I could feel myself blushing and I was glad we were standing in the dark. I hesitated. She chuckled again.
“It’s okay, pal. I say so and that makes it all right. Yes, these two particular members of my particular minority group are assholes. Okay?”
I laughed with her. “Okay.” Then I put my arm around her shoulder and we went back into the house. Artie and Julia— I had convinced them to come to the meeting and get their minds off Alan for a while— had arrived. A short, wiry, nervous-looking blond guy was standing in front of the fireplace warming his left hip. An older couple, early sixties I guessed, were sitting on the couch. She had long gray hair held at the back of her neck with a leather clasp, and wore a wildly colorful dress in reds, blues, and yellows, cinched at the waist with a wide cloth belt. When she crossed her ankles I noticed she was wearing cowboy boots. The man sitting with her also had gray hair. He was wearing a plaid wool shirt over a cotton turtleneck, and baggy worn corduroys.
The wiry blond guy lived in the first house this side of the bridge. His name was Jim something. Jim, I had learned that afternoon, was “in computers.” The older couple were Eric and Mary Anderson. They lived next door to Charlie’s, just beyond Carlota’s and above the lane. Julia had told me that they had a bookstore in Mill Valley, and that Eric also did “something else intellectual,” which she couldn’t remember. Charlie, I had learned, was a stockbroker.
Charlie looked at his watch. “We’re running a little late. We’ll wait another five or ten minutes, then we’ll start.” Nobody objected. Everyone was drinking wine except Jim, who was dressed in chinos and a sport jacket and looked like a 1958 fraternity boy gone to nerves. He was sucking on a can of beer.
I heard footsteps on the stairs, two kinds, and then a knock on the door. Charlie opened it and greeted two more neighbors. The man didn’t look like someone I wanted to know. He was short- to medium-size, about five foot eight, and a little wider than medium across the chest. Stocky, close to the ground, sand-colored hair and beard, blue-gray eyes. A physical type you see a lot around the northern California coast. I’m not sure why. I guess that hardy peasant type gravitates toward rugged and primitive land. But he was just a little off. He had pouches under his eyes you wouldn’t see up north, and hard lines from nostril to chin that spoke of stress. This was Hanley Martin, would-be killer of redwoods. I had been interested to learn from Artie that afternoon that Martin worked as a gardener.
The woman with him, Arlene Shulman, had long dark fuzzy hair, petulant lips, and a vacant expression in her yellow-brown eyes. She was introduced as a friend of Hanley’s. Hanley nodded brusquely and sat down. She gazed opaquely into my eyes, said “Hi,” and wandered off to the kitchen.
Several small conversations were going on at once. Carlota was saying something about the steps to Rosie. Eric and Artie seemed to be talking about garden tools. “It wasn’t your trowel after all, Art,” Eric was explaining. “Turned out I’d borrowed it from someone else.” Hanley was telling Jim about “some goddamn customer” who couldn’t seem to understand that things grew faster in the spring. I noticed that no one was talking about the murder. I wondered if any of them knew, yet, that the cops had arrested Artie’s nephew.
“I think we should get started, don’t you?” Charlie asked in the style of one who is not asking a question. He was answered with vague nods and murmurs. Charlie turned to Jim. “Give me a hand with the cover, will you?” Jim nodded and followed Charlie outside. The two men had left the back door open and I could just see through the bedroom into the backyard. It looked a little lighter out there now. I guessed the moon was rising just in time for the show. Eric and Mary brushed past me into the bedroom and began to undress, folding all their clothing neatly and placing the pile on the bed. I watched their bare buttocks move outdoors. When I turned abruptly back into the living room I almost bumped into Rosie, who was gazing past me with eyebrows elevated. Then I got out of the way, because Carlota was sweeping through, followed by the dark, glowering Nona. Followed by Artie and Julia. Artie laughed a little nervously at the expression on my face.
“It’s a custom, Jake. When in—”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “After you, Rosie.” She did, indeed, lead the way, past Artie and Julia, who had stopped off in the bedroom to strip. Hanley Martin and his buddy Arlene brought up the rear.
