A Sunny McCoskey Napa Valley Mystery 3: Murder Alfresco Read online

  “It’s more important to know what you think it means,” said Rivka, yawning. “It’s a message from your subconscious, not mine. Tell me again what happened in the dream. Give me the high-level summary.”

  “Heidi wanted to talk with me, but I refused to go over to her. I was afraid of her because she’s dead. I tried to say so, but I couldn’t.”

  “And what about when you woke up? How did you feel?”

  “I was sorry that I hadn’t allowed her to speak to me. I wished I hadn’t been afraid. I wanted to know what she was trying to tell me.”

  “Well,” said Rivka, “that seems pretty clear. You couldn’t say the word dead because she’s not dead in your mind. She is still very much alive in your subconscious. There is still something Heidi Romero needs to tell you, and you’re going to have to overcome your fear in order to find out what it is.”

  “Fear of what?” said Sunny.

  “Well, in a murder there are plenty of things to fear, but this is probably something more elemental, less rational. Death itself, maybe. You couldn’t say the word and you avoided her because she’d dead. Maybe you have to overcome your fear of death in order to find out what she is trying to tell you. Or maybe, as far as your subconscious is concerned, she’s not dead. Her spirit is still with you. Maybe you picked her up like a hitchhiker by being the first one to discover the body.”

  “Where did you get that idea?”

  “Nowhere in particular.”

  Sunny thought that if Heidi’s spirit was lingering anywhere, it was more likely at Vedana Vineyards. That was what was bothering her. Endings were important. To end up hanging in a tree, caught up literally and figuratively in somebody else’s nightmare, was not a fate she was willing to allow Heidi Romero to endure for all eternity. Something so ugly could not be the end of what sounded like a very pretty life. Maybe the best thing she could do was try to help her make a transition from the hell of her last hours back to someplace she felt at home. “I think I need to see the water,” said Sunny.

  “Like maybe where she liked to surf?” said Rivka.

  “She lived in Sausalito. Where would you surf if you lived in Sausalito?”

  “I have no idea. But I know someone who’ll know. I’ll call while you drive over.”

  “See you in fifteen.”

  They drove down Highway 29 and turned west at the 120 split, heading into the Carneros hills. A delicate light touched the vineyard-covered hillsides and turned the sky exuberant blue. At 101, they went south, passing the rolling green hills of San Rafael, the Space Age civic center building famously designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and finally the downhill stretch to Mill Valley. It was still early enough for the freeway to be empty. Rivka looked toward the upcoming exit.

  “Coffee at the Depot?”

  “I was thinking Caffe Trieste,” said Sunny.

  “Sounds good,” said Rivka.

  They topped the final rise and the truck gathered speed down the other side, rounding a turn at the bottom that opened up a view of the bay, from the mansions of Tiburon to the eucalyptus-covered slopes of Angel Island, the concrete edifice of Alcatraz, and beyond, the distant high-rises of San Francisco crowding the water’s edge. To the east, the ridge line of the Oakland Hills ran the length of the horizon. Sunny turned off and cruised into the seaside town of Sausalito.

  “If we talk to anyone, we’re friends of Heidi Romero,” she said. “Nothing more. I don’t want to get into anything about finding the body.”

  “Right.”

  They parked on the main street in front of the Sausalito marina. The café was peppered with locals, up early to beat the tourists. The guy behind the bar had a grizzled look, with unshaved whiskers and a wide, red face. His fingers were fat as sausages. Sunny ordered a latte and watched him under-tamp the grounds and over-heat a pot of milk. Rivka sighed.

  “Would you mind if I gave that a try?” she said.

  “You wanna make your own coffee?” the barista joked, his face breaking into a gaping smile. He poured the scorched milk on top of the watery shot, turning it a uniform, ashen gray. “Be my guest.”

  Rivka came around behind the counter. “That thing you just made? That’s not a latte, that’s a laxative. Let me show you how to make a real latte. First you warm the milk, gently. Then you need a shot with a nice, golden layer of crema on top.”

  The barista took Sunny’s money, looking amused, while Rivka pounded the old puck out of the portafilter and whipped the espresso station into shape.

