The Bohemian Connection (17 page)

His round face looked blank for a moment. I walked through the doorway into the center room where the clerks sat. A counter separated it from the lobby area where customers came to pay their bills, or to question them. To the left was Mr. Bobbs’s cubicle. From it I could feel the cold air, and hear the whirr of an air conditioner—his portable air conditioner that he never brought to the office when we meter readers were around. Vaguely I recalled a memo telling us that personal appliances were not allowed.

He moved around me with more agility than I would have imagined possible and stood in his doorway.

I controlled a smile. “My suggestion? Is that what you’re working on today?”

He stepped to one side of the doorway, blocking my view of his air conditioner. “Miss Haskell, as I have told you on each of the many occasions you have asked about this, your suggestion is in Follow-up.”

“For what date?”

“For a time when I can give it my uninterrupted attention.”

Pointedly, I glanced around the empty office.

His neck muscles tightened; his neck looked very red and rough against the soft tan of his collar. “When I put your suggestion in Follow-up, I dated it for the day that would be most advantageous for it —when it will get my best attention.”

“When it will be most convenient for you,” I almost said. But as he moved again to block the view of the illicit energy-gobbling air conditioner, I could see his desk. On it was a copy of the
Utility Reporter,
the union paper. Suddenly I felt sad. Mr. Bobbs had come to the office on his day off to covertly read our union paper. Where could he live, what could his life be like that he would find it preferable to come to this closed-up building on a Saturday afternoon? The idea to invite him out for a beer flickered through my mind. I dismissed it. I had distressed him enough for one day. Having a beer with me was probably what he would view as atonement for a mortal sin.

“See you Monday,” I said, and headed for the back door. Mr. Bobbs walked as far as the supply room entry. As I closed the door I could see him heading toward the routebooks to check what I had taken or left.

I headed through town toward Half Hill Road. Maria Keneally’s house was more important than I had realized. Someone was in there using electricity. Alison had been there yesterday. I would have to find out what she was doing there. If she was the Bohemian Connection she wasn’t going to tell me. I would have to watch the house when the Bohemian Connection brought clients there—at night. Tonight. But not until tonight. Maybe something would happen before then to make that unnecessary.

Meanwhile, I’d have to content myself with checking in with Vida. It was a safe bet that she would be at Craig’s house.

North Bank Road was still crowded, but not nearly as bad as before. A group licking ice cream cones crossed in front of me, reminding me that it was one o’clock and I hadn’t had lunch. But even for someone of my considerable appetite, the hassle of looking for a parking spot downtown was more than hunger could justify. I drove on.

I glanced at Jenny McElvey as I glided past in first gear. She was just tearing off a sketch and handing it to a man. At the corner I turned right, drove past the closed nursery and on up to Half Hill Road.

I was still pondering my run-in with Mr. Bobbs as I pulled up next to the sewer hole. I’ll bet he’d like to have that to chuck Follow-up suggestions in, I thought. And then with a clutch of guilt I remembered Michelle’s body in that hole, and how sepulchral that hole had been.

I climbed down from the cab of my truck and walked around the far side of the hole.

Vida came down the stairs from Michelle’s house. She was wearing a maroon dress, hot for a day like this. She had on high heels and carried a purse. Her face looked even more lined and tired than it had yesterday.

“Oh, Vejay,” she said. “I’m just on my way to the funeral home.”

I nodded.

She started to walk on, then stopped. “It’s just so awful, Vejay. The sheriff’s still holding Michelle’s body. He won’t say when he’ll release it. We can’t set a time for the funeral. We don’t know when it will be. Craig’s falling apart. He couldn’t handle making funeral arrangements at all. He hasn’t even been near the house all day. He’s holed up in his shop. I guess it’s best for him to be working. But the kids are still in Santa Rosa; they’ve got to be told some time. I don’t know when Craig will be up to that. And there are Michelle’s clothes… Oh, Vejay, I just can’t believe she’s really dead.”

I squeezed her hand and waited till her sobs stopped. “I was just in the office looking up something when Mr. Bobbs sneaked up on me,” I said, mostly to fill the silence. “He’d been at his desk. And guess what he has there?”

Vida looked up.

“An illicit air conditioner! He must sneak in on Saturdays and use the company’s power.”

Vida’s mouth wavered a moment, then she smiled. “Well, we all have our vices. But what were
you
doing there on Saturday?”

