“I had the feeling that everyone just wished the Vonns would move on,” said Stoltz. “Like bad weather. But they stayed.”

Stoltz said he saw Janelle again in the fall of sixty-five. She was sixteen by then. She was in a coffee shop with some older girlfriends. They were all loud and giggly and unkempt and obviously drunk or high. Manager came over to throw them out and Stoltz took him aside, then got the girls to straighten up so there wouldn’t be a scene. He told Janelle to call him if there was anything she needed. Next day she did. Said she needed a place to stay. Said some people were after her. Roger checked with Marie and they offered Janelle the Newport apartment on Balboa Island. It was a summer rental for them and would have been empty most of that month anyway. They helped her move some things in. She’d just gotten her license and had a very old Dodge that smoked bad and smelled like wet dogs inside. Loaned her their Mercury, helped her sell off the Dodge. Got a hundred fifty for it. Paid for some dental work for Janelle. Bought her some clothes she needed and some books and records she might like.

“Marie and I weren’t able to have children,” said Stoltz. “So Marie and I got attached to Janelle very easily. Surrogate daughter to us. Marie was a country girl, always taking in strays. Big heart. Janelle was, well, pretty stray.”

Marie helped her furnish the apartment. Talked to her about things. They had her over for dinners. Goofed off together on the weekends sometimes, all three of them. They put Janelle to work part-time at RoMar-clerical. She was smart and competent.

Stoltz said that Janelle didn’t like the apartment in Newport Beach. It was supposed to be temporary and she was soon back sleeping in the homes of her girlfriends. Drinking and using pills. Lost touch with her a little.

A month later David called him to say that he was trying to help her. Janelle had spoken highly of Marie and Roger. Would they be willing to encourage her to stop her drinking and pill taking and move in with friends of his-Linda and Howard Langton? Langton was a teacher and Christian and a fine man. Linda a good mother and very principled. Janelle moved in with them in December. Stayed until March. Then she began to split her time between the Newport apartment again and the Vonn place in Tustin.

“During those months, from December through March, that was when the community stepped up to help Janelle,” said Stoltz. “Andy’s article actually started it. She went to David’s church, got involved with the youth group, did those Mexico things. Not too long after, she got interested in the Miss Tustin contest.”

Nick watched Stoltz pick up his pencil, tap the eraser on the desktop.

“With all respect, Congressman, were you sleeping with her?”

Stoltz colored deeply and shook his head. “Jeez. With all respect back, Nick, no.”

“There was some speculation that she was your lover.”

“On whose part?”

“Jesse Black’s.”

An injured gentleness settled into Roger Stoltz’s eyes. “That’s too bad. It says something about human nature.”

“Why would Black believe that?”

“I don’t know. He’s a promiscuous and wasteful young man. Maybe he assumes the worst in people.”

“I’ve read Janelle’s letters to Lynette. Janelle told her sister that she never went to bed with you.”

Stoltz looked up with a slight smile. “Now I know I’m telling the truth.”

“Did you know she died pregnant?”

“I did not know that.”

Stoltz looked out the window, then back to Nick. “I can’t say I’m surprised. She told me about more than one lover. And she spoke of them in a careless way. She was very open to sexual encounters with men. Very open to alcohol for a time. Then pills. Then marijuana. Finally to LSD. They all seem to go together, the sex and the drugs and the music.”

“It’s nineteen sixty-eight.”

“She deserved better, Nick. That’s all I’ll say in terms of judgment.”

“Who were the lovers?” asked Nick.

“Black, the singer. Jonas Dessinger at the Journal. And of course the man who almost killed you, Cory Bonnett. There may have been others. It wasn’t a subject I pursued with much interest.”

“Why?”

Stoltz’s glance cut. “Because I hated to think of those losers fucking over a girl that young and damaged.”

Nick nodded. “Well said.”

A zip of pain issued from low and deep inside. He remembered his face against the warm window of Cory Bonnett’s car down in Baja, thoughts about Katy pouring out of his imagination while his blood seeped onto the seat. He looked out the window to the Stoltz backyard garden.

“But she never told you she was pregnant?”

“She did not.”

“Is that an orange tree I see out there?”

Stoltz didn’t turn to look through the blinds into his sun-blasted backyard. “Yes. A navel. Why?”

“I’m wondering how you prune it.”

“With a pruning saw. This sounds like a line of trick questioning, Nick.”

“That’s what was used on Janelle’s head.”

Stoltz offered Nick a look of disappointment without surprise. Held Nick’s gaze with his own but said nothing.

“Did you buy one recently, a pruning saw?”

Stoltz nodded. “Yes. Sears, up by Knott’s. Would have been…” He flipped backward through a desk calendar. Nick listened to the pages slap.

“Sunday, September twenty-nine. I’ll show it to you if you want.”

“I’d like to see it.”

Nick felt another stab of pain when he pushed off the chair with both arms and came face-to-face with Stoltz.

“It’s out in the potting shed, Nick.”

They walked to the living room, then out a sliding glass door. The brightness hit Nick hard. The breeze was warmer and stronger now. The backyard was big and surrounded by a six-foot grape stake fence long weathered to silver gray. There were raised beds for roses and flowers and a network of brick walkways. The navel tree was bright with fruit. So were a lemon, tangerine, and lime. The breeze shifted the leaves one way and then the other in a slow cadence. The potting shed was a rustic wood structure with a sun-faded fiberglass roof. The door was closed and latched but not locked.

“Marie does most of the gardening,” said Stoltz. “I help with the heavy stuff. We have a gardener once a week for weeds.”

Stoltz pulled the latch away and swung open the wooden door. Held the door for Nick, let the breeze slap it all the way open behind them. Sun on fiberglass. Heat and light. Potting tables and the stacks of empty plastic pots, the watering cans hung on nails in the wall along with the trowels and hand rakes and weed stabbers.

“This was where I discovered the cleaning properties of fermenting citrus juice,” said Stoltz. “I mixed my first few quarts of Orange Sunshine right here. First batch was an accident. I spilled it, wiped it up, and the wood floor came clean.”

Stoltz pointed out the Trim-Quick. Hanging between an old Rain Bird hose sprinkler and a pair of loppers. Blade folded shut.

“May I?”

“Whatever you need, Nick.”

Nick took it down. Noted the fresh shellac on the wooden handle. Unfolded the blade. Shiny and the bevels of the cutting edges still precise.

“Used once,” said Stoltz. “On the acacia tree out front, not on a woman’s neck.”

“The Sears clerk was just trying to help.”

“I understand,” said Stoltz.

“I am, too.”

“I understand that also. I wonder where Bonnett got his saw.”

“We’re working on that,” said Nick. The heat was suddenly suffocating.

“The Santa Anas are kicking up again,” said Stoltz. “More lemonade?”

“No thanks. I’ll leave you to your Friday.”

“You okay, Nick?”

“I still feel like I have other people’s blood in me.”

“Let’s get back in where it’s cool.”

LATE THAT AFTERNOON the children took naps. Nick and Katy locked their bedroom door. Lay on top of their bedsheets and let the warm wind waft through the curtains and onto their skin. Nick rolled onto his side and ran his hand over the smooth capacious flank of his wife. She fondled him lightly for a while and they said nothing.