The Lemon Orchard Page 14

  The café was set beneath enormous ficus trees with glossy green leaves and pale gray bark. White lights filled the branches and leaves, and candles in pressed-tin lanterns were on every table.

  Colorful flags of turquoise, vermilion, emerald, crimson, and dark pink hung on a wire strung all around the seating area, and fluttered in the slight breeze. The air was still hot, even after sunset. The menu had ropa vieja; remembering dinner with Roberto, she ordered it. Patrons called out requests, and the mariachis began to play “Contigo.”

  Waiting for her food, she remembered her uncle’s letter. She pulled it from her bag and began to read.

  Dearest Julia,

  Greetings from Clifden, capital of that most beautiful place on earth—Connemara, Ireland. To be here is to know our ancestors, to hear their whispers, and to feel their desires. How you would love it, my dear. You must visit one day.

  Meanwhile, Graciela and I thank you mightily for looking after the Casa while we’re gone. I trust all is well, or you would have called. You are in good hands with our orchard manager, Roberto, and of course Lion is just down the road. Graciela and I have such happy memories of your visiting as a child, and we hope you are rediscovering the pleasures of Malibu in general and Casa Riley in particular.

  Speaking of “Riley,” our namesake, my research into John Riley’s roots is going well. I hope to have a new book finished by the end of next year. While Clifden is exceptionally beautiful, on the rocky shores of Clifden Bay—and in the virtual shadow of Croagh Patrick, Ireland’s holy mountain—I’ve uncovered much evidence of the suffering that led our forebears to escape the potato famine and immigrate to the United States.

  John Riley himself is a prime example. I’m telling you this because I know, as an anthropologist, you have a special interest in the patterns and movements of human development, and here we have a case history in our own past. Because of the famine, which was so deadly many of the Rileys died of starvation, John joined the British Army. Can you imagine that? The conflict he must have felt, an ardent Irishman, joining with the enemy just to survive?

  Perhaps this is a book you should research, Julia. More to the point, would you be interested in helping me? As I’ve told you often enough, and as is well documented in art and lore, after Riley immigrated to the United States, he fought in the Fifth U.S. Infantry Regiment against Mexico in the Mexican-American War.

  Recognizing the injustice of taking Texas and other land from Mexico—and I’m sure identifying with Britain’s occupation of Ireland—he defected and formed the Saint Patrick’s Battalion. I feel very proud to have him as our ancestor, and I know you do, too.

  Do you remember dreaming about him when you were a little girl? You were visiting us, and I held you on my lap and told you the story of John Patrick Riley. I remember you being so moved by the fact that he’d been branded a deserter, a “D” burned into his cheek. It made you cry, and you asked me to draw a “D” on your cheek, too. I did, and on my own as well.

  That night you dreamed of him as an angel—after his death, lingering in Mexico to protect the people who needed protecting. You said he looked after two little girls, and one of them was you. I’ve often wondered if that dream, and your knowledge of John Riley, influenced your decision to study anthropology, particularly because of your research trip to Mexico.

  He died in Veracruz and his death certificate read “Juan Reley.” He was forty-five, unmarried, and the curate who filled out the certificate said he died of drunkenness, without sacraments. You know very well that I am a lapsed Catholic, like yourself, and I believe John Riley died with abundant sacraments. He followed his heart and did what was right, and how many people can we say that about?

  His Irish name is Seán Pádraic Ó Raghallaigh. If it weren’t too late to have a son, that’s what I would name him. Riley never left Mexico, although he could have. These are all discoveries I am making, and I wanted to share them with you, Julia.

  No one escapes this life without suffering—not a person on earth knows that better than you. Take heart in knowing our ancestor fought against the unfair in life, and in spite of what that Catholic curate wrote, I believe he died with more sacraments than the damn church can count. And I believe he has passed them on to you, dear child.

  Take care, let the Malibu air soothe your soul, and any time you want to join my research team (just me at the moment), you are welcome. We could co-author the definitive biography of John Riley. Graciela sends her love.

  Love,

  Uncle John

  Julia closed her eyes to listen to the music and remember those dreams she’d had about John Riley. She did remember crying over his story—the combination of his family starving, and his having to leave beautiful Ireland, and then having to fight for what he had considered to be the wrong side. It had made her sad to think of soldiers burning a “D” into his face, and spitting on him and calling him a deserter.

  Her food came, and she ate it slowly. It was good, but nothing like the dinner she’d had with Roberto. She read John’s letter again, and wondered if he was right: had knowing that John Riley was their distant relative influenced and inspired her all along?

  Those dreams had been so vivid. Whenever she was scared, his ghost would protect her. When she was eleven, a neighborhood boy bullied her on the way home from school—pulled her coat off in January and threw it up in a tree. It was snowing, and she’d had to walk the rest of the way, nearly a mile, in shirtsleeves.

  That night John Riley had come to her dream. Instead of a snowy New England street, Julia and another girl walked down a jungle path. A monster appeared—it had blond hair and blue eyes like the neighborhood boy, but was ten feet tall with scaly skin and bloody fangs. He grabbed Julia’s friend, and somehow that felt more terrible than if he’d attacked Julia.

