Murder at Moot Point

by Marlys Millhiser

  “I just came up here to see Jack and get away from home and now I feel guilty about some tragic crime that happened to somebody I’d never heard of yesterday at this time,” Charlie confided. “Pretty soon that guilt will convince me I did have something to do with it. It’s depressing.” But having said that, she felt better for it and could almost see the empathy radiating from the warm features of the girl beside her.

  “Come on up to my place for a cup of tea. Must be awful having no one to talk to.” Paige reached for an expensive mountain bike leaning against the porch and wheeled it along as they walked. “I can imagine how you must feel, but don’t be too hard on us. It’s easier to suspect a stranger. And it’s scary to think it might have been one of us. We’ll all get ourselves sorted out once we get over the shock.”

  Paige Magill lived on the second terrace. Her little flower shop and greenhouse was called the Dream Emporium and was really more of a glass-wrap addition built around three sides of a small house. She lived in three gloomy rooms and a bath at the back. But a deck had been jerry-built onto one end of the greenhouse and it was here they brought their tea.

  “Dream Emporium is a funny name for a florist shop,” Charlie thought aloud and then hoped she hadn’t been rude. She wanted more than sympathy from this woman, she wanted information.

  “I do dream counseling too.” Paige shrugged, rolled her eyes, grimaced. “And I keep Jack’s books for the Earth Spirit.” She pulled her knees up to hug them, setting her heels into the metal mesh of her rusting deck chair. “And I help Brother Dennis with his seminars and workshops. And I get a small monthly allotment from my grandmother’s estate.” She offered up her financial status without embarrassment. “Anything to survive and be able to stay here at the point.”

  Under an endless expanse of clean sky the Pacific broke in four or five hypnotic foam lines before rolling up onto the beach. Sea gulls skipped in and out harvesting what the waves left behind.

  “It is a beautiful place to live,” Charlie agreed.

  “And I believe in the work going on here.”

  “What exactly is the work going on here?”

  “Defining reality. The reality of the spirit as well as the mind. Learning to experience the whole world instead of just the narrow slice allowed us by science and the tunnel vision of society and religion. Freeing the spirit to learn … awareness … becoming …” Paige shook her head helplessly. “It’s impossible to define it to someone who’s … not awake yet.”

  Charlie could come up with no reasonable comment on all that, so they sat in companionable silence, sipping tea, squinting in the sunlight at the verdant greens and creamy blues of land and sea and sky, the whitewashed lighthouse and its several buildings with their red roofs looking “storybook” out on the point. The tea had a smoky, earthy flavor that melded with the odors of the greenhouse. A chicken clucked contentment somewhere behind the house and the warning buoy still warned ships off the rocks out to sea.

  Charlie turned to find her hostess’s smile so beguiling and unaffected she didn’t hesitate to speak her thoughts. “Did Georgette embroider those signs with the New Age messages for Jack’s store?”

  Paige nodded. “She was wonderful with a needle and thread, did sewing and mending for everyone.”

  “She was apparently quite an old lady otherwise too—able to ride a bike at her age.”

  Paige explained that Georgette Glick and her husband had moved to the point about fourteen years ago after Georgette had come to a weekend seminar on transcendence.

  “Isn’t that a pretty big topic for one weekend?”

  “It was just an introductory course, but it took hold of Georgie and she’s … she was studying with Brother Dennis ever since. He put her on a diet, exercise, and meditation program.”

  Charlie could see Jack’s store and the short line of retirement trailer homes along the road below. Another car pulled into the spot in front of the station wagon. A teenage girl slid out from behind the wheel and an older man got out from the passenger side.

  “Georgie had four children, nine grandchildren, and some great grandchildren,” Paige said, following Charlie’s look. “And she’d been married only once and to Frank Glick all that time. Can you believe it?”

  “I suppose everyone loved her. Everyone in Moot Point. I mean in the New Age community.”

  “I’m not sure it’s a community—more a bunch of unorganizable individuals—but we are all striving to love everyone. Ourselves included. Because we are all inherently one. Even you. It’s just that our biocomputers were programmed wrong at an early age.”

