Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway

by Sara Gran

  34

  SIXTY-TWO DAYS AFTER Paul died, I drove up north to check on the miniature horses and to see Lydia at Paul’s house, now her house, on Bohemian Highway in Sonoma County.

  East Sonoma County is famous for its wine. West Sonoma County isn’t famous at all. It’s somewhat well known, though, for its fog, its redwoods, the wide and ever-flooding Russian River, and being the home of the Bohemian Grove, the large parcel of the county owned by the Bohemian Club. The Bohemian Club was an all-male club that started in San Francisco as a private club for artists and writers of the upper class and demimonde. Now its members included presidents, ex-presidents, and a litany of shadowy men like Henry Kissinger and Alan Greenspan, men I knew I was supposed to think were important but didn’t. They met at Bohemian Grove for two weeks every year, and no one knew exactly what they did there. Conspiracy theorists claimed the club drank blood and worshiped Satan, or at least had unauthorized discussions about the federal reserve and tax schedules. Defenders claimed it was just a fun outing of a very selective club. The Bohemians themselves weren’t talking.

  Paul’s house was adjacent to the Bohemian Grove property, at the end of a long private road in the town of Occidental. Although the land around it was owned by the Bohemian Club, their actual camp was at least ten miles away, and there was no path or road between the two, just thick redwood forest.

  By the time I got up to the house, it was dark out. I’d spent the afternoon at the Spot of Mystery. No news on the miniature horses. Jake had his very best men on the job, which may not have been the same as someone else’s best men, but what can you do. Lydia greeted me from the porch. She wore a pretty white dress and her hair was long and freshly colored black. She had dark circles under her eyes, and her hands shook badly, but she looked better than she could have.

  Life goes on. Nothing is permanent.

  The air smelled like redwoods, a woodsy, piney, smoky smell.

  “Come in,” she said. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  I couldn’t tell if she was glad or not. Her mouth was curled into something kind of sardonic and kind of like a smile.

  “Paul told me,” Lydia said as she showed me around, “sometimes at night, when they would come here in the summer, if the wind was right they could hear the music from Bohemian Grove. You’d be surprised at who’s in it—all these old hippies like Steve Miller and Jimmy Buffett.”

  The house was in a private clearing of a few acres in the woods. It was a craftsman-inspired “cottage” from the thirties, with a stone base and wood and plaster above, sloping eaves and a big porch. A stone chimney made it look like a witch’s house.

  “Paul said he and Emily tried to sneak through the woods a couple times. But these guys in suits would always find them and escort them back to the border.”

  Lydia frowned. She knew about Emily.

  “Anyway,” she went on. “Thanks for coming.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s going to be fun.”

  But something in me turned and I had a sour taste in my mouth and suddenly I wasn’t sure about that.

  It was late and we decided to get dinner. We drove to a fancy-ish place in Guerneville where they knew Lydia. Lydia told me about trying to get the utilities and bills switched into her name. She seemed absent and a little off—I wasn’t sure if she was exactly talking to me, or to whoever happened to be sitting across from her.

  “It’s like no one ever died before,” she said. “It’s like you call the phone company or the gas people and they’re completely unprepared to deal with a customer dying. As if it doesn’t happen to everyone.”

  I had less to drink than Lydia so I drove us home, back down Bohemian Highway.

  “You want to come in?” Lydia asked. “Maybe watch a movie or something? Spend the night?”

  I glanced over at her in the blue dark light. She looked lonely and sounded a little desperate. Must hurt to be alone if you’re not used to it.

  “Sure,” I said. “Sounds fun.”

  We were almost at Lydia’s long driveway when suddenly something was in front of the car and I slammed on the brakes.

  A giant black vulture stood in the road in front of the car, lit up against the blacktop by my white headlights. I looked around. On the right side of the road a gang of five more vultures, presumably its family, were eating a deer. A doe. The doe had likely been killed by a car; she was on her side, glassy eyes staring toward the road, mouth open. The vultures worked on the deer’s soft center body, leaving the bony head and legs for last.

