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

by Shelley Singer

  “Yeah.” I stood up. “Just time to make a small but adequate dinner.”

  She got up, too, and paused at the door, beer can in hand. “If you get back before eleven or so, knock on the door, okay? I’d like to hear about whatever happens.”

  “Sure.”

  “And be careful. If your relatives inherit this property, they might not like me.”

  – 6 –

  The Earthlight Meditation Center looked somehow more institutional at night. I guess it was because even a house party doesn’t light up a place like that, upstairs and down. Three other people approached the entrance at the same time I did. Two of them went straight through the entry area into a downstairs hallway. I could see several open doors in there. Busy night at the center.

  I went upstairs and found room five. Half a dozen people were there already, sitting on couches and upholstered armchairs. I’d always thought you were supposed to sit up straight in a hard chair when you meditated, feet on the floor. But I’d learned that ten years before in Sonoma County, and maybe the seventies had changed things. After all, you couldn’t be laid back and flowing with your feelings and totally self-centered sitting rigidly in a straight-backed chair and making sure you were connecting with the same floor everyone else was connecting with.

  I sat on a couch next to a woman who appeared to be somewhere around forty. She was a type I’ve always found attractive in a slightly off beat way. She had long dark hair, graying, clasped at the back of her neck with a leather buckle. Her hair looked springy, like it would pull free and stand out all over her head if she didn’t hold it down tight. Her eyes were very dark and large, with darker skin above and below them. A slight looseness in the skin under her eyes. She wore three gold bracelets and several rings on her small pudgy hands. Her skin was olive. She wore a voluminous mud-brown dress cinched tight at her small waist with a wide leather belt. Her legs were encased in black tights and her feet cradled in soft leather slippers with no heels.

  This woman was not a seventies or even a sixties person. She was right out of the other side of the fifties, the beat side, the black leotards, black beret, Chianti and lousy poetry, folk music side. Old-style bohemianism left over from the twenties. I liked it. I always had, even though I’d been barely pubescent when it had been at its peak. It was so morose.

  I nodded to her. “Jake Samson.”

  She allowed her eyes to react in an almost-smile. “Alana Gold.” Her voice was soft, almost a whisper. That’s right, I remembered. It was mostly the men who were morose. The women had had their comforter roles to play.

  “Have you been coming to this group long?” I asked. Very original. Do you come here often?

  “Three months.”

  I looked around the room. Nine people, ten counting me. “How big is the group?”

  “Usually around a dozen.”

  I decided to get right to it.

  “Actually,” I confessed, “I’m here to get some information.” She raised her heavy dark eyebrows. “I’m doing a magazine piece on an artist, a woman who was in this group, and I need to get in touch with people who knew her.”

  Her expression, attentive to me a moment before, had gone a little remote. “Artist? I suppose you mean Margaret. What kind of magazine piece?” Her eyes were roaming around the room. Violent death fascinates people, but when the victim is someone they knew, it also scares them. Especially when a mysterious stranger starts dragging them into it by asking questions.

  “About her work. She’s been out of the public eye for the past few years, but her work shouldn’t be forgotten.”

  Alana’s attention returned reluctantly to me. She gave me the look that always reminds me of a one-way mirror: She was trying to penetrate my soul, excavating for truth, but she wouldn’t let me pass through to hers. “Really? You’re not a policeman?”

  I smiled crookedly and dug in my wallet for my Probe magazine credentials. She looked at the paper and frowned slightly. “I don’t know any gossip, Mr. Samson. I can’t tell you anything seamy about Margaret because there’s nothing seamy to tell. And I don’t know anything about her work. I didn’t know she was a serious artist.”

  Serious? A significant modifier. “Did you know she dabbled in it?”

  “I had some idea…” A man was standing up in the middle of the room, counting heads or checking out the women or something.

  “Alana—may I call you Alana?” She nodded graciously and showed a flicker of her former interest in me. I wasn’t just bullshitting for information. Her ripe sensuality seeped out of her pores and surrounded her like an aura. “I don’t know how to prove to you that I’m not out to do a hatchet job. I respect the woman as an artist. That’s what I’m interested in. Did you know her well?”

