Murder in the Melting Pot

by Jane Isenberg

  A genial woman named Annette and the irresistible aroma of garlic welcomed them to Annette’s Ristorante. She greeted Steve by name, gave Miranda the once-over, and seated them. They turned their attention to the specials she reeled off and then to the wine list and menu. Steve made Miranda’s choice easy for her. “Have the lasagna, Mandy. Annie here makes it herself. It’s great.” He ordered a bottle of Bale Breaker Ale, and Miranda chose a glass of merlot from a new winery in Horse Heaven Hills.

  “Thanks for the tour, Steve. You really know your stuff and you appreciate those paintings.”

  “These paintings are by real artists, not the kind who stuff a dead sheep with beer cans, spray paint it blue, and call it art. Real artists deserve to have their work respected, not defaced by a bunch of thugs, right?”

  Miranda nodded. But she had just spent an hour confronting the destructive work of the gangs. Enough with the gangs already. On a night out, okay, a date, she didn’t want to dwell further on the damn gangs. With an ease that pleased her, she changed the subject.

  “So tell me, Steve, the murals are in Toppenish where there’s a motel. How come you decided to bunk in Sunnyvale? At Breitner’s? ”

  “I figured your B & B would probably be quieter. The one in Toppenish is near the casino. Besides, the Toppenish Public Art Association President, Caroline Evans, said you serve a really good breakfast, and she was right. I’ll miss those breakfasts.”

  Miranda was not so naïve that she couldn’t tell that this compliment fell way short of what she wanted to hear. She acknowledged it with a polite nod. “I saw that you’ve restored almost all the damaged murals. You’ll be leaving soon.”

  “Yes’m, I will. That’s why I wanted to have dinner with you tonight, to thank you. You’ve made me real comfortable for over a month. The grub’s been great, and none of my socks has gone missing from my laundry either. I’ll be sure to write something nice in your guest book.”

  Miranda managed to fake a smile. The prospect of Steve’s leaving didn’t sadden her as much as the realization that, for him, this evening wasn’t a date. It was an appointment, an obligatory tax-deductible business appointment like when her realtor took her to lunch to celebrate the closing on the farmhouse or her attorney treated her to a drink when she won her lawsuit. What had she been thinking? Just so the evening wouldn’t be a total loss, Miranda reverted to business herself. “Thanks, Steve. And please post that review on-line also, okay? Another good one on my website and on a couple of travel sites right now would really help what with all that’s going on.”

  “Done. But update me, please. Exactly what is going on? What’s the latest on the neighborhood dead guy?”

  “Don’t know. I just hope they at least took the poor young man’s body away.” Miranda sighed. “A Jewish burial usually occurs within twenty-four hours of the person’s death. So the thought of this corpse decomposing on the floor right across the street from me for days without any respect for the human life it embodied is very sad.” Miranda felt tears well.

  Steve noticed them. “Did you know this guy? Is that why you’re so upset?”

  Miranda knew the corpse belonged to the solo ram’s horn blower she’d heard the day before, a total stranger she’d felt a kinship with. But she wasn’t about to try to explain that to Steve now, so she gave him another reason for her sadness. “No, I never met him, but his body’s just lying there like trash. And his family….” She ferreted in her purse for a Kleenex. “Almost as an afterthought she added, “And having someone killed across the street isn’t exactly good for business.”

  “Of course. Isn’t that Jewish holiday over yet? If it is, the sheriff can make contact with the next of kin.” Steve seemed eager to cheer her up.

