by Leslie Karst
That done, I plopped down once more in the Solari’s office to check my phone. Nothing urgent, thank goodness, since all I wanted to do right now was go home, play with Buster while I had a soothing nightcap, and then fall into bed.
I hoisted myself out of the chair with a grunt and made my way back to the kitchen, where Dad was helping Emilio with the final cleanup. Slipping behind my father as he pulled plastic wrap over a container of leftover tarragon-cream sauce, I planted a kiss on his cheek. “See you tomorrow morning,” I said, then headed out the back door, the screen slamming behind me.
The sun had been down for a while, but off to the west the sky still glowed a violet and cobalt blue where it met the Pacific Ocean. Pulling my jacket closer around me, I walked across the now-empty bocce court to the railing and inhaled deeply. After the closeness of the Solari’s kitchen, the cool, salt-sea air was a welcome relief.
Strains of laughter and seventies rock music escaped from the restaurant bar two doors down, and I tried to make out the song. Bob Seger, maybe? It sounded a little like “Night Moves,” but the slap of water against the wharf piers was too loud for me to tell for sure.
I tilted my head back and gazed upward. Dark clouds raced across the sky, and between them a host of stars gleamed in the moonless night. Please, please let it not rain tomorrow. Yes, we did have the tent, but it would still be a bummer of mammoth proportions if we had to transport all that food from the restaurant kitchen to the tent in a downpour.
Leaning forward again, arms crossed on the railing, I stared out across the inky inlet toward West Cliff Drive. Okay, I really should get myself home and to bed, I thought, and stood up. But as I pushed back from the railing, a shadow fell on its wooden frame. I had just enough time to register that someone must have come between me and the security light attached to the back wall of Solari’s before I felt a sharp blow to the back of my head.
I crumpled, falling limply across the railing. Too dazed to pick myself up, I drew a slow, shallow breath and tried to turn my head to see my assailant. But before I could even open my eyes, I was lifted up by my legs.
It didn’t take much. Once I was about a foot off the ground, the weight of my upper body did the rest of the work and I slid over the side of the railing. Down I plunged.
Into the cold, black water below.
Chapter 24
They say that profound and insightful images can flash through your brain in times of great danger or stress—key memories or visions of a future now in peril. Which is a pretty accurate description of my first thought as I sank into the murky depths: I’m going to pass out and drown, and no one will ever know what became of me.
But the very next one was, Ohmygod, this water is freakin’ cold!
It was the temperature of the ocean that likely saved me. Its iciness snapped me out of my daze, prompting me to stop my tumble and swim for the surface as fast as I could. I popped up out of the water and gasped for breath, only to be immediately slammed by the surge against one of the piers.
Ignoring the throbbing in both my head and my shoulder, I pushed off from the wooden piling and coughed up the salt water in my throat. Back up on the wharf, I could make out the dark, backlit shape of a man leaning over the railing, peering downward. As soon as he spotted me, he raised his right arm as if about to throw something, then lowered it again.
I knew I should try to swim away, but the surge kept sweeping me back toward the wharf, knocking me against its mussel- and barnacle-encrusted piers. Doing my best to protect my head and sore shoulder, I kept pushing off from the pilings with my hands, which were now cut and bleeding from the sharp shells, and every time I came up to breathe I got a mouthful of seawater along with air.
Panic began to set in. I was achy, freezing, exhausted, and terrified I was going to be knocked unconscious by bashing my head against one of the wooden piers. A vision of my drowned body lying tangled in a pile of kelp like Gino’s flashed through my mind, and I started to scream.
“Help! Help me, please! I’m down here in the water!”
But my feeble cry was swept away by the wind and drowned out by the churning water crashing against the wooden piers.
Then it began to rain. Hard.
And that’s when my emotion changed from fear to fury. You can do this, Sal. You’re a strong swimmer. You have to get out of this and nail that scumbag. Just think.
