Free Draw (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 2) (17 page)

“Mike, you know I think it’s best if you don’t tell your friends what you hear about this case. Best to keep things kind of quiet until we get it figured out. For Alan. Okay?”

He looked disappointed, but he agreed.

Artie didn’t think Hanley was worth pursuing. “He’s just a nut, Jake. There couldn’t be anything in it. That stuff about Carlota.”

He sighed. “We don’t seem to have very much yet, do we?”

“Got a busy day planned for tomorrow, though. I’m pulling a lot of threads together,” I said optimistically.

He didn’t look encouraged, but he reached over and clapped me on the shoulder. “I know you’re trying, buddy. I know that.”

“How’s Alan doing?”

“He’s not real happy in jail. Maybe you should go see him.”

I didn’t want to. “I think it’s best,” I said, “if I spend my time trying to get him out.”

Even though Hanley’s alibi was meaningless— Arlene would lie for him— I decided to let it stand for the time being. There were other questions that needed answering first. They had to do with the timelines he’d given me on the committee’s work, and one matter of timing I hadn’t asked anyone about yet. So first thing Monday morning, I took a drive to the county building.

The Marin County Civic Center is a real landmark. It sprawls like a growth in a pocket of the green hills of central Marin, hills that turn yellow with summer and, as often as not, are black-patched at the end of the dry season by the inevitable and frequent grass fires. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Spawned by a mutant mushroom. Somewhere between pink and tan with a turquoise roof. The building houses everything the county needs to house, from the welfare department to Alan’s current home, the jail. I found a spot in the parking lot not too far from the main entrance and pushed through the doors.

Marin County is not just another pretty place. It’s got class. Even though the building looks like a fungus from the outside, the inside looks less like a bureaucratic beehive than any government building I’ve ever seen. An island of greenery runs down the middle of the ground floor, with offices on either side. Not just your everyday ferns and bushes. No, this is a real garden, with trees reaching up through the railed hallways above, toward the skylight.

I found the recorder’s office on the first floor. The county employee who offered to help me was very helpful indeed. Within an hour of my arrival, I had what I needed. Yes, the lot belonged to the county. Yes, a private party had made an offer for it about three weeks ago. And yes, some people who lived in the area had been searching the records on the lot recently. Basically, Hanley had told it right.

I told the clerk that I knew the community organization had found an old ruling that said the county couldn’t sell the land. Was she aware of that?

“Well,” she said, “there was an old file we found. Not right away. It was so old, it wasn’t quite in the right place. Would that be it? The woman seemed very happy about something, but she didn’t say.”

“Do you remember when that was?”

She thought a minute. “Oh, yes, now I remember. It was last Monday or Tuesday. That’s when we finally found the file. Yes, probably Monday. At the beginning of the week.”

“Really? Not the week before?”

“No. They’d come in once or twice before then, but we didn’t find the file until the beginning of the week.”

I thanked the woman and left. Although Mary had never actually said that she and Hanley had found the old records before Smith’s murder, she had, it seemed to me, tried to create that impression. She had made a special point of saying, at the hot tub meeting, that they had succeeded in their search “soon” after they began it, and that their report was almost finished. The efficiency of the canyon grapevine— nearly everyone seemed to hear news within a day or two— hadn’t hurt. But the truth was, Smith had been killed just before they found their legal remedy to the sale.

Mary was busy with a customer when I walked in the door to her cheerful, white-paint-and-potted-ferns bookstore. She waved at me and I smiled back. I spotted some familiar-looking items on a table to the right of the door and walked over to have a look. The journal books, just like the one Bunny had been given by her father.

Mary finished with the customer. “Hi, Jake. Here to buy or to visit?”

“Thought I’d have a look at your mystery collection. I also wanted to talk to you.”

“Sure. What do you need?”

I told her about my visit to the county building and what I’d learned there. She didn’t look guilty. Only embarrassed.

