Murder at Moot Point (20 page)

“Hungry? We got a great special tonight, Sheriff.” Rose pointed to the chalkboard behind her.

“It's got Grape-Nuts in it,” Charlie offered. She thought it sounded pretty good. But Wes motioned her off her stool and led her to his car. “Well, anything sounds good if it means putting off going back to that friggin' cabin.”

But to her relief the official Bronco roared past the turnoff to the Hide-a-bye.

“Was Michael an accident or a murder?” she asked.

“Don't know yet.”

Charlie hoped she wasn't being taken straight to jail without passing go where, according to Paige Magill, she was due for some horrible abuse. Maybe she was just being lured back to the bachelor eyrie for some of the best-seller attempts at incredible humping featured in Chapter Two of
Death of a Grandmother
. Somehow that didn't sound so bad right now either.

But the Bronco zipped past the turnoff to Wes's house too. Just before reaching Chinook it left 101 and headed inland along a wide river cutting through the Coast Range.

“Mrs. Bergkvist looked drunk as a skunk,” he ventured finally. “She say anything?”

“Did you know that Rose and Gladys were half sisters? That Rose caters all the food for the institute? That Olie Bergkvist is late in coming back this summer? That—”

“Frank Glick says Georgette swore she'd seen Gladys bringing Olie back in their car from Portland like she always did about this time of year. But when she went by the house to speak to Olie the next day, Gladys claimed he wasn't back yet and Georgette must have been seeing things. That pissed Georgette royally.”

“What did she want to talk to Olie about?” Charlie asked.

“Frank didn't know, but he said his wife was forever sticking her nose where it wasn't wanted.”

“Sounds like she did it once too often.” Maybe the murdered woman had wanted to tell Olie about his wife and the animal doctor.

“We're checking the airlines for a record of Olie's travels. According to Gladys, the last she heard from him was Buenos Aires. He didn't take a bus home. I personally do not believe he's missing or that Georgette saw him going by in the car or that he had anything to do with Georgette being shot. But since you insist upon raising so goddamned many questions I'll just go about following all the false leads you can find. If I didn't feel pretty confident you weren't the murderer, I'd think you were just trying to fuzz up the case.”

They were driving along an estuary where a lowering sun turned the water a faint pink, where blue herons stalked about on stilt legs searching for dinner. The Bronco turned off onto a road leading out to a spit of land where a shabby-looking building of weathered wood hunkered at its end, surrounded by still, shallow water on three sides. It passed a diamond-shaped yellow sign with
GARLIC XING
written in black lettering just before pulling into a small parking lot, already half full.

Another sign,
Warning: Garlic in Use
, graced the door. Inside, strings of raw garlic bulbs hung from open rafters and draped the mirror over the bar in ropes like Christmas tinsel.

They made a meal of steamer clams and beer on the deck outside, coleslaw and great hunks of toasty garlic bread. They watched the pink on the water turn to red and whole herds of ducks take off and land just for the hell of it. The mountains in the background grew purple, then gray. They sat at crude picnic tables and the people around them spoke barely above whispers, if at all. The odors of pungent garlic, reedy water, and hearty mud melded pleasantly.

Charlie wiped grease from her chin with an oversized paper napkin and sighed. This was sure a long way from murder and the Hide-a-bye. “It's perfect here. Thanks.”

Wes looked away from the water where something flapped and splashed and started perfect rings growing. A slow smile lifted one corner of his face and wrinkled up the corners of his eyes. “Beats sprouts and Grape-Nuts, right?”

“Right.” Charlie sighed again.

The smile stayed pasted on his lips as it faded from his eyes. “Jesus Charlie, don't look at me like that, okay?”

“What do you expect, bringing a woman to a place like this, a knee in the groin?”

But this was just an interlude for a county sheriff with two recent deaths on his hands. After coffee in the bar he hurried her back to her cabin, refusing to say exactly when the Toyota would be returned to her. He did divulge that a preliminary on-the-spot check didn't show any damage to the brake system of Michael's car. “No skid marks on the parking lot. It's like he just stomped the gas pedal and flew off the cliff.”

