A Curious Affair

by Melanie Jackson

  Part of the sheriff’s unofficial job is to see that visitors don’t blunder into danger, and if they do, that they are rescued right away. For this reason, I was given to understand, he had embraced the geological version of know-thy-enemy. Which is a long way of saying that he had already hiked some of Viper’s Hill and checked out some of the abandoned mineshafts located along what looked like a great cross-country ski trail.

  But would his familiarity get me off the hook for a return trip to Irv’s cabin? No. Neither would my protest that I was cold, tired, scared and in pain. Any lawman would wrestle with my guilty conscience and easily overpower it. I was in for a long, painful night.

  Sheriff Murphy is handsome enough to look at. He’s one of what my mother would have called the Black Irish. Some of my friends have even admitted to crossing the room to get a closer look at him. I stood there in the doorway that night and glared at him with eyes that failed to find anything to admire.

  The sheriff looked up and smiled pleasantly, not put off by my glower.

  “Was that you on the phone earlier, Miss Marsh? I thought maybe it was an obscene phone call. Livened up the still watches of the night.”

  “Not tonight,” I said. My glower deepened, and so did his smile. A hint of a dimple appeared in his left cheek.

  “Damn. Well, let me guess—you’ve seen a UFO, Miss Marsh. That’s what brings you in. Please pull up a chair and make yourself comfortable while I get the particulars.”

  “Missus,” I corrected. Actually I said mithuth. My jaw was loosening up in the heat of the station, but it was still far from functional. It’s a tribute to the sheriff’s ear that he could understand me. “And if I say yes and I’ve ridden in one, will you let me go home and sleep it off as soon as I’m done here?”

  “Perhaps.” His gray eyes twinkled—they actually twinkled—and I thought of that G. K. Chesterton poem, “The Ballad of the White Horse”:

  For the Great Gaels of Ireland

  Are the men that God made mad,

  For all their wars are merry

  And all their songs are sad.

  He finally explained when I said nothing more. “Don’t get cranky. I just want to know if you’ve been seeing any of the strange lights folks have been calling in about this evening. I’m going to have to get onto PG&E and find out what’s up at the station. There’ll be hell to pay if folks lose power again. It’s been out three times this week already, and they seem to think that I am personally responsible for it.”

  In a small town the sheriff was pretty much responsible for everything that couldn’t be handled by the priest, the doctor or the undertaker. I felt a moment of sympathy.

  “Oh. No, I haven’t seen lights or green men or even downed power lines,” I said, less grumpily. “I’ve seen rain and a dead body, though. My friend, Irving Thibodaux, is dead. That’s what brings me in. And if you want a guide up the hill to Irv’s place then we need to go now. The road is mostly mud and getting worse by the minute—and we can’t take the car because the track’s barely graded, let alone graveled.”

  “I see. Well, let me fetch my coat.” He reached for the sheepskin jacket on the back of his chair. It was a large coat. Tyler Murphy isn’t a small man. “Are you quite certain that Irv is dead? Might he just be…extremely indisposed?”

  He meant dead drunk.

  “No, he’s really, really dead,” I said, echoing Atherton’s reply to me when I had asked the same question.

  The sheriff finally lost his smile. He sighed. “Then we’d best be off at once, while there’s a break in the rain. Tell me, Missus Marsh, does it ever stop raining up here?”

  “I heard tell that it happened one July.”

  Murphy was a gentleman after that, holding open doors and taking my arm when the terrain got rough because I kept slipping in the worsening mud. But though he was polite, I couldn’t shake the feeling that he somehow didn’t believe me about Irv. Maybe it was the cloud of alcohol that clung to me in spite of the antacids I’d been sucking to calm my stomach. Or perhaps it was that I sounded like a ridiculous cross between Daffy Duck and Yosemite Sam. Maybe it was that I had called myself Irv’s friend—which I wasn’t. Not exactly. But I didn’t want Murphy thinking I was buying pot from Irv, and I’d had to have some reason for paying a social call on a dreadful night like this.

