There was a sketchy article about the break-in at the bank, which must have been discovered after the deadline of the week before, and a story about Gracie Piedmont’s death that treated it as an unfortunate accident during a bad storm.
Two paragraphs at the bottom of the front page mentioned another unfortunate accident— our crash on the coast road— and included the notation, at the end, to (see page 3).
Stopping long enough to turn to page three, I read on as I walked. The headline was “San Francisco Reporters on the Trail of Trouble.” The story went downhill from there.
“Why are Probe magazine reporters Jake Samson and Rosie Vicente nosing around Wheeler?
“They’re doing an article on the North Coast Cryobank, they say. We want to know what kind of story that would be? Why didn’t Probe show any interest until the bank was broken into and vandalized by persons unknown? And why are they asking questions about the recent death of one of this town’s citizens, who also happened to be an employee of the bank?
“What are they after? Why are they mercilessly harassing the recently bereaved?
“We’re all friends and neighbors here in Wheeler, and maybe it’s time someone told people from down around San Francisco that our town, our people, don’t exist for their amusement, that our private sorrows have nothing to do with them, and that if anything untoward has actually happened here, we’ll be the ones to set it right.”
It went on like that for another couple of paragraphs, but I stopped reading and handed the paper to Rosie. She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, read the piece through, then riffled some pages.
“Look,” she said, pointing at the masthead. I looked. The publisher and editor was our friend Henry Linton, the mayor and patriarch of Wheeler.
– 23 –
Just as I got inside the door of my room someone knocked on it.
“Who’s there?”
“Clement.”
I let him in. “What’s going on, Clement?”
“I just thought you might want to know about this. Rollie Hackman. His mom called me a couple of hours ago. Looks like he’s run off.”
“Run off?”
“Run away.”
Suddenly I felt cold and scared, remembering Gracie, remembering our crash. “Are you sure he left on his own?”
Clement nodded. “That’s what Tommy says. He says his brother told him he was leaving town for a while, that he’d get in touch, and tell the folks not to worry.”
“What else does Tommy say?”
“Nothing. No matter what you ask him, he says he doesn’t know the answer. I know that boy, Jake. If his brother said don’t talk, he won’t talk. Not even to his folks.”
Maybe Tommy wasn’t talking, and maybe the Hackmans didn’t know anything, but there was one other place to go for information about Rollie, and that was Louis’s gallery and bookstore. Clement went off on some mission of his own.
I banged on Rosie’s door. No answer. I banged louder and heard a cry of rage from within. A minute later she came to the door, wrapped in her robe, dripping shower water on the floor.
Her disgust at being dragged out of the shower vanished when I told her about Rollie. In five minutes she was dressed and ready to go. We took Alice, who had been stuck in the motel during our hours at the bank, along with us.
Lou was just locking the door of the gallery from the inside when we arrived.
We made faces and yelled about how urgent our visit was. He shrugged and shook his head. He was closed. We yelled some more. He pointed to a door next to the big front window of the shop and jerked a thumb upward. An entrance to his apartment. The door was unlocked, and we got upstairs fast enough so that we had to wait a few seconds before his apartment door opened.
“What is it you want?” he asked in a neutral voice.
“Rollie’s run away. What do you know about it?”
He sagged, and closed his eyes.
“That’s terrible,” he whispered. Then he regained his composure, stood up straight, and met my eyes. “What makes you think I know anything about it?”
I wanted to say “Your reaction to the news,” but that wouldn’t have been the right approach. Instead, I asked if we could come in and sit down.
“I don’t see why you should. I don’t know anything about this. It’s awful.”
He did look pretty unhappy, all right. Rosie and I walked in and sat down without an invitation.
“You like the kid,” I said. “You sell his work and you’re happy when someone else appreciates it. You’re probably the only person in this town he can talk to about art. I don’t think his parents are too helpful. Maybe he even thinks of you as some kind of mentor.”