  Lydia stared at the scene like she’d seen a ghost. He face turned pale and her mouth formed a perfect O.

  “Oh,” Lydia said. “Oh, I—”

  I looked at her in the rearview mirror. Her face was turned toward me but her eyes were going the other way, toward the window. Her mouth was open the tiniest bit and her eyebrows were drawn together.

  Suddenly the vulture jumped up on the hood of the car, talons scraping on the metal. Its face was red and wrinkled, ugly and angry. It stood on the hood for a second and then spread its wings as well as it could.

  Then it jumped up as if to fly and slammed into the windshield, shaking the glass in its setting.

  Lydia screamed.

  The bird wobbled and pulled its wide wings in, stunned. It stumbled and then spread its wings again. One black wing slammed against the windshield. A smear of blood smudged the glass. The bird made a sound like a hiss or a growl, high-pitched but from deep in its throat.

  Lydia stared at it, transfixed.

  “Oh my God.” Lydia said. She looked like she was going to cry.

  The vulture opened and closed its injured wings a few times. It didn’t leave.

  “Please,” Lydia said, voice shaking. “Please.”

  I looked at her. She looked terrified, broken.

  The vulture stood on the hood of the car, tending to its injured wings, confused and scared. I tapped the horn lightly.

  After a mean look it hopped off the hood and landed, unbalanced, on the blacktop, lit by the bright white headlights. It made another hissing, grunting sound and then half walked, half flapped off toward the woods. Once it was out of the headlights I lost track of it. The rest of the vultures kept working on the deer, undisturbed.

  I drove us home.

  Lydia stared straight ahead the rest of the drive to the house. When I stopped the car she got out and went inside without a word. She went in the bedroom and shut the door. A few minutes later I heard the bath running from the attached bathroom.

  After a while Lydia came out of the bedroom, hair wet, body wrapped in a big white robe. She smiled a feeble little widow’s smile.

  “Sorry,” she said. “That totally freaked me out.”

  “Oh, hey, yeah,” I said. “Don’t worry about it. That was weird.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Doesn’t that mean something? Like isn’t there some thing where you see a certain bird and it means something? Like to Indians?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.” But I did know: There are lots of things like that, Indian and otherwise.

  Lydia frowned but tried to shake it off. There was a cabinet full of DVDs and Lydia opened a bottle of wine and put on Born to Kill. I got the drift that this was what she did every night, alone or with company: an old movie and a bottle of wine. She curled up on the big sofa next to me. About halfway through the movie she dozed off. In her sleep Lydia grasped and groped and squirmed, like she had the night Paul died. She began to mutter and make little sounds—grunts and squeaks.

  After midnight, Born to Kill over, I woke her up with a nudge. Lydia, drowsy in a way that made me guess she’d taken a pill or two, pointed me toward a guest room and then went to bed. I wouldn’t have known, if Lydia hadn’t told me earlier, that it had been Paul’s room when he was a kid. His family used to come here often, at least four times a year, when Paul and Emily were little. In the eighties, when Paul and Emily were teenagers, their father died. Then their mother pick
ed them up and moved them back east, to be closer to her own family. Paul had moved back to California for college a few years later and stayed ever since. As an adult, he’d had the house lightly redone, moving out the children’s furniture and turning his and Emily’s old rooms into guest bedrooms. When he stayed here, with Lydia or anyone else, he stayed in the master bedroom. After all, he was now the master of the house.

  The day before Josh had called and asked if I wanted to meet his friend who had dated Paul. I did, but not right before I saw Lydia. Carrying around the knowledge that Paul had cheated wasn’t so bad; like I said, I figured Lydia knew. If she asked me about it I would tell her the truth, but I wouldn’t bring it up.

  But meeting the woman was different. I asked Josh if we could do it next week and he said yes. Wednesday at four we’d meet at a coffee shop in Berkeley.

  I lay in bed and thought about the woman. The woman Paul had slept with. Or had an affair with or spent too much time with or whatever they’d done together. There were as many ways to cheat as there were marriages.

