Murder at Moot Point (15 page)

Neither she nor Linda said a word as Charlie looked through it, went to the bathroom to wash her hands, and inserted a replacement for the lens she'd torn. They were back sitting in the recliners in front of the dead fire not looking at each other when Linda snapped her fingers and grinned.

“He's got the place bugged. I don't know why, but that's the answer. Damn you, Jack, I'll get you for this. And those ducks were dirty and mean.” She said it loud enough to be picked up by hidden “bugs” and jumped up to run her hands along the fake mantel and under the chair arms and under the table. “Don't you see? When he snuck over to hide your contacts he planted the bugs.”

Charlie felt the goosebumps subside on her arms. The last time she'd felt this relieved somebody had told her Libby had been born and she could stop pushing. “Thanks, he really had me going there.”

They were both running their fingers over and under and around everything and giggling at each other when Charlie asked, “What does one of these bug things look like? How big are they? What exactly are we looking for? And did Doc Withers really sleep with ducks … and you? At the same time?”

They were standing about three inches apart, laughing into each other's faces like the world's best friends, when they realized Sheriff Wes Bennett had walked through the door and stood in the short hallway staring at them, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.

Chapter 16

“Don't you ever knock?”

“Don't you ever lock your doors?”

“Sheriff, the suspect has been here all afternoon and has had contact with no one,” Linda's drawl was even more pronounced when she was nervous, “except Jack Monroe on the telephone and me of course.”

“Of course. Surprised I didn't find the two of you in bed, so cozy are we here. Tuttle, I want you—”

“Tortle, sir.” Angry red flared everywhere uniform or hair didn't hide it.

“Linda Tortle,” Charlie added, feeling the warmth of anger diffusing her skin too.

“Deputy,” the sheriff compromised, “write up your report and be back here by six tomorrow.”

“Sheriff, she was supposed to have today off to be with Peety and you wouldn't let her. She should spend tomorrow with him to make up for it.”

“Peety? You get married again, Tuttle … Tortle?”

“I can handle my own affairs,” Linda warned Charlie. “Sir, I think you should know about the telephone call from Jack Monroe. It came just—”

“Write it down, Tortle, hmm? Back at the courthouse, please? In your report? I'll read it tomorrow first thing.”

Deputy Tortle left them with a series of snaps—a snap in her eyes as she looked from Charlie to her boss, a snap of her teeth as she bit down on what she couldn't say, and a snap of her heels as she grabbed her Smokey the Bear hat and headed for the door. Charlie wanted to go after her and make amends but knew better. She liked the deputy, hated to see her treated this way, and was about to vent her indignation on Wes Bennett when she noticed him studying her again, this time with his eyes so squinted he could have been staring into the sun.

Charlie sipped some kind of Oregon-grown wine and watched Sheriff Bennett cook dinner for the chief suspect. It reminded her of her first night in Oregon with Jack chopping and stir-frying for her. Except then she hadn't been a suspect yet. Then it was olive oil, now it was corn oil. Then it was tofu and seaweed, now it was thin strips of sirloin and onions and peppers.

Why wasn't the sheriff worried that if Charlie ever got to court, her lawyer would pounce on this little “date” that wasn't a date like the proverbial chicken on a June bug?

They were up above the fog in the sheriff's mountaintop eyrie. Having been born in Colorado, Charlie would never be convinced anything low enough to have trees on top could be a mountain. Mountains had bald jagged rock on top. Foothills had trees. But she didn't say as much. Had this been a real date, that would have made wonderful verbal fencing material.

But on the way here he hadn't unclamped his jaw long enough to clear his throat. He had stared steely-eyed at the road and gripped the wheel like he was practicing strangling techniques. Charlie had braved the tension enough to risk, “Come off it, you don't really think I'm a suspect here? What are you so frosted about? Just because your deputy and I were laughing when you came in the door. Just because I nosed around the village for a while—”

“Oh, but you're wrong, Charlie Greene,” Sheriff Wes Bennett uttered the only words he would relinquish on the entire trip. “You are my
chief
suspect.”

