Don't Turn Your Back on the Ocean

by Janet Dawson

  “Uncovering other people’s trash,” I added helpfully. I’d been in the business long enough to hear all the accusations. I’d even turned over some rocks I wished I hadn’t. “Everyone has something to hide. Often with good reason.”

  “Yes, Peter had a messy divorce.” She stopped while the server set our food in front of us, looking at the plate of scones without appetite. When the young woman had departed she continued. “His ex-wife made some horrible accusations against him. Even set one of your ilk on him. But those accusations were never proved. Because he didn’t do it.”

  “Accusations made,” I said quietly, “but not proved. The same could also be said of Bobby Ravella.”

  Glennis Braemer didn’t make the connection. Or she didn’t want to. She picked up her knife and held it as though she wanted to stab me with it. “Stop this now. Or I’ll go to the authorities and swear out a complaint.”

  I don’t take well to threats. They just spur me on. My eyes grew equally cold over the cup of hot tea that I held. I set the cup down and leaned toward Glennis Braemer.

  “So I’m a ghoul. I’ve been called worse. You and your family are so eager to blame someone for Ariel’s death that you’ve developed tunnel vision. You and Sylvie and Peter don’t like Bobby. He’s a little too rough around the edges for you, isn’t he? Working class, never went to college, spends twelve, fourteen hours a day on a fishing boat. He’s divorced, he used to drink too much. It’s very convenient to call him a murderer.”

  She drew in a sharp breath. Then her mouth thinned and she glared at me.

  “No, he wasn’t right for Ariel. She was special. You can’t imagine how special she was.” I saw Mrs. Braemer’s lip quiver but she fought back the emotion. “You accuse us of tunnel vision. Aren’t you prey to the same malady? He’s your cousin. Doesn’t that blind you to the possibility that he could be a killer?”

  “It could. I’ll admit that.” I picked up my fork and cut into the Welsh rarebit. “I feel about my family the way you feel about yours. I also believe in justice. If Bobby killed Ariel, I’ll turn over that evidence to the authorities and let the chips fall. I don’t know whether I can convince you of that. But it’s the truth.”

  She didn’t respond. Instead she dumped a spoonful of orange marmalade on a wedge of scone and lifted it to her mouth. “Why don’t you think he killed Ariel?” she asked a moment later.

  “I’ve been an investigator for a number of years, Mrs, Braemer. I’m good at it. I’ve developed some instincts, some intuition, and I’ve learned to trust them. There’s nothing scientific about it.” I poured myself another cup of tea and took a sip.

  “Bobby didn’t kill Ariel, but someone’s going to a lot of trouble to make it look like he did. When I see someone being fitted for a frame, it makes me suspicious.” She didn’t say anything and I filled the silence by asking a question. “Why did your brother come back early from Paris?”

  “He had nothing to do with Ariel’s death.” Her face looked as grim as her voice.

  “I’m not saying he did.” I’d toyed with the possibility, of course, after I’d heard that Peter Logan had been accused of molesting his stepdaughter so many years ago. But the same gut instinct that told me Bobby hadn’t killed Ariel made me also dismiss Logan as a suspect. “But why was he at the Rocky Point Restaurant, the same night his daughter was there?”

  “He was meeting someone. Someone who never showed up.”

  “Who? And why?”

  “It has nothing to do with Ariel,” she repeated. I waited and she knew I’d wait until she explained. Finally she sighed. “I’m going to tell you a little story about Hollywood. You know Peter was a screenwriter. Still is, when he can get someone to buy a script. People in Hollywood have long memories.”

  She brushed her hand over her face, suddenly looking tired. “Sylvie and Peter just didn’t decide to move to Carmel because of the scenery. When Peter was accused of molesting his stepdaughter, he couldn’t sell any scripts. Sylvie couldn’t get work either. So they left town. If it weren’t for the money Sylvie’s father left her, they wouldn’t have been able to survive. Peter made some smart real-estate investments. And he writes adventure novels.”

  “But not screenplays?”

  “Occasionally,” she said, signaling for more tea. “Sometimes he collaborates with other writers. But now he has a different problem. These days, all the movers and shakers in the industry are children barely out of the UCLA film school. They don’t buy scripts from elderly people over the age of thirty. The man Peter was meeting at the restaurant was one of those Hollywood youngsters he’s had to deal with recently.”

