Murder at Moot Point

by Marlys Millhiser

  “Are you telling me that old a woman could still ride a bicycle because she didn’t eat meat or sugar and that her husband could walk clear to Chinook because of that?”

  “Oh, no, they obviously must have extraordinary health to begin with. But she used medicinal herbs and positive thinking and made her husband do it too. They never doctored that I know of, even when the county nurse would come around and check blood pressure, cholesterol, vision, and hearing free for seniors. They even took their cat to this holistic veterinarian we have in Moot Point. Georgie said it was all a different way of living and thinking and perceiving.”

  “Well, the results were certainly impressive. Did she often ride her bike at night?”

  The bird lady stared owllike through the magnification of thick trifocals. “That is odd, isn’t it? I don’t remember that it even had a light on it. But then I’ve thought recently she’s been getting a little strange. Old people often do, you know.”

  Charlie could see suspicion forming in three different sizes behind the trifocals so she changed the subject. “That artist, Michael, who has so many paintings at the Scandia down in the village, has he done any of the rookeries or the birds, do you know?”

  Clara’s dawning suspicion switched to disapproval in a blink and a distinct straightening of the spine. “I wouldn’t know. His ‘art’ is far too expensive for me to bother with. He’s up at the lighthouse right now. You can ask him.” The lighthouse, she explained, her manner less friendly, was manned by the National Guard and visitors were rarely allowed inside. But the view was stunning.

  Charlie thanked her and headed for the wooden stairs, knowing she should be heading for the Hide-a-bye instead. Stunning views, she’d found, often meant yawning areas of nothing where next you step. Besides, she’d have to come down them again. A dangerous thing if you’re afraid to watch your feet.

  Charlie stopped at the top of the stairs to catch her breath and tried not to stare. Michael was what was stunning. Michael brought to mind a combination of Heathcliff and Nureyev, and his bored glance carried the wallop of Mitch Hilsten, the superstar. He sat on a folding canvas stool, a sketch pad crimped between his knees, a camera hanging by a strap down his chest, a palette and brush in hand. His easel was hammered into the soil, the canvas lashed to it with an intricate arrangement of wires that kept it from being blown off the point.

  Dark, jagged-cut, shoulder-length hair whipped out behind him as did a white scarf tied about his neck above a Navy pea jacket. He was beautiful and looked completely mad.

  Charlie stepped quickly out of his line of vision.

  “Glance at my work, madam, and you are dead,” he said between his teeth. He sounded like Peter O’Toole but more arty than British.

  “I was just looking for a pathway down the north side of the headland to get to the Hide-a-bye. Is there one?”

  “Behind the lighthouse and assorted buildings and then behind the latrines, you will find a macadam pathway leading down off this precipice, across a small meadow, and to your destination. Please do make haste so that you will not be late.”

  Charlie copped a glance at the canvas and took off for the lighthouse. This was obviously not the time to ask him why he hated Georgette Glick, but she could certainly see how she might have come to hate him.

  The lighthouse was solid and uninformative, but a one-story building nestled up against it was half window on three sides. A woman in a uniform and a ponytail dangling from under a baseball cap, worn backwards, talked into a microphone hanging from the ceiling and chewed gum at the same time. There were several sheds behind the lighthouse with the same whitewash and red roofs and then two Porta Potties. Next to them a blacktopped trail had been cut between bushes.

  The path was certainly preferable to a flight of stairs. But as Charlie followed it, it grew darker, more claustrophobic. The bushes wanted to grow together across the path. They’d been sliced off smooth on either side but rebellious twig fingers poked through a restraining fence of wire mesh and caught at her hair, prodded her shoulders as if to get her attention. Charlie was highly aware of unknown bird calls and rustlings in the impenetrable underbrush to either side.

  Chapter 7

  Charlie’s breath came in labored gasps as she climbed the path up from the beach to the Hide-a-bye. She’d been alone for what seemed hours with the sounds of Mother Nature menacing her every step. She’d seen not one other soul since the lighthouse and had ended up walking so fast she was soon running in a body highly unaccustomed to such things.