  I couldn’t sleep. I thought I knew who it might be—the woman Paul had cheated with. I’d seen Paul talk to her at a show one night. You can tell. I kept thinking about Paul and the woman from the show. It was another band playing—Lydia’s band? No, a friend of Paul’s. Josh? Not Josh. I couldn’t remember. The Swiss Music Hall. The girl was in a white vintage dress from the sixties with a boat neck and a full skirt and a trim waist. Who was playing? They had a stand-up bass and a snare drum. The girl in the white dress was dancing by herself, skirt spinning like a dervish. A tattoo of a tree on her calf. Birds on her arms. Her hair was short and white, a lot like mine. I’d come to the club with someone else. On my way to the bathroom I’d seen Paul and the girl in a corner, whispering. Paul was leaning on the wall next to her, standing too close. Nothing illegal, but you could tell. I figured he’d fight it off. I guess not.

  In bed in Sonoma I stood up and turned the lights back on and rummaged in my purse until I found a stale half-joint tucked into a book of matches from the Shanghai Low. I lit the joint and looked out the window at the velvety black nothing outside. With the fog outside, the house could have been a ship, an island.

  After I finished the joint I went back to bed and closed my eyes. The girl in the white dress spun on the dance floor, in front of the band. On her face was a smile that looked like bliss. I watched her from the balcony. Andray stood next to me and we leaned on the railing, watching her.

  “She ain’t your problem,” Andray said. “Your problem is getting right with your case.”

  “You always act like you know me so well,” I said.

  “’Cause I do,” he said. “You wearin’ your heart on your sleeve, Claire DeWitt.”

  I looked down at my arm, stained with a big smear of blood.

  “You think your problem is her,” he said. “Your problem is her.”

  He pointed toward the dance floor and I saw the girl in the white dress, still spinning, dancing alone. But it wasn’t her anymore. It was Lydia. She was crying and screaming, furious. She choked on her tears and howled.

  “If you know me so well,” I said to Andray, “why won’t you talk to me?”

  “That exactly why, Claire DeWitt,” he said.

  The next morning was foggy and cold. A hawk circled overhead. Some poor little mouse or snake was gonna get it soon. You were reminded pretty quick around here that nature was a losing game.

  “It clears up by noon,” Lydia said.

  We sat on the porch and drank coffee. A family of deer came out from the woods to eat in the clearing. A mother and two children. We watched them for a while, vanishing in and out of the fog like creatures from a fairy tale.

  “Hey,” I said. “Do you remember that band? I think we saw them at the Swiss Music Hall a few times. They have a stand-up bass? And I think a snare drum?”

  “Oh, I think that’s the Salingers. Female singer?”

  “I think so,” I said.

  “Yeah, I think he uses a little cocktail drum. Same thing. When did we see them together?”

  “That time,” I said. “That time when . . . Wait. Maybe it wasn’t you. Maybe it was Tabitha.”

  “I think so,” Lydia said. “I don’t think it was me. They’re really good. Paul was good friends with the guitar player, Nita. Come on. Let’s go get breakfast before you go.”

  She seemed a little more cheerful today, a little less bitter. I imagined the long lonely day stretching ahead of her.

  “Sure,” I said. “Sounds fun.”

  The sky cleared up just like Lydia said it would and we went for a drive south. The roads were filled with slow-moving tourists, and Lydia was quick with the horn. In between each town were thick woods and clear, open pastures.

  In Petaluma, a town that was almost a tiny city, with a densely plotted Victorian downtown, we parked and walked around a bit and got a big Mexican breakfast of eggs and beans and tortillas. Lydia bought a few things in an antique store; a lamp in the shape of a Geisha, a metal nutcracker in the shape of a squirrel. I bought a vintage fingerprinting kit—some good dust left and an excellent magnifying glass.

  When we were almost back at her house I said, “I know you don’t like to talk about this stuff. But the list of guitars you gave me, guitars that had been stolen—one was wrong. The Favilla. Paul actually sold it back to Jon, up in Marin, before—well, before.”

  Lydia wrinkled her forehead. “Oh,” she said. “Well, that explains where that is.”

