Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries Boxed Set: Books 1-3 (The Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries)

by Heather Haven

  No wonder one waitress can handle such a crowd.

  Two minutes later a steaming plate loaded down with food was set before me. I dug in, and it was delicious. Fat and grease will do it every time. While I was eating, I looked into the pass through and saw what had been connected to the meaty hand. A middle-aged, gum-chewing man, tattooed on nearly every part of his body except his nose, was busily slicing portions from several meatloaves and pouring gravy onto plates. He had the ruddy complexion usually associated with living on the sea or being in front of a stove all your life. This was Hank; I was sure.

  “You was in here this morning, weren’t you, honey?” Maggie beamed at me as she filled the sugar bowls on the counter and took cash from customers. “You visiting with us for awhile or just passing through?”

  I took a sip of water, as I gave myself a moment to think and looked back at Maggie. “Well, I’m actually looking for someone. A friend of mine.”

  “Really?” She counted out some singles and change to a family of five anxious to pay the bill and leave. When they exited, she came over and stood across the counter from me. “Everybody’s in such a rush these days,” she commented on the departing family. “What’s your friend’s name?”

  “Grace Wong. Here, I have her picture.” I reached inside my pocket and drew out the photocopy, as I continued with the latest lie that had just come into my head.

  “You see, she was my neighbor, but she moved away last week. The day before she moved, her cat disappeared. Last night it came back, and I want to let her know I’ve got the cat in my apartment. She told me she was moving here to Princeton-by-the-Sea, but didn’t tell me where or leave a phone number.” I made a face and raised my shoulders as if to say, ‘If only we had known.’ I felt the story was much more believable than the one I fed Ed. I was getting better at this.

  “Oh, what a shame. I like cats. Got three of them, myself,” Maggie said shaking her head and taking the picture.

  “Oh, what a sweet looking girl. Chinese isn’t she? Such a friendly, sweet face. I’ll bet her mother’s proud of her. You can tell she’s a good girl.”

  Mesmerized by the appraisal, I studied the picture Maggie set down on the counter. Grace Wong was a sweet looking girl, I observed, once you got past all the sexiness of her.

  “I can tell a lot by looking in people’s eyes you know,” Maggie continued as she took a couple of dirty plates off the counter and threw them into black plastic bins. “Like yours. You’re a nice girl, too. Just like her.” She gestured with a nod in the direction of the picture, which lay on the counter between us.

  “I got six kids, four of them girls. Five of my kids, good as the day is long. Sweet-natured, good to their husbands, wives, kids, me, Hank, everybody in the world. But my Darlene, I knew when I took her home from the hospital she was never going to do anybody any good in the world and she hasn’t.” The people nearby stopped whatever they were doing and listened intently to Maggie’s assessment of her sadly lacking child.

  She came over and leaned into my face. “I saw it in her eyes. The day I took her home from the hospital. It didn’t matter what Hank and me did. We tried everything with her. Ran off when she was sixteen after taking all the cash from the register and my good opal earrings. Haven’t heard from her since.”

  Maggie sighed deeply, and I felt as if everyone nearby was torn between going back to eating lunch or applauding. It occurred to me this might not be going quite the way I had intended. I tried to bring Maggie back to the subject of Grace Wong. “Well, that is too bad. I’m sure you’ll hear from her someday but...”

  “Good God, I hope not.” Maggie interrupted and raised her eyes to heaven.

  “But my friend, Grace Wong. Have you seen her?” I insisted.

  Maggie wiped down the counter as old customers left and new ones came in. “No but it’s odd you should show me a picture of a Chinese girl.” I held my breath, unsure if Maggie might not be starting on another long, loud and non sequitur story. Not that they weren’t interesting, but I wanted to get out of this diner sometime before I applied for Social Security.

  “We don’t have a lot of Asian people around here,” she said finally. “That’s too bad because I love the food. Hank’s style of cooking leaves a lot to be desired. I mean, he does a couple of things okay, but I’d love to have a good cook back there.” She gestured over her shoulder to the kitchen with her thumb.

