Curiouser and curiouser. I tugged off my shoes, collapsed onto the bed with the file Allison had given me, and took another slug of soy milk, the least objectionable of the so-called refreshments available in the hotel minibar. This much I had been able to decipher. On June 17, 1944, Joseph Albacco’s mother, Ava Anderson Albacco, sold Parcel 66 of Lots 11 and 13, map of the Buenaventura Palisades Tract, filed September 19, 1905, Map Book C, page 64, Ventura County Hall of Records. She got $2,900 for her trouble, which didn’t amount to much these days, but would’ve meant something in 1944, especially if you were dirt poor like Ava was. I nibbled on an oat-bran cracker. The attorney of record was Julius O’Rourke, Esq., of Benton, Orr, Duval, and Buckingham. By that time, ESG was no longer practicing law, of course. Now here comes the good part. The buyer was Mr. Morgan Allan.
Morgan Allan. He and his ghoulish daughter, Meredith. Talk about the undead. But why would the man have bought tidelands property from Joe’s mother, Ava, when he had received a letter twenty years earlier telling him to dump precisely that? And why did Jean have a copy of that letter? And, furthermore, how had Joe’s father gotten ahold of that parcel of land to begin with? According to his son, he was a roustabout who had never had a dime, not to mention a good idea, in his life. I sat straight up in bed, threw away the rest of my soy milk and crackers, and pulled out the yellow pages.
I found a dozen listings for title companies. Luckily, there was someone still there at the second place I called. For the modest sum of $125, they could trace the history of any piece of California real estate back to the Spanish land grants. And if I could fax the particulars over tonight, they’d have the information to me by two P.M. tomorrow. It was a place to start.
The fax machine in the lobby was broken, but there was a little copy shop a couple blocks away, on Valdez Alley. I walked out the door and headed down the street. It was six-thirty P.M. according to the digital readout flashing over Tri-County Savings Bank. The moon was out and the air smelled like jasmine, but there wasn’t a soul around to enjoy it except me. Pretty much everything seemed to have been nailed shut, except A-Plus Printing, which glowed electric blue.
Fifteen minutes later, I was done. The sky had gone from pink-streaked to black. The wind was picking up. I wrapped my sweater tighter around me, clutching the papers to my chest. Something caught my eye in the window of the used bookstore a few doors down. It was a first edition of The D.A. Cooks a Goose, a Doug Selby book by ESG. I had seen one of those at the Mystery Manor. They were charging an arm and a leg for it. I’d have to come back tomorrow and see what it was going for here. I needed more on Doug Selby, but those titles weren’t exactly enticing. I’d read The D.A. Breaks an Egg a few weeks ago, and, sad to say, it was about as exciting as an omelet.
The used bookstore on Valdez Alley. I knew about this place. Jean Albacco had stopped in the day she was killed, to pick up a book for her husband, a book on California history. Ghosts everywhere, I thought, shivering. A stray cat howled as it skittered across my path. I think it was black. I’ll admit to being superstitious, but something wasn’t right. I heard footsteps. They were too close. I could feel someone bearing down on me. The guy in the blue Camaro? I remembered his face perfectly. No, he had nothing to do with this. Did he? The person at Mrs. Flynn’s? The person in the black SUV? Man, was I in trouble. I picked up the pace. The steps quickened in turn. The cat screeched behind me. Main Street was only thirty yards away. I could see the lights. I could hear the cars. I tried not to go to pieces.
“Stop, miss!”
Do killers yell “Stop, miss”? Slowly, I turned around.
The kid from the copy shop was grinning at me. “You forgot the last page of your fax. Here.”
Back in my room, I dumped the complimentary bottle of bath oil into the tub and soaked for a while. I needed to relax. Desperately. I tried to think calming thoughts, but that never did any good, so I gave in and thought hysterical ones. How was Annie? I hadn’t spoken to her in a few days and I was worried. I called her from the tub, but got the machine and hung up without leaving a message. It was all my fault, this Vincent thing. That’s what my mother had said when I made the colossal error of calling her yesterday for advice. It was my fault because I had gotten a divorce and set a bad example. My mother had stayed married for twenty-five years, though my father, god bless his soul, was no Ward Cleaver.
What about Mrs. Flynn’s missing son? Had they found him? Maybe he knew something. Maybe he’d done something. I wondered if Gambino had found out anything else. I wanted Gambino. I was relieved to have at least that much figured out. I ordered a pepperoni and anchovy pizza in the man’s honor and ate the entire thing, though I didn’t enjoy it as much as I should have. Then I found a Joan Crawford movie on cable. The last thing I remember before falling asleep was her stomping all over her wedding dress. Did anybody ever give that woman a break?
When I woke up in the morning, my jaw ached. I must’ve been grinding my teeth again. My dentist keeps suggesting a night guard. “Cut the euphemisms,” I keep telling him. “You’re talking about a retainer.”
I performed my morning hair depoufing and pulled on my black capri pants and a skinny white tee, a sensible choice given the powdered-sugar doughnut I planned to eat for breakfast. I needed to erase the memory of that pizza. I slung my purse over my shoulder and headed for the Busy Bee. They know food over there. Doughnuts. Coffee. None of that cappuccino nonsense. I had three cups while I went over the plan for the day.
