that. And I have a court appearance at ten.” She smiled wanly. “I wish we could. But we can’t, not this time. We’ll come back, soon. I promise.”

Sophia closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. When she opened them, she looked away from her mother. “I meant…permanently,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper. “Live here. With Wanda.”

Kate’s mouth flew open in shock. She turned and stared at Wanda. Wanda shook her head—
I didn’t know she was going to say that.

Somehow, Kate managed to stay on her feet, although the room was reeling. “No, Sophia,” she said, trying to appear calm. Inside, she was screaming. “You can’t live here.” She had to sound rational, she couldn’t lose control: “Wanda’s going to be gone almost all the time, you aren’t enrolled in a school here, it’s…” She put her knuckles to her eyes. “You live in Santa Barbara now, Sophia. With me.”

“You’re never home, either.”

Kate moaned. “That’s not fair.”

“You work until seven or eight every night,” Sophia blurted out, spinning around to confront her mother. “And you’re in law school two nights a week, and Saturday mornings.” She was verging on tears now. “I hardly ever see you, Mom.”

Where did that two-ton safe come from that had suddenly crashed down on her heart? “That’s not…true,” It wasn’t, exactly; but there was too much truth to it not to cut to the bone.

“It is,” Sophia came back at her.

Kate inhaled slowly, then exhaled. “Do you want me to quit law school? Is that it?” she asked.

As soon as the words were out of her mouth she started to shake inside again. She had been going to the law school, nights and Saturday mornings, for two and a half years. In another year and a half she would have her degree, six months later she’d take the bar, and she would be an attorney, instead of a private detective who worked for attorneys.

“No, Mom,” Sophia protested. “No. It’s just that…”

“I can take a year off,” Kate said. Her heart was beating like a hummingbird’s. “Next year you’ll be in college. I’ve waited this long already, one more year isn’t going to make that much difference.”

Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn’t. Emotionally, of course it would. It would be wrenching. But she needed to be with her daughter more. They had so little time left.

“No, Mom.” Sophia’s eyes were tearing up. “Really, I don’t want you to quit, not even for a year. It’s not that. It’s…” An
arrrgh
of pain came from her gut.
“I hate it there, okay?”
she wailed. “I
hate
Santa Barbara! It’s totally plastic. I hate the high school, it’s all shitty little cliques.” She was crying now, bawling. “I don’t have any friends there, Mom. It’s like I’m a fucking ghost. They already have all their friends, there’s no room for me. All my friends are here, in San Francisco. I haven’t had one date since I’ve been there. And I don’t even have a car, so I can’t go anywhere, I’m stuck. I
hate
it. I hate my life!”

“Ah, Sophia…” Kate was reeling, she was going to black out. She grabbed the sofa to support herself.

“I know you want me to be with you, Mom!” Sophia cried. “And I want to be with you, I do. But my life there is horrible. Why don’t you get it? I got there too late. I can’t help that. I wish I could, Mom. But I can’t.” She slumped to the floor in a heap.

Kate stared down at her. “I…you just can’t live here with Wanda,” she said in a shattered voice. “Not like this, with no preparation. And you couldn’t anyway, it’s not the way things are. I’m sorry, I don’t know…” She trailed off.

Wanda knelt down and put her arms around Sophia. “Hey,” she said softly. She looked up at Kate. “Can we talk for a minute, Mom? She and I?”

“Sure,” Kate answered numbly. Her spirit and brain were fried. “I’ll take a walk.”

“Not for long,” Wanda said. “Just a few minutes.”

Kate hiked down to Haight Street and went into the first joint she came across. She sat alone at the end of the dark wooden bar, drinking a vodka martini, straight up. She hadn’t smoked a cigarette in fifteen years, but if smoking was still permitted in California bars she would have lit one up without hesitation.

She milked her drink, because she knew two would be over the top. Finally draining it to the last drop, she gathered her change off the bar and trudged back up the street to Wanda’s apartment.

The girls were waiting for her. Sophia had washed her face and redone her lip gloss. She smiled wanly at Kate, who was shaking inside.

“It’s okay, Mom,” Sophia said in an even, steady voice. “I know I can’t stay here.” She turned to her sister for a moment, then looked at Kate again. “I need to be with you.” She paused. “We need to be with each other.”

6

W
HEN MARIA ESTRADA DIDN’T
come home by ten o’clock at night, her mother tried her on her cell phone, but got the recorded message. After she dialed two more times with the same result she started calling Maria’s friends, trying to find her delinquent daughter. But none of the usual suspects knew where Maria was, and after an hour of fruitless trying, Mrs. Estrada gave up and went to bed.

This wasn’t the first time Maria hadn’t come home at night over the past few months; during summertime, kids slept over at each other’s houses as much as they slept at their own. But now, although school had started again, Maria was still gypsying around. She’d show up at home when she felt like it, blithely announcing that she’d been at this or that friend’s house and had forgotten to call, or had tried and the line was busy, or that she’d lost track of the time and it was too late to call—the usual litany of lame excuses that she knew her mother didn’t believe but didn’t have the energy to get into a fight over. Mrs. Estrada was pretty sure that Maria had a boyfriend she was keeping secret, probably an older man the family wouldn’t approve of. She knew that Maria had been sexually active for at least two years, because she had found a discarded condom mixed up in her daughter’s underwear (she was always cleaning up after Maria, a worse-than-usual teenage slob) in the spring of Maria’s tenth-grade year, and had angrily confronted Maria about it. Maria had flown into a rage at the invasion of her privacy, declaring that if she wanted to have sex that was her business, she was almost sixteen and every other girl in the universe was doing it, and that her mother ought to be glad she was using protection.

