Samson's Deal: A Laid-Back Bay Area Mystery (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series)

by Shelley Singer

  “Everything matters, Rebecca.” I finished the rest of the food on the serving plates and considered what she had left uneaten in front of her. No, I’d already eaten too much. The first day of cutting down was always the hardest.

  I asked her if she’d like to go somewhere for another glass of wine.

  “If you don’t have any more questions, I think I’ll just go home, Jake. I’m exhausted and I feel a little sick.”

  I dropped her off and went for an Irish coffee, no sugar, at Michael’s Saloon on Shattuck. I had two of them before I decided to take the case.

  – 5 –

  Harley wasn’t in his office or he wasn’t answering his phone, so I tried the home number. He was there. I closed the door to the saloon’s phone booth and told him to go to his bank and draw out a five-thousand-dollar cash retainer.

  “Seems like a lot of money to start off with,” he grumbled. When I didn’t bother to argue with him, he gave up. “Oh, all right. Meet me at my bank. It’s—”

  “No. I’ve got work to do.” I also didn’t want to be connected with a large withdrawal from his account. I was working for a magazine, not for Harley. I looked at my watch. Three-thirty. “Do you know the Scholar?”

  “Of course. It’s a bar just north of campus.”

  “Good. Meet me there with the money at six.” A little more grumbling and we had a date. “Also, I need some information from you. Your wife’s will. There is one, isn’t there?”

  “I think so.” He sounded sulky. “I expect I’ll hear from her attorney if there is.”

  “Okay. Let me know. The other thing I need is information about some of the groups she belonged to. What were they, where did they meet, any names you can give me?”

  “Oh, yes. I thought you’d want to know that.” The sulkiness had passed as quickly as it does in a child. Now he was the cooperative grownup. “The only thing I know about for sure is the meditation group. She was in a therapy group too, but she didn’t talk about it.” I grunted encouragement. “They met at the Earthlight Meditation Center. Do you know it? On Euclid?”

  “I’ll find it. Do the police know about her groups?”

  “Well, they asked me, and I thought I’d better tell them. Was that right?”

  “Good idea.”

  “Also, they asked me for her address book, and I gave it to them. And they wanted to go through her desk drawers. I didn’t have any choice, did I?”

  “No.”

  “I’d like to spend some time talking to you this evening. I don’t feel we’ve discussed things enough. I think you should ask me some more questions, stir up my memory. We might come up with something helpful.”

  “We’ll talk,” I said reluctantly. ‘‘Later.”

  I returned to the bar, ordered a glass of mineral water with a twist of lemon, and wrote “Earthlight Meditation Center” in my pocket notebook.

  The police probably had the jump on me there, unless they were following up other leads I knew nothing about. The address book, not to mention other personal papers, might give them a big advantage. Then again, it might not. In any case, I was stuck with talking to Harley in a few hours, whether he had any more information for me or not. His insistence that we talk didn’t mean he actually thought he had information for me. He probably wouldn’t feel secure in hiring me unless he could have a chunk of me now and again. I had to admit that this wasn’t just his peculiarity. A lot of people seem to need personal attention from those they hire on even the most casual basis. I remembered a job I once had building some steps for some people in Santa Rosa. Just your basic wooden steps, leading down from the back door to the patio. They insisted I do it on a weekend so the husband could be around. Right away I knew I was in trouble, but I needed the money.

  Well, of course, the guy didn’t know anything about building steps. He got underfoot. He questioned every cut and measurement. He talked about his house and all the improvements he’d made. He wasn’t trying to be obnoxious. It wasn’t because he didn’t trust me. It was like I was operating on his wife and he needed to be reassured that I really cared.

  Harley was paying me enough so I could afford to show him I cared. I hadn’t been crazy about the guy in Santa Rosa either.

