Mariner's Compass Read online

  I gave his left biceps an encouraging squeeze. “It’s only May first so you have almost a whole year to figure something out. And you will. You always do.”

  “Mrs. Potter’s not so sure.”

  “But I bet you just smiled real pretty at her, and she was like putty in your hands.”

  He winked at me and didn’t answer. My blue-eyed, part-Hispanic husband was a handsome man and was not above utilizing his physical attributes when it suited his purpose. But he was also a top-notch police chief and cared deeply about the people of San Celina. This kind of thing regularly happened to him when he was jogging, some citizen flagging him down, determined to relay some complaint or suggestion they felt he needed to know right now. He handled the interruptions with gracious aplomb, jogging in place and patiently listening to their often long-winded diatribes, promising to look into it and always keeping that promise. I was proud of my husband of fifteen months and the way he’d managed, after twenty years of working the roughest precincts in L.A., to adapt to the diverse society of our Central California coastal town with its cornucopia of city-fleeing retirees, rambunctious college students, traditional ranchers and farmers, oil workers, education professionals, and ethnic subcultures.

  “Enough about me,” he said. “I repeat, what’s wrong?”

  I opened the refrigerator and poured him a glass of grape juice. “What makes you think anything’s wrong?”

  He looked at me over his glass, his blue-gray eyes amused. My inability to hide my feelings had been a sore spot between us since we first met. Well, a sore spot for me. He found no end of amusement in it. I stuck my tongue out at him.

  “Very subtle, chica,” he said. “So, what’s up?”

  I considered making him suffer by not telling him, except I was dying to tell someone. “I’m an heiress.”

  “Who died?” He finished the juice in three gulps and set the empty glass in the sink.

  “Someone named Jacob Chandler of Morro Bay.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “I have no idea. I’m meeting Amanda for lunch at Liddie’s, and she’s going to read me the will.”

  He gave a disbelieving grunt. “Are you sure this isn’t a joke? You know Amanda.” He and Amanda had a somewhat love-hate relationship because his sometimes cute, sometimes irritating male chauvinism alternately amused and annoyed her vehemently feminist sensibilities. They traded cop and attorney jokes like baseball cards—each trying to outdo the other. Deep down, they had a profound respect for one another, but they would rather have eaten worm soup than admit it out loud.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, sitting down on a pine kitchen chair.

  “So what did he leave you?”

  “Apparently everything he owns.”

  “Which is?”

  “That’s what I’ll find out at lunch.”

  He frowned. “I don’t like the sound of this.”

  “Sergeant Friday,” I said, using the often appropriate nickname I gave him the first time we met, “it’s Saturday. Take off the cop hat and quit worrying. He probably just left me his snowdome collection, or something equally strange, to display at the folk art museum.”

  “You’re probably right,” he said, pulling me out of my chair and against him. He smelled of clean, salty sweat and spicy deodorant. “So, Ms. Rockefeller, how about a little Mexican rhumba with the help tonight?”

  “Sure, you know a young, sexy pool boy who knows how to dance?”

  He untied my terry cloth robe and slipped his hands under my cotton tank top. “I was thinking some oak-grilled salmon and a midnight ride on the ranch. It’s a full moon. They say it’s good luck to make love under a full moon.”

  “Who says that?” I asked, giving a little shiver when his thumb probed the place on my spine he knew was my weak spot.

  “You know, they do.”

  “Buy me Maine lobster, and I might consider it.” I squirmed out of his arms and headed for the bedroom.

  He followed me, hitting me on the back of the head with his damp, balled-up T-shirt. “Woman, you get more expensive every day.”

  I picked it up and threw it back. “And who knows, after this afternoon, you might not be able to afford me anymore.”

  I pulled on a clean pair of Wranglers and a white T-shirt while he took a shower. I was sitting at my antique vanity braiding my hair when he came out of our small bathroom and rummaged through our packed closet.

  He pulled on new dark blue Levi’s and a red polo shirt, toweling his shaggy black hair. “I’ll be back from Santa Maria by four. Think about that ride. I was up with your dad on Kenyon Flat last Sunday. The grass is as thick as a mattress.” He gave me his sexiest smile.