  Sunny carried a glass of water out to the terrace to watch the boats while Rivka conducted coffee school. A few minutes later, she and the barista arrived at the table, bearing perfectly layered Chavez-style lattes.

  “Your friend knows what she’d doing, I’ll give her that,” he said, standing in front of them with his hands on his hips, shielding the view of the marina like a partition.

  “And she’s not afraid to say so,” said Sunny, putting down the paper she’d been reading. She tapped the front page. “Sad story. This was a local girl, right?”

  “That’s right. She lived over on one of the houseboats docked at the end of town. A real shame. She came into the café sometimes.” He looked around at the tables and picked up a dirty plate and napkin.

  “In the mornings?” asked Sunny.

  “Sometimes. Sometimes at night for a glass of wine. We got music in the evenings and the people come in to relax after work.” He walked away and came back a second later without the plate and napkin. “Hey, you girls come back anytime. Ask for Jason. I’ll make you a perfect latte or it’s on me.” He shook their hands and urged them to have a great day. After he left, they sat drinking their coffee in silence and letting the sun warm their faces. Rivka shed a layer, down to her perennial tank top. Sunny followed suit. It had been a long winter.

  “You certainly made a friend,” said Sunny. “And by viciously criticizing his craft.”

  “People love you when you bust them out,” said Rivka. “He knew that was a terrible latte. Most people don’t know the difference, so why should he bother doing it right? It’s easier to feed people garbage. Guys like that love to get busted trying to put one over on the general public. It’s secretly gratifying to them to know that somebody can tell the difference.”

  They soaked up the sun and the view of the marina with its forest of masts. A seagull approached them with wary arrogance. Rivka swallowed the last of her latte. “On y va?”

  “Allons-y.”

  10

  Nothing, not a cloud or wisp of fog, impeded the view from the top of the hill overlooking Fort Cronkhite. Sunny parked the truck and they walked through the concrete bunker punched through the hillside, then hiked up to the top, where a concrete pad had been laid down for a lookout station. The installation, like many dug into the hills facing the Pacific, had been built in the late thirties as a last defense against invasion from the west. Now defunct, they served as observation points for tourists and weekenders, covert make-out and quickie spots for the amorous, and nighttime venues for rituals involving spray paint, beer, and bonfires.

  From the peak, they looked down on the massive orange Art Deco towers of the Golden Gate Bridge and the narrow channel of surging water that separated the two hillsides. Beyond, San Francisco spread out like a scale model of itself. The day was so clear, lines of whitewater could be seen from waves breaking at Ocean Beach, the straight strip of unprotected beach at the city’s western edge. To the east, beyond the Oakland Hills, was the perfect pyramid of Mount Diablo in the distance. Immediately to the north, Rodeo Canyon plunged down to a cluster of red-roofed military buildings beside an estuary that ended in a half-moon beach. Beyond the canyon, the forested ridges of Mount Tamalpais rose up. West of everything, the vast blue of the Pacific filled the horizon. A ship loaded with cargo containers approached the entrance to the bay. Otherwise, only the distant, craggy silhouettes of the Farallon Islands interrupted the endless expanse of ocean.

  The sun b
ehind her, Sunny gazed out to sea. It felt good to stretch her eyes. The sight of an endless series of swells rippling the water’s surface all the way out to the horizon stirred her emotions. They arrived from a journey across hundreds or even thousands of miles of open water. So many endings. The ceaseless arrival of travelers, of journeys ending with a crash and an explosion of foam and spray.

  They walked back to the truck and headed down into Rodeo Canyon. Bright orange poppies and purple lupin lined the road and climbed the hillsides. At the bottom, they passed stables, horses grazing lazily in a nearby meadow, and a snow-white egret stepping through tall grasses in the lagoon. A red-winged blackbird balanced on the tip of a reed, showing a flash of crimson with each adjustment.