Wes's house reminded Charlie of Gladys, Olie, Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Mo, and Joe Bergkvist's house in that it was largely redwood, decks, and windows. But this was a smaller, less opulent version, more of a bachelor pad version. Still, he lived pretty well for a sheriff with child-support payments. The place reeked of raw wood and the damp fire trying to survive in the rock fireplace, of the fajitas, frijoles, and south-of-the-border spices.

As they ate, Wes loosened up enough to tell her that under the fog to the west was a stunning view of the lights of Chinook and the Pacific Ocean. To the east was a stunning view of the Coast Range.

Right now they seemed to be floating on dark moonlit clouds like flying on a jet at night. But instead of having to peer through tiny portholes onto a scary life-sustaining wing, they were surrounded by windows. The floating view, the spicy food, the wine, the massive man across the butcher-block table were all heady stuff. Charlie caught herself wishing this was a real date. And then she remembered his treatment of Deputy Linda, set her own jaw, and offered up not a word.

Wes rose to uncork another bottle of Oregon red and slam it down on the table between them in a gesture Charlie identified with childish-male gauntlet slapping. She reached for the bottle and poured for them both.

He grunted, did his malevolent squint again, and jabbed his fork in her direction. “You are in a who-o-le lot of trouble, lady.”

“You've got sour cream on your chin.”

He wiped his chin and threw his napkin on the table and then his fork at the plate. It bounced. He took a slug of wine and swished his teeth with it. People really could flare their nostrils. “Think you're real tough, don't you?”

“Michael Cermack's gun is missing.” Charlie wanted to reach for her wine glass but didn't want him to see her hand shaking.

“Who the fuck is Michael Cermack?”

“The artist I told you about meeting yesterday. His paintings take up most of the Scandia Art Gallery. He lives above the Bergkvists' garage in a studio loft. I asked him if he had a gun and he said yes but when he went to show it to me, he couldn't find it. He seemed furious, but then he's a moody, arty type so it's hard to tell.”

“You just walked up and asked a total stranger if he had a gun in a village where a woman had just been shot to death.”

“I asked him a lot of other things first. Do you know Olie Bergkvist?”

“I couldn't pick him out of a lineup, but I know who he is.” The sheriff looked disgusted, thwarted, drowning in the unreasonableness of the moment, but at least the massive hands were bringing food to his mouth again instead of encircling Charlie's throat as she'd sensed their urge to do.

“He's usually only home in the summer months, but this year he's weeks overdue.” She reached for her wine glass and took a quick gulp.

“What's that got to do with the murder of Georgette Glick? Or the fact some painter can't find his gun?”

“I don't know. You're the professional law enforcement type here. You yourself said this is all a puzzle. Yesterday on the dock, remember? I'm just helping you find some of the pieces.”

“Wharf.”

“Wharf. Did you find Randolph Glick's randy old daddy in one piece this morning?”

“Yeah, I remembered what you said and we finally found him at the only little old café in Chinook that still makes hot beef sandwiches with real mashed potatoes and gravy, not that packaged glue you—you think you're real smart don't you?”

More like desperate. “Brother Dennis's institute is overbooked and the searchers begin arriving tomorrow. The village will probably be swamped with strangers walking all over and haphazardly destroying clues.”

“Searchers?”

“Searchers of cosmic consciousness and transformitiveness.” Charlie was in too deep again. She poured him more wine and changed the subject. “Do you know what an OOBE is?”

Coffee in front of the fire. Wes finally got the one in the fireplace roaring. Must have used half the wood that empty Japanese ship had wanted to take home. And Charlie was finally warming up sitting next to him. Not that her host had thawed much but he was so big, he radiated warmth no matter what his mood.

“Why is it,” he said, “just when I think I am communicating something relevant to you, you get weird on me? Would you explain that? We have important things to discuss.”

But you haven't read me my rights yet. Whatever it is, and obviously something I don't want to face up to has happened, you're not that sure
. “Read Linda's, I mean Deputy Tortle's report.”

