SONOMA SQUARES MURDER MYSTERY
By 16 Sonoma County Writers
Conceived and edited by Robert Digitale
Copyright © 2012 by Robert Digitale
To:
Santa Rosa Press Democrat Executive Editor Catherine Barnett, who first suggested publishing this story in the daily newspaper. Thank you for your encouragement.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1: RED MUUMUU by Dean A. Anderson
Chapter 2: MR. CROCODILE BOOTS by Meg McConahey
Chapter 3: THE MISSING PHONE by Jeremy Hay
Chapter 4: I PRAY SIC by Heather Chavez
Chapter 5: WHY SANDRA? by Linda C. McCabe
Chapter 6: CLOSE EYE ON YOU by Heather Irwin
Chapter 7: LISTENING IN by Ana Manwaring
Chapter 8: PHONE SECRET by Randi Rossmann
Chapter 9: UNWANTED EYES by Charles Markee
Chapter 10: THE RIDDLE by Crissi Dillon
Chapter 11: TEMPTING OFFER, by Chris Coursey
Chapter 12: SINKING FEELING, by Paul Gullixson
Chapter 13: DEATH WATCH, by John Hendrickson
Chapter 14: FACE-OFF, by Martin Espinoza
Chapter 15: HANDCAR REGATTA, by Frederick Weisel
Chapter 16: SCARED OF NOISE? by Robert Digitale
About This Story
Chapter 1 – Red Muumuu
BY DEAN A. ANDERSON
The little boy gazed forward paying no attention to the dead woman at his feet. Perhaps his concentration was on the neatly folded flag in his hands. Or perhaps he was distracted by the first rays of sunshine coming through the trees and touching the back of his head. Realists would insist that the true reason for his indifference was the fact that he was merely a statue, sculpted and placed in the Healdsburg Plaza to commemorate those who died in war.
Jennifer Willis, taking her early jog on that August summer morning, was not indifferent to the body. Willis’ screams woke guests in the inn on the south side of the Plaza and in the hotel on the west side of the Plaza. But it was a baker on the east side of the Plaza who called the police.
Officer Desiree Ransom of the Healdsburg police tried to question Ms. Willis and comfort her simultaneously, but soon decided there wasn’t much to learn from her beyond, “I was jogging and I found this body.” So she went about examining the body.
Officer Ransom tried to look without touching. The dead Caucasian woman appeared to be in her 40s, though many of those years could be attributed to mileage rather than chronology. Her hair was more yellow than blond and gray at the roots. Her face was heavily made up, but the make-up had been smeared by travel, or perhaps struggle.
Where is that forensics team? Ransom thought as she saw the half-dozen onlookers that were still keeping their distance.
The dead woman was wearing a red muumuu. Who still wears muumuus? Besides overweight dead women in town squares? And again, where is some back-up here? The red muumuu was not complemented by the other fashion accessories: hoop earrings, several cubic zirconium rings and, most strange of all, white high top tennis shoes covered with Chinese script.
Finally, Officer Nico Rodriquez pulled up, parking his squad car. He brought with him some yellow caution tape to ensure the increasing number of looky-loos stayed at a distance.
“Friend of yours?” Rodriquez asked.
Ransom assumed Nico was trying to prove he was completely comfortable with the situation by making a snarky remark from a television crime procedural. But she knew the rookie had so far only faced traffic and public drunkenness in the line of duty. She knew homicide was as unfamiliar to him as it was to her.
“She was someone’s friend, so I suggest you treat her with respect.”
Rodriquez put on an appropriate face of shame. Ransom couldn’t tell if it was real or not. Not that it mattered.
“Have you found cause of death yet?” he asked.
“No.” She didn’t see any lethal looking wounds on the visible flesh. Perhaps a fatal blow was hidden under that hideous dress. Perhaps she was felled by a heart attack or a stroke, but Ransom didn’t think so. For all she knew it could have been a poisoning, a freak accident or some nasty voodoo.
