Spit In The Ocean: A Laid-Back Bay Area Mystery (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 4) Read Online Free PDF

still open, and its smaller window was uncovered.
    Henry’s Pub, pretentious though its name might be, was a pleasant, dimly lighted place with real wood paneling and a scarred and ancient bar. The few patrons, I suspected, were regulars who were not deterred by weather. A couple of guys who looked like hard drinkers perched on stools at the bar. A leftover hippie was playing pinball, and a man and woman in their forties huddled at a tiny table looking like they didn’t have much to say to each other but hoped that being out in public would help.
    The bartender had a neat red beard and short red hair and a square face saved from Prussian sternness by soft brown eyes. Rosie and I grabbed a couple of stools.
    “Hi. What can I get you?” A friendly, sad smile. We ordered beers. He slid them across the bar to us. “Visiting?” We said yes. “Not a real nice day for it.”
    “We noticed,” I agreed. “And it sounds like it’s going to get worse.”
    “Bad enough, but not too bad, maybe. Not like last year.” The winter before, whole towns had been flooded out in Sonoma county. “Weather service says it’ll blow by, tomorrow sometime.”
    He didn’t seem terribly concerned. “People seem to think,” I said, “that there’ll be some property damage.”
    “Maybe. Mostly out on the spit, and those folks are insured up the ying-yang.”
    “I heard some of those houses are owned by celebrities.”
    He leaned a little closer. The subject interested him. “Ever hear of Melody Clift? Marty Spiegel?”
    “Melody Clift?” Rosie perked up. “Isn’t she a writer? Romance novels or something like that?” I was amazed. I would never expect Rosie to recognize the name of a romance novelist. Come to think of it, though, the name did sound familiar. “And Spiegel,” Rosie continued, “he’s the movie director. Big.” She turned to me. “You know, Jake, he did
Pirates of the Martian Sea.”
    I knew, all right. Everyone did.
    “’Course neither of them’s in town right now,” the bartender said. “Melody’s in and out, but Spiegel— he spends most of his time in L.A., I guess.”
    The conversation lagged for a beat or two, and it seemed like a good time to introduce a new subject.
    “I hear you had some other excitement around here a couple of days ago.”
    He half-smiled. “Oh, yeah. You must mean the break-in over at the bank.”
    One of the drunks halfway down the bar snickered. The other one said, “Hey, Wolf, how about another bullshot?”
    Wolf— Wolf?— brought the man another bullshot. I ordered another beer to bring him back to our end of the bar.
    “I’d think a crime that big would be quite an event out here,” I said.
    Wolf shook his head. “Bunch of kids. Big joke.”
    “The people at the bank don’t think it’s too funny.”
    The laughing drunk laughed louder. “Guess this guy’s a depositor. You got an account over there, fella?” He cracked himself up. Wolf gave him a disgusted look, and the drunk tried to stop grinning.
    “Got any particular set of kids in mind?” I asked.
    He studied my face. “You some kind of insurance investigator or something?”
    “No. I don’t even believe in the stuff. Insurance, I mean.”
    He moved down the bar to talk to the drunks, which only goes to show how little he wanted to talk to us. Rosie was meditating quietly over her beer. I figured she’d start to ask some questions once she got her bearings in the town.
    Right about then a tall fat man came in, shedding rivers from his Christmas-tree-green plastic coat. When he walked closer to the bar, I recognized the white-faced man from the cafe, the one whose house on the spit had been an object of amusement to his buddy. His face looked even paler, almost gray, like a dead man’s.
    “Hey, Henry,” Wolf said, looking surprised. “What are you doing back here so quick?”
    Henry leaned over the bar, took Wolf’s shoulders in his hands, and said something to him softly. Wolf’s body sagged,