Cape Perdido Page 6

  There had been a time when the possibility of living without Joseph had been inconceivable. And later, a time when she had lived without him and been inconsolable. But there were many years after that when she’d scarcely thought of him, when months went by before a particular quality of the light, or color of the sea, or shape of a cloud formation caught her notice, and the words Joseph would like that sprang to her mind. Then, briefly, she’d be inconsolable once more.

  Now, after twenty years, Joseph was back in her life, but he wasn’t the man she’d once known. The relationship—too cool, too polite—wasn’t the one they’d once had.

  Don’t speak of the past; forget everything we ever were to each other. Old friends now, and that’s all we can be.

  His dictums, his parameters. Not hers.

  The old Joseph, her Joseph, had vanished. No more wildness, no more passion. The new Joseph was a man who was merely going through the motions, and Steph, for the life of her, couldn’t get through to him on any significant emotional level.

  She was nearly to town, approaching the old mill, when she saw the sheriff’s cruisers parked there and checked her watch. After four. Was the public forum still going on? She’d used the excuse of running errands and going to the farmer’s market not to attend; large crowds—particularly ones that she feared would turn unruly—made her uncomfortable in the extreme. Besides, Joseph had dissected the potential water grab from every angle on those afternoons when he sat in her closed restaurant drinking cup after cup of coffee; nothing Gregory Erickson could say would have further informed her.

  As she drew closer, she realized there were far too many sheriff’s cars for simple crowd control. Two blocked the gate, and several more were drawn up along the fence. She spotted a familiar red pickup truck with a “Support Your Local Sheriff’s Department” bumper sticker, and a big yellow Labrador retriever in the passenger’s seat, and on impulse, pulled over.

  Lester Worth, a deputy who frequently stopped for lunch at the Blue Moon, was the first person she encountered after she crossed the highway.

  “Hey, Lester,” she called, “what’s happening here?”

  Surprise creased his weathered face. “Steph! You don’t know?”

  “I’ve been down at the Landing. I saw Rho Swift’s truck, figured something serious was going on.” Rhoda Swift was the detective in charge of criminal investigations in the coastal area of the county.

  “Serious for those water-grab people. Somebody shot up their bag.” Lester leveled his index finger seaward, pulled back his thumb as if he were cocking a trigger. “Ka-boom! Three times. Murdered the thing.”

  “You don’t seem very concerned.”

  He shrugged. “The way I see it, it was bound to happen. Maybe now they’ll go away and leave us alone.”

  From what Joseph had told Steph about Gregory Erickson, the shooting would probably have the opposite effect. “You seen Rho?” she asked.

  “She’s down by the pier with the head waterbagger.”

  “Okay if I go look for her?”

  “Be my guest.”

  Steph spotted Rhoda Swift halfway out on the pier, talking with Gregory Erickson. A massive royal blue form, puffy in places, flat and submerged in others, sloshed against the pilings, trapping the red and white tug that was moored there.

  As Steph started along the pier, Erickson began waving his hands in the air, then spun on his heel and walked toward her in a tight, fast stride. As he passed, he glared. She kept going, to where the detective now leaned on the pier’s railing, staring down at the remains of the bag.

  “Hey, Rho,” Steph said.

  Swift turned. She was a small woman, in her late thirties. Curly black hair, grown longish since Steph had last seen her, framed her fine-boned face. “Hey, Steph,” she replied. “Can you believe this? It’s like a humpback swam into the harbor and died. Thank God it doesn’t smell as bad.”

  “How the hell’re you going to get it out of here?”

  “Erickson’s problem, or Timothy McNear’s. Not ours.”

  Steph leaned on the railing next to Rho, and they regarded the bag in companionable silence. Steph had known the investigator since grade school, although not well, since she was a few years older than Rhoda. After Steph graduated from high school and Joseph deserted her for Berkeley, she had moved to Oregon for five years, and by the time she returned, Rho had gone off to Chico State. They’d run into each other occasionally after Rho joined the sheriff’s department, and of course, Steph had heard the talk about her career difficulties and drinking and failed marriage; but by the time they connected again, while cochairing a Christmas toy drive sponsored by the sheriff’s department and the Rotary Club, all that was behind Rho. Since then they’d become, if not friends, good acquaintances.

