An Equal Opportunity Death (12 page)

“Tell me again.”

“I told you, he was asking how I ran the store. He wanted to know where I got the things I sold—did I buy them locally, did I go to auctions or follow up ads in the paper? Did I deal primarily in glass or metal, or was there any plan at all? All he needed to do was look around if he wanted to know what I sold. I told him that. I don’t have time for idle chatter.” Madge stopped talking, with obvious relief.

The woman in front of me had moved up. I lifted my basket to the counter, removed the groceries, put a ten-dollar bill on the counter, and turned back to Madge. “What else did he want to know?”

“I don’t recall, Vejay. It was a long time ago. I can’t remember his questions.”

“Well, what did you tell him?”

The clerk handed me my change. I stepped forward, giving Madge room to get to the counter. Her own cart was next to the register and the clerk was tallying her groceries.

“Madge?”

“I told him about various people who opened antique shops and failed. It looks, to an outsider, like you do nothing but sit behind the cash register and take in money, but you do have to know something. People are not going to pay the same price for redwood as they would for mahogany. You have to recognize which mirrors can be salvaged. You need to know how to care for leathers and bronzes. Brasses you can let sit forever, but bronzes you need to keep free from humidity. There’s a tale of an antique dealer who bought an expensive bronze buddha in Japan and had it shipped back here. He didn’t know what he was doing. He had the buddha crated but he didn’t seal it in a humidity-controlled package.” She took two twenties from her purse and handed them to the checker.

I waited, blocking her exit.

The checker put her bags in the cart and Madge took it. But if I’d worried about Madge escaping, the fear was needless. She continued, “So the ship left the cold of Japan and hit a hot spell, and then the weather changed back and became cold again. Condensation formed on the bronze exterior of the buddha. The moisture was held in by the wrapping. By the time it was uncrated, the finish was ruined.” She loaded the bags into the cab of her truck, opened the driver’s door, and climbed in. Without giving me a glance, she backed out of the parking lot.

It might have been more sensible to wait till I’d gotten my ride home before asking unwanted questions. But, of course, in the privacy of her own truck Madge wouldn’t have admitted anything.

Burdened with my groceries, I walked through the lot and around to the main road. It was an odd story, the one about the buddha. Had Frank found it odd? Had Madge thrust it on him to get rid of him as she had done with me? Was it a true story, or did she create the whole thing to kill time until she could shake me off?

And more to the point, what did Frank know or suspect about her selling the shop? It was clear she wanted, and needed, secrecy. Had Frank been a danger to that?

I
MANAGED TO HITCH
a ride home, but not before I walked through a few puddles and was splashed by several cars. When I got home I settled into a warm bath. My life these days seemed to be spent continually in water. Only the temperature changed.

I contemplated everything Madge told me, but it was not fitting in like the missing pieces of a puzzle. Why did Frank ask her about her business? I couldn’t believe, as she did, that he was planning to branch out into antiques. There would have been no reason for that. As Madge said, the business didn’t bring a great income, and it did require a lot of time. Frank needed all his time for the Place. So what was he after? Was he interested in knowing who came regularly to Henderson; who might buy and sell things besides antiques? And that led back to the question of drugs and the fact that I had no proof. It became clearer and clearer that I was accomplishing nothing but alienating people with my probing and I would continue doing so until I had definite evidence about the drugs. I was having dinner with the only friend I hadn’t yet put off, and by the end of the evening he probably would join the list of the offended. I heartily wished that I had checked out Frank’s Place the previous night when I still had the pickup. This evening I was going nowhere.

I heard brakes squeal in the driveway just before six. Ned Jacobs was a notoriously rotten driver. Perhaps it was all that unsupervised time in the state park. Perhaps it was the monotony of the job and the long distances along dirt roads he had to cover. Whatever, Ned had virtually no familiarity with the first three gears; anything under fourth was merely a fleeting stage. At every start, he would challenge the zero-to-sixty record. It was fortunate Ned had a professional relationship with the sheriff’s department, or he would have spent most of his time in residence at the jail.

Now he jogged up the steps with mountain-goat surety and banged on the door.

