by Susan Dunlap
It wasn’t till she got back that she spotted the envelope on the Jeep’s window. A parking ticket! Dammit, why hadn’t she chosen a motel with an adequate parking lot? She stuffed the ticket in her pocket and stalked back to the room.
By ten she’d spoken to Olsen’s machine twice and her own once; called the Big Sur grocery twice. Where was Maureen Brant? Any other time, she’d be hanging on the phone. But now, when Kiernan had a vital question to ask her—did Olsen hire Delaney?—where was she? Angrily, Kiernan paced the floor. She should abandon the case. Principles—But it was too late now. She wasn’t working for Maureen, or even for Garrett, anymore. She was hooked by her own need to know. She left word at Barrow’s Grocery that she’d call Maureen at noon.
Now, at last, it was time for Jessica Leporek, who, just maybe, had been Robin’s friend. It would be interesting to get Leporek’s take on Cummings and the memo theft. And more interesting to get his. Later.
It was just eleven when she parked by a green curb on Market Street about a mile and a half down from Skip Olsen’s flat. The rain had retreated to a heavy mist that cloaked the city in drabness.
Proposition Thirty-Seven was housed in a narrow storefront. “Block Offshore Drilling!” demanded a huge sign in one window. Smaller posters filled the other: “Save California Shores,” showed a postcard-quality photograph of the rocky cliffs and dramatic breakers at Big Sur. The scene could have been five miles west of Maureen and Garrett Brant’s house. Kiernan stopped, staring; Garrett Brant would never see that beach again. “Protect Our Otters!” “Protect Our Seals!” bumper stickers insisted. “An Ounce of Prevention …” loomed over a poster-sized shot of Alaska: a snow-covered peak pierced the pale blue sky, dark green pines tufted with white crowded to the edge of the shore. But the beach was black. Tar-covered sand, rock, the corpses of birds and otters. Kiernan’s breath caught. The poster was trite and a bit dated; it pandered directly to sentiment. She knew that intellectually, but it didn’t lessen the effect.
It was a moment before she was aware of the cars and trucks rushing past her on Market Street, the bursts of chatter from couples in raincoats hurrying on their way to stock up at the giant Safeway, or to lunch at one of the radicchio-to-chanterelle cafés. Tchernak, she thought, would go wild over all the culinary possibilities on display here.
She opened the door to the headquarters. A tsunami of ringing phones and noisy banter washed over her. Every square foot of the office held a campaign worker, and every worker seemed to be doing three things at once. It was like the ER on a Saturday night—the ER without the blood.
“How can I help you?” a sandy-haired boy shouted from behind a desk.
“Jessica Leporek. I’m here to see her.”
“She know you’re coming?”
“Yes. I’ll just go on back.” Before he could protest, she headed for the door in the partition. It was marginally quieter and noticeably messier back there. The sink was hidden by a tower of unwashed cups. Boxes of papers were stacked precariously along the walls and in haphazard rows throughout the room.
To the right was another door, partially opened. She stuck her head around it and looked into a white room with posters, notices, and schedules, tacked up on every wall. A red-haired woman crouched over the phone. Kiernan had seen photos of Jessica Leporek in the campaign literature Tchernak trailed through her flat at home. Unlike most candid shots, those had flattered the subject. In person Jessica looked more like the mother of the vibrant redhead pictured washing down an oily bird or striding up the Capitol steps. Sunbursts of lines surrounded her eyes and two deep, painful-looking grooves marked the space between her eyebrows. Her red hair was streaked with gray, and in need of a wash that she looked too frantic to give it. She held the phone between ear and shoulder, using both hands to root through a pile of papers. Absently, she motioned Kiernan to a chair.
“Of course it’s important,” Jessica insisted. “The Department of the Interior, not known for its environmental concerns, estimates the oil producers will build twenty-two drilling platforms off northern California alone. Try to take a boat out to sea and it’ll be like rush hour on 1-80. They—”
For a moment Jessica’s mouth hung open as if she couldn’t decide whether to regroup and fight to finish her sentence. Her shoulders drooped defeatedly as she pushed aside the piles she’d been excavating and started digging through another.
