Don't Turn Your Back on the Ocean Page 17

  “As soon as the place is fully ventilated,” Lopez said. “Tomorrow’s fine. You’ve got a clean bill of health as far as I’m concerned.”

  The question was, I thought, whether Café Marie’s customers would agree.

  Twenty

  TUESDAY MORNING I DROVE SOUTH, DOWN THE MIDDLE of the broad agricultural Salinas Valley, into San Luis Obispo County. At Paso Robles I left U.S. 101 and took Highway 46 west, over the hills toward the Pacific Ocean and the coast highway.

  I rounded the curve just outside the beach town of Cayucos and saw Morro Rock looming in the distance, a granite sentinel marking the entrance to Morro Bay harbor. The ancient volcanic peak is the last in a chain of nine stretching from San Luis Obispo to the sea, lending their name not only to the town but to the strand of beach between Cayucos and Morro Bay. The rock dwarfed the triple stacks of the Pacific Gas & Electric steam plant where Angie’s husband Stan worked.

  I glanced to my right and saw a huge vessel rocking in the waves off Morro Strand. Offshore oil drilling, I thought, something the north coast had so far been able to stave off. At least Monterey Bay was safe now. The sanctuary’s boundaries encompassed the coast from San Francisco down past San Simeon. There would be no offshore oil rigs there.

  It was almost noon when I reached Morro Bay. My cousin’s house was on Pacific Street, midway between the highway and the shoreline, near the downtown business section, a one-story wood-frame house painted white with dark green shutters. A huge pine tree stood in one corner of the small lot, shedding cones on the lawn. The flower beds along the front of the house were full of vibrant yellow-red marigolds, as warm as the midday sun burning through the coastal fog.

  I parked the Toyota in front of the house and got out, carrying my overnight bag. Angie Ravella Sellers opened the front door as I came up the walk. I hadn’t seen her in a couple of years but she looked the same, her curly hair cut short and tumbled around her face. She wore a flowered short-sleeved dress and low-heeled shoes. Angie and I were both thirty-three. She looked a lot like her younger brother Bobby, with his black hair and wide brown eyes.

  “Great timing,” she said, holding the screen door wide as I stepped into the living room. “I got here fifteen minutes ago and I’m fixing lunch. Just stash your bag in the back bedroom.” She led the way down a hallway to my right. The small bedroom held a desk covered with papers, several bookshelves, and a daybed.

  I detoured to the bathroom before walking back through the living room. It opened onto a big kitchen with space for a round oak dining table. Angie had set two cloth place mats on the table and now she stood at the counter, constructing a tossed salad from the array of fresh vegetables strewn on either side of the wooden cutting board.

  Sunlight streamed through a back window, falling on an elderly beagle curled up on a throw rug just below. His name was Clyde and he’d been part of the package when Angie married Stan four years ago. I knelt and patted the old dog, noticing how white he was on the ears and muzzle.

  “He’s getting on, isn’t he?” I straightened and looked out the window at the small backyard with herbs and vegetables growing in a plot along the fence.

  “Just turned fourteen,” Angie said, slicing mushrooms. “He has arthritis and he doesn’t see very well. Stan will be devastated when Clyde goes. But you’re hanging in there, aren’t you, boy?” At the sound of her voice Clyde wagged his tail, slapping the linoleum on which the rug lay. Angie gathered the mushrooms and tossed them into the bowl, then turned her attention to a bell pepper.

  “How are things at the college?” I asked as she cored the pepper.

  “Fine. I’m teaching three classes this term. I’ve got one this afternoon, so I’ll give you the extra key and leave you to your own devices.” She picked up the tongs and tossed the salad, then set the ceramic bowl on the table, along with some bottled dressing and a bakery bag full of soft breadsticks. Then she turned and opened the refrigerator. “I have wine, beer, mineral water. What do you want?”

  “Mineral water.”

  As we ate lunch I told Angie about the incidents at Café Marie and their escalating seriousness. “You don’t have any idea who’s behind it?” She stood up and carried our empty salad bowls to the kitchen sink.

  “No. I have some theories but nothing concrete. Mother’s frantic about it. That restaurant is her whole life.”

