An Equal Opportunity Death (22 page)

A restaurant. Frank had asked Skip Bollo about restaurants for sale. As Skip said, restaurants in the Russian River Resort Area were on the river. My route book covered the roads by the river. That was the reason Frank’s killer needed to have my route book today. As Chris said last night, the river would rise quickly, higher than the new people—like me and Frank—would expect. It would invade the lower buildings on the riverbank. It would knock down walls and wash away everything inside. It would rush into Frank’s new hiding place and sweep away the Chinese plates.

The water already covered the road. The killer didn’t have much time. If he did get the Chinese plates out, this would be an ideal time to dispose of them, while everyone else was preoccupied with the flood. No one would notice if he was not around. He could drive to San Francisco with the plates and be back without anyone realizing he’d been gone.

I pictured the route along the river as it had been last month when I walked it. Mentally I walked from building to building, allowing myself no “fast forward” in my vision. There were, numerous houses, and many motels and businesses closed for the winter that would reopen soon, too soon for Frank. Those were places whose owners would come up to assess the damage as soon as the flood waters receded. Frank needed a place no one would check.

There were three deserted commercial buildings at the west end of town. I started the engine and followed North Bank Road to the nearest, a weather-worn old place that might once have been a café. Its white shingles had turned gray-brown with years of exposure and neglect. Its porch swayed precariously over the river. Now, as I pulled to a stop in front, I could see the water lapping over the porch.

The building had been empty as long as I had been living here, and from everything I had heard, even years before that. As I made my way through the weeds toward the door, I could see a line around the side halfway up the windows—the highwater mark from the last flood eight years ago.

I followed the drop line to the weatherhead. The wires were tied around the pole, their raw ends flapping in the wind. There was no power on in here.

I walked back to the truck, irrationally relieved at having the confrontation postponed.

The second building, deserted even longer than the first, was already a foot under water. No one was around. No drop line even left the main line. I drove on.

The water crested the bank. Across the river, I could hear sirens. Water flowed onto the road. I slowed as the road dipped and the truck wheels went into the water. From either side of the road redwood branches formed a dark green canopy, alternately sheltering my truck and deluging it with water. The last building, once a sandwich shop, was ahead. The killer’s truck was parked outside. There had been no attempt to hide it. Had I been passing, I would have thought nothing of it. I pulled the truck in front, blocking its exit.

Automatically, I looked up for the drop line. It came in from the street, attached to the weatherhead. If I checked the meter, I would find it bypassed. I had found Frank’s illegal hookup.

I opened the truck door and pushed hard against the wind to keep it from slamming back into me as I climbed out. It banged shut, but the noise wouldn’t be heard above the battering of branches against the building, or the clamor of debris hitting the deck pilings.

The water washed over the deck. It would be at least a foot deep inside the building.

I passed his truck. In the back, piled unceremoniously, were eight boxes. The small plate was still stashed in my truck. That left only one still inside the building.

I wished … I pushed open the door.

Carlo Fortimiglio was holding the box in those strong arms that compensated for his injured leg. The box was large, wooden; it must have held one of the biggest plates. Looking at me, he shifted it to one arm, holding it as easily as he would one of his grandchildren.

“I’m sorry, Carlo,” I said. With the rain pounding on the roof and the branches hitting against the wall, I didn’t think my voice was loud enough to carry across the room. But Carlo nodded. He seemed to be deciding.

He beckoned me closer. The water was almost up to my knees. I clung to the doorjamb, then to the door, and let it open inward.

Carlo stood halfway across the room.

“This is as close as I can come,” I said. Carlo had killed Frank. If he killed me, he’d be free. But he was Carlo—Carlo who dug my pickup out of a mudslide when I first came up here, Carlo who ladled the clam sauce onto Rosa’s fettucini. Carlo who killed Frank.