“So they say,” she countered, obviously interrupting the person at the other end of the line. “So they say. If you believed their propaganda, you’d think drilling platforms were nothing more than fish playgrounds. They don’t mention that the drilling itself creates tons of toxic waste—seventy-five thousand to one hundred fifty thousand tons of toxic waste for every single platform. Multiply that by twenty-two! And that’s not taking into account the contents of the contaminated waste water—oil, grease, cadmium, benzene, lead. All this is in the fish’s little playground. Do you eat fish? Do your kids?”
Listening to her, Kiernan sat back, recalling Olsen’s evaluation of Jessica Leporek: the clumsy kid no one wants on his team. But Olsen’s assessment wasn’t quite right. It was Jessica’s freneticism and overwhelming intensity that would give her enemies grounds to mock her. Kiernan found herself eyeing the door with longing.
“Those toxic wastes get dumped on the sea floor. They suffocate the organisms there. We’re talking the basis of the food chain. It’s—Fine. Yes. Okay. Right. ’Bye.” She banged the phone down, yanked out a sheet from the second pile of papers, looked at Kiernan and said, “Yes?”
“Kiernan O’Shaughnessy, Private Investigator. I have an appointment to talk about your friend Robin Matucci.”
For an instant Jessica Leporek sat dead still, and the ringing of phones, the questioning shouts from the front room seemed to resound in the silence. Then she turned back to the pile. “Yes?”
Not the reaction of a friend. The reaction of a woman intimidated by an appointment she couldn’t recall. Employing the confident manner she’d honed for her court appearances as an expert witness, Kiernan said, “What was your relation to Robin?”
Addressing her words to her papers, Jessica said, “Friends of sorts. Not close. We met at an event I organized.”
“You run events, too?”
“Run’s too strong a word now. I don’t run anything but this, and I’ve hired a clutch of efficient assistants to keep things in line here”—smiling, she shook her head and waved both hands at the office—“My house is a disaster. I haven’t had my hair cut in months; my husband could have a new wife for all I know. She could have dinner with him every night and sleep in my bed three nights a week.”
“But you do organize events, and you did meet Robin at one of them,” Kiernan said, feeling as if she were translating a tongue foreign to logic. Still, she couldn’t help but like Jessica. “When was that?”
“A little over three years ago, in September.”
“It must have been a memorable occasion, for a woman as busy as you to recall the date.”
Jessica laughed, and momentarily the grooves between her eyebrows relaxed. “You sound like my husband, only a helluva lot more tactful. He’d say it was a memorable occasion when I wasn’t carrying on about a two billion-dollar fishing industry in danger of permanent damage, or—”
“Was Robin one of your supporters?”
“Just like Bill, my husband. Plow on through, he says; it’s the only way.”
“Robin?”
The smile faded. “No, she wasn’t working for Prop. Thirty-Seven. She was a fool not to spend every spare hour down here. What do you think it will do to the charter-boat business to have the shoreline marked with drilling platforms? And one big spill, what’s that going to do to the recreational fishing trade? How many guys are going to lay out big bucks to spend the day floating in muck, pulling in fish they’d be afraid to eat?”
“So why wasn’t she here? Because of Dwyer Cummings?”
The grooves deepened. “Cumm
ings?”
“I heard part of your debate with him. Did you know he was one of Robin’s most frequent passengers?”
“Well, I shouldn’t be surprised, but I’ll admit I am. Still, it makes sense.” Noting Kiernan’s puzzled expression, she said, “Robin was totally committed to her boat, her business. She wouldn’t have done something that damaged it. Now I know what you’re going to ask: then why didn’t she support the initiative? The answer is because she didn’t think ahead.”
Kiernan held up her palm. “That doesn’t square with what I know of Robin. She saved her money to help her father. She worked hard to buy Early Bird. She considered the future a lot. Do you think she was planning to not have the boat in a year or two?”
