by Susan Dunlap
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.
CHAPTER 13
CONTRARY TO SHERIFF WESCOTT’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.
Craig had lied to me when he insisted he and Alison were together until he went home Thursday night. He was hiding something. He was protecting himself, or Alison, or both. No wonder he had been so hesitant about asking me to look into Michelle’s death. That he agreed to it at all was a testimonial to Vida’s influence.
I showered, toweled off, and left my hair wet. I dawdled over my makeup, procrastinating. And breakfast—I couldn’t face it at all.
The parking lot at Davidson’s Plants was empty except for Craig’s car and the shop truck. On the sliding glass door was a Closed sign. Peering in, I spotted Craig adjusting a container of plants. I banged on the glass.
“Craig,” I called. “It’s Vejay.”
He turned, and from his immediate, unguarded expression, I thought he would walk away. But almost instantly his face changed to that of the pleasant, helpful man his customers dealt with. He pulled open the door.
“I’m not doing business today,” he said. “But there are some things that can’t be put off. And sitting home wasn’t going to make me feel better. The kids are still with Michelle’s sister. They don’t know. I saw them last night. They’re better off there.”
“When are you going to tell them?”
He sank back against the counter. “I don’t know. Soon, I guess. I don’t want to have them hear it somewhere else. But I just couldn’t last night.”
“It’s lucky you have so many relatives around here.”
Craig nodded. He looked tired and rumpled, as if he’d slept in his clothes. Even his beard looked slept in. I recalled thinking that he was wiry and strong, but now his muscles seemed to weigh down his body. His brown hair was greasy from not having been washed, and the beginning of a bald spot showed through on top.
“It’s going to be awful for the kids. Michelle spent so much time with them. I couldn’t because of the shop. I couldn’t make money and have time to be home too. I had to be here. I had to go to professional meetings; I had to go to the flower market—I mean, before Jenny started doing it. I just couldn’t spend the time with the kids.”
“That’s pretty normal,” I said.
“Maybe, but it won’t make it any easier on them now.” Turning toward the tall vases of cut flowers on the far end of the counter beside the African violets, Craig said, “Used to be we could just get mums and dahlias and an occasional iris. But now with all the gays here, they want variety, they want exotic.” He moved a bunch of yellow trumpet-shaped flowers that seemed plenty exotic to me.
Seeing how upset Craig was, I hesitated momentarily. Then, taking a breath, I said, “Craig, where were you Thursday night?”
He turned back toward me, his brows lifted in question.
“You said you were here with Alison, all evening, until nearly midnight. You weren’t, were you?”
His jaw tightened, but he didn’t say anything.
“Alison was in the bar.”
“She was only gone a few minutes.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know. What difference does it make? I was here.”
“You said you were together all evening.”
He was still holding the plastic vase of yellow flowers. His fingers pressed tighter against it.
“I asked you if either of you went out for a beer and you said you were too busy—the books didn’t balance. You don’t lie for no reason, Craig. You don’t lie about the night your wife was killed.”
“Michelle wasn’t killed! She just died.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me the truth? You had your car here Thursday night. That’s why Michelle needed a ride. You could have left the truck in the parking lot and the light on in the office to suggest you were here. You could have driven anywhere.”
“You better leave, Vejay.” His voice was controlled now, but his knuckles were white.
“I’ll go when you tell me what really happened Thursday night.”
“You—” Hi
s lips pressed hard against each other.
“You and Michelle weren’t getting along. She’d been drinking with the duplicate of her old boyfriend. She left the bar and was killed. And that’s the exact time Alison was not with you. That’s the time you lied about.”
“I said you’d better leave.” He stepped back. That reining in was more ominous than a move toward me.
“Maybe you were here. Maybe it was Alison you were protecting. Maybe she didn’t come back here after she left the bar.”
“Vejay.”
“Or maybe both of you. Maybe this business—”
He hurled the plastic vase. It smashed into the wall behind me. He grabbed me by the shoulders, yanking me off my feet, and threw me through the open door so hard that I landed sprawled against a potted spruce five feet away. He pulled the glass door closed.
