The Daughters Of Alta Mira (Quill Gordon Mystery Book 4)

by Michael Wallace

  Gordon turned to Elizabeth.

  “It’s pretty lonely out here,” he said. “Do you ever worry about your safety?”

  “Are you offering to stay here and protect me tonight?”

  “That wasn’t what I was thinking, but …”

  “Because I don’t need to be protected. Let me show you something.”

  She closed the door and walked back to a small desk against a wall. It had three drawers down the right side; she opened one and removed a 9mm pistol, checking it to make sure the safety was set. She carried it to the table on which they’d eaten dinner and set it down.

  “The single woman’s best friend,” she said. “I bought it not long after I came here.”

  “How’s your aim?”

  “Pretty damn good, since you ask. I take it to the range and practice almost every weekend. Actually, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoy shooting it.”

  “I was talking to the sheriff this morning,” Gordon said. “She’s of the opinion that having a gun for self-defense doesn’t help much because the bad guys rarely give you a chance to use it.”

  “I don’t know about that. What I do know is that I want some protection. All it has to do is help me once, you know.”

  Gordon shrugged. She took the gun back to the desk drawer, and they walked to the front door again.

  The rain had eased up considerably, and Gordon was about to make a sprint for the Cherokee, when she said his name.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I’ve shared one of my secrets with you. The gun. Now you need to tell me one of yours.”

  “I don’t know. I’m pretty close with my secrets.”

  “Well, I’ll ask anyway, because I’m dying to know.”

  There was a moment of expectant silence.

  “How did you get your name?” she asked.

  “My father’s last name was Gordon.”

  “Get serious. Your first name.”

  “Oh, that. Pretty straightforward, I’m afraid. My mother’s maiden name was Quillan, and she wanted to give her son the family name. But my father pointed out that Quillan Gordon would be too many ‘un’ sounds in one name, so they made it Quill.”

  “And he didn’t know about the Quill Gordon trout fly?”

  “Not until later, and by then the damage was done.”

  “I wish I hadn’t asked. I’d much rather believe you were named for the trout fly. It’s more exotic somehow.”

  “Sorry to disappoint.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, that’s not even in the top ten disappointments I’ve suffered at the hands of men.

  He said nothing.

  “The rain’s stopped, if you want to go.”

  Gordon made it to the Cherokee without getting wet.

  Tuesday November 11

  THE WEATHER FRONT passed through the area overnight, favoring the people of Alta Mira with a brilliant sunrise in a sky washed clean by the rains. Gordon and Sam watched it from the Rodeo Café, two miles south of town near a grandstand where, unsurprisingly, spectators could view the Sheriff’s Posse Rodeo every August.

  The parking area in front of the café was a large open area where several pickup trucks and big rigs parked higgledy-piggledy. Faded paintings of rodeo scenes decorated the wormwood walls inside, and faded red-checked plastic-covered tablecloths covered the tables. The coffee was terrible, but the food was decent.

  Gordon and Sam ate in silence, eavesdropping on the conversation at a nearby table. A group of men, apparently locals, were talking about the Jessica Milland murder and what they would like to do to the person responsible if they ever caught him. That blood-curdling discussion eventually wore itself out, and the subject changed to the football game coming up Friday night.

  “Gotta like our chances.”

  “You seen the other team play?”

  “Nah, but I hear they can’t defend the pass, and we’ve got the quarterback.”

  Everyone nodded at this.

  “Too bad Mountain Bob won’t be there to call the game. Won’t be the same without him.”

  That drew another round of nods and turned the conversation to a blood-curdling description of what they’d do to whoever killed Bob, if they got their hands on him. Gordon thought, as he chewed his food, that if indeed one killer committed both crimes, he should be grateful that he could only die once.

  Gordon and Sam emerged into the parking area after breakfast, feeling both well-fed and uneasy. They’d had a reasonably good meal and were going fishing, but would it be enough to take their minds off what they’d seen the last two days?

  “It’ll be quieter at the lake,” Gordon said, giving voice to the sentiment. “I hope there aren’t too many people there.”

  They drove south several miles, turned left on a narrow paved road (which turned to dirt four miles from the highway) and followed it seven miles to Reflection Lake. The rain had wet down the dirt road and filled its depressions with water, but it had been dry enough in preceding weeks that the road was firm and easily passable. The parking area was deserted as they arrived, and when they got out of the Cherokee, the surrounding pines, heavily watered by the rain, practically blasted their scent into the air. It was still and cool, with an occasional breeze adding even more coolness.

  A boat ramp went down to the lake from the parking area, and on either side of the ramp were piers extending about 30 feet into the water.

  “We’re in luck,” Gordon said, as they began assembling their gear. “Those piers get you far enough out that you can cast over some nice weed beds. If the fish are feeding, they’ll be there.”

  “Think it’s worth trying dry flies?”

  Gordon shook his head. “I’ve seen one fish rise in the last three minutes. They aren’t feeding on the surface in any numbers. I’d go with a nymph or streamer, but you could try a dry. Maybe they’d come up if it’s there.”