  Her smile was humorless. “Peter had a business arrangement with this person, one that involved his name going on Peter’s script, in the hopes the script could be sold. Peter’s done it before and he’s not proud of it. He’s embarrassed by it. Like any writer, he’d much prefer to have his name on his own work. That’s the only reason he was at the restaurant. To meet someone who didn’t show up.”

  She took a creased business card from her handbag and placed it on the table between us. “This is the other writer, his name and phone number. Maybe he can at least verify that the appointment was made, if not kept.”

  I took the card and looked at it, noting the address in Carmel Valley. Another Hollywood refugee, one who could probably eliminate Peter Logan as a suspect. Was Ariel’s father then a witness, who might have seen something important without realizing its value?

  “Did he see anything? Ariel, the car?”

  Mrs. Braemer let out a sigh. “No. He’s agonized about this over and over, wondering whether he could have prevented what happened. If he’d seen Ariel or who she was with, maybe we wouldn’t be sitting here.”

  This had the ring of truth. If Logan had been nearby while his daughter was murdered and realized it later, his guilt at not being able to prevent her murder might explain his eagerness to blame Bobby, the convenient suspect he didn’t like anyway.

  I looked at the tea leaves floating in the bottom of my cup and wished they would provide me with all the answers I sought. “I like Ariel. I wish I’d known her. I do want to find out who killed her. To do that I need to know what she was investigating.”

  “What makes you think she was investigating anything?” Glennis Braemer drew her eyebrows together.

  “As you pointed out, I’ve been to San Luis Obispo. I talked to a number of other people there, as well as Maggie Lim. Ryan Trent also provided me with a lead. We’ve both mentioned accusations which were made but not proved. Perhaps Ariel was about to make a few accusations of her own, and it got her killed.”

  “Accusations against whom?”

  “It may have something to do with the environment.”

  “She was studying to be an environmental engineer.”

  “More than that,” I said. “Ariel was also an environmentalist. She was active in a group called Central Coastwatch. Maggie told me Ariel used to demonstrate at the nuclear power plant at Diablo Canyon and the oil refinery.”

  Glennis Braemer laughed, an unexpected and pleasant sound. Her face softened.

  “Oh, yes. Tankers and derricks and spills. Oil. That’s how my late husband made his money. We had lively arguments when Ariel came to visit. I will miss those arguments.” Her eyes turned bleak again as she turned to me. “Can you find out who killed her?”

  “I’ve been working on it since the body was found. I have a lot of pieces of the puzzle, Mrs. Braemer, but I haven’t found the pattern yet.”

  “You think the pieces are in Ariel’s life,” she said, looking at me speculatively as the server brought the check and cleared away the dishes. “The leftovers, represented by all those books and papers and computer disks I brought with me from San Luis Obispo. But the sheriff’s people looked through those things and returned them. What makes you think you’ll find anything they missed?”

  “Maybe they didn’t know what to look for. I’m not saying I do. But I h
ave a hunch. I’d like to play it out.”

  “I’ll talk to my brother and his wife,” Glennis Braemer said. “But I can’t promise anything.”

  Thirty-six

  THE PHONE DIRECTORY GAVE ME AN ADDRESS FOR Frank Alviso, one half of a down-at-the-heels duplex on Alcalde, a short street just off Fremont Street in north Monterey. I went by the place three times Sunday afternoon. There was a beat-up, rusted Ford in the driveway, but Alviso wasn’t there. His neighbors in the other half of the duplex got more curious each time I knocked on the door.

  When Alviso finally came home I heard him before I saw him. The rap music on his car radio vibrated the immediate neighborhood. He was driving a shiny red Pontiac Grand Am that looked as though it was not long off the lot He pulled into the drive behind the Ford and cut the engine. When he saw me standing between him and his front door he stared at me as though he couldn’t place me. Then recognition narrowed the muddy brown eyes.

  “What d’you want?”

  “Answers, Frank.”

  “Already told you I didn’t see Bobby that day.” He stepped past me onto the porch, keys in hand.

  “Great-looking car, Frank. Looks new. How long have you had it?”

  “Coupla months. What’s it to you?”

