Take a Number

by Janet Dawson

  “Who’s involved in the investigation this time?” I asked.

  “We are of course.” In this case, we meant the California Department of Fish and Game. My cousin is a biologist who studies and monitors seabirds, specifically the brown pelican, a thirty-million-year-old species that is on the endangered list. Blame DDT and a host of other pollutants.

  Donna grasped the mesh of the chain-link fence separating us and other human observers from the rocks that formed the breakwater at the end of the jetty. Dozens of California sea lions sprawled unconcernedly in the early-afternoon sun, their companions an assortment of seagulls, cormorants, and pelicans.

  “Also the Monterey County SPCA and the National Marine Fisheries Service, since pelicans are protected. But I thought maybe you could help.”

  “Me?” I stared at my cousin. She was three years older than me, thirty-six, and a few inches shorter than my own five feet eight inches. Her round fair face was full of freckles, splashed across a snub nose. “What makes you think a private investigator from Oakland can help?”

  “The outside observer,” Donna said. She ran a hand through her short unruly blond hair. “Another pair of eyes that might see something we’ve missed. These incidents are similar to the earlier ones, but there are some differences, too. Think about it. I have to talk to someone.”

  Earlier I’d wondered why my cousin had asked me to meet her here. Now she walked toward the inward side of the jetty, where the vessels of Coast Guard Group Monterey were tied up. Donna went through the gate and boarded the gleaming white cutter. I took a seat on the low concrete wall on the bay side of the jetty, just to the right of two elderly men who’d cast fishing lines into the blue water.

  I heard sea lions barking in the distance, beyond the end of the jetty. The creatures congregated under Commercial Wharf Two, farther to the east, where the fishing boats unloaded their day’s catch. Fisherman’s Wharf was closer, several hundred yards distant. The wharf jutted over the water, buildings and planks balanced on a forest of thick pilings pounded into the bay floor. A number of small boats road the water in between, at anchor, a picturesque sight for the customers of the restaurants whose broad glass windows sparkled in the afternoon sun.

  I shifted, tucking my blue-jean-clad knees under my chin, and gazed out at Monterey Bay, a marvelous sight on this clear autumn day. As the bay curved to the east toward the coastal hills, it was edged by the smooth sand of Del Monte Beach and the mounded dunes along Highway 1, where huge breakers rolled foaming onto the beach. Farther north, past the Salinas River and Castroville, the self-proclaimed artichoke capital of the world, I saw the tower of the Pacific Gas & Electric generating plant at Moss Landing. Beyond that, distance and haze made the shoreline and the coastal hills indistinct as they circled north, then west, past Watsonville, Capitola, and Santa Cruz.

  The blue-green water glittered like a jewel, dotted here and there with white foam and froth, moving with tide and current, waves and backwash from the boats that rode its surface. The bay was alive with fish and slick black sea otters, barking sea lions and harbor seals, white seagulls, brown pelicans, the darker cormorants. Beneath the water’s surface kelp drifted gently, hiding place for octopus, squid and rays, schools of fish and thousands of tiny sea creatures, all depending on one another for survival.

  The first whale I ever saw was in Monterey Bay. I was five years old, walking hand in hand with my grandfather on the bluff overlooking the rocky shore at Lovers’ Point Suddenly Grandpa pointed at the water. My eyes followed the direction of his hand and I saw a whale breach, close to shore. The creature’s enormous gray bulk lifted impossibly high, majestic in slow motion. Then it returned to the mother ocean with a mighty splash as I stood openmouthed, awed, entranced, clinging to Grandpa’s hand.

  “Well, that was a deadend.” Donna tapped me on the shoulder and brought me to the present. “I thought one of the Coasties had a lead, but it didn’t pan out. Did you think about what I said?”

  “No,” I admitted. I’d been drowsing in the sun, and Donna’s mutilated pelicans had been far from my mind. “I’m on vacation. I’m here to loll about on Mother’s deck, with a can of beer and a paperback, soaking up the sun. A week’s respite from personal injury cases and digging information out of tax records at the assessor’s office. Even private investigators take vacations.”

