by Janet Dawson
“That remark about tree huggers,” I asked. “What’s that all about?”
“The land Walt wants to buy, he’s up against some environmental group that wants the same parcel. For wetlands, I guess. And they complain about the marina, say it’s dirty, a hazard. I suppose they’ll be using the fire against us, as ammo. But the fire wasn’t our fault. Propane leak, that’s what the firemen said. It happens if folks aren’t careful with that stuff.”
“Thanks for your help, Tracy. You have my card. If you think of anything else, let me know.”
“Nice talking with you.” Tracy turned back to the desk, settling onto the chair, and picked up her paperback mystery.
Fourteen
I walked to the north end of the marina, to cabin twelve near the dock where the boat had burned. Today there was a blue Mazda hatchback parked outside. The front door was open. I looked in through a screen door and saw a small, cluttered living room, with a kitchen beyond. I called a greeting and knocked. A middle-aged man wearing khakis and a green T-shirt stepped out of the kitchen, carrying a plate with a sandwich and some pickles.
“Chet Olsen?” I asked.
He set the plate on an ottoman and ran a hand through thinning blond hair as he approached the door. “Yeah?”
“I’d like to ask you a few questions about the fire on Sunday morning. Your cabin here, it’s closest to the site.”
He frowned. “I already talked to the cops.”
“I haven’t seen those witness statements yet,” I said. And I might not, unless Sid, or Joe Kelso, was able to get some information from the Sonoma County detectives. I held out a business card. “I’m a private investigator. I understand you saw a vehicle in this area, just before the boat caught fire. Do you remember anything about the vehicle, make, model, color?”
He shrugged. Then he opened the screen door and stepped outside, reaching for my card. He examined it and looked up at me. “That SUV I saw, it was silver, I think. Or white. Light-colored, anyway. I couldn’t tell you what kind it was. Mid-sized, I guess. It was parked over there.” He pointed to a fence and a cluster of bushes that apparently defined the marina’s northern boundary. “I couldn’t see very clearly. It was dark. And I’d had a bit to drink. I was at a party on one of the other boats and I’d just come home.”
“I understand. Did you see any other vehicles in the vicinity? Vehicles that you didn’t recognize?”
He shook his head. “No. Most of my neighbors, I know what their cars look like. I heard a motorcycle really close, but with the roadhouse and the bikers who hang out there, that’s pretty common.”
“Getting back to the SUV, can you describe the driver?”
“There were two guys,” Olsen said. “Didn’t see which of them was driving. They made several trips from the SUV to the boat and back again. I figured they were loading up, getting ready to take the boat out. But I can’t tell you what they looked like. I didn’t get that good a look at them.”
“Can you recall if they were young, old?”
“Younger than me, I guess.”
“How long before the explosion was this?”
He thought about it. “Ten minutes, I guess. I left the party around one and walked down here. That’s when I saw those guys and the SUV. I went into my cabin here. Took a leak, got ready for bed. And then, boom. I opened the front door and saw the fire, saw that SUV pulling out of here pretty fast. I put on my pants and shoes and came outside. A bunch of people came running from the bar and the other cabins. We were trying to put out the fire, but that boat was a goner. The fire department was still mopping up on Sunday, and then the cops came and hauled off the boat on Monday.”
I probed further, but it appeared Chet Olsen had told me all he knew, or had seen. A mid-sized SUV, light in color, and it had left the scene very fast, driven by one of the men he had seen. The other man, presumably, was the corpse found on the boat.
Now that I knew Rhine was listed as the owner of three boats, I took more photos of the two cabin cruisers that were still tied up to the charred dock. Then I walked back to my car. Before I started the engine, I called Rita Lydecker’s cell phone.
“Hi, Rita,” I said when she answered. “I’ve learned that the owner of the boat that burned is named Lowell Rhine, and he’s from San Rafael. That name sounds familiar. Does it ring any bells with you?”
