The McCone Files

by Marcia Muller

  A contradictory and oddly compelling place, this seventy-three-mile stretch of coast southwest of Eureka, where—as with most worthwhile things or people—you must take the bad with the good.

  Unfortunately, on my first visit there I was taking mostly the bad. Strong winds pushed my MG all over the steep, narrow road, making hairpin turns ever more perilous. Early October rain cut my visibility to a few yards. After I crossed the swollen Bear River, the road continued to twist and wind, and I began to understand why the natives had dubbed it The Wildcat.

  Somewhere ahead, my client had told me, was the hamlet of Petrolia—site of the first oil well drilled in California, he’d irrelevantly added. The man was a conservative politician, a former lumber-company attorney, and given what I knew of his voting record on the environment, I was certain we disagreed on the desirability of that event, as well as any number of similar issues. But the urgency of the current situation dictated that I keep my opinions to myself, so I’d simply written down the directions he gave me—omitting his travelogue-like asides—and gotten under way.

  I drove through Petrolia—a handful of new buildings, since the village had been all but leveled in the disastrous earthquake in 1992—and turned toward the sea on an unpaved road. After two miles I began looking for the orange post that marked the dirt track to the client’s cabin.

  The whole time I was wishing I was back in San Francisco. This wasn’t my kind of case; I didn’t like the client, Steve Shoemaker; and even though the fee was good, this was the week I’d scheduled to take off a few personal business days from All Souls Legal Cooperative, where I’m chief investigator. But Jack Stuart, our criminal specialist, had asked me to take on the job as a favor to him. Steve Shoemaker was Jack’s old friend from college in Southern California, and he’d asked for a referral to a private detective. Jack owed Steve a favor; I owed Jack several, so there was no way I could gracefully refuse.

  But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong with this case. And I couldn’t help wishing that I’d come to the Lost Coast in summertime, with a backpack and in the company of my lover—instead of on a rainy fall afternoon, with a .38 Special and soon to be in the company of Shoemaker’s disagreeable wife, Andrea.

  The rain was sheeting down by the time I spotted the orange post. It had turned the hard-packed earth to mud, and my MG’s tires sank deep in the ruts, its undercarriage scraping dangerously. I could barely make out the stand of live oaks and sycamores where the track ended; no way to tell if another vehicle had traveled over it recently.

  When I reached the end of the track I saw one of those boxy four-wheel-drive wagons—Bronco Cherokee?—drawn in under the branches of an oak. Andrea Shoemaker’s? I’d neglected to get a description from her husband of what she drove. I got out of the MG, turning the hood of my heavy sweater up against the downpour; the wind promptly blew it off. So much for what the catalog had described as “extra protection on those cold nights.” I yanked the hood up again and held it there, went around and took my .38 from the trunk and shoved it into the outside flap of my purse. Then I went over and tried the door of the four-wheel drive. Unlocked. I opened it, slipped into the driver’s seat.

  Nothing identifying its owner was on the seats or in the side pockets, but in the glove compartment I found a registration in the name of Andrea Shoemaker. I rummaged around, came up with nothing else of interest. Then I got out and walked through the trees, looking for the cabin.

  Shoemaker had told me to follow a deer track through the grove. No sigh of it in this downpour; no deer, either. Nothing but wind-lashed trees, the oaks pelting me with acorns. I moved slowly through them, swiveling my head from side to side, until I made out a bulky shape tucked beneath the farthest of the sycamores.

  As I got closer, I saw the cabin was of plain weathered wood, rudely constructed, with the chimney of a woodstove extending from its composition shingle roof. Small—two or three rooms—and no light showing in its windows. And the door was open, banging against the inside wall…

  I quickened my pace, taking the gun from my purse. Alongside the door I stopped to listen. Silence. I had a flashlight in my bag; I took it out. Moved to where I could see inside, then turned the flash on and shone it through the door.

  All that was visible was rough board wills, an oilcloth-covered table and chairs, an ancient woodstove. I stepped inside, swinging the light around. Unlit oil lamp on the table; flower-cushioned wooden furniture of the sort you always find in vacation cabins; rag rugs; shelves holding an assortment of tattered paperbacks, seashell, and driftwood. I shifted the lights again, more slowly.

