Free The Bohemian Connection by Susan Dunlap

rough.
    I drove on to a flat spot at the top of the hill—the parking area. There was no other vehicle here.
    Briefly I considered racing back down into town to see if Ross was there. But he wouldn’t be. That would be crazy. He wouldn’t rush away from Michelle’s house so fast that I couldn’t find any remnant of his being there just to be seen on North Bank Road.
    I got out of my truck and walked toward the gravestones as I had done on many occasions when I wanted to think. After the sepulchral sewer hole the shady cemetery seemed almost cheerful. It bore no resemblance to newer memorial parks where unobtrusive memorial plaques are camouflaged so they won’t mar the landscaping. Worn, cracked, their lettering so faint as to no longer reveal who rested beneath, the gravestones here were grouped in family plots. Tarnished low brass rails enclosed the ten-by-twenty-foot rectangles.
    The mud from the sewer hole still caked my feet; leaves stuck to the mud; and my feet seemed part of the earth beneath. I felt a surprisingly easy affinity with the other inhabitants here. A cool dusk breeze lifted the leaves and passed like a shawl over my arms. It was nice to be here in the silence, with no awkward questions to ask, no sheriff to threaten me. I sat down on a long flat stone, picked up a dead pine branch, and began half-heartedly dusting the mud from my jeans.
    The man I had followed had eluded me. But suppose that man wasn’t Ross. I had only my own assumption to say that he was. It was reasonable to assume that a man who merely looked like Ross might have been walking down the street—but standing in Ward’s backyard? What was he doing there if he wasn’t Ross?
    Assuming he was Ross, why would he have left Henderson so suddenly as to miss his father’s funeral, and then return eight years later to kill a girl he had dated when she was in high school? Was there more to it than that? Alison Barluska hadn’t mentioned any letters or phone calls from Michelle when she was living with Ross. But Ross might have kept in contact. Alison, as she had said, wasn’t the love of Ross’s life. His living with her wouldn’t have precluded visits to Michelle. Perhaps he had come to Henderson when Craig was away. Perhaps Michelle had told Craig she was going to visit her sister in Santa Rosa and gone on to San Francisco to meet Ross. But even if that were so, even if they had carried on a clandestine romance all these years, why would Ross have killed her now?
    The branch cracked halfway. I tore the end loose and continued to brush.
    According to Ward, Michelle hadn’t had enough to do now that her children were in school. Craig spent long hours at the plant nursery. Michelle was irritated about Alison working there. Was this then the time that Michelle had decided to run off with Ross? Had Ross objected (was it more than he had in mind?), Michelle insisted, and he killed her? Wait—rather than kill her, wouldn’t it have been easier for Ross just to stay out of Henderson?
    It would, unless Michelle had had some hold on him. Suppose she had known he was the Bohemian Connection. He had told Alison; maybe he also bragged to Michelle. Whatever he did as the Bohemian Connection included the illegal.
    But it had been eight years since he had been the Connection. Unless he was involved in something more felonious than Alison had intimated, the statute of limitations would have run out on any crime he had committed.
    I pushed myself up and strolled along the overgrown path between the families of gravestones. The path was thick with pine needles, so that even the sound of my steps was muffled. I felt like I was walking on pillows. A redwood tree, older than any of the dead beneath the ground, shaded the nearer plots. In winter it would shield them from the driving rain. Now its shade was dark against the patches of bright setting sun. I walked to the farthest plot, that of Maria Keneally and her five children, all of whom had died