Beyond the Grave

TWO

Before I could carry my picnic lunch back to the ruins of the church, it began to rain, so I gave up on that idea and ate in the car. By the time I had finished and started down the road toward Las Lomas, the sun was out again and a rainbow-delicate translucence that in no way resembled the gaudy imitation on the church wall-arched over the landscape. The tender spring leaves and blossoms were studded with droplets that broke the light into miniature prisms, as if pieces of the rainbow had flaked off and fallen to earth.

The little village of Las Lomas shared none of the beauty of the country around it. lit nestled in a valley on the edge of Los Padres National Forest, where the foothills became mountainous and rugged. A ragtag collection of shabby frame and cinder-block buildings sprawled around a town square. Half weeds and half packed earth, the square contained a flagpole without either flag or rigging, a basketball hoop minus a net, and a broken-down green picnic table. A couple of small boys were tossing a baseball around on the dirt section that apparently served as a playground, and an old brown dog lay under the table watching them.

The main road into the town deadended at the square. I turned left and parked in front of one of the few buildings that wasn't in poor repair-a freshly painted white Victorian house with a picket fence and well-tended garden. When I got out of the car and took a closer look, I saw that what grew there was not flowers but vegetables-big spiky-leaved artichoke plants, seedling beans that had already begun to climb a trellis, tomato plants with yellow blossoms. White-flowered strawberry plants were everywhere, like a ground cover. It seemed an efficient and economical use of space, and for a moment I thought of all the room I had in my backyard and how attractive it would look filled with vegetables. Then I remembered last summer's zucchini disaster-zucchini grows like weeds for everybody but me-and dismissed my visions of living off the land.

Back on the corner where the road had entered the town, I'd passed a grocery store with a gas pump out front, and now I started walking back to it. The sign on the cinder-block facade said MARSHALL'S, and there was a bin full of potatoes and onions and some sacks of feed sitting under the overhang of the rusty corrugated iron roof. When I got closer I could see, through the front window, wire racks containing potato chips, other snacks, and packaged baked goods. I opened the screen door and stepped inside.

It was a country store but without the usual charm of such establishments. The wooden floor looked grimy; the light was a peculiar jaundiced yellow; the walls a dirty beige. Rows of shelves stretched from the door to the rear where the refrigerated cases were, but they were half-empty and what canned and boxed goods stood there were in total disorder. To my left was a counter with produce in crates; most of it looked wilted or half-rotten. To my right was a checkout counter, backed by high shelves that held liquor, candy, and cigarettes. An old man with wispy gray hair and a sallow complexion stood behind it, putting a fifth of Old Crow into a paper sack. His customer had his back to me and was slipping a wallet into the hip pocket of his faded jeans. When the screen door flapped shut, the customer glanced over his shoulder; he was about forty, with a suntanned, weathered face and a full head of faded sandy hair. I smiled self-consciously and began turning the rack of snacks to give myself something to do until they'd finished their business.

“There you go, Gray,” the man behind the counter said. “Guess that should hold you for a day or two.”

“Until tomorrow, at any rate.” The younger man's words were joking, but there was an edge to them.

“Well, while the old lady's away Hear anything from Georgia lately?”

“I get a letter every week, but it's pretty old news. The dig's up in the mountains, and the mail has to be taken down to Lima to be posted. The mail service from Peru is bad at best.”

“Well, that's what you get for marrying a lady archaeologist,” the storekeeper said. “Still, I see Dora's helping you out, keeping you fed. You were at her house twice this week for dinner.”

“You see a lot, Jim.” Now the edge was back in the voice of the man called Gray.

“Enough. I see what interests me.”

Gray gave a dry, humorless laugh as he went toward the door. “If you can find anything interesting in this town, you're welcome to it.” He went out, letting the door slam hard behind him.

I stopped turning the rack and went up to the counter. The storekeeper-Gray had called him Jim-smiled at me, showing crooked, tobacco-stained teeth. “Help you, young lady?”

“I hope so. I'm looking for a man named Sam Ryder.”

“Oh, the professor.” His grin widened when I looked perplexed. “Oh, that's just what we call him hereabouts. He's the town scholar, unless you count Dora Kingman, lady up the street with the organic garden in her front yard. She writes cookbooks-natural foods, like the hippies eat. But Sam, he's a real writer. Got rooms full of books.”

“I see. Can you tell me where he lives?”

“I can show you.” He came around the counter and motioned for me to follow him outside. In front of the store he stopped and pointed diagonally across the square. “Over there, third house from the end. Red one with white trim, next to the lapidary.”

“The what?”

“Lapidary. Fancy name for a rock shop. Belongs to Gray Hollis, the fellow who was just in here buying booze.”

“A rock shop-here? Does he get many customers?”

