Spit In The Ocean: A Laid-Back Bay Area Mystery (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 4)

by Shelley Singer

  “Wonderful idea. Let me help you.” Awkwardly, protecting my right shoulder, I turned over, then got to my feet. She looked me over, face to knees, and smiled. Then she unzipped my pants and peeled them off, along with my shorts. I didn’t move. I stood still, watching her. She undid the sash of her robe, and a few buttons, and let it fall. It slithered down to the rug. She took my hand, moved up against me, and gave me one helluva kiss. The next thing I knew she was lying on the rug, laughing up at me.

  Maybe this was a scene she’d written a dozen times before. Maybe this was what she’d been writing when I showed up that day. Maybe it was ridiculous, and not at all the sort of thing a real sophisticate would be caught dead doing. But I didn’t keep her waiting.

  There never was enough time, that day, to visit her hexagonal tower, which was too bad. On the other hand, there also wasn’t enough time for her to read to me from her books, which was probably a good thing. I’m a mystery fan, myself.

  – 17 –

  Our walk to the Hackman house that evening after dinner took us past Fredda’s house. The sky had cleared and the moon was bright, and a flash of light glinted off Joanne’s wheelchair on the front porch. We waved and said hello. She said hello back.

  While I’d been distressing my bad shoulder that afternoon, Rosie had picked up some interesting information. She’d found Henry Linton working the bar at the tavern and talked to him for a while. She’d come at things sideways, saying she’d expected to find Wolf there— didn’t he work afternoons? She learned that he did, except for Sundays, when he worked just a couple of hours in the evening. He usually worked from noon to five, broke for dinner until six while Henry relieved him, then worked until eight or so, when Henry came in and worked until closing. On Fridays and Saturdays too? Yes. Which meant that unless there was something we didn’t know, he’d worked all afternoon the day before, which put him out of the way as far as the truck was concerned. But it also meant he’d been taking his dinner break right around the time Gracie Piedmont had died.

  She’d also visited the bookstore and talked to Lou Overman, who still insisted he’d slept through the break-in.

  “So you believe him?”

  “Why should I?” Obviously, Rosie was not enamored.

  We compared notes on our spit-resident findings. What Rosie had learned from Clement narrowed things down considerably. The two couples— the Sierra Club folks and the young retiree and wife— had been gone at the time of Gracie’s death. The old folks were visiting friends in Berkeley. The whiz kid and his spouse were in France. That left Henry, Frank, and the elderly poet.

  “And Clement didn’t get anything out of her, I suppose?”

  “She was hiding out from the storm behind her shutters.”

  “We’ll talk to her anyway, just in case.”

  The Hackmans lived just a few doors down from Fredda and Joanne. Rosie’s description of poverty overwhelmed by its own debris was accurate. An old dismembered car in the weedy drive, an equally old but whole car parked in front. A house that looked as tired as Mrs. Hackman herself.

  The man who opened the door was a big guy gone to seed. He was clutching a can of cheap beer and looking doubtfully at us from watery red eyes. Rosie offered to leave Alice outside.

  He still looked doubtful. He didn’t actually say hello, come on in. What he said was, “Dog’s okay. My wife said you were coming.” Then he jerked a thumb toward the interior and led the way into a living room full of sagging, stained beige nylon furniture.

  Mrs. Hackman was sitting in front of the TV, which was tuned to the latest sex-and-violence-and-pseudo-history mini-series. With a look of resignation she turned it off and stood up.

  “I’ll get the boys,” she said, and dragged wearily across the room to a door opening onto a pale pink hallway.

  “Have a seat,” Hackman said. “Can I offer you a beer?”

  Looking around me at the furnishings that had probably come to the house second-hand, the tattered rug, I told him no, I wasn’t thirsty. Beer, I suspected, was probably his big extravagance, and I thought I’d let him keep it to himself. Rosie, for maybe the same reason, said she was too full of dinner, but thanks anyway.

