by Susan Dunlap
His little encounter with the sheriff was definitely a subject I didn’t want to reopen. On the very slim possibility that he might run into the sheriff again, I didn’t want him to be able to quote one word of mine on that topic. I walked back into the bar and asked for a beer.
On a less busy night my reentry with the man Wescott and I had hustled out of there minutes earlier might have attracted some comment, but if anyone remembered it tonight amidst the shouts and laughter and clanking of glasses, they didn’t mention it loud enough for me to hear. I followed Sugarbaker to a table near the back of the bar. I would have preferred one against the wall where it would have been quieter, but those had been snatched up by the few other people who had intentions of being heard. Sugarbaker pulled out a chair for me and sat in the opposite one, facing into the room.
Before he could return to the topic of the sheriff, I checked my assumption, asking, “The woman who said you looked like someone else, who was she?”
It took him a moment to readjust his thoughts. “A complainant.”
A complainant! How bad could my luck be? “Are you a lawyer?” No wonder he had thought of false arrest.
“No.”
“A legal assistant?”
“No.”
“Well?”
“I’m a field investigator for the Department of Environmental Health.”
The mosquito man! I laughed so hard the beer slopped over the edge of my glass and onto my hand.
Sugarbaker, the mosquito man, stared. “What’s so funny?”
“Sorry,” I said. And when I was more composed, I said, “You investigate things like complaints about mosquitoes, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“One of my friends had a complaint about mosquitoes—Michelle Davidson on Half Hill Road.”
“Hey, that’s her. She’s been calling in every month since Christmas.”
“Every month?”
“Residents are only allowed to complain once a month.”
I laughed again. Was this rule Environmental Health’s answer to Follow-up? Did each bureaucracy have its own special system for avoiding having to deal with grievances? I suspected Mr. Bobbs would gladly trade Follow-up for the joy of restricting me to one complaint a month.
“I’ll bet that limits your work.”
He smiled tentatively. “It’s a practical rule. Our investigations take time. You have to come out and look the situation over. That’s what I was doing yesterday, looking at your friend’s garage. Then I had to take a sample—”
“So you met Michelle then?”
Now he did smile. It wasn’t hard to see what he thought of Michelle. “Real looker, your friend. Real interested in her problem.”
“The mosquito larvae?”
“Yes.”
“So what did you conclude?”
He took a swallow of his beer and leaned forward. Behind him three men pushed between the tables. To the right a group burst into laughter. It was all I could do to hear Sugarbaker. I leaned closer.
“Real nice lady,” he said.
“Did you make a date to see her last night?”
“Nah. It wasn’t a date. Nothing like that. We just happened to meet. She has a husband, you know, not that that would have stopped her. She seemed, well, you know, hot to trot.” He finished his beer. His eyes were beginning to droop now but his speech gave no hint he had been drinking. He ordered another round even though my glass was still half full.
“I don’t want to sound like I think I’m irresistible. I got over that a few years ago.” He laughed. “Divorce makes you realize that you’re not everyone’s taste.”
“Indeed.”
“You divorced too?”
“Yes. It’s the California way.”
“How long?”
“Few years.”
“Oh. Mine was final two months ago. That’s how come I’m staying with my folks. Donna, my ex, took everything—the house, the car, the cats. We didn’t live in California. It wasn’t a community property state. If I’d known we were going to get divorced, I would have moved back here. Then I’d have a place to live or something to drive.”
Next to the sheriff, this was the last topic I wanted to hear about. My own divorce had been relatively easy. Unlike the apparent bonfire the Sugarbakers had had, mine had been more like sweeping away the ash. I asked, “Do you think it was accidental, Michelle’s seeing you last night?”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t all that surprised. Her husband works late Thursday nights. She told me.”
Two more beers arrived. Sugarbaker poured a glass and downed half of it. “Odd though.”
“How?”
“Couldn’t figure her out. I mean she sat there staring at me like she couldn’t wait, you know. Then she’d shake herself out of it and look at me like she’d never seen me before. And she’d ask me about her complaint.”
“What did you tell her?”
“About her complaint, you mean?” He gave his head a quick shake and seemed to pull himself back a notch closer to sobriety. “She had a reasonable gripe. I told her that. She wanted to know how she could speed things up. I’m not supposed to tell complainants to do that, you know. But she had this real clear complaint, so I told her, ‘Get some clout.’ That’s what I said. ‘Call your congressman.’ Boy you get one of them bugging the department for you and wham!—your complaint is number one.”
I took a sip of my beer.
“That’s what I should do about that jerk, the sheriff. I can call my congressman. And I can sue, too. What do you think?”
“Did Michelle say she would contact her congressman?”
He tried to open his eyes wide but the lids moved only halfway, then closed back to where they had been, so that his eyes were nearly slits. It was as if his eyes absorbed all the effects of the alcohol and his speech none. “Odd thing,” he said. “She said her congressman would be here, in this town, this Sunday to give a speech. Then she laughed.”
“Laughed!”
“Yeah. She said he’d get a good audience. She said the last congressman who spoke here blocked traffic or something and the people burned down his podium.” Sugarbaker was sounding less sober by the moment.
“Did Michelle say she’d ask the congressman about her problem?”
He giggled. “She said after the heat he might get from the rest of the people here, he’d be glad to talk to her about her mosquito larvae.” He downed the rest of his beer.
“What happened then—after she told you about the congressman?”
He eyed me suspiciously. “We talked. Nothing else. We were getting on real good. I told her I could tell her what to say to her congressman. We could get together, plan what she should say.”
“When were you going to do that?”
“We could have then, that night. I had this motel room—”
“Did you ask her?”
He picked up the glass and stared into it. He looked like he was having a hard time using those almost-closed eyes.
I repeated my question louder.
“Well, no. Odd thing. All of a sudden she gets real mad. I mean you don’t stare at the person you’re talking to all the time, do you? I mean, you look at other people, and some of them are women, right?”
“Yes?”
“I’ll admit it, I was looking at this blonde, at the bar. She had these dark blue eyes and this wild blond hair. She was wearing overalls, with this wild blond hair.” He paused so long I thought he was about to pass out, but he pulled himself together and said, “Then, all of a sudden Michelle gets mad. She says, ‘Do you find her attractive?’ Just like a schoolteacher or something. I say, ‘Not bad.’ And she gets up and stomps out, just like that. Not a word.”
I restrained my urge to comment, “Odd thing.” Instead, I asked, “What did you do after Michelle left?”
“I sat there, then I was going to hit on the blonde, but she left, and then there was this brunette, but…I went back to my motel. But I’m not sta
ying there tonight. No, sir. I told them what they could do with their cesspool of a place.” He put both hands on the table, started to push himself up, then dropped back into his chair. “They sell bottles of wine here. We could get a bottle. Do you live around here?”
“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.”
CHAPTER 12
ONCE 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?
