Murder Alfresco #3 (28 page)

He had an iPod with him then. He’d been wearing one when she first met him. Ronald Fetcher lived two boats down from Heidi, in the place owned by the people who were away. It was
then that a memory came back to her. She hadn’t thought of it since it happened. She and Rivka and Joel Hyder had been in the canoe, going back under the dock so they could go up and around the other side. They glided between the houseboats. The boat skimmed along level with the downstairs windows. Not intending to, she had spied on Ronald Fetcher watching cartoons in the daytime. She had thought it sad that a grown man would be indoors in the middle of a beautiful day watching cartoons. But he wasn’t watching cartoons. She could see the television screen, and the close-up of the buxom Japanese girl with the wide, frightened eyes. Ronald Fetcher had been watching anime, wearing his headphones.

With that thought came the final connection between Kimberly Knolls, Vedana Vineyards, Heidi Romero, and Ronald Fetcher. Everything snapped into place at last and she wondered that she hadn’t understood days ago. She tried to remember exactly what she had told Ronald Fetcher when she found the iPod, and what Vurleen had said about him in the parking lot. He was moving, but when? She thought of Vurleen standing outside the harbormaster’s office, one hand on her hip, the other patting gently at the side of her well-lacquered hair. Something about the Mendels coming back. Ronald had to leave.
Got to. They’ll be back before the end of the week.

Sunny went to her desk and took her cell phone out of its cradle. It was almost four in the morning, but on what day? Tuesday? She checked the date against the calendar. Wednesday. What exactly did “before the end of the week” mean?

Four
A.M.
There was plenty of time to drive down and back before work. It might not accomplish much, but it would help kill the time between now and the hour it seemed reasonable to
telephone Sergeant Harvey. There would be no more sleeping tonight, but she would certainly reap some satisfaction in confirming that Ronald’s little beige sports car was still in the parking lot at Pelican Point. She could even note the license plate for Sergeant Harvey’s convenience. If she was very lucky, Vurleen or Dean Blodger might be stationed in the harbormaster’s office early. If anybody was an early riser, it was Dean Blodger. She could tell just by the tidy look of him. He would be an invaluable resource when it came to keeping an eye on Ronald Fetcher.

The solid dark before sunrise
meant one of three things to Sunny, all hardwired by repetition in childhood. One was manual labor. Predawn was the time of work boots, work trucks, toolboxes, and thermoses. Three to five in the morning was the time of day owned by males headed outdoors to work. If that wasn’t why a person was awake, getting dressed silently in the dark, then it could only be for a skiing or camping trip. If she had grown up in another household in another place, maybe this would be the hour of the stockbroker, the baker, the doctor on call. As it was, early morning held magic and excitement. In her family, they set off on adventures at this hour, driving out into the mountains, watching the night wildlife coming in from their hunts, waiting for the first glow of daylight to reveal the contours of a new landscape.

Sunny laced her work shoes, pulled on her jacket, and tucked a notepad and pencil into her pocket. The truck waited at the curb, a splash of streetlight hitting its root beer-colored hood. She opened the passenger side and propped a thermos full of coffee in the well by the stick shift, set a slab of toast with jelly on a paper towel on the dashboard, and put her duffle bag, knife kit, and purse on the seat. She rolled down the window the way she
liked, so the cold morning air would wake her up on the drive. The streetlight went out as she walked around to the driver’s side. She always thought of Catelina Alvarez when that happened, and how such incidents amused her. The old Portuguese woman theorized that the inner light in a person did it, shining in some wavelength our eyes could not detect but the light sensors could. It was one of her few indulgences in the mystical. Her conversation with Catelina had made all the difference last night. She was so certain and sane. “Nothing is pure evil or pure good, Sonya. The world is a constant negotiation between the two. Every minute, you create your way. And sometimes you have to fight.”