  Laughing, I wrapped a rubber band around the end of my braid. “Geeze, Friday, your subtle technique is so hard to resist.”

  AMANDA WAS ALREADY waiting at our favorite restaurant, Liddie’s Cafe, the only old-fashioned 24-hour cafe left in town. She waved at me from one of the red vinyl window booths. Seconds after I slid across from her, Nadine, Lid-die’s head waitress, walked up.

  “Looky what the cat drug in,” Nadine said. Her brown sparrow eyes glared at us from behind thick pink plastic glasses. She treated everyone from the mayor to the lowliest Cal Poly freshman with the same irritable disrespect. You put up with it or learned that your favorite pie was always out.

  “How’s my boy?” she asked me. She adored Gabe and made no bones about showing it.

  “He’s going to Santa Maria today. Police business, I think.”

  “You tell him I have some fresh local raspberries I’m saving for his lunch Monday. Don’t you forget, now.”

  “Nadine, I swear he’s gonna leave me for you any day now.”

  “And he’d be better off by a long shot, tootsie.” She licked her pencil and barked, “So, what’ll it be, chickadees? I ain’t got all day.”

  “Cheeseburger, Coke, and onion rings,” I said.

  “Heart attack special, got it,” she replied, then looked at Amanda. “And you, Miss Fancy Pants Lawyer Lady?”

  “Nadine, I swear I’d like to take you home with me,” Amanda said. “You bring to mind my dear memaw back in Alabama, the Lord rest her cantankerous ole soul.”

  Nadine smacked Amanda on the head with her order pad, which was just the reaction Amanda was angling for. “Someone should wash that smart-alecky mouth of yours out with an old bar of Lava soap.”

  Amanda winked at me. “I’ve had some fellow attorneys say that very thing.” Her wide mouth turned up in a glorious, toothpaste-selling grin that never failed to melt even the most cynical prosecuting attorney—providing that attorney was male. “Chef’s salad and an ice tea. With lots of ranch dressing. On the salad, not in the tea. Ma’am.”

  “I’ll ma’am you,” Nadine muttered, her back already to us.

  “I love her,” Amanda said, running her fingers through her thick, sherry-colored hair. “Think she’d consider coming to work for me?”

  “You do like living on the edge,” I said, sipping my water. “Forget Nadine. Who the heck is this Jacob Chandler, and what have I inherited?”

  She pulled a sheaf of legal-sized papers out of her leather briefcase. “I’ll tell you all I know, which isn’t much.” She laid the papers down in front of me and said, “Mr. Jacob Chandler of Morro Bay, California, died of an apparent heart attack last night, and you are his sole heir.”

  I thumbed through the papers which were full of legalese, then looked up at her. “Give me the Reader’s Digest version.”

  “In a nutshell, you inherit his house in Morro Bay, all his possessions, and whatever is contained in his bank account at the Paso Robles Branch of the San Celina Savings and Loan.”

  “A house? And all his possessions? Who was he?”

  “All I know about him is he came into my office when I first opened my practice and asked me to draw up his will. I didn’t even know you then, so your name didn’t mean squat to me. Frankly, I’d forgotten all about it until I
was notified of his death by the deputy coroner. He apparently has no next of kin and is to be buried in a plot he bought some time ago at the Paso Robles cemetery. The mortuary address where they took his body is in there. Everything’s been picked out and paid for. You just need to set a date for burial. I’m the executor, and they’re waiting for instructions from me. And I’m waiting for instructions from you.”

  “This is so weird,” I said, pushing the papers aside when Nadine brought our lunches. “I swear I don’t know him.”

  Amanda searched the plates of food. “Where’s my dressing?”

  “You don’t need it, missy,” Nadine answered. “That blue suit of yours was looking a tad snug in the hips the last time you was in here.” She swung around and stomped away.

  Amanda sighed and dug into her salad. “I sure do miss my memaw.”

  “So, what do I do?”

  She forked a slice of turkey breast. “You go check out your new house and then call a realtor.”

