The Bohemian Connection

by Susan Dunlap

  Behind him was Sheriff Wescott.

  CHAPTER 6

  I JAMMED THE PHOTO in my pocket, wiped my hand on my jeans, and climbed out of the sewer hole.

  Before I could speak, Sheriff Wescott said, “Didn’t you hear me before? Not half an hour ago? I said stay out of this case. Out! And I barely leave the street before you climb down into the one place that’s off-limits.”

  I said nothing.

  “I could book you for this. You know that, don’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “Okay, but I expect you to tell me, honestly and without withholding as much as a thought, what you were doing down in that sewer hole.”

  I had no choice. “I dropped something into the hole. That’s how I happened to be looking down there when I spotted Michelle’s body.” I glanced uncomfortably at Craig. He had moved back a few steps and was leaning against the stair railing. If he noted anything either of us said, he gave no sign of it. He merely looked dazed.

  “What did you drop?” the sheriff demanded.

  I extricated the snapshot of Ross and Michelle from my pocket and handed it to him, feeling like a naughty child. The photo was creased from being jammed into my pocket and was smudged with mud, but both the faces were still recognizable.

  Sheriff Wescott looked down at it a moment and then, almost involuntarily, glanced at Craig. Motioning me to the far side of the hole, away from Craig, he said, “Who is this man?”

  “The one I tried to tell you about, the old boyfriend.”

  “The one you’ve decided makes this a murder case, eh? So you took it upon yourself to break through our cordon, climb down into the secured area, and get it, is that it?”

  “That’s it,” I said, involuntarily mimicking his tone. “And since it’s so irrelevant to your case, I’ll take it back.”

  “Anything in the hole is evidence.”

  “Evidence of what, if you don’t think there was a crime?”

  “Evidence.”

  “If I hadn’t searched for that you’d have never known it was there,” I said, realizing as I said it, that this line of complaint was going to get me nowhere.

  Instead of giving me back Ross’s picture, Wescott made me describe my search for it, where I had looked, where I’d stepped. The photo he deposited in a plastic bag.

  “I want you to understand that this is the last time for anything like this. The next time you do something that is not thoroughly legal, completely above-board, you can count on being a guest of the county. Is that clear?”

  “What?” Behind Ward McElvey’s house a man stood looking down at us.

  “I said, the next time I catch you at anything illegal, you go to jail. Understand now?”

  I was sure the man was Ross Remson. Or almost sure. It was that flicker of doubt that kept me from pointing him out to the sheriff. Then he turned and walked behind Ward’s house.

  “Is that all?” I said to the sheriff.

  “It had better be.”

  I forced myself to walk, not run, around the sewer hole and down the street past Ward’s house. With each step my pace quickened. On the far side of Ward’s was an older house, the one with the yard Ward crossed. I looked between the houses, but there was no sight of Ross. I hurried on till I could see between the next two houses. Nothing moved. Ross had been walking too. How had I missed him? Maybe he had started running as soon as he was out of view of the sheriff. I rushed down past the next house, but again there was no running man, no branches waving in the still afternoon.

  If these houses were like mine there would be a path behind them that led to a commonly used spring. It would be easy for Ross to lope along that but not to run all out. I couldn’t believe he had outdistanced me and still left no trace of his flight.

  But if he hadn’t run beyond this spot where was he? Had he hidden somewhere along the path? Was he lurking behind an outbuilding waiting to hear the sheriff’s car leave? It might be a long wait. Even then he would have to get down without being spotted. He had grown up here. People would recognize him. They wouldn’t think of him as a murderer, but they would find it noteworthy that he had returned to Henderson after being gone so long.

  Of course, he was familiar with the terrain. For someone who knew the area the sensible thing to do would be to go uphill, to come out on Cemetery Road, the street above, and stroll back to his car. And the most likely place to park without drawing notice would be at the old Henderson cemetery at the top of the hill. The graves there were old. Relatives of the entombed had long since died and been buried in the new cemetery across the river. Now the only people who visited the cemetery were those who for one reason or another wanted the solitude.

