Wash Her Guilt Away (Quill Gordon Mystery Book 2)

by Michael Wallace

  A couple of minutes later, Drew got up from his table and headed in the same direction. At the corner of the entrance and the hallway, he “accidentally” brushed against Wendy, who was on her way back. He said something Gordon couldn’t hear, and she smiled and gave him a playful slap on the shoulder. Gordon quickly looked to see if her husband had observed the exchange, but Charles Van Holland was focused on his breakfast and hadn’t seen a thing.

  “Let’s get moving, gentlemen,” said Johnny. “The fish will be stirring shortly.”

  2

  BY THE TIME they got to the pier, the mist had lifted enough that the other side of the river was barely visible. Johnny had tied up his boat, an aluminum 14-footer, at the end of the previous day. He got into the boat first, placed a mid-size ice chest at the back by the motor, and checked the two plastic seats where Gordon and Peter would be sitting. He had each man hand over his fly rod, which Johnny placed carefully along the inside edge of the boat so it was completely within. He took their gear bags and tucked them under an overhanging seat at the front of the boat, offsetting the weight of the ice chest. He worked precisely and economically, and the two anglers had little to do except hand over their gear and shiver on the pier, watching the vapor they created every time they exhaled.

  On the way out of the lodge, Gordon had briefly ducked into the fireside lounge to take another look at the Stoddard painting over the fireplace. It still struck him as kitschy and ordinary, and he concluded Stuart had been joking about finding another.

  “I don’t think it’s for sale, but you can always ask.” He hadn’t realized April was behind the bar, unloading glasses from the dishwasher.

  “That’s all right. I wasn’t planning on bidding,” he replied.

  “So what did you think of that little scene a couple of minutes ago?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Yeah, I thought you saw it, too. You don’t miss much. Our little trophy wife is getting more blatant every day.”

  “Maybe. Not my concern.”

  “You may not have a choice. Even her old man’s going to notice pretty soon.” Gordon did a quick mental calculation and realized he was nearly as close to age to the “old man” as he was to April. The thought did nothing for his mood.

  “We had a situation last Labor Day weekend,” she continued. “Guy left his wife unattended while he went fishing and another guest made a play for her. I think he succeeded. Anyway, the husband figured it out and they had a big shouting match.” She tapped the edge of the bar. “Right here. One of them threw a sucker punch and gave the other guy a black eye.”

  “Which one got punched?”

  “The husband.”

  “Ouch. That’s adding insult to injury.”

  “He hasn’t re-booked for this year,” April said laconically. She wiped off the last glass and set it in place on the shelf. “You know what I don’t understand?”

  Gordon shrugged.

  “Why did Wendy marry him? I mean, I can see where it might be fun for a while to have an older guy with a lot of money who takes you nice places and buys you nice things. At least it seems like it could. Nobody’s ever asked. But marrying him? That’s a lot of work.”

  “Well, my father always said that a man who marries for money earns it in the hardest way imaginable. Probably goes for a woman, too.”

  April hooted. “That’s the truth.”

  “Your turn, Mr. Gordon,” said Johnny, bringing him back to the pier. “Plant your foot right behind the chair, then come on in.” Gordon did as he was told and was quickly seated in the boat. Johnny untied a rope from the pier and pushed the boat into the river before starting the motor. It came on with a purr, rather than a roar, and the boat slowly moved forward.

  “Doesn’t feel like you have much horsepower here,” Peter said through chattering teeth.

  “Don’t want it. Don’t need it. By county ordinance, the speed limit on this river is five miles an hour. I like to say this is such a beautiful river we should take our time on it. This is a battery-powered motor, non-polluting. Don’t you worry, doctor. It’ll get us to the fish soon enough, and it won’t scare ‘em off with a lot of noise, either.”

  “Anybody ever come out here with a really big motor?”

  “We see the occasional jackass. I’m afraid we do. Usually a weekend visitor, though. We know each other out here, and any local who did that would be feeling mighty lonely before long.”