  “But I have no idea who this man is!” The thought of a stranger leaving me something as valuable as a house, not to mention all his worldly possessions, was intriguing, but also a little unsettling. I picked up the will again, trying to glean some answers from its neat black and white lines, but for all they told me, they could have been the phone book.

  “Here’s the house keys.” Amanda pushed a set of keys across the table to me. They were attached to a small, hand-carved cowboy boot. I ran my finger over the intricately carved boot—tiny stars, roses, and horseshoes covered the shaft. Someone—Mr Chandler?—was a very talented wood-carver. I peered closer at the key ring and looked up at Amanda in surprise.

  “My name is carved on this!” Albenia was cleverly hidden in fancy script among the elaborate decorations.

  “Looks like Mr. Chandler knew you,” she said, grabbing one of my onion rings. “By the way, there’s one little stipulation to the will.”

  “I knew there had to be a catch.”

  “To inherit his estate, you must reside in the house for two consecutive weeks starting the day the will is read to you.”

  “What?”

  “Alone. No overnight guests.”

  “What?”

  She laughed. “You said that already.”

  “You have to be kidding.”

  “No, ma’am, it’s part of the will. If you don’t comply, the estate goes to the Federal Government to help lower the national debt.”

  “What?” I squeaked.

  “And before you ask, yes, it’s all legal and aboveboard. There’s nothing you can do except follow the will’s instructions or let the money go to our wonderfully screwed-up government.” She stole another onion ring and dipped it in the ketchup spreading across my plate.

  I groaned. “Gabe is going to have a fit when he hears this. He was suspicious about it from the start.”

  “This truly is the weirdest inheritance I’ve come across in my entire legal career. Are you sure you don’t know who this guy is?”

  “Haven’t a clue.” I slipped the key ring in my purse and picked up my hamburger. “But you can be darn sure about one thing. I’m gonna find out.”

  2

  AFTER SPLITTING A peach cobbler and listening to Amanda complain at length about her lobster-footed defense attorney, I drove downtown to Blind Harry’s Bookstore and Coffeehouse owned by my best friend, Elvia Aragon. The window display was full of pastel figurines, books of poetry, and frilly cards extolling the virtues of motherhood, hoping to entice window-shoppers into remembering their mothers next Sunday with a gift from Blind Harry’s. It was unusually warm for the first day in May on the Central Coast. Cal Poly students crowded the streets dressed in tank tops and skimpy shorts, trying for an early start on tans they’d regret twenty years later. Finals were still a week or two away, and the mood was as festive as a Fourth of July block party.

  “Where’s la Patrona?” I asked the young girl behind the front counter in Blind Harry’s. “Upstairs or down?”

  Elvia’s elegant, soundproofed, French country-style office was upstairs, but my friend, having grown up in a household of seven children, was often found in the downstairs coffeehouse peacefully attending to her paperwork amidst the noise and confusion of her beloved customers.

  “She and Emory are eating lunch in her office,” the clerk said, fingering the blue streak in her long black hair. “He said they didn’t want to be disturbed.”

  “Great, thanks,” I said, heading up the stairs.

  “Wait,” she called after me. “He really said they—”

  “Oh, he doesn’t mean me.”

  Elvia and I had been best friends since second grade when we were fortuitously seated next to each other for the entire year, starting a relationship that to this day was the closest either of us had to a sister. The oldest child in a family of six brothers, she was tough, stubborn, beautiful, smart, bossy, loyal, and demanding. And I would do anything for her. She was also nosy as an old hen-turkey and would throttle me if she heard about my inheritance from anyone else. Worse, she’d make me pay up my charge account at her store.

  I burst into her office, hoping to catch Elvia and my cousin Emory in flagrante delicto. Their heads were together all right, intently studying something on her computer screen. Two half-eaten Caesar salads sat on the corner of her executive desk.

  “Sorry to break up such a romantic moment,” I said, grinning.

  Elvia glared at me. It annoyed her to no end that I was right, and she actually did enjoy dating my cousin. “What do you want?”

  Emory came around the desk to hug me. “Sweetcakes, I’ve been meaning to call you.”

