Full House: A Laid-Back Bay Area Mystery (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 3)

by Shelley Singer

  Our directions took us one mile west of the Vacation Wonderland, more or less, where we were supposed to spot a dirt road winding off to our left.

  We did. It led through tall, dank redwoods and narrowed to a car’s width after the first fifty yards. A quarter of a mile or so into the woods, in the middle of a cleared lot fringed with trees and ferns, we found the ark. The setting was shady and dark in the early evening, maybe even dismal. No one was singing.

  The ark looked to be at about the same stage of construction as the one in Oakland. Work lights clamped to poles, running off the same kind of portable generator. Half a dozen people hammering and sawing. One of them came to meet us as we stepped down out of the car.

  “Can I help you?” The pretty teeth he flashed at us contrasted nicely with his tanned face. I wondered where he’d gotten the tan; not here.

  Rosie and I told him who we were, and that we were friends of Arnold’s, just having a look around. He ran his fingers through his yellow hair. “We’re kind of busy,” he said, “but let me just tell Joe you’re here.” He headed toward the ark and we followed him, up the ladder onto the scaffolding and up onto the deck. He looked a little persecuted by our pursuit, but I didn’t much care. There was an open hatch on the deck. We all went through it down to the hold.

  The few portholes didn’t do much to light up the huge, nearly bare interior, since nothing was coming in but filtered early evening gray. A couple of worklights were hooked onto the ribs near a large table flanked by two chairs. A man was sweeping the floor, or whatever the bottom of a boat is called. He looked up. It was a Joe I knew, Joe Durell. He dropped his broom in the pile of sawdust he’d made and strode over, smiling, to greet us. He looked as tired as he had the last time I’d seen him.

  “Jake! How you doing? What can we do for you?” The young man who had inadvertently brought us down there sighed audibly. Everything was okay. I was a good guy.

  “This is my partner, Rosie Vicente,” I said. “Rosie, Joe Durell of Yellow Brick Farms.”

  “Great,” Durell said. “Glad to meet you. I was just going to go up for some air. Come on.” He grabbed my elbow and guided me back to the ladder and up to the deck. He didn’t touch Rosie, but she trailed along anyway.

  There were a couple of wooden crates and the inevitable pile of lumber up top. We sat.

  “Do you come up here a lot?” Rosie asked.

  “Quite a bit,” he said. “When I’m not running Yellow Brick, I’m keeping an eye on things here.”

  “Keeping an eye on?” I asked. “You mean you’re running this project?”

  “Hell no, Jake, I just don’t have that kind of time. Fred— that young fellow who brought you down to see me— he does the day-to-day management.”

  “Then maybe we need to talk to him, too,” I said. “We think Marjorie might have come up here sometime during the week before she and Noah disappeared. We’d like to know exactly when that was— if it happened at all— and who saw her and talked to her.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Don’t see why that should be a problem. What exactly was it you heard? Did anybody get more specific than ‘sometime during the week?’”

  “Not sure. When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Oh, Jesus, Samson. Let’s see. I think it was early last month some time. I was down in Oakland on business, stopped by the ark.”

  “You didn’t see her up here, at this ark?”

  “She’s only been up here a couple of times that I know of. Once in August— I talked to her then— and I heard she stopped by here just a couple weeks ago. But I wasn’t here and I don’t remember when it was. We sure can do some asking around, though.”

  “We’d appreciate that,” Rosie told him. He bobbed to his feet. He climbed most of the way down the ladder and hopped lightly to the ground. Not bad for a guy past forty-five. I was right behind him, and I didn’t even hear his knees crack. He raised his hand at the guy with the teeth, who came right over.

  “Fred,” he said, “these folks want to know when was the last time Marjorie Burns came around. Jake here says he heard she stopped by. When would that have been, Jake, the week of the ninth?” I nodded.

  “Probably,” I said, “the end of the week. Possibly Saturday morning.”