  Sometimes you can’t scream in your dreams. That had always been true for Julia. She opened her mouth and no sound came out. But John Riley heard anyway, appeared out of nowhere. He grabbed Julia’s friend from the monster’s arms, set her down gently, and killed the monster so he’d never hurt anyone again.

  Pulling her out of her reverie, the mariachis approached Julia’s table and played a beautiful ballad. She thought of Roberto, wished he were sitting beside her. She could still feel his kiss, how it had felt to be standing in the orchard with him, their bodies pressed together. What would happen when she got back to the Casa?

  She was falling in love with him. It had been building for weeks, maybe even from that first night they’d sat together on the steps. The way he looked at her made her blood tingle—her emotions had never run anything but high, but with Peter she’d kept herself in check. When she’d cried, he’d always said she was being dramatic. She’d gotten very good at sublimating her passions.

  When the mariachis finished playing, she paid her check and went up to her room. She checked her phone. It had been on the whole time, but with the band playing she hadn’t heard it ring. Jack Leary had left a message giving her his address in Yuma, Arizona, and telling her he would be expecting her when she got there. She lay down on the bed with its white roses coverlet and closed her eyes and thought of kissing Roberto under the lemon trees.

  Jack Leary

  Waiting for Julia Hughes to arrive, Jack straightened up the living room and remembered to open the curtains. Louella would have liked that. She always said there was nothing worse than a dark room on a sunny day. She’d have gone out to the garden, cut some of her desert grasses, and arranged them in a vase. Jack had let the yard go to hell. He’d wound up mowing the whole thing down to a stubby little field of dry brown whatever. At least he could see the snakes better.

  He put a pot of coffee on and sat down at the kitchen table to wait. This house was so empty now. Louella’s two old cats, Lee-lee and Nomar, slept all the time and barely gave him the time of day. Sugar, Louella’s teacup York
shire terrier, was another story. She missed Louella as much as Jack did, and she sat at his feet while he read the paper.

  The news was depressing, as usual. Here in Yuma it was all about the border. The drug cartels, the kidnappings, Mexico’s new president and was he better or worse than the last one, another seven border crossers found dead in the back of a truck. It just went on and on. There was only one reason Jack stayed in Arizona instead of moving back to Boston, where he came from.

  Louella. She had wanted to be buried next to her parents, out in the back corner of what used to be their old ranch and was now, except for the small cemetery, a mall with every store Yuma thought it couldn’t live without.

  Jack heard tires crunching on the driveway, and realized his guest had arrived.

  Sugar ran to the screen door barking and guarding the property as if she were a German shepherd.

  “Well, hello,” the woman said, crouching down so she was eye level with Sugar. “Aren’t you brave? Good dog . . .”

  Jack opened the door, and Sugar ran out, flying in circles still barking, but finally letting the lady pet her on the head and then rolling onto her back so she could get her tummy rubbed.

  “What kind of guard dog are you, Sugar?” he asked.

  “Oh, she’s a good one,” the woman said. “I can tell. She just knows I’m friendly. I think she smells Bonnie on me.”

  “That your dog?”

  “Yes, my old girl. She didn’t make the trip with me, though.” Standing, she shook Jack’s hand. “I’m Julia Hughes. Thanks for seeing me.”

  “Jack Leary. Not sure how I can help, but come on in.”

  He gestured for Julia to sit at the table. She was small, about five-four, with a tiny frame but a nice figure. Big blue eyes and pale skin, silver-blond hair. She had some small freckles on her cheeks and arms, and she reminded him of his sister Eileen when she was young. He made Julia Hughes for Irish.

  “So, you’re retired,” she said, after he served her a mug of coffee.

  “Yep,” he said. “Nearly two years now.”

  “That must feel good.”

  “Oh yeah,” he said. “All the free time in the world. Now, what can I do for you, Ms. Hughes?”

  “Julia,” she said.

  “Fine then. Julia.”

  “Well,” she said. “It’s like I said in the message. It has to do with a case you once worked.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said. She’d described it well enough. “I remember. Some of them stand out. That was one of them that did.”

  “Can you tell me why?”

  He stared at her across his coffee mug. She looked intelligent, but what kind of question was that? Jack steered clear of reporters, journalists, any kind of writer who might want to make a buck off the stories of the dead and despairing.

  “Why?” he asked. “Because a little girl got lost. Now listen, you never did tell me what’s your angle in this. What is it to you? You didn’t mention being a reporter, and you’re clearly not Mexican.”

  “I have to be Mexican to care?” she asked.

  Well, what the hell? It was like he’d slapped her. Tears had sprung into her eyes so fast he hadn’t seen them coming at all. She wiped them away and composed herself with head-snapping speed.

  “Let’s start over,” he said. “What brings you here?”

  “I want to find out what happened to Rosa Rodriguez.”

  He nodded. “Okay. How are you connected?”

  “I know her father.”

  “From where?”

  She didn’t reply.

