Spit In The Ocean: A Laid-Back Bay Area Mystery (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 4) (6 page)

“Let’s get to the timetable first,” she suggested. I opened my notebook to a clean page.

“First,” I said, “came the burglary, or vandalism, or whatever it is. That was Tuesday night, discovered Wednesday morning.”

She smiled. “That’s the easy part, because we don’t know anything much about it.”

“Right. Except that it was done sometime during the night and found first thing the next morning. Then it gets complicated.” I wrote down “5
P.M.
Friday,” and circled it. “Starting at about five o’clock this afternoon, right about the time I was leaving the sheriff’s office and coming here to meet you. That’s when Gracie Piedmont got the call from Spiegel and went out to the spit. It was also right about the time that Perry was telling Clement he’d go out to the spit after he’d gotten some dinner.” Rosie had gotten up, taken a few sheets of motel stationery from the desk, plunked herself back on the bed, and begun her own diagram. She’s a visual thinker. I guess carpenters tend to be that way.

“What time did we go to the tavern?”

“About six-thirty,” I said. “Which is also right about the time that Perry must have found Gracie. Fredda called the cops at six, Perry was radioed at the spit, told to look for Gracie.”

“And by seven-thirty the news of her death had somehow gotten to Henry, because that’s when he came into the bar to tell Wolf.”

“And don’t forget Fredda Carey. She made another phone call to the station after seven, and went to the spit.” I had scribbled a question mark next to Henry’s arrival at the tavern. How had he found out?

“We go to dinner at Nora’s. A little later, maybe around eight-fifteen or so, we go out to the spit. Fredda’s already there. Wolf has come and gone. The body’s been taken away, the coroner’s man is out there being futile.”

Rosie scribbled for a minute. “That’s all pretty tight. Perry says he got to the spit just after six. That means Piedmont died sometime between around five-fifteen— assuming she left her cousin’s right at five— and six or six-fifteen.”

A question occurred to me. “If Perry was already out there when he got the call, wouldn’t he have seen Gracie’s car in Spiegel’s driveway, wondered where she was, maybe even started looking for her then?”

“He says he didn’t. That he hadn’t gotten that far out. That he was checking the houses closer in when the call came through.”

Remembering Paisley’s estimation of Perry’s ability, I wondered if he’d been working at all. Still, with what we had, the time of death couldn’t be stretched very much beyond the bounds of five-fifteen to six-fifteen.

Moving on to another new notebook page, I said, “People.”

Rosie and I have been doing this long enough, now, so the more routine stuff has been reduced to shorthand. She flipped to a clean sheet of stationery.

We started again, with the sperm bank. “Employees,” Rosie said. “Especially the one who has a key to the file and tankrooms.”

“Doesn’t look like the burglar used a key.”

“Would you, if everyone knew you had one?”

It was too early in the case for logic, and too late in the evening for it as well. “And the kids, whoever they are, that everyone seems to think did it.”

“And the local religious maniacs.”

That pretty much took care of that. On to the death. Lots of real people with real names there. Perry. Henry, Wolf’s boss and bearer of bad news. Wolf, the boyfriend. Marty Spiegel. Cousin Fredda.

Locations between five and six
P.M.
Perry, dinner? Henry? We didn’t know. Wolf— working at the tavern? We didn’t know his hours. Marty Spiegel? He’d gotten the woman out there. Had he really called from L.A.? Fredda? Sitting at Gracie’s house, waiting for her to come back? We didn’t know.

Our next moves were pretty well laid out for us, then. We would talk to the boyfriend and his boss, and we would see what more we could find out about the dead woman from her cousin. Find out about Spiegel. And, in our spare time, dig out suspects in the break-in.

We turned in, then, wanting to get an early start in the morning. Exhausted as I was from fighting wind and rain and stuffing my head with people and their movements, I had some trouble falling asleep. I lay awake constructing improbable scenarios, rehearsing questions I might ask. Just before I fell asleep I had a shameful thought. Maybe I would get to meet one of the celebrities that lived on the spit.

Fredda Carey was listed, so right before Rosie and I went out for breakfast I called her and asked if we could stop by in an hour or so.

She hesitated.