  She was half ashamed for letting herself get so spooked, but her kidneys were in full agony because of the tea and coffee she’d consumed while being nosy. So when she saw the lights in the windows of her cabin and the official county Bronco parked at the door behind, she stormed inside. “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Which was a stupid question. The sheriff obviously was sitting at her table stuffing his face again and watching the tube at the same time. Before he could answer her, she raced back to the john.

  “And where the hell have you been?” he countered when she returned. “You knew you were supposed to stay put.”

  “How did you get in here?”

  “Through the door. You left it unlocked.”

  “I did not.”

  He lifted her room key, unmistakable on the end of its plastic sea urchin, and waved it at her. “There’s been murder done around here and you don’t even lock your door. Unless you’re the murderer, that’s pretty stupid.”

  “You know perfectly well I’m not the murderer.”

  He poured Oregon cabernet into a thick wine glass, Hide-a-bye scrolled in white letters across it, and handed it to her, his brow heavy with menace. “So what have you been up to?”

  She took a sip and glared back at him. This guy was getting to her. “This wine’s sour.”

  “Oregon wine has structure.” His glance kept shifting back and forth from her face to the television screen behind her. “So what have you been up to? Or have I already asked that?”

  “I tended the Earth Spirit for Jack while he went to the celebration for Georgette.”

  “Where? What’s to celebrate?”

  “I don’t know where. But Georgette is to be congratulated because she has now entered the highest consciousness possible.”

  “She’d dead.”

  “Right.” The second sip wasn’t so sour. The third began to feel good. “Then I had tea and sympathy with Paige Magill, the greenhouse dream counselor. She left the celebration early.”

  “… the Soviet foreign minister said today while on a tour of day-care centers.”

  “What’s a dream counselor do?”

  “Beats me. You’re the sheriff, you find out. Then I sat still for a full lecture on sea birds off the point from the bird lady, you know—puffins and murres and cormorants. Then I met Michael-Nureyev-Heathcliff-Hilsten, probably the rudest artist in the world. He does the seascapes in the Scandia. Oh, I forgot, in between the bird lady and the tea and sympathy I met Gladys Bergkvist at the Scandia Art Gallery.”

  “Just out visiting, or doing a little detecting on the side? I don’t need anymore screwups on this case. My own are enough.”

  “Why would I be out detecting, Sheriff? Why not just sit around and wait for somebody to drop the answers in my lap, give me back my car, and let me go home? Wait maybe three, four years? I have nothing better to do. Except a daughter, a job, a mortgage, car payments, assorted bills, and if I’m not careful—a cat. Your problem is, you watch too much television.”

  “My second wife reads nothing but mysteries, not even newspapers. Won’t read anything where the woman doesn’t solve the crime on her own and show up the law. What comes from having been married to a cop.”

  “The Dow Jones was down again today but trading on the world markets remained steady.”

  “What do women cops read?” Charlie asked him.

  “Famed film star, Mitch Hilsten, broke ground for a hos
pital for sea and shore birds and mammals in Anchorage today. He says the new two-million dollar installation will help save the lives of hundreds of thousands of creatures caught in the deadly mire of oil spills in one of the last inhabited pristine areas left on earth.”

  “I do not understand what you women see in that guy,” the sheriff said when Charlie turned back from the television screen that had finally caught her attention. “He can’t even be six foot.”

  “So what have you been up to?” she asked.

  “Talked to some of the same people you did. But nobody mentioned a bird lady or a Michael Heathcliff.”

  “Clara Peterson. She lives next to the Glicks, explains sea birds to tourists for some senior volunteer organization. Did you ask Frank why his wife was out riding her bike in the fog at night? His seventy-eight-year-old wife? Clara didn’t think the bike even had a headlight.”

  Sheriff Bennett took a small notebook from his shirt pocket and flipped through a few pages. “Clara Peterson, sixty-eight, widow. Lives in the house just behind the Glicks’. Wasn’t home when I called. What else did you find out about her?”

