Antler Dust (The Allison Coil Mystery Series Book 1) (23 page)

Suddenly Applegate realized that he didn’t want any more contact with the people who knew him as his previous self.

“So this anti-hunting thing,” said Marcovicci, “it’s real?”

“Of course.”

“What I mean is, you believe this stuff? It’s got you on television and in every newspaper from here to Podunk, but—”

“But what? I changed my mind. It’s about as simple as that.” There was an unbending silence in the space between them.

“Excuse me?”

Marcovicci cranked his head at the sound of the female voice at the opening to Applegate’s partition. Ellenberg stepped in, not waiting for permission. The office was like that, free flowing. Applegate had grown to like its loose feel. Applegate introduced them but only mentioned Marcovicci’s profession: nothing to do with the hunting. Ellenberg didn’t seem interested in small talk.

“Pleasure to meet you,” she said curtly.

“We need to talk schedule when you get a minute,” said Ellenberg. “Local morning show here wants you to debate the author of that new, disgusting book that says hunting is in our genes and can’t be suppressed.”

“The guy that says hunting is like loving yourself,” said Marcovicci. “Interesting premise. Yeah, what’s the title?
Born To Gather, Dying To Hunt.
”

“Gives me the creeps,” said Ellenberg.

“Actually,” said Marcovicci, “he’s a reputable scientist, or theorist.”

“Like how our brains can’t possibly control an impulse stuck in our genes,” said Ellenberg.

“Stuck—or built up, developed over the centuries,” said Marcovicci.

“Perhaps you’d like to debate your friend here,” Ellenberg said to Applegate.

“He’d eat me alive,” said Applegate. “So to speak.”

“Yeah,” said Marcovicci. “Bet the cannibalism metaphors don’t go too far around here.”

Ellenberg gave Marcovicci a faint sneer, nothing he could have detected. It was in her eyes, the hint of disdain.

“We’ve got a big fundraiser and everyone wants you there for a few words. The next weekend we have a stunt up our sleeves for the people breaking ground on that new aquarium. So when you get a chance ...”

Ellenberg smiled and was gone, casting a curt glance in Marcovicci’s direction.

“You’re doing the horizontal bop with the queen bitch,” said Marcovicci.

“What do you mean?”

“What do you mean what do I mean?”

“Jesus—”

“Jesus, what? Christ, Applegate, you’re a fucking mess. War paint camouflage and looking for a big elk one week, boinking Mrs. Fucking Doolittle the next. And I mean do little but make a fuss and raise a stink for her goddamn political purposes. She’ll probably run for Congress or mayor and all her minions will have laid the groundwork. And you, you ride in like Mr. Cowboy who suddenly decides to engineer the fucking peace train. I hope you’re getting plenty and I hope it’s good, but there’s nobody out there who believes a blessed word of what you’re saying.”

Two pulsing veins flanked Marcovicci’s throat. Applegate thought he felt the cubicles nearby go hush. He wanted to signal Fishy to cool it.

“You got problems or a rifle or whatever you left behind up in the mountains, then I’m sorry I even bothered. Christ, screwing her.”

“Wait, Fishy, it isn’t that simple.”

“Then what’s complicated about you standing in the middle of FATE headquarters like the last great talking head? You guys and Operation Rescue and all the strident one-issue groups. It must be nice to see the world in such black and white terms. Later,” said Marcovicci, turning to leave. “Or maybe never. One thing for sure, more room in the tent next year.”

“Fishy, look...”

What was there to say? It might not matter. There was plenty to do.

The rifle. He’d need to drop things for a few days and get back with Grumley. He’d have to go up there and do with the rifle what he’d said he’d already done.

Fishy was gone. What excuse would he give Dawn?

He couldn’t afford to let things wait. The rifle. Maybe Grumley had destroyed it. Maybe he needed to make a phone call to find out. Could he risk a phone call? Life was confusing, just when he was starting to believe in something.

****

“You can’t honestly think,” said Trudy, “that I’m really and seriously a threat.”

Popeye Boyles sat at the kitchen table, gun propped precariously over his knee.

“Like physical threat? No, I don’t suppose,” he said.

“You’re letting me fix us a decent lunch, perhaps we can at least be civil about this prison thing.”

“Just following orders.”

Trudy stirred the homemade clam chowder in her cast iron pot, added some milk and set the flame on low. She wanted to stretch things out.

“Clam chowder. Don’t ask where a Colorado mountain girl comes up with a taste for slimy old seafood, but it’s possible. Always made me feel kind of warm and cozy.”

“Only chowder we got in the U.S. Navy was corn with canned ham. A side of baking soda biscuits. Surrounded by an ocean and never clam chowder—well, maybe twice a year. Go figure.”

She half wondered if this leathery old man had an eye for her. It crossed her mind that if she couldn’t go through with the mushroom plan, which had kept her awake most of the night— the idea emerging crystal clear and foolproof—she might at least make herself available for something physical. The age difference between them was fifteen years. She could live with that. And his gruff way of talking didn’t bother her as much as his dull musty odor. It was like the back of a damp basement closet. She wasn’t sure what might be growing there.

