by Dana Mentink
“Yes. Did you bring your birds?”
“Maude wanted me to being them as some sort of tourist attraction, but they don’t get along well with the able-bodied of the species.” She gestured to the mob of birds, wings outstretched, undulating around the children with food in their hands. “I see you’ve got a friend there.”
She stroked the tiny dog carefully. “His name is Gulliver. He’s eleven years old. Nobody wants a dog that old.” Her voice was stained with sadness.
“Then I guess he’s really lucky to have you.”
Evelyn stared at her. “Sometimes,” she said softly, “I feel as alone as they do.”
The wind blew the hair away from her face, and Ruth could see the sadness nestled in her eyes. “I think everyone feels that way at one time or another.”
“There doesn’t seem to be a point to things anymore. I just move from one place to the next, but I don’t feel like a part of any of it.” She looked a Ruth with desperate eyes. “It feels more like existing than living. Have you ever felt like that?”
“Oh yes,” Ruth said quietly. “I have felt exactly like that.”
Evelyn opened her mouth then closed it, but the question remained on her face.
For a moment there was only the sound of the waves. Ruth felt a surge of courage in her heart. Before her brain had a chance to stifle it, she spoke. “There is Someone who can help you, who will be there to love you when the world lets you down. Someone who will never betray you.”
They locked eyes for a moment. Ruth wondered if she had offended the woman. Evelyn stayed silent.
“If you ever want to talk, about Him, we can do that.”
The tiny dog licked Evelyn’s chin. “Thank you. Maybe—maybe we could talk, sometime.”
“I would like that.”
Evelyn gave Ruth a weary smile and left.
She watched Evelyn leave, each step leaving a stamp in the sand. Ruth hoped fervently that those steps would lead her home.
Though her heart was light, her head was pounding when she made it back to her cottage. The strange home she had made with a flock of crippled birds and a pasture full of worms seemed pretty tame compared to the wild world outside. Well, she thought, today is the last day of this awful festival. Maybe things will return to normal again.
She thought about the toe and the murder and the terrifying disappearance of Cootchie Dent. The dark musings consumed her until she recalled the strange wondering look on the face of Evelyn Bippo. Suddenly a distant crack made her jump. Could it be a gunshot? No, probably a firecracker tossed by an errant festivalgoer. Jack would probably be more relieved than she when the Fog Festival staggered to a close. It would be heavenly to have things return to normal.
She thought of the growing closeness between Bobby and Jack.
Then again, maybe a few changes might be in order.
Chapter Twenty
Jack couldn’t see her from his position on his stomach behind a rock. Though it was irrational to blame all his trouble on the ridiculous festival, he couldn’t wait for the event to be over. Things were not safe, he tried to explain to Bobby on the phone, and he didn’t want her charging up Finny’s Nose unescorted. She hadn’t listened, of course.
Now, as he sheltered himself behind the rock pile, he prayed she wasn’t going to pay a terrible price for her impatience. His heart refused to let him consider a tragic outcome. Not now, not Bobby.
The afternoon sun temporarily blinded him. He could hear the shots whacking into the dirt and trees just in front of him. He thrust his head above the granite edge, trying to get a shot off, but the sting of flying rock chips caused him to recoil. It would be another five minutes until backup arrived, even with Mary Dirisi at the wheel. Heart pounding, muscles tensed, he made a decision.
“We’re going to have to do this the hard way.” Scuttling on his belly around the outcropping, praying he wasn’t stirring up any dust, he did a slow count to ten before he launched himself into the clearing and dove behind a twisted clump of trees.
Two shots zinged over his head, and then there was silence.
He crouched in as small a ball as he could manage and listened.
Nothing.
Ten seconds later he heard a small crack and the quiet crunch of leaves.
Creeping forward, both hands around the gun barrel, he poked his head around the pile of rock obscuring his sight.
