Free Draw (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 2) (7 page)

Carlota continued to flicker at Rosie as she asked Charlie about wineglasses. Then she wrinkled her forehead, sucked in her cheeks, and followed him into the kitchen.

“I can’t imagine,” Nona said, “why either of you would be interested in our little community meeting. But it’s very nice of you to come.” She was no longer threatening to boil over, but as she spoke to us she gave Rosie only the briefest of glances.

“I’ve never been to a neighborhood meeting in a hot tub,” Rosie said, showing polite and gracious interest.

“Oh, really?” This time she gave Rosie a slightly longer look. “Don’t they have them in Oakland? In the hills, perhaps?”

Nona seemed to be playing several roles at once, and I couldn’t get a fix on her. She was the fiery woman of deep and explosive passions. She was the gracious hostess, and she was the Marin County snob, which is not much different from the San Francisco snob, the Peninsula snob, or the East Bay hills snob.

“Heck,” I said. “We don’t know much about the hills. We live down in the flatlands with the People.”

She grimaced, flailing wildly for an appropriate answer— should she be a knee-jerk liberal or maybe even a socialist?— and finally muttered, “Of course…” At that moment Carlota and Charlie emerged from the kitchen and Nona regained her balance. She returned to being the fiery woman of deep and explosive passions. I guessed it was her favorite role, and probably the one Carlota appreciated the most. Carlota, too, had regained her balance. She was no longer flickering at Rosie. In fact, she didn’t look at her at all.

At one point, when Carlota strode to the fireplace and posed with elbow on mantel and wineglass in hand, her eyes flitting all over the room and avoiding Rosie and Nona as though she were afraid of both of them, I suggested that Rosie might like to get an advance look at the hot tub. She agreed, and we went out through the dark bedroom to the tiny backyard.

The yard was a patch of gravel about ten feet by fifteen, a level spot between a steep downslope and a damp, forty-five degree upslope, its surface obscured by blackberry and broom, that looked like it was about to start sliding any minute. The upper reaches of the incline were lost in trees and brush a hundred feet or so above the house. Someone had built a three-foot retaining wall at that side of the yard. Comforting. Right up against the retaining wall the hot tub squatted on its decking. It was heating. The cover was still on.

This hot tub was not one of those plastic jobs dropped into a wooden structure like a large sunken bathtub. That kind of thing might be good enough for Oakland, or even Berkeley, but it certainly wouldn’t do for southern Marin. This was the real thing. Rustic redwood. The old hand-hewn effect.

The canyon was dark, except for a few house lights showing here and there through the trees. The spillway, reduced after two rainless days to a stream, babbled delicately to itself and maybe to the redwoods. The air was cold and so charged with oxygen it smelled funny. Rosie stood there, staring up at the sharp little sparks of starlight, breathing deeply, and smiling like the Mona Lisa.

The place was too damned beautiful. Too beautiful for murder. Too beautiful for some of the types who lived there, like the tree-slayer. Just about beautiful enough, I figured, for me, and for Rosie, and for the few other perfect people in the world. Artie and Julia could stay. I didn’t know Charlie well enough to know whether he could stay or not.

I brought myself back from dreamland. “So,” I said to Rosie, “What do you make of Carlota and Nona?”

She chuckled. “They’re assholes.”

“Oh.” It was a revelation and a relief. I hadn’t known what to do with them and now Rosie had provided a niche.

She turned to face me. “Jake, you’re usually pretty good at checking people out. Why did you need me to tell you that those two are jerks? Were you taken in by the too-too-divine act or were you afraid to judge them?”

I could feel myself blushing and I was glad we were standing in the dark. I hesitated. She chuckled again.

“It’s okay, pal. I say so and that makes it all right. Yes, these two particular members of my particular minority group are assholes. Okay?”

I laughed with her. “Okay.” Then I put my arm around her shoulder and we went back into the house. Artie and Julia— I had convinced them to come to the meeting and get their minds off Alan for a while— had arrived. A short, wiry, nervous-looking blond guy was standing in front of the fireplace warming his left hip. An older couple, early sixties I guessed, were sitting on the couch. She had long gray hair held at the back of her neck with a leather clasp, and wore a wildly colorful dress in reds, blues, and yellows, cinched at the waist with a wide cloth belt. When she crossed her ankles I noticed she was wearing cowboy boots. The man sitting with her also had gray hair. He was wearing a plaid wool shirt over a cotton turtleneck, and baggy worn corduroys.

