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22.
"Bingo," Louise said, poking her head into Linsey's office. "The police had some DNA on file for our missing guard. They've had a courier run it to UCSD Medical Center for lab processing."
"Great!" Linsey had been working at her computer and listening to music. She set her earphones before her as she rose. "Hey, Louise, I may have another little lead."
"You're just cooking today!"
"Remember that the Coast Guard report mentioned there was a pilot who went on board?"
Louise snapped her fingers again. "Yes."
"I called SDPD and nobody has interviewed him yet."
Louise frowned. "Now why would that be?"
"Because he hasn't answered his phone."
Louise said: "If you're going looking for him, take someone from SDPD along—if he lives in San Diego. Got to avoid any inter-agency wrangling."
"Actually," Linsey said, "he lives in Coronado, so I'm not worried about jurisdictions. They are pretty good over there."
"Be careful."
"I will." She strapped on her weapon. "News from our mushroom man, Dr. Nolan?"
Louise shook her head. "Mycologist. I'm going to let you handle the yakkety yak with him. I just keep checking my email to see if he's hollering about lab results yet."
"Okay, Louise. I'm going to meet my husband for lunch and then I'll swing over to North Island to look for our elusive harbor pilot. That definitely sounds like my jurisdiction."
"It does indeed. Well, I'm sure you can talk your way out of just about any sticky situation."
Linsey noticed something odd as she drove out of the parking garage in her private car, a dark green Lexus with cream colored leather interior. Either the entire world had become dotted with tiny yellow dots, or maybe some tree or bush was flowering madly, or else her eyesight must be failing—was she seeing little dots everywhere?
As she drove up Broadway, she was held up at a stop light by Horton Plaza, the fancifully architectured shopping mall that dominated the center of town. Looking down, she saw a tiny yellow mushroom growing from a crack in the street. Any moment, a car would run over it, but it had sprouted on the dashed white line separating lanes.
She saw more and more of them—tiny, frail dots no bigger than a dot at the end of a sentence, atop hair-thin wavy stems.
She took scenic California 163 with its rows of palm trees south to I-5, and then cut across California 75 atop the soaring Coronado Bay Bridge. Descending as if from a helicopter ride, she breezed into the City of Coronado. Along with Naval Air Station North Island, this was an elongated thumb of land that stuck up north-south from Imperial Beach and San Ysidro by the Mexican border, and enclosed one of the best natural harbors on the West Coast. A century or more ago, before the Silver Strand road had been built up, North Island had actually been an island. If one considered the naval air station as the tip of a thumb, then the fingers meeting that thumb ended at Cabrillo Point, which stuck out into the sea and formed the northern boundary of the harbor. A narrow but deep channel a few hundred feet across allowed sea traffic in and out. That included nuclear submarines berthed at Point Loma along with other Government ships, and the touristy Harbor Drive area where the Star of India sailing ship, and the retired aircraft carrier U.S.S. Midway were docked, among numerous seafaring attractions that included a decommissioned Soviet B-39 Class diesel attack submarine.
She met Jack in the Babcock & Story Bar at the Hotel del Coronado—the Del, as San Diegans generally called it. Parking by the seawall, she walked two blocks along the sandy sidewalk. To her right, she heard the surf booming as a Pacific storm sent rows of good surfing swells. It was windy here, and she was glad to have a jacket on because there was a slight, coldly humid bite in the air. Still, it was bright enough to warrant sunglasses. She called Jack on her cell phone. "Hi, honey, where are you?" There were at least six major restaurants and bars in the complex.
"The main bar topside. Come up through the beach side and I'll wave to you."
"Done deal. Order me a margarita."
