Electric City, page 6
Donna was a woman after her own heart. Jane sometimes felt like an adult Harriet the Spy herself, wondering about strangers, eavesdropping in waiting rooms, and even making up histories for intriguing people on buses or airplanes.
“Listen, I gotta go,” said Donna with reluctance. “Maybe I can call you back later. What happened to her? She’s missing, huh?”
“Yes,” said Jane, who had made a quick decision. “Can I come and talk to you more about this, Donna? It might be important.”
Donna sounded thrilled, and she sounded like an excellent witness. Maybe she could cast some light on Irene’s weekend excursions. Jane took Donna MacLaine’s phone number and best times to call, and hung up with a nice heady sense of anticipation.
She’d have to get a map and find out where in God’s name Pateros was. Somewhere East of the Mountains.
East of the Mountains was the generic term for most of the state, the area that began east of Seattle’s King County at the peak of the Cascade Mountains. On the west side, everything was green and wet. Parts of it were even rain forest.
But beyond the mountains that kept the wet clouds from moving inland, the land was dry. In some places it was desert. Jane had a vague and jumbled impression of sage-brush, cowboys and pine trees. Plains Indians in teepees. A couple of pretty old college towns.
Through it all, moved the Columbia River, captured here and there by big concrete dams. The river irrigated the apple orchards along its banks, and salmon swam against its current to spawn. It was a huge river working its way west to the ocean and to Portland, Oregon, where, wide and swollen, it flowed out to the Pacific.
Overwhelmed by geography, she was about to go out to the car where she thought she had a map of the state, when the phone rang again. Someone wanted to tell Jane they’d seen Irene on Jeopardy!
As soon as she got rid of them, the phone rang again. This time, it was a man who sounded as if he were in his fifties. He had a slow, patient sort of voice. “I’m reluctant to get involved in this,” he began.
Jane rushed in to reassure him. “I’m so glad you called,” she said. “There are people worried about Irene.”
“I worried about her too,” said the man. “She was doing something dangerous and, I’m afraid, sinful.”
“She was?” said Jane. She believed in sin, all right, but she thought mere mortals should be pretty careful about categorizing others as sinful. She wondered if the caller was some kind of fanatic. Maybe he’d never even seen Irene, but his mind had just gone off on some tangent when he read the newspaper.
“Do you know where she is?” said Jane.
“No,” he said. “But if she had any loved ones, I thought maybe I should tell them what I know. It’s hard to decide what’s right. Are you her family?”
“No,” said Jane. “I’m helping her friends. Have you seen her?”
“Just once. Some months ago.” He said it impatiently. The facts about Irene seemed unimportant to him. It was clear he was primarily interested in doing the right thing.
He sighed. “I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone. If she’s passed away, it might be better to let it all lie, let the Lord take care of it. But if she’s missing, I might be able to shed some light on why.”
“Please,” said Jane, trying not to sound exasperated. “What you’ve told me makes me fearful for her safety. What was she involved with?”
He didn’t answer.
“Can we meet and discuss this?” she said. Jane felt that in person she could be much more persuasive. The caller had given her a couple of clues as to what motivated him. “Maybe if you have time to pray on it, then we can talk.”
“All right,” he said, sounding slightly relieved that he was dealing with either a believer or someone who had respect for his belief. “I’m over in Westport. You can come by Dave’s Charters and ask for me.”
“I can be there later today,” she said. She tried to remember how far away Westport was. It was on the West Coast, three hours or so west of Seattle, which isn’t on the Pacific at all, but inland on Puget Sound.
“What’s your name?” she said.
“I’m Dave,” he said. “What’s yours?”
“My name is Jane da Silva,” she said. “And I’m very glad you called. I will try and make it today. But what if I get there too late? How late are you open?”
“I live above the place,” he said. Then he added, “I hope I’m not making a mistake here, but I know I’ve got nothing to hide.”
