Murder at Moot Point

by Marlys Millhiser

  “So they’re still lettin’ you run around loose, are they? No wonder Randolph couldn’t find you in jail. Or did you break out? You read about that all the time in the papers.”

  “How often?” She backed up to let him pass.

  “How often what?” He went right on by and Charlie could see through the thin beard why he wore one. He had almost no chin.

  She changed her course to follow him. “How often do you read of women breaking out of jail? Or committing murder for that matter?”

  “Happens all the time. You women are getting so independent you think just being female will get you out of anything. Women do every terrible thing on earth men do.”

  “But what are the odds, Mr. Glick? Considering we outnumber men, what are the odds that any crime is committed by a woman?”

  “Well, now, all abortions are, aren’t they?” He jogged to the right and into the shadow of the bank under the Hide-a-bye. “Half the kids are staying in cabins up there and if they see me they’ll come down and insist on trying to coddle me and then they’ll start weeping again. Drive a guy nuts. Appreciate them all better over the telephone.”

  Charlie trotted along beside him. If he felt like chatting she felt like listening. “Don’t you want to weep too? Don’t you miss her?”

  “Course I miss her. After all these years ain’t nobody else going to know how I like my Cream of Wheat cooked for breakfast, you can be darned sure. She even picked out my shirts and my underwear at the store. When she mended something, it fell apart before the mending did. Think I want to go out and buy toilet paper and write checks for the bills and all? Hell, I been retired practically longer than I worked. My wife took care of things I wasn’t about to. Now who’s going to do all that? And who’d of thought she’d be stupid enough to get herself shot so’s I’d be in this predicament, anyhow? No understanding women.”

  “If you think I shot your wife, why aren’t you afraid to be walking the beach with me?”

  “I’m no crazy old woman on a bicycle you can just go around shooting because you feel like it.”

  “Frank, did Georgette’s bike have lights for night riding?”

  “Hell, no, had enough fancy junk on it anyway because fancy Brother Dennis said she’d better have it. That long-haired queer wasted more of my retirement money than the government. Him and that Jack Monroe with all those stupid books and tapes and rocks.” They skirted the next headland and he moved closer to the water.

  “What did you argue about night before last when she went out to ride her bike?”

  “I’d been saving up, on the sly like, these articles about how watching sports on television is good for a man’s health and how decaffeinated coffee pumps up his cholesterol count and how margarine is more dangerous than real butter because it’s made of stuff they don’t have to tell you about on the package and how real sugar is natural too and that red meat is good for the prostate.” He laughed deep and rich and all his shaggy eyebrows lifted into little tents over his eyes. He tapped her shoulder conspiratorially. “Been saving them for I don’t know how long. Then I springs them on her all at once. You’d of thought I hit her. Those old lips got tighter and that old back straighter than a flagpole. I had her then.”

  Yeah, but you don’t have her now. “So she just got mad and left? Jumped on her bike? In the fog? In the dark? With no lights?”

  “She got mad and left. That’s all I know. It got later and later and finally I put on my slicker and went looking for her. She’s old, you know, never know what an old woman will do. They’re not rational anymore. Found her and her bicycle dead under your car.” He stopped to stare down at Charlie and the sea breeze blew his wispy hairs all in the same direction. “Ain’t fair. I don’t even know what size undershorts I wear.”

  They walked on in companionable silence, his pace impressive, Charlie forgetting to worry about whether he was the murderer—spouses often were but generally not at this age—or even that he would make a grab for her body. “Do you think you should walk clear to Chinook this morning, Mr. Glick? Your family will worry.”

  “Man can’t get any peace back there. Just because I’m old don’t mean I enjoy being treated like a kid.”

  If this section was any indication, the Oregon Coast was one clean, deserted, long, beautiful beach after another separated by rocks and headlands with passable footpaths. Even the birds gleaning the wet sand or sunning on the dry appeared little bothered at their approach. The surf had left few footprints from yesterday in its wake, giving the illusion of treading virgin sands. The experience was unreal but Charlie still wasn’t ready for the wreck of the Peter Iredale when they suddenly came upon it.