When I recovered enough to stand up, he was nowhere in sight.
I brushed the dirt off the seat of my jeans and walked through the parking lot. I wasn’t hurt. Craig could have hurt me, but he hadn’t. A smaller woman like Michelle might have been bruised. A less sturdy woman might have been frightened. Vida had told me about Craig’s temper, but what she hadn’t said, perhaps hadn’t known, was that he could intimidate physically while still under some control. I wondered if he had learned that during his years with Michelle.
Twice I had seen Craig faced with my demands. In his house with Vida yesterday evening, when his only available weapons were words, he couldn’t fight back. He acquiesced grudgingly, but he did as Vida told him. Today, again, he couldn’t argue. Maybe, he didn’t know how. Maybe he had never won with words. Physical force was his only recourse.
Still, I didn’t know if he was capable of killing. And I didn’t know where he’d been Thursday night.
I walked into the café. It was early yet for Saturday morning breakfast. Weekdays saw a number of regulars and semi-regulars rushing in before work, but Saturday most of the locals ate at home and most of the tourists weren’t up. So this morning there was just me and two women sitting at a table by the wall.
Had it not been Bohemian Week, and had I not had Michelle’s anti-hookers’ group in the back of my mind, I might have assumed they were merely tourists from Southern California. Neither looked like the stereotypical prostitute. One was brunette, the other blond—not platinum, but a darker, streaked, almost natural-looking shade. Their makeup was carefully done, just a bit obvious. Both wore shorts, a clear sign that they were not Northern Californians—not on a foggy morning like this —and the blonde wore a sleeveless front-button T-shirt, with the buttons open just far enough to show a strip of untanned cleavage. Both were freezing.
I walked over to them. “The best place to get sweaters is the hardware store.”
The blonde looked up suspiciously. The brunette, who was eating one of the cafe’s superb blueberry buttermilk biscuits, continued to chew.
“There are a couple of dress shops here and in Guerneville, but they carry those light summer sweaters that don’t do anything in this weather except remind you how cold you are.”
The brunette glanced at the prominent goosebumps on her arm. “I don’t know why I can’t remember. Every time I come up north I freeze.” She had a trace of a Midwestern accent.
Marty, the weekend waiter, and the café’s token gay, plunked my eggs and kraut on the table.
“You don’t mind?” I asked perfunctorily as I sat down.
The blonde shrugged. She was just drinking coffee. She looked from my plate to my midsection and back.
“I get a lot of exercise,” I said.
“Tell us about the sweaters,” the brunette insisted. “Where do we get them and how soon?”
“The hardware store, Gresham’s, is right down the street. You have to go through all the pipes and tools to the back where they have the overalls and the flannel shirts and those thick ragg sweaters with the shawl collars. And”—I looked down at my watch—“they should open in about twenty minutes.”
“Thanks,” the brunette said. “I was beginning to think of those mountain climbers who died on Everest.”
The blonde sat silent, looking both bored and wary. There was more similarity between the brunette and I than the two of them. The blonde, I suspected, didn’t know where Everest was. And if you asked her about scaling, she would have thought of a dermatologist.
I hated to endanger this moment of friendliness, a commodity getting rarer in my life, but I said, “Can I ask you one question?” Before they could answer, I continued. “You’ve probably heard of an anti-prostitution demonstration outside the Grove scheduled for this weekend. Do you think whether or not that was held would affect what goes on here?”
“How would I know?” It was the blonde.
I waited, looking toward her companion.
She seemed to be considering.
“If you had to guess…” I prompted.
She nodded slowly. “If I had inside knowledge on such matters, I would feel sure that very little would affect things. Certainly not a protest. If protests made a difference, the Grove would have been closed years ago. The men in there are too big to be bothered by these nuisances. Why do you ask?”
“The woman who was to lead the protest died.”
The brunette shook her head. “Don’t waste your time thinking that’s the reason. A crime of any sort is the last thing anyone here for Bohemian Week wants.”
“I’m sure you’re right.”
