DOWNTOWN GILROY RUNS ALONG MONTEREY Street. Like many towns with business districts bypassed by freeways and the development that follows freeways, downtown Gilroy is struggling to hold on. The JC Penney on one corner had going-out-of-business signs in its front windows, having lost the battle to the outlet mall near the highway. But the antique business was booming, judging from the number of stores lining both sides of Monterey Street. And in the middle of the block between Fifth and Sixth, some brave soul had launched a bookstore with a flourish of “Grand Opening” banners.
Meriwell Hardware anchored the corner of Seventh and Monterey. It was an old-fashioned hardware store that looked as though it had been at the same location for years, sitting deep and wide on its corner, with high windows at the front, ledges crowded with merchandise, and, above, signs advertising specials. Inside it was dark despite the fluorescent lighting on the high ceiling. Four cash registers with counters were arrayed across the front of the store. Beyond the registers, long narrow aisles stretched back between tall shelves. The place smelled of metal, sawdust, and machine oil, a musty aroma that tickled my nose. The wooden floor creaked as I walked past the registers into the bowels of the store. A treasure trove, I thought, peering at the booty all around me.
I saw racks and bins piled with shiny brackets and hinges of brass and steel, dull metal screws, nuts and bolts, everything from minuscule tacks to heavy nails, ready for the customer’s hand to plunge into the heaps, pricked by edges and points, sifting out the required amount. Stacked on shelves or hanging from pegboard were hammers, pliers, and wrenches, ratchets and screwdrivers, saw blades and drill bits, every variety of tool I could conceive of and some I couldn’t. Meriwell Hardware was an adult playground, the sort of place where I could happily roam the aisles, collecting things I needed and might need and probably didn’t need. I could gather an armful of extension cords, picture-hanging supplies and sandpaper, pluck light bulbs from a shelf or batteries from the revolving metal rack at the head of one aisle, find myself seduced by a matched set of metallic red flashlights in descending sizes, or that big toolbox with all the drawers and compartments.
The sales clerks were mostly men of middle age, though I saw a gray-haired woman stocking shelves in the housewares section. Two younger women staffed the cash registers. All of them wore orange canvas vests over their work clothes. On closer inspection I saw that each vest had Meriwell Hardware inscribed in brown yarn script on the right side of the vest, and the clerk’s name on the left side. At one of the cash registers, a customer, a clerk, and the cashier were rehashing the most recent Garlic Festival and its attendant traffic and parking problems. I interrupted them, asking for Tom Meriwell.
“He’s back in plumbing,” the customer said, pointing toward the rear of the store.
I thanked him and headed in the direction he indicated, sidestepping a leathery man in overalls who was staring intently at a hacksaw blade, as though contemplating some higher plane. Back in the plumbing section I found Tom Meriwell using his hands and passable Spanish as he explained the fundamentals of installing washerless faucets to an elderly Hispanic man. Then he escorted the customer to the check stands at the front and I tagged along. He turned to me with a smile on his round face.
“Find out anything interesting at the funeral?” he asked, twitching his sandy eyebrows at me.
“Tom Meriwell. Brother of Denise Meriwell, formerly Denise Raynor. Alma Raynor doesn’t have a very high opinion of you. Or your sister.”
He laughed, removing his orange vest. Underneath it he had a white plastic liner stuck in the left pocket of his blue work shirt, filled with pens. His clothes looked rumpled on his short stocky body. He tossed the vest over a swinging wooden door that led to a cramped makeshift office furnished with a wooden desk and a battered-looking chair, its walls lined with shelves that held a variety of publications. The vest landed on the desk’s cluttered surface, covering an old black dial phone.
“Alma Raynor doesn’t have a high opinion of anyone,” Tom Meriwell said. “Except her son. She always had a blind spot where he was concerned. You had lunch?” I shook my head. The coffee and cookie I had consumed at the house after the funeral didn’t qualify. Tom Meriwell beckoned me to follow him. “I’m going to lunch, Shirley,” he called to the nearest cashier as we headed out the front door. “You in the mood for Mexican food?”
“Always,” I said.
We crossed Monterey at Seventh and walked north, Tom Meriwell nodding and raising his hand as he was greeted by passersby. In the middle of the next block Tom opened the door of a bright green building. We entered a café called Robledo’s, with a counter and stools along one wall, and tables covered with red-and-white-checked oilcloth. Lunchtime diners crowded both counter and tables.
“Hey, Estella,” Tom said to the waitress, a Chicano woman with gray streaking her coiled black hair. She wore a white uniform with a frilly black apron.