  She shrugged, world-weary. “I thought I knew her. But I knew her as Margaret Bursky. I didn’t know she was married. We had a glass of wine together once or twice.” The man who had been counting heads took on a group-leader stance, and our conversation was cut short.

  “Nice to see you all here,” he said smoothly, as though he were about to start selling us sets of encyclopedias. Everyone in the room seemed to settle a little more firmly in their chairs. Several people rested their heads against the backs of their seats and closed their eyes.

  “Would you have a glass of wine with me after this?” I whispered. She nodded, her eyes fixed on the talking man.

  “I see some new faces here tonight,” he said. He was wearing a plaid flannel shirt, baggy jeans, and Birkenstock sandals with red socks. He smiled at me and at one or two others. “Beatrice, would you pass the can around?” A slight, pale woman in tight pants and platform shoes started a coffee can moving around the room. “Whatever you can afford, folks. Five or ten dollars is enough.” I thought so, too. The can came to me and I tossed in a five. Then another. What the hell, Harley would be paying for it. Alana put in five. I wondered how else the center made its money. When the can got back to Beatrice again, the leader spoke.

  “My name is Evan. Let’s go around the room and introduce ourselves.” Once again Beatrice was the starter. We all said our first names with varying degrees of aggression, flirtatiousness, or sociability.

  “Now those of you who are new here may or may not have ever meditated before. It really doesn’t matter. We’ve kind of developed our own system here. For a start, make sure both your feet are planted firmly on the floor. We’re all going to be receiving and sending power to each other. But you don’t want the power to slip right off the tips of your fingers, so you should clasp your hands—not too tightly—that’s right. Very good, Jake.” Cozy. I was willing to bet he’d trained himself never to forget a name. Everyone was shuffling into position. “Now each of you is a terminal for the current. It flows into your body. Try to keep your spines straight—that’s right, Beatrice—but feel free to relax against the backs of your chairs. Nice soft chairs.” His monotone was putting me into a trance. I resisted. “Now close your eyes.” He paused for a second, I supposed to give us time to close our lids. “Very good. Charles, you don’t look relaxed. Relax. Feel the comfort and warmth all around you.” Charles was also a newcomer. With my eyes closed, I remembered that he was middle-aged, and he wore slacks and a sports jacket. He looked like a man trying to cure an ulcer. “That’s good. Very good. Now everyone has a favorite color, isn’t that right? A favorite color? Red or blue or maybe green or even violet or yellow…” I was relaxing. I couldn’t help it. “Pick your favorite color. Keep your eyes closed. Imagine a round rubber ball. It’s your favorite color. It’s hovering in front of you.” I was staring, eyes closed, at a red rubber ball. Red is not my favorite color, but the ball stubbornly insisted on being red so I stopped fighting it. “Concentrate on that ball. Concentrate. It begins to roll away from you.” My ball just hung there. It didn’t move at all. I gave it a push. It swung away and then back again. My rubber ball was hanging on a string. I cut the string. The ball dropped out of sight. Maybe I just wasn’t in the
mood for all this. But I had paid ten dollars to get into this gym, I might as well get the exercise. I found the ball, lying on the ground at my feet.

  “The ball is rolling away down a wide path…” I gave it a kick and it started to roll. “It is a winding path. Follow the ball. Concentrate on the ball.” My path was a yellow brick road. Concentrate, Jake, I told myself, on the ball. There are no cowardly lions or scarecrows… .

  “There is a fork in the road. Your ball rolls off to the left and comes to a stone wall about five feet tall. It disappears through a hole in the wall.” I felt a vague resentment. Here I’d been following this damned red ball, and now it was supposed to disappear. It did. I was standing there facing a stone wall with moss in the cracks.