“What he sells is mostly by mail order. Doesn't make much, but that don't matter. Gray's wife is the one who puts bread on the table-and bourbon in Gray's glass. You probably heard us talking about her; she's with some big expedition that's digging up a city in Peru.”

The storekeeper spoke matter-of-factly, as if he were discussing the recent rain shower, but underneath his words I caught a hint of malice. I'd already learned more from him about the residents of Las Lomas than I ever cared to know; heaven only knew what I could find out if I F'ressed him. But the present-day inhabitants of the area weren't what interested me. I thanked the old man for the directions and set off across the square, thinking that if I lived in the village and had a fondness for bourbon, I'd probably drive all the way into Santa Ynez to do my shopping.

The two houses the old man had pointed out-the one belonging to Gray Hollis and Sam Ryder's-were very different from each other. Hollis's was a rambling brown-frame structure with a glassed-in front porch; there were shelves directly behind the windows, and on them sat polished chunks of rock. A sign on a wrought-iron standard said LAS LOMAS LAPIDARY. The front yard was a formal garden centered around a dry fountain and edged with wagon wheels. I guessed this was the creation of Hollis's absent wife, since it was beginning to show signs of neglect.

In contrast, the yard of the small boxcar-red house next door looked as if it had never been touched by human hands. A big pine tree stood in its center; cones and needles littered the ground, fighting with the weeds for dominance. The low iron-mesh fence had bent over in places from the weight of rampaging blackberry vines. I went through the half-open gate and up a narrow path to the sagging cement porch. Two wires extended from the hole where the doorbell should be, so I opened the torn screen door and pounded on the inner one.

The man who answered my knock was short, roly-poly, and had curly bright red hair that was as undisciplined as his front yard. He didn't look like any historian I'd ever seen, but he did look like he ought to be out in the kitchen baking sugar cookies. I stared at him in surprise.

The man didn't seem to share my discomfort. He smiled as if I were an old friend whom he was very glad to see and said, “Hello. Are you looking for me?”

“If you're Sam Ryder.”

“That I am. And you are …?”

“Elena Oliverez, Gabriela's daughter.”

His smile broadened, making him look like a happy cherub. Although I remembered my mother saying Sam Ryder was in his fifties, he seemed almost boyish, with his plump features, unwrinkled skin, and curiously innocent blue eyes. If I had had to describe him in one word, I would have said “round.”

He said, “Well, for heaven's sake. How is Gabriela, anyway? I haven't talked to her since I delivered Ciro Sisneros's book two months ago.”

“Right now, she's in the hospital.” I felt a sudden rush of guilt; since lunch, I'd put Mama out of my mind. Dave, too, come to think of it.

Sam Ryder's mobile features took a quick downward turn. “The hospital? Nothing serious, I hope?”

“An ulcer. But she's going to be fine.”

“Well, that's a relief.” He stepped back and motioned for me to come inside. “Forgive me; I shouldn't keep you standing on the porch. I'm addled today-a chapter on Russian and French aggressions in the Pacific Northwest, and it's not going well.”

I followed his rot and little figure inside, thinking that even if he didn't look like a historian, he sounded like one. The room he led me into further reinforced the impression: three walls were bookcases floor to ceiling; a long parsons table covered with more books and papers sat under the front window. An electric typewriter hummed noisily on a low stand next to the table, and beside it, a cigarette smoldered in an ashtray. Sam went over and crushed it out, then pressed a button on the machine, and the typewriter went silent.

“I don't want to interrupt your work,” I said.

He moved one pudgy hand in a gesture of dismissal. “You're not, really. On top of the Russian and French aggressions, I'm having people for dinner, and I have to start preparing things. You'll stay, won't you?”

“Well…” I thought of Mama; Nick had said he would see her around five, and I had promised to come at seven, when he had a meeting to attend-something to do with one of the marathons he was running this spring.

“It's nothing formal,” Sam said. “Just a few neighbors stopping in around four. I'd be pleased if you'd join us. Gabriela fed me many times while we were conferring over Ciro's manuscript, and I was never able to return the hospitality. At least allow me to feed her daughter.”

“It's just that I have to be in Santa Barbara at seven, to visit Mama in the hospital.”

“No problem. You'll have plenty of time to eat and drive back there.”

“Then I'll stay.”

“Good.” He beamed at me, and then started toward the back of the house. “Come keep me company while I get things started.”

I followed him to the kitchen, impressed by his easy hospitality. I am a nervous hostess at best-always forgetting to make a dessert, or having the various parts of a meal come to the table at odd intervals-and would never just casually invite an extra guest for dinner. Maybe, I thought, Sam's offhandedness had something to do with living in the country, where people were more easygoing and less suspicious of strangers. But probably it had more to do with having what seemed to be an open and trusting nature.