As Ransom thought through possibilities, she realized she had never even checked to be sure the woman was dead (though it would be hard to believe otherwise.) She lifted the woman’s left wrist to feel for a pulse. The coolness of the wrist said as much as its stillness. But it was when Ransom lifted the wrist that she noticed the writing on the arm. Writing apparently in red ink, the same shade as the hideous dress the woman wore.
On the woman’s forearm was a single word, “Sonoma.”
Next time: “Mr. Crocodile Boots.” Another victim. Another word on one arm.
Dean A. Anderson lives and works in Healdsburg. The sixth of his Bill the Warthog detective novels for kids, KING CON, has been nominated for a Christian Retailers Choice Award. For For more on his books, click here: https://www.legacypresskids.com/index.php?cPath=41_29
Previously: A woman in a red muumuu is found slain on the Healdsburg Plaza. On her arm is written a single word: “Sonoma.”
Chapter Two – Mr. Crocodile Boots
BY MEG McCONAHEY
Even if the man hadn’t been frantically fishing for something in the duck pond, he would not have passed through the Sonoma Plaza unnoticed.
It was the custom-made crocodile skin boots that caught the eye of Skip Wingo, who had just left Plaza Liquors and was hurriedly crossing the square with a bottle of scotch in a brown paper bag clutched under his windbreaker. Skip was hoping to muscle into La Casa for some cheap tacos at the tail end of Happy Hour, but he slowed down to regard the stranger. A fancy silver buckle on the man’s hand-tolled belt glinted in the angled sunlight. He wore a white beaver felt hat and Wranglers way too crisp to have ever rubbed up against a horse.
“Definitely not Sonoma,” Skip scoffed. Locals might wear cowboy boots but they’d be scuffed with a little vineyard dust. Skip was used to the overdressed wine snobs and twittering twenty-somethings who took over the town on weekends. This guy, though, looked like he’d ridden in on a Cadillac with Texas plates. As he passed the pond Skip noticed that the man had pulled his hand from the water and was now standing, a muscular 6 foot 5 at least, even without the hat. He had pulled a cell phone from the pocket of his long leather jacket. His head was bowed as he barked in low tones in what appeared to be an older flip phone. Not the kind of device you’d expect from a man wearing $2000 boots, Skip thought, shaking his head as he hurried on.
After the neon marquee of the Sebastiani Theater goes dim, the Sonoma Plaza is a dark place. But in that gray hour before sunrise the Italian fountains and the Bear Flag monument take on an eerie definition. Tripping over an unseen obstacle and turning an ankle was the only potential calamity that threatened Audrey Hastings’ complete feeling of safety running in Sonoma when the streets were empty.
Having spent 20 years in The City, where bus stop beatings, park muggings and stabbings were commonplace, she felt completely at ease in a bubble her fellow urban ex-pats were given to calling “Sonomalot.” In fact, one of Audrey’s guilty pleasures since retiring six months ago to this snug town a remote 20 miles from the interstate was reading the police blotter, a daily hoot of bumbling petty thieves and errant motorists breaking the speed barrier at 45 mph on Broadway.
Heading up Napa Road from her Second Street East cottage, she cut over to the plaza in front of City Hall and decided to cross through the west side of the square to catch the bike path down from the police station two blocks away. If it weren’t for a noisy flapping of wings and a cacophony of quacking she might have passed by the duck pond without noticing the pointy tip of a boot poki
ng out of the surface. Figuring she’d be a good citizen and remove the litter, she jogged over and reached down to pull at the old shoe. What came up was an entire leg. Audrey froze, unable to scream as she looked down into the blank face of a man staring up at her through open eyes.
*
Zach Brown reached over groggily when the cell phone beside his bed sounded off with that “Dragnet” ringtone that signaled a call from the station. “Sh--,” he sputtered as his hand knocked the gadget to the ground. “Yeah. Brown here,” he said in that cottony voice of the not quite awake.
“Get your boots on buddy.” The sheriff’s sergeant’s voice was almost cheerful, a tone he took on when things were starting to get really interesting.
“Possible 187 in the Sonoma Plaza. Fifty-eight-year-old white male, about six-five, 220. Face up in the duck pond.”
