“She said she was going to Tahoe? I don’t understand that at all. I know she was doing work for Tom, but I thought it was only on the arks. I don’t understand that.”
I put my sherry aside, too, nearly untouched. “Could she have been doing other kinds of jobs, maybe connected with your casino?”
“We don’t own the whole casino,” she corrected me. “Just part of it. I don’t know. So… she said she was going to Tahoe and Tom said he had her with him.” For the first time, I saw a flicker of doubt about her husband.
“Does that worry you?” I asked. “Does that make you think he did just run off for some kind of fling?”
The doubt faded, replaced by anger. “No. Never. It had to be business.”
I decided that I had spent enough time with her, shaken her more than enough. I said good-bye, told her I’d be in touch, and left her alone.
Rosie had told me she didn’t think she’d be home before noon, and she wasn’t. Or at least her truck wasn’t, which was a pretty good indication. I passed right by the house and found a parking place near the copy shop on College Avenue. It took me half an hour to copy the pages in my notebook. Rosie was amazingly good at reading my handwriting, and those pages would give her a jumping off place on the case. She could run through them and then we could sit down for a couple of hours and go over the whole damned thing. If I was missing anything, she would be able to tell me what it was. While I copied, I planned out the rest of the day. Lunch. Then, if Rosie was back, a quick run over to Noah’s mechanic’s place. Maybe he knew something, maybe Noah had mentioned something to him. Maybe they were best pals. Who could tell? Then I wanted to spend some time going over what I had and trying to make some sense of some of it. And while I was doing that, Rosie could have a talk with Arnold— as good a way as any to get a hold on things— and ask him a couple of outstanding questions about the arks and their investors and passengers.
Then we were going to do some traveling. I didn’t think Rosie would mind that too much.
– 16 –
Eva had made a big salad for lunch, with those tiny cooked shrimp in it. Just a few years ago she would probably have served something like beet borscht and blintzes, one with lots of sour cream mixed in, the other with lots of sour cream on top. My world has changed. We are dying of nutrition.
Rosie came back to find me just as we were finishing, said she’d eaten, and told me to come and get her when I was ready. The folks were just as friendly to her now as they had been before Lee had become a more likely prospect.
I told them that Rosie and I would probably be going out of town later that day on business. They thought that was a terrific idea, but much to my relief said they had plans. Which were? I asked. They were driving up to Petaluma and having dinner with Lee. Too bad, they said, I couldn’t make it. They thought they might stay over, because Lee was taking some time off to give them a tour of the wine country the next day. Where would we be going?
“The Russian River, for starters,” I said. “That’s in Sonoma, too, but farther north.”
Maybe they would join us there later the next day? I said we would be on our way to Tahoe, by then.
“Tahoe?” my father cried. “That’s one of the places we want to be sure to go.”
“I’m sorry, Pa, but we’ll be working. And I don’t really expect to stay there much more than overnight, either.”
Maybe, he said, they would go on their own later in the week. Maybe Lee, he said, would go with them.
I escaped, and found Rosie sitting on her front deck reading a Robert Parker mystery. She stashed it next to her bed, told Alice it would be too hot for her to sit in the car, locked up the cottage with Alice inside, and followed me to my car.
Bert Olson’s Auto Shop was down in West Berkeley, just off University Avenue. On the way there, I filled Rosie in on what I wanted her to talk about with Arnold, and asked her if there was any problem with going to the river that night.
She looked delighted, and said there shouldn’t be any problem at all— she’d just need to find a dog-sitter.
Olson’s shop was tucked away on an industrial side street down the block from a lumberyard. It was a dirty white frame building with an office and garage space for three cars, two of which were filled. A sign over the garage doors said “We Specialize in Volvos and Other European Cars.”
Olson was bending over the open hood of a Volkswagen Rabbit. I introduced myself and Rosie and asked if he could spare a few minutes to talk about a customer who had disappeared. He straightened up and turned a grease-smudged face to us, checking us out with something like disbelief. Amused disbelief.