“Yes, that’s so. Monday. But I didn’t see any reason to make a big point of when we actually knew… I was sure it was there somewhere in the records… certainly you don’t think anyone…” She got a grip on herself. “No. It doesn’t make any sense. Everyone knew we were looking. Everyone knew that I was sure we’d find what we were looking for. Even if someone decided that the way to solve the problem was to kill the man, why take a big step like that until they were sure we had no other way out? I’m sorry, Jake, but I think you’re grasping at straws.”

“That’s a possibility.” The problem was, I didn’t have much else to grasp at. Mary picked up on what I suppose was a fleeting look of weariness. I liked her. I wasn’t convinced, but I didn’t feel like arguing with her. And she made me like her even more by offering me a cup of coffee. I accepted. She also offered me a chair behind the counter, near the stool she used. I sat down. Nice guys shouldn’t try to solve murders. Mary went off into a back room and returned with two mugs.

I sipped my coffee. “You know,” I said, “you might have met Smith.”

She had just enough time to raise her eyebrows before two more customers brought books up to the register. She made the sales and turned back to me.

“I don’t think so. Not that I know of, anyway. Why do you say that?”

“He bought a book in here, for his daughter. Probably the week before he died.”

She looked up at the calendar on the wall. “I wasn’t around much that week. Eric was pretty much on his own. Last week, too. I’m thinking of opening another store, in The City, and I’ve been spending a lot of time across the bridge, looking at sites. In fact, that’s why I’m working today, to give Eric a break. Monday’s my usual day off.”

I sipped my coffee. It was good. “Business is good, then?”

She smiled. “For a bookstore, we’re doing very well.”

I liked sitting around and talking to Mary. She was a restful person. “Have you always done this kind of thing?”

“Oh, my, no,” she laughed. “I used to be a social worker. Have you ever thought about how many people have changed their lives all around since the sixties? Divorce, remarriage, career changes. People who were lawyers, teachers, social workers, executives—”

“And cops,” I laughed, tapping my chest. “I guess there really was a revolution, after all.”

She sobered. “Yes, and so much of it was good. But there were the bad things, too. We saw a lot of that at the welfare department. Kids, desperate, homeless, strung out… that’s how I met Eric. He was looking for a runaway daughter. Of course, he was already divorced by then.”

I finished my coffee, bought a paperback P. D. James, and said goodbye.

Stopping at a phone booth, I put in a call to Bert Franklin at Bright Future. He remembered me, but he didn’t sound all that happy to hear from me until I offered to buy him drinks after work. He didn’t even ask why I wanted to see him. We agreed to meet at a bar just off 101 north of San Rafael. Then, I had lunch at a hamburger place on Miller and drove back to the canyon.

Rosie wasn’t around, but I found a note on my door from Julia that said I’d gotten a call from Chloe while I was gone. It said please call back as soon as possible. I crossed the footbridge to Artie’s side of the canyon and knocked on his door. No answer. I went in and made a second call to Bright Future. Chloe was at her desk.

“Jake,” she said, “I have to talk to you.”

“Okay, I’ll come right over.”

“God, no. I’ll meet you tonight. Do you know the Pink Salamander in Sausalito?” I didn’t. She gave me directions. I told her I’d see her there at eight.

The rest of the afternoon I spent hanging around the canyon waiting for Rosie, but by four-thirty she hadn’t showed up, and I decided I’d better start north for my date with Bert Franklin. He’d said he’d get to the bar a little after five, and I didn’t want him to have to buy his own first drink. Might put him in an off mood. Also, I knew that the commuter traffic from San Francisco across the Golden Gate and into Marin, Sonoma, and Napa, had been building for at least an hour.

The ten-minute drive took twenty minutes, and I arrived at the Hearthstone Inn well ahead of Franklin. The dining room was deserted. This was not the kind of place where people came in for an early dinner so they could get the kids to bed by seven. The bar, on the other hand, was filling up for happy hour.

It was a nice bar, one of those where everything seems to shine in the dim lighting. All the bottles and glasses sparkled. The dark wood bar top glowed. The mirror caught dazzling reflections of candlelight from the booths. The red plastic bar stools looked polished and so did the people sitting on them. Middle management. Young to middle-aged people on the way up. Somewhere. Somewhere in the hierarchies that inhabited the industrial parks of Marin and the financial district of San Francisco. I had a little time to watch while I sipped my Napa Valley white, and decided that none of the people who gathered here had gone as far as they wanted to go. They were restless, and trying too hard to look successful.

