Mother Nature

by Sarah Andrews

  “That’s what everyone keeps telling me. Okay, were you there the day she left the company?”

  “Yeah, but it was lunchtime. I was gone. Let’s see … come to think of it, I’ll bet no one but Rauch and Hollingsworth were there when it happened. When I came back from lunch Hollingsworth tells me she’s gone and I’m supposed to pull her time sheet off her computer so he could advise payroll to make out her last check.”

  “Did she keep her time sheet that current?” I knew Janet was tidy, but that was anal-retentive.

  “Yeah. We were supposed to update them the end of every day directly into the computer. Hollingsworth and Rauch would go over them and E-mail them over to the company that did payroll.”

  “No paper copies?”

  “Nope. We’d E-mail them to H and R directly from our individual computers.”

  “But doesn’t that make it a little easy for someone like H or R to kite the numbers?”

  “Yup.” Jaki popped her eyes and smiled in a “happy clown” face and nodded. “You’re getting it, ain’t ya?”

  “This is part of why you left?”

  “You got it.”

  “I copied one of Pat Ryan’s sheets off his computer.”

  “So have I.”

  Jaki took me to her home computer and got it running. As she booted her programs, she said, “This is for your information only. I kept this backup tape from the payroll company’s system just in case anyone at HRC got rough with me.” She glanced at the date and fiddled with some keys. “There.” She pointed at the screen. “I’ll pick a week at random. On the payroll, Pat shows sixty-two billable hours. You can see here on the time sheet Pat actually filled out that he reported less than thirty. Of course, Pat’s on salary, which means he gets paid for a standard week regardless of all the overtime he logs.”

  “Wow.”

  “No shit, Sherlock.”

  “Did they kite Janet’s hours?”

  “What do you think?”

  “You have a record of that, too?”

  Jaki moved back to the futon couch. “Sure, I used to copy everyone’s time sheets off the computer every Friday. Aside from losing them clients if the chumps ever found out, it’s against federal law to defraud people through the mails, and the clients are billed guess how.”

  Like Pat had said, Jaki was a heads-up kind of babe.

  “Did Janet know about this?”

  “Well, we all suspected it.…”

  “But you did not confirm her suspicions.”

  Jaki’s eyes dimmed for the first time. “Janet and I didn’t talk that much about things.”

  Which meant, I supposed, that Jaki had wanted to keep her job until she was ready to leave it. “Okay, let’s go back to the day you came back from lunch and Janet was a newly ex-employee. Did Hollingsworth seem angry?”

  “Naw, but butter wouldn’t melt, you know? Now, Rauch, he had a head of steam up. He told me to crack into her computer so he could delete all her files. Then he had me clean her desk out and bring everything into his office that didn’t look like a paper clip or a rubber band. I heard him running the shredder after that.”

  “So you had everybody’s computer passwords?”

  “Yeah.” She raised a skinny arm and made a muscle. “Power!”

  “Did you tell the Sheriff’s detective about all this?”

  Jaki’s rather pale skin turned paler against the purple lipstick. “Well…”

  “You held some of it back?” I didn’t mean it to sound accusatory, but it did.

  “Look, all that was nothing unusual. Really. Rauch is always going off half-cocked at people, and with what he’s up to, he’s so damned paranoid he shreds his own toilet paper when he’s done with it, you know? I mean, it was weird that Janet was killed and all, but I didn’t think it had anything to do with HRC. Did it?”

  It was time to be a little less gentle. “Maybe. Why didn’t you tell the Sheriff’s detective? The real reason.”

  Jaki cringed. “I got a record.”

  “Dope?”

  “Yeah. It was a long time ago, but I really got to watch it. I figure anyone coming from money, like Janet, they can figure out who killed her without my help, what little I know. See? They hired you, didn’t they?”

  “So why talk to me, if you won’t talk to the Sheriff?”