“I suppose he does.”
“Anything more than that?”
He looked puzzled for a moment, then glared at me. “I’m not a pedophile, Samson. And in any case, I’m completely heterosexual.” He glanced at Rosie. “No offense meant.”
“None taken.” She smiled.
“It’s just that you seem to have other unacknowledged relationships,” I said, “and I thought this might be one too.”
His eyes went dead. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Skip it for now. All I’m saying is that Rollie might have confided in you, something that would be helpful in finding him. I want you to think hard about anything he might have said lately, anything that might give us a clue. And while you’re thinking, could I use your bathroom?”
“Oh, sure,” he snarled. “And while you’re at it, why don’t you stop off in the kitchen and cook a seven-course meal?” He pointed to a doorway, and I got up and went through the kitchen, which had a stairway leading down to the shop, and into a bedroom with the bathroom next to it. I closed the bedroom door partway behind me, and went to the windows. Sure enough, his bedroom looked right out on the back area, and the back windows of the sperm bank. I went into the bathroom, closed the door, stood around for a second, and flushed the toilet. Then I rejoined Lou and Rosie.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “I can’t help. He never said anything about going anywhere. He was happy enough at home, although you’re right about his folks. They’re not much help to him. And if you’re thinking he ran away because he did something wrong, don’t think it. He wasn’t that kind of boy. All he cares about now is his art. Well, mostly all. He cares about his brother. And he likes girls, I guess.”
“Any particular girls?”
“I think he has a girlfriend, I forget her name. But you’re right. He could have run off with a girl. Kids get funny ideas sometimes.”
I hadn’t suggested any such thing, but he seemed to like the idea. He liked it so much I dismissed it as a possibility for the time being, anyway.
“You must have talked about what he’d do when he grew up, where he’d go to school, where he’d go to work as an artist,” Rosie said.
“Well, San Francisco, of course. You can’t do better than that.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Rosie said. “A lot of artists live in Oakland and Berkeley because they can’t afford San Francisco. There’s a tremendous amount going on in the East Bay.”
He sniffed. An idea too ridiculous, obviously, to contemplate.
“I assume you deal with some San Francisco galleries,” I said. “Have you sent any of his work there?”
He shook his head. “I was going to. I’ve been talking to some people. But no one yet. And no one he knows, if you’re thinking that’s where he might have gone. Now I wish you’d go. I have an engagement.” We allowed him to herd us to the door.
“He’s hiding something,” Rosie said when we were down on the street again.
I agreed. Lou Overman was hiding, I thought, a whole lot of somethings. But I didn’t think he was clever enough to hide them much longer.
– 24 –
We were on our way to the Hackmans when Joanne rolled up behind us.
“Excuse me,” she said primly, and we moved out of her way.
But before she could go very far, I called out to her.
“Joanne? Did you hear about Rollie Hackman?”
She stopped and spun around halfway to show us her sharp profile. “Yes.”
“Do you have any idea where he might have gone or why? Are you friends with him or Tommy?”
“We are not friends.” Her mouth twisted in an old-woman smile. “Tommy’s stupid and Rollie likes beautiful girls. You know, cheerleaders. That’s the dog I saw in your truck, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Is he friendly?”
“Yes, she is. Any cheerleaders in particular?”
“I wouldn’t know. If you’ll excuse me, I’m on my way to my great aunt’s house for dinner.”
“Oh, is your mother busy tonight?”
She turned away and didn’t turn back. “Yes.”
She rolled away.
The Hackmans were a mess. Mrs. Hackman was crying and looked as though she didn’t plan to stop for days. Hackman was so drunk he couldn’t get off the couch. Tommy was holed up in his room and wouldn’t come out, but Mrs. Hackman let us go back to see him.
It was just the way Clement had said it was. He wouldn’t say anything except “Go away.”
