Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 128, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 781 & 782, September/October 2006

The Last Calabresi by Jean Femling

Author of three mystery novels — Backyard, Hush Money, and Getting Mine — Californian Jean Femling is also a talented short story writer who last appeared in EQMM in December 2002. She joins us here with a country-house whodunit whose suspects are part of a house party shut in by a flood.

“Hey, you can see the Calabresi place from up here,” Jake said. Lulled by the rhythmic groan of the wipers, I sat up as Jake wheeled his big red pickup truck onto a deserted road. We splashed ahead between ranks of dormant grapevines marching away like blackened tau crosses over the brilliant green slopes.

He braked at the top of the hill. The rain had thinned to a light drizzle, and I stared.

The Calabresi mansion sat on a knoll about a mile away, a semi-fortress of dark stone against heavily wooded hills. Above it, masses of blue-black cloud bellied up the sky. Leftward, toward the coast, a rim of light edged the distant mountain ridge. A sudden bolt of sunlight slanted below the cloud cover, struck the Calabresi house, and blazed out from the center of the upper floor like a great beacon. Then it was gone.

“Wow.” I sat blinking, blinded by the dazzle. “What was that?”

“Reflection off Noni’s sunroom,” Jake said. “Old Tomase built it for his wife when he enlarged the house.”

“Maybe it’s an omen.”

“I thought we’d agreed not to mention any of that up here. Right, Cassandra?” That’s me, Cass for short. Cassandra was the Greek seer nobody ever believed. And “that” was the Calabresi Curse.

“Obviously,” I said. I hadn’t traveled six hundred miles today to offend our hosts. We were up here in California’s wine country to celebrate the fortieth birthday of Jake’s old buddy Evan Calabresi and ignore the Calabresi Curse, which Evan had told Jake about years ago. Evan’s father and his grandfather had both died violently in their forties due to some mysterious condition the doctors had never been able to diagnose. The Evan I’d met was perfectly healthy, but Jake was convinced that even though Evan had never mentioned the subject since, he expected to die the same way.

“I can’t believe a guy as sharp as Evan would pay attention to something like that.”

“What matters is, he does,” Jake said.

Jake headed downgrade. The daylight had died, night closed down, and as if on signal another curtain of rain descended and Jake turned on the headlights. “Maybe we’ll have separate rooms,” I said.

“I doubt it. Evan knows we’re living together.” Jake reached over and squeezed my knee. We’d finally decided we wanted to get married and start a family — “Our own tribe,” as Jake said. Pretty foolhardy, given the messes our parents had made of their lives. So we were keeping totally quiet about it, giving ourselves six months beforehand to see how we handled our differences.

We headed downhill and the road disappeared at the bottom into a boiling chocolate-brown torrent carrying along snags and whole branches. Jake hesitated an instant and then stepped on the gas. I clamped my mouth shut to hold in my scream: It was too late to stop. We hit the water with a splash and the front wheels sent up a wave on both sides.

It’s only hub-deep, I thought, only about ten feet across, but we were still going downhill with the water rising. Jake steered rightward against the current, the water rumbled and gurgled underfoot. Then the motor coughed, and coughed again — we were stalling.

Jake had the gas pedal all the way down as the truck slowed, but the rear wheels were losing traction and then the rear end began to float free, swinging sideways with the current. The front wheels spun and almost grabbed and spun again as the road leveled; the grade was rising and they caught. The rear end settled and we pulled ahead, out of the water. Jake locked onto the wheel and accelerated.

My heart was pounding so hard I couldn’t breathe, and an artery in Jake’s neck throbbed. We went ahead at half speed, bent forward, focused on the road. Images filled my brain of us yanked sideways, the truck rolling over and being swept away.

“All right,” he said. “No more omens, okay?”

The road ended at a wide gravel turnaround in front of the Calabresi house. The balcony of Noni’s sunroom formed an overhang above the double doors and partly sheltered a broad half-circle stone terrace. As we pulled up, Evan came out carrying a poncho and a black umbrella. I opened the truck door and stepped down into an icy ankle-high stream.

“Jake! Stay in there.” Evan met me with a quick, fierce one-armed hug and a cheek kiss. Same piercing stare; same wiry, dark good looks; same impact. “Cassie! You look wonderful.” Lean as a greyhound — through his raincoat I felt ribs, and the ropes of muscle along his back. If it weren’t for Jake, I could’ve been seriously attracted to Evan Calabresi.

He handed me the umbrella. “Go on inside. We’ve got to do some more sandbagging.”

I squelched across the terrace and into a broad entrance hall with a threadbare Persian carpet covered with several mud rugs. A hall tree hung with raincoats dripped into a nest of towels. Behind the left-hand door a mixer went in short bursts and a woman called out, “Just a minute — be right there.”

Through the door on my right lay a smallish sitting room, and farther along, a wide staircase slanting up sideways. The double doors straight ahead opened on a dining room with the table already set, dimly lit by a massive chandelier.

