Murder Alfresco #3

by Nadia Gordon

  “Are you the harbormaster when he’s out?” asked Sunny.

  “I am the assistant harbormaster all the time. Vurleen Rose,” said the woman. “And you are?”

  Sunny introduced herself.

  Vurleen narrowed her eyes and looked her up and down. “I see everyone who goes in and out here. I haven’t seen you before. You visiting somebody?”

  “I was just leaving some flowers at Heidi Romero’s place.”

  Vurleen shook her head slowly. “I feel mighty sorry for that poor girl. She never did nothing to deserve to be killed. But I truly hope people aren’t going to start leaving flowers at her house. All those flowers and cards pile up and wilt and blow around. It makes a terrible mess.”

  Sunny laughed. “I’ll go back and get them if you like.”

  “Don’t bother, darlin’. One bouquet of flowers won’t make no difference. What’d you leave?”

  “Stargazer lilies.”

  “Oh, that’s nice. That’s a nice flower. It’s when they start to pile up that’s a problem. I managed a building once where a man jumped out the window one day. Nice guy. Everybody liked him. We had people leaving jars of flowers from their gardens, candles, cards, fruit, you name it. I thought they would burn the place down with those candles.” Vurleen pattered her fingers over the shiny walls of hair slicked down to either side of her head, savoring the memory. “Went on for weeks. Every morning, same thing. Flowers, candles, cards, little packages all piled up along the wall where he died.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “Well, turns out he’d been robbing the company blind for a decade. It was talk to the judge or talk to his maker, and he chose his maker. Heidi Romero was a different story.”

  Sunny was beginning to like Vurleen, who sees everyone who goes in and out of Liberty Dock. “What do you think happened to her?”

  “Only the good lord knows. The dead tell no tales. If I had to guess, though, I’d say it was getting messed up with that man she was seeing. He come in here with that fancy car of his. He didn’t even bother to take off his wedding band. I saw it with my own eyes. He was always trying to sweet-talk me, but I ain’t gonna sweet-talk with any man stepping out on his woman. I do not approve of such activities, I don’t care who the girl is. I told Heidi she was doing wrong, but she wouldn’t listen to one word of it. That’s the way, though. That’s what money will do to you. Pretty soon you don’t know who you are and you’re stepping out on the woman you swore to love till death do you part.”

  Sunny nearly pulled the photograph out of her pocket in her excitement. She remembered just in time where it had come from. “You mean Mark? You think he killed her?”

  Vurleen looked at her with the mixture of profound contempt and pity reserved for the irritatingly stupid. “Him? Why would he kill her? He was the happiest man alive. Pocket full of money, wife at home cooking dinner, and that pretty young thing on the side whenever he liked. He wouldn’t kill nobody. I don’t think he took an extra breath in case it might upset things. Now his wife, that’s a different story though.”

  “You think his wife killed her?”

  “Or made arrangements,” said Vurleen with a sage look. “A man runs off with a pretty young thing like that, makes a woman mighty resentful. No jury I was part of would blame her for taking steps to resolve the situation.”

  “Was he the only guy Heidi was seeing?”

  “The only one. That’s what I could never understand. Why go with someone else’s man when she could have had her pick? Pretty girl like that could have had anybody. Even that cold fish Dean Blodger was practically obsessed with her. He would never admit it, but I saw clear as day. He couldn’t wait for ten o’clock every morning when that girl would sashay down the dock to her car. Dean Blodger would be glued to the window watching her while he pretended to listen to his phone messages. That poor little girl. But you can’t say she didn’t deserve it, messin’ around with another woman’s husband. None of my business, I got to tell it like it is, though.”

  “You think Dean had a crush on her?”

  “Dean Blodger may be all tied up like a ball of dime store twine, but he’s still a man. He was right there with the rest of them whenever she walked by. When she said jump, he said, ‘Yes, ma’am.’” Something beyond Sunny attracted Vurleen’s attention. “Good night, Ronald!” she called out sweetly, waving.