  “So not everyone found it that easy to love Georgette?”

  “Well, she was sort of a busybody and that got on some people’s nerves a lot.”

  “How about you? Did she get on your nerves a lot?”

  Paige smiled that serene smile again and the dimples made her appear younger than she was. A cute little giggle went with it. “You’re beginning to sound like Sheriff Bennett. How about some more tea?” When Paige Magill returned with the teapot, the conversation changed purposefully to dreams. “Almost everybody dreamed more than usual last night. Fog does that—and then hearing about Georgie. I’ll bet you had a few after all you went through.”

  “I had one at least,” Charlie obliged her. “And it must have been something. Woke me up screaming this morning—well, not out loud.”

  Paige sat forward. “What happened to you in your dream?”

  “Can’t remember a thing,” Charlie answered and watched relief and something else Charlie couldn’t identify reshape the contours of the dream counselor’s face.

  As Charlie left the Dream Emporium a man in a lumberjack shirt pirouetted through the intricate balances and momentums of t’ai chi on the vacant lot next door. On the next property an old woman in a housedress and head scarf, tied under her chin peasant fashion, bent to her garden ignoring him. But she looked up to give Charlie a sharp scrutiny.

  So Georgette Glick wasn’t necessarily the beloved and harmless little old lady Charlie had assumed. She was a busybody who got on people’s nerves. Maybe the busybody saw something that got her shot.

  What could she see in Moot Point in the fog? How could she even see to ride her bike in Moot Point in the fog? How could a seventy-eight year old woman ride a bike at all? Why didn’t this seem to surprise anyone but Charlie?

  Charlie dawdled along the tiny shopping district on the first terrace, unsure what to do next. She had so much to do back in the office and at home she resented having to misuse an afternoon this way. It was too early for dinner at Rose’s. It didn’t look like Jack would be available to drive her back to the Hide-a-bye. Perhaps she should start now in case the tide was coming in and would trap her here. But there was nothing to do there either. God, she wished she’d never come to Oregon.

  She glanced in the window of the Scandia Art Gallery. There was, of course, a seascape. Charlie stepped inside to find more of the same with a few renditions of the lighthouse for balance. Unlike the greenhouse, the gallery was strangely sterile of odors. The carpeting was thick and dark and deadened any sound but the quiet ticking of an old-fashioned wall clock. The rest of the colors were neutral to heighten the contrast of the paintings.

  Only one oil really drew Charlie in. It depicted the skeleton of a ship wrecked long ago sitting on the shore with fog fingers threading through naked ribs. It was titled “Wreck of the Peter Iredale,” was priced at two thousand dollars, and was signed simply, “Michael.”

  Charlie had studied it for several seconds before she identified discomfort as the source of her fascination. She imagined she could feel her pulse speed up in her ears. It was as she turned away from it that she saw several of the fog fingers take the shape of human bodies, one hanging over a railing of fog somewhere in the bowels of the ship and another on the floor of a fog cabin no longer there. When she turned back they were gone.

  “I see you found them,” a woman said, slipping through
an interesting slit in the wall formed by panels tilted out to display each painting in its own attention space. “Most people don’t. Isn’t Michael something? Almost like a hologram the way he does that.”

  “Found what?”

  “The dead sailors.” She was a comfortably middle-aged woman with bleached hair, and a magenta jumpsuit to match her fingernails. Charlie counted three gold chains, five gold rings, and an unbelievable number of bracelets. The woman clanked like machinery when she moved. “There are supposed to be five. How many did you pick out?”

  “Just two. Is this a real shipwreck?”

  “Well, yes, but I don’t believe there were any men lost. It just went aground. Michael has to add his little touches, macabre sense of humor. Is there anything in particular you’re looking for today?”

  “Does he live here in Moot Point?”

  “Oh, yes, he has a studio up on the hill.” She gestured vaguely behind them and all the bracelets tried to clank down to her elbow.

  “He’s probably at Georgie’s celebration this afternoon,” Charlie led.

