Time of the Wolves

by Marcia Muller

  And then I spotted the cabin, overgrown and wrapped in shadow, only yards away. Built into the downward slope of the hill, its moss-covered foundations were anchored in bedrock, as I’d been told. But the rest was only blackened and broken timbers, a collapsed shake roof on which vegetation had taken root, a rusted stove chimney about to topple, empty windows and doors.

  I drew in my breath and held it for a long moment. Then I slowly moved forward.

  Stone steps, four of them. I counted as I climbed. Yes, you could still see the Pacific from here, the meadow, too. And the opening was where the door had been. Beyond it, nothing but a concrete slab covered the debris. Plenty of evidence that picnickers had been here.

  I stepped over the threshold.

  One big empty room. Nothing left, not even the mammoth iron woodstove. Vines growing through the timbers, running across the floor. And at the far side, a collapsed heap of burned lumber—the sleeping loft?

  Something crunched under my foot. I looked down, squatted, poked at it gingerly with my fingertip. Glass, green glass. It could have come from a picnicker’s wine bottle. Or it could have come from a broken stained-glass window.

  I stood, coldness upon my scalp and shoulder blades. Coldness that had nothing to do with the sea wind that bore the mist from the coast. I closed my eyes against the shadows and the ruin. Once again I could smell my mother’s baking bread, hear my father’s voice. Once again I thought: Home.

  But when I opened my eyes, the warmth and light vanished. Now all I saw was the scene of a terrible tragedy.

  “Barbie,” I said, “what do you know about the Northcoast Lumber Company?”

  She looked up from the box of wind chimes she was unpacking. “Used to be the big employer around here.”

  “Where do they have their offices? I couldn’t find a listing in the county phone book.”

  “I hear they went bust in the ’Eighties.”

  “Then why would they still own land up in the hills?”

  “Don’t know. Why?”

  I hesitated. Yesterday, the day after I’d found the cabin, I’d driven down to the county offices at Fort Bragg and spent the entire afternoon poring over the land plats for this area. The place where the ruin stood appeared to belong to the lumber company. There was no reason I shouldn’t confide in Barbie about my search, but something held me back. After a moment I said: “Oh, I saw some acreage that I might be interested in buying.”

  She raised her eyebrows; the extravagant white eye shadow and bright-red lipstick that she wore today made her look like an astonished clown. “On what I’m paying you for part-time work, you’re buying land?”

  “I’ve got some savings from my mom’s life insurance.” That much was true, but the small amount wouldn’t buy even a square foot of land.

  “Huh.” She went back to her unpacking. “Well, I don’t know for a fact that Northcoast did go bust. Penny told me that the owner’s widow is still alive. Used to live on a big estate near here, but a long time ago she moved down the coast to that fancy retirement community at Timber Point. Maybe she could tell you about this acreage.”

  “What’s her name, do you know?”

  “No, but you could ask Penny. She and Crane bought the hotel from her.”

  “Madeline Carmichael,” Penny said. “Lady in her late fifties. She and her husband used to own a lot of property around here.”

  “You know her, then.”

  “Nope, never met her. Our dealings were through a realtor and her lawyer.”

  “She lives down at Timber Point?”

  “Uhn-huh. The realtor told us she’s a recluse, never leaves her house, and has everything she needs delivered.”

  “Why, do you suppose?”

  “Why not? She can afford it. Oh, the realtor hinted that there’s some tragedy in her past, but I don’t put much stock in that. I’ll tell you”—her tired eyes swept the dingy hotel lobby—“if I had a beautiful home and all that money, I’d never go out, either.”

  Madeline Carmichael’s phone number and address were unlisted. When I drove down to Timber Point the next day, I found high grape-stake fences and a gatehouse; the guard told me that Mrs. Carmichael would see no one who wasn’t on her visitor list. When I asked him to call her, he refused. “If she was expecting you,” he said, “she’d have sent your name down.”

