Murder in the Marketplace (7 page)

The bus made that funny noise again while I drove down El Camino. This time I ignored it.

Chapter 7

"What a darling puppy!” Amy picked Barker up when he bounced at her and hugged him; it was hard to say which one was more delighted. I thought about food and vet bills and how big his feet looked at the end of his cute little legs. He smiled at Amy with his engaging doggy grin; she laughed when he licked her face. “Where did you get him? I thought you were doing census stuff.”

“I’m keeping him for someone for a while.” I glanced over my shoulder and wondered if I could swing a temporary fence of some kind between my house and Drake’s, where the hedge we perpetually planned was to go. “We’ll have to watch him carefully when he goes out. There’s some clothesline on the back porch to make a leash.”

Amy buried her face in his soft fur. “Are, you a stray, too, Barker? You’ve come to stay with Aunt Liz?” She was right. I was running a flophouse for the alienated and unwanted—including myself. Another set of responsibilities, for someone who’d spent the past few years ducking them. I half expected to look up the driveway and see a procession of laid-off victims of the moribund California economy coming to camp under my plum trees.

But so far it was only Amy, who ran dizzily beneath the branches in the golden twilight, with Barker chasing and leaping around her. The sight, for some reason, gave me great pleasure. Their noisy game of tag seemed necessary, the sort of amenity every house should have.

I didn’t quite know how to tell Amy about what had happened that evening. I kept seeing Jenifer Paston as she had been earlier, yawning while she leaned against the door. Perhaps she had taken the overdose before I spoke to her. But in that case, why had she made an appointment for seven? Her death, the manner and unexpectedness of it,
depressed and alarmed me. I just couldn’t talk about it.

Instead, when Amy collapsed on the grass in front of me, breathless and smiling, I asked about her trip to Walgreen’s. It was only eight by the old schoolhouse clock, though it seemed way past my bedtime. After years of going to bed near sunset, I don’t often stay up late. The morning is my power time.

Amy bubbled over with the coolness of the scene in downtown Palo Alto. She’d already met some really nice kids. One of them had a lead on a job in a deli she might be able to get, and that would be cool because it was in walking distance—"I don’t want you to have to drive me, Aunt Liz,” she assured me, wide-eyed.

I had no intention of driving her. We are given legs to keep us from being a burden on the transportation system. When I imparted this bit of wisdom (Rule Number 27), Amy grew thoughtful.

“Dad wouldn’t let me drive, after two teeny little accidents,” she confided. “I didn’t think it was fair.” She stroked Barker, who’d settled down for a snooze in her lap. “He told me to walk if I wanted to get anywhere. So I did—right to the bus station.” She giggled.

“So your dad isn’t always wrong.” I wasn’t going to bite on this kind of blackmail. “The VW bus is only driven by me, Amy. It’s cranky, and might decide not to start again after you drove it somewhere. If you don’t want to walk or take the county transit bus, you could get a bike. One of the rules about staying here is that I don’t have to worry about you."

“You won’t,” she promised, lifting Barker and kissing him on his black and pink nose. She got to her feet and stretched. I envied that careless ease and limberness—I have to struggle with yoga and swimming just to keep it all from racing downhill instead of sliding gently. “One of the guys I met tonight has a car.”

She didn’t wait for me to absorb this before delivering the punch line. “He’s picking me up tomorrow to show me the ocean.”

With great difficulty I bit my tongue. The girl was sixteen, for heaven’s sake. Either she had some sense, or she didn’t. Either way, I couldn’t chain her to my ankle all day. “Just the two of you?” I had to say it—I couldn’t stop myself.

“No, a whole bunch,” she said carelessly. “Don’t worry. We won’t drink, do drugs, or fuck in the sand.”

I blinked.

“That’s what you were going to warn me about, isn’t it?” She grinned at me. “That’s what my mom and dad would have said, anyway.”

“Not in those exact words, I suspect.”

“Maybe not. Are you shocked?” She sounded hopeful.

“I’ve been in shock since this afternoon,” I said truthfully. She didn’t know the half of it. “Amy, about sex—”

“Listen, Aunt Liz, I’m not going to have sex.” She stared at me earnestly. “Like I said, I did it once. It was gross. And two of my girlfriends had terrible problems—one got pregnant and had an abortion and felt really bad about it, and the other one got chlamydia and had to take these awful drugs. Sex is just more trouble than it’s worth,” she said with a worldly air. “But when I tried to tell my mom that, she freaked. She wanted to send me to the priest for counseling, but another one of my friends had been hit on by a priest, so I said I wouldn’t go, and that made big trouble, too.” She heaved a sigh. “They just wouldn’t listen.”