  “Good night, Miss Rose,” said the man across the parking lot with equal honey. It was the guy Sunny had seen on the dock last time, when she was with Joel Hyder talking to one of the neighbors. He was the one who liked to take out the trash. He picked a leaf off the windshield of an old beige sports car, got in, and fired up the throaty engine. A moment later it chugged out of the lot. Behind them, they heard it accelerate loudly toward the freeway.

  “We’re losing all the good ones,” said Vurleen. “That Ronald Fetcher has been a rare pleasure to have at Liberty Dock. Clean, quiet, courteous, friendly. A real gentleman. If everyone was that helpful, my job would be easy.”

  “Is he moving?”

  “Got to. The Mendels own the place he’s been watching. They’ll be back before the end of the week. What was your name again, darlin’?”

  “Sunny. Sunny McCoskey. Good luck getting that Saturn to shove off.”

  “I don’t need luck, missy. I’ve got the law on my side.”

  24

  Caffe Trieste was in between crowds. A sprinkling of customers dotted the sidewalk tables, and a few others were hunkered down inside. Jason, Rivka’s pupil in the school of fine espresso making, wasn’t there. Instead, two men, one tall with gray hair, the other short with black hair, both stocky, stood behind the counter. Sunny showed them the photograph she’d taken from Heidi’s bedroom.

  The short man shook his head. “Never seen him.”

  The tall man gave him a disgusted look and made a gesture like he would knock him in the back of the head. “Idiot. This guy’s been in here at least a hundred times. He keeps a boat down at the marina. Hey, Antonio! Tonio! What’s that guy’s name with the Baltic 37 with the black sails?”

  “You mean the smartass with the turtleneck?” said Antonio, a rumpled oldster wearing a plaid trilby hat and loafers with white socks. A backgammon game was set up between him and an old man in a well-worn suit sitting across from him, who was busy plucking at his long strands of eyebrow as he considered his next move.

  “Yeah, that’s the one,” said the tall man. “What’s his name?”

  “Weisass,” Antonio called out. “I mean Weisman.” His friend jiggled with laughter. “Mark Weisman.”

  “Mark Weisman,” said Sunny. “He keeps his boat here at the marina?”

  “That’s right. He comes by for breakfast on his way down.”

  “Any idea how I could reach him or where I could find the boat?”

  “You mean which slip? No idea. It’s easy to spot with the sails up, since it’s the only one out there with black sails. With them down, you’ll just have to hunt around until you find a Baltic 37. You know what that looks like?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “It’ll be thirty-seven feet long, for one thing. And a sloop, so there’s only one mast. And the Genny will be black. You’ll only see it rolled up, but it will still be different from everybody else’s. Why are you trying to find him?”

  “I need his help. Did you ever see him with a girl named Heidi Romero?”

  “The one who was just killed?” A look of profound skepticism came over his heavy face. “That I never saw. I read in the paper she lived down in one of the houseboats, but I didn’t recognize her. I don’t think she came around much.” He raised his voice again. “Hey, Antonio, did this Weisman ever come in with a girl named Heidi? Young girl, long black hair.”

  “If he did, he kept it secret from the missus,” said Antonio, triggering another round of chortles from his gaming partner.

  Sunny thanked them and walked around the side of the café, down to the water. The gate to t
he marina was locked, so she waited. After a few minutes, a trim, friendly-looking man and his dog came along and opened it.

  “Thanks,” said Sunny. “You don’t happen to know where I can find Mark Weisman’s Baltic 37, do you? The one with the black sails?”

  “It’s down on C Dock. But he’s not around. He’s been away for weeks.”

  “Do you know where?”

  “Yes,” said the man, his eyes sparkling. “I do. Do you?”

  Sunny laughed. “Am I being nosy?”

  “Technically, this marina is private property. You need a pass to get in here, and you need to rent a slip to get a pass. How do you know Mark?”

  “I don’t,” said Sunny. “He knows a friend of mine. Any idea when he’s coming back?”

  “I couldn’t say. Last I heard he was in Europe. And you are?”

  “Sonya McCoskey.” She took a business card out of her purse. “I’m just trying to find a way to reach Mark. The sailboat is all I have to go on so far.”

