Death Gets a Time-Out by Ayelet Waldman

sandals embroidered with lotuses, Al was back in his car with the engine running.
    “Let’s get a move on,” he said, “or we won’t have time to hit La Superica in Santa Barbara for tacos after we finish interviewing the docs.”
    One of my favorite things about Al is his encyclopedic knowledge of every taco stand, noodle shop, mom-and-pop burger joint, and date shake shack in Southern California. The man lives and dies for junk food, but only of the most obscure kind. If there are absolutely no other options, he’ll make do with an In-n-Out Double Double, animal-style, but he’s only truly happy standing at the counter of a Vietnamesedive in a strip mall in East L.A., say, slurping Pho out of a plastic bowl. When we had worked together at the Federal Public Defenders Office, we had always planned our field investigations around lunch. We’d take pictures of the interior of the bank our client was accused of robbing, interview a teller or two, and then drive back to the office, our chins shiny with the grease of a Cuban
medianoche.
I should have known Al would have planned to hit the best taco stand in Southern California. Too bad it was a cool hour out of our way.
    On our way we discussed Lilly’s reaction to my question about her mother’s death.
    “Definitely strange,” he said. “But can it possibly be related to the murder?” Then he yelled an obscenity at a passing car. “Did you see that idiot?”
    “Who? The eighty-year-old woman in the diesel Mercedes? Yeah, I saw her.”
    “The old bat’s going to kill someone, creeping along like that in the fast line!”
    “She was doing the speed limit, Al. Maybe Lilly’s mother’s death has nothing to do with anything, but you’re the one who always says there is no such thing as coincidences in criminal investigations. We’ve got a murder, and another suspicious death thirty years ago. It’s certainly possible that they’re related, don’t you think?”
    He shook his fist at another car, and then said, “How did you go from an accident that Lilly doesn’t want to talk about to a suspicious death?”
    “It’s suspicious that no one wants to talk about it. And will you please
stop
giving people the finger! Haven’t you ever heard of highway shootings? Are you trying to get me killed here?”
    He rolled his eyes. “Let’s worry first about what we’re being paid to worry about, okay? We’ll work on gathering the mitigation evidence. Then, if we’ve got time, we’ll follow up on the Mexico thing.”
    I acquiesced, albeit a bit unwillingly, and sank down in my seat so that I could not be visible to enraged driversresponding to Al’s vigorously expressive highway maneuvers.
    The Ojai Rehabilitation and Self-Actualization Center was located in the hills above the town for which it was named, a farming community that had over the years become something of an artists’ colony. Al and I wound our way through the little streets, passing signs for open studios and gallery openings, and fresh farmer’s cheese. Much to Al’s chagrin, I broke the hermetic seal of his air-conditioned SUV and rolled down my window as we drove up a long road through rolling hills of brown grasses and scrub oaks. I took a deep breath, inhaling air redolent with dried brush, cow manure, and surprisingly, given how far inland we were, the faint tang of salt and sea.
    A wooden sign so discreet that we almost missed it pointed us to an electronic gate that guarded the entrance to the center. Al pulled up to the gate and leaned precariously out of his window to reach the microphone.
    “Lucky you’ve got that gut to provide ballast,” I told my partner. “Otherwise you’d fall head first out the window.”
    He grunted and hauled himself back in the car. “Very funny. The director’s waiting for us in the main building.”
    The gate slid silently open. We drove through and continued for another half a mile or so along a road of crushed gravel, bright white, shaded on