“I’m listening.” I was, too, fascinated by this glimpse of a girlhood so much different from mine. “Amy, if you feel like you’re in trouble, I’ll come and get you. Just call—” I stopped short.

“You don’t have a phone, though.” Amy shook her head. “I mean, on the one hand, you’re right. Nobody can call you up and yell at you, like my parents or anything. But what about emergencies? It’s, like, a dilemma, huh?”

“Right,” I said hollowly. A dilemma that hadn’t really existed before today. Drake let me give his number to the temp agencies and editors; they left messages that eventually got to me. I’d lost some temp jobs over that, which contributed to Mrs. Rainey’s lack of enthusiasm for me.

It was getting dark, and the mosquitoes had found us. I followed Amy into the house. She looked tired in the bright glow of the living room light.

“Can I go to bed?” She yawned hugely and for a moment my throat caught, remembering Jenifer. “I’m really beat. And Randy is coming early tomorrow—they want to catch the surf at high tide, or something. I wasn’t really listening. They have jobs in the afternoon—Randy and Eric.”

“What other girls are going?” I took the cushions off the couch and yanked the bed part out of its coffin. The mattress had a lumpy look. The sheets were very old, very soft cotton, part of my inheritance from Vivien Greely, the dear lady who had left me her house and contents the year before. Amy lent a hand spreading them, while she told me about the kids she’d met on the corner of University and Waverley downtown.

“Elise has a job at this deli downtown, and she’s the one who said they might have an opening. And Kimberly is doing summer school, but she has tomorrow off for some reason. We’re planning to be back by one or so, when the guys have to clean up for their jobs at the mall. There’s a terrific mall, Kimberly said, right over there.” She pointed in the direction of the Stanford Shopping Center. “That’s a good place to work because you get discounts on really great stuff. But those stores don’t want you to have nose rings or anything, so Elise didn’t apply there.”

Nose rings. “They sound like nice kids,” I said faintly, digging an old quilt out of the cedar chest against the wall.

“You can meet them tomorrow morning,” Amy promised blithely. “I told them we could have breakfast here.” She caught my eye and giggled. “They’re going to bring some bagels or something. Honestly, Aunt Liz, you look just like Daddy when you have that expression on your face.”

"Thanks for the compliment.” I tossed her a pillow from my bed. “Have you given up on your stock exchange idea?”

“Not exactly given up,” Amy said, holding the pillow under her chin while she put on a clean pillow slip. Watching her, I had a vivid flash of myself as a girl, gripping the pillow beneath my chin, both hands free to open the pillow slip and pull it halfway up, then raising my chin to free the pillow for a brisk shake the rest of the way into the case. My mother would be flapping the sheets, wearing the calm expression of one who knows exactly what her job is and how to do it That certainty had driven me wild with rebellion, but now I understood how she could barter freedom for a narrow security.

Amy put the pillow on the Hide-a-bed and I pulled myself out of the past. “I’m going to do some research on investment houses at the library tomorrow,” she said, looking like the farthest thing from a button-down stockbroker that I could imagine. “There’s a library downtown, Elise said.”

I spread one more blanket on top of the bed; nights are cold even in June. "That sounds like a good idea.”

She picked up her big leather bag and pulled out an immense T-shirt. “Can I take another shower? I still feel, like, positively groady.”

“Sure.” I looked at the Hide-a-bed, taking up all the space in my small living room. “There’s not a lot of hot water, though. The heater doesn’t work too well, and I haven’t saved enough for a new one yet.”

“Okay,” she said. “It’ll be like camping.”

I spread my census paperwork on the kitchen table, but I couldn’t get down to it. The interruption I’d been expecting came while the water was running.

Drake knocked with his usual impatient rat-a-tat, and didn’t bother waiting for me to open the door. He came in, holding a big paper bag.

“I can’t believe after all that happened last year that you’d leave the scene of a crime,” he said, shoving the paper bag into my arms. Drake had been the investigating officer the previous fall, in my brush with contrived death. That’s how we’d met—how he’d been on the scene to snap up a bargain when I decided to sell one of the houses Vivien had left me.

