Take a Number

by Janet Dawson

  Rosie shook her head. “No. Just mad-sounding. One of them hit the car. Smack, like this.” She brought her left hand down, open palmed, onto the edge of the shopping cart. “Not the fancy car with chrome, the other one that I scratched.”

  “What kind of car was it?”

  “Dunno. Some of ‘em I do because of the gizmo on the hood. But most of ‘em look alike.”

  “Could you tell what color the cars were, the fancy car and the other one?” I asked, without much hope. It had been dark, and the street lamp didn’t offer that much illumination.

  “Like fire,” Rosie said, her face bemused. “A’course, when all the cop cars got there with those red lights, everything looked like fire.” She waved the stick at us. “I’m tired. I wanna go to sleep. You go away now.”

  “Are you sure you told us everything?” I asked her. “It’s really important, and we don’t want to have to come looking for you again. What happened to those somebodies who were arguing? Did they leave? Or did they belong to the cars you scratched.”

  She thought about it for a moment, then shook her head. “They walked toward me, so I hid. Between two cars. They didn’t see me, though. They went into a building.”

  “Was it the building where you saw me sitting on the wall?” I was certain that it was, just as I was certain one of Rosie’s somebodies had been Sam Raynor.

  “Mighta been. I couldn’t tell. I was pushing my cart toward my corner. Only I couldn’t get it up to the sidewalk ‘cuz of those damn cars blocking the curb cuts.”

  “Before the cop cars came, did someone come out of the building and get into one of the cars and drive away?”

  Rosie was past her limit as far as questions. She shook her head and brandished her nail-studded stick. “I don’t remember anything else. I’m tired. You go away now. I’m not talking anymore.”

  “Okay, Rosie, we’re leaving now. We really appreciate you talking to us, because it’s important.” I took one of my business cards from my purse and lay it on the grass in front of me as I got slowly to my feet. “This is a phone number where you can reach me if you remember anything else about that night.”

  She gave no sign of interest in the card, instead watching our faces as Franklin and I backed away from her campsite. As we retraced our steps toward the cemetery gate, I heard Rosie singing. Tiny bones, tiny bones, over and over again, an eerie mantra borne on the still night air. It means something, I thought. But I couldn’t quite figure it out yet.

  “The cookies were a great idea,” I told Joe Franklin as we reached the cemetery gate.

  He favored me with a sidelong glance and a weary grin. “Yeah, I thought so.”

  “You had more nerve than I did, drinking from that bottle.”

  “I’ve had worse. Did we find out anything we could use?”

  I didn’t answer right away. We left the cemetery the same way we’d entered, and walked along the south side of Piedmont Avenue until we came abreast of my Toyota. I pulled my keys from my pocket.

  “I’d like to think that was Sam Raynor she saw, arguing with whoever followed him into your daughter’s apartment building and killed him. Too bad she couldn’t give us a description.”

  “But she scratched the car.” Franklin kneaded the back of his neck, looking exhausted. “A car that looked like fire, a red car.”

  I laughed and drummed my fingers on the roof of my blue Toyota. “Just about everybody involved in this case drives a red car, or a variation thereof,” I said, thinking of Sam Raynor’s bright red Trans-Am, both the Yancys’ vehicles, Tiffany Collins’s red Subaru, the red Buick that hit Tiffany that night on Howe Street. “Tomorrow I start looking at fenders and paint jobs.”

  Thirty-six

  THE FIRST PAINT JOB I EXAMINED WAS THAT OF SAM Raynor’s Trans-Am, now sitting at the Oakland Police Department impound lot, where it had been towed after I found it last Monday on Howe Street. There was no letter R scratched anywhere on the vehicle’s finish, but I wasn’t surprised. When I’d spotted it, the Trans-Am was parked near the corner, but not close enough to block the curb cut so that Rosie wouldn’t be able to get her shopping cart up to the sidewalk,

  I thanked the officer who’d let me into the lot this Sunday morning, and eliminated one red car from my list. Then I drove through the Tube to Alameda, heading for the bungalow on Marion Court. Chief Yancy drove a red pickup and he had been on Piedmont Avenue the night Sam Raynor was killed. Did Rosie know the difference between a pickup truck and a car? Or would she have mentioned it?

