The Last Annual Slugfest (18 page)

“Yes.” She eyed me skeptically. “Aren’t you Leila Katz?”

“No. I’m Vejay Haskell, a friend of hers. She was planning to be here now. She told me this morning how much she was looking forward to seeing you. It was very important to her. But her aunt died last night. Leila was up all night. She was exhausted this morning, but she was still determined to see you at six.” My words rushed out. Somehow, in my increased worry about Leila, it seemed essential that I make this woman understand that Leila hadn’t just stood her up.

Anna Martin nodded slowly. “I’ve got to be back in San Francisco at nine. I’ll have to leave here by seven-fifteen at the latest.”

“I’m going to Leila’s house now. She probably was falling asleep this afternoon and went home for a nap and forgot to set the alarm. Look, the door to the store is open. Why don’t you go on in and check it out, take pictures.”

“Okay, but like I said, I’ve got to be home at nine.”

I ran for my truck, started the engine, and hung a U on North Bank Road. At Zeus Lane I turned right. The road was steep and dark. Before I came to Leila’s house, the pavement ended. From that point the street was mud. In a more cosmopolitan area the top of the hill would have been a plush location. It would have boasted half-million-dollar homes with imposing decks. But the apex of Zeus Lane looked like a scene from the Ozarks. Dim lights came from the windows of tiny ramshackle cabins, and herds of maimed vehicles, many on blocks, were parked where front lawns might have been.

But Leila’s little house was well maintained. It was also dark. And worse, there was no car in front. I knocked on the door.

No answer.

I knocked again, loudly. Then I leaned over the porch rail and rapped on the bedroom window.

No response at all. She couldn’t have slept through all that banging. She wasn’t there. Now I was really worried.

I walked back to my truck. What could have made her forget Anna Martin and the publicity that might thrust the bookstore into the black financially? Why would she have left the bookstore unlocked? What could have been so important, so surprising, so compelling?

I looked across the street at Hooper’s cabin, hoping he could tell me something. But his place was dark, too.

Turning the truck around, I headed back down the hill. I parked in the same spot on North Bank Road, and ran across the street to the café, and then back to Fischer’s Ice Cream. But neither of the clerks had seen Leila leave. Neither had even realized the bookstore was closed.

I pushed open the door to the bookstore. All the lights were on. Anna Martin was standing by Leila’s chair, next to the table that held the thermoses. “Did you find … I guess not,” she said.

“No. I’m a little worried,” I said, in understatement. “Can she call you?”

“I guess. But I can’t drive back up here. I’m on a tight deadline. I had the flu last week and I’m really behind. I took some pictures of the store. I’ve got a good idea of the stock. Here’s my number at home. She can leave a message on my machine if I’m not there.” She handed me her card. Her home phone number was pencilled in.

After Anna Martin had left, I stood in the empty store. The bookshelves looked undisturbed. On the table were three empty cups, one with lipstick marks and one half full of black coffee. Leila had been drinking her coffee black this morning. But that didn’t mean anything. I sank into the chair where I had sat this morning, asking Leila about her lover, listening to her refuse to reveal his or her identity. Now, as I looked at her chair, I saw it wasn’t empty. On it lay a book, lying face down—a tall thin book, a children’s book. I turned it over.
For Bear Lovers Only!

Bear Lovers! Leila had explained about Bear just this morning. She’d expected me to stop here this afternoon. She was telling me she had gone off with Bear. With a shudder, I realized that if Leila had left with an easy mind, she wouldn’t have put the book on the chair for me. She left a trail because she was worried, or frightened. Had she gone with Bear to protect him, or her?

Maybe Leila had dropped everything to help Bear.

Maybe. No one but Leila knew Bear’s identity.
If
Bear had killed Edwina, then Leila was a threat.

Who was Bear? According to Rosa, Angelina was the only adolescent girlfriend Leila had had. She was the person to whom Leila turned the summer of the scandal. Leila went to her house secretly, to protect Angelina from Edwina’s wrath. Angelina had access to whatever nicotine there was at the fish ranch, and to Maxie Dawkins’s Estrin. It all pointed to her. But I wanted to be sure before I committed myself to going to the fish ranch for the evidence—before I took the chance of coming up against the violent night guard.

