by Janet Dawson
“My thought exactly,” Errol said. “But who?”
“Any one of those guys who work with him on the boat, including a man named Frank Alviso. Bobby fired him a while back and he looks like the type to hold a grudge. Alviso now works for Beckman Boat Works. That’s where I encountered him. He’s a shifty-eyed customer if I ever saw one.”
“So either Karl or Lacy has access to Alviso.” Errol got up and reached for the coffee carafe, refilling both our mugs. “You still think Karl has something to do with Ariel’s death?”
“I don’t know what to think.” I leaned back and sipped the hot black brew. “According to Bobby, Ariel made some accusations involving toxics in the bay, implying that Beckman Boat Works was responsible. That’s what she and Bobby were talking about at the Rose and Crown.” I told Errol what Bobby had said yesterday at the wharf, about the boat called the Marvella B, the subsequent tour of the boatyard, and Ariel’s pointed questions about chemicals.
“So Bobby went looking for Karl,” Errol said as he settled back in his chair, “to get his side of the story.”
“Right. Ariel gave him twenty-four hours to talk with Karl. But Bobby couldn’t find Karl, not until Monday. At first Karl told me he didn’t know why Bobby wanted to talk with him. But that’s not true. Bobby told him. Karl denied Ariel’s claims, first to Bobby, then to me last night, when I confronted him.”
“So you backed him into a corner.”
“Yes. And he was royally pissed, not only at me but at the idea that someone thinks he’s polluting the bay. Of course, that could be an act, if he’s covering his tracks.” I stopped, shaking my head. “Something doesn’t make sense. Donna told me last week, before Ariel’s body was found, the cops had been getting anonymous calls implicating Bobby in her disappearance. Why would Karl do that to Bobby?”
I described what happened in King City back in April, when Bobby was arrested for drunk driving in King City. Karl Beckman not only called in some markers to get my cousin out of jail, but he had also given Bobby the push that finally got Bobby off the booze.
“If Karl cares enough about Bobby to rescue him in April, it doesn’t make sense for him to kill Ariel and blame Bobby.”
“It doesn’t have to make sense,” Errol pointed out. “There’s nothing logical about murder or the emotions that lead to it. If Karl killed Ariel, he’s more interested in saving his own neck.”
“The pieces don’t quite fit.” I finished the granola, got up, and rinsed the bowl in the sink before putting it in the dishwasher.
“You just have to keep working with them until they do. Or you find another piece.” Errol paused, then asked, “Is there anything else I need to know about what transpired last night?”
I smiled at his delicacy. “Minna will fill you in. Did your investigator friend in L.A. call with any information on Peter Logan?”
“Not yet I’ll phone him this morning. What are your plans this fine October Saturday? Are you going to lean on Frank Alviso?”
I reached for my coffee mug. “Eventually. But first I think I’ll drive to King City.”
Thirty-three
I LEFT CARMEL JUST AFTER ELEVEN AND COVERED the distance between the coast and Salinas in half an hour. In south Salinas I drove through block after block of agricultural packing warehouses until I reached U.S. 101, where I headed south for the second time this week.
The highway cut down the broad flat middle of the valley, past brown freshly turned earth contrasting with fields in varying shades of green. The Salinas River meandered to my right, then my left after I crossed it at Soledad. The dun-colored hills on both sides of the highway were dotted with dark green trees.
An hour later I crossed the river again and took Broadway into King City. Rows of buses waited in the parking lot of the big high school for students who would be hauled in from outlying farms and ranches on Monday. Today was a sunny Saturday in October and downtown was busy.
I parked outside the post office and sought the nearest pay phone. A tattered directory showed a listing for Charles Harper, no address. I dropped some coins into the slot. The woman who answered the phone identified herself as Mrs. Harper.
“May I speak to your husband?”
Her next words reminded me that Harper was a county commissioner. “Charlie went to town about an hour ago. Had a lunch meeting with the mayor at Keefer’s.”
