by Leslie Karst
No, more like abject panic.
What would I do if Javier left? The idea of running Gauguin without its head chef was unthinkable. Not only was he the heart and soul of the place, but I had no clue how I could possibly carry on without his experience and expertise. Plus, I knew I’d never find anyone I got along with or trusted as much as him. He was irreplaceable.
Neither of us spoke. And if my expression was reflecting even one quarter of the despondency I felt, I could see why Javier was hesitant to say any more. For my part, I was merely afraid that whatever I tried to articulate would come out as a wail.
After what seemed like an uncomfortably long pause in our conversation, I finally got it together enough to ask, “So, when…?”
“Not right away,” he answered quickly. “It would obviously take a while. Me and Natalie have been talking, and she wants to get in a little more time at the Full Moon Café running the pâtisserie before she goes out on her own.”
“Oh. So you’re thinking of opening up a place with Natalie?” That explained things. But it also made them hurt all the more. How could he possibly choose someone he’d known only a few months over Gauguin? And over me …
Javier tried to hide it, but his eyes betrayed the excitement he felt at the prospect of starting a restaurant with his new flame.
“Uh-huh,” he answered, bobbing his head vigorously. “I’ve been saving up for the down payment on a house, but if I move in with her I can use what I’ve saved for the restaurant instead. And she just inherited a little money, so we figure by combining our cash we should have enough—for a small place, anyway.”
“Sounds like you’re already decided, then. That it’s not just a ‘maybe.’”
I tried to hold his eyes but he turned away, just as Buster would have if he knew he’d done something wrong.
“So there’s nothing I can do to get you to stay?” I was trying to control the trembling in my voice but was having a hard time of it. “’Cause I’ll be better, Javier, I swear. You just need to tell me what to do to make it okay; I’ll do whatever you say.”
But he merely frowned and reached once more for the tiki.
* * *
The Santa Cruz County offices are located in a concrete-and-glass edifice, designed in what’s colorfully termed the “modern brutalist” school of architecture, a style favored by governments and other large institutions for projects during the late 1960s. Though flanked by soaring redwood trees that help soften its appearance, the blocky five-story structure isn’t much to look at, in my opinion. But the view from inside the building, which overlooks the San Lorenzo River and adjoining park, is lovely.
I knew the place well from my days as a lowly associate attorney, for not only had I paid frequent visits to the county clerk’s office to file and consult court documents, but I’d also passed many a long hour in the law library doing legal research for the memos, motions, and appeals I’d spent my days drafting.
Since the district attorney’s office was on the second floor of the same building, Eric and I had sometimes met for coffee or lunch in the cafeteria, which was down in the basement along with the law library, when I had a research project at the law library. Their coffee wasn’t all that great, but they always had a selection of doughnuts and other sweet treats, perfect for that much-needed three o’clock sugar rush to get me through the rest of the afternoon.
Today, as I found a spot in the two-hour section of the County Building parking lot, I thanked my lucky stars I didn’t have to spend the morning in the fluorescent-lit library flipping through musty casebooks. Running a restaurant can be stressful and exhausting, but I wouldn’t go back to pumping out those billable hours if you paid me the senior partner’s salary.
Taking the stairs two at a time, I went up one floor and rounded the corner into the county recorder’s office. The man at the receptionist counter was on the telephone, so I waited for him to finish his call.
“I’m sorry,” he was saying, “but we can’t take requests by phone. You need to either come down here in person or send in your request by mail if you want a certified copy of the deed.” He listened a moment and then spoke again, the testiness in his voice now a notch higher. “No, it doesn’t matter what company you represent; the same rule applies to everyone.” A pause. “Yes. That’s right. Good-bye.”
He hung up the receiver and turned to me with a sigh.
“That must get old fast,” I said.
“Yeah, and it’s not even ten yet. So what can I do for you?”
“Well, my father is the head of the biggest construction company in the state, and I was wondering if you could print out for me free copies in triplicate of every lien against his corporation recorded in the county during the past six months.”
His expression remained serious till about halfway through my sentence, at which point he laughed, slapping his palm on the black laminate countertop. “Good one.”
“Nah, it was actually pretty lame,” I said. “But I couldn’t resist. So anyway, what I really want to know is how I can find out whether someone has recorded a marriage license in the county.”
“Well, if it was after 1997, it’s been digitized and scanned, and you can look it up on the index on one of those computers over there.” He indicated a row of ancient computer terminals behind me.
“Oh, great. Thanks.”
I took a seat at the nearest computer and, once I’d figured out how the index system worked, entered the name “Gino Barbieri.” Nothing came up. The man had now left the front desk and was at a file cabinet flipping through manila folders. “Can I ask you something else?”
“Sure,” he said, holding his place with his thumb.
“The name I’m looking for isn’t there, but it occurs to me that it might be too soon to be in your system. How long does it take for a recorded marriage license to show up on the index?”
“It usually takes ten business days from the time the marriage officiant turns it in for it to show up in the system. You know when the officiant brought it down here?”
“I have no idea. In fact, I have no idea if the guy I’m looking for even got married or not. But thanks, that helps a lot.”