  I ground my teeth. It was frustration, but it was also being out in the cold again. Why hadn’t I put in my bite plate when I could still get my jaws open? It made my lisp worse but it blunted the pain enough that I could think logically.

  Tyler was right. The rain stopped during our walk up the hill, which was nice, but the cold and wind came down hard as soon as the clouds began to depart, and it froze our breath. Sheriff Murphy’s soft but steady profanity at the state of the road clotting his new boots with mud made miniscule crystals that gathered quickly now that we were still. Moonlight punched a hole through the clouds with a silver fist, but I didn’t look up. I felt it would do violence to my eyes if I looked straight at it, and I’d seen enough brutality for one night. Irv’s lonely cabin was enough of a visual assault for the time being.

  The wind died as we crested the hill, and the sudden quiet pressed against my ear drums. The silence of loneliness and death is different from the simple cessation of noise. This stillness of the heart and mind is a creature of near-substance, a dank shadow that hovers over my own house even on a sunny day, and now it hung over Irv’s. I rarely noticed it anymore, mostly because I’d been using enough pills to stupefy my brain—in part because of the physical pain, but also because I saw the vampire’s shadow far too often that reminded me I was alone. Love, I was infuriated to find, had limitations. It might move mountains, but it couldn’t stop death when he decided to call, and it couldn’t banish his shadow from my heart and mind when he’d decided to linger, feeding on my grief.

  Winter. The dead season. I hated it. It didn’t care about me or anyone. The short days and long nights rolled by; gray, then black, then gray, then black—the sequence repeating itself for the last nine weeks and more. My eyes had forgotten what the sun looked like and my jaw could no longer recall what it was like to exist without the cold ice-pick pain as its companion. I knew that I had been depressed, but had failed to be sufficiently frightened by my degraded mental condition because I had accepted that this was my new steady state. It took Irv dying, and the sheriff’s skepticism at my story, to rouse me enough to feel alarm at my situation.

  I realized in that moment I owed the sheriff for keeping me away from home and the pills and Drambuie on the coffee table. Because there was still a part of me that found their easy solution an appealing alternative.

  Shaken by the realization of what I was thinking, and wanting a distraction, I stood close to the sheriff, trying to see Irv’s cabin as he did. It didn’t help my mood much. I didn’t need anything else to remind me that we are helpless creatures, easily broken by our emotions.

  The view wasn’t any more inviting, in spite of the new company and emerging moonlight that was kind to the building’s flaws. The front porch still sagged like the beer belly on an old drunk. The prolonged wet had made the shingles swell until the rusting nails had come unstuck. Damp had invaded the loosened joints and been held back only by the constant fire in the potbelly stove. But now that fire was out and the wet and cold had crept down the chimney and in through the rotting walls. It didn’t seem possible that things could have worsened in the short time I was gone, but somehow they had. This place was one step beyond desolate. It was dead, deserted. Even the cats were gone.

  I had a weird and uncomfortable thought: What if the body was gone, too?

  Then a much worse one: What if it had never been there at all?

  Swallowing hard, I walked gingerly up the stairs, deciding to be nice and warn the sheriff about their possible instability. It wasn’t because I had warmed to him any, I told myself, but if he broke an ankle, I’d have to slog down the hill again to get help.

&n
bsp; “Be careful. Some of the steps are rotten.”

  “Some?” He pushed at one of the empty pie tins with a foot. Like Irv, he wore cowboy boots.

  I shrugged.

  “Irv fed the ferals?” Sheriff Murphy asked.

  “Yes. And I know that officially this is discouraged because of the risk of disease. Unofficially, it is done in almost every neighborhood. We have a terrible problem with wild cats. Too many assholes dump their animals when they don’t want them anymore—and that means when they’re pregnant.” My words were garbled but angry. I have always believed that there is a special ring in hell for people who abandon their pets.

  “I know. It’s heartbreaking,” Tyler said, and I believed he meant it. That raised him in my estimation.

  I stepped onto the porch and opened the door with my gloved hand, and then reached inside to turn on the light.