  After a while Steph said, “You know who did this?”

  Rho shook her head. “Shooter was over on the old administration building. Nobody saw—or admits to seeing—him. Frankly, I can’t get too worked up over it.”

  “Erickson looked worked up.”

  “Well, sure. He thought he could show us the pretty blue bag and opposition to the water grab would automatically disappear. This has told him he faces a fight.” Rho paused. “I’d be derelict in my duty if I didn’t ask if you know who did it.”

  “Me? Why . . . ?”

  “Well, you’re hooked in with the Friends of the Perdido crowd through Joseph Openshaw.”

  “You don’t think they had anything to do with this? Or Joseph did?”

  “I didn’t say that. Besides, Joseph was on the platform when it happened. But it strikes me that he might’ve known or suspected what was about to go down.”

  “No, not possible. Joseph is strictly nonviolent.”

  Rho was silent for a moment. “What about Curtis Hope? As I recall, he hasn’t always been nonviolent.”

  “You mean the protests over Indian gaming in Rohnert Park last year? He wasn’t part of the faction that got out of hand.”

  “I know that. I was thinking of his army service. He was a Ranger. Trained as a sniper.”

  “Really? Still, that was the army.”

  “Yeah, but it makes me wonder. He’s got the ability to have done this”—she motioned down at the bag—“and snipers, they’ve always seemed a little creepy to me, even though I know it’s a necessary job. I just thought he might’ve mentioned his military experience to you, given you a take on how he felt about it.”

  “We haven’t really talked in a long time.”

  Rho straightened. “Okay, just thought I’d ask. If you hear anything, about anybody, you’ll let me know, right?”

  “Of course.”

  Rho nodded and started back down the pier, leaving Steph alone with a whole new set of suspicions and fears.

  TIMOTHY MCNEAR

  For the first time in over thirty years, he couldn’t summon the desire or the strength to climb to the loft at the appointed time. Instead he sat with his drink at the table in front of the stone fireplace in the big kitchen, next to the French doors that overlooked the formal gardens. He hadn’t turned on the outside spotlights, and could barely see the swaying fronds of the seventeen varieties of palms that his dead wife Caroline had collected from all over the world and nurtured here in the sunbelt above the sea.

  The garden, three acres of exotic plantings, reflecting pools, and statuary, had been Caroline’s refuge from their somewhat turbulent marriage; she’d spent hours working in it or in the little pagoda-style potting shed at its far reaches. Later, when his son and grandchildren lived with him, the shed became another kind of refuge: a fantasy world for two young boys who had lost their mother and been abruptly uprooted from their life in a comfortable suburb of San Francisco. Nowadays the garden was not exactly untended, but the dour part-time groundskeeper—one of a long succession Timothy had hired—neither cared for it nor took pleasure in it the way his wife and grandsons had.

  Timothy rolled his glass between his long, slender finge
rs, acutely aware of the heavy silence. This house had never been a particularly happy or lively home, that he had to admit, but at least the voices of his family had filled it. But they were long gone, his wife and daughter dead, son and grandsons estranged. Twenty years since Rob had taken Max and Shelby away to Melbourne; longer than that since the boys had called up to him as he sat in his loft at sunset and he’d turned to see their small faces appear at the top of the ladder. . . .

  It had grown dark in the kitchen, but he made no effort to turn on a light. After the debacle at the pier that afternoon, he wanted to hide like a dying animal. Better to be a dying animal—alone, resigned to the inevitability of its passing.

  The palm fronds swayed outside the doors—gray on black, black on gray—as the storm front that had been predicted that morning moved in. Timothy watched and waited. The wind rose, baffling down the chimney, then spewing ash onto the hearth. The air grew chill and heavy.

  After perhaps fifteen minutes, a figure appeared in dark silhouette at the edge of the garden. It paused there, also watching and waiting, then crossed toward the house. Timothy rose, went to the door, and opened it.

