The Big Kahuna (Fox and O'Hare #6)(50)

“Wait. Anderson Baker, who owns the bowling alley?”

“Yes.”

I turned to my mother, who sat slumped in her chair with her hand over her mouth. When she drew her breath again, she spoke at a clipped pace, her voice full of frustration at her pronunciation, which always got worse when she became emotional. “That man was always trying to start trouble. He said our customers took up all the parking spots and he didn’t have any spaces left for his business. My husband bought the special signs, you know, with the name on them…”

“Custom parking signs,” I offered.

“Right. But the tourists coming from Joshua Tree, they don’t pay attention. They just park wherever they can. So Baker was angry.”

I knew about the trouble with Baker only in the broadest of terms. One of the things I had been relieved about when I left home at eighteen was that I didn’t need to hear about the family business—no more talk of shift schedules, food orders, late deliveries, trash pickup, or sewer-line repairs. When I spoke on the phone with my father, I didn’t ask him about his restaurant, and if he mentioned it, it was usually in connection with some new idea he wanted to try, like these custom parking signs. The lot had twenty-three spaces, thirteen of which belonged to the Pantry and ten to Desert Bowling Arcade. The custom signs were meant to clear up any ambiguity about space, but obviously that hadn’t worked. I turned to Coleman. “What my mom is trying to say is, this is premeditated.”

“I understand what she’s saying,” Coleman said levelly. She opened the manila file folder on the table. “In his affidavit, Mr. Baker states that it was very dark out that night and there is no signal light at the intersection of Highway 62 and Chemehuevi Way. He said he didn’t know it was your father he’d hit until he read about it in the newspaper.”

“Who did he think he hit?”

“A coyote.”

“So he left my father out to die?” I asked. “If it was just an accident,” I said, my voice rising, “then why didn’t he turn himself in right away? Why did he wait until you found him?”

“He said he was worried about losing his license. He lives all the way out in Landers and he needs his car to get to his place of business.”

“That’s a load of bullshit.” I couldn’t tell if Coleman believed Baker’s lies; she gave no verbal hint of her views, and her face retained the careful composure of an experienced investigator. After a moment, I asked, “What are you charging him with?”

“The D.A. makes that decision.”

“Okay. But what are the charges?”

“Felony hit-and-run.”

“That’s it? He killed my dad.” The words came out in a helpless croak. It seemed to me as if the past I had left behind years ago had suddenly come crowding up against me and might choke me if I wasn’t careful. “Do you know,” I said, “I went to high school with Baker’s son, Anderson Junior. A.J., everyone called him. Nasty kid. One time he wrote raghead on my locker.”

My mother turned to me. “When?”

“Sophomore year.”

“You never told me.”

“What would you have done if I had told you?”

Across the table Coleman shifted in her seat. With her thumbnail, she scratched at the scar on her eyebrow. It was an old wound, but the skin still looked pink in places. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice completely different now, “but what happened to you in high school is probably not relevant to this hit-and-run case.”

“What is relevant? The fact that Baker was fighting with my dad?”

“How long has this dispute been going on?” Coleman asked.

I waited for my mother to answer. The truth was, there hadn’t always been a dispute, or whatever it was Coleman wanted to call it. There was a time when we got along. In 2002, when my father had just bought the Pantry, I had gone into the bowling alley with him to meet Anderson Baker. It was just a little after dusk, but already half of the lanes were taken and it seemed they were getting ready for a busy night. Baker was talking to the cash-register clerk, but he turned around when we came in and smiled and shook hands with my father. He had been cordial, then. Distant, but cordial. There had been some talk early on about having food orders delivered to the arcade, but that had never led anywhere and the two businesses kept to themselves. All that changed a few years later.

“Since we expanded the restaurant,” my mother said quietly.

“What happened was,” I said, “a writer for Los Angeles Magazine came out here to do a feature about Joshua Tree, and she included the Pantry in her write-up. The article had a picture of my dad pouring coffee for a customer, and the restaurant quickly got popular with tourists. My dad ended up buying the little dry cleaner’s shop next door, and he got the three parking spaces that came with it, too. I guess that’s when the trouble with Baker started. Right, Mom? When he expanded.”

“All right,” Coleman said, “I will look into it. But I should also mention that Mr. Baker made no attempt to fix the dent on his car, which is consistent with his contention that it was just an accident.”

“It was no accident. You heard what my mom said.”

“I will look into it,” Coleman said again, closing her file folder.

“Did any witnesses come forward?”