Mother Nature

by Sarah Andrews

  There were a few short reports entitled Quarterly Report of Groundwater Sampling, with Janet’s name on them. Each one was co-signed by Rauch. They appeared to be little more than a presentation of analytical data, but I printed one out and jotted down all of the addresses. I found and printed out two reports that dated back a ways entitled Environmental Assessment, also signed by Rauch. I wondered how Janet liked working with him. I suspected I knew.

  I got back into the shell program and took a tour of all the programs Pat had access to. I found a spreadsheet, which was interesting because there were two canned user files attached to it, one for running job-cost estimates and one for figuring his time sheet.

  When I booted the time sheet up, it automatically called up a current client list, coded by account number. My mouth watered a touch as I wondered how to decode that list into names and addresses, and oh, how I wanted to get at Janet’s time sheet. I called up one completed time sheet at random and printed it. I was appalled at how much Pat had worked. Seventy hours in one week. He might as well have been a lawyer. There was a line at the bottom that calculated how much of that time was billable. Forty-two percent. Pat had worked that long and not even booked a forty-hour week. I had a sinking feeling that that record wouldn’t be considered very high by an employer who looked on his employees as commodities.

  I struck a vein in my computer mining when I found the client address records. Fat cats, alphabetical by cat. This I gleefully printed out for perusal in the privacy of my motel room.

  From the client list I bounced into an interesting little scheduling program. It could move either forward or backward in time, beep you a warning of impending meetings, let you reserve equipment such as company trucks or well pumps, and send requests to co-workers for attendance at meetings or job sites. I got to fiddling with it, trying to find out if it could look backward and query what Janet had been doing during her last days on the job. This resulted in a very frustrating loop of commands which I couldn’t find my way out of.

  About there I heard the front door opening and Pat’s muffled footfalls on the carpet. Adrenaline shot through me as I grabbed the reports and client list, frantic to hide it before Pat could see what I had done. I tried to stuff the pages under my jacket, but they immediately began to slide. As Pat’s footfalls drew close to the doorway, I yanked open a drawer of his desk and tossed the pages in on top of some files. Slammed the drawer shut. Cursed under my breath at the sound that made. Berated myself for my stupidity. Freaked at the realization of how sloppy I’d gotten from hunger and lack of sleep.

  “I brought you a Danish, my dear,” Pat crooned, intent on extracting the gooey marvel from a very rustly bag. Perhaps he hadn’t heard the drawer slam over his bag rustling. “Junk food of the gods,” he said, proffering the goodie with courtly gestures and flourishes.

  My nostrils picked up the scent of lemon Danish, my favorite rendition of the refined sugar/white flour/saturated fat class of gut bomb. Saliva gushed into my mouth. The flames of my gastronomic furnace leapt in anticipation of this fuel. I received it humbly into my hands, I bit, I chewed, I swallowed, I sighed.

  The problem with eating refined shit like that when I’m that hungry is that I’m instantly even more ravenous. With my last ounce of self-control, I refrained from licking the inside of the bag. And found Pat staring at the computer screen. Frowning. I had left it set on the scheduling program. Shit.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I squeaked. “I hit a couple of keys by accident, and wound up in this. How do I get out?”

  Pat smiled. “You hit the hot keys. An easy mistake.” He leaned forward and hit Alt and the W. The screen immediately flashed back to the word processing program. But then Pat straightened up, his eyes hooded with suspicion. “The only thing is, I don’t remember booting up the scheduler. So how could you have just switched into it like that?”

  A sickly grin spread across my face. I said nothing.

  Lowering himself into a chair, Pat stroked his jowls as he made a careful study of my eyes. “My dear Miss Hansen,” he drawled, “I think it’s time you told me more about yourself.”

