An Equal Opportunity Death (11 page)

“What isn’t?”

“I looked at your engine. Most of the damage is superficial. You won’t be able to drive the truck now, but the engine itself looks unharmed. It’s all mostly for show.”

“Oh. Well, I guess that’s a relief. I can call the auto club and have it towed into Guerneville, if the auto club is dealing with small stuff like this today.”

“I’ll have the department truck stop by. It’s here in Henderson now. We’ve had some problem with a squad car.”

“Thanks,” I said, surprised.

“We are the servants of the citizens.” He smiled; it was a smile born of confidence, the type of smile I like to see when discussing my truck.

“I just made some coffee. Do you want some?”

“Sure. I’m a sucker for decent coffee.”

“Cream?”

“Real cream?”

“Well, no. Half-and-half. For here, that’s cream.”

“Okay, cream. No sugar.”

When I returned with his mug, he was perched on the ottoman of my reading chair, the closest spot to the fire.

“Are you a heat lover?”

“I like novelty.”

“You’ll have to climb onto the logs if you want to get really warm.”

“Don’t you have heat?”

“I do, yes. It’s just that …” I paused. He was waiting with an amused expectant expression. It was, I recalled, remarkably similar to Frank’s. It was the look that had taken me in yesterday. “Meter readers have a few peculiarities. There’s a lot of competitiveness among us, friendly rivalry.”

“Such as?”

“Oh, how fast you can walk a route and still do it right. Doing it right is no issue. You make more than three mistakes per thousand, and you have explaining to do. But there are secret speed records for each route. And there’s also low-key, ongoing bragging about how little electricity you can use. Since my house is all electric, I have to be very frugal with the heat if I want to have anything at all to say.”

He laughed. Frank would have laughed. Frank would have felt that bit of foolishness deserved a drink on the house. Frank, now that I thought of that, was very generous when he chose to be. He had been more of a host than a bartender.

“I sit in my truck a lot in the winter.”

He laughed again, but this time the laugh seemed less spontaneous. He pulled out a form from his briefcase. “We’ll need a report. Tell me where you were with the truck last night.”

I recounted the evening’s visits with approximate times for each. “It was ten-thirty or quarter to eleven when I got home. It couldn’t have been more than fifteen or twenty minutes before I heard the garage door banging.”

“Did you notice another vehicle following you when you drove home?”

“No. But anyone who saw my truck in town could have guessed where I was headed.”

“Did you see anything suspicious when you got to the garage? Were there any strange vehicles parked nearby?”

“I don’t remember anything unusual. But it was late, and I was tired, and wet, and cold. All I wanted to do was get inside the house and take a bath. So I could have missed something.”

Wescott put his pen down. “You said you spent last night talking to people about Frank Goulet. Just what was it you were asking them?” His face had hardened into that weathered look. Again I had the feeling he had replaced one facade with another, and there was no clue as to what existed beneath either.

I said, “I was asking them what they knew about Frank. Everyone is talking about Frank’s death. And these people were Frank’s friends.”

“What did they tell you?”

“Nothing really.”

“What exactly?”

“They told me what they would have told you if you had asked them. They said they didn’t know anything about Frank being involved with drugs, but no one seemed surprised that the topic was broached.”

“Is that all?”

It wasn’t. I didn’t mention Patsy’s anger, or Skip’s observation that there was something particular about the Place that attracted Frank, or Frank and Patsy meeting in the park, or Madge selling her shop. But these people were my friends. One might not be, but the others were. I didn’t feel right telling the sheriff about them. And even if I did, what I knew was closer to gossip than fact. I said, “That’s all.”

“Detective work isn’t as easy as it seems, is it?”

There was no need to reply to that. In the silence, he stood up and carried his cup to the kitchen. And, irrationally, that show of fastidiousness annoyed me more.

“Do you have a sledgehammer, or an axe?” he asked, stopping at the front door.

“No, why?”

“You have a pile of wood outside.”

“I bought it.”

“So you don’t have an axe?”

“Are you suggesting that I wrecked my own engine?”

I had put the question lightly, I thought, but his response was all business.

