A Sunny McCoskey Napa Valley Mystery 3: Murder Alfresco Page 14

  “You’re wrong,” said Kimberly, taking her sunglasses from her head and placing them on the table nervously. “I don’t know anything about her.”

  Sunny read the word PRADA upside down on the stem of the sunglasses and idly wondered what such objects cost. “Then why are you so scared?”

  Kimberly gave her an amused look. “What makes you think I’m scared?”

  “The fact that you’re here, for one thing. I think Heidi Romero’s murder makes you nervous in more than the usual ways. The police haven’t said much about what happened to her or exactly how she was left, but the kind of questions they’ve been asking probably has you good and worried, and you want to know more. You’re here to find out everything you can from me. You need help, and I might be the only safe place for you to look for it. The worst part, I would imagine, is being alone. You can’t confide in anybody. You can’t even share your fears with your husband, let alone the police. All you can do is wait.”

  Kimberly looked at Sunny with an expression of naked despair. She put her hands to her face, covering her mouth. “I don’t have to tell you anything,” she said in a voice that was barely a whisper. She reached for the water and drank thirstily.

  “No, you don’t. In fact, I have work to do. And since nobody left a dead body at my restaurant, I don’t have to worry about any of this. Heidi Romero is not my problem, she’s your problem. You can tell me what’s really going on, and maybe I can help you, or you can go on staying up all night wondering when the next body will be found, and when it will be your turn. It makes no difference to me.”

  Kimberly put the glass down hard. “I didn’t even know her. I’ve never even heard of Heidi Romero until last week.”

  “Then tell me what you do know,” said Sunny. “Wait, let me enhance your motivation. Here is what we’re going to do. If you don’t share enough of your story to satisfy my curiosity right now, my first phone call after you leave will be to Sergeant Harvey. As I understand it, he’s been inches away from getting a search warrant for your home and office for the past week. This conversation could be just what he needs to finally get it.”

  “What are you talking about? I haven’t said anything that would remotely interest the police.”

  “The fact that you came here to threaten me is enough.”

  “I didn’t threaten you!”

  “Didn’t you? I thought that was how this conversation began.”

  “I just wanted to … I was angry about last night.”

  “And I’ll just tell Steve you came by after meeting me at dinner, desperate to know more details about the murder, asking a million questions. The police don’t believe any more than I do that that girl was left at your winery at random. They know someone at Vedana knows something about her. Imagine what they could find with a search warrant. It’s remarkable what can be recovered from a hard drive these days, for example. Deleted files, deleted emails, Web sites you visited three months ago. As I understand it, it’s all still on there if you know where to look. And then there are the cell phone records.”

  A disturbing look came over Kimberly’s face and she rose up from her chair, aiming a solid slap at Sunny’s cheek that definitely would have hurt and certainly would have made it more difficult not to lose her temper. Luckily, a childhood of rough-housing and slap fighting had served her well. She read the intention accurately, saw the hand en route, and reached up in plenty of time to catch Kimberly’s delicate forearm before the blow could reach her. Sunny spent her days getting a kitchen workout that pumped up the veins in her forearms, brought definition to her biceps, and hardened her grip until she could flip eggs in a cast-iron skillet with a flick of the wrist. Even an enraged Kimberly was no match for her strength. Sunny let go and almost smiled, seeing that Kimberly was about to try it again. “How dare you accuse me!” she fumed instead. “How dare you imply I’ve done anything wrong.”

  Sunny matched her glare unapologetically. “I’m not implying anything. I’m quite confident you’ve done something wrong. I think you know why that girl was left at your winery tied up like an erotic sideshow at the Folsom Street Fair. As far as I can tell, you have two options. You can take action on your own, or you can sit around and wait for somebody else to make the next move. Whether it’s the police or the killer that makes it, either way it’s not likely to improve your quality of life.”

  Kimberly turned away with a look of disgust and seemed to crumple inward. “What do you mean by erotic sideshow? How was she tied?”

