Full House: A Laid-Back Bay Area Mystery (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 3)

by Shelley Singer

  “So this flood is going to purge the planet of the people who make victims of everyone and everything else? And your carefully selected group believes in capital punishment and environmentalism and the rights of animals and other victims?”

  She smiled. “Yes. But you should talk to Arnold. He knows more about it.”

  I didn’t know whether I would or not. I thanked Beatrice and set out for home. Only in the eighties could such a collection of causes coalesce, I decided. The kind of person who cared about animals and the environment didn’t use to be the kind of person who wanted criminals eliminated. Were Right and Left merging here into some weird hybrid? This eye-for-an-eye thing could get pretty dangerous if you mixed Old Testament justice with current-cause passion.

  I thought of Marjorie. An angry young woman, justifiably so, who wanted so desperately for the world to be better that she had climbed off the dirty streets of reality and onto the deck of an ark.

  Unless, of course, she’d seen the arks as a personal way out, and nothing more. And Noah. And his money. I preferred to think she’d tipped off into never-never land.

  – 14 –

  The tourists arrived at six. They had had, I could tell, a wonderful time. My father was laughing, Lee had a slight pink flush on her gorgeous cheeks, and Eva was chattering away about the seals on seal rock, which, I believe, are actually sea lions.

  “So cute,” she was saying. “Jake, is it true that killer whales eat them? I heard somebody say that.”

  I had some memory from some time back, something about somewhere up north… “I guess so, I think I remember reading something in the paper. But I don’t think it’s a big problem.”

  “Not to you, maybe,” she said indignantly.

  “How did you like Chinatown?” I asked. My father was enthusiastic.

  “Better than Chicago,” he said. “Like you’re in China. The smells, the shops, everybody talking Chinese. Wonderful.” I’d taken him there once, on his first visit to the Coast, but we’d gone only for dinner. He had obviously loved his daylight tour. “Such interesting people,” he added. “An ancient culture, a great civilization. Did you know a lot of Jews went there from Europe, to escape?”

  No I hadn’t, but I wasn’t surprised. They’d gone to Argentina, too. Never any peace and quiet.

  I turned to Eva. “And you? How did you like it?”

  She shrugged. “I liked the seals.”

  “What about Chinatown?”

  “Very interesting,” she said. “Different. But I don’t know…” I waited. “Who wants to look at old eggs and dead ducks?”

  Lee laughed, and the angels sighed.

  “Now,” I said masterfully, “where does everyone want to go for dinner? What do you feel like eating?”

  “Not Chinese,” Eva declared. “Not today, anyway.”

  “Italian? Mexican? Japanese?” Lee asked.

  “No raw fish,” my father said.

  “You don’t have to eat raw fish in a Japanese restaurant,” I told him.

  “You know,” Eva said, “I only had Mexican food once before. Interesting. Different. But good.”

  No one objected to that. I put on my fedora and took them to my favorite Mexican restaurant. I think, on the way, Lee glanced favorably at my hat.

  The restaurant was just up the street, on College. For several years, this same place had specialized in authentic dishes native to the South Pacific. Now the same management had turned it into a mostly Mexican restaurant. The food was terrific, the service delightful, and they seemed to be having some success with their new menu.

  We were seated by a young man who could have been anywhere from eighteen to twenty-five and who wore his dark hair short and spiky. I placed my hat carefully under my chair.

  “Don’t forget it there,” my father warned.

  “I won’t.”

  The waitress was a member of the original, founding, Indonesian family. The cashier, who looked like Rudolph Valentino even unto the patent leather hair, was a new addition. The South Seas mural still covered one wall, but, on another wall, someone very skilled had painted a villa set on a distinctly Mexican landscape, complete with serape-clad inhabitants.

  The clientele looked pretty much the same: Berkeley/ North Oakland young to middle-aged professional types who probably owned pasta makers. The only difference was, there were more of them than there used to be. Maybe Guadalajara was just a catchier name than Oceania.

