Two recliner-rockers in the middle of the carpet could swivel between the TV and the stone fireplace built into the inner wall shared with the bedroom. A couch sat against a side wall. A Formica table with plastic chairs graced the kitchen end. The place smelled of moldy carpet and sour drains. Sliding doors and picture windows formed the outside wall.
“The agency paid all that for this?”
A chuckle rumbled behind her. “Just wait till the fog lifts and you won’t believe the view. People come clear from foreign countries for this.”
Even though they were pulled open, sections of the drapes on the Pacific wall pouched loose from their hooks. Only a blanket of dark showed through from outside. The sheriff lit one of those pressed logs in the grate and they sat in the recliners to watch it burn as if they’d never seen fire.
He was built like a tank. All square edges. Massive, but solid. Not a soft-looking place on him except where he smiled. “We keep having to go to all these consciousness-raising seminars,” he said finally. “When you’re trying to help little kids through some of life’s shit it’s teddy bears. But for tough agents from LA, I’m not sure what’s best.”
Charlie managed a grin to thank him for not leaving her alone just yet. None of the people she’d met tonight fit her expectations. This man was no exception. She leaned toward the welcome warmth of the fire. “What I can’t help thinking of is how unsad her husband was about the whole thing.”
“Probably hasn’t hit him yet. Men of that generation grieve different, but they grieve.”
“He felt up my ass while you were hauling hers out from under my car. That’s grief?”
Now he grinned. Even his teeth were big. “You one of those feminist types?”
Charlie stared down the challenge in his drawl and sat a little straighter. She heard the hardness in her voice that her mother hated. “I was not speeding down the road, Sheriff. I was pulling to a stop in front of the Earth Spirit. I can almost rationalize not seeing Mrs. Glick on her bike because I was so relieved to have finally found Moot Point and my client. I’d been nervous driving for nearly an hour on a strange road, unable to see … but I’ll be damned if I can believe Mrs. Glick and her Schwinn wouldn’t have felt like more than a bump in the road.”
There was still a sympathetic twinge to his grin but he rose and yawned. “Get some sleep. It’ll all shake down when the investigation gets in gear. Complimentary packets of coffee over by the sink, teakettle and cups in the cupboard. Since you don’t have a car I’ll pick you up for breakfast in the morning.”
“Do all suspected killers get such thoughtful treatment in Moot County?”
“Just tough little agents named Charlie, with gravelly voices and brassy coils.” He gave her a fatherly wink and moved down the hall to the door with the stealthy tread of a cat burglar. Which didn’t seem possible for a man who must weigh over two-fifty.
It was too late to call her mother and she didn’t know if she needed a lawyer yet. Charlie fell into the oversoft bed, so exhausted from a day of driving and its inexplicable aftermath she was sure she wouldn’t be able to sleep, not sure she hadn’t left reality behind her when she crossed the Moot County line.
The next she knew she was coming straight up out of the bed, yelling no silently in her head as loud as she could, heart pumping panic to the tips of her toes and the ends of her hair, and daylight seeping around the curtain at the small window. By the time Charlie stood in the shower washing away the terror, she’d forgotten the dream that had caused it. By the time Sheriff Wes arrived she was dressed in loose forest green pants with a leather jacket dyed to match and had her “brassy coils” tied back with a scarf. All this dampness gave them a life of their own.
“You were right about the view.” She handed him a mug of instant motel coffee and took hers to the deck outside that had been a blank wall of darkness and fog the night before. What greeted them now was endless sky filled with sun and puffy clouds, and rollers eight deep washing onto a nearly white beach about fifty feet below the railing.
Charlie took a closer look at the law. “Did you get to sleep at all last night?”
He studied her face for a drawn-out moment and turned to stare at the sea. Last night he’d worn a sport coat and tie while his deputies were in uniform. This morning he wore jeans and sneakers and dark patches under his eyes. Finally he drained the mug, which in his hand looked like a Chinese teacup. “Tell you one thing. I need breakfast. Let’s head for Rose’s.”
