Murder in the Melting Pot

by Jane Isenberg

  If the creep was trying to scare her again, he was doing a good job. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and spoke. “Okay, okay. I want to help. I’ll do what I can. But I have a question.”

  He looked at his phone, probably checking the time. “I’ll try to answer it if I can have a little more coffee.” He refilled his cup.

  “Why was the white sheet covering the body tented?”

  “You don’t miss much, do you? The kosherer who came to the plant to start the machinery again said that out of respect you Jews cover the bodies of your dead with a white sheet. He wanted us to do that as soon as he got there. But us detectives didn’t want any trace evidence on the victim’s clothes or skin moved or lost by putting a sheet in contact with the corpse, so, as a compromise, we tented it.”

  “That was nice of you.”

  “Thanks. We aim to please.” He drained his coffee cup and placed it on the counter. “Now, tell me, did you see or hear anything else unusual?”

  “Not that I remember, no.”

  “Were there any guests around that morning?”

  “There were two for breakfast and one left early. The other one, Steve Galen, he stayed. He’s the art restorer working on the Toppenish Murals. He ate, went to church, came home to change, and then he went to work. He’s still staying here. You can talk to him.”

  “So there was no one else on the premises?” His eyes narrowed.

  “No other guests, but a handyman was out back fixing the shed roof.”

  The detective’s eyes flickered.

  “He’s a college kid who works for me sometimes. He’s here a lot. He’s real sharp. You should talk to him too. Maybe he noticed something.”

  “I’d love to talk to him, Ms Breitner, but I need a name.” His tone was patient.

  She felt her face flush yet again. “Oh, I’m sorry. Michael. Michael Wright.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “No.” The fool seemed to think everything she said was some kind of joke.

  “Is he on the premises now? The tribal cops are looking for him.” The officer stood, cast his eyes around the room, and nodded in the direction of the corridor leading to the back door and the yard.

  “No. he hasn’t been to work in a couple of days. Why do the tribal cops want to talk to Michael?”

  “I can’t discuss that with you. But call me right away if you hear from him, okay? Or if you think of anything else. Thanks for your help, not to mention the coffee and the rhubarb bread. That stuff really rocks, Meryl. Can you e-mail me the recipe? I want to give it to my wife.”

  “Sure. I have your card. I’ll send you the link.” Even though their parting was cordial enough, Miranda was relieved to hear his car start. And then her breath came short. Detective Ladin knew her real name and the sly son of a bitch had tricked her into answering to it.

  CHAPTER 8

  Guest book: “After a stay of over a month, I hate to leave this comfortable and centrally located B & B. The amiable owner serves up a locally sourced organic breakfast. My room was quiet, my shower had great water pressure, and I could control the thermostat. Luxury amenities at economy prices!” Steve Galen, Art Restorer, West Virginia

  After Miranda realized that chameleon-like Detective Alex Ladin knew her secret and after her B & B’s once merely dicey neighborhood became a recognized killing ground, she was more than ever convinced that Breitner’s was doomed. If Ladin had seen through her carefully constructed new identity, others could. But they wouldn’t have to, because it was just a matter of time before the detective would spread the word about her all over the Valley. And her newest guests, journalists drawn to the murder like addicts to their dealer, would broadcast it to the world. And then Breitner’s would surely bomb.

  Lynn Dinnerstein, a svelte reporter from Washington’s Jewish Transcript, arrived hours before check-in, and Al Horowitz, a Woody Allen look-alike from The Forward in New York, wasn’t far behind. Coincidently, a petite Texan named Sally Slade who blogged about food and was eager to discover and share the secrets of koshering grapes, showed up way early too. Even before Sally deposited her bag in her room, she looked around and drawled a request. “Miranda, honey, my blog’s called Faith-based Food, and I bet some of my fifty-five thousand followers would love this B & B. And, just so you know, Rabbi Alinsky’s agreed to let me video my interview on koshering with him tomorrow. And then he promised me a tour of the fruit processing plant so I can see the grapes actually being koshered and film it for my followers. But he says the plant is often noisy. So may I invite him here to do the interview?” Sally pointed to the two red easy chairs flanking the fireplace. “This room is so cozy and peaceful. I love it here already. And the interview will only take about half an hour. Please…”

  A day earlier Miranda would have welcomed the online exposure, but that day publicizing her moribund B & B seemed about as useful as making dinner for a corpse. Before she had a chance to politely refuse, she felt her phone vibrate. When she nodded in recognition of the caller’s name and answered it, Sally mouthed a silent “thank you” and wheeled her suitcase to her room.

