Time of the Wolves

by Marcia Muller

  He wasn’t cracking, though. “Granted, Andrea had her problems. But why would I rake up the Carding matter?”

  “Because it would sound convincing for you to admit what you did all those years ago. God knows it convinced me. And I doubt the police would ever have made the details public. Why destroy a grieving widower and prominent citizen? Particularly when they’d never find Carding or bring him to trial. You’ve got one problem, though . . . me. You never should have brought me in to back up your scenario.”

  He licked his lips, glaring at me. Then he drew himself up, leaned forward aggressively—a posture the attorneys at All Souls jokingly refer to as their “litigator’s mode”.

  “You have no proof of this,” he said firmly, jabbing his index finger at me. “No proof whatsoever.”

  “Deli items, crabs, wine, apples,” I recited. “Del Prado Spanish olives, Tanqueray gin.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I have Andrea’s receipt for the items she bought at Lucky yesterday, before she stopped home to pick up her week-end bag. None of these things is here in the cabin.”

  “So?”

  “I know that at least two of them . . . the olives and the gin . . . are at your house in Eureka. I’m willing to bet they all are.”

  “What if they are? She did some shopping for me yesterday morning. . . .”

  “The receipt is dated yesterday evening, nine-fourteen p.m. I’ll quote you, Shoemaker. ‘Apparently she went out to the coast last night. I haven’t seen her since she walked out on us at the noon hour.’ But you claim you didn’t leave home after noon.”

  That did it; that opened the cracks. He stood for a moment, then half collapsed into one of the chairs and put his head in his hands.

  The next summer, after I testified at the trial in which Steve Shoemaker was convicted of the first-degree murder of his wife, I returned to the Lost Coast—with a backpack, without the .38, and in the company of my lover. We walked sand beaches under skies that showed infinite shadings of blue; we made love in fields of wildflowers; we waited quietly for the deer, falcons, and foxes.

  I’d already taken the bad from this place; now I could take the good.

  Forbidden Things

  All the years that I was growing up in a poor suburb of Los Angeles, my mother would tell me stories of the days I couldn’t remember when we lived with my father on the wild north coast. She’d tell of a gray, misty land suddenly made brilliant by quicksilver flashes off the sea; of white sand beaches that would disappear in a storm, then emerge strewn with driftwood and treasures from foreign shores; of a deeply forested ridge of hills where, so the Pomo Indians claimed, spirits walked by night.

  Our cabin nestled on that ridge, high above the little town of Camel Rock and the humpbacked offshore mass that inspired its name. The cabin, built to last by my handyman father, was of local redwood, its foundation sunk deep in bedrock. There was a woodstove and home-woven curtains. There were stained-glass windows and a sleeping loft; there was. . . .

  Although I had no recollection of this place we’d left when I was two, it somehow seemed more real to me than our shabby pink bungalow with the cracked sidewalk out front and the packed-dirt yard out back. I’d lie in bed at night feeling the heat from the woodstove, watching the light as it filtered through the stained-glass panels, listening to the wind buffet our secure aerie. I was sure I could smell my mother’s baking bread, hear the deep rumble of my father’s voice. But no matter how hard I tried, I could not call up the image of my father’s face, even though a stiff and formal portrait of him sat on our coffee table.

  When I asked my mother why she and I had left a place of quicksilver days and night-walking spirits, she’d grow quiet. When I asked where my father was now, she’d turn away. As I grew older I realized there were shadows over our departure—shadows in which forbidden things stood, still and silent.

  Is it any wonder that when my mother died—young, at forty-nine, but life hadn’t been kind to her and heart trouble ran in the family—is it any wonder that I packed everything I cared about and went back to the place of my birth to confront those forbidden things?

