Murder at Moot Point
Charlie described the wreck of the Peter Iredale as best she could without letting the panic it evoked into her voice. “Is there a picture of anything like it in the National Geographic on the end table? It’s called the Peter Iredale if that helps.”
“Just a minute,” Libby said, incredulity melding into disgust. Charlie could hear her whisper, “She’s freaking out, Grandma.” There was a buzz as Charlie’s only two living relatives whispered back and forth. “Peter Iredale” rose to the top of the buzz and Libby came back on—live. “Grandma’s looking. This have anything to do with the murder?”
“I don’t know. I keep having nightmares about that wreck and I’m going to feel a lot better if you tell me it’s just something I’ve been looking at at home and not seeing. Do you remember anything like that at the poster store on the mall or any place else we might have been together?”
Libby didn’t, and disgust had given way to suspicion when, after a slight pause, Charlie’s daughter asked, “You got a boyfriend in there with you?”
Charlie glibly lied that it was only the television, and turned from the direction of the shower where Wes was sounding off like a teenager’s boom box. Charlie just knew Randolph Glick, whose car was parked outside the cabin two doors down, was on the phone even now to the authorities in Salem about this latest impropriety.
“You don’t watch daytime TV,” Libby said, sweetly this time, “remember?”
“I do when I’m alone in hotel rooms, just for the noise and companionship.” Which was true. “Has Grandma found anything?”
Knowing full well the search had come to an abrupt halt at the mention of a boyfriend, Charlie cuddled the mouthpiece tighter into her shoulder and shielded it with the bedspread even though Wes Bennett and the shower had turned themselves off. Charlie was helpless to stem the tide of guilt washing over her at the thought of her mother’s reaction.
She hadn’t even had time to bring up the subject of the goddamned cat before her two female relatives decided they could find or remember nothing about the Peter Iredale but would keep looking and call her back.
Sheriff Wes had dressed and brought her a cup of instant coffee before he noticed the change in her mood. “You switching Charlies on me again, Charlie?”
“I called home while you were in the shower. Libby thinks I’m ‘freaking out.’ Do you think I’m freaking out, Wes?”
“Well, let’s see now.” He pursed his lips and gingerly fingered the scratches she’d left on his face. They’d turned into welts. “I’ve been here what, little over an hour? In that time you’ve tried to claw me to death and love me to death. And right now you look about ready to cry at the sight of me. It’s possible you’re freaking out.”
They ate cornflakes and fruit sitting on the balcony bench, their feet up on the railing. “Tell me,” the sheriff broke into her nagging thoughts, “was it the clams last night or the guilt over inflicting serious wounds upon my big mug this morning that made you so cuddly and sweet all of a sudden?”
Charlie stopped crunching flakes to stare up at him.
“I’m not trying to be insensitive or macho or anything,” he assured her. “I just want to know if I did something right for once … I guess.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know. I just needed you.”
“Jesus, don’t apologize.” He laughed rich and deep where she’d never heard more than a chuckle before. “You want to talk about it? Your dream I mean? Hell, you want to talk bad dreams, talk to a cop—life we lead.”
And Charlie did, feeling less guilty and more silly by the minute. When she finished they were both grinning.
“Shit,” the sheriff said, his breath rich with the odor of plums, “there’s a murderer running loose, you’ve looked upon two dead bodies since last Thursday, found yourself all but under arrest, and you’re dreaming about a shipwreck almost a century old?”
Charlie had to keep reminding herself that, although she had an alibi for the time of Michael’s death, her fingerprints were supposedly still on his gun. And that gun shot Georgette Glick. And the highest-ranking officer on the case had just slept with her. She felt guilty again. How this man managed to keep his office was beyond her.
“If I just knew I’d seen the Peter Iredale before, I could rationalize these stupid dreams, make sense of the senseless.” Charlie tried to explain to them both why Jack’s OOBE’s disturbed her so.
“He’s just dreaming himself and trying to make a book out of it. I told you about the people around here.”
