Read Online Full House: A Laid-Back Bay Area Mystery (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 3) by Shelley Singer - Free Book Online

spot to eat and drink, although I never stayed overnight there. I heard, not long after I moved to the East Bay from Marin, that Maria’s had burned down and been relocated somewhere unlikely— was it Vallejo? I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s anywhere anymore, or if she’s even alive.
    The Yellow Brick plant was big, without a yellow brick to be seen anywhere. It was built, rather, of red brick, a strange building material for earthquake-land, but one which nevertheless has a way of showing up in out of the way places.
    The many-paned windows were clean; the gutters were plastic, and probably new in the last few years. There were pink geraniums planted beside the door that had OFFICE printed in neat white block letters over it. Tidy. An air of comfortable success. No flash, no hype. There were only two cars in the parking lot, a Corvette and a new white Toyota.
    The woman behind the desk looked like a lot of women I knew in the early seventies, only a little better. Her hair was longish and dark brown, fuzzy around the ends. She was wearing a kind of peasant blouse and a long skirt with flowers all over it. I couldn’t see the shoes, but I guessed maybe clogs, maybe sandals. I was betting she’d been with the company from the beginning and was very dedicated, and, to go along with the dedication, underpaid.
    When she raised her eyes to me, I knew she’d been wearing the same clothes for a dozen years. She was somewhere between thirty and thirty-five. She had dark blue eyes. Her face was round and innocent.
    “Hi. What’s your name?”
    I was suddenly transported back to childhood. “Jake,” I said. “What’s yours?”
    “Doreen.” She smiled. A nice smile that almost compensated for the name. Names that end in “een” always sound like cleaning compounds to me. The two exceptions are Arlene and Francine, for some reason. “Is that Jake Samson?”
    I nodded.
    “Great name.”
    “Thank you.” I couldn’t decide whether she was projecting sweet dumbness or sexual subtlety.
    She pressed a button on the intercom on her desk. “Mr. Durell? Mr. Jake Samson to see you.”
    All that “mister” stuff didn’t quite go with the laid-back, groovy atmosphere of the outer office and its inhabitant. Mr. Durell asked for just a few minutes, and I sat down on the old wicker love seat that occupied the wall across from the desk. The room was large and full of plants. I noticed no ashtrays on the tables. There was a braided rug in blues and greens on the floor, and framed posters on the walls. Posters of flowers, of sixties and early seventies groups— Creedence Clearwater Revival was one— and some drawings in the colorful fantastical style that looked, then and now, like the product of an acid trip.
    Mr. Durell really did need only a few minutes. He buzzed and Doreen— had she called herself something like Willow-song Peacelove once upon a time?— gestured me through a door that was painted yellow. “Second on the left,” she told me.
    I wondered why I was so conscious of the time warp she represented. I loved the sixties and early seventies. I think I feel a little angry because that time passed so quickly. Or because it didn’t deliver what it promised. Or because it sailed away on a drug dream and left a lot of people stranded in a time so unromantic and unformed that no one could ever hope to grasp its principles, if it had any.
    Durell’s office was big and comfortable, and didn’t look anything like the reception area. It was carpeted in something industrial and had white-painted walls hung with a few nondescript framed prints. Landscapes, flowers in vases, that kind of thing. The desk was an elderly wooden one, the chair a new executive swivel, and there were two wooden side chairs, a tweed-covered couch, and a coffee table.
    Durell stood up and smiled, extending his hand over the desk, gesturing generously at one of the wooden chairs, which wasn’t any more comfortable than it looked. I noticed