I Scarce Can Die (Quill Gordon Mystery Book 5)

by Michael Wallace

  “How’d that work for you?”

  “Pretty well. She painted while I fished. A couple of times she painted me fishing. But I was starting to say, she asked me to catch trout for breakfast each trip, and I couldn’t do it. I caught plenty of fish, but not when I had to in the morning.”

  “Too much pressure.”

  “Something like that. Then I try doing it when I’m with you and get two fish in six casts. Go figure.”

  “I must bring you luck.”

  “There has to be another explanation.”

  “Where did you catch them?”

  “The pool just below the house. It was barely light.”

  “You must have been the only person in town who was up then.”

  Gordon’s mind flashed to the woman in the window.

  “Not exactly,” he said.

  NELL QUINN, the woman who initially contacted NGNC on Gary Baxter’s behalf, lived in Pass City, 12 miles up the Bellota River from Dutchtown. The state highway continued from there to Bellota Pass (elevation 8,168), hence the name. Pass City was located in a narrow valley at an elevation of 4,900 feet and had a population of 327 in the 1990 census. It was essentially a half-mile-long commercial strip along the highway, extending a block or two on either side to the residential areas. It had a two-pump gas station, three boutiques, a small grocery store, a small church down a side street, four restaurants, two motels, and Gustavson’s Bellota River Resort. Sunset Magazine had called Gustavson’s one of California’s ten best mountain resorts in 1959, and the place had attracted little notice since then.

  The drive up was lovely. Shortly after Dutchtown, the highway crossed the river, which ran along the right side of the road most of the way. It had plenty of water this late in the season, and the water cascaded down the mountain in a series of rapids, riffles and pools. The remaining oak trees yielded to pines not far from Dutchtown, and the valley in which Pass City sat had a distinct Alpine feel to it. There was even an establishment on the far side of town called Benoit’s Swiss Chalet, which had clearly been boarded up for years.

  One of the boutiques, Bellota Pottery, belonged to Nell, as did Nell’s Bed and Breakfast, a four-room Victorian establishment painted in bright yellow, with white trim. With the mountain air washed totally clean by the previous day’s rains, the yellow house was impossible to miss in the morning sun. It was on the left side as Gordon and Peter drove through. Gordon slowed down, checked the mirror, and made a U-turn in the middle of the highway. There was no one to tell him he couldn’t; in fact, they’d seen only four other cars on the 12-mile drive.

  “She said to come to the house,” Gordon said.

  They climbed out of the Cherokee. The house was slightly up the hill from the pottery shop, and all of it could be seen from the roadway. They climbed a long flight of stairs leading to a porch with several wicker chairs and two small tables flanking the front door. When they turned around, they could see over the town to the river, and to the edge of the valley on their left and right. Gordon reached for the knocker on the front door, but the door opened before his hand got there.

  The woman who stood in the doorway was in her early to mid-thirties and attractive in a sensible, ordinary way. She was five-and-a-half feet tall, neither thin nor plump, with reddish brown hair pulled behind her head in a short ponytail. Her eyes were gray, her face was freckled, and its expression was slightly wary. She wore an ankle-length dark skirt and a lavender blouse with an apron over it.

  “You must be Gordon,” she said, extending her hand.

  “And you must be Nell,” he said, taking it. “This is my colleague, Dr. Peter Delaney.”

  “Doctor?” she said. “Are you a forensics expert?”

  “Just a humble surgeon,” Peter replied, taking her hand. “And Watson to Gordon’s Holmes.”

  “This isn’t a laughing matter,” she said. “And we could use a forensics expert, because that’s just one of the things they got wrong when they railroaded Gary.”

  Gordon and Peter glanced sideways at each other.

  “Please come in.”

  She stepped aside, and they entered. The house was well heated, and the morning chill was soon a memory. On the right of the small entry area was a living room, with an unlit fireplace and furniture suitable to the vintage of the house. On the left was a parlor area with four tables, where, presumably, the guests ate breakfast. She showed them into that room.

