Spit In The Ocean: A Laid-Back Bay Area Mystery (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 4) (17 page)

“Would your mother be upset with you if you were?” I wasn’t exactly wild about Fredda, but I felt compelled to act as if her mother, not her great-aunt, were the authority in her life.

“He shouldn’t sell books like this,” she said, and wheeled off to a table piled with books about northern California ecosystems. I pursued her.

She fiddled with the books.

“No school today?” I asked.

“I don’t feel good.”

“Sorry to hear it.”

She wheeled away from me, up to the counter. I heard her telling Lou her mother needed a couple of boxes for delivering cookies. He went into the back room, got two book cartons, placed one inside the other, and set them on her lap. She wheeled out without another word to anyone.

Rosie and I took our packages and left. Walking back to the motel, I mentioned what I was thinking.

“You’re right. There is a resemblance. She doesn’t look exactly like him, though.”

“You didn’t catch the expression on her face when she realized I was watching her look at one of Melody’s books. I felt like I was looking at Lou, not Joanne.”

“Go on. I’m listening.”

“Lou has strong connections with both Joanne and Rollie. He thinks a lot of Rollie, seems to really care about him. And he could have witnessed the burglary. I wonder if there’s any connection between Rollie and Joanne, or Rollie and Hilda? Jesus, what a can of worms.”

“Everybody’s connected to everyone else,” she groused. “The whole town probably has a common ancestor.”

“Yeah. A Kallikak or a Juke. I want to add Overman to the list of cryobank suspects. For a lot of reasons. He could have seen something. And maybe he’s a rejected donor.”

“You mean something’s wrong with him and that’s why Joanne was born that way— there are a lot of reasons for birth defects, I think.”

“Let’s just check it out.”

Since we didn’t want to talk to or see Mrs. Hackman, we went to Georgia’s for breakfast. Seated in a booth at the back were Henry and Wolf, Wolf with his back to the door. Henry nodded at us, and Wolf turned around. He stood up and came to our table.

“I hear you were looking for me yesterday,” he said to Rosie.

She thought fast. “Not exactly. I just wanted to try to make peace with you. You were so angry at us the other day. No hard feelings, that kind of thing.”

He sat down. “Sure. That’s why you wanted to know if I was at work when Gracie died.”

Henry stood up and came over too. “Wolf, why don’t you let these people eat their breakfasts?” He stopped, gazed at us benignly. “Better yet, why don’t you two join us in that back booth. Let’s have a talk. Clear the air.”

I was tempted to ask, “What’s it to you?” There was something about his manner that offended me. Big Daddy making peace among his children. But my investigative side shut me up. We joined them.

The waitress brought coffee and took our orders. Henry got back to his soft scrambled eggs, sausage, and whole wheat toast. Wolf let his sit and congeal.

“This man,” Henry said, tilting his head toward Wolf, “has been through hell in the past few days.”

We waited, silent.

“His fiancée was killed in a terrible accident. You were there in the bar when I came in to tell him. You saw how he was.”

I nodded. “But if it wasn’t an accident? He wasn’t working when it happened, he was working after she was found.”

Our food arrived. “Maybe Wolf can tell us,” I continued, “where he was between five and six o’clock?”

“I don’t know why I should tell you anything. I told Clement. He asked me this morning and I told him. And I’m sick and tired of people looking at me funny because you two are asking questions. Because your questions are making people wonder.”

“Then why don’t you tell us too,” Rosie said. “We could ask Clement. We’d rather hear it from you.”

“Who the hell do you think you are, anyway? I thought you were here to find out about that business over at the bank. Why all this shit about Gracie?” I was startled to see a couple of big tears spill over his lower lids. He wiped them away.

“Wolf,” Henry said, “maybe they think there’s a connection. Because you used to go with Nora.”

Wolf stared at us, dumbfounded. “That was years ago for Christ’s sake.” I shrugged. He turned to Henry. “You think these people have any right to be going around asking questions about me?”

Henry shook his head. “No, I don’t. But it might be a good idea to do what you can to get them off your tail, you dumb shit.”

