by Julie Smith
“I’m Rebecca Schwartz. I work with the sea otters?” I made the sentence a question so I’d sound properly submissive—almost as little and cute as one of the fuzzy beasts I’d mentioned.
“You do? My kid loves those things. He can watch them for hours.”
“I know you. You belong to Friends of the Sea Otter.”
He looked wary. “No, I—”
“Would you like to join? I think I’ve got a brochure here.” I rummaged in my purse. “We really need your support—there’s only three thousand California sea otters left in the wild, and one good oil spill could wipe every one of them out. Did you know that?”
“Miss—uh—Schmidt—”
“Schwartz.” I gave him a great big, all-American, conservationist grin. “You know, they’re not like birds. Our feathered friends—‘pelagic birds,’ we biologists call them—do pretty well unless they get oil all over them. With an otter it’s like Brylcreem—a little dab’ll do him.” I cut my throat with my finger. “And it’s not true they’re eating all the shellfish. An abalone’s just a giant snail in the first place, did you know that? I bet you wouldn’t eat little escargots, so why would you eat a giant escargot? And anyway, think about it. Three thousand sea otters and millions of human beings—who do you really think is gobbling up the goodies?”
He stepped away from me. I was charming him like a mongoose charms a cobra.
He was still groping for a polite squelch when I stepped back myself. “I’m so sorry. I was being pushy.”
A warm blanket of relief spread over him. “It’s okay. Are abalones really snails?”
“Honest.”
“Yick. Wait’ll I tell my brother-in-law. He hates snails. Loves abalone. This’ll kill him.”
I squinched up my nose, schoolteacher-style. “I’ll bet he’s a diver, too. Hates sea otters, right?”
He blushed, all but shifted from one foot to the other. “You, too, I’ll bet.”
“Hey, I’m a conservationist. I brake for trees.”
Having established myself as Miss-Grundy-of-the-deep-blue-sea, I permitted myself to point a finger in his face. “Oho. You’re a funny one.”
We guffawed together like the fun-lovin’ fellas he and his brother-in-law were, and then he said, “Okay, Miss Schwartz. Let me see your name tag and I’ll let you in.” Name tag! Damn Marty Whitehead’s liver and lungs! She could have lent me her damn name tag, and she hadn’t even mentioned it.
I said, “Omigod, I don’t know if I brought it. See, I switched purses—” As I spoke, I began to pull things out of my purse: a flashlight, a paperback copy of an aquarium book I’d found at Marty’s, my calendar. “Oh, no! I really have to feed the little critters. Did you know they have to eat ten times their body weight every six hours?”
My acting teacher had said you could get the effect you wanted just by wanting to. As I kept my eyes lowered and chattered, frantically pulling things from my purse, I imagined a tank full of poor orphaned sea otters, separated from their mothers in stormy seas, and now at the mercy of human beings who were after all only human and sometimes left their name tags at home and therefore couldn’t get in to feed them. I imagined how lost and miserable and, above all, hungry an otter in such a tank would feel. When I felt genuine tears, I looked up.
“I overslept,” I said. “I was supposed to feed them at eight.”
Quickly, as if embarrassed at having been caught crying, I looked down again and found my keys, including the ones Marty had turned over to me. “Look, how about if I show you I really do have a key that’ll open that gate—wouldn’t that prove I work here?”
He looked around to see if he was being observed and I knew I had won.
“Sure,” he said. “Hardly anyone remembered their name tag this morning. You guys must have pretty casual security.”
I only wished my acting class, before which I was as likely to flub my lines as not, could have seen my award-quality improvisation.
In Marin County, where I grew up, all kids take nearly every kind of lessons they can fit into their schedules—except acting. That could lead to a career in the arts and a life of poverty.
I took acting after I got beat in court by a DA who’d done it—Raymond Fanelli, damn his soul. His opening statement had the jury in tears. By the time the trial was over, they wanted my client’s blood. Since she was a battered wife who’d finally fought back (if a little too hard), I had plenty of histrionic material myself. I’m convinced she’d be a free woman today if I’d put in a better performance.
