Don't Turn Your Back on the Ocean Page 5

  “Most brown pelicans migrate from Southern California and Baja,” Donna said. “They arrive in Monterey Bay in mid-September. But we do have a small resident colony that’s here year-round. They stay where the food is and this is a rich fishery.”

  “According to Donna,” I said, “the local fishermen formed a coalition last time. To find out who was attacking the pelicans, because they didn’t want to be blamed. Who were your suspects the last time? Or did you have any?”

  “There was clearly more than one person doing it,” Marsha said. “We had all sorts of leads, but none of them panned out. I didn’t view the commercial fishermen as suspects at all. They make their living from the sea and they know brown pelicans are protected. If anything, they have more problems with sea lions than seabirds. Sport fishermen are different. The last time I suspected a couple of men who crewed on one of those hire boats that take people out for a day’s fishing. We had several tips about some juveniles as well. Couldn’t prove either theory.”

  “I don’t know what I can do,” I said, “that you local people aren’t already doing. Nose around, maybe, see if I hear anything. The differences in the time of year and the number of birds are interesting. May I have a list of the dates the birds were found? And while you’re at it, a copy of the report Ariel Logan made about the sea lions.” As Marsha complied with my request I turned to Donna. “Maybe the person who is mutilating the pelicans has a different agenda.”

  “A copycat?” Donna asked. “But why?”

  “To draw attention away from something else. Those earlier incidents got a lot of press. I read about them in the Bay Area papers. That could be how the current perpetrator knows what was done to the pelicans before. The injuries have been similar.” I shook my head. “It’s easy enough just to say that the person is sick or warped. Maybe there’s another reason.”

  “Before, we contacted the press,” Marsha said, “hoping for tips from the public. And we did get quite a few calls. We haven’t yet publicized this current round of incidents. But if the numbers increase, the word will get out. The press did a good job of arousing public interest, but when it comes to pelicans we have to contend with the cute factor.”

  I nodded. “Pelicans aren’t as pretty as otters.”

  “Exactly,” Donna said. “When something bad is happening to wildlife, people get riled in proportion to how cute and cuddly the animal is. Otters are high on the adorable scale, above sea lions and harbor seals. Mammals are higher than birds and both are higher than fish. If you’re a marine invertebrate, forget it.”

  “Are these crewmen who worked on the sport fishing boat still around? Maybe I can have a talk with them.”

  “I think so. If I recall, they were both local.” Marsha consulted one of the file folders in her briefcase. “Yes, here are the names. Derry McCall and Frank Alviso.”

  Donna frowned. “McCall doesn’t ring any bells, but Alviso does. Jeri, you remember what Bobby said at Ravella’s earlier today? About firing a guy named Frank? I think that’s the same Frank.”

  Six

  MY MOTHER’S EVENING RITUAL IS ALWAYS THE SAME. By the time she comes home from her restaurant it’s late evening. She strips off her clothing, runs a boiling-hot bubble bath, and soaks in the tub until the hot water cools. Then, in her sensible cotton nightgown and robe, feet scuffing along in her slippers, she moves tiredly to the kitchen, where she puts the teakettle on to boil. When the hot water and steam whistle through the spout, she makes herself a mug of peppermint tea and sits at the kitchen table, sipping the fragrant liquid and staring into space until she is sufficiently unwound from her long day to finally go to bed.

  I operate best during the day. Unless the case I’m working on requires it, I go to bed before eleven. I’ve been known to doze off in front of the television or over a book while I read in bed. Last night, my first in Monterey, was no exception. I had gone to bed early, after a solitary dinner and phone calls to several people I wanted to see while I was in town. So when my mother emerged from her bath, she was surprised to see me in the kitchen. I’d already put the teakettle on the burner of the gas stove, and the water was making preliminary popping and squeaking noises as its temperature rose.

  “You’re up late,” she said, glancing first at the digital clock on the microwave, then at me. Her gray-streaked black hair, damp from her bath, curled in tendrils around her long face and at the collar of her rose-colored terry-cloth bathrobe. I sat on a kitchen chair, one bare foot tucked under me, in my oversize T-shirt and a striped seersucker robe. I’d been reading in bed as I waited up for her.