  Not very often, though. I was the sole owner of J. Howard Investigations. If I took time off, J. Howard didn’t get paid. It was different from my five years as an operative for the Enrol Seville Agency. Back then I had health and dental insurance provided by the company. But Errol had retired to Carmel eighteen months ago, sidelined by health and age, so I set out on my own.

  My cousin tilted her head to one side, a challenge in her blue eyes. “Come on, Jeri you know you can’t resist a puzzle. Meet me this afternoon at the SPCA and talk to my friend Marsha. She’s their investigator.”

  “Okay, okay. Now can we get some lunch? I’m hungry.”

  “Well...” Donna’s voice trailed off as we continued up the jetty, to where it intersected Cannery Row. Now we walked along the paved Recreation Trail that edged the bay, all the way from Del Monte Beach to the Point Pinos at the tip of the Monterey peninsula. The Rec Trail was crowded with people, though it was a weekday, people walking, running, roller-skating, on bikes, or pedaling one of the two-seater jitneys tourists rented down on the Row.

  Something else was on Donna’s mind, something other than the most recent spate of pelican mutilations. I’d known her all my life and I could pick up on her moods. More than relatives, she and I were friends, similar in age, temperament, and personality. Her father and my mother are siblings, so she is my first cousin, one twig on my extensive maternal family tree. The tree is quite large, with lots of roots here on the peninsula.

  I guessed Donna would tell me what was bothering her, in her own good time. “Where are we going for lunch?” I asked.

  “The wharf. Ravella’s.”

  “Got the urge for squid. I know you. Fine with me. I just got here yesterday, so I haven’t seen Nick or Tina yet.”

  My family, on my mother’s side, is Irish and Italian. Grandpa Dennis Doyle was a big black-haired, blue-eyed Irishman from County Mayo, a fiddle-footed fellow who wandered from Ireland all the way across America, finally lured to Monterey by the work offered by the canneries. He married Angelina Ravella, daughter of a Sicilian who’d been fishing the bay since the turn of the century. And so my families were linked.

  The Ravellas were additional and numerous branches on the family tree. Granny Doyle’s brother Dominic and Dom’s sons Nick and Sal carried on the Ravella fishing tradition. Nick was now retired from the fishing fleet. He and his wife Tina operated Ravella’s Fish Market, a fixture on the wharf almost as long as there has been a wharf.

  A man and a woman pedaled towards us in a jitney, weaving from one side of the Rec Trail to the other. A little towheaded boy sat in front of them in the bike’s basket, his face beaming in the sunshine. We got out of their way, then Donna stepped off the path, heading for a bluff overlooking this sheltered part of the harbor between the wharf and the shore, where an unoccupied picnic table stood under the shade of a Monterey pine. Below us a sea otter did what otters seem to do best, eating as it floated on its back, oblivious to all but the sun and the water. The otter was close enough to shore that I heard the sound it made as it broke a clamshell on the rock resting on its chest.

  “I need to talk with you,” Donna said, “before we get to Ravella’s.”

  I turned my gaze from the otter to my cousin’s face. Her sandy eyebrows were drawn together, emphasizing her frown. “What else is going on besides these pelican mutilations?” Now I frowned. “Is it family stuff?”

  Donna nodded. “Cousin Bobby.”

  “Of course. Cousin Bobby. In trouble again?”

  “Actually he’s cleaned up his act. Hasn’t been in trouble for a while. Until now.”

  We stood in silence as
the otter below us submerged and swam toward the wharf, the tip of its head visible above the water. Bobby was the youngest of Nick Ravella’s brood, the only boy, preceded by three girls. He was twenty-nine, the same age as my own brother Brian. I pictured Bobby, seeing a tough wiry body honed by years of hard work aboard his father’s fishing boat, a head of curly black hair atop a lean brown face. He had big brown eyes curtained by long lashes, and a cheeky infectious grin that made sure he never lacked for female companionship.

  Bobby was a charmer, all right. He also drank too much, and his reputation as a hell-raiser was legendary. When he had a snootful he got belligerent and argumentative and got into fights. Even worse, he sometimes climbed into the driver’s seat of the lovingly restored classic 1957 T-bird that had once been Nick’s, and drove while drunk. As a result he had a couple of DWIs on his driving record and the attention of law enforcement all over Monterey County.

