Dead In The Water (Rebecca Schwartz Mystery #4) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series) (6 page)

“I’ll put you through to Mr. Nowell.”

She rang through and a brusque male voice said, “Warren Nowell.”

“Mr. Nowell, this is Rebecca Schwartz. I’m Marty Whitehead’s attorney and she asked me to pick something up for her—”

“I heard a rumor Marty’s been arrested. Surely that can’t be right.”

“Let’s say she’s being held at the police station.”

He drew in his breath. “After all she’s been through!”

“Thanks. I appreciate the sympathy, and I’ll convey it to Marty. But listen, back to my errand. Do you think—”

“I’d love to, but I don’t see how I can do a thing for you. The police said not to let anyone in except employees who have to get in to work.”

“I see. You’ve got quite a mess on your hands, haven’t you?”

“It’s pretty rough. How’s Marty doing, anyway?”

“Fine, under the circumstances. She particularly asked me to talk to you—she seemed to think you’d be the person in charge.”

“Gee, I really wish I could help, but there’s a cop at every entrance. Tell you what—maybe I could have someone bring down whatever it is.”

“Unfortunately she wasn’t quite sure where it is. She asked me to look for it.”

He laughed, a little smugly, I thought. “Well, if you can charm some policeman, you’re certainly welcome to do that.”

How hard could that be, now that I knew what it took to get in? I was glad I was dressed in jeans and running shoes, and I was glad the young cop at the back gate looked more bored than alert. I tensed my body to give me stage presence, the way I did for court appearances.

“Hi,” I said. “Awful about Sadie, isn’t it?”

The young cop put on his grim look, the one students are required to learn on the first day of school at police academies across the nation. “Pretty bad.”

“I’m Rebecca Schwartz. I work with the sea otters?” I made the sentence a question so I’d sound properly submissive—almost as little and cute as one of the fuzzy beasts I’d mentioned.

“You do? My kid loves those things. He can watch them for hours.”

“I know you. You belong to Friends of the Sea Otter.”

He looked wary. “No, I—”

“Would you like to join? I think I’ve got a brochure here.” I rummaged in my purse. “We really need your support—there’s only three thousand California sea otters left in the wild, and one good oil spill could wipe every one of them out. Did you know that?”

“Miss—uh—Schmidt—”

“Schwartz.” I gave him a great big, all-American, conservationist grin. “You know, they’re not like birds. Our feathered friends—‘pelagic birds,’ we biologists call them—do pretty well unless they get oil all over them. With an otter it’s like Brylcreem—a little dab’ll do him.” I cut my throat with my finger. “And it’s not true they’re eating all the shellfish. An abalone’s just a giant snail in the first place, did you know that? I bet you wouldn’t eat little escargots, so why would you eat a giant escargot? And anyway, think about it. Three thousand sea otters and millions of human beings—who do you really think is gobbling up the goodies?”

He stepped away from me. I was charming him like a mongoose charms a cobra.

He was still groping for a polite squelch when I stepped back myself. “I’m so sorry. I was being pushy.”

A warm blanket of relief spread over him. “It’s okay. Are abalones really snails?”

“Honest.”

“Yick. Wait’ll I tell my brother-in-law. He hates snails. Loves abalone. This’ll kill him.”

I squinched up my nose, schoolteacher-style. “I’ll bet he’s a diver, too. Hates sea otters, right?”

He blushed, all but shifted from one foot to the other. “You, too, I’ll bet.”

“Hey, I’m a conservationist. I brake for trees.”

Having established myself as Miss-Grundy-of-the-deep-blue-sea, I permitted myself to point a finger in his face. “Oho. You’re a funny one.”

We guffawed together like the fun-lovin’ fellas he and his brother-in-law were, and then he said, “Okay, Miss Schwartz. Let me see your name tag and I’ll let you in.” Name tag! Damn Marty Whitehead’s liver and lungs! She could have lent me her damn name tag, and she hadn’t even mentioned it.

I said, “Omigod, I don’t know if I brought it. See, I switched purses—” As I spoke, I began to pull things out of my purse: a flashlight, a paperback copy of an aquarium book I’d found at Marty’s, my calendar. “Oh, no! I really have to feed the little critters. Did you know they have to eat ten times their body weight every six hours?”

