The Dangerous Hour

by Marcia Muller

  “For a long time there was a guy hanging around here, Dan Jeffers. A leftover from the hippie years who went away in the seventies, came back in the mid-nineties. Guess he spent the best days of his life here, felt the place was home. Strange guy; you could tell he’d done—was still doing—way too many drugs. Not a bad guy, though, and I felt sorry for him. He had a permanent place to crash—Novato, or maybe up in Los Alegres—and he’d disappear for months at a time. But every once in a while he’d show up here, asking if he could trade grunt labor for staying in one of the cold rooms off the old dairy barn, and I’d let him. Shouldn’t’ve—insurance—but the boss didn’t need to know, and Dan never caused any trouble. The thing I’m getting to is that Dan was staying in the cold room the week before Scott Wagner died, but as soon as I found the body, he disappeared, and I haven’t seen him since. Makes you wonder.”

  “About what?”

  “Well, maybe he saw something that scared him off.”

  “Are you saying you don’t think Wagner’s death was an accident?”

  Rios’s lips tightened, and he gunned the Jeep up the dirt trail. “I’m not sayin’ anything. Just wonderin’, is all.”

  He drove swiftly, past an old wooden horse barn topped by a cupola and a grouping of small white buildings—once a blacksmith’s shed and housing for ranch workers, he explained—that clustered around a declivity dominated by one of the largest bay laurel trees I’d ever seen. “Down that road to the right,” he added, “is today’s staff housing.”

  I looked the way he pointed, saw a collection of mobile homes about a quarter mile down a second dirt track that led toward the freeway. Beyond it Rios slowed, moving off into the high grass to avoid a dip in the trail and motioning at a dilapidated corrugated-iron structure to our left. “The old dairy barn where I let Dan Jeffers stay.”

  The trail narrowed, became rutted, and began rising, oak and bay laurel and madrone crowding in. We crossed a bridge over a stream, rounded a curve, and came to a large clearing where several rustic bark-and-reed huts stood.

  “Miwok village,” Rios said. “Tribal members are building it, preserving the old ways, trying to show how their people lived. Miwoks’ve been on this land since six thousand BC. The name Olompali means ‘kitchen rock,’ from the boulders they used for fixing their food. But the village project is stalled now. Old story for the Indians—no money. But you ought to know all about that. At least, you look Indian.”

  “I am—Shoshone.” It still seemed strange to lay claim to my heritage; until I’d learned I was adopted, and located my birth parents, I’d thought I was Scotch-Irish with one-eighth Shoshone blood—my appearance the result of a recessive gene inherited from my great-grandmother. And Rios was right: “no money” was an old story for all the native people; my birth father, artist Elwood Farmer, donated his own time and funds to teaching in and providing supplies for the underfunded reservation schools of western Montana.

  The trail became narrower, deeply rutted now. Rios downshifted, steered around the worst dips.

  I said, “This Dan Jeffers, what d’you know about him? Where did he come from? What did he do for a living?”

  “I think he came from someplace north. Mendocino County, maybe. One time, while he was helping me prune what’s left of old man Burdell’s orange trees, he mentioned his hometown was where the Citrus Fair is held. As to what he did for a living, I doubt it was much. He might’ve picked up other odd jobs. Sometimes he collected recyclables from our trash barrels, redeemed them for cash. Maybe he got government disability money—a lot of those burned-out druggies do. He had a car, at least, even if it was a clunker.”

  “What kind of car?”

  “Old VW van. Real leftover hippie vehicle. Wonder it ran at all.”

  “What color?”

  “Some tan, mostly rust.”

  “You recall the license plate number?”

  “With my memory, I’m lucky I recall Dan.” He pulled off to the side of the trail under another giant bay laurel, whose twisted trunk must have been six feet in diameter.

  “You know,” he said, “there might still be some of Dan’s stuff in the cold room off the dairy barn. After I show you the place where I found Scott Wagner’s body, we’ll go there.”

  Rios led me through thick underbrush, along a deer track that angled away from the trail for some fifty yards until it came to the edge of a ravine. The drop wasn’t too steep on this side—some five gradually sloping feet—but on the other, sheer rock rose sharply toward the treetops.

