Free Draw (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 2)

by Shelley Singer

  “Yes,” I said agreeably. “I read Eric’s review. Quite a rave.”

  “Oh, yes. I was so pleased. And it’s so terribly pleasant that we’ve become great friends, as well as colleagues.”

  Rosie stifled a yawn. “Colleagues?”

  “Oh, Rosie, dear, have some more wine, please.” Carlota poured some for herself and passed the decanter to Rosie.

  Carlota continued to babble about her friendship with Eric. How much she admired him. How much he admired her work. How they often talked together about art. I wasn’t really listening. I was thinking about Andy and Bill, wondering what Rosie would learn.

  “…we’re developing something of a salon,” Carlota was saying. “Nona joins us when she’s at home. And not painting…”

  I also wondered whether Bill would join Andy at the fundraiser. Did he ever break his rule of no weekends away from the inn? If he actually had such a rule.

  Carlota was still talking about her mentor. I thought she must be pretending he was famous, and that she, as his friend, shared his glory. “…and he’s such a fine, sympathetic man. On that dreadful day, when I was so distressed, he brought me some lovely sherry. Our first real tête-à-tête…”

  And what if Rosie learned that Andy was not covered for the time of the murder? Had been off somewhere on his own? If we had that information by Sunday, when Andy would be conveniently in town, could I force the issue with him in some way?

  Rosie had asked something about the review. Her manners as a guest are always good. And Carlota babbled on. “Oh, yes, weeks and weeks ago. We spoke about it and he said he would try. But he couldn’t promise. It was only after he’d seen them, you see…”

  I would have to confront Andy with his presence in the area that weekend, and with Smith’s plans to testify against him. But I needed more. I needed evidence. A witness to say that Andy was seen in the canyon. Anything.

  Rosie and Carlota continued to chat while Nona watched them suspiciously. Carlota was obviously delighted with the attention Rosie was giving her. Nona was not. I shook myself out of my speculations about Andy and set myself to the task of being a good guest like Rosie.

  “Nona,” I said, “I’d love to see your studio. After dinner, maybe?” She pulled her watchful eyes away from the two women and muttered that she would be happy to show me everything except the work in progress. We finished the stroganoff and salad.

  “Carlota,” Nona said sharply, “would you mind getting the dessert?”

  “Of course, darling. Do excuse me, Rose.” She left the table.

  “Would anybody like more wine?” Nona asked. When we said we wouldn’t, she took the decanter across the room and tucked it away in the liquor cabinet. Then she did the same with the martini pitcher.

  Carlota returned with a bowl of fruit and a wedge of cheese centered carefully on a wooden board. She looked at the table, where the decanter had been, then her eyes shifted to the piano. After casting a slightly accusing look at Nona, she settled down to cutting an apple into very small pieces, all the while talking about the size of the audience she expected that night.

  Suddenly, she stood up. “It’s time to go. We must get there early— in time to greet people, you know.”

  “If we have a few minutes,” I said, “I’d like to see Nona’s studio.”

  She sent a tender look Nona’s way. “Do you mind doing that another time, darling?”

  Nona shook her head and smiled a resigned smile. “Of course not. We should go.”

  We took two cars, mine and Nona’s, and arrived at the film showing early enough to join the patrons in a glass of cheap champagne and late enough to make an entrance. Carlota swooped about greeting people, striking poses, and guzzling champagne until it was time for the show to start.

  We seated ourselves along with the two dozen other film fans, the lights went out, and the projectionist let the first film roll.

  It started with about ten seconds of blackness punctuated by the rhythmic flashing of a single very bright light. Then, suddenly, overexposed and backed up against a bank of ferns, there was Carlota.

  “A star is born,” Rosie whispered in my ear.

  The film blacked out again, and came to somewhere on the floor of the forest, looking up through the trees at the wispy fog. This was followed by a shaky tilting of the camera, so the trees were horizontal. Then they were upside down.

