by Nadia Gordon
“Not necessarily,” said Rivka. “Remember he said he lived nearby? Maybe sometimes he walks home.”
“So, assuming for a moment that he walks home with some regularity,” said Sunny, “and assuming he has a pattern the killer can rely on, which is fairly safe to assume since Dean Blodger is a creature of habit if he is nothing else, someone could have broken in and taken the keys to the truck, used it to deposit Heidi at Vedana, and returned them. Why?” She thought again. “To make it look like Dean did it. Or, if it was Dean, to give himself an out.”
“I think you guys are barking up the wrong suspect,” said Monty. “Sun, you need to follow your own advice. Look at why, not how. Sure, any passing sociopath could have nabbed her. That’s true of all of us, all the time. All you really have to go on is where and how she was left. Find somebody connected to the winery or the rope business, and you’ve got your man. For now, that suggests Mark Weisman, even if we can’t think of a reason for him to have done it. He’s the only one connected to both the girl and the winery.”
For now, that suggests Mark Weisman and the man Kimberly Knolls met in a hotel in Sonoma, thought Sunny. If they were one and the same, or if Kimberly’s Internet hookup was Dean Blodger, she was getting close. Wade was right, it was time to alert Sergeant Harvey, even if it meant admitting she’d been back to the houseboat at Liberty Dock.
“There’s more,” said Sunny, thinking what an understatement that was. The faces around the table waited eagerly. She couldn’t disclose what Kimberly had told her, and she would resist the urge to share her find in the mud. If she was going to withhold evidence from a murder investigation, it only seemed prudent to do so with discretion. “I was talking with one of Heidi’s neighbors tonight, and he said Heidi and her boyfriend had a loud fight a couple of days before she disappeared.” She related the argument as Ronald Fetcher had given it to her.
“There,” said Monty, looking over the top of his glasses meaningfully. “I rest my case.”
26
Wade searched Sunny’s cottage, including the closets, the pantry, and under the bed, then went outside and toured the perimeter. He even walked up and down the block checking for suspicious cars. When he came back, he extracted a solemn promise from Sunny that she would telephone Sergeant Harvey within the hour. Only then would he agree to leave her alone in the house for the night.
“Don’t you think the harbormaster or Mark Weisman or whoever the bogeyman du jour is would have come to get me by now if he was going to come at all?” said Sunny, watching Wade check behind the shower curtain. “You’re making me paranoid.”
“Since you mention it, that is exactly what I think,” said Wade, satisfied there were no murderers hiding in the bathtub. “Otherwise I would never leave you here alone. But I still want you to call Steve tonight.”
“I will.”
“You promised me.”
“And I will do it.”
Everyone cleared out by eleven. When they’d left, Sunny locked all the doors and windows, checked the whole house one more time herself, and went for the phone. Steve Harvey was in the middle of watching a movie with Sarah Winfield, resident yogini.
“Sorry to interrupt.”
“It’s okay, it’s a rental,” he said. “We can pause it.”
“Anything I’ve seen?” said Sunny.
“Dirty Harry.”
“A classic.”
“Sarah says it glorifies violence and revenge.”
“Indeed. That’s the whole point. What’s Clint supposed to do, suggest the bad guys try some breathing exercises and a few downward dogs to relax those destructive impulses?”
“I don’t think that will help.”
“Tell her it’s about mindfulness. That scene at the beginning with the bank robbery is a celebration of his superior powers of awareness. He’s a crime-fighting Zen master.”
“Who packs a .44 Magnum.”
“Let me guess, you picked the movie. Word of advice. Next time, let her pick.”
Steve sighed. “To what do I owe the honor?”
“You’re not going to like this.”
“I never do. People don’t call my mobile at eleven o’clock on a Monday night to invite me out to pizza. I’m listening.”
“First of all, does the name Mark Weisman mean anything to you?”
“What does it mean to you?”
“I asked first.”
“I’m wearing a badge.”