  “How and why has Bobby cleaned up his act?” I asked Donna. She and Bobby had always been close, despite the difference in their ages, so she’d certainly be in a position to know.

  “The how is AA. He’s been going to meetings and staying sober.” Donna stepped away from the edge of the bluff. We climbed back up the slope and rejoined the walkers and roller skaters on the Rec Trail. “The why is Ariel Logan.”

  “A woman,” I said. It wouldn’t be the first time someone was redeemed by another person’s faith. “She must be special.”

  “Yes. I introduced them, so I feel rather proprietary about the whole thing. It was just over a year ago, last August. She was buying fish at Ravella’s. Bobby and I were there. They looked at each other—sparks.”

  “How did you know Ariel?”

  “Her family lives in Carmel. She’s a grad student at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, studying environmental engineering. She toured our marine pollution lab down at Granite Canyon that summer, so that’s how I met her. All this past year Ariel and Bobby were seeing a lot of each other. I know she was bothered by his drinking, because she mentioned it to me. I think she gave him an ultimatum of some sort, last spring. Whatever happened, it took. All of a sudden Bobby straightened out. He’s made a real change for the better. I’ve noticed it So have his parents. Even his ex-wife noticed it.”

  “So what’s wrong now? You’re walking so slow I know you want to tell me before we get to Ravella’s.”

  Donna turned and faced me, her frown deepening. “Ariel Logan is missing.”

  Chapter 2

  NEAR FISHERMAN’S WHARF A TREE-SHADED CLEARING held a statue of Santa Rosalia, patron saint of Italian fishermen. A woman in long flowing robes, she stood looking out at the harbor, her hands outstretched, all smooth curving lines. Donna and I stopped near the statue and looked down at the water, washing onto the sandy sliver of beach edging this portion of the shoreline. A young couple had staked out a spot on the beach. They were eating sandwiches and fending off bold seagulls who aimed to part them from their lunch.

  I spotted a bench under the stand of Monterey pines and claimed it. Once seated, I stretched my legs out in front of me, staring at the dusty toes of my formerly white athletic shoes. Then I raised my eyes and looked out toward the Coast Guard jetty, watching the progress of a man and a large dog in a dinghy, threading through the larger boats.

  “Everyone around here knows I’m Bobby’s cousin,” Donna said. “I got a call yesterday from someone I know at the sheriff’s department. They want to question Bobby.”

  “Why?”

  “Bobby and Ariel quarreled at the Rose and Crown on Alvarado Street, last Friday afternoon. The barmaid and several customers saw them.” Donna’s hand clawed at her blond curls. “No one has seen Ariel Logan since. Or at least no one will admit to it.”

  “There must be more to it than that. What else did your source at the sheriff’s department tell you?”

  “Our old friend the anonymous telephone caller. Something along the lines of, ‘If you want to know what happened to Ariel Logan, ask Bobby Ravella.’”

  “Could be some wiseass who saw the argument and is trying to be funny.”

  “Or it could be more serious than that. My friend Marsha at the SPCA has been getting anonymous calls about the pelicans, too. With much the same message.”

  I sat up straight. “Implicating Bobby in the pelican mutilations? I can’t believe that. Not Bobby. He’s a fisherman. He loves the sea—and everything about it.”

  “You and I know that. The fishermen watch the seabirds to find out where the fish are. During the last run of the pelican mutilations several years ago, the fishermen formed a coalition to find out who was doing it. They didn’t want to be tarred by that brush. Trouble is, when something like this happens people are quick to point the finger at the fleet.” Donna shook her head.

  “Now and then we have an incident, someone shooting at sea lions and otters. Fishermen know the animals are protected but they can get exemptions from the Marine Mammals Protection Act. If a sea lion is after a fisherman’s catch, he’s allowed to use reasonable means to protect it. I don’t know that anyone has defined reasonable means. Depending on the circumstances, the fisherman can shoot at a sea lion.”

  “Bobby wouldn’t do that,” I repeated. “I’ve been aboard the boat. He uses those noisemakers, those sea-lion bombs, to scare the critters off.”