  They were moving downstream, leaving a barely noticeable wake. On the left side of the river was a large clump of cattails, with a group of red-winged blackbirds fluttering about them. The right bank sloped up from the river and had two residences perched on it, about 50 yards apart. One looked to be brand new, around 4,000 square feet, painted a light blue-gray, with a veranda running along its entire length facing the river. There was no sign of life. The other house looked to be about 25 years older and 2,500 square feet smaller. Its wooden exterior was stained and weathered, and an older man drinking a cup of coffee stood on the deck, wearing a heavy bathrobe and flannel pajama bottoms. He waved at them and Johnny waved back.

  “Oscar Stern,” he said. “Retired now but he used to be vice president at Tri-Valley Bank.”

  “Who owns the other house?” Gordon asked.

  “Man named Summitt. Makes a lot of money in Silicon Valley, I’m told, but he’s too busy to get up here much. Probably see him Memorial Day and Labor Day, then his family’ll be here a week or two during the summer. Maybe he’ll come up for a weekend.”

  “Seems like an awful lot of money to spend on a place you hardly use,” Peter said.

  “His money,” shrugged Johnny. “We’re seeing more and more of that — people building big, expensive houses and hardly ever coming to use ‘em. I call these places the ghost homes of Eden River.”

  “Ghost houses, witches, curses,” said Peter. “Pretty supernatural area you have up here.”

  “Well, doctor, we have a saying in these parts. What happens in the woods stays in the woods.”

  They cruised downriver in silence for five minutes, covering less than half a mile. The air was cold, bracing and pure, and after a winter spent mostly indoors in San Francisco, Gordon breathed it in deeply and appreciatively, taking in the surroundings as well. Though the mist had lifted a bit, it was hard to see too far beyond the river. Still he was able to take in the passing panorama of green fields, farm buildings, grazing cattle and barbed-wire fences.

  “Indian Hollow Bridge, gentlemen, prepare to duck,” Johnny said. Gordon looked downstream and saw that they were approaching a bridge across the river. It stood only six feet above the surface of the water, supported by weathered pilings driven deep into the river bed. Between these were narrow gaps through which a boat of their size could pass, but the lowest part of the bridge dropped enough to make the clearance only three or four feet, with the boat a foot and a half above water level.

  Having been on the river before, Gordon knew enough to get out of his chair and crouch as low in the boat as possible. He motioned for Peter to do the same, and Johnny cut the motor to its gentlest idling speed and crouched in front of it, keeping his head just above the edges of the boat. With his hand behind him, he guided the boat slowly through the opening to the open river on the other side. As they passed under the bridge, Gordon noticed that its bottom was just a foot above them.

  “Ever lose a fisherman who didn’t duck low enough?” Peter asked, as they emerged onto the open river.

  “Not yet.” Then, after a minute more, “We’ll be going under several of these bridges today. Never heard of anybody hitting one, but a couple of years ago, one of the ghost house owners was coming back from town one night after maybe a bit too much to drink. Most of these bridges don’t have railings, and he went right over the side. Nobody heard it, and his wife spotted the car the next morning. He drowned in six feet of water because it came in through an open window and he couldn’t get out fast enough. Never heard it myself, bu
t a couple of the other guides claim they’ve heard cries for help by that bridge after dark. I’ll point it out if you’d like when we get there.”

  They floated downstream five minutes more, then came to a big bend. Rotting pilings near the shore hinted at the presence of a bridge or pier in the past, and Johnny gave them a wide berth. The river had widened slightly, and in its clear, pure water they could see an occasional trout, spooked by the boat, scurrying for cover in the weeds. The fish appeared to be 16 to 18 inches long and solid and muscular.

  Johnny slowed the motor again and leaned forward, squinting downriver through his sunglasses. Gordon, too began to look carefully at the water in front of them.

  “Think there may be some fish here, Johnny?”

  “Have been before.”

  Gordon sat up and pointed. “Over there by the right bank.”

  “I saw him, too. Lone wolf. We want a pod of fish so you and the doctor each have a shot at one.” Half a minute later, “Here we go.”

