“Might there be someone here who’s been around longer?”
“I’ll ask,” she said, and bustled off.
“I try to build up slowly, ease in the ecstasy with my fingers,” the red-haired woman at the next table was saying.
“Absolutely,” the blond-gray lady with the flushed cheeks agreed, bobbing her head. Or maybe it was that her head was wobbling. “Building for the whole hour is the only way.”
When I was in high school back in Rivertown, the hookers who worked the parking lot behind the bowling alley had a different name for it, but they built ecstasy with their fingers, too. They didn’t go slow, though; they went real fast, and they only charged five bucks, less if they wore gloves. And it didn’t take an hour, not with high school boys.
“You were inquiring about the bank?”
The man had come up behind me so quietly I hadn’t heard him.
I looked up. He had a full gray beard and was wearing a white chef’s jacket and hat. “Yes. I’m looking for information about the Clarinda State Bank. It was here in 1970.”
“Indeed it was, though it wasn’t much of a bank. It closed sometime in the midseventies, torn down for that gas station.” He gestured out the window at the B.P. and smiled. “You can see Clarinda isn’t really ripe for commercial development.”
“Is there a city hall, or a telephone company office? I’m looking for someone.”
“Might I inquire who?”
“Nadine Reynolds. She used to live here, or at least bank here.”
“Can’t say as I know the name.”
“Is there anyone in town who might have known her?”
“There’s old-timers around, but they’re mostly retired loggers or sixties people farming little plots up in the hills.” He didn’t pause to explain what kind of crops “sixties people” would be growing in small plots in the hills. “Your best bet is to go across the street, ask at the post office.”
I looked out the window. All that was across the street was the little general store.
“It’s got postal boxes inside,” the chef said. “Ask Betsy, she runs the place. She might remember your Nadine Reynolds.”
The waitress brought me my check. Eighteen bucks, which was nine bucks a cake if they threw in the raspberry gratis. Of course, that included all you could drink of the sherry. I left twenty-two dollars on the table and walked outside, a healthy man.
The sign on the store said it opened at ten, leaving me an hour to kill. I got in the car and drove north a couple of miles, but there was nothing there but more hills and craggy cliffs. I pulled off at an observation point and leafed through the therapist directory I’d picked up in Bodega Bay.
The counter clerk at the motel had been right: There were advisors, therapists, and counselors peddling every kind of assistance,from tantric sex instruction, avatar training, and radical forgiveness to polarity therapy and shamanic counseling. I didn’t understand any of it; the ailments that were plaguing people in Northern California had not yet struck Rivertown. One ad in particular caught my eye. Some fellow was offering help in “Getting Right with Your Colon,” which sounded like it might be popular as a postlunch seminar topic outside Kutz’s Wienie Wagon. I tossed the directory into the backseat and drove back to Clarinda.
A tall woman with braided gray pigtails was hauling out wire display racks from inside the store. I pulled in and parked.
“I understand this is also the post office,” I said from the convertible.
“It is.” She set down a round contraption full of T-shirts on hangers.
I got out, followed her inside, and helped her carry out a rack of brightly colored inner tubes.
“Inner tubes?”
“The Russian River is great for tubing,” she said. “Can I help you find something?”
“I’m looking for a Nadine Reynolds, used to live around here.”
“Still does,” she said, disappearing into the store. She came out with a shelf rack stacked with beach towels. “She in some kind of trouble?”
“I need to talk to her about an insurance matter.”
She nodded, satisfied.
“But Nadine Reynolds still lives here?”
“Think so.” She paused. “Still gets mail, mostly junk, ten, twelve times a year.”
“Where does she live?”
“Don’t know. I’ve never seen the woman. Her mail comes general delivery. I hold it until Lucy comes in.”
“Lucy?”
“Lucy Vesuvius. When she walks down for her mail, she alwaysasks if there’s anything for this Nadine Reynolds and says she’ll bring it up to her. Got a letter in there right now for Nadine.”
“Do you have an address for Lucy Vesuvius?”
“She lives up in the hills, Runnelback Road.”
I pulled my cell phone out of my shirt pocket. “May I use your phone book?”
“Pay phone’s inside.” She turned from straightening the T-shirts on the round rack and saw the cell phone in my hand. “Those things don’t work around here,” she said. “Too many hills, not enough towers. The Zen folks say that’s the natural order, the hills keeping cellular out. Me? I’d like to have one. Anyway, Lucy doesn’t have a phone, regular or cellular. If you want to talk to her, you have to go on up.”
She grabbed a small brown paper bag from a stack on a seed table and sketched a map. “I expect she’s at home. Lucy doesn’t seem to get around much, except for a hike down here once, twice a month for provisions.”
“What does she do?”
“She’s one of them in touch with her inner spirit. Sometimes I think I’m the only one’s got a toe in the real world around here.” She paused. “You sure this Nadine isn’t in some sort of trouble?”
“No. Why do you ask?”
“Because I been running this place for twenty years, and excepting one other guy, you’re the only one’s asked for Nadine Reynolds.”
Good news, I thought. Till had mobilized one of his San Francisco agents. “The other fellow, was he a government type, in a suit, came up in the last day or so?” I asked.
She laughed. “Not hardly. First off, he calls, never comes here. Second, he sure doesn’t sound like a government man. He’s a little too soft-spoken, a little too polite. He always asks if I know how Nadine’s doing. I always tell him what I just told you: I don’t know her, but somebody comes down periodic for her mail, so she mustbe doing all right. I always ask if I can pass on a message. He says no, and that’s pretty much it until he calls again a few months later.”
“How long has he been calling?”
“Ever since I’ve owned the store. When I see Lucy afterward, she always gets real excited about it and promises to tell Nadine right away.”
“This caller, he doesn’t leave a name?”
“Sure he does. Michael. His name is Michael.”
“Michael Jaynes?”
“He never has said his last name, but Lucy seems to know who it is.”
“I think I’ll head up there,” I said, starting for the car.
“Hold on a minute.” She went into the store and came out with a small packet of mail. “Might as well bring the mail up, if you’re going up to see Lucy.” She handed me the rubber-banded bundle.
I opened the car door and set the mail next to me on top of the bag map. “Where I come from, they’re not this trusting with the mail,” I said.
“Neither are we, but you have a good face.”
“An honest face?”
She shook her head and laughed. “No. More like it’s too confused to be dishonest.”
I smiled with her at that, then drove away.
A half mile up into the hills, I pulled over and slipped the rubber band off the mail. A letter-sized white envelope, computer addressed to Nadine Reynolds, was in the middle of the packet. The address was printed in the same font as the summer’s two extortion letters, and it had been postmarked from the same Chicago zip code, the day after the money was left in the Dumpster behind Ann Sather’s restaurant.
If my cell phone worked, I would have called Till.