by Paul Charles
“Do you remember an incident a couple of months ago when…” Kennedy ventured when he eventually found a customer-free space.
“You don’t mean when Grace’s poor husband Steve was found dead, do you?” she said, her face immediately losing what little colour it possessed.
“Yes, actually,” Kennedy replied. He hadn’t intended to ask any direct questions, but he was happy the conversation was developing naturally. “Do you remember exactly when it happened?”
“Like it was yesterday. You’re not a journalist, are you?” she asked, her warmth quickly receding.
“No, no, I just met Grace and her father… I’m Christy Kennedy. I’m a policeman myself, over in London.”
“Oh that’s okay then,” she said, returning to her friendly self. “I’m Jennifer, Jennifer Rainbow,” she continued extending her hand. “Actually, it was a Saturday morning. It wasn’t as nice a day as today. It had been raining really hard the day before, as it has a habit of doing here occasionally, more frequently than we’d like.”
“I’ve been warned,” Kennedy laughed, trying hard to keep the tone conversational.
“I was opening up the bookstore, just before nine o’clock, and I heard a bit of a commotion down by the bridge. I locked the store again and ran down there. Coach, that’s Coach Goldberg, he’s retired, gets his New York Times from me every morning… He’s usually my first customer of the day. Anyway, a tourist had spotted the body while taking some photographs over the bridge. Coach came along, just as a crowd was building up. He phoned Chief Donohue and took charge of the area. He used to be a lawyer in Boston, so he knew what to do.”
“Was Officer Scott in his uniform?”
“Now that I come to think of it, no, he wasn’t,”
“Would Coach Goldberg have known Officer Scott?”
“Normally, yes, but the body,” Jennifer Rainbow’s voice became shaky and she dropped to a whisper, “was found face down. The upper part of the torso was in the water and the remainder of the body on the bank, but also water-soaked.”
Kennedy was worried about asking too many questions and appearing suspicious himself.
“How long have you lived here?” Kennedy asked, deciding to take his questions away from the crime.
“I was born and bred here, Christy. I moved into San Francisco for a while after I got married. My husband worked for BGP…”
When Kennedy’s eyebrows shaped a “who?”
“BGP stands for: Bill Graham Presents, the name of the company. Bill Graham was a concert promoter and manager with a great eye for detail. My husband was on the road too much, so we split up; we’re still good friends. Bill Graham was killed in a helicopter accident. BGP as a company kept going for a while, but eventually they sold out - to the devil, some say. All the key staff members were tied into the deal and well looked after. My husband in turn looked after me as well in our settlement, and I bought this place.”
“It’s a great bookstore,” Kennedy said, looking around the shelves.
“Yes, it’s become harder, but we’re doing okay, and it gives me a great social life. Funny thing, well I suppose I really mean sad thing, is that the incident down by the bridge brought a certain type of crowd flocking to Half Moon Bay and, I hate to admit this, but we’ve done very well since the body was found.”
Great, Kennedy thought, she’s opened up the door to the topic again herself. “I suppose there wouldn’t be a lot of crime in Half Moon Bay?” “Well, not murders. I think I could recall two other murders in recent years.”
“A long while ago?”
“A good few years,” she replied.
A customer came into the store then. Kennedy browsed “casually” around the shelves for a bit, but within five minutes there were four other customers in the store, so he decided to leave. Perhaps he’d have a chance to talk to her again later in the day. He imagined the bookstore being a bit of a centre for the local community. He figured she got to hear a lot of the local gossip, but she wasn’t likely to share it with him on their first meeting.
Kennedy was walking towards the bridge, thinking that it would be a good idea to try to have a chat with Coach Goldberg, when his thoughts were interrupted by a horn honking continuously. Kennedy looked around and couldn’t spot anything except for a battered green Ford pick-up truck with a “My Other Gun Is a Winchester” sticker on the bumper. He had to admit he was very disappointed by the cars on the streets of Half Moon Bay. They were all, without exception, the characterless, boring shapes ever present Europe-wide. Kennedy had expected the classic cuts of the Chevrolets, Mustangs, Corvettes, and Thunderbirds, which had all been ever visible in the American movies he loved when he was growing up.
