Don't Turn Your Back on the Ocean

by Janet Dawson

  But nothing here pointed either to the earlier incidents concerning the seals off Avila Beach in San Luis Obispo, or the sea lions she had reported to the Monterey SPCA in August. I wasn’t surprised, though. Ariel hadn’t contacted Susan Dailey about the seals until after she’d seen the sea lions. The letters in the file folder spanned several years but seemed to end in May, when Ariel had finished her most recent term at Cal Poly. She’d been here in Carmel all summer.

  By now I’d drained the carafe of coffee and was in need of draining myself. I opened the door to the house and looked around. To my right were the stairs Mrs. Braemer and I had descended from the foyer. To my left an open doorway led to a larger space that appeared to span the back of the house. I could see a low sofa and a coffee table. A recreation room? Maybe I’d have some luck in that direction.

  “Do you need more coffee?” a voice said above me. I turned and saw Mrs. Braemer standing on the steps, surveying me with wintry blue eyes. She must have heard me open the door. Was the woman hovering on the landing above, listening to my every movement, afraid I might storm the rest of the house?

  “More coffee would be appreciated,” I said. “But first I need a bathroom.”

  “Of course. Through Peter’s office, on the right. I’ll refill the carafe.”

  I walked toward the back of the house, past the sofa I’d seen, and saw in the far corner a long L-shaped surface on which rested a computer, a small copier, and a fax machine. There were bookshelves everywhere. I found the bathroom just beyond, and past that an open door leading to an extra bedroom. A few minutes later I returned to the door leading to the garage, just as Mrs. Braemer descended from the upper regions of the house, carrying the carafe.

  “Have you found anything?” she asked.

  “Not in the file boxes. Did Ariel have a computer?”

  “Yes, a notebook.” She looked past me at the cardboard cartons in the garage. “It’s in one of those boxes, along with some of those little disks.”

  “I’ll have to plug the computer into a grounded outlet. Somewhere with better light than this,” I told her, pointing at the ineffectual fixture on the garage ceiling.

  “All right. You can come into Peter’s office.”

  She helped me look for the computer, opening boxes until we found the notebook in its padded nylon case. Tucked into the same carton was a smaller box, a clear plastic container with its lid secured with a strip of masking tape. Inside were half a dozen 3.5-inch computer disks.

  I carried the computer and the disk holder into the house. Mrs. Braemer followed, switching on the overhead light in the room that served as her brother’s work space. In the corner near the sofa I saw a lamp and I turned this on, following its cord to the nearest electrical outlet. Then I set the case on the coffee table and unzipped it, pulling out a slim notebook computer and its cord. I plugged it into the outlet and turned on the computer. Then I checked the directory to see what Ariel had on her hard drive. While I was looking at the list Mrs. Braemer brought me the coffee cup and the carafe.

  “I’ll be upstairs,” she said.

  I was familiar with some of the programs. I called up each in turn, getting used to the machine. It was fairly new, with a color screen and lots of power. I began working my way through the disks from the little plastic box. All of them bore adhesive labels, and on some of them Ariel had written the names of classes. One was simply labeled COR.

  Correspondence, I thought, shoving the disk into the A-drive. I checked the directory list as it scrolled onto the screen, trying to decipher whatever system Ariel had used to file each document. It seemed to involve initials, no doubt referring to the recipient of the letter, and numbers, probably dates. I called up the word-processing program and went through each document in turn.

  I’d seen some of these letters before, the hard signed copies in the correspondence folder I’d found in the green file box. But some had been written during the summer while the author was here in Carmel. Evidently she hadn’t photocopied these, so the only record was here on this disk.

  The next piece of Ariel Logan’s puzzle were two letters, both dated August 23. The first was to a paint manufacturer in Ohio, asking for an analysis of a certain product. The other was to an environmental testing lab in San Jose, asking for an analysis of the enclosed samples, to be paid for by the attached check. The letter didn’t say what was contained in the samples but I had a feeling it was water, from the ocean off Point Pinos.

  I felt like yelling “Eureka,” but I hadn’t struck gold, at least not yet What I saw in front of me was the glimmer of color in the stream. If I followed it maybe I’d find the nugget.

  I got up and headed for the garage, leaving the door open as I sifted through the green and blue file boxes once more. Earlier I’d seen business cards among the other papers in Ariel’s files. The name of the firm at the head of the letter now on the computer screen fit with something I’d seen before. Here it was, stapled to a firm resume.

  Head down, eyes on the papers in my hand, I walked back through the door into the house and smack into Glennis Braemer. She’d appeared at the bottom of the stairs, lured by the sound of my movements. Her eyes narrowed when she saw my face.

  “You’ve found something,” she said.

  “Yes. Two letters. Written a month before Ariel died.”

  She followed me to the office and sat on the sofa, peering at the little computer on the coffee table. She read the letter over my shoulder as I examined the resume of the environmental testing lab Ariel had contacted. The chain of events took shape in my mind. Just as my mother had paid for an analysis of the substance that closed down her restaurant Sunday afternoon, Ariel had paid for an analysis of the water where she’d seen the sea lions having seizures. But where was the response?

