“She was shot in the head, Frank. There would have been blood. Clara said you both thought she’d died a natural death.”
“The fog was gray, her skin was gray, her hair was gray—you couldn’t see that well. So you decide what it is you think you’re seeing. I didn’t know about the blood till later.”
“That’s why you wore the yellow slicker over your clothes when you rushed into the Earth Spirit to accuse me of running over your wife.”
“Already changed my shirt, give it to Clara to dispose of, but we weren’t positive there weren’t stains someplace we wouldn’t see until it was too late. I need my reading glasses to see things close up and things got so jumbled I couldn’t find ’em in time and Clara was too nervous about then to trust completely. Had to hurry in case you was going to leave soon or old Jack wouldn’t let you in. So I slipped on my slicker. Changed clothes again when I got home before the sheriff brought you and Jack over here to question. You can’t be too careful these days.”
Charlie drove slowly into Chinook and tried to enjoy the drive and the outlandish scenery along the way. But her head was back in Moot Point.
Sheriff Wes had arrived to hear her story, gather Clara, Frank, and Randolph together in the Glick trailer, praise Charlie on a “nice job, Detective Greene,” and essentially tell her to get lost. Charlie had been about to tell him of the bloodstained shirt under the steps, but his attitude pissed her off.
So she didn’t. No doubt about it, a sheriff with an attitude misses things.
Charlie ended up at The Witch’s Tit across from the Moot County Courthouse for a frozen yogurt lunch. So mad still at that particular county’s sheriff, she splurged for chocolate sprinkles and cashews even.
She was crunching up the cashews with venom when Deputy Linda Tortle walked in, did a double take at the sight of Charlie, ordered a butterscotch sundae, and came to sit across from Charlie with her pickup ticket.
“Attacked any innocent men lately? You’re the talk of the department, you know. First woman to ever beat up on Wes Bennett and get away with it.”
Charlie crunched her cashews harder.
Linda allowed the professional drag on her long face to lift into a teasing and toothy smile. “Told you he was a bastard … didn’t I? Thought I had.”
The deputy went off with her claim ticket at an order barked from the PA system and returned with her caramel-colored lunch.
“Why do you work for him?”
“He’s a good sheriff … hell, he makes a damn good bastard if that’s all you aspire to. Charlie, he’s not the first man to make big or muscle look sexy. Why do I have the feeling you already know that?”
“Why do I have the feeling some election year, he’s going to read all about it in the local newspaper? And a woman named Tortle, not Tuttle, will be running against him?”
“And why is our sheriff been called off to the point by the California woman on an important development and low and behold we find the California woman right here in Chinook?”
Charlie told Linda about the spot Frank Glick and Clara Peterson were in at the moment.
Linda licked sticky butterscotch off her tongue onto her teeth. “What reason would Frank have to kill Michael Cermack? I can see him and Clara being panicked enough to dump all the grisly under your car in an emergency maybe, but a planned and cold-blooded attack—no way.”
“Hey, you can afford to say that. You’re not an unofficial investigator, as in nonprofessional, who doesn’t know the least thing about almost everything.”
Linda sucked on her plastic spoon a minute and studied Charlie. “And our Wes ticked you off. And you didn’t tell him everything because he was being a big shit, right?”
Charlie shrugged noncommittally and got up to leave.
“You know, there’s a great coffee bean place about three doors down,” the deputy said, getting up, too. “Could I treat you to some fresh-ground, roasted-on-the-spot, real caffeinated dessert, Ms. Greene?”
They soon strolled down the sidewalk toward the waterfront, like old friends, nursing thick paper cups of serious coffee.
“So what’s it going to cost me to get this information you’re withholding from Wes Bennett because he was being an asshole?” Deputy Tortle asked, breathing in the aromatic steam rising from her cup.
The cargo ship Charlie had seen while sitting on the wharf with the sheriff was gone. But a huge Hyundai ship like the one she’d seen approach from her cabin windows was loading sawn lumber from a barge out in the harbor. “I’ll trade you for information that I want.”
“How do I know your information’s worth anything?”
“You don’t.”
“You tell me first and I’ll decide.” Linda put on her tough act.
“No deal.”
“Listen, withholding information in a murder case can get you in deep waters fast, my friend. My advice to you is—”
“What information? Who said anything about information?” They stood in mild sunshine, but on the horizon behind the big ship and the barge of lumber the sky looked bruised and faintly dirty. A sea gull flew over them, shitting a three-foot-long string of white.
“What is it you think you need to know?” Deputy Tortle asked finally.
“The current status of the investigation into the whereabouts of Olie Bergkvist. I assume someone is looking into it. It should be easy to trace him if he flew into Portland, by checking computerized airline passenger lists.”
“Mr. Bergkvist left Buenos Aires about a month and a half ago to attend some art doings in New Orleans. He was seen there and told friends he planned further travel before coming home. So far none of those computerized passenger lists list him as coming into Portland International. And we have been able to make no contact with him, but then he probably doesn’t know we’re looking for him.”
“Is that all? Georgette Glick swore she saw him in town.”
“That’s all so far. We’re still investigating.”