“I’m merely trying to find the weapon.”

“Oh.”

“The damage was superficial. Whoever did this didn’t intend to cause a lot of expense.” He walked out, closing the door.

I hesitated; I was tempted to follow him and demand an explanation for his last statement. Just because there weren’t hundreds of dollars of damage, did he find this attack trivial? Did he assume I’d done it myself? Did he consider it an attempt to direct guilt elsewhere?

I left the door shut, walked back into the living room, and sat down. With Wescott, I had no idea what he thought. I didn’t know whether he truly suspected me, or didn’t, or even if he understood the threat made here.

I sat for about half an hour with my back to the fire, feeling the cold on my chest. My house, which had been a refuge from the cold and wet outside, a place where I could be safe, now seemed isolated and vulnerable. Whoever attacked my truck could as easily have attacked me. The neighbors were not alerted by the slapping of the garage door. They would not have heard a muffled scream. Even with all the lights on, the house was too far up from the street, too “protected” behind tall trees, for anyone to look through the windows and see someone attacking me.

At best Wescott’s reaction could be called noncommittal. And even if he did believe me and decided to search elsewhere for Frank’s killer, all I told him was that no one knew anything about Frank and drugs. That certainly wasn’t going to prod him on. I really did need some solid evidence, something linking Frank to drugs. I wished now that I’d used those PG&E passkeys I’d been too angry to return, gone to Frank’s Place last night and searched. There had to be some evidence there. If someone could break into my garage unnoticed, I could easily have let myself into Frank’s Place with a key. I could have done it last night, when I still had a truck to drive there. Once inside the truck the rain and wind would have protected me, but to walk several miles through the rain, keeping off the street and out of sight when a flood was on its way, was out of the question. I’d had my chance and blown it.

I was still sitting in my chair when I heard a knock on the door. I jumped, before I realized that attackers rarely knock. And indeed, it was not an axe-wielding killer, but the driver of the sheriff’s tow truck.

The driver of the tow truck left me at the garage. I was lucky, the mechanic told me. They could replace the air filter, put a sealant in the radiator, and do a couple of other things in the shop. I wouldn’t have to go to a dealership in Santa Rosa. That was good, he went on, since I’d need to be towed and their truck had been gone all day and probably would be just as busy next week. My good fortune was even greater since there was a lot of towing to be done now but not much work for the mechanic. My truck would be ready tomorrow.

My luck did not, however, include a ride back to Henderson. That was five or six miles. If I walked down North Bank Road in the daytime, hitching a ride would be no problem. And as long as I was in Guerneville, I called Ned Jacobs at the state park, to convince him to come into town and have lunch with me. No luck there either. Outsiders, Ned explained, had done a lot of damage to the state park over the year. With the flood coming there was a lot of work to do. He couldn’t take a couple of hours off just because he wanted to. And then, in a rush of remorse, he suggested dinner at six-thirty, when it would be too dark to work. He’d come by.

I agreed. I liked Ned. I knew he liked me. As long as Ned was kept off the topic of “outsiders,” he could be fun. But alas, he was not going to drive me home this afternoon.

I passed several restaurants, but somehow I couldn’t get up the ambition to go in. Eating a meal seemed too formal, too time-consuming for now, though I didn’t know what I planned to do with my time today anyway. I kept walking through town to the Safeway store at the end. It was the only supermarket around. With the exception of what I usually picked up at Thompson’s, I did most of my shopping here. As long as I was going to be in the house that afternoon and the next day, I thought I might as well not starve.

Purposely, I took a small plastic basket, the kind you carry over your arm. I needed to show some self-control, in case I had to lug it all home by myself. Self-control, however, did not extend to chocolate, and I started with a large bar with peanuts, a favorite of meter readers in general. I made many mid-afternoon stops at Thompson’s or its counterparts in other towns. Thompson’s had actually increased their order last year on our account. In any case, I decided chocolate was not going to weigh down the grocery bag very much.

