by Janet Dawson
“Did you ask her? When was the last time you saw Ariel Logan, Mr. Beckman?”
Now Karl’s face became suffused with red, while most of the color drained from Mother’s face. “What the hell kind of question is that?” Karl demanded, getting to his feet. Mother stood up, too, her hand on his arm.
“A fairly basic one. When did you last see Ariel Logan?”
“I hadn’t seen her,” he said, biting off the words as he stepped around the end of the coffee table and walked toward me. “Not since she went down to Cal Poly in the middle of September. I certainly didn’t see her the weekend she was killed.”
“You claim you were on a business trip but you won’t say where you were.” I put my hands on my hips and narrowed my eyes. “Ariel Logan was seen talking to someone that Friday afternoon, after she left Bobby, someone driving a pickup truck with a Beckman Boat Works logo. I’ve only seen two people driving those trucks. You’re one of them.”
Karl stared at me as though I’d taken leave of my senses. Then he shook his head.
“This is unbelievable. This is crazy. I don’t have to put up with this inquisition.” He turned and strode angrily toward the front door, yanking it open. “You were right about her, Marie.”
His parting shot was a curious remark but I didn’t give it more than a passing thought. I didn’t have time to. As soon as Karl was out the door my mother whirled. She was scowling at me and her brown eyes glowed with outrage.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” she snapped, hands on her hips as she fired words at me. “Karl didn’t have anything to do with Ariel Logan’s murder.”
“How can you be so sure?” I shot back. “I have reason to believe Ariel suspected him of something illegal. That makes him a suspect as far as I’m concerned.”
Mother shook her head emphatically. “Don’t be ridiculous. Karl wasn’t even in town.”
“How do you know that?”
“He told me he went to King City.”
“And you believe him?”
“Why shouldn’t I?” Mother threw up her hands in exasperation. “Good God, Jeri, I think you’ve been playing Sam Spade for too many years. Sometimes you take this detective stuff too far. You always act as though people are guilty of something. Everyone’s a suspect to you.”
Her disparaging tone grated on me. It always did, when she acted as though “the detective stuff” was a phase I was going through. That hadn’t stopped her from asking me to look into the sabotage at her damned restaurant, I thought resentfully.
“I’m suspicious when people behave as though they have something to hide,” I said, trying with an effort to keep my voice even. “Karl Beckman lied to me on Sunday, about something that’s very important. What makes you think he’s telling the truth now? You’re awfully quick to defend him. How well do you really know him, aside from the fact that you’ve been dating him since New Year’s Eve?”
“We grew up together.” Mother dismissed my question with an irritated gesture. “I’ve known him all my life.”
“Have you really?” I shook my head and walked a few steps toward the dining room. Could she be so infatuated with this man that she was blind to a few facts?
“You left Monterey to go to college at Mills when you were eighteen. Karl wasn’t even a teenager. The man’s ten years younger than you are.” Her lips compressed and I knew I was not the first person to point out the disparity in their ages. “How well did you know him then? You and Dad got married not long after you graduated. You lived in the Bay Area for over thirty years and only came to Monterey on visits until you divorced Dad six years ago. By the time you came back here to open your restaurant, Karl Beckman had a wife and daughter. You know very little about him.”
Mother narrowed her eyes and her mouth twisted in a bitter smile. “This is about the divorce, isn’t it? It’s always been about the divorce.”
Now it was my turn to put my hands on my hips and fire a salvo. “Well, I must admit I was somewhat shocked that you’d walk out on Dad after thirty-plus years of marriage.”
“You blame me,” she said. Anger mixed with resignation colored her voice. “You always have. Since you’ve been married and divorced yourself I should think you’d realize there was more to it than my leaving.”
That hit home. I wasn’t comfortable with my own failed marriage. It hadn’t lasted very long and it had left a bitter taste in my mouth when it came to relationships with men. I would always wonder if I’d tried hard enough.
“Your father and I grew apart.” Mother’s voice sounded as though she were tired of explaining, tired of being required to explain. “He has his interests and I have mine.”