  “She was hanging from the oak tree in front of the winery with her hands tied behind her back. She was naked except for hemp rope worked around her body, almost like a corset. From what I’ve been told, it was a kind of Japanese-style bondage called shibari. Does that mean anything to you?”

  Kimberly released her hair from its ponytail, letting it fall down around her face. She removed each of her rings and stacked them on the table, then sat staring at her hands, twisting and rubbing them as if trying to remove some invisible binding. Finally she said, “That’s right, that’s what it’s called. If I’d never heard of that word, none of this would have happened.”

  20

  Contrition evaporated swiftly from her pretty face and she went back to looking defiant. “Boredom can be dangerous,” said Kimberly Knolls. “I was bored.” She looked away. “It doesn’t matter why I did it. I’m not sure I even know. Boredom. I let go of the reins of my life, and some dark, hidden part of me took over. I did it, that’s all that matters.”

  Sunny waited. Kimberly would tell her now, if she was patient. Asking questions or trying to encourage her would only risk making her change her mind.

  “I was reading the personals online, exactly six months ago. I remember because we had just had our third wedding anniversary. Anyway, I was playing around and I found a listing that appealed to me. A guy looking for something edgy and anonymous. Edgy was exactly what I was looking for. Something forbidden. I contacted him and we exchanged emails for a while. He was articulate, witty, intelligent, and he could tell what I wanted. He sent me pictures of what he was going to do to me.” She picked up the elastic and tied her hair back again. She took a drink of water and lifted her eyes to Sunny’s. “I liked them. I liked the pictures he sent. I hated them, but they did something to me I could not resist.”

  “What were the pictures of?”

  “Girls tied up, all different ways. Some of them looked beautiful. He said he was an artist. He said I would love it. I thought he was probably right. In the beginning, I never even considered meeting him. I just wanted to flirt with the idea. Then I thought I could do it once and get away with it and no one would ever know. If we did it just right, neither of us would know the real identities of the other, and we could vanish back to where we came from. It would be our secret forever. I knew if I got it out of my system I would feel better, then I could forget about it and everything would go back to normal. I needed a release.”

  Kimberly reached for her purse. Sunny watched her, wondering what she would do if Kimberly did something unpredictable now. What if she had a gun? She took out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. They both took one. Sunny went behind the bar and came back with a ramekin, two glasses, and an open bottle of Chardonnay. She filled the glasses. Kimberly held the lighter for her and Sunny inhaled, the orange glow of the burning tobacco registering her commitment to the conversation. The cigarette tasted bad, but they were in a bad place. She pulled again on the cigarette, exhaling a thick plume of smoke. “Go on.”

  Kimberly drank the wine and looked relieved. She almost looked like she was enjoying herself. Part of her still liked the story. “I was very careful. We never revealed our real names. Just anonymous email addresses. All I knew was that he lived north of San Francisco. He knew I lived in the wine country. I suggested we meet at a big hotel where I was unlikely to be noticed by anyone I knew.”

  “Which hotel?”

  “We went to that one in Sonoma with all the Russians.
The Flamingo. He offered to put it on his credit card so I wouldn’t have to give my name at all. He told me to go to the room on a certain day at a certain time. He would be waiting. I didn’t think I would really go, and I told him that. He said he would be there anyway, hoping I changed my mind. The day came, and I got in the car, and I drove there, almost without thinking. It was like someone else had control of my body. I sat in the parking lot for an hour, trying to decide what to do. Finally I went to the room where he said he would be waiting.

  “Have you ever felt two things at once? Two conflicting emotions? I hated him and I loved him at the same time. It was the worse day of my life and the best.”

  Sunny felt nauseous, whether from the cigarette or what Kimberly was saying, she couldn’t tell. One question couldn’t wait any longer. “What did he look like?”

  “I don’t know. It was dark in the room, and when I came in he grabbed me at the door and blindfolded me. When it was over, he told me to count to five hundred before I left the room, and I did. I never saw him.”

