Mother Nature Page 3

  I closed my eyes and literally shook myself, intent on staying focused on the job at hand, and picked up the information I had scribbled when I met Senator Pinchon.

  I stared at the one scant page of notes. It wasn’t much to go on. Janet Pinchon, aged twenty-four, dead two weeks. Home address: 3006 Via Robles, Santa Rosa. Education: bachelor’s degree from somewhere in the California State University system, the Senator could not recall which campus. Friends: unknown. Boyfriends: unknown. Employment: geologist with a small environmental services firm somewhere in Santa Rosa; the Senator didn’t know the name, but he understood that she had left the job immediately prior to her death. The Senator couldn’t say why. He discouraged further questioning along this line by informing me peremptorily that “the family” had not heard from Janet for some time before her death. This was the part of delving into murder that made me queasy: the way the problem seemed to spread, rather than contract. I wasn’t just investigating the riddle of who killed Janet Pinchon, I was also delving into why her daddy didn’t know more about her; and if he was not interested in her life before she was dead, why he was now; and why he thought a geologist from out of state could succeed where a perfectly good sheriff’s department had so far failed.

  * * *

  IF I WAS going to find out who killed Janet Pinchon and why, I was going to have to devise a plan. Twice before I had been involved in murder investigations, but only because I found myself in the middle of things and had to fight my way out. But this time I was an outsider. This time I first had to fight my way in.

  On the principle that it was easier to fight on a full stomach than an empty one, I reached for the Senator’s assistant’s map to figure out which way to drive to find a little lunch. For this, the map was useless. No detail. No scale. Understand, I am truly a geologist. Geologists live and breathe maps. We can read maps symbols better than words in a book. We suffer sensory deprivation and consider committing manslaughter when some idiot hands us a bad one.

  So I tuned my dead-reckoning sense to B for burrito, which took me back toward Santa Rosa, forsaking the farmlands for suburbia. Twenty town-house-modern developments and five bland concrete strip malls later, I got lucky: huddled in a far corner of a shopping center, I found a storefront taco joint with unadorned Formica tables. A row of customers, including petite mamas with smiling niños and short, swarthy laborers, stood at a tall counter ordering burritos grandes “to go” in Spanish from a stone-faced señora with shining coal-black eyes. By some divinely guided luck I had found the place: cheap and auténtico. I smacked my lips in anticipation of my first taste of Cal Mex, wondering just what variant combination of tortillas, beans, and cheese might await me.

  The woman behind the counter eyed me expectantly, stubby pencil poised impatiently over the order chit, her dark eyes aimed in my direction but not troubling to see me. I examined the menu plaque over the cook’s window and opened my mouth, ready to place my order in Spanish, but after a second, sheepish glance into the opaque dignity of her gaze, I chickened out and spoke English. “Hi. Super chicken burrito with guacamole and lots of hot sauce. Please.”

  The woman scribbled my order. “Drink?”

  “Just water.”

  The woman tallied my tab and tax, then pointed to the sum with her pencil. I paid. She tore the order off her pad and slipped it into a metal clip over the cook’s window, handed me a plastic fork and knife wrapped up in a thin paper napkin, and turned to the next customer, a gawky blond guy decked out in neon-colored bicycling spandex. I supposed my water would arrive with the burrito.

  I headed for the table closest to the window, and was even more pleased when a teenaged female with waist-length black ringlets hustled up to the table to deliver a basket of corn tortilla chips and two little crocks of salsa. Wasting no time, I shoveled one of the chips into the salsa, popped it into my mouth, and closed my eyes, the better to concentrate. Chip: thin, salty, trace of lime, perfect crunch. Salsa: spicy, about a seven on a scale of ten, but not too hot to dull the tongue and keep the flavor from blooming through. I meditated for a moment on the herb I couldn’t identify, munched down three or four more chips, then spread out my papers and got to work.

  I had my one scant page of notes and those nasty eight-by-ten black-and-white photographs. Not much to go on, but every investigation has to start somewhere.

