Live and Let Fly Page 10

  I went to the drafting table and pulled out a large sheet of graph paper. What would this new kite be? I began loosely sketching the elements of the coastal landscape. A sunfish. A large sunfish with fins that would ripple in the wind. No, the colors would be too garish. What about a whale, a whale nearly as large as the real thing, with ribbons streaming from its spout? That didn’t feel right, either. The key was to design a shape that would not only harness the wind, but would use it to animate the kite, to bring it motion.

  As I sketched, I thought about Strings Attached. I was so lucky to create and sell kites. And live on the ocean, especially this stretch of Oregon’s coast, with the rugged rocks jutting from the surf, and the balsam scent of the forest so close. Any evening I could watch the sunset from Avery’s house on the bluff, surrounded by conifers. Any morning I could ride my bicycle into town and feel the salty air on my face. This had been my dream, and I was living it.

  I didn’t want to fail. I didn’t want to have to return to Portland and camp out with my parents until I found another job at a chain outdoor store while I figured out my future.

  Rose’s warning about new businesses failing came back to me, laying a foundation of anxiety. Then, of course, Jasmine’s murder. Someone had threatened Jasmine, then slashed her tires, then killed her. My anxiety mounted. I lifted my pencil from the sketch pad. Why would someone slash the tires of a person he intended to kill? It didn’t make sense. Dead people don’t drive. Yet the murder couldn’t be a last-minute crime of passion, unless the murderer had surprised Jasmine while she was taking her dose of insulin, then forced more on her. But the different brand? No. This had been premeditated.

  I began to sketch again, letting my pencil swoop and shade almost on its own. Nicky Byrd’s column came back to me. “An ill wind” blew through Rock Point, he’d said.

  Sunny’s voice cut the silence. “Why aren’t you sewing?” she asked from the door. She picked up the basted-together kite and smoothed it on the table.

  “I’m trying a whole different kite. No more appliqué. Something with drama.”

  Sunny looked confused for a moment, but she knew better than to question me on this. “All right. Well, I’m closing up the shop for the day. Are you coming home for dinner?”

  The light through the old kitchen’s windows had changed, slanted more from the west. Hours had passed, and I hadn’t even noticed. “No. I’d better work.”

  “Don’t be too late,” Sunny said. “Make sure you lock the door after me.”

  I followed her through the shop. She’d already taken down the windsocks I hung from the front porch each morning and had flipped the sign to “Closed.” I bolted the door behind her.

  When I returned to the drafting table, my latest sketch surprised me. It was a cloud, with eyes narrowed and puffed cheeks, blowing wind. Nicky Byrd’s ill wind. But maybe also the winds of change.

  chapter fifteen

  Hours later, the kite’s pattern was finished. I’d named it Father Wind, and it would be the showiest kite I’d ever created. I’d tended to more introspective kites, kites that were designed to make an impression from the sky, but that demanded thought and attention from onlookers. This kite stretched me artistically. I wanted it to be easy for anyone to appreciate, but still surprising. No obscure artistic references here.

  Another benefit was that it would actually take less time to sew than my fiddly appliqué kite. I might even be able to put together a quick prototype to make sure it would lift and fill.

  As I’d scaled my pattern to a fresh sheet of graph paper, I’d been giving thought to Sheriff Koppen’s suspicions of Marcus. The only way to know if Marcus had killed Jasmine was to figure out where he was when she was killed. The sheriff and deputy would have interviewed Marcus’s neighbors—and Marcus himself, if they got to him—to determine his alibi and prove, or disprove, it.

  I pushed myself away from the drafting table and stretched my back. Night had fallen, and the streets had quieted. A thought occurred to me. I might have sources the sheriff didn’t. I made a plan.

  Half an hour later, a garlicky Martino’s pizza in hand, I was at the old dock. Clouds like furling smoke raked the stars, and the chilly ocean lapped at the dock’s barnacled posts. The pizza box warmed my arms, but the night chilled the rest of me.