  14

  Understand this about me: I am a terrible liar. I don’t like to lie. What little thrill I get from even the smallest obfuscation is quickly crushed by a world of guilt. Moreover, I try to avoid lying if for no other reason than because I have trouble remembering anything other than the truth. Forgetful liars can get themselves in a great deal of trouble when they slip up and forget which lies they’ve told whom, and at that moment, I was so far from known territory that I couldn’t remember what I’d told Pat before, or—and this was worse—what was true about me.

  So I panicked.

  I just sat there, staring back at Pat. Swallowing nervously. From inside my guilty little head, all that saliva rushing down my throat sounded as loud as a storm sewer.

  “You were saying,” Pat prompted. His eyelids had drooped to half-mast. He was pissed.

  “I’m a friend of Janet’s,” I blurted. “No, that’s not exactly right, either.” And here I got confused, because wasn’t I the best friend Janet had left in the world? Certainly her family hadn’t kept very good track of her, and her roommate seemed to have written her off. “Well, I am her friend, but—well, I’m trying to find out who killed her. So yeah, I’m infiltrating your company. I was trying to find out what she was doing toward the end. Would you like me to leave?”

  Pat’s eyes closed the rest of the way. He let out a big lungful of air and caved slowly into himself, like an inflatable Patrick doll with a leak. “Oh, so that’s all, God, I was afraid the boys had sicked you on me.”

  “What?”

  Pat set his jaw in frustration. “Oh, you don’t want to hear about it. It’s my problem. Doesn’t need to be yours.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Pat drew circles with his index finger on the desktop. “Let’s just say I’m under a little pressure here to perform. Beyond that, I really think you’d be best advised to stay out of it. Consorting with the Company Loser can be considered impolitic.”

  I couldn’t believe it. I’d just confessed something close to breaking and entering, and all he could focus on was whether I was on his case in particular. Whatever was happening to him had to be bad. “Can I help?” I asked lamely.

  Pat drew another circle on the desktop and then folded his hands. “Sure, help yourself. Don’t be a hero. H, R, and C don’t like heroes.”

  “But—”

  “No buts.”

  “I could keep on typing.”

  Pat gave me a wry smile. “Your kind of help, I don’t need.”

  “Would you mind keeping it to yourself what I’m doing here?”

  “Emily, my dear, I have enough trouble; I don’t want to get involved.” His shoulders sagged. “Well, that’s not altogether true.”

  “Why?”

  “Janet was a friend. Believe me, I’d love to take you on a big tour of this place, for what good it might do you, but the fact is, I haven’t the courage. I’m not proud of that. Furthermore, I don’t have the keys it would take, computer or otherwise. Besides, the bastards shredded all her notes and work files, even what she had on the computer.”

  “Why?”

  “Paranoid bunch of bastards. Standard procedure when someone leaves.”

  “Her father didn’t know why she left HRC. Do you?”

  Pat leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. “I have no idea. Except it seemed they had some sort of falling out. Hell, they marched her to the door when she left.”

  I had meant, Why did Janet decide to leave? not Why was she canned? Then I wondered, Why didn’t I think before to ask Pat why Janet left HRC? The answer clearly was, Because I’d thought she’d left of her own accord. Why had I thought that? I reached to the back of my memory bank, to that first conversation with the Senator.… Yes, he had clearly stated that Janet resigned from HRC, not that she’d been f
ired, or that he was uncertain which way she’d left HRC’s employment. Had he been saving the family face? Or had Sheriff’s Department detectives told him that? And if that was the case, then who told them that? “You mean she was fired?”

  “I guess you could say that.”

  “But not exactly?”

  “I expect the feelings were mutual.”

  “What did she tell you about it? If you were friends, didn’t she confide in you? Something? Anything?”

  Pat shifted uncomfortably in his chair, then shifted again, his large body wrestling for comfort in a smaller person’s world. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and stared at the floor. “She wasn’t happy here. Well, who is? But understand, Janet was a person who didn’t say much about herself. Didn’t offer confidences, and didn’t reply to personal questions. I told you before: she mostly asked questions.”

  “Like what?”

  Pat was no longer listening. He had buried his face in his hands. “I let her down.”

