Hunt for the Holy Grail Read online

  He glanced over her shoulder. “Shit.”

  —

  Tom Garcia stood in the middle of the room, looking around.

  He refused the urge to cover his nose on account of the reek.

  “Olivia, what happened here?”

  She had already flopped back onto her couch and resumed her whiskey and cornflake meal. Smokey was on the chessboard, contemplating the crown of the Queen.

  “Life happened, Tom,” she mumbled through a full mouth.

  “Is that—?”

  Tom took his nose closer to perceive the smell of whiskey in the bowl of cereal. He took off his fedora and wrinkled it in his hands. He hung his hat on a rack and opened the curtains. Harsh daylight cast itself across the room, over the table. Olivia winced.

  Copies of the Daily Mail littered the floor. Clothes piled on the floor, everywhere, and on her reading table where there were more newspapers, sheets of papers with scribblings, and the dead face of a Dell laptop.

  Tom pulled up a chair and sat in it.

  “The stairs were good for me. Look at my gut, remember what I used to look like? Me, with the six-packs?” he laughed.

  Smokey, now tired of the chess game, walked into the kitchen, tail up. Olivia finished her cereal and belched.

  “Excuse me.” She attempted a smile.

  “Uhuh.”

  “Let's not talk about me, Tom. What’d you want?”

  “Can we talk about your neighbors downstairs parking like they own the street?” Tom said quietly.

  “Leave my neighbors alone.”

  “How are you, Olivia?” Tom asked, taking off his jacket. “Been a while.”

  “I’m good.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  She raised one eyebrow. “Obviously.”

  Through half-closed eyes, she stared at the doubling image of Tom. Sheriff Tom Garcia, friend and confidant. She smirked, recalling a few nights when the sheriff had extracted her from bars around town. She had gone down the bottom of whiskey bottles to kill the pain that tore through her like cancer, and to probably kill herself in the process.

  Tom had been there to remind her that there was life after John Williams died.

  She glanced around her place and thought, This is life after John Williams.

  Tom had a life, a job, a wife. But she didn’t. She had her cat—John got him for her birthday last year—and whiskey.

  Tom hadn’t been to see her for two months. She felt some resentment for that. She staggered over to the fridge by the kitchen door.

  “What’s happening at the office?” she finally asked, reaching for a bottle of Jack Daniels.

  Tom sighed. “There was a murder at the Baker Home last night.”

  Her hand froze.

  —

  Tom Garcia told Olivia everything.

  “Harald Kruger, his name. He was 97,” Tom ended.

  “Any families?”

  “None. At least, none have turned up in our search. No friends either.”

  Olivia had done some columns in the past on the Baker Home, three years ago. It was a two-passport photo-sized editorial detailing the persistent problem of funds and understaffing. Olivia was especially mad about the graffiti-ridden walls. John Williams had taken the photos that she used. Olivia still kept those photos in her purse.

  Her face tightened at the memory of it.

  “Baker Home isn’t front page, I know, but I want you to check it out,” Tom was saying. His eyes were shot and there black dots of hair on his face.

  “You know I can’t, Tom,” Olivia said tiredly. “I can’t have my desk back until, you know.” She spread her hands, gesturing at the environment of her place.

  “And you should fix yourself, Olivia. It’s been long enough—”

  “Don’t!” She raised a stiff forefinger.

  Tom came to her. He shoved his hands down the pocket of his trousers and contemplated his long-time friend. There was a rumble in the kitchen. The cat, Smokey, whined.

  Tom regarded Olivia with a drawn face, most of the vicarious empathy he felt was in that one gaze.

  “It hurts to see you this way, Olivia. Now you have to get yourself together before you lose everything—”

  “Everything,” she scoffed.

  She reached for the bottle of whiskey. Tom intercepted her hands. He got a whiff of her breath and his stomach heaved.

  Olivia slouched and closed her eyes. Tom shook his head slowly. Olivia looked like what anguish would look like if it were human.

