Murder in the Melting Pot

by Jane Isenberg

  Miranda grew up believing that Jewish brains and brawn could make the desert bloom and defeat enemies who vastly outnumbered them in only six days, so she nodded and added something she’d learned recently, “That’s good, because to the plant owners the RCK seal means the difference between selling grape juice and not selling it.”

  “Yeah, but until a few weeks ago this kid probably hadn’t set foot in a factory or a vineyard. And all of a sudden he’s calling the shots. I’m telling you, Ms Breitner, that’s when things got really hinky. I had my keys out and my car was right outside. So I told him I’d drive him.” This kid looks me in the eye and tells me on this Jewish holiday he doesn’t drive or ride!” The detective raked his head with his fingers, a reflexive gesture Miranda figured was left over from before he got the buzz cut. She was pretty sure she knew how that offer had gone over, but didn’t interrupt. “He says it’s only five miles from Grandview to Sunnyvale, so he’ll walk! He’ll be here in an hour. And he sheds his safety gear and sets off doggin’ it. I run after him. I tell him we got a special situation here, we’re in a bind. And the kid tells me that he can break the commandment not to ride only to save a life. But Isaac Markowitz, that’s the victim’s name, is already dead, so…” The detective threw up his hands. “I nearly lost it but that’s when I came up with the solution.”

  “I figured you would,” Miranda fibbed. “What did you do?”

  “I asked David how about if Sheriff Carson called NYPD and got them to send an officer to Isaac’s widow’s house to tell her of her loss face to face and ask her to authorize an autopsy. He said she might be at her parents’ house in New Jersey for the holiday. But he allowed as how that way at least no commandments would be broken, only the widow’s heart. Can you beat that for a response?”

  Miranda shook her head.

  “It gets better. That’s when David told me that even if Isaac’s widow was at home, it’s forbidden to mourn on this holiday, so she won’t be free to mourn the death of her husband until the holiday’s over.”

  She ignored his obvious contempt for a religious tenet he didn’t understand. “But Sheriff Carson will make that phone call anyway, right?” She wanted a sign of progress.

  The detective stood and checked the time before he answered. “Yeah. And then we’ll begin investigating for real. So not to worry, Ms Breitner. Excuse my French, but we’re gonna get the son-of-a-bitch who killed this Jew in spite of the fuckin’ roadblocks those fanatics put up. But meanwhile, get yourself a handgun. Just to be on the safe side.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Guest book: “Stopped On my way back to Sea-Tac after a two-week consulting gig at Manhattan Project National Historical Park on the Columbia. What a find this B & B is! A comfy bed, a fine breakfast, and no mention of radiation sickness!”

  —Dr. Joan Oneidas, National Park Service

  Once again, the detective’s visit left Miranda worried that a provincial and short-handed county sheriff and his deputies were not equal to solving Isaac Markowitz’s murder. Detective Ladin was so obsequious and inept as to be a caricature of a competent police officer. While he bumbled around like a bumpkiny version of a lobotomized Columbo, Isaac’s family suffered and news of the homicide could seriously impact her business. Not to mention how sad and scary it was to know that a person, a Jew yet, was murdered right across the street. And on Rosh Hashanah.

  Miranda regretted blanking on Rosh Hashanah, but there was one holiday tradition she could still observe even if she was a day late and a nervous wreck. After powering through her chores, she grabbed a couple of uneaten brioche buns and Rusty, fed her destination into her truck’s GPS, and drove out of town to take Route 22 north towards Granger. Passing canal-watered fields of what Rosemarie had identified as alfalfa and baled hay, Miranda was reminded of how lovely the area was. Soothed, she turned into a side road and followed directions to turn once more. That second turn brought her to the closest somewhat-accessible body of running water, the Yakima River. She and a yelping Rusty scrambled down a break in the reeds and shrubs along the bank to where she could almost reach the stream below.

  Her rush to running water was Miranda’s attempt to perform Tashlikh. When the Rosh Hashanah service ends on the first day, worshippers meet at a nearby river, lake, creek, or beach and walk together with their rabbi to the edge of the water. There they follow the tradition that originated in a request the prophet Micah made of God to cast the Israelis’ sins into the sea. Adults and kids alike toss small pieces of stale bread representing their own sins into the water to be washed away.

