Full House: A Laid-Back Bay Area Mystery (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 3) (14 page)

“What makes you say that?” I felt like an idiot asking the question, and the man looked at me like I was one, for sure.

“A man thinks he’s Noah? A man builds an ark because the flood is coming? Shit.” He laughed again. “Don’t get me wrong, I like old Tom. Nice guy, good customer. But fuckin’ apeshit, man. I told him so myself, when he asked me did I want a spot in the ark. I told him, ‘Tom, you’re fuckin’ nuts.’ Of course I kind of thought so before that, anyhow.”

“Oh, yeah?” Rosie grabbed hold. “Why is that?”

He shook his head again, and looked from one to the other of us like an uncle talking to a pair of not-too-bright kids. “The guy’s got millions, you know? You ever seen his house?” I nodded. “Shit. Millions. And he was driving a 1975 car?” He laughed again, snorting a little. “Don’t get me wrong. That’s a good car. But millions, man. And he’s driving a ten-year-old station wagon.”

“There’s nothing wrong with liking old cars,” I said.

“Old-old, yeah, maybe. But middle-aged?” His wit cracked him up again. “Over and over I told him, ‘Tom, you’re fuckin’ nuts.’”

“Now that we’ve established that,” Rosie said, smiling a little despite herself, “when did you last see him?”

He closed his eyes to think. “About a month ago. Had her in for an oil change. Never lets it even begin to get dirty. But I heard from him about a week ago. He called me long distance. On a Sunday.”

“What Sunday? And from where?”

He slid off the desk and went around it to look at his calendar. “Must of been the fifteenth. Yeah, Sunday the fifteenth.” The day after he’d left the note for his wife.

“From where?” Rosie repeated.

“From Tahoe. Said he was having some vapor lock problems and wanted to know if I knew of a good mechanic up there. You know, at that altitude—”

“Yeah,” I said. “Did he say anything else?”

“Not that I remember. I don’t know anyone up there, so I couldn’t help him out. He said thanks anyway and goodbye.”

That was all he had. It did not exactly sound like a message from a kidnapped man.

“If you hear from him again,” I said, “would you let me know?”

Olson looked doubtful. “I don’t know about that, man. Maybe the guy doesn’t want to be found. Even crazy people got rights. That’s what Berkeley’s all about.” He burst out laughing again.

“He may be in trouble,” Rosie said. “Maybe if you hear from him you could tell him we’re looking for him? We just want to be sure he and this Marjorie are all right.”

He plunked himself down in a plastic upholstered swivel chair that looked like Jack the Ripper had had a go at it, and poured the rest of his drink down his throat.

“Sure. I could tell him that.” I gave him my phone number and thanked him for his help. He followed us out of the office and returned to the gaping Volkswagen. He was chuckling happily to himself.

When we got home, I ran down to Rosie what I wanted to ask Arnold, handed her a couple of files from Noah’s desk, walked her down to the corner, performed introductions, and left her there, returning to my house. I set myself up in a lawn chair with the rest of the files and my notebook, some paper, and a couple of sharpened pencils.

An hour or so later, Rosie and Alice walked up the path. Rosie pulled up another lawn chair and sighed deeply.

“Did you have fun?” I asked.

“Yeah. I’m such a great talker. I really love sitting around with middle management and trying to cut through the bullshit. Anything interesting in what you’ve been reading?”

I closed the file folder I was holding. “Nothing that seems very important. The personal stuff includes some memos from Arnold about lumber and tools. There’s some plans, drawings of the ark. A letter from some employee over at Yellow Brick Farms complaining about being fired. Lots of lumber receipts— do you think he plans to deduct the arks from his income tax?— but not a damned thing that might lead us to someone who might want to get Noah for any reason.”

“What about the fired employee?”

“Fired by Durell.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, if we’re looking for some guy who just wanted a quarter of a million, just an ordinary, everyday violent thief, I haven’t found any leads to him. How about you?”

“I went over the lists with Arnold. He didn’t know of any other contributors— pardon me, investors. See, most of the people on that membership list aren’t putting up any money at all. Arnold says all Noah required for a place on the ark was a certain amount of labor. Quite a lot of labor. And more lately.”

“About that— you asked him why they’ve been speeding things up?”