  “Stream’s dried up now,” he said, “but last month it was still running pretty good. The cops said if Scott hadn’t died from the injuries caused by his fall, he might’ve drowned before he regained consciousness.”

  I let my gaze travel to the tangled vegetation at the top of the rocks. “What’s up there?”

  “Grassland. There’s an old stone wall at the top. Wagner probably left the trail at the bridge below the Miwok village, climbed up to the wall to take in the view. At this point you can see north to Mount Saint Helena, south to Mount Tamalpais.”

  “But why did he come here to cross the stream? He must’ve known it wasn’t possible.”

  Rios shrugged. “Probably he was looking down at the water, lost his balance. Soil at the top was disturbed, like he’d loosened some rocks and slipped. You seen enough?”

  “Yes.”

  We went back to the Jeep, and Rios made a U-turn. I gripped the sides of the seat, trying to cushion myself against the roughness of the ride. At the old dairy barn, he brought the vehicle to a stop.

  The barn was open on one side, its interior dark, with small shafts of light penetrating where the iron roof had rusted through. When we approached, noises came from the far reaches as mice or rats scurried for cover, and a gecko ran across our path. Rios raised a flashlight he’d brought from the Jeep and shone it around inside. An old tractor, oil drums, tools, buckets, stacked lumber, cabinets, and doors.

  “It’s a hold-all for equipment and other stuff that nobody wants,” he said. “You got someplace this big, you can shove junk in here and forget about it. Back this way are the cold rooms where Dan used to sleep.”

  A thick-walled concrete building with high, boarded windows and missing doors stood toward the rear of the barn. Rios led me there and motioned me inside. The first room felt cool and damp and smelled musty, and contained nothing but mouse droppings. I crossed the cracked concrete floor and peered through a second door, saw sheets of warped plywood leaning against the wall, a rusted metal desk beside them. A rolled sleeping bag and a backpack were propped in one corner, and a scattering of Budweiser cans and cigarette butts lay on the floor.

  I went over and examined the sleeping bag. It was worn but of fairly good quality, and nothing was rolled inside it. The backpack was equally worn and held a couple of changes of clothing. In a side pocket was an empty prescription drug vial. I took it out, held it up to the light. The label was made out to Dan Jeffers, for the painkiller Vicodin, and had been filled at a pharmacy in Los Alegres, the next town north on the Highway 101 corridor. There was one refill left.

  “Okay if I take this?” I asked Rios.

  He shrugged. “Don’t see why not.”

  “Thanks.” I stood, slipping it into my purse. We left through a second door that led from the rear room and down a short flight of steps. Minutes later Rios had me back at my car. As he drove off, I waved and called out my thanks for the tour.

  Back in my car, I paused to contemplate the possibility that I might be going off on a tangent, making more of Scott Wagner’s death than the circumstances warranted. Still, Ray Rios’s thinly veiled suspicions and the leftover hippie who had gone missing as soon as Rios discovered Wagner’s body intrigued me. And I was very close to Los Alegres.

  Before I started north, I called the office. “Did Craig go to Southern California?” I asked Ted.

  “Yes, last night. He called in this morning, said he probably wouldn’t be back
till tomorrow. You can reach him on his cell.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Mother One called.” After some confusion over phone messages, Ted had taken to differentiating between my adoptive and birth mothers as One and Two. “She asked me why you didn’t reply to the message she left on your home machine last night.”

  “And you’re supposed to have the answer to that?”

  “Maybe she suspects I’m omniscient. Why didn’t you reply?”

  “I worked late, and by the time I got home I was in no mood to— Why am I telling you this, if you’re so all-knowing?”

  Ted laughed. “Getting people to tell me things is how I acquire my vast stores of knowledge. Anyway, she wanted to remind you not to forget your brother John’s birthday on Thursday.”

  “What’s wrong with her? I never forget his birthday.”

  Ted didn’t respond. Both he and I knew exactly what her problem was: ever since my other brother, Joey, committed suicide last year, grief had made Ma cling tightly to her surviving children. I said, “If she calls again, tell her I haven’t forgotten and I’ll get back to her tonight. Is that it?”

