The Bohemian Connection (4 page)

I moved around behind the man so I could watch Jenny. She looked to be a little younger than I, probably about thirty. Her brown hair was drawn back at the neck, folded over and clasped up on her head, so that none of it hung against her neck. Her face was bare of any makeup. Her eyebrows were thick and seemed to have grown randomly. But her eyes, large and dark brown, stared fiercely at the paper, moving only briefly to view the subject.

Abruptly she put down the charcoal, and without an appraising glance, handed the paper to the young man. She looked exhausted, like a psychic recently revived from a trance.

I glanced at the crowd, expecting the man’s friends to push forward to get their money’s worth of amusement, but no one elbowed in. The crowd as a whole moved closer and their murmurs, of approval bubbled up. The man himself gave the drawing all the careful evaluation that Jenny had not. Finally, he smiled, and returned it to her to be wrapped. The crowd stood a minute or so, apparently waiting to see if another subject would take his place. When none did, individuals and small groups wandered off. The man stepped up to Jenny, extricated a bill from his wallet, and accepted the drawing.

A couple walked up, glanced at me, and moved on.

“Are you trying to decide?” Jenny asked me.

“No, actually, I’m looking for your neighbor, Michelle Davidson.”

“She’s not here.” Jenny adjusted the sketch paper in its clasp. Clearly, to her the subject was closed. She wasn’t even curious as to why I couldn’t find Michelle or why I was bringing my problem to her.

“I’ve been looking for her since last night. I talked to your husband.” I hesitated, then decided to plunge in. “He said you particularly disliked her.”

“And so you figure I’ll know where she is?” There was a mixture of irony and irritation in her voice.

“Actually, I thought you might be pretty straightforward.”

She fingered the charcoal.
“Straightforward
is that you’re hurting my business. People don’t come to watch me talk, they’re attracted by seeing me draw. Either you want a picture, or leave the space for someone else.”

Again, I hesitated. I hated to invest more than time in Michelle’s whereabouts. But I did like the idea of having my picture done, so I said, “Let me finish my cone, and then do a sketch of me. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“But while I’m eating answer my questions.”

“An eight-dollar interrogation?” she said with the barest hint of amusement.

“Only partly. It will be a treat for me to have the picture. I remember watching artists doing sketches and caricatures when I was a kid. I always wanted one, but it was a lot of money then.”

Jenny smiled tentatively. It didn’t seem like a normal expression for her. “Okay then, ask your questions, but you’ve got to keep licking that cone.”

I sat in the chair. “Do you have any idea where Michelle could be? Father Calloway of St. Agnes’ dropped her in town last night. I can’t find out what happened after that.”

Jenny leaned back in her chair. She eyed a couple walking by, then forced her attention back to me. “I haven’t seen Michelle in days. I’ve been in Santa Rosa getting supplies. This is my busiest time. I do more work during Bohemian Week than the rest of the season combined. I have to make sure I have everything I need. I can’t take a day off to run to Santa Rosa and pick up charcoal.”

I looked at the sketch pad, the charcoal, the floodlight for evening work lying next to the easel. “It took you more than one trip to get your supplies?” I asked in amazement.

“Are you an artist? Do you know what decisions I have to make or how many places I have to go to get the best?”

I decided not to deal with that. “When was the last time you saw Michelle?”

She rubbed a finger along a piece of charcoal. “Look, the woman lives next door. She’s part of the landscape. I can’t remember when she was out on her deck, doing her Olga Korbut number on the railing. Like Ward was kind enough to tell you, Michelle and I are not friends.”

I had the feeling that Jenny McElvey was on the verge of deciding that an empty chair was preferable to me. “Your husband Ward was talking to Michelle last night, about the cesspool.” I paused, but she didn’t react to that. “He was as helpful as he could be, but I obviously caught him at a time when he had a lot to do.”

“I’m sure,” she said with the same bitterness she’d had for Michelle. “Look, this is the most important time of the year for me. If anyone ever discovers me as an artist tucked away in the country it will happen during Bohemian Week when all the bigshots and reporters and people with taste and influence are here. Ward knows that. So what does he do? Does he try to make things easier for me? Does he offer to take my part-time job at the nursery? No. What he does is invite a pair of total strangers for the weekend. They came yesterday. And they’re staying till Sunday night. He wants the house clean; he wants me to go to dinner with them. He’s angry that I won’t stay home and amuse them.
He’s
angry!” She was shaking.