  “I made coffee cake this morning, but there was only one couple staying here, so plenty left. Could I offer you some?”

  “Sure,” Gordon said.

  “Would you like tea or coffee with that? I have my own blend of breakfast tea.”

  Gordon glanced at Peter. “The tea would be great, thank you,” he said.

  “Have a seat and I’ll be back in five minutes.”

  They sat at a table by the window. It had two chairs, and Peter pulled one from another table for Nell when she came back. He looked around the room at the paintings of local scenes that hung on the walls.

  “No Macondrays,” he finally said.

  “Nope,” Gordon said, “but I think she’d like to paint this valley.”

  “Any reason we’re not staying here?”

  Gordon lowered his voice to a near-whisper. “The official line is that we have to be in Dutchtown, where it all went down. But I was also afraid if we stayed here, we’d get sucked into the case so totally there wouldn’t be time for fishing.”

  Peter nodded.

  Nell returned shortly with an enormous tray that held a quart brown pottery teapot, three mugs of varying designs that also appeared to have come from the pottery studio, a large plate holding several generous slices of coffee cake and three smaller plates on which she placed cut pieces of cake. She poured tea into the three mugs and took a sip of her own. Gordon and Peter tasted theirs.

  “Nice,” Peter said. “It has a slight metallic taste, which is good. Is that from the water?”

  She shook her head. “Blended into the tea. One of my secrets. It plays against the sweetness of the breakfast pastries.”

  The coffee cake was moist and delicious, with diced walnuts and apples (Gravensteins from an orchard up the hill, Nell said), redolent of cinnamon and another spice Gordon couldn’t identify. The men complimented her on it, and she allowed herself a quick smile.

  “So you’re the one the Not Guilty people sent up to investigate.”

  “Not quite, but close.” Gordon said. “NGNC isn’t officially involved at this point. I’ve just been asked to do some preliminary investigation to see if there’s anything to go on.”

  “Oh, there’s plenty to go on. You’ve read the transcript of the trial, I assume?”

  “Not yet,” Gordon said. “I’m meeting with the attorney Monday morning.”

  “The so-called attorney. A chickadee in a cage would have spoken up more for Gary.”

  “Tell you what,” Gordon said, opening the folio he had brought with him. “The attorney, Mr. Pope, said he’d have a transcript for me, but maybe it would help if you told me ahead of time what you think the problem areas are.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere. Where should I start?”

  “Wherever you think you should.”

  “Well, first of all, it was pretty obvious the sheriff and the DA had it in for Gary. He found the body, they’d been called to the house before over domestic arguments, and they just assumed he did it. No one ever bothered to look into what kind of person he really was. If they had, they’d have realized he couldn’t have killed her.”

  “And why was that?” Peter asked.

  “He’s always been one of the kindest, gentlest people you’d ever want to know. Look, I’ve known him since he was four, and he’s never hurt anyone. He got into trouble a few times over silly ideas he had — bad impulses, really — but it was never anything serious, never anything violent.”

  “How well did you know him?” Gordon asked.

  “We grew up two house
s apart on Union Street, so really well. We played together and talked together for years. He had a difficult time with his mother, and then his stepfather, and I knew what he was feeling because he told me. He was really sensitive, probably too sensitive for a small town where that isn’t understood.”

  Peter shifted in his chair. “It seems that as an adult anyway, he had a drinking problem …”

  “He didn’t have a drinking problem, he had a wife problem. He married the wrong woman, and that brought him down. Connie was grasping, always wanting more for herself and belittling Gary because he couldn’t provide it. He felt that very deeply, and tried to bury the feelings in alcohol.”

  “Do you know if he ever considered leaving her?” Gordon asked.

  “Good God, no. Haven’t you been listening? He loved her. That’s why he never would have killed her.”

  EVENTUALLY, GORDON WAS ABLE to maneuver the conversation back to the trial. It turned out that Nell had been in court as a spectator for every minute of it, and, unsurprisingly, she had strong opinions about how it had gone.