“Gladys thought he might have been drunk.”

“We'll know soon. Watch some TV and get some sleep. I'll see you in the morning.”

There was no baby-sitter deputy at the Hide-a-bye. Wes just watched her unlock the door before he drove off. Charlie got on the phone to Jack and was back in the village of Moot Point in twenty minutes.

Chapter 22

Jack persuaded Clara Peterson to rush over to the Hide-a-bye to pick up Charlie. Searchers wandered the village and business hours would extend until the streets emptied. Jack was happily ringing up sales when they arrived at the Earth Spirit, so Charlie promised to stop by later.

Once the skies cleared, night took a long time to settle in on the Oregon coast in June. The sunset had faded but it was by no means dark yet. Couples strolled the beach as well as the main street where electric streetlights were disguised to look like old-fashioned gas lamps. House windows lit the hillside in erratic polka dots.

The air was cool but soft, the ocean breeze gentle. Rose's was lit like a Christmas tree and the lights from its windows splayed across the beach below. The horizon formed a glow line on the edge of the sea, the lighthouse a phallic shadow against it. Charlie cut off a sigh. If the sheriff had work to do, so did she.

“Isn't it awful about what happened to Michael?” Clara said now, and Charlie realized the older woman had stopped beside her to take in the night. She'd spoken little on the way over, explaining that she rarely drove at night and had to concentrate on it when she did. Clara said she saw so poorly in the dark she really shouldn't be driving at all then. After riding the short distance with her, Charlie had to agree.

Clara had just happened to be standing by the cash register when the call came through, and that's how Jack had come to send her for Charlie. “I never liked the boy much but it's so sad when a young promising life is snuffed out that way. And on the same day as Georgette's memorial service. Things like that just don't happen in this little place. I understand he'd been drinking … Michael.”

“As far as I know that's only rumor. Deputy Olsen told me you're an avid mystery fan besides being a bird-watcher.” And Charlie soon found herself inside Clara's trailer home to see for herself. Deputy Olsen had not exaggerated. Bookshelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling with time out for heating ducts and windows. They were hard packed with paperbacks, spines out and where possible stacked three deep in horizontal piles on top.

It was a more colorful and diversified decor than wallpaper or paneling would have been. Certainly an improvement over Libby's bedroom walls which were covered with shelves that held a mass of once-colorful stuffed animals congealing, with the help of dust and smog, into a depressing gray.

“Mrs. Peterson, you even have them alphabetized by author. I'm so impressed.”

Clara flashed her gold-filled smile and looked years younger. “I'm afraid I have two vices, mysteries and caffeine. And do you know what? I sleep like a baby. Most people my age don't.”

“You even have one of my authors.” Charlie had followed the alphabet around a corner and into the bathroom. It was not the location Charlie would have chosen, above and behind the john rather than in front of it, but there would always be a certain excitement about finding a book you'd sold just lying around someone's home. “You've got them all.”

“Who is that? Oh, Lennard Shipton, yes. I do enjoy his Sheriff Tomlin books. Do you know if he'll publish another one soon?”

“I don't think there'll be anymore Sheriff Tomlin books. Len has had some sticky problems and gone into real estate to make a living. But we are marketing a new series proposal.” Which didn't have a chance in hell, but this didn't seem the time to tell the bird lady that.

Charlie used the bathroom, and when she emerged, Clara was making coffee. “Then Sheriff Bennett doesn't think Michael had his accident because he'd been drinking?”

“He won't know until he gets lab reports or whatever. But he sure can't blame this one on me. I've been under lock and key for two days.”

“Then it's possible his death was more than an accident?” Clara asked without taking her eyes from the stained Mr. Coffee pot, sucking and flushing, excreting dark fluid in a steady drip into its glass pot.

“He does seem a little young to have a heart attack and drive off a cliff. I expect they'll check his blood and his brakes pretty carefully.”

“Artists are temperamental people. They often commit suicide.” Clara handed Charlie a cup of coffee she didn't want, the cup and saucer a delicate china with a rose pattern—remnants of better days perhaps. “It's possible he shot Georgette and when his gun was found he decided to end it all.”

