Death al Fresco

by Leslie Karst

  Oof. If only I had a train right now to drag me up this damn hill. I’d finally made it to the last grueling stretch before summiting onto the upper marine terrace and was feeling dizzy and lightheaded. I added to this wish a mental note to henceforth strike Western Drive from consideration for future rides, no matter how energized I might feel. Okay, c’mon Sal, you can do it. Just a few more pedal strokes. Concentrate on something other than that burning in the legs. Who else might have wanted to off poor old Gino?

  I wrested my attention from the fatigue in my calf muscles back to my list of suspects. Next up was Anastasia, who would absolutely have had a motive for killing the fisherman if they’d gotten married beforehand. But that was a massive “if.” And the answer to that question was still unknown, so, other than checking back periodically at the records department, there was nothing more I could think of to do.

  Okay, who else? There was also that old man Sean had seen arguing with Gino out by the bocce court the night he went missing. The more I thought about it, the more I liked him as a suspect. Maybe he was one of those old guys who played out there all the time and he’d been mad at Gino because of his cheating. Wait. Maybe Gino was so out of it that night that he went one step too far and the guy just clocked him—with a bocce ball. That could certainly give you a big ol’ welt on the head.

  I considered this scenario as I finally crested the hill and downshifted, exhaling a long stream of carbon dioxide from my overexerted lungs. The old bocce player wouldn’t have necessarily intended to kill Gino. But once he’d struck out in anger, he might have gotten spooked and then shoved Gino over the side of the wharf in a moment of panic. Or maybe the guy had simply left him there and Gino—concussed and out of it to begin with—had wandered off and somehow fallen into the water all on his own.

  But there was a major downside to this theory: I had no way of knowing who the old man might be. Sean’s vague account could describe any number of old men who hung out at the bocce court.

  Taking a long drink from my water bottle, I continued up the now gradual climb to the top of Western Drive until I reached the aptly named High Street at the base of the university, at which point I turned right, downhill. Ah …

  As I cruised back home, enjoying the feel of the salt-laden ocean air on my sweaty face and damp cycling jersey, I could see tiny white triangles scattered across the Monterey Bay. The offshore Diablo winds had been replaced today by the more usual onshore variety, and numerous boaters were taking advantage of the breeze and the glorious weather.

  Seeing the sailboats, however, sent my mood spiraling back down as I was reminded of Gino in his beautiful Monterey Clipper. Why would someone have wanted to kill the old fisherman? And who could have had the audacity to actually carry out the deed?

  * * *

  The first thing I said to Eric when he showed up at my place three hours later was, “I have an idea about another possible suspect.”

  “Good afternoon to you as well,” he responded, stepping into the living room. “And I’m doing just fine, thank you very much.” Eric knelt down to give Buster a good long scratch at the base of his tail and behind the ears, then stood up and brushed the dog hair from his hands. “Okay, what is this new theory?”

  I told him what I’d learned from Sean the day before—how Gino had been arguing with some guy behind Solari’s the night he disappeared. “And get this. I talked to Angelo again yesterday, too, and he told me that Gino had been cheating at bocce and getting into arguments with the old men who play out there all the time. So, what if one of those old guys finally had enough of him and went ahead and whacked Gino with a bocce ball, then shoved him into the water?”

  “Huh.” Eric scratched his chin as he considered my theory. “Well, that would explain the shape of the wound on his head.”

  “Of course, the huge problem with him as a suspect,” I said, heading for the kitchen, “is that we have no idea who it could be. There must be at least a dozen old guys who play bocce out there all the time.”

  I led the way outside, where I’d already set up my easel and laid out my paint supplies. While Eric wrestled with his fancy French easel, I went into the kitchen and poured us each a glass of sun tea. Coming back outside into the bright sunshine, I crossed the patio and set our glasses on the picnic table.

  I had just opened my pad of watercolor paper when I had a thought. “Wait,” I said, turning to Eric. “Remember that man whose bocce ball hit my dad’s skiff during class on Saturday? And how pissed off he was when the other guys laughed at him?”

