by Susan Dunlap
But Frank and men; Frank gay? It seemed impossible. If he had been gay, he had been hiding in the back of his closet. Considering the growing gay population in the Russian River area, there would have been no advantage in pretending to be straight, and such deception would have created plenty of resentment in the gay world.
A sports car swerved around me. I was doing thirty-five. Obviously, I could think or I could drive, not both. I pushed down on the accelerator and turned the radio on, loud.
By the time I got to Henderson it was raining in earnest. I pulled up in front of Thompson’s grocery. The sidewalk was raised here, up two steps from the street. Puddles from the last few days of rain surrounded it. I jumped from the truck to a dry spot four feet from the curb and walked twenty feet along the road before I found a narrow enough stretch of water to leap over.
In Thompson’s I bought a can of beef stew (inability to cook was one of my business executive attributes that stuck with me) and a bottle of brandy. But as I made my way back to the pickup, I realized that even heating the stew was more than I felt like doing. I put the bag in the cab and walked across the street to the café.
I was not hungry when I was here for breakfast, but now I was starved. Perhaps fear burned calories. One of the café’s fine qualities was their menu—it offered all kinds of food at any time of the day. That, I believe, had been forced upon them by the sewer laborers who usually wanted what was normally considered dinner at seven in the morning. Now, at four-thirty, I ordered scrambled eggs, sausage, and sauerkraut.
I sat in the same secluded corner I was in this morning, propped a discarded newspaper in front of me to discourage conversation, and returned to thoughts of Frank. If he wasn’t killed because of his social life, then why? What had he been doing at the Place to necessitate someone killing him?
I pondered that till the eggs arrived, but I came up with no more reasonable speculation than that Frank was involved in drugs. When I suggested that to Sheriff Wescott, I was merely tossing out the first thing on my mind to distract him from me. But now, considering it, with a mouth full of sauerkraut, it made a good deal of sense. There were a lot of drugs in this area. Marijuana was the biggest cash crop in Humboldt County to the north, and Humboldt was a large county. Each autumn the authorities (combinations of local, state, and federal), surveyed the area from helicopters, sprayed paraquat, and burned fields. They watched the roads for suspicious vehicles heading toward San Francisco, Berkeley, and beyond to Los Angeles. But, as I smugly pointed out to Wescott, that was all for show. So many people were involved with marijuana in one way or another that any effort to eradicate it was useless.
Suppose Frank had been involved in dealing, maybe in a minor way, when he lived in San Francisco? Suppose he had a source north of here? Suppose he had found out that he could run a profitable way station at the Place—that suppliers could bring the weed there, either for Frank to distribute to smaller dealers in the area or in larger quantity to “tourists” from the city? Suppose Frank had gotten greedy, or one of his suppliers or customers did? That would make sense. Frank wouldn’t have had any qualms about dealing drugs, at least not recreational drugs. Marijuana was the most likely contraband because of the location, though, I supposed, he might have arranged for cocaine to be smuggled off a ship in the ocean and up the Russian River. I’d have to ask Chris about that possibility.
When I finished my eggs I felt better than I had all afternoon. Drugs made a lot of sense. And the people who had been involved in the drug scene, who had been in San Francisco, and who had access to boats, were Patsy and Paul Fernandez.
It was just after five. The rain was heavy now. As I crossed the bridge I looked over the railing to check the height of the river, but it was too dark to make out anything.
South Bank Road was lower than the bridge and I turned west onto it. Paul and Patsy’s canoe rental was half a mile away.
The road was dark. Houses and businesses were locked, with flood preparations made and the owners gone. The water had saturated lawns on either side of the road, and it wouldn’t be long before the road itself would be inundated.
The canoe rental was located in what once had been a large wooden barn. In summer the canoes were either at the dock or on the main floor there. Now they were suspended from the sloping roof like oblong chandeliers above the muddy dirt floor. The only dry area was the raised wooden platform behind the counter and the storeroom in the rear.
I pulled up by the storeroom door. The Fernandez’ old VW van was gone, which meant Patsy wasn’t home yet. She worked, in some clerical capacity, at Solano Construction, the company that was laying the sewer pipe. It wouldn’t be long till she arrived.
I knocked. “Paul?”
In a minute he opened the door.
“Oh, Vejay. Well, come in.”
I held out the paper bag (minus the beef stew). “I thought I might convince you guys to share some brandy.”
Paul smiled. “I’d say that was a safe guess. Come on in. Have a seat while I pour. Patsy shouldn’t be too long.” He was shouting. Music, heavy on drums and horns, came from speakers in opposite corners of the small room. Paul turned down the volume on his way to the sink.
The room resembled nothing so much as the back room at PG&E except that while the other was tan, this was boat gray. Like the PG&E room, these walls were covered with metal cases holding mysterious metal objects of odd shapes and unknown purposes, presumably canoe stuff. As a storeroom it might have been satisfactory, but as a home it was awful. And while Paul and Patsy had added a leather sofa, an oriental rug, the elaborate stereo, and a television, the effect did not convert the room into a home, but only cluttered the storage room.