  As I drove through the narrow West Alameda streets, I found myself singing as Rosie had last night. Tiny bones, tiny bones, over and over again, like a song on the radio, now irritatingly enmeshed in my consciousness. It nudged at me, as though I may have heard it before, a piece of the puzzle that had yet to fall into place. I couldn’t help thinking tiny bones meant something, if only I could make the connection.

  The chief’s pickup was nowhere to be seen on the cul-de-sac, and Yancy didn’t answer my knock at the door of the little stucco house. From Marion Court I drove to Dana Albertson’s apartment on Santa Clara. I looked for Claudia’s burgundy Nissan parked on the street, but didn’t see it. As I approached the front walk, Dana and Claudia stepped out onto the porch of the Victorian house. Both wore shorts and sleeveless tops, sandals and sun visors. Dana carried a rectangular Coleman cooler, and the handle of a wicker picnic basket swung from Claudia’s arm. I planted myself at the foot of the steps and gazed up at them.

  “Now what?” Claudia said with a frown. Dana sighed, set the cooler on the porch and sat on it, glancing from me to Claudia.

  “I need to look at your car. Where is it?”

  She set the picnic basket on the porch railing and waved her hand to the right. “Around the corner. Why do you need to look at my car?”

  “Humor me.” I turned and walked in the direction she’d indicated, with both Claudia and Dana following close behind. “When you went to the movie Saturday night, who drove?”

  “I did,” Claudia said as we reached the corner.

  “Where did you park?”

  “Howe Street. It’s always easier to find a spot on Howe Street.”

  “Which cross street?”

  “I don’t know,” Claudia snapped at me.

  Dana volunteered the information I needed. “It was up past that church. I don’t know the name of the street.”

  “Ridgeway.” I stopped and surveyed Claudia’s Nissan sedan, tucked into a space on Caroline Street, its dark wine-red surface covered with a layer of soot and dust. I walked slowly around it, checking for marks. No R. Nothing, other than a ding on the driver’s side door. I stepped from the street to the sidewalk and fixed Claudia with a gaze. “You say you and Dana left Fenton’s around ten-thirty Saturday night. You mentioned that you saw Harlan Pettibone. Did you by any chance see his car?”

  “The one with the stuffed tigers stuck to the window?” Claudia’s tone was withering. “I think I would have noticed.”

  “Did you walk directly to the car?” Both women nodded. That meant they’d crossed Piedmont Avenue and gone up Ridgeway to Howe Street, passing the church. Depending on their pace, it was a short stroll, possibly five or six minutes. Claudia’s car had been parked a block above the corner where Ruth’s apartment building was located. So they wouldn’t have seen the two people arguing near the intersection of Forty-first and Howe.

  “Did you see anything at all unusual?” I asked.

  Claudia answered with a curt shake of her head, but Dana nodded. “I did, on that cross street. Ridgeway, you called it. I saw a bag lady pushing a shopping cart. Well, I don’t know if a bag lady’s all that unusual these days, but I noticed because she was pushing that cart right down the middle of the street.”

  “Thanks.”

  I left them standing perplexed on the sidewalk and headed back to my own car, frustration and something else nagging at me. At least Dana’s sighting of Rosie focused the time the homeless woman
arrived at the scene. If she’d been at Ridgeway and Howe just after ten-thirty, she probably traveled the long block from Ridgeway to Forty-first Street in ten minutes, maybe less. So that put her at the construction site about 10:45.

  A couple of things concerned me about Rosie’s story of the two people she’d seen and heard arguing. First of all, I couldn’t be sure that either of the cars she scratched Saturday night had anything to do with the case at hand, although one of them looked “like fire.” That description suggested a red car, but it could have been any color, enhanced by Rosie’s imagination or her memory of the flashing red lights that arrived on the scene after Sam’s murder. Harlan’s Chevy Camaro was bright orange, but surely Rosie would have noticed the stuffed tiger embellishments. But maybe not. Rosie’s description was as vague as Rosie herself.

  I wanted to get a look at Harlan’s tiger-festooned Camaro. I drove past the Pacific Avenue apartment he’d shared with Sam Raynor but I didn’t see the car. It was probably still parked outside the enlisted club at the Naval Air Station, where Harlan had started the fight with the two Marines last Saturday night.