I headed for Canal Street. Keefer’s is a restaurant-gas station-motel on the west side of the highway, the kind of “easy-off, easy-on” place that’s popular with motorists who drive through King City rather than to it. The food’s good, the service friendly, and during lunch the place was hopping. I asked a waitress to point out Harper.
“That’s him, back there with the mayor. They’re just getting ready to leave.” One of the men she indicated was short and round-faced, wearing a suit. I pegged him for the mayor. The other man towered over him, rangy and broad-shouldered, face burned brown by the sun, his thinning hair sandy fading into gray. He wore boots, faded jeans, and a blue work shirt open at the collar. He looked the part of a rancher. In the Salinas valley that could mean he grew anything from cattle to tomatoes.
Harper covered the check with several bills. Before the two men left the table I intercepted them. “Mr. Harper? May I speak to you? Alone.”
He had sharp eyes, as blue as the October sky. They narrowed as he looked me over. Then he nodded and told the other man, “I’ll be in touch, Bill.” When the mayor had departed, Harper smiled. “What can I do for you, young lady?”
I handed him one of my business cards. “I’m a private investigator out of Oakland, working on a case in Monterey. I’d like to ask you a few questions about your brother-in-law, Karl Beckman.”
Charlie Harper’s blue eyes turned wintery and several emotions wrestled across his face, so quickly I couldn’t categorize them. When he spoke, his voice was no longer friendly, but harsh and abrupt.
“What’s this all about?”
“It’s about murder,” I said, watching his face for a reaction. “The murder of a young woman named Ariel Logan.”
Harper didn’t say anything right away, and when he did, his eyes narrowed and his mouth curved down in a frown. “That body in the ocean, down off Rocky Point. I read about that in the papers. Everyone seems to think the boyfriend did it. But they cut him loose yesterday. Why do you want to talk about Karl? You think he had something to do with Ariel Logan’s death?”
“Now, why would you leap to that conclusion?” I asked, but I thought I already knew the answer. It appeared that Charles Harper had a very large ax to grind with his brother-in-law.
When Harper didn’t answer I plunged ahead. “I understand Karl Beckman came to visit you the weekend Ariel Logan died.” I waited for some sort of confirmation and Harper gave it to me, a brief, almost undetectable nod. “I’d like to know what that visit was about, Mr. Harper.”
He thought about it for a moment then motioned me to the table he and the mayor had just vacated. By now it had been cleared and new settings were in place. As soon as we were seated another waitress appeared with water and a pot of coffee.
“What did Karl want?” I asked Harper, taking a sip of strong black coffee.
“Money.” He snorted. “The damn fool. I’m not throwing good money after bad. If he can’t keep that boatyard afloat on his own, he’ll just have to let it sink. Besides, I pulled his chestnuts out of the fire before, when that no-account brother of his was still alive.”
“When Gunter borrowed money against the assets of Beckman Boat Works.”
“You’ve been digging around.” Harper picked up his mug and swallowed a mouthful of coffee. “Why? Did somebody hire you?”
“Ariel’s boyfriend, Bobby Ravella, is my cousin. I don’t think he killed her and I’d like to find out who did.”
“Ravella. That explains it.”
I waited for Harper to explain these words he’d muttered, half to himself. He didn’t offer any immediate enlig
htenment I recalled what Bobby told me about his arrest in King City last April. Karl must have turned to his brother-in-law to keep Bobby out of jail, despite the fact that Harper didn’t care much for Karl.
“Why did you loan Karl money two years ago?” I asked him.
“Because of Janine. She asked me to help him out. So I did.” Harper’s face darkened. “Of course, that was before we found out he was stepping out on her with his sister-in-law.”
Somehow I’d known that, ever since I saw the look in Karl Beckman’s eyes when I mentioned Lacy. Was it over between them? Did my mother know about it?
“Is that when Janine changed her will?”
“You have been busy.” Harper sipped his coffee.
“How did Janine find out about Karl and Lacy?”