His disappointment lifted the moment he spotted Grace Scott. She had been honking, trying to get his attention, but she’d been blocked in on the other side of the truck with the rifle sticker, which is why Kennedy initially couldn’t see her. She’d swapped her patrol car for a black Mustang, the vintage Mustang Kennedy had been longing to see. She did a U-turn and nearly ran over Kennedy as she shouted, “Hop in quickly.”
Three silent, white-knuckle minutes later they were out of town, turning left off Main Street on to Higgins Canyon Road and closing in on a traditional white, tongued-and-grooved New England saltbox, complete with freshly painted green window shutters
“This is the James Livingston House,” she announced as they pulled up in the gravel car park in a cloud of dust.
“Right, and can I ask who is Livingston and why are we visiting his house?” Kennedy asked.
“James Livingston was a Scot who came to San Francisco during the 1849 Gold Rush. He did well in property, bought 1,162 acres in this neighbourhood, and he and his brother Thomas drove 800 head of cattle from Ohio to the new ranch. James married his Spanish sweetheart in 1852 and built this house with hand-sawn redwood in 1853. These days it’s owned by a New Age collective, and I have reason to believe your Miss Chada may be working in there as a masseuse.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Kennedy and Grace were sitting in the car park of the Livingston House. Kennedy had been keen to get out and go looking for Miss Chada, but Grace advised him it would be more advantageous to stay where they were. She tuned the radio into a classic country rock station whose programmer seemed trapped in the 1980s.
“This James Livingston fellow, did he make his money illegally?” Kennedy eventually asked, if only to distract himself from the music.
“The chief always says that most great fortunes start with a crime.”
Kennedy laughed.
“So what was Livingston’s crime?”
“I’m not even sure there was one, but if there was, in those days it would most likely have been smuggling.”
“So not prostitution then?” Kennedy asked.
“I can see where you’re coming from,” she laughed, “but this isn’t a brothel; it’s a legit establishment. I was going to circulate Miss Chada’s photo around the city, but Ed persuaded me to go about it a bit more subtly. So I visited various members of the Chambers of Commerce, the majority of whom are, believe it or not, women. When I visited the station house this morning, there was a message from Pam Johnston, also a Scot. Anyway, a new girl started work yesterday. Pam said the new girl fitted the description of Sharenna Chada, but there was a more definite giveaway on top of that.”
“There was?” Kennedy asked, trying to stare a hole through the pure white wall of the house.
“Yes,” Grace said, avoiding Kennedy’s eyes, “she called herself ‘Sharenna Chada.’”
“No!” Kennedy jested.
“Yes,” Grace replied, “how brazen is that?”
“Believing you’re innocent - not acting the part, becoming the part” Kennedy offered, “is always the best way to play this.”
“Well, Pam also said they knew your Miss Chada very well. Apparently she’s visited them several times over the last couple of years, and she frequently talked about moving
here. According to Pam, Miss Chada is the best masseuse any of them have ever met.”
Kennedy opened his mouth to say something. Grace stopped him with, “There’s more.”
“There is?” he replied, turning around to look at Grace for the first time since they’d arrived.
“Yes. According to Ruth, this Miss Chada of yours is very beautiful and has a body to die for.”
Just then a cab pulled up, honked it’s horn, and about thirty seconds later the small white front door of the Johnston House opened, and out into the sunlight stepped Miss Chada, the brown of her skin highlighting the starched white of her pristine nurse style top and trousers uniform.
Kennedy went to open the door but forgot his seatbelt. In one quick motion, Grace Scott removed her Half Moon Bay Police baseball cap, shoved it down over Kennedy’s head so the peak hid his eyes and secured his seatbelt clip in place with one hand while she slammed her trusty Mustang into gear with the other. She screeched around the car park, took a left and a right on to Main Street and back towards Half Moon Bay.