The kitchen door popped open and a pretty Latina about my age burst out swathed in a bunchy chef’s apron, her single thick braid coiled high and held with a big red clip, and her hand outstretched. “Hi! I’m Evan’s sort-of girlfriend, Sochi Alarcon; I’m in here doing his birthday cake. Not that he’ll eat any of it.”

“Cass, Cassandra Bailey. Sochi?”

“Short for Xochitl, from my daddy’s activist days. I was his little Aztlan princess.” A strand of blond threaded through the black braid. “Sochi’s hot,” Jake had said, and she was — high-cheekboned, vivid, sexy, strong. I can hold my own in a crowd, but Sochi’s the one everybody would see first.

She reached into the closet for a pair of gray slipper socks. “Come and put these on while we dry your shoes.”

The big kitchen took up the end of the house, its restaurant-sized range dominated by a slender brown man in an orange shirt and a white baker’s pillbox: Wilson Tang, the Filipino cook. “Call him Tang. Everybody does,” Sochi said. Tang looked maybe fifty, but was over seventy and had been with the family since Evan was born.

He squeezed my hand gently. “I am responsible for the conducting of the entire household. If you are in need of anything at all, you must contact me at once.”

The kitchen smelled wonderful. Wild mushrooms he’d gathered himself, Tang said, and Petaluma ducks he’d killed and dressed.

This was clearly Tang’s lair. In the back corner a roll-top desk overflowed with bills, catalogs, and sporting papers, a television tuned to basketball and a radio droning weather and traffic conditions.

Sochi asked about our trip up, and I told her about the drowned road. She was worried about getting back to town tomorrow to start the inventory at her business, which specialized in mineral and crystal specimens and carvings.

I heard Evan and Jake pass by in the hall, talking and laughing.

“Maybe he’ll sleep tonight.” Tang nodded toward the ceiling. “All night long I hear him up there, bum — bum — bum, running on his machine.”

Sochi volunteered to show me our room, stopping by the hall closet on our way. “I hope they still keep the heaters in here. I haven’t been up here for two months.” Uh-oh. She dug out two space heaters and handed me one. “This place is impossible to heat.”

“Who all are you expecting?” I asked as we started up the broad staircase.

She looked surprised. “Just us.” Evan’s mother, long remarried and living in Virginia, was cruising in the South Pacific. “Oh. Uncle Farley. He’s down in the library watching TV. No way would he pass up the chance for a good meal.”

“I didn’t know Evan had an uncle. Is he well?”

Sochi nodded; she seemed to understand exactly what I was asking. “Oh, quite.”

I seized the opportunity. “I never did hear exactly how Evan’s father died. Or his grandfather, either.” The staircase ended in the center of the upstairs hall, with a railing all around the opening; an odd arrangement. Music from two acoustic guitars came from the room at the end, above the kitchen, and Jake started singing. “In the shuffling madness... locomotive breath...”

Sochi lowered her voice. “Evan’s father killed himself,” she said. “My own father was vineyard manager here then. I used to love it up here. I was nine when Tom Calabresi walked up into the woods and blew out his brains.

“Not even a note. Horrible for the family. Forty-three years old. He’d been having headaches.” She scowled. Did she not believe it? “Of course he’d watched his own father, Tomase, go crazy. Turned violent, had to be tied down in his bed.” Sochi nodded toward the far end of the hall. “In a coma the last six months. He was forty-seven.”

“And they never found any cause?”

“You just know they tried everything. Clinics, experimental programs — now they’re talking stem cells. Evan’s been under the microscope his whole life, and he’s let himself be taken over by the dark side. Fatalistic; wicked. Helping it happen. So the less said about it, the better. Okay?” I could see that she really did love him, and she was totally frustrated.

Our room was at center back, opposite the stairwell. Sochi opened the door and a wall of cold, dank air flowed out. The room was mega-country, all maple and rag rugs. And — ugh! — twin beds with white chenille spreads, like a ’40s movie. I knew the sheets would be clammy.

“I’d start the heaters going now,” Sochi said. “You’ll have to share the bathroom.” She opened the bathroom door and set her heater down. “I’m on the other side.”

I started the other heater in the center of the room. As she left Sochi pointed out Farley’s door opposite, next to the glassed-in sunroom, and dropped her voice. “They say old Tomase never believed Farley was really his son. Anyway, Farley’s over sixty now and still charging, sharp tongue, big gut, and all.”

Sochi yipped as a smiling head appeared in the stairwell, the dark V of hair close-clipped, with a little Machiavelli goatee to match. “Well, hidy. And here you have me in the flesh! I wondered where you’d got to, Sochi.” Tweeded and groomed to a razor’s edge, Uncle Farley carried his years of good living quite well. Portly, that’s the word.

Sochi introduced us and Farley said, “Come on, Miss Sharp-Eyes,” with a knowing smile. “I need you to look at something for me.” Farley led the way through the glass-walled sunroom, dark now, and onto the balcony above the front entrance. The balcony was roofed, and the rain was slanting away.

“I’m worried about Noni’s Parcel,” Farley said. One of the fields was being undermined by the rising creek, and Farley went into a rant about ignorant county officials and the stupid and corrupt Corps of Engineers. “Sochi, look down toward the creek. Can you see anything like the shine of water?” He bent over the thigh-high iron railing, shading his eyes.