I was glad Amy was in the shower. “I didn’t know there’d been a crime.” Inside the paper bag was dog food, a leash, and some food bowls. “Looked like suicide to me. How did you know I was there?”

Drake shrugged impatiently. “Suicide is a crime in some states, for your information. Any dead person you discover, you’re supposed to wait until the police get there. I saw you driving away, and when Miss Jensen said there’d been a sinister census taker on the doorstep when she got there, I managed to add two and two.”

“I waited for the ambulance. Clarice more or less told me to leave.” I took the bag to the kitchen and Drake trailed behind.

Barker rose from a brief nap and attached himself to Drake’s pant leg, growling ferociously, the hair standing up on the back of his neck.

“And you removed evidence.” Drake shook Barker off his leg and picked him up by the scruff, which instantly cowed him. “This dog.”

“According to Clarice, he was a nuisance. I did her a favor.” I filled the water bowl, and Barker immediately came to drink from it as if he were dying of thirst. “It’s not like I want a puppy planted on me.” I crossed my arms and returned Drake’s glare with interest. “Why are you involved, anyway?”

“Suspicious death.” He sat at the kitchen table, uninvited, and looked expectantly at the teakettle on the stove. I filled it with water and turned on the gas, getting out the box of ginseng tea like he likes. “I hate that kind of thing,” he grumbled, waiting for the water to boil. “Everything messed up and no clear indications of what happened.” He shot me a look from behind his wire-rims. “Miss Jensen said you were the first person on the scene.”

“I was after her into the apartment." I gave him a brief description of how Clarice and I converged on the door. “I didn’t touch anything,” I concluded. “I felt her wrist and didn’t find a pulse. There was an open, empty-looking prescription bottle by her hand.”

“Prescription bottle?” His gaze sharpened. “I’ll have to speak to Miss Jensen again.”

“Did you find a note? I assumed there was always a note.”

“Not always.” He didn’t answer further, and I didn’t press him. Drake is good at getting information without giving it.

“You haven’t heard the weirdest part,” I said reluctantly. I’m paranoid about the police, I admit, which makes me very ambivalent about having a cop live practically on my doorstep. Nevertheless, I’d learned that the best way to deal with the police is to tell them everything, and let them sort out the important from the dreck. “The strangest thing is I met them both this morning. Jenifer and Clarice. I temped at SoftWrite, and they both work there. Worked,” I corrected, thinking of Jenifer.

Drake stared at me. The sound of the shower stopped, and the sweet scent of shampoo drifted into the room. “Well. Let me get this straight. You did temp work this morning at a company, and some of those workers then showed up on your census register? And this evening, one of them is dead?”

“It’s a populous area,” I said defensively. “I was doing mailing labels, and I noticed a lot of SoftWrite’s people live in Palo Alto. I might even have more of them on my register. People tend to ask their friends and coworkers about apartments when they need one, and that creates a cluster effect.” I made that up on the spur of the moment, but it sounded authentic, and Drake nodded.

“Take you and me, for instance,” he said, giving me a look that blended irony and speculation nicely.

“Right.” I poured hot water into the cups on the stove. He thanked me absently when I served him, and dunked the tea bag up and down, frowning into the cup.

“So do you suspect me?” The words burst out from the nameless emotions that roiled inside of me. I saw Jenifer’s pale face, and Clarice’s tear-streaked one. I remembered Ed Garfield at Bridget’s party, and the rumors that he was romantically involved with Jenifer. He’d be devastated, if so. And the other woman, Suzanne, whom I hadn’t met yet—how would she take her rival’s death?

“Suspect you of what? Posing as a census agent to make the poor girl take an overdose? Don’t be ridiculous. Coincidences do happen, and that’s all you are, the victim of coincidence.” He lifted the tea bag out of his cup and plunked it into a saucer. “At least your being on the scene gives me a reliable account of what happened. Miss Jensen was incoherent.” He looked up, curious. “Was she like that this morning? What were your impressions of them?”

I thought back, and described the scene at the table—Clarice’s motherly behavior, including the two aspirin she’d given Jenifer; Jenifer’s tense, stressed-out air. I repeated what Mindy had said about Jenifer’s being given a lot of responsibility for someone so young. Drake made a few notes on the jumble of papers he shoves into any convenient pocket. They were more for show than anything else—he remembers like an elephant.