  “You could try leaving a note. He’ll come back here eventually.” He called his dog and headed up the gangway.

  Sunny walked up to C Dock. All the boats looked alike, and most of them seemed about thirty-seven feet long. They had names like Bodacious and Vanity Fair and Seventh Heaven. She might not have figured out which one belonged to Mark Weisman if she hadn’t stopped to watch a seagull crack open a mussel, eat it, and discard the shell onto the dock. It dipped back into the water to forage for another, and Sunny walked over to see where it was getting them from. That was when she noticed the name. Painted in black, swooping script along the bow of one of the boats was the word Vedana.

  The Vedana was sleek and well-maintained. The canvas covers on the mainsail, wenches, and tiller were all brand new, and the deck and hull were pristine gray teak. The ropes tying it to the dock were still white. Sunny climbed aboard and called out if anyone was below decks. All was quiet. Both of the hatches were locked. She peered in through the tinted glass at the kitchen and seating below. Everything seemed perfectly normal. There was no way to tell if Mark had been there lately, or if the boat had been neatly battened down for weeks. She took out the photograph and compared it to the boat. Everything in the picture matched perfectly.

  The sun slipped behind Mount Tam and the air cooled off quickly while she waited by the gate for someone to let her out. A sailboat motored toward the dock and slid into its place. There was a flurry of activity, with crewmembers adjusting bumpers, shouting, and jumping off to tie off ropes. When they cut the motor, the evening quiet returned and she listened to the rigging of a hundred swaying boats chime gently against an equal number of aluminum masts. In the end she had to wait until the new arrivals had hosed off the deck and stowed all their gear to let her out. At the café, the tables were filling up with the young, well-heeled paycheck crowd, just off work and eager to unbutton over a noisy glass of wine.

  She walked past and got in the truck. There was no hurry to do anything about Mark Weisman and the Vedana. She could sit right here as long as she wanted and sort out what it meant. A couple, laughing, their arms around each other, walked by on the sidewalk. She closed her eyes. The world was not all darkness. That night she’d found Heidi Romero’s body had run like ink into every part of her life, coloring it with a muddy darkness. She had allowed it to permeate her thoughts and obscure every other concern. Had she given any real attention to Andre Morales lately? Or her restaurant? Or her family? Or anything that ought to matter? Had she thought of anything other than Heidi Romero? Heidi’s death had pulled her life into its wake, dragging her along after it, an unrelated, superfluous, accidental hanger-on, trailing after the disaster that had struck her. Nobody planned for Sunny to leave a party in the middle of the night and walk out into the darkness. Her whim had caught fate by surprise. She was never supposed to be part of what happened to Heidi Romero, but she had walked out of her place in the warmth of Andre’s home into the cold night, where she had crossed into a world of darkness and been caught up in it, snared by an ankle and dragged.

  She stared at the photograph of Mark Weisman and wished he wasn’t wearing sunglasses. The smile looked authentic enough. The hand that gripped the sailboat’s cable was held neither too firmly nor too loosely nor at an awkward angle. Still, without the eyes, his character remained opaque.

  Try to keep it simple, she told herself. Sort through the facts. Mark Weisman owned a boat named Vedana and dated a girl named Heidi, who turned up dead at a distant winery named Vedana, possibly while he was out of town. Other than that connection—boat to Mark to Heidi to winery—no other connection between boat and winery had turned up. Could the two names overlap coincidentally? Not plausible. Vedana was too unusual a word. Or was it? After she named her restaurant Wildside, she’d been surprised to discover all the other businesses of the same name. Maybe the world was peppered with enterprises and vessels named Vedana. More facts. Kimberly Knolls met and had sex with an anonymous man. No name, no description. This man is connected to Heidi’s body both by his sexual proclivities and by his association with Vedana Vineyards, e.g., Kimberly. What if Mark Weisman was the man Kimberly met at the hotel in Sonoma? If that were true, it would make the connection between the name of his boat and the name of the winery coincidental, since, presumably, he already owned a boat named Vedana when he met Kimberly without knowing the name of the winery she owned. Not plausible. To arrange to meet an anonymous lover and find that she owned a winery of the same unusual name as your boat would be a very strange coincidence. What if Kimberly’s adventure had nothing to do with Mark Weisman? That would make the shibari connection between her adventure and Heidi’s body coincidental. Possible. Bondage was certainly not an unusual fetish, and, even if she lived in the bush and spent all day in a kitchen, Sunny knew enough about sex to know that there were trends in erotic activities as much as in bathroom towels, breeds of dogs, cocktails, and any other aspect of human activity. Shibari might simply be the latest acquired taste from the scandal crowd to go mainstream. In that case, nothing made any sense at all, at least as far as Mark Weisman was concerned. If there was no other connection to the winery than the name, and if he did kill Heidi, he would not have left her there. It exposed him to suspicion without being direct enough to be a good taunt to the police.

