Don't Turn Your Back on the Ocean

by Janet Dawson

  “Get on with it,” he said, taking a stance behind his desk. “I’m not interested in playing games with you.”

  “Murder’s hardly a game. You’re quite a martinet, Trent. Based on everything I’ve learned about Ariel I can’t imagine what she saw in you.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and favored me with an unpleasant smile. “What did she see in your alcoholic cousin? I had him checked out. I know about his drinking, his DWIs, his brushes with the law, his bimbo girlfriends.”

  “Come on, counselor. You can’t tell me you haven’t dated a few women whose attributes were physical rather than intellectual.”

  “I’ve never been arrested for drunk driving.”

  “So your quarrel with Bobby Ravella is that he wasn’t good enough for Ariel.” I uncrossed my legs and leaned toward him.

  “Who the hell appointed you God? It was Ariel’s decision. She was twenty-two years old and capable of making her own choices. No, what really makes you angry is that she didn’t choose you. She bruised your ego.”

  Trent’s thin mouth worked and his tic became more pronounced. “And that gives me a motive for murder?”

  “Why not?” I shrugged. “Rejection is as good a motive as any. Ariel rejected you twice. She broke up with you a year ago and started dating Bobby. You didn’t like that. This summer you kept calling her, but she wouldn’t go out with you.” He frowned at this, wondering how I knew. “The rumor mill says Ariel wanted to break off her relationship with Bobby and so he killed her. That’s what the Logans think.”

  “Why not?” He flung my words back at me. “Your cousin’s got a reputation. Maybe Ariel finally saw him for the loser he is. They were arguing about something at the Rose and Crown. And then she was dead. Murdered. Beaten over the head and dumped into the ocean.” He glared at me, a trace of anguish visible behind his anger, hinting that what he’d felt for Ariel was perhaps deeper than I’d thought. “Christ, I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy, let alone a twenty-two-year-old woman I cared about.”

  “Neither would Bobby,” I said forcefully, believing it and willing him to do likewise. “He and Ariel were planning to get married. I have a hunch the subject of the argument at the Rose and Crown wasn’t about the rumored breakup of their relationship.”

  “So what was it?” He pulled out his chair and sat down.

  “Put your assumptions aside, Trent, and tell me why Ariel visited your office in August.”

  Trent looked startled for the blink of an eyelash, then he masked it. “What makes you think she did?”

  “I went to SLO a few days ago. Maggie Lim told me she visited Ariel in Carmel several times during the summer. In August Ariel came to see you. Maggie didn’t know why, but I think I do. Ariel asked you to do something for her. What was it?”

  “I can’t tell you that.” Trent scowled. He shook his head and waved away my words.

  “I know all about attorney-client privilege. But Ariel’s dead. She was concerned about something. It may have led to her murder. Did Ariel’s request have something to do with Beckman Boat Works?”

  The attorney’s eyebrows went up. “How did you know that?”

  “I’m a private investigator, remember? What was it? Karl Beckman’s finances? Come on, Trent, you don’t have to give me chapter and verse. Just confirm it.”

  He pulled a pen from the container on his desk and began fiddling with it. “She wanted to know if the boatyard was in financial difficulty,” he said, reluctance in his voice. “It is. Dates back to a loan made to Gunter, the brother who died in the car wreck with Karl’s wife. It was a large sum, using Beckman Boat Works as collateral. Gunter was behind in the payments. There was danger of a default, so Karl had to make good. It cleaned him out.”

  “Karl must have inherited something from Janine’s estate. I’m surprised he’d be cash poor.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Trent said. “But I checked Janine Beckman’s will in probate. It was dated just a couple of months before she died. Except for her share in the boatyard, everything was left to her daughter and her brother.”

  My ears pricked with interest. “Why would she do that? If Gunter was up to his ears in debt, what did he leave Lacy, besides a share of the business?”

  “Not much. They had a fancy house here in Carmel. She had to sell it. Now she lives in an apartment in New Monterey. I don’t think she’s accustomed to living paycheck to paycheck.”