“Oh, yes. The restaurant. Always the restaurant.”
“Why is my restaurant less important than his historical research and his collection of Indian pottery? Or your desire to play Nancy Drew? I always thought you of all people would understand, be supportive of my need to finally do what I spent my whole life wanting to do.”
“Did you have to do it at Dad’s expense? At mine, and Brian’s?”
“You and your brother were adults when I left, with your own lives. You were with Sid, your brother was married with children of his own. And your father has his dear friend and colleague Isabel Kovaleski. There was always more to that friendship than a mutual interest in history and Cal State Hayward politics, even when Tim and I were married. But you conveniently ignore that. You’ve been cold and rude to Karl ever since you got to Monterey. Don’t mink I don’t know why. Your double standard grates, Jeri. Why is it okay for Tim to have a relationship but not Marie?”
She had a point, a good one, but I couldn’t answer that question. I felt my own anger and resentment prickling behind my skull and I wanted to hurt her as she was hurting me. We’d been doing this to each other for years, usually with cold politeness, but I was too tired to stop.
“I thought you were married to your business.” I said the words with a sneer.
She called me on it and we were back to the start of the argument “And you’re not? You can’t stop being a detective, not even for a minute. People aren’t people, they’re suspects. You can’t stop poking and prying and tearing off strips of skin.”
“Ariel Logan was murdered.” I said the words slowly, coldly, trying to get her to look at the seriousness of the situation. “That’s more important than your friend’s wounded feelings. And I should think you’d want to know whether Karl’s involved.”
“He’s not involved,” she shouted at me. “Just leave it alone.” She stopped, as though taken aback by the loudness of her voice. “I don’t know why I bother talking to you. God knows I’ve never been able to dictate to you. What gives you the right to tell me how to run my life?”
“Your life affects other people.”
“And yours doesn’t? I couldn’t sleep nights when you got beat up.”
“But you weren’t there at the hospital.”
Until I said it I didn’t realize how much I’d resented her absence after the incident several years ago when I’d been pistol whipped by a couple of thugs. “Dad was. He was there every time I woke up. But you couldn’t be bothered. You couldn’t get away from your precious damn restaurant.”
She wrapped her arms around herself and stared at me as though she didn’t know where I’d come from. “Yes, it is precious, something I gave birth to, like you and Brian. At least I can control and guide it. It needs me. You’ve gone your own way. You haven’t needed me since you left grade school.”
Suddenly neither of us had anything else to say. We glared at each other across a gulf of words that we couldn’t take back and I felt drained of feeling and energy. I stalked past her, back to the second bedroom, where I grabbed my things from the bed and shoved them into my overnight bag. When I returned to the living room my mother was still standing where I’d left her.
I slammed the front door on my way out.
Thirty-two
IT TOOK ME A MOMENT
TO FIGURE OUT WHERE I WAS. When I opened my eyes I saw wallpaper, a floral print in blue and yellow. I lay on my right side on a single bed in a small bedroom I didn’t recognize. I shifted onto my back, yawning, and tried to get my bearings. Sunlight streamed through pale yellow curtains on the window near the foot of the bed. I glanced to the left and saw the clothes I’d been wearing, tossed over the back of a chair. My overnight bag and shoes were on the floor.
Errol’s house. I remembered now. I was in the guest room at the Sevilles’ place in Carmel. I stretched my arms above my head and let them fall onto the pale blue comforter that covered the lower half of my body. The enticing smell of coffee wafted in from the kitchen.
What time was it? Where was my watch? There it was, on the chair seat. I could see the strap but not the dial. Better get up, I told myself. But when I tried to move my feet toward the edge of the bed I discovered that they were blocked by something heavy and inert. I propped myself up on my elbows and looked for the source of this impediment.