  “Mom hasn’t mentioned any of this the last few times I’ve called. Of course, Mom’s frantic about Bobby,” Angie said, her face suddenly somber. “She thinks the sheriff is going to arrest Bobby for Ariel’s murder.”

  I reached for the last breadstick and broke it into pieces. “I don’t know. If the investigating sergeant had enough evidence I think he would arrest Bobby. But he hasn’t. That means he doesn’t have enough evidence. Did you ever meet Ariel?”

  Angie nodded as she ran hot soapy water into the sink. “Bobby drove down to visit her several times last year. He brought her here for dinner. She was good for him. They seemed to fit together.”

  “Donna said Ariel was concerned about Bobby’s drinking.”

  “We all were.” Angie was quiet for a moment as she washed our dishes. “But he seems to have gotten that under control. Her influence, I’m sure. I hope he doesn’t start again.”

  “Do you recall any specific time when he sobered up? Donna mentioned last spring.”

  Angie shook her head, rinsing the dishes and stacking them in the drainer. “Spring sounds about right. That was the end of the school year and I’m always up to my ears in work. I don’t remember any specifics.”

  “Maybe Ariel’s roommate can tell me. Were you able to find an address for Maggie Lim?”

  My cousin’s eyes twinkled. She dried her hands on a dish towel and reached for her handbag, hanging by its strap from the back of one of the chairs. She pulled out a sheet of paper. “I certainly did. Maggie Lim lives on Foothill Boulevard, not far from the campus. I don’t know what sort of class schedule she has, but I would think if you hang around long enough, she’ll come home eventually.”

  “Good work,” I told her. “I may have to take you on as an operative.”

  “Does it pay more than an instructor’s salary at Cuesta College?” When I shook my head, she laughed. “Then I’m not interested.” Her demeanor turned more serious. “I just hope you can find out something that will prove Bobby’s innocence.”

  The coast highway turned inland through twelve miles of rolling hills until it reached San Luis Obispo. California Polytechnic State University, known as Cal Poly, was tucked at the bottom of the rolling hills northwest of town.

  The highway turned into Santa Rosa Street and intersected with Foothill Boulevard. I kept one eye on the street and the other on the building numbers, finally spotting the address Angie had written on the paper. It was a two-story brown stucco with eight units that faced each other across a narrow central courtyard. The mailbox for number four held a strip of plastic tape that read LIM. Below it another strip of tape had been removed.

  Number four was the upper rear unit on the right-hand building. I climbed the concrete stairs and knocked on the door but got no answer. I knocked on the opposite door. A moment later it opened and a young man peered out.

  “Hi, I’m looking for Maggie Lim,” I said, favoring her neighbor with a big smile. SLO has a laid-back, mellow atmosphere and I was counting on the natives to be friendly. “Do you know where I can find her?”

  He scratched his unruly brown hair. “You looking for a roommate? I know she put an ad in the paper.” I cranked the smile up a couple of watts and didn’t confirm or deny his assumption. “I guess she’s in class or at the library. You could leave her a note or something. No, wait, it’s Tuesday, right?” When I nodded he glanced at his watch. “She works at the bookstore, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. She should be there.”

  “Which bookstore is that?” I prompted.

  “Earthling, downtown on Higuera Street.”

  I thanked him and r
etraced my steps back to the curb, relieved that I wouldn’t have to stake out the apartment. Stakeouts are excruciatingly boring. I headed downtown and I left my Toyota in a municipal lot just off Higuera Street, the main drag.

  I walked a couple of blocks to Earthling, where customers browsed through the racks of books or sat round the upper-level fireplace perusing the Coast Weekly or potential purchases. Behind the counter, both cashiers were busy ringing up purchases. The man finished first and his customer departed with a stack of mystery paperbacks. I stepped up to the counter and asked if Maggie Lim was here.

  He glanced at his watch. “She doesn’t actually start work until three,” he said. “It’s just now two o’clock.”

  “She’s early, then,” the other cashier said. “I saw her back in the stockroom.”