  Mrs. Hackman returned, trailed by the fourteen-year-old Rosie had already met, and his older brother. Rosie’s good at descriptions. I could have spotted Tommy on the street. Rollie Hackman looked like his father must have looked at sixteen. Large, strong, a little blurred already, around the chin. His eyes were bright and alert, but I wouldn’t call them friendly.

  When we were all seated, the Hackmans waiting silently for someone to speak, my eye caught a glimpse of a water color painting on the wall behind the TV. I stood up again and walked closer to get a better look. The piece was badly matted and had no frame, but I recognized the work. It had been done by the same artist whose paintings and drawings I had admired at Overman’s gallery.

  “You like Rollie’s work?” Mrs. Hackman asked.

  “Very much.” I took a longer look at the kid. His face was red, and he was looking at the floor. He still wasn’t smiling. “I saw some of it at Overman’s place when I first came to town. I thought it was the best stuff he had.”

  I enjoyed not having to lie to get people feeling cooperative, for once. At least I was hoping to get some cooperation.

  “Rollie,” Mr. Hackman said in a threatening voice.

  “Thanks,” the kid said. He was looking somewhere over my left shoulder, scratching the top of Alice’s head. The dog seemed to find Rollie, of all the people in the room, particularly attractive.

  “Sometimes people buy his stuff,” Hackman said. His voice held an odd mixture of pride and fear. I guessed he didn’t know what to do with his artistic son, knew he couldn’t help him in any way, and wished he hadn’t been “blessed” at all. “I guess he gets it from my wife’s side.”

  “My grandmother was a milliner,” she said. “She made beautiful hats. And she sewed too.”

  I decided against asking Hackman what he did for a living. Whatever it was, he wasn’t terribly successful at it and didn’t look like he was still trying.

  “We don’t want to take a lot of your time this evening,” Rosie said, “and we’re very grateful that you’ve allowed us to come and talk to you.”

  “That’s okay,” Mrs. Hackman said. “We want to set the record straight. Too many people are just too darned anxious to blame a poor man’s kids for anything that goes on.”

  “I’m sure that’s true,” I agreed. I turned to Rollie. “Did you do it?”

  “No.” He looked directly at me, defiantly. For a kid, he was hard to read. There was something hidden there.

  “Why do you think some people say you probably did?”

  “Because me and Tommy got in trouble once, that’s why.”

  Hackman broke in. “Couple years ago these two damned fools got themselves caught breaking into Frank’s garage. Trying to jimmy the cash register. That’s why. They made a stupid kid’s mistake.”

  “Why’d you do that?” Rosie asked. She looked first at Rollie and then at Tommy, both of whom sat tight-lipped.

  “They wanted a moped.” Mrs. Hackman sighed.

  I changed the subject. “Rollie, you were down at the beach when Clement arrived that day— the day they found the stuff from the cryobank. I guess you’re down there a lot?”

  His mother answered for him. “He goes out to the beach a lot of mornings. To draw.”

  “Is that right?” I asked, addressing myself to the boy again. He nodded. “Did you look at it at all? What did you think it was?”

  Tommy snorted, looking sideways at his brother, who stuck his chin out at me and kept his eyes as far from Rosie as he could.

  “I thought it was a bunch of junk. Chief Paisley wouldn’t say anything when I asked him why he was messing with it.” Though Tommy seemed amused, his older brother still looked sullen. I was beginning to wonder how such a depressed kid could produce work with so much space and light in it. Ma
ybe, I thought, the beach was the one thing that made him happy.

  “You saw it there, then you saw the chief… did you see anything else earlier? Anyone else?”

  “No,” he said softly.

  “Are you sure, son?” Mrs. Hackman asked.

  “Mom!” he protested.

  “Okay,” she said. “The boy says he didn’t see anything.”

  “So,” I said. “You guys didn’t do it. Who do you think did?”

  Tommy spoke up. “Perry. He’s stupid enough to do something like that.”

  “Hey,” Hackman said, “don’t talk that way about a policeman.”

  “He’s dumb.”

  “And he caught you jimmying the cash register at Frank’s, so I guess he ain’t all that stupid, right?” Hackman yelled. Tommy set his lips again. I guessed he wouldn’t say another word.

