This chapter gets headlined as “Saturday morning, August 17” and the writer employs a not-at-all-subtle metaphor involving the storm clouds rolling in, which gets the first paragraph of the chapter, and she uses that as a transitional device to get to the next paragraph.
It was under such a literal cloud that Rennie drove a small and subdued Melza Raven to the police station Sunday morning, accompanied by Rhino Kanaloa…
The infantilization of Demelza Poldark-Raven also continues. Note that she is “small and subdued” after her epic hysterical-weeping-‘n’-catatonia fest of the night before, as well as not being able to manage driving a car (Future Me: at the end of the chapter Rennie does mention that Demelza can’t drive “American,” whatever that means) or getting herself to the cop shop alone. She’s also being called Melza here, which is a nickname that’s been deployed throughout this book although I hadn’t mentioned it. Another word for a nickname is a diminutive, something made smaller.
And we get an editorial fail right off the bat. In the sentence above that I quoted, it states that Rennie drove Demelza to the police station, but later in the very same sentence the writer tells us that Chin Ho Kanaloa was driving because Rennie was tired and the road was bad due to the rain. Can the writer not keep the start of a sentence in mind until she gets to the end? Why did Kennealy-Morrison leave “drove” in the sentence and not change it to “accompanied” or something along those lines, just to be consistent? How can memory fail that fast?
She also refers to wanting Chin Ho Kanaloa with them because he’s bigger than the cops. So she thinks a civilian can intimidate cops inside the police station?
Then there’s a paragraph about the Soncartneys which is designed to remind you that they’re some of her very bestest friends, no kidding you guys!
And then Kennealy-Morrison executes one of her patented time skips which is a boring-as-hell detailing of what Rennie did after the end of the last chapter which mostly involves breakfast and does manage to tell us that Ned has in fact been arrested, which should have been clear to us before this. Demelza Poldark-Raven is calm when she’s told and Rennie thinks she’s still stoned from that ten-milligram Valium she had the night before. Even as a non-drug-addict, that sounds dubious, but moving on.
Marcus Dorner is at the station when Rennie shows up, which the narrator states she was expecting, and she still has the knee-jerk rage reaction combined with cartoonish threats of physical violence at his presence that we should be used to from all the times we saw it in California Screamin’. The author calls this “a splendid fit of bad temper…a little personal thunderstorm of her very own…” as if this is something commendable. Your mileage may vary—mine does.
“Don’t start with me, Marcus! Do not, or I swear to God I will snap your arm off and beat you to death with it. Do I make myself clear? Let her [my note: Demelza Poldark-Raven] go in and see Ned in peace. You and I can handle whatever we need to be handling right out here on our own. And you have exactly one minute to tell me about it. Fifty-eight seconds. Go.”
Nobody in the real world would ever put up with this shit for five minutes, which is one reason it’s so hard to suspend disbelief regarding this series. In addition to that, we’ve never been given any real reason why Rennie is so consistently hostile to Marcus. We can’t use the moving-to-Los-Angeles gambit to hang it on, since she was even more hostile toward him in the second book, after they’d started their little affair. I can’t imagine why she decided to fuck a man she disliked so much, despite the narrator’s contention that they felt “considerable affection” for each other. Somehow that never made it onto the page in any way other than “tell-don’t-show.” My theory for this is that Marcus Dorner is the direct analogue for the guy she was engaged to in college and wound up not marrying.
Originally I thought that Stephen Lacing must be the analogue for that guy, but she doesn’t display the same venomous nastiness toward him. Don’t get me wrong; she cuts him down at every opportunity, but she’s much milder in her dislike, which indicates that he could be someone who didn’t offend her to any serious degree. Marjorie Lacing has the same venomous nastiness directed at her, so I still think she was Kennealy-Morrison’s fiance’s mother, but with Marcus as her son, rather than nephew.
But Marcus has reclaimed at least one of his balls from her and tells her in a low voice that she needs to see him first because Marcus witnessed him giving his statement and some things were mentioned that Demelza Poldark-Raven would be better off hearing from Rennie. Yeah, that’s the mark of a healthy marital relationship right there.