“I wanted to check the usage for a house I think the Bohemian Connection is using. Mr. Bobbs caught me with the routebook open. But I fended him off with a question about my Follow-up suggestion.”

Vida moved a foot forward as if easing into departure.

“The thing is, Vida, I’m sure the Bohemian Connection has something to do with Michelle’s murder.”

Her hand tightened on her purse. “Vejay, I’m too upset to think about that. To be honest, I’m sorry I ever called you—not that you haven’t really put yourself out, I don’t mean that, I know you have. But now the sheriff won’t give us Michelle’s body. I wish she had just died with nothing questionable about it.”

“But she didn’t. I’m sorry about the added misery this is to you, but it’s too late to change that. Maybe you’ll feel better when you know what I’ve figured out.”

She didn’t respond, but she didn’t leave either.

“When Ross Remson left, the Bohemian Connection passed on to his successor. That successor, if it wasn’t Michelle herself, was someone she knew. She was the one person in Henderson who cared about Ross, the one person he was likely to tell. So she was a danger to the present Connection.”

Vida put a hand on my arm. “Vejay, it’s bad enough she died in the sewer without dragging her name into an operation as seamy as that. If that’s what you’re thinking, just leave the whole thing alone.”

I took a breath. “I’m only telling
you
this. I’m not broadcasting it. But look, killing her was one thing, but putting her body down that hole was another. Why would someone do that? I mean, it’s not like burying it miles away where no one would find it. This was a very temporary arrangement. If her body wasn’t discovered by someone like me over the weekend, then it would have been found first thing Monday morning when the sewer construction crew arrived. It’s like Follow-up. The killer just put her body there to keep it out of the way for a while.”

“But why?”

“That is the question. What would anyone gain by hiding Michelle’s body for three days? If the killer had left town and used those three days to put distance between himself and Henderson it would have made sense. But everyone involved with Michelle and the Bohemian Connection was still here.”

Vida stared at the hole, her fingers pressing even tighter against her purse. “Maybe the killer wanted to prevent Michelle from doing something?”

“Okay. But it would have had to have been something that she was going to do this weekend. He kept her from doing it, but also tried to avoid the publicity of her death—at least until Monday. What is it that Michelle was going to do?”

With a sigh, Vida said, “Demonstrate. She was going to picket outside the Grove.”

“Which brings us back to the Bohemian Connection.”

“Not necessarily. She could have been killed by a pimp. Some guy—”

“You don’t really think that, do you, Vida?”

It was a moment before she shook her head. “No. We’ve never had any trouble with any of them here.”

“Was there anything else Michelle planned for this weekend?”

Vida looked back at the sewer hole. She was silent for a full minute. “No, nothing she didn’t do any other weekend.”

The sun was hot on my hair; my T-shirt stuck to my back. There seemed to be an odd odor coming from the direction of the sewer hole—an odor of decay. But the odor was in my mind; Michelle’s body was gone. I had seen it carried out. I’d been down in the hole after it was gone. I’d climbed up; the sheriff had seen me, and Craig, and Sugarbaker. Sugarbaker!

“There was something else Michelle was going to do this weekend, Vida. She was going to talk to her congressman. She was going to ask him about speeding up action on her cesspool complaint.”

Vida smiled. “I can see Michelle doing that. I can see her striding up to the platform and demanding his attention. But, Vejay, if she wasn’t killed because she was going to demonstrate, she surely wasn’t murdered because she complained about mosquito larvae.”

“I suppose. But I think we should tell the congressman when he’s here.”

“No.” Her teeth clamped together. I’d seen that “don’t push me” look before when Vida chaired the union meetings. “There’s a limit. We’ve had enough publicity in this family.”

“I’ll do it. You won’t have to be involved.”

“Vejay, just let it go, will you? I don’t want to hear theories; I don’t want to talk about Bohemians. I have to look at caskets and try to make some arrangements. It will be a big funeral.” She walked toward her truck.

“Just one thing,” I said as she was about to climb in. “Do you remember a Bohemian Ball at the bar some years ago?”

“Vejay, I said no more.”

I caught her arm. “You asked me to find out about Michelle. I’ve done nothing else since noon yesterday. I’ve annoyed people I barely knew, I’ve made an enemy of the sheriff, and I’ve been physically attacked. It’s too late for you to withdraw your request. You owe me, at least enough to answer my question.”

Vida took a step back, freeing her arm. From the look on her face it wasn’t clear if she was stunned or angry.

