Murder at Moot Point (28 page)

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, organically 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.”

“I had fully planned to, but you insisted on being such an asshole”—she struggled until he had both her wrists in one hand, the other holding her away as she danced around trying to kick his shins—“that there was no way to get a word in because the great big, big-deal sheriff sent me on my way before I could open my mouth to tell him anything because he felt threatened at the thought that I might know something he didn't. Which I did.”

“My size intimidate you that much, Charlie?”

“Mine intimidate you?” she asked his shirt front.

“Yeah,” he admitted after a long deflating sigh, “a lot.”

It was about then that the suave cowboy fruit seller decided to wade in and even the odds.

“You find stress an aphrodisiac or what?” Wes asked.

“You're going to pay for hitting that man,” Charlie told him. “You, your future, your career. What are you, crazy?”

“Hell, I didn't even know he existed, and there he was with his fist in my face. Charlie, he attacked an officer of the law.”

“So did I.” She dropped a Bing into his mouth. “He was only trying to protect a female in jeopardy.”

“Jeopardy, Jesus.” Wes raised up on one elbow to spit out a cherry pit in the paper bag beside them and pulled her back down on top of him. “I'm the one in jeopardy.”

While he proved that point at least, the paper log flared in the fireplace of cabin three at the Hide-a-bye Motel, the quilt bedspread covered the floor in front of it, the sun still glamorized the balcony, the grit line still moved the horizon closer toward Moot Point over the vast Pacific.

“That piece of red plastic I picked up by Clara's driveway came from Georgette's Schwinn, didn't it?”

“Yeah, reflector,” he said. “Are we having fun yet?”

“What kind of houseplant did you say it was that poisoned Michael Cermack?” she asked.

“Wasn't a houseplant after all, unofficial investigator. Oh God, don't do that. Okay, do that.”

Chapter 31

Just below the wooden stairs leading to the beach from the Hide-a-bye Motel, Charlie Greene turned to grin up at cabin three. She had left Wes snoring on the quilt bedspread in front of the stone fireplace, had showered and dressed, and kissed his sleeping forehead. So much for the legendary hero who came awake instantly dangerous, rolling over gun in hand at the least disturbance. She could have run off with his pager, his gun, and the keys to the Bronco.

There wasn't much in the way of smog here. Dusk, twilight, and night took forever to arrive in late June. But the dusty mess on the horizon had not paused for pleasure as had Charlie. It had shortened the horizon and view to within a few hundred feet of the bird rookeries on the end of the point and blocked out the sun.

Perversely, just when her anger at Wes Bennett had reached its zenith she'd had sex with him again.
Was
stress an aphrodisiac for her? Before this morning, Charlie hadn't made love in a year. Maybe things had just built up so she was taking it out on him. Both her head and stomach felt better.

Perversely, now that she had her car back she'd decided to walk to the village. Walking casually down the beach she could check out the bright colored tents she'd seen from the overlook. She suspected they were for an end-of-seminar beach picnic thrown by the institute and that most of the people she wanted to see would be there. Her resolve to mind her own business seemed to have gone the way of the sunlight.

Wes hadn't arrested Frank or Clara, upon discovery of the shirt, but he had warned them not to leave the village. Wes considered their story ridiculous and probably untrue. Charlie thought it was so ridiculous it probably was true.

She rounded the point without getting her feet wet and strolled along picking up shells and disturbing shore birds until she came to the yellow and blue tents below the village. They were really plastic tarpaulin roofs on aluminum poles, sheltering tables and charcoal cookers sitting on the sand. Charlie wondered what vegetarians cooked over charcoal.

Rose's van was backed up to one of the tarps. The young man with the stiff mousse job unloaded containers of ketchup, pickles, and mustard. The girl helping him struggled with a giant coffee urn.

Doc Withers was engaged in trying to light coals in various cookers and then trying to dampen the flames to keep them from reaching the tarp roofs. The sea air thickened with the odor of fluid charcoal starter.

He wore a sweatshirt over Bermuda-length cutoffs, sagging knee socks, and massive hiking boots. His movements were even more awkward than his looks. He raised a box of wooden matches in the air to salute her, and then dropped them to grab a tent stake that flew loose on the end of its line as sea wind lifted a corner of the tarp.

Charlie dropped her shells and grabbed the line opposite when it decided to follow suit. The stakes had been set and then rocks rolled over them. This time Doc Withers tied the lines around the rocks. She helped him pick up wooden matches. “Looks like it's going to rain.”

“It has to. Always rains for beach picnics. It's the law in Oregon. Hey,” he turned to yell at the girl helping to unload the van, “keep those fruit bowls covered or they'll have sand in them.” Just as he turned back to Charlie the playful wind picked up another tarp corner.

Charlie made herself so useful she ended up staying on to help. And by the time the searchers arrived, every one of the people in the village that Charlie knew was already there helping too. Everyone except Clara Peterson and Frank Glick. Even Jack Monroe was there, still looking troubled and subdued, minding the coffee urns and soft drink dispensers. Even the Mary and Norma sisters had been pressed into service heaping beans and coleslaw and potato salad on paper plates. Gladys Bergkvist cut slabs of carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. Paige Magill handed out paper cups of ice cream and collected dirty plates. Doc Withers dispensed wine again. Rose Kortinemi saw to it that everything was getting done and all the helpers were kept supplied from reserves in the van. Brother Dennis played host and moved among the searchers showering attention on all who requested it.

Even the babushka lady, Irene Olafson, dashed from charcoal grill to charcoal grill, as did Charlie, flipping things over before they burned, ladling them onto plates, and rushing them to the serving table before they grew cold.

“Don't know how they eat this stuff, do you?” Irene asked Charlie once when they met dodging searchers while hurrying between grills, spatulas in hand.

It was odd, they were all very busy, but it seemed that whenever Charlie glanced over at any of these people—except for Irene—they seemed to be watching her. As if they knew she suspected a couple of them to be guilty of murder. Jack could just be thinking about his OOBE's and her dreams and his book. Mary and Norma glared their disgust at her betrayal of their friend and refused to speak to Charlie. Brother Dennis should have been paying so much attention to his paying guests that he didn't notice her. But he did.