  Evan’s tone of voice changed. “Now, open your hands and step through the wall. That’s right, open them, lay them palms up on your thighs. Good. Are you through the wall?” There were a few uncertain murmurs of assent. I was still staring at a stone wall with moss in the cracks and a caterpillar crawling along the top. One of those fuzzy orange ones that look like stray tomcats. “Your hands are apart and open and ready to receive what you find on the other side of the wall. Whatever it is. You will receive it and it will travel through your mind and body and down your legs and will combine with the visions of everyone in the room.” I thought about climbing over the wall but I couldn’t get a foothold. I tried to imagine something on the other side and realized I was just faking it. “Your vision is unique. It is yours. It is your dream of all that is beautiful.” I turned around, my back to the stone wall, and walked back along the brick road. If I couldn’t go with everyone else I was at least going to amuse myself. “Receive. It is all coming to you. Clearly.” I sat down on a rock just past the fork in the road and waited for the others.

  “Good. When you’re ready, when you’re finished with your vision, open your eyes and shake your hands, shake the vision right out through the tips of your fingers and return to the world. Now stay silent. Others are still away from here.”

  I opened my eyes. More than half the people in the room were either shaking their hands or gazing bleary-eyed around them to see what the others were doing.

  Within about three minutes everyone had finished vision number one. When the last person opened her eyes, I turned quickly to Alana again.

  “Who else around here knew Margaret Bursky, talked to her pretty regularly, that sort of thing?” The leader was chatting with Beatrice. Were Beatrice and Evan an item? Who would care?

  She thought for a moment. “Well, there was Billy, of course. He’s not in the group, though.”

  “Where could I find him?”

  “He works downstairs in the office during the day.”

  “Guy with a red beard, long brown hair?” She nodded. I would definitely have to have another chat with Billy. “Anyone else?”

  “Not really. She was pretty quiet. Friendly, nice, you know. But quiet.”

  Evan took his group leader stance again and told us all to hold hands. We were going to have what he called a close encounter.

  “Now, you’re going to give yourself up totally to the forces, the vibrations, the flow of the group. You will concentrate on one thing and one thing only: the energy coming from the hands on either side of you.”

  We did that for a while. Alana’s hand was hot. The guy on the other side of me kept squeezing mine. I couldn’t tell whether this was his way of concentrating or his way of sending a message.

  After the close encounter we did a couple more versions of the things we’d already done, with lots of chat from old Evan. We finished up with a healing session. We all held hands again and concentrated on the physical problem of a member of the group. I’d been right about poor Charles. He volunteered his ulcer. We bombarded it with goodwill.

  When the session ended, most of the people stood around talking to each other for a while. Alana acted as though she wanted to talk to Evan, so I wandered around listening to conversations and smiling like a dope whenever anyone noticed me listening.

  “Well, I never would have known either,” a tall woman with a long, mouse-colored ponytail was saying, “if they hadn’t printed her picture.”

  Her companion, a neatly dressed man with black curls on his head and on his face, nodded grimly. “Certainly seems strange, using another name. Poor thing. Wonder what happened?”

  The ponytail moved slowly from side to side. “Tragic.”

  “Excuse me,” I said with the proper mournful tone. “I couldn’t help but overhear. I suppose you’re talking about Margaret Harley, or Bursky?”

  They turned to me and agreed, cautiously, that they were indeed talking about the deceased.

  “Yes,” I said, “it’s very sad. Did you know her well?”

  They both shook their heads, regarding me warily.

  “I’m doing a little magazine piece on her and I’m looking for people who knew her, people who can tell me something about her. She was an artist, you know, a few years back.”

  “Yes, that was mentioned briefly in the papers, I think.” The black curls waggled sadly. “But of course we didn’t know that. She never talked much.”

  “Alana. And Billy,” the woman with the ponytail said kindly, but with an air of butting me out of her tête-à-tête. “She seemed to be friends with them. You could talk to Alana now. She’s here.”

  I smiled brightly. “Thank you, thank you very much.” At least she had confirmed the information I’d already gotten from Alana. I wandered around a bit more. Quite a few of the folks were talking about their dead fellow-meditator. People were beginning to move out the door. Alana was coming toward me.

