by Janet Dawson
I moved a bit closer, filtering out street noise as I strained to hear.
“—come up to your damn office,” Slade said. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you.” He paused, as though listening to the person on the other end of the line. “Not good enough. Either you come down here or I’ll—”
His threat had the desired effect. Slade ended the call with an aggressive punch to the screen of his phone.
A few minutes later, Byron Patchett came out the double glass doors of the building. He didn’t look happy. “What do you want?”
Slade, who was a few inches taller than his stepfather, leaned forward, getting into Byron’s face. “I want you to stop interfering. What goes on between me and Mom is our business, not yours.”
“It’s my business if you’re bleeding her of money,” Byron snapped. Slade tried to interrupt, but Bryon wasn’t having any of it. “The same damn story, over and over. You can’t make a go of whatever you’re doing so you come to her. You’ve been bleeding her for years. Well, the bank is closed.”
I edged closer, wanting to hear more, wary of being seen. Their voices were loud enough to be heard over the cacophony of traffic at this busy intersection—and loud enough to attract the attention of passersby.
The argument went on in the same vein, with Slade making threats and Byron standing his ground, insisting that the time had come for Slade to stand on his own two feet financially. Finally Byron threw up his hands in disgust. “This conversation is over.” He turned and went back into the building.
Slade sputtered with anger, yelling an expletive loud enough to earn him a nasty look from an older woman who’d just come out of the building. He turned quickly, heading back in the direction he’d come from, stalking past me with his head down. He was furiously typing onto the screen of his phone, a text message, no doubt.
So Byron had put his foot down. Millicent had said as much when I spoke with her and Rosalie this morning at the shop. The question now was, what would Slade do about it?
Slade made a left off Grand onto Broadway, heading back in the direction from which he’d come. As he neared Twenty-fourth, he detoured into the very bakery I’d been planning to visit. I stopped outside and looked in as he walked past the counter to a vacant table. He sat down, back to the wall, glancing at the door. He was waiting for someone. Marsh, I would guess.
I went inside the bakery and lingered in front of the glass case, taking in the display of cookies, cakes and other delectables. I always had difficulty deciding which of them to purchase, and today, that would be my cover.
Slade looked up and past me, at the front door. In my peripheral vision, I saw Marsh walk to the table where his cousin sat.
The server behind the counter turned his attention to me, waiting for my order. I smiled and stepped back from the counter. “Give me a couple of minutes. I’m having trouble making up my mind.”
“Take your time.” Another customer moved up to take my place and the server leaned forward as he took the order.
I moved to my right, edging closer to the table where Slade sat with Marsh. As I examined the contents of the bakery case, I tuned out most of the voices around me, honing in on the conversation between the two cousins. Their voices were low and indistinct, and a woman at a nearby table was talking on her cell phone loudly. Still, I managed to hear a few words.
“—fix that son of a bitch,” Slade said.
Marsh laughed. Just then the woman ended her conversation and I heard Marsh say, “—get even. Be like old times. Got an idea.”
Just then, Marsh looked up from the table and saw me. He recognized me from yesterday.
As he leaned toward Slade, I waved at the server, who’d come my way again. “I’ll have a latte to go. And I’m going to get some cupcakes.”
Slade and Marsh got up from the table, stepping over to where I stood at the counter. “You’re Davina’s friend, right?” Slade’s eyes looked suspicious.
I glanced at him as though I didn’t recognize him, then said, “Davina? Oh, yes, I met you yesterday afternoon. You were with Davina’s sister. Your name is—” I stopped. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember.”
“Eric,” he said.
“You work around here?” Marsh asked, putting his charm to work on me.
“Yeah, just down the street. Taking a break. I need a caffeine jolt to get me through the afternoon.” Close enough to the truth. I did like my coffee. But I preferred asking questions, not answering them, at least in this situation. I glanced at Slade. “You went to dinner last night at Angeline’s. Did you enjoy it?”
“It was okay,” Slade said, scowling.