They hadn’t spoken to each other for almost a week after that blowup, and from then on Maria’s sexual activities weren’t mentioned. Her mother put her head in the sand about the subject, and they managed to coexist under the same roof. As long as Maria didn’t get pregnant, come down with a sexually transmitted disease, get heavily into drugs, and did the minimum amount of work required to graduate, Mrs. Estrada was willing to turn a blind eye. In nine months Maria would finish high school, get a job, and would move in with two of her older female cousins who had their own apartment in Carpinteria. Latino girls didn’t stay at home with their families until they were married anymore, especially antsy girls like Maria. Mrs. Estrada wasn’t unhappy with that prospect.

But when Maria failed to show up at school the next day—the social services worker called, checking up on her—and didn’t come home again that night, there was enough cause for alarm that Mrs. Estrada, a divorced woman who had raised Maria on her own, was sufficiently worried that she called the police and filed a missing-persons report. Because Maria had been gone for less than two days, was over eighteen (which made her ineligible for an Amber Alert), and had a history of casualness in her schedule, the officer who took down the information didn’t give the call a high priority. He promised Mrs. Estrada that a detective would get on it in the morning, but that in all likelihood Maria would turn up soon.

Although she was still worried after she talked to the cop, Mrs. Estrada was inclined to agree with him. She knew that her daughter was a tramp, and figured that Maria had probably found some jerk with money to shack up with for a few days. She would have a line of bullshit all prepared when she finally waltzed back home, and they would dance around the subject, and Maria would promise to stay in touch better, and they’d sweep the trouble under the rug, same as they always did.

Kate Blanchard stared at the notes on her computer screen. The words were blurring together; she shook her head to clear the cobwebs.

She was tired; recently, she seemed to be tired most of the time. She had nineteen active cases on her calendar. In addition, there were the two nights of law school, three hours each night, as well as her normal household chores. And of course, trying to spend time, not just sharing space, but real quality time, with Sophia.

Since their return from San Francisco, Sophia had adopted an attitude of sullen nonaggression toward both her mother and her school. She was up early without prompting in the morning, the day’s clothing and accessories neatly laid out the night before. She talked to her mother about what was going on in her life—school, kids, her routine—without revealing anything personal, anything about her feelings. In the evenings she did her homework, watched television, talked to her sister on her cell phone. It felt to Kate like they were two strangers on a long ocean cruise who had been assigned to the same table for meals and had to exchange polite conversation.

She was trying her best to bridge the gulf between them. The day after they returned home from San Francisco she had dipped into her savings and bought Sophia a car from a mechanic she trusted. It was a twelve-year-old Volvo with high mileage, but it ran decently. Sophia hadn’t shown much outward emotion when Kate handed her the keys—a quick hug and a “Thanks, Mom”—but she was thrilled to have it. She could come and go on her own now without having to worry about borrowing her mother’s car. Sophia had already started putting her own personal touches on the old wagon—dried flowers woven around a bird’s feather hung from the rearview mirror, and an Indian shawl she’d found in a local flea market covered the worn backseat.

“Hi, Mom.”

Kate turned in surprise. She hadn’t heard the front door open. “Hi there,” she answered back.

Her office was on Anapamu Street, close to the courthouse, the central police station, and coincidentally, the high school. Last spring, Sophia would stop by after school and do her homework while she waited for Kate to drive her home. This was the first time this year she had come here after school.

Kate flushed with enjoyment from the unexpected visit. “How’s school?” Not the most intimate of questions, but she was treading lightly these days.

“The usual crap. My last period class was cancelled, so I thought I’d come bug my mommy.” Sophia tossed her backpack onto a chair. “You want to hear my latest news?”

Kate looked up from her computer screen. “Sure.”

Sophia unsuccessfully tried to appear nonchalant. “I auditioned for the fall play.”

“That’s great!” Kate could feel the smile spreading across her face. “What is it?”


The Wizard of Oz.
It’s not a musical. We’re doing the original play, not the movie.”

“What part did you try out for?” Kate asked eagerly.

Under her olive complexion, Sophia crimsoned slightly. “Dorothy. I won’t get it,” she said quickly. “There are too many girls who’ve been doing the plays at school since their freshman year. The drama coach has his policies—new kids never get leads. But I could get one of the other parts, like a munchkin.”

Kate stood up and gave Sophia a hug, both for love and support. This was a good sign, Sophia’s first positive move in a long time. Kate almost literally felt her shoulders lighten. “Have an upbeat attitude,” she told Sophia. “Maybe the drama coach will think outside the box.”

Sophia nodded. “Whatever happens, it’ll be fun.” She peered over her mother’s shoulder at the computer screen. “Whatcha working on? Not that I’d understand, even if you explained it to me. God, Mom, the shit you have to deal with sometimes. I don’t know how you do it.”

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