Murder in the Melting Pot

by Jane Isenberg

  Alone in the locked bathroom with Rusty, Miranda liberated her phone from the inside breast pocket of her parka with her good hand and pointed it at the rows of vials and tubes in her hostess’s medicine cabinet just as any TV detective worth watching would have done. With the thumb of her injured hand, she clicked a couple of times and shoved the phone back in her hidden pocket. Then, even though no one else could possibly hear, she dutifully held the flusher down for ten seconds, waited a few more seconds, and left the bathroom just in time to let in a waiting guest with the initials AH beneath the swastika on his sweatshirt. Chilled to the bone, Miranda was glad this Hitler fan would see water eddying in the toilet.

  The hall was empty and mercifully quiet until she heard chanting and stamping from the living room. She couldn’t make out the words, but it sounded like some kind of rah-rah football cheer. She looked at the photos set out on old-fashioned molding that once probably displayed a former owner’s “good” plates. The photos appeared to have been taken at rock concerts, Christian rock concerts according to the signage that figured prominently in several of them. The rock concert in the living room began again and that’s when she saw it. The snapshot of Tammy, her husband, and another couple set Miranda’s heart beating so hard and so loud, she could actually hear it over the percussive pounding of the music in the next room. She wanted to take a picture of this photo, but didn’t dare. What if someone else with a bursting bladder came along? She’d said she had no cell phone. But what if she didn’t take the photo? Could she steal the actual picture, frame and all? Too bulky. Besides, then it might be inadmissible as evidence. She wasn’t sure. But without that picture, who would believe her? It was the missing dot that just might enable her to connect all the others. She had to photograph it.

  So with her pits dripping sweat and her heart throbbing in her throat where it threatened to choke her, she took out her cell and pointed and clicked a couple of times. Just as she saw the knob on the bathroom door turn, she jammed the phone back in her pocket. Only a step ahead of the unsuspecting guy leaving the bathroom, she led Rusty quickly back through the living-dining room to the front door, trying to look at the guests without any of them seeing her and, perhaps, recognizing her. Could that smiling woman swaying to the beat in a white sweatshirt with a coiled snake on it be the genial farmer’s wife who sold homemade jam from a roadside stand near the Thurstons’ house?

  Miranda squatted with her back to the group as she pressed down the Velcro on her sneakers with her good hand. These sneakers were geeky but convenient, especially that night. It would’ve been hard to tie the laces on her other running shoes with one hand bandaged. Before leaving, she slid what looked like a flyer from atop a stack of paper to the right of the pile of shoes and shoved it into her pocket.

  She gave Rusty a quick head scratch as soon as they pulled the door shut behind them. The smiling man posing with Tammy and her husband and an unknown woman in the photo that had set her heart to hammering was Steve Galen.

  CHAPTER 18

  Guest book: “We just closed on a house in the Valley so we can be near our twin grandbabies. We’re gonna miss staying at this B&B. After a day with those two, we love to come back here where it’s peaceful and cozy and we don’t have to do a thing! Thanks, Miranda!” Gram and Papa Harrison

  Back at the B & B Miranda pulled the crumpled flyer she’d filched from the pumpkin house out of her parka pocket and studied it.

  Martyrs Day Commemoration!

  December 8th

  Rock and Remember those who came before us!

  5 bands!

  Tyler’s Ranch

  Between the Okanagans and the Cascades

  RaHoWa!

  A quick flip through a chapter in American Swastika reminded her that Martyrs Day, the two words in navy blue on Tammy’s sweatshirt and touted on the flyer, was a haters’ holiday commemorating the shooting of Aryan terrorist Robert Matthews. He was gunned down in a battle with federal authorities on Whidbey Island, Washington, in 1984. Who knew? This information convinced Miranda that the inhabitants of that house and their guests were, in fact, Aryan supremacists. No wonder their kids had bad-mouthed dark-skinned and developmentally-challenged Josefina. Kids notoriously forget that when their parents tell them “What you hear at home stays at home,” they mean it. She recognized RaHoWa as what she had heard the pumpkin-house partiers chanting and there it was on page one of American Swastika! It was coded shorthand for Racial Holy War, and chanting it promotes solidarity among white supremacists.