  Eric nodded. “Yeah. He hurled the ball back at them. Not a nice fellow.”

  “So maybe it was him who was arguing with Gino that night. I’ll have to ask Angelo if he knows who he is.”

  “You do that, Miss Marple.” Eric shook his head and chuckled softly as he clipped a sheet of paper to his easel and selected a pencil from the drawer.

  Neither of us spoke for a bit as we sketched in the blocks of light and shadows for the compositions we’d chosen. Omar called them the “big shapes.” I was taking a second shot at the persimmon tree I’d painted the week before, and Eric had decided on the yellow rose climbing up the old wooden fence at the back of the property.

  Buster had curled up on the far side of the patio, where a splash of sunlight was still warming the red bricks. “Leave it to a dog to find the last sunny spot,” I said as I stepped back from my easel to examine my work.

  Setting down his brush with a glance toward the sleeping dog, Eric removed his glasses and turned back to stare at his rose bush, eyes glazed.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. “Something wrong with your prescription?”

  “Remember when Omar told us to get in the habit of squinting, to make our eyes out of focus, so we can concentrate on the shapes and colors rather than the details of what we’re painting? Well, it’s easy for me. All I have to do is take off my glasses and everything’s way out of focus.”

  Since I didn’t need corrective lenses, I had to make do with narrowing my eyes and letting them go a little cross-eyed to achieve the same effect. “It’s kind of like an Impressionist painting, huh? I wonder if Monet took off his spectacles to paint his water lilies.”

  “Maybe so,” Eric replied, replacing his horn-rimmed glasses and once more taking up his brush. “After all, as Omar always says, ‘We don’t paint things—”

  “—we paint shapes and colors,” I finished for him. This was a sort of mantra for our instructor. “Now, if only I could free myself up enough to paint like Monet. Or Paul Gauguin or Vincent van Gogh.”

  “I think you’d have to do some pretty heavy-duty drugs to get into the head space van Gogh was in,” Eric said with a laugh.

  “And Gauguin, too. That book I read says he went kind of crazy from syphilis toward the end of his life.” I reached for my glass of sun tea and took a sip. “Oh,” I said, setting it back down on the redwood table, “and did you know that Gauguin and van Gogh actually shared a house and painted together for a summer when van Gogh was living in Provence?”

  “What a fun couple they must have been,” Eric said. “Was this before or after Vincent cut off his ear?”

  “Right before, I think. And pretty soon after that he moved up north and then killed himself.”

  “Well, that’s what lead poisoning will do to you, I guess.” Eric wiped the red paint off his brush with a paper towel and then dipped it in the jar of water. “Didn’t he supposedly eat his paint or lick his brushes or something, and that’s why he went insane?”

  “I’m pretty sure the current thinking is that he had some sort of mental illness like schizophrenia. Man, talk about painting ‘what you see, not what you think.’” This was another of Omar’s favorite sayings. “He probably did see all those swirls in the sky and the fields, and all those super-saturated colors, too.”

  “Well, I’ll take my mental health any day,” Eric said, dabbing blobs of yellow gouache onto his paper. “Even if it does mean I’m d
estined to be a mediocre artist.”

  We painted together for another half hour or so, and while we worked, I mused about what Eric had said regarding van Gogh and his lead paints. For although I knew this had been pretty much debunked as the cause of the painter’s insanity, the mention of lead paints had gotten the wheels turning in my head about someone other than Vincent van Gogh.

  “What if Gino had lead poisoning?” I asked, breaking the silence.

  “What?” Eric looked up from his palette, where he’d been mixing a muddy gray for his fence posts.

  “Well, think about it. He’d been a fisherman all his life, and if he was like all the other fishermen I’ve known, he must have painted and repainted his boat over and over again over the years, well before they outlawed using lead in paint. So maybe the reason he was acting so weird the past few months was because of lead poisoning.”

