Free Draw (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 2) (13 page)

“I know what Polly’s is,” Iris rejoined. “That’s great. I can’t wait to hear.”

I studied her for a minute. “I didn’t know you were familiar with Polly’s.”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “Jake,” she said. “I know all kinds of people, just like you do. And I’ve been all kinds of places.”

I wanted to know more, but I’d been seeing Iris off and on for months, and I’d finally conceded that there were going to be a lot of things about her that I’d probably never know. I knew I liked her. I knew that she was beautiful in an Anglo-Saxon way that I find irresistibly exotic. At one point, I’d even thought I was in love with her, but I didn’t know how I felt about that now. The attraction was strong, but even when we made love I didn’t feel like I was getting, so to speak, to the bottom of her.

Anyway, after we’d polished off the sizzling rice soup and pot stickers and started on the sweet and sour shrimp and Szechuan chicken, we began one of our many traditional debates. I wanted to see a movie about a forties-style detective; she wanted to see a Russian film about love and death among communal farmers on the Kamchatka Peninsula.

“We saw a film last time,” I said. “This time we should see a movie.”

She couldn’t argue with that. Fair’s fair.

And Iris is a good sport. She shared a small box of greasy popcorn with me, held hands, and laughed in all the right places.

We got out of the movie about eleven-thirty and drove through South Berkeley into North Oakland. The parking lot at Polly’s was full, but I found a spot on the street. We pushed through the padded upholstery-tack studded double doors and were greeted by a large female doorperson who asked to see our identification. We presented our drivers’ licenses, were judged to be both well behaved and old enough to drink, and were waved graciously into the dark, red-wallpapered barroom. We didn’t see Rosie at the bar or at the small tables scattered about the room, so we settled in on two recently vacated seats at the bar. The bartender, an acquaintance of Rosie’s I’d met once or twice at the cottage, glanced at us and nodded. After she had finished making a couple of margaritas, and had rung up the sale, she cleared the empty glasses off the bar top in front of us and asked what we wanted.

“Have you seen Rosie around tonight?” I asked.

“Uh huh. She’s in back. At the show. Cut and Run.”

“Huh?” Was she telling me to leave, for some reason?

“Cut and Run. It’s a band. New Wave. Should be out soon.”

We ordered drinks. About fifteen minutes later, the door to the performance hall opened and a rush of music-high women came through. Rosie was among them. She had her arm around the waist of a pale woman with dark hair. The pale woman was about thirty years old and was wearing a blue brocade jacket over faded jeans, which were tucked into the tops of English riding boots. I thought of Arlene, who would have approved. Rosie looked gorgeous in a ratty gray suede jacket, jeans, and, of course, her passé cowboy boots.

I waved and Rosie steered her friend to where we sat at the bar.

Her friend’s name was Joyce. She had a hot pink streak in her hair and was wearing a lot of eye makeup. I have never been able to figure out what Rosie’s type might be. We mumbled around with the “how are you” stuff for a minute. Joyce looked bored already.

The formalities over, I got right to it. “So? Anything interesting from your end? How’s Carlota?”

Rosie laughed. Iris leaned forward, toward her, brandy snifter clutched in both hands.

Joyce frowned. “What are you talking about?” Rosie gave a brief explanation of what she was doing in the canyon. Very brief and not very true. Something about checking on someone who owed a friend some money.

Then she turned back to me. “Carlota was weird, naturally. She flirted and twitched and talked about how wonderful Nona is and what a great painter she is. And how difficult it is to live as an artist. I think that’s a direct quote, but may not be. Somehow it doesn’t sound phony enough.”

Joyce spoke up again. “Really, Rosie,” she said. “Don’t you think it’s a little, well, incorrect, to discuss intimate things about another woman with… these people?” Not waiting for Rosie’s answer, she leaned over the bar and ordered a bottle of mineral water, orange-flavored, and a beer. The beer was for Rosie. Then she excused herself and went to talk to a friend while we finished our “business.”

Rosie was blushing, half apologetic, half amused. “Sorry. Joyce seems to lack the social graces.”

“Or thinks we do,” Iris said comfortably, “since we’re interfering in her date with you. What the heck, Rosie, at least she didn’t call us ‘breeders’.”