  “What the heck. I’ll try. Easy enough to switch to something else if it isn’t working.”

  Gordon took the pier to the right of the boat ramp and Sam moved toward the one on the left. As Sam walked across the grated steel toward the end of the pier, he hit an icy spot and lost his footing. But he was able to break the fall with his free hand and land on the pier, rather than falling into the icy water.

  “Sorry,” Gordon shouted across the boat ramp. “I should have warned you. It can be slippery first thing in the morning.”

  The piers ended with the walkway opening onto an 8-by-8 foot square surface covered with tarpaper and hence less slippery. It was 8:15, and the sun had not completely come over the mountains to the east, leaving half the lake, including the piers, still in shadow. As Gordon reached the square, he noticed a large rock — the one in Elizabeth’s painting — about 200 feet out in the lake. It occurred to him that she must have painted the picture from the pier. He gazed at the rock for several minutes before making his first cast.

  He was fishing a Hare’s Ear nymph seven feet under an indicator — a painted cork ball three-eighths of an inch thick — floating on the surface of the water. He cast it out about 40 feet and concentrated on the indicator as it slowly drifted back toward the pier. If a fish grabbed the fly below it, the indicator should go down, indicating a strike, but nothing happened on his first two casts. On the third cast, he tried something different.

  He cast to a spot about 20 degrees to the right of where the first two casts had been. After allowing 15 to 20 seconds for the fly to sink, he raised his rod and gave it a couple of quick, short twitches, making the fly jerk upward toward the surface, like an emerging insect rising. Almost immediately, he felt the rod jerk back as a fish grabbed the fly. It was a 12-inch Lahontan Cutthroat, brilliant in its fall spawning colors, and he briefly took it out of the water to admire it before letting it go.

  For the next hour and a half, using the same technique, he caught and released a dozen fish, ranging in size from six to 14 inches. Most were Rainbows, including the largest, but four o
f the dozen were Cutthroats, and he appreciated them all the more for their rarity. Sam, having no success with the dry fly, switched to the nymph like Gordon and caught several decent fish himself.

  By ten o’clock they were in the sun — not that it was providing much warmth — and Gordon had had enough. Ordinarily, fishing allowed Gordon to leave his cares behind, but after what he’d seen the past two days, no lake was beautiful enough and no fish satisfying enough to have that result. After missing several strikes because his mind was elsewhere, he reeled in his line, walked back to shore, leaned against a pine tree, and looked at Sam and the lake.

  When the breeze wasn’t blowing, the lake was utterly calm and showed the provenance of its name in the way it reflected the surrounding mountains. The rock in the lake was bright white in the sun, but without much cloud cover to darken the rest of the scenery, it didn’t stand out the way it did in Elizabeth’s painting. Gordon was looking at it and considering that circumstance when he realized Sam had walked up to him without being noticed.

  “You all right?” Sam said.

  “Not all right, but OK. I can’t get my mind entirely on the fishing. Would you mind if we packed it up early?”

  “Sure,” said Sam after a slight hesitation. Then he laughed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I was just thinking. In all the years we’ve been fishing together, this is the first time you’ve wanted to quit before I did.”

  IT WAS PRETTY CLEAR that the equilibrium of our trip has been upset, that Gordon is badly rattled by Bob’s murder and is still trying to figure out how to handle it. Ordinarily, when he’s bothered or agitated, he tries to work his way through it by keeping himself really busy or doing something to take his mind off it. He doesn’t want to confront his feelings about it. The fact that he walked away from good fishing after only an hour and a half is a sign that his usual approach isn’t getting the job done, and I suppose he’s going to deal with it by trying to help catch Bob’s killer.

  And then there’s the issue of our teacher-painter friend. I figured yesterday that keeping her away from him had become a lost cause, which is why I stepped aside so they could have a cozy dinner together. I must admit I was surprised when Gordon got back to the hotel before ten o’clock. I can only conclude she wasn’t really trying.

  As soon as we got back to town, Gordon pulled over at the first place he could and took out his phone. There had been no reception at the lake, and now he saw that he had missed a call from Miss M. He listened to the message and turned to me.

  “She got hold of Hooper, and he’s coming to her office at 1:30. She wants us to be there. You in?”

  I nodded. He’d filled me in on his hunch last night, and following up on it seemed more interesting than killing time in Alta Mira on a holiday, when half the businesses were closed.

  As we drove into the heart of town, we saw a cluster of people gathered on Third Street, where it met Chaparral Boulevard. There were a lot of American flags, and several people were in military uniform.

  “The Veterans Day parade,” Gordon said. “Bob mentioned it to me Sunday night, but I’d forgotten all about it.” He looked at his watch. “It’s 10:53. They’ll be starting at 11 o’clock, the time of the Armistice in World War I. What do you say we check it out?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Gordon turned right onto Fourth Street, drove down half a block, and parked at the curb in front of a house. We hopped out, walked to the next street over, and cut down to Third Street.

  I was surprised by what I saw when we got there. There must have been at least a thousand people lining the street on both sides for the two blocks between Chaparral Boulevard and the courthouse. A lot of them were waving small American flags, and several cars along the way were decorated in red-white-and-blue bunting.