I realized that in my panic I’d been doing it all wrong. This wasn’t technically a rip current, but the same rules applied. The first thing was to remain calm and not struggle. Well, I’d failed that one already. But the second rule was not to swim directly against the current or you’ll just tire yourself out. You have to go at an angle.
Since the surge seemed to be coming from the direction of Cowell’s Beach, I needed to swim parallel to the shore, or even out to sea, to get free from the current that was slamming me against the wharf. Only then should I head back inland.
Pushing off from the sharp pilings one more time, I summoned all my strength, calling up memories of those summers I’d spent as a junior lifeguard in this exact same spot. After about forty strokes I stopped and treaded water, the rain coursing down my face. Was I being swept back toward the wharf? No, I could tell by focusing on the distant lights of the Dream Inn that I was holding steady.All I had to do now was make it to the beach. I could do that easy, right? I must have swum it a dozen times as a teenager.
Less frantically now, I headed for shore. I could tell from where I was along the length of the wharf that I was making progress, but it was slow going. Every few minutes I’d stop and tread water again to catch my breath and then continue on.
After what seemed like at least a half hour but was probably only fifteen minutes, my feet touched bottom and I dragged myself onto the beach and dropped to the sand. As I lay there in the rain, I had the ironic thought that in the end, here I was indeed washed up on the shore just like poor old Gino. Well, not just like him, thank God.
I started to chuckle softly, in that way people who’ve narrowly escaped a scary situation have a tendency to do. It’s really more delayed hysteria than it is humor.
But my smile vanished as I saw a tall man in dark clothing running across the sand toward me. It had to be my assailant, coming to finish me off. I pulled myself to a sitting position, knowing there was no way I could outrun anyone right now. This was it.
When he approached, I raised my arms in front of my face instinctually, as if that could protect me from his attack. The man stopped before me, breathing heavily, then dropped to his knees. I closed my eyes, waiting for the inevitable.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “I saw you coming out of the water and wondered what—” And then he let out a gasp. “Ohmygod, you’ve got blood all over the back of your head! I gotta call nine-one-one!”
As he spoke to the person at the call center, I fell back onto the sand. This time I laughed out loud.
* * *
I wasn’t laughing two hours later as I lay on a gurney in the ER. It was a busy Friday night and all the rooms were full, so my bed had been rolled into a corner of the hallway till one opened up. My head hurt like hell—the meds they’d finally given me hadn’t fully kicked in—and even though I had three thermal blankets over me, my teeth were chattering and I felt as if I’d never be warm again.
They’d cleaned and patched up my head. It was merely a surface wound, the doctor had said, and only looked bad because of all the blood vessels near the surface of the scalp. I’d been lucky that the blow had apparently glanced off the side, but they still wanted me to stay the night for observation.
Which was fine by me. Maybe I could stay here indefinitely, or at least until they caught whoever had come after me. Since he’d failed the first time, it seemed likely he’d be back soon to try to finish the job. Best not to think of that right now.
“You look like the Invisible Man,” Eric said, nodding toward the white cloth bandages wrapped snugly about my cut-up hands.
>
When the EMT had asked during the ambulance ride if there was anyone I’d like him to call, Eric had been the first person I’d thought of. Eric had wanted to call my dad, too, but I’d told him that since it looked as if I was going to be fine, I wanted to let Dad get a good night’s sleep. No reason for both of us to be useless tomorrow.
Because I clearly am going to be little help, I thought, staring glumly at the bulky bandages. “Too bad I can’t turn invisible,” I replied, “and just disappear for the next few days.”
Eric checked his phone, then stowed it back away. “I called the cops,” he said, “and also left a separate message for Detective Vargas. I was just looking to see if he’d gotten back to me.”
“Yeah, the EMT said the nine-one-one center also contacted the police. I’m sure I’ll be getting a visit from one of them sometime tonight.”
“No doubt.” Eric leaned back in the plastic chair he’d dragged in from the waiting room, shoved both hands into the pocket of his Santa Cruz Skateboards hoodie, and eyed me solemnly.
