Murder at Moot Point (10 page)

Charlie found it curious that the prime suspect in Georgette's murder was invited so graciously into homes in such a small place where everyone would know of her involvement. She said as much to Doc Withers when they were seated in the cubicle he called a kitchen. Three cats, two parakeets, and a puppy watched her every move. The place looked immaculate but smelled of incense and pet potty-training.

Doc leaned his chair back against his oven door. “That's because we're so gullible here. We believe we're all one in spirit so it's hard to be suspicious of others. We love everybody like we love ourselves because we're all bites off the same cookie. Of course explaining this way of thinking is damn near impossible. When it hits you, you know. And I can see by your expression it hasn't hit you. Don't worry, when you're ready it will.”

“Some people don't find it that hard to separate themselves from Michael the artist.”

“Poor guy, talk about the Dark Ages. When awareness hits him, he's going to be so dumbfounded he'll probably have a heart attack.” Doc Withers shook his head and then nodded it, rocking his chair in jerky rhythm. “But I'll admit that man's hard to relate to now.”

His glasses had one bow affixed by a circle of wire where a tiny screw should have held it on. His hair looked like he'd cut it himself, impatiently, different lengths wherever it became a nuisance. Sort of like Michael's but much shorter and with no pretense toward artistry.

“Of course, here you just walk into my house without questioning whether or not I'm the murderer too. I mean you don't know me. And if you didn't kill Georgie somebody else around here did.” He wore hiking boots like Frank's and an awkward smile.

Everyone in this place seemed so nice, so friendly, so “centered.” Yet one of them … “Why would anyone want to shoot an old woman on a Schwinn?”

The holistic animal doctor shrugged and brought his chair down on all its feet to pour her more coffee. Charlie felt her bladder wince. “Wes Bennett asked me that and asked me that,” he said, “and the whole thing is so out of sync with Moot Point I come up blank every time I think about it. I mean this place is so laid back—”

“I've heard Georgie was a little overly interested in other people's business.”

“That's small town anywhere.” But his smile straightened, a hint of confusion replaced its reflection behind the glasses as he considered what he'd said. Then he shrugged off the discomfort and started nodding again. “I know, I know. Murder happens in small town anywheres too.”

“Could she have seen something even in the fog? Come across someone doing something they'd kill to keep secret? Was someone just target shooting and hit her by accident?”

“Why would anybody go target shooting in the fog at night?” he asked.

One of the cats crawled uninvited onto Charlie's lap, turned itself around three times, and curled up to make a warm spot. Charlie watched its tongue take a few swipes at a paw and then it snuggled into a purr.

Her host stood to peer over the tabletop. “I've never seen Mortimer accept a stranger so easily. You must have a way with cats.”

“I don't even have a way with kids.” The creature sounded a lot like the one named Tuxedo who had kidnapped the affections of her daughter. “What kind of secret could the village have worth murdering for?”

“We aren't a united community. Lots of loners and individuals live here. But the people who own guns tend to be those living outside of awareness at this point, the retired laborers on pension who still hunt, that kind. Why are Georgie's colleagues in the search for expanded consciousness any more suspicious than merchants, or the widows of retired loggers? We're actually a pretty peaceful lot.”

“The widows hunt and carry guns?”

“Well, probably not. But weapons are still lying around the house.”

“Where did Michael the painter come from? How long has he lived here in Moot Point?” Charlie watched the gears change behind the dark-rimmed glasses. “I met him yesterday and I realize the population here is diversified but even so, he doesn't seem to fit in.”

“Town's full of artistic types of one kind or another. A lot of people are jealous of Michael because his paintings sell for fabulous prices. An engineer with a steady job and benefits might make more but that kind of job doesn't exist near enough to here to provide us with other types to envy. Just because many of us are working toward higher consciousness in which envy doesn't exist doesn't mean we've reached it yet. Do you understand?”