Mrs. Hackman, on the other hand, was able and willing, between snuffles, to tell us Rollie’s girlfriend’s name and address. We got out of the Hackman house as quickly as we could after that. Rosie and I split up at the corner, she to follow up on the girlfriend, I to head back downtown and see if I could find out more about Overman’s “engagement” for the evening. We agreed to meet at Georgia’s Cafe in about an hour.
I had nearly reached the gallery when Fredda’s station wagon passed me on the street. A couple of seconds later Lou’s yellow car pulled out of the alley beside his shop, moving slowly. He turned left onto Main, with Fredda making a U-turn right behind him.
I turned around and ran for the motel and my Chevy. I was going to have to drive fast to catch up with them, and that was going to be hard with one arm. But there wasn’t much else I could do. I wanted to see if those two were going to the same place and what they did there.
I started the car and reached over the wheel to shift into first, pulled out of the lot, wrestled the stick into second and then third, drove three blocks, hit a stop sign, ripped off my sling, and used the bad arm to shift. It hurt like hell, but frustration hurts worse.
Catching sight of Fredda’s car about a mile outside of town, I followed it from an around-the-curve distance all the way into Rosewood.
She pulled up outside a tavern, parking right behind Lou’s car. When she went inside, I parked behind her. I pushed open the door. The place was dimly lit, but I could see the two of them sitting at a booth. I had no hope of not being seen eventually, but I did hope I could at least catch the mood. I did. Lou was talking animatedly, and he looked angry. Fredda was sullen. I couldn’t hear what her friend was saying, and tried slithering into a nearby booth. Fredda saw me. Her eyes widened, she muttered something to Lou, then smiled and waved.
I went over to say hello.
“What are you doing here?” Lou snapped.
“Just passing through. Saw your cars, decided to stop in and say hello.”
“Hello,” he said. “Now would you please leave? This is a private conversation.”
“Sure thing. See you two kids around.”
I sat in the car for half an hour, put the sling on again, and drove one-handed back to Wheeler, considering the possibilities. Old flames relighting the fire? Hardly. Ma and Pa discussing some problem with the offspring?
Rosie, when we met at Georgia’s, had nothing much to report. Rollie’s girlfriend said they’d broken up a week before because he wasn’t any fun anymore.
“I don’t think much of his taste in girls,” Rosie said. “She’s a real snip, and I don’t think she cares about him at all. The only thing she could tell me was that he had some friends down in Marin, she thinks in San Rafael.”
“That’s something, I guess.” I told Rosie what I had been doing.
“Why do you think they’d go out of town to meet?”
“Small town. Gossip. Maybe they don’t want Joanne to know they see each other. Maybe they have some other connection, like with Rollie.”
At that moment Clement walked into the cafe. I waved him over and he sat down.
I kept my voice low. “Clement, is Lou Overman Joanne’s father?”
“Lou?” He nodded. “But it’s not something he or Fredda talk about. No one ever said it was so, even though half the people in town figured it out years ago.”
The waitress came. We all ordered chili.
“Why are you asking that, Jake?”
I told him about their meeting in Rosewood. “Did you know they were seeing each other?”
“Seeing each other? How do you mean that?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“If you’re talking about romance, forget it. Those two don’t like each other. Not at all. I didn’t even know they were speaking. They usually aren’t.”
“So it’s strange that they were together?” Rosie asked.
“Oh, hell, Rosie, maybe they meet each other once a month and talk about old times. It’s not the kind of thing I usually look into.” He laughed and took a spoonful of chili. I followed his example. It was good.
“Speaking of romance,” I said, “what about Hilda and Frank? We saw him bringing her flowers. Now that was strange.”
He laughed again. “Oh, Frank has been courting Hilda for years. Wants to get married. Maybe she’ll weaken someday. How about you?” He smirked. “I hear you been talking to Melody Clift.”
I nodded.
“She tell you anything about her past love life?”
“Of course not.”
“Just thought you might be checking into it.”