Rose’s was in the village of Moot Point, which was on the other side of the headland from the Hide-a-bye. The road took them up along the mountainside and Charlie could see the Moot Point lighthouse at the end of the promontory sitting white in a sea of dripping jade vegetation. Its light still circled in the old way but modern antennas poked into the sky around it.
They turned off the highway onto the road Charlie had followed, but could barely see, the night before. It swooped down through trees and thick underbrush, then broke out into a dramatic view of the bay. The village stair-stepped by street up the hillside. Rose’s was on the lowest step just above the beach, a building of sea-weathered gray wood with old-fashioned oilcloth on the tables, candles in miniature ships’ lanterns, a black wood stove taking the chill off the morning, padded cushions on ancient hardwood chairs, and the odor of careful cooking.
Sheriff Bennett sat with his head between the tremendous breasts of a woman adorning a fake ship’s figurehead that sprouted from the wall behind him. Rose herself came to fuss over him.
“She the one?” Rose stared openly at Charlie. She was short and heavy, wore a saggy cardigan over a shapeless dress and floppy terry-cloth bedroom slippers. The other waitpersons wore tailored black pants, white shirts, black string ties, and straight spines.
“See you haven’t translated the menu into Japanese yet, Rose,” he said instead of answering her, and ordered pancakes and bacon.
“You got yourself a lot bigger worries right now than the Japanese, Sheriff.” She patted the top of his big head and took Charlie’s order. Her slippers clapped measured applause as she shuffled off.
“When can I have my car back?” Charlie asked him, his change of mood from last night making her uneasy. Maybe that was part of law enforcement these days like teddy bears. Or maybe it was just that he didn’t care for sunshine.
“Do you own a weapon, Charlie?” he said instead of answering her and leaned back into the painted bosom, part of his face shadowed from the light coming into the window next to them. Even the twinge of sympathy for her seemed to have been drowned in waves of exhaustion.
Charlie sipped at her coffee and stared out to sea. She could see the lighthouse from here too. It looked too good to be true, like a calendar picture. “There’re knives in our kitchen but I don’t own a gun. Guess my Toyota was a weapon last night, wasn’t it?”
They sat in outward silence until their food arrived. Inwardly Charlie was talking over the possibilities with him. “Listen, I’m in some kind of serious shit here, right? Should I call my lawyer or what?” And he’d say, “You got one?” And she’d say, “A lawyer? Doesn’t everyone?”
Charlie knew people who had lawyers. She wasn’t one of them. Her egg came, over easy, and she chopped it up so the yolk ran and mixed it in with half the home fries and glanced up at Sheriff Wes. He was watching her plate, looking a little sick. Charlie had always done this to eggs. Was it a pathological sign?
She tried to peer between the wooden boobs into his eyes. “Listen, Sheriff Bennett, I’ll say it again. I had been driving all day, hit bad weather. I’d had some trouble at home and I know I wasn’t in great shape. But I still don’t see how I could have hit and killed a grown woman on a bicycle and not known it, even in heavy fog. It just doesn’t work. Now can I have my car back or what?”
“Your car is still under investigation. There are no signs of impact in the bodywork or paint immediately identifiable as being related to the death of Mrs. Glick or the destruction o
f her Schwinn. But we’ll let the experts confirm that before we return your car.”
He would say no more until they’d eaten. Finally when the dishes were cleared he came out with it. “Charlie, Georgette Glick died of a bullet to the head. But her bike appears to have been struck and run over by a heavy object such as a motor vehicle.”
“You mean she was shot and dead before I ran over her?”
“She wasn’t run over. Just the Schwinn.”
Chapter 3
The area in front of the Earth Spirit where the Toyota, Georgette Glick, and her bicycle had mysteriously come together in the fog was still cordoned off. A uniformed sheriff’s deputy stood guard. He was talking to a tall lanky man in acid-washed jeans whose black hair was tied back with a ribbon but still reached halfway down his back. Oddly shingled bangs and side wisps curled and fluffed about his face as if he’d taken a blow dryer and a curling iron to it.
