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Greta had brought her kit with appropriate basketball attire—shoes, socks, shorts, sports panty and bra, and two knee supports. She didn’t require the supports, but a coach recommended using them in practice as a safety precaution, and she had followed the advice. The knees were a critical point for athletes, and she also worked on strengthening the muscles supporting the knee, although not as much as when she played regularly.
She tried not to take over the practices. It wasn’t fair to Emily, and it also wasn’t smart to let the girls forget Emily was the official coach. Thus, she watched, while the team went through warm-ups and routine drills. Only during full- and half-court scrimmages did she become a player-coach. Her own experiences were mainly applicable to the center and forward positions. For the guard position, she advised from experience through observation. She had never been one of the players to bring the ball down the court or be a major player in a defensive full-court press.
Where Greta made the biggest differences was in advising on general game strategies and technique for the taller girls, two in particular. Sharon Tomasini was a chunky five-foot-nine-inch forward with a decent outside shot, though initially with no idea what to do around the basket. Annie Rollan was a six-foot beanpole center. One of Greta’s strengths had been rebounding. The previous year, Greta had focused on drilling the girls on “blocking out,” keeping their bodies between the basket and the opposing player. The rationale was that if the other player couldn’t get around you, she couldn’t get the rebound. The drills paid off but needed regular refreshing or, in this case, regular yelling.
They were scrimmaging half-court. Greta took turns playing against Sharon and Annie.
“Sharon! You’ve got that big butt for a reason. Keep it on the other player. Keep pushing it into them. If you can’t feel ’em on your ass, then use it to find ’em again. If they aren’t on your ass, they’ll get around you for the rebound.”
Sievers winced at Greta’s instruction style but acknowledged that it worked. The girls appreciated being treated like adults by a skilled player they admired. Then there was Greta’s own generous, muscular rear, and she used it skillfully. Normally, she ratcheted down her play when on the court with the girls, but they had experienced her “blocking out” when she took off the governors, and nobody got around her. That included anyone on the boy’s team and their good-sized coach, a fair player himself, the times she’d scrimmaged with them.
Practice over, she said goodbye to the girls and Sievers and drove home to clean up. It was a relatively short day for her. However, she wanted to write up notes from the visit to Mendoza. It wasn’t that she had any great leads, but it being her first action in a homicide investigation, she wanted to start off with clear, detailed records.
For dinner, she ate a large salad, the rest of the sourdough from the previous night, and a moderate bowl of chocolate ice cream. She spent an hour writing her notes and setting up files on her laptop, then another hour thinking over the case with a glass of the Marlborough sauvignon blanc and a Telemann symphony playing in the background. The day ended as she brushed her long hair, deep in thought about the Toompas case. She had become confident enough with her job performance that the routine edged toward boredom, and the Toompas case provided a welcome addition, unfortunately for Toompas.
Finished with brushing her hair, she admired the result in the mirror and replaced the brush in a drawer. Her hair was the one personal conceit she acknowledged, and she possessed an impressive collection of combs and hair clips, most of the latter never used publicly. Satisfied, she braided her hair and fell asleep within seconds of her head hitting the pillow.
CHAPTER 7
The case picked up tempo the next day. Although Greta was technically “off duty” on Saturdays, she had to respond to any calls that came in. If given a choice, she would rather have worked on the Toompas case, instead of answering calls or weeding her front yard. Although the area was small, it had several Godzilla weeds. She kept expecting neighbors to complain that these were dropping seeds in their yards.
Greta emailed her report of the Mendoza interview to Connors. Six names on Mendoza’s list belonged to people living in Tillamook County. She also received from Connors another two names and addresses in Tillamook County to add to her list. That gave her eight more names, and she resolved to hit as many as she could that day.
One man, Willis Casinelli, worked as a cook at the Surf’s Up Seafood Restaurant in Pacific City. She couldn’t find a current address or phone number. She called the restaurant, and a worker said Casinelli came on shift about four in the afternoon. A second person, Kyle Umstead, lived along Route 130 in the southeast part of the county, a forested, sparsely populated area almost to Yamhill County. Other contacts were scattered around the county, five in Tillamook City.
She first tried Umstead along Route 130. She drove past where his house should have been several times before she recognized an overgrown path into the forest. No one could call it a driveway. She followed it to a dilapidated house with junk scattered everywhere. Greta didn’t get out of the car because of two chained pit bulls. They couldn’t quite get at each other, but their area of movement covered the front of the house and the driveway.
She didn’t want to hassle with the dogs, so she beeped her horn half-a-dozen times, then leaned on it for a sustained blast. She also called out, but neither effort got a response. With no vehicle in sight, she assumed no one was home. She craned her neck to look up out the windows but couldn’t see phone lines, so she figured they must use cell phones or have no service at all. She decided to come back later. If she missed Umstead again, she’d leave a note for him to contact her.
She then took Route 22 north along the eastern side of Tillamook Country to join 101 at Hebo and on to Tillamook City. She called ahead to Sergeant Travis Hodgkins with the Tillamook police. She knew him the best out of all the staff and informed him of her intent to question several Toompas acquaintances. He said he’d meet her at the first address and accompany her for a couple of hours. She lucked out. Four of the people were home or at work nearby, but none of the four gave any useful information. All knew Toompas and corroborated Mendoza’s opinion. None claimed recent contact, and all had reasonably solid alibis for the window during which the medical examiner believed the murder had occurred. The fifth person wasn’t home, and she asked Hodgkins whether he would check the house later. He had heard her questions and offered to do the interview to save her a special trip. She gratefully accepted, thanked Hodgkins for his assistance, and retraced her route back to the first stop with the pit bulls. Still no occupants.
The dogs were robust looking, and they had water in their pans, so the owners must be around. Shit. She’d just have to come again.
On the way out, she pulled a fallen tree limb across the path and stuck a message on a side branch to hold it in place. She gave her phone numbers and a request to cal
l her. She didn’t reveal why she wanted to talk with Umstead.
Her watch read half past three, so she drove back to Pacific City and the Surf’s Up Restaurant. The cook arrived a few minutes late, just as Greta had worked up irritation at not achieving anything useful that day.
Willis Casinelli was an okay-looking thirtyish man, clean shaven with medium-length hair. She thought him normal looking, except for one large earring that never would have been seen in the small town in southwest Missouri where Greta grew up.
Casinelli had no violence charges, according to the databases, although several run-ins with Fish and Game about abalone poaching. In one instance, he and Toompas got caught with two undersized abalones and were fined.
They sat at a table in the restaurant’s empty banquet room.
“So, what’s this about?” he asked politely.
“You know Howard Toompas?”
“Sure. I know . . . or, should I say, knew Howie. I saw the news the last couple of nights.”
“Did the news surprise you?”
“Surprise? I guess not particularly. A shame, but Howie danced on the edge. He was too much into drugs and other stuff, at least from rumors.”
“You and he did some abalone collecting.”
“Yeah,” he grimaced. “One time.”