I counted back ten business days from today: that would have been the Monday that Gino was last seen, the day he had dinner at Solari’s. So if he and Anastasia had been celebrating their marriage by dining at Solari’s that night, as Allison had suggested during the dinner party at my house, and the officiant had submitted the license the next day, today would be the earliest it could show up on the computer. Which meant I’d have to keep checking back if I wanted to know for sure.
But is it even worth it? I wondered as I logged off and gathered up my bag and sweater. Allison’s idea had sounded terribly clever at the time, but now that all the bourbon and Gewürztraminer I’d consumed that night were no longer clouding my judgment, it seemed far more implausible than clever.
Once out into the corridor, I pulled out my phone and sent Eric a text: “Here in bldng. Meet for coffee downstairs?” The district attorney’s reception desk was only about twenty feet down the hall from where I was standing, but if I went up and asked for him, all his coworkers would know he was playing hooky. This way, he could pretend it was business calling him away.
“Sure. Be there in ten,” his answer came.
I was about to stow my cell back in my bag when a familiar figure emerged from the DA’s office and headed for the elevator. The sight of the man’s shaved head and burly frame triggered a wave of prickles across my shoulders and back. Spinning around to face the wall, I pretended to study the phone’s screen, hoping he wouldn’t notice me.
It was Detective Vargas of the SCPD, a man whose acquaintance I’d made under less than delightful circumstances the previous April, when (in his view, anyway) I’d poked my nose inappropriately into the investigation of my aunt’s murder.
I never relished a conversation with him, but right now I felt an extra need to avoid the detective.
Ever since finding Gino’s cap, I’d been feeling guilty about not turning it over to the police and instead stashing it in the bottom of my sock-and-underwear drawer.
I was planning to give the cap to the police. Just not yet. Not until I’d had a little more time to prove my father had no involvement in the old fisherman’s death. Nevertheless, the idea of making small talk with Vargas, all the while keeping the evidence from him, gave me a severe case of the jitters.
The detective strode past without even glancing my way and punched the button for the elevator. I continued to hunch over my phone until the door had closed behind him and then hightailed it for the stairwell. Bullet dodged. For now.
Since I had at least fifteen minutes to kill (no way would Eric get down to the cafeteria as soon as he’d promised), I popped into the law library to say hi to the head librarian, whom I’d gotten to know well during my years as a frequent patron. She wasn’t around, however, so instead I wandered the floor-to-ceiling stacks, enjoying the luxury of watching other research attorneys besides me pore through their pile of casebooks, searching for that elusive perfect legal opinion to prove their argument right.
As I strolled past a shelf lined with civil law treatises, one on wills and trusts caught my eye. Pulling down the heavy volume, I carried it to a nearby table and flipped to the section on omitted spouses. I knew there was a California statute protecting a husband or wife who had not been provided for in a testamentary document and was curious to see what the exact language was. Because, if the mysterious Anastasia had married Gino, he likely wouldn’t have had time to draft a new will including her before he died.
The book summarized the law nicely: “In general, a surviving spouse who is omitted from a will or trust that was executed by the deceased spouse prior to the marriage is entitled to a statutory share of the deceased spouse’s estate.” There were exceptions listed (this is, after all, the law we’re talking about), but none seemed likely to apply to Anastasia.
I returned the book to its shelf, walked back out to the cavernous basement hallway, and headed for the cafeteria. About a dozen people were in the place, but Eric was not one of them. They no longer sold doughnuts, so I bought a large coffee and a croissant and found a table in the corner where I could spot my tardy ex as he came in.
Watching a lawyer I recognized lean across the table to consult in a low voice with her clients, I considered the language I’d just read in the wills-and-trusts treatise. What it meant was that if Anastasia and Gino had in fact married, she would get all of his estate. Since the brother he’d willed everything to was no longer alive, Gino had, in effect, died without a will, and she’d therefore be the sole heir.
Could she have gotten the fisherman to marry her, and then knocked him out and shoved him off the edge of the wharf? It did seem more like a movie plot than real life, but I knew from my attorney days that fact could, indeed, sometimes be far stranger than fiction.
I’d finished all of my croissant and most of my coffee by the time Eric showed up. He flashed me a “just a sec” sign and got in line behind a group of women who’d come into the cafeteria just ahead of him. Five minutes later, he finally plopped down on the red chair across from me.
“Sorry,” he said, setting his coffee and two blueberry muffins on the table. “Right as I was about to leave, I got waylaid by Nate, who wanted to talk about his new case—that guy who embezzled fifty grand from the Korean restaurant out in Capitola.”
“Oh yeah, I read about it in the paper the other day. A bookkeeper with a gambling habit, right?”
“Yep. And he wasn’t too good at it, either. The gambling, that is. Hence the need for cash. But, man.” Eric shook his head. “I gather the guy had been with the restaurant for like twenty years. You’d think he’d have some sort of loyalty for the place after that amount of time.”
“Uh-huh…” I said, then bit my lip and looked away.
“What?”
“Oh, it just reminded me of Javier, is all. The part about loyalty.” I recounted what the chef had told me the night before, doing my best to keep my voice steady and my eyes from tearing up.
