Then I picked my way across the slippery planks that spanned the ditch, tested the handrail gingerly for slimy travelers, and began pulling myself up the stairs through the sweet-smelling mist. Here and there, visible through the trees at various levels of canyon along various paths, lamplight made squares of brightness where houses perched. Music— Haydn, I thought— drifted softly from Carlota’s stereo.
I had nearly reached the fuzzy-edged patch of fog yellowed by the coach lamp when I heard Carlota’s voice rising above the Haydn.
“But I want to. You used to beg me to play for you.”
“Not when you were drunk, Carlota. Never when you were drunk. You can’t do anything right when you’re drunk.” The voice, I assumed it was Nona’s, rose dangerously at her last repetition of the word “drunk.”
“I am not…” I passed their deck, took the next few steps as quickly as I could, and escaped up the path to my little nest below Charlie’s house.
A cold, damp little nest. Charlie had indeed cleaned up. He’d placed the chemical toilet in the near right-hand corner, and he’d left me fuel for the stove, too. I jammed some crumpled newspaper, kindling, and a couple of chunks of oak into the potbelly, threw in a match, left the hatch open so I could see the fire and know I was getting warm, and pulled the work table closer to the heat. Then I got out my notebook, spread out a couple of sheets of paper, and began outlining my sparse and inconclusive knowledge about the dead man and the people who might have wanted to kill him. I set up three categories: Bright Future, family, and canyon. Those were the starting places. If I talked to the people he worked with, his family, and the people who lived where he had died, I should come up with some leads. If the killer was someone who even knew the man.
The stove warmed the small room. The mist slid in streamers across the window. If Carlota and Nona were still arguing, I couldn’t hear them. Charlie wasn’t wearing his cowboy boots, and even his steps across the living room over my head were soft. I was getting some good work done, planning what I like to think of as my interviews, when I heard what sounded like firecrackers, or maybe the cracking of a tree limb. Once, twice. Crack, crack. Or maybe a small handgun. The sound seemed to come from across the canyon, up above Artie’s house, but it was hard to tell the source. Sound echoes and dances in a canyon. I listened. I heard Charlie yell, “Oh, shit.” Crack, crack. I was sure now that someone was firing a gun. I dropped my pen and crossed the room, opening my door cautiously. Crack.
“Goddamn trees!” Crack, crack, crack. “Goddamn rotten trees!” The bellowing voice, and the shots, were definitely coming from across the canyon and up at the top of Artie’s path. I remembered there was another house up there. I slipped out of my room and up the steps.
Charlie answered my frantic knocking by waving me in the door. He was holding the phone and dialing. “Good,” I said. “Get the police. Yes.” He waited while the phone rang at the other end.
Charlie’s party answered. “Listen, Han, that’s enough now,” he said quietly. “Put the gun away and go to bed.” Pause. Crack. Crack. “Goddammit,” his voice got a little louder. “Don’t make me call the sheriff.” Pause. His jaw tightened, his biceps bulged. He yelled into the phone. “Because bullets don’t always go where you want them to, that’s why!”
There was a long pause. I couldn’t hear a voice at the other end of the phone. No sound in the canyon. Then Charlie hung up. I stared at him.
“It should be okay now, Jake. That happens once in a great while. Nothing to really be alarmed about.”
“Gunshots often alarm me. But then, I live in Oakland where they usually have some significance.”
He laughed. “It’s just Han. Hanley Martin. Up there.” He waved his arm in the general direction of the house above Artie’s. “He gets drunk, sits in the window, and shoots the trees.” Charlie’s phone rang. At the same time, I heard a car pull up at the bottom of the canyon.
“Yeah? Oh, hi, Art. Listen, it’s not anything you have to worry about. He does that sometimes. You’ll see when you’ve lived here a while… . Oh, is that them down there? Can’t say I blame you. They’ll probably let him off with a warning. They did that last year. Actually, I think he passed out while he was on the phone with me. Yeah. Well, we can talk about it tomorrow night. See you then. ‘Bye.”