  Fred ruminated, scratched his blond head. “I do remember seeing her, but I can’t be sure when it was. I wouldn’t have written it down or anything . . . the end of the week? That sounds about right. That’s a week ago.” He turned suddenly to Durell. “That would have been right before they left, her and Noah, right?”

  “That’s right. You don’t remember what day it was, do you?”

  He shrugged. “Damn, I really don’t. Let me go ask a few people if they remember.” He trotted off.

  “I should explain something to you,” Durell said. “Not everyone working on the arks knows that Noah actually disappeared. Some of the key people know, of course, like Fred, but we didn’t want to upset people until we absolutely had to. That’s why he said ‘left.’ Not vanished. A careful way we’ve gotten into the habit of talking.”

  “Probably a good idea,” I said absently, watching Fred collar one worker after another.

  He came back. “No one remembers what day it was. It wasn’t a big event or anything. She stopped by from time to time, so she could tell Noah we were on schedule, I guess.”

  “You know that she and Noah disappeared, right?” Rosie asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What do you think happened to them?”

  He glanced at Durell, who said, “Go ahead, Fred. You can tell these people what you think.”

  “I don’t know what to think. I know that some of the people who know Noah best think there’s something wrong. But I guess I don’t want to believe that. As for Marjorie, she seemed okay, pretty much the same as usual. I guess the point is we have to keep up people’s spirits, and their belief that he wouldn’t abandon them.”

  “You sound like you think maybe he did just take off,” Rosie said.

  “Heck no. I never said that. And I don’t believe it. We’re really pretty busy. Is that all you wanted from me?”

  “For now,” I said.

  With some difficulty, I swung the car around and got it back on the road.

  “Not terrifically helpful,” I commented.

  “No,” Rosie agreed. “Kind of a weird spot, isn’t it?”

  “No weirder than a street corner in Oakland.”

  We decided to take in a little night life before we turned in.

  The place we chose was big and noisy and had lots of rooms and lots of people dancing. It was outside of Guerneville, along the road to Santa Rosa, and Rosie had been there before. None of the women so much as glanced at me. A couple of the men did, briefly. Rosie ran into some people she knew, but mostly she danced with me, since no one else would. We danced until we were dizzy, drank modest quantities of beer, and then, since we were not in love with each other, got tired and went back to our motel. It was an early night.

  Next morning, also early, we had pancakes at a place which was, according to a sign in the window and several proclamations on the menu, famous for its pancakes. They were good. So good that we decided we’d better take a little stroll to work them off.

  We walked to the far end of the main street, taking in the atmosphere. A combination of Old West and new tourism. A little cute, maybe, but pleasant and cheerful. A bunch of restaurants, all of which looked good. Friendly people. Rosie was wearing her Gertrude Stein tee shirt, which collected some smiles. Male couples, female couples, mixed couples. Rosie in her tee shirt and macho me. Then we turned around and walked back to the motel.

  The day before, I’d noticed a sign on the office wall that said CANOES FOR RENT.

  It was a beautiful morning, warm and sunny, and not yet ten o’clock. We were self-employed, and that has to be worth something. I suggested an hour in a canoe before we checked out and left for Tahoe. Rosie agreed happily. We paid what seemed to
me to be a small deposit— $15— for a padlock key and went out back to unchain our canoe.

  The motel backed up onto the river, so we didn’t have to carry the thing very far. We man- and woman-handled it down a steep bank, and set off downstream to explore.

  You don’t have to work very hard to canoe the Russian River upstream, and you don’t have to work at all to go downstream. It carries you along, slowly, in its current.

  What you do have to do, though, is watch out for submerged branches, and keep an eye on the bottom. It is possible to run aground twenty feet from shore. Running aground presents no dangers. Neither, for that matter, does capsizing. But drifting is nicer. We drifted. We didn’t talk.

  The river is at its shallowest in the fall, before the rains start again, many months after the last rain of the winter before. There was just enough to swim in, and we slid past a few swimmers. The water was warm. The bottom was rocky enough to bruise the feet. Occasionally, Rosie would get a sudden urge to exercise and would paddle strenuously for a bit, and I, at the stern, would go along with the gag and work at steering.