  “Listen,” my father said, “I’m paying, so you order whatever you want.” He studied the menu.

  The waitress remembered me, although not by name.

  “Good to see you again,” she said.

  I smiled my reply and checked out the beer list. They still had Kirin, so that’s what I ordered. My father asked for red wine, but Eva decided that, having had wine once before that week, she’d had enough alcohol. Lee considered a margarita, until she learned that they had only a beer and wine license and made their margaritas with white wine. She decided on the wine all by itself. The waitress went off to get our drinks.

  “So?” my father wanted to know, “what’s good?”

  I explained some of the items on the menu while Lee’s eyes wandered to Valentino. My father settled on a taco-tamale combination. Eva went for the quesadillas, and I was in the mood for chicken enchiladas verdes. Lee came back from a dream long enough to order chili rellenos.

  Okay, so I don’t look like Valentino. More like James Caan, I thought, with George Segal’s nose. Curly dark blond hair, some of it on my chest. Passionate lips. Strong but sensitive hands. What more could she want? Besides all that, I had maturity, which Valentino definitely did not have. When she was forty, I thought, she’d probably be chasing twenty-year-old tail. Women. They’re all alike.

  I chatted unconcernedly with Eva. Lee drifted back.

  “Eva tells me you write articles, Jake, is that right?”

  Hah. Just as I thought. Eva had talked about me to Lee, no matter what she said. I avoided my father’s eye. I was afraid he would be either winking and smirking or looking elaborately secretive— or, worst of all, bearing my idiocy and impending death with courage and resignation. I wished they’d both go home to Chicago and leave me alone. With Lee. Who was probably wondering why I had not yet answered a perfectly ordinary ice-breaking question.

  “Actually,” I said, “I’m a kind of investigator.”

  “A kind of?” she repeated with interest.

  I glanced around me at the nearby tables occupied by strangers.

  “Maybe I can tell you more about it under more private circumstances.”

  Eva raised her eyebrows, probably in despair at the duplicity of the rutting male. I still did not look at my father. Lee appeared to be reserving judgment. A tough cookie.

  Dramatic effect dictated a change of subject, veering away from my sinister self, so I asked her what she did for a living. It turned out she was an attorney, working for a small firm up in Santa Rosa. Our food arrived; I was hungry, which made me happy. I was still in control of my vital organs, despite Lee’s presence. Nodding appreciatively at her choice of profession, I ate a few bites of enchilada. Good green sauce.

  “Civil or criminal?” I asked, after a long swallow of beer.

  “Criminal,” she answered, sipping wine and not looking seductively at me over the rim of her glass. “But sometimes it gets pretty disgusting.”

  “Yes. I know what you mean.”

  “Do you really?” That flicker of interest again, almost flirtatious. What a killer.

  I smiled at her, confident, tough. “I do. Really.” The folks, trying their best to leave us alone, were carrying on a low-voiced conversation about their dinners.

  Lee’s eyes were no longer straying quite so often toward the cash register.

  “Must be a rough field,” I said. “Law, I mean. Overcrowded, isn’t it?”

  “It is. There must be almost as many attorneys in Northern California as there are psychotherapists.” I
laughed with her and felt a small flash of wonder. Was it coincidence, I asked myself, that I was so often attracted to women who were, in turn, attracted to overcrowded fields of work? Chloe was a journalist. Iris was a therapist. I decided that it wasn’t. I liked women who were what they wanted to be, period.

  “Were you always interested in law?”

  “No. Are you familiar with Hammurabi?”

  I had to think hard for a moment. It was a name, and he was dead. I knew that. Phoenician? Assyrian? No, wait a minute— Babylon. “The guy with the code of laws?”

  “Right!” She was pleased with me. Very pleased. “I was an anthropology student. Got my bachelor’s degree in cultural anthro. Archaeology. But I didn’t know what to do with it. I had gotten interested in Hammurabi’s code, realized maybe that law…” She shrugged. “Anyway, I came at it sideways.”