“Hey, Tom,” she replied, pointing us toward a recently vacated table for two, near the back against the wall. As we pulled out the chairs, she quickly cleared away the remains of the previous diners’ lunch. She carried the dishes to the kitchen, moving quickly in her thick-soled white shoes, and returned with a tray, setting in front of us glasses of ice water, a basket piled with warm tortilla chips, and two small bowls of salsa, one red and one green. The plastic-covered menus were already on the table, stuck between the salt and pepper shakers and the metal napkin dispenser. I studied the menu while I took a chip and dipped it in the green salsa.
“The chiles rellenos here will set you free,” Tom advised me, eyes twinkling. He didn’t even bother to pick up a menu.
“I don’t know about setting me free, but this salsa is about to liberate my sinuses.” In fact it brought tears to my eyes. I ate another tortilla chip plain and chased it with some water in an attempt to put out the fire.
Estella appeared again, carrying a tall frosted glass and a can of Tecate beer, which she set before Tom. He picked up the can and poured the brew down the side of the glass to minimize the foam. She pulled an order pad from the pocket of her apron. “You gonna have your usual?”
“Might as well be consistent.” He set the can down and took a swallow of beer. Estella turned to me, order pad and pencil at the ready. I ordered the chicken enchiladas, and she told me I’d made a good choice. As she headed for the kitchen, I reached for another chip, sampling the red salsa. It was slightly less flammable than the green.
“I’d like to talk with your sister Denise,” I told Tom.
He flashed a cagey grin. “Question is, will she want to talk with you?”
“I hope so. Alma Raynor’s version of the story is a bit lopsided.” Tom Meriwell snorted derisively, an indication of what he thought of Alma and the whole tribe. “I know you can give me some information about Denise’s marriage to Sam Raynor, but I want to hear it from her too. I understand there’s a child, a little boy named Scott.”
“If it hadn’t been for Scott, she wouldn’t have married the SOB,” Tom said, shaking his balding blond head. “When I found out she was pregnant, I wanted to run that varmint down with my pickup truck, I was that pissed off. I should have done it. Would have saved all of us a lot of trouble.”
“Where were you the night he was killed?” I asked him bluntly.
Tom Meriwell raised his beer to his lips. His smile dimmed and his blue eyes turned wintry. “I won’t say I never considered it,” he said when he set the glass down on the table. His words didn’t come as readily as they had before, and his voice lost its bantering tone. “Especially when I found out he was beating up my sister. The night she showed up at my parents’ house with her kid in her arms, a black eye, blood running from her nose—” Tom Meriwell shook his head, his fair skin coloring at the memory. “I damn near got my hunting rifle and went after him then. If my wife hadn’t blocked the door, I don’t know what I’d have done.”
He was quiet for a moment as the heat of renewed anger faded from his flushed face. “If I was gonna kill him, I’d’ve done it then, not now. Saturday night I was at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts, me and my wife and two other couples.” He picked up his beer again and stared at me over the rim of his glass.
“What he did to my sister was a crime. He should have gone to jail for it But all Denise wanted was to get out of that marriage. She told Sam she wouldn’t file charges if he’d give her a divorce and custody of the boy. So that’s what happened. Maybe if he’d been locked up then, he wouldn’t have had a chance to get married again and hurt some other woman. When I heard he was dead, I wasn’t surprised. It’s a wonder somebody hadn’t shot him before now.”
I looked at Tom Meriwell across the table and he looked away from me, glancing first at the counter, then back toward the kitchen. Something was bothering him, and I thought I knew what it was. Where was Denise the night Sam was killed? Was he asking himself the same question?
“Has Denise had any recent contact with Sam Raynor?”
“Maybe,” he said, reluctantly meeting my gaze. “I don’t know.”
Estella brought our lunches, and Tom dug into his chiles rellenos, plump and covered with melted cheese, bracketed by generous heaps of rice and refried beans. The portions on my plate were equally large, and I took a fork to the chicken enchiladas. They were delicious and I was hungry. As I waited for Tom to continue I glanced at his perspiring forehead and wondered if it was the chiles, or my questions, that were making him sweat. He set down his fork and pulled a paper napkin from the dispenser on the table, mopping his forehead.
“Denise left town when she left Sam. She doesn’t come back much, particularly since Dad died. She’s married again. Her husband’s a nice fella and I guess they’re happy. We call each other about once a month. Last time we talked—hell, I don’t know.” He crumpled the napkin and tossed it aside.
“I really need to talk with Denise.”
“I’ll call her tonight. I got your phone number. If she wants to talk, she’ll call you. She lives in—” He stopped, then went on. “She lives in the Bay Area.”