What did that mean? Jane felt uneasy. At least she’d tell Calvin Mason she was going to see this guy. She decided she’d better bump him up to the top of the list, before Donna in Pateros. He sounded less reliable, but his voice had an urgency about it.
The phone rang again and another caller told Jane that Irene had been on Jeopardy!
Jane thanked her and got off the phone. She bustled around and collected a few things for the drive out to Westport—an extra sweater and a Gore-Tex parka. It could be cold on the coast. She packed a few overnight things too, in case she was too tired to drive back tonight.
She began to leave a message on Calvin’s machine, and had recorded “Gone to Westport to interview Dave of Dave’s Charters,” when Calvin came on the line.
“I found out what happened to Craig Swanson, the guy you called the cops on over at Irene March’s house,” he said. “They didn’t arrest him or anything. He said he was a relative. Concerned about her well-being.”
“Yeah, right,” said Jane.
“Apparently he was legit. He had an old lady with him, waiting for him in the car. They said they were cousins or something.”
“That does fit,” said Jane. “I heard she had some cousins. She was estranged from them, and after meeting Cousin Craig with his crowbar, I can understand why.”
Jane decided to check on the next of kin when she got back to town. While she was thanking Calvin and saying goodbye, a click on the line told her she had another call coming in.
“Collect call from Amanda Jenkins. Will you accept the charges?”
“Yes,” said Jane, wondering if her brain could take one more lead right now.
A child’s voice came on the line. “Hi. You know that lady in the paper? The one that’s missing? Is there a reward or anything? I saw her. So did my mom. Well actually, my mom more than me. Is this the right number?”
“Yes,” said Jane. “Tell me about it.”
Just then there was a commotion in the background and the sound of an angry adult female voice. At first, Jane couldn’t make out what it was saying, but as the voice came closer she heard a sharp “Just what do you think you’re doing? Hang up that phone now!”
The child hung up the phone.
Jane stood there for a moment, wondering if the child really had seen Irene, or whether she’d seen her on Jeopardy! like the other callers. Maybe she was just playing with the phone. She could follow it up, she supposed.
She wrote down the name Amanda Jenkins on the pad next to the telephone, and headed to the garage.
By two in the afternoon, she should be talking to Dave in Westport about the sins that had tarnished the life of Irene March. Actually, the way Dave had talked, it almost sounded as if he thought her sins could have been the death of her.
8.
By two in the afternoon, Jane was on board a forty-five-foot charter boat, being tossed around Grays Harbor off of Westport. She was bracing herself, holding on to a rail and gazing at a migrating gray whale that loomed up momentarily between the white-capped waves and exhaled through its blow holes. Its warm breath created a roundish cloud of mist in the cold air with an audible whooshing sound.
She had driven south along the Interstate 5 corridor where most of the state’s population is clustered, down to Olympia, the state capital.
With the capitol dome looming above stands of trees, she had headed west, away from the stucco postmodern malls and the familiar logos of franchises, hoisted high along the interstate to catch the eye of the driver looking for the known entity.
Away from I-5, the landscape took over. The road climbed uphill, past green meadows with cows and horses, through forests of fir, hemlock and alder, past rock walls with waterfalls running over their surfaces, past signs pointing to old towns too shy to flank the road.
Finally, she reached the coast and Aberdeen, a mill town with an old-fashioned gritty, industrial look. Big sturdy steel bridges, booms of peeled logs floating in the harbor, solid old buildings from the turn of the century in dark brick.
South from Aberdeen, it was only a short run to Westport. The town seemed strangely elongated, running along a long strip of road lined with gappily placed motels and businesses. The road led to a small grid of streets near the marina. Facing the marina and looking out at a fleet of bobbing vessels was a street that featured a big old Cape Cod–style Coast Guard station with white shingles and green trim, and a row of charter businesses and gift shops selling dried sea stars and bits of coral, abalone jewelry, books about sea life, fresh bait and plush seals.
