A Line To Murder (A Puget Sound Mystery) (23 page)

“Where are we?” Andy roused himself as I found a spot and parked.

“Leland. I need breakfast.”

“Do you feed a cold and starve a fever, or vice versa?”

“I don’t know. I never can remember, but fruit juice never hurts.”

“It hurts a sore throat.”

Lord, spare me from a sick man.

We stepped out of the car into a splash of sun and enjoyed its warmth as we walked to the restaurant. Greasy bacon smells and the sounds of clattering cups and conversations greeted us like glad cries at Thanksgiving. A waitress delivered platters of eggs and pancakes to a table.
These are my people.
None of the staff was particularly young. No one seemed in a hurry. No overly loud music jarred the ears.
Heaven on a hotdog
.

While Andy found a booth near a window, I dashed to the restroom. There was toilet paper and seat covers. The sink was clean.
If this is
The Twilight Zone
, I love it
. On a wall just outside the door was a pay phone and I made a quick call to Dave. Back at the booth, Andy and I gave our orders to a gray-haired man who was cheerfully unabashed about his blue-checked, gingham apron. To Andy’s inquiry about what was good, he recommended fried ham with biscuits and gravy and papaya juice. “Less acid. Easier on a raw throat.”

Andy turned his head and leaned in to hear. He didn’t have his hearing aid in. At my glance he said, “They’re not comfortable when your ears are inflamed.”

I ordered an egg whites omelet with bacon and coffee with cream and relaxed against the booth’s padded back.

The coffee came first and I stirred the contents of a little container of Mini Moo in mine. For a while we were quiet.

“Does bringing Dominic home mean the police are backing off?”

“They call. I go in. They ask the same questions. I give the same answers. Then I go home.”

“I’ve been trying to find the vicar.” I told him about going to the psychic shop, Calculated Love and sending out the letters. “Nothing’s working. Kinsey Millhone would be so disgusted.”

“Who’s that?”

“A fictional private eye.”

“Contemporary or Honey West?”

“Contemporary.”

“Don’t women want to be nurses or teachers anymore?”

“Not since the E.R.A.”

Andy shook his head. “Well, getting back to Isca, do we even have any ideas?”

I have one. Why did you snatch that money clip I found in her garden when you thought I wasn’t looking?

“Someone at the dinner last night thought it might be a serial killer.”

“Ya think?”

“Not really.”

“Yeah, it seems like it was a ritual killing.”

“Why?”

“The way the—Isca’s body was posed. Remember?”

“As if I could forget. Anyway, how do you figure?”

“I watch crime TV.”

“And?”

“Something about killers having personal agendas.”

Our conversation ended when the food came and we both tucked into it. I’m an accomplished eater, and Andy seemed hungry. People weren’t too sick if they still had an appetite.

“Have we exhausted all our ideas then?” I took a sip of coffee.

“I guess so. Unless we go from church to church on Sundays looking for a gray car with the word ‘Vicar’ around the license plate.”

“I suppose we could graph out the city and mark the churches.” It seemed like a daunting task. “We’d probably have to do it from roughly eight to noon on Sundays.”

Andy looked at me in disbelief.

“It would go faster if we worked separately.”

“I suppose.” He didn’t seem keen on the idea. Only, which idea? Canvassing the churches or working alone? With the flu, though, who could muster up enthusiasm for anything other than chicken soup and bed? Nor did he seem to be in too much of a hurry to leave the restaurant. He alternately sipped the fruit juice and cradled his warm coffee mug in his hands.

“I thought of another thing:  Asking my friend Ruth at the Passion Play if she knows him.”

Andy didn’t respond.

The coffee kept coming. No one was rushed. People came and went. Business looked good. I was pissed at Andy’s lack of interest in my ideas. I got up and excused myself.

When I returned from the ladies’ room, Andy had paid the bill and stood near the door.

“How much farther?”

“Fourteen miles to Chimacum and a few more to the house.”

I glanced at my watch. That meant we would arrive a little before noon. Allowing a couple of hours to visit, we’d be back on the road around three. With a dinner stop, I put us home in early evening. Not bad but I hoped I wouldn’t have to do most of the driving.

I didn’t. Andy took the wheel after we left the restaurant. The farther north we went, the better the weather got. He started talking about Betty McDonald, the author of a hugely popular book published in the 1940s.

“
The Egg and I
, right?” I said. “I read it a long time ago.”

“That’s the one. The chicken farm was in Chimacum, but it’s gone now. There is an
Egg and I Road
, though.”

“Seems like there should be a Ma and Pa Kettle Road, too. They’re pretty well-known, too, after all those corny fifties movies.”

“The real Ma and Pa sued her over the book, you know.”

“What?”

“For defamation of character.” Andy stopped talking long enough to unwrap and pop in another cough drop. “I think two of the Indians she wrote about, Clamface and Geoduck, might have gotten in on it, too, but I forget.”

“I suppose the real Ma and Pa could have been offended, but it was pretty funny stuff.”

“Betty’s defense was she wrote the book fifteen or so years after she actually lived on the chicken farm and didn’t even recognize the Bishops—Ma and Pa’s name, by the way—when they walked into the courtroom and that her book was creative nonfiction.”

“Well, that’s the kind of hard-hitting story that matters, isn’t it?”

“It was at the time.” Andy started coughing again.

“Are you sure you don’t have pneumonia?”

“Nothing so dramatic.”

After that, we stopped talking.

Chimacum was dairy farm country. We passed fields of cattle looking as contented as Elsie from the Borden Milk ads. And barns, beautifully derelict or as upright as a war veteran, either aged into velvet patina or freshly painted. Canada claimed to have the biggest and best variety of barns, but from the looks of things, Washington could hold her own. Then, just as I was sneaking a glance at my watch, Andy turned onto a rutted dirt road marked by a mailbox mounted on the back of a wooden llama.