Still, it was warm. Gargantuan space heaters occupied the two free corners, making the room more comfortable than any place I’d been in this month—certainly cozier than my house.
I took one of the filled brandy glasses from Paul and sat on the leather ottoman.
“What have you been up to?” he asked, settling on the sofa.
“I’ve been suspended from work and interviewed twice by the sheriff. How’s that for starters?”
“Suspended? How come?”
“My boss doesn’t believe I was sick yesterday.”
“Well, what business is that of his? You have sick leave, don’t you? What is he, a doctor or something?” Paul leaned forward, almost propelled off the sofa by his indignation.
I took a sip of my brandy, thinking that I liked Paul.
“Mr. Bobbs, my boss, feels it’s obvious to the community as a whole that I wasn’t sick, and he doesn’t want PG&E to look foolish.”
“What’s your union doing? They shouldn’t put up with that.”
“The union? I completely forgot about them. It just happened this afternoon. And then I charged down to the sheriff’s office.”
Paul pulled back the slightest bit. It was apparent that while being suspended from work was a very acceptable circumstance for a friend, going to the sheriff’s office of one’s own volition was definitely suspect.
“Sheriff Wescott told my boss that I’d had two drinks at Frank’s. I figured that was not the type of information he ought to be passing on. So I went to tell him that.”
“Chewed him out, huh? How’d he take that? I’ll bet they don’t get a lot of lip here, these sheriffs. Well, good for you. Told them where to get off, huh? Here, let me get you some more brandy.”
I hadn’t finished what I had, but I let Paul refill the glass. Which question should I ask Paul first? I wanted to take advantage of the glow of the brandy and the camaraderie we were sharing over my supposed tongue-lashing of the sheriff.
“It seems odd none of us ever saw each other in San Francisco,” I said as Paul settled back onto the sofa.
“Big place.”
“I suppose. Still, you get around. You lived in the Haight, didn’t you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What did you do there? I mean, you obviously did
n’t rent canoes.”
He laughed. “There were plenty of people high enough that I could have sold them canoes. If they’d had money. That was the problem. That’s always the problem. Just like it is here. Cash flow.”
I didn’t want to let Paul get onto his finances. “But what did you do there?”
“A little of this, a little of that.”
“Like delivering flyers?”
“Yeah, that and collecting. Collecting was a big thing. Activists, they called us, as if we were devoted to whatever cause it was. The only thing that interested us was the couple of bucks an hour. The people who cared about health centers and sea mammals were in the offices; they weren’t tramping door to door.”
“But how could you survive like that? I mean, surely that wasn’t steady work?”
“We weren’t living on Nob Hill! Patsy and me, we know how to make money stretch. We don’t live high.” He gestured toward the room.
I smiled. “Did you know Frank then?”
“Frank Goulet? No. There’s no way we would have been in the same circles as he was.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You just know to look at him. He never lived with six other people in a room. You can tell he always had his own clothes.”
I sipped my brandy to hide a smile. I’d never considered owning your own clothes a status symbol.
“Frank,” Paul continued, “had to have had money. I mean he bought Frank’s Place. You don’t do that without big bucks.”
“But you never saw him in the Haight, never heard about him dealing drugs?”
Another time, with less brandy, with someone who had not berated the sheriff, Paul might have become suspicious. But now he leaned back against the sofa and considered the possibility. “No. I’m sure I would have recognized him here if I’d seen him before. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t doing drugs there.”
“Do you know if he did any here?”
“You mean used, or dealt?”
“Either.”
He shrugged, pushed himself up, and headed for the bottle, giving me a questioning glance on the way. I shook my head.
“Everyone uses, don’t they? Do you know anyone who doesn’t at least smoke weed?”
He had his back to me, so I could ignore the question.
“But dealing? If he did, I didn’t hear about it. But Patsy knew Frank better than I did. You can ask her.”
It was nearly quarter to six. “Shouldn’t she be home soon?” I asked.
“Should be here now. Maybe she stopped at the store.”
We sat in silence, which seemed fine with Paul. He listened to the stereo and drank my brandy. I sat and sloshed the brandy around the glass.
“Are your canoes all up?” I asked.
“Every last one.”
“You haven’t had any stolen, or borrowed and returned, have you?”
“No.” He sat up, suspicious. “Why?”
“You remember Madge Oombs saying Frank’s killer could have come by river.”
“In my canoe!”
“No one else rents canoes on the river, do they?”
“No. I checked that before we took the lease here. I wasn’t going to deal with competition. You get too many guys doing the same thing and it can kill you.”
“So none of your canoes could have been missing? Would you be sure to know if they had been?”
“Every canoe here has its place. I check them each night and morning. People steal things. Kids try for free rides. I’m no fool. I keep good track of these canoes.” He swallowed the rest of his brandy and stood up.
As he passed the door, it opened and Patsy walked in.
“Is that brandy?” she asked. “I can sure use a glass. I’ve had a—”
Before she could finish her sentence Paul wrapped an arm around her shoulder and kissed her. When she emerged, she was looking toward me. She seemed surprised.
“Vejay, what are you doing here?”