“But Jack’s and my dreams are identical, Wes. That chapter he gave me to read would have sounded a lot less plausible if I hadn’t dreamed I’d experienced something similar.”
“We all get tingly, floaty sensations sometimes when we’re falling asleep,” he said. “We all have nightmares.”
“But how could I have them about the Peter Iredale before I saw it? That’s the one thing that keeps coming back to drive me … to freak me out.”
“I wish there was only one thing about this case that freaked me out. But I remember standing on the beach years ago and this couple from Florida were taking pictures of it and making a big thing about running across a familiar landmark. They recognized it from a picture. That’s a pretty famous wreck, Charlie. Odds are you did see it before you came to Oregon.”
He’d made her feel better yet again so, to be fair, she admitted she hadn’t stayed at the Hide-a-bye when he’d dropped her off last night, but had gone back to the village instead. If she shared everything she’d learned with him perhaps between the two of them they could make some sense of it all.
“I knew about Mrs. Peterson’s walls being covered with books,” Wes told her. “I was there before you were. Doubt it means anything.” He said it offhandedly but defensiveness had added an edge to his tone. Maybe he was changing sheriffs on her.
Charlie hurried to tell him of the scalding at Rose’s and Dr. Paige’s treatment with aloe. “I wonder if they ever called a doctor for Gladys.”
“No law says you have to call for medical assistance if the victim is an adult of sound mind and doesn’t want it. What’s this houseplant again? And how do you find out all this stuff, most of which is useless, by the way?”
“Tagging along, being an unofficial observer. I don’t believe in amateur detectives any more than you do, Wes, but I can see how they might be places and learn things an official wouldn’t.” She’d noticed the spark in his eyes when she mentioned houseplant. “You still haven’t told me how Michael died.”
“Lab reports aren’t in yet. But we think it was poison. There were fairly obvious signs plastered around the inside of the car and elsewhere which I won’t go into since we just ate.”
“Thank you.” She licked sticky cherry juice off her fingers and went on. “Jack tells me that, contrary to obvious economic indicators, the institute plans to expand and Rose is going to buy back her shares from the Japanese investors and Paige hopes to build onto the Emporium. Doc Withers has marvelous plans for a pet clinic that is so poor he has to make house calls in Chinook and shuffle wine at the institute in the evenings. The economy has mysteriously picked up in the village. Noticed any such changes in Chinook?”
That gave him pause and he finally shook his head no. “But I did check it out with Olsen about his brother getting ready to sue the institute for unpaid bills and found out that was old news. Brother Dennis has paid up and Olsen’s brother’s in the process of preparing a bid on more improvements. That was another one of your puzzle pieces that didn’t fit. But I checked it out, took you seriously, and investigated your suspicions.” His contentment had vanished. He lifted an empty coffee cup to his lips while his eyes searched this small section of the Pacific Ocean as if for the reason why.
“Let’s get a second cup at Rose’s,” Charlie suggested.
Wes insisted on making a private phone call first.
“How’s Gladys this morning?” Charlie asked Rose, accepting the coffee being poured and realizi
ng the same stomach that had given her so much trouble the night before felt happy as a jaybird after an early morning recurrence of a nightmare, a later morning comforting by the sheriff of Moot County, and the requisite guilt trip. No explaining stomachs.
“She’s cool.” Rose poured coffee with one hand, and stifled a yawn with the other.
“Cool? I saw those burns last night.”
“That Paige ought to be an MD.” Rose bent close to squint at Wes’s face as she filled his cup. “Looks like you should make an appointment with her, Sheriff. Either that or stay away from California women.”
“Rose, where did Michael Cermack eat usually?” Charlie asked. “Did he cook for himself or drive into Chinook? There’s no deli in Moot Point.”
“We do breakfast, lunch, and dinner seven days a week. Why should he cook? We pack picnic lunches to eat on the beach and even carry-out. Rose’s takes care of Moot Point. Who needs a deli?”