  “Jules came in. She’s sitting at her desk, staring at her monitor, but I can tell nothing’s happening there. She won’t talk to any of us except for little grunts and mumbles.”

  “At least she came in. We’ll just have to give her some space for a while. Will you buzz Mick for me, please?”

  “Computer Forensics Department, Ford speaking,” a smooth voice said.

  “Derek?”

  “Yes. How may I help you?”

  “It’s Sharon. You sound . . . very formal.”

  A silence. “Let me turn you over to Mick.”

  “Yo, Shar.”

  “What’s going on? Derek sounds like an SBC online technician.”

  “And how does one of them sound?”

  “Robotic and insincere.”

  Mick repeated the phrase, and in the background I heard Derek laugh. “Okay, I agree it’s too much,” my nephew said. “But we’re kind of trying to define our persona.”

  “Your . . . persona?”

  “The face we want to present to the public.”

  “Why does it have to be different from the one you’ve been presenting all along?”

  “Well, the clients that this department’s aiming at are somewhat different from the agency’s as a whole.”

  “Oh? How?”

  “For one thing, they’re more corporate. Upscale. We need an image that will give them confidence in us.”

  An image. God help me!

  I said, “I don’t have time for this discussion, Mick.” Although you can be sure there will be a discussion—soon. I added, “Right now I need you to pull up some information for me.”

  “Sure. What?” He was all business now—the “image” I liked agency employees to project.

  “The Citrus Fair. Where is it held?”

  “I can tell you off the top of my head. Last year Sweet Charlotte and I did the festival circuit—Gilroy for garlic, Sebastopol for apples. You know.”

  I knew. California has more gala celebrations involving food than anywhere else on earth, and sometimes I worry about a population that so worships what it puts into its collective mouth. The absolutely worst example of such events is the now-defunct Slug Fest in the Russian River town of Guerneville, during which chefs vied to create the best dishes containing the huge, slimy banana slug. “So the Citrus Fair is held at . . . ?”

  “Cloverdale. Northern Sonoma County. Every February since the late 1800s. But get this: there hasn’t been enough citrus grown in that area to create the fair’s displays in decades. So where d’you think they get it?”

  “Southern California?”

  “Nope. Florida!”

  Yes, the world had gone quite insane.

  I asked Mick to begin a search for people in Cloverdale with the surname Jeffers and get back to me with the information. Then I ended the call and set off for Los Alegres.

  I’d learned to fly at the small airport on the eastern side of the old-fashioned river town, so I knew the central district and had no difficulty locating ABC Drugs, next to the municipal parking structure two blocks off Main Street. I left my car in the structure and went into a store that was a cross between this century’s drugstore and last century’s five-and-dime. Aisles of utilitarian merchandise—over-the-counter medicines, personal care items, household cleaning products, school supplies, greeting cards, and wrapping paper—alternated with what my half-Jewish, half-black friend Adah Joslyn calls “tchotchkes”: ornate figurines, potpourri, American flag doormats, whimsical windchimes, T-shirts imprinted with cutesy sayings (“Ex-lovers Make Great Speedbumps!”), Beanie Babies and teddy bears, scented candles, a bank shaped like a toilet that made flushing noises when coins were deposited. Looking at the assortment, I wondered not so much why anyone would buy it as why it had been manufactured in the first place.

  Finally, at the rear of the store, I found the pharmacy. A basket full of fuzzy toys called “Mr. Love Weasel” sat next to a rack of literature on rheumatoid arthritis. I picked one up, saw a heart-shaped patch on its underside that read “Squeeze Me,” and fulfilled its wish. The thing giggled and writhed in my hand as if we were engaged in foreplay. I dropped it, looked around to see if anyone was watching me.

  Not the pudgy young man who lounged behind the counter. He was moving his lips as he read an issue of Playboy. When I said, “Excuse me,” he took his time before setting the magazine down and coming over to wait on me. Not too bright or ambitious, and just as well. Such an individual wouldn’t be inclined to question the scenario I’d constructed on the way up here.

  I took the prescription vial from my purse and laid it on the counter. “My friend Dan asked me to bring this in to be refilled. You deliver, don’t you?” I’d seen a van with the drugstore’s name parked outside.