Rennie doesn’t like it because he hasn’t caved in but agrees to see Ned, to which Marcus rewards her by saying “Good girl,” which I would find patronizing but this is Rennie so fuck that noise and the section ends.
So the cops show Rennie into the interrogation room where Ned is being held and the author provides an unintentionally revealing moment about her protagonist that I’m sure she thought was cute and quirky but comes across as more sociopathic, considering that a guy she had a sexual relationship with (which has been retconned to four weekends in service of revirginizing her for Turk) has been arrested for murder. One would think the first, if not the only, thing on her mind would be finding out if he’s all right, and maybe what Marcus was talking about, but that’s not how Rennie rolls.
The only person in it [the interrogation room] was Ned himself, sitting at a dark-stained oak farmhouse table of Arts and Crafts design and considerable age, which Rennie lusted after as soon as she set eyes on it.
OOOH! I wonder if they would sell me that table, it’s probably an original one, up here in the boondocks like this, it would look great in the downstairs hall, they would do so much better with a nice new one, I’ll buy them two to replace it, I wonder if they have anything else nice lying around that I could take off their hands, maybe a bench or something…
I have spent the ENTIRE series ripping on Rennie Stride for calling herself a hippie when it suits her and adopting the accoutrements of hippiedom while eschewing the substance of it. She has the clothes, the music, the alternative personal lifestyle, and the rampant drug use, but somehow the disdain for money and social status and material possessions never sank in. And she just keeps providing material for me to rip on.
After she has her orgasm over the beat-up police department table, she remembers that she’s there to try to help Ned, even though she still hasn’t lifted a finger to start investigating the murder of Amander Evans. We also still don’t know how she died. Since she and Turk were at the same party and he was poisoned, we can assume that she also got a drugged cup of wine, but we shouldn’t have to assume cause of death in a murder mystery. How many chapters did it take to find out that Tam Linn was stabbed to death in the first book? I think something like ten? But then everybody had forgotten he was murdered at all for the same length of time. And her investigation of Cory Rivkin’s murder has been limited to checking with his bandmates to see if he actually did have a peanut allergy. At this rate, she might start her serious investigating in a month or two.
Ned tries to show some bravado but Rennie cuts him off at the knees and indicates she doesn’t think he knows this is serious business, even though he’s the one who’s been in the interrogation room overnight. Credit where credit is due, though—she does correctly call the window in the interrogation room that’s mirrored on one side and clear on the other “one-way glass,” because you can only see through it in one direction. I’ve heard this called “two-way glass” more times that I care to remember. Two-way glass is ordinary window glass.
And now, back to your regularly scheduled snark.
When she’s asking him to Basil Exposition Dump about Amander’s murder, she takes the time to do a name-drop for “the gold Mark Cross pen that had been a graft gift last Christmas from RCA Records.” Because God forbid one doesn’t understand that everything about Rennie is so super-special, including her goddamned ink pen.
So Ned left Demelza Poldark at the motel and went back to the festival, and there’s some time-wasting detail about the décor of the meditation yurt itself, before he finds Amander and takes quite a while to figure out she’s dead instead of stoned. Ned doesn’t seem like the sharpest knife in the drawer.
Because, as a narcissist, Rennie has to tie everything back to herself in some way, the description of finding Amander’s corpse makes her “remember[] a hauntingly similar moment for her and Turk, in the Hollywood Hills house, a year and a half ago.” Well, except for the fact that neither she nor Turk ever touched Citrine, and Citrine was in bed, and neither she nor Turk ever tried to wake Citrine up, yeah, it’s very similar.
Ned did the sensible thing and ran for help, even though he couldn’t be bothered to check her for a pulse, but Amander was thoroughly dead. He brings up Cory Rivkin and wants Rennie to tell him what’s going on and who’s doing this, which indicates he at least knows what’s going on. Rennie answers him with “Honestly, dear man, I don’t know. I wish I did.” But not enough to do any hardcore investigating, of course.
Ned lies about not recognizing Amander when he found her, but Rennie lets him rattle on for almost a page before confronting him and calling his story “twaddle.” Hey, I had a post for a chapter in the last book called “A Fistful of Twaddle!” Don’t be stepping on my territory!