I couldn’t be sure Angelina was Bear, but she was more likely than anyone else. And with Leila gone, I had to do something.

Perhaps I was jumping to conclusions about Leila being worried. Maybe the book was a coincidence. Maybe she’d just gone off. But she wouldn’t have left the shop unlocked. She wouldn’t have forgotten Anna Martin.

Not believing for an instant that it would do any good, I looked up Angelina’s phone number and used Leila’s phone to call. There was no answer. Angelina and her family could still be up at Fort Ross. They could be pitching the tent right now. Angelina might be innocently vacationing, but …

It didn’t leave me much choice. If Angelina had lured Leila away from here, if she was keeping her captive, assuming she hadn’t already killed her, she wouldn’t be likely to do that in her own house, with her husband and child there. She’d be holding Leila at the fish ranch, where she had a guard who had said there was nothing he wouldn’t do for her.

Turning out the lights in the shop, I closed the door and headed for my truck and the fish ranch.

B
UT AS
I
STARTED
the engine, I thought of Maxie Dawkins’s description of the night guard who had almost killed a man. One more check at Leila’s house, I told myself. I would feel like a fool if I raced out to the fish ranch and ran afoul of the guard, only to discover that Leila was home in front of her fire. By now—seven-twenty on a Saturday night—North Bank Road was too crowded to allow a U-turn. I drove east to the traffic light and waited. The sidewalks were filled with groups of fishermen making the most of their last night before the salmon season. Tomorrow night they would be on their boats, ready to head out into the black Pacific at two A.M.

I turned left, and then left again onto Zeus Lane, and then up through the mud to Leila’s house.

I ran through the rain to her door and banged long and hard. But there was no answer. I started to bang again, as if the force of my fist could bring her here to safety. Then, realizing the futility, I stopped.

There was a light on in Hooper’s cabin. I ran across the muddy street to his door and pounded. But although the cabin was tiny, I heard no steps toward the door. Hooper wasn’t the type to leave the light on and go out. The part-time work at the tobacco shop was his only income, and knowing Edwina, that was no more than minimum wage. In the two years I had been reading his meter, Hooper consistently had the lowest usage on the hill.

“Hooper. It’s Vejay Haskell.”

Moody as he was, it was more likely that he was inside and didn’t want to come to the door. I knocked again.

The door opened. Hooper looked as he had this afternoon. He had on the same worn work clothes. His eyes had that same wary look. From behind him came the smell of wood burning. “Are you still nosing around in Leila’s life?” he demanded.

That was the question and the attitude that had forced me off the Pomo rancheria this afternoon. But now I stood firm. “Leila’s not home. Do you know where she is?”

He glanced over my shoulder in the direction of her dark house. “Maybe she’s at the store.”

“The bookstore was closed at four this afternoon.”

“Are you sure?” He sounded worried.

“She wasn’t there to meet the
Chronicle
reporter.”

His eyes widened. It was clear he understood the significance of that.

“And the store door was unlocked. Can I come in? It’s pouring out here.”

“Yeah, sure. Leila should be home. This isn’t a part of town you leave your place dark. If Leila goes somewhere, she tells me. If she’s going to be gone overnight, I stay in her place. Her house is a lot better than this.” He indicated the room behind him.

It was warm and somewhat smoky inside, the smell of burning wood filling the tiny room. Beside the fireplace was a stuffed chair that could have been the companion piece of a Steelhead Lodge sofa. The floor was covered with pieces of rugs, some remnants, some clearly rejects. They were piled haphazardly one on another so that ends curled upwards at odd places on the floor and every step required thought. An archway led to another room that was divided, half covered with a pile of blankets (similar to the rugs in here) that must have been Hooper’s bed, and the other half holding a miniscule kitchen. I saw no sign of a bathroom; there was probably an outhouse out back. Behind him was what appeared to be Hooper’s one extravagance—his books. The bookcase ran from floor to ceiling and covered the entire wall. There were clothbound volumes on California law, hardbound and paperback books on gardening, native California plants, and organic vegetables. And on the two top shelves, Hooper must have had every book written on American Indians.

