Twenty-Four

I got up early on Thursday morning, no more rested than I’d been last night. I breakfasted on coffee and an English muffin before leaving the house. My first stop was my office where, as I had the day before, I checked my email and phone messages. One email came from Rita. She told me that she hadn’t yet received the boat history on the Esmeralda and the other two boats, but she’d let me know as soon as it came in.

The background check on Harry Vann hadn’t come back yet, but I looked up the address of Vann’s Motorcycle Shop. It was on Guerneville Road, west of Santa Rosa.

I shut down my computer and was headed for the door, ready to drive to Sonoma for my meeting with Nancy Parsons. My cell phone rang. I stopped, my hand on the doorknob. The readout told me the call came from the Petaluma Police Department.

“We found your brother’s Jeep,” Detective Colman said.

“Where?”

“An old quarry west of Forestville,” she said. “Somebody dumped it there in the past few days. The guy who found it says the Jeep wasn’t there when he left work on Friday. The place where it was found is on a side road that isn’t used often.”

“Any prints?”

“The vehicle had been wiped down pretty good,” Colman said. “But we did find a few prints, all of them your brother’s.”

“He’s been abducted,” I said.

“Or he dumped the Jeep himself,” she countered.

“What about his cell phone?” I asked.

“The cell phone company says the last signal they had from it was on Friday, in the area between Forestville and Santa Rosa. But there’s no signal now. It’s probably out of juice.”

We ended the call. I was frustrated by Colman’s attitude. She was still clinging to the theory that Brian had left on his own.

I closed and locked my office and went down to the lot where I parked my car. I took Interstate 80 across the Carquinez Bridge, driving through Vallejo, and then headed west on Highway 37, along the marshy upper reaches of San Pablo Bay. Highway 121 north took me into Sonoma.

The Sonoma Valley had long been populated by California’s Native American tribes. They called it the Valley of the Moon, a term still used today. The town of Sonoma was founded when California was Spanish territory, and its mission, San Francisco Solano, was built in 1823, after Mexico won its independence from Spain. Sonoma was also the site of the Bear Flag Revolt, when a group of rebels raised a flag in June 1846 and proclaimed independence from Mexico and started a short-lived country called the California Republic. The Bear Flag soon gave way to the Stars and Stripes with the Mexican–American War, and California became a United States territory.

These days, Sonoma was known for wine, as it should be. Despite the popularity and publicity accorded to the Napa Valley, just over the Mayacamas Mountains to the east, Sonoma and its own valley were historically the birthplace of the California winemaking industry, dating back to the days when the mission had its own vineyards. In fact, as I parked near the town’s historic downtown plaza, I saw posters advertising the upcoming Valley of the Moon Vintage Festival, which takes place each year on the last weekend of September.

It was cooler this morning, but the forecast was for more heat. I strolled around the plaza and located the café and bake shop where I was to meet Nancy Parsons at ten o’clock. It was a few minutes before ten, so I went to the counter to survey the yummy pastries she’d mentioned. They did indeed look enticing. Which one to have? It was a tough decision, but I finally narrowed it down to a pain au raisin, a spiral of flaky pastry liberally studded with plump raisins. When my turn came at the counter, I ordered a latte to go with the pastry and carried my purchases to a nearby table. With a fork, I cut a piece of the pastry and lifted it to my mouth. Mmm, good choice.

As I sipped my latte, a woman of about forty walked into the café, wearing sandals, khaki capri pants and a blue T-shirt on her short, rounded frame, her salt-and-pepper hair brushing her shoulders. She glanced around the café as though looking for someone and I made eye contact. She crossed to the table where I sat. “Jeri Howard?”

“Yes.” I waved a hand toward the counter. “Can I get you anything?”

“Oh, thanks, I’d love a cappuccino. And a chocolate croissant. My weakness. Hey, there’s chocolate and there’s everything else.”

I laughed. “My sentiments exactly. Although you see I got seduced by something else.”

She examined my pastry. “Oh, that one’s good, too.”

Nancy sat down at the table while I stepped up to the counter and ordered. I returned a moment later and set the cup and croissant in front of her.

“I appreciate your meeting me,” I said, sitting down across from her.

“Anything I can do to help. I was so shocked when you told me Brian was missing. What happened?”

She ate a few bites of her croissant while I gave her an edited version of events. “I’m following up on something Brian told a friend. He also mentioned it to my father. Brian was upset over something that happened to one of his students, a boy who tried to kill himself after being bullied.”

“Ah, that.” Nancy wiped chocolate from her fingers. Then she sipped her cappuccino and licked a bit of foam from her lips. “Anything I tell you is strictly off the record. I bet you hear that a lot, in your line of work.”

“Yes, I do. And this would be for my use only. I’m interested in Brian’s state of mind. I’m not even sure this has anything to do with his disappearance, but I’m exploring every avenue.”

“It may not have anything to do with Brian disappearing,” Nancy said, “but I’m sure it has something to do with him changing jobs. That asshole McManus.”

“Who’s that? The principal?”

“Yes.” She sighed, took another bite of her croissant, washing it down with more coffee. “It’s all been hushed up, you see. Never happened, not the school’s fault, et cetera. Just because McManus didn’t take the bullying seriously and he doesn’t want any record of anything happening on his watch. It didn’t happen at school or there would have been some official repercussions.”

“So what did happen?” I cut off another wedge of my pastry and raised the fork to my lips.

“A lot of what I know is hearsay, but I’ll tell you anyway. The kid’s an eighth-grader. I understand he comes from a very conservative, strict, religious family. I’m sure he’s gay and conflicted as hell about it.”

“That spells trouble.” I sipped my latte.

“You got that right. These kids are middle-schoolers, twelve and thirteen, and some of them are emotionally quite young. They pick up on any differences, any student who’s different from the herd. In this case, a bunch of boys were bullying this particular kid, calling him the usual names. It escalated during the school year. I don’t know when Brian first picked up on it, but sometime around the last part of April, he said something to the principal about the kid being hassled. McManus pretty much ignored it.”

“Can he do that? I thought there were measures in place to deal with bullying in the schools.”

“There are supposed to be. It’s a serious problem and it’s gotten lots of media coverage. But McManus blew it off. He should have his ass in the wringer for that, but it’s not gonna happen. His excuse is that he couldn’t really do anything because the complaint hadn’t come from the student himself. It was just Brian’s opinion, you see. I know Brian talked to the kid. But later that week, the kid got hit by a car.”

“Traffic accident?” I reached for my coffee. “I thought it was a suicide attempt.”

Nancy waved a piece of croissant at me. “Officially, it’s a traffic accident. Unofficially—well, make that the school grapevine—the boy deliberately ran out in front of the car that hit him. The driver said he never saw the kid until he was in front of the car. Another witness said it looked like the kid did it on purpose. So who knows?”

“That muddles it,” I said. “If the boy had taken a fistful of sleeping pills, there would have been an investigation, some official record.”

Nancy nodded. “But in this case, the police called it an accident. Kid versus car and the kid was seriously injured. Brian was sure it was a suicide attempt, due to the bullying. He told me so and confronted McManus about it. I gather there was quite an argument in the principal’s office. It wasn’t long after that Brian confided in me that he was looking for another job. I didn’t think he’d find one this soon, but when that position opened up in Petaluma, he jumped on it.”

After Nancy left, I finished my pastry and coffee and thought about what she had told me. It was interesting and it certainly gave evidence of Brian’s state of mind at the end of the last school year.

But did it have anything to do with my brother’s disappearance? I didn’t think so. Nor did I think there was any point in talking with the principal. From what Nancy had told me, he was in denial that anything had happened.