  I walked quickly up Half Hill Road. My pickup was on the near side of the sewer hole. The sheriff’s car was next to it, but fortunately the sheriff himself was nowhere in sight. He must have gone into Craig’s house.

  I climbed into the cab of my pickup, backed into a driveway, and turned toward town.

  I took a right on Zeus Lane, up the hill toward Cemetery Road. I barely had time to slam on the brakes. A Winnebago blocked the street. Its nose was in a driveway.

  “Could you pull in?” I hollered to the driver.

  He looked confused. “Waiting for the wife,” he called. “Never can finish her good-byes in less than an hour. You’d think she—”

  “I need to get by,” I yelled. “I’m in a hurry.”

  “Oh. Sure.” He started the engine and inched the huge vehicle into the driveway.

  I raced by and cut left onto Cemetery Road.

  Cemetery Road paralleled Half Hill Road then cut sharply uphill to wind its way past a few dead-end streets before it reached the cemetery itself. It was possible that Ross could have driven into one of those dead ends but unlikely since he had no reason to think anyone was looking for him. If he didn’t, and if he hadn’t followed Cemetery Road down across Zeus Lane and into town at the other end of the shopping area, then he was somewhere on this street. Or in the cemetery itself.

  Cemetery Road was narrower than Half Hill. Beside it the ground rose or dropped steeply. The houses were newer, had large decks, and looked precarious. The only vehicle parked on the street was a county car and it was empty. I drove slowly, checking as best I could for a tall sandy-haired man who might be hiding behind a eucalyptus tree or making his way up the street. But when I reached the cemetery I still hadn’t seen him.

  The entrance to the cemetery was marked by cement pillars between which a gate may once have hung. If so, it had been stolen long ago. Now even the pillars were worn, like the teeth of an old dog. I drove along the dirt road. Clumps of stone suggested it had been covered with gravel at a time when that was as close to paving as any road in this area got. But that time was long ago. Now the road was dusty and deeply pitted and even in a pickup the going was rough.

  I drove on to a flat spot at the top of the hill—the parking area. There was no other vehicle here.

  Briefly I considered racing back down into town to see if Ross was there. But he wouldn’t be. That would be crazy. He wouldn’t rush away from Michelle’s house so fast that I couldn’t find any remnant of his being there just to be seen on North Bank Road.

  I got out of my truck and walked toward the gravestones as I had done on many occasions when I wanted to think. After the sepulchral sewer hole the shady cemetery seemed almost cheerful. It bore no resemblance to newer memorial parks where unobtrusive memorial plaques are camouflaged so they won’t mar the landscaping. Worn, cracked, their lettering so faint as to no longer reveal who rested beneath, the gravestones here were grouped in family plots. Tarnished low brass rails enclosed the ten-by-twenty-foot rectangles.

  The mud from the sewer hole still caked my feet; leaves stuck to the mud; and my feet seemed part of the earth beneath. I felt a surprisingly easy affinity with the other inhabitants here. A cool dusk breeze lifted the leaves and passed like a shawl over my arms. It was nice to be here in the silence, with no aw
kward questions to ask, no sheriff to threaten me. I sat down on a long flat stone, picked up a dead pine branch, and began half-heartedly dusting the mud from my jeans.

  The man I had followed had eluded me. But suppose that man wasn’t Ross. I had only my own assumption to say that he was. It was reasonable to assume that a man who merely looked like Ross might have been walking down the street—but standing in Ward’s backyard? What was he doing there if he wasn’t Ross?

  Assuming he was Ross, why would he have left Henderson so suddenly as to miss his father’s funeral, and then return eight years later to kill a girl he had dated when she was in high school? Was there more to it than that? Alison Barluska hadn’t mentioned any letters or phone calls from Michelle when she was living with Ross. But Ross might have kept in contact. Alison, as she had said, wasn’t the love of Ross’s life. His living with her wouldn’t have precluded visits to Michelle. Perhaps he had come to Henderson when Craig was away. Perhaps Michelle had told Craig she was going to visit her sister in Santa Rosa and gone on to San Francisco to meet Ross. But even if that were so, even if they had carried on a clandestine romance all these years, why would Ross have killed her now?