“No need for the funereal look,” I said. “I’m fine. At least physically, anyway. I gotta say, it does kinda freak me out that the creep is still out there.”
“I can imagine.” If anything, Eric’s expression had now become even more somber. “You haven’t named anybody, so I’m guessing you don’t know who did it?”
I shook my head and immediately regretted the action. “No, the guy was backlit, so all I saw was that he had on dark clothes and was fairly tall.”
“Not much to go on,” Eric observed, unhelpfully.
“I know. The only other thing I can tell you is that whatever he hit me with was hard, though thank God he didn’t connect well. I saw something in his hand after I was in the water, but I couldn’t tell what it was.”
“How big? Like a bat? ’Cause that’s what the cops are thinking might have been used on Gino.”
“No, it was small and compact. More like a rock. Or a bocce ball.” I told Eric about the guys who’d been packing up their gear after a game out in the same spot just fifteen minutes before I’d been hit on the head. “So one of them could still have been hanging around and, when he saw me, realized he had the perfect opportunity to get me out of the picture.”
“You thinking of anyone in particular?” Eric asked.
“I am, but I have no proof. And no great motive, either.” I told him my suspicions about Frank, the old man with the temper we’d seen playing bocce the week before, and how he and Angelo had overheard the two of us talking on the phone that morning. “I chatted with Frank afterward a little bit, and when I asked about Gino, he got all serious.”
I shifted in my bed, but it was hard to do without using my hands as support. Eric got up and helped me adjust the pillows behind my back.
“Thanks. It sucks being so helpless. So, anyway, I’m thinking it’s possible that Frank was the old man Sean saw arguing with Gino the night he disappeared. And if he was the one who killed him, maybe he got spooked when he heard me telling you about going to the police. He was one of the guys I saw at the bocce court tonight, so I know he was at the scene, as they say.”
“Maybe.” Eric returned to his plastic chair and tipped back on its back legs. “So what about that Bobby guy? Didn’t you think last week that it might have been him who killed Gino?”
“Yeah, but once I found out he wasn’t going to inherit Gino’s boat, and then saw how upset he seemed by his death, he didn’t seem too likely as a suspect. And I’m not sure why he’d want to get rid of me, anyway. Especially since I’ve just hired him to help with that big tent. He sure won’t get paid on Sunday if it turns out he’s trying to off his boss.”
My chuckle was only halfhearted, though, since when I really thought about it, I had no more evidence supporting Frank as the culprit than I did Bobby. And unlike the old bocce player, Bobby at least had had a close relationship with Gino. And, I realized with a twinge in my stomach, he’d also been there this morning when I’d talked on the phone to Eric. Could Bobby have overheard our conversation?
Eric interrupted my fretting. “You said it was a man who knocked you on the head and pushed you over the side, but is there any way it could it have been a woman?”
“Anastasia?” I filled in. “Huh. That hadn’t occurred to me. I just assumed it was a guy ’cause of their build. And also, I saw her drive away about a half hour before it happened. She’d had dinner at Solari’s with Angelo tonight. But I suppose she could have come back later and then put on a big jacket to disguise herself. And she is tall, actually…”
A sharp cry from one of the rooms down the hall made us both jump. Almost immediately it grew into continuous shrieking, interrupted by the occasional stream of shouted obscenities. A med tech in blue scrubs ran into the room and the screaming subsided.
“So you finally met the mysterious Anastasia?” Eric asked once the noise had come down to a hoarse moaning.
“Yeah. And it looks like she is legit, after all.” I told him the real name of the newspaper she was writing for and how she’d had dinner with Angelo and Gino to interview them for her article. “But we were right about one thing. Gino was hot for her. She said he came on to her after dinner and she had to shove him away.” I frowned in distaste. “Why do guys do that, anyway? You know, just all of a sudden start kissing you without any advance warning.”
Eric didn’t answer. I guess he figured he wasn’t responsible for the actions of his entire sex.