  Unlike the new dock’s pleasure craft, most of the old dock’s residents were working fishing boats and the boats of a few of Rock Point’s older families, like Avery’s. One of the boats, though, belonged to Ace the plumber. Ace was known to skip out on his “old lady” several nights a week to hang out in his man cave here at the old dock and drink cheap beer. I figured I had about a fifty-fifty chance of finding him.

  Luck was with me. Light spilled from his boat’s narrow windows. I stepped onto the deck and avoided a thick coil of rope. I rapped on the cabin door.

  “Who’s there?” Definitely Ace.

  “It’s Emmy Adler. And a pizza,” I added for good measure.

  In seconds, he was at the door. “Come to visit, eh? Entrez.”

  According to Stella, Ace hadn’t grown up in Rock Point, but he’d lived here since the late 1960s, when he’d migrated from Ken Kesey’s Merry Band of Pranksters. He’d kept his long hair, although it had thinned and grayed. He’d spent the intervening decades collecting a parade of tattoos up his arms and peeking out his T-shirt’s collar. And that was only what I could see. Besides fixing toilets and installing water heaters throughout Rock Point, Ace made a few bucks driving the tow truck out of Lenny’s filling station and doing other odd jobs as the spirit moved him.

  “I couldn’t resist the extra garlic pizza,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Mind? That’s my favorite. Come on down. Yin, let the lady take a seat.” He shooed a tabby cat away. Yang, Yin’s sister, lounged on the narrow bed at the cabin’s rear. “What can I do for you? Is it about that reality TV contestant’s murder?”

  I’d been made. “How did you know?”

  “You wouldn’t be showing up here with one of Martino’s finest without wanting something from me. And after that tidbit I read in the Bloodhound—”

  “You keep up with that?”

  “I work in a lot of bathrooms, darlin’. And most of them have some kind of reading material handy.” Yin had leapt to his lap, and Ace absently stroked the cat between the ears. “Beer?”

  I eyed the cans in an ice bucket at his feet. “No, thanks.”

  He set diner-style white crockery plates in front of us and pulled a slice from the box, neatly detaching its cheese from the rest of the pie. “What do you want to know?”

  “Well, it’s Marcus Salek. What do you know about him?”

  If my mentioning Marcus surprised Ace, he didn’t show it. “Nice European-style kitchen sink, but a crappy faucet. Doesn’t do the sink justice. Those plastic ball bearing washers can’t stand up to regular use.”

  While he went on about the state of Marcus’s water heater, I devoured a slice of pizza and wiped my greasy fingers on a paper napkin. “What about his background? I mean, aside from his plumbing fixtures?”

  “Why Marcus?” For the first time, Ace looked serious. “Because he’s disappeared? Didn’t even take his car?”

  I left the crust on my plate. “You know, then.”

  “Lots of people do. I admit it’s unusual.”

  I couldn’t tell him about the sheriff’s suspicions. “He hates the whole idea of the kite festival,” I said instead. “Loathes tourists. It’s enough to make me wonder.”

  “He does have a bad temper. But murder? I don’t see it.”

  “No one seems to know anything about him, except that he grew up here, moved away, then came back.”

  “He married a lovely woman. Naomi. I met her once around the holidays when he was back in Rock Point.” He stopped petting the cat, and the cat went to join his litterma
te on the bed. “You still hanging out with that foxy lady?”

  “Stella?” I’d first met Ace in the spring, when Stella and I had followed someone to the docks.

  He got a faraway look in his eyes. “She’s a class act.”

  I didn’t want Ace to get distracted. “What happened to Marcus’s wife?”

  “Huh? Oh. Don’t know.”

  “Divorce?”

  “Could be. They seemed real happy, though. I asked him about her once, and he wouldn’t say. I got the impression that she might have died.”

  If the wife was dead, it raised even more questions. “But when he came back to Rock Point, it was definitely alone.”