“Hey there,” she said, her voice weak. “I thought you decided to go for coffee.” She was sitting hunched over, back against the rocks, blood dripping down the side of her face.
He took a steadying breath, noting the tightly controlled look of pain on her face. “No coffee. How badly are you hurt?”
“I’m not sure yet. How many of you are there?”
He swallowed. “Just one, I’m afraid.”
“Hmmm. Then I think I may have some sort of head injury.”
“Okay,” he said, holstering his gun and feeling her arms and legs. “Any bullet holes I should know about?”
“No, and don’t think this is going to get you out of going for a run with me,” she said.
“Never crossed my mind.” She winced as he passed a hand over her bloodied head. “Good thing you have excellent reflexes.”
“Yeah. I felt the shot graze my hair and I dove. Unfor- tunately, I think I was a tad anxious and I rolled headfirst into a boulder. Who is shooting at us, by the way?”
He continued his examination, running fingers along the back of her neck. “I don’t know, but we need to move. Are you up to it?”
“Sure.”
He helped her up and then caught her as she collapsed again, vomiting on his shoes. He lowered her back to the ground, brushed the hair out of her eyes, and wiped her mouth with his shirtsleeve.
“I’m really sorry about that,” she said.
“No problem. I’ve been through worse. Let’s try it again, this time more slowly.”
He raised her to her feet. She stood, clinging to his arm, her face pasty white.
“Okay?” he whispered.
She nodded.
“We’re going to have to run for it, back to the trees. It’s not far.” He forced his voice to sound light, encouraging. He tried to ignore the quantity of blood staining her shirtfront and the glazed expression beginning to creep into her eyes. She was going into shock.
He counted softly to three, and then they ran, stumbling along to the tree line until he threw himself down on top of her, covering her head as best he could. Shots drilled into the trunks above, speckling them with splintered wood.
After a few minutes, the shooting stopped, replaced by the wail of sirens and running boots. Nathan hurled himself to the ground next to Jack, panting, eyes wide.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. She’s hurt. Did you get him?”
“No. Mary and Yolo drove up the access road. Nothing yet. You think it’s a single shooter?”
He nodded. “Reloaded twice. I think I heard him running downhill.”
Nate eyed the pale form between them. “Ambulance won’t start. They’re sending a rig up, but it won’t do the slope very fast.”
While they exchanged information, Jack rolled Bobby over, peeling the blood-soaked hair off her face.
She was still and drained of color.
“Where is the engine?” he shouted. “Never mind, we’re taking her now.”
He lifted the woman in his arms and carried her to Nate’s squad car.
Her blood tattooed a trail on the slope of Finny’s Nose.
He was on his fourth cup of coffee in the Eden Hospital waiting room when Ruth found him.
“Hi, Jack. How is Bobby doing?”
“She’s going to be okay. She got a fairly good concussion, and she’s been pretty out of it since we made it here. Doctor says she needs to stay quiet until tomorrow, and then they’ll do another CAT scan.”
She was glad to see only a shade of worry in his eyes. Monk had told her he was on the verge of panic when th
ey met at the hospital earlier. “Any leads on the shooter?”
He grinned at her. “You’re beginning to sound almost coplike, Ruth. Must be from your frequent brushes with the law. We don’t have any leads yet, other than it was someone who knows the area real well. Lots of empty shell casings sent to the lab, but that’s about it.”
“Hmmm.” Ruth nodded. “Would you mind telling me what Bobby was going to show you up nose? I saw her up there as I was on my way down from Pistol Bang’s a few days ago, and she said she was doing homework so she could show you something. What was it?”
“Let’s see—it kind of slipped my mind, what with everything that followed. She called me about two thirty or so and asked me to meet her at the top. What did she say?” His eyes searched the ceiling for an answer. “She said something about trees, fir trees, something weird about the cluster of trees at the top.” He chuckled. “Frankly, I didn’t really get where she was coming from, but that’s not unusual for me when it concerns Bobby.”
“You really like her, don’t you?”