  Miranda looked out the window at the restaurant’s red neon sign, a bright flare in the gathering darkness. She spoke with more authority than she felt. “Rosh Hashanah ends tonight at sundown, so the police here should have been able to reach someone from that young man’s family already. In New York the sun set three hours ago.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Guest book: “My blind wheelchair-bound brother and I enjoyed our stay at Breitner’s. Our room was accessible, clean, and comfortable, breakfasts were super, and the hostess had helpful suggestions about restaurants and local tourist attractions. Her dog got along really well with my brother’s service dog too. We’re veterans of the war in Iraq, so the killing across the street really got to us, but we’re learning how to process trauma. We’ll be back.” Jerry from Portland, OR

  When Miranda and Steve got back to the B & B, he said a cheerful goodnight and headed for his room, clearly satisfied that he’d fulfilled his obligation to his hostess/laundress. Miranda walked Rusty. Disappointed by the way the evening turned out, she blamed herself for Steve’s lack of interest in her. What’s wrong with me? He doesn’t think of me as a woman. At least not as an attractive woman. Gradually she allowed as how her lack of experience with dating had left her inept at reading men’s behavior. That realization led her to acknowledge that factors other than her lack of appeal might have prevented him from taking her in his arms and so becoming the missing actor in the drama that was her new life. Like maybe he’s married….

  Not until she and Rusty returned did she begin trolling news sites. She learned that poor Isaac Markowitz’s young widow in New York had at last been notified of his death and an hour later authorized his autopsy, that Rabbi Alinsky was speeding back across the Cascades, and that Sheriff Carson expected the Yakima County Coroner to return to the crime scene any minute. Miranda stationed herself at the front window of her upstairs apartment with a glass of wine in her hand and Rusty beside her. The window framed the view just like a TV screen. It wasn’t long before a van like the ones from the morgue on Law and Order pulled into a space between the many stacks of wooden fruit boxes standing sentinel around the flood-lit processing plant parking lot.

  To the woman observing from her second floor window, everything going on in that parking lot looked eerily similar to scenes in the crime shows she and her mother had followed during Mona’s long illness. But, as Miranda reminded herself, the two men getting that stretcher out of the van weren’t actors. They were real. She shivered, pulled her dog closer, and raised her wine glass to her lips. She figured one of those guys for the county coroner and the other for his helper. Together they took the stretcher inside. She expected to wait, knowing the coroner would have to examine the body before they moved it.

  After her Orthodox grandma died, there had to be an Orthodox rabbi present to be sure her wizened corpse was respected, as in covered with a sheet and minimally invaded before anybody examined or moved it. Later Grandma Minnie’s friends from her shul washed her body and dressed it in the customary white shroud. Miranda shivered again and then sat quietly, sipping wine and reading online accounts of Isaac Markowitz’s recent marriage to Eva and of the young widow’s initial refusal to believe the NYPD officers who had staked out her apartment waiting for her to return so they could tell her that her beloved young husband was dead.

  The coroner and his helper were still inside when the familiar white Subaru roared into the processing plant parking lot and stopped short. Rabbi Alinsky jumped out and ran into the factory itself. Miranda drank from her glass again and waited. She minded waiting less now that the rabbi was on the scene. It wasn’t long before he walked out alongside the stretcher bearing Isaac’s remains beneath a tent made out of what looked like a white sheet. The rabbi’s presence didn’t make the sight any less jarring. Miranda remembered how the pious ram’s horn blower’s sharp notes had reached into her gut and stirred the dregs of her girlhood piety. She put her empty glass on the windowsill and watched the rabbi climb into the back of the van with the corpse. Only then did she give up her vigil and refill her wine glass. She knew that with Rabbi Alinsky in attendance, the treatment of the body of the dead shofar blower would be, well, kosher.

  Her sleep that night was
fitful and her dream, as usual, formed of larger-than-life memories. Seeing the very real remains of Isaac Markowitz borne out of the factory on that tented stretcher triggered her recollection of her mother’s body being borne from their home. In Miranda’s Cinemax dream, Mona’s skeletal sheet-swaddled corpse appeared as a ballooning cloud of white threatening to submerge the puny stretcher made for lesser mortals. This super-sized chimera continued to swell until it grew too huge to stuff into the waiting van. That’s when Miranda awakened, teary and grieving anew. She didn’t need a therapist to help her interpret that message from her subconscious. Mona had loomed large in her daughter’s lonely life. She still did.