Obliging, Sochi leaned out. “Nope.” Nothing was visible but a steady curtain of rain against black. “Ask me again later, when the lanterns are turned off.”

Only when Farley discovered that the road in was submerged did he turn to me. “I was afraid of that,” he said. “Now I’m going to be stuck here overnight.”

When I finished unpacking I knocked on Evan’s door. Downstairs Sochi and Tang were discussing serving dishes and when to start the rice.

“Step into my playpen,” said Evan. The long room was jammed with a pool table, king-sized waterbed, giant television, several drums, his computer corner, and a grove of fierce-looking chromed workout machines. I felt as if I’d lost my hearing, and realized that the room was thickly carpeted and the walls hung with heavy draperies.

Evan handed me a bongo. “Make yourself useful.”

When Tang buzzed Evan for dinner I went downstairs first, aware that I should’ve volunteered to help.

“No food till everybody is sitting down!” Tang stood in the dining room with a majestic scowl and his arms folded. “Right now! It’s ready.”

Evan and Jake came along the upstairs hall talking and laughing. Sochi took off her apron, revealing a dark green knit dress patterned with roses. With a big smile she arranged herself in the dining-room doorway, leaning against the doorframe with one arm up, her knee cocked, and the other arm cupped around the distinct bulge of her belly. What? Sochi was pregnant? Impossible. Yes: true.

Jake stopped at the bottom of the stairs, dazzled. “Sochi, baby! Hey there — looks like you’ve got something in the oven.” He rushed across to give her a brotherly hug.

Evan froze on the bottom stair. “What have you done!” he shouted. His look of horror turned the room to ice. Tang stood in the doorway, expressionless. Nobody spoke.

Sochi straightened up. “Don’t worry. This is nobody’s concern but mine.”

“How could you do this?” Evan stood rigid. “You promised—” He and Sochi were nose-to-nose in a quietly furious argument, all hisses and snarls.

Jake murmured in my ear, “So what is he? Just the sperm donor?”

“Come to dinner now.” Tang clapped once. “The ducks will be ruined! They dry out! You can talk at the table.”

Tang directed us to our places, and the ritual took over. Waiting to be seated, I noticed odd little crackling sounds in the big chandelier close overhead. The crystals were veiled in dust and cobwebs starred with tiny clots of shrouded insects. A few surviving spiders ran frantically through the maze until they frizzled in the heat.

Evan sat at the head of the table with Sochi and me on either side, Jake beside me, and Farley opposite him. Sochi appeared calm and inward-looking, radiating content. No need to envy her: My turn would come. What a way to tell Evan, though. Why? Because she’d been afraid of his reaction? “You promised!” Evan had said.

Tang served everybody from a rolling cart, starting with Sochi. The duck was truly wonderful, though I caught myself shielding my plate from possible fried spiders. Jake asked Farley about the effect of this rain on the vines, and he launched into a lecture.

“Larousse lists fourteen steps in the making of wine.” We were up to “noble rot” when Jake interrupted, raising his glass. “This is certainly wonderful.” He turned to Evan. “Home-grown?”

“The Calabresi label is defunct,” Farley said. “The wonderful grapes are now simply raw material for other vintners. Time to replant Noni’s Parcel with Cabernet Sauvignon grapes.” Clearly, Farley lusted to get back into wine-making and be a player again.

A gust of rain splattered the windows beyond the heavy draperies. “It’s beginning to break up,” Evan said to me. “Should be an excellent snow pack in the hills. Ever done any cross-country skiing?”

We were discussing his favorite trails when Evan went blank. Literally: silent and unseeing — I thought he was about to topple over, and put out my hand. He blinked, looked vague, and gave me a questioning look.

“It’s okay,” I said, and saw that he knew I’d keep his secret. My heart sank, and kept on descending. Evan’s little episode looked like an epileptic seizure, a petit mal: I had a cousin who was epileptic, we’d all been prepared to react as needed. Did Jake know? Had Evan told him?

Epilepsy is usually manageable, and I could’ve been entirely wrong. Still I felt a sense of dread — that the curse was starting. “Let’s don’t feed this thing,” Sochi had said. Because it was nothing, nothing unless you believed in it, and then it was everything.

The rumble of a deep-throated engine came from beyond the front door. The others heard it, too; we were all watching when the door crashed open. A sixtyish woman burst in, blond and decisive in a shiny black cape, calling, “Tang? Evan? Quickly, I need you!”

“My God, it’s your mother,” Sochi said. Tang groaned out loud.

Evan’s mother, Leonor, waved to someone outside and swept in with a voluminous hug for Evan, cheek-kisses for Farley and Sochi, and nods to us. “I got a ride up with Leo Bonaducci in his Hum Two, the maddest luck.” A Martha Stewart-type in black turtleneck and sweatpants, just blown in from the South Pacific, Roger somebody sent his plane for her, wasn’t that sweet?

“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming when we talked Thursday?” Evan demanded.