“Fine. Mark Weisman, owner of the Vedana, a sailboat docked in the Sausalito marina, as well as lover of Heidi Romero, recent victim of apparent homicide. Alleged to have had a loud argument with the deceased shortly before her disappearance.”
“Very good. A little too good, as a matter of fact. I guess you didn’t take my advice from last time to heart.”
“I did, but then circumstances intervened.”
“What circumstances?”
“That’s not the important part. The important part is Mark Weisman.”
“Weisman was in Germany starting four days before Heidi went missing,” said Steve. “Verified by his office in Frankfurt. Verified by his office in San Rafael. Verified by the very helpful and courteous staff at Lufthansa Airlines. Verified by his wife. Verified by phone by Mr. Weisman himself. I’m sold on the story. Next topic.”
“So you don’t make anything of the connection between the two Vedanas?”
“I didn’t say that. But I believe Mark Weisman was out of the country during his girlfriend’s murder, and I believe he is still there. If he comes back, we’ll want to have a talk with him.”
“What do you mean, if he comes back?”
“Well, if he is involved in Heidi’s death, Germany is a great place for him to be, and I’m sure he knows that. We have a hell of a time extraditing suspects from abroad. There’s no budget for sending somebody over there to track him down, for one thing. The paperwork’s a nightmare. I gotta get somebody who speaks German. Even with way more to go on than I’ve got, I’d be spinning my wheels. The best evidence against him is if he doesn’t come back. That tells us something. In that event, we keep gathering evidence, we watch, we wait for a chance to nail him.”
“What about Dean Blodger?”
“Why don’t you tell me about him.”
Sunny sighed. “Harbormaster at Liberty Dock. Said to have had a crush on Heidi. Drives the white truck with mismatched taillights I saw leaving Vedana Vineyards the night of the murder. Leaves his keys clearly visible in his office, which is often left open. Is that enough, or shall I go on?”
“If you’ve got more, be my guest.”
“Spotted recently by me around St. Helena, twice. Turned up at the Ferrari event where Vedana Vineyards was a sponsor. He was tailing somebody, whether it was me, the Knolls, or the Obermeiers, I don’t know which. And speaking of the Obermeiers, what do you make of Ové?”
“The winemaker? Once again, I’d like to hear your thoughts first.”
“He’s lecherous enough to be overtly inappropriate in a formal social setting. He spent an entire dinner winking at me across the table. He may not be dangerous, but he is certainly motivated and daring when it comes to women. He’s a pathological winker. How deep his impulses run is another question. There, I’ve spilled my guts. Please tell me you’re looking into the white truck at least.”
“At least. Have a little faith, McCoskey. I don’t make it my top priority to keep you informed on my investigations. But since you ask, yes, we’re working on linking up the white truck. Yes, we’ve talked with Dean Blodger, several times. Yes, I am aware that Mark Weisman owns a boat named Vedana and was in a pickle with his wife and his mistress, with whom he had recently had a nasty quarrel overheard by at least three people. And yes, I picked up on the concept that Ové appreciates the company of the ladies, maybe even a little more than is healthy. What else have you got?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“Can you tell me who I should arrest and why?”
&
nbsp; “No, I can’t. But I do have something else.”
“Spill it.”
“Has Kimberly Knolls contacted you recently?”
“Ms. Knolls? No, she hasn’t contacted me. We interviewed her a couple of times after the body was discovered, but that was over a week ago.”
“If she talked with someone else, another police officer, would you hear about it?”
“You mean about this case?”
“Yeah.”
“Then I’d hear about it. I get cc’d on anything related or potentially related to my cases, especially Heidi Romero. Why would Kimberly Knolls need to contact me?”
“I was just curious.”
“Do you have any other curiosities you would like to float, or can I go back to Mr. Callahan and his Zen handgun of justice?”
“Just one more. You never talked to Joel Hyder.”
“True, we have not spoken as yet.”