They both cackled about that, and I tried to get in on the peacekeeping mission. “Maybe it just made her jealous to hear you talking about another woman.”

Rosie shrugged. “Who can tell? But listen, something more peculiar than Carlota’s personality is going on in that canyon.” I was dying to hear what it was, but Polly’s on a busy night can be a hard place to have a private conversation with Rosie. She always seems to get involved in a lot of conversational byplay and odds and ends of affectionate greeting. A small woman carrying a large motorcycle helmet came up behind Rosie, hugged her, kissed her on the cheek, and said she knew someone who knew someone who wanted a basement finished. Rosie promised to call her. Polly herself strolled by, her forty-year-old person turned out in bow tie, pegged pants, and a new and wonderfully awful-looking punk hairdo. She put one arm around me and one arm around Rosie, recommended some wine she was selling cheap, and, after being introduced to Iris, asked me why she didn’t see us more often. Then she wandered off.

“Now!” I said to Rosie. “Tell me now.”

“It’s Hanley. He’s scaring Carlota half to death. She says he’s watching her. She told me he’s started using the steps that go past her house, even though the path at his end of the canyon is a quicker route up and down for him. She says he looks in her kitchen window.”

“Peeping?” Iris asked clinically.

Rosie shook her head. “She doesn’t think so. And while I was working on the steps this afternoon, I saw him standing on that bridge, over on the other side of the canyon. He had binoculars. They seemed to be aimed at her windows.”

“Not at you?”

“No, I was a good ten steps below her deck.”

I thought about it. “Maybe he’s changing hobbies. Maybe he’s tired of shooting trees and has taken up Carlota-watching. It could be pretty entertaining.” I treated the matter lightly, but I was not happy about nutso Hanley aiming binoculars anywhere near Rosie.

“I think,” Rosie said, agreeing with my thoughts and not my words, “that it’s pretty damned peculiar.”

Iris, who had been listening very carefully and with some delight, asked a logical question. “Why doesn’t Carlota ask him what he’s doing?”

Rosie sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe she’s afraid he’ll tell her.”

It was my turn to tell about my day with the Smiths. Since I skimmed over my encounter with Bunny, limiting it to information obtained, the story didn’t take very long. Joyce returned to catch the last couple minutes of it. She pretended she wasn’t listening, but she knew when I’d reached the end because she took that opportunity to ask Rosie to dance.

Iris and I had one more drink and went back to my house.

Tigris and Euphrates were sleeping on the front porch, curled up together, and followed us into the house yawning, stretching, and complaining. While I fed them, listened to their problems, and scratched behind their ears, Iris built a fire in the Franklin stove. I made coffee and we sank down on the couch to admire the flames and console the cats for my frequent absences. No doubt about it, Iris is beautiful. Sometimes it knocks me out just to look at her. The blond ice maiden with glacier gray eyes that can flash hot enough to pierce a man clear through. She was wearing one of her tailored silk blouses, a lavender one, unbuttoned just far enough down to keep me preoccupied. She folded her hands behind her head, slitted her eyes at the fire, and got me talking about the case. By the time she’d stopped asking questions, she knew everything there was to know, from me anyway.

“So,” I said, dragging my eyes away from her mouth, “what do you think?”

“I think you have a problem. Are you sure this young man didn’t do it?”

“Pretty sure.”

“Well, that leaves only about a dozen suspects,” she said.

“Hanley, because he’s crazy. That’s one.”

“And Smith’s son,” she added, “because his father rejected him.”

“I guess.” I hadn’t thought much about Smith’s son.

“And then there’s all the people he worked with. Depending on what’s going on in that company, there could be some pretty strong motives. Doesn’t sound like he was terribly popular. What about that woman— what’s her name?”

“You mean Chloe?”

“Yes. Chloe.”

“Nah. I don’t think so.”

“Jake, you can’t just cross off people you like. That’s not very professional. And you do like her. I can tell by the way you talk about her.” Could that be just the tiniest edge of jealousy in her voice?

“So what,” I said. “I like you, too. A lot. I would like to like you a lot right now.”

She smiled. “Don’t you want to talk about the case any more?”

“No.”

She turned toward me. It’s amazing how warm gray eyes can look.