  I’d located Camel Rock on the map when I was nine, tracing the coast highway with my finger until it reached a jutting point of land north of Fort Bragg. Once this had been logging country—hardy men working the cross-cut saw and jackscrew in the forests, bull teams dragging their heavy loads to the coast, fresh-cut logs thundering down the chutes to schooners that lay at anchor in the coves below. But by the time I was born, lumbering was an endangered industry. Today, I knew, the voice of the chain saw was stilled and few logging trucks rumbled along the highway. Legislation to protect the environment, coupled with a severe construction slump, had all but killed the old economy. Instead new enterprises had sprung up: wineries, mushroom, garlic, and herb farms, tourist shops, and bed-and-breakfasts. These were only marginally profitable, however; the north coast was financially strapped.

  I decided to go anyway.

  It was a good time for me to leave southern California. Two failed attempts at college, a ruined love affair, a series of slipping-down jobs—all argued for radical change. I’d had no family except my mother; even my cat had died the previous October. As I gave notice at the coffee shop where I’d been waitressing, disposed of the contents of the bungalow, and turned the keys back to the landlord, I said no good byes. Yet I left with hope of a welcome. Maybe there would be a place for me in Camel Rock. Maybe someone would even remember my family and fill in the gaps in my early life.

  I know now that I was really hoping for a reunion with my father.

  Mist blanketed the coast the afternoon I drove my old Pinto over the bridge spanning the mouth of the Deer River and into Camel Rock. Beyond sandstone cliffs the sea lay, flat and seemingly motionless. The town—a strip of buildings on either side of the highway with dirt lanes straggling up toward the hills—looked deserted. A few drifting columns of wood smoke, some lighted signs in shop windows, a hunched and bundled figure walking along the shoulder—these were the only signs of life. I drove slowly, taking it all in: a supermarket, some bars, a little mall full of tourist shops. Post office, laundromat, defunct real estate agency, old sagging hotel that looked to be the only real lodging place. When I’d gone four blocks and passed the last gas station and the cable TV company, I ran out of town. I U-turned, went back to the hotel, and parked my car between two pickups out front.

  For a moment I sat behind the wheel, feeling flat. The town didn’t look like the magical place my mother had described; if anything, it was seedier than the suburb I’d left yesterday. I had to force myself to get out, and, when I did, I stood beside the Pinto, staring up at the hotel. Pale green with once white trim, all of it blasted and faded by the elements. An inscription above its front door gave the date it was built—1879, the height of last century’s logging boom. Neon beer signs flashed in its lower windows; gulls perched along the peak of its roof, their droppings splashed over the steps and front porch. I watched as one soared in for a landing, crying shrilly. Sea breeze ruffled my short blond hair, and I smelled fish and brine.

  The smell of the sea had always delighted me. Now it triggered a sense of connection to this place. I thought: Home.

  The thought lent me the impetus to take out my overnight bag and carried me over the threshold of the hotel. Inside was a dim lobby that smelled of dust and cat. I peered through the gloom but saw no one. Loud voices came from a room to the left, underscored by the clink of glasses and the thump and clatter of dice rolling; I went over, looked in, and saw an old-fashioned tavern, peopled mainly by men in work clothes. The ship’s clock that hung crooked behind the bar said 4:20. Happy hour got under way early in Camel Rock.

  There was a public phone on the other side of the lobby. I crossed to it and opened the thin county directory, aware that my fingers were trembling. No listing for my father. No listing for anyone with my last name. More disappointed than I had an
y right to be, I replaced the book and turned away.

  Just then a woman came out of a door under the steep staircase. She was perhaps in her early sixties, tall and gaunt, with tightly permed, gray curls and a face lined by weariness. When she saw me, her pale eyes registered surprise. “May I help you?”

  I hesitated, the impulse to flee the shabby hotel and drive away from Camel Rock nearly irresistible. Then I thought: Come on, give the place a chance. “Do you have a room available?”

  “We’ve got nothing but available rooms.” She smiled wryly and got a card for me to fill out. Lacking any other, I put down my old address and formed the letters of my signature—Ashley Heikkinen—carefully. I’d always hated my last name; it seemed graceless and misshapen beside my first. Now I was glad it was unusual; maybe someone here in town would recognize it. The woman glanced disinterestedly at the card, however, then turned away and studied a rack of keys.

  “Front room or back room?”