  Fifty yards away they could see the still surface of the river periodically broken by rising fish feeding on insects on the water. When a fish took a bug on the surface, it did so with a gentle slurp, rather than a loud splash, leaving a small ripple that quickly disappeared. There appeared to be a half dozen fish feeding in a channel about six feet wide. Johnny maneuvered the boat into the channel, directly upstream from the fish and stopped the motor when he was 40 yards away. Gently and without a splash he lowered the anchor, a block of cement on a chain, into the water, and when it caught on the bottom the boat came to rest 60 to 75 feet above the fish.

  “What size leader do you gentlemen have on?” Johnny said.

  “Thirteen foot, 6X,” Gordon said.

  “Twelve foot, 5X” said Peter.

  “Not the right one, doctor. You could get away with the length, but 5X is too heavy. In water this clear and slow the fish are likely to see it by your fly, and you won’t get any business. Swing your rod tip over toward me and let me fix you up right.”

  Peter did as told. His rod and reel were fitted with a five-weight line in bright yellowish green, standard for western waters. The leader — clear, nearly invisible nylon monofilament — extended from the end of the line. When a fly fisherman casts, the rod whips the line forward to the area where the fish are. The leader, with artificial fly tied at its thinnest end, called the tippet, turns over at the end of a good cast, allowing a seemingly unattached fly to drift toward the fish. Johnny was letting Peter know that his tippet was likely not fine enough to escape detection by these fish in ultra-clear water with almost no current. Accordingly, he added four feet of thinner tippet, or leader end, to Peter’s rig, then tested the knot with which he had done so. From Gordon’s gear bag he removed two small, off-white flies, the bodies about the size of a sowbug, but with a single white spiky wing sticking up.

  “Number 16 tan paradun. I see you brought the right stuff, Mr. Gordon.”

  “I learned from you, Johnny.” He turned to Peter. “This is Johnny’s preference for the Pale Morning Dun, the big morning hatch here.”

  “How do you know that’s what they’re feeding on now?” Peter said.

  Johnny swiped his hand through the air, closed his fist, then held it out to Peter and unclenched it. In the palm of his hand sat a slightly dazed insect that bore a striking resemblance to the flies he had just taken from the bag. After a few seconds, the insect flew out over the river again.

  “That’s how,” said Johnny.

  As he tied the flies on, Gordon and Peter looked downstream at the rising fish. On most streams fish feeding on the surface can be nearly frenzied, rising aggressively and vigorously smacking the water to suck in the bugs on the surface. The Eden River trout, on the other hand, were almost nonchalant, rising slowly and sipping the bugs from the surface of the water. Their feeding had a steady rhythm; every few seconds one of the fish would rise to almost the same spot as before and take in another morsel.

  “Aren’t we a bit far away for a good cast?” Peter said.

  “We are,” Johnny said, “But you won’t really be casting to them. Watch Mr. Gordon, doctor, and he’ll show you how it’s done.”

  Gordon stood up and lobbed the fly about 20 feet downstream and to his right. When it landed, he pulled his rod to the left to bring the fly more into a direct line with the fish downstream. He lowered the rod and the line went temporarily slack, the fly drifting naturally with the current, like the real insects on the water. He stripped additional line from his reel and fed the line through the tip of his rod with a series of rhythmic wrist jerks. The line being released was under no pressure from the rod and the fly kept going downstream with the slow current.

  With Gordon feeding the line out steadily, the natural drift of his fly continued 30, 40, 50 feet downstream. It was headed directly for a spot where a fish had been repeatedly rising to feed. The fish rose and took an insect from the water ten feet ahead of the dry fly coming its way. Peter and Johnny leaned forward to get a better look; Gordon’s fly was in line to be the next thing the trout rose to eat.

  The fly was a foot from where the fish had been rising when it rose again. Gordon automatically raised his rod tip, jerking the fly back toward him.

  “Took the bug just in front of you,” Johnny said. “But you got a great drift. Keep fishing like that and you’ll be catching some today.”

  “You try it, Peter,” Gordon said. “Once you get the hang of it, you should be fine.”