  “Archaeology,” I said, eating some more enchilada. “I used to read a little ancient history now and then. You haven’t been formally introduced to my cats, have you?”

  She laughed. “Not formally, no. Why?”

  “Their names are Tigris and Euphrates.”

  After that, I was sure she was giving me the edge over the cashier.

  – 15 –

  The next morning I got right down to business, calling Mrs. Noah to ask if it would be convenient for me to stop by. I wanted, I told her, to drop off some of the papers I’d taken from her husband’s office.

  “Did you learn anything from them?”

  “Not much so far.” That was true. I’d noticed that the man was rich, which I’d already figured out, and that he had indeed pledged the quarter of a million to the arks. I also learned that he’d been largely responsible for the funds that had gotten the arks started, as well. There were the lists of ark-people, but I thought I should go over those with Arnold at some point, to see if he could come up with anyone who might have been interested in doing the leader in. There was also a list, a very short list, of people who had donated various small sums to the construction: Beatrice, Arnold, and Joe Durell. I noticed that neither Jerry Pincus, Noah’s Tahoe partner, nor Bert Olson, his mechanic, was on either list.

  I kept the file of memos and notes, and some of the personal correspondence I hadn’t had the time— or the inclination— to go through yet.

  On my way over to the house, I saw an incredible-looking blond walking down Claremont Avenue, and, unavoidably, thought about the evening before. Lee had shaken my hand at the door and gone home to Petaluma— no surprise there— but she had held my hand a little longer than she’d needed to, and her smile had been a mite on the heavy-lidded side. We said we hoped we’d see each other again soon. I was planning to make sure of it.

  I would find the time somehow.

  I passed the Claremont Hotel and turned up the money-cushioned street. The big new American car was right where I’d seen it last, parked in front of the house on the movie-style driveway.

  I pushed the bell. Adele, the maid, pulled the door open after a while and gazed at me sullenly. Her red hair, I reflected, was nothing like Lee’s.

  “Jake Samson,” I said. “Mrs. Gerhart is expecting me.”

  She nodded, turned, and marched through the entry hall. I followed her, once again, to the library. June Gerhart was wearing a shirtwaist dress, heels, and a ribbon around her neck.

  I put the folders down on a side table. She invited me to sit down.

  “Is that everything?” she asked.

  “No. I kept what I’m still using. I did want to talk to you about a few things, though.”

  She nodded. She was looking a little tired. New lines had appeared around her eyes since I’d seen her last.

  “Are you having any success at all, Jake?”

  “Yes, I think so. I’m following a lot of trails. I don’t have the answer yet, if that’s what you’re asking, but I don’t have all the pieces of the puzzle yet, either. I’m closing in on it.”

  I was no such thing. At that point, as far as I knew, I could keep following trails for the rest of my life and never find Noah or Marjorie or the quarter of a million. But I was certainly taking the case more seriously since my father had gotten bashed. Whatever was going on, it wasn’t kosher.

  “You said you had something you wanted to talk to me about?”

  “Several things. One of the lists I found in your husband’s papers had to do with investors. In the arks. There were only three: Arnold, Beatrice, and Joe. Each name had five thousand dollars written after it. Did they each give five thousand dollars?”

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Jake, I just don’t know. I don’t know much about the finances for the arks. I had the impression that Joe had contributed something. He is involved, after all.”

  “I can’t decide whether five thousand dollars is a lot of money or not very much, compared to what your husband was putting in.”

  “Oh, that sounds like a good amount. After all, the arks were Tom’s project from the beginning. Other people gave what they could or what they thought would be suitable. Most people don’t have a lot of extra money, you know.”

  “Are you saying Durell doesn’t have much money? Doesn’t he have an interest in Yellow Brick Farms?”

  “Oh, yes. But Yellow Brick Farms is also primarily my husband’s project. Joe has some shares— they’d be worth quite a lot now, I would think— and of course a generous salary.”

  “But he does have an interest. He shares in the profits, right?”

  “That’s right, in a small way.”

