Free Draw (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 2)

by Shelley Singer

  He smiled with one side of his mouth. “Somebody must have been playing with you, Mr. Samson. This is not a food store. We don’t use coupons.”

  I contrived to look puzzled. “But that’s what he said, and I’m sure it was Mr. Smith I talked to.”

  He stopped smiling. “Now I think you’re playing with me,” he said. “Was there anything else you wanted?”

  I hate it when people don’t follow the script I write for them. He was supposed to say something like, “Well, Mr. Smith was here on Sunday, but he wasn’t answering the phone.” Or he could have said, “Mr. Smith couldn’t have told you that because he was in San Francisco last weekend.”

  But it was not to be. I showered and changed and went to the Pelican for oysters. Then I went upstairs to the bar to hear a country and western group.

  The group was good, but my mood of futility carried over through the evening, and I couldn’t bring myself to talk to any of the attractive women who were in the bar that night. I was sure they wouldn’t follow my script.

  19

  Rosie had left a note on the door of my room. If I got back before six, I would find her in her own room at Carlota’s. After that, she wrote, she would be out for the evening. It was a little before five. I dumped my bag on my cot and went down the steps to see her.

  Since I’d left on Friday, she’d added a Styrofoam ice chest to her furnishings. She gave me a cold beer and settled down on a floor cushion, after offering me the seat-sprung easy chair, to hear about my trip.

  She didn’t think Bill had killed his father.

  “It doesn’t make sense, Jake. After all these years? Why would he decide to kill him twenty years after the fact?”

  “But it hasn’t been very long since the man rejected him for being gay,” I objected. “He’s not welcome in his parents’ home. Or wasn’t while his father was alive. That’s pretty heavy stuff.”

  Rosie just shrugged. “Look, maybe that kind of behavior isn’t as common as it once was, but nearly everyone is afraid of it. You come out to your family, you’re taking a chance. Even now. But I’ve never heard of anyone killing because they lost the toss.”

  I thought about that. For just a minute, I tried to imagine what it would feel like. I didn’t succeed very well.

  “What about Andy?” I shifted to the second Mendocino suspect.

  “That’s a possibility. Sounds like he’s feeling pretty ragged around the edges about this daughter thing. If Bill’s father had anything to do with his problems… but that’s another chance people have to take.”

  My Mendocino depression was settling over me again. “Kind of a high price,” I mumbled.

  Rosie smiled. “Switch to men or you’ll lose my friendship.”

  “Point taken,” I said, but I didn’t feel like smiling back.

  “Cheer up, Jacob. It’s a lot like being Jewish in some places, at some times.”

  I laughed. “And the ones who can’t take it pretend to be Christians?” We had another beer. Rosie said she knew people who would be sure to know all about any custody fight with a gay angle. Movement people. Attorneys. Parents who had won or lost in the past. She agreed to start nosing around right away.

  We were silent for a moment, companionable, sipping at our beers. Alice had her head in Rosie’s lap and had begun to snore.

  “I like your new refrigerator,” I said, waving a hand at the ice chest.

  She made a face. “I tried keeping beer in their refrigerator.” She glanced at the ceiling. “But Carlota kept drinking it all. And speaking of Carlota…” she started to get up but decided to let Alice sleep undisturbed. “I’ve got a copy of that magazine with a review of her films. It’s over there on the bed.”

  I got up and found the new issue of The Marin Journal of the Arts. Rosie was looking at her watch.

  “Better start getting ready,” she said. “I’m due in the East Bay at seven.”

  “Got a date with Joyce?” I hoped not, but I couldn’t very well say so.

  “No. I didn’t like her either. It’s someone new.”

  “Good. Good,” I said noncommittally, heading for the door.

  “Oh, Jake? That review? It’s a rave.” I turned back to look at her, unbelieving. She laughed. “Well, I guess you never can tell, huh?”