Harper flushed again. “Something I said. Purely by accident I saw Karl and Lacy together in Carmel, a couple of months after I loaned Karl the money. I didn’t even think anything about it. But when I mentioned it to Janine, she flew off the handle. Said Karl had lied to her about where he was that day. She’d suspected for some time he had a thing going on with Lacy. Who I hear is not particular about who she sleeps with. Neither was Gunter, for that matter.”
He sighed and sipped his coffee. “Janine was thinking about divorcing Karl, but she wasn’t sure how Kristen would take it. Kristen’s real close to her dad. So she changed her will instead. Cut Karl out completely.”
“How did Karl take that news?”
“He was mighty peeved, as I recall. But he didn’t find out till after Janine died. As far as I could see, he seemed to be more concerned about the estate than he was about the way his wife died.” Harper’s face flushed under his tan. “I can’t prove a thing, but damn it, Karl Beckman’s responsible for my sister’s death.”
This underscored all those questions I’d had since I’d learned the details of the car accident that claimed the lives of Janine and Gunter Beckman. And since Karl Beckman was dating my mother, it also underscored several other disquieting feelings I had about the man.
“Why would Karl kill his wife?” I asked bluntly.
“Money,” Harper said. “He’d have inherited most of Janine’s estate if she hadn’t changed her will. And it was a lot of money. Came to us both when our folks died.”
“How do you know about the terms of the earlier will?”
“I was executor for both wills,” Harper said. “I got a copy of the first one back at the house. I’ll let you take a look at it.”
I nodded. “Thanks. What motive would Karl have for killing Gunter?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Gunter was irritating enough to make someone want to kill him. I know Karl was pretty damn ticked off at Gunter for borrowing that money against the boatyard’s assets, and having to ask me for money to bail him out. Karl was sleeping with Lacy, maybe they were in it together. Hell, I don’t know.”
Harper balled his right fist and smashed it into his left palm, a gesture of frustration. “My wife says I’m crazy to go on about it like this. It’s just a gut feeling. I can’t prove a thing. But there’s something odd about my sister’s death. Why would she and Gunter be having dinner at Ventana? Unless it was to talk about Karl and Lacy. You know, the rescue team never could bring up what was left of Gunter’s BMW. I’d be willing to bet someone tampered with the car.”
“Does Karl know you suspect him of being involved in Janine’s death?”
“I haven’t told him,” Harper said. “Not in so many words. But he knows I don’t have any use for him.”
“Then why would he drive down here a week ago Saturday to ask you for money?”
“Because he’s desperate. He’s been to bankers in Monterey and Salinas and they’ve all turned him down. Hell, he just paid off the last loan, back in April. He had another year to go on the payments, but he paid it off early, in return for a favor. Don’t know where he got that money, but it was important to him.”
“What was the favor?”
Harper shook his head. “I’m not supposed to say. That was part of the deal.”
“You don’t have to. Bobby told me he got arrested here in King City last April. He called Karl and Karl kept him out of jail. Why would you pull those kinds of strings for Karl, feeling the way you do about him?”
“Ranchers have cash-flow problems, same as anyone else,” Harper said. “And I had a cash-flow problem last April. Karl had been paying back the loan regular, every month. At first I said I couldn’t do anything for the boy. But Karl offered to pay me the whole balance owing if I’d help his friend. So I said yes.”
“How much?” He told me and I whistled. It was a large sum to pull together on short notice. “If Beckman Boat Works is in trouble, where did Karl get that kind of money?”
“I didn’t ask. I thought maybe he’d turned the business around. Or he got it from someone else. Something else occurred to me, after he showed up here a week ago, asking for more. Kristen’s college money. He and Janine had set aside quite a bit for her education. Then Kristen got a scholarship to Stanford. So that money is sitting in a bank somewhere, drawing interest. I don’t know where, or how he’d get to it, but that’s something to look at.”
I agreed. “When did Karl come to see you?”
“Saturday,” Harper said. “When did Ariel Logan die?”
“The last time anyone saw her alive was Friday evening, about seven-thirty or eight. She could have been killed anytime after that.”