  Penny had given me the name of the realtor who handled the sale of the hotel. He put me in touch with Mrs. Carmichael’s lawyer in Fort Bragg. The attorney told me he’d check about the ownership of the land and get back to me. When he did, his reply was terse: The land was part of the original Carmichael estate; title was held by the nearly defunct lumber company; it was not for sale.

  So why had my parents built their cabin on the Carmichael estate? Were my strong feelings of connection to the burned-out ruin in the hills false?

  Maybe, I told myself, it was time to stop chasing memories and start building a life for myself here in Camel Rock. Maybe it was best to leave the past alone.

  The following week-end brought the kind of quicksilver days my mother had told me about, and in turn they lured tourists in record numbers. We couldn’t restock the Beachcomber Shop’s shelves fast enough. On the next Wednesday—Barbie’s photography day—I was unpacking fresh merchandise and filling in where necessary while waiting for the woman Barbie bought her driftwood sculptures from to make a delivery. Business was slack in the late-afternoon hours. I moved slowly, my mind on what to wear to a dinner party being given that evening by some new acquaintances who ran an herb farm. When the bell over the door jangled, I started.

  It was Mrs. Fleming, the driftwood lady. I recognized her by the big plastic wash basket of sculptures that she toted. A tiny white-haired woman, she seemed too frail for such a load. I moved to take it from her.

  She resisted, surprisingly strong. Her eyes narrowed, and she asked: “Where’s Barbie?”

  “Wednesday’s her day off.”

  “And who are you?”

  “Ashley Heikkinen. I’m Barbie’s part-time. . . .”

  “What did you say?”

  “My name is Ashley Heikkinen. I just started here last week.”

  Mrs. Fleming set the basket on the counter and regarded me sternly, spots of red appearing on her cheeks. “Just what are you up to, young woman?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Why are you using that name?”

  “Using . . . ? It’s my name.”

  “It most certainly is not! This is a very cruel joke.”

  The woman had to be unbalanced. Patiently I said: “Look, my name really is Ashley Heikkinen. I was born in Camel Rock but moved away when I was two. I grew up outside Los Angeles, and, when my mother died, I decided to come back here.”

  Mrs. Fleming shook her head, her lips compressed, eyes glittering with anger.

  “I can prove who I am,” I added, reaching under the counter for my purse. “Here’s my identification.”

  “Of course, you have identification. Everyone knows how to obtain that under the circumstances.”

  “What circumstances?”

  She turned and moved toward the door. “I can’t imagine what you possibly hope to gain by this charade, young woman, but you can be sure I’ll speak to Barbie about you.”

  “Please, wait!”

  She pushed through the door, and the bell above it jangled harshly as it slammed shut. I hurried to the window and watched her cross the parking lot in a vigorous stride that belied her frail appearance. As she turned at the highway, I looked down and saw I had my wallet out, prepared to prove my identity.

  Why, I wondered, did I feel compelled to justify my existence to this obviously deranged stranger?

  The dinner party that evening was pleasant, and I returned to the hotel at a little after midnight with the fledgling sense of belonging that making friends in a strange place brings. The fog was in thick, drawn by hot inland temperatures. It put a gritty sheen on my face, and, when I touched m
y tongue to my lips, I tasted the sea. I locked the Pinto and started across the rutted parking lot to the rear entrance. Heavy footsteps came up behind me.

  Conditioned by many years in L.A., I already held my car key in my right hand, tip out as a weapon. I glanced back and saw a stocky, bearded man bearing down on me. When I side-stepped and turned, he stopped, and his gaze moved to the key. He’d been drinking—beer, and plenty of it.

  From the tavern, I thought. Probably came out to the parking lot because the rest room’s in use and he couldn’t wait. “After you,” I said, opening the door for him.

  He stepped inside the narrow, dim hallway. I let him get a ways ahead, then followed. The door stuck, and I turned to give it a tug. The man reversed, came up swiftly, and grasped my shoulder.

  “Hey!” I said.

  He spun me around and slammed me against the wall. “Lady, what the hell’re you after?”