  “I’ve been expecting you,” he said.

  Gregory Erickson stepped into the house, his mouth set grimly. “That business with our water bag being shot,” he said. “You’d better not have been behind it, or there’ll be hell to pay.”

  JESSIE DOMINGO

  Jessie was having a heated argument with Fitch, had just informed him that he was an arrogant son of a bitch for keeping her out of the loop where Eldon Whitesides was concerned, when the lights in her motel room flickered and suddenly went out.

  Fitch said, “Whaaat?”

  Wind blasted the front wall of the small unit; Jessie could feel its chill seeping in around the cheap aluminum frame of the window.

  “Storm must’ve knocked out the power.” She groped toward the switch by the door and flipped it to make sure. “Yeah, it’s definitely out. Joseph warned me this might happen.”

  “Great! Just fucking great. Now what the hell do we do?”

  “Call the office and ask for a flashlight?”

  Over by the bed, Fitch stumbled around. There was a thump, and then he exclaimed, “Ouch! Dammit, where’s the phone?” A clatter, and the bell tinkled as the instrument hit the floor. “Oh, hell! This is impossible. Do something!”

  Not two minutes before, he’d told her she was “peripheral” to his “mission.” Now he was demanding her assistance.

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Help me find the . . . wait, here it is . . . oh, hell, I think I broke it.” There was an undertone of panic in his voice now.

  Was he afraid of the dark? “Look, it’s no big deal. I’ll walk down to the office—”

  A knock at the door. Jessie called, “Come in.”

  The dark, heavyset woman who had registered them the previous afternoon stepped inside, her round face highlighted by the glowing kerosene lanterns she carried in either hand. “For you and Mr. Collier,” she said, extending them to Jessie.

  “Thanks very much, Ms. . . . ?”

  “Bynum. Nita Bynum. The kerosene, it’ll last a couple of hours; storm should be over by then.”

  “Does the power go out often?”

  “Every time there’s a bad storm. You get used to it.” She stepped out, shutting the door behind her.

  “My God, Jess,” Fitch said. He was standing by the bed, the wreckage of the phone at his feet. “You shouldn’t tell just anyone who knocks to come on in. You don’t know who it could be.”

  “This isn’t New York, you know.” She set one lantern on the table by her laptop, took the other to him.

  “Have you forgotten there was a shooting today?”

  “Of a water bag, not a person. And whoever did it is on our side.”

  “Not necessarily. This kind of country, they believe in violence for violence’s sake. You’ve got to be more careful.”

  He was concerned, yes, but she sensed he was also trying to steer her away from the subject of Eldon Whitesides.

  “Let’s get back to what we were talking about,” she said.

  “I was talking; you were shouting.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that Eldon is in San Francisco, and coming here tomorrow?”

  “He’s not coming if this storm doesn’t let up.”

  “Never mind the weather. What were you planning to do, wait till he arrived and then say, ‘Oh, by the way, here’s the boss’? And don’t give me that crap about me being peripheral.”

  Fitch began inching toward the door. “Okay, maybe I was wrong not to tell you. And maybe what I said earlier was a little . . . harsh. But you shouldn’t have listened at my door while I was having a private phone conversation.”

  “I wasn’t listening at your door. I was about to knock, and I overheard you talking with Eldon. The walls are paper-thin in this motel, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  Fitch’s hand was on the doorknob now. “Jess, I’ve apologized. Eldon decided to come out here after he heard about the shooting and—”

  “He wouldn’t’ve had time to get from New York to San Francisco since then.”

  Fitch was silent, trapped by his lie.

  “Well?” she demanded.

  “I’m not discussing this with you when you’re behaving irrationally. Besides, I’ve got to meet with the hydrologist who’s going to testify at the hearing, and I don’t think you’d be an asset to our session. We’ll talk in the morning.” He went out, neglecting to latch the door, so it immediately blew open.