  “I thought we could talk while we have some tea.”

  “Sure.” Mother’s black eyebrows lifted a bit at this. We didn’t usually talk much. She walked to one of the kitchen cupboards and opened it, taking out two bright pink ceramic mugs. Next to the stove was a painted tin. She pulled the lid off this and removed two tea bags, placing one in each mug. Then she left the mugs on the counter, pulled out a chair, and sat down, elbows on the surface of the round wooden table, her chin cradled in one hand.

  I looked at her with my investigator’s eyes, those of the objective observer. The woman who sat across from me looked exhausted, dark circles under her eyes, lines pulling her mouth down in a frown. She looked like a woman with a great deal on her plate. I wondered that I hadn’t noticed it yesterday. Perhaps I hadn’t been looking.

  “What did you do today?” Mother asked.

  “I met Donna for lunch. We went to Ravella’s.”

  “I figured you two would get together as soon as possible.” Mother mustered a brief smile, then her face settled back into its sober repose.

  “Donna heard through the grapevine that the authorities wanted to talk to Bobby about Ariel Logan’s disappearance, because of an argument he and Ariel had last Friday. While we were on the wharf a sergeant from the sheriff’s department showed up. He told us a woman’s body was found down by Rocky Creek Bridge. They think it’s Ariel.”

  Mother pushed one strand of salt-and-pepper hair out of her eyes and tucked it behind one ear. “News travels fast. People were talking about it tonight at the restaurant. It must be some dreadful mistake.”

  The teakettle began whistling. I got up from my chair and turned off the gas burner, then poured boiling water in each of the mugs. “You know anything about this argument Bobby and Ariel had?”

  “If the police arrested everyone who had an argument with someone they care about,” Mother declared, “we’d all be in jail.”

  “No one’s arrested Bobby. At least not yet.” I set the mugs on the table. “This sergeant just wanted to talk with him.”

  Not that Bobby was in the least cooperative. And I had the feeling Magruder wanted to do more than question him. I hoped the dead woman whose body had been found would turn out to be someone else. But if it was someone else, Ariel was still missing.

  “Did you know Ariel?” I asked. Steam wafted upward from my mug, redolent of peppermint. The tea was far too hot to drink. I blew on it, because that’s what you do with tea.

  “Bobby brought her to the restaurant for dinner one night. At first I was surprised they found each other. Bobby’s a fisherman and Ariel—” Mother stopped.

  “She’s a rich girl from Carmel,” I finished.

  Mother nodded, toying with the string of her tea bag. “Her parents are Hollywood refugees. They moved to Carmel when Ariel was just a baby. The mother’s an actress, or was, and the father is a writer. From what Nick and Tina have told me, Ariel’s parents weren’t too keen on her relationship with Bobby. But Ariel seemed very assured, very much her own person.”

  The Ariel Logan described by Donna and my mother certainly sounded different from the other young women who’d crossed Bobby’s path over the past few years. His ex-wife Linda was his high-school sweetheart, a pleasant down-to-earth woman. But that early marriage hadn’t lasted much past the birth of their son Nicky. Since his divorce several years ago Bobby had been involved w
ith a succession of blow-dried tootsies, all similar in their penchant for thick layers of eye makeup and tight, flashy clothes, more body than brains. That’s all Bobby was interested in, a quick roll in the hay and no entanglements, all in a pleasant alcoholic fog.

  Ariel must have been special. She had to be if Bobby had put a lid on his drinking and was talking marriage. She sounded like a wonderful young woman, someone I would like to meet. I hoped that I’d have the opportunity to do so. Despite the fact that Ariel was missing and her car had been found, I hoped she’d show up and tell everyone it was all a mistake. But like my cousin Donna, I had an unpleasant feeling in the pit of my stomach, one that had gotten a whole lot worse this afternoon when we heard about the body that washed ashore near Rocky Creek.