  I took the journal with me to a Mexican restaurant in San Rafael, ordered a margarita, enchiladas verdes, beans and rice, and turned to the table of contents. Films, page 23. I found page 23. “Powerful Showing by Mill Valley Filmmaker,” by Eric Anderson. There was a nice mug shot of Anderson that looked like it had been taken about ten years ago, and a larger shot of Carlota leaning against a tree. Down at the bottom of the page, there was a blurb about Eric that mentioned he was co-owner of Mary’s Bookstore in Mill Valley. Nice publicity for the shop.

  The margarita came. It was made from a mix and tasted like chemicals.

  Carlota couldn’t have written a better review herself. It was kind of vague, with a lot of stuff about allegories and metaphors, but the main impression it left was that Carlota Bowman was a sensitive artist with full control of her medium, and that she had created some very avant-garde work indeed.

  The food was pretty good, so I ordered another chemical margarita to go with it.

  Knowing Carlota, I couldn’t believe she had control over anything. But there it was, in print. I decided to give the rest of the journal a pass until some other time. I stuck it in my pocket and pulled out my notebook.

  While Rosie was getting what she could on Andy and Bill, I had a few things I wanted to do. One item: I still wasn’t satisfied with what I knew about the residents of the canyon. Too many holes unplugged, and a couple of important questions I hadn’t asked them yet. Then there was Bright Future. Probably the most likely nest of suspects in the case.

  So, first, I thought I’d have a talk with Hanley. After all, there was still the issue of the parking area, and he and Mary had been doing the work in that fight. Hanley, I figured, was nuts. And nuts have been known to end less important disputes in violent ways. I also wanted to talk to Mary. Although I had no reason to believe she was a nut, she was involved in the canyon’s crisis. By the time they’d made their report at the hot tub meeting, Smith was a dead man. Maybe the committee of two had decided not to mention something— like having had a face-to-face confrontation with the victim.

  As for Bright Future, Bert Franklin seemed to me to be a logical source of information about the company, and, most important, about Howard Morton’s past business dealings. I figured the price of a few strong drinks could take me one hell of a long way with Franklin.

  I ordered some coffee and sat over it for awhile, running over the list in my mind. The people in the canyon, threatened by financial loss. Some of them probably had nothing but their homes. Someone could have panicked. Bright Future tied for first place. If something funny was going on there, and Smith knew about it and was threatening to expose it…

  Next came Andy and Bill. I didn’t know that Andy had a motive. And maybe Rosie was right about Bill.

  So where did that leave me? Still groping around, looking for hard, incriminating facts. And there was always the possibility that Smith was killed by someone outside my neat categories, someone I didn’t know anything about.

  Anyone could have found Alan’s knife. Anyone could have used it.

  I finished my coffee, paid the check, and went back to the canyon.

  Hanley’s gardening truck was parked near the bottom of the steps. I headed up the path, but I didn’t make it past Artie’s house.

  “There you are!” Artie crowed at me from his front door. “Rosie told me you went to Mendocino. Come on in, tell me what’s going on, have a glass of something or maybe some coffee. Have you eaten? Can I give Alan any news?”

  “Whoa, Artie. Tell you what. I’m going up to Hanley’s for a while, just checking out something. Then I’ll come down and talk to you. Okay?”

  He looked more eager to hear my news than my
news deserved, so I said, “Still just feeling my way. No solution yet.”

  Hanley was home. I saw him in the dim glow of a front-porch bug light, through the thick shrubbery that screened the entry to his house, before he saw me. He was sitting on his front steps drinking beer from a can, his eyes half closed and a dreamy look on his face. He jumped up, startled, when I broke through the last of the brush, and for a second, I thought he was going to throw his beer can at me.

  “Hi,” I said, tactfully ignoring his unmanly fright. He plunked his butt down on the step again and nodded to me.

  “Nice evening,” I said.

  “It’s going to rain.”

  I looked up at what I could see of the sky between the towering redwoods. Didn’t look like rain to me, but I squinted my eyes and nodded, old farmer style.

  “What are you doing up here?” he wanted to know.

  I shrugged. “Just walking. Thought I’d see if you were around.”