  Running back to the B & B with Rusty after reclaiming her gloves and razor from Darlene’s front yard, she’d been as elated by her own chutzpah as she was by the discovery of Steve Galen grinning at her from a photo on the wall of a “respectable” local family. That family had undoubtedly told Galen about the kosherers’annual visits to Sunnyvale. The photo and the flyer validated Miranda’s own impulsive reconnaissance mission. No wonder the art restorer wanted to stay at her B & B even though his work was in Toppenish. It wasn’t her great website or delicious breakfasts or comfortable, quiet rooms or low prices. It was the B & B’s proximity to the processing plant and its koshering operation. He wanted to be able to observe the comings and goings there without being observed himself before striking. No wonder he’d selected the room facing the street. How many times had he donned a skullcap, climbed out of his first-floor window, and entered the plant before he found the storage room and figured out when it was empty? Her own foray into the pumpkin house had led her to a breakthrough in her entirely unauthorized investigation of the murder of Isaac Markowitz. The familiar voice in her head telling her she must be crazy was muted by a louder one congratulating her on her cleverness and daring. She couldn’t recall when she had felt so pleased with herself.

  But later, upstairs in her apartment while giving Rusty a belly rub, this flood of self-satisfaction ebbed along with her endorphins, and her exhilaration gave way to skepticism. Steve Galen was an esteemed art restorer, an accomplished and personable man with a website full of references from satisfied clients. Maybe he was just a friend of Tammy and her husband, unaware of their beliefs and with no reason to kill Isaac Markowitz. But if he, too, was a white su-premacist that would be reason enough. Nurse Tammy, aka Babe, was so kind and competent. She would never teach her kids to torment children like Josefina. But they had. And Tammy did work at the local hospital and have access to poisons. By the time Miranda covered her bandaged hand in a plastic bag, showered, and crawled into her sleeping bag, she had calmed down enough to realize that getting the cops to take Steve Galen seriously as a suspect in a carefully-orchestrated hate crime would not be a slam-dunk.

  To Miranda, the art restorer’s affiliation with Tammy and her husband was grounds for further investigation into Steve’s past activities, but that affiliation alone might not prompt Sheriff Carson to authorize his finest to investigate him. One of her TV detectives would show them that Steve Galen had the opportunity to commit this murder by placing him at the crime scene. That would be a problem because she herself had given him a partial alibi by mentioning to Detective Ladin that the pious art restorer had chatted with her on his return from church. Damn.

  And then Miranda remembered something. She thought on it for a few minutes. It was a long shot, but so was her visit to the pumpkin house. Reassured, she burrowed into her cocoon. There, in spite of the racial slurs set to music that she still heard, her fear of being exposed, the throbbing of her self-inflicted wound, the four empty guest rooms below, and the guy she’d spotted lurking in the shadows across the street, she slept dreamlessly until she felt Rusty’s wet nose nuzzling her neck.

  That morning was the first since Breitner’s opened that she had no guests waiting for breakfast. This might have inspired yet another bout of self-pity. But instead, Miranda was up early enjoying a mug of hot chocolate and a couple of eggs-over-easy mopped up with a buttered cinnamon bun. This orgy of sugar, fat, and white flour energized her
as she crossed the street and walked around the block to enter the fruit processing plant’s front door. She presented her card to Oskar Hindgrout’s receptionist, who looked a lot younger than Miranda expected.

  “Do you have an appointment?” The woman consulted her laptop.” I don’t see any appointments for this morning. Mr. Hindgrout’s at a meeting.”

  “I’m not here to see Mr. Hindgrout. I’m here to see you.” Miranda smiled and pushed her card across the desk. “I’d like to talk to you outside for just a few minutes. Can you take a break?”

  The young woman shook her head firmly. “No. I’m a temp.” She barely glanced at Miranda’s card. “This is only my second week here. I’m hoping to get hired permanently. What did you want to see me about?”