  “Let go of me!” I pushed at him.

  He pushed back, grabbed my other shoulder, and pinned me there. I stopped struggling, took a deep breath, told myself to remain calm.

  “Not going to hurt you, lady,” he said. “I just want to know what your game is.”

  Two lunatics in one day. “What do you mean . . . game?”

  “My name is Ashley Heikkinen,” he said in a falsetto, then dropped to his normal pitch. “Who’re you trying to fool? And what’s in it for you?”

  “I don’t. . . .”

  “Don’t give me that! You might be able to stonewall an old lady like my mother. . . .”

  “Your mother?”

  “Yeah, Janet Fleming. You expect her to believe you, for Christ’s sake? What you did, you upset her plenty. She had to take one of the Valiums the doctor gave me for my bad back.”

  “I don’t understand what your mother’s problem is.”

  “Jesus, you’re a cold bitch! Her own goddaughter, for Christ’s sake, and you expect her to believe you?”

  “Goddaughter?”

  His face was close to mine now; hot beer breath touched my cheeks. “My ma’s goddaughter was Ashley Heikkinen.”

  “That’s impossible! I never had a godmother. I never met your mother until this afternoon.”

  The man shook his head. “I’ll tell you what’s impossible . . . Ashley Heikkinen appearing in Camel Rock after all these years. Ashley’s dead. She died in a fire when she wasn’t even two years old. My ma ought to know . . . she identified the body.”

  A chill washed over me from my scalp to my toes. The man stared, apparently recognizing my shock as genuine. After a moment I asked: “Where was the fire?”

  He ignored the question, frowning. “Either you’re a damned good actress or something weird’s going on. Can’t have two people born with that name. Not in Camel Rock.”

  “Where was the fire?”

  He shook his head again, this time as if to clear it. His mouth twisted, and I feared he was going to be sick. Then he let go of me and stumbled through the door to the parking lot. I released my breath in a long sigh and slumped against the wall. A car started outside. When its tires had spun on the gravel and its engine revved on the highway, I pushed myself upright and went along the hall to the empty lobby. A single bulb burned in the fixture above the reception desk, as it did every night. The usual sounds of laughter and conversation came from the tavern.

  Everything seemed normal. Nothing was. I ran upstairs to the shelter of my room.

  After I’d double-locked the door, I turned on the overhead and crossed to the bureau and leaned across it toward the streaky mirror. My face was drawn and unusually pale.

  Ashley Heikkinen dead?

  Dead in a fire when she wasn’t quite two years old?

  I closed my eyes, picturing the blackened ruin in the hills above town. Then I opened them and stared at my frightened face. It was the face of a stranger.

  “If Ashley Heikkinen is dead,” I said, “then who am I?”

  Mrs. Fleming wouldn’t talk to me. When I got to her cottage on one of the packed-dirt side streets after nine the next morning, she refused to open the door and threatened to run me off with her dead husband’s shotgun. “And don’t think I’m not a good markswoman,” she added.

  She must have gone straight to the phone, because Barbie was hanging up when I walked into the Beachcomber Shop a few minutes later. She frowned at me and said: “I just had the most insane call from Janet Fleming.”

  “About me?”

  “How’d you guess? She was giving me all this stuff about you not being who you say you are and the ‘real Ashley Heikkinen’ dying in a fire when she was a baby. Must be going around the bend.”

  I sat down on the stool next to the counter. “Actually there might be something to what she says.” And then I told her all of it: my mother’s stories, the forbidden things that went unsaid, the burned-out cabin in the hills, my encounters with Janet Fleming and her son. “I tried to talk with Missus Fleming this morning,” I finished, “but she threatened me with a shotgun.”

  “And she’s been known to use that gun, too. You must’ve really upset her.”

  “Yes. From something she said yesterday afternoon, I gather she thinks I got hold of the other Ashley’s birth certificate and created a set of fake ID around it.”

  “You sound like you believe there was another Ashley.”