  That proved to be easier said than done. Peter made seven casts in a row, all ending the same way. Before his fly could get downstream to the fish, he got behind on letting out line. The line that was already out tightened, and his fly began to careen on the placid, barely moving water in such an unnatural way that not even the dimmest of fish would mistake it for a real insect and try to eat it.

  Surgeons are not generally known for patience and tolerance of error, and Peter was no exception to the rule. With each cast and drift gone bad, he became more agitated and frustrated. After he let the line get too tight, yet again, on the seventh cast, he let out a torrent of profanity, then said:

  “Why are we doing this, anyway? Why don’t we move closer to the fish and just cast to them like any other river?”

  “The Eden isn’t any other river,” Johnny said calmly. “It’s so clear and the current is so slow the fish can see more than almost anywhere else. If we were closer, they’d notice us, and any problem with a cast would put the whole lot of them down. Trust me. It’s better this way.”

  Gordon stood up again.

  “Let me talk you through it, Peter,” he said. He cast again and began letting out line. “You just have to be regular. Strip the line. Shake it through the rod tip. Strip the line. Shake it through the tip. Like a metronome. Make sure the line is always slack, but that there’s not too much slack so you can’t tighten it when a fish comes to your fly. Watch the fly and the line, not the rod and reel. Strip. Shake. Strip. Shake. Easy does it.”

  Seventy feet downstream a trout rose to Gordon’s fly. He raised his rod to set the hook, and the fish was on.

  “I think you have a brown trout there,” Johnny said.

  “How can you tell?” Peter asked.

  “Saw his nose when he took the fly.”

  Gordon’s companions watched him play the fish for several minutes, finally getting it near the boat, where Johnny reached out and pulled it in with his hand.

  “Brown trout. Seventeen inches,” Johnny said. With a quick twist he removed the barbless hook from the lower lip of the fish and put it gently back in to the river. It shimmied away, taking cover in a nearby bed of weeds.

  “All right,” said Peter. “If that’s the payoff, I can learn this. I mean, it’s not brain surgery, right?”

  3

  FOR THE REST OF THE MORNING they drifted downstream, stopping to work on groups of fish until they had exhausted their chances and had to move on. Gordon had caught and released nine fish by mornin
g’s end, all of them 16 inches or larger. Peter showed gradual improvement. He reached a point where every third or fourth cast resulted in a good drift. On a couple of those drifts, a fish rose to his fly, but he wasn’t able to tighten the line quickly enough to set the hook and get the fish on.

  By eleven o’clock the ground fog had dissipated completely, but a layer of dingy gray clouds hovered about a thousand feet above the valley floor, thick enough that it was impossible to tell where the sun was. Van Holland and his guide had passed them at ten o’clock and had gone far enough downriver to be out of sight. For an hour, the only human being they saw was a farmhand working a tractor on shore. He recognized Johnny and waved.

  The temperature had slowly and gradually risen into the mid-40s by the time Johnny dropped anchor in the middle of the river for lunch. On the left bank, a large barn and corral could be seen 150 feet back from the river, with a well kept ranch house about 30 years old in the background. On the right bank a large, empty field of rich, green grass was dotted with grazing cattle until it gave way to a pine forest several hundred yards from the river.

  “I usually go downstream a half a mile to where there’s a big tree overhanging the river and providing some shade,” Johnny said. “But I don’t think we need the shade today, and this is as pretty a place as any to stop for lunch.”

  From the cooler at his feet he got out soft drinks for everybody, and cold cuts, cheese and condiments for sandwiches. Chips and apples from a canvas bag next to the cooler finished out the meal. The cold, the exercise and the concentration had given them a good appetite, despite the large breakfast earlier, and they ate with a purpose.

  Halfway through his sandwich, Gordon took a sip of 7-Up and turned to Johnny. “So what do you think about Harry’s?” he asked. “Are the new owners going to make a go of it?”

  Johnny carefully finished chewing the bite of sandwich in his mouth, considering his response from all angles, like a politician at a hostile press conference. “Well, now, it’s hard to say,” he said after swallowing. “Pretty hard. They seem to be getting more people than before, but then I don’t see the books. And I’m sure you know, Mr. Gordon, that it’s not the volume but the profit that matters.”