  The bicyclist sauntered over and sat down facing me at the next table. The overhead lighting gave his white-blond hair a luminous green sheen, rather like it was made of plastic. He locked eyes with me and hoisted a bottle of Gatorade to his peach-fuzz-fringed lips, guzzled noisily, clunked the bottle down on his table, and sighed contentedly as he wiggled his narrow ass into a more preferred arrangement in the stiff plastic chair. Either I was hallucinating, or he gave me a little wink.

  I peered back at him. What was he, nineteen? Hell, he hadn’t even filled out yet, if indeed he’d finished growing. Did he really presume to catch the eye of a woman more than ten years his senior? And had he truly picked as the subject of this campaign Forgettable Em the Wyoming Wallflower? But yes, there it was again, the old one-eye. What a prince.

  “Hi,” he said.

  I sort of smiled. I couldn’t help it: his performance struck me as funny.

  “You new in these parts?” he asked, mistaking my smirk for a welcome.

  Just passin’ through, pard, I wanted to say, with a little extra zinger like, and passin’ for sure, but he’d caught me. If it was that obvious I was from somewhere else, I wanted to know what I was doing wrong in the camouflage department. “Why do you ask?”

  The skinny little snake grinned. I didn’t like his narrow teeth any better than that insolent look in his eyes. “It’s your belt buckle. Babes ’n this hood buy shit that looks like that down at the mall, but like I say, it’s shit, and yours is real.” Smug, smug, smug.

  I wanted to smack him. But as Em Hansen, undercover investigator, I forced myself to give impulse a backseat to information gathering. Janet had been found wearing bicycling clothes, ergo she was a bicyclist. Here was another bicyclist. “I can see by your outfit that you are a bicyclist,” I quipped.

  The kid rolled his head back suavely and lowered his eyelids to a level I suppose was meant to be sexy, but served mostly to make him look like an intoxicated gecko. “Check.”

  “Know a bit about bicycles, then?”

  He let out a snort.

  “Okay, bicycle man,” I said, turning over my file to obscure the label and pulling out the last black-and-white photograph in the lot, “what you think of this number?” It was a picture of Janet Pinchon’s bicycle. Ever so casually, I laid a napkin across the twisted front fork and wheel, so that it would look like a normal bicycle just lying in the grass.

  The boy swagged himself over to my table. “Duke’s the name,” he drawled, gazing into my eyes.

  “Em Hansen. The photo, Duke.”

  Duke gave me yet another wink and applied himself to the photograph. “Nice ride. Merlin frame, a custom job. Oh, and looky here at these shifters. State of the art, don’t come cheap. The whole setup, oooh, I’d say three and a half, four K. Where’d a nice babe like you get all that dough?” Then, quick as a bat catching an insect, he snatched the napkin away and saw the nasty twist in the front wheel and forks. His face fell. “Hey, what’d you do to it? This is sacrilege!”

  “Just a little altercation. Nothing another K or two can’t fix. Calm down.”

  “Yours?” he asked, looking at me askance.

  “Sure,” I replied.

  Duke’s scowl deepened. He spirited an inconspicuous pair of reading glasses out of one of his jersey pockets and narrowed his view to one section of the photograph. “Okay, hot stuff, then what color is this thing?” he demanded, disappearing the glasses again and jabbing a stained and callused finger at the frame.

  “Huh?”

  Duke peered at me sharply. “Right. You don’t know. Not your bike, is it?” He flipped the photograph over an
d read the label on the back, which idiotically declared, “Bicycle in ditch.”

  I was beginning to get plenty annoyed, which is to say I didn’t like being caught lying. I was supposed to be the detective asking the questions, not he. I returned his stare with one I hoped was equally virulent.

  Our staring match was interrupted by the arrival of my lunch. “Burrito grande de pollo?” asked a girl with sloe eyes and a black braid long enough to sit on. I pointed to my place. The girl landed an enormous tortilla-enshrouded mound in front of me, cantilevered a similar one down in front of Duke Bicicletas, then through some sleight of hand made additional little dishes of green and red salsa appear on the table.

  I plucked the photograph out of Duke’s hands and began to stab into my food, eyes pointedly anywhere but on him.

  Duke let out a nasty snort. “That’s a police photograph, isn’t it? You some kind of detective, or are you just playing at it?”