  “Sorry about the doorknob,” I said without thinking as I clicked off my flashlight, “but I probably wiped out any fingerprints when I closed it before. It was open when I arrived. Maybe there are some prints on the inside.”

  “Was it open?” Murphy repeated, coming up behind me. I stepped left so the sheriff could see into the room. A part of me was relieved that Irv was still there. It’s kind of sickening, I guess, that I felt better that Irv be dead than I be crazy. I mean, crazier.

  Murphy didn’t step inside. Neither did I.

  “You noticed the footprints too?” I asked hopefully when he hesitated in the doorway.

  He didn’t answer, so I turned to look up at him. He was staring at me oddly.

  “Are you suggesting that he was murdered?” the sheriff asked. “Why didn’t you mention this before?”

  Was I? I mean, was I willing to admit out loud what I was thinking—that I actually believed a cat when it told me that Irv had been murdered?

  “Well, it just occurred to me that he could have been,” I said. “He did sell…” I trailed off, not wanting to say what Irv sold, though I don’t think he was ever ashamed of the deals he made.

  “Yes, he did, didn’t he?” Murphy said, and a frown appeared on his face. He looked at the floor and noted the two sets of very different prints, some of which were scuffed and elongated.

  “Not that anything like this has ever happened before,” I said, feeling the need to defend what Irv had done. “Irv was not a violent man.”

  Even as I said this, I knew it sounded absurd. In his own way, Irv had been violent. Brawling was a favorite pastime. But he hadn’t associated with people who practiced organized violence—at least I didn’t think so. He wasn’t a drug kingpin.

  “Hm…I don’t suppose those are yours?” he said, pointing at the waffle-stomper prints.

  I turned and lifted a shoe so the dim light would shine on it. Looking over my shoulder I could clearly see the sunflower pattern stamped on my sole. What can I say? I have always had a thing for cute shoes, and even my rain boots are fashionable.

  “And if my feet were that big I’d slit my wrists,” I said absently as I looked at the room again. Something was different from the last time I’d stopped in to see Irv. What was it that bugged me? I felt like I should be able to see what was different. What was missing?

  “What’s in those jugs?” Tyler asked, jerking his head at the ceramic pots near the stove.

  “Cherry cider. It’s worse than prune juice. I had a glass once and found out my colon had more moves than a Chinese acrobat. I truly thought I’d shi—uh, lose my intestines.” Then, before I could say anything else so crude, I managed to find the misplaced item in my mental catalogue of Irv’s artifacts. “The poker is missing,” I said. “He always leaned it up next to the jugs.”

  “Poker?”

  “The one Irv kept by the stove. It was this twisted black wrought-iron thing. Heavy, with a wicked point. It’s gone.”

  “Well, hell.” The sheriff pulled out his radio and frowned at it. “I’ll have to get Farland Tulloc to bring up my bag and the camera. It looks like we might have a suspicious death. That news will get the mayor’s blood pressure up.” He didn’t sound like this fact distressed him. Maybe he had the good taste to dislike our mayor. I certainly did.

  “Sheriff?” I asked tentatively.

  “Yes? And please call me Tyler. It’s so much friendlier. We may as well be on good terms since it looks like we will have a lot to talk about, at least for the next little while.”

  Oh goody.

  “Your radio won’t work up here. You better come down to my place and use the phone.” He hesitated, perhaps as surprised at my suggestion as I was. “I’d call for you, but no one can understand me when my jaw is locked.”

  “Your jaw is actually locked?”

  It was my turn to sigh.

  “Of course it is. Do you think I always talk like this?”

  I must have also sounded really annoyed, because the sheriff blinked at me. He wasn’t smiling.

  I said slowly, “Haven’t you heard anything I’ve been saying? My jaw is locked. I have TMJ and I am in pain. I want to go home.”

  Murphy looked contrite.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Marsh. In truth, I’ve only understood about half of what you’ve been saying. I thought it was just shock and cold”—and booze, but he didn’t say this—“and I didn’t like to make you repeat yourself when you are obviously struggling.”

