Suicide King (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series) by Shelley Singer

Author:Shelley Singer [Singer, Shelley]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Jake Samson, San Francisco, Oakland, Bay area, cozy mystery, mystery series, political fiction, legal thriller, Minneapolis, California fiction, hard-boiled mystery, PI, private investigator
ISBN: 9781625174666
Publisher: booksBnimble
Published: 2014-05-25T04:00:00+00:00

– 19 –

GERDA Steiner lived just a few blocks from us. Rosie had set up an appointment that morning while I’d been on the phone with Pam, filling her in on progress and damages so far, checking some facts, and asking her to get in touch with Walter Richmond. I did not call Lee. I did not call my father. I did not call my dentist.

Gerda’s house was a converted storefront on one of the side streets west of College Avenue. The display windows were covered on the inside by large sheets of canvas. On one of the canvases someone had painted a large mushroom cloud with the circle-bar symbol for “no” across it. I thought that was a reasonable sentiment. The canvas in the left-hand window was blank, and yellowing around the edges. The glass-paneled door was hung with closed Venetian blinds. I knocked.

Gerda was waiting for us.

“Rosie,” she said, smiling. “Please come in.” The look she gave me was politely blank.

“My name is Jake Samson,” I told her. “I’m a friend of Rosie’s. And Pam’s. We both wanted to talk to you about Joe Richmond.”

She nodded slowly. “Ja, you are a policeman? The one who helps Rosie?” We were still standing just inside the door.

“Not a policeman. Rosie’s partner. We’re investigating privately. For Pam.” I had figured out a while ago that it sounds less like I’m pretending to have a license if I say “investigating privately” than if I say I’m a private investigator.

“Have I seen you somewhere? I think maybe so.”

“Yes. I was at the benefit. And the meeting a couple of months ago.”

“Ja. The benefit. With Rosie. I remember now.”

I was getting impatient. “Do you think we could come in and talk to you?”

She laughed. Her left cheek dimpled. “Of course. Forgive me.”

She stepped aside and waved us graciously into a single large room that can best be described, I think, as utilitarian. It appeared to be a combination living room and workroom, a big square space that had probably been a neighborhood grocery in the old days. There was, in addition to the covered storefront windows in front, one small, high window on the back wall. At the right rear was a staircase which I guessed led to sleeping quarters and a kitchen upstairs.

The room was painted beige, a color that can be either restful or grungy. In this case, it had been painted beige a good ten years earlier. There was a worn brown corduroy sofa— a sofa bed, I guessed at first glance— with black iron-on patches on the arms, and several chairs in various stages of disintegration. One of those fake-wood coffee tables with metal legs sat in front of the sofa. A floor lamp with a drinks tray halfway up its stalk leaned toward the couch. A single scrap of carpeting, five by five, dirty gold and sculptured, protected the peeling blue linoleum from the coffee table’s legs. The chipped beige paint of the walls was covered, here and there, with old posters of various political persuasions.

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