“A few too many tastes?” Brown sneered, irritated that he’d been roused from his best sleeping hour for a clueless tourist who failed to take into account there was alcohol in wine. He raked a hand over his blonde buzz, as if rubbing his scalp would help engage a groggy mind.
“Look Brown. We found his hat, still damp, perched on top of the slide. Female jogger found the body. She’s still hyperventilating,” the sergeant said evenly. Then paused.
“And?” Brown interjected to break the long silence.
“Remember the body in Healdsburg? This victim also has something written on his arm. Care to guess? Try ‘Sebastopol.’ We better find this perp before he kills somebody over there.”
Next Time: “The Missing Phone.” Sheriff’s Detective Zach Brown starts gathering clues, but one item is nowhere to be found.
Meg McConahey is a staff writer at The Press Democrat.
Previously: A tall man with crocodile skin boots is found dead in the Sonoma Plaza duck pond. Sheriff’s Detective Zach Brown is awakened and told that a second victim has been found with a single word written on an arm. This time it’s “Sebastopol.”
Chapter 3 – The Missing Phone
BY JEREMY HAY
Brown started in Healdsburg. He didn’t know why but he walked first to the gazebo where the bands set up and played for the summer concerts. He’d brought a date here last year. They’d listened to New Orleans jazz and drunk Lagunitas. But life went on. Until it didn’t, he thought.
As far as plazas go, it wasn’t a bad place to find and kill someone. There were a lot of trees to obscure witness sight lines. Just two bars on the fringes where a late-night boozehound smoking on the sidewalk might have spotted or heard something.
But other than that, it was jar-headed and counted on luck. That no young lovers were cuddling on a bench. That a cruiser wasn’t making the rounds, which, this being the posh center of posh Healdsburg, was more than likely. That no old man had bedded down for the night under a nearby tree, although, this being the posh center of posh Healdsburg, that was unlikely.
So it was a thrill on top of a thrill for their killer. Which troubled Brown. That they had a serial operator was obvious. One who liked games and had started with some sort of a playbook already in place. But this one had stone nerves, too, operating out in such public locations here and again in Sonoma. He wasn’t just daring cops. He was daring anyone in the wide open world.
Brown drove to Sonoma with that on his mind. Every time he wanted a cigarette he switched radio stations. By the time he arrived at the plaza he felt like a transmission tower.
On the way to the duck pond he stepped in some fresh droppings and cursed. It made him wonder again at the lack of disturbance at the scenes. In Healdsburg, they’d combed the site where Matilda Pismo was found and had come up with nothing but fifteen Camel Wide cigarette butts that had been ground into the dirt at the base of a redwood. And here? Well, the area around the pond was already messy – ducks and mud and a thousand children’s shoe prints – but even with that, they’d seen no signs that Wally Spittleheimer had been dragged into the water. It was hard to imagine how else he would have ended up in there. He was an awfully big man to hold down and drown. And if there is one thing serial killers usually do, it’s repeat themselves. Pismo’s autopsy had shown that she was stabbed with a hypodermic between the third and fourth rib. Brown was betting that that was Wally’s fate, too.
But how do you sneak up on a 6-foot-5 taxidermist from Lake County, stick a six-inch needle through his chest into his heart, roll up his sleeves, write in red Sharpie on his arm, drag him into the pond, and leave no signs of a struggle? Brown shook his head. They were still waiting for the examiner, but it had surely happened at night, in which case the question was, how late and what was Wally doing here? Meeting his killer? Brown thought about it and then, after first making sure no one was looking, tossed a penny at a duck.
Two hours later, after narrowly avoiding a head-on with a texting driver on Highway 12, and after resisting the urge to pull a U-turn in his black Mustang GT to make an arrest, Brown was in Sebastopol.
“If this gets out, this little game our perp is playing on our vics’ arms, I will write ‘I did it’ on your forehead and stick the Sharpie in your eye,” he said to the detectives gathered in the chief’s office.
There were three of them – two from the Sheriff’s Office and one from the Sebastopol Police Department – besides him and the chief. And he could see they were on edge and eager at the same time. Who wouldn’t be? Big cases like this don’t come along too often.