Charlie didn't but continued, “Why does it seem like Brother Dennis runs this place? I've met him and frankly charisma doesn't quite answer my question. But it's like everybody's studying with him. Like he's a guru or something.”

Chuck Withers studied with him too and he too had relocated to be near him. “Not that much veterinary business around here, but I make house calls in Chinook.”

“But what exactly do you study? Why do people relocate to be near him?”

“Mostly transcendence, overcoming perceived reality, looking at the world through a child's eyes again but with an adult's acquired experience.… Haven't you ever passed by something for the thousandth time and suddenly seen it for the first? And realized that was only a crack in your clouded perception? And wondered what it would be like to open up to the world that way permanently? We study trying to do that. It's not easy but it's worth relocating for.”

Charlie had the feeling that the man's sudden eloquence was due more to rote learning than to his own vocabulary and inspiration, but she couldn't fault his sincerity.

He showed her his surgery in the made-over garage, assuring her he used it only after all nutritional, psychological, and physical therapy techniques had been exhausted. He seemed proud of it though. It was modern and stainless steelish and smelled better than his house.

She left with a book proposal in a padded envelope, unable to think of a way to gracefully refuse it after accepting his hospitality and then grilling him. Georgette's calico nearly tripped her as Charlie stepped outside. She'd have known it anywhere by the accusation in its eyes.

“Frank's too distracted right now to feed her,” Doc explained, picking it up. “Critters around here know where to come when there's trouble at home. Poor thing's trembling.”

“She doesn't seem to think as well of me as Mortimer did.”

“She should, her name's Charlie too. Talk about your coincidence.” Charlie the cat rode Doc's shoulder into the house for a meal, staring back wide-eyed at Charlie the agent until the door closed between them.

Chapter 11

A white car with an emergency-light bar on its roof pulled to a stop in front of Rose's down on the first terrace, so Charlie headed uphill. And, as she had yesterday, she came to Brother Dennis's wooded lot. There was more to it than she'd thought—cabins with porches off in the trees, several ancient vans, an old round-topped house trailer, bird feeders hanging quaintly from tree limbs. But the sound of traffic up on 101 behind the compound undermined the illusion of cozy isolation.

The car with the light bar moved slowly away from Rose's and turned up a street toward the next terrace. Charlie stepped into the trees. She felt a little silly, but the thought of being imprisoned in her cabin while everything happened without her, of not knowing what might be said or done that could raise her ranking on the suspect list, was intimidating.

“
Wes Bennett is a trained professional. He has real detectives, crime specialists, laboratories, computers. He probably knows methods and procedures you can't pronounce.
”

“
His job is to maintain his winning streak and find a murderer for Georgie. My job is to make sure it isn't me.
”

“
By not following his orders you're probably slowing him down and making things worse for yourself.
”

“
Ex-football-player Marine types are not into losing. And elected officials can't be. And being cooped up at the Hide-a-bye, knowing nothing about what needs defending, is hardly going to be a winning situation for me. I'm just trying to talk with as many people as I can before I have to go back and be cooped.
”

“
He is here to defend and protect you.
”

“
Unless someone convinces him I'm the murderer while I'm pining away in my cabin with no information about this strange place and the strangers in it to use in my defense.
”

“
It's only natural that the sheriff has to keep an eye on you until he has more evidence. But even Rose can see he doesn't really suspect you of murder and it's obvious by the way everyone's so eager to talk to you, nobody else does either … except maybe Gladys. She's the only one who's shown sincere fear of you. Let's face it, you're paranoid.
”

But Charlie backed deeper into tree shadows as the sound of an engine ground up the mountainside. An olive brown UPS truck roared into the semicircle of drive in front of the octagonal monstrosity. Its horn blasted three short ones and the driver pushed square boxes out onto the gravel. No one appeared from the house, but a dog in high fury erupted like a champagne cork from the trees on the other side. It didn't touch ground until it was at the door of the truck. The truck promptly bolted toward Charlie, passed her, and tore off down the hill—leaving her once again facing Eddie of the infected dewclaw.