Anyway, I did well that day in the parking lot. I later looked up the actual figures on sea otters, and I wasn’t that far off. But to set the record straight, things are even worse than I thought—there are actually only seventeen hundred of them left in California, and opinions vary as to whether one oil spill would lubricate their way to oblivion. They eat only a quarter of their body weight daily, which may sound pitiful compared to the fanciful figure of my imagination, but for one of us, it would be about forty hamburgers.
An abalone really is a snail.
* * *
Once inside, I followed Marty’s directions to the third floor, where, I had learned, most aquarium employees had their offices.
What Marty hadn’t told me was that the place still looked like a sardine warehouse. No walls had been added, only those partitions that give you “modular” offices, or, in truth, no offices at all, but something more like library carrels. Hers was the fourth or fifth “office” on the right, she’d said—she couldn’t remember exactly, but I was to look for pictures of Libby and Keil.
The way her directions went, you entered at the left, so you must cross to the row of cubicles at the far right, I thought. I was standing at the front of the huge room, trying to get my bearings, when a fast-moving figure cannoned down the left row, and passed me.
The runner wore a baseball cap, jeans, and tennies, so that I hadn’t heard him until it was almost too late, and he had his head down, so I couldn’t see his face. From the back, I got a glimpse of a blue T-shirt that said Monterey Bay Aquarium between the shoulder blades. It was a slight figure, like a small man, but I couldn’t have sworn it wasn’t a woman or even a kid. I stepped out of the way just in time, feeling the breeze, and stood for a minute recovering my equilibrium.
Then, without even considering the consequences, I wheeled and followed, back through the office door and down the stairs to a choice of three more doors. Fortunately, one was just snicking shut. I tried it, but I needed Marty’s key to open it. It took a couple of lifetimes, but still, when I was in, I could hear the muted thud of fast-moving Reeboks somewhere in the distance.
I knew where I was, vaguely. I had come out near the aquarists’ offices, near the staff library. Marty and I had been here the night before. I retraced our steps through the volunteers’ offices, and the volunteer and staff lounge, and out to an area where you could go into one of several small rooms, go downstairs, or go through double doors into the behind-the-scenes feeding area. You would have to unlock a door to go behind the scenes, and once through the area, back in the aquarium proper, you wouldn’t be able to blend into the crowd, because the place was empty today. Figuring I might be wasting precious time, I peered into the graphics and publications offices, didn’t see places to hide, and hit the stairs.
I didn’t hear a thing. Undaunted, I raced down them and tore open the door at the bottom, only to face a crowd of thousands. I was now on Cannery Row, and the cop who’d tried to tell me the white rat joke was on guard at this entrance. “I’ll bite,” he said. “How many cops does it take?”
I stared at him, utterly uncomprehending.
“To change a light bulb,” he said.
“Listen, did a guy in a baseball hat just come through here?”
“Uh-uh. I asked first.”
“Officer, this is important. Anyway, I forget the punch line.”
“Hey, Counselor, you know what? I got some good news for you. It’s not
working out in those labs. They finally realized the rats were smarter.”
Seething, I walked slowly back to the third floor, giving myself plenty of time to cool off. As soon as I opened the door of the huge warehouse of offices, I heard a voice—one I recognized as Warren Nowell’s—raised in what could only be a chewing-out.
Gently I let myself in, tiptoed to Marty’s cubicle (the fifth one, it turned out), ducked into it, and peeked around the corner. At the front of the room—or the rear if you considered the entrance the front—there was a receptionist’s desk and a genuine private office to the right. A man—Nowell, by his voice—was standing in the doorway of the office, more or less yelling.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing here? Don’t you realize you could be tampering with evidence in a murder case?”
“Oh, Warren, pipe down.” It was Julio Soto’s voice, emanating from the enclosed office. With the place empty as it was, sounds carried beautifully.