The server had put my latte on top of the counter and was hovering, waiting for me to decide. “I’ll have, let’s see—” I smiled again, “Everything is so good here, I have trouble making up my mind. So I might as well get all three. One chocolate, one carrot and one of the lemon.” I took a sip of the latte as the server boxed up my cupcakes, then pulled out my wallet.
Another server looked over the counter at Slade and Marsh. “May I help you?”
Slade shook his head, turning to Marsh. “Let’s get out of here.” The two of them headed for the door. I saw them exit onto Broadway. Then they turned and walked up Twenty-fourth Street.
They’d seen me. And they recognized me. That was cause for concern. But I didn’t think they’d realized I was eavesdropping. At least I hoped not. Perhaps my ruse had worked.
I left the bakery, carrying my purchases. At the intersection, I looked up Twenty-fourth. No sign of them on the two blocks between Broadway and Telegraph. Then a vehicle pulled away from the curb, heading toward Telegraph. I couldn’t tell what color it was, but it was dark, and the shape looked a lot like the Nissan Pathfinder Marsh had been driving last night.
* *
When I reached my building, I headed for Cassie’s office. Her eyes lit up at the sight of the bakery box. I opened it and waved the cupcakes under her nose. “Help yourself. Of course, the chocolate is mine.”
“Somehow I knew that.” She reached into the bakery box and liberated the lemon cupcake. “Thanks, I could use a break from working on this brief.”
We talked for a few minutes, polishing off our midafternoon noshes. That should hold me till dinner. Of course, I hadn’t really had lunch, just an apple and a hunk of cheddar from my little refrigerator, while I worked on the client report.
After that, I went down the hall to my own office. I deposited the bakery box on my credenza and switched on the computer. This time, my in-box contained the reports and videos that Rory had sent. I opened the reports concerning the fire at Herkimer’s and sent them to my printer.
My computer setup, new since I’d moved into my new digs, featured a laptop hooked up to a big monitor, with two wireless peripherals, a keyboard and mouse, both ergonomic. This gave me the option of viewing two screens at once. I loaded the videos from the security cameras, one on each screen. My large monitor was bigger than the one on Rory’s computer, where I’d watched the videos earlier. As I viewed them again, I hoped I would see something I’d missed earlier.
I clicked to start the video on the large screen, the footage the security cameras had taken outside the club. Then my phone rang.
I paused the video and checked the caller ID. My mother, Marie Doyle, who had used her family’s name since her divorce from my father. I reached for the receiver.
Mother was something of a workaholic. She owned a restaurant, Café Marie, that was quite good. It consistently made the lists of the best restaurants on the Monterey Peninsula. When Dad and I had dinner the other night, he told me that Mother was heading this way, planning to spend a few days with my brother, Brian, and his family in Petaluma.
Now, Mother confirmed that she was driving up on Tuesday of the following week. Was I free for lunch?
Meals out with Mother, the chef and restaurant owner, were always interesting since she was predisposed to critique the establishment. I was forever looki
ng for new places to take her. Well, what about the restaurant I’d just been to?
I consulted my calendar. I had a client meeting at ten o’clock that morning, but it was here in Oakland, so I should be available by noon. My next appointment wasn’t until three that afternoon. That was the good thing about being self-employed, with a schedule that had some flexibility in it.
“Yes, I am free for lunch, if we do it around one. There’s this restaurant I’ve been meaning to try, called Temescal. Why don’t you come to my new office first? You haven’t seen it yet.”
I gave Mother directions and told her there was parking available at the rear of the building. Parking had always been a problem in my previous location, in Oakland’s Chinatown. After hanging up the phone, I noted the appointment on my calendar.
Then I turned back to the computer and started the video again, watching the footage from the Herkimer’s security cameras. Once again, I saw two men in hooded sweatshirts entering the club through the side door. They left the club a few minutes later. Then two men in a car, presumably the same two men. It was reasonable to assume that these same two men had set the fire that broke out a short time later. But could I be sure based on these scraps of movement?
I reversed the video and replayed the segment that showed the car driving away. The night was dark and so was the vehicle. It could have been black, gray, dark blue. Or dark green, like the Nissan that Marsh Spencer drove.