I sat, amazed by the vehemence of her outburst.

A group of four paused, looking from Jenny to me and back to her. Then, seeing that no sketch was in progress, they moved on.

“I guess Michelle’s anti-hookers’ group won’t help your business, or anyone else’s either,” I said.

It was a moment before Jenny answered. She seemed to be recovering from her outburst. When she did speak, her tone was almost indifferent. “It won’t affect my business. It’s a silly little group, headed by a silly young woman. It’s not going to impress the hookers or their customers. Michelle just wants to get her picture in the paper.”

In spite of her bitterness toward Ward, I still wondered if her reaction to Michelle was based on jealousy. I asked, “Why do you dislike Michelle?”

She took a moment before answering. “I don’t really dislike her, because I don’t really know her. But I find her actions a constant nuisance. Ask anyone who lives near her, they’ll know what I mean. Right now we have a sewer hole blocking our garage. That’s because Michelle kept bugging the city council to keep on the sewer company. If she had let things run their course it wouldn’t have gotten there till fall when the town wasn’t so mobbed and we wouldn’t have tourists driving up the street, slamming on their brakes at the hole, and then trying to turn around. We’ve almost had our car hit three or four times.”

“Surely that’s not the only reason.”

“No, it’s just the latest. I’ve known Michelle since she was a child. She’s four years younger than I am. When she was in high school my brother Ross took her out from time to time. He was already out of school—a big man. He’d invite her somewhere when the spirit moved him, then he’d forget about her. And she’d come over to the house looking for him. I sort of felt sorry for her—it was lousy of Ross—but at the same time she was such a pest. She was a very popular girl, and she just couldn’t accept that someone she wanted didn’t care about her.”

Thinking of the picture inside Michelle’s yearbook, I asked, “What does Ross look like?”

“I don’t know.”

“Ross—your brother.”

“I said I don’t know. I haven’t seen him in eight years, since my father died. He left town that day. My father had a heart attack. He had it because he was shoveling a hole and Ross was standing by watching him work—and there you have Ross’s character in a nutshell.” She swallowed. “Ross didn’t even bother to come to the hospital. Ward had to ride in the ambulance with my father. And when I looked for Ross to drive me there, he was gone. He just left.”

“Where is he now?”

“I don’t know. He lived in San Francisco, off some woman. That was years ago. He hasn’t come back. I wouldn’t see him if he did.” She looked down at the charcoal and when she looked at me again she seemed to be in control. “I’m sure I sound spiteful but if you knew Ross you wouldn’t be surprised. He came and went as he pleased. But there was always a job for him with my father. My father kept thinking it would work out, that Ross would shape up and take over the business, like a son should. It was lucky for him that he had Ward to get some work done. Ross was too busy with himself. He had to go to Mexico, or he had to picket at the Grove, or ride his motorcycle. He was always too busy to take customers around. Ward had to do that. Or my father. It’s no wonder he had a heart attack.”

I waited a moment before asking, “When you saw him last, was Ross tall with sandy hair?”

She nodded.

“There’s a snapshot Michelle has of herself and a tall sandy-haired man holding a picket sign…”

She nodded again. “Michelle showed it to me. She’d brought it to show to Ross, but, of course, he wasn’t there. That picture was the story of their relationship—Ross looking at the sign, Michelle staring cow-eyed at Ross.”

“That was definitely Ross in the picture?” I could hear the excitement creep into my voice.

“Yes. Of course. Why?”

“Because I saw him on the back porch of your house today. It might not have been him, but it looked a lot like—”

The charcoal snapped. Jenny sat staring at it. I couldn’t decide by looking at her if her reaction was shock, or anger, or both.

“If Ross came back, would Michelle have spent the night with him?”

Her eyes refocused slowly. “What?”

I repeated the question.

