“So you’re not busy.”
“Nope. Why? Need a helping hand?”
“Yes, I do. Are you up for a little undercover work?”
“Sure. Here in the city?”
“No. Meruk County. I could pick you up and fly you here tomorrow.”
“Where’s Meruk County?”
“North, on the Oregon border. I’ve been working a case here, but I’m getting to be too well known. You could present yourself as a tourist, maybe find out things I can’t.”
“Tell me about the case.”
I went over the details. “I’ve got three local contacts there: Jane Ramone, Jake Blue, and Hal Bascomb, the guy who manages the airstrip, whom I’ll introduce you to when we get there. Whatever you do, steer clear of the county sheriff, Noah Arneson.”
“Bad news, huh?”
“The worst. He hates Natives, women, poor people. And he’s probably in the pockets of the local high rollers.”
“Sounds interesting. Where should I stay up there?”
“They have a couple of motels, but I hear they’re pretty awful.”
“As you may well remember, I haven’t always lived in the lap of luxury.”
No, she hadn’t. From a cottage in Santa Maria belonging to a begrudging grandmother who had been awarded her guardianship upon the death of her parents, she’d gone to cramped housing in Berkeley, where she’d struggled to support a perpetual-student husband. When she left him, she carved out a cozy nest in the attic of All Souls. After moving with me to McCone Investigations, she met and married Ricky. Now her life included a huge house in Seacliff, private jets, and luxurious vacations, but she was still Rae—one of the special people who never forget where they came from.
“We’ll iron out the details tomorrow,” I said.
“Okay,” she said, and then added thoughtfully, “Isn’t it strange, how we women sometimes speak in the vernacular of our female forbears?”
“What do you mean?”
“‘Iron out.’”
“Never thought about that. I haven’t owned an iron for twenty years or more.”
“I tossed mine out the day I left Dougie.”
“A milestone, however small.”
“And at a time when our lives turned an important corner over such a small matter as ironing.”
TUESDAY, JANUARY 15
8:01 a.m.
While I was preflighting my plane at the airstrip, I told Hal Bascomb I’d be returning with a passenger. “How are those motels outside of town?” I asked.
“Grungy.”
“Is there any other place my friend could stay that wouldn’t link her to me? Not Jake’s or Jane’s—she’s an undercover operator.”
“Well, there’s a woman who takes in boarders in season—Hattie Moran. She’s kind of…eccentric but well meaning. And she can be trusted not to gossip.”
“Will you call her and ask if she’ll take in someone off-season?”
“Yes. I’m sure she’d be happy to. She’s a widow living on her husband’s Social Security, and I know she could use the cash.”
1:55 p.m.
The sky had been mostly clear on my flight to Oakland, but on the trip back, thickening clouds over Goose Lake indicated a storm was brewing. I detoured south and set a northeast course for Meruk County. The turbulence wasn’t all that bad, but Rae, never a comfortable flyer, gripped the edges of her seat and looked queasy, her small face white in contrast to her wild red-gold curls.
“There’s a barf bag in the pocket behind you,” I told her.
“I’ll ride it out,” she said through clenched teeth.
“I’m sorry. I forgot you don’t like to fly.”
“I like to fly. I just don’t like little planes. They make me feel like I’m riding in the stomach of a hummingbird.”
To distract her, I said, “You know, I read something interesting about hummingbirds the other day. They’re the only avian species that can fly backward.”
“Well, don’t you fly backward. Forward is fine by me.” She clutched the seat tighter.
I made another attempt to distract her. “What’s the new book about?”
“About four hundred and six pages.”
“Come on, give me an idea.”
“Well, there’s this woman who’s living in Mendocino County, sort of near Touchstone, but higher on the ridge, and militant people from the forest seem to be closing in on her…”
Hal Bascomb was waiting for us outside the largest of the three Quonset huts when we landed. He helped Rae down solicitously and offered her a mint that he claimed was guaranteed to combat air sickness. She accepted it and ate two more during the drive to Miz Hattie’s Victorian cottage in Aspendale.
The cottage was pale yellow, with all the filigrees and architectural frills of that era. And Miz Hattie, even though Hal had described her as eccentric, was a definite surprise. Short—no more than five feet—and fragile looking, she appeared at the door wearing a towering hat covered with plastic fruit on her white curls. She grinned at our startled expressions.
“I take my name seriously,” she said, admitting us and brushing away a pair of ginger cats who appeared to sniff out the visitors. “I have a world-class collection of hats, and I change them every six hours on the dot—except when I’m asleep, of course. This one”—she motioned at the arrangement of various plastic fruits on her head—“is one of my favorites. The fruit is very realistic, and there’s a comb that I can attach a real pineapple to, just like Chiquita.”
“It’s wonderful,” Rae said.
I agreed that it was.
“Thank you. Come back to the kitchen. We’ll have tea and cookies.” She turned and bustled down a hallway, past rooms crammed with velvet settees and carved chairs and rosewood side tables.
Rae and I raised eyebrows at one another and smiled.