  Eric frowned. “It’s an interesting idea, actually. Here, let’s see what the symptoms are.” Pulling his phone from the front pocket of his chino shorts, he entered a query and then scrolled through the results that appeared onscreen. “Okay, found it,” he said after a moment. “Conditions associated with lead toxicity include anxiety, arthritis, blindness, hair loss, convulsions, fatigue, irritability, vertigo and dizziness, disorientation, poor concentration, mood swings, hallucinations, memory and speech impairment, impaired muscle coordination…” Eric looked up at me. “It goes on, but…”

  “Yeah. A lot of that behavior could easily be seen as drunkenness by someone who didn’t know better. Plus, plenty of those symptoms would explain his irrational behavior, his getting into fights with people. You gotta wonder if that was the reason he was killed. He got so weird he just pushed someone too far.”

  Eric slid the phone back into his pocket. “Well, a test for heavy metals will certainly be part of the tox report, so we’ll find out soon enough if it was lead poisoning that made him so wonky.”

  “Soon isn’t exactly how I’d put it,” I said. “Doesn’t it take at least a month to get the report?”

  Eric just shrugged and went back to his painting. But I was thinking, It sure would be nice for Solari’s if there were a way to find out earlier.

  Chapter 15

  As soon as Eric left for his chorus rehearsal, I sat down at the kitchen table with my laptop and typed “lead poisoning test” into the search box. Scanning the first page of results, it immediately became clear that a booming online business existed based on hair analysis for lead toxicity as well as for other heavy metals. Gino’s cap had a lot of his hair on it, I recalled. How much do they need for a test?

  I clicked on the link to a site called “Speedy Hair Analysis” and scrolled down till I came to the requirements for the sample. A hundred and twenty-five milligrams was best, it said, but the test could be done with as little as fifty mg of hair—about a teaspoonful.

  Jumping up, I strode to my bedroom, where I pulled the green plastic bag from its hiding place under my socks. I brought the bag out to the kitchen, once again extracted the fisherman’s cap with tongs, and examined its cloth, inside and out. There was indeed a lot of hair. Far more than I’d originally realized. Several clumps were hidden deep inside the wool cap in addition to the strands I’d noticed before. And then I remembered the list Eric had read earlier: hair loss had been one of the symptoms of lead poisoning.

  I sat back down at my computer and searched the Speedy Hair Analysis website until I found instructions on how to submit a sample for analysis. The hair needed to be placed in a trace metal-free plastic bag or container, and they wanted it cut from near the scalp. Well, I certainly couldn’t do that, since this hair had fallen out of Gino’s head. But I’d just send along what I had and see what happened. No need to tell them it had come from a man who was now dead.

  Under the heading “Expedited Service,” I read that by paying an additional fee I could get one-day service for the analysis. That meant that if I used overnight delivery both ways, I could get the results of the test as soon as Thursday. What time was it now? Five thirty, my computer said. And the UPS store was open only till six.

  After printing out a copy of the submission form, I filled in the required information along with my credit card number, carefully inserted one of Gino’s locks of hair into an unused zip-top plastic bag, searched Letta’s old desk until I found a manila mailing envelope to put it all in, and then ran out to my car, Buster at my heels. I made it to the store with a full three minutes to spare and startled the young sales clerk—who had her back turned and was sorting through a stack of cardboard boxes—by dashing up to the counter and slapping my package down.

  With the hair sample successfully on its way to the lab, I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe this would solve the mystery of why Gino had seemed so sloshed when he’d had hardly anything to drink.

  Of course, lead poisoning couldn’t have been what killed him, I mused, returning home at about half my outward-bound speed. The coroner had ruled the cause of death to be drowning, plus there was that blow to his head, which the cops now thought was probably caused by something like a baseball bat.

  But from what it said online about its symptoms, lead toxicity could certainly have caused him to behave irrationally and act like a complete jerk. And the more I thought about it, the more it made sense that Gino had simply provoked someone—by arguing, or cheating, or picking a fight—to the point where he or she had simply lost it and decked him with a nearby object. Something like a bocce ball.