“Benicia.” He looked surprised. “Mitch Burgett said he ran into Denise a couple of months ago, working in a bank in Benicia. Would he have told Sam?”
“Wouldn’t have to. If he mentioned it to his mother, it’d be all over Gilroy in half an hour. Elva Burgett does like to talk.”
“What about Mitch? Did he have any kind of relationship with Denise?”
“Mitch still carrying a torch?” Tom smiled. “Whenever I see him, which isn’t often, he asks about her. I guess he’s being more than polite. Mitch was always fond of Denise. They dated in high school, till Sam came on the scene. Mitch and Sam were in the same class, graduated a year before Denise.” That surprised me. When I met Mitch, I thought he looked older than his cousin. “I’m five years older than my sister. After high school I did a hitch in the Army. Came back to Gilroy with a Korean wife who didn’t speak English very well and a baby on the way, so I went to work for Dad at the store. That’s about the time Denise got married. That’s another thing,” Tom said, waving his fork at me. “Sam joining the Navy when he did. You better talk to Pete Bruckner down at the police department. Sam Raynor was a hell-raiser from the time he took his first step. I hear he went into the service about two jumps ahead of the law. I don’t know the details, but that’s something you oughta look into.”
“I will. Alma and Elva mentioned an incident when Sam helped himself to an aunt’s car.”
“He helped himself to other people’s things more than once. Dad used to catch him shoplifting at the store when he was in grade school. I think he was doing it just to see if he could get away with it.”
“Sam was born here in Gilroy, but Alma and Elva talk like Southerners.” I pushed my plate away, the chicken enchiladas half eaten. I was stuffed and ready to concede defeat.
“We’re all Okies,” Tom said with a shrug, finishing the last of his chiles rellenos. “Steinbeck’s people, the ones who came to California during the Grapes of Wrath days. Dust Bowl ran our grandparents out of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, and Texas. They came to the San Joaquin Valley and the Salinas Valley and stayed. Quite a few went back, though, after the hard times were over. And recently too. I guess you can buy a house in Oklahoma City or Amarillo for a lot less than you can anywhere in California. I got family back there, and so do Alma and Elva.”
The waitress came to collect our plates, placing the check between us. I reached for it. “Business expense.”
“I’m liberated,” he said. “I’ll let you.”
I pulled some bills from my wallet and laid them on the table. “What about Mitch Burgett’s sister Nancy? I met her at the house after the funeral. She seemed a bit chilly.”
“Nancy Tate? She’s always had her nose in the air. Nancy was two years ahead of me in high school. She was a cheerleader and I was what the kids nowadays call a nerd.” He grinned. “Still am, but what the hell, it suits me. She had a couple of years of college and married some banker. They got divorced a few years back. Now she sells real estate.”
“Where can I find her?” He gave me the name and address of the real estate office where Nancy Tate worked. The waitress had collected the check and now she brought my receipt and change. I counted out the tip, then Tom and I pushed back our chairs. On the walk back to Meriwell Hardware, he promised to call Denise that evening.
The real estate firm where Nancy Tate worked was on Eigleberry Street in central Gilroy, in a single-story California bungalow of pale yellow stucco which had been converted into offices. She wasn’t there, but that didn’t surprise me, given her remark earlier about showing a house this afternoon. The receptionist told me Nancy would be in later, but she didn’t know when. I didn’t leave my name.
My next stop was the Gilroy Police Department, located near Seventh and Rosanna. Tom Meriwell had suggested I talk with Pete Bruckner, who turned out to be a sergeant. He’d gone to lunch but was due back soon. I waited half an hour before he appeared in the reception area, a tall man whose light brown hair had receded, giving him a high, domed forehead. He frowned as I identified myself and told him why I was there.
“You say Tom Meriwell sent you over here?” Bruckner paused, and I could see that he was turning things over in his mind. “Private detective, huh? I can’t tell you much.”
“You can check me out with the Oakland Police Department if you like,” I began.
“They’ve already called. So has some Navy lieutenant.” Bruckner frowned and scratched his nose. “It was me that went over to the house on Monday, to tell Alma. You say you’re working for Mrs. Raynor’s defense lawyer?”
I nodded. “Look, Sergeant Bruckner, I understand your position. If the information is in public records, I’ll dig it out eventually. But that’s time-consuming and it doesn’t usually tell the whole story. I’d rather get that from you.” Bruckner shrugged. “Hell, come on back to my desk. They buried him this morning. I guess speaking ill of the dead doesn’t mean a damn thing now.”