  A chair on the far side of the table was tipped over, and a woman’s purse lay on the edge of the woodstove, its contents spilling out. When I got over there I saw a .32 Ivey Johnson revolver lying on the floor.

  Andrea Shoemaker owned a .32. She’d told me so the day before.

  Two doors opened off the room. Quietly I went to one and tried it. A closet, shelves stocked with staples and canned goods and bottled water. I looked around the room again, listening. No sound but the wail of wind and the pelt of rain on the roof. I stepped to the other door.

  A bedroom, almost filled wall-to-wall by a king-sized bed covered with a goose down comforter and piled with colorful pillows. Old bureau pushed in one corner, another unlit oil lamp on the single nightstand. Small travel bag on the bed.

  The bag hadn’t been opened. I examined its contents. Jeans, a couple of sweaters, underthings, toilet articles. Package of condoms. Uh-huh. She’d come here, as I’d found out, to meet a man. The affairs usually began with a casual pickup; they were never of long duration and they all seemed to culminate in a romantic weekend in the isolated cabin.

  Dangerous game, particularly in these days when AIDS and the prevalence of disturbed individuals of both sexes threatened. But Andrea Shoemaker had kept her latest date with an even larger threat hanging over her: for the past six weeks, a man with a serious grudge against her husband had been stalking her. For all I know, he and the date were one and the same.

  And where was Andrea now?

  This case had started on Wednesday, two days ago, when I’d driven up to Eureka, a lumbering and fishing town on Humboldt Bay. After I passed the Humboldt County line I began to see logging trucks toiling through the mountain passes, shredded curls of redwood bark trailing in their wakes. Twenty-five miles south of the city itself was the company-owned town of Scotia, mill stacks belching white smoke and filling the air with the scent of freshly cut wood. Yards full of logs waiting to be fed to the mills lined the highway. When I reached Eureka itself, the downtown struck me as curiously quiet; many of the stores were out of business, and the sidewalks were mostly deserted. The recession had hit the lumber industry hard, and the earthquake hadn’t helped the area’s strapped economy.

  I’d arranged to meet Steve Shoemaker at his law office in Old Town, near the waterfront. It was a picturesque area full of renovated warehouses and interesting shops and restaurants, tricked up for tourists with the inevitable horse-and-carriage rides and t-shirt shops, but still pleasant. Shoemaker’s offices were off a cobblestoned courtyard containing a couple of antique shops and decorator’s showroom.

  When I gave my card to the secretary, she said Assemblyman Shoemaker was in conference and asked me to wait. The man, I knew, had lost his seat in the state legislature this past election, so the term of address seemed inappropriate. The appointments of the waiting room struck me as a bit much: brass and mahogany and marble and velvet, plenty of it, the furnishings and antiques that tended to be garish. I sat on a red velvet sofa and looked for something to read. Architectural Digest, National Review, Foreign Affairs—that was is it, take it or leave it. I left it. My idea of waiting-room reading material is People; I love it, but I’m too embarrassed to subscribe.

  The minutes ticked by: ten, fifteen, twenty. I contemplated the issue of Architectural Digest, then opted instead for staring at a fake Rembrandt on the far wall. T
wenty-five, thirty. I was getting irritated now. Shoemaker had asked me to be here by three; I’d arrived on the dot. If this was, as he’d claimed, a matter of such urgency and delicacy that he couldn’t go into it on the phone, why was he in conference at the appointed time?

  Thirty-five minutes. Thirty-seven. The door to the inner sanctum opened and a woman strode out. A tall woman, with long chestnut hair, wearing a raincoat and black leather boots. Her eyes rested on me in passing—a cool gray, hard with anger. The she went out, slamming the door behind her.

  The secretary—a trim blond in a tailored suit—started as the door slammed. She glanced at me and tried to cover with a smile, but its edges were strained, and her fingertips pressed hard against the desk. The phone at her elbow buzzed; she snatched up the receiver. Spoke into it, then said to me, “Ms. McCone, Assemblyman Shoemaker will see you now.” As she ushered me inside, she again gave me her frayed-edge smile.