  Oh, no, she’s off on a tangent again.

  “Anyway, it can’t be your friend I’ve been hearing if she just moved here last week. But sometimes...” Maggie leaned in again and said in a stage whisper,

  “...in the middle of the night, I hear things. Our apartment’s right upstairs. I’m a light sleeper. Hank’s not. But I can hear a traffic light change color. Just a minute, honey,” she interrupted herself, as she heard a small bell ringing in the kitchen.

  Maggie went to the pass through and got four more steaming plates of meatloaf and potatoes and brought them to a table in the rear. Her audience, meanwhile, once again resumed their eating or conversations. The Asian man I had seen earlier at the marina got up from one of the tables he’d been eating at alone and left the diner.

  Maggie returned. “Anyway, Hank says I’m losing it, but I swear every now and then, in the middle of the night, I hear people walking underneath our window speaking Chinese or Vietnamese or one of those. I keep waiting to see a new Asian family living here, but I don’t. It seems they’re just passing through. Now, isn’t that strange?” she asked the world at large.

  “You’re strange, Maggie,” said an old man sitting at the counter nearby who was hunched over his plate and shoveling food in his mouth. “Didn’t you see aliens once?” He challenged with his mouth full. He had a worn out plaid cap on his head that went up and down on his forehead as he chewed.

  “Shut up, Mel,” Maggie replied amiably. She looked down at my empty plate and beamed. “Glad you liked the meatloaf.”

  “Nobody likes the damn meatloaf or anything else here. There’s no other place to eat something around here that ain’t fish,” complained Mel, shoveling in another mouthful of potatoes.

  “Are you still carrying on about the Dew-Drop-Inn closing down? Mel, that was five years ago,” Maggie said, and rolled her eyes toward me.

  Well, in for a dime, in for a dollar, and the subject had been broached. “Are you talking about the closed restaurant on the harbor?”

  “We are,” Mel spat out. His mouth being full, bits of meatloaf landed on the counter. It was enough to turn you into a vegetarian. “Best damn food for miles around, too,” he added belligerently, looking at Maggie who was filling salt and pepper shakers and shaking her head.

  “Well, then why did it close?” I asked. “Bad management?”

  Maggie cut in before Mel could answer, so he went back to chowing down. “We don’t know why. They did a lot of business and had good, honest food, too. Better than ours,” she added, lowering her voice again and looking in her husband’s direction.

  “At better prices, too,” interjected Mel in a hostile tone of voice.

  Maggie went on as if she had not been interrupted. “The Cardozos owned it for years. Nice people. Portuguese, you know. They sold out at a good price, I’m told, and then wham! It goes bankrupt and closes down in less than a year.” Maggie shrugged her shoulders. “It’s okay with Hank and me, though. We got the only other place in town with this kind of home cooking.” She beamed another smile in my direction. Mel grunted.

  “Thanks for the food, Maggie, and I’ve enjoyed talking to you,” I said. I reached inside my pocket and tried to pull out my wallet. I had to take everything out, however, and Maggie noticed the camcorder as I placed it on the counter. She reached over and picked it up before I could stop her.

  “Oh, what’s this cute little thing?”

  “Oh, nothing much,” I said casually, as I seized it back. “Just a kind of a tape recorder.”

  “That little bitty thing? My goodness!�
� she exclaimed, shaking her head at the wonder of technological advancement. I took money out of my wallet, added a generous tip to the bill, handed it to Maggie and walked to the exit.

  “Thanks, honey,” she shouted as I was leaving. “I hope you find your friend. What was her name? Oh, yeah. Grace Wong. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for her.”

  Sighing, I told myself it was just a matter of time before the whole town knew about my search for Grace Wong to return a non-existent, roving cat. What a lousy detective I am.

  A glance at my watch told me it was time to get a move on and accomplish something, anything with the rest of the day.