  “But it wasn’t over when it was over,” said Sunny.

  “He continued to email me. I told him it was a one-time thing, that I was happily married and I never intended to see him again. I canceled that email account and assumed that was the end of it. Then he started calling the house.” She crushed out the cigarette and took a drink of the wine. “I was lucky. I answered the phone once, and managed to delete messages three other times without Bruce hearing them. They were terrible messages. At first he said he was in love with me, that he couldn’t live without me, and that I had to come back to him or he would go crazy. Then he started saying that nobody could take me away from him, that I was his forever, and he would do anything to get me back.”

  “You talked to him?”

  “No. As soon as I heard his voice, I hung up.”

  “And the number?”

  “I wrote them all down. A couple of times he was in the room at the Flamingo. One of the numbers was blocked. The fourth was the phone booth at that gas station on the south end of town.”

  “In St. Helena?”

  Kimberly nodded.

  “You didn’t contact the police,” said Sunny. “How could I? Like you said, I’m in this alone. I couldn’t tell anybody, not even Bruce.”

  “How did he get your number?”

  “I was very stupid. I brought my purse with me to the room. I thought I was being smart by taking my wallet out and leaving it in the glove compartment, but I forgot about my business cards. I assume he looked in my bag at some point while I was there and found them.”

  Sunny crushed out her cigarette and moved the ramekin to another table. “This was when?”

  “I met him in late October. The phone calls came about once a week through November. Then I never heard from him again. I assumed it was over. Even after the police called us and said they had found the body of a young woman at the winery, I never imagined it was connected. It was only after the police kept asking questions about our marriage and our personal lives that I started to worry. They asked me a dozen different ways if I ever suspected Bruce of having an affair, if I had had an affair, if we ever went to sex clubs, if either of us was into bondage. I could tell there was something funny going on.”

  “Why Heidi Romero? What did she have to do with it?”

  “I don’t know. If she was tied the way you say, I’m sure it has some connection to the man I met. He talked the whole time about the beauty of shibari as an art form, how a woman tied that way was like a work of art. But I don’t know what the connection could be. I’d never met or even heard of anyone named Heidi Romero until she turned up dead. The only thing I could think of was he wanted to scare me into seeing him again.”

  “Has he called you?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “And you told the police none of this?”

  Kimberly Knolls looked at her hands and shook her head. “Of course not. It would mean losing everything. It wouldn’t bring that girl back, and it would end my life as well. Can you imagine the scandal?”

  “Scandal? Bad press is the least of your problems. Do you think the person who did this won’t do it again? Can you actually live with the fact that you have information that could put a murderer behind bars, and you’re not going to share it because you’re afraid of upsetting your husband? What about when the next body turns up? Are you going to be able to live with yourself then?”

  “I don’t know anything that could put him behind bars. He’s probably halfway around the world by now. Telling the police what I know would only destroy my marriage and nothing else.”

  “He used a credit card at the Flamingo. Even if it wasn’t his, it belonged to someone, and it could lead to some kind of trail. Which day in October did you meet there?”

  “Listen, I can’t go to the police and I won’t go to the police, and neither will you. If you do, I’ll simply deny everything. I have witnesses that you approached me last night, that you crashed a dinner party for that purpose, and that you pretended to know nothing about the murder. I’ll just say you are obsessed and you’ve been harassing me.”

  “And I suppose you’ll sleep like a baby tonight, knowing once and for all that that message was meant for you.”

  “I’ll never sleep like a baby again as long as I live. Life goes on.”

  Sunny shook her head. “This isn’t over, and you know it’s not over. Heidi Romero was his way of getting your attention, probably so you’ll be more cooperative next time he contacts you. It’s the beginning, not the end. For your own safety as much as anyone else’s, you need to come forward with everything you’ve got.”