He looked down at his work boots. “Yeah. I really do.”
“Well, when she wakes up, you tell her I’m bringing her an éclair. Her uncle has been busily baking batches of them for her. I know those things have mystical healing powers in addition to the five thousand calories and a bushel of fat.”
“Excellent.” Jack smiled at her. “What intriguing thoughts are going on in that head of yours? What’s up with the tree thing?”
“I’m not sure. I was considering about taking a walk up nose before dark. Do you think it’s safe?”
“We’ve still got people up there, so it’s pretty quiet.” He stretched and resettled himself in the chair. “Take Monk with you anyway.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“Why are we climbing up this infernal hill again?” Monk’s cheeks were ruddy, and he was panting.
“I don’t know exactly. It’s just that Bobby was interested in something about the trees up here, and I just can’t get it out of my mind. There is something up here that is the key to this whole mess.” Ruth stopped as they crested the nose. “Let’s sit down for a minute and cogitate.”
He settled his large frame on a rock. “I’ll give it a try, but my cogitator is low on fuel. Seeing Bobby hurt and all that just really took it out of me.” He cleared his throat.
She joined him and patted his leg, saying another silent thank-you prayer for Bobby’s safety. The late afternoon sun silhouetted an enormous Douglas fir against the sky. Ruth studied the tree standing sentinel over the younger trees nearby. She thought about Pickles Peckenpaugh’s journal recounting the horrible tragedy that had taken place atop Finny’s Nose. Could this be the very same tree? There was no outward sign of the crime; the charred bark would have grown over long ago in any case. Was it under these same boughs that the young girl Janey was found and later the body of Slats the gangster, who undoubtedly died at the hands of Soapy Dan?
Restlessly Ruth clambered down off the rock and walked under the spreading branches. The ground was damp and sticky, speckled with uneven patches where something, presumably squirrels, had been at work. Looking down from her vantage point, she counted four more fir trees, evenly spaced on each side of the parent. Standing where she imagined the women of the Pickle Jar had gathered, she could hear echoes of voices from decades past.
“There we stood, under the great fir tree. It was so terribly lonely. Just this one blackened tree and no others to stand near.”
A lone fir. No others to stand near.
Yet as Ruth stood there in the gathering fog, she was yards away from four other fir trees. Younger trees, but still with many decades of growth to their credit. Perfectly spaced, equidistant from the giant fir.
Ruth looked down at the dark soil beneath her feet. Something looked familiar about the surface. The nubbly, tubular trails of earth that poked out here and there amid the rocks and needles.
Of course! Her worm castings. They were so plentiful around the base of the tree that she knew they had to have been placed there. Dug in here and there with a trowel or rake. Those had to be her castings. But why bring them up here? Why steal them at all for that matter?
She continued to walk under the scented branches, lost in thought, until she felt her foot sink into something soft and pliable. Looking down, she screamed.
Monk made it to her side with remarkable speed for a man of his bulk. “What is it? Are you hurt?” he yelled.
She could only point to the mass at her feet.
“Leaping lentils,” he said, kneeling to examine the heap.
The squirrel’s leg was trapped by the metal jaws. Its eyes were closed, breath coming in pants.
“Man. That’s an awful way to catch something. These bear traps have been illegal forever. Alva said he found one this week and brought it to the police. What kind of an idiot would use a bear trap to catch a squirrel?”
“Good squirrels is dead squirrels,” Ruth whispered, feeling the bile rise in her throat. “Can you free him?”
Monk didn’t seem to hear her as he knelt closer. Carefully he wrapped a handkerchief around the squirrel’s head to protect from getting bitten. With a supreme effort he managed to open the trap wide enough for her to remove the injured animal. “We’ll take him up to the doc. She may be able to fix him up.”
She took off her sweater and wrapped the poor shivering animal inside the soft folds. “You’ll be okay. The doctor will take care of you.” Turning to Monk, she asked, “Who would do such a terrible thing?”