“Anyway,” I went on, “I suppose she could have been lying when she said she left him alone after that. Oh, and get this: she also told me about someone hiding and watching when Gino came on to her. But maybe it’s all totally a lie. Maybe she was so pissed off at him for slobbering all over her like that that she shoved him into the water.”
“But why, then, would she even tell you about him coming on to her? It gives her a motive for his death.”
I shrugged, which brought a flash of pain to my shoulder. It appeared I’d have to cease all nonverbal communication until I healed some. “I don’t know. But I do know that it did happen, because that guy who wrote the letter to the paper, Marvin? He told me he and his wife saw Gino kissing some woman after dinner. So maybe Anastasia knew that people had seen them and that’s why she couldn’t hide that fact.”
“You think she’d be strong enough to push him over the side of the wharf?” Eric asked.
“Well, he had been acting pretty out of it. She said she’d had to help hold him up when they were walking and stuff. And she seemed like a strong gal. So, yeah, she probably could have lifted him over the side without too much trouble.”
“And done the same to you, too?” Eric asked.
I frowned. “I guess so. But why?”
“How about because you’ve been poking your nose into Gino’s death? You did tell me you asked her about what happened that night. Maybe she thinks you’re getting too close to the truth.”
Neither of us spoke. I watched a paramedic wheel another casualty on a gurney into the hallway while Eric checked his messages again. If my phone’s circuits hadn’t been completely fried by the plunge into the ocean, I’d have done the same.
“Still no answer from Vargas,” he said, peering at the screen.
“Maybe he has a life,” I said. “It is Friday night. He’s probably out with his wife or girlfriend doing something fun.”
Eric slipped the phone back into his jeans pocket. “So is that everyone?” he asked. “Are there any other people you think could have attacked you tonight?”
There was one more, but I hated the thought of it. “Angelo,” I said softly.
“Really? Why him?”
“It’s partly ’cause of this weird look he gave when Anastasia was talking about Gino coming on to her, and when she mentioned she saw someone watching them. All of a sudden I got this feeling that maybe the guy watching them had been Angelo.” I shivered and snuggled down further under the covers.
“It’s
obvious that he’s totally into her,” I said after a bit. “So maybe he got super jealous seeing them kissing. Maybe he didn’t realize Anastasia had rejected Gino’s advances. And I know that Angelo and Gino had already had a falling out, because Angelo told me so. This could have been like the last straw for him—the one that sent him over the edge, if you’ll pardon the mixed metaphor.”
“And then he went after you because…?”
“Well, I know he was pretty despondent tonight, so maybe he figured he had nothing to lose.” I told Eric about Anastasia turning away from his kiss and how he’d been laughed at by Frank. “And I just found out the other day that Angelo also has quite the temper. My dad told me that years ago he threw a guy off a fishing boat for making fun of him, and that he also once went at a fish buyer with a big ol’ lead weight.”
I chewed my lip—at least that was one motion that didn’t hurt. “Maybe he was upset because Anastasia had told me what happened with her and Gino.” And then I had a thought.
“Oh, Jesus,” I said, turning to Eric. “I told Angelo and Anastasia at dinner tonight that I was going to tell the police everything she’d said.”
“So maybe Angelo wanted to get to you first.”
Chapter 25
I was released from the hospital at eight thirty the next morning. It would have been earlier if the release hadn’t coincided with the nurses’ shift change, which meant it took over an hour to locate someone to come sign me out.
The SCPD detective on duty had shown up to take my statement soon after Eric left and had assured me they would do their best to apprehend the suspect. But we both knew the assertion was pretty much meaningless, since they had no way of knowing who the suspect even was. Then, at around one am, I’d finally been moved upstairs to a real room, but since I was thereafter awakened once an hour to have my vitals checked, I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep. Not that I could have slept much in any case: every time I started to drift off, I found myself struggling for breath, as if once more fighting the ocean surge that threatened to pull me under water.
