Page 23 of A Map to Paradise

22

Eva awoke Christmas morning to a cloudless sky. An accompanying summerlike breeze seemed eager to convey a message, so intent was it to fit through the two-inch opening she’d left at her bedroom window.

She sat up in bed and listened to the wind’s subtle chant. Wake up, Eva, it seemed to say. Change is coming.

Eva had heard this California wind before, many times since she’d come to the States. It even had a name. Santa Ana. The first time she’d experienced it was five months after arriving. She had settled into a different rented room, that first one being in the home of an older couple, the Talbots, who attended the Los Angeles parish that sponsored her immigration. She’d already started her job at Marvelous Maids and was taking the bus each day from La Brea to upscale neighborhoods like Bel Air, Westwood, and Beverly Hills where the well-to-do lived.

She’d awakened on that day in early autumn, not late December, but hearing the same persistent wind. It had been tugging at the Talbots’ backyard furniture and scooting it around their small patio as if determined to rearrange the seating options. As the day had worn on, the wind had transformed into a super-heated gale as angry as a swarm of agitated hornets. It had snapped a power line in Topanga Canyon and fanned into flame a resulting wildfire that burned a thousand acres of brush before being extinguished.

“It’s a Santa Ana wind,” Mrs. Talbot had told her that first time. “It blows in from the desert. They come every year. You’ll get used to them.”

“This wind has a name?” Eva had asked, incredulous.

Mrs. Talbot laughed. “In Poland you have no winds with names?”

Eva had shaken her head. She didn’t think there was such a phenomenon in Poland, but then how would she know?

“A Santa Ana can wreak havoc on your sinuses because it’s so very dry, but don’t worry, Eva,” Mrs. Talbot said, saying Eva’s name as Eh-va , an ongoing mistake Eva had simply stopped trying to correct. “A Santa Ana doesn’t last but a few days usually. It comes and then it goes.”

Eva had moved into the rented room at Yvonne’s a year later, when her sponsorship had been considered complete. She’d continued working for Marvelous Maids, measuring the progress of time by those winds that came without warning every fall and seemed to disappear by April.

This Santa Ana nudging her awake seemed particularly timely. Everything was about to change. The day before, Eva had given notice at Marvelous Maids “to pursue other career goals,” June had coached her to say. Marvelous Maids had promptly contacted Melanie Cole to inquire if Eva Kruse had failed to meet her expectations and if she would like them to provide a new housekeeper. Melanie had declined, telling them she’d be contacting Mr. Edwards herself to let him know she no longer needed a maid service. She also told them Eva Kruse had been an excellent housekeeper, which Eva had been grateful to hear, especially since she felt she was owed nothing from Melanie except her indignation. She couldn’t help wishing she had quit working for Melanie the minute she learned she was on that blacklist. While Melanie had initially thought the same, her anger had softened over the last three days.

June had told them both if there was something to come on its own from Eva’s working for Melanie, perhaps it would’ve happened already. Eva was not sure that was true. She didn’t think Melanie thought that was true, either.

But it was done now. She’d quit, severed the employment tie, and would not be seen going in and out of Melanie’s house on a regular basis any longer.

June believed Eva’s typing skills were nearly on par with her own. She just needed a few more weeks of dedicated practice, which she’d be able to give herself over to now that she wasn’t working with Marvelous Maids. June was planning to telephone her studio contacts right after the first of the year. She was confident a job would be found for Eva in the typing pool, if not in one of the Warner Brothers’ many offices.

And in the meantime, June had offered Eva Elwood’s bedroom until Melanie and Nicky needed it, and until she got a new job and could find a place of her own closer to the studio; a kindness to perhaps guarantee Eva’s compliance as she had brokered Melanie’s, though June didn’t need to do that. Eva was ready to tell anyone who asked that Elwood Blankenship hadn’t seemed suicidal. She was even ready to say she’d spoken with him, albeit only for a moment, while she’d been assisting June. It was a lie, but what was one more compared to all the others she’d told in her lifetime?