“How are we going to alert citizens?” the chief said. “If we are next, and it sure looks that way, I don’t want anyone wandering around the plaza or Ives Park and getting killed because they don’t know. If people find out we knew he was coming here and didn’t warn ‘em, we’re toast. I’m toast.”
Brown’s cell phone rang.
“Yeah.”
“Zach, we got his cell phone records. He made a call at two – in the morning.”
“Really. To who? Whom, I mean.”
“What?”
“Or is it, ‘Who?’ Forget it, just tell me, Ok?”
“Sonoma State. Some shrink professor, Simone Bishop, in the psychology department. No message, though. Strange, right?”
“Get all the numbers from his phone, get who they are,” Brown said, feeling the case turn.
“That’s the thing, boss, we can’t find it. He had a holster on his belt, but it’s empty. They’re dragging the pond again, but nothing so far.”
Next Time: “I Pray Sic.” Police Reporter Sandra Cordero receives a package that leads to the biggest story of her life.
Jeremy Hay is a staff writer at The Press Democrat. He also is working on a novel that involves redevelopment money.
Previously: Detective Brown visits the murder scenes in Healdsburg and Sonoma. A colleague tells Brown that the Sonoma victim’s cell phone is missing.
Chapter Four – I Pray Sic
BY HEATHER CHAVEZ
As new cop reporter Sandra Cordero tried to remember which of the paper cups on her desk was yesterday’s coffee and which was this morning’s, she tapped the padded mailer absent-mindedly with her fingertips.
The one on the right, she decided. She took a sip, grimaced, then popped the lid on the cup to spit it back out.
No, not that one.
Sandra tossed the cup in the garbage and reached for the padded envelope. She didn’t yet look at it. Instead, she tucked her long, brown hair behind her ears, put on her headset and dialed the phone.
In her mid-20s, Sandra was striking and ambitious. After three years as a general assignment reporter, she had been itching to get assigned the police beat. And now, with her morning half over and nothing more to report than a guy who'd stolen a pastrami sandwich, she found herself tapping her fingertips and feet and grinding her teeth.
Probably a good thing I didn’t finish that coffee, she thought.
She had written decent stories about the suspicious deaths of two people in two small towns. But the follow-up articles had been exercises in frustration. After a long
day in Healdsburg, she managed to track down a few folks who knew Matilda Pismo. But her phone calls to Lake County produced only one person who was even vaguely familiar with Wally Spittleheimer. She told herself she would keep working the story as time allowed, but in the meantime she needed to produce some copy.
It was two rings into her call that she really looked at the envelope for the first time. Her brow furrowed. “Attn: Sandra Cordero” was written on the front with a red Sharpie. But it wasn't her name that drew her interest.
Sandra hung up the phone as abruptly as she dropped the envelope. Her heart pounded, though she couldn't separate how much was from fear and how much was from her instinct that this might be a story.
In the upper-left corner of the padded mailer was Sandra’s home address.
With public records and the Internet, she knew such a thing was easy to get. Still, why use her address at all? Quickly she concluded: It had been addressed that way to get her attention.
Without a name or valid return address, Sandra considered whether she should open it. Then she snatched up the envelope.
“Curiosity killed the journalist,” she muttered, even as she squeezed the envelope to guess its contents. Hard. Small. She put it to her ear to see if she could hear anything ticking and immediately felt ridiculous.
Sandra pulled the mailer’s tab to release the contents. Heck, if it was a bomb, at least they’d have a local story for A1.
It wasn’t a bomb. An older model cell phone, red with curved edges, slid from the envelope onto her desk.
Sandra flipped open the phone. Her finger hovered above the power button. Turning on someone else’s phone felt intrusive, even if the sender had made it clear it was intended for her. But she had no choice, really – the phone was a communication device, so what had the sender wanted to communicate?
She jabbed the button. A moment later, an alert popped on the screen. A new text message: “I thought you might appreciate this.” The picture within the text message was small, slightly blurry. Shades of pale pink, a flash of red. She quickly read the rest of the text, heart still racing, then quickly opened the gallery of photos stored on the phone.