The Bohemian Connection (13 page)

“I do, but I can’t ask you to come with me.”

“But we get along so well. We could have a little fun. No commitment, no ties, just fun.”

“I’m not the one you’re looking for. But you’re in the right spot for looking this weekend.” I stood up.

His face reddened. “Hey, you don’t need to take that Miss Priss—”

“Thanks for the beer.”

O
NCE OUTSIDE
I
HESITATED
. I didn’t want a drunken Sugarbaker staggering after me to my house, which he could have easily done since I was on foot. That was part of the reason I chose to head for the café. The other equally pressing matter was that it had been a long time since lunch, substantial though it had been. And the prospect of the café’s wonderful fried eggs, chorizo sausage, and sauerkraut was too good to pass up.

The café was probably the one place in town that was fairly empty. At nine-thirty on this Friday night most celebrants were in the bar, or the lounge of one of the fancier motels. Few people in the Russian River Resort Area on the first night of Bohemian Week were thinking about sauerkraut. I ordered and took my favorite table in the back.

I had come here for breakfast before work many mornings when I had more time than ambition. Recently I had discovered I’d become enough of a regular to call ahead and have my eggs and kraut waiting as I rushed in, which solved my problem on those days when I had neither time nor ambition. By now it never occurred to the cooks that I ate anything else.

Two couples and a family occupied other tables. One of the children surveyed the jukebox selections, then stalked back to his table. Obviously he was not an aficionado of early country music. No Mother Maybelle on the zither for him.

The fluorescent lights reflected off the white tables and the tweed linoleum floor. It seemed as bright as morning now.

With disgust I thought of David Sugarbaker. It wasn’t that he’d been drunk; not even that he’d been drunkenly surly. His sin was not being Ross Remson.

It was hard for me to accept the fact that Ross Remson was not in Henderson. Wherever he had gone the last time he had left town, either he was still there hiding from his San Francisco cronies, or he’d moved on to some place safer. Wherever he was, he wasn’t here.

Briefly, I considered the possibility that he could be here—that both Ross Remson and David Sugarbaker could be in the same town. But that possibility was too remote to waste time on. No, the man I had seen by Michelle’s house was David Sugarbaker, and the reason he was there was to look at her mosquito larvae.

So Ross Remson had not killed Michelle. Michelle may or may not have become the Bohemian Connection, but Ross had not killed her to get the job back.

Maybe Michelle was not the Bohemian Connection. Maybe the Bohemian Connection had nothing to do with her death. Maybe she hadn’t even been murdered.

I slumped back in my chair. Could it be that Sheriff Wescott was right—Michelle’s death had been an accident? The reason I had been suspicious from the beginning was because I saw Ross’s picture, then saw “Ross” behind Ward and Jenny’s house, and later saw him staring down at the sewer hole before he disappeared. But now that there was another explanation—David Sugarbaker had been checking out mosquito larvae—was there any reason to believe Michelle had been killed? Had I annoyed people, wasted my day, and made an enemy of the local sheriff for no reason at all?

My eggs, sauerkraut, and chorizo arrived with a slab of heated black bread. A non-meter reader might have been too depressed to eat, but I dug in.

What
did
I know had happened? Michelle had met David Sugarbaker when he came out in the afternoon to look at her garage. She had asked Father Calloway to let her off when she spotted him in town. Why? She knew he wasn’t Ross. Was she in the habit of drinking with male acquaintances? Vida, of course, denied that. The impression I had was that Michelle would have gone with Ross any time, but not with just any man. But that wasn’t the message Sugarbaker got. I wondered what shape he was in last night. How reliable was his judgment? Were his eyes open enough to see Michelle’s reactions? Or did he see what he wanted to see? Still, as Vida had said, Michelle wouldn’t have gone off with some strange man the night before the anti-hookers’ demonstration.

David Sugarbaker had said she asked him about speeding up the response to her complaint. Might she have simply stopped for another look at this man who resembled Ross? Then whatever conversation there was would have just been filler. Could it be that Michelle had led him on—as he had said, looking at him as adoringly as she would have gazed at Ross—only to shake herself back to reality. Had she agreed to have him take her home and then rebuffed him at the foot of the stairs by the sewer hole? Drunk and angry, had he pushed her in?