  “I need to call these people,” I told Mrs. Braemer, looking up from the firm resume.

  She frowned, more at the computer screen than at me. “Use the extension on Peter’s desk.”

  I dialed the number on the business card. Then I talked my way through several people until I found someone who told me the work had been completed on Wednesday of the week Ariel Logan died.

  “Did you mail a report?” I asked. “Or did Ms. Logan pick it up?”

  The woman on the other end of the line paused, as though she were checking a log entry or a file folder. “Let me see. Looks like she called the week before. But the work hadn’t been completed. So she asked to be called as soon as it was ready. She was, the following week. She picked it up herself. On Friday, around noon.”

  The timing was right. Ariel left San Luis Obispo before eight that morning and she drove straight up to San Jose. It would have taken her about four hours. What she read in the report sent her back down to Monterey, to talk to Bobby. But she came here first.

  I set the phone back in its cradle and looked across the room at Peter Logan’s copier, then at Glennis Braemer. She was perched warily on the edge of the sofa. The look on her elegant face said she didn’t quite understand the significance of the letter she’d read. But she was putting it together with what she’d overheard on my end of the phone call. She wasn’t far behind me.

  “I have to find this report. It’s somewhere in this house.”

  Thirty-seven

  “WHAT IS SHE DOING UP HERE?” PETER LOGAN DEMANDED harshly as I came up the stairs from the foyer, into the spacious living room.

  He sat on a long white sectional sofa facing the front windows. The thick white drapes were open but there was little to see on the other side of the moisture-beaded glass but the occasional car with the lights on or a determined clothing-swathed pedestrian, making slow progress through the fog. An oval wooden tray holding two coffee cups rested on the glass-topped table in front of the sofa, along with this morning’s copy of the Herald. Behind Logan I saw a wide doorway leading to a formal dining room and the kitchen beyond.

  Logan’s question had been addressed to his sister, who’d led the way up the st
airs, but I answered him. “I have to look for something in Ariel’s room.”

  Ariel’s father got to his feet, face haggard below his uncombed silver-blond hair. His clothes seemed to hang loosely on his tall frame. He glared at me with hostility, mouth twisted bitterly as he spoke.

  “No. I won’t allow it I don’t want you in this house, pawing through my daughter’s belongings, touching her clothes.”

  “Peter.” Mrs. Braemer sighed. At the end of her beige cashmere sleeves her hands clenched and unclenched. “Peter, it’s very important.”

  He shook his head violently and started toward us. Then he stopped and looked up, past me at the stairs leading to the second floor. Sylvie Logan stood there, still dressed in black, this time wool pants and a sweater. Her dark hair was swept back from her face, which looked serene until I saw the grief in her brown eyes. Hand on the banister, she walked the rest of the way down the stairs.

  “You have found something, Miss Howard?” she asked me in her low French-accented voice.

  “Yes, I have.” Quickly I told them about the letter, the sea lions, and the report that brought Ariel from San Luis Obispo to Monterey the day she died.

  “Ariel said nothing of this to me.” Sylvie frowned. “I remember the night she went out on the fishing boat. The next day we learned of my mother’s illness. I was trying to decide when to go to Paris, and whether I would stay long enough to bury my mother. Instead I came home to bury my daughter.” She stopped and looked across the living room at her husband. “Perhaps Ariel did not want to trouble us.”

  “Maybe. At that point she was speculating. She had nothing but theories, until...”

  “Until right before she died,” she finished. “You think this knowledge led to her death. But what is it?”

  “I won’t know until I find that report. Even then, I may have to have someone explain it to me. But it was important enough to make Ariel cut classes that Friday and drive all the way to San Jose to pick it up.”

  “Then we must find it,” Ariel’s mother said, but not to me. She took her husband’s hand in both of hers. “Where shall we look?”

  “All she brought with her was an overnight bag,” Peter said slowly, his voice becoming progressively more ragged as he spoke. “I saw it sitting at the foot of her bed when I got home that night. I thought she was out with... him. But she was dead.”

  “The sheriff’s people examined the bag,” Glennis Braemer said. “I can’t imagine they would have missed the report if it were there.”

  “Let’s look again.”

  Sylvie Logan led the way up the stairs to a bedroom that seemed to be waiting for Ariel to return. The mission-style double bed against one wall was made of oak, as were the matching nightstands on either side. A chest of drawers and a dresser with an oval mirror bracketed the closet. A bright patchwork quilt covered the bed. Against the pillows at the head I saw a plush brown bear with only one black beady eye and a black-haired porcelain-faced doll in a frilly pink gown and slippers. A small bookcase made of dark wood sat next to the window that looked down on the ocean, its shelves filled with books and knickknacks, like the chipped china cat that had some significance to Ariel alone.

  No one said anything as I surveyed the room. I spotted the overnight bag, a match for the blue suitcases down in the garage. It was on the floor at the foot of the bed, zipper closed. I set it on the bed and began removing the contents. There was a striped cotton robe and a matching nightshirt, several changes of underwear and socks, a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. I also found a blue-and-yellow floral-print toiletry bag containing little plastic bottles of shampoo, rinse, and lotion, a toothbrush and toothpaste, a small container of vitamins, some makeup and tampons, and a zippered cloth coin purse that held a pair of earrings and a gold chain.