“Sure. Not much help there, though, either. Arnold says Noah told him he’d ‘gotten word’ that the flood might be coming sooner than they thought.”

“When did he get this word?” Euphrates jumped into my lap, a large ball of lead, purred for a while, and fell asleep.

“A few days before he disappeared. Arnold says he asked Noah if he’d had another dream, and he said he hadn’t.”

“I feel like that should be significant somehow, but I can’t see where it fits.”

“Not yet, anyway. But I’m way behind you on this.”

“We’re going to fix that today.”

“Good. I also took a tour of the ark. Interesting. I’ve never seen a ship being built before, so I can’t tell whether it’ll float or not. Anyway, I talked to Arnold a little about the differences between the original ark and this one, and he said they didn’t need as much room because—”

“God was going to take care of the animals?”

“Right. I think Noah’s pretty good at making his visions suit practical necessity.”

“Yeah. He’s not as crazy as Bert Olson thinks he is.”

She laughed. “I don’t think the modifications are particularly significant, do you?”

“No. And it’s too bad. I spent all that time reading the Bible. You ready to throw yourself completely into this case?”

“Sure. What’s next?”

“We need to do some traveling. First, I thought we’d run up to the Russian River and have a look at the ark up there, talk to some people, see if Marjorie was up there and when. Then, from there— Tahoe. I’ll bet we can even manage to have some fun while we’re working.”

Rosie had no objections. The river and Tahoe are two of her favorite places.

I’ve always liked the Russian River, too. A small river, broad and shallow, coming down out of the north and sweeping through Sonoma County, through the redwoods and the rolling coastal hills, a slow and gentle current to the ocean.

The River, a resort area of considerable beauty and strange inconsistencies, is beaded with tiny towns from up around Cloverdale to Jenner-by-the-Sea, known to the map-makers as Jenner. Most of these tiny towns don’t qualify as towns at all, but as “communities” of fewer than 250 souls. Little stopping places. A store. A gas station. A place to rent a canoe. A motel. The chief industry is tourism.

Inconsistencies? Here’s a knockout of a resort country, less than two hours from the metropolitan Bay Area, with nice, if rocky beaches, a river even a moron couldn’t drown in, lodges, inns and resorts ranging from rustic to elegant, and great food. And the smell of rural poverty. Plenty of real estate available at a good price. But the only jobs in any number are connected with tourism, unless you commute to Santa Rosa, which is a big town but not exactly Detroit. I had a friend once who bought a beautiful house right on the river and didn’t make it through the first winter.

“Jesus, Jake,” he said, “it’s damp and dark and deserted. And depressed. And too far away.” He moved to a condo in Napa.

I guess people are just never satisfied. I don’t think it’s any damper up there than in, say, Mill Valley or the Berkeley Hills.

Anyway, I like it, and I was glad to get a chance to drive up there, stay overnight, hit a couple of restaurants, paddle a canoe, and go on, lungs refreshed, with possibly a little more information about Noah’s disappearance than I had when I left home.

Before we left, I called Rico and asked him to look after the cats until I got back or my folks returned from their visit with Lee. He told me my father was a fine man. I agreed. We dropped Alice off with a dog-owning friend and headed north.

When we passed through Petaluma, I thought of calling Lee, but there wasn’t much point in it, since I was going to be pretty busy for the next few days. We were on our way to Guerneville, one of the main towns on the river, and planned on getting there in time for an early dinner at the Bugle, a very big resort with dozens of cabins, a campground, a classy restaurant, a good bar, a pool, river frontage, and canoes. It also happens to be a gay resort, but the rest of the locals, as far as I know, aren’t complaining. It brings a whole lot of business into town.

I drove through the jammed parking lot once, gave up, and left the Chevy across the road. We got a couple of tequila sunrises at the bar and took them outside to a table overlooking the pool. It was close to six P.M. but still warm, and there were half a dozen men and two women swimming.

The ratio in the bar was about ten to one, men leading. I asked Rosie about the preponderance of men.

“They own the place,” she shrugged. “Their brochures and advertising are aimed at men. And the men tend to have a lot more disposable income to spend on fancy resorts.”

I decided not to think about that. Instead, I suggested dinner, since there wouldn’t be much daylight after seven-thirty or so, and we wanted to try to catch the people at the ark that evening. Like the Oakland crew, they were probably working late.