Leonor’s look would have pierced an armadillo, but her smile never faltered. “Because you might’ve tried to talk me out of it, love.”

In a trice the men hustled her three bags inside and she displaced Jake and me, moving us down one so she could sit next to Evan, all the while filling us in on her life. In the highlands of New Guinea four days ago watching the headhunters dance, she’d brought Evan one of their drums.

Tang, sullen, arrived with a heated plate for Leonor. “You didn’t have to do that,” she cooed. “You know I’ll eat anything.” She took in the grimy chandelier. “Your cleaning crew is cheating you, Evan. We need to have a talk. This place is an absolute slum! It ought to be gutted from the walls out.”

I kept waiting for someone to tell Leonor about Sochi’s condition. How would she receive the little intruder? She had two daughters by her developer husband, both safely married, and a baby grandson. Not till Tang had gone round with seconds and Farley’s plate was cleaned did he sit back and turn to Leonor. “You should know that tonight we’re having a double celebration. We’ve just learned that our Sochi is pregnant.”

Leonor smiled back, waiting for him to go on: Clearly she thought he was joking.

“By all appearances, it’s true,” he said. “Ask her.”

Leonor looked at Sochi. “This is amazing.” She half-rose in her seat, staring at Sochi’s belly, and Sochi, smiling, pushed back her chair to show Leonor.

“How terribly exciting. When are you due?”

“The doctor figures the third week in April.” Sochi gave Evan a quick look. We were now in the first week in February.

The two women dropped into the duet: Who’s your Ob-Gyn, which hospital, ultrasound, boy or girl? Sochi said she wanted to be surprised. Leonor recommended someone brilliant she knew at Stanford Medical. She never once looked at Evan, and projected warmth without revealing either approval or the opposite. But I felt in my bones that Leonor was shocked and furious, and that she too believed in the Calabresi curse.

After dinner Jake hung back to talk to me. “Can you believe Sochi?”

“So maybe it was an accident.”

“You think Sochi ever allows accidents in her life?” Jake said.

“Anyway, it’s a done deal. Everybody’s just going to have to adapt.”

“I don’t think so,” Jake said.

Sochi and Farley settled in to watch a hockey match, and Leonor sent Tang running to fetch lamps, bedding, and whatnot to make up the master suite at the far end of the upstairs floor. Evan and Jake were doing battle on the pool table, dealing with disaster in typical masculine fashion, by ignoring it. All the vital confrontations would take place later, behind closed doors. I watched a little hockey and the news, and went upstairs to bed.

When I opened our bedroom door I smelled something scorching. What? The space heater sat out of sight beyond the far bed, glowing red and not quite touching the white chenille bedspread, which was charred and beginning to smoke. I yanked out the cord and kicked the heater away into the middle of the floor.

Impossible. I was positive I hadn’t left the heater anywhere near the bed, and Jake wouldn’t have moved it. But then how—? I pulled the spread off the bed and ran water on the burned spot. The blanket underneath was hot to the touch, and browning, and I spread a wet towel over it to cool it. And then I noticed that the bathroom heater was gone.

Music, Miles Davis, came from Evan’s room. Let them be: Deal with this tomorrow. I read till my eyes fell shut.

But I slept badly, vaguely aware of the wind buffeting the house and wailing in the eaves like a lost soul, and came full awake at the sound of somebody fumbling at the bedroom door. Incoherent muttering; Jake, and stupid drunk. I could smell him.

“Oh God,” he whined, “that Sochi is such a bitch. You have no idea. I am seriously ripped. I mean majorly.”

“Shh. You don’t have to wake up the world.”

“As if. Oh God. You’re not going to believe it. Oh, am I going to regret this tomorrow.” Feeling for the bed in the dark, he missed and went down on one knee. “A real bitch! Aagh—”

“Go and throw up,” I said.

“What?”

“Put your finger down your throat. Get rid of some of it or you’ll have a terrible hangover.”

“Good idea.” He stumbled into the bathroom and I covered my head with my pillow to drown out his retching. Now I’d be awake for hours. Some vacation.

I was wrong. The next time consciousness found me it was starting to get light, and the wind was down. Then I heard it again, the sound that had waked me. A single sound, repeated at regular intervals like some lonely bird crying. Or a demented human.

I got up and went to the door. Yes: someone wailing, a man, his voice getting ragged now with the repetition, broken by coughing.

“Wake up, Jake.” I shook his shoulder and pulled his covers back. “Something’s wrong.” I dragged on my robe. “I’m going to go see. Get up now! I need you.”

Gray light flooded the hall from the sunroom opposite. Farley, executive-looking in a monogrammed brown robe, was starting down the stairs. “It’s Tang,” he said.

A blast of cold air swept up the staircase: The double front doors stood wide open. Tang’s ragged wails came at longer intervals now. Jake, behind me, called, “Wait up!” and the outdoor cold burst over me.