It was possible. But if he had killed her, why was he hanging around here? Why wasn’t he putting as much distance between the sewer hole and himself as possible? Did he think it would look better for him to stay here as if nothing had happened? Did he have other cesspools and larvae to investigate?

I would have to talk to David Sugarbaker again.

I dunked a forkful of sauerkraut in egg yolk.

Who else benefited from Michelle’s death? Craig? He and Michelle weren’t getting along. She resented Alison working at the shop. Nothing out of the ordinary for a young couple. That was grounds for a separate vacation, but hardly for murder.

Ward and Jenny McElvey? Both of them found Michelle a nuisance. There was a chance she could have forced them to hook up to the sewer sooner than Ward wanted. But you don’t kill your neighbor so you can use your cesspool two months longer. And for Jenny, who seemed as estranged from the whole cesspool dispute as she was from her brother Ross (indeed uninterested in anything more mundane than her art), Michelle was merely a pest that could be swatted away.

And Alison? Was she afraid of losing her job? Perhaps. But Alison had traveled; she had worked other places. She had created this job from nothing. There was no reason she couldn’t do the same elsewhere.

I piled a forkful of sauerkraut atop a piece of chorizo and managed to balance an inch of egg on that before I brought it warily to my mouth.

Alison? Was it Alison that Sugarbaker had seen in the bar? A woman with dark blue eyes, wild blond hair, and overalls—that described Alison. Michelle’s reaction made sense if it had been Alison. No other woman would have made her so angry. If Sugarbaker had been looking at Jenny or Vida or me, would Michelle have been annoyed? Surely she wouldn’t have cared enough to stomp out. But seeing him ignore her to gaze upon Alison, just as Ross had left Henderson and lived with Alison, would have been enough to trigger her anger.

I bit into the warm black bread.

Alison? Alison had gone to a lot of trouble to get a job in Henderson. Why? Because she liked the area? That was reason enough. The whole Russian River Resort Area had an appealing woodsyness, a vacation atmosphere, while still being close enough to San Francisco for a trip to the theater. But did Alison have stronger reasons? Why had Ross brought her up here? Was it to give her the Bohemian Connection job? Had he brought her here to introduce her to the people she would need to meet, to show her around so she would know how to get to the cocaine dealers and the empty houses?

But that was eight years ago. Why had Alison waited all this time to move here? And how had the Connection work been handled in the meantime? Could Ross have done it from out of town? Could he have known what houses were vacant and where the owners were and been sure that no owner would pop up unexpectedly? Could he have handled emergency demands? The only way Ross could have done that from outside was to have scaled down the operation to Bohemian Week only…or have an assistant in Henderson. And the likely assistant was Michelle.

So, had Michelle run the Bohemian Connection in Ross’s absence? Then, this year, had Ross blithely sold or given the business to Alison? If Alison had arrived to take over, Michelle would have been outraged.

If the Connection were anyone but Alison, Michelle might have accepted a financial arrangement. She might even have agreed to be pushed out. But Alison was different. Michelle resented her. She wouldn’t let Alison steal the Connection. And Alison would never be safe as long as Michelle knew she was the Connection. She was the one person Michelle would gladly turn in to the sheriff.

If Alison wanted to secure the Bohemian Connection job, she would have had to kill Michelle.

I recalled Alison at Maria Keneally’s house by the cemetery. That would be a perfect spot for the Connection to use. It was secluded and the owner was overseas for the summer. Alison may have been there earlier this afternoon to get it set up.

I finished the sauerkraut and chorizo and mopped up the last drops of yolk with the black bread. It was clear to me that before I came to a decision, I would have to be sure that Sugarbaker was telling me the truth about Michelle’s departure—that he hadn’t left with her—and I would have to see if Alison was the woman he saw at the bar. I paid for my dinner and headed outside. The sidewalk was nearly empty now. There was no place to walk to. Even on this weekend the shops along North Bank Road closed early. No one in town for a
fun
weekend would be patronizing the hardware store or the grocery at ten-thirty. Fischer’s Ice Cream was still open. There was still a line. Otherwise, the only populated establishment was the bar. It was amazing how quiet the town proper was.