  This was a ritual she and her mom had performed together every year until Mona Weintraub’s lung cancer made her too ill to leave home. Even then Mona had torn apart a slice of challah and given Meryl the bread bits wrapped in a napkin to take to the lake and scatter on her behalf. A year later, standing on the bank of the swiftly-moving river with only Rusty yelping and straining at his leash, Miranda felt like a lone lemming. She crouched beside her restive companion. “No, you can’t go for a swim, Rusty. Not today. But someday soon I’ll bring you back here and throw sticks in the water for you to fetch.” She found it odd that her closeness, soothing voice, and a wee chunk of brioche bun failed to settle him. Perhaps he sensed her disquiet.

  Resolved to hurry, she held the leash tightly with one hand, stood, and silently asked God for forgiveness for any sins she might have knowingly or unknowingly committed. She asked forgiveness not only for sins she committed during the past twelve months, but for the ones that she committed long ago, like causing her parents’ divorce, hating her father, going a little crazy with the cutting, and especially that suicide attempt. At the mention of each sin, she hurled a bit of brioche into the river and watched the current carry it downstream. She asked forgiveness for becoming a “pick-and-choose-Jew,” one who kept only those commandments that suited her and ignored the less convenient ones like honoring the Sabbath and both of one’s parents even if one’s father happened to be an asshole. She updated her list by including a more current misdeed—not doing more for Vanessa Vargas.

  Rusty’s loud bark interrupted her. He wasn’t usually this insistent. She assumed he wanted to swim or more brioche. Only as she turned from the water, did the faint sweet and sour scents of marijuana and vomit reach her. And only then did she become aware of the impossibly ancient little man standing beside her, so close that without fully extending her arm she could touch him if she wanted to. Rusty had been trying to tell her this aromatic phantom was approaching. How had this geezer managed to get next to her without her hearing him? Smelling him? He was too old and too emaciated to frighten her even when he began to sway and mutter. Miranda couldn’t understand a word and wondered if maybe he was praying too.

  Ears cocked, Rusty was doing his best imitation of a guard dog, but she could tell that her stalwart protector no longer considered this white-haired, wrinkled gnome a menace, in spite of the faded camouflage get-up he wore and his pungent yet putrid stench. In fact, he looked familiar. His sharp nose, straight lips, and even his hair─straggly white strands held together by a strip of what might be leather─all seemed familiar. “Hello.”

  She wasn’t sure he heard her, so she repeated herself and added, “I’m Miranda Breitner. I live in Sunnyvale. I run a B & B there.”

  “Kamiakin.” She had to lean in to hear.

  “Kamiakin, like Chief Kamiakin? Are you a descendant of his?” While she and Michael painted the B & B’s large front room, her handyman had filled her in on local history, on how “Kamiakin was the only tribal leader who refused to recognize the Treaty of 1855, the treaty that deprived the tribes who became the Yakama Nation of all but ten percent of their land, the treaty whose terms the American government violated over and over.” Michael spoke of these events as if they had occurred only the day before.

  The gnome nodded and repeated. “Chief Kamiakin.”

  Miranda thought she knew why this strange fellow looked so familiar.
He could be Michael’s grandfather, the tribal elder who told his grandson the stories he, in turn, passed on to her. But she couldn’t fathom what this old guy was doing there alone or how he got there. She wondered if Michael knew where he was. She tried again to engage him. “My friend Michael Wright told me that your Chief Kamiakin dug a canal to irrigate his vegetable garden and the white settlers realized that they could irrigate the whole Valley the same way. Without Kamiakin this entire place might still be desert.”

  What might have been a grin or a grimace contorted her listener’s lips, and he turned and walked slowly away. Miranda stared after him until he seemed to vanish behind or through, she wasn’t sure, a screen of tall dried shrubs dotted with white thistle-like wisps into which his skimpy ponytail blended. She’d have to ask Michael about him. It wasn’t a good idea for such an old man to roam around the countryside by himself. She wondered why he’d come to the river. Perhaps it reminded him of his days as a fisherman. Or, maybe like her, he had sins to cast away. For all she knew, he could be asking some ancient river spirit for forgiveness. She should’ve offered the old fellow a ride. She was starting the New Year off wrong. Damn.

