Aubrey smelled a rat when Pina called him. She and I have a difference of opinion about that. Aubrey told her that she’d hurt his feelings when she walked away from him in Sonoma. “Why,” he asked, “would he meet her again and subject himself to more humiliation?” Or so Pina related, without filling in the stuttering, thus giving Aubrey vocal fluency he’s never had.

“He’s on to you, Pina,” I said. “It made no sense to him that you’d suddenly want to meet after you brushed him off.”

Pina stood with her hands on her hips and shot me a withering look, as if I was both foolish and pitiable. Her posture reminded me of the way Sally used to stand when she was outraged at me at me as a teenager. It was all I could do to take her seriously. With her hands on her hips and elbows pointed out she reminded me of her five-year-old self, singing “I’m and a little teapot” with her kindergarten class. As a sixteen-year-old adopting a similar posture, she’d shout, “You don’t get it, Dad; you just don’t get it.” Of course, she was right. My not getting it was so profound that I often didn’t have a clue of what the it referred to.

The situation with Pina was different—I knew exactly what I was getting that she wasn’t.

Pina made her case. She said that she told Aubrey that the reason she called was that she felt bad that she’d been dismissive. The fact is, she said, she’d been distracted that day. There’d been a death in the family. She made up a story about a stepfather she’d never had whom she’d been closer to than her actual father. Aubrey told her that he was sorry for her loss, but that he’d still rather not meet at this time.

“See, he was onto you,” I said.

“Zzz zzz,” Pina hissed through her teeth, a dismissive exclamation that I imagined her Italian immigrant mother modeled for her. “Like you know what you’re talking about,” she said dismissively, reminding me again of my daughter. “You’ve never even met the man.”

“So now you think that Aubrey, who Augie Boyer thinks may be a cold-blooded killer, had nothing to do with the murder?”

“Fucking Augie Boyer. All he knows about Aubrey are the things I told him. Tell me this, Charlie, who hired Augie Boyer? Who the fuck hired him?”

It’s a question I’ve asked myself, but I must say my curiosity has gone a bit slack. “I don’t have a clue. Maybe The Girl and the Fig hired him to find out who killed their waiter. In the old days they could have paid him off with a couple of seasons of steak frites, but now that he’s become a svelte vegan, it’s hard to imagine.”

Pina shot me a sideways smile, a peace treaty of sorts.

“So what are your thoughts about Aubrey now?” I asked.

“I don’t know what I think.”

“Trust your instincts, Pina.”

That’s when she flipped me off and the conversation ended.

Augie Boyer called me this morning and asked if I could meet him out in Guerneville, claiming his car was in the shop. I tried to find out what was up, but the detective said he didn’t want to discuss it over the phone. When I asked if he wanted Pina to come along he told me that I’d be sufficient. Maybe Pina put a scare into him by flashing him the bird. Suddenly she’s terrifying the world with her middle finger. It’s amusing that the professor of speech is now relying on sign language.

Pina left the house without letting me know where she was going. I heard her car start up and drive off quickly and tried to decide whether she was racing away or toward something. Her foot is always heavy on the gas pedal, but times like this leave everything open for interpretation.

I walked in to say hello to Roscoe.

“Charlie, you’re becoming a stranger again,” he said in his singsong parrot voice, “ I can see you’re worried about Pina.”

“How can you see that?” I asked.

“Charlie, do you think the only sense I have is hearing?”

“Don’t answer a question with a question, Roscoe?”

“Why?”

I wondered what to do with Roscoe—teach him a poem as Augie Boyer suggested or a political command as my daughter Sally demanded. Oh, Sally, what’s become of her? We haven’t spoken in two weeks. I tried to remember what I learned from Al-Anon: is it my job to be in touch with her or vice versa? Is no news good news or bad?

Roscoe chirped: “What’s it going to be, Charlie?”

I considered the equation again. Poetry is always a good idea, but I surprised myself by saying: “Let’s talk about the filibuster, Roscoe, it’s racist history and other reasons that it should be abolished.”

Augie Boyer and I agreed to meet at noon in the front parking lot of Armstrong Redwoods State Preserve. “Bring lunch with you, Charlie,” he said. “I’ll be chowing down with carrot sticks and humus.”

I enjoyed the long ride from Sonoma. The fog had just begun to rise in town, but driving west through Santa Rosa and Sebastopol I was right back in the thick of it. I still was able to catch a glimpse of the Russian River here and there as the road became curvy after Forestville. I’ve always thought of the west county of Sonoma as a magic kingdom with its natural beauty and hearty population of dopers and anti-capitalists.

There were only a few cars parked in the front lot when I arrived at Armstrong Reserve, and no sign of Augie Boyer. I wondered how he’d get to this remote spot with his car in the shop. I imagined him setting off on a long hike from his house with his polished walking stick. I planted myself at a picnic table. The redwoods were deeply draped in a misty fog. You could see up only a small fraction of their height. Even on a clear day at Armstrong, where the senior redwood is reckoned to be 1,200 years old, you can’t see to the top of the 300-foot trees. Sometimes they make me think of “Jack and the Beanstalk,” one of the most beguiling stories of my childhood. Were there giants who lived above the redwoods?

Along came Augie Boyer in red racing tights on a teal-colored electric bike, with the letters TREK plastered on the wide hunk of frame that must encase the motor. Instead of a helmet the detective wore the Sherlock Holmes hat that he described as beyond the pale, the other day in Sonoma. A few waxed spikes of his red hair shot out from under the hat.

All was not lost, Augie Boyer had returned to a haiku facemask, this one reading:

The man on the moon

isn’t pedaling his bike,

and either am I.