This was about the same time that Michelle had left the bar last night, if Sugarbaker was to be believed. The town would have been even more deserted, it being Thursday. And once she left North Bank Road, there would have been no street lights, no one on foot. She would have been alone, oblivious to the danger.

The noise from the bar greeted me twenty feet away. Through the swinging doors, I could see the crowd. I had to pull one of the doors toward me to avoid pushing it into a pair of customers.

Inside, people filled all the chairs, all the bar stools, stood between tables, and leaned against the walls. They stood two and three deep at the bar. Sugarbaker was nowhere in sight. Had he found the right lady and gone?

I spotted Jim at the far end of the bar and began to edge my way between drinkers toward him. The smoke was dense. The clatter of glasses and the roar of conversation made anything below a scream inaudible.

I pushed my way to the corner of the bar. “Jim,” I hollered.

Jim didn’t move.

I repeated my call. It wasn’t until the fourth one that he came toward me.

He grinned. “Vejay. I don’t see you in here for days, and then suddenly you can’t stay away. You want a beer?”

“No, I’ve had enough.”

“Now there’s something I don’t often hear.” His grin got wider. “Well, if you’re not here for a beer are you looking for another man to round out your evening?”

I thought no one had noticed. I’d forgotten Jim’s reputation for knowing every flirtation, every innuendo that passed lips in his bar. Jim’s was one of the few bars in the area that was rarely mentioned in the Sheriff’s Report in the newspaper. Jim caught arguments early, before bottles became weapons.

“I’m counting on your eagle eye.”

“Okay,” he shouted, “but I don’t have much time.” He indicated the crowd pushing toward the bar for drinks.

“Right. You saw the man I was with tonight—not the sheriff—the other one.”

“Yes?”

“Did you see him in here last night?”

“Yes.”

“With Michelle Davidson?”

“Yes.”

“Did he leave with her?”

“You jealous?”

Apparently Jim hadn’t heard of Michelle’s death yet.

“No. Believe me. I’ll explain when you’re not so rushed. But it’s important. And I am a regular customer.”

“Okay, okay. No, your boyfriend stayed after she left. Pretty teed off he was, too. But he got over that fast. Tried to put the make on a couple other women. He was pretty far gone. I thought I was going to have to take action, but then he staggered out of his own accord.” Jim turned back to his customers.

“One more thing, Jim.”

He turned only his head toward me.

“Alison Barluska, do you know her?”

He nodded.

“Was she in here last night?”

He hesitated. I could tell from his expression that if we had been alone, he would have had some questions for me before providing an answer. But now, rushed as he was, he just said, “Yes.”

“When?”

But he had already turned and headed for the beer glasses.

I pushed my way back through the crowd.

At a table along the side wall, three meter readers waved and called. I waved back but kept moving for the door.

Once outside I turned toward my house, walking quickly through town to the stop light and then along the steep-sided road that suddenly seemed very dark.

If Alison was in the bar last night, then she wasn’t with Craig. Why had he insisted that she was with him constantly until he went home? What was he hiding? As I walked through the darkness, I realized that I would have to deal with Craig tomorrow. I would have to challenge that tightly controlled temper of his and find out why he had lied.

C
ONTRARY TO
S
HERIFF
W
ESCOTT’S
expectation, I had quite a decent sleep. I was exhausted. I was used to physically grueling days, ones where I climbed up and down hillsides, trudged up steep driveways, and made my way through overgrown yards hoping I hadn’t missed any spot of skin when I had applied the ImunOak. Meter reading has its drawbacks, but for minimizing stress there is nothing like walking for eight hours and doing a job at which you are competent. Even personal crises seem manageable at the end of a strenuous route. But sitting in my truck in the heat all day and emerging only to provoke people was another thing. By the time I got home it took all my strength to climb into the bathtub.

And when I woke in the morning it was later than I had planned—after eight. Still half asleep, I decided I would make breakfast first, then deal with the very unpleasant task of confronting Craig.