  “I break into a rash when I’m around cops! You ever had a cavity search? Well, and Pat told me you were okay, and … okay, it’s been a while, right? I figured they’d get it cracked right away, but they haven’t. So someone’s still out there creeping around, maybe gonna nail someone else, for all I know.” Jaki sat up straight. Her eyes took on a gleeful, almost avid light. “And maybe it is Rauch or Hollingsworth, what then? Am I supposed to let that go? Uh-uh. See, I can talk to you, and maybe you’ll tell the cops you just found the information lying in the street.” She slumped back and looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “But you won’t tell them about me. Right?”

  I sighed. “Agreed. If I need the stuff about the time sheets, we’ll figure something out.”

  Jaki relaxed back against the arm of the futon couch. The fickle cat stood up and stretched, ambled over to Jaki’s lap, tested it for tenderness, and flopped down again. Jaki scrubbed her fingers into the ruff around its neck and murmured, “We’s gonna chase bad guys together, Brutess. Ain’t we? Huh?” To me she said, “So: what else?”

  “You know a client named Valentine Reeves?”

  “Val? Sure, known him all my life. Pretty good guy.”

  I cocked an eyebrow in surprise. “You like him?”

  Jaki shrugged. “Why not? What’s there not to like?”

  “Well…”

  “You mean because he’s a bloodsucking capitalist pig land developer?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Yeah, he makes a buck, but he’s pretty socially responsible about it. Mostly he’s into building housing for low-income people.”

  “But still, it’s how he makes his living.”

  “I didn’t say he was doing it for his health.”

  “What kind of job was HRC doing at the Martinez place for Reeves Construction? An assessment?”

  Jaki looked blank. “What’s the address?”

  “It’s 10225 Ferris Road. Just east of Miwok Mills.”

  “Oooh. Yeah, Jaime lives there, but he doesn’t own it. That’s the old Ferris place.”

  “Ferris? Like the road?”

  “Yeah, I haven’t lived here in Rodent Park Town House City all my life; I grew up in Miwok Mills. Oh, yeah, old man Ferris owned a guzillion acres along the Laguna. An apple-packing plant, too. It’s a winery now.”

  God bless the prurient mind and long memory of the small-town gossip. “Misty Creek Winery?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That fits, I suppose. Martinez works for Mrs. Karsh. Janet’s body was found in the ditch along her property.”

  “That was where she was found? I didn’t know that. Well, the whole family was weird. Was it in the paper? I’m sure the detectives didn’t say anything about that.”

  “Why weird?” I asked, pulling my legs up under me and getting comfortable. “Tell me about Matthew.”

  Jaki grinned, getting into this new line of gossip. “Oh, yeah. Matty’s pretty wacko, isn’t he? He went to school with my oldest brother.”

  “He went to school?”

  “Sure, for a while, anyway. He may be crazy, but he isn’t stupid.”

  “Has he always been like that?”

  “Well, sort of. In a small town like the Mills, everyone has a theory about a guy like Matt. Lots of people think it was because he got slammed too hard on the playground once, way, way back. He wasn’t more than five or six. This other kid kind of conked Matty’s head against some concrete at the bottom of the slide. Matty’s never been the same. Then again, he never was real great before.”

  “Explain. Before, after.”

  Jaki shrugged her shoulders. “Well, I didn’t k
now him before—I wasn’t born yet—but my older sister said he was always quiet, always stuck to his mommy like glue. Kind of broody. Got scared by things other kids didn’t get scared of. I always wondered if they didn’t just blame things on the accident so they wouldn’t have to admit that he was just plain weird. But they say that after the accident his temper got a whole lot worse, and he was in school then, too, and even though he was smart in some ways, he couldn’t keep up. They kept him back in school once or twice, and he got to where he was bigger and bigger than the kids around him, and somewhere in high school he just quit showing up.”

  “Was he violent?”

  Jaki thought. “It was weird: The kids would taunt him and throw apples at him because he was so big, but he’d just freeze, go all blank-eyed. Then afterward he’d get real frustrated and bellow at his sister, even take a swing at her. He’s a sad case.”

  “Sad? You don’t find him frightening?”

  Jaki frowned. “Well … no. Of course, I haven’t seen him in years and years, but all I remember is this big, pathetic kid.”

  “I see,” I said, although I didn’t. “He has a sister?”