  I didn’t ask Trent how he knew what lifestyle Lacy Beckman preferred. I was thinking about Karl Beckman’s daughter Kristen, who was now at Stanford University, a place that ran up an enormous tab in tuition, fees, and all the expenses that normally accompany an education at a private university. Of course, according to her mother’s will, she had her own money.

  “What’s Beckman’s financial status now?”

  “Still shaky.” Trent tapped the pen on his desk blotter. “He was okay for a while, but the recession has hit everyone hard down here. Boats are expensive to maintain. I know several people who’ve decided to get rid of theirs for just that reason. That means fewer repair jobs for the boatyards. Business is bad. If he’s going to stay afloat, Beckman needs capital.”

  What was he willing to do to get it? “Did Ariel tell you why she wanted this information? Surely you were curious.”

  “Of course I was.” His fingers still twiddled the pen and he frowned, at the desk blotter rather than at me. “But she wouldn’t tell me anything. She promised to fill me in later, she said, when she confirmed her suspicions. That’s a direct quote. Suspicions about what?” He scowled again as a thought dawned on him. “Was Karl Beckman doing something illegal?”

  “Maybe.” I looked at him across the expanse of his desk. “Is Beckman’s financial status desperate enough to make him do something illegal?”

  “I hardly know the man. I wouldn’t even describe his money situation as desperate. Serious, maybe.”

  But it wasn’t just Karl Beckman’s business. Half of it belonged to Lacy, who kept the books. She had to be aware of the boatyard’s financial situation. If something illegal was going on at Beckman Boat Works, would Lacy know about it? Or was Karl keeping her in the dark?

  “When you were looking into the boatyard’s finances,” I asked Trent, “what did you learn about Lacy Beckman?”

  Trent was silent, still reluctant to talk. “She bought some property in Santa Cruz earlier this summer.”

  “Where did she get the money?”

  He shrugged. “I assume she has money of her own. She’s a Standish, from a wealthy family in San Francisco. She sold the Carmel house when Gunter died.”

  “How well do you know her?”

  “Not well,” he said, replacing the pen in its holder. He looked past me at the bookcase on the opposite wall.

  The hell you don’t, I thought. How else did he know her birth name? Trent’s facial tic suddenly kicked in. Was that a sudden brief flush I saw under the lawyer’s even tan? Had Lacy favored the lawyer with her affections before she took up with Julian Surtees?

  I heard a brief tap on the door and then it opened. Trent’s head swiveled in that direction. The receptionist appeared and hesitantly told the lawyer his eleven o’clock appointment had arrived. “I’ll be right out,” he said abruptly. When she’d closed the door again he looked at me, mouth tight again. “You’ll have to leave.”

  I got to my feet. Neither of us offered to shake hands. “If you think of anything else Ariel told you during the summer, let me know.” I took one of my business cards from my purse, wrote Mother’s number on the back, and left it on Trent’s desk blotter. He made no move to pick it up.

  “If you find out who killed her...” he said, and didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to.

  Twenty-nine

  I CHECKED THE PROBATE RECORDS MYSELF. I couldn’t find a will for Gunter Beckman, so I guessed that he’d died intestate. Janine Harper Beckman’s will was as Ryan Trent described it. She’d left her share of
the boatyard to her husband Karl, not surprising since this was an asset she’d acquired by marrying him. Janine had owned a one-third interest in the Harper ranch in southern Monterey County. On her death this share had passed to her brother Charles. The rest of her estate was left to her daughter Kristen.

  So Karl hadn’t benefited significantly from his wife’s death. He got what he already had—Beckman Boat Works—and that business was in financial trouble even then. This will had been signed in December, two months before Janine Beckman and her brother-in-law Gunter died in the car accident. What did her previous will contain? Did Janine have a reason for changing it? If so, was that reason a factor in her death?

  At the Monterey Public library I looked through copies of the Herald until I located the stories that dealt with the accident that killed Janine and Gunter. The information I found in the narrow columns of newsprint left me with more questions than answers.