The tea was jasmine—“My father was stationed in Japan for much of his naval career”—and the cookies were cardamom—“It’s good for what ails you.” Good for my ailments or not, I ate three and asked her for the recipe.
“Your other hats,” Rae said, “what kind are they?”
“Oh, baseball caps—I’m a Giants fan. Berets, because I can pretend I’m in Paris. I’m particularly fond of my red fedora; it has beautiful feathers on the brim.”
After a while I tuned out the headgear conversation, and when Miz Hattie offered to show Rae her room, I excused myself and left.
3:10 p.m.
Back in the Jeep, I phoned Henry Howling Wolf’s cell, and he answered immediately. He was still in Santa Rosa, but said Sally would be released the next morning. “She’s doing well, really well, and I can’t wait to get her back home.”
“Are you concerned about someone going after her again?”
“No way. I’ve got a Remington 870 Express and know how to use it. If I have to turn the house into an armed camp, so be it.”
“What about Sheriff Arneson?”
“I’m ready to kick his ass if he shows up and hassles us.”
“Not such a good idea to attack the county sheriff.”
“I’m not worried about that. Most of his department would back me up.”
“Sounds like he’s riding for a fall.”
“He is, if I have anything to say about it.”
I shifted topics. “The feather pendant of Sally’s that I found and had taken away from me—was there anything special about it? I mean, something that would make it different from the other two you made?”
“No. It—” He broke off, then said, “Well, maybe. It was numbered. Like many other silversmiths, I sign my work, and number them to indicate the order in which they were produced.”
“So the one I found must be Sally’s.”
“I’m positive it was. After her memory improved, she told me the son of a bitch who grabbed her near St. Germaine tore it off.”
Was the son of a bitch who’d torn it off me the same man? Or somebody else? Whoever it had been, I still
didn’t know why.
Or did I?
3:22 p.m.
The Aspendale Civic Building was next to the clinic where I’d been taken after the fire at the shack. I asked the young Native woman at the reception desk in the lobby who the county coroner was, and she told me it was Malcolm Hendley, owner of the Hendley Funeral Parlor. That figured. Often in underfunded rural counties, a local mortician also served as coroner.
The funeral parlor was a white structure that looked like something out of the antebellum South that had been shrunk to fit this small backwater town. I entered and was confronted by the smell of flowers—lilacs, maybe, but the odor seemed artificial. The floors were covered in gray industrial carpet, the walls painted a darker gray. Soft organ music came from loudspeakers mounted near the ceiling.
A man clad in a dark suit emerged from a side door. “May I help you? The services for Mrs. Woods are scheduled to start at four—”
“That’s not why I’m here. Are you Mr. Hendley?”
“I am. Malcolm Hendley, at your service.” He was younger than I’d imagined, maybe thirty, and had the trim body and economical moves of a runner.
I introduced myself. He knew who I was—news travels quickly in places like Aspendale—and was willing to answer my questions. He led me to a small seating area.
“What is it you wish to know, Ms. McCone?”
“You performed an autopsy on Josie Blue four years ago, is that right?”
“I did, yes. The poor girl died of manual strangulation. Her murderer was never caught.”
“And you also handled her burial.”
“Of course. A committal service at the Aspendale Cemetery.”
“Her brother told me a silver pendant his sister always wore was interred with her. Was it?”
“Unfortunately, no. The deceased wore no pendant when she was brought to me.”
“Was it ever found?”
“As far as I know, no, it wasn’t.”
That was all I needed to know.
5:07 p.m.
Rae called with news. “I’m at the Back Woods Casino,” she said. “Those cowboys from the Harcourt Ranch you told me about, Gene and Vic, were here drinking in the bar and only too happy to buy me a couple of beers. I got out of them that they did ‘special jobs’ as well as ranch work. When I asked what kind, they got sort of reticent. But as the bourbon—in their case—flowed, I said I’d heard about the fire at the shack where you were staying, and I got the impression from the sly way they talked and looked at each other that they might be the ones who set it.”
I’d figured as much. And if they had set the fire, it had to have been on orders from one of the Harcourts. The surge of anger I felt started me coughing.
“Shar? Are you okay?”
I cleared my throat. “Yeah. What else did they say?”
“Well, Gene grumbled that they’d been sent on what he called ‘a lot of bullshit errands’ whenever the Harcourts were expecting ‘important visitors’ lately.”
“Did they know who these visitors are?”
“Didn’t seem to. Just important people from out of the area.”
“Congregating at the ranch for what reason?”
“Neither of them could or would guess—they don’t exactly have inquiring minds. And I didn’t want to make them suspicious by pressing too hard. The guests usually arrive by air, although a limo has occasionally been seen in the village.”
“I wonder if anybody in the village has actually seen any of these visitors.”
“Miz Hattie claims she has, but I’m not sure that’s true. Anyway, the cowboys left me at that point. Gene said they might be back later if they didn’t decide to stay at the peak tonight, and Vic told him to shut up. What’s this about a peak?”
“Sheik’s Peak. It’s a big rock formation north of town. I gather those two guys go around the countryside camping out when they’re banished from the ranch, like they did at the shack.”