“Sure as hell does,” Rita said. “Lowell Rhine is an attorney. He’s the lawyer that defended the guy who shot a local cop a couple of years ago. Got his client acquitted. Pissed off the San Rafael Police Department, and the Marin County DA’s office.”
“Now I remember.” The case had been all over the Bay Area news outlets. “Rhine’s client was a drug dealer, right?”
“Yeah. He represents a lot of drug dealers. This particular dealer shot the cop during a bust down in the Canal District. The officer survived, but he lost the use of his arm and retired on disability. Rhine got his client acquitted and the local authorities were not happy about that. I heard that the assistant DA who prosecuted assured everyone it was an open-and-shut case, but Rhine convinced the jury otherwise.”
“What do you know about Rhine? Have you ever done any work for him?”
“He specializes in criminal defense,” Rita said. “Works out of an office near the Civic Center here in San Rafael, but he takes cases all over the Bay Area. He handles a lot of drug charges and other stuff thrown in for good measure—DUI, traffic violations, assault, theft, domestic violence, and sometimes sex crimes. And yes, I did some investigative work for him a few years back. Just the one case. Let’s just say, he and I had a personality conflict.”
“How so?”
“You know lawyers,” Rita said. “Some of them are nice people. Others are born with the arrogance gene, or they acquire it in law school. Rhine is definitely arrogant. Full of himself. He’s slick and I’ve heard him called a shyster. Skates close to the legality line. He’s good, though. He gets results. A lot of his clients are scumbags. Yes, I know they’re innocent until proven guilty and entitled to a defense. Reasonable doubt and all that. Hell, I’ve worked a few defense cases in my day. But there have been quite a few of Rhine’s clients who would be better off behind bars. And the rest of us would be better off if they were, that’s for sure.”
“Is he married?” I asked.
“Divorced from wife number two. Don’t know anything about wife number one. I gather she was in the distant past. He was married to number two for about ten years and they had one child. Nasty divorce, from what I hear. Allegations of infidelity on both sides. Don’t know if it was true about her, but him, yeah, he’s a chaser. Always has some arm candy. I gather he had a girlfriend waiting in the wings, even before the divorce. Wife number two got custody of the kid, a big fancy house in Tiburon, and probably a very large pile of money. So now Rhine lives in San Rafael. Not sure where, but I can find out.”
“Is Rhine a sailor?”
“That I don’t know,” Rita said. “Could be. I’ve never heard anything about him being a sailor, but he does have money, and he likes toys. Drives a fancy car. So I suppose a fancy boat would be just his style.”
“According to someone who works at the marina, Rhine is listed as the owner of three boats that were berthed there, including the boat that burned. If he does like boats, why have three? Expensive toys. You’ve got to berth them somewhere and maintain them. And why keep the boats at an out-of-the-way marina in Sonoma County, when he lives in Marin County? There must be half a dozen marinas right there in San Rafael. Any one of them would be quicker and easier to get to than this place up here in Lakeville.”
“Those are very good questions,” Rita said. “Want me to look into it?”
“Yes, I’d appreciate that. Are you at a computer?”
“Sure. What do you need?”
“First give me Rhine’s office address and phone number. I’ll pay him a visit. Then I need a phone number for a man named Steve Kennett. I’m guessing it’s spelle
d the way it sounds. He lives in Cotati.” Kennett was Willow’s stepfather and I wanted to talk with him.
“Can’t be that many Kennetts in Cotati,” Rita said. “The town ain’t that big.”
Rita provided me with Rhine’s address and number. Then she did a search for Steve Kennett’s phone number. It didn’t take her long to locate the listing. I jotted down the information, thanked her, and disconnected the call. My next phone call, to Kennett, got me voice mail. I didn’t leave a message, planning to try again later.
Donna must have called while I was on the phone. Now I had a voice mail message from her. I listened to it. She’d checked around, following up on my earlier request about permits. Nothing showed up. Brian hadn’t requested a permit for backcountry hiking in any of the state parks. Nor was there any record of his Jeep sighted at a state park.
Another dead end, I thought.