I looked out Charlie’s living room window. Two people with flashlights were just visible on the path alongside the spillway.
“Sheriff,” Charlie said. “Perrine called them. Han’s door will probably be open. They’ll stick their heads in and have a look.”
“Of course,” I said. “And you’ll talk about it tomorrow night?”
“At the meeting. Hanley always comes to those. We’ll give him some hell and it won’t happen again. For months.”
I nodded, watching the wavering lights move up past Artie’s. “He shoots the trees?” I said.
“Yeah. Well, listen, Jake, I’ve got a date coming in a few minutes…”
“Gee,” I said. “Good thing he didn’t get caught on the steps during the barrage.” Charlie was maneuvering me toward the door. But I did want to ask him one question. “Charlie…” He had the door open and was smiling politely. “Why does he shoot trees?”
“I don’t really know. I asked him that last year and all he said was that they’re too big.”
I went back to my plans. A few minutes later, the flashlights worked their way down the path across the canyon again. One of the people carrying a flashlight was saying something and laughing. They got down to the bottom, got in their car, and drove away.
A few minutes after that, I heard heavy boots going up the steps past my door. Charlie’s date.
8
Some of my plans for Tuesday worked out and some of them didn’t.
They were good plans, too: Track down Smith’s family, start working on Bright Future, and get background information on the canyon residents.
For one thing, I started the day late by oversleeping. I woke at eleven to the sound of someone banging on my door. I sat up in bed, yelled “Just a minute,” and tried to figure out what it was that felt different about this morning. Then I got it. I’d slept off the worst of my cold. Even the maniac at the door couldn’t spoil my newfound good mood.
The maniac at the door was Artie.
“What are you doing home from work again?” I asked accusingly, covering a yawn.
“I had to leave work,” he gasped. “Guess what’s happened?”
“Don’t be cute.” His panic was getting to me, but I was determined to stay calm.
“They just picked Alan up. At work. Because of the knife. And Julia’s not home. She’s got this photography class—”
“Then let her take it. She’ll find out soon enough. What about a knife?”
He was still wheezing a little, but his breath was coming easier. “His knife. His hunting knife. They found it stuck in the mud in the ditch. I guess they were poking around down there again this morning. It’s got his initials and everything.”
“It’s the murder weapon?”
“I don’t know!” Artie howled.
“How about Chandler? Does he know?” The shape Artie was in, I was afraid he might have forgotten to call Alan’s attorney. And I couldn’t expect Alan to deal with something so basic when he was starring in his own drama.
“I don’t know if he knows it’s the murder weapon. But he knows they picked Alan up again. I left a message.”
“Okay,” I said. “Leave another message. Tell him when he’s done whatever he needs to do over at the jail, he should call me at your place. You go back there now, make the call, take care of Jennifer, wait for Julia. And relax. There’s nothing you can do. And there’s nothing I can do until I talk to Chandler. I’ll be over in a few minutes.”
He nodded and stumbled out the door. I got dressed and followed him back to his house. Where I got undressed again, took a shower, and brushed my teeth.
Then I asked Artie and Jennifer if th
ey were hungry. They both shook their heads. I dug around in the refrigerator until I found butter, eggs, milk, cheese, and some leftover broccoli. I put on the water for coffee and began to create an omelet big enough for three. It didn’t matter whether they ate or not. I was hungry.
When brunch was ready, I called them to the table. Artie came and sat down but Jennifer was listless. She wouldn’t eat. I split the omelet two ways and let her wander around the house as much as she wanted.
It was another two hours before Chandler returned Artie’s call. He’d just come back from the jail. Artie answered the phone but turned it over to me.
“What are you, Artie’s mother or something?” Chandler demanded. I hadn’t liked the guy before I ever had a chance to talk to him. Now I could not like him in person. But I decided to be civil enough to get what I wanted.
“Artie’s distraught,” I said. “I’m helping him out. I’ve had a small amount of experience along these lines.”