The road was about an eighth of a mile long and bordered by fences. In the fields beyond them, a number of llamas grazed. Andy had mentioned dairy cattle but I didn’t see any.

“Is there a collective noun for llamas?”

“Not that I know of.” He braked for a squirrel. “There is one for squirrels, though—a dray.”

“Trivial Pursuit?”

“Yep.”

Before I could say anything more, we made a turn and an Adirondyke-style farmhouse appeared at the end of the road.

“Gosh, what a beautiful place.”

Andy parked next to a Land Rover. A truck and an old Volkswagen were nearby. The house’s front door opened and three people appeared briefly before Dominic ran from around the corner of the house followed by a llama. Dominic hurtled himself at Andy as the three adults came smiling forward:  Andy’s parents and Umma Grace.

Chapter 21

“Umma Grace is here.”

“Yeah, she crashes with the folks sometimes.”

Damn. If the psychic showcase had been any indication, she wasn’t a comfortable person to be around. She faded into the background, however, while I got my first glimpse of Andy’s parents, the former hippies and the driving force behind the commune. Doing some quick math about their ages, I figured they must have gotten on the bus to hippiedom a little late. My curiosity was so strong I had the uncomfortable feeling they saw it.

“She’s younger than them, you said?”

“Older than me and younger than them. Why?”

“No reason. I guess I’m just curious about the whole commune thing.”

We walked toward the house, and Andy’s parents came off the porch to greet us. His mother wore brown corduroy pants, a beige sweater and soft fawn-colored boots that reached her calves. Around her neck was an enormous turquoise nugget on a silver chain. Her hair was the color of middle-age blonde mixed with gray, and she wore no makeup. I expected some offbeat Carol Kane personality, hoped for it, in fact, but she smiled and offered her hand.

“Mercedes, this is my mother, Melody, and my father, Barrett.”

“Pleased to meet you.” Melody’s grip was much firmer than Barrett’s.

Andy’s father had light brown, over-long hair curling around the collar of his denim shirt. His eyes were dreamy looking, his body fleshy though not fat. Considering the outdoorsiness of their lifestyle, he seemed strangely pale.
This man could be a monk or a monster—or perhaps both.

While Andy hugged Dominic and ruffled the boy’s hair, I looked at the llama, which looked quizzically back at me.

Umma Grace stepped forward then. I was forced to take her extended hand. She took mine between both of hers again and stared into my eyes. I’d met the type before. A number of Dave’s psychic friends were the same way. Always on, as if every meeting should be meaningful in some way. She smiled and nodded. I had to practically wrench my hand away. When she wasn’t looking, I wiped it on my pants. We all were quiet for a moment and, in the silence, there was the unmistakable hiss of a tire losing air. We looked back. Andy’s car listed gently toward the right on a flattened tire.

“Damn.” Andy looked at it in disgust and popped in another cough drop.

“Mercury retrograde.”

Do I want to ask Umma Grace what that is? No.

“Never mind.” Melody turned and started back to the house. “Come on, everyone. We’ll have something to eat and then Barrett and Abel can change the tire.” Before I could ask who Abel was, she threaded her arm through mine. “Dominic talks a lot about you. I feel as if we’re old friends. You’re probably curious about all of this.”

“I’ve never been greeted by a llama before. I’ve been reading more and more about them, though. They’re becoming sort of a cash cow, aren’t they? Backpackers love them.”

Melody frowned slightly. “We’ve had llamas at the commune almost from the day we moved in.”

I hadn’t meant to be rude.

“For their hair.”

“Melody just can’t keep from earning money. Everything she touches turns out to be a cash cow.”

Llamas and cows. A mixed metaphor?

Andy’s tone was somewhat condescending. “That’s right.”

Barrett said, “We’ve never wanted for money, just labor. I don’t think most of the people who came and went in those years realized how hard a commune lifestyle would be.”

“The dropouts dropped out.” At Andy’s words, Barrett laughed but Melody’s arm still linked with mine, stiffened.

We weren’t getting off to a good start. “You must be experts on llamas then if you’ve had them that long. I’d like to see how they’re raised and cared for.” I reached tentatively toward the one who had followed Dominic up on the porch and showed every indication of wanting to join us inside. He accepted my strokes with an enigmatic look—superciliousness, curiosity or resignation.

“Dominic, put Max in the pasture, please. You can show Mercedes around later while the men change the tire.” Melody turned to me. “We have two newborns you might like to see.”

“Yes, please. I love animals. Do you have other animals?”

“Chickens for our use, the dairy cattle, of course, and some beehives.” She opened the front door and stepped back so Umma Grace and I could enter first.

“We used to have rabbits when I was here. I loved them. They were so soft.” Umma Grace smiled at Andy. “You remember, Andy, don’t you? You brought the first pair home. I think you won them at a school carnival.”

“I remember.” His words fell in the room like chips of granite and were followed by coughing.

Umma Grace might have loved them, but Andy’s stony expression said something else.

What the heck kind of rabbit memories does he have?

She pounced like a robin on a worm, as if his sickness made her day. “I’ve got just the thing for that cough. It’s a Chinese herbal tea. I’ll brew you some.”

“That’s okay.” Andy took a chair by the fireplace. “I’ve got pills.”

“Take your pills but try my tea too. Remember how my herbs helped your colds when you were little?”

“Put on the teapot, will you, please?” Melody said

Barrett and I sat down and Umma Grace left the room.

“Where’s Abel?” Andy asked.