  Another blackout, and a car window view of a narrow road. Just the road. Then we were on Miller Avenue, watching the cars go by. That went on for a while and was followed by a shot of a rainbowed pool of water and gasoline and another one of a mud puddle with a fast-food hamburger wrapper half submerged.

  Still another blackout, and we were crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, its struts and cables quivering with the unsteadiness of Carlota’s camera. This was followed by a series of stills of the ocean and then another blackout. We were back in the woods again, staring at an underexposed fern.

  The title came at the end: Exposures, a film by Carlota Bowman. The audience applauded mildly.

  The projectionist had a little trouble getting the next film going. This one began with its title: Dance.

  We were back in the woods once again, looking at ferns. Then a pair of feet, female, I thought, with painted toenails, flitted through the foliage. A slightly different pair of feet followed, running and mashing fronds into the clay. Still another pair of feet came next, doing basically the same things the other feet had done.

  The feet, which were now a little muddy, continued to follow each other around for a while, tripping lightly, skipping, leaping, tippy-toeing. Then the camera backed up a little and we got to see the bodies that went with the feet. They were women, all right. Three of them. Holding hands. They were dressed in flowing robes, vaguely classical in style. No one I recognized. They spent the next fifteen minutes weaving in and out of the trees, wrapping sashes around each other, and getting their feet even dirtier. Then, with many silent exclamations, they discovered another woman lying on the ground and gathered around her. The film blacked out for a fraction of a second, and then the camera focused on the corpse, or sleeping woman, or whatever. It was Carlota. She opened her eyes and the film ended.

  There was, the projectionist announced, one more to go, after a brief intermission. We went back out to the champagne bottles. Rosie and I did not dare speak to each other. Carlota and Nona, thank God, were busy talking to a bearded man wearing a black turtleneck sweater and filthy jeans. The rest of the audience was standing around looking self-conscious. Their facial expressions said these were art films, and heaven knows they appreciated art, and wasn’t this all terribly interesting? I heard someone mention the review in the Journal, but I noticed that no one was talking much about the films.

  The intermission ended and we all trudged back to our seats.

  The last film was called Mirrors. It was an endless— twenty minutes? An hour? Three days?— study of objects reflected in mirrors. I recognized two of the mirrors that hung in Carlota’s living room. There was the one that hung near the French doors, reflecting one side of the living room, a window looking out onto the kitchen deck, and some of the steps leading up to the path above her house. I could even see a piece of my room across the path and under Charlie’s house.

  Then there was the one that hung near the grand piano. That reflected the piano, some of Nona’s artwork, and some of the hillside along the stairway.

  I stopped watching after the first ten minutes or so, and let my mind work on the problems of Andy and Bill and Howard Morton. And Bunny. I was going to have to cope with Bunny again.

  When the film finally ended, we drifted back out again to the reception table. There was no champagne left. Carlota was surrounded by a small circle of enthusiasts— Nona, two other women, and the bearded man. A few other people looked like they thought they should speak to the filmmaker and hovered around the outside of the circle looking confused, but most of the audience just walked slowly out the door. Ro
sie and I agreed that was the best course. We congratulated Carlota on the showing and said we had some errands to run that night.

  Then we escaped to a soda fountain in San Rafael. Rosie had a hot fudge sundae; I had a banana split.

  30

  At nine the next morning, Julia came and knocked on my door to tell me someone named Barbara was on the line.

  “She sounds pretty eager, Jake. What’s your secret?”

  “Wrinkles.”

  Bunny wanted to know why I’d kept her waiting so long. “What did you do,” she demanded, “shave first?”

  I explained that I wasn’t living near my telephone, gritted my teeth, and apologized.

  “Oh, that’s okay. No pressure. You ready to take me out?”

  “For lunch,” I said. “Just lunch. Can I pick you up at school?”

  “I’m not in school today.”

  I did a quick run-through of my mental calendar. “Is it a holiday?”

  “No. Just lunch, huh?” I could almost feel her shrug. “Well, maybe you’ll change your mind after lunch.”

