Illusions

18

Before we left in the morning I called the office and accessed the answering machine, just in case any urgent messages had come in Friday afternoon. Tamara works part-time some Fridays, depending on her school schedule; she hadn’t been in yesterday at all. I was aware of a certain irony as I made the call, after last night’s avowal to back off on work, spend more time smelling the roses. But you can’t hurl yourself into a lifestyle change all at once — at least I couldn’t. Do it gradually, wean myself away from the work-as-number-one-motivator mindset, and I’d be much more likely to stick to my resolve. Besides, there was still the Erskine business to be dealt with. And Eberhardt, like a small tumor that somehow had to be cut out before any real healing could begin.

There were two messages on the machine, both from the same party: Sondra Nelson. One late yesterday afternoon, one at nine this morning. Both said essentially the same thing. Please call her as soon as possible, it was important she talk to me; she would be at the winery all day today, in the afternoon tomorrow, all day again on Monday. She sounded controlled, businesslike, but there was an undercurrent in both messages that I took to be fear. Source: Gail Kendall. They’d had a conference, decided it was Nelson who stood the best chance of finding out how much I knew and of trying to sway or dissuade me. She wanted me to contact her at Silver Creek so her fiancé wouldn’t be involved, which fit with my suppositions. Erskine’s murder was a two-person job, and James Woolfox wasn’t one of the two.

I rang up the winery, and she came on the line in a hurry. “Yes, hello,” she said. “Thank you for getting back to me so promptly.”

“What can I do for you, Ms. Nelson?”

“Well, I wonder— Could you hold a moment?” She went away for about fifteen seconds. Closing an office door or switching phones for privacy, I thought. “I’m back,” her voice said in my ear. “I wonder if we could talk in person, privately? Either up here or in the city, if you prefer.”

Uh-huh, I thought. Did I owe Sondra Nelson the courtesy of another meeting? Yes. I felt sorry for her and Gail Kendall, in spite of or maybe because of what they’d felt compelled to do, and there was no denying that I was partly responsible for putting her in a position where she had had to make that kind of choice. But the meeting would not go as she and Kendall hoped it would. If there was any swaying done, I’d be the one to do it.

I said, “I think that can be arranged. When did you have in mind?”

“As soon as possible. Today?”

“Can’t be done. I’m about to leave for the weekend. I won’t be available until Monday.”

Longish pause. “Monday morning?”

“Afternoon would be better. I have some business in the morning.”

“All right. Where shall we meet?”

“The winery. Or anywhere in Sonoma County. I’ll be in Santa Rosa, if you want to come there.”

“Oh? Are you... you wouldn’t be seeing Lieutenant Battle, would you?”

“Not before you and I talk.”

Another pause. “Would you mind coming here? Santa Rosa... well, there’re just too many people.”

“I don’t mind. Say one o’clock?”

“Yes.” The throat-clearing sound again. “There’ll be people here, too,” she said. “At the winery proper. But there’s another place on the property, the ruins of an old stone farmhouse. Would it be all right if I met you there?”

Dangerous games, Ms. Nelson? But I doubted it. She wouldn’t play them on Woolfox’s land, where he might be hurt by the backlash, and she couldn’t be sure I hadn’t already confided in Battle. Besides, I didn’t see her as the sort who would always resort to violence when threatened. She was a victim, not an aggressor.

“How do I get to the farmhouse?”

She told me. It was only three-quarters of a mile from Silver Creek Cellars and I would have to go through the winery grounds to get there.

“If I’m held up in Santa Rosa for any reason,” I said, “I’ll call and let you know.”

She said, “Thank you” before she broke the connection, but not in response to what I’d said. As if I’d given her something — a slender thread of hope, maybe.

Had I given her a thread of hope? I hadn’t meant to. Whatever she had to say, it wouldn’t make any difference in what I did. Murder was murder; motives and extenuating circumstances and emotional pleas didn’t matter. Neither did pity nor compassion. If she was guilty, and I was sure she was, it was my duty to see that she was held accountable. Convince her to turn herself in, if I could; and if I couldn’t, turn her and Gail Kendall in myself.

The drive up highway 1, the stay at the little bluffside inn near Elk in Mendocino County, was a definite tonic. We walked on the beach, watched the sea lions playing among the offshore rocks, ate too much, built a pine-log blaze in a fireplace so large a hermit could have called it home, drank two bottles of an Alexander Valley cabernet not made by Silver Creek Cellars (“luscious fruit flavor, elegant balance, strong finish”), and got tight enough to engage in some moderately outrageous lovemaking on the carpet in front of the fire — outrageous, that is, for a none-too-svelte sixtyish Italian guy and a younger and considerably more mature stone fox. On Sunday we drove up the coast toward Little River, stopped in at Sharon McCone’s retreat, Touchstone, to see if she and Hy Ripinsky were in residence — they weren’t — and then headed back through the Anderson Valley, where we stopped at a couple of wineries to taste their reds and whites. Getting into it, by God. Before long we’d be subscribing to the Wine Spectator, using phrases like “delightful nose” and “resonant on the palate” with a straight face, and talking about establishing our own cellar.

Nice two days. Very.

I didn’t think once about the Erskine case. Even Eberhardt’s ghost pretty much left me alone.

First stop Monday morning: the office, to check the mail and finish up preliminary work on the insurance fraud case. Tamara came in all chipper and glowing again — another hot weekend with her symphonic hardman. I let her tell me a little about it, but when she started on the ins and outs — literally — of Mr. Mighty’s canine testicular implant, I performed a successful verbal neutering operation on her. She wanted to know how I’d got the still-noticeable fat lip; I gave her a brief and ambiguous explanation, because I wasn’t ready or willing to share the details on the Erskine homicide, and then changed the subject to the Mendocino trip. She allowed as how the weekend had been just what I needed, since I no longer looked like something Mr. Mighty might try to bury. And so it went. Typical sedate and respectful employer-employee conversation, as must surely go on in business offices throughout the city on any given Monday morning.

I was out of there by ten, and once again on the hunt for a parking place within reasonable proximity of the Sonoma County courthouse at eleven-fifteen. The one I found this time required a walk of no more than a third of a mile. It was warm in Santa Rosa today, a balmy spring day for one of the few instances this spring, and I enjoyed the walk. I even managed to hoof it up to the second floor of the courthouse without aggravating my sore back — a lingering reminder that men my age ought to be more careful when indulging in a Saturday-night bacchanal.

The woman in the jury commissioner’s office was cooperative enough, though she would only answer nonspecific questions about the county’s jury selection procedures; information on individual jurors was not to be given out. No problem there. The answers I did get were sufficient to bolster my suspicions. I would’ve liked to talk to the judge and members of the seated jury on the gang-rape trial Sondra Nelson had been called for; that might have produced some hard evidence in the form of a witness with a sharp memory. But the trial had ended Friday morning, I was told, and the presiding judge was not in chambers today. Just as well. That sort of evidence-gathering was better handled by Lieutenant Battle and the county prosecutor’s office.

The good feeling left over from the weekend was mostly gone by the time I got back to the car. I felt only marginally better, in fact, than I had on Friday afternoon. When you’re carrying a couple of loads like Eberhardt’s suicide and Ira Erskine’s murder, two-day getaways are in a class with the generally accepted falsehood about Chinese food: the appeasing effects just don’t last very long.

I consoled myself with the thought that in a few hours I would be free of the Erskine mess. One down, one to go.