Full House: A Laid-Back Bay Area Mystery (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 3) (23 page)
Authors: Shelley Singer
Tags: #murder mystery, #Shelley Singer, #mystery series, #Jake Samson, #San Francisco, #California fiction, #cozy mystery, #private investigator, #Jewish fiction, #gay mysteries, #lesbian fiction, #Oakland, #Sonoma, #lesbian author
Then we all had our picnic in the woods.
Durell would get off on the drug charge. Jellybean-x would be outlawed, but the ban wouldn’t be retroactive. He would not, however, get off on the murder charge. Fred’s passenger in the old blue Pontiac, the big guy who’d bashed Pa and helped to kill Marjorie, was babbling and plea-bargaining like crazy.
“They should throw away the key,” my father said.
“And you, you should be locked up, Mr. Jake Samson,” Eva railed at me. “You’re crazy. Don’t you ever do anything like this again!”
“I won’t,” I lied. Pa looked at the ceiling for help from God, but he didn’t get any.
Eva stood up. She knew what to do in a crisis. “I’m going to make dinner, now.” She glared at Rosie. “You come, too.”
After dinner that night, I called Artie Perrine, my pal at
Probe,
and told him they had to run something on the story. He said Chloe would call me and they’d come up with something I could show to Hawkins. A piece on designer drugs, maybe.
Then I called Lee. Since I hadn’t heard from Hawkins for a solid twenty-four hours, I figured I could make plans to go to Petaluma without having to worry about canceling them.
“You’re sure you’ll be able to make it tomorrow, Jake?” she asked.
“Positive.”
“I remember you saying something about being an investigator of some kind?”
“Yes. Sort of.”
“There was a really big drug bust on the River that night.”
“I know.”
“Will you have an interesting story to tell me?”
I laughed. “Yes.”
“Good.”
I took the folks to the airport the next afternoon. Rico wanted to come along for the ride to see his new buddy off, and I warned Pa in advance not to say a word to the old man. I didn’t want him strolling around the neighborhood telling stories about me.
“Undercover, right?” Pa said.
“Yes.”
He sighed. “Well, I guess it’s better than being a bum.”
On the way back home, Rico said, “It was that Arnold, wasn’t it? He hit your father over the head.”
“No. It wasn’t Arnold.”
“You should watch him. I don’t trust him. You keep an eye on him, okay, Jake?”
I told him I would.
I stopped back at the house to feed the cats before I went on to Petaluma.
No luggage anywhere. Nobody cooking or yelling at a newspaper. Rosie wasn’t home, either. I sat in my living room until I couldn’t stand the solitude any more, and then I headed north.
I got to Petaluma early, drove around for a while, and pulled up in front of Lee’s house on F street promptly at six.
She looked gorgeous. She was wearing a soft green blouse that matched her eyes, and very tight pants. We went out to dinner, and we went to see that movie she’d been wanting to see.
It was a pretty stupid movie. I don’t remember much about it. Something about spies, and some jerk who gets mixed up with them. I’ve never understood the fascination with spies. They seem like a pretty tacky bunch to me.
We shared a box of popcorn, no butter, and we held salty, but at least not greasy, hands.
She also thought the movie was stupid. “That’s the last time I’ll ever take George’s recommendation,” she said, as we left the theater with the small crowd. We walked to a nearby bar for a nightcap, a trendy place full of trendy people.
“Who’s George?” I asked, after I’d ordered a Czechoslovakian pilsner.
“I think I’ll try that, too,” she told the waiter. “George is someone I work with.”
I wanted to ask more about him, but that wouldn’t have been too subtle.
She liked the Czechoslovakian beer.
“You were going to tell me why you missed our date the other night,” she reminded me.
Since I planned to keep seeing this woman I came clean, told her all about it, told her about the other times I’d done this kind of thing before.
“Designer drugs,” she mused. “Tricky, very tricky. You know, there’s a California congressman who’s introducing legislation about that. He wants to go beyond banning the drug itself, beyond banning its imitations. He wants to make it illegal to produce and sell a drug that has the same effect as any illegal one.”
I hadn’t known that. She was wonderful. She knew everything.
“But couldn’t someone come up with something that had a whole different effect?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I suppose. But there are only so many effects that people want a drug to have, and we’ve probably managed to cover most of those already.”
“Might work,” I agreed. “But I worry about laws that are too general.”
“So do I. They usually don’t work very well.” We ordered another beer. She was watching me, smiling. “Speaking of legal problems, aren’t you playing a very tricky game yourself?”
I smiled back at her. “Yeah. I am. But these things come along every so often, and Rosie and I have gotten to like the challenge. Or the excitement. No, I think it’s the challenge.”
“What happened to the arks? What happened to Noah?”
“He’s okay. He’s blaming himself for Marjorie’s death, says he should have called the police. The police agree, and he’s going to have to work that out with them. Meanwhile, Mrs. Noah is trying to put Yellow Brick Farms back together. And the arks— Arnold’s back to the old schedule, and things are quieter in the neighborhood at night.”
“What happened to Jerry Pincus?”
“Noah covered for him, said he didn’t know about the dope.”
“I hate to sound like a lawyer,” Lee said, “but why don’t you get a license?”
“I’ve thought about it. I could get one, I guess. I don’t know. If I had a license I’d have to follow the rules. I’ve gotten used to not having anyone looking over my shoulder.”
She laughed. “A genuine free spirit.” Right. But I was beginning to have a problem with that. I’d been thinking that I liked Ralph Hawkins. That I didn’t like lying. Someone else could have gotten hurt if he hadn’t been fast enough, and sharp enough, to show up when he did. And maybe what I hated most of all was having to act like a moron in front of him.
Lee interrupted my musings. “This Rosie,” she said. “Tell me more about her.” I told her.
It was a weeknight, and she had to go to work the next morning, so I took her home around midnight. She offered me coffee “for the road.” I drank the coffee. I kissed her.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For the kiss?”
“No. For not saying it’s a long drive back to Oakland.”
“It is.” I kissed her again. She kissed me back, but she moved away.
“Haven’t you been reading the papers?” she asked.
“Yes. What—”
“The old free days are gone. They’re saying this is the age of restraint.”
It was a long drive back to Oakland, but we had a date for the weekend.
THE END
For Paula Solomon
The author thanks Inspector Michel de Latour of the Berkeley Police Department and Tony Plotkin of Grainaissance.
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Start at the beginning of the series:
Samson’s Deal
Or…
Try another great San Francisco mystery series:
The Paul Mcdonald Series
Jake Samson Mysteries
Samson’s Deal
Free Draw
Full House
Suicide King
Spit in the Ocean
Royal Flush
Barrett Lake Mysteries
Following Jane
Picture of David
Searching for Sara
Interview With Mattie
Other novels
Torch Song
The Demeter Flower
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Full House
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SHELLEY SINGER has had 13 novels, including a Shamus Award nominee, and several short stories published. Most are mysteries, including the six books in the Jake Samson series. Her most recent novel is
Blackjack
, a near-future thriller, written as Lee Singer. She teaches writing online and does manuscript consulting. She has served as a judge in a number of fiction writing contests, including the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction writing competition. She lives in Petaluma, CA with two dogs and the love of her life.
Chapter 10
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Chapter 11
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Chapter 12
Chapter 13
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Chapter 14
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Chapter 15
Chapter 16
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Chapter 17
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Chapter 18
Chapter 19
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Chapter 20
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Chapter 21
Chapter 22
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Chapter 23
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Chapter 24
Chapter 25
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Chapter 26
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Chapter 27