  “I really need you on this case. It’ll help you get out some more, get some air.”

  Olivia kept her eyes shut. There was a silence in which she listened to herself breathe and to Smokey walk stealthily around the house. The sound of the door as it clicked shut. She opened her eyes and sighed. Her lips trembled.

  Was it fair, hurting those who remained, just because she was hurt?

  Smokey bounded onto the table. He curled across the chessboard and yawned. Olivia jumped and went to the window.

  “Tom!” she called down to the street.

  Sheriff Tom Garcia looked up. Now Olivia saw his bulging midriff. He looked funny, like a rook. She laughed, and oh how good it felt.

  “Wait for me!”

  The sheriff beamed.

  3

  “Where do we begin?” Tom asked Olivia as he put the car in gear. Olivia asked him what the earlier ruckus in the street was about.

  “I should have slapped that guy a ticket,” Tom complained. “He was parked wrong.”

  “You do that all the time, Tom,” Olivia said. She fished a bottle out of her jacket.

  “Seriously? Olivia, it’s too early.”

  “Never too early to live.”

  She drank. She burped.

  She caught Tom shaking his head in the periphery of her vision. She felt a prick, a movement, in that shelf of emotions people call conscience. Her face darkened in diffidence.

  They stopped at a light. She was surprised that the sheriff did. Downtown Miami was getting rowdy with tourists. The whole of Fifth Avenue was colorful with bikinis and flower-spotted shorts, pale skin, and surfboards. The very last time she felt sand between her feet, she was walking on the beach and holding hands with John.

  She tore her eyes off the street and took another sip.

  “You know Olivia, maybe you should consider therapy or something,” Tom volunteered after a moment.

  “Thanks. I’ll put that under consideration.”

  They took a shortcut around Melrose and drove up the hills. The ocean now on the left, the sun on it, bright and warm. Tom’s body blocked most of the warmth.

  They drove into the parking lot of the Baker Home, shortly after.

  “We are here.”

  But Olivia was already out of the car.

  —

  Olivia Newton’s keen eyes scanned the grounds and the surroundings. The horn of a truck drifted in from Highway 11. Spruce trees blocked the trailer park from where she stood. And the home blocked all else—three stories of depressing architecture and peeling paint. It used to be white, but it was now grey.

  Tom joined her.

  “What’d you think?”

  Olivia shrugged. “The home needs a paint job. Badly.”

  They found Sue in her usual place at her desk, caring for her nails.

  “Morning, Sheriff. Morning, Olivia.” She smiled.

  “Morning, Sue—”

  Sue pointed her nail file at Olivia. “You don’t look right, Olivia. Now I know it ain’t been easy since John but you ought to put yourself together—”

  Olivia leaned over the cluttered desk. “I’ll be alright, Sue. Put that tape from the night of the murder together will you? I want to watch it.”

  Sue glanced at Tom Garcia. The sheriff nodded.

  “Dreadful business, that was,” she said as she struggled out from behind her desk. “First of its kind here at the Baker Home.”

  She took a bunch of keys off the rack on
the pale wall behind her. Folds of flesh on her arm jiggled as she did.

  “Come,” she invited.

  They started towards an adjacent hallway. Here the floor was still wet from being mopped but the cleaner was out of sight. They passed open doors. Olivia noted the age ranges there. It was the men’s wing. Some of these men, she noted, looked as old as 90.

  Tom started making small talk about the place with Sue.

  Olivia counted the doors. Eight doors, eight rooms. She recalled from her research for the editorial that each room was occupied by two men. In two of the rooms they passed she had seen only one in each. One of the men waved at her with scrawny fingers. He had a big head, bearded face. He looked like a lion.

  Up ahead, the hallway broke left. There was a man in a wheelchair all by himself. He wore brown khaki shorts and a Miami Beach shirt. Something about the way he avoided Olivia’s eyes caught her attention. He was bald, with big red ears and deep-set eyes the color of piss. He was reading a book.

  Sue stopped at the door.

