Spit In The Ocean: A Laid-Back Bay Area Mystery (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 4) (3 page)

I had hoped, on this first ramble through the town, to get a feel for it and for its people. But the people were not outside where they could be seen, and every time I raised my eyes to look around I got leaves and twigs and rain in the face. So I plodded, head down, to the police station.

The cop behind the desk was in his early sixties, I guessed, a gray man with gray hair and watery gray eyes. His small feet were propped up on the desk, and his reading matter of choice was
TV Guide.

He looked surprised when I stumbled in, dripping, smiling like a friendly idiot.

His radio, like everyone else’s, was tuned to a weather report. I heard something about fifty-mile-an-hour winds.

I threw back my hood, unzipped the front of the slicker, strode purposefully up to his desk, stuck out my hand, and told him my name. His, he said, was Clement Paisley, a name which I thought suited him not at all. Chief Clement Paisley.

He asked me to take a seat. The only seat, besides the wooden bench under the front window, was a sprung secretarial chair, but I took it. With a soft thunk it dropped a notch on its shaft.

I told him I was interested in learning more about the problem over at the sperm bank for a possible article in
Probe
magazine.

“Probe,”
he said. “I’ve seen it on the stands somewhere. Never read it. San Francisco, right? So, you work in San Francisco.” For some reason, he thought that was amazing.

“I’m a freelancer,” I said. Which was true, as far as it went.

“So I guess you live down there?”

“Oakland.”

“I got a boy lives in Berkeley. Well, not exactly a boy. He’s thirty-six this year. About your age, I guess?”

“About.” Not quite.

He shook his head. “I don’t know how anybody can live down there. What exactly is it you’re interested in finding out, Mr. Samson?”

“Well, for a start, I hear you found the stolen items on the beach.”

“Not on the beach, exactly, and only some of them, floating around, up against the rocks. Most of them must have been washed out to sea. Would have been.”

“So you’re the person who found them?”

“Well, how it worked was Nora saw what had happened and called over here. I went to have a look. Saw the note, went to the beach. There was a kid out there, young boy from town. He was there already. Said he’d seen all that stuff in the water, didn’t know what it was. So I guess you could say he found it. He kind of hung around while we hauled out the evidence, or what was left of it. You ever write anything besides magazine pieces?”

“Sometimes. Why?” I never write anything at all except an occasional letter to my father in Chicago.

“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about retirement lately— it’s not so far off now. I’ve seen a lot in my day. A whole lot.” He squinted at me appraisingly. “Thought I might try my hand at some detective stories sometime. Maybe use a partner who knows some of the ins and outs of the writing game.”

“Interesting idea,” I said, looking very interested. “Maybe we can talk about that some more when I’ve finished my story here. We might have a pretty good mystery going right now.” A man with delusions of fictional wealth could be useful, particularly since he was thinking I might be useful to him.

For once, maybe, I wouldn’t have to spend my time toe-dancing around the sensibilities of the law, with its peculiar idea that maybe someone should arrest me for withholding information— which I do not do— or interfering with an investigation, which is a pretty fuzzy charge as far as I’m concerned.

Paisley startled me by laughing a Mike Hammer kind of laugh. “Not much of a mystery, if you ask me. Just a prank. Kids, probably. I got a lot of things to do around here that take priority over a prank. We got people growing dope in the hills. We got a wifebeater or two. We got some mean drunks. And it looks like we’re going to be having some flooding problems if this keeps up.” He cast a countryman’s weather eye toward the window— self-consciously, I thought. After all, northern California may be country but it’s not Indiana.

“It’s funny,” I said conversationally. “I guess city people just don’t think of you folks up here having crime problems. But of course you do. I can see you’ve got a tough job.” I had gone just an inch too far. He looked at me suspiciously.

“That’s right. Nothing like Oakland, of course, but it would take an army to handle things there.”

I agreed. “In the meantime, though, I really need to check out this sperm bank thing. That’s what my editors are interested in, and I’m a workingman. The ins and outs of the writing game. I wonder if I could have a look at the note the vandals left.”

“Sure,” he said, one workingman to another. “You can have a look at it.”

“Actually, what I’d like is a copy— maybe for reproduction in the magazine.”