  I swallowed hard, but that mouthful of burrito halted its descent halfway from my mouth to my stomach and hovered. The fact was, I didn’t really know where the photographs had come from. Curt Murbles had told me they had been taken by a “little Mexican meddler” who had been cruising with his police scanner going when Janet’s body was found. He had given them to me with a sneer, humoring me, and only because I’d insisted on at least seeing a picture of Janet. “Wrong-o, Duke, these are not police photographs,” I growled, perplexed at how quickly this skinny little dweeb was getting under my skin.

  “Aw, c’mon, babe, you can tell the Duke.” He arranged his lips into a pout.

  I’d had enough, and said so: “Duke, honey, I’m not sure I altogether care for your attitude.”

  Duke grabbed for the photograph. I stabbed his hand with my flimsy fork. He jumped back, a hostile grin blooming across his bony face. “Duke likes a filly with spirit!”

  I planted my elbows on the photograph and leaned my face into my hands. “Listen, Duke, do me and my burrito a favor and leave us in peace, okay?”

  Duke got up, pulled a plastic bag out of his jersey, and deftly maneuvered his burrito into it. “Okay, have it your way. The Duke can take a joke.” He made a kissy little pucker, swiveled his hips, and headed for the plate-glass door. As he shouldered it open, he paused a moment and said, “By the way, darlin’, Merlin frames are a nice silver; color film would be wasted on it. You pay that much for a titanium frame, you don’t paint it.”

  I stared at him, not even bothering to fake an I knew that look.

  Then Duke delivered his coup de grâce: “And that was Janet Pinchon’s bicycle. I ought to know, I helped build it. I don’t know what you’re doing with those pictures, but I can find out.” Then he whipped a pair of orange wraparound reflective sunglasses out of yet another pocket in his miraculous jersey, mounted them on his bony nose, flashed his Hollywood smile from hell, and said, “Enjoy your lunch.”

  The door slammed shut behind him.

  My first impulse was to run out the door after him. I wanted to catch him so he couldn’t tell anyone about our conversation, but I wasn’t sure what I’d do with him once I had him. Fold him up like a card table and stick him in my suitcase?

  Instead, I just sat there and prayed. I realized that my hands were shaking. Relax, Em, I told myself. Santa Rosa looks like a big town. You’ll never see or hear from the little turd again.

  I cut a second bite of the burrito but couldn’t eat it. I wasn’t sure what scared me worse: that I’d come within a millimeter of blowing my cover, or that I clearly didn’t know what I was doing. Because if I didn’t know how to do this job, I ought to go home.

  I got a doggie bag for the rest of my burrito, carted it and my papers and photographs back out to the truck. I put the burrito on the floor, overrevved the engine, and missed my shift, but finally managed to find reverse and maneuver out of the parking lot without hitting any of the gleaming Camaros that were parked all around me.

  Eleven-thirty. The blinding milk-white sky of half an hour earlier had given way to a hazy blue, but the vault of the heavens still seemed to loom only a few hundred feet overhead. I drove down the street to the first gas station I saw and pulled in, parked next to the public phone, and dialed the special number the Senator had given me to use to report in. It rang once. Twice. Three times. I waited, tapping on the glass of the phone booth. When a voice finally came on the line, it was not Senator Pinchon’s. “Murbles,” it said.

  “This is Em Hansen. I’m in Santa Rosa. Were you able to make me an appointment with Janet’s roommate?”

  I heard an unpleasant sound, something like muffled laughter. “Why, yes, she’ll meet you at noon at her apartment. Don’t be late.”

  Noon? Shit! I hoped it wasn’t more than twenty minutes away. “What’s her name?”

  “Suzanne Cousins.”

  “What have you told her about me?”

  “That you were a friend of Janet’s,” he said dryly, as if only a cretin would need this repeated. “She asked if you were coming to pick up Janet’s personal effects.” Another smirking snort. “I told her you had been deputized by Janet’s mother to do so.”

  This was good. This meant I didn’t have to fabricate a reason to be pawing through Janet’s things. But why did Murbles seem to think this was funny? “Won’t she wonder why a family member isn’t picking up her stuff?”

  “Don’t ask impertinent questions, Miss Hansen.”

