“Maybe. But what would make him decide to go that suddenly, without waiting to collect his salary?”
“You got me. I can’t figure it.”
“Did he mention anything to you about an article he was writing?”
“Article? You mean like the one he did on salmon fishing?”
“Something he was working on before he disappeared.”
“What would that be?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“First I heard of it,” Kellenbeck said. “He never said a word to me about writing anything.”
“Do you know if he had trouble with anyone around here?”
“What kind of trouble?”
“A fight or an argument of some kind. Like that.”
“If he did, I never heard about it. He got along with everybody, far as I know. An easygoing kid.”
I asked a few more questions and learned nothing from Kellenbeck’s answers that I did not already know. When I got up to leave he stood, too, and put out his hand; I took it. He said, “Anything else I can do, you let me know.”
“I’ll do that,” I said, and left him chewing on his cigar and eyeing the glass of whiskey that was still on his desk.
The wind cut at me in icy gusts when I came out onto the dock. Overhead, low-flying tendrils of mist sailed inland at a pretty good clip, but out over the ocean the fog had lifted somewhat and you could see the black-rimmed clouds above it. The day had turned darker, colder; the bay was frothed with whitecaps now, and the smell of salt and ozone had sharpened. It would not be long before the storm blew in and the rains came.
And where is he? I thought. What happened last Sunday night?
What happened to Jerry Carding?
FIFTEEN
The road that curled around the northern lip of the bay was relatively new and in good condition; but it was also slick with mist, and the tires on my car were starting to bald a little. I drove at a circumspect twenty-five, squinting through the arcs made by my clattering windshield wipers.
Erika and I had taken this road, I remembered, on that longago Sunday outing. It followed the bay’s edge toward the jetty and then hooked back up to the top of Bodega Head. From up there you could watch the surf hammering at the jagged rocks below; and you could see the excavation scars where the government had begun work on a proposed nuclear power plant twenty years ago. A public hue and cry had kept them from going through with their plans: this was earthquake country and nobody wanted to be sitting in the shadow of a nuclear reactor if a big quake hit. We had talked about that, Erika and I, standing up there on the Head, holding hands like a couple of young lovers. And later we had gone back to The Tides to eat crab cioppino before driving home to San Francisco. And that night, after we had finished making love, Erika had said jokingly, “You know something, old bear? You make the earth shake pretty good yourself.”
Bittersweet memories…
The marina for both commercial and pleasure craft was located in the northwest corner of the harbor, opposite several scattered cottages and homes built along the lower slopes of Bodega Head. It was fairly small and laid out like a squared-off letter W-three long board floats with slips flanking each of them, separated by narrow channels but connected on the shoreward end by a walkway. Less than a dozen boats were moored there now, most of them commercial trollers.
I eased my car onto the shoulder near somebody’s driveway, crossed the road, and stepped onto the ramp that led out to the slips. The wind was strong enough here to numb my cheeks and make my eyes water; above the sound of it you could hear the boats rubbing and banging against the floats. They all seemed deserted at first, but when I reached the ramp’s end I noticed movement on one off to my right, in a slip two-thirds of the way along the nearest float. I peered over there. The lettering on the stern read Kingfisher, and below that, Bodega Bay.
I climbed down a short metal ladder onto the swaying float and made my way carefully along the boards. A stocky well-muscled guy dressed in denim trousers and a thin sweatshirt, no coat, was kneeling on deck; long copper-colored hair fanned out in the wind behind him like a horse’s mane at full gallop. He had the engine housing up, and there was an open tool box and an assortment of wrenches and things laid out on a strip of canvas beside him. I had a glimpse of the engine-a GMC 6-71 diesel-but I could not see what he was doing to it.
I stepped up close to the stern gunwale. “Ahoy!” I shouted over the wind. “Ahoy there!”
He came around quickly, a box wrench he had been using upraised in one hand. There were smudges of grease and oil over the front of his sweatshirt, on his hands and arms as well. He owned one of those dark brooding faces, with an aggressive jaw and deep-sunk eyes under heavy brows, that some women seem to find attractive; but now it was pinched-up with annoyance. The cold had turned his lips the color of raw liver: I wondered what he was trying to prove by not wearing a coat of some kind.
He said, “What the hell do you want?”
“Are you Andy Greene?”
“Who wants to know?”
I told him. “Can I come aboard?”
“What for?”
“I’d like to talk to you-”
“I haven’t got time to talk now.”
“It won’t take long.”
“I’m busy, friend.”
“It’s important. I’m here about-”
“Some other time,” he said. “Blow away, friend.”
Pleasant bastard, aren’t you? I thought. I said, “Look, friend, all I want is a few minutes of your time-a few answers to some questions about Jerry Carding. Then you can get back to whatever you’re doing and I’ll be on my way.”
Some of the aggressiveness went out of his expression, but not all of it. He got onto his feet, balancing himself on the pitching deck with his feet spread. “The private eye from Frisco, right?” he said.
“That’s right.”
The deep-sunk eyes studied me; they did not seem very impressed by what they saw. “So what’s your interest in the kid?”
“Professional interest. He’s part of a case I’m working on.”
“What case?”
“You’ve heard about it. The murders of Jerry’s fiance and father.”
“They got the guy who killed his old man,” Greene said.
“Did they? I’m not so sure.”
“Yeah? You think the kid did it?”
“No,” I said. “Can I come aboard or not? I don’t like shouting this way.”
“Waste of time for both of us,” he said. “I can’t help you, friend. I already told the cops all I know.”
“Which is what?”
“Which is nothing. Last time I saw the kid was two weeks ago, when he went out fishing with me. He didn’t say a word about going away and I don’t have any idea where he went. Okay? Now I got work to do.”
He turned away from me and knelt again in front of the Jimmy diesel. I stayed where I was for ten or fifteen seconds, watching him. Irritation was sharp in me-but there was nothing I could do. The boat was his property; if he did not want me aboard, or to do any more talking to me, those were his privileges.
“Maybe I’ll see you again, Greene,” I said, just to find out if he had anything else to say. But I could have saved my breath. He bent forward, inside the engine compartment, and the only answer I got was the faint clank of the box wrench against metal.
Most of the gray daylight was gone by the time I got back to The Tides; it was almost four thirty. Shadows