  Or the oar from Dad’s skiff, I thought glumly as I pulled into my driveway and let Buster jump out of the car. The skiff he took out fishing the day after the old man disappeared.

  * * *

  The next morning, as soon as I’d brewed a pot of coffee, I sat down to make a list of the tasks that still needed doing for the sister-cities dinner. Top on the list was to confirm all the rentals and their delivery time: plates, serving dishes, flatware, wine and water glasses, tablecloths, napkins, tent, tables, chairs. Since the guest list now stood at one hundred thirty-two, no way did Solari’s have enough table settings for everyone, so Dad and I had decided to go ahead and rent everything. That way they’d all match.

  Next I wrote down “confirm w/wharf admin. set-up time.” We’d arranged to have the dinner portion of the event outside in the area behind the restaurant under the big tent, since Solari’s could only legally seat eighty at a time, and I needed to make sure we had use of the public space for the entire day, starting the morning of the big dinner. I was pretty sure that setting up one of those enormous tents wouldn’t be nearly as easy as they made it look in their ads. Plus, we’d have to put out all the tables and chairs and get the tables completely set well before the start time of five o’clock.

  Tapping my pen on the kitchen table, I considered a moment and then jotted down “wine.” My dad was ordering all the food for the dinner, but I’d asked to be in charge of the wine, since I cared way more about it than he did. Left to him, we’d likely end up with boxed “hearty red” and “classic white.” I’d just made a note to check the wine prices at Costco when the Hawaii Five-O ringtone rang out from my cell. Eric.

  “Hey,” he said, mouth full when I answered the call.

  “More muffins?” I asked.

  “Sorry.” Eric swallowed before going on. “I didn’t think you’d pick up so quickly.”

  “You caught me making a list of things to do for Dad’s damn dinner,” I said.

  “Has a nice ring to it, that: DDD.”

  “Certainly better than Columbus Day dinner, that’s for sure.”

  Eric laughed and I could hear him take a drink of what was no doubt his morning Starbucks. “You know,” he said after bit, “if there’s anything I can do…”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not sure what help you could be. It’s not like you’ve got a whole lot of banquet experience.”

  But it was sweet of him to offer. I couldn’t put my finger on it exactly, but it had seemed that Eric had been going o
ut of his way to be nicer to me of late. Doing stuff like agreeing to take that painting class, and listening to my wild theories about Gino and lead poisoning without making fun. And he’d been surprisingly amenable to tracking down information about the will and the coroner’s findings and then passing it along to me—even though such activity could probably lose him his job if his boss found out.

  But there were little things, too: the way I’d started catching Eric looking at me when he thought I wasn’t watching, and his calling when he had no real reason to do so. Like now.

  Was there more to this recent behavior than mere friendship? Not that I’d call what we had a simple “friendship.” Our relationship had always been far more than that, even after we called it quits as a couple. But did he now want more? Was he starting to regret the decision to break up?

  If so, I wasn’t at all sure how I felt about it.

  “So, was there any more graffiti at Solari’s today?” Eric asked, rousing me from my thoughts.

  Great. Way to remind me of something else besides the possibility of my dad being arrested for Gino’s murder and, now, potentially complicated relationship issues. “Not that I’ve heard,” I said, “but it’s closed on Tuesdays, so I doubt anyone’s been down there since last night.”

  “That’s good.” Eric cleared his throat. Maybe our conversation had seemed a little awkward to him as well. “Anyway, I guess I should get back to work. I don’t have to keep track of billable hours, thank God, but we government lackeys do need to take the occasional glance at our case files.”

  “Uh-huh.” I knew Eric to be a highly conscientious worker, but he preferred to present the carefree surfer dude image over that of serious district attorney.

  After we’d hung up, I filled my thermos cup with coffee and called out to Buster. “Wanna go for a ride in the car?”

  The dog came careening and skidding across the hardwood floor from the dining room into the living room, then sat eagerly at my feet while I searched for my car keys at the bottom of my bag.