He was a short, thin man dressed in filthy gray coveralls. Brown hair and a straggly reddish-brown mustache.
“And who might that be?” he wanted to know.
“A man named Tom Gerhart, owns a Volvo. A blue 1975 wagon.”
He burst out laughing. “Disappeared, huh?”
“That’s right,” Rosie said. “Why is that funny?”
“Shit,” he said, shaking his head. “What do you want to know about him?”
“You’ve been his mechanic for a long time, isn’t that so?” she asked. He nodded, and wiped his hands on a greasy rag.
“I was just gonna take a break. Want a coke?”
We followed him into his office, declining the drink. He got one for himself, from a machine just inside the door, hoisted himself butt first onto a paper-littered desk, narrowly missing a dangerous-looking spindle, and pointed at two plastic chairs in the corner. We sat.
The floor was vinyl tile, most of them gone or half-gone. But the office itself was reasonably clean, and looked as though it had been painted within the last half-decade or so. There was a bank of rickety, olive-drab file cabinets behind the desk.
“Now, to answer your question,” he said, “I have been Tom Gerhart’s mechanic for a long time, yeah.”
“So you must know him fairly well?” I asked.
He grinned. “Well enough. Not like we was brothers or anything.”
“So,” I continued, “why do you think it’s funny that he’s disappeared?”
“Why don’t you tell me a little something about this disappearance?”
I told him. “Do you think it’s likely he would have run off with a woman?” I asked. “Did he maybe mention anything about having some problems or having to go somewhere?”
He took a long drink from the coke can. “Can’t say about the woman. He never said nothing about women at all. Never even a good, dirty joke. As to problems, well, that goes without saying, don’t it?”
“What do you mean?” Rosie asked.
“Well, shit, girl— ’scuse me, I should say woman, I guess”— he winked at her— “the man is crazier ’n a fuckin’ bedbug. I would call that a problem of sorts, wouldn’t you?”
“What makes you say that?” I felt like an idiot asking the question, and the man looked at me like I was one, for sure.
“A man thinks he’s Noah? A man builds an ark because the flood is coming? Shit.” He laughed again. “Don’t get me wrong, I like old Tom. Nice guy, good customer. But fuckin’ apeshit, man. I told him so myself, when he asked me did I want a spot in the ark. I told him, ‘Tom, you’re fuckin’ nuts.’ Of course I kind of thought so before that, anyhow.”
“Oh, yeah?” Rosie grabbed hold. “Why is that?”
He shook his head again, and looked from one to the other of us like an uncle talking to a pair of not-too-bright kids. “The guy’s got millions, you know? You ever seen his house?” I nodded. “Shit. Millions. And he was driving a 1975 car?” He laughed again, snorting a little. “Don’t get me wrong. That’s a good car. But millions, man. And he’s driving a ten-year-old station wagon.”
“There’s nothing wrong with liking old cars,” I said.
“Old-old, yeah, maybe. But middle-aged?” His wit cracked him up again. “Over and over I told him, ‘Tom, you’re fuckin’ nuts.’”
“Now that w
e’ve established that,” Rosie said, smiling a little despite herself, “when did you last see him?”
He closed his eyes to think. “About a month ago. Had her in for an oil change. Never lets it even begin to get dirty. But I heard from him about a week ago. He called me long distance. On a Sunday.”
“What Sunday? And from where?”
He slid off the desk and went around it to look at his calendar. “Must of been the fifteenth. Yeah, Sunday the fifteenth.” The day after he’d left the note for his wife.
“From where?” Rosie repeated.
“From Tahoe. Said he was having some vapor lock problems and wanted to know if I knew of a good mechanic up there. You know, at that altitude—”
“Yeah,” I said. “Did he say anything else?”
“Not that I remember. I don’t know anyone up there, so I couldn’t help him out. He said thanks anyway and goodbye.”