I made another phone call, this time to the law office of Lowell Rhine in San Rafael. The young woman who answered the phone told me Rhine was unavailable. I left my name and phone number, declining to give her the reason why I was calling. I’d go to his office instead, hoping to grab the attorney if he was in the building.
I started the car and left the marina parking lot, heading south on Lakeville Highway. At Highway 37, I drove west to U.S. 101, and then south through Novato to San Rafael. Lowell Rhine’s law office was in a commercial suite on North San Pablo Road, across the street from the Marin County Civic Center, the futuristic building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
The building where Rhine had his office had been designed by a more mundane architect. Bland, boxy and three stories high, the walls were beige and the carpet was brown. Rhine’s office was on the third floor. I went through the front door into a waiting room. Here the carpet was plusher, a lighter shade of brown, and the walls were decorated with photographs showing some of the local sights, including Mount Tamalpais, the Sausalito waterfront, the Marin headlands, and the Golden Gate Bridge.
At a desk in front of me was a receptionist. She wore a gray silk blouse and a short shirt, her legs crossed as she talked on the phone. Sitting in a chair on the right was a young man who looked like a gangbanger, baggy pants and a baseball cap worn backwards on his dark hair. He was talking on a cell phone, loudly.
When the receptionist ended the call she was on, she looked up at me. “May I help you?”
“Is Mr. Rhine available?”
“I’m sorry, he’s with a client,” she said. “Do you have an appointment?”
“No.” I gave her one of my business cards.
“Oh, yes, you called earlier. If you’d just tell me what this is about.”
“I’m working on a case. Mr. Rhine may have some information that would help me.”
She looked somewhat irritated, taking her role as gatekeeper seriously. “If I could give him a hint, Ms. Howard.”
“Certainly. Tell him it’s about the Esmeralda. I would appreciate hearing from him as soon as possible.”
“Esmeralda,” she repeated, frowning. She wrote the word on a pink message slip and tore it off the pad. “I’m sure he’ll be in touch.”
I was sure he wouldn’t, I thought.
The young man who been talking on his cell phone ended the call by yelling at whoever he was talking to. He swore and stuck the phone into one of his pockets, glaring at the receptionist. “How much longer I gotta wait?” he demanded.
She gave him a tight, frosty smile. “He’s with another client. I’m sure he’ll see you as soon as he’s free.”
Fifteen
I left the attorney’s office and went out to my car. I headed north again, back to Petaluma. I wanted another look at the coffee mug I’d seen at my brother’s house yesterday. I also needed to talk with my sister-in-law about a few things.
When I got to Petaluma, I took the exit for East Washington Street and drove to the rented house where Brian and Sheila lived. She met me at the door. “Come on back to the kitchen. I’m fixing a snack for the kids.”
As we went through the dining room, I didn’t see the oversized pottery mug on the desk where it had been yesterday. I followed Sheila into the kitchen. I spotted the mug, with its reddish-purple glaze, upside down in a dish drainer next to the sink. I walked over and examined the bottom. The mug had the same signature stamp that I’d seen earlier on Tracy’s blue mug at Newman’s Marina. I realized now that the long, narrow symbol was a willow leaf, with the letter “W” in the middle.
“How about some lemonade?” Sheila asked.
I turned from the sink. “I’ll get it myself, if you’ll tell me where the glasses are.”
“Sure. Pitcher in the fridge, glasses up there.” She pointed at one of the cabinets. I opened it and took out four glasses, filling them with ice and lemonade.
Sheila went back to work at the counter, with a knife and a cutting board, coring and slicing apples. She arranged them on a plate, then sliced some cheddar cheese, and added an assortment of carrots, celery, and crackers. When she finished, she went to the dining room. I heard her call to the children, who were out in the backyard. When they came inside, they bubbled over with news about local wildlife.
“We saw a raccoon,” Amy cried. “It was trying to get into the trash can.”
“Yeah,” Sheila said. “I had to put a bungee cord around that lid, so the little devils can’t get in.”