Eva rose from her bed and surveyed the room that would soon no longer be hers. The furniture was Yvonne’s—Eva had rented the room from her furnished—and in the four years she’d lived in America, Eva hadn’t acquired much in the way of belongings. Most of what she owned was now ready to be boxed up and moved to June’s on New Year’s Eve, the day her rental agreement would be up.

She was grateful for June’s offer to let her stay with her a little while. That generosity only strengthened her desire to figure out a way to help June out with what lay beneath the rosebushes. The longer she contemplated how to move the body elsewhere, the harder it was going to be to do. Seventeen days had passed since June had gotten out that shovel…

Today, however, it was Christmas.

June had invited her and Melanie and Nicky over for pancakes and presents before June drove out to Palm Springs. Eva wasn’t going to think about anything unpleasant. She was glad for June’s invitation to spend Christmas morning doing something festive, and she could tell June hadn’t wanted to spend the entire day by herself, either, nor for Melanie and Nicky to spend it alone.

Everything was about to change for June, too.

And Melanie as well, for that matter.

Eva rose from her bed and quickly got ready so as not to chance missing one of only two buses at her local stop that ran on a holiday schedule.

She’d bought a few gifts the day before on her way home from work—earrings for Melanie, gloves for June, and a stuffed dog for Nicky—and she placed these in a canvas tote along with a sweater in case the afternoon grew chilly, though there seemed little chance of that.

On her way to the front door, Eva caught a glimpse of Yvonne in the kitchen pouring herself a cup of coffee, and she stopped to wish her a merry Christmas.

“Merry Christmas to you, too,” Yvonne said with a sleepy smile. She’d clearly just gotten up.

Eva hitched her tote onto her shoulder. “I don’t know what time I’ll be back. I’m not sure if Melanie will want company this afternoon or not. If she does, I’ll probably stay until the last bus.”

“Okay. I’ll be at my mom’s overnight anyway,” Yvonne said. “But I’ll leave a light on for you. Have fun and I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

Eva turned to go.

“Oh, that reminds me,” Yvonne added, and Eva swung back around. “You might have visitors tomorrow. They were here yesterday afternoon wanting to see you. They said they’d be back tomorrow morning.”

Eva felt a dart of unease. “?‘They’?”

“Two men. They didn’t give their names.”

“Two men?”

Yvonne yawned. “Uh-huh.”

“What…what did they look like?”

Yvonne shrugged. “I don’t know. Normal-looking. Nice-looking, I guess. Shirt and tie. Hats. You know. Like businessmen. But not from around here.”

The unease doubled in intensity. “And they did not say where they were from or who they were?”

“No. I asked and the one who did all the talking just said they’d come back. He asked if you were going to be home on Christmas and I said I sure hope not. So he said they’d come back the day after.”

“Did he say what they wanted?”

Yvonne laughed lightly. “You sound so anxious, Eva! They didn’t look like criminals, honestly. And the one fellow sounded very nice.”

“But did he say what they wanted?”

“Well, it was the strangest question, really. They wanted to know if you were German. I told them you were Polish.”

Eva’s breath stilled in her lungs.

A million thoughts began darting like arrows around the confines of her mind.

The lies on her immigration papers had been uncovered.

She would get deported.

She would be sent to Moscow.

She would be sent to Siberia.

Or, worse, the men were there because of the body.

The body had been found! The police had found Ernst’s body. Louise was in trouble.

Louise had been arrested.

Louise had told them how Ernst’s remains wound up off a deserted road two hours outside Munich…

Yvonne opened the fridge to get out a small carton of half-and-half as these thoughts somersaulted wildly in Eva’s mind.

“They seemed so friendly, though. Very polite.” Yvonne began to pour the creamer into her coffee cup. “Maybe one of them saw you on the bus and followed you home because he wants to ask you out.” She smiled as she began to stir. “If I were younger I wouldn’t mind going out with one of them. I…”

But Eva didn’t hear the rest. She’d flown out the front door with her bag to run to the bus stop.