The scampi was good, but a little too buttery for my taste or my waistline. It would have been nice to take a walk, but that would have to wait. We drove to a small motel down the road, checked in, and headed for the ark.

According to Arnold’s directions, the ark was sitting on a lot tucked back in the woods about five miles from Guerneville. We followed the River Road west behind a metallic blue 1950 Hudson Hornet sporting a bumper sticker that said, “Santa Rosa, Keep Your Shit to Yourself.” This was in reference to the time the overgrown town, having failed to keep its sewage facilities up to its contractors’ wildest fulfilled dreams, had filled all its holding tanks to capacity and then dumped the overflow into the river— a river that provides both recreation and drinking water for all the communities downstream.

This act of vandalism was followed by a lot of hearings and moratoriums and the like, which may force the city of Santa Rosa to contrive, by foresight, to keep it to itself.

The river was visible through the trees on our left most of the way to Monte Rio, population 1,150, four miles along, which has less of a carnival atmosphere than Guerneville, despite the banner across the road that says, “Welcome to Monte Rio, Vacation Wonderland.”

Our directions took us one mile west of the Vacation Wonderland, more or less, where we were supposed to spot a dirt road winding off to our left.

We did. It led through tall, dank redwoods and narrowed to a car’s width after the first fifty yards. A quarter of a mile or so into the woods, in the middle of a cleared lot fringed with trees and ferns, we found the ark. The setting was shady and dark in the early evening, maybe even dismal. No one was singing.

The ark looked to be at about the same stage of construction as the one in Oakland. Work lights clamped to poles, running off the same kind of portable generator. Half a dozen people hammering and sawing. One of them came to meet us as we stepped down out of the car.

“Can I help you?” The pretty teeth he flashed at us contrasted nicely with his tanned face. I wondered where he’d gotten the tan; not here.

Rosie and I told him who we were, and that we were friends of Arnold’s, just having a look around. He ran his fingers through his yellow hair. “We’re kind of busy,” he said, “but let me just tell Joe you’re here.” He headed toward the ark and we followed him, up the ladder onto the scaffolding and up onto the deck. He looked a little persecuted by our pursuit, but I didn’t much care. There was an open hatch on the deck. We all went through it down to the hold.

The few portholes didn’t do much to light up the huge, nearly bare interior, since nothing was coming in but filtered early evening gray. A couple of worklights were hooked onto the ribs near a large table flanked by two chairs. A man was sweeping the floor, or whatever the bottom of a boat is called. He looked up. It was a Joe I knew, Joe Durell. He dropped his broom in the pile of sawdust he’d made and strode over, smiling, to greet us. He looked as tired as he had the last time I’d seen him.

“Jake! How you doing? What can we do for you?” The young man who had inadvertently brought us down there sighed audibly. Everything was okay. I was a good guy.

“This is my partner, Rosie Vicente,” I said. “Rosie, Joe Durell of Yellow Brick Farms.”

“Great,” Durell said. “Glad to meet you. I was just going to go up for some air. Come on.” He grabbed my elbow and guided me back to the ladder and up to the deck. He didn’t touch Rosie, but she trailed along anyway.

There were a couple of wooden crates and the inevitable pile of lumber up top. We sat.

“Do you come up here a lot?” Rosie asked.

“Quite a bit,” he said. “When I’m not running Yellow Brick, I’m keeping an eye on things here.”

“Keeping an eye on?” I asked. “You mean you’re running this project?”

“Hell no, Jake, I just don’t have that kind of time. Fred— that young fellow who brought you down to see me— he does the day-to-day management.”

“Then maybe we need to talk to him, too,” I said. “We think Marjorie might have come up here sometime during the week before she and Noah disappeared. We’d like to know exactly when that was— if it happened at all— and who saw her and talked to her.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Don’t see why that should be a problem. What exactly was it you heard? Did anybody get more specific than ‘sometime during the week?’”

“Not sure. When was the last time you saw her?”

“Oh, Jesus, Samson. Let’s see. I think it was early last month some time. I was down in Oakland on business, stopped by the ark.”

“You didn’t see her up here, at this ark?”

“She’s only been up here a couple of times that I know of. Once in August— I talked to her then— and I heard she stopped by here just a couple weeks ago. But I wasn’t here and I don’t remember when it was. We sure can do some asking around, though.”