  I finished my mineral water and left the saloon. Before I headed north I picked up an Oakland Tribune and checked through it. The woman had been dead two days now. The headline had shrunk and the story had moved to page three. It said, in essence, that there was no new evidence. By tomorrow, if things stayed the same, I figured Margaret Bursky might rate no space at all.

  The Earthlight Meditation Center was in an expensive section of North Berkeley, just beyond the campus. There are two kinds of spiritual enlightenment and/or self-improvement centers: the kind with money and the kind without. This one had money, or it would have been forced to move to another neighborhood long ago. The housing shortage in Berkeley and the huge student population have created a rent inflation monster that radiates south into Oakland and west into Richmond. The same is true of real estate prices.

  I drove past the small business block of restaurants and shops where Euclid dead-ends at the campus, past the Earthlight Meditation Center’s two-story frame house with tasteful, churchlike sign, and found a parking place without a meter a block and a half farther on.

  The front door was unlocked. To the left of the entry hall was a half-open door marked OFFICE. I pushed it all the way open and went in. It reminded me of a school office. A counter to the right, a large bulletin board dead ahead, a closed door to my left where the principal would sit in grand isolation. When I came in the door, a youngish man stood up behind the counter. He was a familiar type that was beginning now to look a little old-fashioned. Some people get stuck in the decade they like best. Maybe it’s a lack of flexibility or adaptability; maybe it’s just whimsy. Some men never give up their crew cuts no matter how far the fifties recede into the past. This one was stuck in the sixties. He had long brown hair, down past his shoulders, a badly trimmed reddish beard, and that saintly look around the eyes that a lot of folks adopted back then. And he had that peculiar physical attitude, the one I always thought came right out of a bad movie about Jesus: shoulders slightly rounded, head thrust forward, chin upraised, eyes barely focused. I’m not saying he was stoned or anything. He was just locked into a sweetness that had gone stale.

  The office itself created the same effect. It was clear that no particular school of meditation was represented here. The place was generic, maybe even neuter. The notices on the walls covered a variety of causes and preoccupations, from saving the whales to reading the Tarot. Nothing really controversial like parking meters.

  The sweetly aging young man was waiting patiently for me to speak, a gentle smile on his full lips. I felt like patting his head. I tried to look harmless.

  “I’m looking for someone,” I said, my voice rising softly on a hopeful note.

  He nodded sagely “I’ll help you if I can.”

  I nodded back, showing that I understood he was a nice, helpful fellow. “I’m looking for people who knew a woman named Margaret Harley.” His expression hardened and his eyes turned opaque.

  “Police?” He spoke with a show of self-control. Nothing significant in that, I supposed. Just an old habit.

  “No. Have they been here?” I emphasized the word they so he would think that I, too, disapproved of homicide investigations.

  “Not yet. Who are you?”

  “Jake Samson. I’m a writer.”

  He was not impressed. “A crime reporter?” Same category as cops, from the look on his face.

  “No. Let me explain. Margaret Harley was a well-known artist once, a painter. Her name then was Margaret Bursky. She dropped out of sight a few years ago when she married John Harley. I’m doing a magazine piece on her.”

  His eyes were still cool. “Because of the way she died,” he said in a flat voice. That made me like him a little better.

  “Because of her talent and beca
use a lot of people have wondered what happened to her.” I waited while he digested that.

  “We knew her as Margaret Bursky,” he said, and I knew I’d won.

  “Would it be possible for me to meet some of the people who were in her meditation group?”

  “I don’t see why not. Anyone can go to a meeting.”

  “When does it meet?”

  He held up his index finger and consulted a sheet of paper taped to the top of the counter.

  “Tonight. Eight o’clock. Room five upstairs.”

  “Thanks.” I turned to go.

  “Mr. uh…” I looked back at him over my shoulder. “She seemed like a really nice woman. I only met her a couple of times, you know, but I liked her.”