  We ran into the bank a few times, bumped the bottom, hit some rocks, but mostly managed to keep our aluminum craft in the narrow channel where the water was more than a couple of feet deep. The number of houses visible near the bank dwindled outside of Guerneville, but occasional dwellings showed above the trees. Houses with high decks built for the view.

  Going back upstream, we paddled hard enough to get back before the hour was up.

  I felt a little sad when we checked out. My own bedroom, my own bathroom. I could walk ten steps through that motel room without falling over a suitcase or a pot roast or a bowl of soup.

  – 18 –

  By eleven o’clock we were on our way east to the Sierras, and feeling good, looking forward to spending some time in Tahoe.

  Not that either of us is a heavy-duty gambler. The best I’ve ever done is break even for the trip, which isn’t bad. But that only happened once. Usually I dump a hundred or so, write it off— to myself, not to the IRS— as entertainment, and go home.

  Rosie had skimmed through my notes on the way to the river, and she was rereading them now. I don’t know how she does that. I can’t read in a car without getting sick.

  She asked me a few questions, and I gave her some of my impressions of the people in the case she hadn’t met, which was nearly everybody.

  “You think this Carleton guy’s okay?” she asked.

  “I like him, but that doesn’t mean he’s okay. I think he could be a hothead under the right circumstances.”

  “And getting dumped can be just the right circumstances.”

  We had no disagreement there.

  The Chevy is not air-conditioned, and neither is the California Central Valley. We drove with all the windows open, watching miles of dusty farmland, flat as anywhere in the Midwest, slip by, stopping for a quick and tasteless lunch at a place outside of Sacramento. The weak iced tea tasted great.

  Our first sight of the Sierras ahead was like a mirage in the desert.

  We came up over Echo Summit in midafternoon, the lake below us shining like a blue gemstone set in a ring of mountains.

  Tahoe is the classiest of the gambling towns, for my money. Which is why classy Northern Californians and their money go there. Rosie, who had driven the last half of the trip, spotted a vacancy sign at a small motel two blocks from the main street and pulled into the parking lot. We lucked out on adjoining rooms, tossed our bags inside, and drove to a casino in the middle of town to get ourselves a beer and lay out our line of attack. We strolled virtuously through the banks of singing slots to the bar. But the poker machines set into the bartop were irresistible. I bought some dollars.

  “Jake,” Rosie said, “those are dollars.”

  “I know. Ten of them. Here, have a couple.”

  “A couple?” I handed her five.

  First one in the slot got me the eight, nine, ten, jack of hearts, and the jack of clubs. Sadistic bastards. A pair of jacks pays even money. I went for the straight flush and got a six of spades. One dollar down. I drank some beer and dropped another one in the hole. Bells were ringing over in the quarter slots somewhere. But not for me. The computer dealt me a pair of eights, spades and clubs, and an assorted four-five-six. Big decision to be made here. The eights were worthless. There’s no payoff on anything lower than jacks. The alternatives were to try for three— or even four— of a kind, or, possibly, a second pair, or try for the inside straight. I tossed in the four, five, and six and drew a four, a five, and a seven.

  Rosie wasn’t doing much better than I was. She’d gotten a high pair, two pairs, and a hand that was great for lowball but not for anything else.

  Then I stuck with a pair of jacks and got another one on the draw.

  No more luck after that, which was probably a good thing, since we did have work to do. We lost the last couple of dollars, got a couple of city maps, marked out our territories, and set off, me in the car, Rosie in a cab, to interview garage mechanics. I’d had copies made of the photos of Marjorie and Noah, and we each had a set. We would meet back at the motel at seven, have dinner and compare notes.

  I slogged around until 6:45, talking to service station attendants and auto mechanics, flashing my photos, describing Noah’s car. I met a lot of people. I even bought some gas. Nobody remembered seeing either the car or the people.