  “Well, yeah,” I said. “But there were five empty stands in the house when the police found Paul. And we know of four that are missing. So I’m wondering. Was there an empty stand? Or is there another missing guitar?”

  Lydia looked confused.

  “God,” she said. “I have no idea.”

  I let it go. Her memory for details had never been good, and as she moved forward, putting Paul’s death behind her—or trying to—it was all getting hazier.

  When we got back to her house she invited me in again.

  “You want a tea?” she asked. “One for the road?”

  I could tell she didn’t want to be alone, but I had things to do. Things to do like go home and wash the death off me. Maybe I wasn’t so different from everyone else.

  When I left Lydia I didn’t go straight down 101 into the city; instead, I veered off at the 580 and drove to Oakland. I pulled off the highway and drove to the woods and parked at the first entrance.

  The ground was soft with redwood needles, which smelled strong where I stepped on them. I hiked up to the top of the mountain and down the other side. Then I took a kind of rabbit trail off the main path, deep into the woods. Spruce and oak and then redwoods again as I went downhill, which made for easier walking, just soft oxalis and ferns and a few orchids and mushrooms underfoot.

  I walked around for a while but I couldn’t find the Red Detective. Maybe he’d moved, or maybe I’d gotten lost. I didn’t feel like going home. Instead I went to a bar I knew in Oakland. When a man asked me if he could buy me a drink I said yes, and when we went home together he smelled like lavender and soap. When I woke up in the morning he was gone. I made a cup of tea, looked through the medicine cabinet, took what I wanted, and left.

  35

  SEVENTY-FOUR DAYS after Paul died, I started again. I called Claude and asked him to come over. We sat in my living room. I had two big overstuffed red sofas I’d found on the street in Pacific Heights, and Claude sat in one sofa and I sat in another. I gave him new instructions. We had three potentially fruitful roads to explore: the poker chip, the missing guitar, and the keys. He would keep trying to research the poker chip, and he would go through Paul’s credit card bills, eBay sales, photographs, and anything else he could think of to find the missing guitar. There was nothing to do about the keys.

  When he left I called Carolyn, the friend of Lydia’s I’d called from the police station the day after Paul died. Carolyn met me in a café on Solano Aven
ue in Albany. She lived nearby in El Cerrito. I asked her some questions like they would ask on TV: Did Paul have any enemies? No. Did he have a drug problem? Anyone want him gone? Not that she knew of. Shocking.

  After a few more minutes of warmups I started the show.

  “Between Lydia and Paul,” I asked, “was there anything? I mean, I know they were an amazing couple. But I’m just wondering—were there any issues? Any issues at all? Just, you know, normal stuff.”

  Carolyn made a face. “To be honest,” she said. “They were, things were not—well, not so good. They were definitely having a rough patch.”

  “Really?” I said. “What was that all about?”

  “To be honest,” she said again, “it had been going on for a while. Like, the first year or two was really good. The beginning. Then, you know. Fighting and fighting and fighting. Just about dumb stuff. Jealous stuff.”

  “Why didn’t they break up?” I asked, concern furrowing my brow.

  “Oh, they still loved each other,” Carolyn said. “They were trying to work it out.”

  “Trying how?”

  A look passed over Carolyn’s face as she debated with herself for a few seconds.

  “Well,” she said, reaching a decision. “Telling you—I guess it’s like telling a doctor, right?”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  “Okay, so,” Carolyn said. She thought she hated telling me this. But she loved it. Loved releasing it and passing it on to someone else. I couldn’t blame her. “Paul had been seeing someone else. I don’t know who. I wouldn’t say serious, but I wouldn’t say not serious. And the girl, he gave her up to try to patch things up with Lydia.”

  I nodded nonjudgmentally, fake sympathy on my lips, concern in my eyes. It was a fragile moment and I didn’t want to spoil it. Besides, I was pretending I was like a doctor.

  “When did it start?” I asked.

  “Well, jeez.” Carolyn made a face. “It started with Lydia. She cheated on him. With this guy. When Paul found out, that was when—when things took a turn. When they became less nice. And then, you know, he had an affair, which was not a big deal, I think, and then this other one.”