Blue Saturday. Blah Saturday. But maybe not, you never know; maybe the day would turn out to be a good one after all. You just have to plug away and hope for the best.
It was not far down to Blanche’s—I could see it clearly from where I stood, a weathered, rust-red building with a long pier behind it jutting out perpendicularly into the creek—but I didn’t feel much like walking. I got into the car and drove down there and parked among a scattering of other cars. The place didn’t seem crowded, judging from the number of cars, and it wasn’t. There was one customer at an inside table, another picking up his breakfast from a woman behind an order counter; neither of them was Melanie Purcell. I went out through a side door, onto the pier. Seven or eight people were sitting out there, at wooden tables set among a jungley profusion of potted plants and trees, and dozens of green gallon wine jugs that served as vases for a variety of flowers.
Melanie was there, sitting alone at a table next to the pier’s picket-fence railing. She wore shorts and a baggy T-shirt; her legs were so thin they were like white stalks. She was drinking coffee and fiddling with a mostly uneaten blueberry muffin, and she didn’t look happy. She looked even less happy when I came up to her and said, “Hello, Melanie. Nice day, isn’t it?”
“Oh, shit, you again. What do you want now?”
“A few minutes of your time. Mind if I sit down?”
“I don’t have to talk to you,” she said.
“That’s right, you don’t. Where’s Richie today?”
Some sharp emotion—I took it to be pain—darkened her eyes and pulled her mouth out of shape. She looked away from me before she said, “None of your business where he is.”
“Don’t you know?”
“Sure I know. Why wouldn’t I know?”
“What’s the secret, then?”
“There’s no secret.” I sat down across from her as she spoke. She looked at me again, but the one cockeye made it seem as though her gaze was still somewhere else. Her expression had changed to one of bluff and anger. “What do you care where Richie is?”
“I want to ask him some questions,” I said.
“What questions?”
“About Danny Martinez.”
“Who?”
“Danny Martinez.”
“I don’t know anybody named Danny Martinez.”
“No? Well, Richie does.”
“Am I supposed to care about that?”
“You should. Danny Martinez knows who murdered your father.”
Her mouth opened, closed again; the surprise seemed genuine. “You’re crazy,” she said. “You’re full of shit.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Kenneth wasn’t murdered,” she said.
I still didn’t say anything.
“You’re making it up,” she said. “There’s nobody named Danny Martinez.”
“Yes there is. He used to work for Cabrillo Market in Moss Beach, delivering groceries and liquor. He made a delivery to your father’s house the night he died, right about the time he died. He saw or heard what happened. A couple of weeks ago he contacted your Uncle Leonard and tried to sell him the name of the person who pushed Kenneth. Maybe he did sell him the name; maybe that’s why Leonard was shot. I don’t know yet. I won’t know until I find Martinez.”
She was shaking her mouse-brown head. “I don’t believe you,” she said. “I don’t believe any of that.”
“It’s true, Melanie.”
“No,” she said. Then she said, “Even if it is, what does Richie have to do with this Martinez?”
“That’s what I’d like to know. He was at the Martinez farm in Moss Beach yesterday afternoon. I saw him there. The place is deserted now; Martinez split for Mexico a couple of weeks ago. I think Richie was searching the house.”
“You’re lying,” she said.
“Why would I lie to you?”
“You’re trying to get something on Richie—”
“Melanie,” I said, “where is he?”
“I’m not going to tell you!”
“Did he come home last night? Has he been home since yesterday afternoon?”
She got up fast, so fast she almost upset her chair. “You son of a bitch!” she said, loud enough so that her voice carried to everyone on the pier. They all turned to look at us. “I don’t have to listen to any more of this! You hear me? No more of this!”
Her face had gotten red and she was trembling; she had worked herself into a state, and quickly. I stood up, too, and just as I did a brawny guy in a sheepskin vest came over from one of the nearby tables. He said to Melanie, “Some trouble here, kid?”