  Suddenly I didn’t want to think about Ariel anymore, or think about Bobby under the scrutiny of the sheriff’s department. I changed the subject.

  “When am I going to meet your friend? Donna says you’ve been dating someone.”

  Two rose-colored spots appeared on my mother’s cheeks, matching the terry-cloth robe. Her mouth curved upward in a smile and the result took years off her face. I hadn’t seen her look like that in a very long time. Something rubbed across my personal antenna—the wrong way.

  “I see you’re up-to-date on all the family gossip. I’ve been seeing an old friend. Karl Beckman. He owns Beckman Boat Works over on Cannery Row. You can meet him tomorrow, if you come over to the restaurant. We’re catering a luncheon and Karl will be there.”

  I nodded, a brief noncommittal movement. Was my hesitation due to Karl? I didn’t know. I sipped my tea and set the mug back down on the table.

  “Speaking of family gossip, were you planning to tell me about the incidents at the restaurant?”

  “I hadn’t made up my mind whether to mention it. What did Donna tell you?” Now she frowned and the worried exhausted look returned to her face.

  I restrained myself from asking why she’d considered not telling me. “She said at first it looked like accidents, but the last few had to be deliberate. What happened, and when did it start?’

  Mother didn’t answer right away. She took temporary refuge in her tea, the raised mug hiding the lower part of her face. Then she sighed. “It started in June. Someone put salt in the sugar bowls. It only happened once. Unfortunately it was a busy Saturday night and a lot of customers were affected. It could have been an accident. It’s an easy enough mistake to make. I assumed it was, until the next time, about two weeks later.”

  She stopped. We sipped tea in silence for a moment, then she continued. “Someone didn’t tighten the lid on a container of olive oil. As a result it spilled, all over the kitchen floor. God, what a mess. One of my cooks fell and hurt her back. And some of the oil splashed into pots on the stove, ruining several dinners. It slowed us down considerably, on a Saturday night when the restaurant was packed. That could have been an accident, too.”

  “But you’re not sure.”

  Mother shook her head. “Particularly in light of what’s happened since. In July someone called the Immigration and Naturalization Service, claiming I’d hired undocumented workers.”

  “An anonymous tip?” It seemed a great many anonymous calls were burning up the telephone wires in Monterey County.

  “I don’t know. Anyway, Café Marie had an INS raid, late in the afternoon while we were preparing for dinner. On a Friday, with a full slate of reservations. It put us off schedule and it was extremely embarrassing. Of course Immigration didn’t find anyone without the proper papers. I’m careful about who I hire. All my employees have been with me forever.”

  “Except your new assistant Julian.”

  Mother dismissed this with a wave of her hand. “Julian’s not illegal. He’s from L.A.”

  That would cause a great many Northern Californians to consider him an alien, I thought, picking up my mug again.

  “Then there was the knife,” Mother said. “I suppose that could have been an accident, too, but by this time I was starting to wonder if someone was out to get Café Marie.”

  “What about the knife?”

  Mother stretched out her right hand, palm up. The callused flesh already showed the nicks and burns of someone who spent the better part of the day in a restaurant kitchen. But now, running diagonally across the palm, I saw a new scar, about three inches long.

  “How did this happen?” I asked, frowning. “You’re always careful with knives.”

  “Yes, I am. I’m careful about cleaning them, where I set them down, where I keep them when they’re not being used.” Mother stared at the scar, then raised her eyes to mine. “The knife was in the wrong drawer, with the blade up. I was reaching for another utensil and I cut myself. Blood everywhere. I had to go to the emergency room for stitches.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “The middle of August. Then it got worse.” She curled her hand around the handle of her mug and raised it, sipping the peppermint tea before she continued. “The week after that, on a Saturday. According to the reservation book, we had a full house. But less than half the people showed up. That’s never happened before. Of course, since it was a summer weekend, we did have plenty of walk-ins. But I’m usually booked solid all weekend—Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.”

  Easy enough to do, I thought I could call Café Marie and reserve tables under several assumed names. When those fictional parties don’t show up, the result is a nearly empty restaurant. How inconvenient and vexing. Someone was quite adept at using the phone to create havoc for my mother.