Rennie’s figured out that Ned was banging Amander, which is a pretty safe bet since he’s Not-Mick Jagger, but she couches it as him looking guilty and her knowing the look. He ‘fesses up and gives us an entire longish paragraph about how slimy everyone in the music industry is, except for Elkanah Bannerman, who’s protected from sliminess by his newfound personal association with Rennie’s family.
Then Rennie gives us an entire page of exposition dump about the record company tactic of forcing an unknown act on a venue as an opener for an established act, which I think was already detailed in one of the previous books, but this is not so unknown as to need an entire page of explication. That was the reason why Jimi Hendrix opened for the Monkees on one of their tours, and why Lynyrd Skynyrd opened for a lot of bands before they hit the big time, including REO Speedwagon (an acquaintance saw this show in Murray, KY, in 1973) and Black Sabbath. And the Doors gets dragged onstage for a bit before the narrator starts the next paragraph with “Getting back to Ned and Amander,” one of the more awkward segues I’ve seen in a while. You know who could have helped with that? An editor!
Rennie gets the idea it was Elk Bannerman’s idea to make Amander the opening act for Bluesnroyals for the tour and gets mad about it for no particular reason except that he didn’t tell her and intends to take him to task about it. I hope she does—maybe he’ll have one of his Mob connections fit her for cement shoes and give her a tour of the bottom of the East River. I’m even more committed to this possible future for Rennie after the next couple of paragraphs.
Ned gives some backstory about their tour with Amander, in which all the guys were flirting with her, including him, and he “stepped in to protect her,” which of course ended up with them screwing, which in Rennie’s mind proves that Amander is a groupie and deserved to die.
Since Ned is trying to evade responsibility for where he stuck his dick, he indicates to Rennie that he told Amander he was happily married, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer and wanted to be “mentored.” Which I don’t think was a word in usage as much then as now. And Rennie’s a slut-shaming bitch as usual, calling Amander “this slutty little Kiwi fledgling.” She then goes on with her internalized misogyny and slut-shaming.
“Who was, I have to tell you, no innocent sparrow. She was hunting you like a yellow-headed vulture.”
Because when a woman wants a man, he has no choice. If she pursues him, he has to fuck her because reasons. Jim Morrison didn’t fuck all those women because he wanted to—it was just because they pursued him! It wasn’t his fault, really and truly!
I wouldn’t be quite so pissed off about Rennie’s woman-hating and slut-shaming if, again, the author had shown us that these aren’t good things and allowed her protagonist to experience negative consequences so that she could learn and grow and change as a character, but as we all know good and well by this point, everything Rennie thinks or says or does is sheer perfection and must never be questioned under threat of being hit by lightning.
Ned’s embarrassed that he got caught dipping his wick and Rennie goes off on him and ends her screed by wanting to know why he did it. That’s the one thing in the whole book that rings true, and Ned can’t give her any reason for his fucking around that she’ll accept, other than that he isn’t “Sir Lancelot” like Turk Wayland. Maybe that’s not the best person to compare Turk to, since Lancelot fucked his king’s wife. I’m picturing Stephen Lacing smashing Turk over the head with a scepter.
Demelza caught him cheating and took off with the baby—what baby? We weren’t told that the Poldark-Ravens had a baby! God, this is such sloppy writing. This is why you need an editor! And Ned calls Amander “the little tart.” How respectful of the dead. He also goes on the say that Amander “wasn’t very good” and was “a trampy little bint.” Ned remains an asshole.
Rennie gives him a slight rebuke but moves on quickly as the slut-shaming of a competitor for her man (“Every woman in the world is competition for him”) satisfied her like an orgasm. She then asks what evidence the police have against him and he admits his fingerprints were in her room and they’d had an affair, which is a lot more compelling than Rennie thinks. The most likely person to kill a woman is a current or ex-romantic partner, and Ned doesn’t have an alibi. But Rennie goes ahead and shits on the cops for not having evidence that would convince the living Queen Emma Peel.