Sochi’s body lay sprawled on the rain-drenched paving stones with one arm flung out, the flowers in her sodden dress darkly brilliant, the thick two-toned braid had fallen free. Raindrops beaded crystal on her skin. I couldn’t believe it, her face was so pale and smooth, drained of color, and I went close and touched her hand and her bare arm. It gave a little but it was cold, cold as the stone. Jake pulled me away.

“Oh, dear God, what has she done now?” Leonor said from the door. “This is terrible.”

Farley, muttering, hugged himself tight. “A terrible accident.”

“There was no need for this,” Leonor said.

Afterwards I remembered everybody crying. Jake and I hung on to each other, rocking. It was drizzling again, and we moved back under the overhang.

“She didn’t do it,” Tang said, his voice raspy. “She wouldn’t do it on purpose.”

“Evan,” Leonor said. “Someone’s got to tell him. Jake, you go. And be gentle.”

“She must’ve been leaning out in the dark to look, and lost her balance,” Farley said. “I asked her last evening if she could see flooding on Noni’s Parcel.”

“Slippery with the wet, maybe?” Leonor said.

Evan ran out barefoot in his pajamas and knelt beside Sochi. He tried to pick her up and they made him stop, they were actually wrestling with him, and it was all beyond awful. Leonor brought a coat for Evan, and Tang covered Sochi’s body with a yellow tarp. Jake and I, sharing the same idea, edged away, out of the ring of grief and fury. We were strangers, we didn’t belong here.

We left Farley and Leonor discussing calling the sheriff, if the phone was working — cell phones didn’t work up here. Not just Sochi was dead, I realized. The baby, too.

Shut in our room, our little sanctuary, we whispered together, trying to absorb what had happened. “It’s only a fifteen- or twenty-foot drop,” I said. “Not enough to kill you, normally. Sochi would know that.” Suddenly the burned bedspread seemed ominous. “Did you by any chance move the heater close to the bed?” I asked Jake.

“Of course not.” He scowled. “That would really be dangerous.” Obviously he thought I’d been careless. I was too numb to argue.

The only other people who’d been up here last night were Tang and Leonor: Farley was watching TV with Sochi.

While Jake was in the shower I heard voices outside. I moved close to the door.

“Remember, you promised me,” Leonor said, her voice low.

“I know what I promised,” Evan snarled. “God, you never let me forget it.” Their voices moved out of range.

I repeated what I’d heard to Jake. He didn’t understand it either. Evan had told Jake that Sochi had never wanted to get married, they’d agreed to that right from the start; also, that Evan did not want any kids.

“Maybe the baby wasn’t Evan’s,” I said.

“Oh, Jesus.” Jake’s look of horror sickened me. Was it not an accident? Had he and Evan done something...?

By the time we’d both dressed I was pretty well cried out. “How come Evan didn’t hear Tang when the rest of us did?” I asked.

“Earplugs. Also he takes sleeping pills.”

I couldn’t quit thinking about Sochi. Not a good way to get rid of somebody. Maybe it was a heat of passion thing. Or a struggle.

Jake was watching me. “Will you stop? We’ve got no way of knowing what happened. So could you for once in your life just not get involved?” I felt myself getting scared. Jake’s reaction was wrong. He was too composed, almost resigned.

As we came out of our room Evan’s door opened, as if he’d been waiting for us.

“Listen, you guys,” he said. “Can you stick with me here? Just for a day or two?” He stopped and blew his nose. “Sorry. Sorry about this. Just unbelievable. They’re sending a helicopter, my mother talked to somebody. You think I should go with her? Oh shit.” We came together in a three-way hug.

Of course we’d stay, as long as he needed us.

At the bottom of the stairs a flash of yellow brightened the shadowed dining room, Sochi’s poncho-covered body laid out on the dining table. How much did Jake know about what happened to her?

The smell of fresh coffee drew Jake into the kitchen. Through the window alongside the front door I saw Farley out on the terrace, scanning the vineyards with his binoculars. I shrugged into a slicker and went out.

“I can’t stay away,” I said, looking down at the spot where the body had been.

Farley nodded. “A terrible accident; terrible. The sheriff won’t be happy that she’s been moved, but Tang absolutely insisted. He would’ve done it alone.”

I couldn’t stop the pictures forming in my head. Was it quick? Did Sochi realize? No blood was visible. Maybe it had all washed away. Was her spirit still hanging around, unsatisfied? I waited, still, in case there was any kind of sign. But nothing came.

Farley showed me where part of Noni’s Parcel had washed away, leaving a raw brown gouge in the hillside. I wondered who would inherit the land if something happened to Evan. Wasn’t that why Sochi had died — because of the baby? Farley was certainly the next of kin.

When I glanced up at the balcony I saw a flash of red between the bottom rail and the concrete floor. I looked away quickly. I knew exactly what it was. Sochi had been wearing a big red clip in her hair; but I didn’t remember seeing it down here, where she’d fallen.

I was hot to go and get the clip, but Farley kept on talking. Inside the house Tang shouted once, and Farley shook his head, smiling. “Tang and Sochi both loved to gamble. Stereotype, I know, but as it happens, true for him. She always took him over to Reno for his birthday. For a smart guy he’s a terrible gambler — bets his hunches, astrological numbers, high and low temperatures, anything. She always wound up lending him money. He must be into her for thousands by now.”