  Miranda was disappointed to learn that this pert and ambitious gal was not the woman she wished to see. “Never mind. Thanks anyway.” She snatched her card back and left. Before she’d made her way across the road, she’d figured out an alternate source of the information she wanted. Nelson would know the former receptionist. Miranda preferred to ask him rather than Hindgrout, who might not feel free to divulge personal information about a former employee. Also she was sure Nelson wouldn’t tell the police about her inquiry, whereas Oskar Hindgrout just might.

  She had Nelson’s cell number and left word for him to call her during his morning break. While she waited, she e-mailed the photo she’d taken the night before to herself to get it on her laptop, enlarged it, and printed out several copies. She also made copies of the flyer. That done, she attacked her inn-keeper’s chores with one and a half hands. She was watering plants when she heard her phone’s distinctive bleat. “Nelson, thanks for getting back to me. I need some information but I don’t want anyone to know, even Pauline. So this call is between you and me, okay? We can tell Pauline later.”

  He hesitated. He didn’t keep many secrets from Pauline. She was pleased when he said, “Okay. What do you want to know?”

  “The name of the receptionist who used to work for Hindgrout. I need her address too.”

  “Carmen. Carmen Esposito. Catholic. She’s strict, like a school teacher. But she’s a nice lady. Been at the plant almost as long as me. Now her mother has cancer and has moved in with Carmen. That’s why she left work.”

  “Thanks.” Miranda appreciated this unsolicited thumbnail description, but pushed for just a little more. “Do you have an address for Carmen?”

  “Don’t know her exact address, but I always drove her home when her car was in the shop. I could find the house again.” Pauline often said her husband didn’t know how to say no, and she was right. Nelson sounded resigned to his own acquiescent nature when, even before Miranda made a request, he complied. “I’ll call you when I get off work. Follow me in your truck. I’ll show you where her house is.”

  “I owe you one, Nelson.” She figured her injured hand would complicate driving a little, but as long as she stayed on local roads, she’d be fine.

  That evening with three precious guests royally welcomed, Miranda drove across the little town to the beige house Nelson had pointed out to her earlier. There were lights in the back, probably in a bedroom or the kitchen, and a light on the porch too. Before ringing the doorbell, she braced herself to meet a cancer patient, sure that the sight of the sick and suffering woman would evoke painful memories of her own mother’s last sad months.

  The brown-haired fifty-something woman who opened the door did a double take at the sight of Miranda. Clearly she was expecting a different visitor. Her cryptic dismissal was barely civil. “Please go away. You’re wasting your time. I have all the make-up I need. I’m Catholic, and I’m not converting. And the election’s over.” She held the side of the door in one hand, ready to slam it.

  Miranda stuck her foot over the threshold. “Carmen, I’m not an Avon lady, or a Mormon missionary, or a campaign worker. I’m Miranda Breit…

  “How do you know my name? Are you from the government? I was born here. I’m a citizen. What do you want?”

  “No, no, I’m not from the government. I own the B & B across the street from Oskar Hindgrout’s plant. My name is Miranda Breitner. And what I want right now is to come in and talk to you for just a few minutes. You’re letting all the heat out of your house, and I’m freezing out here.”

  Carmen grudgingly opened the door and moved aside as Miranda stepped in and found herself in the line of fire of a rifle held by an emaciated gray-haired woman in a lime-green nightgown not two feet away from her. For the second time in a month Miranda froze speechless in a doorway fearing for her life. The gun rested on the would-be shooter’s shoulder, and she gripped it in two hands, one tethered by tubes to an IV pole teetering behind her. Even the unlikely shooter’s thick Spanish accent, raspy whisper, and the tubes pushing oxygen into her nostrils didn’t keep Miranda from understanding her every syllable. “I not letting you bastards deport me. I gonna die right here in this house. I not going back.”

  “Mamacita! Put that gun down. What’re you doing out of bed and sneaking up behind my back? You’re not going anywhere. How many times do I have to tell you?” Gently, so as not to detach any of the tubes festooning her mother’s blue-veined hand, Carmen wrested the rifle out of her grasp and tossed it onto the sofa where it lay among the cabbage roses decorating the fabric covering all the living room furniture. Miranda ventured a breath and closed the door behind her. Carmen’s resigned tone indicated that this was not the first time she’d had to disarm her mother and talk her back to bed.