Wolf’s shoulders slumped. He pushed his plate into the center of the table, nearly tipping over my coffee. “Ask Clement,” he said. “He’s probably already checked it out. I was over visiting Hackman. Having a sandwich and a beer with Howard. Gracie was eating with her cousin, so Howard said come on over for a bite. His wife was working the dinner shift, and his kids were getting dinner at the restaurant.”

We finished our breakfasts fast. Mine, I thought, was going to sit like lead in the pit of my stomach. We went to see Clement.

“We hear Wolf’s got an alibi for Friday night,” I said.

He nodded. “News does get around, doesn’t it? I was just talking to Hackman. Wolf was with him, he says. No reason to think he’s lying.”

I told him we’d been at the Hackman place the night before. That Mrs. Hackman had accused Wolf and Hackman, although he’d disagreed, hadn’t said anything about being with Wolf that evening.

Clement laughed. “Hackman didn’t know when any of it happened. Didn’t know the hour. Didn’t make a connection until I questioned him.”

“Doesn’t that seem strange?” Rosie asked.

“Not really. The man drinks. He doesn’t keep track of things too good anymore.”

I sat down on the hard bench under the window. I was unconvinced. “Then maybe he got his nights mixed up too?”

“I don’t think so. Vonnie— that’s his wife— she only works the dinner hour on Fridays. He can probably keep that straight enough. If he doesn’t go over to the restaurant with the kids, he fends for himself. So unless he’s lying, Wolf’s probably clear.”

There was also crime number three to consider— the truck sabotage. “What about Saturday?” I persisted. “Do we know Wolf was at the bar all afternoon? Maybe he was on the coast road and decided to give us a free brake job.”

“Those are his hours. We can check on it.”

“And what about Frank Wooster?” Rosie wanted to know. “Was the garage open all afternoon? Was he there?”

“He was there when I called for the wrecker. In fact, he was working on Henry’s car, and I had to drag him away.”

That didn’t tell us much. The mechanic could have done the work on the truck and cut back to town in plenty of time to answer the garage phone.

As much as I wanted the truck-wrecker, though, it seemed pretty clear that for the moment the way to that crime was through the first two— the burglary and the murder.

We made a return visit to the bank.

The personnel director told us she’d spent hours the night before looking through the files, and she was sorry, but she hadn’t been able to come up with any former or current employees who were obviously unhappy. No one had left, she said, “under a black cloud.” No one had ever complained that the raise and promotion system was unfair.

“But I do have a theory,” she said brightly. We were desperate enough to listen. “What if it was Gracie? She seemed kind of upset around here the last few days before she fell. And she looked through the profiles that time and never said anything about it again. Maybe she had some problem? And went off the deep end? And broke in here and took everything and then killed herself?”

“An interesting idea,” Rosie commented generously. “Incidentally, when was it exactly that she looked at the donor profiles?”

“Oh, just a couple of weeks ago.”

Against the woman’s will, we kept her for nearly another hour, questioning and questioning again her assertion that no one in the history of the bank had ever been unhappy, trying to learn more about Gracie. The time was wasted.

According to her, everything was for the best in this best of all possible cryobanks.

We went to find Nora. She kept us waiting for half an hour before she agreed to let us take her away for lunch. We convinced her to take enough time to drive up to Rosewood with us, because I, for one, was getting tired of having my meals spoiled by indignant citizens.

She recommended an Italian place that she said was pretty good, which was not much of a recommendation. I was even less impressed when I saw that Fredda’s all-natural cookies were listed with the desserts. We settled down with our plates of pasta. They turned out to be, after all, pretty good.

Nora agreed with her personnel director. No unhappy employees or ex-employees.

“Not in the whole history of the bank?” Rosie asked.

“And no really unhappy clients either?” I added.

Not that she knew of.

“How long has the bank been in existence?”

“Six years.” So much for Joanne. She was twelve. If she was Lou Overman’s child, it was by the usual method, which pretty much took care of the possibility that Fredda had a birth-defects grudge against the bank.