  It wasn’t until she got back to the B & B that she read the local news on her phone. “Unidentified Student Rabbi Found Dead, Presumed Murdered.” The reporter went on to note that detectives from Sunnyvale’s Gang Unit and the Yakama Nation Tribal Police Department were joining the County Sheriff’s detectives in the investigation. She’d have to ask Michael about the involvement of the tribal police when he came to work the next day. But when she checked her messages, she found one from him saying only that once again he wouldn’t be in.

  There were three other phone messages. Returning these calls assured Miranda three new bookings. Two were reporters from Jewish newspapers assigned to follow up on reports of a murdered Jew. The third was a food blogger eager to reveal the mysteries of koshering to her followers. Talking with them distracted Miranda from thinking too much about the dead man across the street or the strange old man at the river. But it didn’t distract her from thinking about the charming guy she had a first date with that very evening.

  This was not only her first date with Steve Galen, but her first real date period. As such, it was fraught with more than the usual amount of promise and peril. Miranda worried, because Steve was worldly, smart, and at least a decade older. Undoubtedly he’d had lots of experience with lots of women while she’d spent her youth as a screwed up recluse, sequestered with her grandmother and her mom. But a glance in the mirror reminded her that it was the red-haired Meryl Weintraub who’d lived that nun-like life, not Miranda Breitner. And Meryl was history. Miranda checked to make sure her roots weren’t showing, washed her face, brushed her teeth, and then brushed her curls. She didn’t want to change her clothes lest Steve think she was making a big deal out of a simple dinner date. But out of deference to the art restorer’s reverence for old things, she removed her small, silver hoop earrings and put on Mona’s antique gold ones embedded with tiny stones of black and red.

  Downstairs again and awaiting her guest, Miranda was checking her breakfast supplies when Steve called. She feared he wanted to break their date, so she was relieved when he just changed their meeting place. “Hey, Mandy, let me know when your check-in gets there. If it’s still light, you can meet me here in Toppenish and I can show you what I’ve been up to.” Miranda often asked him how his work was going and was flattered that he wanted to give her a personal tour. “Then we can drive back to Sunnyvale and have dinner at that little Italian place near the highway. You like Italian, right?”

  Waiting downstairs for her guests, Miranda visited Steve’s website, hoping to find some useful conversation starters and determine if he was single or not. The list of his pleased clients who provided glowing reviews was extensive as was the photo gallery of art works he’d restored to their original splendor after they’d been damaged by time, weather, vandalism, fire and/or smoke. Steve’s brief bio made no mention of family. Of course, remembering how easily she had fabricated her own totally fictitious Facebook profile, she realized he could still have a wife and kids or a girlfriend or both. But she hoped he didn’t and noted that she didn’t mind that he wasn’t Jewish. She was certain that, although she longed for a child, with her problematic past, marriage wasn’t an option for her. And a long-distance relationship wouldn’t interfere with running her B & B.

  Miranda’s guests arrived well before the blazing sun began to sink. She checked them in, called Steve, and, leaving Rusty in charge, headed for downtown Toppenish. She was able to park her truck right behind Steve’s on Elm Street where he had suggested they meet in front of a mural called The Rhythms of Celilo. While waiting, Miranda read the plaque next to the mural and learned that the once powerful Celilo Falls, formerly a site sacred to the tribes, cascaded in the background. In the foreground, native men stood on wooden platforms built out over the roiling waters net-fishing for salmon and clubbing their catch. Near the center of the mural, two men sharing a platform were partly obscured by swirls and zigzags of black spray paint.

  Seeing this particular damaged piece up close, Miranda was upset and Steve showed up just in time for her to say so. “My God! This is an important painting, Steve. Michael told me that before the government dammed the Columbia, there were so many salmon here that people could walk across the river on the fishes’ backs. Scribbling on this is like scribbling on history.”

  “And hello to you too, Mandy, why don’t you tell me how you really feel?” He grinned. “Seriously, all the paintings are important. The ones that weren’t damaged are important too. The taggers just didn’t have time to spoil them all or they would have.”

  “So, how will you get that black paint off this mural without ruining the original? And don’t tell me you’re going to swab it off with Q-tips.”