The wiry blond guy lived in the first house this side of the bridge. His name was Jim something. Jim, I had learned that afternoon, was “in computers.” The older couple were Eric and Mary Anderson. They lived next door to Charlie’s, just beyond Carlota’s and above the lane. Julia had told me that they had a bookstore in Mill Valley, and that Eric also did “something else intellectual,” which she couldn’t remember. Charlie, I had learned, was a stockbroker.

Charlie looked at his watch. “We’re running a little late. We’ll wait another five or ten minutes, then we’ll start.” Nobody objected. Everyone was drinking wine except Jim, who was dressed in chinos and a sport jacket and looked like a 1958 fraternity boy gone to nerves. He was sucking on a can of beer.

I heard footsteps on the stairs, two kinds, and then a knock on the door. Charlie opened it and greeted two more neighbors. The man didn’t look like someone I wanted to know. He was short- to medium-size, about five foot eight, and a little wider than medium across the chest. Stocky, close to the ground, sand-colored hair and beard, blue-gray eyes. A physical type you see a lot around the northern California coast. I’m not sure why. I guess that hardy peasant type gravitates toward rugged and primitive land. But he was just a little off. He had pouches under his eyes you wouldn’t see up north, and hard lines from nostril to chin that spoke of stress. This was Hanley Martin, would-be killer of redwoods. I had been interested to learn from Artie that afternoon that Martin worked as a gardener.

The woman with him, Arlene Shulman, had long dark fuzzy hair, petulant lips, and a vacant expression in her yellow-brown eyes. She was introduced as a friend of Hanley’s. Hanley nodded brusquely and sat down. She gazed opaquely into my eyes, said “Hi,” and wandered off to the kitchen.

Several small conversations were going on at once. Carlota was saying something about the steps to Rosie. Eric and Artie seemed to be talking about garden tools. “It wasn’t your trowel after all, Art,” Eric was explaining. “Turned out I’d borrowed it from someone else.” Hanley was telling Jim about “some goddamn customer” who couldn’t seem to understand that things grew faster in the spring. I noticed that no one was talking about the murder. I wondered if any of them knew, yet, that the cops had arrested Artie’s nephew.

“I think we should get started, don’t you?” Charlie asked in the style of one who is not asking a question. He was answered with vague nods and murmurs. Charlie turned to Jim. “Give me a hand with the cover, will you?” Jim nodded and followed Charlie outside. The two men had left the back door open and I could just see through the bedroom into the backyard. It looked a little lighter out there now. I guessed the moon was rising just in time for the show. Eric and Mary brushed past me into the bedroom and began to undress, folding all their clothing neatly and placing the pile on the bed. I watched their bare buttocks move outdoors. When I turned abruptly back into the living room I almost bumped into Rosie, who was gazing past me with eyebrows elevated. Then I got out of the way, because Carlota was sweeping through, followed by the dark, glowering Nona. Followed by Artie and Julia. Artie laughed a little nervously at the expression on my face.

“It’s a custom, Jake. When in—”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “After you, Rosie.” She did, indeed, lead the way, past Artie and Julia, who had stopped off in the bedroom to strip. Hanley Martin and his buddy Arlene brought up the rear.

Charlie was in the tub, waiting, with Eric and Mary. Jim, still fully clothed, was leaning against the decking watching the half moon clear the top of a redwood. Nona was sitting on the retaining wall, swinging her short legs. Carlota, standing in the middle of the tiny yard, glanced at Rosie and, in one stagy movement, removed her caftan— she was wearing nothing else— and draped it on a shrub. Then she slithered up the steps to the decking that surrounded the hot tub and lowered herself slowly into the water. Rosie coughed. I knew better than to meet her eyes. Arlene had somehow managed to remove her clothing while moving through the bedroom, but she didn’t waste much time covering herself up again by getting into the tub. The Perrines minced out the door naked, holding hands. They looked, for damned good reason, goose-bumpy with cold. They also squeezed into the tub. Cozy.

“Bet one more person could fit in,” I told Rosie.

“I never take off my cowboy boots in Marin County.”

Arlene stared at us blankly. “It’s English riding boots, now, you know,” she said. “Cowboy boots are out.”