Charlie was in the tub, waiting, with Eric and Mary. Jim, still fully clothed, was leaning against the decking watching the half moon clear the top of a redwood. Nona was sitting on the retaining wall, swinging her short legs. Carlota, standing in the middle of the tiny yard, glanced at Rosie and, in one stagy movement, removed her caftan— she was wearing nothing else— and draped it on a shrub. Then she slithered up the steps to the decking that surrounded the hot tub and lowered herself slowly into the water. Rosie coughed. I knew better than to meet her eyes. Arlene had somehow managed to remove her clothing while moving through the bedroom, but she didn’t waste much time covering herself up again by getting into the tub. The Perrines minced out the door naked, holding hands. They looked, for damned good reason, goose-bumpy with cold. They also squeezed into the tub. Cozy.
“Bet one more person could fit in,” I told Rosie.
“I never take off my cowboy boots in Marin County.”
Arlene stared at us blankly. “It’s English riding boots, now, you know,” she said. “Cowboy boots are out.”
“We’ll alternate as usual,” Charlie said. “Halfway through the meeting, some of us will get out and the rest of you can get in.”
Martin nodded sullenly, looking at Arlene, who had seated herself between Charlie and Eric. Jim just waved his hand dismissively and drank some more beer. Nona was still glowering, but I couldn’t figure out why. I didn’t know how long she’d been living with Carlota, but she must have seen this act before. Maybe the heavy frown was a method of limiting the performance. My mother used to do that, may she rest in peace.
Carlota spoke to me, probably because I was Rosie’s friend. “Jake, do you remember when I told you my films were going to be reviewed?”
“Yes.” Her breasts were bobbing on the surface of the water. I looked resolutely at her face. “Marin Journal, right?”
“Of the Arts. Yes, well, Eric is going to do the review. He does that sort of thing.” She smiled warmly at him. “He has a fine reputation.” He shrugged, feigning embarrassment. “When is it coming out, Eric?”
“This weekend,” he said. “In time for the second showing of the films.”
“So good of you,” she murmured.
“Okay,” Charlie said crisply. “Let’s get down to business.” Arlene yawned and stretched. “Let’s start with you, Jim. What’s happening with the gravel?”
There followed an account of Jim’s adventures in attempting to get a couple of loads of rock delivered to fill the winter’s ruts in the canyon’s entry road. When he finished his report, he seemed to brace himself. Then he turned to Han Martin.
“And I’d like to say a few words on another subject, too,” he snarled. Martin raised his chin in a belligerent “c’mon, hit me” attitude. Charlie sighed.
“Okay, Jim, but briefly.”
Jim didn’t take his eyes off Martin. “I want to know what this jerk thinks he’s doing shooting off his goddamn gun again. I thought we talked about that already. I thought we decided he had to stop doing that.”
If I’d been Jim, and Martin had been looking at me that way, I think I would have shut up right then. Jim didn’t; but Charlie, who managed to look authoritative even three-quarters submerged, intervened with a few peaceable words.
“Yeah, Jim, that’s true. We did decide that. And I talked it over with Han again last night, so how about we think of it as a kind of slip in his good intentions. For the time being.” There was just the tiniest note of threat in that last sentence. Martin caught it and sulked a bit.
“Glad to hear about the gravel,” Charlie concluded. “Mary? What’s new on the parking area? I h
ear you have some good news for us?”
I had started to shut off my hearing, but halfway through Mary’s recital I caught the name “James Smith.” Immediately after I caught it I also caught a blow to the ribs from Rosie, who had also noticed that Mary had mentioned the name of the murdered man. I tuned back in again. And I learned that Smith did indeed have a living connection with the canyon.