  “Right. But he also has a thirty-caliber rifle aboard, just in case.” Donna sat beside me on the bench.

  I stared out at the water, thinking about my cousin Bobby. He didn’t strike me as a guy with a mean streak. He was rowdy, but he had charm and kindness and his grin was quick and ever-present. On the job he was serious and capable. Alcohol was the kicker here, the drug that could change a human being into a monster. His misadventures with alcohol seemed confined to weekends, that period from Friday night to Sunday, when Bobby wasn’t out fishing, when he was likely to hoist a few with the guys. It occured to me now that it had been a while since I’d seen my cousin. I didn’t know whether he was caught in the grip of alcoholism, or just a guy who had too many beers on a Saturday night. When does a person cross that boundary?

  “There’s a line between shooting at a sea lion to scare it away from the catch and someone catching and mutilating pelicans. It takes planning and deliberate cruelty to catch a seabird and cut off its beak. I can’t believe Bobby would do that.”

  Donna shook her head. “Neither can I. Even at his worst. It’s just these damned anonymous calls about the pelicans and now Ariel. I don’t know what to think, Jeri.”

  “I think someone’s making a big effort to get Cousin Bobby in trouble. When was Ariel reported missing? By whom?”

  “Her parents filed the report. They’d been in Europe, didn’t get home till Sunday evening. The sheriff’s department put out an APB for her car. They found it yesterday, in the parking lot of the Rocky Point Restaurant, down on Highway One.”

  I watched the couple on the beach below us toss bread crusts to the seagulls. One big white gull caught a crust and took to the air, with his compatriots in pursuit “You say Ariel’s a student at Cal Poly. It’s the last week in September. Surely the fall term has started.”

  Donna nodded. “She should have been in class Friday. Ariel’s college roommate says she left San Luis Obispo early Friday morning. The roommate’s the one who alerted the Logans that Ariel wasn’t where she was supposed to be.”

  “She cut classes to come up to Monterey,” I said, “to see Bobby or for something else. I wonder if she left here on Sunday, on her way back to school. Maybe she was taking the scenic route.”

  There are two ways to drive from Monterey to San Luis Obispo, a central coast city a hundred and fifty miles farther south, known to its residents as “SLO,” an accurate description of the pleasant, unhurried pace of life. If Ariel Logan had been returning to her classes at California Polytechnic University, the faster route would have been to take California 68 northeast from Monterey to Salinas. There she could connect with U.S. 101, a f
our-lane freeway that ran the length of California, approximating the route of El Camino Real, the King’s Highway of the days when California was an outpost of Spain. Depending on how leadfooted she was, and how many stops she made on her way south, Ariel Logan could have made the trip in three hours or less.

  The scenic route was down Highway 1, also known as the Coast or Cabrillo Highway. The two-lane road hugged the rocky cliffs and headlands where California crashed into the Pacific Ocean, past some of the most spectacular scenery found anywhere in the world. It was a beautiful drive, good for the soul, a drive a young woman might want to take if she’d had a quarrel with the man in her life. But it was much slower. The narrow two-lane road is popular with tourists in all but winter months, so traffic on Highway 1 usually moves at a glacial pace, which is wise, given the curves. Again, depending on the number of pit stops, Ariel Logan could have made it to SLO in five or six hours. But she never got there.

  “What was she doing at the Rocky Point Restaurant?” I wondered aloud. The site where Ariel’s car had been found was about ten or eleven miles south of Carmel. The restaurant itself was about half a mile off the road, down a drive leading to the edge of the headland.

  “I don’t know,” Donna said. “Maybe Ariel wasn’t on her way back to SLO, Jeri. Which means she could have driven down to Rocky Point anytime after she left Bobby on Alvarado Street.”

  “Maybe she just needed to stare at the ocean for a while, to sort out that argument with Bobby. There’s a beautiful view from the bar, or anywhere on the point. Would she have gone walking on those headlands?”

  “I hope not.” Donna looked grim. “It’s dangerous on this coast. You just don’t turn your back on the ocean, not around here. Even when you think you’re a safe distance away, one of those waves can suddenly leap up and snatch you right off the face of the earth.”