I thought about what Tomás Calderón had told me. He’d thrown Slade and Marsh out of Herkimer’s on Open Mike Night, a week or two before the fire. They were my first choices as suspects. But I needed evidence, not feelings.
I watched the video again, this time looking at the grainy footage that showed the driver and the passenger. I stopped the action on the shot where the driver made a gesture with his left hand, coming in contact with the edge of the hood. Earlier I’d thought he was pulling at it. But the more I peered at the image, I thought he was reaching past the edge. Touching his face? Scratching his chin?
Tugging on his ear? The way Marsh did, when I’d seen him in person and on the music video of the Flames, the group he’d been in with Slade and Cam Gardner.
I switched my attention to the laptop, looking for the video I’d shot Tuesday afternoon when Slade met Marsh near Lake Merritt. As I watched it, I made note of the gesture. Marsh Spencer was definitely tugging on his earlobe, a nervous habit that was again visible on the next video I watched, which was the Flames, with Slade on lead guitar, Cam on bass and Marsh on drums. At the end of the song, Marsh reached up and tugged his ear. He’d made the same gesture when he showed up at Davina’s cottage on Wednesday.
Was it Marsh at the wheel of the car at the scene of the Herkimer’s fire, tugging on his ear as he drove away from the scene? Or was I reading too much into a simple gesture? Seeing things because I wanted to see them?
It was evidence, somewhat tenuous. Not enough, though. I needed something more.
I looked at the photos I’d snapped on Wednesday, of Marsh’s car. The license plate on the car at the fire scene had been covered up, obscured with mud or some other substance. But— I looked at the photo of the V-shaped scratch on Marsh’s bumper. The thin line on the dark green finish didn’t look new. It had been there a while.
What if it had been there last year?
I put the photo on the laptop screen and looked at its location in relation to the blurred license plate. Then I looked at the video again, pausing the action and increasing the size. Was there something on the bumper? Or was it my imagination?
Yes, there was a scratch on the car’s bumper. And it was V-shaped.
Marsh was driving the car. And I’d bet money the man in the passenger seat was Slade.
I was convinced. Would anyone else be?
Chapter Twenty-five
“It’s not much,” Gary Manville told me when I called him Thursday afternoon.
He’d walked over to my office to look at the videos and photos, and he’d read through the reports concerning the fire at Herkimer’s. Then we headed for Z Café, which was located in an old auto showroom at Broadway and Twenty-seventh.
“I agree, it’s not.” I scooped up another forkful of grilled salmon and basmati rice. “But from what I overheard earlier today, Slade is angry with his stepfather, angry enough to ‘fix that son of a bitch,’ as he said. And Marsh suggested getting even. My investigation suggests that Slade likes to get even by setting fires. Those two are going to start a fire. I’d like to prevent that from happening.”
Gary was tucking into a homey-looking plate of meatloaf, replete with garlic mashed potatoes and gravy. “How are you going to do that?”
“I can talk with Sid Vernon.”
“The guy from the Oakland PD? You know him?”
“We have some history.” I didn’t add that Sid and I had once been married. Gary didn’t need to know that. “If you were going to start a fire tonight, which site would you pick?”
“Tonight?” Gary grimaced and looked out the window. It was twilight, getting dark, and neither of us wanted to think about what could happen when the sun went down. He gestured in the direction of Twenty-seventh Street, where the First Presbyterian Church had stood for decades. “That site on Twenty-sixth is too close to the church. A lot of businesses there, and also a lot of apartment buildings. Too many people around.”
“That didn’t stop whoever torched that site on San Pablo. That’s a very busy street.”
“You’ve got a point,” Gary said. “The site at Webster and Thirtieth is a possibility. So is the one at Brook Street. A few houses and apartment buildings farther down, but where the building is going up, there are a bunch of auto businesses, and they’re closed at night.”
“So, how do we deal with this?”
“I’ve already got guards on those sites twenty-four hours a day,” he said. “I’ll add people. Better to be safe than sorry.”