I got some of the story through Mary’s report. Charlie filled in the gaps for the benefit of the guests. It went roughly like this: The area down at the bottom of the canyon, which all the inhabitants had used for parking for, presumably, as long as there were cars, had been threatened by an impending sale, by the county, to a private party named James Smith. Such a sale would have been disastrous. None of the people who lived in the canyon had what is known in real estate as on-site parking, since they were all perched up above the canyon floor. If the lot were sold, and built on, there would not have been enough room at the bottom for the residents’ cars. What that meant was that their homes would have become useless, valueless cabins in the sky. The residents couldn’t have continued to live there conveniently and it would have been impossible to find anyone foolish enough to buy.
But Mary, who had lived there a very long time, had always had some vague idea that, for some reason, the lot could not be sold legally. She had formed a committee of two— asking Han Martin to help her— and had begun a search of the records, racing against time to prevent the sale.
They had soon found what they were looking for, Mary said: a turn-of-the-century ruling, wherein the county had agreed that the land was to be held in common by canyon homeowners. Forever.
Most of the neighbors nodded knowingly, as though they’d already heard about the committee’s success. Only Artie and Julia looked pleasantly enlightened by Mary’s announcement.
“We’re nearly finished with our report and we’re probably going to submit it tomorrow,” Mary concluded. “If it’s accepted, there can be no more prospective buyers.”
“Is there any question that it will be accepted?” Charlie asked.
Mary shook her head. “It’s hard to tell. There could be some loophole we don’t know about yet. A later ruling, perhaps. But at least now we have time to deal with that eventuality.” Mary, it turned out, had checked the day after the murder to be sure the dead man was the James Smith they had been trying to stop.
“Damned good thing, too,” Han growled.
“Yes,” Mary agreed, not in the least disturbed that Martin had just implied a man’s death was a damned good thing. Jim was looking almost happy. Charlie was nodding cheerfully, and Martin was actually smiling. Nobody had the bad taste to applaud, but I could tell that most of them wanted to.
Everything had worked out well for them. Someone had solved their immediate problem— Smith— and barring some as-yet unknown obstacle to their legal rights, the lot was safe. But what if that unknown obstacle existed? And what if another buyer showed up tomorrow? I had a fleeting picture of corpses bobbing down the spillway like logs from a lumber camp.
Again, it looked as though the grapevine had done its work before the meeting. Only Artie and Julia had looked surprised to learn that the murdered man was the prospective buyer. But then, the Perrines had been busy with family problems.
Julia also looked shocked. “Listen, all of you, the man was murdered. And they think Alan did it. And he didn’t. And every homeowner in this canyon had a motive for killing him.”
That really sobered them up. Jim shrugged, Eric sighed, and Hanley Martin said, “Oh, pig pellets.” I guessed the expression was related to “horse pucky” and “dog doo-doo,” and felt as though I’d gotten a whole new perspective on his personality. The more you knew him, the worse he got. “The cops,” he continued, “don’t care diddly squat about motive, especially not a silly motive like that. They’re into physical evidence. Besides, the ruling will stand.”
“Of course it will,” Mary agreed. “I’m sure he would have been prevented from going ahead anyway. But Julia does have a point. The man is dead. I’m sure the police won’t suspect any of us, but perhaps we can celebrate the survival of our canyon without celebrating a murder too. Let’s just be glad we have a good chance to win and time to fight if we have to.”
They were also glad, I was sure, that someone outside their immediate group had been charged with the murder.
“Well,” Charlie said, “quite a few of us haven’t had a turn at the tub. Let’s take a recess and get back to this.” I wasn’t happy about the interruption. I had been hoping they’d really start arguing, and maybe reveal a little something about themselves. But there wasn’t much I could do about it. After a bit of “Oh, no, really, I’ve been in long enough” conversation, four people got out of the tub and four prepared to take their places. Charlie, Artie, Julia, and Eric went into the house to dry off and dress. Nona, Hanley, Jim, and I took off our clothes and joined Carlota, Arlene, and Mary in the water. I’d never taken a hot tub with more than one other person before, and I thought about leaving on my jockey shorts. But Rosie was trying her best to embarrass me by watching me undress, so I stuck my tongue out, turned around, and removed the last scrap between me and the cold air. If she wanted to laugh at my backside, she was welcome to. Once I was safely in the tub, I told her she was really missing something.