  “Want a beer? I’m about ready for another one, myself.” I accepted his surprisingly friendly offer, but I hoped he didn’t plan on having several more himself. Just because he’d never shot anything but a tree— or so people said— didn’t mean he never would.

  When he came back out with the beers, I took a space on the steps beside him and took a cue from his silence. We both sat there, stoically drinking from cans, gazing at nature. He burped. I burped.

  “How come you’re hanging around the canyon?”

  “Doing a magazine piece.”

  “On the murder?”

  “No. Well, that’s a little part of it. It’s about the company the guy worked for.”

  “Where Arlene works.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “Might be interesting.”

  “Uhm.” He burped louder.

  “What do you know about the guy, Han? Besides the fact that he wanted to buy the lot?”

  “Wanted to build a house.”

  “You found out his name before he was killed, right?”

  “Right. Wanna make something out of it?” He said it casually, half smiling, so I laughed.

  “Not really. But can you tell me anything about when he first made an offer, and how? I mean, there wasn’t any ‘For Sale’ sign on it, was there?”

  He shook his head. “Nah. Nearly as we could figure, he went looking in the records for the owner, found out it was the county, and made an offer to someone down there. Maybe he had friends or something. I don’t know. Anyway, that was a few weeks ago. Maybe less. Jim’s the one who found out about it. He works for the county some way or other.”

  “Computers.”

  “Yeah. Anyway, he found out about it, and Mary and me offered to check it out. That was maybe, I don’t know, two weeks ago we started. Maybe less. Had to do something.”

  Right, I thought. Something.

  I sure as hell couldn’t complain I had nowhere to go in this case. I had about twenty places to go. With odds like that, I figured, something had to turn up. Some day.

  “You know, Han, I’ve been kind of wondering. You live up here, close to where the man was killed. Didn’t you hear anything or see anything that morning?”

  “Uh uh. I spent the night at Arlene’s. I wasn’t home. Not until the cops were already here.” He got up abruptly and went back into the house. Since he hadn’t said goodbye, I thought I’d wait and see if he came back out. He did, with one can of beer.

  “This is all I’ve got left. Want to share it?”

  I declined. Then, by way of introduction to a change of subject, I leaned back and chuckled. Hanley looked at me with a blankness reminiscent of his girlfriend.

  “My friend Rosie— you know, the carpenter who’s working on the steps?” He nodded solemnly. “She says Carlota thinks you’re watching her.”

  “Watching who?”

  “Carlota.”

  “Yeah. I am.”

  I chuckled again. “What for?”

  He looked at me coldly. “What do you care?”

  “Just curious. Couldn’t help but wonder.”

  “You ought to watch that curiosity of yours. You know what they say about cats. Let’s just say I don’t trust her. She’s weird.”

  “You think she killed the guy?” It wasn’t easy, but I think I managed to continue looking only mildly curious.

  He finished his beer and stood up.

  “I didn’t say that, did I? I got some things to do now. See you.”

  He went inside and closed the door. I walked slowly down the path, trying to digest what he’d said before I got to the Perrines’.

  Jennifer answered the door. She looked at me accusingly.

  “You spent the weekend in Mendocino,” she said.

  “Working on the case, Jennifer. Went to see the dead man’s son.”

  She looked skeptical but she invited me in.

  Julia, Artie, and Mike were watching TV. Artie got up and led me into the kitchen. He filled the kettle, got out a coffee filter and a bag of coffee, and put the kettle on the stove. Then, he sat down across from me and looked expectant. I told him everything I’d learned so far. We spent an hour on Mendocino and fifteen minutes on Hanley. From time to time during our conversation, Mike wandered casually into the kitchen— during commercials, probably. The third time he did that, I spoke to him.

  “Mike, you know I think it’s best if you don’t tell your friends what you hear about this case. Best to keep things kind of quiet until we get it figured out. For Alan. Okay?”

  He looked disappointed, but he agreed.

  Artie didn’t think Hanley was worth pursuing. “He’s just a nut, Jake. There couldn’t be anything in it. That stuff about Carlota.”

