Looking for Yesterday by Marcia Muller Read Free Book Online Page A

I decided to be blunt. “In your opinion, could Caro have murdered Amelia?”
    Patty didn’t take offense. “Actually,” she said, “I’ve always thought she did.”
    “Why?”
    “No especial reason. Just a feeling. When she got into bed that night, she wasn’t only drunk, but scared. The fear coming off her was as strong as the smell of alcohol.”
    3:30 p.m.
    After I left Patty’s I called the hospital for an update on Caro’s condition. Still no change. Then I went looking for Jake Green.
    According to the background information I had, Green had quit the stock brokerage and bought a travel agency south of the city in San Bruno. I called my own travel agent, Toni Alexander, and asked her if she knew of him.
    “That little weasel?” she responded. “He tried to put the moves on me at the last American Society of Travel Agents convention.”
    “I take it you don’t have a high opinion of him.”
    “It’s not because he made a pass. I’m as open to that as any single gal. But he’s just…ugh!” I could picture her shuddering.
    “How so?”
    “He’s conniving. Petty crimes like selling for inflated prices the promotional flight coupons the airlines give out to those of us in the industry. Stolen tickets, too, when he can get his hands on them. And it doesn’t help that he has eyes like a ferret.”
    I’d never gotten close enough to a ferret to look it in the eye, but I could imagine.
    “Are you aware that Green was involved in a high-​profile murder case three years ago?” I asked.
    “Am I aware? He told me about it within three minutes of meeting me at an ASTA cocktail party here in the city. He was still ‘jazzed’ about it, he said.”
    “He give you any of the details?”
    “No. I told him I’d heard about the case and escaped from his company—not very graciously.”
    “Good move.”
    “Not to change the subject, Shar,” she said, changing the subject, “but have you and Hy talked any more about that trip to Tahiti?”
    “We’re thinking of making it a stopover on the way to New Zealand.”
    “I could send you some information—”
    “I’ve already looked at stuff on the Internet.”
    “Shar, you’re not really thinking of booking online ?”
    I had been, but I knew I wouldn’t. Toni had done me too many favors over the years.
    “Don’t worry,” I said, “you’ll be hearing from me about making arrangements.”
    4:32 p.m.
    More than two years earlier a Pacific Gas and Electric pipeline had ruptured down the Peninsula in San Bruno, creating a deafening roar that could be heard for many miles and a huge fireball that destroyed dozens of homes and killed several people. The commercial part of the city, where I was headed, had been spared, but grief, anger, lawsuits, and the eventual retirement of the utility’s CEO followed. The disaster had made Bay Area residents very wary, and most of us checked carefully at the slightest whiff of natural gas.
    All World Travel was located in a nondescript beige stucco building fronting an old shopping center on El Camino Real, the city’s main drag. The small storefront was cramped, with two visitors’ chairs and a table covered in brochures. Faded posters of exotic lands adorned the walls.
    A young woman with long stringy hair who looked as if she’d like to be somewhere else was paging through a file at the reception desk.
    Mr. Green, she said, wasn’t in. If I wanted I could find him three doors down at the Reading Room.
    “Reading Room?” I asked.
    “It’s a bar, his office away from the office.” She snapped her gum for emphasis.
    Classy operation.
    You couldn’t have read anything in the Reading Room. Its interior glowed a strange orange, broken only by the flickering of a big-screen TV. A hockey game was on, but the picture was so blurred I couldn’t tell who was playing. At the bar a lone man hunched over a mug of dark beer. His hair was brown, and he had a perfectly round bald place on the top of his head.
    I