  “Which is more quiet?”

  “Well, in front you’ve got the highway noise, but there’s not much traffic at night. In the back you’ve got the boys”—she motioned at the door to the tavern—“scrapping in the parking lot at closing time.”

  Just what I wanted—a room above a bar frequented by quarrelsome drunks. “I guess I’ll take the front.”

  The woman must have read my expression. “Oh, honey, don’t you worry about them. They’re not so bad, but there’s nobody as contentious as an out-of-work logger who’s had one over his limit.”

  I smiled and offered my Visa card. She shook her head and pointed to a cash only sign. I dug in my wallet and came up with the amount she named. It wasn’t much, but I didn’t have much to begin with. There had been a small life insurance policy on my mother, but most of it had gone toward burying her. If I was to stay in Camel Rock, I’d need a job.

  “Are a lot of people around here out of work?” I asked as the woman wrote up a receipt.

  “Loggers, mostly. The type who won’t bite the bullet and learn another trade. But the rest of us aren’t in much better shape.”

  “Have you heard of any openings for a waitress or a bartender?”

  “For yourself?”

  “Yes. If I can find a job, I may settle here.”

  Her hand paused over the receipt book. “Honey, why on earth would you want to do that?”

  “I was born here. Maybe you knew my parents . . . Melinda and John Heikkinen?”

  She shook her head and tore the receipt from the book. “My husband and me, we just moved down here last year from Del Norte County . . . things’re even worse up there, believe me. We bought this hotel because it was cheap and we thought we could make a go of it.”

  “Have you?”

  “Not really. We don’t have the wherewithal to fix it up, so we can’t compete with the new motels or bed-and-breakfasts. And we made the mistake of giving bar credit to the locals.”

  “That’s too bad,” I said. “There must be some jobs available, though. I’m a good waitress, a fair bartender. And I . . . like people,” I added lamely.

  She smiled, the lines around her eyes crinkling kindly. I guessed she’d presented meager credentials a time or two herself. “Well, I suppose you could try over at the mall. Barbie Cannon’s been doing real good with her Beachcomber Shop, and the tourist season’ll be here before we know it. Maybe she can use some help.”

  I thanked her and took the room key she offered, but, as I picked up my bag, I thought of something else. “Is there a newspaper in town?

  “As far as I know, there never has been. There’s one of those little county shoppers, but it doesn’t have ads for jobs, if that’s what you’re after.”

  “Actually I’m trying to locate . . . a family member. I thought if there was a newspaper, I could look through their back issues. What about long-time residents of the town? Is there anybody who’s an amateur historian, for instance?”

  “Matter of fact, there is. Gus Galick. Lives on his fishing trawler, the Irma, down at the harbor. Comes in here regular.”

  “How long has he lived here?”

  “All his life.”

  Just the person I wanted to talk with.

  The woman added: “Gus is away this week, took a charter party down the coast. I think he said he’d be back next Thursday.”

  Another disappointment. I swallowed it, told myself the delay would give me time to settle in and get to know the place of my birth. And I’d start by visiting the Beachcomber Shop.

  The shop offered exactly the kind of merchandise its name implied: seashells, driftwood, inexpert carvings of gulls, grebes, and sea lions. Postcards and calendars and T-shirts and paperback guidebooks. Shell jewelry, paperweights, ceramic whales and dolphins. Nautical toys and candles and wind chimes. All of which were totally predictable, but the woman who popped up from behind the counter was anything but.

  She was very tall, well over six feet, and her black hair stood up in long, stiff spikes. A gold ring pierced her left nostril, and several others hung from either earlobe. She wore a black leather tunic with metal studs, over lacy black tights and calf-high boots. In L.A., I wouldn’t have given her a second glance, but this was Camel Rock. Such people weren’t supposed to happen here.

  The woman watched my reaction, then threw back her head and laughed throatily. I felt a blush begin to creep over my face.

  “Hey don’t worry about it,” she told me. “You should see how I scare the little bastards who drag their parents in here, whining about how they absolutely have to have a blow-up Willie the Whale.”