  “And here we are.” She glanced at Olivia. “Have you been drinking, lady?”

  Olivia almost told her to mind her fucking business.

  “Last time you was here, you was dressed better. Now you look like one of them hobos sitting around the bandstand out on Dallas Mall,” Sue scoffed.

  Keys dangled, locks clicked, and the black woman pushed the door open into a dark room. Tom and Olivia walked in.

  Sue flicked a switch and as she shut the door said, “The police made copies of the tape. I hope they catch the asshole soon. But in here we keep all the originals.”

  The room was a regular-sized one. Two shelves on the wall contained case files. A third one and more spacious was on the far side of the wall. There were tapes on it. Each one was labeled: day, month, and year. Then a serial number that Olivia figured only Sue probably understood.

  Sue picked the tape from last night and put it in the slot of the VCR. Tom pulled a chair out for Olivia to sit in.

  The door opened, Sue was there. “I’m gonna let you two do your thing.”

  Olivia’s eyes were glued to the screen.

  —

  They were back outside the door five minutes later.

  “Nothing there, Tom.”

  The sheriff said he knew. “It was a professional job. And that’s what worries me.”

  “Yeah.”

  Olivia looked up and down the hall. The old man who was in a wheelchair had moved away. Her eyes screwed in deep thought.

  The intruder from last night had made sure his face was bowed all the time. And he walked like a robot. His stride would be difficult to match. It was indeed a professional job.

  Which begged a lot of questions.

  She looked at Tom. “Why would anyone want to murder an old man in Baker Home, and also have a professional do it?”

  “The boys are still running a match as we speak.”

  “They are not gonna find anything, Tom.”

  “It's worth a try, though.”

  Olivia looked across the hall again. She got her bottle out and sipped. She caught the pain in the sheriff’s eyes again. She sighed. It was like a hole inside her. A gaping chasm that never filled, but kept demanding more.

  How could she explain how much she wanted to quit drinking to Tom?

  “There was a man…”

  Olivia started off the way they had come.

  “What man?” Tom hurried after her.

  “The man in a wheelchair, he was here.”

  4

  Sue stopped Olivia and Tom Garcia in the lobby. She was carrying a huge collection of files in her underarm. She gave Olivia the rundown again.

  “I hope you found something new—” she started saying.

  “Did Harald have friends here?” Olivia asked.

  Sue looked at Tom before answering. Tom was getting tired of having to give her permission to speak all the time so he said, “Sue, we are both trying to catch Harald's killer. Just tell Olivia whatever she wants to know.”

  She frowned. “These old people don’t exactly have favorites among themselves. Any one of them could as soon latch on to you for asking about the weather. You know, that sort of way.”

  Olivia stared at the woman for a long time.

  Sue was about to glance at Tom again but she went on. “Harald Kruger was a recluse. He didn’t make friends well.”

  “He wasn’t one to latch on to a stranger, then how about a neighbor?” Olivia prodded.

  “Then you’d wanna talk to Stitch.”

  “Stitch who?” asked Tom Garcia.

  Sue started walking again, making an effort to gesture with her hands, and hold on to her files. They followed her.

  She walked out the door and took a sidewalk that went ahead and around the corner of the building. From here they got a full view of the woods. Olivia noted how dark it was in there even in the day. Anyone could be watching from there now.

  “They call him Stitch on account of his injuries,” Sue was waddling ahead and saying. “He served in Nam, I been told. Got an early discharge when he stepped on a mine that miraculously didn’t take off his legs. But he sure got the most amount of cuts I’d seen on a being.”

  They went through a large entrance without a door. It led to a large hall like a mess. Olivia and Tom were presented with old age in almost all its guise.

  Olivia quickly scanned the place for the man in a wheelchair but half of the population here was sorted in one.

  Sue pointed at a corner of the hall. There was a thin man licking ice cream and staring at a 50-inch TV on the wall. A baseball game was on.