Eric frowned and took a large bite of his muffin. “That would be pretty cold,” he finally said after washing it down with a slug of coffee. “After you saved his ass from jail last spring? And then promoted him to executive chef to boot?”
“Yeah, well, the restaurant biz can be awfully dog-eat-dog. And I guess I get it, his wanting to have his own place. It’s pretty much every chef’s dream.” I stared past Eric, focusing instead on the table across the room where my attorney acquaintance was now flipping through a stack of papers, pointing out to her two clients where they needed to sign and initial each page.
Watching the lawyer and her clients reminded me of the probate law I’d just looked up in the law library. “So,” I said, turning once more toward Eric, “I went to the recorder’s office to see if a marriage license had been filed for Gino and that Anastasia woman, but no dice.”
Eric shook his head and finished off the first of his muffins. “I gotta say I think that’s a crazy idea,” he said, mouth full.
“Yeah, me too, the more I think about it. But I did find out that if they did marry, she’d inherit his entire estate.”
“And if I were to marry Jennifer Lawrence, I could quit my job and spend all my time surfing. Speaking of which, I was thinking of taking off a little early today. You up for some more painting this afternoon?”
“Sure. Gauguin’s closed today, so I have the day off. How about going out to Wilder Ranch State Park? Those old farm buildings would make a great subject, especially in the late-afternoon—” But then I stopped. “Oh, wait. There’s no dogs allowed. I don’t want to leave Buster home alone. How about Capitola Village? I rode my bike out there last week and was thinking it would be a great spot to paint.”
“No way. The traffic that direction in the afternoon always sucks. But we could go up to UCSC.”
“No dogs there either,” I pointed out.
“Well, shoot, let’s just either do it at your house or at West Cliff, then. ’Cause my place allows dogs, but it wouldn’t be that interesting to paint.”
Eric was right about where he lives. It’s a condo with no yard—only a balcony. And although the place is easy to maintain, it’s not what you’d call an artist’s dream subject.
“My house,” I said. “If we’re on West Cliff, Buster will have to be on a leash and just sit around while we paint. Plus, I can just see him tangling my easel and knocking the whole thing down. And that way we can have a drink while we paint.”
“Not me,” Eric said. “I have chorus at six.”
“Oh, right. Well, I can at least offer you something to eat before you go to rehearsal. I brought some leftover coq au vin home from Gauguin last night.”
At the mention of the restaurant, we both fell silent as our thoughts returned once more to its chef, Javier. Eric sipped from his coffee cup and I poked at the crumbs on my plate one by one and ate them off my finger.
“So what will you do if he does leave?” Eric finally asked in a quiet voice.
“I have no idea,” I answered. Then, shoving the plate out of the way, I lay my head on the table and let out a soft groan.
Chapter 14
After taking Buster for a walk around the neighborhood so he could stretch his legs and, more important to him, search for morsels of food that had been dropped on the sidewalk, the first thing I did after getting home from the County Building was pull the plastic bag containing Gino’s cap from the sock drawer where I’d stashed it for safekeeping. Seeing Detective Vargas had made me even more nervous about my “suppressing evidence,” and I wanted to check whether the cap did in fact contain any obvious clues.
Using a pair of clean tongs to extract the wool cap from the bag, I set it on the newspaper I’d spread out on the kitchen table. I examined the cloth inside and out, and other than strands of the old fisherman’s fine, white hair—which were numer
ous—I saw nothing. No blood, no bits of suspicious fabric, not even any dandruff as far as I could detect.
Of course, I thought as I poked the cap back into the plastic bag with my tongs, that didn’t mean it contained no important information. I wouldn’t be able to see DNA evidence, or even such things as traces of blood or individual strands of others’ hair. But I wasn’t going to turn it over yet. By the end of the week, I promised myself in an attempt to justify what was beyond doubt unjustifiable behavior. I’ll turn it over to the police by then if I still haven’t found anything definitive to exonerate Dad.
After stowing the plastic bag back in its unoriginal hiding place, I changed into my cycling clothes. A short but vigorous workout seemed like just the ticket to rid myself of the nervous energy now pulsating through my body—a ride up Western Drive to High Street and then back down the hill.
As soon as I started up the incline that is Western Drive, however, I began to regret my decision. It’s brutal, especially at the beginning. Santa Cruz is built on a series of five sedimentary shelves, called “marine terraces,” each higher than the next. And Western Drive cuts straight up from the first terrace, where I live, to the next with no respite.
I felt nearly spent within the first five minutes of the climb, so, to take my mind off my pounding heart and burning legs, I tried to concentrate instead on what I’d learned so far regarding Gino’s death and those who might have had a reason to do him in.
First, I ticked off in my head, there was Bobby, who, according to Angelo, was to have inherited Gino’s fishing boat when the old man passed on. Even though I now knew that Gino hadn’t in fact given Bobby his boat, it was still possible that Bobby had thought he was in the fisherman’s will. But given how genuinely sorry—and sad—Bobby was that his good friend was now gone, this scenario didn’t really work for me. Plus, now that Gino was dead, Bobby’s gravy train had permanently left the station without him.
