Wescott stepped back and Craig walked in.
I expected Wescott to warn me again, or at least ask what I was doing back here, but he didn’t. Nodding to us, he walked to the door.
I hesitated, tempted to wait and ask Craig what he had said, then decided I needed to talk to Sheriff Wescott himself. “I’m just leaving too,” I said, joining Wescott at the door. “I’ll be in touch, Vida.”
As soon as we were outside and the door had been shut behind us, I asked, “Does this visit mean you’ve changed your assessment of Michelle’s death?”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Then why were you here?”
“Fortunately, the Sheriff’s Department isn’t required to report every move to you.”
“But you do see that it could be murder and by waiting you may be letting the suspect get away?”
We had reached the bottom of the stairs. He stopped and turned toward me. “It’s after eight o’clock. I should have been off duty an hour ago. I’m tired. I’m thirsty. If you really want to talk, give me time to change out of uniform and meet me at the bar in half an hour.”
T
HE INVITATION WAS DEFINITELY
not what I had been expecting from Sheriff Wescott, but it didn’t shock me either. It wasn’t in the same category that an invitation from Mr. Bobbs would have been. I knew Wescott found me a nuisance. His threats to arrest me were well within his power, but I didn’t expect him to do that. There was something about me that he liked. And that gave me a bit of leeway in how far I could push him. What I didn’t know was how much leeway. I’d know only when I’d exhausted it. Still, for the moment I was safe.
I realized as I stood in front of the mirror in my bathroom that I was applying eye shadow with more than usual care. I put on cleaner jeans and a warmer shirt, grabbed a sweater, and headed down the stairs.
Leaving my truck in the garage, I walked the few blocks to the bar.
The bar was officially titled Jim’s, but, since it was the only establishment of its kind in town, we all referred to it as “the bar.” It was a standard post-Depression watering hole, the type that could be found in any city across the country. To the left as I entered was a long mahogany bar with red stools and regular patrons on them. The floor space was filled with Formica-topped tables and plain wooden chairs. On the walls were pictures with waterfalls that lit up and seascapes that moved. The only concession Jim had made to the California locale was to add swinging doors. Jim himself was behind the bar.
Wescott beckoned from a table in the rear. Even in the dim light his appearance startled me. Before this I had seen him only in uniform. Now I realized how much the tan color of that uniform accentuated the unsmoothed lines of his nose and the wiry curl of his light brown hair and mustache. Normally his face looked like a sculpture awaiting its final sanding. But now, in a teal blue shirt, it was the blue of his eyes that stood out, and the rest of his face seemed softened around them.
“Beer?” he asked, motioning me to the seat across from him.
“Anchor Steam.”
“Is that one of your San Francisco habits?” He smiled, a disarming look. I recalled that smile from the time I had told him about my years in San Francisco, my marriage to another account executive in the public relations firm where I had worked, our two years together, and our divorce when we realized how little there was between us. Those years, the work, and the marriage had seemed all facade, and when I left and moved to Henderson, I had tried to change as much as I could, to turn my life inside out and deal with the internal, the real. I had told Wescott all about it in detail that later appalled me.
“My taste for Anchor Steam Beer’s gotten more firmly entrenched since I’ve been here,” I said. “Meter reading is thirsty work. Like sheriffing, I imagine.”
“Yes, but it doesn’t look good for the sheriff to be guzzling beer all day. And it’s not that easy, anyway. If you’ll notice, no one is sitting at the tables around us. A sheriff is not a welcome sight in a bar.”
“Even out of uniform?”
“You’re never really out of uniform. If a fight broke out now I couldn’t just watch. So that really settles the question of sheriffs in bars; it’s as uncomfortable for us as it is for the other customers.”
“So how come you suggested coming here tonight?”
“I wanted a beer and I wanted to talk—to you.”
“Oh.” Wescott had a way of focusing in on the object of his attention that was at once flattering and unnerving.
“How did you get involved in the Davidson death?” He waited expectantly.
Despite our surroundings and his show of interest, I believed, as he had said, that he was never totally out of uniform. I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to tell the
sheriff.