“We’ll alternate as usual,” Charlie said. “Halfway through the meeting, some of us will get out and the rest of you can get in.”

Martin nodded sullenly, looking at Arlene, who had seated herself between Charlie and Eric. Jim just waved his hand dismissively and drank some more beer. Nona was still glowering, but I couldn’t figure out why. I didn’t know how long she’d been living with Carlota, but she must have seen this act before. Maybe the heavy frown was a method of limiting the performance. My mother used to do that, may she rest in peace.

Carlota spoke to me, probably because I was Rosie’s friend. “Jake, do you remember when I told you my films were going to be reviewed?”

“Yes.” Her breasts were bobbing on the surface of the water. I looked resolutely at her face.
“Marin Journal,
right?”

“
Of the Arts.
Yes, well, Eric is going to do the review. He does that sort of thing.” She smiled warmly at him. “He has a fine reputation.” He shrugged, feigning embarrassment. “When is it coming out, Eric?”

“This weekend,” he said. “In time for the second showing of the films.”

“So good of you,” she murmured.

“Okay,” Charlie said crisply. “Let’s get down to business.” Arlene yawned and stretched. “Let’s start with you, Jim. What’s happening with the gravel?”

There followed an account of Jim’s adventures in attempting to get a couple of loads of rock delivered to fill the winter’s ruts in the canyon’s entry road. When he finished his report, he seemed to brace himself. Then he turned to Han Martin.

“And I’d like to say a few words on another subject, too,” he snarled. Martin raised his chin in a belligerent “c’mon, hit me” attitude. Charlie sighed.

“Okay, Jim, but briefly.”

Jim didn’t take his eyes off Martin. “I want to know what this jerk thinks he’s doing shooting off his goddamn gun again. I thought we talked about that already. I thought we decided he had to stop doing that.”

If I’d been Jim, and Martin had been looking at me that way, I think I would have shut up right then. Jim didn’t; but Charlie, who managed to look authoritative even three-quarters submerged, intervened with a few peaceable words.

“Yeah, Jim, that’s true. We did decide that. And I talked it over with Han again last night, so how about we think of it as a kind of slip in his good intentions. For the time being.” There was just the tiniest note of threat in that last sentence. Martin caught it and sulked a bit.

“Glad to hear about the gravel,” Charlie concluded. “Mary? What’s new on the parking area? I hear you have some good news for us?”

I had started to shut off my hearing, but halfway through Mary’s recital I caught the name “James Smith.” Immediately after I caught it I also caught a blow to the ribs from Rosie, who had also noticed that Mary had mentioned the name of the murdered man. I tuned back in again. And I learned that Smith did indeed have a living connection with the canyon.

I got some of the story through Mary’s report. Charlie filled in the gaps for the benefit of the guests. It went roughly like this: The area down at the bottom of the canyon, which all the inhabitants had used for parking for, presumably, as long as there were cars, had been threatened by an impending sale, by the county, to a private party named James Smith. Such a sale would have been disastrous. None of the people who lived in the canyon had what is known in real estate as on-site parking, since they were all perched up above the canyon floor. If the lot were sold, and built on, there would not have been enough room at the bottom for the residents’ cars. What that meant was that their homes would have become useless, valueless cabins in the sky. The residents couldn’t have continued to live there conveniently and it would have been impossible to find anyone foolish enough to buy.

But Mary, who had lived there a very long time, had always had some vague idea that, for some reason, the lot could not be sold legally. She had formed a committee of two— asking Han Martin to help her— and had begun a search of the records, racing against time to prevent the sale.

They had soon found what they were looking for, Mary said: a turn-of-the-century ruling, wherein the county had agreed that the land was to be held in common by canyon homeowners. Forever.

Most of the neighbors nodded knowingly, as though they’d already heard about the committee’s success. Only Artie and Julia looked pleasantly enlightened by Mary’s announcement.

“We’re nearly finished with our report and we’re probably going to submit it tomorrow,” Mary concluded. “If it’s accepted, there can be no more prospective buyers.”

“Is there any question that it will be accepted?” Charlie asked.

Mary shook her head. “It’s hard to tell. There could be some loophole we don’t know about yet. A later ruling, perhaps. But at least now we have time to deal with that eventuality.” Mary, it turned out, had checked the day after the murder to be sure the dead man was the James Smith they had been trying to stop.