  “Yeah, somewhere. She took off with this older man in the middle of high school. It was a real scandal.”

  I thought, I’d have run off, too, at the same time feeling guilty for harboring such resentment against a damaged, demented child. Matthew Karsh was a conundrum to me, someone I instinctively feared yet begrudgingly felt sorry for. Part of me certainly wanted to prove him a killer, especially after that scene in the apple-pressing house. I tried to clear my mind of my own prejudices. He was frightening to look at, and certainly capable of some pretty scary mischief, but was he a killer? Maybe his bluster was just a front he put up to cover his own fears. Yet I found myself saying, “I had an older brother once, and he was pretty rough on me.”

  Jaki’s bright little eyes focused sharply on me. She didn’t say anything.

  Embarrassed at letting my personal stuff work its way into the conversation, I asked, “How old would Matthew be?”

  “He’d be forty, I guess; same age as my brother. Yeah, that’s about right.”

  “And his sister, was she older or younger?”

  “Younger, by two years. Her name was Sonja.” Jaki reached for a cookie. “People always say how sad it was, like she was real charming and smart, so why did she have to leave and Matty stay; that kind of stuff. Then I’ve heard the old birds say she was a little hussy, like she had her daddy wrapped around her little finger and all the other men and boys swooning, but you know how people talk.”

  “Ah. Mr. Karsh. What happened to him?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it doesn’t look like he lives in that house.”

  “Oh, no, he hasn’t lived there for who knows how long. He’s got a cookie. He lives with her.”

  I pondered this bit of information. If Mrs. Karsh had been left for another woman, and worse yet, had been left caring for a brain-damaged, tempestuous son, perhaps that explained her apathy toward her surroundings. The woman must be bitterly depressed. “So they’re divorced?”

  “No, like I said, he lives with his cookie. That’s my mother’s term for mistress. That means Mr. K is still married to Mrs. K, otherwise you’d call his cookie his significant other.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s just what they call it.”

  “No, I mean why didn’t they get divorced?”

  Jaki shrugged her shoulders. “I dunno. Catholic? But it’s all still one big weird happy family. He runs the family business.”

  “So Mrs. K doesn’t work?”

  “No, she stays home, always has. She’s kind of a dinosaur, like she remembers when she was a girl and her family had money. At least, that’s what my mom says. She only comes out to do the marketing, on Friday afternoons. I know that because I used to check at the Lucky in Sebastopol before I went to secretarial school.”

  Friday afternoons. Yes, that fit, and I knew just who baby-sat for Matthew while she was shopping.

  Jaki chattered on. “Once a month she goes to the ladies’ auxiliary meeting over at the grange hall in Miwok Mills. My ma sees her there. She calls her the grandee.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Never gives anyone the time of day.”

  “She seemed pretty nice when I dropped in on her. Gave me tea and cookies.”

  “Wild. You’re probably the only visitor she had this year, unless she talks to the meter reader. Oh; and once a year she cooks sauce for the fire department’s Christmas Spaghetti Feed. That’s tonight. You going?”

  “It’s an idea,” I murmured, not wanting to admit my own fall from financial liquidity. And I had bigger things on my mind than spaghetti feeds. Seemingly miscellaneous pieces of the puzzle were falling together: Dierdre Karsh proudly frozen in a loveless marriage, grieving a runaway daughter, living on a decaying farmstead with a deranged or perhaps just damaged son, while her estranged husband sought his comfort with another woman. Perhaps he gave her only enough money to live on; not enough to paint the kitchen or buy fresh curtains.

  But what was the connection with Valentine Reeves? Wait, Jaime Martinez worked for Mrs. Karsh, and Reeves was getting an environmental assessment done on the place where Jaime lived. “Was it an environmental assessment that was being done on the old Ferris place? You know, where this guy Jaime Martinez lives?”

  Jaki furrowed her brow. “I don’t know. I’m sure I finalized the contract and all that, but God, there were so many of those. The addresses stick with me better than the work, because that’s how I thought about them. Well, it probably was an environmental assessment, because that’s mostly what we did for Reeves Construction.”