  That’s why disappointing her mother, even after Mona had been dead for over a year, upset Miranda. It upset her so much that she just wanted to pull her sleeping bag flap over her head and never emerge from that dark cocoon. Meryl Weintraub had been intimate with hopelessness and depression for years, and that morning, for the first time since she moved, their siren song sounded in Miranda Breitner’s head. Lying in bed, she castigated herself as a total loser for trying to make a successful business out of a funky foreclosed farmhouse in the notoriously gang-infested and under-policed Yakima Valley. And then she lit into herself for being too unattractive and dull to interest the intriguing Steve Galen, and this failure left her feeling even more hollow and hopeless.

  So when the first rays of sunlight slid between the slats in her blinds, Miranda closed her eyes and cursed these relentless heralds of yet another bright, bright day. She was sick of the sun’s blaze, tired of slathering her redhead’s fair skin with sunscreen in October, and tired of the seat of her truck searing the back of her thighs. Seattle’s wet gray days made a more suitable backdrop to her tearful black mood. She would remain in bed with the blinds down and let her damn guests, including Steve Galen, post irate reviews online. Breitner’s was doomed anyway.

  But Rusty had other plans for his mistress. His nuzzles and nudges made it clear that he expected her to get up and dress and let him out to pee, so she did. And while she was up, she fed him and put out breakfast for her guests. By the time Steve appeared, she was able to greet him pleasantly. “Morning, Mural Man.”

  “Mornin,’ Mandy.”

  She made small talk, just for practice. “The rhubarb bread is from a new recipe. Let me know what you think.” Then she busied herself with one of the other guests, a blind wheelchair-bound veteran come to Central Washington for equine therapy from The Pegasus Project at a ranch in the Valley. This guy, Harlan Atkins, was accompanied by his brother Jerry, who wanted Miranda to suggest a lunch spot. Steve had eaten and gone to work before Miranda finished going over with them the menu of a good tamales place on the way back from the ranch. In such close proximity to the cheerful yet sightless Harlan, it was impossible for Miranda to continue to indulge her own self-pity.

  That state of mind lasted until Detective Alex Ladin strode in, triggering painful, angry memories of the inept cops who derailed her life. He looked around, approached the counter, and spoke to whatever he could see of her as she bent over the dishwasher. “Morning. I’m back. Now I gotta finally ask you a few questions.”

  Miranda straightened up and met the man’s intense dark-eyed stare. It made her wonder if she’d grown another head or literally had egg on her face, so she raked her curls with her fingers, passed the back of her hand over her mouth, and forced a polite smile.

  “Sure. Have a seat. And here, try some rhubarb bread.” She pushed the plate of bread towards him and he helped himself to a slice. “Coffee?” She pointed to the coffee pot and he filled his cup. Damned if she was going to wait on him. But she would be civil if it killed her. “I saw on the news that the victim’s family has finally been notified. That’s a relief. I really hope you get this guy, Detective Ladin. Nobody wants to stay at a B & B across the street from a crime scene.”

  “Yeah. I hear you. It would also be good to get a killer off the streets and bring some closure to the victim’s family.”

  His sarcasm caught Miranda off guard. Or was he joking? Either way, this dumb all-eyes cop totally misunderstood her. He thought she didn’t care about the dead guy, his family, justice, or the public good. Well, she did, but dammit, she also cared about her B & B. And, unlike his pea-sized brain, hers could hold more than one idea at a time. Besides, she had rights and she’d learned the hard way exactly what they were.

  He met her glare, and when he spoke again his tone was conciliatory. “I understand, Ms Breitner. And, believe me, you’re not alone. The victim’s family, Sunnyvale’s mayor, the sheriff, the Chamber of Commerce, the rabbi and the kosherers, and every parent, farmer and business-owner in the Valley all want us to get this killer.” He paused to take a bite of rhubarb bread and wash it down with a gulp of coffee. “They want us to get him sooner rather than later and they don’t want any more bloodshed or any more press. No pressure though.” He shook his head. “You know we finished up at the crime scene and the sheriff finally got the okay from the family to let the coroner move the body. You had eyes on that last night.”

  Miranda paled. “You were watching me?”