  I left Alameda and drove first to San Leandro. No red Subaru in Tiffany Collins’s slot at the Estudillo Avenue building. I headed back to Oakland, for her brother’s house on Miles Avenue, but found neither Acey’s Harley nor Genevieve’s bronze Plymouth. It seemed the whole world was taking Labor Day weekend off—except me. Downtown Oakland looked deserted in the midday sun, as though all its inhabitants had been snatched from the streets and plopped down somewhere else, presumably at a beach or in front of a barbecue grill. I thought again of Mother, the family picnic and my aborted trip to Monterey, part vacation and part obligation. I hadn’t returned her phone call from earlier in the week because I didn’t want to talk with her. Yet, for all the progress I was making today, I might as well have gone south.

  I parked outside my Franklin Street building and went upstairs to my office. When I called Duffy LeBard’s office on Treasure Island, the petty officer who answered the phone told me the chief was out and not expected back until Monday. I left both my home and office numbers, along with a message asking Duffy to call me as soon as he returned.

  A moment after I hung up the phone it rang and I picked it up before the answering machine clicked into play. “Jeri,” Errol Seville said, sounding surprised to find me here. “I just left a message on your machine at home and I thought I’d do the same at this number.”

  “Well, you got the genuine article instead. Did you find out something about Ruben Padilla?”

  “I did indeed,” Errol said, sounding as though he were pleased to be doing some detective work again. He’d talked with a contact at the Salinas Police Department. There were a lot of Padillas in Monterey County, but my description of the man who’d barged into my office Friday afternoon had narrowed the field of possibilities.

  “Ruben Castor Padilla. Age thirty-one, born and raised in Salinas. Parents Castor and Natividad Padilla, from Oaxaca, Mexico.”

  “Farm workers?” I asked.

  “Originally. Now they own a truck farm and nursery east of town. Ruben is one of seven kids, three boys and four girls. Siblings are all married with families. Ruben and his youngest sister are the only ones who’ve left the area. She’s going to school at U.C. Davis. The others have stayed put. One brother works the farm with the father, one’s a dentist in Salinas. Of the sisters, the oldest is a nurse, one’s a teacher, and one owns a kids’ clothing shop.”

  “Sounds like your basic middle-class success story,” I commented. “But why does your contact at the Salinas P.D. know so much about the Padilla family?”

  “Because Ruben’s the kid who was always in trouble. Juvenile stuff in high school, some of it alcohol-related. When he was nineteen, he did some time at Soledad,” Errol said, mentioning the state prison south of Salinas. “Assault with a deadly weapon. Again, alcohol-related.”

  “What was the weapon?”

  “A pool cue. Ruben was at a local bar shooting pool and he got into an argument with the other player. He picked up a cue and used it to beat the other guy, who almost died. According to my friend at the P.D., Ruben Padilla was a mean drunk. No hint of trouble since he was paroled, however. Presumably he’s cleaned up his act.”

  He certainly has a temper, even when he’s sober, I thought, recalling Padilla’s behavior Friday when he burst into my office. I thanked Errol for his help and hung up, staring at the telephone. Ruben Padilla had evidently put his life back together after getting out of prison, what with his marriage to Denise and a baby on the way. When Denise told me how she’d met Ruben, she said he’d been attending meetings at the church where she sang in the choir. Must be AA meetings, I thought. Ruben Padilla had sobered up, walking the straight line in order to stay out of trouble.

  Could he be sent over the edge, particularly if something threatened his new life? The unwelcome appearance of Sam Raynor could be just such a catalyst, particularly since Sam had threatened Denise, using as his weapon Scott, the son he hadn’t seen since Denise walked out on him years ago. There was something else as well. Ruben Padilla had never answered my request that he explain his presence at the scene of Sam Raynor’s murder. Even now as I stared at my phone, I could see his angry face, suffused with red from the flashing lights. Why was he there? It couldn’t just be coincidence.

  When I considered the possibilities, both Ruben and Denise Padilla had a lot to lose.

  * * *

  Alex called me at home Sunday afternoon. I was correct in yesterday’s guess that he’d had duty. “Let’s go to dinner,” he said. We met at Nan Yang, a favorite Burmese restaurant in Chinatown.