  I went back to the motel and put in a call to my answering machine to see if anything was happening back in Oakland. There were two messages. Lee wanted me to call her when I got back. Arnold wanted me to call him immediately. Very important, he said, and his voice sounded a little hysterical. I called the number he’d left on the tape. No answer. Then I took a long shower and stretched out. I was hoping Rosie’d had better luck than I’d had.

  She showed up about ten minutes later, and she had some news. She’d found the place where Noah’s car had been worked on. The mechanic remembered Marjorie, remembered the car. He was pretty sure she’d come in alone. He looked up the work order— it was for Monday the sixteenth— and found the motel name Marjorie had given him as an address and the phony name she’d given for herself. Beatrice Hinks.

  I told Rosie about the message from Arnold.

  “He sounded upset?”

  I shrugged. “He’s such a nervous little guy, it’s hard to tell. But yeah, I’d say he was upset about something. Could be just because I took off without telling him. Who knows? How hungry are you?”

  “I could wait a while.”

  “Let’s, then. I’d like to go check out Pincus and the casino.”

  “What about the motel Marjorie gave as her address?”

  “That, too, or maybe dinner and then the motel.”

  Mrs. Noah had told me the casino was called Jerry’s Jackpot. Information gave me the number, the employee who answered the phone told me where it was. A half-mile or so down the road from the biggest cluster of Tahoe business.

  It wasn’t the smallest casino in town, it was maybe the second or third smallest. Noah was, or had been, a rich man. But ordinary multimillionaire wealth was not, apparently, enough to buy a piece of a really big palace of dreams.

  No one was standing outside passing out coupons for free dollars, but the lack of a come-on didn’t seem to be hurting business any. The place had a lot of slot machines and I didn’t see many that weren’t being fed. There was a nice little bar in the far corner, the road to which was lined with nickel and dime slots. You couldn’t get near the poker, twenty-one, or roulette without being tempted to drop some spare change into the bread-and-butter fund. Once you did get past the slots, though, you could see that the place was one big room. Only the poker players were segregated, behind an Old West-style banister that partitioned off a couple of tables at the left-hand side of the room. At the back were one roulette table, three twenty-one games, and three craps tables.

  I asked the cashier where I could find Jerry Pincus. She told us he
was in his office upstairs. She didn’t ask if we had an appointment. She’d probably put a lot of energy into not becoming someone’s “girl Friday,” and she wasn’t about to blow it by acting like one now.

  The second floor of Jerry’s had a lot more slots, a bingo game, and keno. There were a couple of change people, a woman and a man, running around with their little coin belts. I stopped the guy and asked him where I could find Pincus’s office.

  “I don’t know if he’s there,” he said. “Is he expecting you?”

  “Yeah,” I lied. He glanced toward the back wall, pointing with his chin. I could see a small added-on cubicle back there, with a sign on the door that I figured probably said PRIVATE. It did. I knocked.

  A deep, soft voice on the other side wanted to know who was there. I told him, adding that we wanted to talk about his business partner, Thomas Gerhart, that we were working with Arnold Wolfe.

  There was a brief silence. Then, “Come in.”

  I pushed open the door and entered a very small cubicle, with a desk directly across from the door and a four-drawer file cabinet to the right of the desk. The man in the swivel chair was facing the door across the desk. He stood up, leaned over the littered surface, grabbed my hand, let it go, smiled at Rosie, jerked a thumb at a couple of straight chairs on our side of the desk, and sat down again. We sat, too.

  Neither the office nor the man suited my image of what a gambling casino owner and his surroundings should look like. The office was utilitarian; he worked there. Pincus was a very tall, very thin man. He should have been short and fat, flashily dressed, and sweaty, with thinning, or thinned, greasy hair. There should have been a sleazy blond lounging in a corner.

  That’s one of the problems with approaching middle age— I plan to approach middle age, warily, until I’m at least sixty-five— it’s like you turn some kind of corner and too many things aren’t what you expected them to be.

  Anyway, he was very tall and very thin, with healthy hazel eyes, lots of sandy hair, and freckles on his face and arms. He was wearing a yellow shirt with an alligator on it and white cotton pants. He was about my age.