  He peered at her, wondering how much she knew about the whole immigration mess, and figured she didn’t want the dad getting in trouble for being illegal.

  “I’m retired,” he said. “I’m not turning him in.”

  “Still. What’s the difference how I know him? He told me his story. Rosa’s been missing five years. I checked with a friend at the Reunion Project, and he said no remains they have on file can be matched to her.”

  “Well, hell, what is he doing, looking at a computer screen? Coyotes could have dragged her far from that rock where her father left her.”

  “He didn’t really leave her,” she said.

  She was quick to defend the father, Jack noted, but what did she really know? Passing through the desert was like a mirage. Facts shimmered and disappeared into the hot sun. But in this case, he had personal knowledge of the mistakes his squad had made that day.

  “He told us about her,” Jack said. “And by the time we were able to recon, she was gone. And I suspect he went back, too.”

  “He did,” she said. “So what happened? It was only a matter of hours. He said she was so dehydrated and weak, she couldn’t have walked away on her own. Could she?”

  “Doubtful,” he said.

  “Did you look for footprints? She was wearing—”

  “Bright green sneakers. I know. And yes, we did. Of course we did. We even brought out. . .” He stopped himself. No need for her to get into the politics of the agency or to know more than would be helpful about what happened next. There was a fine line between giving people information and false hope.

  “Brought out what?” she asked.

  “Now listen,” he said, turning the tables. “What’s your interest in this? You’re not a family member; I’m not sure I have the right to give you any information at all.”

  “If I were a family member,” she said, “would I have any right?”

  “Huh,” he said. “Undocumented Mexicans don’t, it’s true. But why do the Border Patrol and ICE always come off looking like the bad guys to people like you? You come down to the border—what, your first time here?”

  She nodded.

  “And you want to help, I get it. But we have a job, and you don’t see what we do. We stop a truck, we don’t know whether it’s going to be full of families looking for a better life or meth couriers for the Sinaloa cartel armed with AKs. And the coyotes, they ‘help’ people cross. Lady, they want their money. They take them through ever more rural and dangerous passes to avoid us. And it’s getting these people killed. Didn’t the father tell you about that?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Several members of that group died, as I recall.”

  “Before,” she said, “you said ‘we brought out . . .’ Please tell me.”

  He tried to think back, get the details straight in his mind. He had reviewed the file before she came—when he retired he made copies of twenty or so cases that haunted him. This was definitely one, for reasons Julia Hughes might never want to know.

  “You know, your best bet really is the place you already visited,” he said. “The Reunion Project. Did you go to their office in Tucson?”

  “San Diego,” she said. “I met with the director, Juan Rios.”

  “How do you know him?”

  “Through a friend, one of his colleagues. In a sense, we’re in the same field—anthropology. Juan is on the forensic side of it, but eleven years ago my daughter and I spent a few months studying at a site in Mexico.”

  “How old is your daughter?”

  “She was ten that summer,” Julia said.

  And just like that, Leary had his answer. The way she closed her eyes, her hesitation, the way she gave him the age her daughter had been eleven years ago. He knew why she was pursuing the case of Rosa Rodriguez.

  “What was her name?” he asked.

  “Jenny.”

  “What happened?”

  “Car crash.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “How did you know?” she asked.

  He smiled sadly. There were so many ways—how she’d answered him, the sorrow in her blue eyes. And this mission she was on—he had to admit it was unusual
. The people who came to him were generally journalists after a story or naturalized Mexicans looking for their loved ones. Julia was searching her heart out for Rosa Rodriguez to try to staunch the pain of her own loss. So Leary decided to tell her.

  “Shadow Wolves,” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Earlier you asked me who we brought out on Rosa’s case. Shadow Wolves. They’re an elite squad, expert trackers, Native Americans. We generally use them to catch drug smugglers, mules carrying cocaine and methamphetamine. But I requested that they look for Rosa.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  He was quiet for a few minutes. He got up and refilled their coffee mugs, finally remembered to put the muffins he’d bought at the store that morning on the table. Louella would have wanted him to. He sat down again, looked Julia deeply in the eyes.

  “The reason I wanted the Shadow Wolves on it is that there were parts of the story that didn’t fit,” he said.

  “Roberto’s story?”

  He saw the blood drain from her face. “No,” he said quickly. “We believed him. But shortly after we caught his group, some others came along the same route. We captured six, but the others, including the coyotes, got away.”

  “Could one of them have rescued Rosa?” Julia asked.

  “We wanted to think so. That’s why we called in the Wolves—to track that second group.”

  “What did they discover?”

  “Nothing definitive enough to tell you. I could ask Latham Nez if he’d be willing to talk to you. He holds everything very close. But as a favor to me, he might do it. He’s the head of the team that handled Rosa’s case.”

  “Would you ask him?”

  Leary glanced at the picture of him and Louella standing outside their teardrop camper, on a trip to Yellowstone four summers ago. He could feel her with him now, wanting him to help Jenny’s mother.

  They weren’t going to find Rosa, but he had learned over the years that no search was ever futile. Finding the quarry wasn’t always the point. In fact it rarely was.