by Susan Dunlap
Her whole body seemed to tighten, but I couldn’t tell whether the reaction was surprise or fear, whether she was alarmed at Leila’s disappearance or my discovery of it, or Chris’s having been arrested.
In the main room, a skylight banged against its frame.
“Why Chris?” she asked.
“Edwina found a treaty from the eighteen-fifties giving the Pomo Indians a rancheria. It extended across the river.”
Her long narrow face scrunched in from the sides. It was clear that she understood the implications Chris had explained to me. She nodded slowly, deliberately, as if checking off the various effects of the treaty.
I said, “He told me it could endanger the entire fleet.”
The skylight banged. She barely reacted. She looked like she was trying to restrain her urgency. But something, some intention I couldn’t make out, or perhaps pent-up anger, pushed her on. “Maybe that’s what that fleet needs,” she said bitterly. “Cowboys, these men riding out to sea in their little boats. Half of those boats are so old they shouldn’t be floating around the inlet, much less out at sea where the waves can be fifteen, twenty feet high, coming three directions at once, and the weather can change from sun to fog so fast you can’t even check which direction shore is.”
I wanted to keep her talking, not considering the advantages of disposing of Leila and me together. “They take care of their boats. I’ve seen them at the docks.”
“They do what they can. But they can only do so much. They can’t make fifty-year-old planks new. They can’t stretch a twenty-six-foot Monterey into forty feet. And nothing they do will change the fact that every year one or two, and some years eight or ten fishermen, will be washed overboard. Do you know what happens then?” She glared at me. The gun rested in her rigid fingers.
“They drown?” Could I surprise her and knock that gun out of those stiff fingers?
“Oh, a few are saved,” she went on, “if they happen to be lucky enough to be fishing near a friend, or sensible enough to keep their radios going. A few. Most of them drown. But they don’t just fall into the water and die and have the waves carry their bodies to shore. Sometimes it’s weeks before their bodies are found. They wash up miles down the shore.”
The gun barrel had dropped a little; it pointed at my stomach. “Is that what happened to your father?”
“Oh, no. His body didn’t wash in at Bodega Bay or Point Reyes. We waited, my mother and I. At first we hoped he’d been picked up by some boat heading north or south, that we’d hear from him any moment. Then, slowly, we realized that we wouldn’t hear at all. Then we waited, dreading the time when we’d get a call to come look at some body so bloated that we wouldn’t be able to say for sure it was him.”
At the far side of the desk, the phone was out of reach. I had seen the cord lying behind it—it would reach across the room. “And?” I said.
“Even that didn’t happen. His body never turned up. A lot of bodies don’t. The currents sweep them out to sea. Maybe they sink to bottom. Maybe the crabs eat them.” She shivered in the unheated room. “We’ll never know what happened to him. But I’ll tell you what it did to us. He was a fisherman—macho. He didn’t want his wife working. My mother had never worked. And when he died, we didn’t have any money. We didn’t have any boat. All we had was the bank wanting their money for the payment on the house and the truck.”
“Didn’t he have insurance?”
She laughed, bitterly. “Without a body the insurance company doesn’t have to admit he’s dead. And they don’t. They don’t pay a cent until seven years go by and you can get a court to declare him legally dead. By that time, the house was gone, and it had been so long since we’d had a truck that we’d forgotten what it was to leave town.”
I shifted nearer the phone. My water-logged sweater hung heavy on my shoulders. The smell of wet wool battled the stench of fish and chemicals.
“And you think I was spending those years screwing around with little Leila Katz?” she said.
“You were her babysitter.”
“She was a child, for Christ’s sake.”
“She trusted you then. She trusted you later.”
“I never touched her.” Her face was red.
“You were just home for the summer then, a college student, full of new ideas, exciting experiences.”
Angelina laughed. The gun shook. “So you assume I went off to seduce women at San Francisco State or U.C.L.A.? Off to the wild life? I’ll tell you where I went when I got out of high school. I’ll tell you how much I hated the macho way this town was, how much I hated my life here. I went to a convent.”
“A convent!”