  “Not Michael. He hated her—” the woman followed and then blinked. “Did you know Georgie Glick? Isn’t it awful what’s happened? Oh, goodness, you’re not one of the family?”

  “No, I just—why did Michael hate Georgie?”

  The bracelets all clanked back to her wrist. “I’m Gladys Bergkvist. I don’t believe I caught your name.”

  “Greene. Charlie Greene. I’m visiting Jack Monroe.”

  Gladys Bergkvist’s pallor paled. “You’re the one who murdered Georgie Glick.”

  “No, haven’t you heard? She wasn’t run over. I didn’t run over her in my car.”

  “What is this world coming to that you can just be walking around like this, free to do it again to anyone?”

  “I didn’t do anything to her. Please let me explain.” But Charlie backed toward the door as the woman’s outrage turned to visible fear.

  “Everyone’s saying you shot the poor woman.”

  Chapter 6

  Charlie’s face stung as if she’d been slapped. She stomped down the street, afraid to look in any of the other shops. If the word was out she was the murderer, no one was going to answer her questions about Georgette Glick. The last time Charlie had felt quite this way she’d just learned the rabbit died. Then she’d stomped through Crossroads Mall in Boulder sure that every stranger there had heard the news before she had, sure that every detached smile she met was a personal leer. She’d trudged for hours considering abortion and suicide and running away to some fantasy world that welcomed imperfect teenagers. Someplace they didn’t have to admit they’d screwed up.

  A third car had parked in front of Frank’s trailer and the porch and patio were crowded with people, plastic glasses in hand. It looked like yet another celebration. Charlie turned abruptly before anyone noticed her and headed up the road toward the lighthouse. If there was no way off the point to the Hide-a-bye, if the tide was up and she couldn’t follow the route she’d come, she’d slip back to Jack’s store after dark. If he wasn’t home she knew where the key was.

  Tides were still a mystery to Charlie, despite having lived on both coasts. They were always coming in or going out and the time changed by night and day and by day of the month and by month of the year and by flip of the coin for all she knew. Charlie stayed away from places she was likely to get caught in at high tide. The beach below the lighthouse looked to be just such a place.

  Sea wind tore her hair out of the rolled scarf she’d subdued it with and teased her face with blasts of fresh salt air. Sea birds shrieked derision.

  “All the desperate people in this world and you’re feeling sorry for Charlie Greene. You’re not that desperate teenager of fifteen years ago.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “The minute they find you have no gun, no motive, and have never had contact with the late Georgie, you’ll no longer be a suspect. The worst that can happen is you’ll have to come back up here to testify in a murder trial. Probably Brother Dennis’s or even Jack’s. You don’t know when she was shot.”

  “I know she was still bleeding.”

  “Then there’s Gladys Bergkvist. And the dimpled, luscious Paige.”

  “If you like drumsticks.”

  “There’s also Rose, at the restaurant.”

  “What about the obvious suspect—the husband—old randy, handy Frank?”

  “And don’t forget Sheriff Wes. At least we know he has a gun to shoot someone with. Or this Michael who hated Georgie. Or someone we haven’t met. Which is almost everyone in Moot Point.”

  “It could have been anyone within shooting distance of Moot Point last night. Someone on the highway.”

  “Someone with a motive and a secret and a gun.”

  Charlie realized she’d missed the path down to the beach when she rounded a curve in the road and came out into the full brunt of the wind. The road continued on up to the lighthouse above her and she could look over at the tops of the massive rocks off the point. She gave up on the scarf and held it in her hand, let it snap in the wind that slapped her hair across her face. This might be June and the sun might be out but it was cold here. A heartier soul would have called it brisk. She could see nesting birds on the rock rookeries and occasional battles when a nest seemed threatened. Had Georgette Glick threatened something that basic to someone in the village?

  Someone’s home, business, livelihood, relationship? Surely not someone’s life.

  Charlie wanted to look over the cliff edge to see if the tide threatened her pathway to the Hide-a-bye but knew she could handle high places only if she didn’t look down.