  “Let me help.” Shaken, Miranda approached the gasping patient and, with a practiced hand, untangled the tubes and checked their connections to the bags and bottles while Carmen dragged over a walker. Unbidden, Miranda walked ahead of mother and daughter to the ammonia-scented back bedroom where she expected to find a rumpled hospital bed. She was right. She lowered the mattress and, with her good hand, straightened and tightened the flowered sheets, plumped the pillows, and cranked the bed back up, so that by the time the groaning old lady and her sorrowful and embarrassed daughter appeared, it looked almost inviting.

  Miranda left the two women alone and retreated to the cozy living room. She made sure to seat herself on the plush easy chair across from the sofa rather than on that sofa next to the rifle. On the mantel, children and elders smiled at Miranda from a line-up of family photos, while in a large portrait hanging above the rose-strewn sofa and the gun the Madonna kept an eye on her. A slightly smaller painting of the Stars and Stripes hung next to the one of Mary.

  Just as Miranda heard the emphatic musical prelude to Law and Order, Carmen returned. “I’m sorry my mother scared you. She’s pretty scared herself now and the meds are making her act crazy. When death comes for her, she’ll probably try to shoot him too.” Smiling bitterly, she picked up the rifle and manipulated its mechanism, making it click and open. She extracted and pocketed several bullets. “I don’t know which of her friends is bringing her ammo,” Carmen complained. “I try to keep this hidden, but she always finds it. I keep it around because of, you know, the gangs. I’ll be right back.” She left the room with the rifle and a pocketful of bullets.

  When she returned, she sat down on the sofa. Up close and in the light, Miranda noted that Carmen’s thin nose protruded beneath a forehead pleated with lines and that one of her hands, empty on her lap, trembled. When she spoke she sounded put upon. “Please, tell me your name again.”

  “I’m Miranda Breitner. I own the B & B across the road from where you used to work.”

  “Did Mr. Hindgrout send you? That man is stubborn.” Carmen shook her head. “I keep telling him I can’t come back until…” Her voice broke. She pulled herself together and added. “Tell him I’m really sorry. He should get somebody else.”

  “Mr. Hindgrout didn’t send me, Carmen. In fact, I don’t want him to know I was here. I don’t want anyone to know.”

  Perplexity added even more lines to Carmen’s crowded brow.
“So what do you want?”

  “Carmen, when you worked, you used to go out to the plant parking lot every day during your break to that little space between the stacked fruit crates to smoke.”

  Carmen’s jaw dropped and she hugged herself with both arms. “You were spying on me?”

  “No. I was just looking out a window in my apartment on the second floor of the B & B. I used to see you race in there, and then I’d see smoke from your cigarette rise in puffs.”

  “So? I was on my break.” Carmen’s tone was the defiant yawp of a teenager caught smoking behind the barn. “On my breaks I went out there and had a smoke. So what?”

  “And during the grape harvest, you worked seven days a week, right?”

  “Yes. I was Mr. Hindgrout’s administrative assistant and receptionist. Since 2009 I had to do both jobs for one paycheck.” She snorted. “But my mother kept getting worse so I took a leave and moved her in here. I quit smoking.” In an instant, her defiant voice thinned to a wary, anxious whisper. “Are you from my health insurance company? Are you going to raise my rates?”

  “No. I’m not here from the insurance company.” Having learned to interrogate from pros, Miranda stayed on track. “You left your job soon after Isaac Markowitz was killed, right?”

  “Yes. That’s when my leave started, but I was glad to go after that happened. I was scared. Not too much difference between killing a Jew and killing a Mexican or an Indian, whatever.” She shrugged. “That boy’s death was a terrible thing. Nothing like that ever happened at the plant. We never even had an injury worth dialing 911 for. All the workers were scared after that. They wonder if they’ll be next. Mr. Hindgrout worries too. He put up lights and an alarm. The cops still didn’t get the guy who did it.”

  Without explanation or ceremony, Miranda took the enlarged black-and-white photo from her purse and placed it in her hostess’s lap. “Carmen, when you were in the parking lot on your break, did you ever notice any one of the folks in this photo go into the plant?”