Ice and Stone

by Marcia Muller

  “Sure. Where can I find you?”

  “Tell Jake. I’ll keep in touch with him.”

  3:41 p.m.

  Jake had suggested I wait at his cottage until he got home from work. It seemed a waste of time. I thought again about going to the sheriff’s headquarters and trying to speak with Noah Arneson, but that would mean borrowing a car for the thirty-minute drive, and there was no guarantee that he’d even be there. Besides, I’d need a good excuse to see him, and then I’d have to be very careful not to say anything that would blow my cover. And I wasn’t about to schedule an appointment either; throughout my career I’ve found that just showing up works best with unwilling and potentially hostile subjects.

  After half an hour I yielded to impulse and began snooping through the house—after all, there was no guarantee that Jake Blue wasn’t the man who’d attacked me last night, or the perpetrator of the two murders. He had given me no reason to suspect him, but for all I knew he could have withheld something or other that had relevance to my investigation. I couldn’t afford to trust any of these strangers.

  I started with the bedroom, where secrets are often found. The bed was neatly made, the socks, T-shirts, and underwear in the bureau drawers aligned precisely. The single nightstand held tissues, nail clippers, aspirin, and a mild analgesic for muscle pain. The closet contained work clothes, a few ties, and a single suit whose extra-narrow lapels were several years out of date. There was nothing unusual in the adjoining bathroom and medicine chest.

  The kitchen: a fifties-style range showing signs of use, but scrubbed clean; a fridge of the same vintage containing eggs, milk, beer, orange juice, carrots, and a badly wilted bunch of kale; its tiny freezer compartment held a few boxes of Stouffer’s macaroni and cheese. The cabinets were full of mismatched dishes, bowls, and pots and pans, the drawers a jumble of equally mismatched utensils. Jake, I thought, had no claim to culinary expertise.

  I stood in the middle of the room, my eyes narrowed as I took a final look around. Kitchens had been the source of some of my better finds in the past. Including refrigerators. I opened the freezer compartment again, removed the mac and cheese. The crusted ice was thick. I scraped at it here and there, and one of my fingernails hit what felt like glass. I got a soft spatula from one of the jumbled drawers and moved it carefully over the spot. A narrow unlabeled vial, perhaps three inches in length, came into view. I worked with the spatula until I could remove it.

  A cloudy substance. What the hell was it? And why had Jake Blue hidden a vial of it in his freezer?

  I put the vial in my pocket and returned to the living room—and in good time too, because shortly after five, Jake came through the door. “Ah, good, you’re still here. I’ll get us drinks!”

  He went through the door to the kitchen, and I heard the whirring of a wine opener. When he returned he had a bottle of Sangiovese and two glasses. “This is from a winery down in the hills in Mendocino County. Friend of mine works there, gets me a deep discount.”

  Together we sipped in silence, neither of us anxious to discuss the issues of the day. The wine was excellent.

  There’s a myth about Native people: they can’t drink alcohol without becoming crazed drunks. Not so. The “genetic theory” of Native Americans’ intolerance to alcohol has largely been refuted, but it still is accepted by many people because of unscientific motivations—one of them being bigotry. In truth, the Natives had no alcohol until they were introduced to it by Europeans, in an attempt to influence them to give up treaty rights. High alcohol use can be attributed to helplessness, poverty, and a bad lifestyle—none of which the Natives have cornered the market on. Yes, some Natives get drunk and raise hell—as do people who are Black, white, Asian, and possibly extraterrestrial.

  I myself have gotten drunk and raised hell, but I’ve never been accused of my behavior being caused by genetics. Jeez, I was just having a good time!

  We discussed my meeting with Bart and Fowler. Jake gave an exasperated sigh. “Fowler’s always been a shithead. I’m surprised that Sam didn’t cut him loose years ago. But that was Sam—too big a heart for her own good.”

  “She must’ve had a lot of patience too.”

  “More than Fowler deserved. I wonder what’s going to happen to him now.”

  “There’s no other family he can turn to?”