We sat a moment in uncomfortable silence. The muffin was gone. The coffee cups drained. Marty arrived with their check.
“You don’t mind?” the brunette said, skillfully mocking my earlier words.
As they got up, I started on my eggs. They didn’t taste as good as they had last night. I didn’t know what Craig had been doing Thursday night. I didn’t know if his story about Alison just being gone a few minutes was true or not. If it were night now I could have asked Jim at the bar how long Alison had been there. The only other person who would know was David Sugarbaker. To find out I would have to deal with him at his motel. At nine A.M. he wouldn’t be as chipper as I was.
CHAPTER 14
EVEN THOUGH THE PACIFIC fog now masked the sun, and people wore jeans and heavy sweaters, Henderson was still a resort town on a Saturday morning. Most of the visiting families were from the San Francisco Bay area or farther north; to them, the fog that rolled in with the late afternoon breezes and cleared mid-morning was normal summer weather. They knew it would be sunny by noon. And here in Henderson, it would be hot.
North Bank Road was already bumper-to-bumper with families heading toward their motels or out to Jenner by the sea. The café had begun to fill as I paid for my breakfast. Shops were opening. There was even a line outside Fischer’s Ice Cream. No sun over the yardarm for ice cream buffs.
Genelle’s Family Cabins were about a block past town on North Bank Road, just before North Bank reverted to being River Road. I walked along the sidewalk toward them. Near the end of the block a car was double-parked, causing the rest of the line of traffic to edge into the oncoming lane. As I came nearer, I recognized Ward McElvey’s Pacer. The sloping metal supports between its large windows gave it the appearance of an Easter basket. Ward was getting out—into traffic.
A horn honked. A woman leaned out the passenger window of an old sedan and yelled something that was masked by the street noises. Jenny got out the other side of the Pacer, seemingly oblivious to the altercation, and began unloading her easel, umbrella, charcoal, paper, and light. Ward pulled out the chairs and carried them around to the sidewalk.
They didn’t notice me as I passed. I looked down from the raised sidewalk into the car. It was roomy, almost like a glass-covered pickup truck, with the same disadvantages. A trunk was the thing I missed most with my truck.
Walking along the road after the sidewalk ended took all my concentration. The same cars that Ward had delayed gunned their engines as soon as they passed him, not expecting to find a pe
destrian on the two-lane road. I walked as close as possible to the hillside, and even so, twice I had to fling myself back against the sandbags that the sewer company had left to shore up the hillside. Ivy, oxalis, and wild blackberry plants covered them already, and probably poison oak.
Genelle’s Family Cabins were fifteen-foot wooden squares with fresh paint and windowboxes. Sheriff Wescott had been kind to suggest this motel. There were plenty of seedier ones around. I walked up to the desk in the main cabin. There were cut flowers next to the register—yesterday’s flowers, Genelle herself explained, since the plant shop was closed today. A death, you know. I nodded. And that was all the helpful information I got. There was no David Sugarbaker registered there. No single man at all had registered after ten last night. Thanking her, I headed back to town.
It hadn’t occurred to me that I wouldn’t find Sugarbaker, but now it was a real possibility. This was a resort area. Motels were one of the things we had in abundance. I could spend the entire day going from one to another only to find the right one after Sugarbaker had already checked out.
I was halfway through town, past the spot where Jenny McElvey was sketching a man in his early forties, when I recalled the motel Sugarbaker had mentioned, the one that Wescott told him was too far for him to drive to—the Winding Road Inn. For that I would need my truck.
The Winding Road Inn was several miles outside of town. It was ten-thirty by the time I got there. I pulled into the lot and parked next to a county car.
The motel was a brown-shingled building with a dining room and bar in the middle and wings on either side. I walked in past the salad bar to the registration desk on the right. On the far side of the salad bar I could see customers at the tables. A number looked like the women I had breakfasted with. I recalled now that I had heard this was a popular spot during Bohemian Week. I wondered if David Sugarbaker had heard that too.
“What room is David Sugarbaker in?” I asked the desk clerk.
