Wildcat Play by Helen Knode

Author:Helen Knode
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Gerry was holding my ignition key, and between customers he told me the latest news. Hilary and Caroline Mahin had just publicly disowned Suzette, and Suzette had been spotted that evening hanging around her parents’ house. Gerry also got me the unlisted number for Mike Garcia—Manuel Garcia the Second, Jean’s oldest son, a hotshot lawyer in Bakersfield. It was time to try Mike, I’d decided.

The Mahins lived in the same neighborhood as Jean, only a few blocks away. Typically the best neighborhoods had names ending with Hills or Heights or some species of tree. But there were no native trees or high ground in Wilson and this was just called the southwest part of town. Nothing about Wilson was fancy or pretty, either, and people with money didn’t blow it on pretentious housing. The Mahin homestead was a large, plain ranch with a landscaped lawn surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. Lights were on outside and in-, but as I cruised by, I couldn’t see any action.

It was impossible to hide in that flat, open setting. I just blessed the anonymity of a white truck and parked in a less-lit patch between two houses down the way.

Keeping one eye on the street, I grabbed my phone.

I located a Donald A. Mancuso in Palm Springs that cross-checked with a Donald A. Mancuso in Balboa Beach. The desert place didn’t answer but down the coast I spoke to a snooty secretary with a British accent who wouldn’t tell me where Mrs. Mancuso was or when she might be due. I told him it was urgent and concerned her son. The secretary asked which son, so I said. I left my name and number, told the secretary to tell Mrs. Mancuso I was friends with Joe Balch, and stressed again it was urgent.

One end of the Mahin house went dark. Somebody had turned off the driveway lights.

Squinting at Gerry’s scribbled number, I dialed Mike Garcia. I hadn’t seen Mike in a few years but I knew his voice the minute he answered.

I said without preamble, “Want to take me to the diner for a Coke?”

Mike started laughing. He looked and sounded exactly like his father and was the same kind of good man. I had a major crush on him when I was in high school and he was in law school, and that was a line I’d used as a teenage femme fatale. It became a joke between us.

“Ann Whitehead—what a pleasure! I heard you were living with Joe. Mom says you’re roughnecking on the wildcat.”

“Wuffnecking, actually, and it’s a blast. Do you have time for a top-secret and confidential talk, Mike?”

“For you I do. Let me close this door—wait.”

He put the phone down and I scoped the street and the Mahin house another time.

He came back on the line. “Go ahead.”

“I didn’t know you were practically raised with the late, unlamented Ray Parkerworth Junior. Your aunt Cathy told me Celeste Parkerworth dumped the baby on Luz and Joe, but he was trouble by the time he could ride a tricycle.

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