“Yeah, sure. Okay, what do you want to know?” He was still cranky, but he, too, had apparently decided to be civil.
“Whatever you know,” I said reasonably. “What’s the story on the knife?”
“It’s Alan’s, and it’s the murder weapon.”
“How do they know it’s the murder weapon?”
“Because,” he said, veering toward nasty again, “the point was broken off and the point they found stuck in the corpse matches. Real easy, when you know how.”
“Why are they so sure it’s Alan’s?”
“One, it had his initials on it. Two, he admitted it when they showed it to him.”
“Well, what the hell was it doing in the ditch?”
“Not to mention in the corpse? Hah. He says he lost it. About a week ago. Says he didn’t tell anyone he lost it because it was a gift from his wife and he didn’t want her to know.”
“Any rust on it?”
He hesitated, as though I’d surprised him by asking an intelligent question. “Not anymore. And even if there was, what would that prove? Maybe the kid doesn’t take care of his toys.”
“Any prints on it?”
“It was washed clean. In the water and in the mud.”
“Have they charged him yet?”
“No, not yet. I think they’re checking some things out before they take the plunge, so to speak. They can hold him for a while without a charge if they need to. But I think they’re going to do it.”
“When was the man killed?”
“Close enough to the time Alan was spotted near the ditch. They seem to think he killed him, threw him in the spillway, then ran down to make sure he was dead. They found traces of Smith’s clothing up near the top.”
“Come on,” I said, “maybe a killer would be dumb enough to get himself noticed checking on the victim. But why would anyone use his own knife to kill somebody, with his own initials on it, and then leave it lying around for the sheriff to find? That’s really stupid.”
He grunted. “It’s physical evidence, Samson, stupid or not. And a lot of people do stupid things after they’ve killed someone. Not everyone’s as clever as you are. They figure he left the knife in the body and the trip down shook it loose.”
It was my turn to grunt. “Okay. That’s it?”
“So far.”
“Thanks.”
“Yeah.”
We both hung up.
As I was telling Jennifer and Artie what he’d said, Julia came in and I had to start at the beginning again. Julia got quarrelsome.
“Oh, hell,” she said. “Anyone could have used that knife. They haven’t proved anything. I don’t see how they can expect to get a conviction on such flimsy evidence.”
Jennifer nodded, looking hopeful.
I hated to be depressing, but I couldn’t contribute to their optimism. “Maybe they’ll decide not to charge him. It’s not a solid case. Still, if Alan’s the best they’ve got, he may be good enough.”
We spent the rest of the afternoon together, going over and over the case. Artie used up a lot of excess energy “helping” me plan my investigation, but no one wanted to turn me loose long enough to get started with it.
I did get a chance to make a call to Bright Future and set up some appointments for the next day. I also managed to get Artie and Julia to talk a little about their neighbors while they were helping solve the case.
We were just finishing dinner when Chandler called.
Alan had been charged with murder.
9
Rosie and Alice showed up at my door a few minutes before the meeting was scheduled to start, and the three of us climbed the rest of the way to Charlie’s.
I introduced Rosie and Rosie introduced Alice. “She can stay out on the deck, if you’d rather,” Rosie said.
Charlie reached down to stroke the dog’s head. “I wouldn’t hear of it,” he said, looking a little shocked. “I knew a standard poodle once. Very civilized. She’s welcome to join us.”
When we were seated in the living room with glasses of wine, Charlie said casually, “Didn’t Gertrude Stein always have standard poodles?”
Rosie, who had been looking around the room at the art, laughed and said yes, that was so.
“And her name is Alice?”
“Right again.” They smiled at each other.
Now that they had that settled, there wasn’t much to do except wait for the rest of the party.
First to arrive were Carlota and Nona, Carlota in a red caftan and Nona in something that looked very much like a karate suit with yellow roses embroidered on the sleeves. Carlota was carrying a bottle of wine flamboyantly, as though any minute she might tuck it under her chin and draw a bow across it. This was the first time I had seen the living Nona. She was remarkable mostly for her smallness. She could not have been five feet tall.