  The caller was Pauline. Miranda figured she was probably canceling their date for coffee at her home later. Pauline, who often knew what went on in the Lower Valley almost before it happened, would have heard about Miranda. That bastard Detective Ladin had started defaming her already. Miranda assumed she’d just lost the first friend she’d made since she was thirteen. She felt her heart relocate from her knees to her feet.

  She could hardly understand this new friend’s seemingly hiccupped words. It took a moment to realize that Pauline was not hiccupping, but sobbing. “Oh, Miranda, the police have Nelson! They’re holding him at headquarters for questioning. They suspect him of killing that poor young man.”

  Miranda silently chastised herself for being relieved at this news, so different from what she’d expected to hear. But when she spoke, her voice was warm with genuine shock and concern. She said what her mother would have said. “Oh my God, Pauline, I’ll be right over. I’ll bring coffee. Not to worry. Nelson’s a saint.” Miranda’s sole contact with this man she was so quick to canonize had been when he came by once with eggs when Pauline was sick. “I bet Nelson will be home even before I get there.”

  On the way, Miranda reflected on the fact that she’d made two friends in her new community, Pauline, whose husband was being held by the cops for questioning about a murder, and Michael, who was a person of interest to the Yakama Nation Tribal Police. And they both worked for her. Would they be her friends even if they didn’t? If they knew all about her? And what about Rosemarie? She was proving to be a good friend too. Would she continue to refer her clients to the B & B? Miranda saw her business going down the tubes for sure when Detective Ladin opened his big mouth and outed her to anyone who would listen.

  Miranda shivered as she remembered her friends deserting her, because although she was not tried and found guilty of killing Timmy, she was not proved innocent either and no one else was charged. So her classmates and their parents continued to suspect and fear her and she spent much of her adolescence and young adulthood as a pariah. But as she pulled into Pauline’s driveway, she realized that if somebody didn’t figure out who killed the kosherer, Breitner’s would fail and Detective Ladin’s revelation wouldn’t matter.

  Pauline was hunched over the vintage Formica and chrome table in her sunny kitchen with only a box of Kleenex and a yard full of clucking chickens for company. Fearing that these fowl and Rusty might not take to each other, Miranda had left him home. She was sad to see her friend’s eyelids red and puffy and her distinctive French braid only partly plaited, leaving half her gray mane straggling down her back. Miranda sat down and, with an apologetic nod to the chickens, handed Pauline a thermos of the chicken soup she’d made for herself in honor of Rosh Hashanah. “This is better than coffee. Now tell me what happened. What do the police want with Nelson? Is he a witness?”
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  “I wish.” Pauline blew her nose. “I think he’s a suspect.” Before Miranda could ask why, Pauline continued, her voice low. “It’s partly because he found the body and called the police.”

  “They probably want to ask him about what he saw and the time and things like that. They already talked to me.” What she didn’t add was that on TV crime shows, the unlucky person who finds the body and reports it is often a prime suspect.

  Pauline sipped her broth. “Thanks for coming over. Your soup is good.” Her shoulders stiffened with the effort of containing another sob. “But it’s not just that he found the body. They’re talking to him because he was friends with the Jew. They used to eat lunch together.”

  “Is that a crime? You’re friends with me.” Clearly Pauline had no Jewdar, wouldn’t recognize a Jew if one walked into her kitchen and handed her a thermos of homemade chicken soup. Miranda figured she’d better make her religion clear in case her first new girlfriend in twenty years harbored anti-Semitic feelings.