Stinkpot had joined me sometime during the night. Despite his antipathy for anyone who wasn’t Errol or Minna, I shouldn’t be surprised to see the big tomcat staking out a spot on the bed. After all, it was his house. He figured he could sleep anywhere he damn well pleased. Now he sprawled along the ridge formed by my legs, his head pillowed on my feet His long plumed tail stretched near my hand. It twitched slightly, indicating he was awake. I wiggled my toes and tickled the end of the tail, which jerked away from my fingers and began slashing back and forth. Another wiggle of my feet, and he seized them with his forepaws, claws poking through the comforter to flesh beneath.
“Ouch! You ornery damn cat.” I sat up and so did he, purring loudly, yellow eyes smug in his pugnacious wedge of a face. He stretched, yawned in my face, then jumped off the bed and sauntered out of the guest room.
I got out of bed and took a shower in the adjoining bathroom. When I was dressed I padded barefoot out to the kitchen, where Minna was emptying the dishwasher. The French doors leading to the patio were open and morning sun splashed on the flagstone patio.
“Good morning,” I said.
“You look like you need lots of coffee.” Minna took a large blue ceramic mug from the top of the dishwasher rack and filled it to the brim.
1 do. Thanks.” I sipped the strong black brew and felt my synapses kick in. “Where’s Errol?”
“He walked over to Katy’s for breakfast.” Katy’s was a Carmel restaurant where Errol could linger over breakfast and get the day’s news, the sort that never appears in the Monterey Herald or the Carmel Pine Cone. “Are you hungry? I’ve got cereal, or I can scramble some eggs.”
I looked at her over the rim of the mug. “Oh, Minna, you don’t have to wait on me.”
“You’re a guest,” she said. She finished unloading the dishwasher and closed it. Stinkpot, who had gone outside to terrorize birds and small bugs, thundered across the patio, through the open doors, and into the kitchen, launching himself at Minna. She caught the big tomcat in her arms and hugged him tightly. “There’s my boy. Isn’t he a love?”
Depends on who’s doing the loving. Every time I came near Stinkpot he either growled or took a swipe at me with his paws. But now he allowed Minna to hold him like a baby. His head rested blissfully on her shoulder and those lethal paws kneaded her arm gently as he purred like an engine.
“Why do you call him Stinkpot?” I asked, sipping the restorative coffee. I’d always been certain there was a connection between this moniker and the cat’s disposition.
“It was Inkspot, because of his color. But Errol started calling him Stinkpot and it stuck.” Minna laughed and shifted the enormous bulk of black-and-white fur in her arms. “He was eight weeks old and no bigger than a powder puff. I could hold him in the palm of one hand. As you can see, those days are long gone.”
She released the cat. He thudded to the floor and strolled majestically toward the living room, his tail straight up like a flagpole. Minna topped off her own coffee mug and joined me at the kitchen table. “You want to talk about it?”
I remembered now, the argument with Mother. After stalking out of the house on Friday night, I’d headed for Pacific Grove, but Donna and Kay weren’t home. I had a solitary dinner and contemplated checking into a motel. Instead I drove to Carmel, showing up at the Sevilles’ doorstep with my overnight bag in hand. Minna had already gone to bed but Errol had opened the door, finger stuck in the book he’d been reading to mark his spot. When he saw me, he didn’t ask for any explanation, but instead ushered me into the second bedroom.
“I had a fight with my mother,” I said finally. “A nasty one.”
I’d been working as an investigator for the Seville Agency when my parents went through their divorce, and Errol and Minna were well aware of the history of bad feelings between me and my mother. I told Minna what happened the night before, boiling it down to as few words as possible.
Finally I sighed. “Minna, I’m tired of this. I’m tired of living out of a suitcase and wondering how things are at home. I’m past ready to go home and sleep in my own bed, with my own cat. But I can’t do that. I’ve started this thing and I’m going to finish it.”
She smiled. “Have a bowl of cereal before you do. You need to keep your strength up.” Then her lined face turned serious as she pushed a strand of silver-gray hair out of her eyes. “Jeri, what happens between you and your mother is none of my business.”
“I guess it is if I’m sleeping in your extra bedroom.” I looked at her, my hands wrapped around the mug.