I daresay so were Turk’s fingerprints there.
That’s a remarkably awkward line. And if Turk’s prints were in Amander’s room, I’d vote for Rennie as the murderer.
And mine. And the prints of half the artists at the festival…It was a party. We were all there.
So that Rainshadow Records party was in Amander Evans’s room? But you said before that two hundred people attended that party. Two hundred people can’t fit in a motel room. Checking back, on page 123 the room the party’s taking place in is called a “small suite.” A suite is traditionally a living/dining room with an attached bedroom and is still not big enough for two hundred people. And, nowhere in the entire passage is the reader told that this small suite is Amander Evans’s room. So there for your editorial fail, Ms. Kennealy-Morrison!
Rennie doesn’t think the cops have any evidence and Ned asks her to find out. Note that they’re still in the interrogation room with cops watching from the other side of the one-way glass.
And then, since we’re still doing a soft reboot of California Screamin’, Demelza comes in and starts confessing to Amander’s murder, to which Ned responds by confessing to the murder instead of her. This is a mash-up of Pamina Potter confessing to Baz Potter’s murder to protect her lover and Danny Marron confessing to Pierce Hill’s murder to protect his wife. At least Brandi Storey Marron had the brains to arrive at the police station with high-powered lawyers and get Danny to recant his confession. Neither Not-Mick Jagger nor Not-Bianca are smart enough to even call a lawyer yet. And, lest we think we might have seen the end of the slut-shaming of Amander Evans, Demelza Poldark-Raven gets in a shot at her as a slut before the section ends.
The next section starts out with Rennie looking in through the door of the interrogation room five minutes later to watch “Mr. and Mrs. Raven continue to whale on each other.” Whale actually means beat in this context, so the cops aren’t going to put a stop to mutual assault? Rennie gets to feel superior because they’re both so stupid and explicitly compares it to the Pamina Potter situation in Monterey and states that the cops don’t believe either confession now. I can see why they wouldn’t believe Demelza, but there’s no reason for them not to believe Ned. They already thought they had sufficient evidence to arrest him. But since Rennie is always right, I’m sure they’ve completely disregarded a suspect confessing to the crime he’s been arrested for.
Rennie thinks Sheriff Lawdog isn’t stopping them from fighting because he’s looking for someone to say something incriminating, which they both already did, but let’s just go with it in service of getting this chapter finished. She then goes into the interrogation room and chews out Ned and Demelza Poldark for two entire pages, explaining in detail why neither of them could have done it, and does have an uncharacteristic little bit of humanity when she says she doesn’t believe Amander Evans was going to tell the London tabloids that Ned had raped her. Since Rennie/Kennealy-Morrison hates other women so much, I’m surprised Rennie didn’t jump right on that to demonize Amander just a little bit more. Anyway, she lays down the law to everybody, including Marcus and Sheriff Lawdog. Why they listen to her I have no idea.
And—chapter! We have hit the two-thirds mark of this book and Rennie still isn’t doing any investigating worthy of the name. We don’t even have any real suspects, so Kennealy-Morrison didn’t learn the lesson I thought she’d learned from the first and third books: always give us plenty of suspects so we can keep guessing. And what happened to Chin Ho Kanaloa? He got one mention in the chapter because he drove them to the station and then he vanishes. Maybe he’s trying to escape the narrative.
The author also seems to have forgotten about the person who attacked Rennie in the woods and got stabbed by the antler-hilted dagger. We still don’t know if the attack had anything to do with anything, the same way we don’t know if Sunny Silver’s broken arm and Ned the asshole’s electrocution have anything to do with the two murders so far. The plotting in this is pretty lazy so far.
And this series could afford to take a vacation from the slut-shaming. Just a suggestion.
Next time, chapter 17, during which the burglary that brought Marcus Dorner into the narrative is suddenly remembered, Rennie does multiple pages’ worth of talking about the media misrepresentation of the Woodstock festival, and an old enemy of Rennie’s comes back into the picture, although she was only mentioned in the third book, so it’s really the first time we’ve met her. Since Rennie hates her, I’ve got a feeling she’ll be my new favorite character.
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