“So then, she could afford it.” Maybe Sochi had struggled with somebody on the balcony, and the clip fell out. There might even be fingerprints.

“And she loved to stick it to him,” Farley said. “‘What, you lost again?’ she’d say. ‘Come on, you old gook, where’s your Filipino pride? Let’s see some of that Oriental cunning.’”

I smiled. So obvious what Farley was doing, even if what he said was true. When I finally got away and up to the balcony, the clip was gone. And if I’d found it — so?

Everybody was at the breakfast table, except for Tang. He leaned against the back wall beside the burbling radio. Two separate mudslides: several people missing. We breakfasted on Froot Loops, Grape-Nuts Flakes, expired toaster waffles, half-thawed onion bagels, and bananas. In spite of everything, I was ravenous.

The phone was working intermittently. Farley gave us direct orders not to answer it. “The reporters will be on us as soon as they hear something.”

“They’re vultures. Maggots!” Leonor said. “I know all about that from my time with Tom. You don’t dare give them a millimeter.”

They slid into reminiscences about Sochi. Running away on her pony when she was ten, headed for the beach thirty miles away because her daddy promised her and couldn’t go that day. Hiding her tattoo from her dad. And her flying lessons. “I taught her to play blackjack when she was six years old,” Tang said.

“Ruben,” Evan said, getting up. “We’ve got to call her dad.”

Leonor pushed back her chair, blocking him. “Let somebody else take care of that.”

“It’s my job, isn’t it?”

“You really don’t want to do that,” she said. “Too stressful.”

“It’s my life; remember?” he shouted over his shoulder.

“Hey-hey.” Farley pointed to the radio. “Governor’s declared Napa and Sonoma Counties disaster areas. Low-cost loans? Tax relief?”

“I wonder how much she’d had to drink,” Leonor said. “She always liked her nightcap.”

“Maybe not now,” I said. “Being as she was pregnant.”

“They’ll be able to tell from the — examination, won’t they?” Jake said.

“Alcohol in the blood dissipates,” Leonor said.

“I went up to bed around eleven,” Farley said, “and she went into the kitchen to play cards, right?” he asked Tang.

“Evan and I were shooting pool,” Jake said. “Never saw her after dinner.”

“We played five-card stud till one o’clock,” Tang said. “Then she went upstairs. With all of you.”

“Maybe it was some kind of wild impulse,” Leonor said. “Even the weather can make people do things. We may never know.”

I had an itch in my brain. All of them, even Tang, had some reason to want Sochi gone. I wanted to scream. “I keep seeing her, so clearly,” I said. “In the flowered dress, with her hair piled up, and that big red clip with the curved teeth — come to think of it, I didn’t see the clip this morning. I wonder what happened to it.”

“I will go look in her room,” Tang said.

“And I’ll come and help,” I said.

Farley looked uneasy. “Maybe we shouldn’t move anything till the sheriff comes.”

“Why not?” Leonor demanded. “This isn’t television. We’re talking about a tragic accident, after all.”

It didn’t take long. Sochi’s dresser drawers were nearly empty. Underwear, two nightgowns, heavy socks, sunscreen. In the closet, a couple of robes, a down jacket, ski clothes, old aviation and skiing magazines. No red hair clip.

Tang found a dusty suitcase and started packing, over my objections. I asked him about his gambling trips with Sochi, and he turned a red-eyed glare on me. “I don’t have to explain anything to you,” he said. “I knew her from a baby.” His voice rose. “She showed me her report cards, every one. I’m like an uncle to her!”

“Hey, hey. Farley just happened to mention—”

“Farley,” Tang sneered. “That’s not even his real name.” Which was Frank, from his father, Tomase Francisco. “When he was still in school he didn’t like the dirty work; too hard. Had a big, big fight with his father, and changed it to Farley. Went down to Salinas to his mother’s brother and raised artichokes. So then Tomase only gave him a little something in his will. Tom, that was Evan’s father, got the whole thing.

“And then when Tom takes him back into the winery, what does Frank do? He steals from the company. That’s embezzlement.”

I looked toward the door, afraid we might be overheard. “Don’t worry,” Tang said. “He’s sitting on his big butt watching some game and waiting for his next meal. You figure out why old Frank wants it that Sochi would jump?”

Of course. To get rid of the new heir.

Tang closed up the suitcase. “Now I have to burn it all.”

“Why?”

“Sometimes the person’s spirit gets lonesome for their own things, and comes back looking for them,” Tang said. “As soon as they’re burnt, she will have them with her, and she can be at peace.”

I suggested he discuss it with Evan, but I don’t think he heard me. “She gave him a present,” he said, mostly to himself. “But he didn’t want it.”

The others were still in the kitchen. “No,” I told them. “We didn’t find the clip.”

Everyone scattered, and the thumping of the treadmill started overhead. The weather continued showery and uncertain, with rivers of molten silver rushing downhill in the changing light. The green countryside stretching away was like a poultice for my fevered brain.