“Vida.”

“All right. I do owe you an answer. Yes, I do recall the Bohemian Ball.”

“When was it?”

She opened the door to her pickup and stood with one foot on the rise, teetering slightly in her high heels. “I remember that. It was a big thing, with the costumes and all. People were getting pushed out of shape by the Bohemians coming in and partying then. There was a lot of jealousy here. Jim picked up on that. He’s very good at sensing things before they get out of hand. So he arranged the First Annual Bohemian Ball. Or, he thought it would be the first.”

“I gather it ended poorly.”

“Like so many things here. Too much liquor. Jim was too new to the area then to sense that coming. But still, it was a good idea. People put a lot of thought into their costumes. I remember that because Michelle wanted to go. She was so disappointed and angry when she couldn’t. She carried on for days.”

“Didn’t she have a date?”

“Michelle always had dates. She was going with Craig then. But the Bohemian Ball was in the bar. Michelle wasn’t old enough. She was still a month short of turning eighteen.” Vida climbed into the truck and quickly shut the door. “I’m really late.” She started the engine.

I backed away. As I watched the truck’s departure, I spotted a fellow onlooker—Ward McElvey. He was sitting on his steps beside the garage. He looked as if he’d been sitting there in the sun for some time. His light blue shirt was blotched with sweat; sweat outlined his underarms and streaked down the middle of his chest. His polyester pants stuck to his legs. And his hair, which had been fluffed with a dryer when I last saw him, now hung limp.

I made my way around the sewer hole to him and asked, “Are you waiting for someone?”

“Jenny. I told her to be here at one o’clock. I have things to do, people to see. This is a busy time for real estate.” He glared at his watch. “It’s nearly one-thirty.”

It was more like quarter after. “And you’ve been sitting in the sun waiting all this time?”

“Yeah.”

“Is your other car in the garage?”

“Other car? There is no other car. What we have is the Pacer, and Jenny took that.”

“But you dropped her off. I saw you unloading this morning.”

He glared at me. “Well, that was then. I figured that I could take her and all her paraphernalia downtown and leave her for the day. I had to wait half an hour after I planned to leave to do it. I had to rearrange an appointment. Was she thankful? You bet she wasn’t,” he said without waiting for a response. “Then, I’m not in the office an hour before she calls. She’s got to have the car. Her easel broke and she’s got to get it. fixed.”

“Why didn’t she go to Gresham’s? Surely they could tape up an easel at the hardware store.”

“Ask her, if she deigns to drop by. She seems to think the only place that can deal with the complicated equipment of the finer art world is on the road to Santa Rosa.” He glared at his watch again. “I don’t know why I married into that bunch of loonies. One’s worse than the next. The best of the lot was old Mrs. Remson.”

“Why?”

“Because she had the decency to drown herself.”

I expected him to look up in embarrassment, to back off from his statement. He didn’t.

I sat next to him on the step. I wanted to ask him about Alison and if she had had any professional contact with him.

“Single-minded, that’s what they are. With Jenny, it’s her art. The earthquake could come and she wouldn’t notice, unless she thought the rubble would be suitable for a still life. Have you seen the inside of our house? It’s like an art museum. You can’t find the plaster for the paintings. You know…” He looked at me as if just realizing I was there. “What’s your name?”

“Vejay.”

“You know, Vejay, I don’t like the paintings. I never told her that, of course, but those canvases are like…” He searched for the right word. “They’re like wounds on the wall. You can’t see the house for the paintings.”

I sat still, amazed by this outburst.

But Ward McElvey wasn’t through. He took a breath. “Jenny couldn’t hold a job, not a real job. She can’t even stay down there on the sidewalk all day. If it’s not her easel, it’s her charcoal, or her lights, or something she needs at the house, or something she needs from Santa Rosa. She can’t do anything that requires responsibility. She doesn’t cook. She doesn’t clean. Most of the time I doubt she knows I’m there. I’m just a convenience, someone to run the business and keep her in money. I’ve been a convenience to the whole goddamn Remson family. If they’d had to depend on Ross you know where they’d be? Down in that hole with Michelle, that’s where. You couldn’t count on him any more than on Jenny. Less. Always taking off whenever he felt like it. And even when he was here he was no use. You couldn’t be sure he’d come to work. And when he was there it was all we could do, the old man and me, to make sure he stayed out of the way of the locals.”