  “I won’t change my mind.”

  “Meet me at the Casbah at twelve-thirty.”

  I thought she must be kidding. “You an old movie fan or something?”

  “Huh?” I gathered from that answer that she wasn’t. “It’s no movie, Samson, it’s a restaurant. On Throckmorton. It’s not far from the movie, though.”

  “See you there at twelve-thirty.”

  “Yeah, you will.”

  But I didn’t. I was there at 12:35 and she wasn’t. The Casbah was a pleasant and expensive looking place with dark gold plaster walls hung with Oriental carpets, a few wooden booths alongside the front window, a few tables in the center, and about half a dozen archways hung with beads along the left side. They did a good lunch trade.

  A slender dark man approached me. “Name?”

  “Samson.” Terrific, I thought, he’s going to tell me there’s an hour wait for lunch.

  “This way, Mr. Samson.” He led me to one of the beaded archways, pulled back the beads, and showed me into a cozy little hideaway, a platform with a low table and cushions for sitting.

  “Did I have a reservation?” He nodded solemnly.

  “And Miss Smith said she would be about fifteen minutes late. May I bring you a drink?” I glanced at the wine list. They had retsina.

  “Greek wine?” I asked.

  He smiled. “The owner’s wife is Greek. You will see from our menu that we are quite cosmopolitan here. Greek dishes, Arab dishes. We like to think of ourselves as Eastern Mediterranean. You would like a glass of retsina?”

  My love for retsina dates from my Chicago days. I’d gone through a belly-dancer period in my early twenties and I used to spend half my evenings hanging around the old Greek Town area. It’s a funny thing about retsina. If you don’t like it, you think it tastes like furniture oil with the furniture still in it. If you love it, as I do, it reminds you of the forest the resin came from. Unique, this resinous wine of Greece, like feta cheese and wrinkled black olives. When I drink it, I imagine myself sitting in a cafe overlooking the Aegean, dreaming out my days in useless philosophy.

  After a while, I stuck my head and arm through the beads and ordered another glass of wine. A few minutes later, Bunny arrived. She was playing a new role. Her hair looked a little less like Elvis Presley’s. She was wearing loosely fitted green velvet pants that stopped halfway down the calf, high-heeled boots, a fishnet shirt with something satiny under it, and a green velvet jacket, darker than the pants, with short embroidered sleeves. I wondered where she’d left her coat. The day was chilly for bare arms. She slid into the cubicle beside me, and moved in close.

  “Sit around on the other side of the table, Barbara,” I said.

  “Come on, Jake, no one can see us here.”

  “Just the patron saint of little children.”

  “You Catholic or something?” She snarled and moved to the other side of the table, nearly colliding with the waiter, who was bringing our menus. He did not ask her if she wanted something to drink. She asked for a Turkish coffee; I continued working on my second retsina. The menu was extensive for lunch. Since Artie was paying, I tried to keep the overhead down by ordering egg-lemon soup and a falafel sandwich with hummus. Bunny ordered the soup and stuffed grape leaves.

  “Two avgolemono, dolmades, falafel with hummus,” the waiter repeated, writing it all down very carefully while he gave Bunny several long looks. After he finished checking out Bunny, he gave me an approving leer, I guess for being tucked away in this little den with an adolescent. I glared back at him and he went away.

  “Okay, Barbara,” I said, all business. “Why don’t you tell me what you have to tell me?”

  “Before lunch?” she whined. “How do I know you won’t just take off and leave me here?”

  I sighed. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “You won’t because I’m not talking until we eat.”

  I surrendered. “Fine. How’s school?”

  She snorted. “You mean what am I studying and what do I want to be when I grow up? Jesus, Jake.”

  “Well, you must be interested in something.”

  “Lots of things. Right now, I’m interested in who you think killed my father.”

  I decided to shake her up a little. “Maybe your brother did it.”