  “Uh, yeah, but there’s a charge.”

  “That’s okay. Dan’s in too much pain to come in for it, and I can’t wait till it’s filled. He doesn’t remember if he’s picked up any prescriptions since he moved, so he asked me to check to see if you have the right address.”

  The clerk sighed and reached under the counter, bringing out a looseleaf binder. He squinted at the name on the vial, flipped pages, ran his index finger down one. “Dan Jeffers, one-oh-three Rose Court. That it?”

  “Yes. When can he expect delivery?”

  He sighed again. “I guess we can have it to him by five this afternoon.”

  The young man obviously had a wonderful future in the workforce.

  I located Rose Court on a city map I bought at the drugstore. It was a short block off Fifth Street, only a few blocks away. Most of the small frame houses were well cared for, their postage-stamp yards neatly groomed, but number 103 was an unpainted wreck with a sagging porch and cardboard taped over broken windows. A pair of rusted patio chairs, their webwork trailing, stood beside a deflated kiddie pool in the weedy front yard.

  I went up on the porch, where an old sofa was piled with mildewed cardboard cartons, and rang the bell. After a second ring, a sallow, gaunt woman in a bathrobe answered. She clutched the robe tightly at her throat, her other arm folded over her midriff, as if she was in pain.

  “Danny?” she said when I asked for Jeffers. “I haven’t seen him in a month or more, but I’ve been in the hospital, so that doesn’t mean anything. Did you try out back?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “The studio, that’s his. This place belongs to his mother. I rent it from her; she’s in a rest home now, and Danny has the use of the studio.”

  “You pay your rent to him?”

  “No.” Her mouth twitched, and her knuckles whitened as she twisted the robe’s fabric. “Management company handles the house. Danny, he’s . . . well, you must know. Look, I’ve got to lie down now. I’m always lying down, goddamn it. Studio’s at the end of the path to the right of the house. If Danny’s t
here, tell him to stop in some time.”

  The cracked concrete path led to the back of the deep lot. There, under a gnarled pepper tree whose heavy limbs rested on its roof, stood a small brown-shingled structure with a Dutch door; the upper half of the door was slightly ajar. I called out for Jeffers twice before nudging it open.

  The interior was one tiny room whose only light came from narrow windows to either side; a door at the rear opened onto an even tinier bathroom. A makeshift loft—plywood, supported by metal braces and thick wire—hung from the rafters, blankets and sheets drooping over its edges. The space below was in chaos: clothing heaped on the floor; take-out cartons and beer cans littering a low table; magazines and newspapers strewn on a rumpled futon-style couch. The walls were decorated with curling and torn Grateful Dead posters; the floor was covered in a dirty grass-cloth mat; a lava lamp on the table was cracked, liquid pooled beside it.

  I turned the knob on the lower half of the door and stepped inside. The air was stale, the heat intense. I moved around the room, examining its contents; on the couch, beneath a June 17 issue of the Chronicle, I found an ashtray full of cigarette butts and marijuana roaches. I pawed through the rest of the newspapers, but they all predated that edition.

  The bathroom was in the same state of disarray as the main room, towels crumpled on the floor, the fixtures filthy. In the medicine chest, prescription vials were jumbled together. I read their labels: various painkillers, sleep aids, a sample kit of Zoloft—an antidepressant that I’d seen advertised on TV. An empty fifth of an off-brand bourbon stood atop the toilet tank.

  As I searched, I grew cold in spite of the trapped heat. Then my vision blurred, and I felt a curious dissociation from my surroundings. I grasped the door frame, cradled my forehead in the crook of my elbow.

  Jesus, it’s just like Joey’s wretched trailer in Anchor Bay. The last place he lived before he moved to Humboldt County and killed himself. . . .

  After a moment the feeling passed, and I went back to the main room. I warned myself I shouldn’t draw parallels between my brother and Dan Jeffers, but there was a sense of déjà vu about the situation: I’d gone to Joey’s trailer, found out how bad his life was, and then heard that he’d ended it. Now I’d gone to Dan Jeffers’s last known address, found out how bad his life was, and . . .