#1. I scribbled on my legal pad, Visit to the historical society. Mr. Grandy was sure to have some ideas about how I could research the history of oil in Ventura. Like Meredith Allan, I couldn’t get away from the stink of oil. It seemed to be everywhere, but I didn’t understand why.
#2. Well, maybe I’d just start with #1.
Mr. Grandy was delighted to see me.
“Cece, Cece! I knew you’d reconsider! You made such a hasty decision about those Erle Stanley Gardner files. A treasure trove, I guarantee it! Mrs. Murphy, she’s the big kahuna around here, she’ll be thrilled! Why, you’re better than a cataloger, Cece! And we don’t even have to pay you!”
My ex-husband used to say things like that. But I suppose I have his cheapness to thank for my current vocation. Back when he was an assistant professor up for tenure at the University of Chicago, he was given the ignominious task of teaching Genre Fiction, affectionately know as Shit Lit. Too tight to spring for a teaching assistant, and convinced the entire subject was beneath his dignity anyway, he had me do the research for his lecture on police procedurals. I’d had nothing else to do, what with raising our daughter and waitressing thirty hours a week at the faculty club. By the time I’d composed more than a hundred pages on Ed McBain, however, we both understood that something had happened that was going to change our lives forever. My first book was published eighteen months later.
Now I was stalled on my sixth book, ESG was a mystery to me, and the only thing that could fix things, it seemed, was figuring out who killed Jean Albacco and her sister, Theresa Flynn. But, as I said, I have my limits. Mr. Grandy was disappointed I would still have nothing to do with his boxes. Nonetheless, he went into the back and came back with an armful of books he thought would help with my query about oil in Ventura.
“Remember, Cece, pencils only, please!”
Three hours later, I came up for air. My back was sore from sitting in the same position for so long. I stretched my legs, got a drink of water, sharpened my pencil, which I’d worn into a sad nub, then sat back down to try to make sense of the reams of notes I had taken.
Up until 1865, the main oil interest in California had been in whaling. No one had much thought it could be otherwise until a Yale geologist reported that California had more oil in and around its soil than all the whales in the Pacific Ocean. Most everyone thought this guy was out of his mind, except the vice president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Just after the Civil War, he snapped up seven ranchos in Ventura County for the purpose of constructing shipping facilities for the crude oil he expected to flow. He and his nephews hauled the latest in steam-powered drilling equipment across the country, opened a bank account, and prepared to get richer.
The first California oil boom went bust a few years later. Seventy oil companies had drilled sixty wells, but it had cost them a million bucks to net $10,000. Even I could tell you this was not a good return on your investment. Still, oil had changed the area forever.
The 1870s brought the formation of a new Ventura County, with San Buenaventura as the county seat. Saloons, dance halls, and hookers sprang up to take the money of speculators, tool-dressers, and other susceptible types. In 1885, an oil pipeline was constructed. By 1890, three of the dominant companies merged to form the Union Oil Company of California.
World War I was the first real turning point. Gasoline, fuel oil, and lubricants were needed in large quantities for tanks, airplanes, and ships. The key technological breakthrough was the development of rotary drills, which replaced the older cable-tool rigs. In 1925, the first major strike was made when Lloyd No. 9A and Lloyd No. 16A in the Ventura Avenue oil field each yielded close to five thousand barrels a day. Within five years, companies like Shell Oil were bringing in fifteen thousand barrels a day. The hills and flatlands of the Ventura River plain, once covered with apricot and walnut trees, were studded with oil derricks, like spines on a porcupine’s back.
Okay, this was all very interesting, but what I wanted to know about were the tidelands. I pulled another book from the stack and flipped to the index. Offshore drilling. Here it was.
By the early 1920s, the state of California had begun to grant exploration leases to prospect for oil in the tide-and submerged lands. Less than a decade later, some 350 wells had been drilled under the sea. In 1929, a worried legislature called an emergency moratorium on further leases, and a few months later it repealed the Lease Act of 1921. Hello—this was starting to ring a few bells. The repeal rendered further exploitation of the tidelands unprofitable. Here we go. This was what the letter in Jean’s lockbox had been about.
Someone at the state legislature had warned Morgan Allan that the Lease Act was going to be repealed and that if he didn’t get rid of his tidelands in a hurry, he’d be stuck. That letter was proof that Morgan Allan had a politician in his pocket. But so what? What businessman didn’t? Was it illegal to sell your own property? I didn’t see why it would be.
I kept reading. After World War II, new breakthroughs in petroleum technology encouraged several of the major oil companies to recommence geological exploration of offshore sites. I slammed the book shut. So Morgan Allan was in on that, too, long before everybody else. He bought a tidelands parcel from Ava Albacco for next to nothing, in 1944, just in time to make a mint. How convenient.
But again, so what? Ava didn’t know what she had. And even if she did, she wasn’t in a position to do any wildcat drilling, was she? In any case, Jean didn’t necessarily know Morgan Allan had been the buyer of the parcel Ava sold. I didn’t even know if Jean knew the parcel existed. All I knew that Jean knew of was the existence of a letter written in 1928. And what did that letter really prove?