On the street outside, Wes stuck his hands in his pants pockets, rocked on his feet, and said casually, “I’d already figured out that’s where Cermack got his lunch to take up to the lighthouse, unofficial investigator. But nice try.” He wrinkled his nose in good-natured condescension, as only a man who’d made love with a woman before breakfast would have the nerve to do.
Then he watched her face as Deputy Tortle drove up in a gray Toyota and stopped in front of them. Charlie’s gray Toyota.
“You’re not to leave the county, understand,” he said. “Me, I’m feeling the need for some of that ‘unofficial’ investigating you keep telling me about.”
When the sheriff slid into the county Bronco wearing his facial scars and a complacent smirk, his deputy said under her breath, “Jesus, you two play rough.”
Chapter 26
As Charlie and Deputy Linda stood watching the Bronco wend its way up to Paige Magill’s Dream Emporium, Charlie felt suddenly empowered by the return of her wheels. “Could I give you a lift, Officer?”
“I’d thought maybe Himself would give me a ride back to Chinook, but it doesn’t look like it. If it wouldn’t be too much trouble?”
“None at all.” Charlie patted the top of the Toyota. Once inside, she stroked the steering wheel and sighed. For all the freeway hours she’d cursed having to sit in it over the last two years, it felt marvelous now. Deputy Linda folded herself into the passenger side and slid the seat back as far as it would go.
“I don’t care for these little Jap cars myself, but I’ll say one thing—this sucker rides smooth as butter,” she said once they were out on 101. “Got to get me a new car. My old Pontiac’s rusting out.”
It was a blustery, bright blue day. They let the wind in to tangle their hair and talked about their kids and about their mothers. And then the conversation turned to the sheriff, unprofessional on Deputy Tortle’s part and unwise on Charlie’s.
“You’re not in love with him or anything, I hope.”
“Just attracted I guess,” Charlie admitted.
“Yeah, well he’s got three exes who’ll tell you not to get involved. Why do I have the feeling you already are?”
“Has he given you any indication of when I can go home? I mean if he gave the car back—”
“Soon as we figure out how your prints got on the revolver probably, and maybe know more about how Michael died. I think he gave you back the car because he doesn’t think your snooping around will hurt the case. That would be one reason I could think of. Or that you’re not in any danger now. Or that without charging you with anything he can’t hold onto the car any longer. Or that, left on your own, you might do something to implicate yourself as the killer. Or,” they’d pulled up at the curb next to the Moot County Courthouse and Linda unfolded herself out, then leaned down to finish the sentence through the open window, “that running around loose you might flush out the killer. That’d be my guess.”
The drive back to Moot Point didn’t look as bright. The sheriff was probably using Charlie and letting her think she was using him. The guilt set in again. Charlie decided guilt made sex better at the time and lousy later.
She could see the wreck of the Peter Iredale from 101. From here it looked tiny and inconsequential. How much stock could she put in those crummy dreams anyway?
Once back in the village, her first stop was the Earth Spirit. Jack was just opening up and he looked terrible.
“Writer’s block?” she asked half in jest and half to belay the dark look on his face.
He rubbed at an unshaven chin. “Bad OOBE last night.”
She trailed him to his living quarters where he lifted a coffee mug and swirled the liquid around his mouth like TV cowboys once did whisky. “Worse than a bad trip in the days of chemical blowout.”
“Where do you go, Jack, when you leave your body?” Charlie crawled up on a kitchen stool, idly fingering the wooden handles of some cutlery set out to dry. Jack’s bed seemed always unmade but he kept tidy control on his kitchen.
“Usually wherever I think hard enough I want to go.” He hit the counter with the flat end of a fist. Charlie and the cutlery jumped. “Damn! Why is this happening now? Now when I’ve got a book contract?”
“According to Paige, this isn’t your first bad experience.” Charlie began to wonder how deeply she wanted to go into this. How much of it, through the power of suggestion, would transfer to her own dreams which, what she could remember of them, seemed bad enough now.