Funny place for Bert Franklin to pick, I thought. Hard to believe he was a regular in this bar. My guess was that since someone else was paying, he wanted to go some place where they served more than shots and beer. Just for a change.

He walked in the door about ten after five, spotted me immediately at the bar, and, belly foremost, unsmiling, lumbered toward me. Despite the belly, despite the graceless walk, his rigidly squared shoulders gave him the look of an aging, overweight tom, scared of the new cat on the block but determined to maintain his dominance. What I had to do was convince him that I wasn’t out to rip his ears.

He was wearing a green and yellow plaid jacket, green double knit pants, and Hush Puppies.

I smiled happily, like I was glad to see him, and asked if he’d like to take a booth.

“Bar’s fine,” he grunted, plunking himself down on the stool next to mine. To the bartender he said, “Jack Daniels black. Rocks.” I put a five on the bar.

I asked about all the nice people at Bright Future. Franklin sucked down half his drink before he said everything was “terrific.” I ordered another drink for him, and he swallowed the rest of the first one fast enough to be ready when the second one arrived. I kept the chatter light and sociable through the second drink. He began to relax a little with his first sip of the third.

He took one of his elbows off the bar and swiveled slightly toward me.

“Listen, Samson, you didn’t invite me here for a friendly gossip. This is real nice and everything, but why don’t you ‘fess up?” He leered at me. “I don’t think you’re after my body— though these days it’s hard to tell— so order me another drink and get down to it.”

Controlling an impulse to gag at the thought of anybody wanting his body, I laughed and ordered him a double.

“Hell, Franklin, it’s just the same old journalistic shit. You know how it is. The editor wants a story, I see what I can dig up.”

He snickered. “Sure. A story on correspondence schools. What is it, a humor piece?” He started working on the double. I was on my second glass of wine.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll level with you. It is a story about correspondence schools.” He laughed, spraying Jack Daniels in my face. “No, really. You’ve got to admit that Bright Future is quite a phenomenon. An old, traditional company that’s got itself some hot new people”— I punched his shoulder— “and a hot new marketing plan that’s going to take it right up there. A success story. It’s good stuff.” He narrowed his eyes at me suspiciously, and I added, remembering the operative word in the company literature, “It’s exciting.”

“Marketing plan’s not that new,” he muttered. “But I see what you mean.” He was still watching me, assessing me. Wondering if I was as dumb as I sounded.

“That’s right,” I said. “You’re kind of an old hand at this sort of thing, aren’t you? Didn’t you work for another company that ran along the same lines?” I was fishing. I didn’t know that Perfect Day cosmetics, where he’d worked with Morton, had been the same setup. But I figured that the more I found out about that business that had gone under in some peculiar way— according to Arlene— the more I’d know about what Morton was doing at Bright Future. Which might lead me to the reasons for Smith’s death. Might. But what the hell.

Franklin had turned away from me again, casually, and put both his elbows back on the bar. He finished the double. I ordered him another one. “Whole different ball game,” he said.

“What?”

“I said I don’t know where you heard that. Completely different kind of company.” He glanced at me sideways, and tilted a little in the process. He was not altogether sober. “No resemblance at all.” He spoke softly, and with careful control.

“Guess I got it wrong,” I told him. “But isn’t that where you met Morton? I just figured maybe he ran things the same way when he was there.”

“Not at all. Not the same at all.” He was still speaking very quietly.

“What was the name of the place? Perfect Day, something like that?” He swallowed the second double in two gulps.

“Thanks for the drinks, Samson. I got to go now.” He lurched off the stool, caught himself, and marched through the bar and out the door.

I took a look at the menu, decided Artie couldn’t afford the place, and stopped off in San Rafael for Chinese food. Then I got back on the freeway— still jammed going north— and turned south toward Sausalito.

Chloe was waiting for me at a table in the back of the bar. I picked up a beer on the way. She was drinking a straight-up martini, and there were three cigarette butts in the ashtray.