“Not formal, okay?” he said. He was in jeans and a wool shirt.

I was in jeans and a wool sweater. “So you’re not taking me to the Top of the Mark?”

“I thought we’d go to Jenner and see what the ocean’s up to.”

“Is the road clear to the beach?”

“So they say. My truck’ll make it.”

We clambered down the steps—he easily in his ranger’s boots, me clinging to the rail—and into the truck. I was sure his faith in it was justified. It was a big Chevy four-wheel drive that made my little pickup look like something a toddler would be straddling. As he stepped on the gas, spraying mud in all directions, metal things in the truck bed jumped and clanked. He skidded to a stop at the light three blocks away.

From there the journey was an act of faith. We passed under the canopy of trees I loved in the blink of an eye. The empty shops and houses along the river were mere sodden blurs. On the radio the announcer reported the high-water levels all the way up the river; he listed the increasing number of slide areas and the evacuation centers readying for the flood. Some of those centers, I’d heard, held annual gatherings which served the same families year after year. For them evacuations had become events in themselves, and as soon as the water reached thirty feet upriver, mothers began cooking their specialties, fathers carried camping gear to the centers, and children gathered balls and games and transistor radios.

Jenner was half an hour along the river from Henderson. Here the river emptied into the Pacific, and the town, clinging with surprising tenacity to the hillside, overlooked the ocean. The Jenner Point Restaurant was at the top of the hill on a rocky cliff. If you sat by the front window you saw nothing below but the spray of breakers. We made the trip in twenty minutes, and since most sensible people were home filling sandbags or boarding windows, we had our choice of tables.

“I’m starved,” I said. “So far today I’ve had a candy bar.”

“Wine?” Ned asked. “Is that okay on an empty stomach?”

“Fine. My stomach won’t be empty long.”

We ordered and I started on the French bread. Ned talked about the park, the trees that had already fallen, the creeks that were poised to overflow, the underbrush that was creating unwanted dams. “It’s a mess. No matter what I do, it’s a mess.”

“Maybe you should just wait.”

“Can’t.”

I shrugged and ate the last piece of bread.

“It’s awful about Frank,” he said.

“You two were good friends weren’t you?” I had, of course, planned to bring up the subject and was relieved when he mentioned it first.

He hesitated. “I saw him a lot.”

“But?”

“Well, it’s probably nothing. It’s just that the first time I saw Frank he’d been in a fight with a camper. It was over a woman. Frank got the decidedly short end of it. I patched him up quite a bit before he could go home. He didn’t say much, but the next year, a whole year later, the camper reported his tires slashed and a lot of his gear destroyed.”

“And you think Frank did that?” I asked, amazed.

“I’m almost positive. I saw him in the park the night it happened.”

“Still, why would he wait a whole year if he was looking for revenge?”

“I don’t know. I’m not defending his actions. I’m just telling you about the incident. I saw Frank plenty of other times, and he seemed pleasant, normal—just Frank. Everyone likes the park. And I enjoyed a few beers at Frank’s Place. We had some common interests, like preserving the area. He talked about that a lot.”

I could imagine. Ned talked about keeping the area unchanged to anyone who would listen. “Outsiders” were to Ned what finances were to Paul Fernandez. With Ned, Frank would have had difficulty avoiding the topic.

Still, I said, “I never heard Frank mention the population changes here.”

“Really? He was adamant about not wanting the town to grow or change.”

Dinner arrived—fresh salmon, a baked potato smothered in sour cream, and a heap of asparagus. I took a bite, a couple of bites, while I formulated a tactful question. “It would seem like expansion would have been good for Frank’s business.”

“He didn’t need more trade. He had plenty.”

“Did he say that?”

“He didn’t have to.”

“It’s odd, though, that he never mentioned so strong a conviction—I mean, to anyone but you.” I took a forkful of asparagus, watching him from under my eyelashes as I lifted the spears to my mouth.

But Ned apparently saw nothing pointed in my question. “Frank,” he said, “was a merchant. He had to appear impartial on controversial issues unless he wanted to lose trade. So he only talked freely to individual friends. He even asked me not to mention his feelings. I had some questions about that, I certainly wouldn’t be able to keep my feelings hidden. But then I hardly need to attract more people to the park.”