“Only copy machine is over at the drugstore. I’ll see if I can’t get my man to run over and make a copy later, but we’re going to be pretty busy.”

“I could run it over there myself.”

Maybe he thought the break-in was just a prank, but he was enough of a cop not to let evidence go drifting off with a stranger. He gave me a sly smile.

“I think you know I can’t do that, Mr. Samson.” He laughed. “You’re a tricky one.”

I smiled back at him. I was beginning to enjoy his company. He chuckled again, got up, and went into a back room. He returned with a plastic bag. The note was in it. He smoothed the plastic on the desk and let me look.

It was exactly as Nora Canfield had said, complete with “Godless destroyers” and the misspelled “consecenses.”

I looked closely at the printing. Made with a soft pencil. Very laboriously done, very unstable-looking. The lines were wavy, the verticals and horizontals were neither vertical nor horizontal, exactly. The lines slanted downward on the unlined, cheap typing paper. The kind of paper you could buy at the local drugstore when you went to make copies of whatever it was you made copies of.

I agreed with Nora. The printing looked a lot like it was done by someone using the wrong hand. Or some senile crazy. Or some barely literate and not too well coordinated kid.

I thanked Chief Paisley.

“Tell me this,” I said. “You think the whole thing was just a prank. Why is that? It looks pretty serious to me on the face of it. Even if you just think in terms of the money that’s been lost.”

“Oh, I know the people in this town, Mr. Samson. There may be one or two who might write something like this, but they’re not the kind who could pull off a burglary, or lug cases of what they stole all the way to Spicer Street Beach, if they did decide to do such a peculiar thing.”

“Who might those people be?”

He frowned and shook his head. “I’m not going to send you around to scare innocent people. But I’ll tell you this— two of them are too old and one of them’s too young, and a cripple to boot.”

“Do you know of anyone who might have it in for Nora herself? Does she have any enemies?”

“None that I know of.”

“No one besides a disabled kid and a couple of old people who might be angry that she set up that kind of shop in their town? No one who might want to scare her off?”

“I can’t see anyone caring about any of that. This town gets most of its money from tourists, after all. Whatever reason people have for coming here, they’re just more customers for the restaurants and shops and motels. Sure, maybe some people grumble, but nothing big.”

“Are you sure someone broke in— that the thieves really used the window, and didn’t have a key to the door?”

“You mean did someone fake all that window stuff, breaking it and so forth?”

“Yes.”

“I’m pretty sure. Glass on the inside, on the floor. Scratches on the outside wall and the sill. No reason to believe it was an inside job.” He smirked when he said the last two words, like he enjoyed using them and making fun of them at the same time.

“I was just wondering if there might not be someone working at the bank who—”

“You probably ought to ask Nora that one.” The phone rang. It seemed very loud, even with the wind carrying on outside. He picked it up. I looked out the window. Nearly dark. A sheet of rain washed the glass; I couldn’t see through it at all.

“Well, hello, Melody, how are you?” Pause. “Uh-huh. It doesn’t look too awfully good. I’m going to have to send Perry out to take a look… right. We’ll keep on top of it, so try not to worry too much.” Pause. “Well, whatever you think. Maybe we’ll see you, then.” He hung up.

“Lady’s got a house out on the spit,” he said. “Line of big houses out there, built right out into the water. Pretty high up, but you never can tell when it blows this way.”

“Does she want you to hold her hand?” I asked.

He laughed. “She doesn’t live out there in the winter. She’s a big writer down in San Francisco. Real celebrity. Just keeping tabs on her real estate.”

An elderly woman fought her way in the door, swathed from head to foot in transparent plastic.

“Angie!” Paisley was happily surprised. “I didn’t expect you to come back here tonight.”

She smiled at him, her face pink and pleased. “I thought that with the weather and all you might need some help.”

“Well, that’s just wonderful. Make yourself some tea and then see if you can get Perry on the radio.”

She retired into a back room, dripping water from every pleat and fold.

I brought him back to my case. “Did you find anything besides the note— anything that might give you some lead?”

He shook his head. “They busted in, emptied the freezers, got away clean.”

“Clement?” It was the elderly woman calling from the back room.

“Yes, Angie?”

“Perry says he’s just going to get himself some supper, then he’ll go on out to the spit like you asked.”