“I take it that was your Miss Chada?”
“That was her. I need to speak to her, Grace.”
“Yes, but not now. You know where she is. She doesn’t know you’re here; let’s keep it that way for now. The chief reckons we’ve got one shot at getting her extradited, so let’s not blow it. Let’s get all our wee, as you call them, soldiers lined up neatly in a row.”
“But what if she does a runner?”
“Look, Inspector, as far as I can tell, Miss Chada thinks she’s got away with it Irish free…”
“Sorry?”
“It was just a private joke Steve and I had. Our name was Scott, so when anyone said someone was getting off Scott-free, we’d always change it to Irish-free.”
“O-kay,” Kennedy replied in an “I get it” tone.
“Anyway, as I was saying, if she is guilty, your Miss Chada thinks she committed the perfect murder back in London. Maybe, from what you say, she had been planning it for the last year. She figures no one will think it was her because she has the perfect alibi. I believe she’s more concerned now about starting off her life again. Do you think there is any chance that Miss Chada was responsible for the deterioration in your back over the last couple of months?”
“In that she was making me dependant on her so I’d unwittingly be her perfect alibi? Oh yes, I definitely think that could be the case.”
“I say we let her get on with her new life. Pam has promised to keep an eye on her for me while you and I get our case together, and then Miss Chada will enjoy neither Scottish nor Irish freedom.”
Grace turned up the volume of a track, which had just come on the radio.
“Who’s this?” Kennedy asked.
“It’s Alison Krauss,” she answered after a moment. Kennedy couldn’t be sure, due to the loud volume of the radio, but he thought he heard her voice break a little with emotion.
“Fancy a bit of sightseeing?” she eventually asked, quite a few seconds after the song eventually finished.
“Actually, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d quite like to go back to the bridge and have a look around there.”
She looked surprised, pleasantly surprised, and a large smile dissolved the dark cloud which had recently descended over her.
She parked outside Coastside Net, a computer and Internet access shop, and they walked along the sidewalk on the direction of the bridge. Everyone seemed to know her and had the time of day for her. “What can I tell you, Inspector? It’s a small town.”
Kennedy observed her new quietness as they walked on to the bridge.
The central, vehicle section of the 111-year-old bridge was coated with the traditional tarmac surface and marked by double (no turning or overtaking) yellow lines along the centre. The vehicle section of the bridge was partitioned from the public boardwalk on both sides by a white picket fence, which looked as if it had been reinforced to withstand the impact of a vehicle. The boardwalk was protected from the drop to the creek by a sturdy, solid white fence. Kennedy and Grace Scott turned away from each other.
Kennedy opened the Scott file and studied it as he walked the scene. He looked over the side of the bridge and marvelled at how high and furious the waters below were. It was hard to make out the submerged riverbank line. He wasn’t going to get a chance to examine the crime scene in detail until the water had subsided substantially. He crossed to the other side of the bridge, the town side and walked back toward the bridge. Due to the roadside safety-fence at either end of the bridge, he couldn’t walk straight across. He looked back into town, down Main Street, which ran straight out of the bridge. Half Moon Bay was now getting a little busier, and Kennedy found it hard to believe that a man had maliciously lost his life in such a gentle, small-town, hippie setting. He turned and looked in the opposite direction where the road curved quickly to the left once clear of the bridge.
At some point, Kennedy became aware that Grace Scott was now studying his every move.
“You were so lost in your own world there I didn’t want to disturb you,” she eventually said, when she joined him on his side of the bridge. “Several people came and stared at you, and you didn’t even seem to notice them, I bet.”
Kennedy smiled but didn’t comment.
“And another thing,” she added as he continued studying the bridge, “I don’t know if you’re aware of it or not, but the more you concentrate the more you flex the fingers of your right hand.” By the time Kennedy looked down at his hand, his fingers had already stopped their furious subconscious flexing.
He stood looking up and down the bridge for a while, and then he went down on his hunkers. He stood up again and walked along the side and leaned over the fence, focusing back on the spot where he knew, from the police report, that Steve Scott had been found face down, head and shoulders in the waters.