  The surf looked rough and disorganized, a chaos of waves and whitewater crashing into a steep depression it had carved into the shore. They walked out to a driftwood log washed up to the top of the beach and sat down. A cluster of surfers sat their boards a few yards beyond the breaking waves, facing out to sea. Periodically one of them would turn and paddle for a wave, usually pulling back at the last moment to let it slide away underneath him. Occasionally a guy would paddle hard and catch one, standing up for a few seconds before the wave closed out, enveloping him in foam. They watched a pair of surfers arrive and plunge into the icy water with their boards. They paddled into the line of breaking waves, struggling against the power of each wave in succession. They were forced underwater and shoved back toward the beach half a dozen times, coming up and resuming their struggle with determined strokes. One of them had paddled ahead six or seven feet. He crested the last swell easily, tipping over the top to join the pack in calm water. The other paddled hard behind him. The wave rose up and the surfer with it, his board more and more vertical as the face of the swell grew. Sunny and Rivka sucked in their breath in unison, anticipating an ugly backward tumble. The surfer paddled furiously and leaned forward, stretching to push the nose of the board up and over the top an instant before the wall of water gathered force and fell forward, crashing heavily downward with an angry blast of spray and foam.

  They watched until their hands were red with cold, then walked back to the parking lot. A group of surfers, some in wet-suits, others in down jackets, all barefoot or wearing flip-flops, was gathered around the back end of an SUV.

  “Hang on a sec,” said Sunny. She detoured to approach the surfers. Rivka hung back, watching. Their talk fizzled as she walked up. There didn’t seem to be any point to introductions or hey-how’s-it-going formalities. “Do any of you know a girl from around here named Heidi Romero?”

  Chins down, staring at their toes, they glanced at each other furtively. One of them, a teenager hunkered down in his jeans’ pockets with the hood of his sweatshirt flipped up against the chill, looked up at her. “She the chick with the long black hair?”

  “That’s her.”

  “I think Hyder might know her.”

  “Where can I find Hyder?” asked Sunny. The boy indicated the direction with his chin, keeping his hands shoved in his pockets. “Over there. Dude with the shaved head.”

  The issue resolved, they went back to talking waves and rides. The one they called Hyder, a bulky guy with a goatee, was sitting on the tailgate of a 4-Runner, pulling off his booties. When Sunny and Rivka walked up, he had just peeled his arms free of his wetsuit. His sturdy forearms and biceps were covered with tattoos, including a gothic cross, a dagger with a snake wound around it, and, from what Sunny could see, an ambitious dragon-like creature covering much of his back. He looked up at them with eyes the color of the water he’d just gotten out of. They met Sunny’s with a jolt. She could hardly remember seeing more striking eyes in a more shocking shade of blue on anyone, let alone a girthsome, ink-covered surfer. They looked like blue-green marbles held up to the light. He was in his late thirties or early forties and his face was beginning to show the signs of middle age, with comfortable-looking crow’s-feet around the eyes. He finished toweling off his shoulders and pulled on a T-shirt. Sunny and Rivka introduced themselves and he reciprocated with a surprisingly engaging smile.

  “Joel Hyder,” he said, shaking their hands and looking at them curiously. “What can I do for you girls?”

  “We heard you might know Heidi Romero,” said Sunny.

  Joel Hyder gave her a stern frown. “Who told you that?”

  “Those guys,” said Sunny.

  “What about her?”

  “We’re friends. We were just looking to hook up with other people who knew her, considering what’s happened.” Sunny studied his face, wondering whether or not he knew Heidi Romero was dead.

  His expression softened and he went back to toweling off. “As long as you’re not reporters.”

  “Reporters?”

  “They were out here yesterday snooping around. I don’t care for newspapers or TV news, and I don’t like reporters. Vultures paid to prey on other people’s tragedies.”

  “We’re not reporters,” said Sunny.

  “Excuse me a minute.” He wrapped the towel around his waist and gestured for them to spin around. Sunny had witnessed the surfer’s towel dance before. The object was to pry yourself free of the tight, sticky wetsuit and pull on shorts or jeans, all without dropping the towel or exposing yourself. Especially for a man of Hyder’s proportions, it would present a challenge.

  “Much better. Now, tell me who you are again?” He stepped into flip-flops, tossed the hide of sandy black neoprene into the plastic bin with his booties, and tightened the drawstring on his shorts.

