Don't Turn Your Back on the Ocean Page 18

  “Sometimes that type doesn’t like to let go.” We were halfway to the bookstore. I broke a piece off my waffle cone and popped it into my mouth,

  “Well, yes, he kept calling her, even after she stopped dating him. That was after she met Bobby. Ryan knows her parents. He can be really ingratiating. I guess that’s why they liked him so much.” Maggie was quiet for a moment, working on her peach ice cream. “Ariel was beautiful. She always got lots of attention from men. When I was up in Carmel last June, Ryan kept calling and she kept shutting him down. Politely, of course. But she did say something about going to visit Ryan at his office, late in the summer. I thought that was odd.”

  So did I. Maggie shook her head when I asked if she knew why Ariel had gone to see Ryan Trent. We stood outside the bookstore and finished our ice cream cones. It was still a few minutes before three and I was reluctant to see Maggie go through the open door of the shop. I needed much more time with this particular source.

  “Tell me about Ariel’s parents,” I said.

  “Well, like I said, I thought they were formal, distant. Ariel was an only child and they were older when they had her. I think they had a lot of expectations for Ariel. But they loved her.” Maggie’s eyes grew wet again as she recalled yesterday’s services at Carmel Mission.

  “Poor Mrs. Logan, she’s just overcome by grief. I didn’t think she was going to make it through the funeral. Mr. Logan’s really broken up about it. It’s good Mrs. Braemer was there to take charge.” Maggie looked through the window of the bookstore. “It’s three. I have to go now.”

  I reached out and touched her sleeve. “Maggie, there’s so much I don’t know about Ariel, things that you can tell me.”

  “Why? How will that help Bobby?”

  “I’m trying to trace Ariel’s movements before she died. Why did she go up to Carmel that Friday? She must have cut class to do it. Did she tell you why?”

  Maggie shook her head. “No, she didn’t. And I didn’t ask. I thought it was something about Bobby, their relationship. I didn’t want to pry.”

  “Maybe it was something else, something that was important to Ariel, that led to that argument with Bobby. A project of some sort. I’d like to look at a diary, a desk calendar, anything that would help me find out where she went and who she saw that last week before she died.”

  Maggie sighed and edged closer to the doorway of the bookstore. “You’re welcome to come by the apartment after I get off work this evening. I should be there by nine-thirty.” She gave me the address. I didn’t tell her I’d already been there earlier, looking for her.

  “But I don’t know if I can help you. Ariel’s aunt stopped here Friday, on her way up to Carmel. She and I packed up all of Ariel’s things and she took them with her. I doubt we missed anything.”

  Twenty-two

  WHEN I RETURNED TO MORRO BAY ANGIE WAS home. We went for a hike at Montaña de Oro, the unspoiled coastal plain where the ocean surges against the rugged rocky coast. Not as unspoiled as all that. On our way back to the car we picked up litter caught in the foliage along the path. Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant lies just over the ridge to the east, near an earthquake fault. From the road we could see the long finger of the sand spit stretching north toward Morro Rock and the towers of the PG&E plant.

  Back in Morro Bay we stopped at a market near the municipal pier on the Embarcadero and bought fresh fish. We took it home, where Stan grilled it outside. It was hard to tear myself away from this pleasant dinner and drive back to SLO.

  The first thing that caught my eye when Maggie Lim let me into the apartment she had shared with Ariel Logan was a large framed poster of Van Gogh’s mulberry tree, from the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. The poster’s colors were not as vibrant as the original but nevertheless the blues, purples, and yellows, highlighted by a nearby floor lamp, added a much-needed splash of color to this apartment, with its beige carpet and beige walls.

  “Some of the furniture is hers. Was hers.” Maggie amended her statement as she switched on a lamp on a table next to the brown sofa in the living room. She walked to the window that looked down on the courtyard and closed the half-open blinds. Then she turned and ran her hand over an oak rocking chair with a flowered cushion.

  “This rocker. The bookcase over in the corner. And all the furniture in Ariel’s bedroom.”

