Amateur Night

by K. K. Beck

  Jane thanked her, and then straightened up and stepped back, bumping into someone. She turned.

  “Good morning,” said Mr. Johnson, looking all newly shaved and smelling like the same hotel soap she'd used. His eyes drifted to the map and she swept it off the counter, with a movement she was afraid wasn't casual enough. His eyes followed her hands as she folded it in half.

  “I looked for you in the bar after I came back, but I guess you'd turned in,” he said.

  Jane was slightly miffed that he'd expected her to be hunkered down at the bar, waiting for him to return. She also knew he'd seen the map. Had he spotted the X and did it mean anything to him? Had he driven Brenda MacPherson home last night? Was Brenda safe?

  He smiled a little shyly, and Jane found herself deciding he wouldn't hurt anyone.

  “I thought I'd check out those hot springs,” he said. “We talked about them last night. Want to come?”

  “Sure,” said Jane, smiling. She began to feel easier now, more in control.

  “Can you leave in about an hour and a half?” he said.

  “All right. I have an errand to run this morning.”

  He raised his eyebrows inquiringly and looked at the map in her hand. “An old friend of my Uncle Harold's,” she said with a level gaze. “I promised I'd look him up.” Lying was getting easier and easier.

  “Looks like he lives near that Brenda MacPherson I met with last night,” he said. Jane felt herself tingle a little. Was she blushing? God, she hoped not.

  “Just what business are you in, Mr. Johnson?” she said calmly.

  “Insurance,” he said. “And how did you know my name? I was just about to introduce myself.”

  “The woman who brought that Brenda MacPherson into the dining room called you that, didn't she?” said Jane.

  “Did she? Well it is Johnson. Steven Johnson.”

  “Jane da Silva,” she said, extending a hand. He shook it and gave her an appraising, amused look beneath slightly lowered lids. It could have meant he saw through her and knew she was lying and what she was really thinking—which was, after all, what flirtation was all about anyway, seeing through the subterfuge that was coyness, and declaring yourself not fooled in your own coy way.

  “I hope the young lady bought a policy,” said Jane with a little sideways smile.

  “Another lousy lead,” said Johnson, with an ironic smile of his own. “Meet you here at nine-thirty, okay?”

  “Okay,” said Jane, wondering what she was in for.

  “I'll have the hotel pack us a nice lunch,” he added rather cozily, his sinister edge fading. “And I'll get them to throw in the resident professional whale on the way over.”

  The clerk, a motherly looking older woman, beamed discreetly at them. She thinks we're sweet, thought Jane, and that our little outing is the beginning of a romance.

  The clerk had been right about one thing. It was no trouble finding Brenda's house—a small cabin on the road out of town, with a hardscrabble look to the yard—big firs providing a dark canopy over a weedy lawn, and a big orangey-looking stump of crumbling cedar sprouting a huckleberry bush. It looked as if the place had been hacked quickly out of the wilderness, without any particular love for nature, or for civilization.

  There was an odd collection of objects around the place: next to a little outbuilding was a stack of bundled foliage—leathery dark green leaves. There were some red mesh sacks lying around too, the kind onions came in, and some tools hanging from hooks by the door.

  Brenda was home. She answered the door wearing jeans and a sweatshirt.

  “Hi,” said Jane rather breathlessly. “You're Brenda MacPherson, aren't you?”

  “That's right.” Brenda looked surprised, but not suspicious. She raised her eyebrows as if she wanted to be helpful but needed more information. An uncitified reaction to a stranger at her doorstep.

  “This sounds kind of silly,” said Jane, “but I've lost track of Mr. Johnson, and I knew he was going to be looking you up, so I thought I'd come by here.”

  “The American gentleman?” said Brenda in her genteel Canadian way.

  “Yes,” said Jane, looking over Brenda's shoulder at the interior.

  There was a big waterbed with a patchwork quilt made out of velvet, some furniture that looked as if it were made of two-by-fours, and a strip of kitchen on the wall facing the door.

  “I don't know where he went,” she said. “I was the wrong Brenda MacPherson.”

  “I don't know what to do,” said Jane. “He was supposed to leave a message at the hotel.”

  “Oh.” Brenda was still confused. Jane's strategy was to leave her that way so she'd start volunteering information.

  Instead, Brenda just stood there looking pleasant but puzzled. She was sweet, Jane decided, and reasonably intelligent-looking, but the wheels in her brain seemed to revolve without much speed.

  “Did he come to sell you some insurance?”

  “Insurance? No.”

  A man wearing a plaid shirt and jeans came into the room, went over to the kitchen and plugged in an electric tea kettle. Americans never seemed to have these appliances. Strange, thought Jane, that we should have missed out on a gadget. The man was skinny and ruddy-cheeked, around twenty-five or so. He nodded at her politely.

  “I'm sorry to disturb you,” she said to the man. May as well get him involved too, and prolong the encounter in hopes of gleaning something. “I'm Jane da Silva, and I'm looking for someone called Johnson.”