Toward noon, as I passed the sunroom, I saw through the two layers of glass Leonor, outside on the balcony. It seemed wrong, foolhardy to be in that fearsome spot. She was rubbing her hands back and forth along the iron railing. Wiping away possible fingerprints? The thought was a warning. Leonor was so easy to dislike that I couldn’t trust my judgment of her.

Quivering, I walked out to her. “Mind if I join you? The air is so wonderful up here. In spite of everything.”

“Of course not. But I warn you, I’m not very good company.”

I waited.

“I’m angry,” she said. “I’m just so angry I can’t stand myself. That that girl would do such a thing to Evan. Try to burden him with all that guilt.”

“Then you don’t think it was an accident.”

“Absolutely not! It’s a very common cause of suicide, you know. Revenge.” Leonor leaned stiff-armed, looking down. “I’m just trying to get it straight in my mind,” she said. “Just between us, I figure she must’ve been drunk. Or possibly hysterical. Even as a little girl she was strong-willed and impulsive, anybody will tell you that. I wonder now if she mightn’t have been bipolar.”

My expression of pleasant interest felt like a cardboard mask. Be fair, I urged myself. Maybe Sochi was given to wild impulses. “Tang is certainly broken up over it,” I said. “Naturally.”

“He seemed all right after dinner,” she said. “You may have noticed that he goes off now and then. I kind of suspect some form of dementia, or possibly early Alzheimer’s, because of his sudden mood changes. Fine one minute, the next — unbelievable. Like that stunt with your heater.”

“What stunt?”

“In your room. Trying to burn up your bed, simple as that.” She smiled, waiting for my reaction.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, we went into your bedroom to get the extra heater so I wouldn’t totally congeal last night. When we left I looked back, and saw that he’d moved your lighted heater up against the bed.” She shook her head. “I suppose he’s feeling angry at these extra people to take care of. Anyway, I went and moved the heater out of harm’s way.” She shrugged. “Or who knows what might’ve happened.”

We shook our heads and exchanged a few clichés about fate that neither of us believed, and Leonor marched off. Did the heater business actually happen that way? Maybe Tang went back again. It sounded crazy; but Leonor wouldn’t much care if I believed her. Did she want Tang to seem out of control, and so a major suspect in case Sochi’s death was questioned?

Wait a minute. Sochi was still alive then. Was Leonor thinking ahead, already worried that Evan might try some way to get rid of her? Now the craziness was infecting me, too.

The rescue helicopter arrived about two o’clock, the thupa-thupa growing deafening as it settled onto the gravel turnaround out front. The pilot was alone, and disgusted: He was on his way to check out a family of five believed stranded on the other side of Whiskey Creek, and clearly thought the living should preempt the dead. He hustled Sochi into a body bag, and we followed in silence as he and Evan carried her out. He couldn’t say when the roads would be open. Expect a visit from the sheriff, he said, when they were.

The house seemed somehow emptier. I wandered into the kitchen for a cup of coffee. Tang was stirring a big pot of something spicy on the back of the stove. “Chili,” he said. “Another storm coming.”

I told Tang about our scorched bedding. “What I can’t understand is, Leonor seems to think that you set the heater there on purpose.”

“What did she say exactly?”

When I told him how Leonor described him moving the heater, he scowled as if in puzzlement or disbelief. “I don’t know where she got the idea,” I said. “You know how she is. Of course, I figured she was mistaken.”

“Oh, yah. I know everything.” Then a smile began and Tang straightened up, starting to look positively pleased. “I’m in charge of it now.” He patted my shoulder. “You go ahead and forget the whole thing.”

By late afternoon I was stir-crazy. Jake came down from Evan’s room blinking like a disoriented owl, and I dragged him outside for a walk. Everything dripped and gurgled, streams and rivulets carved up the gravel paths and ate away the hillsides, and mud, mud everywhere. The air was intoxicating.

“How’s Evan doing?”

He shrugged. “I left him watching cartoons.”

“Think we can get out of here tomorrow?”

“No way.” Jake stopped dead and brushed a lock of hair away from my cheek. I started to tell him what I’d found out from Farley, and about Leonor and the heater. I could see him getting furious.

“Always stirring the pot. Why can’t you just let it be an accident?”

“Because I don’t believe it, and neither do you! You know what they’ll say: Evan did it.”

“Listen,” he said, “it’s a whole lot worse than you think.”

We turned and walked a few more steps. “He told me last night,” Jake said. “You know the Calabresi Curse? There really is one. It’s in the family. Genetic. Not a virus and not a bacteria — it’s this weird element, a prion, that starts to develop at a certain point and trashes your brain. Fatal Familial Insomnia, it’s called. FFI.”

“Insomnia? Oh, come on—” I was appalled.

“Yes! It kills people.”

I walked away from him and then back. “I can’t stand this crazy talk.”

“You see? That’s why Evan never tells anybody. Because of exactly that reaction. First the laugh, total disbelief, and then finally the ‘Oh you poor dumb bastard’ look.”