  “How?” I persisted, as gently as I could.

  After a pause, Pat said, “I could see that she was into a row with the boys.”

  “How could you help, if they were on your case, too?”

  “I mean I was sitting right here when they marched her out of here. She walked right past this door, back straight, shoulders square. God, she looked straight at me, said, ‘Next time I’ll take a subtler hint.’”

  “What do you suppose she meant by that?”

  Pat shook his head, grinding the tips of his fingers into the angle where his brows met his nose. “She just looked at me, said that, and kept right on walking out that door. Kind of ‘Do your worst, I am on the side of the righteous.’ I’ve seen men on the battlefield run straight into enemy fire with that look on their face.”

  “But what could you have done?”

  “I could have called her. Or gone to see her. And then she was dead.”

  * * *

  AS DELICATELY AS I could, I took Pat back and forth through what he’d seen, and what had been happening at HRC before and after, trying different angles of questioning in the hope of jarring loose some minuscule clue that would give me another thread to follow. His mind was a shambles, a bomb site to his emotions; he didn’t know what Janet had been working on, wasn’t sure even from her questions what she had been thinking, and had no idea what could have made Rauch mad enough to goose-walk her out of the building. I apologized for any risk I’d put him to, apologized also for adding to his depression when he had so much work to do, and took my leave. It seemed the only decent thing to do.

  Pat saw me to the door. “Where are you staying?” he asked. “If I don’t make my deadline, maybe we can get drunk together.”

  “The Wagon Trail Motel. On Santa Rosa Avenue, bordering scenic Highway 101, where the dainty semis rock the weary traveler to sleep.”

  Pat nodded and shuffled back into the building, his shoulders bowed under the weight of the work that lay before him.

  I thought about him as I drove back to the motel, wondering what lay ahead for him. Would he be the next victim Rauch marched down that hallway? I felt wretched at the thought that I might have hastened that moment.

  The printout pages from Pat’s computer lay on the seat next to me. Pat had said nothing as he watched me pull them out of his desk drawer. Maybe he didn’t care anymore what anyone did to his employer, or maybe he had been too far saturated in despair to realize what I was doing.

  Back at the motel, I pulled up by the door to my room and took the pages inside, whipping up a cup of coffee sludge to lighten the reading.

  I’ve never liked reading technical papers. So before starting to read, I made a list of people I had to locate and talk to: Deputy Dexter, Suzanne Cousins, and the marvelous omnipresent Duke. Dexter would be easy to find. Suzanne might require a stakeout. Duke; hmm. It was time to turn the tables on him. I’d seen him on Highway 116 just before it rained; did that mean he lived nearby, or that he didn’t mind getting wet? I could check his whereabouts with a few bicycle shop owners. Toward that end, I copied a list of shops and their addresses out of the telephone book and put the list in my pocket.

  That accomplished, there was nothing left to do but read.

  The environmental assessment reports were terribly boring. Dry recitations of what potentially hazardous materials were where on a property, why, when, and put there by whom. Yawn. I set them aside and pulled out the client list, leaned back against the pillows on the bed. Sipped the sludge. Yawned. Confirmed client Wilbur Karsh, Misty Creek Winery. Sipped. Yawned again, thought about taking a short nap. Thought uncharitable thoughts about Curt Murbles. Considered driving out to the ocean to watch the sun set. Kept reading. Halfway down page five, I saw a name that made me gag on my coffee: Valentine Reeves, of Reeves Construction.

  Perhaps the Karsh family could convince the Sheriff’s detectives that it was mere coincidence that put their dead geologist in a ditch in front of their home, but the additional presence in the same place of Valentine Reeves, a second client, made coincidence look a lot more like design. I thought of the figures I’d seen laid out in Reeves’ notebook in Mrs. Karsh’s kitchen, and suddenly the diagram seemed less cryptic. Surely that division of $40,000 meant that Reeves and Mrs. Karsh were in business together. Hadn’t “RConst” been set up to shunt part of its portion to a “DK,” and hadn’t Reeves called Mrs. Karsh Dierdre? But what about the notations to “Bank” and “Trust”? Okay, to do business they might need a startup loan, but that didn’t explain the “Trust” entry.