  “I thought maybe you were hurting for money, since Bobby fired you this summer.”

  Alviso cut his eyes toward me, then away. “Yeah, well, I got hired on by Beckman right away. Pay’s good, regular hours. I don’t need Bobby or his damned boat. I’m doing just fine without him.”

  “You used to be friends.”

  “Before he got to be Mr. High-and-Mighty,” Frank snarled. “So goddamn critical he wouldn’t cut a guy any slack.”

  “You’d like to get back at him, wouldn’t you?” Alviso’s eyes smoldered but he didn’t respond. Not with words, anyway. “Is Lacy Beckman easier to work for?”

  “Hell, yes. She appreciates a guy who can do a job. Karl, too.” This last was almost an afterthought.

  “You used to borrow Bobby’s T-bird.”

  Alviso’s eyes narrowed again. “So?”

  “Borrow it lately?”

  “Hey, I haven’t talked to Bobby since he canned me.”

  “That’s not what I asked.” I looked at the key ring Alviso held. “You ever borrow the T-bird without asking Bobby first?”

  “Dunno what you’re talking about.” Alviso threw the words from the side of his thin mouth as his eyes glanced off me. He unlocked his front door. “Dunno anything, so leave me the hell alone.” He shoved open the door, eager to get away from me.

  “I hear you and Derry McCall used to catch pelicans. Caught any recently?”

  Alviso froze, turned his head, and looked at me. Then he stepped inside his apartment and shut the door. I walked back to my car, marveling at the way his eyes never stayed in one place very long. Bobby was well rid of this clown. Or was he rid of him at all? Frank Alviso was nursing a grudge against Bobby. I recalled the resentment that flared in Alviso’s eyes when he spoke of being fired from the crew of the Nicky II. He was going to get even. Maybe he was already doing it.

  I found a pay phone and called Minna Seville to ask if there was anything she needed in the way of groceries. She gave me a short list of items. By the time I got back to the house on San Antonio Avenue, dinner preparations were under way. I unloaded the groceries and pitched in by setting the table.

  “I need to check Lacy Beckman’s background,” I told Minna as I opened drawers, looking for napkins. “She’s a Standish from San Francisco. You said she had all the Pacific Heights moves. Errol said you or your sister might be able to help me.”

  Minna didn’t say anything as she basted the chicken she was roasting in the oven. I didn’t know whether Errol had told her of the conversation he and I had Saturday afternoon, when he told me that Minna had bucked her family’s disapproval to marry him. Then she closed the oven door, straightened, and hung the oven mitts on a hook near the stove.

  “I’m never quite sure whether San Francisco’s a big city or a small town. My sister’s one of the Old Guard, as people call it. Her social circle is small. It consists of people who wear expensive clothing and lots of jewels to the symphony and opera openings. Then they fall asleep in the third act.”

  I smiled at this description and so did Minna. “The name Standish isn’t familiar to me,” she continued. “But I haven’t lived in that world for a long time. I don’t know whether Celeste can help you. I’ll certainly call her.”

  The fog rolled in with the dawn Monday morning. For the first time this year it felt as though winter was coming. Glennis Braemer called shortly after eight with the Logans’ decision.

  “Peter and Sylvie have agreed to let you examine Ariel’s things. But they don’t want to talk to you.”

  I might need to talk with them, I thought. That could come later, though. At least this was a foot in the door. “I’ll be right over.”

  I borrowed a sweater from Minna and walked the short distance from the Sevilles’ home to the gray stucco house on Scenic Drive. The bloodred bougainvillea climbing the outer wall provided a beacon of color, visible through the shroud of gray fog that obscured the horizon, masking the tops of the Monterey pines and the curve of land around Carmel Bay. On my right the surf whispered across the sand of Carmel Beach, dark blue water and white froth rushing out of the fog bank. I felt the chill of the thick salty air and pulled the sweater tighter around me as I mounted the stairs and rang the bell. The huge black-and-white wreath still hung on one of the double wood doors, the white flowers looking wilted after a week.

  Mrs. Braemer answered the door, looking poised as usual in her taupe slacks and a matching pullover. “Everything’s in the garage,” she said. She turned and led the way down shallow carpeted steps to a door opening onto a double garage.