“I used to panic thinking I couldn’t get back and my body would die without me in it and I’d just float aimlessly forever or spin off into some void … but then when I gained some control it became a wondrous freedom, a soaring freedom, freedom from the half-substantiated myths of modern, soulless science. I explained all that in the chapter you read, didn’t I?”
But last night had been different. He had not been alone. Jack had sensed others out there before. “Why wouldn’t there be? This is an unusual skill I’ve discovered I have. But there are others, maybe lots more than I thought.” He flopped down on his bed and leaned back against the wall. “But last night there was evil out there with me. Awful evil. And I don’t believe in evil.”
“How do you know it was evil? Did you see it? Did it talk to you or what?”
“It was so powerful. I don’t know what else it could have been. Lately I’ve been going as far as an old shipwreck up the beach toward Chinook, using it as a marker on how far away from these old bones I dare go.”
“The Peter Iredale …” Charlie felt the surge of panic bubbles start to course through her bloodstream again. She gritted her teeth against them, drew in a breath, and tried to grin her disturbing thoughts away all at the same time.
“You got a headache?”
“Oh, no. I’m fine. It’s just I’ve been dreaming about the Peter Iredale until I think I’m … I’m freaking out.”
The intense eyes forgot their hard misery and stared first at and then through her. “You know, Charlie, since you came I’ve been stopping off to see you on my way? You don’t suppose I could be … nah, that’s too … when do you usually have these dreams?”
“Sometimes when I go to sleep at night, but more often just about dawn. Why? And I don’t suppose you could be what? Jack, I was having these dreams before I ever saw the Peter Iredale.”
“You probably saw it on book jackets or record covers, calendars. It’s likely to be in any New Age store you ever went in.”
“I think this is the first one I’ve ever been in. Why is it on covers and calendars?”
“It’s considered a center of power to a lot of people who are into that kind of thing. Not it, so much as its location. Have you ever heard of a vortex?”
“Oh, boy.” This was getting too deep for closed little minds like Charlie’s. She slipped off her stool and started back through the store. “Just promise me not to stop off at my cabin again unless you’re in your body, okay?”
But her client was right behind her. “About last night, I need to talk to someone, please
? Did you ever sense evil, Charlie, lurking in your room when you were a kid and your parents wouldn’t take you seriously? And the fear felt like it was outside your body and ready to swallow you?”
“Like a body cast.” Charlie was out on the porch before he could grab an arm and turn her to face him.
“That’s it … a body cast. You think my OOBE’s have something to do with your dreams? Opened up the way for you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to know. I want the dreams to end. You don’t believe in evil. I don’t believe in OOBE’s.” But Charlie would sure feel better if she knew for a fact she’d seen a picture of the Peter Iredale before she came to the Oregon Coast.
When Charlie knocked on the back door of Gladys and Olie Bergkvist’s home, even the dogs seemed subdued. Gladys opened the door looking old and saggy but not terminal, not infected from heavy burns. Charlie stepped inside. “I’m so relieved you’re all right. You are all right?”
“Yeah, I’m better. Hung over more than anything. You were there last night, weren’t you? I remember all you helping me. I appreciate it. You want some tea?”
“Nothing, thank you.” Charlie had finally learned the proper response for Moot Point. But she sat at the kitchen table and watched in awe as Gladys shuffled about the room in bedroom slippers and a short-sleeved duster imprinted with posies and berries. Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe, and Joe crowded at her heels and narrowly missed tripping her up when she turned back to the table with a cup of tea and a plate of toast. The arm that should have had the skin falling off, or whatever severe burns do, looked much the same as the other arm and didn’t appear swollen or that painful to use.
The kitchen and attached family room with TV and fireplace overlooked a sunken living room and the wall of windows displaying the village and the bay. Green leafy plants and decorative pillows replaced the art works Charlie would have expected here. The furniture was fussy and ruffled and in cranberry-colored prints with bold splashes of blue for contrast, walls and drapes white, carpets a light cream. What Libby and her friends couldn’t do to that carpet in a half-hour snack-and-soda session.…