“Leila’s got stuff worth stealing in her place. When I stay over there I figure that if anyone is dumb enough to break in here, they’ll be so mad that they’ll wake me up slamming things around.”

I must have looked surprised, because he went on. “Leila and I are friends. Up here there’s no one else. This part of the hill, it’s all little places like this. Most of the people live in them because they can’t get it together to pay for anything better. Me, I choose not to. There’s a difference.”

I nodded.

“But Leila, if she says she’ll bring you something from the grocery, you can warm your oven. If she borrows a book, she returns it and the binding isn’t broken. With the rest of these people, I’d never think of lending one of my books.” He laughed. “Of course, it’s not like they read. When you’re that zonked out, a label on a can of chili is like
War and Peace.”

This part of Zeus Lane was well known in the PG&E office. It got more fourteen-day notices, three-day notices, and shut-offs than any other part of town. And there was barely an account that hadn’t merited an “R” in the changes column for tampering.

“Could Leila have decided to spend the night with a lover?” I asked.

Hooper’s face shifted into that ominous blankness. I glanced down at his stocky, muscular body. How sure was I that it wasn’t he who’d killed Edwina? I really didn’t know anything about him. He had come through town one or two summers, years back. Then four years ago he had turned up again. I didn’t know from where. I didn’t even know for sure he was a Pomo. I, and everyone else, had only his word for that.

He took a breath and motioned me toward the one chair. I sat on the edge. The fire warmed my right side. Squatting on the rug pieces, he said, “Leila doesn’t have a lover now.”

“Are you sure? Could she have met someone new?”

“Anything could be. But it would have to have been since Thursday night, because she spent that evening here complaining about how long it had been since she’d been with anyone.”

“How about the old lover from the past? Would she have gone off with him or her, for any reason?”

His eyes tightened. “Listen, I told you—”

The heat of the fire made my scalp feel gummier than ever under the wool cap. Exasperated, I leaned forward. “Hooper, look at me. Do I look like a woman who’s been sitting around sipping sherry all afternoon and pondering people’s love lives? Leila’s my friend, too. I’m worried about her. There’s already been one woman killed in Henderson this weekend.”

He hesitated.

“Tell me about that affair Leila had in high school.”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on, Hooper. Leila’s in danger.”

“No, really, I don’t know about it. I asked Leila, just like you’re asking me. And I was just as angry when she didn’t tell me. After all, Leila told me about all her affairs. We sat around a lot of nights and talked about life. Then, all of a sudden, she’s got this big secret that’s too special for her to divulge.” He pushed himself up and began to pace, placing each foot carefully on the pile of rug scraps.

I believed him. But that didn’t make the prognosis for Leila any more hopeful. “If she didn’t tell you, who would she have told?”

“No one. Leila’s learned not to trust people, even lovers, maybe especially lovers.”

“Because of that high school affair?”

He nodded. “I had the feeling that that set the tone for her love life since. Pity.”

“When she talked about it,” I said slowly, “did you have the feeling that the lover was someone older?”

“Maybe. I don’t know if older was it. But the lover was someone who knew a lot more than she did, someone who showed her something she hadn’t seen before.”

“Man or woman?”

“Don’t know. She was real careful not to say. It was one of the things that got to me then.”

I sighed. I had been hoping for some bit of information, however small, to lead me away from the fish ranch. “You know, Hooper, this isn’t much help.”

He glared. “What do you expect me to do? I can’t make her have told me things she didn’t.” He moved to the window in back, stepping carefully through the pile of blankets. There was no spot on the entire floor of his place where he could put a foot without thinking about it first. It made his pacing more deliberate and controlled.

He might have told me everything Leila confided to him. Even if he hadn’t, there was nothing more to ask about her. I stood up. “Hooper,” I said, “when you were here years ago, Edwina paid your family’s PG and E deposit. Why did she do that? Charity?”

“Charity!” he exclaimed, “Is that what you think? Is that what the people of Henderson, the
white
people of Henderson, think, that Edwina out of the goodness of her heart took pity on three indigent Indians?”