My acting teacher had said you could get the effect you wanted just by wanting to. As I kept my eyes lowered and chattered, frantically pulling things from my purse, I imagined a tank full of poor orphaned sea otters, separated from their mothers in stormy seas, and now at the mercy of human beings who were after all only human and sometimes left their name tags at home and therefore couldn’t get in to feed them. I imagined how lost and miserable and, above all,
hungry
an otter in such a tank would feel. When I felt genuine tears, I looked up.

“I overslept,” I said. “I was supposed to feed them at eight.”

Quickly, as if embarrassed at having been caught crying, I looked down again and found my keys, including the ones Marty had turned over to me. “Look, how about if I show you I really do have a key that’ll open that gate—wouldn’t that prove I work here?”

He looked around to see if he was being observed and I knew I had won.

“Sure,” he said. “Hardly anyone remembered their name tag this morning. You guys must have pretty casual security.”

I only wished my acting class, before which I was as likely to flub my lines as not, could have seen my award-quality improvisation.

In Marin County, where I grew up, all kids take nearly every kind of lessons they can fit into their schedules—
except
acting. That could lead to a career in the arts and a life of poverty.

I took acting after I got beat in court by a DA who’d done it—Raymond Fanelli, damn his soul. His opening statement had the jury in tears. By the time the trial was over, they wanted my client’s blood. Since she was a battered wife who’d finally fought back (if a little too hard), I had plenty of histrionic material myself. I’m convinced she’d be a free woman today if I’d put in a better performance.

Anyway, I did well that day in the parking lot. I later looked up the actual figures on sea otters, and I wasn’t that far off. But to set the record straight, things are even worse than I thought—there are actually only seventeen hundred of them left in California, and opinions vary as to whether one oil spill would lubricate their way to oblivion. They eat only a quarter of their body weight daily, which may sound pitiful compared to the fanciful figure of my imagination, but for one of us, it would be about forty hamburgers.

An abalone really is a snail.

* * *

Once inside, I followed Marty’s directions to the third floor, where, I had learned, most aquarium employees had their offices.

What Marty hadn’t told me was that the place still looked like a sardine warehouse. No walls had been added, only those partitions that give you “modular” offices, or, in truth, no offices at all, but something more like library carrels. Hers was the fourth or fifth “office” on the right, she’d said—she couldn’t remember exactly, but I was to look for pictures of Libby and Keil.

The way her directions went, you entered at the left, so you must cross to the row of cubicles at the far right, I thought. I was standing at the front of the huge room, trying to get my bearings, when a fast-moving figure cannoned down the left row, and passed me.

The runner wore a baseball cap, jeans, and tennies, so that I hadn’t heard him until it was almost too late, and he had his head down, so I couldn’t see his face. From the back, I got a glimpse of a blue T-shirt that said Monterey Bay Aquarium between the shoulder blades. It was a slight figure, like a small man, but I couldn’t have sworn it wasn’t a woman or even a kid. I stepped out of the way just in time, feeling the breeze, and stood for a minute recovering my equilibrium.

Then, without even considering the consequences, I wheeled and followed, back through the office door and down the stairs to a choice of three more doors. Fortunately, one was just snicking shut. I tried it, but I needed Marty’s key to open it. It took a couple of lifetimes, but still, when I was in, I could hear the muted thud of fast-moving Reeboks somewhere in the distance.

I knew where I was, vaguely. I had come out near the aquarists’ offices, near the staff library. Marty and I had been here the night before. I retraced our steps through the volunteers’ offices, and the volunteer and staff lounge, and out to an area where you could go into one of several small rooms, go downstairs, or go through double doors into the behind-the-scenes feeding area. You would have to unlock a door to go behind the scenes, and once through the area, back in the aquarium proper, you wouldn’t be able to blend into the crowd, because the place was empty today. Figuring I might be wasting precious time, I peered into the graphics and publications offices, didn’t see places to hide, and hit the stairs.

I didn’t hear a thing. Undaunted, I raced down them and tore open the door at the bottom, only to face a crowd of thousands. I was now on Cannery Row, and the cop who’d tried to tell me the white rat joke was on guard at this entrance. “I’ll bite,” he said. “How many cops
does
it take?”

I stared at him, utterly uncomprehending.

“To change a light bulb,” he said.