  “Right,” I said thoughtfully. I made a mental note to find out just how much he’d liked her. Before I went out the office door I had a look at the bulletin board. Announcements of meditation groups and classes, business cards for all kinds of entrepreneurs—tailors, gardeners, palm readers, therapists—fliers for private classes in subjects I assumed were not available at the meditation center—astrology, body work, solar technology—and three-by-five cards listing various items for sale or apartments to rent. Nothing unusual or unexpected.

  The nice young man was still standing at the counter, watching me. I nodded to him and went out the door.

  So the police hadn’t been there yet. Unless they were right behind me I had a chance to beat them to some of the people who knew the dead woman.

  I was just feeling my way at this point. There wasn’t much to go on. I needed to find out more about Margaret Bursky and Margaret Harley both. If Margaret Harley had truly lost Margaret Bursky along the way in favor of a marriage that was going bad, suicide was still a possibility and might even be the answer the cops came up with after a brief investigation. Of course, there was the bowl of fruit, but that was pretty flimsy. Maybe she was thinking about painting it.

  I left my car where it was and went in search of the campus art library. It was pretty small, but I hoped I would find what I wanted in the periodicals. Sure enough, after half an hour’s search through the card index, I found two references to Margaret Bursky in back issues of Art Monthly. One in March of 1970 and another in November of 1973, the year before her marriage. But space on the shelves had been given only to more recent issues, up to five years back.

  The young woman at the desk told me they had older magazines stored in the back room and she’d be happy to find me the numbers I was looking for. That search took another fifteen minutes, during which time the desk was unattended. No matter. No one came in.

  She smiled beautifully at me when she handed me the two magazines and asked what I was researching. I told her I was looking for information about Margaret Bursky.

  She looked blank.

  “She hasn’t painted for several years,” I explained. I thanked her for her help. She showed her dimples. She had short curly blond hair, green eyes, and stubby blond lashes, all of which went very well with the dimples. She looked about eighteen, but I was tempted to come back for more research in the next few days.

  The 1970 issue was not helpful. The piece covered several young artists and gave only a paragraph to my subject. The more recent article, the one from 1973, showed how much status she’d gained. It was all about her. That is, it was all about her art. Had she been that secretive about her personal life? I flipped back through some of the other pieces on other artists. No, they just didn’t say much about the people they were immortalizing. This was a very slick, very expensive, not very readable journal. Its level was aesthetic, its aims and language obscure, its attitude self-conscious. The material wasn’t difficult, just a bit dusty. The article on Bursky went so far into the realm of gossip as to mention that the woman had been born in Massachusetts and had gone to school in New York. But it did tell me two things: she was respected in her field and she had experimented with a variety of styles. The magazine predicted that given a few more years to mature, she could be one of the century’s better painters. There were two photographs with the article, both of paintings. One—a landscape—was reminiscent, to me anyway, of the French Impressionists. The other—a self-portrait—was done in quick harsh strokes of paint, very few strokes, and showed a strong intense face with dark hair and eyes. She didn’t fit Rebecca’s “medium” very well. I wondered whether the artist had not seen herself as others saw her, or whether Rebecca had never looked closely at the woman. Maybe this intense young artist had weathered, in a few years of marriage to John Harley, into the handsome but faded wife Rebecca had known.

  I found myself staring with some regret at the face in the self-portrait. Regret that I’d never known her, that I hadn’t met her in 1973. I was reminded of that old movie—what was it called, Laura?—where the guy falls in love with the woman in a portrait.

  I got up, feeling a little depressed. The young blond woman was talking to a young blond man. Barely woman and barely man. A few years ago I wouldn’t have felt self-conscious about calling them a girl and boy. They were flirting. They looked good together. I didn’t think I’d come back after all.

  Harley was at the Scholar waiting for me when I got there. He looked a little less damp and his color was a little better, but he still wasn’t my idea of a charming drinking buddy. I slid into the booth and looked across at him. He slid an envelope across the table to me. I folded it and stuck it in my pocket, planning to count the money later.