“I know,” I said. “Was it only for money to delay the sewer construction, to save your family’s—”

“To keep the fish, the town, for us. Yes.” He stood braced against the wall, holding the box easily in his left arm. Suddenly the wind was calm, the room quiet. “But I didn’t have a choice. Years, maybe ten years ago, there was a bad spell. I hit—burgled—some houses. I stashed away a little money. Chris let it slip. The boys in the Navy, they drink, they say things they shouldn’t.”

“Chris told Frank, and Frank threatened to go to the sheriff unless you burgled houses for him?”

“Yes, that. And he took my money, for his down payment. He said he’d pay it back.” Carlo made a sound between crying and laughing. The wind grew stronger, but still I had no trouble hearing him.

Carlo took a step toward me. “But I don’t excuse myself. I didn’t argue. Why should I? We didn’t steal from local people, only summer people. They could afford it. They have insurance. I didn’t take too much. Maybe I hit one house a month.”

The stolen goods would have gone into Carlo’s old truck, a common sight in town as he hauled wood, carted off debris, or repaired a deck. It was the truck no one would notice. With his injured leg, Carlo might be unsteady on a rolling boat, but as I watched him stand in the rising water, holding the box, there was no question he had well compensated for it on land.

“Frank chose the house you took the plates from,” I prompted.

He looked down at the box. Again, he stepped closer, within a foot of me. “I figured it was just another hit. But later, the more I thought about it, how did Frank know to take the plates, the plates but not the little statues? How did he know who to call for ransom? How much to ask? Then I figured he had planned it all along. He made a fool of me.

“I told him—this is big stuff. He’ll get the sheriff, and the state police, maybe the FBI after us. I told him—get rid of these.” He stared down in hatred at the box. “But Frank, he says I got no choice. Then he calls the guy who owns them and tells him three hundred thousand dollars isn’t enough money. He wants four hundred thousand dollars. I hear the guy argue. I hear him say he doesn’t have it. When Frank gets off the phone he laughs. He says ‘Maybe five hundred thousand.’ I tell Frank he’s crazy. There isn’t going to be any five hundred thousand dollars. No four hundred thousand. No money. No money at all. All we’re going to get is the sheriff.

“Frank laughs. He says the sheriff won’t find him. He can disappear like that.” Carlo snapped his fingers. The box bounced in his arm.

“I shot him. I had to,” he said so softly that I could barely hear him. “He would have gone and left me with no money, nothing but trouble.”

“And you were going to call Walucyk and take the three hundred thousand dollars? And then when you looked for the plates they were gone?”

Carlo nodded, but I could see his mind was elsewhere.

“Yes. And now,” Carlo said, “I’ll go to jail. All the burglaries will be known. Everyone in town will know I’m a thief. And the insurance companies, they’ll be after me; they’ll take our house and the fishing boat. And lawyers …”

I could almost see him realizing that with me dead, no one would know. No police, insurance companies, lawyers.

Something smashed into the building. The box came flying at me. I screamed, jumped, but it caught my shoulder and threw me back, down into the water. I grabbed for the door, missed, and slid across the floor toward the deck, toward the swirling brown waters of the river. I grabbed for the doorjamb, where the back door to the deck had been. The whole building shook. Something else—big and heavy—smashed against the side of the room. The supports underneath me swayed. I clung to the wall, bracing my feet against the other side of the doorway, working them toward the inside of the wall. The water was swirling; it had gotten deeper in just those few moments. I braced my feet and grasped at the slippery doorjamb. Desperately, I looked back into the room.

Carlo was holding on to the front doorknob, blocking the way to the street. Even if I could get across the room, he could easily push me down into the water. I didn’t know whether he had hurled the box at me, or if it had been thrown from his grasp by the movement of the building.

“Carlo, help me.”

My hands were slipping. The water covered my thighs, smashing debris against me.

“Carlo!”

He looked at me. I couldn’t read his expression.

He stretched away from the door and extended his arm. His hand was only a foot away. If I let go I could reach it. If he let go, he could send me into the river. I looked at his face again.

A branch hit my legs. My knees buckled. I grabbed for Carlo’s hand.