  Instead of walking back to the path to find out she started up the road to the lighthouse. The path ended in a paved parking lot with plenty of room for visitors who liked lighthouses. But they still had to climb what looked like a hundred and fifty stairs to get to the lighthouse itself. A big rusting Ford, a small red Ferrari, and a pickup were parked in the lot.

  Though there was no fog today the light at the top of the tower still rotated and the buoy out at sea still warned ships off the rocky shoreline. Charlie had been hearing that sound for so long she’d forgotten to listen for it.

  A lady in a windbreaker and stretch jeans stepped out of the old Ford and waved at Charlie. “Have you come to see the birds? Did you park along the road?”

  “I walked up from the village.”

  She smiled and all her back teeth appeared to be made of gold. “I should have too, I know. Such a waste of fuel. But there’s no shelter from the wind here and after a while it forces the chill right into your bone marrow. You won’t welcome that either when you get to be my age.”

  “I don’t welcome it now.” Charlie hunched her shoulders in her light jacket.

  “Would you like a cup of hot coffee? I have a thermos in the car and we can get out of the wind.” She’d let her hair mature to a lovely gray with silver highlights. It would have settled into short smooth waves if not for the wind. “We can see the birds through the windshield and I can explain them to you in comfort.” She turned to the car and then turned back before taking a second step and said, “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m Clara Peterson. I live in Moot Point.”

  Charlie had no idea why this woman wanted to explain birds to her, but it was a chance to talk with another citizen of the village before her own identity was discovered. The bird lady soon had her ensconced in the passenger seat with a paper cup of coffee, a pair of binoculars, and a leaflet describing tufted puffins, common murres, storm petrels, cormorants, and sea gulls.

  “Are you with the Audubon Society?”

  “Oh no, I’m just with the Senior Volunteer Corps. We take turns explaining things to visitors. We help the Forest Service and the state parks people with whatever natural wonders are near our homes. It’s something to do and fun to meet people. Although it seems all too often to rain on my shift and make the visitors leave and the birds hard to see.”

  �
��All the more reason to bring your car.”

  “I’m so glad you understand. I thought you might be one of those young fitness people opposed to automobiles and packaged foods and homemade jam and refined sugars and every good thing that makes getting older at all comfortable. Oh, look, there on the rock closest to us, just to the right of that thumb-like outcrop near the end away from us and down about three feet? All the movement and color there? It’s a nest of puffins the gulls have been after and the parents are afraid to leave, even though all the eggs I can see have hatched.”

  Charlie obediently wedged her cup between her legs and raised the binoculars. She pretended to find the puffins and their endangered nest but managed to adjust the focus in time to catch the lesson in cormorants and their diving and fishing skills and the common murres who were supposed to look like penguins.

  “My husband wanted to retire near the ocean.” Clara Peterson’s husband had died two years later and she stayed on for the last fifteen alone. “Had I known I wouldn’t have left Milwaukee and near and dear friends. But Ralph loved oceans and mountains and there’s both here in very close proximity. Still, I’ve always enjoyed birds. I’ve made a life for myself. Moving home would be so expensive by now and most everyone’s passed away.”

  “I heard a woman passed away in some mysterious way last night.”

  “A neighbor of mine.” Clara sat silent staring out the windshield but not at birds. “I still can’t believe it. One of the reasons I’m delighted my shift is sunny and I have an excuse to come up here.” She didn’t look delighted. She looked half sick.

  “I thought I heard someone say she was riding a bicycle at seventy-eight? In the fog? At night?” Charlie took another slug of coffee and raised the binoculars again. “Obviously I heard wrong.”

  “Georgie was an amazing woman. So is Frank for that matter. That’s her husband. She scorned my driving up here, Georgie, and my using sugar in my baking. She wouldn’t let Frank eat meat or come to the senior citizen dinners at the community center. So he would walk into Chinook, mind you at his age, along the beach, and eat hot beef sandwiches with mashed potatoes and gravy and wash them down with chocolate malteds. Sometimes, when she was at a group meditation or whatever, he’d sneak over to my place for a piece of pie.”