  She’d been lost in thought somewhere, seeing it from a distance but not really taking it in and then she was standing next to it, stopped in her tracks while Georgette’s husband continued on without her. The Peter Iredale was not on the rocks but embedded in the sand, broken in two, and upright. It was rusted metal bones with the wooden flesh vanished to holes. Even most of the bones were gone, but what was left was so out of place on the pristine beach it was haunting.

  There was no fog this morning. Charlie saw no sailors in the wreckage as she had in Mad Michael’s painting. But Charlie Greene turned on her heel, letting a seventy-nine-year-old bereaved widower walk off alone, and ran back the way she’d come. For the first time in her life Charlie wondered if she was in need of a dream counselor.

  By the time she arrived at the village some of her reason had been restored and, rather than rush up to Paige’s greenhouse so early, she stopped at Rose’s for a bagel and a think.

  Sheriff Bennett and Randolph Glick arrived just as her cup was being refilled. They sat on either side of the table next to hers and glared at each other in obvious anger and as enemies.

  Both noticed Charlie at the same time, and when the murdered woman’s son realized who she was both men were transformed into buddies bonded in righteousness.

  Chapter 10

  The sheriff of Moot County demanded to know how Charlie had escaped her cabin at the Hide-a-bye and the eldest of Georgie’s children wanted to know where Charlie had buried Frank’s body. And both pretty much at the same time.

  “Now it’s my father,” Randolph shouted. “What is it you have against our family? Sheriff, arrest this woman.”

  Rose brought Charlie an unsolicited orange juice and a surreptitious wink. The coffee was fresh ground, the orange juice fresh squeezed, and Charlie sensed she was in all-natural, organic trouble. She tried to convince herself she wasn’t particularly intimidated.

  “When I left the Hide-a-bye there was no one there from your office so I thought you’d changed your mind about my having to stay,” she lied to Sheriff Wes. That earned him a venomous look from the firstborn Glick who didn’t have much of a repertoire when it came to expressions. Then Charlie explained to Randolph that she had last seen his father walking purposefully along the beach toward Chinook.

  “He finds you all too coddling and irritating and resents your treating him like a child and he wanted some fresh air.” Not to mention hot beef sandwiches, young female figures, chocolate malteds, and to discover the size of his jockeys for all Charlie knew.

  “He can’t be off on his own at a time like this.” Frank’s son was on his feet. “Who knows what he’ll do?”

  Both men headed for the door, Wes bellowing for Charlie to stay put until he could send Deputy “Whatever-her-name-is” to pick her up.

  “We don’t have many murders around here,” Rose said, watching the door sweep shut behind them, “but I don’t recall one ever going unsolved since Wes Bennett was elected sheriff.” She wiped thoughtfully at the ring the orange juice glass had left on the oilcloth. “Most counties can’t claim that.”

  Charlie slipped ample payment under her plate and stood, planning not to wait for Deputy What’s-her-name, gambling—merely on the basis of that wink—that Rose wouldn’t try to stop her and no one else would want to get involved eit
her. She counted five customers and two waiters.

  The proprietress had dark hair with gray roots and dark eyes that squinted up at Charlie myopically. “But it seems to me if you’d killed Georgie you’d be long gone. He must think so too.”

  Rose slipped the cash from under the plate and into the stretched-out pocket of her stretched-out cardigan, turning her back on Charlie’s exit.

  “Do you have a degree in psychology or anything?” Charlie followed as Paige Magill sprayed mist from a special hose on the hanging plants at the greenhouse windows.

  “A master’s is all.” The dream counselor snipped off a dead blossom between two fingernails and tossed it at a plastic garbage pail. “There’s lots of people out there counseling with less. But if you want to know the truth, Charlie,” the backdrop of bright flowering plants and deep green ferns diffusing the light around her gave Paige an ethereal quality all out of keeping with her jeans and work shirt, “I’ve learned most of what I know since I came to Moot Point. You’ve had a dream, haven’t you? One that bothers you. Just let me put on the teakettle and we’ll talk about it.”