  The wreck had occurred on a rainy February evening at Hurricane Point about twelve miles north of the village of Big Sur, above the beach where the Little Sur River runs into the ocean. No one was sure exactly what time the car went off the road, but Gunter Beckman had made a seven o’clock dinner reservation for two at Ventana, located about two miles south of Big Sur. He and his companion were no-shows. The accident had been reported around eight, when the driver of another car spotted something burning on the rocky marine terrace below Highway 1.

  I recalled yesterday’s drive up the coast and the tug of gusty winds that gave Hurricane Point its name. The road requires attention during daylight hours, even more so on a rainy night. After the accident, the wreckage of Gunter Beckman’s BMW stayed where it was, where the waves and rocks would batter and grind it. It had taken the county rescue team two days to retrieve the badly burned bodies.

  The authorities never determined why the car went off the road. Hurricane Point had claimed so many vehicles over the years that everyone assumed the driver of the BMW had failed to make the curve. A barmaid at the Hog’s Breath Inn in Carmel reported that Gunter Beckman had been at the bar that afternoon, drinking steadily. It was his car, so everyone assumed he’d been driving. The bodies were so charred from the fire that the retrieval team couldn’t tell who was behind the wheel or how much alcohol the deceased had consumed.

  Why had Gunter and Janine planned dinner at Ventana? Was it just a friendly meeting between in-laws? Or did it have something to do with their respective spouses? I recalled Karl Beckman’s reaction each time I mentioned Lacy. Something flickered in his eyes. I wondered about Karl’s relationship with his brother’s wife. Had they ever crossed the line from friends to lovers?

  I also wanted to know where Karl Beckman was the weekend Ariel Logan died, and he wouldn’t tell me. Why was he being so damned secretive?

  I retrieved my car from the library parking lot and drove to the Monterey Peninsula Airport, where a clerk at the United counter looked at the snapshot of the Logans and told me he remembered Sylvie Logan’s arrival a week ago. “Sunday evening,” he said, “on the shuttle from San Francisco. She must have been coming from someplace else, because she had lots of luggage. I didn’t think it would all fit in the cab.”

  “But you don’t recall seeing the man?”

  He shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t. I think it was just her. You can check with the cabbie.”

  I went outside and questioned several cabdrivers waiting for fares. The cabbie I wanted to interview wasn’t there. It was another half hour before he showed up, dropping off a passenger. He was a bulky Chicano who got out of his hack, leaned against the fender, and fired up a cigar redolent of wet garbage. I showed him the snapshot of the Logans. His memory improved greatly when I added a twenty-dollar bill to the equation.

  “Yeah, I remember her. Fare to Carmel.” He puffed on his stogie and I surreptitiously took a few steps upwind. “Older lady with an accent. Not like mine, though. No, she didn’t have no man with her. But this guy—” He used the cigar as a pointer, waving the lighted end at the photographic image of Peter Logan. “This guy came out of the house in Carmel to help me with the luggage.”

  Minna Seville was in the front yard of the Sevilles’ house in Carmel, wielding a trowel at the base of a cluster of lilies. “Door’s open,” she told me. “Errol’s on the patio.” I went through the house and found Errol seated in one of the Adirondack chairs, reading a detective novel and drinking coffee.

  I took a seat in the other chair. “Last night I had a talk with a man who hauls boats for a living.”

  Errol’s eyes sparkled and he closed the book he was reading. “I assume you had a reason.”

  “I certainly did. He’s the customer who walked into the Rose and Crown right after Bobby and Ariel left. He saw Ariel later, near the bookstore across the street. She appeared to be talking to someone in a Beckman Boat Works pickup track. He couldn’t see who was driving.”

  “That puts a different spin on things,” Errol said. “Was it Karl, Lacy, or one of their employees?”

  “This morning I went to see Ryan Trent.”

  “That must have been interesting. What did you find out?”

  “Ariel’s roommate Maggie told me Ariel went to see Trent while she was in Carmel this summer, despite the fact that she’d broken off their relationship the year before. Trent says Ariel asked him to look into the finances at Beckman Boat Works.”