  As Maggie spoke I nodded and moved slowly around the room, getting my bearings. As we’d entered the front door the living room was to my left, furnished with a sofa that looked like a castoff from someone else’s den, bracketed by a couple of spindly and mismatched end tables. In addition to the rocking chair and bookcase Maggie had pointed out, there was a small television on a mobile stand, with a VCR on a shelf below. On top of the bookcase I saw a portable compact disc player and several CDs.

  “Is the family going to collect the furniture?”

  “That’s what Mrs. Braemer, Ariel’s aunt, said. Then, after the funeral Mr. Logan told me to keep the furniture. But I don’t know if I can. It reminds me too much of Ariel. The only thing I want is the poster.” With a raised hand, Maggie indicated the Van Gogh reproduction. “It was Ariel’s favorite. I asked Mrs. Braemer if I could keep it and she said yes.”

  “So when you and Mrs. Braemer packed up Ariel’s belongings,” I said, “you mean personal items that would fit into her car.”

  “Yes.” Maggie nodded. “Clothes, jewelry, photographs, her computer. Ariel had several plastic file boxes with schoolwork and personal papers. If I find anything else I’m supposed to ship it to them.”

  Maggie now moved through a dining area, where a round café table and four chairs stood, into the small kitchen that was separated from the living room by a counter. “Some of the dishes are Ariel’s,” she said distractedly, “and the blender. I keep seeing things that are hers. Like that cookie jar.”

  She pointed at a ceramic cookie jar in the shape of a fat red apple. A telephone rested atop a phone directory, next to a small white answering machine with its red light blinking. A large rectangular woven basket with a center divider held an assortment of mail.

  I glanced at the contents of the basket. The envelopes on the left side had been opened and I saw bills, a magazine, and a couple of letters addressed to Maggie. The stack of mail on the right was larger, addressed to Ariel. I touched it with a finger, glancing at the envelopes. Most of them were envelopes with windows, either bills or pitches for money from the usual sources, including several environmental organizations. There were a couple of letters, both from women, one postmarked Boston, the other San Diego. Underneath all of this I saw a magazine, the monthly publication of one of the environmental organizations.

  “I’m still getting her mail,” Maggie said, looking at the basket. Then she stared at the blinking red light on the answering machine. “And phone calls. That’s the worst. I have to tell people she’s dead.” She sighed and moved her eyes up to meet mine. “You want a cup of coffee?”

  “Sure. Mind if I explore?”

  “Go ahead.” She put water on to boil and took coffee and filters from a cupboard. I walked farther into the apartment. The central hallway led to a bathroom and a closet, with bedrooms on either side. The front bedroom was Maggie’s, I guessed, surveying the double bed with its green comforter pulled untidily over the sheets and pillow, the jewelry strewn on the dresser, the clothes hanging in the open closet. At the far end of the room I saw a white laminated student desk and a matching bookcase, its shelves crammed with books. The desk held a laptop computer and an inexpensive printer.

  Ariel’s bedroom, at the back of the apartment, looked as though it had been swept clean of any personal trace of its occupant. I looked it over carefully, just in case anything had been missed. The smooth pine desk was bare and mute, its drawers yielding only paper clips, pens, and pencils. The dresser was empty and so was the closet. The double mattress and box spring stood on a steel frame, covered by a blue flowered spread, and there was nothing on the bedside ta
ble except dust and a telephone extension.

  When I returned to the living room Maggie had pressed the playback button on the answering machine. I heard a female voice inquiring about the apartment to share.

  “I put an ad in the paper, advertising for a roommate,” Maggie said, jotting down the caller’s name and phone number. She had poured boiling water through coffee grounds and now it dripped from the filter into the pot. “I can’t afford this place on my own. I’ve had a couple of calls and someone’s coming over to see it tomorrow afternoon. But it won’t be the same without Ariel. God, I’m going to miss her.”

  “When did you realize she was missing?”

  Maggie poured coffee into two mugs and asked if I took anything in mine. I shook my head and she handed a mug across the counter. She splashed some milk in hers. We settled on the sofa before she spoke.