“Nevertheless, I’m going to put in my two cents’ worth. You can tell me to butt out if you choose. You’ve always been closer to your father, ever since you were a child, and you and your mother have never seen eye to eye. That happens quite frequently between mothers and daughters.”
Minna smiled again, the curve of her mouth tinged with something that made me wonder about the relationship between Errol and Minna and their children. The Sevilles had a son and daughter, both married and older than me. I’d met them occasionally when I was working for Errol and the Sevilles lived in Oakland. Those children, and their offspring, were more familiar to me through the framed photographs visible on various pieces of furniture.
“Your parents’ divorce just exacerbated things,” Minna continued. “You resent your mother’s role in the breakup. This situation with Karl Beckman seems to be on several levels. Admittedly, he’s being closemouthed about where he was the weekend Ariel was killed. That’s a legitimate subject for investigation. But I think what really bothers you is that he’s dating your mother.”
Of course that was the reason. And I knew it. Karl Beckman was a nice enough person. If I’d met him under different circumstances I might have liked him. But I hadn’t liked the idea of him since Donna told me my mother was dating someone. When I saw them together last night, seated on the sofa, Karl with his arm around Mother, it was obvious that their relationship had moved beyond dating. If I admitted it, grudgingly, I just didn’t like the thought of my mother in bed with Karl Beckman.
I sighed over my coffee. It’s certainly unreasonable for people of my generation to think that our parents don’t have sex, that once past a certain age all those feelings and desires and needs disappear. I knew that Dad’s relationship with Dr. Isabel Kovaleski, his colleague in the history department at Cal State Hayward, was more than just professional association and friendship. If it was okay for Dad, why wasn’t it okay for Mother? When Mother fired that shot last night, she’d been right on target.
And so was Minna. I didn’t have to tell her that. She knew. I’d always felt comfortable with Minna but never with my mother. Even when I was a kid and we lived in the Victorian house in Alameda, it was as though Mother and I were two strangers in the same house. I was closer to Dad and my nearby grandmother. Last night Mother said I hadn’t needed her since I’d left grade school. It was true. I’d gone my own way, just as she had.
We don’t have
any common ground, I told myself. But that wasn’t true either. My father once said Mother and I were too much alike. That was why we never got along. We’d probably never find any common ground, unless both of us made an effort.
“Enough talk,” Minna said, as though she’d heard my interior dialogue. “Eat some breakfast. Errol will be back soon and the two of you will want to lay out the day’s investigation.”
“I wasn’t supposed to let him get embroiled in this investigation,” I said, mindful of Errol’s age and heart condition.
“As though either of us could stop him.” Minna’s amused tone spoke of knowledge gained during more than forty years of marriage. “Retirement hasn’t been easy for Errol. He loved being a private investigator and he was very good at it. He’s thrilled to be in the thick of things again.”
I was seated at the kitchen table eating a bowl of granola when Errol returned from his breakfast jaunt to downtown Carmel. He had the morning edition of the Monterey Herald tucked under one arm and a cat-that-ate-the-canary expression on his narrow face. He poured himself a mug of coffee and joined me.
“There is much speculation among the regulars at Katy’s about why the district attorney refused to file charges against Bobby for the murder of Ariel Logan.”
“How about because he didn’t do it?” I retorted, swallowing a mouthful of cereal.
“Ah, but conventional wisdom says he did. Spurned lover and so forth.”
I added more granola to the milk left in the bottom of my bowl. “Several people in Bobby’s AA group came forward. He was at a meeting that night, between seven and nine.”
Errol nodded. “That’s what I heard. But my friend the Carmel police chief told me the reason Sergeant Magruder arrested Bobby is that he had a description of the T-bird as well as a partial plate number. Which means Magruder’s witness was mistaken, or—”
“The T-bird was at the restaurant,” I finished. “I asked Bobby about that last night. He says when he was drinking, he wasn’t particular about who borrowed the car. Could be someone had an extra set of keys made.”