“Karl got to the ranch a little before noon on Saturday,” Harper said. “He didn’t call or anything, just showed up as we were sitting down to eat lunch. My wife put another plate on the table. After we ate, he hit me up for a loan. That’s when I told him I wasn’t throwing good money after bad, no matter how deep a hole he’d dug himself. He left about one-thirty, quarter to two. Don’t know if that helps you. I’ve got no idea where he was before he drove down here. But why would he kill Ariel Logan?”
“She may have had some information that would have closed down the boatyard.”
“From the way he described it, business was so bad the boatyard was already sinking. I figured he was exaggerating. What if he did take Kristen’s college money, and he needed to replace it?”
The waitress freshened our coffee, and I reflected on the contradictory pictures of Karl Beckman I had received. Karl had bought Bobby out of jail last April. He had money then. Where had it come from and why did he need more now?
Karl supposedly viewed Bobby as the son he’d never had, yet if Karl had killed Ariel he was willing to let Bobby take the blame. Errol said a man who killed was interested only in saving his neck. Desperate, I thought, repeating the word Harper had used to describe Karl’s attempt to borrow more cash. Desperation might spur a man to do many things, including commit murder.
Thirty-four
I FOLLOWED HARPER BACK TO HIS RANCH SOUTHEAST of King City, where he unearthed his sister’s earlier will from a filing cabinet in his office. The yellowed paper was over ten years old, a fairly standard document in which Janine left everything to Karl except her interest in the Harper ranch. If Karl had died first, the estate went to Kristen, with Charles Harper named as the girl’s guardian.
It was late afternoon when I returned to Carmel. Errol had given me a key since I now ranked as a houseguest. I found him on the patio, a detective novel in his lap and a glass of wine on the table next to him. When I came through the French doors from the kitchen, he glanced up and flashed his foxy grin. His eyes glittered and I recognized a certain look in his eyes, one I’d seen frequently during the years I worked for him as an investigator.
For a moment Errol was two people. The one his wife saw, and worried about, was a silver-haired man with a lined face and age spots, a man in his seventies who’d survived two heart attacks and retired on the advice of his doctor. The other person, the one I remembered behind that knowing smile, was the skilled and shrewd detective who took me under his wing years ago and taught me how to be a privat
e investigator. Right now his motor seemed to be revving a few cycles above what it should be. I knew what would set him buzzing like this. Information. The old private eye had a hot tip.
“Your friend in L.A. came through,” I guessed.
“With some interesting information about Peter Logan’s last divorce.”
“I thought he’d only been married once before.”
“Twice, actually. The first one was so brief it barely counts.”
“Let me make a pit stop,” I told him. “Then I want to hear all about it.”
“Call Donna while you’re at it.”
I detoured to the bathroom, then picked up the phone in the kitchen and dialed Donna’s number in Pacific Grove. “Your mother called me this morning,” my cousin said when she answered the phone. “She wanted to know if you were staying with Kay and me, or if I knew where you were. I figured you were at the Sevilles’. What happened?”
“We had a screaming match.”
“What about?”
“The usual. Hell, Donna, I don’t want to go into the details now. I’ll tell you about it later.” Resignation colored my voice. “Mother and I just don’t get along. We never have. Arguments are inevitable. I’m surprised we lasted a week without one. This is why I don’t come to Monterey very often. It raises my stress level too much.”
“Usually you don’t have murder and sabotage to worry about,” Donna pointed out. “Maybe when all of this is sorted out...” She didn’t finish and I didn’t add what I was thinking. If it turned out that Karl Beckman had killed Ariel Logan, that would solve nothing as far as my mother was concerned. She would think I’d proved it just to get back at her.
I rang off and helped myself to some wine. Then I joined Errol on the patio. Stinkpot ambled toward us from the garden, yawned, stretched, and sprawled on a couple of flagstones warmed by the sun that was preparing its daily descent into the Pacific Ocean. In the distance I heard the rush of the waves against Carmel Beach.