  The sun was shining brightly, but there was a cold, salty breeze in the air when you were in the shade. I shivered and wondered what the hell to do next. I really wanted to know more about that closed restaurant. Richard, the oracle from which all things flowed, was too busy to help me.

  I’ll have to do this the old fashioned way. I’ll have to go out and search manually — or was that womanly — by myself. How gauche.

  After several quick calls, I found that the county records of this small town were kept in the San Mateo County Library. It was now twelve-forty p.m. I could be there in about twenty minutes, spend the afternoon in the library and/or the hall of records, and be home by around five-thirty. Figuring that Tío was probably still with the little guy...no, Tugger...I corrected myself, I phoned my apartment.

  I knew Tío would never pick up my phone, letting it roll over to the answering machine. Nevertheless, you could hear whoever was calling loud and clear when they began to leave a message.

  If Tío was there, I could probably persuade him to pick-up. He did so and after some confusion regarding how to turn off the machine, I informed him I would be home around five-thirty to help with any last minute things for the family fiesta. After several minutes of hearing about Tugger’s latest antics, we hung up. Tío never once asked where I was or pried in any way. Another thing I loved about him.

  I drove back over Highway 92, a beautiful winding drive over the mountains, and toward San Mateo. Years ago, in my youth, friends and I would often go to Half Moon Bay to swim at one of the beaches, if it was warm enough. If not, we would stroll the shore collecting shells and driftwood. It was a great life for a kid, I realized, and I had a lot of treasured memories of this area. It was funny how I had missed out on the little hamlet of a seaport all these years.

  I drove to the downtown district of San Mateo and on to the county library. After a couple of starts and stops, I finally found the microfilmed records of the Princeton-by-the-Sea Bulletin, a newspaper put out twice a month and comprised mostly of ads. Going through back copies of the paper, I was sure such an event as the sale of a successful, family owned restaurant would be mentioned in one of the editions. As I searched, I learned many things about the town, such as the slow death of the fishing industry, in particular, the salmon industry. Nearly another hour went by before I found what I was looking for, a small article in the Easter edition of the paper about six years ago. It mentioned the Cardozos received several lucrative offers from the same company and decided to sell. No mention of the buyer, which was a little odd.

  Replacing the microfilms, I thought aloud. “P period Y period, that’s what Richard said. Where have I heard of that before?” From across the room a little girl, not much more than eleven, angrily shushed me and continued reading a Harry Potter book. I shut up and silently racked my brain. The answer was somewhere in the past, but I just couldn’t get at it.

  Oh, well, maybe I need a stretch.

  I rose from the chair. I went outside into the daylight. The sun, as it does in the winter, had already crested and was starting its downward cycle even though it was not quite three o’clock. I walked the two blocks to City Hall and asked a nasal man, who had decided long ago he was much too good for this job, how I could find the sale records of the Dew-Drop-Inn in Princeton-by-the-Sea. He was not very helpful, and it was only after I stood in front of his desk and loudly demanded to see his supervisor that he showed me where these records might be kept. These were not on microfilm, however, and I physically pored over dozens of papers in several file drawers until I came to the one I was looking for.

  Unfortunately, it was only a one-sided photocopy of the original. Incongruously enough, the law regarding photocopies of business sales allows that only the front side has to be copied, not necessarily the back. Consequently, anyone searching through these files might find only half a record. This was the case now. On the front of the document, I read the date of sale with the signature of the sellers. The back obviously had the buyers’ signatures and sale price, because it wasn’t here.

  “You know,” I told the air. “We really do need both sides of a paper if both sides are written upon.” I slammed the drawer shut. I had learned absolutely nothing of any real value all day.

  “Oh, to hell with it. I don’t know what I’m doing,” I admitted, and put my head down on my arms, which were crossed and on top of the cabinet. I was feeling very sorry for myself. “I don’t want to do this any more. I want to go home.” I licked my lips. “And, I want a piece of Maggie’s cranberry-apple pie,” I murmured into the crook of my arm.