  “But Mandy, I am. That’s exactly what I’m going to do tomorrow.” He was grinning again. As usual, Steve’s grin made Miranda smile. “But first, I’m going to put on my powdered latex gloves and my apron. This is a messy business. Didn’t you see that photo of me in the Yakima Herald-Republic? I look like The Cake Boss meets Jackson Pollack.” He blew away the white powder escaping his gloves and sprinkling his windbreaker as he pulled them on and then donned his apron and bowed. “See?”

  Miranda’s smile widened to a grin.

  “Next I climb up there on my rented ladder with my trusty Q-tips and a glass lab jar which sits on the ladder’s shelf. In that jar is my magic potion. I dip a Q-tip in this brew, and start to scrub.” He pulled off his gloves and untied his apron and shoved them into his backpack.

  “What’s in your potion? Seriously. I need to know in case they tag my freshly repainted B & B.” She didn’t mention that in her nightmares she pictured the one-time farmhouse emblazoned with gang graffiti and deserted by the roadside.

  “I mix xylene and alcohol to make a solvent. It’s a fancy paint remover.”

  Steve didn’t seem to notice that Miranda suddenly frowned. Memories of helping her parents scrub nasty labels off the white fence around their yard flash-flooded her brain. The paint remover her parents bought took off the white paint as well as the blood-red letters spelling out “Baby Killer.”

  “Won’t that solvent dissolve everything under the black paint too?”

  “Not if I mix it right. And I do.” Sotto voce Steve added, “That’s why they pay me the big bucks.” He cranked his volume up again when he spoke next. “My brew isolates, dilates, and strips away the freshest paint, the sprayed on enamel graffiti. It may take off a little of the protective varnish that the artist applied to the original too, but I varnish it when I’m done. And the solvent itself dissolves.” He shrugged. Then he paused. “Now listen up, Mandy, because here’s the part you’re gonna really love.” His next pause was mock-dramatic. “I work on only one half square inch at a time!”

  “You’re kidding!” Miranda admired patience, a virtue
that sometimes eluded her.

  They strolled from mural to mural along the nearly deserted streets of the dusty old town. A dress shop window ablaze with gleaming satiny quinceañera gowns of fuchsia and turquoise rivaled the murals for Miranda’s attention. Diagonally across the intersection, the grim black-and-white sign “Center for Victims of Domestic Violence” offered a reality check. Steve was still focused on the murals as he pointed out those that had not been tagged as well as those he’d already restored.

  His tone was reverent when he told her, “Commissioning these paintings back in the late Eighties was a brilliant idea. They tell the story of this town. Not everybody likes to get their history from a book or even a museum. But these works of public art bring the old American west to life.” He stopped in front of a painting of a local doctor’s early car next to a horse and buggy parked in front of the boxy building that had been Toppenish’s first hospital. He pointed towards the lower part of the mural. “Look at how he’s got the lighting just right! Everything has a shadow and those shadows show the strength of the sun. This artist, Jack Fordyce, is so good with lighting.”

  Miranda thought the shadows rather grim, but she was nonetheless impressed by Steve’s obviously more informed view. It would be fun to go to an art museum with him. All she said was, “Yes. He is. And these paintings are a huge tourist attraction.”

  Steve didn’t respond with more than a perfunctory nod, but Miranda interpreted his silence for agreement.

  When he did speak it was to announce, “Okay. My stomach’s telling me this tour’s over. I’ll meet you at the restaurant, okay?”

  Back in her truck, driving past the strip malls, collapsing barns, flourishing vineyards, corralled cattle, gas stations, and churches that gave the Valley its unique mixture of blight and beauty, she missed Steve’s company. It would have been fun to share her impressions with him, but she also felt relieved from the stress of attempting to be both flattering and flirtatious. On their walk around Toppenish, she had thought she was having fun. But alone again, she wondered. Running alongside Rusty was fun. Baking blueberry scones was fun. Getting a new booking was fun. Even answering guests’ questions was fun. But overcoming shyness for hours at a time to make a longer conversation was work. Dating was work. Or maybe she just needed practice. She would get more of this at the restaurant where she’d also get a glass of wine. She was glad to see Steve waiting for her beside his truck.