Blood and Oranges by James Goldsborough (latest books to read txt) 📗

Joe’s idea to do something on the dowager queen of Malibu, the little lady who put up fences and hired goons on horseback to keep people off her beaches and out of her ocean. It was hers, damn it, bought by her dead husband from some Mexican back in the good old days and she wasn’t going to share it. Took the US Supreme Court to stop her.”

“Good story.”

“Anyway, Larry had to get approval from Otis himself to run that. The Chandlers own land from here to Owens Lake and don’t like the idea that some court—even a supreme one—might tell them what to do with it. Otis doesn’t mind so much.”

The platinum waiter returned with their main course, the strange Pacific mollusks whose fleshy feet can be pounded until tender as chicken breasts and whose taste is to chicken as caviar to carp. Fingerling potatoes and parsley were on the side, along with oyster-ginger sauce in little bowls. He smiled down on them. “You can’t get abalone like this anywhere but Jack’s, though I do know a special place in Avalon if you ever go over.”

“Let’s get the name of the place,” Lizzie said when he’d left. “Might be fun to go to Catalina. I imagine Terry knows how to sail?”

“Terry can navigate anything.”

“And Joe almost nothing, including cars. Took the trolley when we had one. Now walks.”

“Safer.”

“Still hates the Times. Thinks the Chandlers are part of the problem.”

“And Otis?”

“Nobody knows what he’ll do. He wouldn’t just be taking on the establishment; he’d be taking on his own family, the family that didn’t want him, that wanted Phillip, Norman’s brother, the John Bircher. Mom got him the job.”

“Which is why he’s afraid of her.”

“The only person not afraid of Buff Chandler is Miss Adelaide.” She sipped her wine. “Anyway, back to May Rindge. After the Supreme Court ruling, the county started building roads over the Malibu mountains to the Valley and the state started the coast road to Ventura. Poor May became depressed and insolvent and started selling off her land.”

“What does any of this have to do with a foundation?”

“Because the people buying beach land today, up and down the coast from Mexico to Monterey and farther north for all I know, are a lot of little May Rindges. They build fences and hire guards to keep people off their land, off their beaches and out of their ocean.”

“They can do that?”

“Joe and I go up to this place past Paradise Cove, beyond Malibu. You trek over hills and down a steep drop to the beach. Golden sand, maybe twenty-five yards across, hidden on both sides by hills. The ocean laps in soft and blue and almost warm. Like a little atoll in mid-Pacific. We’ve never run into a soul; it’s like we discovered it.”

“And?”

“Should someone have the right to ride down on a horse and tell us it’s theirs and we’re trespassing and to get the hell off their beach and out of their ocean? That’s what May Rindge’s goons were doing.”

They’d finished their lunch and hadn’t noticed the waiter standing behind them. “Nobody asked me,” he said, “but I’d say the answer is no.”

“Bravo,” said Lizzie. “A supporter.”

“You two are sisters, aren’t you?”

“You have a good eye, honey,” said Maggie. “Most people don’t see it.”

“I do have a good eye,” he said, smiling, looking from one to the other. “Now what if I bring you some dessert and coffee?”

“Just coffee,” said Maggie. “No desserts. And write down the name of the special place in Avalon. We may be going over.”

“Nobody can own the ocean,” said Lizzie when he’d left. “And if you can’t own the ocean, how can you own the beach that gives access to it?”

“But the Supreme Court stopped May Rindge.”

“Because the state and county needed to build roads. It was a legal taking, said the court, in the public interest, fairly compensated. What’s happening now is people trying to shut off public access to the beaches and ocean in their private interest. It’s insane, but it’s legal. My idea is to create a foundation that buys up coastal land for a public trust, like a state park. Make sure the beaches stay open to everyone, forever.”

“We have enough money to do that?”

“Why wouldn’t others join in? The Sierra Club, for instance. Their job is to protect natural resources. Why do you think Cal wants that letter from Hughes? To make sure the Hughes’s land never turns into a slab of concrete stretching to the beaches.”

“Have you talked to Cal?”

“He thinks the money could be used to sponsor a campaign for a state constitutional amendment that permanently protects the entire coastline.”

“Would he be involved in the foundation?”

“He wanted to hear what you had to say first.”

“I love the idea of the three of us doing something. Preserve the stables. You know, I go riding some mornings, still love the feeling of sitting on a horse, letting that big beast under me stretch out. They still have a horse called Dynamite, though it’s not my Dynamite.”

“Speed is your thing. Funny, isn’t it? Speed makes me nauseous.” She hesitated a moment. “You know, speaking of Cousin Cal. The last time I talked to him he was meeting Sister Angie for dinner.”

“For dinner . . .”

“That’s what he said.”

“It’s the way you said it.”

“I don’t think it was the first time.”

“You don’t?”

“No, I don’t.”

They fell silent, both women staring out over the cobalt blue bay toward the green mountains in the distance, lost in their own thoughts.

“You know, I asked Cal once if he’d ever been in love. We were in Paris. He was trying to talk me out of marrying Arnaud.”

“And . . .”

“He wouldn’t answer. I wonder what he’d say now.”

The waiter was back. He put down a stub of paper with an Avalon address on it. “I’m not eavesdropping, but I’ll tell you this: You do what you’re talking about and I’ll bring a hundred friends to work with you.”

Maggie pushed the paper