The Rita Farmer Mystery series Box Set by Elizabeth Sims

Author:Elizabeth Sims [Sims, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Spruce Park Press
Published: 2019-07-23T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20 – Inside the House in Bakersfield

I felt slightly forsaken by George when he went out of town on whatever other case he was working on. “The bad guys,” I whined on the phone, “right here in L.A. are trying to annihilate you. Us. Why do you have to go?”

“Besides that it’s business, I’ve committed to this particular client, and he’s paying me? I’m starting to tunnel on this Vargas-Cubitt situation. I’ll get a message to the Whale, but before I do, I want to be away from it for a day or two. You said you wanted to do more. Well, I’ve got an assignment for you, and I think you can guess what it is.”

“Bakersfield.”

“I think it’s safe enough for you to stick your head in there, so long as you’re cautious. Don’t reveal yourself, you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes. And then I’m going to poke around the ABC Mission again, because I’ve just got to learn—”

“Rita, no. Don’t go near there without me.”

“But—”

“I’m asking you. Please.”

“But—”

“Look, isn’t Bakersfield enough for now? See how it goes. But promise me—just for now!—you won’t go to the mission.”

“Well, OK.”

He’d gotten on his red-eye going “somewhere in North America”—so discreet!—and the next morning, Wednesday, I drove up to Bakersfield.

I passed the exit to the farmhouse and went on into town. I found the main senior citizens’ rec center and picked up a bunch of literature, including the business card of the activities director.

Then I asked directions to a pharmacy, where I bought a jar of Digest-All, a bottle of Vitamax Silver, a pair of support hose (medium), a seven-day plastic pillbox, a tube of hand cream, a tube of face cream, a thing of gel sanitizer, a bar of olive oil soap, a packet of rose hip tea, and a mug with a picture of a barefoot farm boy asleep on a haystack. All for only $18.78.

At the open trunk of my car I arranged the stuff in a wicker basket I’d been using for bathroom towels. I tied a yellow grosgrain bow on it and headed out to the farmhouse. It was eleven o’clock.

Typical dog-day weather in the San Joaquin Valley: ovenlike heat. The land lay flat as if the sun had hammered it that way. The tumbleweeds blew, and the long irrigation channels flowed siltily.

In the distance the worn gray house, a couple of hundred feet back from the road, stuck up from its weedy patch like a tombstone. My pulse quickened at once again taking a matter into my own hands. I pulled all the way up to the house.

The whole way there, the whole morning, the weight of this errand had grown. It’s one thing to imagine yourself walking into what might turn out to be a scorpion jar, and another to actually do it.

But long before all this began, I’d gone hunting for a dark place inside myself. I’d found it, used it, and now I knew where it was. As an actress, I had a leg up when it came to pretending not to be afraid.

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