Time seemed to stop the moment I touched Carlo’s fingers. Nothing moved; neither he, nor I, nor the water. And then it started again. Carlo pulled me in. I caught the doorknob and clung, scrambling my feet under me.

The building was hit again. It didn’t seem as strong a shake as before. Maybe it was enough to knock Carlo’s hands loose. Maybe the effort of pulling me in weakened him. Maybe.

His body swept across the room like a pillow in the water. For an instant it caught at the doorjamb, where I had held on, then passed right by me, into the river.

I
STAGGERED OUT OF
the old sandwich shop to my truck. The small Chinese plate was still under the seat. Not pausing to see how badly oxidized its finish had gotten, I stuck it in the back of Carlo’s truck, among the others. One plate was at the bottom of the river, the other nine were in bad shape. Even dead, Frank Goulet had gotten his revenge.

The water had already seeped into the cab of my truck. I was lucky to get the engine started, luckier yet to get through on North Bank Road. From there, I headed over to the sheriff’s department.

The session with Sheriff Wescott took hours. He sent one deputy out to get me cocoa and offered to have another fetch me dry clothes. The closest he came to admitting he had erred in suspecting me of murdering Frank Goulet was to smile and say, “So you two were really just friends, huh?” Then he reminded me that each time he talked to me he’d been sure I was withholding something. And since there were things I still couldn’t tell him about (like breaking into Frank’s Place, stealing the PG&E truck to get there, or keeping the Chinese plate on my mantel overnight) there was nothing more to say.

It had been raining all night, and then, as if the rain had been part of a movie and we were walking out of the theater, it stopped. By morning the sun was out, bright. The river, of course, continued to flood, but somehow, in the sun, it seemed more entertaining than ominous.

I was told that when it floods, all the townspeople wade down to the donut shop, buy crullers and coffee, and walk out to the main bridge—forty some feet above the riverbed—to watch the flood waters rush under them. They look at the markers, watch debris float by, and reminisce about the flood of ’64 or ’47. It’s a party, a celebration of surviving another bout with nature. By noon, someone always just happens to have found a bottle of champagne. A grocery owner, whose stock is going to be flooded anyway, provides a few more.

I went down to the bridge. But there was no party. People were there, crowding both sides, but no one was laughing. Few even seemed to be talking. When I arrived, the people nearest me—the Greshams, who owned the hardware store—either didn’t recognize me or turned away. I moved on, nearer the center. No one said anything. They would know by now that Carlo was dead, that Carlo had killed Frank, and that I had been the one to expose Carlo.

At the far end of the bridge I spotted Paul and Patsy Fernandez, listening to a man who had his back to me. They looked at each other, then turned and hurried off the bridge in the direction of their boat rental. They would disappear; I knew that. They would take advantage of the commotion as Carlo might have. They would turn up somewhere else, with different names, waiting on tables or renting canoes.

Skip Bollo was on the other side of the roadway, staring down at the brown water, watching the town—as it had been—flow under the bridge.

I stopped beside Ned Jacobs, wondering if he, too, would unconsciously blame me for Carlo, for the town.

But he didn’t. He didn’t speak. He just rested a hand on my shoulder.

I leaned against him, surprised by my need for support from a friend, after the long night hours with the sheriff.

“There was no way I couldn’t tell the sheriff,” I said. “I didn’t want to. Carlo saved me. He pulled me back.”

Ned firmed the arm around my shoulder. “You wouldn’t have been there but for him, Vejay.”

“Maybe they won’t connect all the burglaries to him. I mean, who knows? Maybe the insurance companies won’t bother. Martin Walucyk will have nine of his ten plates. It’s his own fault for bringing them up here. He …” I realized I was crying.

I remembered the last time I had cried, sitting at the table in Frank’s Place after talking to Sheriff Wescott. Rosa had come over, touched my arm, taken me home to dinner. Halfway across the bridge I saw her and Chris. Our eyes met. She turned away.

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