  I sat up and swung my legs over the edge of the bed, grabbed the telephone off the bedside table, and tugged the telephone directory out of its drawer. Flipped through the yellow pages. Reeves Construction, address on Petaluma Avenue, Sebastopol. I dialed his office number, hoping that he might just be there on a Saturday, and got a polite woman’s voice. “I’m sorry, Mr. Reeves has stepped out for a few minutes.”

  “But he’ll be back?”

  “I think so. May I say who’s called?”

  “No, thanks,” I answered, already standing up and straightening my shirt. “I’ll just drive on over and wait for him.”

  * * *

  I PICKED UP Highway 12 off of 101 and hurried across the flatlands toward the low hills to the west. As I left the Santa Rosa city limits, I once again enjoyed a feeling of release as the road broke free of tract housing and strip malls, giving way to pasturelands. Egrets hunted laconically in the tall grasses, suggesting that the gathering rainy season was spawning vernal pools, and a turkey vulture glided overhead. As Highway 12 ran parallel to Occidental Road, it dipped gradually to a bridge that crossed over the Laguna de Santa Rosa. I looked for and found a similar causeway leading up to the bridge, but here the Laguna was choked with cottonwoods and gnarled oak trees, obscuring my view of the floodplain. Abruptly past the Laguna, I found myself in downtown Sebastopol, inching through a little late afternoon shopping traffic. On my left lay a development of new commercial buildings built on engineered berms to keep them above winter’s floodwaters; on my right, a refurbished railroad station turned upscale shopper haven. Two automobile dealerships and a delicatessen later, I arrived at the traffic light that graced the main intersection in town. As I waited for the light to change, I perused my detailed map again, making sure which way to turn.

  Reeves Construction had its offices in a tastefully refurbished Queen Anne—style house. I pulled the blue pickup to the curb and hurried up the walk.

  And nearly body-slammed straight into Valentine Reeves, who had returned and was just leaving again. His thick, wavy white hair was even more vivid by daylight, almost decadent in its lavishness. It curled just over the collar of another blue shirt, this one a richly overdyed indigo chambray, the sort of work shirt worn by people who don’t actually do any work. He wore tan work boots, and the kind of Levi’s that come predistressed, the knee and butt already worn pale. I revised my opinion about just how much, if ever, this
man might work with his hands.

  A look of patient indulgence occupied Reeves’ handsome face. He was a big man, used to other people giving way to him, and I was blocking his path. A heartbeat later, his lips spread into a flat smile. I presume he displayed his perfect teeth to me so that I could admire them, because the cool glint in his eyes said he wasn’t glad to see me. “Emily Hansen, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “How nice to see you. You’ll excuse me—”

  “This won’t take a minute,” I insisted. “Perhaps Mrs. Karsh told you why I was visiting here the other evening. I’m trying to talk to people who might have known Janet Pinchon. I’m thinking you did.”

  Reeves studied me like I was some unusual bug that had landed on the path in front of him. Impatiently he said, “I believe I met her once. She seemed a very earnest young woman. Does that help?”

  “How did you know her?” I was deciding that I didn’t like Valentine Reeves. Didn’t dislike him, actually, just found him a bit … too pretty, too glad to know himself.

  The flesh around Reeves’ eyes tensed. He took several breaths, the little wheels under all that lovely hair squeaking on their axles. “I’d love to help you, but I’m afraid I really am in a hurry. Where can I reach you, Miss Hansen? I understand your mission, and it’s a good one,” he said condescendingly, pulling a small notebook and a mechanical pencil out of his pocket to emphasize his request of my phone number.

  “I can come again,” I said hurriedly. “When’s good?”

  Reeves’ eyelids lowered ever so slightly. “Just give me your phone number.”