Jessica picked up a paper clip and began pulling the curves straight. “I can’t imagine her without it. But, look, what difference does that make? She’s dead.”
“Maybe. Possibly not.”
“Alive? You think she really could be alive? I can’t believe it. That’s great. Where do you think she is?”
Despite her public position Jessica Leporek hadn’t learned to be much of an actress. “If Robin survived, she hasn’t contacted anyone.”
“So where could she be hiding?”
Interesting this immediate assumption that Robin was not injured but hiding. “Hiding from whom?”
“Well, you know, if she screwed up and caused the boat to sink she wouldn’t be able to face anyone. She told me when she was a kid she learned success was everything: to be a failure, or even average, was to not exist. You’re a pretty big failure if you sink your boat.”
No mention of Delaney’s death. Was Jessica’s focus on the loss of Early Bird, rather than Delaney, her bias or Robin’s? Kiernan lowered her voice. “Jessica, I’ve heard a rumor that Dwyer Cummings was involved in a theft, probably as victim, just before he left Alaska.”
Still clasping the paper clip with both hands, Jessica leaned forward, as if pulled magnetically. “Just what do you know?”
“A memo of his was stolen.”
Jessica shook her head, remarkably unconvincingly. “Damn! I’ve heard that rumor for three years, ever since Dwyer got here.”
“Three years? He couldn’t have been working on the anti-initiative campaign that long. The initiative campaign committee was formed only last year, wasn’t it?” Kiernan asked, trying to recall those facts with which Tchernak had sprinkled dinner night after night, facts she’d tried to tune out.
“Officially last year, but the initiative’s been on our minds for closer to five. We just had to wait till the time was right. And nothing’s secret. The oil guys had their spies. I don’t know what Dwyer’s job was until this year, something low profile.”
“The kind of job they might give him to get him away from Alaska and out of sight?”
“Maybe.” Jessica shrugged, a forced, phony-looking movement. “Are you sure you don’t know anything more about it?”
“Not yet, but I will. And I’ll find out quicker and more accurately if you tell me what you know. Like what could that memo have said.”
The boy from the front desk leaned in through the doorway. “Jessica, what about the rally at Stinson Beach tomorrow?”
Jessica grabbed a clump of papers from her In box. “Wait, I’ve got something right here on that.”
“I mean: Are you going?”
“What time?”
“Two.”
“Let me—”
“You’re free. I checked. I’ll drive you, and get you back here in time for your meeting with”—he glanced from Jessica to Kiernan and back—“your meeting. Okay? You’ll go?”
“Right, but we’ll have to move fast.”
“Gotcha,” he said and left.
“You were about to tell me just what you know about Dwyer Cummings and his memo,” Kiernan prodded.
Jessica glanced suspiciously at the doorway, then around the room. “Okay. But promise you won’t repeat this, not that it’s specific enough to do any harm. I just don’t want anyone to be able to say we’re mudslinging.”
Kiernan nodded.
“Well, the word I’ve gotten on Dwyer is that he’s careful about what he says. He drinks, but he can hold it. He’s at his best bringing together groups of guys and getting them to talk. If he has a fault—what they think of as a fault—it’s that he can be indiscreet in that kind of setting.”
Jessica’s evaluation of Cummings’s drinking was more benign than Olsen’s. “Are you saying the memo that was stolen was indiscreet?”
“I don’t know. But whatever it was they shipped him out of Alaska headquarters fast.”
“What was the memo about?”
“Kiernan, if I knew, I’d tell you. I don’t know. It’s not for lack of trying to find out, believe me. I’ve virtually lived in these offices for nearly two years. Any sensible person would vote for Prop. Thirty-Seven. But the truth is we could still lose this election. I’d saw off my right leg to anyone who’d give me damning secrets about the Energy Producers’ Group’s spokesman. I’ve told you everything. I’m counting on you.”