  “Neat trick,” said Rivka.

  “Took me longer to learn that than it did to surf,” he said, grinning. “So, how’d you know Heidi? Surfing?”

  Sunny found it distasteful to lie, but, in the present circumstances, she found telling the truth even less agreeable. There was much to be lost and nothing to be gained by revealing how she had come in contact with Heidi Romero. Rivka took the lead. “We did yoga together.”

  “Did you? Where was that?”

  “In Mill Valley.”

  “You mean the place across from the Cantina?”

  “That’s it.”

  “I go there myself now and then. I like to give the Marin moms a thrill. They love to see a guy who can barely touch his toes.” He stared at them with his gemstone eyes. “And?”

  Rivka faltered. “We only really knew her in that context.”

  “And now that she’s dead, you wish you knew her better,” he said.

  “I guess so.”

  “Well, you’ve come to the right place. I surfed with her just about every day for the last year. You girls looking to learn? I make a good teacher. I taught Heidi and she was better than me within three months.”

  “Not me,” said Rivka. “I’m afraid of sharks.”

  “You come with me, I’ll protect you. I’ll fight off any sharks that come around.”

  Rivka smiled awkwardly. “Thanks, but I think I’ll pass.”

  He loaded his gear into the back of the 4-Runner and closed the hatch. They watched while he wiped down his board and hoisted it onto the roof, then went around the other side to tighten the straps down. He came back brushing off his hands. “Ladies, I suggest we continue this conversation over brunch. I know a place where the pancakes are out of this world.”

  They hesitated.

  “Come on, I don’t bite. At least not on the first date.” He pinched at Rivka’s waist and she jumped.

  “I think we’ll hang out here for a while,” said Sunny.

  “Don’t be like that. I’ll play nice, I promise.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks,” said Rivka.

  “Suit yourselves.” He stroked his goatee and looked them up and down. “You girls ever been over to Heidi’s place?”

  “The houseboat?” said Sunny. “Not me.”

  “Me neither,” said Rivka.

  “It’s over at the north end of Sausalito. I was meaning to go over there later, but we could go now if you wan
t. That’s my final offer. You come with me and you can snoop around all you want.”

  “We don’t want to snoop around,” said Sunny.

  “Then what do you want to do? As far as I can tell, you’re snooping around right now.”

  Sunny frowned. “Good to meet you. Riv, let’s get out of here.”

  Joel Hyder grabbed Rivka’s wrist. “How about just you come. You know you want to see where Heidi lived. It’ll be fun. I can drive you home whenever you want.”

  Rivka glared at the hand on her wrist and he let her go. “Thanks, really, but no thanks.”

  “What are you two really up to?” said Joel. “Why are you

  here?”

  “We told you. We’re friends of Heidi’s. We just wanted to see where she surfed,” said Rivka.

  “You saw it. Why bother me?”

  “I’m sorry we bothered you. We’re finished bothering you now.” She rolled her eyes at Sunny.

  “I don’t get you two,” said Joel. “You come all the way out here looking for some clue to who this acquaintance of yours was, then when you find it, you run away. I knew her better than just about anybody. Inside of an hour, I’ll be sitting on her sundeck, playing my guitar, wishing her a good journey in the afterlife. If you don’t want to come, that’s fine with me, but you’ll learn as much as there is to know about Heidi from looking around the houseboat. If you have unfinished business with her, maybe you should try to finish it while you have the chance. I’ll tell you one thing, I’m not making this offer again.”

  Sunny looked at Rivka and back to Joel. “We can’t go to Heidi’s house.”

  “Why not?”

  “You can’t just break into somebody’s house who’s been murdered. We’ll get arrested.”

  Joel scowled. “Forget I mentioned it.” He got in the 4-Runner and started the engine.

  Sunny made a face at Rivka. This was their only chance. She jogged up to the window and tapped on the glass.

  He rolled it down. “What now?”

  “Why are you going to her house?”

  “Her father asked me to keep an eye on the place until he gets here. Besides, I don’t need a reason. I used to hang out there whenever I wanted when she was alive. I don’t see why I can’t do it now that she’s dead.”