Dave’s Charters was busy with a handful of tourists with cameras and binoculars around their necks, putting rain gear on young children.
She introduced herself to Dave, who was dressed in a windbreaker and a baseball cap, a pleasant-enough-looking man with a lean, lined face and crisp dark hair turning gray.
“We’re about to go out whale watching,” he explained. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours. We can talk then.”
“Is there room for me?” said Jane, who couldn’t imagine what else she could do to amuse herself here for two hours and who thought it might be good to start bonding with Dave as soon as possible.
“All right,” said Dave a little warily. Jane made arrangements with the woman at the counter, presumably Dave’s wife, a fresh-faced lady with short brown hair. Jane had already noticed that she had a nice way with the children, instilling them with a certain amount of festive anticipation about their outing.
On board, one of the fathers of the children spent a lot of time talking to Dave, which allowed Jane to listen and take the skipper’s measure. He didn’t seem like a raging nut case. He talked about how court decisions giving more of the salmon to the Indians back in the seventies had changed the charter business. “We’ve had to get creative. Now we go out after lingcod and tuna, and we go whale watching in the spring. And, when the tourists aren’t around I do a little crab fishing. Things work out if you just have a little faith.”
The radio crackled, and the skipper of another boat came on and told Dave where some gray whales were to be found. He turned the boat and raced off, bouncing over some tremendous waves and the wake of a vessel laden with logs for Japan.
Soon he was regaling the children with details of the whales’ feeding habits, their migratory patterns, which took them from feeding grounds in the Arctic to calving grounds in lagoons in Mexico, and the hundred pounds or so of parasites the poor things had to lug around—barnacles embedded into their hides and orange lice an inch long that lived between the barnacles and in folds of skin.
The children screwed up their faces in delighted horror, and Jane felt that nature had been unnecessarily cruel saddling the whales with an ugly encrustation of parasites. She was consumed by an urge to take a wire brush to the animals and clean them up.
By the time they saw the whales, ponderous creatures emerging now and again and blowing their vaporous clouds, it had begun to rain. Jane was freezing cold, having foolishly allowed herself to get wet when waves had crashed over the railing instead of huddling under shelter, and her hands were red and numb.
She wished she could see the whales in those Mexican lagoons where the waters would be calm, the air nice and hot, and where there were lots of appealing baby whales, the only ones, apparently, free of all those hideous parasites. After an afternoon of whale watching there she could have margaritas and go dancing with attractive dark men to wonderful salsa bands.
Her teeth began to chatter, bringing her back to reality. She’d seen the whales, now she wanted to go back to land. Not only was she cold, she wished she’d taken some Dramamine.
She sat quietly on a bench, turning green, she was sure, willing herself not to throw up and wishing the boat would turn around. Dave seemed cheerful and happy, standing up nice and straight at the wheel, answering questions and making small talk. Jane decided a life running these vessels had to be sheer hell. An eight-hour salmon charter would kill her.
Finally, they did make it back to land, and Jane, feeling like a drowned rat, managed to lure Dave, disgustingly perky, off to a restaurant where she ordered a large pot of tea for herself and hoped she could keep it down.
Dave ordered a cup of coffee. “I prayed about it, like you suggested,” he said. “And I feel much better about it. I realize I wanted to tell someone about it, but I didn’t know who. I didn’t want to call the police. I believe you are a person of goodwill, and maybe you can help this poor woman somehow.”
Jane tried to look deserving of his confidence, and like a person of goodwill—serious, with a grave expression in her eyes, a slight furrowing of the brow; yet pleasant, with a small half smile.
Actually, despite her queasiness, she felt like rising in her chair, leaning across the table, grabbing Dave by the throat and demanding that he get to the point.
As if in answer to prayer, he did. “She showed up here in town and tried to blackmail me,” he said.