For the first time, she gave me a smile with a flicker of pleasure in it, as if she was comforted by the fact that I could see the ludicrousness of that move. “I stayed two years. Long enough to get college credits to transfer to Sonoma State. Long enough to try for loans and scholarships, and plenty long enough to see that I’d jumped from one form of slavery to another. But don’t misunderstand me, when I went there I was sure I’d be in that convent till I died.” She adjusted her grip on the gun. “And when I got out of there, I worked like the devil to prepare myself for something like this, this fish ranch.”
I shifted my feet again. The phone was still out of reach. “So,” I said, “if the Pomos were to string gillnets across the river and trap every steelhead and salmon in the Russian River, it wouldn’t bother you?”
She shrugged. “Hardly. They can catch everything that moves upstream.”
“What about government control of the fish in the ocean?”
“You’re thinking of the Boldt Decision?”
I nodded.
“If that happens, I’ll have records of how many smolts I sent down my chute. If I had to go to court, I’d get my share.”
I stood, then sat back full against the desk. One more move and I’d be able to reach the phone. “Still, it’s hardly advantageous to have your fish caught by someone else, even by the fleet.”
She sighed, the sigh of a businesswoman at the end of a long, fruitless meeting. “There’ll be plenty of fish to go around. If every smolt I send out were to come back up my chute, this building wouldn’t be able to hold them.”
I hadn’t believed her when she told me about the disease of the fish fry, but I couldn’t zero in on why. I stared past her into the empty room. “You start with the fertilized eggs, right?”
“We fertilize them here.”
“Then where do they go?”
“In trough incubators.”
“How big are those incubators?”
“About four foot square. Look, why are—”
“Well, where are those incubators? You just flushed all your fish fry and suddenly you don’t have any equipment either? Where are they?”
Her hand tightened on the gun. “Outside.” But her voice had lost its authority.
“Outside?” The pile of crates by the fence. “Why would you take them outside?”
“To disinfect them.”
“With the river this high? Come on, you couldn’t find more germs and bacteria and just plain mud than you’ll get if it washes up here.”
From the distance came a whine.
“What are you using this place for?” I demanded. “What have you emptied it out for?”
The whine outside was louder, clearer—a sheriff’s car. I had worried about the guard. No wonder he wasn’t here. I’d thought I was keeping Angelina talking. I wasn’t making her talk; she was holding me for the sheriff. Lunging to my right, I grabbed the phone and slammed it down on the gun. Angelina screamed. The gun hit the floor. It didn’t go off.
She grabbed her hand in pain. I fell to my knees and scooped up the gun. It was cold, heavy. I put my finger over the trigger, hoping it wouldn’t release easily.
“Where’s Leila Katz?” I demanded.
“What?”
I didn’t have time for that. “Open the lab.”
“I
t’s not locked.”
I ran past her, past the doors to the dock, and pushed open the lab door. The room was empty.
The siren shrieked, then died. The sheriff’s car would be stopped at the gate. I pushed open the doors to the dock. There was nothing behind them.
I ran back to Angelina. “Turn off the electrical system.”
She laughed. “You’re not going to shoot me. Not with the sheriff right outside.”
“You’re right. But if you let the sheriff get me, I’ll make sure everyone in the Russian River area knows this building is empty. I’ll call the Bodega Bay Sentinel, The Paper, and the Russian River News. I’ll tell them your fish died.”
She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.
“Come on,” I said. “Either you get me over that fence, or when salmon season starts Monday, the fishermen will be laughing so hard they won’t be able to get to their boats.”
She reached for a switch. The room went dark. I followed her to the outer door and across the yard behind the cluster of overturned incubator boxes. She slapped her hand on the deadened electric wires. I climbed on a box. As I jumped down outside the fence, I could see the sheriff’s headlights come around the building.
CHAPTER 20
I TOOK OFF MY yellow slicker and stuffed it up under my sweater. The wind stung my skin. The rain splattered on the soaked wool. But my sweater and jeans were dark. I wouldn’t make the same target I’d have in the slicker. The gun was like concrete; I shifted it to my left hand.
