April Elizabeth Lowe and Dr. William Brian Staehlings were united in marriage on February 20, 1988, at the United Methodist Church in Santa Teresa, California. April, the daughter of Ned and Celeste Lowe of Cottonwood, is a 1981 graduate of Pomona College and more recently the Santa Teresa Business College. She’s currently employed as a legal secretary for the law firm of Eaton and McCarty. Dr. Staehlings is the son of Dr. Robert Staehlings and the late Julianna Staehlings of Boulder, Colorado. A graduate of the University of California, Santa Teresa, and Loma Linda University School of Dentistry, Dr. Staehlings opened a private practice, specializing in orthodontics, with an office on State Street in Santa Teresa. The newlyweds honeymooned in Hawaii and are now “at home” in Colgate.
April, not yet four years old when the items were mailed to Father Xavier, had done all right in the world. She’d managed to educate herself, find gainful employment, and fall in love. I read the wedding announcement again and stopped three sentences into it at the mention of the bride’s father. Ned Lowe was the defendant in the lawsuit I’d just come across. I was assuming Ned Lowe was April’s father and Lenore Redfern was her mother. Ned was now married to a woman named Celeste, so if Ned and Lenore were April’s parents, they’d either divorced or Lenore had died and he’d moved on. Pete must have spied the announcement in the paper and added it to the old file, creating an addendum to the now-dead legal dispute.
The remaining item was a four-by-six-inch red leather frame that contained a studio portrait of a mother posed with a little girl sitting on her lap. The mother-daughter relationship was reinforced by the fact that the two wore matching red plaid tops. The little girl’s wispy blond curls were shoulder-length and her face was lighted by a smile that showed small perfect teeth. She held an Easter basket in her lap that contained a big blue bunny, dyed Easter eggs (one pink, one blue, one green), and assorted foil-wrapped chocolates nested in bright green paper grass. Lenore and April? I put the two photographs side by side. Lenore at her confirmation and Lenore with her child.
The grown-up Lenore bore only a passing resemblance to her younger self. Her hair was now blond and worn in a style vaguely suggestive of vintage movie star glamor. She must have been in her late teens or early twenties; her pale complexion was so smooth and clear, it might have been carved from alabaster. Her expression was withdrawn, anger turned inward, as though motherhood had somehow robbed her of animation. The contrast between mother and daughter was troubling. The camera had caught the child close to bouncing, happy and secure and utterly unaware of her mother’s demeanor.
I returned the items to the pouch and then returned the pouch to the bottom of the box and wedged the cardboard panel in on top. I assumed Pete had created the hidey-hole, though I couldn’t be sure. I shoved the batch of files into the box in no particular order. I wondered how these keepsakes had ended up in his hands so many years after the fact, especially when they’d been mailed to a Catholic priest. Pete, of course, was a mercenary at heart and may have intended to deliver the memorabilia to the newly wed April and accept a reward if she should press one on him in gratitude. The notion was crass, but in perfect keeping with his character.
I placed the banker’s box near the front door. In the morning, I’d take it to the office and lock the mailing pouch in my floor safe. I couldn’t imagine who’d want it, but if Pete thought it worth concealing, then I’d do the same. At that point, for lack of a better plan, I put a call through to Ruthie. The number rang repeatedly, and then her answering machine picked up. I listened to the outgoing message, and after the beep, I said, “Hey, babe. No tax returns and no financial records. Sorry ’bout that. I’ll be trotting up to Rosie’s in a bit, so if you feel like joining me, I’ll buy you a drink and we can catch up.”
8
As I’d forgotten to eat lunch, I prepared a nutritious dinner at home: a peanut butter and pickle sandwich on a multigrain bread so textured, I could count the seeds, nuts, hulls, and bits of straw baked into the loaf. I rounded out the fiber content with a handful of Fritos while I sipped a Diet Pepsi. At eight, I grabbed the banker’s box and rested it on my hip while I locked the studio door behind me. As I passed my car, I unlocked the trunk and hefted the box into the space, locking the car again before I continued the half block to Rosie’s.
William was at his usual post behind the bar, looking chipper in a three-piece navy suit with a pale blue dress shirt; no tie. He’d donned a white apron and he was polishing wineglasses with the special microfiber cloth he favored for eradicating water spots. When he saw me, he lifted a hand in greeting. He placed a glass on the bar, filled it with white wine from one of Rosie’s oversize screw-top jugs, and then winked to let me know the glass was meant for me. I crossed to the bar and settled on a stool. “How are you doing, William?”