“So you misplaced your contact lenses under your bed and that means Monroe walks around out of his body? I don't know what you're trying to pull here, and frankly, Charlie, I don't know why, but this stuff is—”

“Wes, you don't misplace something from your cosmetic case in the bathroom across a hallway, into a bedroom, and under a bed. And if there were no bugs in cabin three, and your deputy and I couldn't find any, how could Jack know what we had just been talking about? I mean
everything
we'd just been talking about.”

“You don't honestly believe in this OOBE stuff.”

“No, but I think it's got to be another piece of the puzzle.”

“Charlie, you can't take every little piece of gossip and trivia you overhear in the village and plug it into the murder of Georgette Glick. It doesn't work that way. You can have too many pieces for a puzzle.”

“But the more pieces you have, the more likely you are to find the right ones.”

“Shit, what do I have to do, draw you a picture?” And he stomped off around a stairway and into a room she'd only glimpsed on entering. It looked to have an odd combination of uses. She'd seen a cluttered desk, a television, a rowing machine, and a bench press.

Wes came back with two oblong boxes and shook them. He set one down, took the lid off the other and handed it to Charlie. The box had a picture of four horses running across a summer pasture, manes and tails flying, a corral and fence in the background, a mountain ridge and cloudless sky behind that. 1000 Pieces, proclaimed the lid.

The sheriff dumped all the pieces on the rug at Charlie's feet. He picked up the second box and repeated the process, moving slowly and deliberately as if demonstrating a simple procedure to an imbecile. The second box had only five hundred pieces and the lid depicted a mountain stream splashing merrily among rocks and wildflowers. The sheriff got down on his hands and knees and scrambled the puzzle pieces together methodically with big blunt hands, all fifteen hundred of them.

Then he leaned forward on all fours, his head hanging over her lap like a woolly Saint Bernard wanting attention. “Charlie?”

“What?” She very nearly patted his head.

“Wouldn't it have been easier to assemble either one of these puzzles if I hadn't mixed them up like this?”

“Oh.”

“Oh, she says. Jesus!” The Saint Bernard stood up into a two-legged sheriff, those blunt hands clenched into fists.

“But what are you going to do with this mess?”

“What am I going to do? I'm going to dump this mess in the garbage can.” That low rumble of a chuckle came out strangely mirthless. “Because, Charlie Greene, both puzzles are ruined now. Because there are too goddamned many pieces to make sense out of anything now. You can't separate one from another. Any chance any of this is soaking in?”

Charlie was saved by the telephone. Wes stomped off into the weight-lifting television office and she stared at the puzzle pictures on the lids.

“Oh, Christ, not again. Whadya mean he … no, no special privileges cause his dad's a cop. If anything, make it harder on him … no, I'll call his mother. And thanks, Harry.” The door closed on the next conversation and all Charlie could hear was the defeated tones of a beleaguered father. Welcome to Parenting 101, Charlie thought.

When he came back he poured himself a brandy and downed it in one gulp like a Hollywood cowboy on a saloon set. “That kid's going to keep at it until he kills me. Him and his mother too. And what's his mother say? She says, ‘Life just doesn't live up to Joseph's expectations anymore.' Who ever told him it was supposed to, is what I want to know. Charlie, what are you doing?”

“I'm separating the puzzles. See, if you look closely at the colors in the pictures you can see different shades of greens in the grasses and blues in the skies. The other colors aren't the same at all, well, maybe the fence in the horse one and the rocks in the stream one could get confusing but—” Charlie's voice broke in a squeak when he kicked the boxes with some of the separated puzzle pieces already collected in them across the room.

He lifted her off the couch by her upper arms. Her feet were dangling. He asked reasonably, “Why are you doing this, Charlie?”

“Because I don't want you to tell me the important things we have to discuss. I don't want to know why I'm the chief suspect. I had the awful feeling those fajitas were a last meal. I don't want to hear the bad news.”

He lowered her gently back to the floor, but kept a hold of her shoulders, which was good because she didn't think she could stand on her own.

“You're going to have to.”

“I know. Don't let go.”