“Why not?”
“I’m keeping an eye on him, don’t you worry. Sometimes you don’t gain anything by talking. Sometimes it’s better to wait and watch, see if somebody will make a move on his own. Believe me, Joel Hyder isn’t going anywhere that I won’t know about.”
“How is that?”
“Little run-in he had outside a bar in Oakland last year. He’s still on probation.” Steve paused. Sunny waited. She had the impression the TV she could hear in the background had caught his attention. After a moment, he went on. “I’ll tell you what, Sunny. You’re worrying too much about all this. We’ve got it under control. Not that I don’t appreciate your insights and contributions, but it sounds like you’re letting this thing get under your skin. I can understand that, and I’m sympathetic. But you’ve gotta understand that murder investigations can go on for a very long time. You’ll wear yourself out thinking about it, and if you get yourself involved you could easily mess up the investigation. Unless you join the police force or remember something you forgot to tell me about that night, it’s better to just forget about Heidi Romero and get on with your life. We’ll handle it. When I’ve found the responsible party and the evidence I need to prove it, you’ll read about it on the front page of the Napa Register. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Get some rest. You sound tired.”
“Right. Will do.”
She hung up the phone and sat staring at the empty fireplace. Steve was right, she should go to bed. There was nothing she could do. He already knew everything she’d discovered, except for what Kimberly had told her. She would wait one more day. If Kimberly hadn’t talked to the police by then, she would call Steve, make her very last disclosure, and be done with it. She stretched out on the couch and put her feet up. Everything had its price. The price of a day of anonymous sex was about to come due for Kimberly Knolls. That was the last thought she remembered before the sun shining in the living room window woke her six hours later.
“Jason, you know, the blackberry dude, called me last night, late. We had this amazing conversation about how when you have sex with someone, it’s not two people in bed together, it’s really four,” said Rivka, right before she shoved a bowl of crepe batter under the mixer and hit the switch.
Sunny waited until the machine stopped and she could hear again. “Explain.”
“He was saying how our brains are made up of different sections that handle different tasks. You’ve got the base brain that all animals have. The brain stem. They call it the lizard brain because it goes back to the reptilian age, when we were all lizards and there weren’t any big thinkers around. The lizard brain is the part that handles subconscious impulses, like breathing, eating, and procreating. The basics. Then you have the higher brain where conscious thought happens. That’s the lumpy gray part. What he was saying is, when you’re in bed together, there are really four minds jockeying for position. Two lizard brains trying to get their freak on and make a new generation of lizards, and two higher minds trying to form a deep and lasting spiritual bond, move in together, maybe buy a house. The lizard brain and the cerebral cortex are essentially in conflict. They have conflicting objectives. Lizard is single-minded, knockdown kink. Lumpy gray is all love and harpsichords. That’s why sex is so confusing and full of contradictions.”
“Is it full of contradictions?” said Sunny, wishing they could wrap up the subject swiftly and move on. These conversations with Rivka inevitably made her feel like she’d been doing it wrong all these years, or possibly had missed the point entirely and never really done it at all.
“It is in my experience. Part of me wants the guy to bring flowers and kiss my hand and read me Pablo Neruda. The other part wants him to throw me on the bed and get busy. I always wondered what was up with that. Now it turns out the reason it feels like there are two people in my head who want two different things is that there really are two minds in there with two different sets of goals. Three actually, since there’s also the middle brain controlling emotions. That’s the part that really messes things up.”
Rivka disappeared into the walk-in and came back with an armful of stainless-steel bins covered in plastic wrap. She left again and returned with a bag of onions and a bottle of red wine vinaigrette. “I mean, I always wondered about that stuff, but I never really thought about it. Then last night when we were on the phone he started talking about how the rift between our sexual minds and our conscious minds gets bigger and more confusing and full of contradictions all the time. Because our conscious minds are getting more and more refined and sophisticated, but our lizard brains are still as primitive, carnal, and violent as ever. Our basic nature is fight, eat, fuck, repeat, not necessarily in that order, meanwhile the guy driving thinks he’s above it all. He just wants his strawberries and cream.”