“Why would I do that?” I couldn’t tell whether the old bastard was laughing at me or not.
“Well, I thought you might be interested to know she had a fling with Wolf a couple of years ago, before things got so serious with Gracie.”
Rosie was enjoying the conversation. “Are you saying she might have been out on the spit the night Gracie died? That she might have killed her in a jealous fit?”
Clement grinned. “Well, she called me early on— you were in the office, Jake— from San Francisco, she said. Lying, maybe, but Henry says he called her later, down there. Still…”
“She was on the beach the day the truck got sabotaged,” Rosie said.
“That’s right, she was on the beach,” I said. “Not up on the road with a wrench.”
Clement laughed and finished his chili. “Got to go. Checking on a couple of leads about Rollie.”
I told him about the friends in San Rafael, but he was ahead of us.
“Yeah. Got some calls in to the police down there, and San Francisco too. Lots of kids run off to San Francisco. Henry’s working on it, too, with his newspaper contacts.”
I snorted. “He likes to keep his hands on things, doesn’t he?”
“Henry’s okay. Maybe he cares a little too much, but that’s no crime. Guess you didn’t much like his piece about you, huh?”
I ignored that. “Before you go, tell me again what exactly it was you found on the beach the day after the break-in?”
“Lot of little plastic vials. Stuck in the sand, caught in the rocks. Had to figure most of them got washed out to sea. We found only a hundred or so. Nora says they lost a lot more than that.”
“And that’s all you found?”
“You mean footprints, something like that? No, except for Rollie’s. Sand was washed smooth of anything that might have been there earlier. Except there was one thing. Big square depression on the dry sand. Could have been made by a box. Could have been what they carried the stuff out there in. But like I said, it was up on the dry sand. Didn’t have to even be from that day.”
“And Rollie,” Rosie said. “He was there.”
“That’s right. Said he’d been there a little while, hadn’t seen anything. See you later.” He left.
“Maybe you ought to go talk to Melody again, Jake,” Rosie said. “Ask her if she’s sure she didn’t kill Gracie because Gracie stole her man.”
“Enough,” I snarled. “Let’s follow through on the lovely couple.”
“Lou and Fredda?”
“Right. I’ll watch his place if you’ll watch hers.”
“What is it you expect to see?”
“Oh, hell, I don’t know. But I would like to know how tight they are, what their relationship is, whether they’re sleeping together.”
“And if they come back to the same house tonight, one of us will be able to hear what they’re talking about?”
“Yes.”
The antique store next to Lou’s provided good, safe cover. It was a one-story place with no living quarters, all shut up and dark for the night. I brought a blanket from the motel and made a nest for myself behind a dumpster with a good view of Lou’s back door. I was wearing two sweaters and a warm jacket. I had no idea how long I’d be stuck there.
As it turned out, I had no more than an hour of discomfort before he drove up the alley, parked behind his shop, and let himself in the back door. Alone. I waited another twenty minutes, just to make sure Fredda wasn’t following him, before I set out for Fredda’s house. Rosie was waiting for me. She said Fredda had showed up a while ago, with Joanne, and the mother and daughter had gone into the house together. Fredda was asking Joanne, Rosie said, what she had had for dinner at Aunt Hilda’s.
– 25 –
When I woke up the next morning, my arm hurt less and my head felt clearer than it had in days. I left the tape around my shoulder but tossed the gauze sling in the wastebasket.
Waiting for Rosie to get up next door, I reflected that the main problem with this case was the way it attacked from all sides. A burglary, complete with its own handy note of explanation, an explanation that laid what I was sure was a false trail. A murder that looked like an accident, or, possibly, an accident so mired in interconnections that it looked like a murder. An attempted murder, or at least an attempt to scare us off by sabotaging the truck. And now a runaway kid, suspected from the beginning of being the burglar of the first instance.
Spit In The Ocean: A Laid-Back Bay Area Mystery (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 4) Page 15