“Could he have come by ship or train or rental car? Or to some other airport, maybe by small chartered flight?”
“Sure, and we’re checking that out too. But if so it would be the first time. His pattern was to fly into Portland International and call his wife to come pick him up.”
“Don’t you think it’s odd that Gladys doesn’t know where he is right now? That he spends most of the year away from her?”
“Might be odd, but it’s not illegal.” They turned back to walk up the street toward the courthouse. Linda said, “Why are you so fascinated with Olie Bergkvist?”
“Two other people asked questions about him, too, and they’re both dead. Georgette insisted she’d seen him and Michael was curious as to why he was so late coming home this summer.”
They’d reached the Toyota and the deputy leaned pointedly against the door on the driver’s side and folded her arms. “Now it’s your turn.”
“There’s a bloodstained man’s safari shirt under the front steps of Frank Glick’s house. Georgie’s cat made a nest out of it and it’s full of hair.”
Linda Tortle stood absolutely still but took long blinks, reminding Charlie absurdly of a computer booting up. “When you withhold information,” she said finally, “you don’t fool around, do you?”
Chapter 30
On the way back to Moot Point, Charlie turned off at a forest service sign and drove up to a scenic overlook high atop a “mountain.” Soaring walls of thick forest dwarfed the road and the Toyota. And Charlie.
Leafy vines crawled up tree trunks and weighed down bushes. Green moss spread along everything not covered by vine. Shorter trees, drooping under the burden of bright red berries, formed part of the undergrowth, and below them flowering bushes and below them clots of wildflowers fought for the sun at the edge of the road, like colored Christmas decorations against the forest green.
It was impressive yet depressing and Charlie was glad when, after a couple of miles of switchbacks and climb, her world opened out to the o
pen sky above the open sea. A middle-aged couple sat outside their Ford pickup camper in webbed lawn chairs eating sandwiches. They nodded distantly as she stepped out of the Toyota.
She wandered over to the other end of the parking lot. A waist-high battlement, two feet thick, made out of rocks and concrete kept her from falling off the edge. And she tested her acrophobia by peering over it in a safe, sideways stance with her balance still on the mountain side of the overlook.
Great. Charlie had come here to get away and think and there were all her problems spread out below. She drew back when the sweaty sickness came over her, but could still see in remembered sight the tiny ribbon of Highway 101 broken only by curves in the landscape and juts of the mountain forest … leading back home to Libby and to Congdon and Morse Representation, Inc., where she was sorely needed if not always appreciated.
There was the white lighthouse with its picturesque red roof looking tiny and pristine in its jade setting … where Michael Cermack had driven his equally red Ferrari off the point to his death on the beach below.
There was Moot Point in its half-oval nesting place around the bay, a series of dot roofs and flowering trees, of pencil streets, idyllic in its gorgeous setting … where Georgette Glick was shot, her body left sprawled on her own picnic table, and then stuffed under Charlie’s car in the fog.
There were the massive rock rookeries off the point where pinpoints of birds hustled over and about their own nesting places. There was the Peter Iredale nearly invisible from clear up here, except for the whitewash of foam breaking around it at odd angles to the beach. And the beach, a line from horizon to horizon unbroken except for jagged headlands, the multilines of breakers fading into sea mist at the far reaches of vision.
… and there was something out of order down there. Charlie dared her sickness to peer over again. Bright yellow and blue tents had been set up on the beach below the village of Moot Point. Or maybe huge beach umbrellas … something.
Charlie leaned back to the safe side of the battlement and stared out to sea. The horizon now looked grubbier and meaner than it had in Chinook—even though sun glorified the scene below and warmed Charlie’s shoulders up here.
The couple folded their aluminum and plastic-web chairs, hung them on the back of the pickup camper, climbed into the cab, and drove off leaving Charlie all alone with nature and her thoughts. She’d come up here to be alone and expected to feel relieved. Instead she felt uneasy.
She began to pace along the rock and concrete battlement, trying to ignore the strange forest sounds and birdcalls, trying to focus on what needed thinking about.
Did Frank and Clara Peterson kill Georgette to get her out of the way? How would they get Michael’s gun to shoot her with and then get Charlie’s fingerprints on it? And was either of them dumb enough to think if they shot Georgette and stuffed her under Charlie’s car the local law would decide she’d died from being run over and not find the bullet in her brain? Clara, at least, read enough mysteries (not that mystery stories weren’t full of holes) to know that would be highly unlikely.
And why Michael’s gun? According to Doc Withers, firearms were not that hard to come by in Moot Point. And how and why would Frank and Clara kill Michael? Bloody shirt or no, Clara’s confessing to running over the Schwinn and aiding and abetting Georgette’s trip under Charlie’s car or no, Charlie didn’t see either of them committing either of the murders. Cover-up, yes. Murder, no.
The couple in the Ford pickup camper had carried out their sandwich wrappers but left scattered cherry pits and stems and the stain of leaking oil to mark their scent for the next visitors.