  Which left her back where she started, clueless about the events that led to Heidi’s death, and in lawless possession of a souvenir from her house.

  A white plastic chair stuck out of the glossy mud next to the dock, along with the domed top of a barbecue, an evening slipper, assorted cans and bottles, and a two-by-four painted yellow and bristling with rusty nails. The tide had gone out still farther in the last hour, stranding the houseboat community in a quagmire of debris. Sunny made her way as quickly and quietly as possible down the dock. A woman was watering her plants in the twilight. Otherwise, she saw no one.

  She entered Heidi’s place the same way as before and stood in the kitchen letting her eyes adjust to the gloom inside. She considered the light switch. Was it more suspicious to turn on a light in a dead girl’s house, or to be seen going into a dead girl’s house but not turning on the light? She imagined the sight of a yellow glow, visible up and down the dock, coming from a house known to be deserted. It would attract attention like a beacon. She waited until she could make out the heavy wooden table, the desk with its stacks of papers, the two stairs up to the living room. Out the French doors, the mountain stood in silhouette against a Moroccan blue sky.

  She climbed up to the loft and froze, listening. The creak of wood settling its weight against its mooring sounded remarkably like careful footsteps on a wooden floor. She was seized by the temptation to go downstairs and be sure no one had come in behind her. She listened again. Now there were definitely footsteps. They sounded close enough to be on the boat. She thought of the sound of the shopping carts people used to ferry heavy loads up and down the dock. Whoever was walking was on the dock, not in the house. It was a tr
ick of acoustics. She stepped forward and returned the photograph to its place on the mirror, her heart thumping, then slipped into the bathroom to peer out the window. A silhouette was walking away down the dock. She turned to go back downstairs and realized she had forgotten the kitchen towel. She went down to the kitchen, grabbed it, climbed back up, then backed her way down, removing her footsteps as she went.

  In the kitchen, she rinsed the towel out as she had done before and hung it back up to dry. Someone, Vurleen or a neighbor, had put the stargazer lilies she’d left outside in an old mayonnaise jar filled with water. Sunny stashed the key back under the aloe vera and stepped lightly down the gangway. Since she’d arrived at the houseboat, the lights along the dock had come on. One of them, positioned on the dock directly above, flooded the catwalk with a soft yellow light and reflected off something shiny in the mud. It was the same piece of metal she’d seen earlier in the day, lying just out of reach. She could see now it wasn’t a can. It was rectangular and made of brushed aluminum. A credit card case, or a folding makeup mirror for your purse. She kneeled on the catwalk and reached, stretching her hand out as far as she could. The silver rectangle sat several inches beyond her fingertips.

  Under the dock, an old newspaper lay moldering in its plastic bag. She pried it from its resting place and laid it in the mud between the catwalk and the shiny square of metal, resting her weight on it with one hand and stretching out with the other. Her fingers came together around the piece of metal and she shoved her weight back to the catwalk. She considered the newspaper. Throw it away or put it back where she found it? Safer to put it back where she found it. She tossed the newspaper back into its place under the dock and was sitting on the catwalk examining her treasure when a voice called down from the dock.

  “The tide reveals all kinds of interesting things. What did you find down there?”