  “So, what is it you want to talk to me about, Harley?”

  He looked insulted. “Well, I would like to know what you’re doing and if you’ve learned anything.”

  The waitress came over and took my order. More mineral water. I wanted a beer, and I was feeling a little testy.

  “Look, Harley, there’s something you’d better understand.” He sat up a bit straighter, his chin tilted up. “I’m not going to come around and report to you once a day. I’m going to spend my time investigating your wife’s death. That’s what you’re paying me for; that’s why I’m taking your money.”

  His eyes shifted away and he shrugged slightly. Good. He wasn’t going to get pushy.

  “The police came to my office today and asked me some more questions.” I leaned forward, waiting for him to go on.

  “They asked me about our marriage. Again.”

  “And you lied. Again.”

  He was indignant. “Of course I lied.” He almost choked on the last word as the waitress appeared suddenly with my drink.

  “What else?”

  “They asked about some of the people in her address book. I didn’t know Rebecca was even in the damned thing, from when we were buying the house.”

  “What were some of the other names?”

  “I don’t remember. I didn’t know them.” I stared at him. “Well, what do you expect? After they mentioned Rebecca’s name, I got so nervous—”

  “What else?”

  “They wanted to know if she’d left any recent artwork.”

  “And she hadn’t?”

  He shook his head. “And they were all over the damned department talking to people. You’ve got to hurry.”

  I tossed my drink down my throat. It burned.

  “Look, Harley, I’ve got things to do. When would be a good time tomorrow for me to come over and look through her stuff?”

  “I don’t know. Call me at my office in the morning.” I stood up. “By the way,” he added, “her funeral’s on Friday if you want to come.” Then he stuck his face back into his glass of what looked like a red wine cooler. Or maybe it was Kool-Aid.

  I went home with my money.

  The cats came running down the driveway looking distressed, stopped about three feet short of me and began to run the other way, toward the house, leading me, as cats will, toward home and their supper dishes. Just then Rosie’s pickup came to a clattering halt at the curb.

  “Hey, Jake!” She jumped out of the cab, followed by Alice.

  “Come
on back to the house while I feed the cats,” I told her.

  “Okay. It’ll take me a few minutes to unload.”

  I nodded and turned toward the house again as she was lifting a six-foot stepladder out of the back of the truck.

  I’d scooped out a bowl of kibble, dumped half the contents of a can of Kitty Treat into their dishes, and taken Rosie’s beer out of the fridge by the time I heard Alice’s tags jingling down the path. Rosie stamped the sawdust off her boots and came inside. She examined the seat of her pants before she sat down on the couch and took the beer from my hand.

  “So?” she said.

  I sat down across from her, admitted I’d taken the job, and told her as much of the story as I knew.

  “Bursky, huh?” She squinted at the ceiling. “I don’t know what it is, but that name seems familiar.” She brought her eyes back to communication level and reached down and idly scratched Alice’s head. The dog grunted. “Let me think about it. Maybe I know something. Something recent.” She shook her head as if to get the ball bearings moving and took a swig of her beer. “This Rebecca. Do you trust her?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Hard to tell what she’s like from your description, but I think most women are capable of killing.”

  I grinned at her. “I suppose that, coming from you, that’s a favorable judgment.”

  She snorted. “You know it as well as I do, pal.”

  I fixed her with a disapproving glare. “Most of the killers I’ve known have been men, baby. You girls is too delicate, too soft. You shouldn’t even be thinking about doing men’s work. Like killing.”

  “Gosh, Jake,” she said softly. “Sometimes you make me feel all tingly and subservient.”

  “Take off your work boots and say that, sweetheart,” I muttered in my best imitation of Humphrey Bogart.

  “Alice,” she muttered in return, “kill.” The dog wagged her tail. “Listen,” she added, suddenly back in the real world, “I hate to interrupt this 1947 movie, but don’t you have to get to that meditation group soon?”