  Olivia didn’t care much about baseball. She wasn’t sure Tom was into it either. There was a rumble in the room as someone made a home run.

  Olivia said to Sue, “Thank you, Sue. We’ll take it from here.”

  Sue glanced at the men in the hall once and left.

  —

  “Huh?”

  The man they called Stitch hovered between 70 or 75. His open face was covered in liver spots and his mouth was open even before Olivia began questioning him.

  “I ain’t done nothing.” His voice rang with a Texas twang.

  Olivia chuckled. She crouched beside Stitch. Tom wandered off.

  “Easy pops, I just want to ask you about another friend,” she said mildly. “Your friend Harald Kruger was knifed in his room last night, you heard about it?”

  Stitch's face remained cool, his eyes held the little light in it with such tenacity Olivia thought they might go out if she took the ice cream cone away.

  Stitch had fine, curly brown hair, a well-trimmed beard, and he smelled nice enough. Olivia counted six stitches on his forehead alone. He must have dabbed aftershave on himself, thought Olivia.

  “Harald had no friends. He loved it by his own lonesome,” Stitch said.

  “Go on, pops.”

  “Sue says Harald was your friend.”

  “Sue knows nothing about anything but nail files. That woman could file your sins away, I swear to Jesus.”

  “That’s her vice, right. Each man to his own.”

  “What’s your vice, ma’am?” Stitch gazed into her eyes. Olivia realized, too late, that her breath may have given her away.

  “Was Harald afraid of anything? Did he talk about family?”

  “We are all the family he got.”

  “And yet he had no friends?”

  Stitch's blue eyes faltered. Tom was weaving his way back through the old men. There was another uproar. On the TV, a player slid through a cloud of dust.

  Stitch glanced at Tom.

  He pointed his cone. “I know you. You the sheriff, right?”

  “Yes that’s me, papa.”

  Olivia Rose from her crouch. She checked out the place again for that man in khakis and his book. She mentioned it to Tom. “Brown khaki shorts, he was in a wheelchair, reading.”

  Tom spread his hands at the place. “Well, half the old people here hav
e books open on their laps. I even saw a couple of comic books, Archie and Tintin.”

  Olivia cursed under her breath and fingered the outline of her bottle in her jacket.

  “Brown khakis?”

  Olivia and Tom turned to face Stitch.

  “Yes,” she said, stepping back to a crouch, her face inches from Stitch's own.

  “Oh I know that one, weird but nice guy, those military types who still think they’re out there in Afghanistan or someplace where they’d done a lot of killing. He’s been here as long as anyone, long as Harald himself,” Stitch piped.

  Pink tongue snaked out of his mouth and licked cream.

  “Where can we find him?”

  “He’s out by the woods this time of day,” said Stitch. “Kowalski, that’s his name. Eddie Kowalski.”

  5

  They rounded the corner of the hall where they left Stitch and the other seniors. Better not have to answer curious questions from Sue again, thought Olivia.

  The walkway was a short winding one that went up a small hill behind the main building of Baker Home. It had shaped into a bright day already, a good one for exercise. But Olivia was already gasping before they reached the top.

  Tom wasn’t doing well himself.

  “We both need lifestyle changes, Tom,” she puffed, eyes peeled for Kowalski.

  “You, more than me, love.”

  Olivia chuckled. She missed this. And she craved a drink badly. Between Tom’s contempt and the Jack Daniels in her pocket, she chose the former.

  “There’s Kowalski.”

  Tom gestured at a man in a wheelchair, seated by the stump of a tree. His back was turned to them, his face raised up as though he contemplated something in the trees. Vehicles sped by on the highway nearby. An occasional honk caused birds in the street to scatter in the air.

  The chair had stainless steel handles and wheels like the ones on bicycles. His legs were crossed in front of him. The book on his thin lap was Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.

  “Hello, Mr. Kowalski?”

  Tom stood in front of the man. His steely brown eyes left the trees and found Tom’s own.

  “Who’re you?” he asked in an incongruous, soft voice.