I heard the noise of someone opening drawers and rummaging in them. Remembering my own mission, I looked at the calendar on Marty’s desk. It was still turned to Friday, the night before. Damn her, she’d lied to me—she had had a date the night before. Still keeping both ears open, I started flipping through her calendar, to see if there was a pattern of rendezvous, and if so, how far back it went.
I heard Warren say, “Sorry. I’m not mad at you. I’m just—a lot’s happened this morning, that’s all. I’m sorry I snapped. But I will have to ask you to stop rifling Sadie’s desk.”
The rummaging noise stopped. I tried opening Marty’s top drawer, to look for the note, but it stuck. Thinking it might make an awful noise if I forced it, I put it off for a minute. Frankly, I didn’t want to interrupt the conversation a few feet away.
Julio said, rather nastily, I thought, “What gives you that authority?”
“I’m acting director.”
“I beg your pardon? How could that be? The board can’t have had time to meet.”
“Well, then, make it acting acting director. The president phoned this morning and asked if I’d take care of things until they can meet—which they’re doing this afternoon—to make it official.”
“You sound very sure of yourself.”
“He sounded pretty definite. Do you mind if I ask you what you’re looking for?”
“Oh—uh—something I lent Sadie. Mmm—well, none of your business, Warren. No hard feelings, I hope? And congratulations.”
“Thanks.”
There was a pause while I imagined them shaking hands, and then I heard them starting to leave, walking toward me. If I started searching then, they’d almost certainly hear me, and I didn’t think Warren, despite what he’d rashly said over the phone, was going to give me a free hand.
My purse wasn’t large enough to fit the calendar in. I’d brought a plastic bag for it, but I’d have to get it out and unfold it—there wasn’t time. I tore off the “Friday” leaf of the calendar—there had been other dates, so it wasn’t the ultimate solution, but it was all I could do for now.
Before I had time to duck out of sight, they were parallel with the cubicle. They stopped—staring straight at me. Julio said, “Rebecca Schwartz, how on earth did you get in?”
“Charmed a policeman,” I said.
His companion was around five ten and overweight. He had thin curly hair and wore glasses. For some unfathomable reason, he held up his jeans with a belt sporting a giant buckle that looked like a rodeo prize. Fat under his T-shirt rippled like Jell-O around the edges of the buckle. There was something a little vague about him.
He said, “You must be a very resourceful person.”
“And you must be Warren Nowell. I recognize your voice.”
“What did you need to pick up for Marty?”
“Just some papers she wanted.”
“I think I have to reconsider what I told you on the phone.”
“I was afraid of that.” I shrugged and stepped out.
The three of us walked as far as the door, but Warren came no farther, making it clear he was escorting us out where we belonged. When Julio and I were alone, I asked how Esperanza was.
He looked miserable. “Awful. Near-catatonic, to tell you the truth. I don’t know what to do.”
I must have looked baffled.
He said, “I’m sort of new at single parenthood.”
An odd ringing sounded in my ear as I caught his implication. My heart pounded. But these were not the beginnings of tender feelings. Oh, no. Not when I hadn’t even had a chance to mourn Rob yet. Not with Marty cooling her heels in the hoosegow. And certainly not, knowing what I knew. Marty’s calendar for Friday night had said “6:30—J.”
The pounding was fear. The ringing was a built-in alarm bell.
“You wouldn’t have time for coffee, would you?”
“Sure,” I said. Alarm bell be damned.
I called Chris from the restaurant.
“Got a name and number for you. Judge Serita Reyes—new on the bench, said to be eminently reasonable. And female. Maybe she has kids and she’ll be sympathetic.”
“Who knows her?”
“Bruce—uh—Pigball.”
“Parton.” Chris had a repertoire of made-up words she used when she couldn’t think of real ones—and she could almost never remember names. But I had no problem figuring out who she meant; Bruce had been in my class at Boalt.
“He’s separated from his wife, by the way—he made a special point of telling me—and asking about you.”