  Jessie shut it, pressing the snap lock on the flimsy knob. Then she went over and picked up the phone. Its faceplate had popped off, but it still had a dial tone. She forced the plastic grid back over the push buttons, then sat down on the bed to consider this latest turn of events.

  Before she’d left the Deluxe Billiards, she and Joseph had been joined by two women who were interviewing old-timers in connection with an oral history of Soledad County’s coastal region. For an hour or so they’d been entertained with stories of the lumber booms in the doghole ports that used to dot the coast in the days before rail or truck transport. During Prohibition the ports, no longer in use for hauling lumber, became ports of call for trawlers laden with bootleg Canadian liquor. Jessie was so fascinated by the tales of the ongoing battle between the rumrunners and government agents that she lost track of the time, and it was nearly six when she hurried through the rain to the motel, hoping to collect Fitch and go to dinner at the Blue Moon. Above the rising wind, she’d heard Fitch’s voice through the door.

  “Where’re you staying down there, Eldon? . . . The Four Seasons? Excellent hotel. And you’ll fly up here on a charter tomorrow afternoon? . . . Good. I’m glad you could make the trip. The situation’s heating up more quickly than we anticipated.”

  At that point Fitch’s words became unintelligible. Jessie rapped on the door and stuck her head inside. Fitch frowned and motioned for her to leave. She mouthed that he should join her in her room when he was done on the phone.

  She had to admit now that the beers she’d drunk at the Deluxe had made her less than tactful in questioning Fitch about Whitesides’s visit, but his labeling her as “peripheral” and then telling her she wouldn’t be an asset in his meeting with the hydrologist hadn’t been diplomatic, either. In fact, it pointed out to her how badly in need of her services as a community liaison specialist he was. She sensed that Fitch’s remoteness and faint air of condescension had already not endeared him to the people he’d met in Cape Perdido.

  Okay, what was going on, anyway? Obviously, Whitesides had planned his visit to the Cape before this afternoon. Fitch had known he was coming. Why hadn’t she? ECC was an efficient organization; whenever an employee traveled for the foundation, all the details of the trip were set down in writing, but there had been nothing about the director’s plans in Jessie’s information packet.

  Outside, the rental car she and
Fitch shared started up. She went to the window in time to see it turn north on the highway. Didn’t the hydrologist live to the south, in Calvert’s Landing? Jessie located his number in her files, went to the phone, and dialed. No, the man told her, he had no plans to see Mr. Collier tonight. They had scheduled a breakfast meeting for eight the next morning.

  So Fitch had lied to her not once but twice. Where had he gone?

  Jessie sat down at the table, stared at the blank screen of her laptop, then at the flickering lantern. Dammit, everything was going wrong with a project at which she’d desperately hoped to succeed!

  A couple of hours before, when she’d told Joseph Openshaw she was living her dream, she’d almost believed it. Scoring the job with ECC had been major, and she’d felt confident it was what she needed to get her career on track and prove herself. But now she had her doubts, and once again she felt a familiar, crushing disappointment.

  Nothing I do is ever going to be good enough. Nothing.

  Not true. What you mean is, you’re never going to be Casey.

  Casey Domingo, her smart, beautiful older sister. Casey, whom everyone, including Jessie, loved. Casey, who at thirty-two was cofounder and CEO of a successful software firm, a devoted wife and mother, on the boards of several philanthropic organizations, and being courted to run for city council of her Long Island town. One of those women who had it all.

  Her whole life Jessie had heard people speak of her sister in awed tones: She’s the perfect daughter. She’s the perfect sister . . . friend . . . wife . . . mother . . . businesswoman . . .

  And she’d heard the whispered corollary: Too bad Jessie’s not more like her. The girl’s bright, but she’s not living up to her potential.

  She’d tried; God knew she had. But she’d never done anything quite well enough.

  Not that her parents had held unrealistic expectations for her or allowed their pride in her sister to overshadow their pride in Jessie’s accomplishments. In fact, they were somewhat puzzled by the exacting and often frustrating standards she set for herself. No, as a therapist she’d consulted in college had pointed out, the burden to achieve was a self-imposed and unnecessary one.