It took just over an hour to drive to Sausalito. A white moon, perfectly placed above the city skyline, shimmered off the San Francisco Bay as she descended the last hill. The timing was perfect. There was just enough time to get the license plate number, speak with the harbormaster or Vurleen if possible, and get back before Rivka started to wonder where she was. Sunny turned off the freeway and drove under the underpass. She stopped at the first light and a pack of bicyclists pedaled by in the other direction, their matching Spandex gear a blaze of neon sponsorship. At the second light, she waited in the left-turn lane. There were no other cars. The lights seemed to be red in all directions. She waited, watching the red left-turn arrow. She was just on the point of turning despite it when the beige sports car pulled out of the Pelican Point parking lot, paused at the light, and turned toward the freeway. As it went by, she caught a glimpse of Ronald Fetcher at the wheel.

Two cars came from the other direction. Sunny waited for them to pass, then did a U-turn against the red, gunning the big engine and cranking the wheel around. Up ahead, Ronald
Fetcher cruised through a yellow light and continued under the freeway toward Mill Valley. Sunny looked both ways and blew through the red light after him. She fumbled in her purse for her cell phone. The Mill Valley or Sausalito police were the logical people to call. The difficulty would be explaining why they should pull over the beige sports car. Sergeant Harvey could compel them to action, but by the time she reached him, explained the situation, and waited for him to get the local cops on the move, Fetcher could be long gone. If she was right about what had happened to Heidi, she wouldn’t be surprised if the car and the name were borrowed. Ronald Fetcher wouldn’t move to Guerneville and list his name and phone number in the local white pages to be looked up at anyone’s convenience. Any day now, maybe right now, he would simply vanish. The license plate was one tangible way to track him, at least until he landed another ride. It might even make sense to stay with him until he arrived wherever he was headed. If his business took long enough, she might have time to get Sergeant Harvey on the phone and get the professionals on the scene. That was thinking too far ahead. More important to get that license plate.

Fetcher breezed through another yellow light. Sunny stopped at the red to let a stream of early commuters turn toward the freeway in front of her. She rounded the corner to the next intersection just in time to see the last of Ronald’s car head west. They began the climb up Mount Tamalpais. She followed, catching occasional glimpses of the beige car as they ascended the curvy road. Ronald’s coupe took the curves appreciably better than the truck. Sunny couldn’t be sure exactly what he was driving without a better look, but it looked like some kind of old Jaguar. It was definitely a vintage model, probably from the seventies. Two door, conservative lines. None of the curves of the sexier, earlier
models. That would be too flashy for Ronald. He went for the country club classic style. He wasn’t flying around the corners in a rush, he was cruising, but it was still good work for Sunny to keep the pace. She leaned forward, as though to urge the truck ahead.

He had chosen an excellent road if his intention was to outpace her. There wasn’t a stop sign or traffic light for miles. From here on, the narrow two-lane road twisted up the mountain, switchbacking across steep ravines lined with towering eucalyptus. At the ridgeline, there were various options, some that headed down the other side toward the Pacific in switchbacks just as sharp and steep, some that followed the spine toward the summit. If she didn’t get close enough to read his license plate soon, she never would. Her best hope was a bus or traffic to hold him up. At this hour, when the sky was just beginning to lighten from black to navy blue, and headed as they were toward open land and open sea, away from houses and cities, they were less and less likely to run into another car, let alone traffic. She was going to lose him. She realized now she should have called Sergeant Harvey the instant she saw Fetcher driving away from Pelican Point. Maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe Steve could still get somebody to intercept him. She flipped open her phone and watched it search for a signal in vain. They were too far out, wending between too many tall trees and steep hillsides. The name of the game now was to stick with him. If she was lucky and he headed down to Stinson Beach, he would hit stop signs in town. She could jot down the license number, head back over the hill, and still be at work before the day got out of hand.

Where could he be going at this hour? If he had decamped from the Mendels’ houseboat and was making his getaway, it was a strange direction to make it. Narrow, winding country
roads weren’t the fastest route out of town, and it was harder to blend in with fewer cars around. He said he found a place in Guerneville. What if she was wrong about Ronald Fetcher? There was always that possibility. In that case, this drive made more sense. A man who liked Guerneville liked countryside. He could be on any number of errands. Maybe he wanted to see the sunrise from the top of the mountain. One thing was certain, with every mile, she was getting farther away from work.