“That’s a refreshing perspective,” said Sunny. “I thought we all agreed that we were basically devolving and becoming more violent as a species, as demonstrated by cable television and spring break in Baja. I kind of like the idea that we’re getting more refined.”
“Maybe we’re not improving overall, but we’re definitely becoming more intellectual, more centered in our heads. We identify with our higher brains, not our reptilian brains. Which is as it should be, otherwise we’d still be living like lizards, but it’s getting more exaggerated all the time. The more we focus on the higher brain with its cerebral pursuits and primness and detachment from the physical, the more alienated we become from this other very basic part of ourselves. We’re never going to escape the fact that we are animals, and that sex is this very physical, basic, grungy, unequal, aggressive scene that is an undeniable part of us, no matter how superior and moral we might think we can become. I can be as eloquent and influential a feminist as I want to be, but somewhere inside me I’m still going to hunger for a big, strong man. It’s hardwired into the brain stem. To deny it leads to repression, which leads to frustration, shame, anger, and ultimately violence.” Rivka cut into another onion, trying to turn her head away from the fumes. “The whole topic came up because we started out talking about how Americans lose their minds if somebody shows a breast on television, but it’s okay to show bodies being pulled out of rubble, people being shot and tortured, maniacs hitting each other in a ring. You know, how various aspects of American culture—our Puritan heritage, for example, but also the more recent hero-savior complex—have repressed the erotic impulse. Shoved down under the surface, it festers and turns into shame, frustration, and anger, then reemerges as an addiction to violence.”
“Here, let me take a turn,” said Sunny. Rivka went to throw cold water on her face and Sunny took over dicing onions. “You talked about all that last night?”
“Yeah,” she called from the sink. “We were on the phone for at least an hour. It was incredible.”
“You think he’s trying to tell you something? I mean, other than that he’s an insightful conversationalist?”
“You mean like he’s some kind of wild lizard-man in the sack?”
“Exactly.”
She looked up from the paper towel she was using to scrub her face dry. “I’ve got my fingers crossed.”
Sunny finished the onions and went back to her station. She took out the three knives she liked to use for butchering. One was eight inches long, slender, and gently tapered like a blade of grass. The other was six inches and narrow, shaped with a curve at the end for hooking under joints and skin. The third was a classic chef’s knife for chopping. All three were marvelously sharp. The Italian shop in San Francisco where Andre had taken them sharpened knives to perfection. With knives this sharp, a piece of meat surrendered all resistance.
She started with the chicken. The smell of raw meat was still a problem, as was the cold touch of it. Only time would strip away the associations of that night. Someday, she reassured herself, the sight of a pristine pink salmon fillet or a pale, tender pork loin would make her smile with anticipation again. She took up the meat shears, deftly snipping at the tendons and cartilage of the chicken on the block in front of her, rendering it neatly flat for roasting. “Joel Hyder call you anymore?” she said.
“Not since Saturday.”
“Good.”
A strange sourness deadened her senses gradually. By the end of the day, her arms and legs felt leaden. In her mind, darkness reigned. Rivka’s talk from the morning haunted her with violent visions, with scenes dominated by primitive cruelty. Humanity seemed a barely contained tide of murderous, purposeless aggression, brimming up under a meager surface of civility and kindness. She longed for the past. For Catelina Alvarez’s warm kitchen filled with the good smells of cooking, and for her certainty in the way life should be lived. Catelina went to bed at nine and rose at five. At five-twenty, the kettle sang and coffee was made. Food brought everyone together in a daily communion. There was no talk of the right or wrong of meat. Meat was god’s gift to mankind, a bounty to be gratefully enjoyed, like the fruits and vegetables and all the other goodness from the land. The sin was to be ungrateful, to be critical and shun what was given.