by Lois Winston
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, but crammed more food in his mouth.
“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 shook 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 is 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 poured 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.
Does Yvette know any of this? Not likely 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 y
ou 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.
“Sergeant Hernandez, Homicide.”
“Yes, I would like to speak with Detective Savarese, please.” I felt smug and couldn’t wait to tell him what I found out.
“Say that name again, please,” he said. I did. In the background, I could hear the man talking to someone else. “How do you spell that name, Miss?”
I was confused. For God’s sake, how big a department was it when they didn’t know each other’s names? “Savarese. S.A.V.A.R.E.S.E., Detective John Savarese. Maybe he’s off-duty.”
“Sorry, there’s no Detective John Savarese here.” It sounded as if he was asking others nearby, “Any of you hear of a John Savarese?”
After several seconds he came back on the line. “You’re sure it was San Francisco Homicide, Miss? Maybe he’s in another division. We pretty much know everybody and nobody’s heard of him. Can anybody else help you?”
“No. No, thank you.”
Stunned, I hung up. I wracked my brain to remember exactly what happened two days before.
He told me he was with the San Francisco Homicide, didn’t he? No, he never actually said those words. He just showed up. He said he was with the police, but he didn’t show identification, and I didn’t ask for any. I just took it for granted…If he’s not with the Homicide Division, who is he?
The sound of my own thoughts kept me from hearing the footsteps behind me soon enough. I felt rather than heard them and whirled around.
Midway something hard hit me on the side of my head directly above my right ear. In that split second, I felt intense pain and saw white lights behind my eyes, fragmenting my mind.
The force of the impact pushed me back into the glass of one of the doors and heard it shatter around me. I could hear and feel everything going on, but I was powerless to do anything but slide down into a world somewhere between reality and oblivion.
Before I hit the glass littered ground, I felt an arm reach out and pull me forward toward the deck and out of harm’s way. In my stupor, I looked up and saw it was the small, Asian man I had seen twice that day, on the boat and in the restaurant. There was a look of anguish on his face, as he tried to keep me away from the major portion of the deadly, jagged edges.
“You kill her. You kill her, Captain Chen,” he said to a taller man, who had no look of anguish on his face, but one of grim determination. I looked helplessly at them, trying to move and speak but not being able to do either.
The taller man, Chinese-American and aristocratic, stared at the smaller one with contempt on his face.
“Shut up, you idiot,” he rasped, in a lower tone of voice looking all around him. “Get inside and turn the alarm off before the sixty seconds are up, or it will go off.”
The other man, probably Cambodian, had wide cheekbones, darker skin and haunted eyes. He was a beaten down man, who had made the unfortunate choice to be born in a country war torn and devoid of opportunities. He was used to being given orders. He was used to being dealt with harshly by life. In other circumstances, he might have been a kind man.
Odd that I could tell all of that, in the split second that he looked down at me, me bleeding from cuts on the head and a large gash over my right ear.
“You never say we do this kind of thing.” The small man shuddered, then stood up and ran inside through the broken section of the door toward the alarm.
The leader ignored his comment and roughly turned me over, going through my pockets. He picked the cell phone off the deck and found the camcorder in my pocket.
Throwing both into the inky water with a grunt, he pulled out the keys to my car from the back pocket. He turned on his subordinate angrily when he returned.
“You didn’t tell me she had a car. Where’s the car?”
“Car? Car?” the other stammered. “I see no car. I follow her from here to restaurant, and then I call you. I see no car.” His voice rose to a fever pitch, and his attitude was like that of a dog expecting a beating at the slightest disfavor of its owner.
“All right. All right. Keep your voice down. We don’t want anybody coming over here.” The man in command studied the keys and made a decision.
“To hell with it. By the time they find her car, we’ll be long gone.” He threw the keys into the water.
“We need to get her back to the ship. Then we’ve got to start unloading. This trip we had to bring all of them here, so it’ll take a while. We leave for China in four hours. We can’t stay here any longer, or we might attract the attention of the Coast Guard,” he said more to himself than the other man. “We’ll throw her body overboard when we get out to sea.”
He looked around with sharp eyes and saw there was no one else was around. The smaller man of the two swallowed hard and nodded, willing to do what he was asked, but clearly unhappy.
“Help me get her across to the dinghy,” the leader said, grunting under my dead weight as he pulled me up and over his shoulder.
I tried to struggle and call out, but all that would come out was a low moan. I felt myself going in and out of consciousness and fought to stay awake.
“And then come back and get ri
d of the broken glass,” he ordered. “Put some cardboard in that door until we can fix it. You hear me?” He snarled at the other man, “And clean up that blood.”
The small man nodded again, afraid to speak and shaking with terror. His was the last face I can remember seeing.
TWELVE
What’s A Nice Girl Like You Doing In A Place Like This?
At first, I knew only of the intense pain in my head. I had never experienced pain like this before. It was so excruciating, I retched several times, but vomiting made my head ache even more. It was so very cold.
I trembled and drew up into a fetal position trying to warm myself. My eyes wouldn’t open, and I couldn’t control the shaking of my body. I tried to lie very still and hoped my parents might find me.
I’m sorry I ran away from the picnic earlier, but Richard won’t stop teasing me.
I smiled inwardly at the memory. No, that was long ago. Or, is it now? I was confused and frightened. Wasn’t I lost in the woods now? I felt muddled and wanted to think it through, but the pain prevented me. My mind drifted.
I’m glad when they found me next to that big rock by Bridal Veil Falls. The waterfall was so loud it was painful to hear it, just like now. They’ll find me again. I’m here in the dark, just like before.
The dark was cold. I didn’t remember it being this cold the first time. I shivered uncontrollably.
Maybe they won’t find me! I felt a wave of panic. Maybe a bear will eat me.
I tried to move, but it made the pain worse and something blocked my way. I tried to cry out, to let someone know where I was, but my throat was too dry, and the pain got worse whenever I moved.
“Por favor, mi Dios, make the pain go away.”
I prayed and I must have lost consciousness. I think some time passed. I was almost awake but drowsy, feeling very far away and disconnected. I heard voices in the distance but couldn’t focus on them. The cold had changed to numbness, so I didn’t mind it too much. My head still ached, but it, too, seemed far away. I didn’t mind that, either. Maybe my parents would find me again. Or, maybe they would leave Yosemite without me. I could just sleep now, and everything would go away.