“Listen, did a guy in a baseball hat just come through here?”

“Uh-uh. I asked first.”

“Officer, this is important. Anyway, I forget the punch line.”

“Hey, Counselor, you know what? I got some good news for you. It’s not working out in those labs. They finally realized the rats were smarter.”

Seething, I walked slowly back to the third floor, giving myself plenty of time to cool off. As soon as I opened the door of the huge warehouse of offices, I heard a voice—one I recognized as Warren Nowell’s—raised in what could only be a chewing-out.

Gently I let myself in, tiptoed to Marty’s cubicle (the fifth one, it turned out), ducked into it, and peeked around the corner. At the front of the room—or the rear if you considered the entrance the front—there was a receptionist’s desk and a genuine private office to the right. A man—Nowell, by his voice—was standing in the doorway of the office, more or less yelling.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing here? Don’t you realize you could be tampering with evidence in a murder case?”

“Oh, Warren, pipe down.” It was Julio Soto’s voice, emanating from the enclosed office. With the place empty as it was, sounds carried beautifully.

I heard the noise of someone opening drawers and rummaging in them. Remembering my own mission, I looked at the calendar on Marty’s desk. It was still turned to Friday, the night before. Damn her, she’d lied to me—she had had a date the night before. Still keeping both ears open, I started flipping through her calendar, to see if there was a pattern of rendezvous, and if so, how far back it went.

I heard Warren say, “Sorry. I’m not mad at you. I’m just—a lot’s happened this morning, that’s all. I’m sorry I snapped. But I will have to ask you to stop rifling Sadie’s desk.”

The rummaging noise stopped. I tried opening Marty’s top drawer, to look for the note, but it stuck. Thinking it might make an awful noise if I forced it, I put it off for a minute. Frankly, I didn’t want to interrupt the conversation a few feet away.

Julio said, rather nastily, I thought, “What gives you that authority?”

“I’m acting director.”

“I beg your pardon? How could that be? The board can’t have had time to meet.”

“Well, then, make it acting acting director. The president phoned this morning and asked if I’d take care of things until they can meet—which they’re doing this afternoon—to make it official.”

“You sound very sure of yourself.”

“He sounded pretty definite. Do you mind if I ask you what you’re looking for?”

“Oh—uh—something I lent Sadie. Mmm—well, none of your business, Warren. No hard feelings, I hope? And congratulations.”

“Thanks.”

There was a pause while I imagined them shaking hands, and then I heard them starting to leave, walking toward me. If I started searching then, they’d almost certainly hear me, and I didn’t think Warren, despite what he’d rashly said over the phone, was going to give me a free hand.

My purse wasn’t large enough to fit the calendar in. I’d brought a plastic bag for it, but I’d have to get it out and unfold it—there wasn’t time. I tore off the “Friday” leaf of the calendar—there had been other dates, so it wasn’t the ultimate solution, but it was all I could do for now.

Before I had time to duck out of sight, they were parallel with the cubicle. They stopped—staring straight at me. Julio said, “Rebecca Schwartz, how on earth did you get in?”

“Charmed a policeman,” I said.

His companion was around five ten and overweight. He had thin curly hair and wore glasses. For some unfathomable reason, he held up his jeans with a belt sporting a giant buckle that looked like a rodeo prize. Fat under his T-shirt rippled like Jell-O around the edges of the buckle. There was something a little vague about him.

He said, “You must be a very resourceful person.”

“And you must be Warren Nowell. I recognize your voice.”

“What did you need to pick up for Marty?”

“Just some papers she wanted.”

“I think I have to reconsider what I told you on the phone.”

“I was afraid of that.” I shrugged and stepped out.

The three of us walked as far as the door, but Warren came no farther, making it clear he was escorting us out where we belonged. When Julio and I were alone, I asked how Esperanza was.

He looked miserable. “Awful. Near-catatonic, to tell you the truth. I don’t know what to do.”

I must have looked baffled.

He said, “I’m sort of new at single parenthood.”

An odd ringing sounded in my ear as I caught his implication. My heart pounded. But these were not the beginnings of tender feelings. Oh, no. Not when I hadn’t even had a chance to mourn Rob yet. Not with Marty cooling her heels in the hoosegow. And certainly not, knowing what I knew. Marty’s calendar for Friday night had said “6:30—J.”