Paisley made a face. “He eats too much.” Then he stood up. “I better take a quick ride around town, see if everything’s holding together all right.” He reached for a long black raincoat hanging from an aluminum coatrack that looked like it had been rejected by a cheap cafeteria. “Want to come with me?” He was talking to me.

“No, thanks,” I replied. “Maybe some other time.”

He laughed. “I didn’t think reporters minded getting a little damp. Maybe we can have a beer together sometime, talk some more about those detective books. Meanwhile, long as I’m out, I’ll make a copy of this for you.” He waved the plastic-enclosed note at me, then stuck it in his raincoat pocket.

I didn’t see any reason to think that the chief had the right idea about the break-in at the bank, or that he was even telling me what he really thought. For all I knew, he was frying fish I couldn’t even smell. He belonged to the town. Just because he seemed friendly and open, just because he was on the verge of retirement and acted countrified, just because his office help looked like my third-grade teacher back in more innocent times— none of that meant anything. I had wandered through these parts in my younger years. Behind every redwood tree, every rock on the beach, lurks wary sophistication. Too many refugees from San Francisco had come this way. Too many artists and gays and entrepreneurs had moved in to stay.

Maybe Paisley had managed to remain unwise in the ways of the real world, but I figured I’d reserve judgment, and keep right on thinking that there were some very nasty people living in this small and pretty town.

I wanted to stop in at a local tavern and chat around, and maybe hit one or two other spots on the main strip, but my pants legs were soaked below the thigh-length slicker and my waterproofed boots weren’t working so well anymore. I could barely see where I was going, and with the wind at my front I felt like that guy in mythology who has to keep pushing a boulder uphill for all eternity. Which is better than feeling like the man whose liver is being eaten by a big bird, but not by much.

I leaned into the wind and worked my way back to the motel, wondering the whole way whether Rosie was going to be able to make it up here at all in the next day or two. Some of the roads north all but disappeared when the weather was bad enough. Of course, I had no idea how widespread the storm was, or how much rain had fallen. A lot, I knew that.

So I was pretty damned happy to see Rosie’s pickup in the motel parking lot. Not only was she safe, she was here early.

I checked with the man at the desk and he told me she had the room next to mine.

“By the way, Mr. Samson,” he added, “it’s all right, of course, but you did say she had a small dog.”

“No, I didn’t,” I objected. “I said she had a standard poodle.”

“Oh. I thought you said ‘your standard poodle,’ you know. A regular little fluffball. That dog has to weigh eighty pounds. I didn’t know there was such a thing. You mean that’s really a poodle?”

“Yes.” I tried to get away.

“I’ll be damned. Smart dog, I’ll bet. Well, I like dogs, just as long as he doesn’t make a mess.”

“She’s a she. And she weighs seventy pounds. Thanks for being so understanding. I’m kind of wet and I’d like to see my friend.”

He raised his hands in a don’t-let-me-stop-you gesture, and I stepped out of the puddle I had been making in front of his desk.

I went to Rosie’s room first, and knocked. Alice whined quietly in greeting, and Rosie opened the door. She was wrapped in a big purple terry-cloth robe and her short dark hair was wet.

“I’m glad you came up early,” I said. I noticed our rooms had a connecting door. “I’m going to go get dried off a bit, then we can talk. Looks like you got wet too.”

“Just a little,” she said wryly. “You know that spot on 101 in San Rafael?”

“The part that floods?”

“Uh-huh. It had, and that was where I got the flat tire. Fortunately, I did get an early start. The storm’s not going to let up tonight and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get through at all.”

“I’m glad you did. We’ve got an interesting one this time.”

I went to my own room, toweled myself dry, and put on fresh clothes. Dry socks helped a lot. I knocked on the connecting door.

Rosie had had the foresight to stop somewhere and get a six-pack of beer, remarkable foresight, I thought, under the circumstances. She was dressed, now, in a sweater and corduroy pants. The bulk of her clothing didn’t conceal the strength or the softness of a body that turned the heads of various genders. Not spectacular, mind you, but very tidy. We cracked a couple of the beers and I told her what we had so far. Which reminded me that Nora was expecting one person for dinner, not two and a dog. I dialed the home number she’d given me and left a message on her answering machine. Then I got back to our discussion of the case.