  Charlie sincerely did not believe in dream counseling or that dreams meant anything, but she wanted to learn as much as she could before the nameless deputy grabbed her off the streets and hauled her back to the Hide-a-bye. That was the only reason she sat in the darkened kitchen drinking that strange earthy tea, surrounded by the earthy smell of the greenhouse, telling this Paige Magill about her uncharacteristic reaction to the wreck of the Peter Iredale. Wasn’t it?

  “But your reaction on seeing Michael’s painting of the Peter Iredale wasn’t as strong as seeing it for real?” Huge almond eyes had narrowed to slits as Charlie talked. All the place needed was a cat and a broomstick. “Even though in your dream there was fog too, but today was clear?”

  “Doesn’t make sense, does it? When I saw the painting in the Scandia it made me uncomfortable but I didn’t know why. When I saw the real thing this morning I remembered the nightmare that brought me up out of bed my first day here.”

  “You really didn’t remember that dream yesterday when we talked? I thought you were holding out on me.” Paige opened the almond slits to wide and leaned across the table. “I can’t help you, Charlie, unless you tell me the truth. What did you dream about last night?”

  “I dreamed I was bobbing against the ceiling looking down at myself in bed.”

  Paige sat back in her chair, drew a knee up to hug, and wrinkled her nose, satisfaction deepening her dimples.

  “Everybody does that,” Charlie insisted. “It’s the first dream that’s haunting me.”

  “And nobody from the village was in your dream?”

  “No, I would have mentioned that.”

  “As your dream therapist, I’m going to tell you something at no charge. Because I want you to keep coming back. You know about therapy? If you don’t keep needing it, the therapist will starve.” Paige Magill giggled, then put both feet on the floor and took hold of Charlie’s hands on the table. “Those dreams are connected, Charlie.”

  The man in the lumberjack shirt practicing t’ai chi yesterday was in a dirty lab coat this morning chasing a German shepherd toward Charlie as she reached the road after leaving the greenhouse. Expecting a sheriff’s deputy in a car, she was run over by the dog instead. It uttered a parting growl and bounced off her chest. Its pursuer shouted for her not to move, he’d be back in a moment.

  Charlie was sitting up resting her elbows on her knees and her forehead against her palms when the dirty lab coat knelt beside her, its owner puffing and shaking his head. “Lost him.”

  “May he rest in peace.” Charlie pushed herself to her feet and the lush green world swam for a moment. This had to be the holistic vet Clara the bird lady had mentioned.

  “I’m Doc Withers,” he said. Charlie shook the hand he offered to support her.

  “Charlie Greene. Sorry about the dog. I hope he doesn’t get run over on the highway.”

  “Eddie’ll head for home. But I’ll have to sedate him to get him back here for surgery. Infected dewclaw. I’m the local animal doctor.” Doc Withers was as tall and almost as gaunt as Frank Glick. His dark-rimmed glasses were too small for his face, and he had on worn Levi’s under his lab coat. “You’re Jack’s agent, huh? What kind of books do you agent?”

  “I don’t do animal books,” Charlie answered quickly.

  “That’s a shame. There needs to be one available on proper holistic health medicine for small animals. Listen, I have to call Eddie’s owner and warn him to be on the lookout. But won’t you come in for a cup of coffee? Least I can do after letting my patient knock you down that way. I’ve never met an agent before.”

  Charlie’s first reaction was to say no, because she needed another client like she needed a vent hole in her forehead. And she needed more caffeine even less. But she accepted. Charlie did need to get off the street before Wes’s deputy discovered her. And here was another member of the community willing to talk.

  Charlie found it curious that the prime suspect in Georgette’s murder was invited so graciously into homes in such a small place where everyone would know of her involvement. She said as much to Doc Withers when they were seated in the cubicle he called a kitchen. Three cats, two parakeets, and a puppy watched her every move. The place looked immaculate but smelled of incense and pet potty-training.