  The branch cracked halfway. I tore the end loose and continued to brush.

  According to Ward, Michelle hadn’t had enough to do now that her children were in school. Craig spent long hours at the plant nursery. Michelle was irritated about Alison working there. Was this then the time that Michelle had decided to run off with Ross? Had Ross objected (was it more than he had in mind?), Michelle insisted, and he killed her? Wait—rather than kill her, wouldn’t it have been easier for Ross just to stay out of Henderson?

  It would, unless Michelle had had some hold on him. Suppose she had known he was the Bohemian Connection. He had told Alison; maybe he also bragged to Michelle. Whatever he did as the Bohemian Connection included the illegal.

  But it had been eight years since he had been the Connection. Unless he was involved in something more felonious than Alison had intimated, the statute of limitations would have run out on any crime he had committed.

  I pushed myself up and strolled along the overgrown path between the families of gravestones. The path was thick with pine needles, so that even the sound of my steps was muffled. I felt like I was walking on pillows. A redwood tree, older than any of the dead beneath the ground, shaded the nearer plots. In winter it would shield them from the driving rain. Now its shade was dark against the patches of bright setting sun. I walked to the farthest plot, that of Maria Keneally and her five children, all of whom had died before the age of ten. She had outlived the last of them by thirty years. When I worked the hillside route the cemetery was a good place for lunch. I had sat here many times before when I wanted to sort things out. I had wondered about Maria Keneally and her sad life.

  I sat again on her stone and stared beyond the cemetery at a log house thirty yards away. The house was owned by her niece, an old woman of the same name. When I came to read her meter, she always rushed out, offered me tea (an offer no one who works outside all day can afford to accept), and invariably stated that it was good for an old lady to live so close to the cemetery. Not so far to go.

  After the initial shock, I had smiled at the old refrain. I hadn’t mentioned that this old cemetery was full and her remains would have to be taken to the new graveyard across the river.

  As it turned out, she went to neither, but in May had gone for a summerlong visit to a niece, yet another Maria Keneally, in County Cork. Her yard, however, was so clearly untended that it looked as if she had been deposited in the graveyard.

  A squirrel ran across the yard in front of the house and toward the giant redwood.

  Enough of houses and rodents, I told myself. Why would Ross have killed Michelle? Even though Ross hadn’t been the Bohemian Connection for eight years, the need he had filled in that job still existed. Men still had rendezvous, doubtless still coveted a lid of grass or a snort of coke. So if Ross were no longer the Bohemian Connection, who was? Craig? Ward? Or some other man?

  Or did the Connection have to be a man? A chairman of the board might be unnerved to discover his illicit rendezvous was arranged by a woman, but his minions wouldn’t care. And marijuana farmers and coke dealers will sell to anyone. No, there was no reason the Bohemian Connection couldn’t be a woman.

  Ross had had the necessary contacts both at the Grove and in town. Whoever had taken over after him needed to know those people. The locals would deal only with someone they could trust, and the visitors would be even warier. The only way both groups could feel sure of the new Connection would be if that person were Ross’s hand-picked successor.

  Besides having Ross’s trust, what would someone need in order to be the Connection? A working relationship with the local suppliers. A good knowledge of the area. No one who wandered in cold from San Francisco or Oakland could find a suitable rendezvous for a company president and his lover and know where to get good grass from the backwoods gardens to the north of here. And the Connection would need his time to be flexible. A sudden rush of demands couldn’t be handled in half an hour. It was hardly work that could be farmed out.