  It was as if she had not spoken. “Yes. But this murdered man, Isaac, was a kosherer, he was a Jew.”

  Miranda tried again. “I’m Jewish, not Orthodox like that fellow, but I’m definitely Jewish.” She paused, scrutinizing Pauline’s face. She was relieved when it registered nothing more than surprise.

  “Oh. I didn’t know…

  “Well, I want you to know. But right now it’s beside the point, isn’t it?”

  Pauline straightened in her chair and looked Miranda in the eye. “To Nelson and me, faith is never beside the point. It is the point. Nelson’s a devout follower of Christ. He would never, ever kill someone.” This protestation of her own and Nelson’s belief seemed to strengthen Pauline.

  Miranda was relieved to see her friend’s despair evolving into indignation and decided this was not the time to begin a discussion of the Crusades or the Inquisition. Instead she said, “Pauline, the cops probably just want to see if Nelson learned anything about Isaac that would explain why somebody’d want to kill him.” Miranda hesitated and drew on her own experience. “But you know what? Just in case, it wouldn’t hurt to get him a lawyer. Do you have a lawyer?”

  “My neighbor’s son was in a car accident last year and he had a good lawyer, somebody from our church. I know his wife. I’ll call him.”

  “Good.” Miranda checked the news sites on her phone. “There’s nothing on the paper’s website about Nelson. Pauline, how did you find out about him being questioned? Did he call you himself?”

  “Yes. Of course. He wanted to be sure I was sitting down, said he didn’t want to upset me. Hah!”

  “Finding that body must have been quite upsetting for him.” Miranda waited, confident that Pauline wouldn’t be able to resist repeating Nelson’s account of his grisly discovery.

  “He came home late that day all upset, and no wonder. He had to wait for the detective and talk to him. Tell him how he was going to meet with the kosherer, with Isaac.”

  Miranda nodded.

  “It was Sunday, so Nelson had to miss church, which he hated doing, but during grape harvest…” Pauline shook her head at the tyranny of nature. “And it was some kind of Jewish holy day too, so Isaac also had to miss going to his church. But he could pray at work, had to, in fact. He even played this special instrument Jews always play on this holiday. He used to go into the storage room to pray in private and play it there. Nelson and the others heard it that morning during their break. Now don’t take this wrong, but Nelson said it sounded like a ewe giving birth.”

  Miranda’s smile faded when she remembered that Isaac’s poignant solo that day turned out to be his last. But she was relieved to learn that she wasn’t the only one who heard it.

  “So at lunchtime Nelson went to meet Isaac in the storage room and see the instrument he’d heard. He really wanted to learn about it. That’s where he found Isaac face-down on the storage room floor.” Pauline’s face seemed to fragment into pixels while she shuddered and swallowed a sob. She somehow pulled her features together before she spoke again. “Isaac wasn’t wearing his hard hat and Nelson could see that his head was bleeding. “Nelson figured the young man had fallen and hit his head on that cement floor and would come to. My Nelson did what he’s supposed to according to company protocol. He called 911 and then he called the plant manager, and then, when the kid still wasn’t moving, he prayed to Our Lord to help his friend.” Pauline lowered her head.

  Nelson had not returned when Miranda left, but Pauline had made an appointment with a lawyer and called her daughter-in-law who was en route. Back at the B & B she pulled into her parking spot and saw Michael’s truck, so she followed the sound of hammering to the yard. The young man knelt atop the shed, nailing new shingles to the old roof. “I’m almost done.”

  “Good. I’m glad to see you.” Miranda paused. “Stop in, please, before you leave so I can pay you. And I want to ask you something.”

  She walked around to the mailbox and stood with her back to the factory looking at Breitner’s B & B, its painted sign a faint beacon in the diminishing light. What would happen to the place when she left? She’d poured her heart and her mother’s hopes, not to mention a big chunk of her hard-won reparation money, into this building. It was more than just her home. It gave her life purpose. She loved her round of housewifey chores, making breakfasts and beds, cleaning up, doing laundry, grocery shopping. She also loved keeping the books and breakfasting with guests. And she’d begun to put down new roots in this fertile Valley where farms and factories and different kinds of people were all neighbors. She didn’t want to leave, had nowhere to go. She had a stake in solving this murder, damn it. She grabbed the mail and went in.