  “When Ariel left a week ago Friday, I was rushing around because I was late for my eight o’clock class. But I noticed her overnight bag there by the front door. She said she had to go up to Monterey, and she’d be back early Sunday afternoon.”

  “But she didn’t say why? How did she act? Did you notice anything different?”

  Maggie shook her head. “I assumed she was going to see Bobby. But she was frowning, like something was bothering her. I wondered if she and Bobby were having problems. Things had been going so well between them all summer. She had classes on Friday, plus her intern job at the water board. I was surprised that she was cutting. She didn’t usually do that, so whatever it was had to be important I didn’t give it another thought until Sunday. When Ariel said she’d be back early Sunday afternoon, I thought she meant two or three o’clock. I figured she’d been delayed. So I called the Logans’ house in Carmel. Mr. Logan answered the phone. They’d just got back from France that evening.”

  “What did he say when you told him about Ariel?”

  “He sounded surprised that she’d gone up there for the weekend, but not worried, like it wasn’t a big deal to him. I mean, who would think anything was wrong? Ariel had a key to her parents’ house. She went up there all the time, to see them and to see Bobby.”

  “He didn’t say that he’d seen Ariel?”

  “No. Like I said, he sounded surprised. Then he said not to worry, she was probably on her way back to SLO. Just got a late start, or stopped somewhere for coffee or something to eat. But when she didn’t show up here on Sunday night...” Maggie’s voice trailed off and she sipped coffee before speaking again.

  “When I woke up Monday morning, I went into Ariel’s room, hoping she’d come in sometime during the night But she wasn’t there. So I called the Logans. I even called Bobby, thinking maybe Ariel had stayed with him. I know he was probably out fishing when I called. I left a message on his answering machine.” Maggie gnawed her lower lip and looked as though she were going to cry. “By the time anyone missed her, Ariel was already dead.”

  That Monday call to the Logans set the official wheels in motion. Ariel was reported missing on Monday morning. The APB on her car had gone out that afternoon and the vehicle had been found at the Rocky Point Restaurant Wednesday. Ariel’s body was spotted on the rugged shore below Rocky Creek Bridge Thursday. How did she get from here to there?

  “Did Ariel ever mention a friend of Bobby’s, a man named Karl Beckman?”

  “Oh, yes,” Maggie said, brushing back a long strand of black hair. “In fact, I met him this summer when I was visiting Carmel. We went over to his house for a cookout. We met his daughter, who was home from school at Stanford, and his sister-in-law.”

  The ubiquitous Lacy, I thought, who is everywhere and seems to blend into the background. But not quite.

  “Mr. Beckman took us on a tour of his boatyard. I didn’t think it was particularly interesting, all those boats with their hulls being scraped and repainted, but Ariel did. I guess that’s why she asked him to show us around.”

  “Why would Ariel want to see the boatyard?”

  Maggie thought about this for a moment, sipping coffee, a frown on her face. “I’m not sure, but the night we had dinner with the Beckmans, she asked Mr. Beckman a lot of questions about what goes on in a boatyard and told him she’d love to tour the place. The next day, when he took us to the boatyard, she seemed fascinated, poking around and asking more questions.”

  “When was this?” I sat back against the sofa cushion. “Was there something specific that seemed to interest her?”

  “August, I think,” Maggie said. “Ariel was always interested in environmental stuff. Like, whether they recycled their paint containers and oil. And the types of chemicals used in the paints and glues. And how they got rid of the stuff when they were finished. Ariel asked Mr. Beckman about disposal of hazardous wastes. You know, that boatyard’s right there on Cannery Row and the bay’s a marine sanctuary now.”

  “Disposal of hazardous wastes,” I repeated, thinking about August. When in August? “Everyone tells me Ariel loved the ocean.”

  “That’s not surprising,” Maggie said, “since she grew up in that house right there on Carmel Bay. To her, everything about the ocean was beautiful and fascinating.”

  And dangerous, I thought.

  Maggie continued. “Ariel liked to walk along the beach with her sketch pad and pick up shells and pebbles. She had a big basket of them in her room. I should have kept some of them.”