  The overhead light didn’t do much to penetrate the gloom of the windowless space. On the back wall, opposite the garage doors, I saw floor-to-ceiling storage cabinets, each door labeled with a white adhesive strip and a handwritten legend I couldn’t make out. The BMW and the big boxy Mercedes I’d seen before had been pulled into the stalls, leaving space on the cold concrete floor for the stack of boxes piled between its grille and the cabinets.

  I counted at least eight cardboard cartons, as well as six plastic file boxes with handles, the kind you can buy in any office-supply store, each a different color. Several garment bags hung from the door handles of the cabinets. To the right of the door where Mrs. Braemer and I stood was a set of luggage, three suitcases in varying sizes, all the same shade of blue.

  “You must have had your car crammed full,” I commented, guessing the Mercedes was hers.

  “It’s a big car. I didn’t think everything would fit but you’d be surprised how much that trunk will hold.” She sighed, folding her arms in front of her as she stared at the pyramid.

  “I thought stopping in San Luis Obispo to pick up Ariel’s things would save Peter and Sylvie the chore of having to go down there. Now that the stuff is here, no one has the heart to go through it. I’m sure someone could use the clothing. But...” Her voice trailed away.

  “As I told you yesterday, Sergeant Magruder’s people looked through all of this. They didn’t find anything of interest. Presumably you’re looking for something they may have missed. Do you have any idea what that might be?”

  “I think so.” I walked toward the cartons, looking to see if they were labeled. Some were, some weren’t. “It has something to do with some sea lions having seizures. Ariel saw them in August, off Point Pinos, and filed a report with the Monterey SPCA. She may have kept some sort of account of what she saw and why it was important. Correspondence, journals, notes of some sort. I think these file boxes will be a good place to start.”

  As I reached for the first one, bright red in the inadequate overhead light, Glennis Braemer shivered. “It’s cold,” she said. “I’ll send Mrs. Costello out with some coffee.”

 
; I saw a step stool near the storage cabinets. That would do as a chair, since the thought of sitting on the floor didn’t appeal to me at all. I walked to it Now I could see the labels on the cabinet doors, things like CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS and CAMPING EQUIPMENT, that evoked the change of seasons and the time when the Logan family was whole, not irreparably torn by Ariel’s death. I positioned the stool as close as possible to the light. The housekeeper opened the door leading to the house. She carried a wooden tray holding an oversized white ceramic cup and an insulated carafe.

  “Do you take anything in it?” she asked. “Mrs. Braemer didn’t say.”

  “This is fine, thanks.” I filled the cup and sipped the coffee, strong and hot, warming my fingers as they circled the cup.

  When she’d gone, I opened the red file box. The array of manila folders that confronted me reminded me of a case I’d had earlier this year, when I spent hours going through the files of a dead professor from Cal State Hayward, where my father taught. Then I had no idea what to look for, but now I did. Or I thought I did. I was acting on a hunch and I could be wrong.

  I knew the contents of the cartons had been packed hastily and haphazardly by Mrs. Braemer and Maggie Lim, as the professor’s things had been by his nephews. The sheriff’s deputies had no doubt been equally haphazard. But as I looked through the file boxes I discerned some organization, probably Ariel’s. The one I sorted through now contained bank statements and bill receipts, both of which told me that Ariel kept good records, at least as far as her finances were concerned. After examining the folders I closed the red box and reached for another. I worked my way through all six file boxes. Lavender contained old letters, birthday cards, and photographs, snapshots and negatives in photo-processing envelopes, the flaps labeled with the subject. No journal or diary, though. The orange and yellow boxes contained school things, papers from Ariel’s environmental engineering classes as well as her French-language studies.

  The green and blue boxes were devoted to Ariel’s environmental interests. Some folders contained pamphlets and publications, others were full of clippings from newspapers and magazines, notes in Ariel’s handwriting scribbled in the margins in blue ink. Several of these had business cards clipped to them, as did the papers in another folder, one I found in the green file box. It was filled with copies of letters Ariel had written. She had aired her opinions on a regular basis, firing off thoughtful missives to people and agencies at the state and federal level, expressing her concerns about the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant and offshore oil drilling, as well as other issues. Any responses she’d received had been clipped to the original letter, as had various business cards.