  The B & B’s guest book was on the counter where she couldn’t miss it instead of on its shelf near the door. It was open to a nice review from Steve that doubled as a goodbye, because his keys were next to it. Miranda had not looked forward to a face-to-face goodbye from him and his bill was paid through the next morning, so his abrupt day-early departure was almost a relief. She got her cleaning equipment and, with Rusty at her heels, went to work to ready Steve’s room for a new occupant. She threw open the windows to let in the fresh autumn air. With the brisk breeze gusting in while she changed the sheets and aired the quilt that served as a bedspread, Miranda felt a bit better. She had to shoo Rusty out of the bathroom where, in spite of her efforts to break him of his one bad habit, he greedily guzzled the toilet water.

  Banishing him from the room by way of punishment, she cleaned the bathroom and then did her routine check of the drawers, certain that the meticulous Steve hadn’t left anything behind, but checking anyway. She was wrong. In the night table drawer she found a small copy of the New Testament. Well, she’d just mail it to him. Then she opened it and read the words on the inside of the cover. Steve’s scrawl seemed at odds with the formal somewhat archaic message it spelled out, “For the next weary traveler to lay his head here… Rest At Home O Wanderer Alone!” So he’d meant to leave it. Annoyed because the religious book violated Breitner’s decidedly nonsectarian policies, she pocketed it to place in a drawer that already served as a lost-and-found for a few other items left behind by guests.

  She was getting ready to take Rusty out when Michael came in. Miranda talked while she counted out the money she owed him. “A detective from the county was here this morning to question me, and he asked about you. He probably wants to know if you saw or heard anything unusual while you were working here the day of the murder. Also he said the tribal police are looking for you too. Said I should let him know when you show up.”

  “Thanks.” He pocketed the cash. His next words came even more slowly than usual, as if he resisted having to say them, having to reveal his personal life to his boss. “The tribal police already talked to me. They’re looking for my grandfather again.” Michael’s voice was low. “I’m sorry I’ve been kinda scarce around here lately. I’ve been trying to track him down too. He wen
t missing a couple of days ago.”

  “That’s worrisome. I’m sorry, Michael. Can you walk with us? Rusty’s been waiting for this outing. And I want to ask you something about your grandfather.” Michael nodded and they left the building, crunching brown leaves beneath their feet as they walked past the processing plant and the row of small houses, some nearly hidden behind weeping still-green willow trees. “You must be worried about him, Michael. Tell me, is he a very small old man who wears camouflage clothes and has a pony tail?”

  “And smells like an alley where some pothead just puked? Yeah. That’s him.” Michael sighed and slowed his pace to match hers. “Where’d you see him?”

  “I was by the river off Route 22 over near Granger with Rusty the other day. And this little old guy kind of snuck up on me. He looks a lot like you. We talked for a minute or two. He said his name was Kamiakin and that he lives on the reservation. He disappeared before I could offer him a ride… “

  “That’s him. His name is Joseph Wright, but they tell me he’s been wrong ever since he got home from Vietnam.” Michael shrugged off his bad pun. “He said he killed a lot of people over there and that made him way different than he was.” The boy frowned and shook his head. When he spoke next his voice was weary as if the story he was about to repeat exhausted him. “He moved out of grandmother’s house in town and ever since he’s been squatting in an old cabin way out on the rez. Then after grandmother died, my mom died and my dad went to jail and died there.” Michael rattled off this list of losses as if such losses were routine. “Then it was just me and my older sister at home. She took care of me for a while. When I got older, she moved away. So grandfather took me in. I had to walk pretty far every day to get to and from the school bus.” Michael rolled his eyes at this memory. “Back in the day he still fished a little.” Perhaps it was pride that made his voice rise when he added, “Taught me to fish before I went to kindergarten. So now I’m taking care of him. Or at least trying to.” He kicked a stick out of their path.