  “I think that old Hilda,” Rollie said. I was glad he had decided to say something. “She’s always talking about how bad the place is.”

  “Hilda?”

  “She’s related to little Joanne? Fredda Carey? You know them,” Mrs. Hackman elaborated.

  I nodded. “You mentioned her, too, I remember. And Perry.”

  Her husband looked disgusted. “She don’t like Perry because he’s my buddy. You can scratch that.” He glared at her and she glared back at him.

  “Buddy!” Mrs. Hackman said. “Drinking buddy, anyway.”

  “But Hilda must be pretty old if she’s Joanne’s great-aunt,” Rosie said.

  “I don’t know how she did it,” Mrs. Hackman said stubbornly. “Maybe she had an accomplice. Like Frank.”

  “You also mentioned Wolf,” Rosie continued. “What made you think of him?”

  “Well, think about it. He used to go with Nora and she walked out on him. And look what happened to his girlfriend. Something’s wrong with that man. I never trusted him. I think he’s got it in for the whole female sex.”

  “And you’ve got it in for my friends,” Hackman groused. “Wolf’s a good man.”

  Rosie cut in. “Were he and Gracie having problems?”

  “I heard they argued sometimes,” Mrs. Hackman said.

  “Oh, hell,” Hackman said. “Everybody argues.”

  “You and your pals.” She sighed.

  We stayed for a bit longer, but the conversation kept going in circles, and it didn’t look like the Hackmans were going to be much help that night. About all we’d gotten out of the visit was a slightly reinforced suspicion of Wolf, who we already knew was unaccounted for, so far, when Gracie hit the rocks.

  And a funny feeling that Rollie might be hiding something.

  My shoulder was giving me trouble, and I felt tired and angry and frustrated. I signaled to Rosie, we thanked our hosts, and started back to the motel.

  Joanne was no longer sitting on her front porch. The street was quiet. Television voices nattered from a couple of houses, living room lights were on. But the night was chilly and no one was outside.

  Even on Main Street nothing much was happening. Music from the tavern. Both restaurants mostly empty. I felt quiet too. The walk was working the kinks out of my mind, but I was having trouble thinking logically.

  “What do you think of Rollie?” I asked.

  “Strange kid, but Alice likes him. And the parents… God, what a depressing house.”

  I agreed. And I wondered how far Rollie could go with his talent, coming from that place. He’d have to be really determined, and he’d have to be smart enough to learn, on his own, how to live in the world that seemed to have battered his parents to death.

  I said good night to Rosie, took a pill, and fell asleep.

  – 18 –

  We had a lot of work lined up for Monday. First on the list was a quick run to the spit to talk to a woman named Filomena Barth, the older woman who made her home there. Clement had told Rosie she was indeed a poet. The second item of business was a stint at Nora’s bank. Nora had reluctantly given us a small office and had promised to make a general announcement about us.

  I had filled Rosie in on the things I had learned about the bank earlier, and she had decided there were a lot of gaps in our knowledge of the cryo-business. I wasn’t sure we needed to know more. She was. She offered to go down to the bank and get things set up while I checked on the poet. I took her up on it.

  Filomena Barth’s house was the one I’d earlier classified as modest, next door to the one I’d classified as humble. It was a tidy brown shingle, the trim painted deep red, that looked like it had been picked off a side street in Berkeley and dropped beside the ocean. Hydrangeas clustered under the front windows. A Monterey pine, planted close to the house, sheltered its face.

  Something rubbed against my leg, and I looked down. A perfectly petite and beautiful black cat, female in all her moves, was batting her eyelashes at me. She wore a red collar with a red tag that said “Sara.” I knelt to pet her. As I was saying, “Hello, Sara,” the door opened and a woman stepped out on the threshold. I stood quickly to introduce myself.

  She had been just about to have a glass of beer, she said. Would I join her? I resisted the urge to look at my watch— I knew it was just after nine in the morning— and said I’d be delighted.