“We got squirrels, Aunt Jeri,” Todd said. “I saw three of them, in that big tree in the backyard. I’ll show you where.”
“Mom says we can get peanuts at the store to feed the squirrels,” Amy added.
“They’ll dig holes and bury them,” I said. “Squirrels like to do that.”
“They forget where the nuts are and trees sprout,” Todd said. “That’s what Dad told me.”
“Peanuts growing in the backyard, that’s all we need.” Sheila set the plate in the middle of the kitchen table. “Eat up, and then you can show Aunt Jeri where you saw the squirrels.”
We talked about squirrels and birds as we ate the snacks, then Sheila offered homemade peanut butter cookies. “Baked this morning.”
I took a cookie, broke off a piece, and put it in my mouth. “Mmm, just the way I like them, chewy in the middle.”
The children each took a cookie and looked at me. “Can we go see squirrels now?” Todd asked.
“I’ll be out in a little while. I need to talk with your mom first.” I waited a moment as Todd and Amy headed out the back door. “They seem less subdued today. Are they doing all right?”
She shrugged. “They still want to know where their father is. So do I.” She put the remaining snacks into a container and put it in the refrigerator. “Have you found out anything new?”
“I had a talk with Lance Coverdell yesterday afternoon. He mentioned that Brian was upset about an incident last spring, involving one of his students in Sonoma. Had Brian said anything to you about that?”
Sheila shut the refrigerator door. She sat down at the table and reached for a cookie. “No, I don’t remember anything specific. What happened?”
“Lance says the student tried to commit suicide.”
“What?” Shock rounded Sheila’s mouth into an O. “Brian never said anything about that. And I don’t remember reading anything about it in the paper, or hearing anything on the news. Of course, if the student didn’t die, the authorities or the family might have hushed it up. But if something like that had happened, Brian would have talked about it. Where’s Lance getting this information?”
“He says Brian told him.”
Sheila looked dubious. “Have you checked out the story?”
“Not yet, but I’m going to.” Once again, I wondered if Lance had made up the story. Or embellished it. Or for that matter, misinterpreted something Brian had said. But it could be, as Sheila and I had discussed yesterday, that Brian hadn’t mentioned anything about the suicide attempt—or his planned change of job—to Sheila because she was distracted by her father’s
illness.
“I’ll follow up on this,” I said. “I’ll need the names of some of his fellow teachers, people he was close to. I’ll contact them to see if I can find out anything.”
“There’s one I remember. Nancy Parsons. I met her at a couple of school functions. She’s been teaching at Brian’s school in Sonoma for ages.” Sheila got up and left the kitchen. She returned a moment later with an address book. She sat down again and opened the book, turned the pages to the Ps. “Here it is.”
Next to Nancy Parsons’s name was a phone number, no address. I wrote down the number. Then I closed the book. “I’ll call her later.”
“Did you find out anything else?” Sheila asked.
“Do you know a woman named Martha Newman?”
Sheila thought for a moment, then shook her head. “No, I don’t.”
“She’s a potter. She made that mug that Brian bought at the craft fair last spring.”
“And this is important, because?” Sheila asked.
“She calls herself Willow. She must be the person who wrote the note to Brian.”
“And they met for coffee several times.” Sheila broke the cookie into pieces and then set them aside. “I thought...”
“You thought Willow was Becca. Why?” Sheila didn’t answer. I pressed further. “I know you don’t like Becca. That was clear when I talked with you yesterday. It’s got to be more than her being full of herself. But something else is going on between the two of you. Why do you dislike her so much?”
“It goes back to when we were in college,” Sheila said. “Brian and I dated our junior and senior years. Going steady, I guess you could call it. Do they still use that term? Anyway, we did break up for a time the summer before our senior year. I was at home in Firebaugh. Brian and Becca were both in summer school. And Becca moved in on him. He was seeing her before we got back together.”
“That was a long time ago. You and Brian have been married ten years. You have two children. You’re still upset with Becca about that?” Why was Sheila so insecure?