“You’re wondering why I’m wearing this hat, when I disavowed it the other day,” he said, as soon as he’d hopped off the bike. “It’s not a tribute to Sherlock, but to that great San Francisco P. I. Jack Palladino, who died yesterday.” Augie Boyer bowed his head.

I’d read about Palladino in the Chronicle. He was a legendary detective who worked for both Bill Clinton and Harvey Weinstein to defame their female accusers. Not exactly savory work. I hadn’t heard about the man before his murder.

Augie Boyer looked up at me with tears in his eyes. “Jack carried a camera, but not a gun. They say he was out photographing on the street before his ultimate killers were aware of him. His photos are the evidence that will convict them. My theory is that he knew he was going to be murdered that day—that it was an unavoidable reality that he wanted to document.”

Before the detective joined me at the picnic table, he pulled a vintage Snoopy lunchbox from the basket bungee-corded to the rear of his bike. We sat kitty-corner from each other at the picnic table.

He opened his lunchbox and pulled out a baggie of carrot sticks. “I bought this at the flea market in Monte Rio not long ago,” he explained. “Guy wanted twenty-five bucks for it, which seemed a little high for west county. I opened up the box and it was filled with fishing lures. This dude, an old time hippie in overalls with a bandana wrapped around his head and an ugly throat beard, says, ‘I’ll throw in the lures for another fifty dollars.’ I tell him I don’t fish and he says, ‘Great opportunity to start, and if you don’t get so inspired then realize that you’re taking home some genuine objects of art,’ which he pronounced in a faux French accent as objets d’art. I could tell he was just another of these over educated west county guys who calls himself a writer and hasn’t worked a day in his life. ‘And consider the metaphoric value of hanging lures around the room where you meditate,’ he says. ‘Things will come to you. You’ll end up snagging all sorts of good fortune. Just like a vacuum is made to be filled, a suspended lure dazzles the spirits until it ends up capturing the unfathomable.’ That’s the kind of woo woo talk you get out in west county, Charlie. Dude won’t let me purchase the lunchbox alone. ‘All or nothing,’ he says. Do I walk away like any sensible man would? No, I buy the whole shooting match, hang the damn lures from the ceiling around my office—no small task—and am still waiting for my metaphoric fortune to materialize. My wife Quince says, ‘what are you trying to catch with those lures, Augie, flies?’”

The detective didn’t seem like he was in much of a hurry. That was fine with me. I decided to treat this day as vacation. After lunch I’d take one of the trails through the redwoods. I was no longer worried about why Augie Boyer summoned me out there. He held a carrot stick in the air as if he was considering its potential properties as a lure.

“So what do you have for me, Charlie?“ he asked, finally.

I explained with regret that Pina was unable to set up an appointment with Aubrey.

That’s a shame,” the detective said, “I’ll have to get creative—just when I thought I had no more tricks left in the bag. Between you and me, Charlie, I’m ready to wind it down and retire from this game. The time I met Pina in the cemetery in Sonoma I thought, you should start shopping for a grave, old boy. Now I’m forced to persist. I trust you’re hip to the William Carols Williams lines, Charlie:

‘I’m persistent as the pink locust,

once admitted

to the garden,

you will not easily get rid of it.

Tear it from the ground,

 if one hair-thin rootlet

remain

 it will come again.’”

“’It is flattering to think of myself so.’ I continued.

“It is also laughable.’”

“Good man, Charlie, you know the poem.”

“Absolutely. I’m also fond of the phrase from Hexagram 34 of the I Ching: Perseverance furthers.”

“Indubitably,” the detective agreed and raised me one, “You know what Hannibal said—‘We will either find a way or make one.’”

I countered with Confucius: “The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”

After Augie Boyer and I finished impressing each other with relevant quotes, he started dipping his carrot sticks in humus and I crunched into a sardine sandwich, having forgotten that my companion was a vegan.

The detective’s eyes narrowed and he assumed a mournful expression. “I used to love sardines.”

After we finished our lunch I asked the question Pina would have wanted me to pose: “May I inquire who you’re working for, Augie.”

“The Sheriff’s Department,” he said, without skipping a beat. “I’m a little more nimble than they can be. I have more gray area in regard to the law than they do.”

He went on to reveal something he’d discovered via the sheriff’s department. The Reddick Syndicate, a crime family based in Stockton, are possible suspects in the murder of Jesus.

“They have strong ties to the Oath Keepers,” the detective said.

“The militia group?” I asked.

“Yeah, those virulent jokers that had a hand in the capitol insurrection. They think they’re patriots,”

“Oh, God, those fucking people intent on destroying the world that is not in their own likeness.”

“That’s right. The street drug trade,” Augie Boyer said, “is providing cash for weapons and the next insurgency. These bums have moved into Santa Rosa; Sonoma Valley is their next stop. One of the syndicate’s goals is to vanquish the local Latino dope trade. They want a pure white business model, from Stockton to the coast, for their dirty heroin and fentanyl. Their motto is: Beaners will not replace us.”

“Can’t see Aubrey fitting in with them,” I said.

“He might have been used. The same may be said of Vince. They’re both still suspects.”

I waited for him to mention my daughter, but thankfully her name didn’t come up. “And the link to Pina?” I asked.

Augie Boyer lifted off his Sherlock hat. I half expected a dove to fly out. “The business with Pina’s name is what has my hair standing on end,” he said.

I gazed at the waxy red spikes of hair shooting off in all directions. The diffuse light through the redwoods burnished the red spikes. Jesus was dead and Augie Boyer wore his own crown of thorns.