That was all he had. It did not exactly sound like a message from a kidnapped man.
“If you hear from him again,” I said, “would you let me know?”
Olson looked doubtful. “I don’t know about that, man. Maybe the guy doesn’t want to be found. Even crazy people got rights. That’s what Berkeley’s all about.” He burst out laughing again.
“He may be in trouble,” Rosie said. “Maybe if you hear from him you could tell him we’re looking for him? We just want to be sure he and this Marjorie are all right.”
He plunked himself down in a plastic upholstered swivel chair that looked like Jack the Ripper had had a go at it, and poured the rest of his drink down his throat.
“Sure. I could tell him that.” I gave him my phone number and thanked him for his help. He followed us out of the office and returned to the gaping Volkswagen. He was chuckling happily to himself.
When we got home, I ran down to Rosie what I wanted to ask Arnold, handed her a couple of files from Noah’s desk, walked her down to the corner, performed introductions, and left her there, returning to my house. I set myself up in a lawn chair with the rest of the files and my notebook, some paper, and a couple of sharpened pencils.
An hour or so later, Rosie and Alice walked up the path. Rosie pulled up another lawn chair and sighed deeply.
“Did you have fun?” I asked.
“Yeah. I’m such a great talker. I really love sitting around with middle management and trying to cut through the bullshit. Anything interesting in what you’ve been reading?”
I closed the file folder I was holding. “Nothing that seems very important. The personal stuff includes some memos from Arnold about lumber and tools. There’s some plans, drawings of the ark. A letter from some employee over at Yellow Brick Farms complaining about being fired. Lots of lumber receipts— do you think he plans to deduct the arks from his income tax?— but not a damned thing that might lead us to someone who might want to get Noah for any reason.”
“What about the fired employee?”
“Fired by Durell.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway, if we’re looking for some guy who just wanted a quarter of a million, just an ordinary, everyday violent thief, I haven’t found any leads to him. How about you?”
“I went over the lists with Arnold. He didn’t know of any other contributors— pardon me, investors. See, most of the people on that membership list aren’t putting up any money at all. Arnold says all Noah required for a place on the ark was a certain amount of labor. Quite a lot of labor. And more lately.”
“About that— you asked him why they’ve been speeding things up?”
“Sure. Not much help there, though, either. Arnold says Noah told him he’d ‘gotten word’ that the flood might be coming sooner than they thought.”
“When did he get this word?” Euphrates jumped into my lap, a large ball of lead, purred for a while, and fell asleep.
“A few days before he disappeared. Arnold says he asked Noah if he’d had another dream, and he said he hadn’t.”
“I feel like that should be significant somehow, but I can’t see where it fits.”
“Not yet, anyway. But I’m way behind you on this.”
“We’re going to fix that today.”
“Good. I also took a tour of the ark. Interesting. I’ve never seen a ship being built before, so I can’t tell whether it’ll float or not. Anyway, I talked to Arnold a little about the differences between the original ark and this one, and he said they didn’t need as much room because—”
“God was going to take care of the animals?”
“Right. I think Noah’s pretty good at making his visions suit practical necessity.”
“Yeah. He’s not as crazy as Bert Olson thinks he is.”
She laughed. “I don’t think the modifications are particularly significant, do you?”
“No. And it’s too bad. I spent all that time reading the Bible. You ready to throw yourself completely into this case?”
“Sure. What’s next?”
“We need to do some traveling. First, I thought we’d run up to the Russian River and have a look at the ark up there, talk to some people, see if Marjorie was up there and when. Then, from there— Tahoe. I’ll bet we can even manage to have some fun while we’re working.”
Rosie had no objections. The river and Tahoe are two of her favorite places.
– 17 –
I’ve always liked the Russian River, too. A small river, broad and shallow, coming down out of the north and sweeping through Sonoma County, through the redwoods and the rolling coastal hills, a slow and gentle current to the ocean.