  I thanked them and made my way to the rear of the store. I spotted my quarry, standing in the doorway to the stockroom, her face in profile as she spoke to someone I couldn’t see. I’d only caught a glimpse of her at the funeral on Monday afternoon, looking subdued in her gray dress. Now I examined her more closely. She was in her early twenties, maybe five feet two, and her long black hair hung straight down her back. Today she wore gray slacks and a white cotton shirt, with an oversized canvas bag slung over one shoulder. She was American-born, probably second or third generation, since she had no accent, unless one counted a slight flavor of San Fernando Valley Girl.

  “Okay,” she told her unseen companion, “I’ll grab some lunch and be right back.” She turned in my direction and saw me standing between two bookshelves.

  “May I help you?” she asked with a ready smile. Then she looked at me again, as though she hadn’t really seen me the first time. She frowned.

  “I know you. You were at Ariel’s funeral. With Bobby.”

  Twenty-one

  I TOOK ONE OF MY BUSINESS CARDS FROM MY PURSE and handed it to her. “My name is Jeri Howard. I’m Bobby’s cousin.”

  Maggie Lim picked up the business card and stared at it. Then she looked up at me, black brows drawn down over her brown eyes. “Mr. and Mrs. Logan think Bobby killed Ariel.” She spoke so softly that I had to lean forward to catch the words.

  “What do you think?”

  She thought for a moment before she answered. Then she shook her head. Her straight black hair flew back and forth, obscuring the collar of her white shirt. “No. I just can’t buy that. They were in love. They were going to get married.”

  “Sometimes love goes bad,” I said, playing devil’s advocate.

  Maggie shook her head again. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “I’d really like to talk, Maggie.”

  “I was just going to lunch. You can come with me.”

  We left the bookstore through the front door and walked up Higuera Street, stopping at a deli where Maggie ordered a chicken salad sandwich and a diet soda. I asked for some mineral water and paid for all three.

  “Thank you,” Maggie said. “Let’s go up to the mission.”

  We rounded the corner and walked up Chorro Street onto the grounds of the Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa, which occupies a wooded city block in the middle of the downtown area. A creek, liberated from the surrounding concrete, runs behind the shops, galleries, and restaurants fronting on Higuera Street. Children played on the banks of the stream, darting back and forth across a series of stepping-stones. Maggie and I walked along the path edging the creek, lured by the music of water running over the rocks. We found a vacant bench and sat down. Maggie spread a napkin on her lap and opened the paper sack containing her lunch. She opened her diet soda and set it on the bench next to her. Then she unwrapped her sandwich, staring at it as though she didn’t remember what she ordered.

  I waited until she’d eaten a few bites. “How long had you known Ariel?”

  “We were roommates for two years.” Maggie gave me a sidelong glance. “We met when I was a junior and she was a senior. I think we got to know each other pretty well.”

  That’s what I’d hoped. “Tell me about her, the Ariel Logan you knew.”

  “She was really nice,” Maggie said simply. “I’m going to miss her.”

  Tears brimmed up in her large brown eyes and she mopped them with a napkin. “I can’t believe she’s gone, that someone would kill her. She didn’t have an enemy in the world. How could such a terrible thing happen?”

  I didn’t have any answers for her. Maggie took a deep breath, then bit into her sandwich again. I let her eat in silence. Then she began describing the Ariel she knew, someone who sounded like a normal young woman with goals and aspirations, hopes and dreams, the kinds of things that two roommates confide in each other, late at night in their off-campus apartment. Ariel was a student intern at the water board, a volunteer for several environmental organizations, and she liked to hike at Montaña de Oro State Park, on the rugged coast nearby.

  “Do you remember when she met Bobby?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes. That was a year ago August.” Maggie nibbled at her sandwich. “When she came back to school she was buzzing about this guy she’d met, a fisherman. She said he was sweet, but a little bit wild.”

  That sounded like my cousin Bobby. “Were there any problems between them?”

  “She thought he drank too much.” Maggie sipped soda through the straw. “They dated during the fall, while she was home on weekends, or he’d drive down here. During the Christmas holidays she took him to meet her folks. I guess that was a disaster.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  “I’m not sure.” She tilted her head to one side. “I think maybe Bobby was nervous and he had too much wine, or spilled some wine. Ariel wouldn’t give me all the details, Maybe Mr. and Mrs. Logan thought he was crude or unsuitable. I just don’t know, other than things got off on the wrong foot. Later, at a New Year’s party, Bobby did get drunk. Ariel got really upset with him and they argued, at the party. Then Ariel left without him.”