  “I don’t think Brad Pope was the right attorney to represent Gary. To begin with, it was his first murder trial, and he almost seemed to be in cahoots with the DA and the sheriff. It was as if he thought Gary was guilty and was just going through the motions.”

  “You said it was his first murder trial,” Gordon said. “Had he ever done much criminal law?”

  “Oh, sure. That’s how he got the job. They turn to him when the defendant can’t afford a lawyer. And Gary and Connie were definitely broke. But representing car burglars and drunk drivers is hardly proper training for taking on a murder case.”

  “Still, at some point, there has to be the first one.”

  “The inexperience showed.”

  “Can you give me an example?”

  “The blood spatters. The medical examiner testified that Connie had been hit from behind with a hammer with enough force that her blood spattered all over the wall behind her. That means it should have hit the person who hit her, right?”

  “Seems like a reasonable assumption,” Peter said.

  “But when the sheriffs arrived, Gary was wearing a shirt and pants that had no blood spatters on them. He had blood on the cuff of his shirt, where he touched her after he found the body, but nothing on the front of his shirt or pants.”

  “Did that come up at trial?” Gordon asked.

  “It came up. Pope asked the medical examiner about it, and the doctor said he couldn’t answer the question. You could see that caught the prosecution by surprise. On the last day of the prosecution’s case, they produced an expert witness from out of town on blood spatters who said it was possible that the person who killed Connie didn’t get hit with her blood.”

  “What was the explanation?”

  “You’ll see it in the transcript. It was rambling gobbledygook, and Pope just accepted it.”

  “Is there any possibility,” Peter said, “that Gary changed out of his clothes before the sheriffs arrived?”

  “He wouldn’t have had much time, and I doubt he was thinking that clearly. When they took him to the station, his blood-alcohol count was .23. And if the sheriff had found clothes with blood spatters in the house, I’m sure that would have been introduced as evidence.”

  “Seems reasonable,” Gordon said.

  Nell looked at her watch. “It’s late,” she said. “I have to open the pottery shop in ten minutes. We should probably continue the conversation later, though.”

  “What if I give you a call Monday or Tuesday after I’ve talked to Pope?”

  “That would be fine. The pottery shop is closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so those afternoons would be a good time to get together. Hold on just a minute.”

  She darted from the room and returned shortly with a piece of paper in her hand. It had been torn from a spiral binder and had three holes punched down one side.

  “I’ve been doing some preliminary research since they told me you were coming. You’ve convinced me you’re interested in the case, so I’m sharing it with you.”

  “Thank you,” Gordon said.

  “One of the problems at the trial was that they never introduced any evidence of a motive for Gary. Just that he and Connie had argued before, but nothing to suggest why it came to murder. There are two people who might have been told something about the relationship by Gary or Connie. Gary’s step-brother, Roger Gow, and Connie’s sister, Barbara Chandler. Here are their phone numbers.”

  Gordon looked at the sheet.

  “Looks like the brother is in the East Bay and Connie’s sister is in San Francisco or Marin County.”

  “You should call them up and see what they know about how the marriage was going.”

  “All right.” Gordon folded the paper and put it in his shirt pocket.

  “And there’s one other thing, then I have to go.”

  Gordon nodded.

  “I’ve had coffee a couple of times with someone from the sheriff’s department who was involved in the case. He might want to talk to you, but he said he wanted to see what I thought of you first. I’m going to tell him to call you on your cell phone, but if he does, his number will be blocked, and he won’t leave a message. So pick up any call you get.”

  “Will do. I don’t suppose you have any idea what he wants to talk about?”

  She looked around as if she thought someone else might be listening, then leaned forward and hissed the answer in a loud whisper.

  “He says there’s a key piece of evidence that never got introduced at trial.”