“Michelle’s aunt, Vida, is a meter reader. She asked me to look into it.”
“Do you do whatever your colleagues ask you?” There was a touch of banter to his question.
“Vida’s our union rep. She’s the one who got me my pay back after they docked me for abusing sick leave, after
you
told Mr. Bobbs I had two drinks in a bar the day I called in sick!”
“That was an incidental in questioning him. You know I didn’t mean to cost you money.”
“I know. But Vida’s the one who prepared for the hearings to get it back. She put a lot of time into that. I owe her. And besides, I may need her again.”
He looked as if he expected more explanation.
“This morning,” I went on, “I was arguing with Mr. Bobbs about a suggestion I made. He didn’t want to deal with it, so he put it in a Follow-up folder. Do you know what that is?”
“No.”
“It’s legitimate procrastination. He dates a folder for whatever date he chooses, sticks whatever he wants to put off dealing with inside it, and gives it to the clerk. She doesn’t bring it back to his desk until that date.”
Wescott roared with laughter. A foursome seated two tables away stared. “That’s great!” Wescott said. “I’d kill for a mechanism like that. I’d put all my drunk driving reports in a folder for next year.”
“And the wonderful thing is that when they came back you could stick them right in another folder.”
He finished his beer. “So why are you going to need your union?”
“Either because I am not Mr. Bobbs’s favorite person and he may get tired of me bugging him, or because if he doesn’t act on my suggestion soon, I’m going to file a grievance. It’s a good suggestion. It’s to the benefit of the employees and the company, too.”
“What is it?”
I told him about the need for two-way radios.
“You’re right. If you knew as much about the area as I do you’d be even more convinced.” He looked directly at me, as if to reinforce his statement with his gaze.
The bar was filling up. Conversations began to blur into one indistinguishable rumble as the noise level rose. It was still early for the bar trade, but in another hour this place would be jammed. Conversation at any level would be a challenge.
Wescott took a long swallow of his beer. One mustache hair stood straight out beyond the wiry line of its compatriots. It caught on the rim of the glass. Wescott felt for it and pulled it out. Staring down at it, held between thumb and forefinger, he said, “I’d like to think you took my warning about steering clear of the Davidson woman’s death to heart, but you didn’t, did you?”
I started to speak, but he stopped me with a touch of the hand. “Vejay, suppose you are right and Michelle Davidson was murdered. Then, there’s a murderer here. First you find the body, then you announce you’re investigating, and then you plunk yourself right down in a hole where the murderer could do damn well as he pleased.”
“It was the middle of the afternoon.”
“And tonight when you go home, alone, it will be the middle of the night.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“I’m not trying to frighten you unnecessarily.”
I fingered my glass. “It sounds like you’re taking the possibility of murder more seriously than you were earlier.”
“What I told you is still true. I don’t know yet what caused her death. I think it was an accident. Everything points to that.”
“What about the position of the body?”
“Your theory that she wouldn’t fall backwards?”
“Yes. Michelle Davidson was a gymnast. She won a medal on the balance beam when she was in school.”
“That was eight or ten years ago.”
“But you don’t forget how to balance. It becomes nearly instinctive. And Michelle still practiced. Ward McElvey told me she walked on her deck railing—backwards! There’s a twenty-foot drop there.”
“That’s fine, but she was sober then. Guys around here can drive any vehicle from a motorcycle to a moving van when they’re sober. After a night of beer they crash their cars into the nearest tree.”
“It’s not the same. Michelle knew how to fall. She would never have landed flat on her back.”
Wescott took a long breath. “If you believe that, you’d be wise to be careful.”
“What about the bruise on her head?” I said, unwilling to have this very unsatisfactory discussion end with his warning. “Couldn’t that have come from her murderer hitting her before throwing her in the sewer hole?”
“It also could have come from hitting her head against the edge of the pipe when she fell. She was close enough.”
“Have they done an autopsy?”
“Not yet. It’s Friday night.”
“When, then?”
“Tomorrow,” he snapped. “Look, I don’t run the county. I don’t have the coroner jumping to whenever I want him.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I should understand that.”