  “No. Like I told you, the sheriff sent me over here to make sure the coroner’s people didn’t run into any problems. So I was on patrol at the crime scene and in the neighborhood. From the squad car in the parking lot, I saw your upstairs light go on and a few minutes later there you were and the light disappeared. Kind of like that guy in Rear Window.” His smile might have been friendly. Or creepy. “I’m glad you’re keeping your eyes open. We need all the help we can get. That’s why I have to ask, Ms Breitner, in the days and hours leading up to the murder, did you notice anything unusual going on in the neighborhood? See any strangers? Hear anything?”

  Miranda hated to have to share her private experience of hearing the ram’s horn with this hard-to-read cop. Nothing good had come of her frankness with the detectives investigating Timmy’s death twenty years ago. But she knew better than to withhold information and in this situation, like that one, she really wanted to help. “I did hear something. It was late Sunday morning about the time church services were ending. I was inside finishing up some laundry when I heard a ram’s horn.”

  Detective Ladin rolled his eyes and shook his head, not quite the reaction Miranda had expected. When he spoke, his voice was stern. “This is a serious matter, Ms Breitner.”

  Miranda resolved to hold her temper. “I’m not joking. I’m Jewish.” She paused, waiting for a reaction. When there was none, she knew she’d have to walk him through Rosh Hashanah 101. “And the dead man was Jewish, right?”

  The deputy nodded. “I told you, that’s why we had such a hard time trying to get in touch with his family or the rabbi here. Because of a Jewish holiday.”

  “Yes. Of course I remember.” She kept her voice even. “Let me explain. Sunday, the day of the murder, was the first day of our New Year and on that day part of the synagogue service involves someone playing a musical instrument from biblical times made from a ram’s horn.” She thought she saw the detective’s lips twitch into a smile that he quickly suppressed. The ancient ritual she described must have sounded ridiculous to him, just like Jesus embodied in a cracker did to her. Miranda took a deep breath. “You can Google it. Anyway, the rabbi told the crew of kosherers that some of them would have to celebrate the holiday in the factories and that they could blow their rams’ horns there.”

  Detective Ladin shook his head as if he found her explanation incredible. “How do you know what the rabbi told his crew? You got ears on him somehow, Mata Hari?” He smiled as if that and his little joke could smooth over the fact that he was questioning her honesty.

  Miranda felt her face redden again. This guy played both bad cop and good cop all by himself. It was hard to keep up. “I was in the plant parking lot the day the kosherers arrived, and I heard him giving them an orientation speech.”

  “Thank you, Ms Breitner.” The detective s
ighed as if he had been doing all the conversational heavy lifting. “I’m going to talk to Rabbi Alinsky and the other workers at the processing plant, and if they confirm what you’ve told me I’ll report this info to the County Coroner. It may help the ME he hires to do the autopsy to determine time of death.” He hesitated. “If you’re the only one who heard it, that may make you a witness. Are you okay with that?”

  Miranda felt her stomach lurch and reached over to rub her hand the length of Rusty’s back. She wished she’d stayed in bed. “Doesn’t that make me kind of vulnerable? On TV the killers are always trying to do in witnesses.”

  “Look, Ms Breitner, you said you wanted us to get this guy. To do that, we need your help.” He paused. When he resumed speaking, his tone was softer but still stern, maybe even a little menacing. “Besides, like you said, you’re Jewish, so if it’s a hate crime you’re already pretty vulnerable.” His lowered voice did not soften the harsh truth of his words.

  “Do you really think it’s a hate crime? Here? In this Valley?” Miranda’s stomach lurched again. She recalled Rabbi Alinsky assuring his new crew of how friendly and helpful Valley folks had always been to his kosherers.

  “The investigation’s just beginning, so I don’t know, and we don’t rule anything out.” He paused. “Out here we got the occasional nutcase holed up in the desert waiting for the rapture, and once in a while they get bored just waiting. Like I told you the other night, it’s a good thing you got this big guy looking after you.” He nodded at Rusty and reached over to ruffle his fur. His hand brushed Miranda’s, and she repressed her urge to flinch.