The Body in Bodega Bay (18 page)

“The gambler Charlie owed money to?”

“The same.”

He was a husky, middle-aged man with dark, thinning hair, sideburns, and a mustache. Everyone else was in casual clothes, which made Kohler conspicuous in his blue pinstripes. He was standing in the back talking to a nervous-looking man who surreptitiously passed him a thick envelope. Kohler rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger, and slipped it inside his jacket. Dan had been watching them. “I haven't been able to tie him to the murder, but it's interesting he's showed up.”

“Do killers really go to the funerals of people they murder?” I asked.

“Some do,” said Dan. His eyes swept the rest of the room as Tom Keogh stepped forward to speak.

At first Tom sounded frail, but his voice strengthened as he went on. “This is not going to be a formal service. This is just a little bit of time when you can say what you'd like about Charlie, or to Charlie, so that we can say goodbye before we put him in the earth. For myself, I just want to say one thing about Charlie. We had our problems, but he was a lovely man. He was tender toward us all. He loved many things, and many people. And we loved him back. We'll miss him. Terribly.” His voice was shaky again, but after a pause he continued. “I'll call on just one person, and then the floor will be open. Jim?”

As Charlie's brother moved up to the front of the room, I turned to Dan and whispered, “Tom isn't still a suspect, is he?”

Dan whispered back, “Like Kohler, he's still in the picture. But Mikovitch is the prime suspect now. We're waiting for final lab reports. I'll call you when they're in.”

Charlie's brother, who looked remarkably like him, only older, talked about their youth in Santa Cruz, when they were boys who took crazy risks playing on the docks. It was Charlie's bravery he remembered most. On hot summer nights, Jim would stay on the dock playing lookout, while Charlie jumped from yacht to yacht in the marina, looking for liquor or cigarettes carelessly left out on a deck. Charlie never returned till he found some contraband. He'd hold his heist high in the air, bringing it proudly to the dock to share with his brother. In later years, Jim took the safe route—college, business school, a lifetime job in Santa Cruz city administration. Charlie took the risky route—skipping college, crewing on cruise ships instead, then learning antiques, and finally finding a business and life partner in Tom Keogh, here in Guerneville. Jim thanked Tom for giving Charlie a sense of home and a reason to stop taking risks. He paused and looked up and around the room as if looking for the next volunteer to speak about Charlie.

Nobody jumped in. My guess is that everybody was thinking what I was thinking. First, Charlie had not stopped taking risks. His murder proved that. Second, he no longer was at home with Tom. He had moved out to his own apartment and a new shop.

Annie stepped forward from behind the bar, her girth well swaddled in a white apron. “The awkward truth is,” she said, “that Charlie was still adventuring. If you loved Charlie, you had to love him for the scamp he was. He was charming and affectionate and surprising, and that was sometimes the problem. Tom loved him that way, and his friends did too. When Charlie left Tom, some of us wanted to kick him, remember? But we'd be ready to forgive him and understand him, whether he got back together with Tom or not, which I think he would have. I'm just sad that Charlie didn't get a chance to make that decision. His life was cut short by a terrible crime. Already we miss him very much.”

Annie's honesty broke the ice, and from there a dozen people spoke movingly in tribute to their friend, Toby among them. “I didn't know Charlie as long as some of you did, but in the short time we worked together he became more than just a business partner. He was a friend. I'd always worked alone, and when Charlie came into the business, I didn't know how I would feel having another person in the shop with me. But in fact, he brightened up the day. Charlie was a fabulous conversationalist, and he knew his stuff. I learned a lot from him. And he was fun to be with. This is a sad day for me. And Tom”—Toby looked directly at Tom Keogh—“I'm sorry for your loss. And yours.” He nodded toward Jim Halloran and his wife. “I hope whoever did this will be brought to justice.”

Several others added reminiscences. The last turned to the undertaker. I hadn't noticed him standing near the casket at the front of the room. He signaled with his eyes to the men who'd be pallbearers, including Toby and Tom, and they moved into position as he told the crowd to follow the hearse to the cemetery on Woodland Drive, just a few minutes away.