  I shook my head at the picture Maggie’s words painted. I hadn’t realized Bobby’s consumption of alcohol had gotten that bad. “I’m surprised they didn’t break up then.”

  Maggie continued her story between bites as she finished her sandwich. “Ariel was upset with him and she didn’t see him for a couple of months. He’d call and I was supposed to tell him she wasn’t home. I hated that. Then, on the long weekend in February, she went up to see her parents. She went out with Bobby and they started seeing each other again.”

  “Something happened in the spring,” I said. “It had to do with Bobby’s drinking.”

  “Ariel gave him an ultimatum.” Maggie crumpled the napkin and the paper that had been wrapped around the sandwich and stuffed them into the bag. “The third weekend in April. He drove down here to see Ariel. Saturday night we went out, four of us. I was with a guy named Ted. We went to a club and Bobby got so drunk that Ted had to drive him back to our apartment in Bobby’s T-bird. Ariel and I followed in Ted’s car. All the way to our place Ariel was fuming. When Bobby dragged out of bed Sunday morning Ariel told him either he stopped drinking or she never wanted to see him again.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He just left,” Maggie said, shrugging her shoulders. “In a blue funk. I figured that was the last I’d see of him. But he did stop drinking. When the term ended, Ariel went back up to Carmel. I went with her, for two weeks. She was seeing him again. The three of us spent a lot of time together during those two weeks in June. And Bobby was different, like night and day. Even I noticed it. We’d go out for dinner, and he wouldn’t have anything alcoholic. Then I came back here, for summer school. Ariel and I talked on the phone a lot. I went up to see her in Carmel a few times during the summer, and she came down here as well. The relationship between her and Bobby seemed to be working. He hadn’t gone back to his old pattern.”

  What if he had? The thought came to my mind unbidden, unpleasant. This pattern of Bobby drinking too much, arguing with Ariel, breaking up with her. What if that was what
they’d been fighting about at the Rose and Crown? But Stella, the barmaid, said he’d ordered lunch, with nothing to drink but mineral water. I shook my head. There were so many things I needed to ask Maggie Lim and the clock was ticking. I glanced at my watch and Maggie looked at hers.

  “I know she cared about him and she wanted things to work out.” Maggie stood and tossed the bag and the soda can into a nearby trash receptacle. “He brought up the subject of marriage during the summer. Ariel didn’t exactly say yes, not at that point. It was more a case of waiting until she finished grad school before making any plans.” She sighed. “I want an ice cream cone. Then I have to go to work.”

  Maggie led the way down the path through the mission grounds to a bridge that spanned the creek. “Did Ariel tell her parents any of this?” I asked as we crossed the bridge.

  “I don’t know.” Maggie shrugged. We walked through a pedestrian mall that led to Higuera Street. “Mr. and Mrs. Logan didn’t like Bobby. They made that plain whenever I was up in Carmel. I think they were hoping it was a phase Ariel was going through. They’re, well, snobs. And awfully formal. Not like my folks at all. I think they liked the lawyer better, just because he was a lawyer.”

  “What did you think of Ryan Trent?”

  I saw Maggie grimace and figured her opinion of the attorney was similar to mine. She opened the door and we stepped into an ice cream parlor called the SLO Maid. I studied the dizzying range of possibilities and settled on a variation of my old standby, chocolate, in this case chocolate and peanut butter chips. Maggie, on the other hand, was one of those who preferred fruit with her butterfat. She opted for peach. Waffle cones and napkins in hand, we left the SLO Maid and walked back outside, strolling toward the bookstore.

  “Ryan Trent is a horse’s ass.” Maggie delicately licked a pale gold trickle of ice cream running down the side of her cone.

  “You didn’t like him.”

  “No, and it didn’t take Ariel long to see through him, either. She had pretty good judgment when it came to people. She could see the good qualities in Bobby when her folks kept saying he’s a fisherman who drinks too much. And she saw Ryan’s bad side, in spite of the money and the fancy suits and the expensive car. Ryan Trent is pompous and possessive, a real ‘I’m God’s gift to women’ type.”