  Doc leaned his chair back against his oven door. “That’s because we’re so gullible here. We believe we’re all one in spirit so it’s hard to be suspicious of others. We love everybody like we love ourselves because we’re all bites off the same cookie. Of course explaining this way of thinking is damn near impossible. When it hits you, you know. And I can see by your expression it hasn’t hit you. Don’t worry, when you’re ready it will.”

  “Some people don’t find it that hard to separate themselves from Michael the artist.”

  “Poor guy, talk about the Dark Ages. When awareness hits him, he’s going to be so dumbfounded he’ll probably have a heart attack.” Doc Withers shook his head and then nodded it, rocking his chair in jerky rhythm. “But I’ll admit that man’s hard to relate to now.”

  His glasses had one bow affixed by a circle of wire where a tiny screw should have held it on. His hair looked like he’d cut it himself, impatiently, different lengths wherever it became a nuisance. Sort of like Michael’s but much shorter and with no pretense toward artistry.

  “Of course, here you just walk into my house without questioning whether or not I’m the murderer too. I mean you don’t know me. And if you didn’t kill Georgie somebody else around here did.” He wore hiking boots like Frank’s and an awkward smile.

  Everyone in this place seemed so nice, so friendly, so “centered.” Yet one of them … “Why would anyone want to shoot an old woman on a Schwinn?”

  The holistic animal doctor shrugged and brought his chair down on all its feet to pour her more coffee. Charlie felt her bladder wince. “Wes Bennett asked me that and asked me that,” he said, “and the whole thing is so out of sync with Moot Point I come up blank every time I think about it. I mean this place is so laid back—”

  “I’ve heard Georgie was a little overly interested in other people’s business.”

  “That’s small town anywhere.” But his smile straightened, a hint of confusion replaced its reflection behind the glasses as he considered what he’d said. Then he shrugged off the discomfort and started nodding again. “I know, I know. Murder happens in small town anywheres too.”

  “Could she have seen something even in the fog? Come across someone doing something they’d kill to keep secret? Was someone just target shooting and hit her by accident?”

  “Why would anybody go target shooting in the fog at night?” he asked.

  One of the cats crawled uninvited onto Charlie’s lap, turned itself around three times, and curled up to make a warm spot. Charlie watched its tongue take a few swipes at a paw and then it snuggled into a purr. />
  Her host stood to peer over the tabletop. “I’ve never seen Mortimer accept a stranger so easily. You must have a way with cats.”

  “I don’t even have a way with kids.” The creature sounded a lot like the one named Tuxedo who had kidnapped the affections of her daughter. “What kind of secret could the village have worth murdering for?”

  “We aren’t a united community. Lots of loners and individuals live here. But the people who own guns tend to be those living outside of awareness at this point, the retired laborers on pension who still hunt, that kind. Why are Georgie’s colleagues in the search for expanded consciousness any more suspicious than merchants, or the widows of retired loggers? We’re actually a pretty peaceful lot.”

  “The widows hunt and carry guns?”

  “Well, probably not. But weapons are still lying around the house.”

  “Where did Michael the painter come from? How long has he lived here in Moot Point?” Charlie watched the gears change behind the dark-rimmed glasses. “I met him yesterday and I realize the population here is diversified but even so, he doesn’t seem to fit in.”

  “Town’s full of artistic types of one kind or another. A lot of people are jealous of Michael because his paintings sell for fabulous prices. An engineer with a steady job and benefits might make more but that kind of job doesn’t exist near enough to here to provide us with other types to envy. Just because many of us are working toward higher consciousness in which envy doesn’t exist doesn’t mean we’ve reached it yet. Do you understand?”

  Charlie didn’t but continued, “Why does it seem like Brother Dennis runs this place? I’ve met him and frankly charisma doesn’t quite answer my question. But it’s like everybody’s studying with him. Like he’s a guru or something.”