The kitchen stretched across the entire rear of the house and had big windows overlooking a yard that rivaled the front in untidiness. Sam sat me down in a canvas director's chair with a glass of white wine and began bustling about, assembling bowls and utensils and ingredients on a chopping block, talking the whole time.

“Actually,” he said, “I'm glad you interrupted me when you did. This project is becoming a pain in the ass.”

“You're working on another book?”

“A text for the Oregon public schools. Updating their state history curriculum. I can't seem to get into it. There's something so dreary about a place where it can rain more than a hundred inches a year.” Sam took a pottery bowl from the oversize refrigerator and tasted its contents with a wooden spoon, his eyes closed. Making a face, he went to a spice rack that covered almost an entire wall and selected several jars. After dropping pinches of this and that into the bowl, he stirred, tasted it again, smiled, and held out a clean spoon to me. “It's gazpacho. Try it.”

I got up and took a sample. It was delicious, with all sorts of delicate flavorings that I couldn't identify.

Sam watched me anxiously. “Okay?”

“Wonderful.”

“Thank God. At least I won't catch hell over the soup course.”

“Catch hell?”

“From Dora-Dora Kingman. She writes natural foods cookbooks, grows organic vegetables. The only way I can get her to come to dinner is to use her produce and follow her recipes to the letter. That's okay, though, because she knows what she's doing-where food is concerned.” He paused, then grinned mischievously. “Besides, what I didn't tell her about was the lasagna and chocolate mousse.”

I sat down, smiling politely while I wondered about a dinner made up of those three courses. “Who else is coming besides Dora?” I asked.

“Arturo Melendez-”

“The artist?”

“You know him? Oh, of course-Gabriela mentioned you were director of the Museum of Mexican Arts.”

“Yes, but I haven't actually met him yet.” I'd heard of Melendez, though; he produced very good primitive oils, and I'd been thinking of contacting him about exhibiting at the museum.

“Well then, seeing him in his natural habitat should be interesting for you. I should warn you …”

“Yes?”

He shook his head. “Never mind. Anyway, there's Arturo and Dora and Gray Hollis-”

“The man next door who runs the lapidary.”

Sam raised his bushy red eyebrows. “You're pretty well-informed about our little social set.”

“I saw Mr. Hollis in the store when I stopped to ask where you lived. And the storekeeper-what's his name?”

“Jim Marshall.”

“Jim Marshall told me about Mr. Hollis's business.”

“His private business, too, no doubt.”

“Well… yes.”

Sam put the bowl of gazpacho back in the refrigerator and took out a covered pan that must have been the forbidden lasagna. “He probably hinted that Gray's the town drunk.”

“In a way.”

“Well, in a way it's true, ever since his wife left him about six months ago.”

“Left him? Mars hall said she was on some sort of archaeological expedition in Peru.”

“She is, but it still amounts to the same thing. Georgia and Gray don't get along, and I'm convinced she doesn't intend to come back. There are those who hope that's what will happen-but not Gray. And that's why he drinks. He'll probably be squiffed when he comes over here, and that means he and Dora will get into it again. Oh, you're in for a rousing introduction to our little group.” Sam didn't look particularly dismayed at the prospect. He popped the lasagna into the oven, then took out a salad spinner, and began to toss lettuce leaves into it.

“Aren't Dora and Gray friends?” I asked. “Jim Marshall mentioned something to him about having dinner at Dora's.”

“They are friends. That's why Dora will take off after him about his drinking. She cares what he's doing to himself, but she doesn't realize that often the best way to be a troubled person's friend is to leave him alone.” Sam dumped the lettuce into a salad bowl, dropping a few pieces onto the floor. He picked them up, inspected them, shrugged, and tossed them into the bowl. Sam may have been a gourmet cook, but he had a few rough edges, and it made me like him even better.

“But listen,” he said, “I've been chattering away at you, and all of a sudden I realize you didn't just drop in out of the blue. No one comes all this way without a reason, and I don't flatter myself enough to believe I'm it.”

I smiled and held out my glass when he went to refill it. “In a way, though, you are. I need to talk to a historian, one who knows this area in particular. And I thought that since you live here, you might be able to tell me what I need to know.”

“And that is?”

“About the Velasquez rancho, Rancho Rinconada de los Robles-its history and if there are any descendants of the family still living around here.”

“You've come to the right man.” Sam hefted a chefs knife and began chopping vegetables for the salad. “I find the era of los ranchos grandes fascinating, and I've made quite a study of it. The Velasquezes are particularly interesting because of all the obfuscation about their downfall.”

“Obfus-?”

“Confusion. Rumors. There's a regular legend grown up about them. More myth than legend, I guess.”