  “Oh,” I said, anger leaving me as quickly as it came. Either I was very tired or Sheriff Murphy had the knack of disarming me. “You can call me Jillian. ‘Mrs. Marsh’ still makes me think of my mother-in-law whenever I hear someone use it.”

  “Gilligan?” he asked carefully.

  “Jillian,” I said slowly, but with no more clarity. I sighed and turned my flashlight back on.

  “Okay, we’ll get to it later,” Murphy answered peaceably, closing the door but leaving on the light. It would make it easier to find the cabin again. “Let’s get you home and I’ll find Farland and Dexter while you make tea.”

  Dexter, aka Deputy Dawg, so named for his long jowls and perpetually gloomy disposition. There’s a rumor down at Caffeine Jill’s in Charleston that he’s had hemorrhoid surgery—twice. His ex-wife, Golden Sugarbrown, says they are wasting their time trying to deal with these small things and should just get to the point and remove his head, which was really the unnecessary and painful growth on his body. Goldie was a direct sort of woman. I didn’t think of Dexter as a hemorrhoid, but he had struck me as being about as dumb as a sack of nails, only not so potentially useful. It was no wonder they had hired Murphy instead of promoting Dexter, who was next in seniority in the department. Geniality was nice in a sheriff, but not as important as having a measurable IQ.

  “Who says I’m making tea?” I asked belatedly.

  “Oh, I really think you should. Nothing like tea to help a person get over a shock. We could both use a cup.” Murphy sighed and added, “I suppose I’ll have to get Animal Control up here to trap the strays before they tear this place down. No way the city will let this death trap stand when they’re forced to officially notice it.”

  “I’ll take care of the cats,” I said quickly, thinking that things were about to get very complicated. Maybe in time I could convince the cats that they would like the animal shelter. It was a really nice one, and they would be out of the cold and wet. “Will they tear it down soon, do you think?”

  “I should hope so, at least come spring. It isn’t up to code and I doubt there was ever any building permit issued. Certainly no one inspected this dump after the wiring went in. I’m amazed it hasn’t burned to the ground and taken the whole mountainside with it. We need to get rid of it before we have homeless people move in.”

  He had a good point. Not everyone would be as conscientious about fire as Irv.

  “Do you know if Irving had any family?” Murphy asked. “We should try and contact next of kin. In cases like this, I always wish we could raise the dead. It would make things easier for everyone if they could talk.”
/>   “I don’t know about Irv’s family.” I looked at Irving’s corpse, wondering if he’d speak to me if I talked to him. Raising the dead wasn’t that hard for me—all I had to do was remember them. The problem was that the ghosts who haunted me never answered questions—at least Cal didn’t. He never said if he knew now why he had died so young, or if he was happy where he’d relocated. He just repeated the same old loving things he’d always said. I’d learned that such fond memories belong to the bittersweet world of what-might-have-been, and I tried not to have them often, not for Cal and certainly not for Irving.

  Anyway, that wasn’t what the sheriff meant. He wanted a corpse that could testify about its own demise. I couldn’t help him there. Atherton could point a paw, but Irv would never point an accusing finger at his murderer.

  I changed the subject, and because I was pretty certain that Irv had been murdered and still had a fair amount of judgment impairers in my bloodstream, I asked directly: “Are you thinking murder for gain?”

  Again, I got that strange look.

  “You think his family bumped him off so they could move into the ancestral mansion?” He shook his head at Irv’s sorry cabin. “I was just thinking they might want to know that Irv was dead. Maybe claim the body and spare the city the expense of his burial.”

  “Sorry. Occupational hazard,” I lied. I couldn’t explain why, even to myself, but I realized that I had been thinking about murder for gain almost from the moment I saw Irv—and not murder for marijuana. “I guess that all writers have vivid imaginations, and we’d prefer a murder mystery.” I didn’t add that I wrote mostly nonfiction and had never had any such wild thoughts before that night. Murder didn’t happen often in Irish Camp—not these days, at least—and the idea hadn’t blossomed until Atherton put it there. And I couldn’t admit, even to myself, that suicide, not murder, was more what had been on my mind all evening.