  “Well then, how does he feel about your husband’s siphoning off profits from the company for the arks?” There was a logical answer to that: it was none of his business. But I had to ask.

  “Oh, but that’s not the way it works, Jake,” she objected. “I think we need some sherry now, don’t you?”

  “Okay.” I didn’t need any, but if she did, what the hell. She picked up a little brass bell from the table beside her chair and tinkled it. Then she put it down again.

  “Now, as I was saying, Tom was putting some of our share of the profits into the arks. He had every right to do that.”

  “But don’t you have to plow a certain percentage, as they say, back into the business?”

  “I believe,” she said with finality, “that there is more than enough for both purposes. If Tom thinks so, it’s so. He is a very good businessman. And Joe seems perfectly satisfied.”

  “Good. Good. I also wanted to ask you something about who’s controlling the company.”

  She looked puzzled.

  “Your husband’s been missing for over a week now. Are you planning to take a more active part in the business, helping out, filling his shoes?”

  She laughed lightly. “I don’t think so. It hardly seems necessary. Of course, I’ve always been somewhat involved. I know some of the oldest, biggest customers, socially. I would certainly help if I were needed. But Joe has worked with Tom a long time. They’ve worked together so well, for so long, that I see no reason not to trust him to keep things going until Tom returns.”

  “I don’t want to upset you or anything, but you do believe that your husband is at least in danger. What if he doesn’t come back? Durell says you inherit his share of the business, is that right?”

  “Of course.”

  “What would happen then? Would you take control of the company?”

  She looked offended. “I’m not sure I know what you mean by control.” She picked up the little bell and rang it again.

  “I mean run the company. If you thought your husband wasn’t coming back. Knew he wasn’t.” Did her lip tremble, or was I running a movie in my head?

  “You mean move into my husband’s office? Not unless I felt I needed to. If I heard of a problem of some sort…”

  Her hesitation opened up another question. “Have you heard of any problems?”

  “No, not really, just the kind of thing you might expect. You see, Joe lost his assistant a while ago, and there
have been some minor tie-ups in deliveries. He just needs a little more help than he’s got right now. Certainly, if Tom didn’t come back, he’d need to do some hiring. But I don’t think I would have to actually go out there and work. I wonder, would you excuse me for just a moment?” She left the room. I checked over my notes. Just a couple more items to go into with her, then I’d go back to the house, have some lunch with the folks, see if Rosie was home, and go on from there.

  June came back with two glasses of sherry on a tray.

  “Just a few more questions, okay?” She nodded, looking a lot more tired than she had when I’d first arrived. “Do you know someone who owns an old car? Dark blue. Early seventies. A dent in the side. A license number starting with C?” I described the mugger and the driver— not much in the way of descriptions, but something, anyway.

  “How did you meet these people?”

  “I’m not even sure they have anything to do with the case, June, but they might.” I told her the big guy seemed to be looking for me.

  She thought for a long time. Then she shook her head helplessly. “I’m sorry. I can’t think who that could be.”

  “That’s all right, it’s just a long shot anyway. Don’t worry about it. There’s something else, something I’ve been wondering about for a while. It’s about the ark. When they first started working on the one down on my corner, they were putting in reasonable workdays, not too long. But in the last couple of weeks they’ve been working constantly, putting in as many hours and days as they can without running into problems with the noise ordinance. Do you know any reason why they might have decided to speed up the work?”

  She thought about that for a long time, too. “I do remember something about that. Tom mentioned something to me; it was right before he went away, I believe. Yes. Something about thinking the flood was going to come sooner. Or something. That’s all I remember. Sorry.”

  “No, that’s fine. I’ll talk to Arnold about it. That’s very helpful.” She sipped a little more of her sherry, then put it aside. It had helped. Her color was better. “Just one more thing. I’ve got conflicting reports about Marjorie, or maybe they’re not. I don’t know. What I have is that she told someone she was going to Sonoma, and then told someone else she was going to Tahoe. I understand why she might be going to Sonoma. That was part of her job. But why Tahoe?”