  “Sure, sure,” I said, kissing his smooth cheek, then sitting down in one of her rose-colored visitor chairs. “You always do this whenever you get a new girlfriend—ignore your favorite cousin.”

  Elvia glared at me again. She hated being referred to as his girlfriend, but I figured the more I said it, the more it would seem inevitable to her. My goal was for them to get married. As was Emory’s. The only fly in the ointment was one stubbornly single Latina woman.

  “What’s cookin’?” he asked, sitting down next to me. He was dressed in his everyday work wear of expensive wool slacks, tailor-made dress shirt, and Hugo Boss sports coat. He’d landed a job at the San Celina Tribune in November after moving here lock, stock, and Razorback loyalties from his home state of Arkansas in the belief that close proximity rather than absence makes a woman’s heart grow fonder. In that short time he had managed to talk the newspaper into giving him his own column and one of the best offices in the building. The fact that he had an independent income thanks to his father’s successful smoked chicken business gave him the sort of easy going confidence that always seemed to procure good employment.

  “You’ll never guess in a billion years,” I said.

  “Lord have mercy on us all, your application has finally been accepted at the sheriff’s academy.”

  I mimed slapping him upside the head. My reputation for stumbling into dangerous situations, some of which included dead bodies, was a source of gleeful entertainment for Emory, who kept threatening to send my resume and clippings to the San Celina Sheriff’s Department so I could start getting paid for my criminal investigations.

  “No, I’ve inherited the house and all the worldly possessions of a total stranger, and I wanted you two to be the first to know.” I left out the will’s weird stipulation until I could break it gently to Gabe.

  The word inheritance caused Elvia to turn from her computer screen. “Any cash involved? I know a great investment . . .” Her Chanel-red lips treated me to her most winning smile.

  Elvia had been slowly buying Blind Harry’s from its absentee owner, a Scottish man who lived in Reno. She’d been bugging me to invest in the store with my spring cattle money, which I’d resisted because I needed to buy that new truck. Emory, of course, would have gladly bought any or all of Blind Harry’s stock, but she wouldn’t even consider his of
fer.

  I held up my hand. “Whoa there, Nellie. I haven’t even seen the house yet. It’s in Morro Bay, and I’m going out there in just a few minutes. I just wanted to tell you both the real story before it hopped a ride on the San Celina gossip train.”

  “As soon as you find out how much, we’ll talk,” Elvia said confidently, turning back to her screen. “Now get out of here, both of you. I’ve got work to do.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  “But we haven’t finished our lunch,” Emory protested.

  I grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the office, shutting the door behind us. “When are you going to learn that the way to Elvia’s heart is to ignore her, not sit at her feet like a pathetic little Chihuahua?”

  “Don’t tell me how to woo a woman,” he said, following me down the stairs. “We’ve had exactly seven and a half dates. I’m wearing her down. I can feel it. We’ll be married by the end of the year.”

  “Right. You haven’t even kissed, and already you’re naming the babies.”

  He grinned and ran a palm across the side of his thick blond hair.

  I pinched his forearm. “Quit looking so smug. When?”

  “Last night,” he whispered. “But she said if I ever told anyone, especially you, she’d boil me in Tabasco sauce and feed me to that spoiled cat of hers, so you’d better keep your big mouth shut.”

  I held up my hand. “Cattlewoman’s honor.”

  He walked me to my truck three blocks away and lingered for a moment while I buckled my seat belt.

  “So, what’s the story behind this inheritance?” he asked casually.

  “Get that nosy journalistic sparkle out of your eye. I’ve been in the news enough in the last year. There’s no story.”

  “I disagree. I’m sensing a real human interest saga here, little cousin. Let me come with you.” The gleam in his green eyes grew deeper.

  “No,” I said, starting the truck. “I want to see it myself first. If, and that’s a big if, there’s anything remotely interesting about him, I’ll consider ... hear me now, cousin... consider talking to you about it for the paper.” He was going to kill me when he eventually heard the stipulation of the will. It was exactly the type of story he’d love to write—and I’d let him . . . maybe. But before I decided anything, I wanted to see the house, get some sort of handle on this man’s identity and motives.