  Tense situation in this office, I thought. Brought on by what? The matter Steve Shoemaker wanted me to investigate? The client who had just made her angry exit? Or something else entirely…?

  Shoemaker’s office was even more pretentious than the waiting room: more brass, mahogany, velvet, and marble; more fake Old Masters in heavy gilt frames; more antiques; more of everything. Shoemaker’s demeanor was not as nervous as his secretary’s, but when he rose to greet me, I noticed jerkiness in his movements, as if he was holding himself under tight control. I clasped his outstretched hand and smiled, hoping the familiar social rituals would set him more at ease.

  Momentarily they did. He thanked me for coming, apologized for making me wait, and inquired after Jack Stuart. After I was seated in one of the clients’ chairs, he offered me a drink; I asked for mineral water. As he went to a wet bar tucked behind a tapestry screen, I took the opportunity to study him.

  Shoemaker was handsome: dark hair, with the gray so artfully interwoven that it must have been professionally dyed. Chiseled features; nice, well-muscled body, shown off to perfection by an expensive blue suit. When he handed me my drink, his smile revealed white, even teeth that I, having spent the greater part of the previous month in the company of my dentist, recognized as capped. Yes, a very good-looking man, politician handsome. Jack’s old friend or not, his appearance and manner called up my gut-level distrust.

  My client went around his desk and reclaimed his chair. He held a drink of his own—something dark amber—and he took a deep swallow before speaking. The alcohol replenished his vitality some; he drank again, set the glass on a pewter coaster, and said, “Ms. McCone, I’m glad you could come up here on such short notice.”

  “You mentioned on the phone that the case is extremely urgent—and delicate.”

  He ran his hand over his hair—lightly, so as not to disturb its styling. “Extremely urgent and delicate,” he repeated, seeming to savor the phrase.

  “Why don’t you tell me about it?”

  His eyes strayed to the half-full glass on the coaster. Then they moved to the door through which I’d entered. Returned to me. “You saw the woman who just left?”

  I nodded.

  “My wife, Andrea.”

  I waited.

  “She’s very angry with me for hiring you.”

  “She did act angry. Why?”

  Now he reached for the glass and belted down its contents. Leaned back and rattled the ice cubes as he spoke. “It’s a long story. Painful to me. I’m not sure where to begin. I just… don’t know what to make of the things that are happening.”

  “That’s what you’ve hired me to do. Begin anywhere. We’ll fill in the gaps later.” I pulled a small tape recorder from my bag and set it on the edge of his desk. “Do you mind?”

  Shoemaker eyed it warily, but shook his head. After a moment’s hesitation, he said, “Someone is stalking my wife.”

  “Following her? Threatening her?”

  “Not following, not that I know of. He writes notes, threatening to kill her. He leaves…things at the house. At her place of business. Dead things. Birds, rats, one time a cat. Andrea loves cats. She…” He shook his head, went to the bar for a refill.

  “What else? Phone calls?”

  “No. One time, a floral arrangement—suitable for a funeral.”

  “Does he sign the notes?”

  “John. Just John.”

  “Does Mrs. Shoemaker know anyone named John who has grudge against her?”

  “She says no. And I…” He sat down, fresh drink in hand. “I have reason to believe that this John has a grudge against me, and is using this harassment of Andrea to get at me personally.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “The wording of the notes.”

  “May I see them?”

  He looked around, as if he were afraid someone might be listening. “Later. I keep them elsewhere.”

  Something then, I thought, that he didn’t want his office staff to see. Something shameful, perhaps ever criminal.

  “Okay,” I said, “how long has this been going on?”

  “About six weeks.”

  “Have you contacted the police?”

  “Informally. A man I know on the force, Sergeant Bob Wolfe. But after he started looking into it, I had to ask him to drop it.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m in a sensitive political position.”

  “Excuse me if I’m mistake, Mr. Shoemaker, but it’s my understanding that you’re no longer serving in the state legislature.”

  “That’s correct, but I’m about to announce my candidacy in a special election for a senate seat that’s recently been vacated.”

  “I see. So after you asked your contact on the police force to back off, you decided to use a private investigator, and Jack recommended me. Why not use someone local?”