  I thought of the sea lions in distress off Point Pinos and the report Ariel had filed with the Monterey SPCA. That was the middle of August. But when I questioned Maggie I discovered Ariel hadn’t mentioned the sea lions to her roommate.

  “So Ariel was very concerned about things like pollutants from boatyards,” I said.

  Maggie nodded vigorously. “Oil spills, she would get so upset about oil spills. When the Exxon Valdez disaster happened up in Alaska, she saw the TV reports about all the seabirds and otters covered with oil, and she’d cry and get angry. All it takes, she’d say, is just a little bit of stupidity and things are ruined for years to come. She hated offshore drilling. She used to go picket the refinery down in south county. She got arrested a couple of times during demonstrations, there and at Diablo Canyon.”

  “Maggie, you mentioned that Ariel went to see Ryan Trent this summer. Was that in August? Before or after her visit to the boatyard?”

  “Yes, it was August,” Maggie said. “It must have been after we went to the yard. Closer to Labor Day.”

  I mulled this over as I set the coffee mug on the table to my right and gestured toward the basket of mail on the counter separating living room from kitchen. “Ariel got a lot of mail from environmental organizations. Which groups did she belong to? Was she active in them?”

  “Save Our Shores, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club,” Maggie told me. “Friends of the Earth, Friends of the Sea Otter. She sent money to all of them. As for actually being a volunteer, there’s one organization right here called Central Coastwatch. They have an office on Chorro Street. We walked right past it this afternoon.”

  “Did Ariel keep notes or files on things that were important to her?”

  “Yes. I forgot to tell you that, but I just now thought of it. She’d keep the flyers and handouts from those groups and she was always clipping things out of the paper or magazines.”

  “Like an article about chemicals in boatyards,” I commented. And all those files and notes were among the personal items that Ariel’s aunt had packed in her car when she stopped here on the way to her niece’s funeral. Could I persuade the Logan family to let me look through those files?

  Maggie yawned, despite the coffee she’d been drinking, and I looked at the clock. It was nearly ten-thirty. “Just one other thing,” I said. “Could I have a photo of Ariel? Surely you must have one. I’ll send it back to you when this is over.”

  Maggie nodded and went back to her bedroom, returning with a snapshot of Ariel Logan. She looked so vital and alive, her blond hair blowing as she stood bracketed by her parents, her arms around both t
heir waists. I thought again of Ariel’s argument with Bobby, when she’d talked of reporting something.

  What did you discover? I asked the photograph silently. What was so important that it made someone want to kill you?

  Twenty-three

  “I NEED TO LOOK AT ARIEL’S THINGS,” I TOLD ERROL over the phone Wednesday morning after Angie and Stan left for work. “Glennis Braemer stopped in SLO on her way to the funeral. She and Maggie Lim packed up most of Ariel’s possessions and Mrs. Braemer brought them with her to Carmel.”

  “So you want me to see if Peter and Sylvie Logan will let Bobby Ravella’s cousin root around in their daughter’s belongings.” Errol laughed wryly. “I can tell you what their answer will be.”

  “You’re probably right. But try.”

  “When will you be back?”

  “Tomorrow. There are still some people I need to interview. Anything going on up there?”

  “Nothing related to Bobby. Café Marie reopened last night. Minna and I had dinner there. The place was half-empty.”

  Parking was in short supply on the Cal Poly campus, so I left my car on a nearby side street and walked in. By now, professors and students were into the third week of fall-quarter classes and the campus was alive with people moving from classroom to library to gym, with arms of books or bags of athletic equipment. Students clustered on the patio at the University Union, and they all seemed to have that bustling, vigorous look of autumn renewal, ready to get back to work after the summer break.

  I approached some of the students at the union, asking directions to the Engineering Building where Ariel Logan had spent much of her time. Once there, I found the office of the civil and environmental engineering department and spoke first with the department chair, then with several of Ariel’s professors. I heard the same thing over and over— shock and disquiet over the murder of a promising student. What was the world coming to when a fine young woman like Ariel Logan could be bashed over the head with a blunt instrument her body dumped into the ocean like so much garbage.