“But how do you know Frank didn’t tell someone else something entirely different and swear
them
to secrecy?”

Ned stared at me. “Frank wouldn’t do that.”

“Why not? Merchants do make use of people.”

“He wouldn’t have made use of
me.
I would have realized.”

“Well, he was murdered, so there was someone he either made use of or wasn’t straight with.”

“It wasn’t me. Do you think I’ve been in the woods too long, that I only deal with chipmunks and bunny rabbits? I’ve got enough sense to know if a friend is lying to me.” He grabbed his glass and took a big swallow of wine. “Besides, what would Frank have gained? He came to see me maybe once a week. That’s a lot of time to spend talking about something you’ve no interest in.” He picked up his fork and stuck it into his salmon. I had never really looked at his hands; they were big, thick, the result of years of manual work.

Ned was one of those men who always seemed smaller than he actually was. His clothes were always baggy, and he looked thin. His dark hair had just enough wave to make it look unruly, but not enough curl to give it imposing bulk. His features were small, sharp, his eyes a pale green, and now, in March, his skin was very pale. Had he been a poet, freezing in a New York garret (circa 1920), he would have looked the part. But he was strong; he had the endurance to spend entire days slogging through the park, lifting debris, cutting branches. Yet every time I realized how substantial a man he was, I was newly surprised.

“I hadn’t realized Frank came to see you that often,” I said.

“Well, he didn’t always stay.” Ned looked abashed. “Sometimes he was just walking in the park and I ran into him. Sometimes he stopped in.”

Things were getting a little clearer. “Did you ever see him with Patsy?”

“Of course.”

“In the park?”

“Well …”

“Well?”

“Yes, but not always.”

“But often?”

“Pretty often. Maybe once or twice a month. But, Vejay, I don’t think there was anything between them. Lots of people walk in the park. Lots of people run into each other.”

“Of course,” I said, not believing a word of it. If Frank had used the park as a rendezvous with Patsy, it explained why he needed to stay on Ned’s good side. And if Frank had so easily fooled Ned, I wondered how facilely he’d handled the rest of us. Was the Frank I had known anything like the real Frank?

We ordered dessert and listened to the waves slam against the cliffs outside. Then we made our way back to his truck and wound down a back route he found through the town.

“I love discovering new streets, seeing the ocean from a different vista. I even love the river when it floods,” he said, on one of the few straight stretches of road.

“It’s still a vacation, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I guess so. I guess I’m still the kid I used to be when I came up here in the summers.” He slammed on the brakes at the bottom of the hill. “Even now, it’s not the same. It’s so much more commercial, the whole area. All those new spiffy motels, instead of the seedy old cabins with the white paint half peeled off.”

“Charming.”

“What?”

“That’s what they call them in real estate lingo.”

He laughed. “I know they leave a lot to be desired. I wouldn’t be crazy about staying in one. But they were once part of the area.”

“Part of your childhood?”

“Yes.”

He was driving slower now, though still not at the speed limit. A few miles outside town, he slipped an arm around my shoulder with the same awkwardness I recalled in high school boys.

“You weren’t real involved with Frank, were you?” he asked in such a wary tone that it was apparent that this was the question the evening had been leading up to.

“No, not at all. Why did you think that?”

“Rumor. I don’t know. Frank was good with women. He was, well, Frank. Chris could tell you stories from when they were on ship together. He said he always got second choice, if there was a second choice left.”

“Frank certainly has got the reputation of going through women like fruit on a Safeway counter.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“No. I’m just getting tired of hearing that question. I suppose we’re both tired. You’ve had a hard day and tomorrow won’t be any easier.” I liked Ned, but I saw him as a friend, and I didn’t want to deal with anything more. Not now.

If Ned caught my hint, he chose to ignore it. His arm still rested self-consciously on my shoulder. Instead he responded to my comment. “It’s always busy in the park. They need more staff. Tomorrow will be worse in some ways, but at least there won’t be people there. There are too many roads, too many entrances. I check the ones that I can, but there’s no way we can make sure all the gates are closed—all the people are out at night.”