  “She used to slip desserts to Frank when Georgette was away. Georgette wouldn’t let him have refined sugar or meat. Bird lady Clara thinks Frank walked the beach clear to Chinook to eat hot beef sandwiches with mashed potatoes and gravy. Jack thinks he did it to ogle sweet young things. Clara doesn’t like Michael. His pictures are strange. He’s definitely a Grape-Nut. Georgette hated him.”

  “Wait a minute.” His full attention returned to her from the sports news. “Who told you this?”

  “Gladys from the Scandia. But she didn’t tell me why. But Paige said that Georgie was a busybody and got on some people’s nerves. Maybe Michael’s. Maybe Paige’s.”

  “Hold it right there.” He came around to her side of the table and switched off the TV. Standing behind her chair, he rocked on his feet so hard the floor shook. “Paige Magill didn’t tell me that about Mrs. Glick. And Gladys Bergkvist didn’t even mention this Michael. Not to me.”

  “Nobody’s going to offer up information to you, you’re the law. You’re the sheriff investigating a murder in their tiny village. They’re confused and scared. Don’t know what they might say that could incriminate them even if they’re innocent.”

  “I’ve known most of them for years. Most of them voted for me.”

  “That was before a little old lady was shot to death practically in their front yards. Get real.”

  “You’re talking to me. And you’re a stranger.”

  “Did you wine them and dine them and console them? You admit you think they’re all Grape-Nuts.” Why was he playing dumb with her?

  “I have to feed you, you don’t have a car. Now I want to hear everything you learned today, lady. I don’t want you withholding one stray thought. You listening to me?”

  Charlie gave him a second-by-second re-creation of her afternoon leaving out no detail and making it as boring as possible. She even included the wonderful messages on the T-shirts Jack offered for sale at the Earth Spirit.

  The sheriff had taken the chair beside her and was showing signs of drowsiness when she, lifting the wine bottle they’d emptied between them, wrapped up her discourse with, “What’s all the gunk left on the bottom of the bottle? Wait, I know, don’t tell me, that’s the—”

  “Structure. See, our vineyards are young, our vintners still learning the soil and climate. But more and more often now you pick up a bottle of the local stuff and it blows you aaa-way.”

  He leaned too close and Charlie drew back. “How many wives have you gone through, Wes?”

  “Three too many. And three divorces. And never again do I get into that.”

  “Good plan. Just cooking for you would be an experience.”

  He grunted. “Would you believe my last wife wouldn’t even cook? Big-deal career woman.”

  “I can believe. How many kids, three?”

  “How’d you know? One by the first, two by the second. But no more. Cops shouldn’t marry.”

  He was leaning again. When this man leaned it was like Mount St. Helens about to tip over. Charlie slid out the other side of her chair. “How did Frank explain his wife’s riding her bike at night?”

  “They had a fight.”

  “Your kids live with their mothers?”

  “I pay support for two of them. Oldest, I can’t deal with.”

  “Well, I deal with and support one. If you’ll excuse me,” Charlie grabbed the last of the cherries and headed for the telephone.

  “What’s going on down there? I told Grandma you’d better have that cat in the shelter by now.” Charlie could hear a rattling sound in the background. “Is that the cat or Doug?”

  “Oh, Mom, you should see him. He’s cracking me up. He’s sticking his cold wet little nose into my neck.” She squealed and the rattle deepened. That was the cat.

  “Tell her you and the cat have already bonded.” That was definitely Doug.

  “Will you get that kid out of the house, Libby? It’s a school night. Where’s Edwina?”

  “She’s over at Maggie’s. She didn’t want to be here when you called. In case you’re in jail, I suppose. Have they arrested you?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I wish I’d taken Tuxedo’s picture before and after. Now he’s silky and fluffy and jumps around and his little pink mouth smiles.” Libby had found the creature in the MacDonald’s parking lot on the way to a friend’s house and rushed him home to be nursed by a doting grandmother. “He was so bedraggled and forlorn. He’s done nothing but eat since I brought him home.”