Outside, the dim sky had clouded over and a misty drizzle had begun. Dan had remained inside to talk to Arnold Kohler. Neither arrived at the gravesite. There, once everyone had gathered, the ceremony was brief. Don Carlin, an ex-priest who had come out after leaving the church and was now active in the gay community, spoke the final words. He too had been a friend of Tom and Charlie.

“We now commit Charlie's body to the earth. In our grief, we take consolation from whatever beliefs we hold most dear. For some, those beliefs may be religious; for others, not. Perhaps the important question isn't which beliefs are true, but rather which beliefs help make the world a better place. Since I've left the priesthood, I've come to think that those beliefs that harden the heart are harmful. Yet those that open the heart are blessed. ‘By their fruits shall ye know them' (Matthew 7:16). So let us open our hearts in memory of Charlie Halloran. And now let us pray.”

We bowed our heads, and the casket was lowered into the ground. Behind me I heard a woman say, “He's gone to a better place.” The former priest demurred. “Charlie liked it here just fine.”

On the way back, Toby said, “That was good, what the priest said at the funeral.”

“Ex-priest,” I corrected. “You mean about opening our hearts?”

“That too. But it's what he said afterward to that woman about Charlie. It reminded me of a favorite poem of mine in college. I used to quote it all the time. ‘To Ford Madox Ford in Heaven.' Do you know it?”

“I don't think so.”

“It's by William Carlos Williams. Williams wrote the poem as a lament for his friend when he died. The gist of it is he asks Ford whether it's any better in heaven than it was in Provence, which was Ford's favorite place.”

“And what was the answer?”

“There wasn't one. It's a rhetorical question. Williams is saying that nothing beats being alive. And there's this line I love. He says, ‘Provence, the fat assed Ford will never again strain the chairs of your cafés.' Now, that's a great line.”

“Did Ford really have a fat ass?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, and that's part of it. The poem becomes a kind of ode to earthiness.”

Earthiness. I thought about that as we drove through the redwoods, then alongside green hills splashed with streaks of yellow broom, with the ocean ahead of us. “Provence is lovely, but I don't think it's any more beautiful than Sonoma County,” I said. “We're lucky to live here.”

“We're lucky to be alive,” said Toby.

I
dropped Toby off at his shop and headed home to pick up Angie. She was hunched over the half-completed art puzzle, trying to fill out the green sea around Botticelli's Venus on the half-shell. She invited me to join her. “Good funeral therapy,” she said. In the interests of maintaining the illusion that the broken pieces of the world can ultimately be put together, we worked till we finished an hour later.

We then had to hustle, because we were going to Occidental, a craftsy little inland town, where the café renowned for its bison burgers keeps lazy hours and closes in midafternoon. Over lunch, we plotted Angie's shopping mission. Mom was on the top of her list, because her birthday was coming up. But Angie had trouble focusing her search. The gift should be natural and luxurious, but that's all she could say. With that fuzzy goal in mind, we had license to visit every store in town and try on the best of everything: locally made earrings, necklaces from Africa, knitted hats from Argentina, and tie-dyed silk in the form of scarves, skirts, and dresses. We couldn't see any of these on Mom. When there were no shops we hadn't scoured, we wanted to pout over a cup of tea, but the café was closed. So we shared a bottle of ginger ale from the General Store before starting on our way to meet Toby.

When we got to Duncans Mills, instead of heading for his shop in the back, I parked in the front, where there was one store that might have something for Mom. Duncans Mills Textiles showcases local weaving, knitting, sewing, and crocheting. When we'd been there a minute, I knew we'd found the right place. Angie was humming as she picked through sweaters and shawls in Mom's favorite colors. Finally, she chose a luminous weave of purple and blue in the shape of a shawl.

“Try it on for me. You're Mom's size,” she said, draping it over my shoulders. It was just the right length to cover the arms on a cold day and yet short enough to wear scarf-style under a coat. And the texture was soft.