This was the kind of thing I was looking for. I waited to hear what he would tell me.

“The Velasquez grant was one of the most profitable of all the ranchos,” he went on. “And the family's way of life was one of the most opulent. They raised blooded horses; all the time there were races, with the attendant heavy gambling. Entertainments were lavish-dances, fandangos, weddings. The rancho functioned as a self-sufficient community-they made their own cloth, tallow, raised their own food, even had their own private garrison of soldiers. They didn't need anything or anyone-or so they thought. And they weren't uncultured, either: it's said that Don Esteban Velasquez had an extremely valuable collection of religious art objects.”

That would be the: artifacts John Quincannon had been hired to find in 1894. “What happened to the rancho?”

“That much we know. It was overrun and partially destroyed by a detachment of soldiers from John Fremont's battalion during the Bear Flag Revolt. Don Esteban himself was killed in the fighting. After that the rancho never fully functioned again, and most of its land was eventually sold off to pay debts.”

“Those are facts?”

“Yes.”

“Then, what's the legend?”

Sam set his knife down and fumbled in his shirt pocket for a cigarette, his eyes reflective. “The why of it is what we don't know. The Bear-Flaggers didn't just overrun ranchos for amusement. It wasn't that kind of revolt. Why the destruction, then? What did they have against the Velasquezes? You see?”

I nodded. “Do you have a theory?”

“No, not really. I suppose I could formulate any number of them, if I cared to. But as a historian, I've got to stick to facts, and there are too few of them in this case.”

I was silent for a moment, wondering if there was anything in John Quincannon's report that might shed light on the matter. If so, I couldn't recall it. “Those ruins up the road a mile or so-are they what's left of the rancho's church, San Anselmo de las Lomas?”

“Yes. And of the pueblo. The church ruins and a few foundations of other buildings are all that remain. The hacienda was on a hill a quarter mile or so to the east, but there's nothing left of that. It burned in a forest fire in the 1920s; the fire also destroyed what little was still standing of the pueblo. The pueblo is supposed to be haunted, you know.”

I could understand why people thought so; apparently I wasn't the only one who had been affected by the eerie desolation of the place. I said, “But the Velasquez family still lived at the hacienda after the revolt.”

Sam looked curiously at me but didn't ask how I knew that. “Until the turn of the century. Then the last of them moved to Santa Barbara.”

“Who owns the land now?”

“The site of the hacienda and the pueblo is still in Velasquez hands. There is a woman in West Los Angeles, I believe, who controls it and prefers to let it lie as is. As I said, the rest was sold off long ago to pay debts.”

“Do you know how I can get in touch with this woman?”

Now Sam looked openly curious. “Why?”

“I'll explain. But first-can you put me in touch with her?”

“Perhaps. There's an old lady who lives on the other side of the square who was at school with her. I believe they still correspond. She-the old lady-is never home on Sundays; her daughter takes her on an outing then. But I can speak with her tomorrow and then call you.” He came around the chopping block and pulled up a companion to my chair. “Now. Why are you so interested? Does it have anything to do with Don Esteban's missing artifacts?”

“You've heard about that, then?”

“Of course. It's a fact, and also part of the lore about the Velasquezes' downfall. It's said that the don hid his collection before Fremont's troops attacked. As far as I know, the artifacts never turned up.”

“What do you think happened to them?”

“I would think that would be obvious: Fremont's soldiers got them.”

“Don Esteban's son, Felipe, wasn't so sure of that.”

Sam raised his eyebrows.

“I found some old papers,” I said. “Part of a report made by a detective who was hired by Felipe Velasquez to look for the artifacts. The report tells of the beginning of the search, and now I want to know the end.” I went on to give him the particulars of what I'd read.

When I was done, Sam looked excited. “The Velasquez treasure. So part of it did turn up.”

“Yes. But did Quincannon ever find the rest of it? Reading that report was like reading a mystery novel with the last few chapters torn out.”

His eyes shone. “What fun! I'd love to see the document.”

“I'll be glad to show it to you,” I said, “in exchange for your getting the Velasquez woman's address.”

“It's a deal.” But suddenly he looked wistful.

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing, really. I was just thinking how much more interesting the Velasquezes are than the Russian and French aggressions. You'll be sure to keep me posted on what you find out, won't you?”

“Of course.”

“Maybe if you ever do learn how Quincannon's case turned out, I could write it up for a historical journal-if that wouldn't be stealing your material.”

“My material? What would I do with it? I can't write to save my soul. You're welcome to use it. If there's anything to find out-”

A woman's voice, loud and strident, called Sam's name from the front of the house. He frowned in annoyance and said, “It's Dora, fifteen minutes early, as usual. The party's about to begin.”