  I emptied the toiletry bag and felt its compartments to see if there was anything else concealed there, but I found nothing. I returned to the overnight bag, which had several interior and exterior zippers, but I found nothing more than the items I’d already removed.

  “I’m going to search the room,” I told the Logans as I returned Ariel’s things to the bag and set it back on the floor. They said nothing, only stared at me in fascination as I opened the top drawer of the dresser.

  “I’ll help you,” Mrs. Braemer said, pushing up her sleeves. “Or this will take forever.”

  It took more than an hour, during which time I stripped the bed to see if Ariel had hidden the report between the mattress and box spring. She hadn’t. Nor had she hidden it in the closet, in or under the dresser and chest of drawers, or in any of the books on the shelves.

  I sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the bookcase. After partially emptying it, I’d tipped it to one side to see if there was anything underneath. Now I shoved the last volume onto the shelf and scrambled to my feet, wishing Ariel had hidden the report in a more accessible location. I wasn’t looking forward to searching the remainder of the Logans’ large house. There were all sorts of nooks and crannies in a home this size and I envisioned poking my nose into attic and crawl space. That would take the rest of the day and it was already edging toward noon.

  Maybe I was wrong, and it wasn’t here at all. Maybe she’d had it with her when she died and it was now in the possession of her killer.

  “What about the car?” I asked. I’d seen the autopsy report but that didn’t tell me what the sheriff’s investigative team found at the scene. “Did they find her purse?”

  “I don’t think so,” Mrs. Braemer said wearily, sitting on the edge of the remade bed. “It hasn’t been returned to us, at any rate. You’ll have to ask Sergeant Magruder and I have a feeling he won’t tell you.”

  Peter scowled at me as though the futile search was proof that I didn’t know what I was doing. He and Sylvie were replacing the contents of the closet. Suddenly Sylvie dropped a hatbox. A straw hat rolled onto the carpet at her feet.

  “Bien sûr,” she said. “Evidemment...”

  “You thought of something.” I certainly hoped so.

  “A place where Ariel used to hide things, when she was living at home.”

  She whirled and headed out to the hallway between the bedrooms, with me and the others at her heels. She opened a door to what turned out to be a large, deep linen closet and began pulling towels off the middle shelf, shoving them into her husband’s arms. When the shelf was empty she pulled me toward it and pointed at the back.

  “Do you see it?” she asked. “I found it one day when I was putting away laundry. When I opened it, I found some treasures Ariel had put there.”

  “I see it.”

  It was a sliding door, a rectangle about twelve by eighteen inches. I reached for the little knob on the left side. The door slid easily to the right The little compartment was about four inches deep, just right for hiding a young girl’s treasures. At the moment the only thing inside the cubbyhole was a white business-size envelope.

  When I opened it, I found three sheets of paper. The first was rectangular, with ragged edges, as though it had been torn from something. It was a label, waterlogged and now dried, but readable. I read the lettering. Paint, manufactured by the same firm that Ariel had written to in August. There was a note in the margin, printed in black ink. It read, “8/17, Marvella B, Santa Cruz, Beckman.”

  The two larger sheets of paper were the report from the environmental testing lab. A staple had been removed from the upper left corner, probably so that Ariel could make a copy. I read through it twice. The samples Ariel referred to in her August 23 letter were water, from the surf off Point Pinos on August 18, the day she saw the sea lions having seizures.

  There were things in the water that caused those sea lions to become ill. But it would take someone with more scientific knowledge than me to understand what and how toxic they were. I was fairly certain, however, that the substances listed on this report had no business being in Monterey Bay.

  “I have to go to San Jose,” I said. “I don’t want to ta
ke the original. You have a copy machine downstairs.”

  Peter Logan reached for the report. “The label, too?” he asked, holding the sheets gingerly. I nodded. Sylvie, Glennis Braemer, and I waited for him in the living room. When he returned I took the copy and folded it.

  “Put the original back where you found it,” I said, heading down the stairs to the foyer. “Don’t tell anyone about it, not until I get back.”

  Thirty-eight

  RICHARD SANTIAGO WAS LEAN AND BONY-FACED, looking younger than the gray hair at his temples would indicate. At first he wasn’t going to tell me anything about his analysis of Ariel’s water samples. He changed his mind when I told him the young woman who picked up the report ten days ago was dead, murdered, perhaps because of the information contained in those pages.

  His brown eyes gazed at me across the desk in his cramped office at the testing lab. The windowless cubicle wasn’t much larger than the one at the Monterey SPCA and just as full of file cabinets. Santiago sat in a creaky wooden chair, elbows resting on the arms, hands tented in front of him. I was wedged into an armless version of the same piece of furniture, next to an overflowing bookcase.

  “I found traces of solvents used in the manufacture of computer chips.”

  Santiago glanced at the photocopy I’d brought with me. Underneath was his own file folder containing more details about the analysis he’d done.