“My partner and I are trying to put together a piece on this town. The problems, the beauties, the tragedies. You know the kind of thing.” I didn’t know what kind of thing I was talking about, but I hoped she did. “We want to know about some of the people who live here, and of course about your cousin, who has died so tragically.…”
Tragedy
is a word so overused by the media that I figured my overuse of it would be like credentials. Maybe I would remind her of her favorite TV anchorman.

“Oh. Well, I suppose so. But we are bereaved, after all. I hope it won’t take too long.”

“I’m sure it won’t.”

Sometime during the night the storm had blown itself inland, where it could batter the Sierras with snow. The morning was fresh and cool, with blue sky and yellow sunlight breaking through little white clouds and bigger gray ones on their way east. I wished them a pleasant journey, brushed the leaves and twigs off the roof and hood of the Chevy, found one tiny scratch, took a deep breath, and thought about food.

Rosie pulled a five-foot-long two-inch-thick eucalyptus branch out of the bed of her truck and volunteered the truck’s services for the day.

On the way to Georgia’s Cafe, the place where I’d had my late lunch the day before, we found a shoe store that would probably have boot oil or at least saddle soap for the shoes that had taken such a beating the night before, the ones that were still wet. The shoe store wasn’t open yet. We were both wearing sneakers. It was a relief to be carrying something dry and lightweight around on my feet, and I’d been particularly happy to trade in the clumsy drapery of the slicker on a lightweight jacket.

Breakfast was terrific. This time there were more customers, and everyone seemed to be eating the kind of food doctors don’t approve of. We both had big fat omelets full of fat calories— mine had cheese and bacon and spinach— and orange juice and strong coffee.

By the time we’d finished, the shoe store had opened, and we bought some leather-saving supplies.

Fredda Carey’s house, on a street named Mendocino, was a one-story frame with hardly any paint left on it, an open front porch with a healthy spider plant in a box hooked to the railing, and a weedy front yard supporting a couple of ratty-looking oleanders. Instead of front steps there was a ramp.

The block was midway between downtown and the edge of town, running parallel to and several blocks from the ocean. It was, as a matter of fact, nowhere in particular. Although there were some large trees in some of the yards, none sheltered Fredda Carey’s house from the sea wind that had worn it down to bare wood.

Some of the neighboring houses looked better maintained than hers, some showed some landscaping and painting creativity, but there were too many small dirt yards with wire fencing, too many weary old hedges and broken-down cars. Fredda’s own ancient station wagon was parked in the drive. Like the house, it didn’t have much paint on it.

We walked up the ramp and knocked. The door was opened by a young girl in a wheelchair, which explained the ramp. About twelve, I guessed, but her face was pinched like a worn-out runner’s. She wore a big silver cross on a chain around her neck.

“Hello,” I said. “We’re here to see your mother.”

“Yes, I know.” I couldn’t tell from her voice what she thought of that. “She said to ask you to go on through into the kitchen.” She waved a thin hand down the hall toward the back of the house, swung her chair around, and disappeared out the front door. We walked down the hall.

The kitchen was big, like kitchens in old houses are, unless someone’s ruined the old house. The painted cabinets looked like the originals, but the stove and the refrigerator and the big freezer in the corner looked new.

Fredda Carey was rolling out a ball of dough on a big floured wooden board on the kitchen table. A nice homey scene. The night before she had been wrapped in plastic against the weather, and about all I’d noticed about her was that she was a big woman with a fretful face. I got a better look at her now. She was tall and broad, but not fat, with wide shoulders. A square face with prominent cheekbones, her brown hair hanging straight to just below her shoulders. Her brown eyes had heavy lids smudged with brown eye shadow. Her hands, wrapped tightly around the roller handles, were big enough to go with the rest of her, with square-tipped fingers and chipped polish on the short nails. She was one of those women who should wear men’s shirts— the cheap, frilly blue blouse was too tight across the shoulders. Her old faded big-bottom bells nearly covered the blue sneakers worn thin over the big toes. Her face still looked fretful.

She invited us to sit down at the table and talk while she worked. It was a nice old table, scrubbed pine, but the chairs were plastic and chrome and ugly. There were two sheets of baked cookies on top of the refrigerator and a big pile of plastic freezer bags on the counter nearby. I started to say something, but she peered at her watch and turned away, taking down the two cookie sheets, grabbing a handful of plastic bags, dumping cookies into the bags. She put the bags on a large metal tray, carried the tray to the upright freezer, and stashed the cookies inside, where there must have been a thousand cookies in plastic bags already stored.