  She laughed, but the laugh wasn’t real. “Billy? Don’t be stupid. He wouldn’t kill anyone. He’s real sweet.”

  “He had some good reasons for hating your father. I talked to him. He’s pretty angry about your father’s reaction to his being gay.”

  She screwed up her face, thinking hard. “He wouldn’t kill him for that.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” I said. “But your daddy was also trying to fuck up Andy’s life. Wouldn’t he kill him for that? Or maybe Andy would. What do you think? What do you know about Andy?”

  “I only met him once. He seemed real nice.”

  “Did you know what your father was planning to do before I asked you about it?”

  “Yeah. Billy told me.”

  “When?”

  “Well, right after he found out. We keep in touch.”

  The soup arrived. It was thick and yellow and it smelled wonderful. It tasted wonderful, too. Best I’d had since Chicago. Egg-lemon soup is not easy to make. The base is chicken broth, to which you add a mixture of egg and lemon. A chef once told me you beat the egg whites first, then add the yolks and beat some more, then you add the lemon juice very slowly, beating the hell out of the whole mess while you’re mixing the eggs and lemon. If you don’t do it that way, the lemon will curdle the egg. Anyway, it goes something like that. There’s rice in the soup, too.

  Bunny tasted hers. “This is weird.”

  “I thought you were a sophisticate, ordering stuffed grape leaves and everything. You mean you’ve never had avgolemono soup?”

  “Never had grape leaves, either. I just liked the way it sounded.” She plodded along with her soup-eating. I waited until my sandwich and her dolmades had arrived before I got back to picking her brain.

  “Okay, Barbara,” I said, “I seem to be pretty much committed to paying this check, now. You ready to let loose of some information?”

  She poked at one of the sauce-covered cylinders on her plate, unrolling a little of the grape leaf, cutting it off with her knife, and tasting it.

  “What’s this sauce?” she asked suspiciously. “Tastes like the soup.”

  “That’s because it’s egg-lemon sauce.”

  “Grody. And this really tastes like a leaf.” She hacked away at her food until the spiced meat stuffing was exposed. She liked that all right. Little savage. She picked up her Turkish coffee and slugged about half of it down. She liked that, too.

  The falafel sandwich was good, with the hunk of falafel, lettuce, and pieces of cherry tomato inside a pocket of pita bread along with the hummus, a kind of dip made of ground-up chickpeas and I don’t know wha
t else. The hummus seemed a little thin. Sure enough, three bites into it the stuff soaked through the bottom of the half-circle of pita and the whole mess dropped down into my plate. I went after it with my fork.

  “I’m waiting, Barbara. What do you know?”

  “Can I order one of those?” she asked, after she’d polished off those parts of her lunch she’d decided to eat.

  “Sure. After a little conversation.”

  “Oh, all right. What did you ask me?”

  “One of the things I’d like to know is how Bill knew what your father was planning to do. I can’t imagine one set of lawyers passing on that information to the other set of lawyers.”

  “You don’t understand my father at all. He wrote Billy a letter, telling him what he was going to do. He believed you could do all kinds of shitty things if you told people what you were doing. Kind of like warning them, you know? So he sent this letter saying he was going to help Andy’s ex-wife keep him away from the kid. He was going to do it by telling the judge that Andy was unfit and so was Bill.”

  “Let me get this straight. Andy’s ex-wife found out he was gay and started the custody fight. How did your father come into it?”

  Bunny sneered. “He saw this piece in the paper about how some gay people were trying to help Andy raise money for court. Bill’s name was in it. And Andy’s ex-wife, too. My father called her.”

  “So, what did your father know that she didn’t know?”

  “Nothing, as far as Bill could see from the letter. He just said he was going to testify that the guys were unstable or nuts or something and would screw in front of the kid. I mean he didn’t use those words.”

  “Is that true?”

  “Can I order one of those sandwiches now?” I hailed the waiter and ordered her falafel. “No, it’s not true, for Christ’s sake, Jake. Of course it’s not true.”

  “Your father was going to lie?”