  “Unless you’d like a toddy or something warming?”

  “No, beer’s fine.”

  “Yes, and good for you in the morning. Like cereal.” She led me into a living room decorated in earth colors. A fire was burning in the brick fireplace, which needed tuckpointing badly.

  I sat on a brown corduroy easy chair, she took the red one.

  She was at least eighty years old, and wore her fine gray hair in a bun. She was dressed in a gypsy skirt and a yellow turtleneck sweater, and wore beaded moccasins on her feet. The rug, I noticed, was Navajo.

  “I want to thank you for being so hospitable,” I began, remembering Melody’s evaluation of the woman as solitary and unfriendly.

  She smiled. “I’ve heard about you and your friend, and I’ve been curious about you. I like the way you look, and the way you pet my cat.”

  “I have cats.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  There was a silence during which we regarded each other warmly.

  “You’re a poet,” I said.

  “And you’re a journalist.”

  “No, I’m not.” She only raised her eyebrows. “I’m…” There it was again. What am I, anyway? Maybe I should just get a license, especially if there are going to be some people I can’t lie to. “I’m investigating the break-in at the bank. The cryobank.”

  She laughed. “Do you think I have something to do with that? I assure you, menopause is long past.”

  “I’m also looking into Gracie Piedmont’s death.”

  She nodded, sipping at her beer. “Would you like some pretzels?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “And you’re wondering if I know anything about what happened out here on Friday night?”

  “Yes. Did you see anything? See her drive past? Anything that happened when she was here?”

  She ate a pretzel. “No, I’m afraid not. I had put up my shutters that afternoon, and Sara and I were tucked up quietly by the fire when I heard all that commotion later— the police, the ambulance, and whatever else there was. I thought about going out to see what had happened, but to tell you the truth, I was working on a poem about the storm and I thought I would find out soon enough if it concerned me, and a little later if it didn’t.”

  “Could you tell me who your neighbors are, on either side?”

  “Inland is Frank Wooster.” She gave me a sly, almost nasty look, and we both laughed. That was the house I kept thinking of as humble. Maybe it was a crooked house with a crooked man? “And on the other is that young couple. He was in business. Does something with money, still.”

  “So you saw nothing from— when did you put up your shutters?”

  “Four or four-thirty, it must have been. I can’t be more exact than that.”

/>   “And they were up until after the body was discovered?”

  “They were up until the next day. You’re not as tall as Magnum, but you’re nearly as good-looking.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’ll be going away for a day or two. I have a daughter in Mill Valley. But I hope we’ll meet again when I come back.”

  “I hope so too.” I got the feeling I was expected to leave. Maybe she wanted to work on a poem. I got up, thanked her again, and left. I think I was a little bit in love.

  I found Rosie in a room on the bank’s second floor. She had barely gotten started, because Nora had not had a room waiting and there was much shifting around before Rosie could begin.

  Most of the employees had little to do with the storage area. The front desk receptionist had nothing useful for us, Rosie reported, and most of the clerical staff dealt with more immediate matters. But we wanted attitudes as well as information. Were any of them disgruntled, angry, dissatisfied? It seemed to us that the act of destruction was more likely to be the work of someone who didn’t get a raise than of a pair of kids or a religious groupie. Maybe someone who had been fired?

  The personnel manager assured us that while several people had left in the last two years for one reason or another, no one had been, as she put it, “terminated.” Why had various people left? Had any of them left angry? Any particular problems with anyone? She didn’t think so, didn’t remember anything specific. So, she said, nothing very terrible could have happened, or she’d remember.

  “It might not have been terrible in your eyes, only in theirs,” Rosie said.

  She saw that there might be some sense in that. “Maybe I could go through my files and see if there’s anything…” she said tentatively. “But I’m not sure when I could do that. Not today, certainly.”

  We managed to convince her that we really needed any information she might have, and soon, and after a lot of negotiating got her to promise she would work on it that evening. I think I charmed her.

  The bank’s medical consultant— Dr. Reid, her name was— was immune to my charm, but not to Rosie’s.