  Kimberly Knolls stood up and buttoned her jacket, tugging it down in front and smoothing the creases from her trousers. She put each of her rings back on and picked up her handbag and sunglasses. “What I did and what happened to Heidi Romero are both in the past. The past is gone. Only three people know what I just told you, and two of us will never admit it. That just leaves you.” She put on her sunglasses. “Thanks for the wine.”

  21

  Everything is relative. Cleaning out the grease drain sounded like a terrible way to spend a Sunday afternoon until the alternative was to call Sergeant Harvey and set a series of events in motion that neither Sunny nor Kimberly Knolls would enjoy. She considered various strategies. One was the truth. Call him up and tell him exactly what had happened. Kim would lie about it. Steve would grill both of them. Then he would start looking into it and find, presumably, that Sunny had been telling the truth. Another was to leave an anonymous tip. Leave a message saying Kimberly Knolls had had an affair with a guy who was into bondage in October at the Flamingo Inn. That would give them enough to get them going.

  A third, more daring strategy was to call Dean Blodger down at Pelican Point Harbor with Kim Knolls listening in on the line, or have Kim call him directly. If the harbormaster was her man, she would recognize his voice. Sunny thought of Dean gripping her hand that morning in the harbormaster’s office. He was stronger than he looked. If he was the guy Kim had met, the guy who’d killed Heidi and dragged her up to Napa, the last thing she wanted to do was have any more contact with him, even by phone.

  And then there was the other option. She could simply forget what Kimberly had told her. As long as no one else got hurt, it wouldn’t matter one way or the other. It was refreshing to imagine doing nothing, to think that Kimberly was right, the past was gone forever, over. If only that were the case. The ramifications of the past live on in the present, that girl hanging limp and dead proved it, and Sunny knew in her heart that a man who could do that to Heidi Romero was possessed by an illness too powerful to just go away. That kind of force did not dissipate. It would grow, searching for a new outlet, or it would wait for the next irresistible opportunity. Whatever he might have started out as, he had become a monster, and he would go on committing the acts of a monster. It was his nature now.

  She made quick work of the grease drai
n and went out to the garden to pull weeds, working with manic energy. The light had softened and a pink glow edged the Mayacamas Mountains. She tugged up handfuls of oxalis and field grasses ferociously. Their presence seemed a blatant affront to order and productivity that would no longer be tolerated. What do you call this state of mind, she wondered, in which it was crucial to think clearly and decisively and yet impossible to do so? She saw stars straight ahead and black zones at the corners of her vision. How long had it been since she’d eaten? There would be food at home. For now, the soil in her hands meant everything. She kept going back to what Kimberly had told her, hearing it again and again. If I’d never heard of that word, none of this would have happened.

  Was it her duty to turn this information over to the police? Sergeant Harvey would listen, then he would check the story out with Kimberly. If she denied it, the worst that could happen was Steve would shake his head at Sunny and chastise her for getting involved again by going to the Ferrari event. He would ask her, again, to stay out of police business. Best-case scenario, there might be something in it that would lead the police to Heidi Romero’s killer.

  The light turned somber and the air cold. She went inside and washed her hands. The only item left on her list of chores was the biscotti. She looked around at the silent kitchen and the dark windows. In the mood she was in, Wildside would feel lonely once it got dark, and she never liked the look of those windows at night, especially since one of her pet fears had been realized last year, when she’d looked up during a late-night baking session and seen a face looking in the window. All week long she had avoided thinking about the white truck that kept showing up in St. Helena. She didn’t think about the driver, and how he might be wondering if she could identify him. And she had not been thinking about Dean Blodger, and how he’d turned up at the racetrack. However, staying late alone at the restaurant was a good way to start thinking about those things all over again. It would be much more pleasant to bake at home. She gathered a box of supplies, locked up, and went out to the truck. Her cell phone was wedged in the ash tray. She could call Sergeant Harvey on the way or when she got home, if that’s what she decided to do. It could even wait until morning. Sunny pulled onto the highway, not thinking about anything, not even Kimberly Knolls.