The River, a resort area of considerable beauty and strange inconsistencies, is beaded with tiny towns from up around Cloverdale to Jenner-by-the-Sea, known to the map-makers as Jenner. Most of these tiny towns don’t qualify as towns at all, but as “communities” of fewer than 250 souls. Little stopping places. A store. A gas station. A place to rent a canoe. A motel. The chief industry is tourism.
Inconsistencies? Here’s a knockout of a resort country, less than two hours from the metropolitan Bay Area, with nice, if rocky beaches, a river even a moron couldn’t drown in, lodges, inns and resorts ranging from rustic to elegant, and great food. And the smell of rural poverty. Plenty of real estate available at a good price. But the only jobs in any number are connected with tourism, unless you commute to Santa Rosa, which is a big town but not exactly Detroit. I had a friend once who bought a beautiful house right on the river and didn’t make it through the first winter.
“Jesus, Jake,” he said, “it’s damp and dark and deserted. And depressed. And too far away.” He moved to a condo in Napa.
I guess people are just never satisfied. I don’t think it’s any damper up there than in, say, Mill Valley or the Berkeley Hills.
Anyway, I like it, and I was glad to get a chance to drive up there, stay overnight, hit a couple of restaurants, paddle a canoe, and go on, lungs refreshed, with possibly a little more information about Noah’s disappearance than I had when I left home.
Before we left, I called Rico and asked him to look after the cats until I got back or my folks returned from their visit with Lee. He told me my father was a fine man. I agreed. We dropped Alice off with a dog-owning friend and headed north.
When we passed through Petaluma, I thought of calling Lee, but there wasn’t much point in it, since I was going to be pretty busy for the next few days. We were on our way to Guerneville, one of the main towns on the river, and planned on getting there in time for an early dinner at the Bugle, a very big resort with dozens of cabins, a campground, a classy restaurant, a good bar, a pool, river frontage, and canoes. It also happens to be a gay resort, but the rest of the locals, as far as I know, aren’t complaining. It brings a whole lot of business into town.
I drove through the jammed parking lot once, gave up, and left the Chevy across the road. We got a couple of tequila sunrises at the bar and took them outside to a table overlooking the pool. It was close to six P.M. but still warm, and there were half
a dozen men and two women swimming.
The ratio in the bar was about ten to one, men leading. I asked Rosie about the preponderance of men.
“They own the place,” she shrugged. “Their brochures and advertising are aimed at men. And the men tend to have a lot more disposable income to spend on fancy resorts.”
I decided not to think about that. Instead, I suggested dinner, since there wouldn’t be much daylight after seven-thirty or so, and we wanted to try to catch the people at the ark that evening. Like the Oakland crew, they were probably working late.
The scampi was good, but a little too buttery for my taste or my waistline. It would have been nice to take a walk, but that would have to wait. We drove to a small motel down the road, checked in, and headed for the ark.
According to Arnold’s directions, the ark was sitting on a lot tucked back in the woods about five miles from Guerneville. We followed the River Road west behind a metallic blue 1950 Hudson Hornet sporting a bumper sticker that said, “Santa Rosa, Keep Your Shit to Yourself.” This was in reference to the time the overgrown town, having failed to keep its sewage facilities up to its contractors’ wildest fulfilled dreams, had filled all its holding tanks to capacity and then dumped the overflow into the river— a river that provides both recreation and drinking water for all the communities downstream.
This act of vandalism was followed by a lot of hearings and moratoriums and the like, which may force the city of Santa Rosa to contrive, by foresight, to keep it to itself.
The river was visible through the trees on our left most of the way to Monte Rio, population 1,150, four miles along, which has less of a carnival atmosphere than Guerneville, despite the banner across the road that says, “Welcome to Monte Rio, Vacation Wonderland.”
Full House: A Laid-Back Bay Area Mystery (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 3) Page 11