He smiled. “Sure.”
“Have your next beer on me.”
“Is that a bribe?”
I signaled the waiter for another round and said to Wescott, “Just softening you up. Tell me about the Bohemian Connection.”
“I thought that was common knowledge. I’m surprised that you don’t know all about it.”
Unable to resist the challenge, I said, “There are the drugs, liquor, rendezvous, and so forth.”
“That’s it. Most of it’s small time, but well paid. Some people rent their places during Bohemian Week. It’s all under the table. A little tax-free income. Of course, they don’t tell us. We’ve burst in on one or two tête-à-têtes because we knew the houses were supposed to be empty—the owners informed us they were going to be gone for months but didn’t tell us about their Bohemian Week arrangement. And then there are the actual housebreakings.”
Thinking of Maria Keneally’s house, I asked, “For housebreaking, wouldn’t a place need to be secluded?”
“Right. The Connection knows the owner is away and just breaks in. Most of those places are back in the hills where the nearest neighbor is half a mile away. It’s rare to have a really secluded house near town. And the one thing the Connections have always been careful about is cleaning up afterwards. We don’t know how many houses they’ve used because we get only one or two complaints. In the other cases the Connection has put everything back to normal.”
“Except the broken window?”
“Well…” He shrugged. “Lots of people are careless. You wouldn’t need to break a window to get in.” He looked directly at me, tacitly suggesting that I knew more than the average woman about such things. “And a lot of windows get broken innocently. If a homeowner discovers a window broken but everything inside the house as he left it, he doesn’t call the sheriff, he calls a glazier.”
“Do you think the Bohemian Connection makes enough money to be worth killing for?”
The waiter arrived with our beers. Wescott swished a mouthful around and nodded solemnly in mock approval. He put the glass down and said, “Killing is like anything else, very individual. I doubt you or I would find the money worth a life, but then how much would you need to protect before you’d kill for it? For some folks that’s not much. But it’s rarely just money. There are other, stronger concerns. If Ross Remson were still the Connection and we were talking about him, I would say that the notoriety was more important than the cash.”
“Important enough to kill for?”
“I don’t know. But I also don’t think you should take the chance of finding out.” He paused. “Am I making myself clear?”
Ignoring that, I said, “Ross Remson was the Bohemian Connection until he left, right?”
“What?”
The noise level had risen. I leaned closer and repeated my question.
“That was before my time. There was never any proof, but the department knew Remson was the Connection.”
“Who took over when he left?”
“We don’t know. Remson was flamboyant. He wanted the attention of people suspecting him. Whoever came after has been much more low-key.”
“And it’s not a priority for you. Particularly if the Connection keeps a low profile.”
He didn’t answer, but I could tell from his irritated expression that I had touched on a sore spot.
“It could be a woman, couldn’t it?”
Now he smiled. “Are you considering moonlighting? You’ve got the perfect job for finding out what homes are empty and how long they’re going to be that way.”
“It could be a woman though, couldn’t it?”
His smile disappeared. “What are you after? Look, I asked you here as a friend. As a friend I warned you. I don’t want to see you end up in the space Michelle Davidson vacated this afternoon. I also don’t want to be pumped.”
I sighed. “I appreciate your concern, really. I know you’re aware of the dangers of this area. But I haven’t been racing around on the hottest day of the year, badgering people, because I had nothing better to do on my afternoon off. Michelle’s family deserves to have her murderer found. They need the question of how she died cleared up. If you would investigate Michelle’s death, I’d take your advice and spend the weekend on the beach.”
Wescott stared at me with the same iciness I recalled from the interrogation in his office in Guerneville. I looked away.
“Oh my god!”
“What?”
“That man, the one who just walked out of the bathroom, that’s Ross Remson.”
Wescott didn’t move.
“Aren’t you going to do something?”
“There’s no reason—”
I jumped up.
Wescott grabbed my arm.
“That’s Ross. Father Calloway saw him with Michelle last night. He was behind her neighbor’s house this afternoon. I’ve spent hours looking for him. Let me go.”