The fish ranch complex was surrounded by the electrified fence and a four-foot-deep ditch. Keeping down, I ran along the ditch, behind the fence to the corner that would lead back to the guardhouse. I kept straight on, forcing my wet, cold-tightened legs to push harder, sinking with each step in the sodden ground, racing for the bridge, crossing it, hurrying along the road, no longer at a run, up the hill to Jenner.
It was an even bet whether Angelina had had second thoughts and told the sheriff I had forced her to turn off the power and help me escape.
But the sheriff wasn’t at my truck, and once I got inside and started the engine—thankful once more for the snap pockets of my slicker that protected the keys—I realized that the person who had answered the call at the fish ranch was probably a deputy. Even if Angelina had told him who the intruder was, he wouldn’t know what my truck looked like. Not yet.
The other thing I realized was that I couldn’t go home. Even though I was shivering, every garment I had on was dripping, the cab of the truck reeked with the smell of wet wool, and there was nothing in all of life I would have traded for an hour in the tub, I couldn’t go home. If the sheriff was looking for me, that’s where he would look.
But spending the night in my truck was out. I couldn’t keep the engine idling all night, and in an unheated truck I would have pneumonia by sunrise. Where could I go?
It was not quite ten o’clock—a long time till morning. Could I go to Rosa’s house? No, too obvious. Besides, half the town would still be there, including officer Joey Gummo. A motel? Hardly, if I needed anonymity. A friend’s? The sheriff knew my close friends, the people I could drop in on soaking wet late on a Saturday night. I shivered. Even though all the windows were closed, drafts of air chilled my skin.
I turned the truck around and headed down the hill, past the fish ranch. Through the rain, I could see the yellow dots of the fence lights, but if the deputy’s car was still there, its headlights were off. The road was empty. I pressed harder on the gas and turned right toward the fishing village of Bodega Bay. As I crested the hill, the Pacific wind bounced the truck onto the white line. I yanked the wheel at each curve, waiting for the tires to grab on the slick macadam. The three-building shopping area—more a convenience for fishermen and tourists than a town hangout—was coming up on my right. There was a space in front of the Laundromat. I pulled in.
The Laundromat was empty. Clearly no one else in Bodega Bay had so pressing a need to be either clean or dry that they had been lured out on a cold, stormy night like this. Locking the gun in the glove compartment, I wriggled out of my clothes, and into my slicker, and hurried into the Laundromat, sopping garments in hand.
It was marvelously hot and steamy. The smell of soap and bleach filled the air. Bursts of laughter and shouting came from the bar next door. Three men—merchant seamen from the looks of them—made their way past the Laundromat to the bar.
I opened the dryer door, jammed my clothes in, and clunked a quarter in the slot. Then, naked under my slicker, I walked to the back of the Laundromat where the candy machine was, bought a Baby Ruth, and sat down.
I had suspected that Angelina was hiding Leila Katz at the fish ranch. But the fish ranch held neither what should have been there—fish—nor what shouldn’t have been there—Leila. When I read the meter there Thursday, the fish incubators had not been in the yard. So the fish had been disposed of since then. Could the fish have died, as Angelina insisted?
Outside, two more seamen raced through the rain to the bar.
Maybe the fish had died. I had heard that ranched fish were neither as hardy nor as intelligent as wild fish. There was a tale of ranched fish that were raised for a year or so in cement channels like the ones Angelina had, then turned loose into a river that emptied into the ocean. Instead of swimming to the ocean to mature, the ranched fish had swum upstream, decimating the younger, smaller wild fish that were headed to the ocean. There was a lot of skepticism about fish ranching. If Angelina’s fish had succumbed to IHN, every fisherman along the Russian River would be laughing. No wonder Angelina would be angry and frustrated. No wonder she’d toss those useless empty incubators outside. No wonder she’d go to extremes to keep me quiet.
Still, as an explanation for Angelina’s decision to help me escape from the sheriff, it seemed weak. But if I didn’t accept that, what reason was there for Angelina to toss out fish, stack her equipment in the yard and leave the building empty—and then be panicked when I discovered it?