  “As I said, my position is sensitive. I don’t want word of this getting out in the community. That’s why Andrea is so angry with me. She claims I value my political career more that her life.”

  I waited, wondering how he’d attempt to explain that away.

  He didn’t even try, merely went on, “In our…conversation just prior to this, she threatened to leave me. This coming weekend she plans to go to a cabin on the Lost Coast that she inherited from her father to, as she put it, sort things through. Alone. Do you know that part of the coast?”

  “I’ve read some travel pieces on it.”

  “Then you’re aware how remote it is. The cabin’s very isolated. I don’t want Andrea going there while this John person is on the loose.”

  “Does she go there often?”

  “Fairly often. I don’t; it’s too rustic for me—no running water, phone, electricity. But Andrea likes it. Why do you ask?”

  “I’m wondering if John—whoever he is—knows about the cabin. Has she been there since the harassment began?”

  “No. Initially she agreed that it wouldn’t be a good idea. But now…” He shrugged.

  “I’ll need to speak with Mrs. Shoemaker. Maybe I can reason with her, persuade her not to go until we’ve identified John. Or maybe she’ll allow me to go along as her bodyguard.”

  “You can speak with her if you like, but she’s beyond reasoning with. And there’s no way you can stop her or force her to allow you to accompany her. My wife is a strong-willed woman; that interior decorating firm across the courtyard is hers, she built it from the ground up. When Andrea decides to do something, she does it. And asks permission from no one.”

  “Still, I’d like to try reasoning. This trip to the cabin—that’s the urgency you mentioned on the phone. Two days to find the man behind the harassment before she goes out there and perhaps makes a target of herself.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’d better get started. That funeral arrangement—what florist did it come from?”

  Shoemaker shook his head. “It arrived at least five weeks ago, before either of us noticed a pattern to the harassment. Andrea just shrugged it off, threw the wrappings and car
d away.”

  “Let’s go look at the notes, then. They’re my only lead.”

  Vengeance will be mine. The sudden blow. The quick attack.

  Vengeance is the price of silence.

  Mute testimony paves the way to an early grave. The rest is silence.

  A freshly tuned grave is silent testimony to an old wrong and its avenger.

  There was more in the same vein—slightly biblical-flavored and stilted. But chilling to me, even though the safety-deposit booth at Shoemaker’s bank was overly warm. If that was my reaction, what had these notes done to Andrea Shoemaker? No wonder she was thinking of leaving a husband who cared more for the electoral opinion than his wife’s life and safety.

  The notes had been typed without error on an electric machine that had left no such obvious clues as chipped or skewed keys. The paper and envelopes were pale and cheap, purchasable at any discount store. They had been handled, I was sure, by nothing more than gloved hands. No signature—just the typed name “John.”

  But the writer had wanted the Shoemakers—one of them, anyway—to know who he was. Thus the theme that ran through them all: silence and revenge.

  I said, “I take it your contact at the E.P.D. had their lab go over these?”

  “Yes. There was nothing. That’s why he wanted to probe further—something I couldn’t permit him to do.”

  “Because of this revenge-and-silence business. Tell me about it.”

  Shoemaker looked around furtively. My God, did he think bank employees had nothing better to do with their time than to eavesdrop on our conversation?

  “We’ll go have drink,” he said. “I know a place that’s private.”

  We went to a restaurant a few blocks away, where Shoemaker had bourbon and I toyed with a glass of iced tea. After some prodding, he told me his story; it didn’t enhance him in my eyes.

  Seventeen years ago Shoemaker had been interviewing for a staff attorney’s position at a large lumber company. While on a tour of the mills, he witnessed an accident in which a worker named Sam Carding was severely mangled while trying to clear a jam in the bark-stripping machine. Shoemaker, who had worked in the mills summers to pay for his education, knew the accident was due to company negligence, but accepted a handsome job offer in exchange for not testifying for the plaintiff in the ensuing lawsuit. The court ruled against Carding, confined to a wheelchair and in constant pain; a year later, while the case was still under appeal, Carding shot his wife and himself. The couple’s three children were given token settlements in exchange for dropping the suit and then were adopted by relatives in a different part of the country.