  He sighed. “We don’t seem to have very much yet, do we?”

  “Got a busy day planned for tomorrow, though. I’m pulling a lot of threads together,” I said optimistically.

  He didn’t look encouraged, but he reached over and clapped me on the shoulder. “I know you’re trying, buddy. I know that.”

  “How’s Alan doing?”

  “He’s not real happy in jail. Maybe you should go see him.”

  I didn’t want to. “I think it’s best,” I said, “if I spend my time trying to get him out.”

  20

  Even though Hanley’s alibi was meaningless— Arlene would lie for him— I decided to let it stand for the time being. There were other questions that needed answering first. They had to do with the timelines he’d given me on the committee’s work, and one matter of timing I hadn’t asked anyone about yet. So first thing Monday morning, I took a drive to the county building.

  The Marin County Civic Center is a real landmark. It sprawls like a growth in a pocket of the green hills of central Marin, hills that turn yellow with summer and, as often as not, are black-patched at the end of the dry season by the inevitable and frequent grass fires. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Spawned by a mutant mushroom. Somewhere between pink and tan with a turquoise roof. The building houses everything the county needs to house, from the welfare department to Alan’s current home, the jail. I found a spot in the parking lot not too far from the main entrance and pushed through the doors.

  Marin County is not just another pretty place. It’s got class. Even though the building looks like a fungus from the outside, the inside looks less like a bureaucratic beehive than any government building I’ve ever seen. An island of greenery runs down the middle of the ground floor, with offices on either side. Not just your everyday ferns and bushes. No, this is a real garden, with trees reaching up through the railed hallways above, toward the skylight.

  I found the recorder’s office on the first floor. The county employee who offered to help me was very helpful indeed. Within an hour of my arrival, I had what I needed. Yes, the lot belonged to the county. Yes, a private party had made an offer for it about three weeks ago. And yes, some people who lived in the area had been searching the records on the lot recently. Basically, Hanley had told
it right.

  I told the clerk that I knew the community organization had found an old ruling that said the county couldn’t sell the land. Was she aware of that?

  “Well,” she said, “there was an old file we found. Not right away. It was so old, it wasn’t quite in the right place. Would that be it? The woman seemed very happy about something, but she didn’t say.”

  “Do you remember when that was?”

  She thought a minute. “Oh, yes, now I remember. It was last Monday or Tuesday. That’s when we finally found the file. Yes, probably Monday. At the beginning of the week.”

  “Really? Not the week before?”

  “No. They’d come in once or twice before then, but we didn’t find the file until the beginning of the week.”

  I thanked the woman and left. Although Mary had never actually said that she and Hanley had found the old records before Smith’s murder, she had, it seemed to me, tried to create that impression. She had made a special point of saying, at the hot tub meeting, that they had succeeded in their search “soon” after they began it, and that their report was almost finished. The efficiency of the canyon grapevine— nearly everyone seemed to hear news within a day or two— hadn’t hurt. But the truth was, Smith had been killed just before they found their legal remedy to the sale.

  Mary was busy with a customer when I walked in the door to her cheerful, white-paint-and-potted-ferns bookstore. She waved at me and I smiled back. I spotted some familiar-looking items on a table to the right of the door and walked over to have a look. The journal books, just like the one Bunny had been given by her father.

  Mary finished with the customer. “Hi, Jake. Here to buy or to visit?”

  “Thought I’d have a look at your mystery collection. I also wanted to talk to you.”

  “Sure. What do you need?”

  I told her about my visit to the county building and what I’d learned there. She didn’t look guilty. Only embarrassed.

  “Yes, that’s so. Monday. But I didn’t see any reason to make a big point of when we actually knew… I was sure it was there somewhere in the records… certainly you don’t think anyone…” She got a grip on herself. “No. It doesn’t make any sense. Everyone knew we were looking. Everyone knew that I was sure we’d find what we were looking for. Even if someone decided that the way to solve the problem was to kill the man, why take a big step like that until they were sure we had no other way out? I’m sorry, Jake, but I think you’re grasping at straws.”