“What?” It occurred to Jane she may have come on a fool’s errand. What did she expect, running an ad like that. The world was crawling with nuts. But then he said something that made her realize he wasn’t a nut at all.
“She came to the office in the middle of the day. Wouldn’t tell me her name. Said we had to talk. There was a funny expression in her eye. Kind of smug like. I couldn’t imagine what she wanted. Then she reaches into her purse and brings out a couple of newspaper clippings stapled together.”
He sipped his coffee.
“Yes?” said Jane trying not to sound too surprised. “Then what?”
“I looked at the clippings. One was from a newspaper in the Tri-Cities.” The Tri-Cities were three towns in eastern Washington, Pasco, Kennewick and Richland, clustered together. “The other was from our little paper here in Westport.
“The one from the Tri-Cities talked about some vice roundup. They were arresting these fellows who were patronizing prostitutes, and putting their names in the paper. Not a bad idea, really, except it might hurt the wives of these guys. They’d picked up a guy who gave my name.”
“You mean someone with the same name as you.” Jane considered the possibility that they’d picked up Dave himself, but she wanted to sound as if she was sure he’d never do anything like that.
“No, someone who gave them my name. I happen to know who it was too. I have a nephew who’s been nothing but trouble to my sister over the years. He didn’t have any ID when they picked him up, and he gave them my name and address here in Westport. It just popped into his head, I guess. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. I’d hate to think he was being out-and-out malicious.”
Jane sensed that’s just what Dave did think, but he was trying to be charitable. “I knew all about the whole deal,” he continued, “because they went ahead and let him out but there was a fine or something, and they came after me. It was a real mess, but fortunately, they finally straightened it out. My nephew is a lot younger, so they knew I wasn’t the guy.”
“And the other clipping?” said Jane.
“It was a notice that I’d been made a deacon of my church. Somehow, she put two and two together and figured I’d be ashamed here in Westport to have people know what I was up to over there in the Tri-Cities. It seemed so strange she would have come across both those things and put them together like that. My last name is sort of unusual, I’ll grant you that.”
“She worked for a clipping service,” said Jane. “She sat around reading newspapers all day. Just what is your name, Dave?” said Jane. She was still getting used to the fact that in America, except for a few legal dealings, you could go through life on a first-name basis.
“Twentyacres,” he said, making it sound like two words. “They translated it from German a long time ago. It had something to do with the family farm, I guess.”
“And she tried to blackmail you,” said Jane. “How awful.”
“It was dangerous, what she did,” he said. “She was just lucky I was a Christian. I told her so.”
Jane remembered thinking Irene was a risk-taker when she had watched her betting on Jeopardy! “You were right,” said Jane. “If she tried the same thing with someone else they might not have been so forgiving.”
“And she might have found someone who actually had something to hide,” he said. “She had her facts wrong as far as I was concerned.”
“How much money did she want?” said Jane.
“A thousand dollars,” he said. “She wanted a thousand dollars. Of course it’s all relative, but it doesn’t seem like a whole lot, does it? I could have come up with it easily enough. But I guess she might have come back for more later.”
“I would have tried to get it all at once; minimize the contact and the risk,” said Jane, who instantly regretted it. She didn’t want to sound like a potential criminal herself.
“Maybe,” he said. “But in a way, I don’t know if she cared that much about the money. When I told her she had it all wrong and she could tell the world whatever she wanted and I wasn’t giving her a dime, she looked disappointed. But not because of the money.” He squinted a little, as if trying to remember, exactly. “She looked upset with herself for having it wrong. It was like she wanted to impress me with how smart she was to know something about me. I really do believe she hated being wrong more than she hated not collecting the thousand dollars.”
“Pride more than greed, then,” said Jane. Pride was supposed to be the deadliest sin. But the sin of pride was more than just the arrogance Dave was describing. Wasn’t it supposed to be playing God yourself? Which is what a blackmailer did, in a way, by deciding whose behavior deserved punishment.