“Well, it could be they’re up to more mischief. I followed them out and heard the fat one say, ‘As my sainted Irish grandfather would put it, maybe we should spend some time riding the dolly.’ That earned him another ‘Shut up’ from Vic.”
“Odd phrase, ‘riding the dolly.’ You have any idea what he meant?”
“No.”
I didn’t either, unless it was a reference to one of the dollies I’d seen at the warehouse in Allium.
I asked Rae, “So what’s on your agenda for the rest of the evening?”
“Paul Harcourt. He came in alone a while ago—the cowboys pointed him out to me just before they left. Harcourt’s playing blackjack. I’m going to try to get next to him, see what I can find out.”
“Be careful. He’s dangerous.”
“I can be dangerous too, you know.”
6:30 p.m.
Jake agreed to meet me at the Brews to talk about the Sheik’s Peak area. I didn’t tell him my other reason for wanting to see him; I would do that after he gave me the information about the Peak.
He was seated in a booth looking worn out. His eyes were reddened from his rubbing them, and his skin was drawn tight over his cheekbones.
We ordered drinks, and when they came I opened the sectional I’d brought with me. “Let’s look at this map. How do I get to Sheik’s Peak?”
“You’re not planning to go out there alone? That’s pretty rough country.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll be careful.”
He uncapped a felt-tip and began drawing on a napkin. “You take the main highway north for five miles or so and turn left on Powder Gap Road. There’s an old, rusted-out Mobil gas sign that tells you when it’s coming up. From there it’s about two miles before you see the peak. It stands out because it’s on one of the high rises of land out there—big, crumbling granite thing. Some of us used to try to climb it, but as far as I know, no one ever did.”
“The road doesn’t go all the way to the peak.”
“No. It ends in a clearing a quarter mile or so below the base.”
“Jane Ramone told me there are hiking trails in the area. Is there one leading out of the clearing?”
“Two. One that leads up to the base of the peak, the other parallels it lower down.”
The second was the one I wanted. “How long a hike is it”—I tapped the sectional with my finger—“to this land mass here?”
“A couple of miles. But that’s on Harcourt land.”
“I know.” I tapped another spot. “The building marked here near the base of the peak—what is it?”
“An abandoned cabin built by a crazy miner a long time ago.”
Gene and Vic’s other camping place.
“Tell me again why you think one of the Harcourts killed your sister.”
He sighed, took a deep drink of beer. “She’d been seen with one of them, walking around by the reservoir. More than once.”
“By whom?”
“Several people.”
“Did you hear this before or after she died?”
“Both.”
According to Josie’s former boyfriend, the Berkeley professor, on her return to Meruk County she’d found the love of her life. A Harcourt?
“Could she have been seeing one of them regularly without you knowing it?”
“What do you mean, seeing him?”
“You know what I mean, Jake.”
“She had better sense than that.” He grimaced. “Or, hell, maybe she didn’t. Anyhow, she didn’t talk about her love life.”
I asked, “What motive would either have had for strangling her?”
“I don’t know. They’ve got a mean streak, a crazy temper. All the Harcourts are crazy.”
I said, “All right. Now let’s talk about the feather pendant that was stolen from me.”
“That pendant! What the hell is so important about it?”
“Henry Howling Wolf made only three of them: one for Josie; one for a friend who’d moved to Portland; one for Sally Bee. You tol
d me Josie was buried with hers. But that was a lie. Malcolm Hendley told me hers was never found.”
Jake sagged over his beer, both hands now pressed to his forehead.
“You believed her killer might have taken hers, maybe threw it away in the woods. When you saw me wearing the one I found and I told you where I’d found it, you thought it might be Josie’s. You didn’t know then that Sally Bee was missing, or that she’d been abducted on the trail to the monastery and the pendant was likely hers. So you followed me back to the shack that night—”
“All right!” He lowered his hands, but his eyes avoided mine. “Yes, I followed you. Yes, I wanted the pendant because I thought it must be Josie’s, the only thing left of hers that meant anything to me. Jesus, I’m sorry, Sharon, I’m sorry…”
“Why didn’t you confess to me later?”
“I was too ashamed. I didn’t want you to hate me after the way I jumped you, knocked you down…”
“I don’t hate you. I’m just disappointed in you.”
“No more than I am in myself.”
“Okay. Where is the pendant now?”
“In my freezer. Under the mac and cheese. I guess I’m not very original about hiding places.”
“You know now that it most likely belongs to Sally Bee. You’ll have to return it to her when she comes home.”
“I will. That’s a promise.”
He looked totally bereft when I left him, as if he were reliving all his mistakes and losses.
6:50 p.m.
The odd phrase Rae had reported to me—“riding the dolly”—echoed in my mind again as I climbed into the Jeep. It had an unpleasant ring to it, although none of the individual words implied anything terrible.
I thought of the warehouse full of stolen goods in Allium. There had been dollies lined up to move the cartons. But you didn’t ride them; you pushed them. Anyhow, what could that have to do with Gene and Vic? Or Sheik’s Peak?
Maybe it was an Irish slang term. But for what?
“Riding the dolly.”
Dolly. Doll. That was a slang word for woman—
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