I did call Sid. He had the same skeptical reaction that Gary had. My conclusions, drawn from the Herkimer’s tapes and my observations of Slade and Marsh, weren’t concrete evidence. More proof, he said.
I hoped we would get some. I also hoped we’d prevent a fire.
Nothing happened Thursday night on any of the three Bay Oak Development sites. That was fine by me. I wanted my theory about a revenge fire to be wrong. But I still had the feeling that something was going to happen—and soon.
Gary had put extra employees on each of the Bay Oak construction sites, the numbers of guards depending on the size of the site. This was stretching his available staff to the limit. The extra workers included Nathan Dupree, who was back on the job after recuperating from his minor injuries in the fire a couple of weeks earlier. In addition, Gary and I had decided that he and I would rotate between sites again tonight, moving from Twenty-sixth, to Webster and then up to Brook Street, keeping an eye out for anything unusual.
Gary and I crossed paths about eleven-thirty, at the site on Twenty-sixth Street. Gary’s guards worked in three shifts, and the night watch had just started, scheduled from eleven till seven the next morning. We stood together on the sidewalk, near his silver SUV.
“I was just over at Brook Street,” he said. “All quiet, nothing happening.”
“Same at Webster and Thirtieth.” Both of us carried coffee in insulated mugs. I took a sip from mine, listening to the late-night traffic noise from Broadway, a block away. “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m misreading the signs.”
“And maybe you’re not.” Gary raised his mug and swallowed more coffee. “I’d rather spend a few nights out here patrolling than run the risk of another fire.”
“Okay. If nothing happens tonight, we can reassess the situation in the morning.”
We talked for a while longer, as we walked the perimeter of the construction site. Then I headed for my car. I drove up Broadway and made a right turn onto Brook Street. It was a short, hidden street, like many that one encounters in Oakland, slanting at a sharp ri
ght-hand angle where it intersected Broadway, then turning right again, so that it almost paralleled Broadway as it ran one long block past the auto repair businesses, houses and apartment buildings. Brook ended at Thirtieth Street.
When I arrived, everything looked quiet. The street was dark at the residential end, but the construction site was illuminated by powerful lights. I drove past a closed-for-the-night transmission repair shop and a shop that sold brake pads and linings, then past the construction site itself. It was long and narrow, backing up to a wooded area that separated Brook from another residential street, Richmond Avenue. The site faced the back sides of the businesses that fronted on Broadway, red brick walls, stucco surfaces and metal doors covered with colorful graffiti, sidewalks with weeds poking through the cracks.
I found a parking space farther down the block, in front of an apartment building, got out of my car and walked up the street, along the perimeter. When I reached the gate leading into the site, I saw Nathan Dupree and two other guards, standing just inside the partly constructed building. One of the men turned and disappeared inside the structure, while the other man strode purposefully along the inside of the chain-link fence, heading toward the Broadway end of the site.
Nathan walked toward me. “Hey, Jeri. All quiet here. I sure hope it stays that way.”
“You and me both. It’s almost midnight. That other fire, the one where you got hurt, that started just after midnight.”
Nathan nodded. “Yeah. Maybe twenty minutes after.”
And the fire at Herkimer’s had started just before ten o’clock. It didn’t seem the arsonist—or arsonists, assuming that I was right and they were Slade and Marsh—were sticking to any pattern.
I’d left my coffee mug in my car. It was just as well. I was overloaded on caffeine, which meant getting any rest would be difficult when I got home. Nathan and I talked for a moment, then he began another walk around the building. I decided to walk around the outside of the site before heading to my next stop, the project that was going up at Webster and Thirtieth. I had a flashlight stuck in my pocket, but there was enough light from the overhead fixtures for me to pick my way along the fence. An area about three feet wide, scraped clean down to the dirt, extended beyond the fence that encompassed the construction site. Beyond this bare perimeter was a thicket of what looked like blackberry brambles. On the other side of the dense vegetation was the back of a stucco apartment building that faced Richmond Avenue, with a house on either side, one a two-story wood-frame and the other stucco.