“Oh, yeah?” she laughed. “What?”
That was when I felt the fingers on my left thigh. What, indeed, I wondered, was Rosie missing? Both Arlene and Carlota were submerged to their necks in the middle of the tub and both were close enough to touch me. Someone had turned on the bubbles, and I couldn’t see anything beneath the surface of the water. I suppose I should have enjoyed the mystery, but I kept thinking about Hanley, on my right, and Nona, on my left. I was not interested in making either one of them jealous. In fact, if I’d had my pick of all the people I would least like to make jealous, those two would have been the big winners.
Charlie had come back outside, dressed warmly in jeans and sweater, and got the meeting going again, unfortunately on a completely different topic. The spillway needed repairing and they had to talk about materials and volunteer labor time. Eric had been asked at a previous meeting to check it out, and he droned on with his report while the delicate touch of someone’s hand was raising the hair on the back of my neck. I kept looking cautiously at Carlota, hoping that if I caught her eye, she’d stop. I couldn’t catch her eye, which was wandering between Rosie and Nona. I switched to Arlene, staring at her until she turned her vacant gaze my way. She blinked once and turned her head again. The hand never stopped moving slowly up my thigh, and whoever it belonged to managed to keep it so disembodied that I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Not so much as the touch of an elbow. The fingers reached my crotch, resting lightly against me. When they began to do more than rest, I thought this was my chance to solve the puzzle. Surely, there would be some small movement to give the culprit away. Then I could look offended and move away from her, whoever she was. But I forgot to look for movement. Then I caught myself beginning to think what the hell, maybe no one would notice anyway. That’s when I knew my mind was going, and dealt with myself sternly, sliding my butt off the bench and moving, submerged to my chin, over to the other side of the tub.
No one paid any attention. Not Arlene. Not Carlota. I sat there for a moment, listening to a discussion of the price of redwood, and then got the hell out of that tub and into my clothes. I was almost completely dressed before I realized that I had forgotten to dry myself first.
The meeting didn’t last much longer. Although there were occasional surreptitious glances at Artie and Julia, everyone, even Carlota, exercised enough restraint to leave untouched the subject of Alan. A few minutes after I returned, safely dressed, to the backyard, the second shift got out of the hot tub and we all moved back into the house. Everyone milled around for a few minutes, saying goodnight. Rosie was saying something about an estimate to Carlota, while Nona hovered alert
ly by.
Eric said it was nice meeting me, and wasn’t I staying at Charlie’s now? I said I was.
“I’m glad to hear it,” he said. “Charlie’s been pretty lonely since George left.” He smiled paternally. I didn’t bother to explain that I was not George’s replacement, even though Eric seemed to expect me to say something in reply. I just nodded and smiled back.
Rosie followed me down to my room and asked if she and Alice could spend the night with me.
“See, I’ve finished my estimates in the East Bay,” she said, “and I promised Carlota I’d have a look at the steps tomorrow and let her know what I’d charge to fix them.”
I offered her the cot but she insisted on laying her sleeping bag on the floor. I stuck some paper and kindling in the pot belly, got that going, and added a chunk of oak. Then we turned our backs on each other to undress and got into our respective beds. After the hot tub party, it seemed a little silly to return to our former modesty with each other, but it felt right to do it that way somehow.
“So what did you think?” I asked her.
“Weird group.” I agreed. “I got the feeling that almost any one of them could stick a knife in someone if they had the right excuse. Especially that Hanley character. And that Jim.” She yawned. “He’s the kind that neighbors always say seemed like such a nice quiet fellow— until he murdered forty people.”
“What about the women?”
“Well, Jesus, that Arlene. Eerie. And of course Nona. Although I would think she’d be more into poisons or curses or something. And Carlota found the body.”
“Right. But somehow I can’t imagine Carlota taking such direct action. She kind of slides around, you know?”
“You mean she’s not violent, she’s just sleazy?”
“Something like that.”
“She asked me over for a drink tomorrow.”
Free Draw (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 2) Page 6
