Spit In The Ocean: A Laid-Back Bay Area Mystery (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 4) by Shelley Singer Page B

said.
    “Well, I’m sure he is.”
    I wanted to know more about Wolf, but at the moment I was more interested in the bank. “How do you feel about— how do people in town feel about— the sperm bank?”
    She ate another cookie. “The sperm bank? I don’t know. You got to give Nora a lot of credit. She’s a smart one. I was kind of surprised when she came back here, but I can’t say I blame her. It’s exciting down in the city, but personally, I wouldn’t want to live there. Too expensive.”
    “And, of course,” Rosie added, “there’s more crime.”
    “That’s for sure.” She stamped out a new bunch of circles, looked at her watch, went to the oven, took out the two sheets, set them on top of the stove while she emptied the two that had been cooling into freezer bags, and finished up the routine by sliding the new ones into the oven and checking her watch yet again. Then she took the dough left over from the two previous cuttings, rolled it in with the dough in the bowl, and dropped another wad onto the board.
    “How do you feel about the crime that happened at the bank?” Rosie persisted.
    Fredda shrugged. “Same way everyone else in town feels. Kids. Probably that Rollie and Tommy Hackman. Real leaders, those two, real funny boys.”
    “Are they bad kids? Get in trouble a lot?”
    She backed off a little. “Oh, well, you know what I mean. High-spirited. I can see how they might think that was just about the funniest thing ever, ripping off a bunch of… but they’re not mean boys. They never tease Joanne or anything.”
    “Joanne?”
    “My daughter.”
    “These Hackman boys— they’re brothers?” I asked, sipping some of the bitter coffee.
    “Yeah. Live right down the street. Just a few doors.” She paused, cocked her head, looked at the back door, and stood up and headed toward it. At that instant there was the sound of a key turning in the lock. The door opened and Joanne wheeled into the kitchen.
    “We’re talking,” Fredda said. “Take a cookie and go to your room.” The child started to do half of what she was told— she didn’t take a cookie— but Fredda stopped her.
    “Wait a minute. Where’s the key? You put it right back under the pot, where it belongs.” Joanne sighed and returned to the back porch, replacing the key under a flowerpot. Then she spun the chair, slammed the back door, and we heard her wheelchair roll away.
    “Kid’s locked me out more than once, palming that key,” Fredda complained.
    I took a cookie off the plate and bit into it. No nuts, no raisins, no chips, not much taste beyond sweet. Dry and dusty. I put it on the table next to my coffee cup. “Do you mind talking about your cousin? I know it just happened and everything…”
    She shrugged again. “Oh, that’s okay. It’s painful, but maybe it’s better to talk.” She sat down, the lump of dough untouched on the board, the rolling pin beside it.
    “Then about this accident last night, could you go over that once more? Why she went? When?”
    “It’s like I told Clement. And Perry. She went out to see if everything was okay with Marty’s house. He called her. Asked her about it. Around five it was. We were talking. We’d just had a glass of wine. She was going to fry some fish for us.”
    “How much wine had she had, do you think?”
    Fredda ate another cookie. “Just the one glass, I seem to remember. But, you know, I’m not really sure. She could have had a whole other bottle before I came. How would I know?”
    “What time did you get there?”
    “Must have been a little after four-thirty.”
    “You think she was drunk?” Rosie asked.
    “Not so I could see.”
    “Did she usually drink a lot?”
    “No. All I’m saying is how would I know what she did before I was even there?”
    “So,” I said, “Marty called around five. They were pretty close?”
    “Close?” She got up, poured herself an inch of coffee, and sat back down again. “I wouldn’t say close. I don’t