  AFTER THE INTERVIEW WITH NELL, they weren’t quite ready for lunch, so Gordon and Peter drove up and down the river, looking for places to fish. A mile upstream from Pass City, they found a turnout where a short climb down a not-too-steep embankment would put them on the water. A bit downstream, there was a wide, shallow stretch of river with a gravel island in the middle. They could wade across there and fish from the other side, if they wanted. They decided to have lunch at Pass City and come back afterward.

  They pulled up in front of the Blue Badger Café just as a motorcycle club was leaving. A dozen bikes roared out onto the empty state highway at full throttle, heading for the pass. It was a full two minutes before the last of the engine noise faded away up the canyon.

  “Maybe now we’ll have a little peace and quiet in this town,” Peter said.

  Inside, a harried young waitress was cleaning off the tops of several tables. She motioned them to a table in the corner near an old stone fireplace; a log had just been added, and the fire was burning nicely.

  “Busy shift?” Gordon asked.

  “Could have been better, could have been worse,” she said. “It was a group of sober bikers, so the good news is they didn’t get obnoxious. The bad news is that since they weren’t buying alcohol, the tip was less.”

  An older couple rose and headed for the door, leaving Gordon and Peter to themselves. They studied the menu, and when the waitress reappeared, Gordon ordered a shepherd’s pie and Peter a chicken sandwich. The waitress tried to talk them into having a Pass City Pale, brewed on the premises, but they passed.

  “Speaking of which,” Peter said after she left, “I’d like to get to a meeting tonight. There’s one at the Congregational Church.”

  “What time?”

  “Eight o’clock.”

  Gordon nodded. “Plenty of time after fishing to get back and grill those steaks we bought yesterday. You’ll make it with time to spare.”

  They stared at the fire for several minutes until the waitress returned with their iced teas. Gordon squeezed lemon into his and took a sip.

  “So what did you make of Nell?”

  “She’s a master baker. That coffee cake was to die for.”

  “Her cooking skills are above dispute. I was more interested in how reliable you thought she was in presenting the evidence.”

  “Hard to say. Remember, Gordon, I know even less about this case than you
do. She certainly was a strong advocate for Mr. Baxter.”

  “Melissa, my contact at NGNC, thinks Nell’s in love with him.”

  “Of course she is. She can’t see that he did any wrong. I had to look away when she said he never hurt anybody. Trust me, if he was an alcoholic, he hurt plenty of people. Even so, some of what she said sounded plausible, and she’s obviously no dummy. My best guess is that half of what she said is true, but the problem is, we have no idea which half.”

  “Do you think I should keep her comments in mind when I read the transcript?”

  “I would,” Peter said, “But as guidance, not gospel.”

  The food arrived and was surprisingly good. Gordon’s pie had a browned mashed-potato crust, a rich gravy, and was generously sprinkled with carrots and onions. Peter’s chicken was tender, with a tangy chipotle sauce. They cleaned their plates and were out the door at 1:20. Gordon stopped at the door to the Cherokee and looked down the road toward Nell’s, which was only 50 yards away.

  “Let me make a quick stop at the pottery shop,” he said. Peter raised his eyebrows. “Nell said her assistant’s working today, so it should be quick.”

  The shop was 20-by-20 feet with sale items on shelves around the walls. A bored teenager sat at a small desk, obviously doing her homework. She greeted them with a “Feel free to look around,” and got back to her books.

  Gordon made the circle of the room, stopping to look at two cylindrical gray mugs, then moved to the tables in the center of the room. One of them held a teapot like the one Nell had used that morning, only smaller. Gordon held it up, removed the lid, looked inside, and carried it to the desk. He walked back to the shelves and took down the gray mugs he’d been looking at earlier, which more or less matched the pot. As he set those on the desk as well, he noticed a three-shelf cabinet holding bags of tea for sale.

  “Do you know where the tea comes from?” he asked.

  “Owner makes it.”

  “Does she have a breakfast blend?”

  The assistant rose wordlessly and rummaged along the shelves, finally pulling down a bag labeled “Nell’s Breakfast Blend.” It held four ounces of loose leaves.