“That would tidy up everything nicely, wouldn't it? But Michael didn't seem the type to kill himself. His self-esteem was way up there.” It was pretty obvious Clara had heard rumors about Charlie's relationship with Wes Bennett and was not too skillfully trying to pump Charlie for information. “And you don't seem the type to shop at the Earth Spirit. Why were you there tonight when I called Jack? Or does he keep mysteries under the counter?”

“Oh, no.” Clara smiled wistfully and gazed about her multicolored walls. “I was unofficially observing, and looking over the stock. He's going to hire me part-time in the evenings this summer so he can work on his book. I can use the money, and I don't fall asleep at nine o'clock like most people my age and then wake up at four in the morning when the world's not ready to start up yet. I begin work officially tomorrow night.”

A rapping on the metal storm door startled Charlie into spilling coffee into her saucer. Some even dripped on worn kitchen carpeting. She grabbed a paper towel to blot it and when she rose from behind the counter Frank Glick was stepping up the little metal steps into the front room. Clara hurried to close the door behind him and they stood looking at Charlie as if they'd been caught in
the
act.

Charlie tried to envision Edwina, who was younger than either of them, having an affair. She couldn't and decided she'd misinterpreted that look.

Frank explained to Clara he'd had to get away from the “looney bin” next door, and turned to Charlie. “Seems like you're every place I look. Thought the sheriff would have you tied up somewhere by now.”

“Now, Frank, I asked her in to see my mystery collection. Do you know I have one of her authors in the bathroom? I baked a lemon meringue pie this morning. The creamy kind that you like, not the Jell-O-y kind.” She led him over to the little kitchen table and held out a chair for him, and he sat as if they'd done this often. “I took a couple of pieces over to Mary and Norma but there's lots left. And the coffee's made. Maybe Miss Greene would like pie, too.”

“No, thanks, I've eaten.” Charlie surreptitiously dumped her coffee down the sink and rinsed out the cup. She complimented Clara on her collection again and left her busily undoing all Georgette's nutritional priming of Frank Glick. He sure didn't look like a man who'd gone to a memorial service for his wife that day.

Outside, night had arrived for real. Street lamps and lighted windows looked even prettier. In front of the Glick's house Charlie could just make out two women sitting on the picnic table, their feet on the bench seat. One cried softly in the dark, the other hugged her and stroked her hair and looked out over her head to an all but invisible sea. Georgette's daughters probably. At least someone mourned the woman. Charlie wondered if there was anyone to mourn Michael Cermack.

“Brother Dennis must have started off this seminar with a bang,” Jack confided when he'd hung the
Closed
sign and taken Charlie back behind the curtain. “Going to take me all day tomorrow to restock for tomorrow night.”

“There's no basement or stockroom. Where do you keep everything?”

“In the shop. The walls are really the doors of storage cupboards if you take a close look.” He gave her a smile and an irritating little nod that said he knew she hadn't noticed.

Before he could get in the question she knew was coming, Charlie asked, “Jack, have you seen Olie Bergkvist here yet this summer?”

They sat on the kitchen bar stools. He drank wine and she'd refused to. She was getting fed up with Oregon in more ways than one. “Gladys's husband?” Jack thought a moment. “I don't think he's back yet. Why?”

“Well, Michael said he's late this year and apparently Georgette thought she saw him coming into town with Gladys but Gladys told Georgette she must be crazy and …” Jack was looking at her, lips parted, “… you did hear about Michael?”

“Oh, yeah, listen, bad karma there. Wonder he lived this long.” He was fidgeting up to ask the big question.

“Then you think he was murdered?” Charlie said hurriedly.

“He was a nobody. Who'd want to murder him?”

“Who'd want to murder Georgette Glick?”

“I heard big-deal Michael drove off the cliff because he was drunk. No mystery there. He drank like a whale.” Jack poured more wine and turned to Charlie with the important things on his mind rolling to the tip of his tongue.

And she cut him off with, “Does Michael have any relatives that you know of?”