  At exactly eleven o’clock, a lone bugle began playing “Taps” down by Chaparral Boulevard, and when it finished, the American Legion Marching band, eight members strong, broke into John Philip Sousa’s “Washington Post March” and began marching up Third Street toward the courthouse. Behind them walked the veterans of Plateau County. A couple of them could still fit into their service uniforms, but most just wore their military hats and tried to stand as tall as they could. There were 60 to 75 of them all told. The Vietnam veteran from the bar Sunday night was in the parade, and so was the bartender, walking with his limp. Korea, I guessed, going by how old he looked. There were several veterans who must have been from World War II, some of them walking with canes. As they passed by, the crowd cheered lustily, and when the last veteran had passed, the people lining the street moved onto it and followed the veterans to the courthouse. The band switched to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” halfway through, and that took them to the courthouse steps.

  A lectern with a microphone had been set up at the top of the stairs. On either side of it were several men in coats and ties, and on the far side, to the left from where we stood, was an ancient man in a wheelchair, wearing large eyeglasses and a doughboy hat. He was later introduced as the county’s lone surviving veteran of World War I, and as he waved to the applause, I couldn’t help feeling that he knew this was the last time he’d be hearing it.

  Three people gave brief speeches thanking the veterans for what they had done: someone from the American Legion, the chairman of the Board of Supervisors, and a State Senator whose name sounded like Sturges. Then one of the World War II veterans from the parade walked up the courthouse steps with the help of a cane and read a list of names of men (and two women) from Plateau County who had gone off to serve and never returned. A minister from the Baptist Church said a brief prayer, the band played “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and it was over. I looked at my watch for the first time since it started, and it said 11:38.

  I’d never seen anything like this. I grew up in a suburb across the Bay from San Francisco, a town that hardly existed when World War II ended. Unlike Alta Mira, the town had no serious history of sending its own off to fight. I had to admit I was impressed by the parade and rally, and glad Gordon suggested taking it in. When we get together in San Francisco, we tend to eat lunch or dinner at the same tried and true restaurants or do the same sorts of activities — ball games, concerts. But when he goes on the road, he gets more adventurous. One of the good things about traveling with him is that he has a nose for local activities in the places we go fishing. If not for him, I’d have missed this parade; I’d never have watched the high school football game from the press box last Friday; and I’d never have taken in the Roundup Barbecue at the McHenry Ranch four years ago. Has it really been that long?

  As people milled around afterward, I saw Chris Huntley working her way through the crowd in our direction. I was standing next to Gordon when she reached him.

  “Glad I found you here,” she said. “Can we talk in my office?”

  Gordon nodded.

  “You, too, Akers,” she said.

  And with that, she started to walk around toward the back of the building with the two of us following. What the hell, I thought. Maybe this is what Gordon needs. Maybe we both need it.

  THE COURTHOUSE WAS LOCKED, of course, for the holiday, but the service entrance at the rear was open. With two murder investigations in the works, sheriff’s deputies were coming and going on a steady basis, and a pair left the building as Chris, Gordon and Sam reached the door. They stepped aside to let her through, and she greeted them by name.

  Once in her office, she sat at her desk, motioned them to chairs, leaned back to look at the tiles on the ceiling, took a deep breath and exhaled loudly.

  “Rough day?” Gordon said.

  “Going from bad to worse, but at least there’s a direction to it.”

  He nodded almost imperceptibly.

  “I wanted to ask if you’d been able to make head or tail of those notes on Bob’s desk.”

  “Hardly had time to think about it. There’s still something that bothers me, though I don’t know what i
t is.”

  “All right. Well, let me know if you figure anything out.”

  “How’s the investigation going?”

  “Which one?”

  “Bob’s shooting was what I meant, but I’d be interested in what you have on any of the others, too.”

  “Howard, Diane and I had a meeting this morning. It wasn’t terribly collegial, but we finally got a couple of things decided, though I had to pull rank.

  “We concluded that Bob’s murder is probably tied into Jessica Milland’s murder and the disappearance of the other students. Everybody agreed that Bob has no enemies, so the killer of the students must have misunderstood what Bob was saying on the air and thought Bob was getting too close to him. We also all agreed that the killer was likely to be someone known on campus, so the female students wouldn’t be afraid to take a ride from him.”

  “Makes sense,” Sam said.

  “That’s where the agreement ended. Howard wants us to start looking at some of the athletes who play on the football and basketball teams. He feels that no one who’s known in town could be the killer, but that the young men who came here from somewhere else — sometimes having darker skin and coming from troubled backgrounds — are a good pool of suspects.

  “Diane and I think it’s an inside job, though. Someone would have to know the area pretty well to go to that logging road where Jessica was killed. So I made the call that we’re focusing on faculty and staff at Homestead College at first. If we need to, we’ll look at the athletes later. Howard didn’t take it too well, but one thing you can say for him is that he’s been in the Army and understands chain of command. So he’s spent the entire morning on campus, interviewing top administrators and every teacher Jessica ever took a class from.”