Did Rose poison Michael’s lunch with a ground-up houseplant? Charlie had not seen Rose’s living quarters, but her restaurant didn’t boast houseplants. It wouldn’t have to be ground up—maybe she’d used a whole leaf of something as a garnish on a sandwich. Why would she want to kill Michael? His paintings were important to her half sister’s business, the gallery across the street. Gladys’s house, on the other hand, was filled with houseplants.
Then again, Paige Magill was the authority on houseplants. Could two of the women have conspired to see Michael dead? All three? Again, why? And why shoot Georgette? “In real estate it’s location, location, location. In murder it’s motive, motive, motive.” (Charlie had heard that line on a network cop show one of her writers had finally made the staff of.)
And did either murder have anything to do with the sudden affluence that appeared to be sprouting up in the village? Charlie realized she was pacing so hard she was getting winded. Her stomach hurt.
Had she incriminated Frank Glick needlessly by revealing the stained shirt under his stairs? She had broken a promise to Clara Peterson, broken faith with someone who’d reached out to her for help. Then again, it was Clara’s idea to stuff Georgie under Charlie’s car.
Charlie was disappointed to find that Olie probably wasn’t germane to the reason two people died, that he probably wasn’t missing after all, and that Georgette hadn’t seen him as she’d thought. Jack did say she had vision problems. Charlie wished now she’d asked Linda about what kind of poison killed Michael instead of wasting her one question on the Olie investigation.
There were so many birds making such a din in the forest around the lot she wished they’d all shut up and let her think. But the thinking and the exercising weren’t helping. Charlie was even more tense and frustrated than before she’d come up here. She climbed back into the Toyota and closed the door on the birds. She leaned forward on the steering wheel to stare out the windshield. The grit on the horizon was moving closer. It reminded her of the desert. But you don’t have dust storms on the Pacific.
Poison can make people sick and it can kill them. But can it make somebody drive off a cliff?
Charlie needed to talk to Rose about the lunch that may have killed Michael. “Oh, by the way, Rose, did you poison Michael’s ham-and-cheese or his apple?”
She needed to talk to Gladys about the night of Georgette’s murder. “Hey, Gladys, not that it’s important, but did you happen to shoot Georgette Glick in the head when she came over to insist that she’d seen Olie? Then drag her across town under the cover of fog and dump her on her picnic table on your way to putting my fingerprints on the gun, putting it in a Baggie, and throwing it in the ditch?”
What Charlie really needed to do was to go home before she did any more damage to the investigation and any more harm to innocent suspects. She needed to take what talents she had back to where they could be useful. She started the Toyota and shifted into reverse, backed halfway into the center of the empty parking lot, and killed it a quarter of the way into a U-turn. Now she was staring out the windshield at solid forest green. Her stomach wanted some milk. There was more than one motive for the two murders, there had to be. And probably more than one murderer. One person couldn’t or needn’t do all the dastardly deeds done in Moot Point since Charlie’s arrival. Would have no reason to. Multiple motives and murderers would answer every question but two. How did Charlie’s fingerprints get on Michael’s gun? And why did Charlie keep having dreams about the Peter Iredale?
The car had heated up in the sun and she rolled down the window, not so disturbed by the birds now. The wind had picked up. She could smell rain but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, just the dirty haze out to sea.
Well, okay, answer every question but three. The third being who were the murderers?
Charlie restarted the engine and finished the turn. She headed back down through the solid, towering forest, the Toyota silent when coasting, the dense foliage swallowing any sound of bird or wind.
Okay, every question but four. She still didn’t know why. Her brief excitement deflated. The road was so bright, the forest borders so dark. By the time Charlie reached 101 she didn’t feel much better than when she’d left it.
Just past the turnoff a pickup had pulled over to the side and set up an awning and a sign. Fresh-picked fruit, ripe, never refrigerated, orga
nically grown. Charlie pulled the Toyota over too. The dude leaning against the pickup chewed on a toothpick and tried to look suave while she inspected the produce. He wore faded denims and a western-cut shirt, cowboy boots, and a ten-gallon pulled low over his forehead.
In Colorado, the only cherries Charlie could remember sold at roadside stands were sour pie cherries. In California she rarely had time to shop for fresh fruit—Libby wouldn’t eat it anyway. But here there seemed to be a great variety of cherry types. She selected some safe old Bings and some plums, paid off the suave dude who nearly swallowed his toothpick when she gave him her thirty-five-millimeter smile, and took her purchases back to the Toyota.
She had just signaled a turn back out onto 101 when a siren sounded very close behind her and startled her into killing the engine again. Her poor Toyota must have decided she was losing it.
The rearview mirrors showed her the Moot County Official Black-and-White-and-Blue Bronco, with its light bar strobing dire warning at her rear window. Charlie’s head began to hurt worse than her stomach. She was out of the Toyota before the giant Bronco’s giant driver could do more than open his door.
“Listen, creep, I haven’t left Moot County and I couldn’t have been speeding. I hadn’t even pulled out yet,” she yelled at the man she’d scratched up and loved too well only that morning. “You have no right to treat people like this just because you’re—”
Now Charlie was gesturing like an Italian and Wes Bennett caught her by the wrist. “The shirt, the goddamned shirt! You could have told me, Charlie.”