“Chris, stop being Southern, would you? I can’t think about that right now.”
“Of course not. He’s for later, maybe.” She gave me the judge’s number.
I dialed eagerly, mentally preparing my spiel, and got not so much as an answering machine. I dialed again. Nothing. So I called Bruce for her address. No luck there either. Coming back from the phone, I found I had trouble believing the handsome man in the white pants and light yellow sweatshirt was actually waiting for me. This Julio was something else in the looks department, and the worried frown he wore was the most appealing thing about him. I was truly reverting to form. Rob wasn’t the vulnerable type at all, but the minute he was out of my sight, I was up to my old tricks. I pulled in my energy and tried to think of this as an exercise in information gathering.
Julio looked oddly sad when he smiled. “They have cappuccino here.”
“Good. I’d love some.” Maybe it would sharpen my rapidly dulling faculties. “Could I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“What were you looking for in Sadie’s office?”
“Oh, that. Something of Esperanza’s—a rock or something she found on the beach.”
“Why did Sadie have it?”
He opened his arms in the universal helpless gesture. “They were playing some sort of game—I don’t know. They were close.”
“Esperanza and Sadie?”
Remembering what Marty had said, I wondered if Sadie had once been Esperanza’s stand-in stepmother. But Julio said, “When Don started living with her, Libby naturally started spending a lot of time with the two of them. Esperanza went over to spend a weekend and fell in love. It was that simple. Sometimes she’d come over to the aquarium after school, and do you think she’d ask to see me? Not first, anyway. That’s why Sadie’s death hit her so hard.”
I sipped my cappuccino.
“I don’t know,” said Julio. “I guess she misses her mother.”
“Is this the first time she’s been away from her?”
“For this long, yes. I've had her all summer.”
“That must have been nice.”
“Uh-huh. And hard. Really hard. I’d have been lost without Libby and Amber, another kid whose dad works with Marty and me.”
“Do you miss her mom, too?”
He thought it over. “I don’t guess I do anymore. She went back to Santa Barbara—we’re both from there. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess.”
I must have winced, because he said, “I didn’t mean that the way you think. I meant that it seems more final when you don’t see the person every day.”
“Santa Barbara’s nice.”
He smiled wryly. “A nice place to be from. All Hispanics are called Mexicans there.”
“Even second-generation ones?”
“Even Salvadorans.” His mouth twitched briefly as if he meant to smile when he said it, but couldn’t quite manage. “I wish Esperanza could grow up in a friendlier atmosphere. But Sylvia thinks she’s better off being near her grandparents. I don’t know, maybe she’s right. At least she’ll never have to do domestic service like they did.”
“What’s her mom do?”
“Social worker. That’s why she went back. Many good works crying out to be done.”
“But you prefer fish.”
“Any day.” His teeth were almost translucent. His lips were so full they looked slightly puckered even in repose. When he smiled, I couldn’t take my eyes off his mouth. “What exactly do you do at the aquarium?”
“Marine biologist. We all are, those of us in husbandry. We don’t all collect, though; that’s the best part.”
“Of course. That’s where the adventure is.” We both smiled, and we locked eyes. I looked away quickly. Visual caresses weren’t what I was there for.
“I want to start teaching Esperanza to snorkel, but she doesn’t seem all that interested.”
“She’s got a hell of a lot on her mind right now, with her parents breaking up—”
“Do you have kids?”
“No, why?”
“I was hoping you could help me with mine.”
“That’s an odd request—don’t you have a woman friend you could ask?”
He shrugged. “Well, that’s my problem. Marty’s in jail and Sadie’s dead.” His voice dropped on the last two words, and I thought it was more than some societal acknowledgment of her death.
“Did you like her? Sadie?”
“Very much.” The words were so heartfelt, I didn’t dare press him further on the subject. “And Esperanza loved her. Rebecca—” His eyes were pleading and hurt. “I know this sounds strange, but could you come home with me and talk to her?”