  Of the people I had met asking about Michelle’s disappearance, it was Michelle herself who most nearly fit this description. Michelle had had more time than she could handle. She had grown up in Henderson, gone to school here, known all the winter people. And perhaps more importantly, she alone had trusted Ross. It was she whom he could trust in return. It was she to whom he could turn over the Connection trade knowing it would stay as he had left it.

  Or could he? Eight years can alter a lot. In less time than that every cell in the body changes. In those eight years the Michelle who had been an adoring high school girl had become a woman. In that time the Bohemian Connection might no longer have been Ross’s gift to her, but have become her own business. That didn’t seem like something Ross would comprehend easily.

  Had Ross come back wanting a share of his trade? Or perhaps all of it? Had he viewed the intervening years as a period when Michelle ran a business for him, just marking time till he returned and took charge again? Had he announced as much and Michelle objected? Had they had a few drinks, walked back to Michelle’s house, argued, and he killed her?

  Leaves crackled. I looked toward the empty house. The screen door was open and by it stood Alison Barluska.

  “Maria Keneally’s not home, Alison,” I called.

  Alison turned abruptly. I couldn’t make out her expression at that distance. From her movements she seemed startled.

  I stood up and called to her again. Alison was just the person I needed to see. She could tell me if Ross had received letters from Michelle. I hadn’t asked her specifically. And she could tell me in greater detail—much greater detail—what Ross had done as the Bohemian Connection. I glanced down, looking for the path through the underbrush. When I looked up Alison was hurrying around the side of the house toward the driveway.

  “Alison, wait!” I called.

  She disappeared behind the house and in a minute I heard her truck pull away.

  I hurried across to the house. Vines grew up the wood sides. The yard was a scramble of low weeds and pine needles. There was another old redwood at the edge of the property that shaded the yard and allowed it to survive untended without being totally overgrown.

  Before she left, Maria Keneally had told me she would unplug all her electric appliances. I had asked her if she wouldn’t feel safer leaving a light on a timer. Housebreaking was an ongoing business in the river area. Each winter, after the summer people had left, a changing crew of winter residents began breaking in. Anyone who went off in September leaving a television or stereo should have been surprised to find it still there when he came back in June. The occasional house was guarded by alarms, a few even connected to the sheriff’s department. But alarms were impractical, particularly for houses as isolated as this one.

  Maria Keneally had been pleased at my concern
. She’d made a point of taking me into her living room and showing me her father’s antique pistol that she kept by the door to her garage. “Still shoots ’em dead,” she’d assured me. She wasn’t about to let any shiftless layabout from Guerneville or Monte Rio break into her house and steal her television when she was there, nor did she intend to pay the electric company for light when she wasn’t. And that was that.

  I checked the windows now. No wires were visible. But I hardly expected Maria Keneally to have paid for an alarm system. So it would have been easy for anyone to break a windowpane and let himself in.

  I walked around the house till I found the broken window, a bathroom window shielded from view by overgrown bushes.

  Had Alison broken in here? I had only seen her at the door. Had she been canvassing and knocked, waited, and was leaving when I spotted her?

  I hurried down to the end of the driveway. The Davidson’s Plants truck was not parked by any of the other houses down the road. Alison wasn’t knocking at doors there.

  So, if not canvassing, what had Alison been doing here?

  CHAPTER 7

  I DROVE BY DAVIDSON’S Plants, prepared to ask Alison Barluska what she had been doing at old Miss Keneally’s house. But the nursery was closed and the nursery truck was not in the lot. So Alison had not come back here.

  No matter what Alison had been doing there, I felt sure she would tell me she was canvassing. She might have been working with Ross and checking out the isolated house to use for rendezvous. But she wouldn’t tell me that. She’d say she was canvassing for the gardening service. Or, indeed, she might have been canvassing.

  Ross had been the Bohemian Connection. Had he been succeeded by Michelle, or Alison? Or had all three of them been in it together? Or…

  Before I tried to make sense of that I needed to be sure the man Michelle had met downtown last night was Ross. For that I had to talk to Father Calloway.