  “Yep. Set himself up in his little house and spends a bunch of time wandering around town, making trouble. What that man needs is a job.” He reached into the bucket and pulled out a can. “You sure you don’t want a beer?”

  “Positive. Thanks.” I decided to try a different approach. “How’s the tow truck business going?”

  “Great, ever since we got her a new alternator. Last week she broke down on the way to Lincoln City, and I had to call a tow truck, of all things. Imagine that. A tow truck towing a tow truck. Humiliating.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Yep. It had to be Kenny out of Cannon Beach to come get me, too. That know-it-all. Thinks because he has a newer rig that he’s somehow superior. Give me an old one any day. Well, an old one with a good alternator, that is.”

  For all his dropout, ex-hippie ways, there was something comforting about listening to Ace. His friendly voice, the purring cats, and the boat’s cradling motion almost made me forget the dark dock above and the murder half a mile up the road.

  “I heard someone slashed the tires on Jasmine Normand’s car, and you towed it away.”

  “Now we’re getting back to business, aren’t we?” He slid a third slice of pizza to his plate. “I towed it all the way back to the rental car agency in Portland. Then I had to rush back and install a dishwasher.”

  “The tires were definitely slashed? I mean, it couldn’t have been an accident?”

  “No, ma’am. No accident. Someone had taken a hunting knife, or something with a fat blade like that, and dug into both front tires. That car wasn’t going anywhere.”

  “Do you have to be very strong to do that?”

  “You do, in fact. Those tires are made to stay in one piece.” He set his can on the tiny table between us and stood. “Here. Follow me. Yang, you stay in.”

  We stepped out onto the deck and made our way around the coiled rope again, to the boat’s rear. The breeze stirred a chill down my arms, and I shrugged on the cardigan I’d taken off below. The fishermen were in for the night and the tourists at home. After the constant noise of the surf out at Avery’s, the bay’s calm water was almost disconcertingly quiet. Ace put his foot on a tire that was sitting on the boat’s deck.

  “You take this here tire.” Ace pulled a knife from his belt and handed it to me. “Give it a try.”

  “Don’t you need the tire?”

  “Nah. It’s sitting here until I get it out to the dump. Go ahead. The blade’s good and sharp. Try to slash it.”

  I wasn’t used to holding a hunting knife. Its wooden handle was smooth from years of use, and its blade widened, then came to a sharp point. It flashed in the mercury-vapor light from the dock.

  “All right.” I braced my legs and jabbed the knife at the tire. The knife’s tip caught the rubber, but the tire merely depressed. I tried again, this time using both hands.

  “Careful there,” Ace said. “Of course, a tire on a car would be easier, since the air would offer some resistance. But you see that it takes some strength.”

  I handed back the knife. Chances were good that it wasn’t a woman who slashed Jasmine’s tires and, presumably, killed her. “Thank you. I’d better be getting home.”

  “Anytime. You want the rest of the pizza?”

  “No, you keep it.”

  “You’ll be competing in the festival this weekend, I take it?”

  “Definitely. I’m hoping to finish my kite tomorrow.” Tomorrow. When I’d find out what happened to Marcus’s wife.

  chapter sixteen

  The next morning, I plastered on a confident smile and strode into the coffee-scented Brew House and ordered a latte. Avery filled my cup from the vacuum pot while Charlie Parker’s saxophone wailed from the record player. “Nice to see you here,” she said as she handed me a large mug.

  “Got to get back on the horse and all that,” I said.

  “No yelling at patrons or reporters, okay?”

  I actually stuck out my tongue at her.

  Under my arm was my laptop. I’d wanted to shut myself in the workshop at Strings Attached, but I had to show Rock Point that I wasn’t afraid of the Bloodhound’s article. I had nothing to do with Jasmine’s death. By avoiding attention, I’d only stir up more gossip. I doctored my latte with sugar and found a small table in the corner.