The introductions made, Rosie grinned and stuck out her hand, warm, friendly, and beautiful as ever. Carlota’s eyelids flickered and she took Rosie’s hand in both her own. Nona scowled, an amazing sight. She looked like a malevolent child with the faint beginnings of crow’s feet.
Carlota continued to flicker at Rosie as she asked Charlie about wineglasses. Then she wrinkled her forehead, sucked in her cheeks, and followed him into the kitchen.
“I can’t imagine,” Nona said, “why either of you would be interested in our little community meeting. But it’s very nice of you to come.” She was no longer threatening to boil over, but as she spoke to us she gave Rosie only the briefest of glances.
“I’ve never been to a neighborhood meeting in a hot tub,” Rosie said, showing polite and gracious interest.
“Oh, really?” This time she gave Rosie a slightly longer look. “Don’t they have them in Oakland? In the hills, perhaps?”
Nona seemed to be playing several roles at once, and I couldn’t get a fix on her. She was the fiery woman of deep and explosive passions. She was the gracious hostess, and she was the Marin County snob, which is not much different from the San Francisco snob, the Peninsula snob, or the East Bay hills snob.
“Heck,” I said. “We don’t know much about the hills. We live down in the flatlands with the People.”
She grimaced, flailing wildly for an appropriate answer— should she be a knee-jerk liberal or maybe even a socialist?— and finally muttered, “Of course…” At that moment Carlota and Charlie emerged from the kitchen and Nona regained her balance. She returned to being the fiery woman of deep and explosive passions. I guessed it was her favorite role, and probably the one Carlota appreciated the most. Carlota, too, had regained her balance. She was no longer flickering at Rosie. In fact, she didn’t look at her at all.
At one point, when Carlota strode to the fireplace and posed with elbow on mantel and wineglass in hand, her eyes flitting all over the room and avoiding Rosie and Nona as though she were afraid of both of them, I suggested that Rosie might like to get an advance look at the hot tub. She agreed, and we went out through the dark bedroom to the tiny backyard.
> The yard was a patch of gravel about ten feet by fifteen, a level spot between a steep downslope and a damp, forty-five degree upslope, its surface obscured by blackberry and broom, that looked like it was about to start sliding any minute. The upper reaches of the incline were lost in trees and brush a hundred feet or so above the house. Someone had built a three-foot retaining wall at that side of the yard. Comforting. Right up against the retaining wall the hot tub squatted on its decking. It was heating. The cover was still on.
This hot tub was not one of those plastic jobs dropped into a wooden structure like a large sunken bathtub. That kind of thing might be good enough for Oakland, or even Berkeley, but it certainly wouldn’t do for southern Marin. This was the real thing. Rustic redwood. The old hand-hewn effect.
The canyon was dark, except for a few house lights showing here and there through the trees. The spillway, reduced after two rainless days to a stream, babbled delicately to itself and maybe to the redwoods. The air was cold and so charged with oxygen it smelled funny. Rosie stood there, staring up at the sharp little sparks of starlight, breathing deeply, and smiling like the Mona Lisa.
The place was too damned beautiful. Too beautiful for murder. Too beautiful for some of the types who lived there, like the tree-slayer. Just about beautiful enough, I figured, for me, and for Rosie, and for the few other perfect people in the world. Artie and Julia could stay. I didn’t know Charlie well enough to know whether he could stay or not.
I brought myself back from dreamland. “So,” I said to Rosie, “What do you make of Carlota and Nona?”
She chuckled. “They’re assholes.”
“Oh.” It was a revelation and a relief. I hadn’t known what to do with them and now Rosie had provided a niche.
She turned to face me. “Jake, you’re usually pretty good at checking people out. Why did you need me to tell you that those two are jerks? Were you taken in by the too-too-divine act or were you afraid to judge them?”
Free Draw (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 2) Page 5