A deer appeared on the bank. Sunny braked and it jogged across the road, trotting up the other side to a place were it could dip back into the forest. She downshifted, accepting the possibility that she had lost him and wondering what Ronald Fetcher did all day. How had the Mendels met him? How did he come to be staying at their place? Who really knew who Ronald Fetcher was, anyway? The thought chilled her.

The road dipped down sharply and flung itself around a hairpin turn and back up the other side of the ravine. The forest crowded in from either side and shut out the faint blue light of morning, cloaking the road in dense darkness. Sunny rolled down the window and smelled the mossy air. She quit driving so hard and let the truck take the corners at more manageable speeds. She told herself she would turn around at the next opportunity. It was getting too late. She would drive back to where there was a signal and telephone Steve Harvey like she should have done to start with, then leave it to them and go to work. Way out here, the police would be able to track down the beige Jaguar, even if it took time to convince them to do it.

There was nowhere to turn around. The road fell away steeply to one side and was carved into the hillside on the other. As far as Sunny could remember, it climbed another ridge up
ahead, then ran along the top for half a mile or so before it dove over the side again. There ought to be a place to turn around up there. It was with this thought in mind, watching for a wide spot in the road more than Ronald Fetcher’s bumper, that Sunny accelerated out of a turn and nearly crashed headlong into the beige sports car wedged perpendicular across the road.

The wheels locked up
and the truck went into a slide. All Sunny could think of was what would happen if the truck went off the edge. There would be nothing to stop the fall but bush lupin and sagebrush. Unless the truck slammed into a boulder, it would roll all the way to the bottom of the canyon. She turned into the slide and remembered she was supposed to ease up on the brakes. There wasn’t time. All she could do was hope the wheels didn’t go over the edge. Even if she avoided a freefall, she’d still be stuck until a tow truck came to get her out of there.

The truck came to rest within a foot of the beige coupe and nearly parallel to it. Ronald Fetcher was not in the driver’s seat. Sunny decided not to hang around to find out what happened to him. It would be tight, but it if took twenty tries she would turn around and get out of there. She put the truck in reverse and looked over her shoulder. She never saw Ronald Fetcher emerge from the edge of the road, open her door, and jerk her out of the truck. The first thing she felt was his arm around her neck, cocked under her chin, dragging her backward.

While he was off balance from pulling her away from the vehicle, she took the opportunity to backpedal toward the bank. They went over in a sickening fall and crashed through the
brush, landing hard on the rocks. Sunny’s head slammed against the ground and she felt something sharp drive into her scalp. Ronald lost his grip on her with the impact and she scrambled away from him, tearing her fingers and gouging her knees as she scrambled back up the rocky bank. She still hadn’t had a good look at Ronald Fetcher, but she soon felt his fingers close around her ankle and pull her back down the slope. Her hands gripped at the crumbling rocks. Ronald whipped her onto her side and lunged forward, gripping her throat between his hands. The sensation overwhelmed her. She had never felt anything so debilitating. It was clear, obvious, that he would suffocate her in a matter of minutes, even seconds. He was crushing her esophagus. Even if he let go, she doubted she would be able to breathe again. Her hands pried at his fingers. For a man, Fetcher wasn’t particularly strong. His grip was wiry and desperate. Nevertheless, it was doing the job without trouble. Sunny pulled her knees up and tried to force him off her with her feet. Fetcher responded by lifting her up and slamming her back into the dirt. Her head bounced off the ground and vibrated like a tuning fork. She looked into his pale white face flushed red with the effort of strangling her, the reptilian eyes lined in red, the nose too narrow for the span of flaccid cheeks. He was older than she thought. At a glance she would have guessed forty-five, but from this angle she could see his skin slipping forward away from the bone. He was closer to fifty or fifty-five. What a thought to have while dying, she thought, that Ronald Fetcher could use work.

She struggled against him, and Fetcher leaned into her all the harder, pushing with all his weight on her throat. Soon what little light there was would fade, she would lose consciousness, her body would go limp, and it would be over. She stared at the
face, distorted with effort, glowering over her. A thread of blood had run from a gash on his cheek. She blinked slowly, for relief from the sight of him, for a taste of the black peace that would come soon enough.