  Only then did I dare to take in the room. Jeanette had filled her “Postal Workers Send You” mug and was on her way out the door. I forced a smile and nodded hello toward her. There. Let her spread the news that I was secure and happy. Rose sat across the room, where Jack and her sister had shared coffee just days before. She was spreading cream cheese on a bagel. Probably getting ready for a day with her ledgers.

  And there were no reporters to avoid. Perfect.

  I fired up the laptop. I didn’t know if Naomi had taken her husband’s last name, so I searched for “Naomi Marcus Salek obituary,” and right away got a hit. Naomi Salek of Bedlow Bay died about five years ago, leaving her husband, Marcus Salek, and a list of relatives I didn’t know. She was thirty-two years old. No cause of death was reported. Bedlow Bay was too small to have its own newspaper, so the obituary was part of a generic online service. I searched for “Naomi Salek” in the News Guard, nearby Lincoln City’s paper, but came up dry. In fact, I couldn’t find anything from the newspaper older than a year or two.

  I wasn’t going to get what I needed online. It was going to have to be done in person. I pulled out my phone. “Sunny? Could you watch the store today?”

  “Today?”

  “Right. Today.”

  “I was just about to leave with Bear for a walk along the cliffs.”

  “Please. The cliffs will still be there tomorrow.”

  “Why?”

  I knew Sunny wasn’t asking because she wanted to challenge me. She was curious. I lowered my voice so no one in the café could hear me. “It’s about Marcus Salek. I need to drive to Lincoln City, maybe Newport, too.”

  “You’ll tell me everything when you get back?”

  “Definitely.”

  After another minute talking about timing and a stern warning not to get within five feet of my kite, I hung up and punched in Stella’s phone number. She was game for the trip. Within half an hour, we were in her Corvette and headed south.

  Stella was a good driver, even if she tended to hover above the speed limit. She cracked the windows to let cool marine air rustle our hair. To our right, the sun sparkled on the waves. To our left, as we left Rock Point, the houses along the highway disappeared, and deep green forest took over. I knew we’d dip through farmland and tiny fishing villages, with the big, wide ocean always just around a corner or over a hill.

  After I’d recounted what I’d found online about Naomi Salek, Stella asked, “So, do we go all the way to Newport to the courthouse first for the death certificate? Or do you want to stop at Lincoln City on the way?”

  “Let’s stop at Lincoln City. The News Guard might have what we need.”

  During the next hour and a half—Lincoln City was usually described as two hours south of Rock Point, but not for Stella—we talked about my new kite design and about Stella’s upcoming art show in P
ortland. The Corvette had an old cassette tape player that the car’s previous owner had installed in the 1980s, and we listened to a Lovepipers album. Stella sang along.

  I told her about my evening with Ace, too. “He has a thing for you, Stella. He called you a ‘foxy lady.’”

  She laughed. “I don’t know how his wife puts up with him.”

  At last we were driving into Lincoln City. Old park-at-your-door motels in pink and weathered green dotted the highway, and billboards advertising the aquarium in Newport and gambling at Spirit Mountain Casino rose over the road. The News Guard’s offices were in a small old building in a residential neighborhood, with a satellite dish in the shrubbery outside.

  “I hope someone is here,” I said. It didn’t have the hive-of-activity look of a TV-show newsroom, that was for sure. No cars were parked outside, and the dark film over the glass front door made it hard to see if there were lights on. “Maybe I should have called before we drove all the way down here.”

  I pushed the News Guard’s front door open, sounding a chime. Stella followed me into a small lobby that was cordoned off from the rest of the office by a waist-high counter. A pink-haired woman not much older than Sunny came out from the back. She wore a full-skirted vintage dress and had a nose ring.

  “Can I help you?” she asked. I caught the glint of a tongue piercing as she spoke.

  “We’d like to look through your archives, if you have them. For something about the death of a Bedlow Bay woman.”

  “How far back?”

  “Five years.” I handed her the notes I’d taken with the date of Naomi Salek’s obituary.

  The woman’s hands dropped to her sides. “Oh no.”

  “No archives that far back?” Stella asked.