In that time she gathered herself together. “Probably,” she snapped. “If he’d asked her to walk barefoot to Nome she would have done that. And that’s—”

“Jenny.” A couple was standing beside the easel. I hadn’t noticed them. I was sure Jenny hadn’t either. The man continued, “I really want a picture of my girl. Are you going to be through soon?”

“Yes. I’m through now.”

“What about my picture?” I said.

“You got what you wanted. Now leave me to do my work.” The bitterness in her voice put me in a group with Ross and Michelle.

I got up, leaving the chair to the girlfriend. As I walked along the sidewalk toward my house, I wondered, if his sister hated Ross, how would Craig Davidson feel?

R
OSS REMSON WAS THE
man in the snapshot with Michelle, but was he the man on Ward and Jenny’s porch? Or was that man just someone who resembled Ross? If only I had looked more closely at the man’s face in the snapshot rather than Michelle’s. I could recall it only generally. I needed to see that picture again before the memory of the man behind the McElveys’ faded. And I needed to ask Ward who that man was.

Now I hurried through town, glancing irritably into the still-crowded cafe. Lunch would have to come from my own fridge. I skirted the families that sauntered along the sidewalk, blocking wide swaths of it with their beach bags and hampers and piles of blankets. The children ran ahead urgently, calling to their laden parents to hurry; every moment on the beach was precious. I maneuvered around them and rushed on across the street just as the light—Henderson’s one traffic light—turned red.

My house was three blocks beyond. In the heat of the afternoon it seemed like three miles. Still, I did have the afternoon off from work; I wasn’t edging past a snarling dog that might not have been vaccinated to get to a meter behind a prickly pyracantha bush. In a few minutes my soaked and none-too-fragrant uniform would be on the laundry pile and a meatloaf sandwich that would satisfy any construction worker would be on my plate. And I finally would have my long-awaited beer.

Half an hour later, having showered, changed into jeans and a T-shirt, and dialed both Michelle’s and Ward’s phone numbers while I ate (no answer from either one), I climbed down the sloping Z of steps from my house. I backed my pickup out of the garage and headed through town again.

This was as ready as I would be to face the unpleasant task of talking to Craig Davidson, Michelle’s husband. It would have been appealing to put it off, but I needed to see Ross’s picture again, and to know if any of Michelle’s clothes had been removed since I’d been in the house. So I had to get the house key from Craig. When I asked for it he would doubtless want to know what I had found out and I would have to tell him that I suspected his wife might have run off with Ross.

It was a bit after three when I pulled into the lot of Davidson’s Plants. The building, a twenty-by-forty prefab structure, was located on a sixty-foot-square lot at the west end of the commercial block of Henderson. Most of the town was either hillside or low enough to be washed out in heavy spring flooding every few years; finding a level spot that was high enough to escape the smaller floods was an accomplishment in itself. Craig’s nursery probably escaped the waters all but once a decade.

I walked through the open sliding doors. Craig Davidson was behind the counter. He was a short man with the wiry muscular body of one who unloads bags of manure off of trucks and moves potted azaleas around a store. His brown hair had been bleached by the sun and hung a bit below his ears. It was not quite sand-colored, not quite wavy, but almost. Looking at him, I wondered if he did not quite measure up to Ross. I wondered if Michelle felt that way, if she had actually thought it, and if Craig knew. Or if the whole comparison existed only in my mind.

The interior of the shop was divided into three sections. The far side held the plastic bags of potting soil, vermiculite, and peat moss, and the boxes of plant food and snail pellets that only made the race to gobble down tender sprouts more of a challenge for the hearty California snail. The middle section sported a display of indoor plants—false aralias, wandering Jews, coleus, various fig trees, decorative cacti, and an array of succulents. And nearer the door was the counter where Craig stood dealing with the first of a line of six customers—a man in dirt-streaked Levi’s, a workshirt that should have been washed months ago (if not thrown out), and work boots. His long tangled beard melded with his unkempt hair. Clearly he belonged in the hills, shooting squirrels, growing marijuana, or living off a veteran’s pension, not standing in line in a plant shop clutching the least appealing African violet from the display next to the counter. He looked wary and uncomfortable.

It was a look shared by the other customers, who had backed away from him.