  “Shall we go?” Her smile was wide and generous. She took my arm. Several people watched us leave. Well, why shouldn’t she be proud to be seen on the arm of such a handsome fellow?

  – 7 –

  Alana suggested we go the Winery, a place on Telegraph Avenue. Since we both lived in that direction, we agreed to take our own cars and meet there.

  The Winery was in one of those arcades created from the insides of a building. You went through the archway and there was a brick courtyard. Red, not yellow like my road. With a fountain. Each of the restaurants and shops had its own door leading into the courtyard. Skylights completed the illusion of— what? An old-fashioned dead-end brick street? But pleasant.

  We chose a table in a dark corner. The waiter—she was a woman, but Rosie yelled at me once for saying “waitress” and I can’t get my tongue around “waitperson”—came over instantly and lit our candle. We ordered a carafe of the house white, which she assured us was made by one of the more reliable and consistent California vineyards.

  I took a few stabs at small talk, and Alana responded with practiced ease. Then I got to it.

  “This Billy. How close was he to Margaret Bursky?”

  She sipped at her wine. “I don’t know. They seemed to be friends. Anyone could tell you that.” She hesitated. “Look, I don’t know much about Billy. Why are you asking me about him?”

  I held up my hand in a soothing gesture. “Just trying to get a little background before I talk to him.” She still looked put out. My question had verged on gossip, after all. I decided I’d better get off the subject of Billy.

  “You said you’d had an idea she dabbled in art.” I tasted my wine and wondered how to approach this woman. “Where’d you get that idea?”

  Alana wrinkled her forehead. “I know that intrigued you before. Why?”

  “Because there doesn’t seem to be a sign of any recent work. It would be great if there was some. Work no one knew existed by a fine, lost artist.” Alana was a nice woman. She liked my attitude.

  “I don’t know. Let me think.”

  “Did you ever see her doing any drawing?”

  “No, that wasn’t it.” She closed her eyes. “She used to carry this big canvas bag around with her. About this big.” She indicated an object about the size of an airline bag. “It had a shoulder strap.
” I nodded encouragingly. “I remember once we were going to meet at the beginning of the week and she wanted my phone number. She pulled a whole lot of pencils out of the bag—maybe they were drawing pencils—and then fished around until she came up with a little notebook to write the number in. It just seems to me I remember seeing a larger notebook or drawing pad or something in the bag, too.” She shrugged. “I can’t be sure. But the pencils, that I’m sure of.” She looked up at me over the rim of her glass. “Does that help?”

  “It’s interesting to speculate,” I said vaguely and mysteriously. She looked at me skeptically and I abandoned mystery. “What do you think about the way she died?”

  Alana cooled again perceptibly and gazed casually around the room. “What do you mean?” she murmured from an aloof profile.

  “I mean do you think she might have killed herself?” I realized I was being pretty straightforward, but she was being so damned oblique and discreet I was ready to scream.

  She turned to me, even cooler. “Of course not.” But she wouldn’t meet my eyes. Not that I have much faith in eye contact as an indicator of honesty.

  I pressed on. “Did she seem reasonably happy?” I reflected that no one ever said “happy” all by itself anymore.

  “Look Jake, she was my friend.”

  “That’s very nice. But her death wasn’t very nice, and I’ve told you I’m writing a friendly piece, so why won’t you just talk to me?”

  She thought about what I’d said while she finished her glass of wine. I poured her another and refilled my own glass.

  “All right,” she said abruptly. “I’m going to trust you not to damage her memory. Actually, I don’t really know very much.”

  I settled back in my chair. Was she going to unwrap a little?

  “When I first met her, about three months ago, she seemed depressed. She didn’t talk about her personal life, but everything she said about everything was, well, colored by depression. Sometimes she would drink more wine than might have been wise. Sometimes she would pick people out in the bar or restaurant and make up stories about them, sad or peculiar stories. I assumed that those stories had something to do with her life, but it was as though she were telling me secrets somehow, and I tended to push them out of my mind later.”