  “I saw that burned-out cabin. Besides, why would Missus Fleming make something like that up?”

  “But you recognized the cabin, both from my photograph and when you went there. You said it felt like home.”

  “I recognized it from my mother’s stories, that’s true. Barbie, I’ve lived those stories for most of my life. You know how kids sometimes get the notion that they’re so special they can’t really belong to their parents, that they’re a prince or princess who was given to a servant couple to raise?”

  “Oh, sure, we all went through that stage. Only in my case, I was Mick Jagger’s love child, and someday he was going to acknowledge me and give me all his money.”

  “Well, my mother’s stories convinced me that I didn’t really belong in a downscale tract in a crappy valley town. They made me special, somebody who came from a magical place. And I dreamed of it every night.”

  “So you’re saying that you only recognized the cabin from the images your mother planted in your mind?”

  “It’s possible.”

  Barbie considered. “OK, I’ll buy that. And here’s a scenario that might fit . . . after the fire, your parents moved away. That would explain why your mom didn’t want to talk about why they left Camel Rock. And they had another child . . . you. They gave you Ashley’s name and her history. It wasn’t right, but grief does crazy things to otherwise sane people.”

  It worked—but only in part. “That still doesn’t explain what happened to my father and why my mother would never talk about him.”

  “Maybe she was the one who went crazy with grief, and after a while he couldn’t take it any more, so he left.”

  She made it sound so logical and uncomplicated. But I’d known the quality of my mother’s silences; there was more to them than Barbie’s scenario encompassed.

  I bit my lip in frustration. “You know, Missus Fleming could shed a lot of light on this, but she refuses to deal with me.”

  “Then find somebody who will.”

  “Who?” I asked. And then I thought of Gus Galick, the man Penny had told me about who had lived in Camel Rock all his life. “Barbie, do you know Gus Galick?”

  “Sure. He’s one of the few old-timers around here that I’ve really connected with. Gus builds ships in bottles. I sold some on consignment for him last year. He used to be a rum-runner during Prohibition, has some great stories about bringing in cases of Canadian booze to the coves along the coast.”

  “He must be older than God.”

  “Older than God and sharp as a tack. I bet he could tell you what you need to know.”

  “Penny said he was away on some charter tri
p.”

  “Was, but he’s back now. I saw the Irma in her slip at the harbor when I drove by this morning.”

  Camel Rock’s harbor was a sheltered cove with a bait shack and a few slips for fishing boats. Of them, Gus Galick’s Irma was by far the most shipshape, and her captain was equally trim, with a shock of silvery-gray hair and leathery tan skin. I didn’t give him my name, just identified myself as a friend of Penny and Barbie. Galick seemed to take people at face value, though; he welcomed me on board, took me below-decks, and poured me a cup of coffee in the cozy wood-paneled cabin. When we were seated on either side of the teak table, I asked my first question.

  “Sure, I remember the fire on the old Carmichael estate,” he said. “Summer of ’Seventy-One. Both the father and the little girl died.”

  I gripped the coffee mug tighter. “The father died, too?”

  “Yeah. Heikkinen, his name was Norwegian, maybe. I don’t recall his first name, or the little girl’s.”

  “John and Ashley.”

  “These people kin to you?”

  “In a way. Mister Galick, what happened to Melinda, the mother?”

  He thought. “Left town, I guess. I never did see her after the double funeral.”

  “Where are John and Ashley buried?”

  “Graveyard of the Catholic church.” He motioned toward the hills, where I’d seen its spire protruding through the trees. “Carmichaels paid for everything, of course. Guilt, I guess.”

  “Why guilt?”

  “The fire started on their land. Was the father’s fault . . . John Heikkinen’s, I mean . . . but, still, they’d sacked him, and that was why he was drinking so heavy. Fell asleep with the doors to the woodstove open, and before he could wake up, the place was a furnace.”

  The free-flowing information was beginning to overwhelm me. “Let me get this straight . . . John Heikkinen worked for the Carmichaels?”