She wondered if he lived here, because it was clear that this dog was not into loving or transcendence or higher consciousness. This dog was into growling and snarling.

“Knock it off, Eddie, right now!” Charlie said in her take-charge, no-nonsense tone and gave the creature a glare calculated to melt railroad tracks.

This dog was not into intimidation either. His tail didn't wag. His eyes didn't blink. His hind feet were set wide apart, his back end hunkered slightly in full preparation for leaping. The only thing on him that moved was the panting of his chest and the expectant drool dripping off his tongue. Eddie's teeth looked strong, clean, well used. The steady growl seemed to operate on its own.

Instead of going dry as she would have expected, Charlie's own mouth filled with saliva that demanded swallowing. She was afraid to move even that much. Perhaps it was empathy with the drooling mouth in front of her. Eddie had freckles on his gums. He had lots of gums, Eddie. Charlie wished mightily that Deputy What's-her-face would drive up, kick Eddie in the freckles, and haul Charlie off to the Hide-a-bye.

Just when she knew she would choke on her own spit, a sharp whistle sounded from behind the house and Eddie blinked. He looked away and then back at Charlie, undecided. It took a second whistle before he split. Charlie heard Brother Dennis scold the approaching animal, whose posture went suddenly contrite with head down, tail curled between his legs.

The man shook his finger as though at a naughty child and scratched the dog's ears, ruffled its neck fur, patted its rump. Tail up and wagging, Eddie tagged along behind him around the house, Charlie following in the trees and at a distance. She'd wanted to speak to the man without the dog present and hoped to see him tie Eddie up and go back into the house, and then she could go knock on the front door.

Brother Dennis did even better. He opened the gate on a dog run with chain-link fencing on the sides and across the top. Eddie's tail went down again but he obeyed the finger pointing him inside. Charlie turned to move back the way she'd come, careful to be out of his sight before she left the trees.

The house was not one of those domes the hippies of old built to live in, in communal peace and poverty, but a suggestion of that style was there. Except for the windows the whole place seemed covered with wooden shingles growing moss. Charlie didn't know why she'd had the impression of an octagon. To prove that she would have had to circle the house and count the wings. She was not about to offer Eddie that thrill.

A second floor perched on the center of the sprawl. It had windows all around, calling to mind a head with eyes, and wore what looked like a one-room cupola on top like a hat. The roof on the ends of the wings dipped almost to the ground rising in between to allow first-floor windows and an occasional door.

The jumble of boxes from the UPS delivery still sat on the drive. The boxes were all the same size and shape—square.
Chinook County Printers and Bindery
was listed as the sendee on all, and all were addressed to the
Moot Point Consciousness Training Institute
. Books, self-published. Charlie looked at the envelope full of proposal she was already carrying and sighed. Maybe she should quit while she was ahead.

But now that Eddie was safely incarcerated, maybe she should talk to the guru of Moot Point, Oregon. How often did anyone get such a chance for free? Self-publishing was a lot more expensive than it looked because you had to find your own outlets. This octopus of a house offering lessons on transcendence and consciousness training would be one of them, but these operations were probably pretty expensive too.

Charlie knocked on the door of carved wood and wondered why there were no students here now. It was June, and no small business no matter how sublime could afford to waste this season. The door slid silently open on its own, showing her a darkened entryway.

“Hello?” she called and took a short flight of stairs to a platform overlooking a sunken gymnasium or auditorium with cushions and those web-and-aluminum chairs without legs. Television monitors hung from the ceiling, all running the same picture like home-appliance departments at Christmas.

Each monitor showed a head shot of Brother Dennis exposing his stained fillings, his eyes boring into Charlie's from eighteen different directions. Charlie took herself and Doc Withers's book proposal down the five steps to a legless chair and relaxed for the first time in hours.