“Might know it was a California license plate,” the deputy muttered and then looked sheepish when he saw Charlie and the sheriff approach.
Wes Bennett gave him a stony look and introduced the other man to Charlie as “Brother Dennis.”
Brother Dennis was fifty if he was a day. He had arrow-straight posture and no paunch but the grooves and lines in his face were accentuated by the improbable flat black of his hair. He nodded at Charlie, studying her closely, as Rose had.
She looked away to the graveled area supposedly protected by bands of bright tape strung between street repair posts weighted with sandbags. It seemed everyone had tracked through the blood and stains on the ground, including a small animal. Probably the house cat she’d heard.
“How could you not have known about the gunshot wound last night?” she asked the law.
“Too much dark and fog and hair. Not enough blood.” Sheriff Wes jingled change deep in his pockets. “Seemed so obvious she’d been run over—dumbest fuck-up I’ve ever pulled on a crime scene. Can’t wait to read all about it in the papers.”
“Election’s not for a year yet, Wes,” Brother Dennis said. “Maybe by that time people will have forgotten this for something bigger you saved the day on. Are you going to arrest Miss Greene here? Going to have to do something.”
Frank Glick stepped out onto the porch of his immobile home with a cup in his hand, still in his safari outfit. It looked like he’d slept in it, and he would have looked less ridiculous if he’d had a tan. But like everybody here he was as white as baby powder. He stared morosely at Charlie, forcing her eyes back to the blood and footprints. She noticed a couple of gray hairs stuck in the stain and swallowed a throat lump so big it made her eyes tear. Was she really about to be arrested for the murder of a woman she’d never seen alive?
“Charlie, I’ve plugged the phone back in. You can call New York now.” Jack Monroe literally bounced across the porch of his shop and down the steps. “Must be halfway through the business day back there. See you’ve met my agent, Brother Dennis.”
“Your agent.” Brother Dennis nearly choked on his scoff.
“She’s got me a deal with Morton and Fish. Must be a good agent, Brother.”
They dueled with their eyes, the tall man and the short, until Brother Dennis broke into a slow smile that threatened to join his ears. His teeth were spotted with stained plastic fillings. “For that pretense of a book you’re working on, Jack? You don’t know a chakra from a hole in a bucket. What’s Bad Dog have to say about this?”
“What’s he know about books? Can’t even read.” But Jack had lost the eye duel.
“Who’s Bad Dog?” Charlie asked her client when the communication with New York had ended.
“My spirit guide.” They sat on the unmade bed, under the prophetic sign, the telephone between them. “He was a member of the Modoc tribe. His father was Running Dog and his mother, Lame Deer.”
“I would have thought Mad Dog, for some reason,” Charlie said, really trying to get into this. Ten percent, after all, was ten percent. “But Bad Dog—”
“Mad Dog was his sister.”
“Right.” Charlie was clearly out of her element here. “Look, Jack, I have to call home. May I use your phone? I have my card.”
“It never ends, does it?” her mother laid into her right away. “You’ve got your own daughter to raise now. How do you expect her to turn out normal if you can’t stay out of trouble yourself?”
“I told you it’s all a mistake, Edwina. Can’t you ever take my side on anything? Where is Libby?”
“She’s going to need braces on those teeth and soon, got a mouth just like you did. You can’t put this off any longer.”
“Is she there?”
“I knew I shouldn’t have come out here. If I hadn’t, you wouldn’t have gone traipsing off up there and this whole business wouldn’t have happened.” Edwina lived in Colorado where Charlie had grown up and where Libby was born. A biology professor at the university in Boulder, Edwina had dropped in on her only daughter and grandchild before a planned field trip to the desert. Charlie’s work called for a good bit of travel and finding someone to baby-sit a fourteen-year-old, who was a baby-sitter herself, was something of a nightmare. “What if you can’t get back before I have to leave?”
“I’ll get back, Edwina. I’ve left her before. Maggie in the condo next door keeps track of her for me sometimes. Can I talk to Libby?”
“I’m here alone except for the cat.”
“We don’t have a cat.”
