A View to Die For

Chapter 6

The next block provided a diversion. “Just look at this, Fred.” John paused at a storefront where a discreet hanging sign announced Photography by Yoshimoto. “My granddaughter Alexia’s—Lexi’s—studio.” He beamed, his smile illuminated by the soft lighting in the window full of framed photographs. “The delight of our lives, to have Lexi living here on the island.”

In one of the pictures, a bride and groom posed in front of the Casino. In another, bride and bridesmaids, cheek to cheek in a circle shot from above, formed a bouquet of faces in a close-up whose background was the Wrigley Botanical Garden. In a third, another wedding party stood in silhouette on a high ridge against the intense blue of a clear sky. To one side of the display hung a scenic shot of waves breaking against rocky island cliffs turned molten gold in dawn light. Opposite it hung a stunning portrait of island caterer Andrea Benet with a tray of exquisite fruit tarts.

“Beautiful work,” Fred said. “That tray of desserts looks pretty good too.”

“That’s our friend Andrea.” John smiled proudly. “She came to the island ten or twelve years ago and invested with a friend of hers who ran a little catering shop. After just a couple of months, the friend decamped and left Andrea high and dry with the business. And the bills. She barely knew anyone here, but she was a worker. She got the business going all on her own.”

In fact, John and Celestina had taken to the tall, intense young woman and lent a hand and a bit of capital to help her salvage the faltering enterprise. “Oh, we introduced her to a couple good suppliers we knew, a cheese importer and a little network of family farms,” John said. “Now she’s the go-to caterer, and she has a beautiful gourmet shop, just moved to the front street. She’s got the best location, right on Crescent where everybody’s walking by. Does a nice latte in there too, if you ever get tired of the coffee at Chuck’s.” Andrea’s catering company, Insula, had thrived, and her gourmet shop, La Cucina, drew well-heeled tourists to its imported pastas and cheeses, California organic olive oils and tapenades, and upscale corkscrews, whisks, zesters and other gadgets.

“Andrea’s like family,” John continued. “And four years ago, when our granddaughter moved out here, Andrea took Lexi under her wing. She introduced her to some other business owners who hired her to do publicity shots, and when Andrea got booked to cater weddings, she recommended Lexi for the wedding photography. So our little Lexi is doing very well.”

“She’s good,” Fred said, nodding at the display. “You must be proud of her.”

John nodded. “She finished school in Santa Barbara, then paid her own way to get her Master of Fine Arts at the Art Institute in Chicago. She’d like to do fine-art photography but weddings are building her reputation right now—and her bank account.” He grinned.

“She grow up here on the island?”

“Nope. Her mom—our daughter Sofia—hated our trips out here when the kids were growing up. Our boys would head for the boat at the drop of a hat, but poor Sofie got seasick. And once we’d get here, she’d be miserable the whole time, dreading the trip back.

“But the funny thing,” he mused, as much to himself as to his companion, “is that she loved the family business. She had to divide her summers between working in our markets on the mainland and coming to our place on the island, and she was mostly in the markets. And happy to be there. The boys hated the business. They hated hauling produce, they hated stocking shelves, they hated waiting on customers. Even as a youngster, Sofie hung out in the markets and couldn’t wait to be old enough to work in them. By then we’d morphed into more specialty markets than grocery stores. She got her degree in business and has been with the chain ever since college. When we opened the first deli, it was Sofie that came up with the name Zorba’s.”

“Oh, my gosh. So that’s why people call you Zorba. I thought it was just ‘cause you were Greek.”

“That, too.”

“Oh, man, there’s a lot of those places. I used to go to one in Lancaster. So that was yours! Great gyros, I remember. And what do you call that marinated lamb on skewers?”

“Souvlakia.”

Souvlakia“That. Yeah. Great stuff. No wonder all those meals you and Celestina brought over for Evvie and me were so good.”

“Stina loves to cook,” John said.

“I hope you know how much we appreciated that. We were still so new here when Evvie got sick, and you treated us as if we’d been neighbors for years.”

“Neighbors are neighbors. We were just sorry we didn’t have time to get to know Evvie better. She was a brave lady.”

Fred nodded. They walked in companionable silence for a moment. Then he returned to the earlier subject. “So now your daughter runs the whole Zorba’s chain?”

“Sofie and her husband. He’s been the force that grew it, actually.”

“How come there’s not a Zorba’s out here? Is there a rule against franchises?”

“Actually, Terry—my son-in-law—and I ran the numbers on one. Wouldn’t fly. Not enough people year-round, too small a niche.”

“Darn. Would have been nice.”

“Yep. Greek delis run by a Nisei named Teruo Yoshimoto.” John chuckled. “And Lexi’s their daughter. Lucky they got to the point they could come to the island by helicopter, or we wouldn’t have seen much of Sofie. Now Lexi, she loves the boats, loves the island, always has. It’s wonderful to have her here.”

They were just turning away from the window when a young man sauntered up. “Great photos, huh?” the slight, dark- haired youngster observed.

“Hello, Rhys. Just now getting off duty?” John greeted him.

“Yeah. Bunch of petty stuff, bunch of dumb reports to write.” The slender young detective looked inquiringly at Fred. “I haven’t met you,” he said, extending his hand. “Rhys MacFarlane.”

“Fred Paige. Glad to meet you, Mr. MacFarlane.” They shook hands.

“Officer MacFarlane. Detective MacFarlane,” John interposed.

“Just Rhys will do fine. Since you’re a friend of Zorba’s.”