  “Uh, isn’t that bad for business?”

  “Hell, no. Embarrasses the parents and they buy twice as much as they would’ve.”

  “Oh.”

  “So . . . what can I do for you?”

  “I’m looking for Barbie Cannon.”

  “You found her.” She flopped onto a stool next to the counter, stretching out her long legs.

  “My name’s Ashley Heikkinen.” I watched her face for some sign of recognition. There wasn’t any, but that didn’t surprise me; Barbie Cannon was only a few years older than I—perhaps thirty—and too young to remember a family that had left so long ago. Besides, she didn’t look as if she’d been born and raised here.

  “I’m looking for a job,” I went on, “and the woman at the hotel said you might need some help in the shop.”

  She glanced around at the merchandise that was heaped haphazardly on the shelves and spilled over onto the floor here and there. “Well, Penny’s right . . . I probably do.” Then she looked back at me. “You’re not local.”

  “I just came up from L.A.”

  “Me, too, about a year ago. There’re a fair number of us transplants, and the division between us and the locals is pretty clear-cut.”

  “How so?”

  “A lot of the natives are down on their luck, resentful of the newcomers, especially ones like me, who’re doing well. Oh, some of them’re all right . . . they understand that the only way for the area to survive is to restructure the economy. But most of them are just sitting around the bars mumbling about how the spotted owl ruined their lives and hoping the timber industry’ll make a comeback . . . and that ain’t gonna happen. So why’re you here?”

  “I was born in Camel Rock. And I’m sick of southern California.”

  “So you decided to get back to your roots.”

  “In a way.”

  “You alone?”

  I nodded.

  “Got a place to stay?”

  “The hotel, for now.”

  “Well, it’s not so bad, and Penny’ll extend credit if you run short. As for a job. . . .” She paused, looking around again. “You know. I came up here thinking I’d work on my photography. The next Ansel Adams and all that.” She grinned self-mockingly. “Trouble is, I got to be such a successful businesswoman that I don’t even have time to load my camera. Tell you what . . . why don’t we go over to the hotel tavern, tilt a few, t
alk it over?”

  “Why not?” I said.

  Mist hugged the tops of the sequoias and curled in tendrils around their trunks. The mossy ground under my feet was damp and slick. I hugged my hooded sweatshirt against the chill and moved cautiously up the incline from where I’d left the car on an overgrown logging road. My soles began to slip, and I crouched, catching at a stump for balance. The wet fronds of a fern brushed my cheek.

  I’d been tramping through the hills for over two hours, searching every lane and dirt track for the burned-out cabin that Barbie Cannon had photographed shortly after her arrival in Camel Rock last year. Barbie had invited me to her place for dinner the night before, after we’d agreed on the terms of my new part-time job, and in the course of the evening she’d shown me her portfolio of photographs. One, a grimy black-and-white image of a ruin, so strongly affected me that I’d barely been able to sleep. This morning I’d dropped by the shop and gotten Barbie to draw me a map of where she’d found it, but her recollection was so vague that I might as well have had no map at all.

  I pushed back to my feet and continued climbing. The top of the rise was covered by a dense stand of sumac and bay laurel; the spicy scent of the laurel leaves mixed with stronger odors of redwood and eucalyptus. The mixed bouquet triggered the same sense of connection that I’d felt as I stood in front of the hotel the previous afternoon. I breathed deeply, then elbowed through the dense branches.

  From the other side of the thicket I looked down on a sloping meadow splashed with the brilliant yellow-orange of California poppies. More sequoias crowned the ridge on its far side, and through their branches I caught a glimpse of the flat, leaden sea. A stronger feeling of familiarity stole over me. I remembered my mother saying: “In the spring, the meadow was full of poppies, and you could see the ocean from our front steps. . . .”

  The mist was beginning to break up overhead. I watched a hawk circle against a patch of blue high above the meadow, then wheel and flap away toward the inland hills. He passed over my head, and I could feel the beating of his great wings. I turned, my gaze following his flight path. . . .