Grace kept looking at him, examining his face as if looking for a clue about what he was thinking.
“Okay,” Kennedy eventually said, “there’s not much more we can do here until the river drops.”
“And your thoughts?”
“Well, the report says he was thrown from the bridge…Sorry, Grace, are you okay with this?”
“Yes,” she smiled, “I’m fine. To be any good to Steve, I’ve had to detach myself…you were about to say something about the report.”
“The report said Officer Scott was murdered somewhere else and then dumped over the bridge.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think so,” Kennedy said, turning back towards the centre of the road. “That ornate yet effective picket fence would have made it impossible just to drive up and throw the body straight over the edge of the railings into the river. Even if they’d tried, they would have blocked the bridge and risked getting caught. Their other option would have been to park at one end of the bridge, but they would have had to park too far away to avoid the side fences and then carry the body back to throw it over the edge. But it’s too public here. Someone would surely have seen the killer or killers. Only an idiot would have risked it. They could have just driven out of town to somewhere more discreet. No, I doubt your…” Kennedy pulled himself up short. “I doubt Officer Scott would have been thrown off the bridge.”
“Why did my guys miss this?” she said, as much to herself as to Kennedy.
“You know, a fellow officer goes down, not everyone thinks by the book, Grace,” Kennedy said, feeling the scars on his lower abdomen, which proved his point.
Chapter Forty-Nine
They did little else on either case for the remainder of Saturday. Grace gave Kennedy the tourist view of Half Moon Bay and the surrounding area.
During the course of their three-hour trip, she filled in a little of the history of Half Moon Bay. Snugly located in the nook between Pilarcitos Creek and Arroyo Leon Creek, the picturesque town is sheltered beneath the rolling hills. Until the turn of the twentieth century, it was known as Spanishtown, a farming com
munity of Italian and Portuguese specialising in artichokes and Brussels sprouts. Business picked up during prohibition when it became a safe harbour for Canadian rum runners. It was a Bay area suburb, famous for pumpkins plus pseudo-Cape Cod cluster developments along Highway 1. There were amazing “dangerous,” Grace claimed - icy thirty-five-feet high surfing waves at Pillar Point. The commercial highlight of the year happened during the third weekend of October when they celebrated the Annual Half Moon Bay Art and Pumpkin Festival, which an average of 250,000 people attended. The normal population was 12,499 plus Neil Young.
She also told Kennedy a little more about herself. Like Kennedy an only child, she also didn’t have many friends. After she and Steve Scott met, all they needed was each other. They knew this would wear off, but at the time of his death it still hadn’t. Her dad had two brothers: one in politics in the city and an older one who had retired to wine country a few years previously. The chief himself had planned to retire four years ago, but before he’d a chance to his wife, Grace’s mother, had died after a long brutal fight with cancer. Grace had never considered anything other than detective work as a career. Now that Steve had passed, her career was her life, rather than just a part of it.
Kennedy found it easy to talk to Grace. She was a person who didn’t mind showing her feelings, and he felt they were becoming friends. Kennedy didn’t have many real friends. He liked and got on well with his trusted detective sergeant James Irvine, but when push came to shove, would he consider him to be a friend? He found himself discussing things with Grace that he’d never discussed with anyone before - well, anyone except ann rea. He wondered if this was because he was so far away from home, but even in London he was also still far away from home.
Before Kennedy knew it, they’d reached the end of the day, and Grace insisted on taking him to dinner. She picked her favourite restaurant in the area, Pasta Moon, which was midway between the bridge and Moon News, where Kennedy had started his day. She ordered butternut squash and mascarpone ravioli and persuaded the gastronomically unadventurous, sweet-toothed Kennedy to do likewise. He didn’t regret his decision; it was like having a desert for a main course, and the glass of house red hit the spot big time. At the end of the meal, tiredness hit him like an out-of-control juggernaut. While they were waiting for the bill which she insisted on paying, he found he was having great difficultly keeping his eyes open.