“There’s something I’ve been wondering about,” I said, changing the subject. “The sperm that was stolen was worth a lot of money, right?” She nodded. “And you can’t be sure that all of it was dumped, right?” She nodded again. “What about this then— say someone dumped only some of it and stole the rest to sell? Would there be a market?”

Nora cut a ravioli in half, stuck in her fork, moved it back and forth in the sauce for a while. “That seems pretty unlikely, all in all. First, why wouldn’t a thief steal all of it?” She ate the ravioli. “Second, I think it would be pretty hard to sell black market sperm without the facilities to back it up. People would be afraid of it. And it’s not like the established banks are that difficult to use. And none of the files were stolen. How could anyone sell it without being able to give the client donor profiles to select from?”

“You could make up your own files,” Rosie said.

“And who says the thief doesn’t have a bank to sell out of?” I added.

“I’m afraid that’s all pretty unlikely,” Nora said. “The sperm was worth a great deal to us, but there would be no reason for another bank to steal it. It’s not expensive or particularly hard to get. An interesting line of reasoning, but I’m afraid it doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

So that answered a couple of questions from our lists of the night before.

“About those donor files, Nora,” I said, “we’re going to have to go through them. This afternoon would be good.” She started to object. “We have to. We can’t help you otherwise.” She shook her head, but it was in resignation. “Could you run down the system for us?”

She sipped her wine. “I’m beginning to be sorry I hired you. The vandalism was a big blow. Violation of confidentiality on top of that could ruin us.”

I commiserated. “I know how important that is, ethically, but at least two crimes and possibly a murder are involved here. On balance—”

“On balance,” she snapped, “the point is not ethics. The point is loss of a business. My business. Ethics are a luxury. So is the social value of the bank. You buy them with money. Without money you can’t have them or anything else.”

Very eighties, I thought, but who was I to quibble? I was getting paid too.

“Okay,” I shot back. “Since we’re still working for you, how about cutting the crap and filling us in?”

She studied me for a moment, sipped more wine, looked at Rosie, who was not looking at her, nodded, and began. “You know the files are organized by number. Each container is numbered. A complete file includes all our information on the donor. Name, address, medical information, the agreement he signs giving up paternal rights. That kind of thing. It also includes a copy of the anonymous profile, which is the only part the prospective recipient sees. And of course there are different sets of numbers, depending on the category the donor falls into. Whether the sperm is being held for private use or is available.”

“Say you were looking in the file,” Rosie said. “How would you be able to tell which set of numbers was which?”

“They’re organized by availability. The available ones are in their own drawers, labeled that way. The others are labeled by designated purpose. Under each of those headings is a set of numbered files. In each file is the information about the donor. You understand that only the available ones include the anonymous profile. Numbered. That’s very important.”

“The number is important?” Rosie asked.

“Well, yes. It identifies the donor in the future.”

“You mean in case a recipient wants to use him again?”

“That, certainly, but also for the children.”

“The children?” I didn’t understand.

“Yes. The children. They get their father’s numbers.”

“I still don’t get it. Why?”

“I would think that would be obvious.” Nora was annoyed. “To avoid marriage to a sibling.”

Ah-hah, I thought. That also explained, at least in part, why each donor was limited to ten live births. Twenty years or so down the road, it could be a real pain to keep falling in love with kin. A scenario rolled through my head:
“I love
you. What is your father’s number? Oh, no, not again
…”

“Were all the files broken into?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Tell me this. Your personnel director says Gracie seemed upset the last few days before her death. Do you remember anything like that?”

A hard question for Nora. A several-ravioli question. “She did seem distracted.”

“Do you have any idea whether the distraction might have started around the time of the break-in?”

“I think perhaps it did. She was upset by the crime. But then, we all were.”

“Did she seem unusually upset?”

She sighed. “Possibly. It’s hard for me to say. I’m afraid I’m not as observant as I should be. It does seem that she was more upset. I remember someone mentioned to me that she’d been talking to Gracie about some work or something and Gracie never heard a word the woman said.”

“Nora.” I finished off a meatball. “Would anyone just off the street, so to speak, have known where to go to find those files and the tanks?”