  “Then Karl got sick,” she continued, mouth curved into a frown. “At my restaurant, about a week later. I’ve never had anyone get sick before, at least not to my knowledge. He and his sister-in-law Lacy were having dinner. He became terribly ill while he was having coffee and dessert. Pale and sweating, with stomach cramps. I thought it was a bout of flu, but Karl’s doctor said it might have been food poisoning. Food poisoning!”

  Tea splashed from the mug onto the wooden surface of the table as Mother set it down hard, her face full of indignation and worry. “A couple of days later the county health department pulled a surprise inspection at the restaurant. The inspector said they’d gotten an anonymous tip about unsafe food-handling practices. Absolute nonsense, of course. My people are meticulous, both in preparation and storage. I insist on it.”

  “Did they find anything?” I got up and reached for a dishrag, wiping up the spilled tea. Then I picked up the teakettle and topped off my mother’s mug and my own. I didn’t know much about food poisoning, but from what I’d read on the subject, I understood that it’s often difficult to trace where the tainted food is ingested, because of the time lapse between consumption and illness. But Karl’s unexplained illness, followed by the health-department inspection, would certainly imply that something was wrong at Café Marie.

  “Yes,” my mother said, speaking slowly, a perplexed look on her face. “The inspector found the controls in one of the refrigerators had been turned up. Everything that’s refrigerated is supposed to be forty-five degrees or below. The food had to be thrown out I don’t know how it happened. I check temperatures frequently, and so does Julian.”

  “What else?” I asked, resuming my seat

  “I think someone called the Herald. I got a bad review, right before the Labor Day weekend. The review implied that the restaurant isn’t as good as it used to be. It alluded to the health-department thing—didn’t come right out and say it, but anyone could read between the lines, particularly the comment saying that things weren’t up to Marie’s usual high standards. I’m hearing a lot of talk around town. Business has fallen off. I don’t think it’s just because summer’s over.”

  Mother tightened her hands around her mug. “This is very serious, Jeri. A restaurant lives or dies by its good name. I’m afraid someone is out to destroy mine.”

  Pelicans and bodies and now this. So much for my nice quiet vacation, I thought.

 
; “Do you want me to look into it?”

  Seven

  ONCE, WHEN MOTHER WAS RHAPSODIZING ABOUT THE quality of a particular goat cheese, I told her it was just food. This heresy earned me an incredulous stare. I love good food just as much as she does, but with Marie Doyle Howard, food is a religion. Her entire life seems to revolve around the purchase, preparation, and consumption of food.

  Not at home, mind you. On Friday morning I searched the restaurant owner’s cupboard and was hard-pressed to find anything worthy of being called breakfast. Yesterday I’d finished the last of a loaf of raisin bread. Now all I could find was a package of rice cakes, which didn’t exactly appeal. Two bananas in the fruit bowl had long since entered the state of ripeness that made them appropriate only for banana bread.

  There was only one sensible thing to do. I made a bagel run, heading for the Bagel Bakery on Lighthouse Avenue. After fortifying myself with coffee and an onion bagel slathered with walnut-and-olive cream cheese, I bought a dozen assorted bagels and several varieties of cream cheese, enough to keep me in breakfasts for the week I planned to be in Monterey.

  My mother’s house on Larkin Street is small, just two bedrooms, a wood-frame structure painted blue with gray trim, furnished with old oak pieces that belonged to her mother. Some of the furniture she brought with her from Monterey to the Bay Area, when she married Dad. Other items were added later, inherited when my Doyle grandparents died. After my parents split, the well-polished oak made the journey from the spacious Victorian in Alameda, where I grew up, back to Monterey, winding up in this little house not far from the house where my mother grew up.

  It’s located in a section of town that climbs a hillside steep enough that the front porch overlooks the wharf and the shifting blue water of the bay. She didn’t buy the house for the view, however, but because of its proximity to downtown Monterey. She’s no more than a few minutes from Café Marie, which is fine with her since the restaurant occupies most of her waking hours.