  Pie. P period Y period. PY. Then it hit me. Not exactly like a cold mackerel at the end of a wet fist, but fairly close. I slowly raised my head and smiled. “Two initials that were joined in a never-ending circle of love,” I remembered her saying.

  It was on a matchbook cover in their home. She had babbled on to Mom and me about how it was one her husband’s new businesses, named in honor of their marriage. That was at one of those damned teas.

  Portor and Yvette were P period Y period. I’ll bet Portor owned that closed restaurant. For all I knew, he owned the warehouse as well. Maybe that’s why we couldn’t readily find the owner. Grace Wong had been seen in the vicinity of both of them, too. It was no coincidence, because I finally believed I knew why.

  Did Yvette know any of this? Not likely, I thought, or she’d never have opened this can of worms and had us follow Portor to the warehouse.

  I had to see that restaurant once more, I decided. Now that I knew what I was looking for, maybe I could find something similar to what I had seen at the warehouse. That would be proof enough to phone the police. I’d hate to make a fool of myself and call Detective John “I-don’t-want-to-see-you-around-here-again” Savarese, if I was wrong.

  I glanced at my watch. Three-fifteen. If I hurried back to Princeton-by-the-Sea I could be home by five-thirty just as I promised. Knowing Tío, he’d start worrying at five thirty-one if I wasn’t there. I left the building, leapt into my car and drove off as quickly as I could. Driving over 92 was slower than I thought due to the early afternoon commute, but I arrived close for four o’clock.

  It was already starting to get dark as I pulled in, once again, to the diner’s parking lot. I found a space directly in front of the diner under a parking lot light, force of habit when you own a car as valuable as this one.

  The flashlight was still underneath the seat of the car, and I only hoped the batteries were working. It had been several months since I had replaced them, and I had meant to do so after the night of the deluge. I flipped it on and sighed, half in relief, half in annoyance. The light was not strong, but would do.

  As I got out of the car, Maggie saw me through the diner’s windows and waved. Waving back, I opened the door to the eatery and stood in the doorway.

  “Maggie,” I said before the other woman could speak. “I have a short errand to run, and then I’m coming back in about fifteen minutes for some of that pie! I hope you’ve got some left.”

  “I’ll save a big piece just for you,” Maggie responded with a grin. Several patrons looked toward us and laughed. I did too, and ran out.

  As I hurried toward the marina, I wished I had taken the light windbreaker from the trunk of the car. Thinking of the trunk and picturing the receiver inside, I remembered to activate the camcorder again. I
pushed the on button and left it running in the pocket of my jeans. Even if I couldn’t visually record anything due to the lack of light, I could do a continuous narrative. I rounded the back of the restaurant directly off the water and a gust of cold wind hit me in the face. It was almost completely dark now.

  “Make this fast, Lee,” I murmured out loud. “It’s effing freezing out here.” I walked to the double doors. I located a small, unsoaped section of glass and aimed the flashlight inside the room starting from left to right. What I was looking for was a confined area large enough to hold ten to twenty people, unobtrusively. I shone the light around the large room, and I noticed the kitchen area, which was slightly to the left of center. This was the only place, I realized, that was an actual room inside the restaurant.

  As the building was half over water and stood on pilings, there was no basement. The restrooms were probably on the other side of the kitchen, near the entrance. It was difficult to see. The batteries were not putting out fully, and the light became diffused at about fifteen feet. On the floor near the entrance to the kitchen, a few shiny objects reflected the light. I strained my eyes and saw a couple of crushed Mountain Dew cans, just like the ones I saw in the white pickup truck. Then I noticed empty food cartons and two- or three-dozen wooden chopsticks strewn about the floor. Now I was pretty sure. All the while I kept a running narration of what I saw. I spoke softly, but loud enough for the camcorder to pick up the sound.

  I pulled out my phone and called San Francisco Information for the Police Department, Homicide Division. It cost me two dollars but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. The night had turned cold, and while I waited for someone to answer, I leaned into the doorway facing away from the wind as much as possible. After four rings, I heard a man’s voice.