Samson's Deal: A Laid-Back Bay Area Mystery (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

door buzzed and I pushed and walked into the large courtyard, open to the sky so that, presumably, the exotic flora sprouting from the circular graveled beds wouldn’t feel trapped. I bypassed the elevators for the sake of fitness and trotted up the uncarpeted service stairs. As I passed apartment 14, an elderly man came out, looked at me very carefully, smiled tentatively, and closed his door again. Friendly, I thought. And nosy. Rebecca opened her door before I knocked.
    She hadn’t changed much, just enough to show that hers had not been an easy year. Her hair was a little longer, her fingernails a little shorter, and the lines around her eyes a little deeper. The giveaway was in the two new lines at the corners of her mouth. She looked thinner and harder, and I found myself thinking that John Harley, with his wife and his house in the hills, had not been good for her.
    Rebecca led me into the living room and offered me a glass of wine. I was glad it was white wine because her pale carpet was just the kind that attracts red wine like a magnet. Sure, I know the trick with the salt; I just never expect it to work. And there’s a certain lack of dignity in crawling around on somebody’s floor sweating and pouring salt on the rug. Especially a woman’s floor. Especially a woman like Rebecca. It was this train of thought, followed while she poured and served the wine, that rubbed the edge off any regrets I still had about our relationship that never was. I don’t want a woman whose carpets make me nervous.
    The furniture was white and blue and yellow and red and contemporary, with two exceptions: a standard lamp with a fringed shade that might have been made in the twenties and an oak sideboard that looked Victorian.
    Rebecca was wearing a pair of fashionably baggy pants, tight around the ankles; clogs; and a tight little nothing blouse, a mauve print with hardly any sleeves and hardly any buttons. She sat back and surveyed me. I’d dressed carefully in my usual corduroys, a Hawaiian shirt that, for some reason, women seem to like, and a tweed jacket.
    “Too bad it’s cool this afternoon,” she said. “It would be nice to sit on the balcony.”
    I looked out through the glass doors. Like Harley, she had a view of the Bay Bridge and San Francisco but from a slightly different angle. Views like that can be expensive. We sat in the living room.
    Rebecca and I had met when we were both selling houses for a living. She was still doing it. That was, in fact, how she had met John Harley. She had sold the Harleys their house in Montclair. She told me about her relationship with him. How he had called her repeatedly until she agreed to meet him for lunch. How she’d fallen in love with him. I looked away from her eyes. I didn’t want her to see what I thought of that. She told me a lot about him, too. He was wise and gentle and too kind to desert a wife who loved and needed him. She told me everything but how he was in bed. I kept my eyes on my wineglass.
    “Has it occurred to you,” I said, “that he might have killed her himself?” I glanced up quickly to catch her reaction. She seemed genuinely astonished.
    “Of course it hasn’t,” she replied calmly. “For one thing, he wasn’t home that morning. He was at his office.”
    “You’re sure of that?”
    “Yes. We spoke to each other. On the phone. I called him and he was there. And there are even some witnesses. A political group that’s been bothering him. They saw him. They knew he was working. He told me they were picketing outside the building.”
    I shrugged. “I still don’t know when the woman was killed.”
    She leaned back in her chair, frowning, thoughtful. Then she flashed me a look of understanding. “I get it,” she said. “This is an intellectual exercise. You’re practicing.”
    I laughed. “No, Rebecca. Not really.”
    She leaned forward again. “Oh, come on, Jake. Why would he hire you?”
    “He thinks cops are stupid. Maybe he thinks