A woman peered in through the door hesitantly, then noting Jessica’s expression, turned and left. In the front room the phones seemed louder, the talk more urgent. Her time with Jessica was running out. Kiernan said, “You’ve known Robin for three years, but you and Robin weren’t friends at all, were you?”
Still clutching the stack of papers, she said, “Look, I’m sorry she’s dead, or missing or whatever, but—”
“No, you’re not. This is a woman you describe as being interested only in her own boat. You don’t care about charter boats; she didn’t care about the initiative. Neither of you is the type to go shopping together. And yet you went to see her a number of times. Why?”
When Jessica didn’t answer, Kiernan demanded, “You met her at an event you planned. What kind of event?”
“An opening at my gallery.”
The phone rang. Jessica grabbed it. Kiernan blocked out the content, listening instead to the rumble of conversation from the front room, the ringing phones, the door opening and closing. She was smiling. So, Jessica Leporek, the environmentalist, ran an art gallery. Not an unlikely hobby for a woman with energy and drive, who’d been a docent at the Asian Art Museum, and who, if Olsen was to be believed, had “married a pile of money.” What kind of art would a woman with her interest in the ocean environment choose for her gallery? As soon as Jessica put down the receiver, Kiernan said, “Did you handle Garrett Brant at your gallery?”
“Garrett? We talked about it. But it never worked out.”
“Was that three years ago, at that opening?”
She nodded.
The phone rang. Kiernan put a hand over the receiver. “This is important. Right after that opening Garrett Brant was hit and nearly killed. He was driving back to the city to see a woman about arranging a show. That was you, wasn’t it?”
“No. We never got as far as that. I never promised him a show.”
“But he was coming to see you, wasn’t he?” The phone stopped, then started ringing again.
“I have to answer—”
“Answer me first.”
“I don’t have to talk to you.”
“Jessica, Garrett Brant was coming to see you the day he was hit. Helping with this investigation is the least you can do for him. So tell me about Garrett.”
“Okay, okay. He said he’d bring me something. But not that day. He was to come up two days later. I waited, but of course, he never showed. It took me a week and a half to find out he’d been in an accident.”
“What was he bringing you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Jessica!”
“I don’t. He just told me it would be something useful to the campaign.”
“Not a painting?”
“I said I don’t know.” She wrenched the receiver free and picked it up. “Okay, okay. Right. Yes, now.” Putting down the receiver, she said, “It
’s nearly noon. I have to go.”
“Okay. Here’s my card. I’m at this motel. If you think of anything, no matter how minor, call me.” Leaving the card on Jessica’s desk, Kiernan raced through the office to the Jeep. Noon! At noon she was supposed to call Maureen Brant. And this time she was probably more anxious to talk to Maureen than vice versa.
26
GARRETT BRANT LOOKED AT the redwoods beyond his studio window. He smiled happily. The trees … just like they were when I was a boy here. Almost as if time had stopped. He moved closer to the window. There’s the scar in the bark, where my swing hit it—
He turned and noticed the wall of photographs. Odd that the edges should curl so soon. I just put them up when Maureen and I got here.
Tomorrow I’ll be in the city. Should I bring it? He smiled, remembering Jessica Leporek’s face, those slate-gray eyes of hers opening wide, her pale—salmon mixed with ocher?—lips stretched sensuously in that big smile, her burning-ember red hair. Her hand ice cold on his arm. “It’s vital,” that’s what she’d said. He could see those tentative lines that were just starting to take hold between her brows—they’d be deep grooves someday. Intriguing. He could paint her. She’d like that. But she’d be more interesting in ten years when those lines …
He turned and caught sight of his painting.
Maureen Brant hunched forward, clutching the wheel as the old Dodge Colt bounced from rut to ridge on the dirt road. She pictured Garrett in his studio, staring at his easel. Trying the doorknob. Frustrated, slamming his shoulder into the door. Just as long as he doesn’t think to get his pistol and shoot out the lock, and wander off. She shivered as she fought the fear that rode with her every time she got in the car. He’ll be alone for over an hour. I hope he’ll be alone! But it’s too soon for danger. And it’s not even dark.