“What about cleaning?” I wondered. I drew the shawl off my shoulders and looked for the tag. It was handwritten. On one side were the price and the directions “Hand wash, cold. Block and hang dry.” The other side said, “Sonoma lambs wool, hand dyed and woven by Rose Cassini, Cazadero,” with her address.

“Something wrong?” asked Angie. “Does it have to be dry-cleaned? Mom hates that.”

“No. It's just that I know the person who made this. Toby and I talked to her the other day. She's the woman who originally owned the icon that Charlie bought, the one that was stolen from the shop.”

“Yikes. Bad karma?”

“I don't think so. She seems like a really good person. You'd like her.”

“Because?”

“She's strong and independent, a weaver living alone in her late sixties. When she was young she was a protester against the nuclear plant on Bodega Head. Then she fell in love, and when her sweetheart died—he's the one who gave her the icon—she retreated to Cazadero. It's a tiny, isolated hamlet way off in the boonies, inland from here. She's spent her whole life making beautiful things there.”

“Well, that sounds romantic enough for Mom. I'm buying it.” Angie took the shawl from me and headed for the counter. I stayed behind, fingering through the other shawls that Rose had for sale there—beautiful, every one. We soon had the gift package stashed in my car, and we walked around to the back of the complex to Toby's shop. As usual when he's open for business, the front door was ajar. I thought I heard someone talking.

Inside Toby and Andrew Federenco were standing beside the large oak dining-room table. Federenco was rocking back and forth, his left hand cupped atop his right, which pressed down on his cane. Toby's posture was stiff. “We were just talking about the break-in at our house. Mr. Federenco thinks he's being harassed.”

Federenco acknowledged our entrance with a nod and turned back to Toby. “So it wasn't you who suggested I be interviewed about it?”

“No, it wasn't.”

Angie came over. Toby introduced her, and she drifted away.

“Look, if you're here to complain,” Toby continued, but Federenco cut him off.

“That's not why I came. I'm here to warn you. The sheriff knows I'm looking for an icon that by rights belongs to me. Your partner had it. Now he's dead, and someone's broken into your home. You may be in danger.”

“From whom?”

“I don't have a name, but someone else has been making inquiries. I've talked to other dealers.”

“A Russian? Someone speaking with a Russian accent?”

Federenco's eyes narrowed. “Possibly. Have you met such a person?”

“You might say we had a run-in,” Toby observed dryly, “or more precisely, he almost ran into us.” Toby paused for effect. “He's dead.”

I studied Andrew Federenco's face as he absorbed this news. His shock seemed genuine. “What?”

“He's dead,” Toby repeated. “He was following us home from Fort Ross and almost drove us off the road. But he went over the rail instead. It happened Saturday.”

“My God!” exclaimed Federenco. “I read about a crash but had no idea you were involved. The paper didn't give names. Who was he?”

“You don't know?” I asked pointedly.

“No, why should I? Do you?”

“According to the deputy sheriff, his name was Ivan Mikovitch. Does that ring a bell?” Again I observed Federenco's reaction, trying to test whether he was hiding something.

He took a moment to reply. “I've heard the name. He's connected to the Russian mafia, a circle of art thieves and extortionists.”

“How do you know him?” I pressed.

“I don't know him. I said I've heard the name. When you're a collector and you follow the trade, you hear these things.”

“I see.” It was hard to read his face.

“Now, may I ask
you
a question?”

“Go ahead,” I replied.

“What were you doing in Fort Ross?”

Was there any reason not to tell him? “To be honest, I was interested in finding out more about your family.”

“Oh, really?”

I explained how my research into the icon that Charlie bought led me eventually to his ancestor Andreyev Federenco's memoir, which he himself had donated to the Fort Ross Interpretive Association in 1972.

When I finished, his face bore a bemused expression. “Well, that was clever of you. And did you find his life story of interest?”

“Very much so,” I said. “I've been wondering how the icon came into the possession of your family.”

“It was given to one of my ancestors by a pious monk in the seventeenth century. It was a reward for his work in helping build a cathedral.”

“And how did the tradition start of passing the icon down from son to son?”