  We hadn’t seen each other since the night of the murder. At first our conversation seemed awkward, but I was curious to know how Lieutenant Bruinsma was faring with her JAG Manual investigation. And Alex was curious about my own efforts to find out who killed Raynor.

  The lieutenant was covering much the same ground as I had. I knew she’d been trying to get in touch with Tiffany Collins earlier in the week. Evidently she’d found out from another sailor about Sam’s other girlfriend, Claudia Yancy. This led to a long closed-door session between Lieutenant Bruinsma and Chief Yancy, who looked shaken when it was over.

  “Actually, he’s looked preoccupied since you talked with him last Tuesday,” Alex said, spooning ginger salad onto his plate. “He swears he didn’t kill Raynor. Says he was in a bar all night. Have you checked out his alibi?”

  “Are you pumping me for information?” I helped myself to Thai garlic noodles and we traded serving bowls.

  “Of course I am.” He set down the bowl and picked up his chopsticks, a frown creasing his dark face. “Yancy works for me and I’m concerned about him. His wife left him, you think he’s a suspect in a coworker’s murder. God knows what Lieutenant Bruinsma thinks—she plays it close to the chest. What am I supposed to do, pat Yancy on the shoulder and tell him it’ll be all right? Or do I relieve him of his duties, pending arrest?”

  I thought about it for a moment as I segregated a fire-hot chile from the rest of the ginger salad on my plate. “Yes, I checked his alibi. It’s not completely watertight. The bartender couldn’t verify Yancy’s every move. But I’m fairly certain the chief’s telling the truth. That doesn’t mean I’ve eliminated him from my list of prospects, just that several other people have bumped ahead of him in line.”

  Satisfied with my answer, Alex now moved the topic from the living to the dead. Lieutenant Bruinsma had taken my advice and talked to Duffy LeBard about Sam Raynor’s alleged involvement in transporting and selling drugs on Guam. It also seemed the Navy wasn’t thrilled to learn that Raynor had lied about a few things when he joined up, such as the fact that his mother was still living and that he’d been married before.

  “So much for the four-oh sailor,” I said, referring to the Navy’s system of evaluating its enlisted personnel, a four-point system, with four being the highest on the scale. Ruth had to
ld me that Sam’s evaluations throughout their marriage had been consistently high, despite the chaotic state of their home life.

  “It’s not perfect.” Alex shrugged. “We’re so keyed into job performance. If a sailor does the job he’s supposed to do, and does it well, we don’t look any further. Unless that sailor gives us a reason to. I don’t think it’s any different out in the civilian world.”

  I nodded, thinking of my jobs in law firms and some of the jerks I’d worked with, jerks who ultimately got the job done—but you wouldn’t want to have a cup of coffee with any of them.

  “Accomplish the mission,” he continued, waving chopsticks at me. “That’s the first priority, whether it’s repairing aircraft, training personnel or completing an audit. There’s privacy to consider. We can’t pry into people’s personal lives.”

  “Until the personal impacts the professional. Or someone winds up dead. It’s a tough call.”

  We talked of other things as we finished our dinner and lingered over tall glasses of strong coffee sweetened with condensed milk. Then I went home, singing as I drove.

  Tiny bones, tiny bones. I laughed out loud as I conjured up a scene of half-pint skeletons jiving across the top of a gravestone.

  Monday was Labor Day. I slept in and had a late breakfast as I read the Oakland Tribune, thinking about the picnic all my Monterey relatives would be having later in the day. Duffy LeBard called me shortly before noon, as I was picking ripe tomatoes off my plants on the patio.

  “Where’ve you been?” I asked him.

  “Lake Berryessa,” Duffy drawled. “Fishin’ and foolin’ around. Came back this morning so I could beat the traffic. What’s on your mind?”

  “Harlan Pettibone.”

  Duffy chuckled. “Good ol’ Harlan. The brig is cutting him loose tomorrow. At which point he’s supposed to report to the legal center here on T.I. They are finally going to process the little pissant for the bad conduct discharge he so richly deserves. That’s an answer to prayer. Get him out of my Navy and let the civilian authorities deal with him. Now, why is Harlan on your mind?”