  Charlie hadn’t known her daughter knew words like forlorn. She made an effort to be reasonable. “He could belong to somebody, honey. Cats do wander.”

  “This is a kitten, Mother, not a cat big enough to wander. He’s obviously abandoned. But we’ve put ‘found’ signs around the neighborhood and notified the animal shelter.”

  “That’s not you I hear talking. Somebody’s feeding you lines. Is it Doug or Edwina? Is it Maggie? If she’s there I want to talk to her.”

  Libby Greene delivered a quick, sharp exit line and broke the connection. Her mother sat staring at the receiver as if it could talk on its own.

  The mammoth hand of the law lifted it from hers and replaced it. The hand’s owner sounded genuinely concerned. “You choking on a cherry pit, Charlie? You look awful.”

  “My daughter just told me to fuck off.”

  “It’s just a word, not a bullet. You’ll live. Can’t be the first time you heard her use it.”

  “Never on me, not that way. It sounds so different coming from your own daughter.” Charlie decided to give up swearing. “I don’t want her to be like me.”

  “You’re not so bad. No great detective, but quite a woman, and it sounds to me like a great mother.”

  “I don’t want my daughter to be a mother at sixteen.” And Charlie lost it right there. No one was more surprised than she was. She pushed away from the consoling arms of the law and made another dash for the bathroom, this time for a tissue.

  “I don’t figure you,” the sheriff of Moot County said when she returned. “You see a dead woman pulled from under your car, face suspicion of murder, and then break up over a smart-mouth teenager on the telephone.” He had a curious way of grinning, the sheriff. The humor was all in his eyes and his mouth stayed closed with one corner turning down in a wryly self-deprecating manner that would have passed for a smirk on anyone else.

  His smile suggested that his size was no big deal, that he was in reality no threat, just a good-natured guy. It tempted you to join in. Charlie was wiping dumb tears off her face and could feel the corners of her mouth tilting upward when his beeper went off, startling them both.

  “Mind if I use your phone?”

  “Might as well, made yourself at home every other way.”

  But he was already talking, “This is Bennett. Yeah? Where? On my way.” He headed for the door.
“They’ve found the gun. See you in the morning and you stay put, hear?”

  “Sheriff, you can’t leave me. The tide’s up, I haven’t got a car, and I haven’t had dinner.”

  “Bought you all kinds of food today in Chinook.”

  “And you just ate it.”

  He came back down the hall and stared from her to the table, opened the refrigerator door, slammed it, and stood indecisively as if searching for a retort that just wasn’t there. “Anybody ever tell you you’re a pain in the brisket?”

  Chapter 8

  Charlie sat in the Moot County Bronco and watched Wes Bennett lumber about in front of the headlights. She’d been ordered to “stay put” again. Lights, flashing on the tops of the Bronco and the squad car parked a length or two ahead, bounced off the thick forest on either side of the road like a frenzied invasion of aliens.

  Charlie rolled the window down and the night filled with the sounds of sea wind and tree creaks. And of too many men standing around snorting and talk-growling. A woman deputy joined the melee and added a nervous giggle.

  They were on the road that swung down off Highway 101 to the village of Moot Point. Charlie could see the lights of the last retirement trailer in front of the squad car ahead of her. A section of the ditch and roadside had been cordoned off and was getting a good flashlight search. The air coming in the window was chilly and smelled a lot like Paige Magill’s greenhouse.

  Charlie was about to roll the window back up when a man marched into the various circles of light and demanded to know who was in charge. The uniforms present pointed at Wes as if cued. The civilian, nearly bald and dressed for success, had the nose and general shape of Frank Glick. He expressed his ire with jerky arm motions and volume rather than explicit language but his aim was clear. He informed everyone that he had some clout with the government in this state and was so appalled that an innocent old woman could come to such a mean end in Oregon, he had a mind to use his influence in Salem to see that pressure was applied where appropriate and justice speeded up. And where “for Christ’s sake” was the woman who had run over his poor old mother? This man was of an age to be a grandfather himself.