The morning was bright, dry, and clear. By the time I got back to Marin I had decided it was a good day for the long drive north to Mendocino. I stopped at a phone booth and called Bill Smith’s to see if I could get a room. The woman who answered the phone said I could.

I packed a bag and had just locked my door and turned to go down the steps when Arlene sauntered up.

“Where are you going?” she wanted to know.

“Won’t Chloe miss you at work?” I countered.

“I was waiting for you. I want to talk to you. Can we go inside?”

I was feeling antsy about getting on the road, but you have to take possibly helpful conversation when it comes. I unlocked the door. Arlene walked in and sat on the bed. I put my bag down and leaned against the work table.

“You’re investigating the murder, aren’t you?”

I began to protest, but she cut me off. “I don’t care what you say. You’ll lie. Why shouldn’t you?” She took a deep breath. I could feel her tension, but, as always, nothing showed in her eyes. “Hanley didn’t do it. I understand why you might think he would, but he didn’t. He was with me that night and that morning, so leave him alone. He gets upset very easily and he might get violent if he thinks you’re picking on him.”

“I guess that’s why he shoots the trees. Because they pick on him.”

She nodded. “In a way. You have to understand him. He’s very sensitive.”

I shook my head. “No, Arlene, I don’t have to understand him. You have to understand him because you live with him, but I don’t.”

She looked shocked. “I don’t live with him. I stay overnight sometimes. I couldn’t actually live with him.” She gazed blankly over my shoulder and out the window. “I need my space.” I had thought that particular expression had died with the seventies, but apparently some people still found it useful.

She continued. “What people don’t understand is that he acts crazy because he’s so frustrated by his work. When he shoots a redwood tree, it’s a social commentary. Really, he has flashes of genius when it comes to social commentary.”

I wanted to get to the point of all this, but my curiosity won out. “How is it a social commentary to shoot a redwood tree?”

“It’s his customers. Their ignorance and destructiveness. They’re always wanting him to cut down trees and prune things in the wrong season and kill perfectly healthy plants and poison perfectly harmless bugs. He hates it. He loses a lot of clients by arguing with them or ‘forgetting’ to do things. So when he gets drunk he shoots trees. Big trees with little bullets. Too big to kill with little bullets. It’s his way of expressing irony, you see.”

I thought about it and realized I’d have to think about it some more.

“Okay,” I said. “Tell me this. Spying on Carlota— is that a social commentary, too?”

She seemed unconcerned. “Oh, is he doing that? With binoculars, I suppose? Well, he has mentioned to me that he doesn’t trust her. I don’t quite know why. But he won’t hurt her or anything.”

“I’ll try to take your word for it. Maybe you can do something for me, too.”

She smirked. “I’m sure I could.” I let that go.

“What I mean is, maybe you could tell me some things about Bright Future. No one would ever know you told me.”

“I wouldn’t care if they did. I could always collect unemployment.”

So I asked her about Morton, and his sales scheme. And I asked her about Smith’s relationship with Morton, and I asked her to tell me everything she knew about Chloe and Bert Franklin and Armand and Bowen.

She didn’t know anything about the Bright Future navy and said she never paid attention to “things like that.” Nor did she know much about Armand and Bowen. She called Armand “frosted glass,” which I rather liked, and Bowen, she said, was “totally doddering.” All she would say about Chloe was that she had nothing but good to say about her.

“Smith was a— what’s a good word— a prig.” She laughed. “A male chauvinist prig.” This woman really had a way with words. “He was patronizing with women, including Chloe. He had this thing about morality and tradition. He gave me the creeps. He and Morton didn’t get along. I saw them talking to each other once in the hall and they looked like a pair of male dogs, circling each other, all stiff-legged and snarly.”

She said she didn’t know much about Morton except that he was “a classic— you know what I mean,” and that he’d come to Bright Future from a cosmetics company that had folded “for some reason no one talks about.”

I took hold of that. “Didn’t Bert Franklin come from a cosmetics company?”

“Uh huh. Same one. It was called Perfect Day. I think Morton got Bert the job at B.F.”

Unfortunately, that was all she had on the subject. I asked her one more question. “Who told the cops about Alan’s argument with Smith?”

“Oh, I did. Just in case someone started suspecting Hanley. But I wasn’t the only one. Bert told them, too.”