“So congratulations are in order,” John said, clapping Rhys on the shoulder. “Rhys here,” he added, turning to John, “just got his promotion to detective.” And to Rhys, he said, “Fred’s our neighbor. Moved here last fall.”

“Well, if you’ve been here that long and I haven’t met you, that’s a good thing, I guess,” Rhys said with a laugh that he choked off abruptly. “Oh, wait. Didn’t I see an obituary? Your wife?” Fred nodded. “I’m so sorry,” the officer added.

“Yes. Well.” Fred looked awkward. “I haven’t been out much. Until this last little while.” He smiled. “I’ll try to stay out of trouble.”

“And I’ll try to keep my foot out of my mouth, but I doubt I’ll have much luck. It’s nice to meet you, Fred. G’night, John.” Followed by the sounds of their echoed “Good night,” Detective MacFarlane ambled off down a side street.

“Nice youngster,” John said to Fred. “Friend of Lexi’s. Might be a little more than a friend, I’m thinking. Trouble with a half-Japanese granddaughter, you know? Inscrutable.”

“Ah, kids these days. They don’t commit themselves.” They proceeded along, now and again meeting friends of John’s who were introduced to Fred. “You know everyone,” Fred commented.

“A place this small, it’s family,” John told him.

“You love it, don’t you?”

“I do. It’s usually so peaceful, so removed from everything. It doesn’t feel that way now, though. And when something is worrying people, that worries me, too. Something, my friend, is not quite right.”

“What do you mean?”

“People are worrying. Edgar is; I’ve never seen him tightened up like that. Our friend Andrea was, too, when I saw her this morning. There is something—a tension in the air. Don’t you feel it?”

“Perhaps I’m too new here,” Fred said. “But now that you mention it, Mr. Ruiz seemed pretty uptight, especially when I mentioned that Mount Ada project.”

“Exactly.” John put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “And perhaps I am an old man with too much time and too much imagination,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

Their walk quickly brought them to the Katsaros house, a white-stuccoed two-story home. Like the other houses on Descanso Avenue, it had originally been one of the tourist cottages William Wrigley had built after he acquired the Catalina Island Company, and the island itself, in 1919. Like most of the others, it had been expanded, then rebuilt. John indicated a pair of chairs in the tiny side garden. “Want a sit and a cup of decaf?” he asked, knowing Fred dreaded going back to an empty house.

“Thanks.”

When John emerged from the house with two steaming mugs of coffee, Fred was prowling the little patio illuminated by lanterns in the trellis overhead, looking at the tiles that bordered it. “These look like the real thing,” he said.

“Oh, yeah. At one point my grandfather did some work for the tile factory that Wrigley had down on Pebbly Beach. He got seconds for next to nothing, still had a couple of boxes of them in the house when he died. I used some of those when I built the patio here.”

“Wow,” Fred said, looking up at the bougainvillea-covered trellis. “This is really beautiful.”

“Thanks.” John smiled. “I love bougainvillea. You know, I used to think it was native to California. But it’s not. Explorers found it in Brazil and Peru. Now it’s everywhere. About ten years back, Stina and I visited Zakynthos, the island where my grandfather had lived. We stayed at a little hotel on a hillside that was covered with it.”

“Tell me about your grandfather.”

Nothing could have pleased John more. “His name was Pero Katsaros. He came to California in 1899. There was a huge exodus from Eastern Europe at the turn of the century. At first he worked on a railroad crew. It was probably there that he met a couple of other young men from the Peloponnesus who introduced him to Catalina.”

“Peloponnesus.” Fred chewed on the word. “That’s a part of Greece, right?”

“The southern peninsula of Greece,” John explained. “And you know, when we got there we could see why he felt at home here. Los Angeles County is a lot like the mainland he had known growing up, those few times he went there. He grew up on an island off the coast, a small fishing village. It was a place that had gotten poorer and more isolated over the years. So he managed to get passage to America. And then war broke out in 1912, and he’d made just enough to get back home again.”

“That was the war in the Balkans?”

“You know your history.” John smiled. “It was the end of the Ottoman Empire. So many of the Greeks who came here went back there to fight. When Pero came back to California, he brought a wife, Iola, and a child.”

“They had a baby? That was fast.”

“No. Peter was four. Iola was a widow. Her husband was a friend of Pero’s from the village where they were born. In fact, they fought together, and Pero was with him when he took a bullet and died. Promised him he’d take care of Iola and the boy.” He put his coffee cup down. “Pero adopted her son. That was my Dad, Peter. He adored his new father; that part of things went well. But Iola wasn’t impressed with the shack my pappoús—my grandfather—lived in. That fall, there was a bad fire, and his place burned up, along with about half of Avalon. She persuaded him to move to the mainland and even found herself a job in a laundry run by a Greek family. Pero drove truck for them that winter. But he couldn’t settle into city life.”

pappoús“They moved back here?”

John shook his head. “No. Iola wanted good schools for my dad, and she liked being in touch with other people from Greece. So she stayed in Long Beach, and my pappoús built another cabin here, and they lived apart for most of the year. My dad spent his summers on the island with him. She’d come too, for a while, but she was sick. She didn’t tell anyone, not until she couldn’t hide how she was coughing blood. Then they both—my dad and his father—blamed themselves for not staying with her.”

pappoús“Oh.” Fred’s voice reflected his own sorrow. “But there’s no telling, really, when it comes to blame, is there?”

“No, my friend. There is not.”