  “Maybe on the rez. But Fowler, like a lot of his generation, doesn’t want to be seen as Native. And he certainly doesn’t want to live hardscrabble, like they do out there. For that, I don’t blame him.”

  We drifted off into other topics. I probed a little further about his sister Josie’s murder, but today he didn’t seem to want to discuss it, so I let the subject lapse. An hour later, I told him I had to go. He offered to walk me to where I was staying, and I declined.

  6:10 p.m.

  Seated on a bench outside an eatery called the Owl Cafe, I put in a call to M&R in San Francisco. Ted Smalley, the agency’s office manager, answered and immediately said, “We’ve been wondering when you’d check in. How are you? Any progress?”

  “Some. Nothing definite to report as yet.”

  “Who do you want to talk with?”

  “Hy and Mick. And you.”

  He sighed and said grumpily, “So I come in last. An afterthought.”

  “You sound like you’re in a snit.”

  “Just lost an auction on eBay.”

  “For what?”

  “A terrific Botany 500 sport coat. Black Watch plaid with hand-applied glitter strips. I’m in mourning.”

  Ted has been making what he calls “fashion statements” for most of his adult life. They’ve ranged from grunge to Hawaiian to cowboy to Edwardian, but the most lasting has been Botany 500, a long-defunct producer of sartorial atrocities.

  “Oh, that’s too bad.”

  “You’re being insincere. I’m thinking of going back to grunge.”

  The first time I’d met Ted, when he was the receptionist at All Souls Legal Cooperative in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights district, he’d been deeply into grunge. All I could see of him at first was his big, bare feet propped on the desk, and only his winning smile as he peered over them kept me from fleeing my interview for the job of staff investigator.

  “What does Neal think of you going back to grunge?” I asked. Neal Osborn, his husband, dresses like an English barrister.

  “Not much, I guess. Although he suggested I consider wearing caftans.”

  “Why not? There are a lot of beautiful ones available.”

  “No way. They’re too long, and I trip a lot as is.”

  “Uh-huh. Is Hy in his office?”

  “No, he left a while ago, said he was heading for L.A.—some CEO getting nervous about his so-called enemies.”

  I was disappointed, but not surprised. Hy is a top-flight hostage negotiator, but many of his jobs in executive protection are simply exercises in hand-holding.

  “What about Mick?”

  “He’s here. I’ll buzz him.”

  My nephew came on the line quickly. “Shar! I was wondering when we’d hear from you. Are you calling on your cell? The connection’s kind of staticky.”

  “No. One of the clients gave me a phone with a local provider. Mine doesn’t work up here.” I gave him the number, then said, “Listen, I have a vial of some liquid I need analyzed. There’s a pilot up here whom I think I can bribe to fly it down to you. You still have your lab contact?”

  “Of course. Just tell the pilot to notify me about when he’s arriving. Oakland, right?”

  “Yes.” The landing fees at SFO were outrageous. “Also,” I went on, “I need information about a number of people. You ready?” I read off a list: the two murdered women, the Harcourts, Gene Byram and Vic Long, Henry Howling Wolf, Sally Bee, Jake Blue, and his sister, Josie.

  Mick said, “I suppose you want this tomorrow morning?”

  “ASAP.”

  “Well, Derek and I are at loose ends these days, so he can help.” Derek F
rye was his counterpart at the agency as well as a partner in several outside computer services ventures.

  “Why at loose ends?”

  “No prospects. No possibilities. I don’t know what’s wrong with the women in this town.”

  “Maybe they’re all wondering what’s wrong with you.”

  “Shar…Okay, I’ll get back to you. But how can I?”

  “I’ll get back to you.”

  As I disconnected, I also wondered what was wrong with the young straight women of San Francisco. Mick and Derek were stars of the tech world, having built and sold two innovative sites that had made them millions. Yet he and Derek—in spite of being good-looking, personable men—were dateless most nights these days, easily available for my many requests to which any ordinary employee would’ve said, “Stuff it.”

  A good deal for me, since that meant I could tap into their expertise at almost any time, and I was grateful for their willingness to help out at a moment’s notice. I didn’t know much about Derek’s private life, but Mick had been through several disappointments in his relationships that had left him scorched and extremely wary of becoming involved again.