  I fell silent, trying to think of anything else I could ask Jaki. That was always the problem in this kind of an investigation: trying to figure out what the questions were so I could get the right answers. On a whim, I asked, “Do you know of a bicycle guy named Duke?”

  “No. Should I?”

  I shook my head. “I’m just trying to connect the dots. How about Janet’s roommate, Suzanne Cousins?”

  “Suzanne. Sure.”

  “You do?”

  Jaki slapped her knee, scaring the cat. “Grew up together. You think this county’s a big town, don’t you? Well, uh-uh. It only grew this big in the last ten, fifteen years. And let me tell you, sister, if you grew up in Miwok Mills, you knew everybody.”

  “Well then, was it you that connected Janet with Suzanne? Suzanne said she didn’t really know Janet.”

  Jaki looked at me like I’d just sprouted feathers. “Huh? Naw, they lived together at least two years, and I don’t know how you can do that without getting to know someone pretty darned well. And no, I didn’t introduce them; they knew each other through that women’s drumming circle that meets out in the Mills. Shit, yeah: Janet and Suzanne were tight.”

  * * *

  AS I DROVE back up Highway 101 toward Santa Rosa, I vowed that I would never, ever again believe a word any of these people told me. I would assume they were all lying until I could prove otherwise. Except maybe Pat Ryan and Jaki. Or were they simply the best bullshitters of the lot? I was going to find Suzanne Cousins, and she was going to talk to me, drum and all. She could tap it out in Morse code on a tom-tom, for all I cared; I needed information, and I needed it now.

  Suzanne’s car was parked in front of her place, and I thought I saw a brief movement near a window as I was approaching the door, but on knocking, I got no reply. I peered in every window, staring past prisms and candles clear to the back wall of each room, but no Suzanne. I did spot a book left open on the couch and a still-steaming cup of tea on the table by the candles and whale vertebra. Either she had just gone out the back door for a brisk walk to the convenience store, or the sly she-dog was in there somewhere, lurking out of view.

  I wrote my name and phone number and “Please call me, it’s important if we’re going to know who killed Janet
” on a piece of notebook paper, jammed it in the doorframe, and left. Hardly knew Janet indeed.

  Still fuming, I descended on the next few bicycle shops on my list, finishing up at the Pedal Pusher on Cleveland Avenue. The place was packed; everyone was buying bicycles for their kids for Christmas, and it took quite a while before I could find someone who could talk to me. As I waited, I stared into glass cases at lovingly displayed bits of bicycle paraphernalia, gimcracks and gewgaws that fit on handlebars or clamped to this or that tube to make the bike work better or look prettier or whatever. I tried on several ultralightweight helmets, and hoisted a couple of thousand-dollar bicycles to see what that kind of money could buy.

  By and by, a very tall, athletically slender man wearing a tight black jersey and bicycling shorts strolled up to me. His eyes were shiny black and intelligent. His socks and athletic shoes were black, too, and his skin was dark as coffee. A fabulous headful of dreadlocks hung almost to his shoulders. He exuded a healthful, soul-deep beauty, an athletic angel done in shades of shadow. In a low, warm voice he asked if he could help me.

  “I hope so. Are you Arnie?”

  “The same.”

  “A woman at another bike shop said you know everyone in the business. She also said you left skin on rocks and trees,” I added, taking in his taut, linear musculature, “but you look pretty complete to me.”

  Arnie nodded demurely. “A figure of speech. The lady’s suggesting that I ride with a certain je ne sais quoi. So. Are you looking for someone?” His eyes glinted with restrained curiosity.

  “Well, a guy named Duke, who looks nothing like you.”

  Arnie thought, shook his head. “Can’t help you.”

  “Well, I’m also trying to learn what I can about a woman named Janet Pinchon, who loved bicycles. She owned a rather expensive one.”

  “A Merlin.”

  “Yes. You knew her?”

  He nodded gravely. “And the bike.”

  “Duke said he helped build it.”

  Arnie rolled his eyes in sudden recognition. “A rather slender young man with, shall we say, afflicted skin?”