The Hotel Del was a famous 1888 Victorian ramble of white wooden buildings distinguished by its brick-red roofs. In particular, it had a large round structure on the seaward side with a huge red cone-shaped roof, and other, smaller cone shapes. The big cone sported a U.S. flag. Linsey entered the stately, dark-wood lobby with its high-beamed ceilings. Very posh. She descended to the shopping arcade on the beach level and followed the curving corridor among pricy shops with indoor display windows, and out onto the rear terraces overlooking the blue Pacific. There, Jack waved to her. He had been working steadily at his laptop while sipping a Bacardi and cola. They kissed as she slipped into a comfortable wooden chair with leather padding beside him. "What are you working on?"
"City Hall. The usual."
"Have you noticed these little yellow mushrooms growing everywhere?"
"Yeah, what's that all about?" Jack was a muscular, balding, powerhouse kind of man. Though mild-mannered, he liked to excel at most things, from work to jogging and boating. He tolerated her addiction to Saturday morning softball league, and she enjoyed sailing with him on Sundays—they had a 24 foot single mast boat, but sometimes he could borrow a larger boat from some of his many golfing buddies, some of them multi-millionaires. Jack's hair was still dark, but it had receded from a high, narrow forehead. It was still thick over the ears. He had a rugged face with beard shadow, a small hawk nose, and a little rosy mouth she loved. He was nearsighted, and wore glasses with heavy dark horn rims. When he wasn't tense and working, he grinned a lot and said silly things. He wore a white linen shirt today, with the sleeves rolled up to reveal hairy arms. He had square, pink fingertips, and hunted and pecked at the keyboard. "I am a hunter-pecker," he once told a paleontologist he was interviewing for a story on local hunter-gatherers of eons past.
"I'm working on a mushroom case," she said as her margarita arrived, ferried by a busy waitress amid the noon rush. She told him a little bit about the case of the missing guard and the human DNA found in a six foot long mushroom under the dock. Their hamburgers arrived, cradled amid lettuce leaves, pickles, and tomato slices, with hot broasted potato wedges reddened with paprika. They shared a side of cole slaw.
Jack frowned. "You said mushroom?" He nibbled at a potato. She told him a little more, about the abandoned ship. He waved his potato wedge. "There was some kind of flap the other day about a plane spraying some yellow stuff over Mission Valley. The HazMat people analyzed it and said it seemed to be fungus spores or something."
She gripped his arm. "Jack. I remember hearing it on the news, and it sort of went away. What if these little mushrooms are from that spraying?"
He shrugged. "Why would someone spray mushrooms?"
"I'm on the Terrorism Task Force, remember?" She whipped out her cell phone and pressed the predial for Louise.
"This is Louise," the familiar voice said.
Linsey poured out her story to Louise.
"Whoa, honey, we've rushed into one situation already. Now you think terrorists are spraying mushroom spores?"
"Has anyone analyzed those little yellow critters yet?"
"I don't know, child, but I can sure find out. I'll make a few calls and get back to you. Thanks for the heads-up."
Linsey picked up her burger in both hands, so that Russian dressing dribbled out on the lettuce. "I got burned once already, yelling fire before the match was struck. She's going to check it out for me. I'm meeting the harbor pilot this afternoon."
He grappled with his burger. "Want me to go with you?"'
She brightened. "Could you?"
"Absolutely. I'm just waiting for a call back from the Mayor's office about the city pension plan problems. I feel better when I see old Cleve by your side."
"Give me some credit. I have a black belt in martial arts, and I can shoot off Washington's wig on a dollar bill at 25 yards."
"You are mighty indeed. Still, if you run into some goon, I'd rather think of Cleve behaving like a Sherman tank." He suddenly remembered. "Oh, on a sadder note, I spoke with Maggie Matthews the other day. Dylan's been hitting the sauce again."
"Oh no, I'm so sorry to hear that."
"Yeah, she sounded pretty grievous." He paused eating until his moment of sadness went away and the marinated tomatoes could taste great again.
"Why were you talking with Maggie?" She dabbed at Russian dressing around her lips.
"Oh, er, what was it? Someone called. Jovia said someone called about the spraying thing, and then Dylan called but didn’t say why. Probably looped and looking for someone to tell one of his war stories to." He made a mental note to try those phone numbers again once he got back to his office.
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