  I called Hal Bascomb at the airstrip, explained that I needed a package delivered to Oakland.

  “No problem,” he said. “I’ve got a chichi couple who want me to take them to SFO so they can catch their flight to Argentina. I can put the package in your nephew’s hands by midnight. Give me a number where I can reach him.”

  I did, then asked, “How can I get the package to you?”

  “I’ll come get it. Where are you?”

  I told him.

  “See you in fifteen minutes.”

  “Thanks, Hal.”

  I wondered why Hy was on his way to L.A. and considered trying to call him while I waited. No, no point in it. When he was in transit, he almost always switched his cell to voice mail.

  Hal arrived. I’d wrapped the vial in several plastic freezer bags also appropriated from Jake’s kitchen. After turning the parcel over to him, I headed back through the forest to the shack, making my way slowly and warily over the ice-slick ground. I held the flashlight in my left hand, my right hand on the .38 in the parka’s outside pocket. I wasn’t taking any chances on being caught unawares after what had happened last night.

  No one had been at the shack since I’d left it; the new chain and lock hadn’t been touched. I went inside, made myself a sandwich, and settled down to read some more of the tattered paperback of War and Peace that I’d brought along.

  I’ve actually read the entire book—including the battle scenes, but now I take it with me whenever I have to travel, hoping that one day I’ll understand it. Or at least understand why Leo Tolstoy had wanted to gift the world with a mostly boring novel of over a thousand pages. It’s still a mystery to me, and I keep hoping I’ll come upon some gem-like insight that will explain it.

  But not tonight.

  WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 9

  9:57 a.m.

  In the morning I decided to interview Dierdra Two Shoes’s unpleasant mother and try to find out about the men her daughter had been running around with.

  10:47 a.m.

  Mrs. Lagomarsino lived in a rented trailer in a small park on the western end of town. She was short and weighed two hundred pounds or more; in spite of the cold day, she’d covered her bulk with a flimsy pink-and-orange-and-green Hawaiian muumuu. When I stepped into her trailer, I understood the reason for the skimpy clothing: she had the heat in there cranked up to at least ninety degrees.

  The room looked like a cyclone had hit a thrift shop: empty Southern Comfort bottles, cheap ceramic knickknacks, throw pillows, and full ashtrays were everywhere, many on the industrial-carpeted floor. Three cats peeked out at me from an adjoining door, then melted away, but their presence was still made known by the smell of an unclean litter box. Dorothy Lagomarsino heaved herself into a dilapidated recliner that wheezed when she put up the footrest. She left it to me to remove a jumbled stack of blankets from the love seat so I could sit down.

  She lit a cigarette and said, “So you want to talk about my whore of a daughter.”

  “I’m curious about her murder. I’m a Native woman myself—”

  “Why bother? Was no more than she deserved.”

  I studied her, trying to determine if she was actually that cold and uncaring or if her attitude was a defensive pose to cover her loss.

  Mrs. Lagomarsino added, “That girl should’ve married Bart Upstream. But no, she didn’t want to be tied down to one man. She started going with anybody in pants.”

  “The men she went with—who were they?”

  “Uh-uh.” She waggled a thick finger at me. “That information is my insurance policy. What I know keeps me alive and well fed.”

  “Keeps you alive? Aren’t you afraid the same man who killed your daughter might kill you?”

  She didn’t answer, just gave me a tight-lipped stare.

  “You called Dierdra a whore,” I said. “Why?”

  “Because she was.” The woman’s voice dripped bitterness. “My first husband, her father Two Shoes, he left me when Dierdra was twelve. I caught my second, Len Riskin, in bed with her three years later. I threw both of them out, but the next year I took her back. What’s a mother to do when her only child is homeless and starving? But while she was living with me and Benny Lagomarsino, I found out she was screwing around with him, the son of a bitch. That was the last straw. They both went, and good riddance!”

  “Was Dierdra involved with him when she was killed?”