He poked at the hinge with a stick. “Look at this. There’s some white leather caught in here. Like the kind they make sneakers with. You don’t suppose this trap caught more than a rodent, do you? Kinda brings to mind a certain toe we’ve got floating around Finny, don’t you think? Ruth?”
She was staring into Monk’s face, a look of horror frozen onto her own. “Monk. I know who the muffin man is.”
He looked at her as though she were speaking in another language. “Huh?”
She felt a fierce tide of protectiveness swelling inside of her. The muffin man had taken her little family, the family she’d worked so hard to build, and brought it to the edge of disaster. Life had taken her first husband without so much as a warning. God had blessed her with another family, strange as it was, and she knew that it was in grave danger. A strength swirled inside her that she’d never felt before. In a blink, Ruth was suddenly concretely positive that no earthly being could be allowed to take Dimple and Cootchie away, too. She knew what she had to do. With God’s help, it was time to make things right.
“Monk, we need to find Jack and Dimple right away.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ruth read lots of mysteries. She knew how confronting a killer was supposed to work. Not that she expected to encounter the murderer at Dim- ple’s farm. She’d frantically called everywhere looking for Dimple as they raced to town with no success. The phone at Pistol Bang’s gave her an endless busy tone, which made her heart beat a panicked staccato.
Monk clicked off his cell phone, panting slightly. “Jack’s just returning from a meeting. I left him a message to meet us up nose.”
“We can’t wait. We’ve got to get to Pistol Bang’s and warn Dimple, if she’s there. I just can’t stand the thought that she might be in trouble.”
“I’ve got your back, Ruth. Let’s go.”
It took them another twenty minutes to make it from the vet’s office back to the top of Finny’s Nose. The farm was quiet, without a sign of movement anywhere, until a noise from the polytunnel made them jump.
Monk lowered his voice to a whisper. “Probably just a squirrel on the roof, but I’m going to check it out. You stay here, Ruth.”
She waited with her stomach in knots while Monk disappeared around the corner of the tunnel. Unable to remain still, she tiptoed to the office to peek in the win- dow. A muffled noise made her whirl back in the direc- tion of the tunnel. She heard Monk holler an
d bang against the door, which was now wedged with a piece of metal pipe.
She took a halting step to free her husband from his impromptu prison when she saw him.
Ruth recalled those satisfying literary conclusions in which the hero confronted the villain in the in- evitable showdown, calmly laying out the facts in a careful, orderly fashion, while the police waited in the wings to apprehend him or her.
She reviewed these facts in her mind. Now that the moment had come and she was face-to-face with a killer, her mouth took an entirely different tact.
“What is the matter with you? Your father works hard for a living every day of his life, and you reward him by killing people? Why, Hugh?”
He looked at her calmly, hands tucked into the pockets of his corduroy pants. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You jolly well do know what I’m talking about. I know you’ve been farming truffles at the top of Finny’s Nose. I also know you killed Ed Honeysill and tried to kill Bobby Walker.”
He sighed, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand. You’re one of those complacent old-timers, content to live out your days on social security benefits until you die. You think too small to come up with a way out.” There was a sullen glint in his prominent eyes behind the glasses.
“Ah yes, the brilliant plan. The plan where you inoculate the trees at the top of Finny’s Nose with truffle spores and grow them yourself, selling them as French exports at triple your cost. Never mind that the land doesn’t belong to you, you idiot.”
“Who cares who it belongs to? Nobody uses it anyway.”
“I see. So you cooked up the idea to farm the truffles. You transplanted new trees, I noticed. When, exactly, will the younger ones start producing truffles?”
“I don’t know for sure. I moved them from another part of the nose. They’re about fifteen years old, but I’ve already harvested some smaller truffles. It’s all experimental. In five years or so, I will have some grade-A truffles. Until then, I have the crop from the mature tree. Soon I’ll have enough socked away to go wherever I want to.”