If I hadn’t suspected Angelina of being Leila’s lover, would I have found the situation at the fish ranch so odd? Considering her vehement denial of that accusation, could I really be sure she was Leila’s lover? What was it Maxie Dawkins had said? “She surprised everyone when she married—don’t know why she bothered.” Was everyone surprised because she was a lesbian? But if she was, Rosa didn’t know about it. And that meant most people didn’t know. So that wasn’t the reason for surprise. “Don’t know why she bothered,” Maxie had added. Of course! She was already living with her husband! That had to be it. And that, everyone would have known. Everyone but her boss, the very conservative James Drayton. Had Edwina threatened to tell him? If Angelina had been Leila’s lover, perhaps for her it was a collegiate fling, or a rebellion against her years in the convent. But for Leila, the affair would have been the beginning of a new way of life. Then, Angelina’s living with a man and her subsequent marriage would have made Edwina all the more outraged.
I put another quarter in the dryer, choosing not to examine my sweater. Skintight and dry had to be better than loose and sopping.
Still, I had no proof Angelina was Bear. If she wasn’t, then who was? Maybe it was someone who didn’t even live in town anymore. Maybe the affair had nothing to do with Edwina’s murder.
But even if Edwina’s murder had no relation to Leila’s lover, I couldn’t believe it wasn’t connected to the treaty, the fake treaty. Who would go to the trouble of acquiring a fake treaty? And why? Anyone who had been to a historical society lecture knew how enthused Edwina must have been about her “discovery.” Anyone familiar with her numerous attempts to call news conferences to present the most minor historical findings wouldn’t doubt that she would have gotten television coverage for the announcement of the treaty. She had told the society members that if she ever discovered a treaty she would race off to Sacramento as soon as she had finished the announcement and present her find to the big shots there. Anyone would have known that b
y the time they declared the treaty false, Edwina would have created enough fanfare to make her humiliation overwhelming.
Who hated Edwina that much? With a warm flow of relief, I realized that one person who could be eliminated was Chris Fortimiglio. He didn’t hate Edwina; he merely considered her an irascible eccentric. And as for the treaty, Chris wasn’t interested in the historical society or the possibility of treaties. He could have read in the paper about Edwina’s plans for the treaty she always dreamed of, but I doubted he had.
That left those who had been to Edwina’s lectures—Leila, Curry Cunningham, Bert Lucci, Hooper, and maybe even Father Calloway. But of the five, who hated Edwina enough to contact her niece and convince her to be party to the scam, or to arrange to have phony letters sent from Washington in her name? It was the type of plan that could only be sustained by someone who enjoyed each escalation, who made it a point to be near Edwina and watch each reaction with carefully concealed triumph. Who?
The dryer clunked to a stop. I pulled the door open and grabbed my clothes. The sweater was still damp, but it was also two sizes smaller. One more turn in the dryer and it would have fit only a doll. I carried the clothes back to my truck and wriggled into them.
I reached for the key to start the truck, then hesitated. No one with the possible exception of Leila had a motive for the elaborate deception of the false treaty. No one, except Leila’s lover. A desire for revenge would be ample reason. But now I had even less idea who Bear might be than I had had before. Leila was the only one who knew. I felt more certain than ever that she was in danger, but now I had no idea where to look for her.
Suddenly I realized what I needed most right now was a shot of brandy. And for once, in a day when no one had been where I looked for them and nothing had worked out, I was dealing with a need I could fill. I grabbed my purse and headed for the bar next to the Laundromat.
The Seaside Shanty was a shabby rectangular room, with a fish net and a couple of dusty seashells on one wall, a hodgepodge of tables and chairs, and the bar at the other side. As soon as I stepped in, the lay of the land was clear. Tonight’s clientele was divided into two groups: fishermen and merchant seamen. I recognized guys from the fishing fleet leaning back precariously on chairs grouped loosely around tables in the rear. Rindo Mercatti, who was as close to what could be taken for a leader of such an independent group, was complaining about the storm outside. “How many days is it going to cut off salmon season?” he demanded of his cohorts. “And do you think Fish and Game is going to say, ‘Oh, those hardworking fishermen have missed a week, let us, gentlemen, prolong the season’?” He was greeted by a mixture of laughter and grunts, and a few more personal characterizations of the biologists at the Fish and Game Department.