  “No. He got shot during a liquor store robbery not long after I threw his ass out. I didn’t hear nothing about her until the cops came to the door and told me she was dead.”

  A depressing family saga, but no more so than most that clutter the pages of many a daily newspaper: “Father Kills Estranged Wife and Son, Then Self”; “Mom Drowns Children in Bathtub”; “Sister of mass murderer: ‘He was the sweetest baby.’”

  Sometimes I grow weary of the gloom and doom in the news and avoid the TV and Internet for days and let the newspapers pile up. Most of what I do read are the features and feel-good stories. I’ll learn about the grim stuff soon enough, thank you.

  There didn’t seem to be anything more I could learn from Mrs. Lagomarsino, so I thanked Dierdra’s mother for her time. She shrugged it off, but as I left I thought I saw a sheen of tears in her eyes; maybe Dorothy wasn’t as callous as she wanted people to think.

  12:18 p.m.

  Back in the village, I had a not-very-good lunch at the Owl Cafe, then put in another call to the agency and asked for Mick. The line was even more staticky today. It made me glad I lived where cell-phone service was not only easily accessible but of a reliable quality.

  Mick came on the line. “The vial got here safely and is at the lab,” he said. “As far as the other stuff, this is only a partial list of the names you gave me, but here goes. Jake Blue: He studied biochemistry at Cal Poly at San Luis Obispo a few semesters, but didn’t graduate. Has never married. Moved back to Meruk County after his sister was killed, been employed at the lumberyard there ever since. No criminal record, average credit rating. Kind of a nothing man.”

  That description didn’t match the man who had spoken with such passion about his sister’s murder, but the bare facts of a person’s life often don’t match what they’re like inside.

  “You said you had everything on Josie Blue,” Mick went on, “but I found something that wasn’t in the sheriff’s file: She came back home because she had an unhappy love affair with a married man in Berkeley. A history professor named Max Kennedy. There aren’t many details on him, but I’ll keep checking.”

  Mick went on, ignoring my silence, as many years of working together had taught him to do. “Now the Harcourts. Ben Harcourt, the Old Man, is well connected. Folks in Sacramento and D.C. I’m having a hard time getting more on that, but Derek’s working on it. He inherited the ranch from his father. Married late in
life, to Victoria Spenser, whom he met while traveling in Australia. She gave him the two sons, died of pneumonia ten years ago.

  “The sons: Kurt, the younger, has a master’s in economics from Michigan, taught for a while at USC, but a few years ago he had a nervous breakdown and went home to help his father run the ranch.”

  “Can you get specifics on the breakdown?”

  “Just that he spent time in a Napa sanatorium. Medically privileged information is difficult to access.”

  “What about Paul?”

  “A successful businessman with a reputation as a playboy, a run-around stud.”

  “The reputation’s justified—I’ve seen him in action. Any trouble with women? Particularly Native women?”

  “Nope. He seems too smart for that. He’s made a hell of a lot of money with his company, called Firestarter, and has been around, all over the world, and usually in the wrong places.”

  “Such as?”

  “Vegas, Hong Kong—before the recent crises—Macao, South America. Places where gambling is a big business and, as well you know, things are not always what they seem.”

  “I think I’d better get some input from Hy on this. What about this company—Firestarter?”

  “Its website claims it’s an investment broker for—get this—‘Those who wish to enjoy exceptional lives.’ I’m checking with Luke at Merrill Lynch about its authenticity.”

  “Great. Keep on it. Did you get anything on Gene Byram and Vic Long?”

  “Not much. They’ve worked as ranch hands for the Harcourts for about four years. Drifters with no fixed addresses before that. Neither of them has a record in Meruk County or anywhere else in California, but Byram was arrested in Reno six years ago for attempted rape; charges were dropped when the woman left town.”

  “How about Sheriff Noah Arneson?”

  “He’s a homegrown boy—born and raised in Buford. He attended school there, went into the navy at eighteen, saw duty in San Antonio, Texas, and then in San Diego. Down there he was attached to the shore patrol, but was reassigned because of complaints of brutality.”