I added some greens, a couple of cans of soup, a dozen eggs, a package of cheese, a bottle of brandy to replace the one left at the Fernandez’s, some tissues, and bread; just enough to disqualify me from the express check-out line. At slightly after twelve, the store was crowded, which surprised me. Then I realized this was pre-flood buying. The store was on low ground. On the wall by the check-cashing window was a photo of the flood of ’64. Water covered the lower half of the picture window in front. I stepped out of line, added a few more cans, some coffee, and some Sterno for when the lights went out. The basket was heavy; the bag would be even heavier. I joined the end of the shortest line and picked up a tabloid off the rack by the check-out counter.

I had just finished reading the headlines, when I noticed Madge Oombs behind me.

A
PPARENTLY
I
WAS WELL-HIDDEN
behind the paper, because Madge Oombs was surprised and obviously not pleased to discover me. She took hold of her grocery cart and looked quickly at the next line, but while we had been standing there a few moments, three people had moved in behind her, and the other lines had grown longer too.

“Madge,” I said, “I’m delighted to see you. Could you give me a lift home?” I watched her expression carefully, but the look of confusion, dismay, and resignation that greeted me told me nothing I didn’t already know.

“Where’s your truck?”

“In the shop. Engine trouble.”

“Rotten time for that. It’s a fairly new truck, isn’t it?” The questions seemed straightforward. There was no hint of guilt or knowledge.

“I just bought it last year.”

“Have you had problems with it before?”

The line moved forward. Two carts separated me from the check-out clerk.

“No, it’s been fine.”

“That’s good. A reliable truck is important here.”

I nodded. Glancing at the lines on either side of us, I spotted two women from town. If I recognized two people, there had to be five or six more whom Madge knew. Lowering my voice, I said, “Tell me about selling the shop, Madge.”

She had followed my glances. Now she looked away.

“Madge,” I said louder.

When she still didn’t respond, I said, “I saw you and Skip at breakfast two days ago. I talked to Skip last night. I know about the two-year option clause. I know how valuable land right in town is, sewer or no sewer. And regardless how long it takes, the sewer is going to be completed sooner or later.”

The line moved forward. A tall woman began to unload the first cart. She looked like she was buying enough to stock Thompson’s. Beyond her, at the public phone, a man balanced a bag in one arm as he flipped through the yellow pages.

“Madge,” I lied, “the reason I know for sure that you’re selling is that I called the phone company.”

“The phone company?” She looked at me as if I’d lost my mind.

“The business office. I gave them your name. I asked if they had all the information for your next year’s listing. They said they had no listing at all for the shop next year.”

She shrugged. “I haven’t gotten around to it.”

“That’s not what they said.” I hoped I wouldn’t have to go any further with this; I was straining my imagination. “You’re cancelling.”

“Vejay …”

“Who are you selling to?”

She looked quickly to either side and in a whisper, said, “Oh, okay. I’ve given a lease option on the property to a developer.”

“For a shopping complex?”

“Condominiums.”

I nodded.

She rolled the cart forward, then pulled it back. “Look, I’ve lived here all my life. I’ve worked at that shop for twenty years. It does reasonably well for what it is, but I don’t make any fortune.” Her voice was still a whisper, her face taut. “My life hasn’t been easy. I’ve had two husbands. One died and the other tried to drink himself to death. They left me with nothing. I’m tired of scraping by.”

“But you don’t want people to know, right?”

“It’s part of the deal. I agreed to say nothing until he completes a couple of other deals.”

The line moved again. The woman ahead of me began to unload her groceries.

“Options on the shops on either side of yours?”

She nodded reluctantly.

I wondered how much Madge’s silence was costing her neighbors.

“I’m not a fanatic about this town like some of you new people. I don’t sit on my deck and sip Chablis and fuss because sensible people want a sewer line. I just want to be able to live decently.”

“How much will you get when the option is exercised?”

She didn’t answer.

“Madge,” I said louder.

“Market price and a percentage of the condos,” she hissed.

“Did Frank know about this?”

She glanced around again, evaluating the line to our right. She nodded at an elderly man toward the rear. Turning back to me, she looked less flustered than before. “Frank?” she said. “Why would I tell him? I’ve only talked to Frank the few times he was in my shop, and that’s been twice in the last year. I already told you about that.”