  “Come in,” said Brenda.

  “Thank you,” said Jane, pleased at how friendly they were. “I'm sorry to bother you, but I didn't know what else to do.” She stepped inside. There was a wood stove, and an old whatnot with some bone china teacups. There were a lot of navigational charts pinned up on the walls. White for water, yellow for land—mostly islands.

  “This is my husband, Doug,” said Brenda. She turned to him.

  “She's looking for Mr. Johnson.”

  Doug looked wary. “Oh yeah?”

  “She wanted to know if he was selling some insurance.” She paused. “Says she's a friend of his.”

  The man looked at her suspiciously. Jane decided she didn't want them to think she was his friend.

  “No, it's not that,” she said hastily.

  “You were having dinner with him, weren't you?” said Brenda tentatively. “In the hotel?” She went over to her husband's side.

  “We wondered what he was up to,” he said indignantly. He turned to his wife and stroked her shoulder. “You didn't say anything about insurance.” He had a protective manner about him Jane found touching. She wondered whether anyone would ever worry about her again like that. Probably not. She'd been on her own so long, she didn't look like she needed help. Once, when she'd been young and soft like Brenda, she'd had a husband who worried about her like that.

  “He hit my car in the hotel parking lot,” Jane said. “Just a little fender-bender, and we were supposed to exchange information—insurance companies and all that. But we didn't get around to it. He said he was in the insurance business. I remembered your name from the hotel.”

  “Insurance business? He told us he was a lawyer,” said Doug. “Some kind of a scammer, I guess.” He turned to his wife. “I told you he was. I should have gone with you.”

  “Gosh, he seemed like a legit guy,” said Jane. “But maybe he's just run off. I guess I'm covered anyway, but I'd sure like to find him.” She turned to Brenda, and then noticed some big plastic tubs on the kitchen counter.

  “Percebes!” she said. The tubs were full of barnacles she'd seen them eat in Spain. Strange creatures with long, leathery stalks coming out of a triangular mosaiced shell that looked like a dinosaur toe.

  “Goose neck barnacles,” said Doug. “What did you call them?”

  “Percebes. I never knew the name in English. This is where they come from? Do you eat them?” She figured she was looking at a thousand dollars' worth of the things.

  He
picked one out of the tub. There was a bit of seaweed clinging to it. “We gather them on the reefs around here and sell 'em to a guy who ships them to Spain and Portugal,” he said. “I guess they had their own, but they fished 'em out, eh? I understand they fetch a pretty high price over there.”

  “They sure do,” she said. “I hadn't seen one in years. They're orange underneath that skin, right?” she said.

  “That's right.”

  “You do that full-time?” said Jane, fascinated, and momentarily forgetting her errand.

  “Lot of people around here go after barneys,” said Doug. “I was a regular fisherman, but it's getting so you can't make a living. Brenda and I dig Manila clams too, but they're getting scarce. The Vietnamese poach them, eh.”

  “And we do salal as well,” said Brenda.

  “You mean the plants? From the wild?”

  “That's right. We cut them in the woods and bundle them up. Florists use them. They keep so long, see.”

  “Want some barneys?” said Doug. “I'll steam you up some.” Jane had never been a big fan of percebes, but she didn't think she should refuse.

  “Are you sure?” she said.

  “I got plenty,” he said. He rummaged around in the tub. “The market likes 'em nice and thick,” he added, gathering up a handful and clattering around in a drawer full of pots and pans, stopping when the kettle whistled. “Anyone but me want coffee?” he said.

  Brenda shook her head.

  “No thank you,” said Jane. “So Mr. Johnson told you he was a lawyer?” she said to Brenda. “Did he leave you a card or anything?”

  “Push those things off the chesterfield, and sit down,” said Brenda hospitably. Jane imagined a chesterfield was a sofa, and moved aside some folded towels in pastels.

  Brenda sat down in a chair opposite and blushed. “No. He said I was the wrong one. He was looking for a Brenda MacPherson who'd inherited some money in the States. He asked me who my mum and dad were and if I'd ever lived in Seattle, and a few more questions, then said I was the wrong one. I guess I should have known it was too good to be true.” She shrugged, as if it had been somehow presumptuous of her to think she could be the right one.

  Doug chimed in. “I was out helping a friend with his boat, so I didn't go with her. He said she might have inherited five thousand dollars. American.”

  “If he was some kind of a scammer, he would have said it was more,” said Jane with a frown.

  “I'd have taken the five thousand,” said Brenda with a rueful smile. She had a crooked incisor, which gave her a sort of sweet, lopsided look. “He was very nice about it all. Seemed sorry he couldn't give it to me.”

  “Asked her what we did for a living and wanted to know if we made a decent living with the barneys and the clams and the salal,” said Doug contemptuously. “Pretty rude, don't you think? It's none of his bloody business.”

  Jane glanced around the room. There was an expensive stereo in the corner. They certainly weren't starving. “Where did he say he was from?” said Jane, reminding herself she was supposed to be trying to track him down because he'd hit her car.