“Just sharing some brandy.” Even in the rain she should have seen my pickup parked outside. “I’ve been here a while, as you can tell from the bottle. I thought you would be home sooner.”
“Well, I … paperwork. Sometimes you just don’t get it done. And nothing is so vital as paperwork. When you work part-time, they really raise a stink if everything’s not done.”
“Vejay got suspended,” Paul announced, handing Patsy a glass. “Then she went and chewed out the sheriff.”
I could see that these accomplishments were considerably less impressive to the sober listener. And even I didn’t have enough interest to recount them once more. I said, “We were just speculating about Frank. Maybe his death was somehow connected with drugs.”
When she didn’t say anything, I prompted, “What do you think?”
“I don’t know. Why would I know?”
“I thought you might have heard of Frank when you were living in San Francisco.”
“No.”
“Paul said you might know if he did any dealing here.”
She glared at Paul, then at me. “He didn’t. I wouldn’t know. I’ve had a rotten day and I’m in a rotten mood and this isn’t making it any better. I’m tired of people asking me about Frank. It’s really infuriating, for me and for Paul. Frank could have been selling land on the moon for all I know.”
“I just thought you might have heard something about him dealing marijuana. It wouldn’t be unknown for a bartender to deal drugs.”
“I left the drug scene in the city. I don’t know who deals what here. I just go to work and rent canoes.”
I stood to leave.
“And you know, Vejay,” Patsy added, “I don’t like all this pawing over Frank’s life. He’s dead. Don’t you care? Or are you just interested in seeing what kind of slime you can stir up?”
I started to answer, to defend myself, but I could see Patsy’s eyes brimming. So I kept my mouth shut, nodded to Paul, and slunk out.
It was well I had restrained myself from drinking more brandy. The parking lot outside Paul and Patsy’s was dark and wet; it would be hard to avoid its many potholes. Patsy’s van was about ten feet from me. She must indeed have had a rotten day to have overlooked my truck.
Had my questions been abrupt to the point of rudeness? Had the brandy and Paul’s unsuspicious responses smothered my usual caution? Or had I hit a raw spot?
I backed the truck slowly and pulled out of the parking lot, hitting only two potholes. South Bank Road was still above water, but one acacia leaned heavily and it was unlikely to survive another day.
I crossed the bridge and hit the red light at the end. I was still thinking of Patsy and Frank, and of Frank and drugs, as I came to the turn for my house. I hesitated, knowing from ample experience that the house, which would have been cold at five, would be icy now. There was not enough time before bed to get it anywhere near warm.
I turned left into town.
I might have had Skip Bollo in the back of my mind. I don’t know. But when I saw the light on in his real estate office, I stopped.
CHAPTER 8
HENDERSON REALTY WAS IN the center of a short block of shops and offices built within the last ten years and raised well above the street level. There was a double walkway: one sidewalk at the normal level by the street, and a wooden walk four feet above that. In front of each shop eight steps connected the two. The shops were shingled and tasteful without being too cute. Skip Bollo had had a hand in the building of the block. It should have been a good investment.
I climbed the steps, stood for a moment under the overhang, shaking the rain from my slicker, then walked in.
Skip Bollo was sitting behind the last of three desks. The office was carpeted in a caramel brown that, as I recalled from a psychology class, was a color that people instinctively connect with home and security. The walls were beige, the furniture solid and substantial, and the large potted plants green and healthy. It was the office of a man whom you’d trust.
“Hi, Ski
p,” I said.
He pushed his file drawer shut and stood up. “This is a surprise. Are you panicking and do you want to sell your house?”
“No. I saw your light on.” I walked back and sat in the seat next to his desk as he settled back in his chair. I could tell he wondered why I was here—a natural reaction, since I hadn’t been in this office after I’d bought my house from him—but he was too polite to ask.
Putting the papers in front of him in a folder, he said, “Your visit is a welcome excuse to interrupt work.” In spite of the hour and his being alone, he was still wearing a herringbone jacket. It fit well and looked comfortable. The gray of the fabric picked up the gray of his hair and accented his slate blue eyes. His skin was hardly wrinkled, his features chiseled. But his nose was what one first noticed. It was a cartoonlike bulb, too big for his face. Knowing Skip, this was not the nose he would have chosen for himself. But it was this appealing imperfection that made him seem immediately likable. Without it, he would have looked too precise, finicky, bordering on the homosexual stereotype. The nose, more than anything, may have been responsible for his success.
I didn’t know where to begin. All I could think of was Skip sitting with Madge Oombs at the restaurant on Route 101 yesterday morning, and I knew I didn’t want to start with that. I asked, “Has the sheriff talked to you about Frank’s death?”
“No. Should he have?”
“I suppose that does seem an odd question. Since he’s talked to me twice I just assume that he’s made the rounds of everyone in town. It’s not a good thing to be the last one to see a man alive.”
“Have they been bothering you?” He seemed truly concerned. It was the same feeling I’d had about him when he went through seven or eight houses with me before I decided on mine.
“Wescott isn’t hassling me. But he hasn’t ruled me out either. I’m just continually startled that he could suspect me at all.”