FFI. Evan had explained the whole thing to Jake. Runs in families, may not develop till as late as sixty, once it starts it can kill you in eighteen months. Same type of organism (only it isn’t one) as Mad Cow disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, but even more rare. Evan even made Jake go on the Internet and see for himself. Jake showed me a printout.

There are four stages of the disease before an individual’s life ends. The first is progressive insomnia... If homozygous for the mutation, = mean 9.1 months to fatality... Not contagious. Only inherited. Always fatal, and so far, no cure.

“Who-all knows he’s got it?” I asked.

“Everybody up there.” Jake nodded toward the house. “Except Sochi.” We looked at each other. “He knows he should’ve told her. She still believed the curse was nothing but superstition.”

Somehow we got through the rest of the day. The televised news from the county seat described three known fatalities from the storm, but no names yet. “Tomorrow it starts,” Farley said.

The pot of chili had scorched, you could smell it all over downstairs. We had cold duck sandwiches for supper, and a very good Riesling. Tang leaned against the back wall of the kitchen, smiling.

“This place,” Leonor said to him. “When did you last get it cleaned, anyway? You must have a statement there someplace.” She pointed at his piled-high desk. “You can’t possibly find anything in that mess. Probably forgot to pay the bill.”

Leonor put down her fork and went to rummage around on the desktop, and a pile started to slide. “Oops!” Papers cascaded onto the floor, and Sochi’s red hair clip bounced free.

Farley groaned.

“Well.” Leonor picked up the clip. “It was here all the time.” Tang looked at her. Then he tipped his head back and chuckled to himself. Nobody spoke. I opened my mouth, and closed it again. I would wait and talk to the sheriff.

Jagged metal lightning, and then a terrible racket dissolved into a big dead bell tolling — I came awake sitting up and saw Jake the same, grabbing our robes and scrambling into slippers as the measured CLONK, CLONK, CLONK went on, and a man’s voice shouted something, over and over. Jake opened the door and I smelled the smoke.

“Fire!” Tang was yelling. “Fire! Fire! Fire!” The dim hallway was already fogged and acrid and my nose and eyes stung. Farley was ahead of us on the stairs, and here came Evan, staring like a wild animal. Down the stairs as roaring and snapping bonfire sounds came from the bright glowing kitchen and the smoke billowed out, flowing toward the open double doors.

“It’s climbing up,” Tang yelled. “It’s going for the attic.”

“Where’s my mother?” Evan shouted.

“She got out already.” Tang pushed him toward the doors. “Go round to the barn, I told her. Quick! Go on, get out!” We ran down the wide steps into the cold dark and sloshed after Evan along the sodden path. Farley stood at the far edge of the wide gravel turnaround with both hands pressed to his chest, shouting something. When we turned the corner of the house I saw the barn looming out there dark and still, with only gleams of light reflected from the flames. Nothing moved. Behind us the roar of the fire grew.

“Mother?” Evan yelled. “Mom?” Evan whirled around and crashed past us running back toward the front of the house again. The whole kitchen end of the house was going up, windows glaring orange and the music of glass popping, the blaze barely contained in its stone cave.

“Where is she?!” Evan screamed.

“And where is Tang?” Farley called out. Evan ran up the steps to the front entrance, dark now, the doors closed. Through the tall side windows the back-lit smoke glowed in the hall rosy gold and weirdly beautiful, like angel hair.

“Oh my God.” Evan grabbed the doorknob and yanked at it as the roaring beyond grew. The door was locked. “Mother? Tang? Open this door!” He threw himself against it, and then again, the noise of the fire drowning out his shouts.

The left-hand window shattered and fell soundlessly: Evan flinched away and then tried to climb through the broken window. Jake and I dragged at him to pull him away. The old dry walls flared like chaparral, the timbers shrieked and roared as they fell. The heat drove us all back.

Six weeks later Jake and I flew north again for the memorial service at the mission. Afterwards we walked with Evan across the sun-dappled plaza under a tender blue sky scattered with cloudlets.

“I want to tell you what happened with Sochi,” Evan said. It wasn’t necessary, I started to say, but he stopped me with a look. “Please?”

She was supposed to come to him last thing that night so they could talk; he waited with his door ajar. He heard her say goodnight to Tang and he shut his door, waiting. “Then I heard her out there talking to somebody. But after that — nothing.” He looked at me and then away. “It was my mother. So then I figured my mother had managed to buy her off, and Sochi just went on to bed. God! If only I’d...”

“Stop it,” Jake said. “It’s done.”

“Tang must’ve heard them together, too,” Evan said, “and jumped to his own conclusions.” A gust of wind ruffled our hair and pulled at our jackets, and my eyes stung. I figured Sochi had actually known about Evan’s condition, and wanted his child anyway. I figured Tang would have told her.

“Funny.” Evan smiled behind his dark glasses. “Mother made me promise I’d never kill myself. And now I’m the only one left.” He raised both bandaged hands to the big old sycamores just starting to push out their bitter green buds. “Beautiful day, isn’t it? Come on, I’ll buy you guys coffee.”

Copyright © 2006 Jean Femling