  “Seattle,” said Brenda.

  “And you've never lived there?”

  “We're from the Prairies,” said Brenda. Jane marveled that a couple of kids from Canada's dry, treeless plains would have ended up foraging for the flora and fauna of this lush, overgrown place.

  “The whole thing's pretty weird,” said Jane.

  “It sure is,” said Doug. “He told you he was in insurance, eh?” He came over and handed her a plate of barnacles. She tried to smile. They looked like hors d'oeuvres from another planet. “Should be woman's work, but she doesn't cook them right,” he said with a grin at Brenda, who didn't seem bothered by his antediluvian attitude.

  “I hope you like them,” she said to Jane. “I don't. Doug,” she chided her husband, “not everyone likes barneys.”

  He ignored her. “Let me fix them up for you.”

  “Get her a serviette,” said Brenda. “They squirt all over.” He went back to the counter and got Jane a paper napkin, then sat next to her on the sofa and started peeling the leathery skin, exposing the bright orange meat. He handed her one and helped himself to one. “I love these things,” he said.

  Jane bit into it. They tasted like lobster, but not so sweet. “Terrific,” said Jane, who could take it or leave it.

  “What kind of a vehicle was he driving?” Doug asked Jane.

  She panicked for a second, but then she said, “I didn't actually see him hit me. He told me inside the hotel that he had.” It just occurred to Jane that they might see her car was undamaged.

  “It wasn't a camper?”

  “I don't know,” said Jane, gamely tackling another barnacle. This one spurted forth orange juice. She wiped at herself.

  “The guy in the camper wasn't the same guy,” said Brenda to her husband. She turned to Jane. “Some guy in a camper was parked outside our house a few days ago. He stared at me for a while and pulled away after he saw I had the dog with me. It gave me the creeps.”

  “What did he look like?” said Jane.

  “Like a tourist. An older guy. Bald. I don't know.”

  “That doesn't sound like Mr. Johnson,” said Jane, sighing. “Well, I'll see what I can do back at the hotel. If you hear from him again, would you mind doing me a favor?” She took out one of Calvin Mason's cards. “This is my work number. Call collect and leave a message. I'll write my name on here.”

  Doug took the card. “You're from Seattle too, eh?” he said.

  “Yes,” said Jane. Maybe it was stupid to have identified herself. But how else could they have got in touch?

  She rose, hoping they didn't decide that Seattle was too much of a coincidence, or that if they did, that she'd be gone by then. “Thanks for the barnacles. I really appreciate it. I didn't know they had them around here.”

  “There's plenty of 'em if you know where to look,” said Doug. “But a lot of people are after them. The Natives collect them too—to sell, not to eat. You have to know where the virgin rocks are and get there when the tide's just right.”

  She went out to the car, thanking them profusely for the barnacles. Doug stood behind Brenda. Neither of them seemed to be looking at her car for any damage, thank God.

  Instead of answers, she had more questions. Was the bald man in the camper some sort of scout for Mr. Johnson? Or was he looking for Brenda too? Or was he, and this was most likely, just a lost tourist? And what was Steven Johnson up to?

  The next thing on the agenda was to find out what she could from Steven Johnson. She briefly turned over in her mind the idea that Brenda could have misunderstood; that the five thousand dollars was some sort of a life insurance payoff. Maybe he was a lawyer who worked for an insurance company.

  But why come all the way up here from San Francisco, or Seattle or wherever he was really from, to give someone five thousand dollars? Surely that was something that could be done over the phone, or with a little ad that said Brenda MacPherson, formerly of Seattle, should contact him and learn “something to her advantage.” Jane smiled, realizing she'd picked up this last phrase from old novels, and there was probably some modern equivalent.

  To find out, she had to get close to him.

  Which she did, sooner than she expected. An hour and a half later, she and Mr. Johnson were both removing their clothes.

  Chapter 19

  After being unceremoniously decked in the Carlisles' front yard, Calvin Mason lay there for a second, feeling woozy. He half expected a pair of feet to start kicking him now that he was down, but it didn't happen. He pushed himself up from the pathway, or at least he tried to. His arms wobbled.

  He decided rolling over on his back made more sense, but it would make him feel vulnerable to more attack. Instead, he crawled off the concrete, through a narrow bed filled with geraniums, and onto a damp square of lawn.

  Out of boot range, he allowed himself to sit up. “What the hel
l was that about,” he said, looking up at a scowling man. His assailant's hands were still in fists, a touch Calvin didn't like. Even more alarming, the guy wasn't holding a brick or a sash weight. He must have pounded the back of his head with one of those closed fists.

  “You son of a bitch,” said the man. “Tell me where the kid is.”

  “What kid?” said Calvin. At least he was talking. This was a good development. Calvin felt more comfortable in a verbally adversarial relationship than a physical one. At the same time, it occurred to him if the guy came at him again he'd grab him around an ankle and pull him down so they were both on the ground.