  The day was past when I could trouble myself to be impressed by some jumped-up politician’s personal assistant, and I fantasized squishing this one like a cockroach. “It’s my job to ask questions, Curt. And I’ll decide which ones are impertinent.” Fellah.

  Silence.

  “Come on, Mister Murbles.”

  “The Senator is a busy man,” he said, as if I was implying that he should be more interested in his daughter’s belongings, which I was.

  “How about his wife?”

  “She is indisposed.”

  “She’s got maybe siblings?”

  “Two brothers.”

  “And?”

  “They are busy also.”

  Nice family. Everyone’s too busy for little Janet. “Cousins? Aunts? Chauffeurs? Garbagemen?”

  Murbles’ voice flowed like ice water over the line. “Miss Hansen, you have been delegated. I rather thought this would be useful to you in your investigation. Would you prefer I inform Ms. Cousins we are canceling the—”

  “No. No, this is fine.” I counted to ten.

  Around eight, the line went dead. I stared at the hand that held the telephone receiver. It was shaking with anger.

  I leaned against the cold glass of the booth, trying to become calm. Why was all this being so difficult for me? I had never been one to suffer fools gladly, but neither had I let them get me so riled so fast. I tried to remember what Elyria had told me about dealing with things when you’re down. When Elyria’s husband had died, she had grieved robustly and with style, greeting each new challenge openly and with grace. Why was I drawing into myself, lolling on the couch for months, and then running away somewhere I’d never been to find out who killed someone I’d never met?

  Get a grip on yourself, Em.

  Well, sure, Elyria lost her husband, but she wasn’t out of work at the time. And now that my life’s falling apart, Elyria’s is on the rise: she’s fallen in love, and three’s beginning to be a crowd. And I’d always thought that Mother’s drinking would put her in an early grave, and that I’d go home to the ranch and help Dad run it, and live on there in peace and happiness, running the ranch myself until I was old and gray.

  I closed my eyes and took a very deep breath. When in doubt, I’ve found that spite can take me a long way. I decided that squishing the Senator’s personal confidential assistant like a cockroach would be too hasty and merciful a death. Perhaps, if I ever got to Washington, I would instead leave roach bait out on his desk. I imagined him salivating at the sight of this tidbit, sweeter than a doughnut, more succulent tha
n foie gras.…

  I focused my mind on the Senator. Why did he suspect that his daughter’s profession had a bearing on her murder? Was it instinct, or did he know something he hadn’t told me?

  I decided to dial that number again, get assertive, demand to speak with my client. While the phone rang, I perused a rather vulgar bit of misspelled graffiti inscribed on the coin box. When I heard Murbles’ voice again, I announced, “This is Em Hansen. I’d like to speak with the Senator.”

  “Miss Hansen, the Senator is not available. What do you need?”

  “I need to report, as instructed.”

  “I shall tell him you called.”

  “And I have a question for him,” I added hurriedly, lest he cut me off.

  “What is your question, Miss Hansen? I will ask him and call you back, or more likely, I can answer it myself.”

  I braced my feet and puffed out my chest as if this guy could see me through all that phone wire, and addressed him like he was some irritating, balky horse I was trying to break to saddle. “No. I will wait until the Senator is available.” “You will report to me and to me only,” hah! Senator, do you know what your help’s up to?

  “Suit yourself.”

  “And tell me, Mr., ah, Murbles”—I couldn’t help pronouncing the name as if I were speaking through a length of sewer pipe—“what is the best time to reach him? I’m on the road, and so he can’t call me.” This technique had always cut through a lot of stalling when I worked in the oil business.

  “There is no best time. But I will tell him you called.”

  The line disconnected, leaving me staring at that line of graffiti. I decided its author was my kind of guy.

  4

  I pressed the buzzer at 3006 Via Robles, which turned out to be half of a duplex on a dusty street at the southwest edge of town, where a seedier, more tumbledown variant on civilization met the farmlands. No one answered. I checked my watch again. Had I really set the thing right? Maybe the clock in the truck is on Pacific standard time, which would mean, uh, let’s see, I traveled west and the earth rotates counterclockwise when viewed from over the north pole.… Where is Suzanne Cousins?