“Remember when you brought that smelly schnauzer home one day? Followed you from school? Well—”
“Edwina, we can’t afford a cat.”
“I couldn’t afford Bowzer either, as I remember.”
“You tell her to take that animal to the shelter the minute she gets back. Do you hear me?” Edwina could never get enough revenge on her daughter by way of her granddaughter.
“Cute little thing, black and white. Name’s Tuxedo.”
“Edwina, I’m going to hang up now, but you have my daughter by the phone tonight so I can talk to her from the motel or the jail or wherever I am. And that kitty damn well better be outta there when the phone rings. Edwina?” Her mother of course had gotten in the last word by hanging up first.
The lowest terrace of the village of Moot Point sat on a ledge about fifteen feet above the beach. A wooden stairway, complete with handrails, continued on down to the sand from all four of the streets that ended there. The horizontal street on that first terrace held what commercial district the town possessed—a craft shop, Rose’s, tourist cabins, an art gallery, an antique store, a community center, several boarded-up buildings and a few falling down, an occasional vacant lot.
Charlie Greene pulled at a can of diet Pepsi and wandered up to the next terrace, still seething. Tuxedo, Jesus. Vet bills, kitty shots, stinking litter boxes, torn curtains, chewed houseplants. On top of the national debt to straighten Libby’s teeth. “Every child needs a pet, Charlie, it’s part of having a home.”
“Libby doesn’t need a pet. She’s got a boyfriend who follows her around like a faithful dog.”
“Wouldn’t you rather she became involved with a harmless little animal than become too involved with droopy old Doug?”
“A cat isn’t going to ward off that danger. Ask Edwina. She thought Bowzer the schnauzer would take some of the pressure off my teen-raging hormones and was she wrong.”
“You’re about to be arrested for the murder of a woman you never heard of until last night and you can still waste energy ranting on about how wrong your mother was?”
“Oh, piss off.”
On this street, and the other two above, the houses were built to face the ocean and attached to the hillside so you looked at the roof of the buildings on the downside and the stairs leading to the front doors of those on the upside. This way the neighbor across the street didn’t block your view. It made for some tortuous driveways though. Most of the homes were modest. There were no sidewalks and little lawn grass, but the yards dripped
flowers. Charlie thought she’d seen roses in southern California, but there were some here the size of cabbages. She couldn’t imagine how the bushes and spindly stalks held them up.
Charlie climbed to the top street and decided the whole village wasn’t the size of a reasonable subdivision. The bay was formed by a long spit to the south and the promontory with the lighthouse to the north. Jack’s store and the Glick’s house, along with two more of the permanent mobile homes, faced the bay from the north side along the road that came into town from the highway and continued on out and up to the lighthouse.
The belated crime scene crew (which hadn’t been called in until this morning when it was light and the news had spread of the bullet hole in Mrs. Glick’s head) piled their samples or whatever and their cameras into the van. The deputy was hosing down what little remained of the gore when a battalion of cyclists swooped down from the highway and nearly collided with the official traffic headed the other way. The stream of bicycles managed to swerve in formation and eventually pull to a bunched-up stop in front of Rose’s. They dismounted like cowboys and left their wheeled steeds lying flat in the vacant lot next to the restaurant with a delegated watchman.
“You going to toss that empty pop can or let me recycle the sucker?” Brother Dennis said behind her and laughed at her surprised yelp. He took the Pepsi can and mashed it flat between the heels of each hand. “Waste not, want not.”
“Were you following me?”
“I live here.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder to an oddly shaped building that appeared to be mostly roof. “I thought you were following me.” He and the can disappeared into the forest next to his house and Charlie was left with the impression of a scrawny wood nymph of exaggerated height.
By the time Charlie got down to the main street, Rose herself stood on the sidewalk in front of her eatery supervising the removal of the cleated footwear from the last of the cyclists. Pairs of such shoes lined the wooden sidewalk in rows stretching from one end of the building to the other. It made Charlie think of the old West and of sheriffs collecting sidearms when the cowboys came to town.