She finished making cutouts in the dough she’d just rolled, put the cutouts on the two liberated cookie sheets, opened the oven, took out two sheets of baked cookies, put those on the refrigerator, and loaded the oven with the new batch. Then she looked at her watch again, pulled another large dough ball out of an immense mixing bowl, and plopped it down on the wooden board.

“I bet you think that’s a lot of cookies for one woman and one little girl,” she said slyly, pointing at the freezer. I said yes, it certainly seemed to be. “It’s my business. I sell them to the grocery, the restaurants. Especially in summer, when more business comes through. This year I’m expanding. Got a customer up in Rosewood, north of here. Fredda’s sugar cookies. All natural.”

We told her we thought that was terrific, which pleased her.

“Now,” she said, whacking the doughball with her rolling pin, “what can I help you with?”

“Wait a second,” I said, scribbling in my notebook. “Fredda’s all natural cookies. That’s Fredda with two D’s?”

“Yes. Two.” She began mashing the dough flat. I finished writing with a flourish.

“They smell very good,” Rosie said politely.

“Oh, gee. I bet you’d like some. And some coffee.” She scraped a half dozen off the sheets on the refrigerator and onto a plastic plate, set the plate and two cups down in front of us, turned on the flame under a percolator, checked her watch again, and went back to rolling dough.

“About the town,” Rosie began. “Have you lived here all your life?” Fredda nodded. The dough was nearly subjugated. “And your cousin?”

She sighed, set down her rolling pin, and went to the stove for the percolator of warmed-over coffee. She poured some into our cups and seemed to assume we both drank it black.

“She lived here all her life too.”

“I guess most of the people in town are people you grew up with?” I asked.

“A lot of them, anyway.”

“Like Wolf, over at the tavern?”

She nodded, picked one of the cookies off the plate, took a bite, then another, then one more and it was gone. Back to the dough. Another forearm-bulging roll and it was a quarter inch thick. “And Nora, at the sperm bank?”

“That’s right. Of course, Nora was a little older than me, so we weren’t close as kids or anything. Wolf’s more like my age. Poor Wolf.” She shook her head. “I guess he’s all broken up about this.”

“You guess?” Rosie said.

“Well, I’m sure he is.”

I wanted to know more about Wolf, but at the moment I was more interested in the bank. “How do you feel about— how do people in town feel about— the sperm bank?”

She ate another cookie. “The sperm bank? I don’t know. You got to give Nora a lot of credit. She’s a smart one. I was kind of surprised when she came back here, but I can’t say I blame her. It’s exciting down in the city, but personally, I wouldn’t want to live there. Too expensive.”

“And, of course,” Rosie added, “there’s more crime.”

“That’s for sure.” She stamped out a new bunch of circles, looked at her watch, went to the oven, took out the two sheets, set them on top of the stove while she emptied the two that had been cooling into freezer bags, and finished up the routine by sliding the new ones into the oven and checking her watch yet again. Then she took the dough left over from the two previous cuttings, rolled it in with the dough in the bowl, and dropped another wad onto the board.

“How do you feel about the crime that happened at the bank?” Rosie persisted.

Fredda shrugged. “Same way everyone else in town feels. Kids. Probably that Rollie and Tommy Hackman. Real leaders, those two, real funny boys.”

“Are they bad kids? Get in trouble a lot?”

She backed off a little. “Oh, well, you know what I mean. High-spirited. I can see how they might think that was just about the funniest thing ever, ripping off a bunch of… but they’re not mean boys. They never tease Joanne or anything.”

“Joanne?”

“My daughter.”

“These Hackman boys— they’re brothers?” I asked, sipping some of the bitter coffee.

“Yeah. Live right down the street. Just a few doors.” She paused, cocked her head, looked at the back door, and stood up and headed toward it. At that instant there was the sound of a key turning in the lock. The door opened and Joanne wheeled into the kitchen.

“We’re talking,” Fredda said. “Take a cookie and go to your room.” The child started to do half of what she was told— she didn’t take a cookie— but Fredda stopped her.