  After I’d given him the details of Trent’s inquiries, Errol leaned back in his chair and narrowed his eyes. “Interesting that Ariel went to such lengths to get information on Karl Beckman. Beckman Boat Works means a lot to Karl, since his father started it. But Gunter viewed it as a cash cow, a means of financing his lifestyle. So Gunter borrowed against the company’s assets and Karl covered for him. Then both Gunter and Janine died. What did Karl and Lacy inherit?”

  I told him about my excursion through the probate records, and the old newspaper articles about the accident. “I think I’ll drive to King City tomorrow and talk with Janine’s brother, Charlie Harper. Is everyone satisfied with the verdict that Gunter and Janine died accidentally?”

  “As far as I know,” Errol said. “It happened about the time we moved here permanently, so people were talking, assuming Gunter was driving. He liked his booze. The witness at the bar confirmed he’d been drinking earlier that afternoon. If he was going too fast, if he’d had too much alcohol... Hurricane Point is unforgiving of both vices.”

  “I’d like to look at that accident report.”

  “It should be on file at the sheriff’s department since it happened in county jurisdiction. Stop in Salinas when you go to King City tomorrow.”

  Minna came through the gate lugging a basketful of gardening tools. She set them down and picked up Errol’s coffee, taking a swallow. “Your coffee’s cold, love. I’ll make another pot. What are we talking about?” she asked as she sat down on the bench.

  “Gunter and Janine Beckman,” Errol said.

  “Ah, that.” Stinkpot appeared from the back of the garden. He leaped into Minna’s lap and coiled himself into a large black-and-white ball, his feathery tail trailing to the flagstone patio. She stroked his back and I heard the cat’s rumbling purr.

  “I’d come down here the month before, to get the house ready while Errol finished closing up his office in Oakland.” Minna rubbed the cat’s chin. “There was plenty of talk, lots of speculation as to why Gunter and Janine were going down to Ventana for dinner. I heard the usual rumors that they’d been having an affair, but I didn’t believe them. I met the Beckmans a few years earlier, while Errol and I were here for one of our long weekends. Janine didn’t seem the type to stray, though Gunter certainly was. There are plenty of local women who had a fling with Gunter Beckman. He was a charming cad.” She shook her head. “I never saw Gunter and Janine behave in a fashion that would give rise to such rumors. So either it wasn’t true or they were good about covering their tracks. On the other hand, I wonder about Karl and Lacy.”

  “
So do I,” I said. “Janine Beckman made a new will two months before her death, which would have been shortly after Karl covered Gunter’s loan default. That will essentially left Karl with what he had when they got married.”

  “I don’t have anything specific to back up that impression about Karl and Lacy,” Minna cautioned. “Gossip, mostly. People do love to talk and one can find out the most interesting things by listening. Lacy used to live in Carmel. She sold the house, so I guess Gunter’s death left her finances lean.”

  “Not according to Ryan Trent. He thinks she has family money. What about Lacy? We know Gunter liked to play around. What about his wife?”

  “Oh, yes. Plenty of rumors about that,” Minna said. “When Lacy lived here, and even while she was married to Gunter, she cut a rather wide swath through the men in this area. Evidently she’s not particular about whether they’re married. In fact I think lawyer Trent was one of her conquests, before he started dating Ariel Logan.”

  I had guessed as much. I needed more information on the icy blond with the tiger eyes. Especially since Julian Surtees seemed to be her current squeeze. If Lacy and Julian were involved, that might give her some access to the restaurant, I thought But why would Lacy want to sabotage Café Marie?

  I turned to Errol. “Were you able to get in touch with your colleague in Los Angeles?” I asked him.

  Errol grinned. “Old private investigators never retire, they’re just on hiatus. Yes, I talked to him. He said he’d be delighted to do a background check on Sylvie and Peter Logan. He’ll call me this evening or tomorrow.”

  “I stopped at the Monterey airport before I came over here. The clerk at the United counter remembers Sylvie, and so does the cabbie who brought her home. She was alone.”

  “I talked with my travel agent,” Minna said, stroking Stinkpot’s back. “Sylvie and Peter Logan were booked on Air France Sunday from Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. That flight gets into San Francisco at three forty-five P.M. Then they were to take the United express from SFO, which arrives in Monterey at six thirty-five P.M.”