“There’s no ham in the house. But I do have tomatoes and cucumbers and this wonderful seven-grain bread. With a bit of Dijon and a pinch of mayo, not the imitation stuff, you’ll never crave a pork product again in your life.”

“Sounds veggie,” said Boyles.

“And we mustn’t forget my secret zing.”

Boyles stood up as Trudy skipped quickly into the greenhouse and pushed aside the massive glass top that covered her own private piece of forest floor. She had thought about secretly pocketing a couple of the fly agarics or orange Clitocybes, which studded the loamy bottom of her terrarium along with the dependable chanterelles and yummy oyster mushrooms. But she couldn’t imagine being sly enough to slip them into the sandwich. The rich, humid, mossy and slightly lemony air filled her nostrils. She took a moment to savor it.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Boyles, right behind her. “I ain’t eating nothing out of there.”

“I suppose you like all your food wrapped in plastic and shipped half way around the country for a couple of weeks before you take a bite.” Trudy pushed back ferns. The irregular, vise-like mushrooms looked healthy and prime, the salmon-orange caps giving way to a brown base.

“Mushrooms?” said Boyles.

“You’ve never tasted a mushroom until you’ve had a chanterelle fried in butter with a dash of nutmeg.”

She grabbed the impostor Clitocybe by the base, the fattest of the six, and pulled the root free. The Clitocybes also had gills that extended far down the stalk, but the chanterelle’s trunk was stubbier. The cap on this Clitocybe was puffy and full blown, but the whole thing barely created any weight in her palm.

Boyles took a step backward.

“They grow from dead things, dead things that have energy.” She spoke calmly. She wanted to hold the Clitocybe up for Boyles’ inspection but realized her hand might betray her fear.

“A dead insect, rotting wood, anything with left-over energy. The mushroom is the fruit. But it doesn’t need chlorophyll to capture energy from the sun. Mushrooms mostly avoid the sun. People pay top dollar for chanterelles in hot-shot grocery stores and we’ve got our own right here.”

“Curse of the Navy right there. If you know your history. Disaster for oak-hulled ships up until the American Civil War. The mushrooms were packing a punch—dry rot. Nothing but a headache that meant constant repair. Couple of ships, I think with the British Royal, even had their hulls rotted clear through. At sea. Entire crews gone.”

“I think we need two,” said Trudy. “I wasn’t aware they were such a problem.” She plucked another mushroom, this one a nutritious chanterelle.

She built the sandwiches, sliced each mushroom neatly into two separate piles on her cutting board.

Think ahead. Keys to the car. Grab his gun. Slit open a 20-pound bag of cat food, good for a couple of weeks, perhaps. Pack clothes. He might writhe and gasp; he might not go all the way out.

“Cut diagonal or straight across?” she said.

“What?” he said.

“Your sandwich.”

“Whole’s fine,” said Boyles.

She spooned the soup into a bowl, thinking a broth base might have been better because all the thick milk might coat his stomach if he ate the chowder first and the mushroom might not as easily find his bloodstream. Maybe he’d get sick. She started on her own sandwich while he peppered the hell out of his soup, stirred it around and peppered it again.

He tested the soup and backed away because it was too hot. He packed his mouth with a bite from the sandwich.

Her heart fluttered and went light.

And then another bite. And three more.

“Beer to go with that?” she offered, wanting to be out of reach when it hit.

“Sure,” he said, through a mouthful.

She spent longer than she needed, digging in the refrigerator. She couldn’t turn around. How could she look? She listened for sounds of anything behind her, the clink of a spoon on the soup bowl. Nothing.

She pulled out two cans of Coors as the kitchen table careened up and crashed down. She scampered for the far corner of the kitchen and crouched by the garbage can and the bowls for cat water. One of the cats gave a howl like its tail had been squashed. A bundle of black fur flew as the table came to rest on its side, followed by a gagging sound like his guts were on fire. He was moving, crawling toward her. She stood up, thinking she should have planned to head the other way, because now she had to go around him and through the mess. And she would probably have to look. Slowly she went along the counter, her back to the cabinets, keeping an eye on the table that shielded her view of him. Maybe he was pretending. Maybe he had tasted the poison. One of the two Siamese, Pookette, lapped peacefully at a pool of clam chowder on the floor. Bliss.

She scrambled across a thrown chair. His arm came flailing from behind the table. She screamed and scrambled free, not looking back.

Put the clothes in a suitcase, especially the heavy stuff, she thought. Her heart beat wildly. Why wouldn’t her hands calm down? How long did she have? She’d have to drive, at least a few miles down the road. She needed his gun and realized she should have grabbed it first, right away. Put the suitcase in George’s old 4Runner. God, did she even know how to work the clutch? Could she? Don’t forget her purse and credit cards. Anything else? The table moved; it sounded like the table moving. Did the table move? Cat stares everywhere. Take a big winter coat, the wool one. The gun. She couldn’t look. She covered her eyes so there was only a small gap to see.

Bless her brain, it was hanging in there.

She stepped to the kitchen and tried not to see too much. The gun. The evidence! Down the disposal? The telephone—911? She would make that the last thing. The gun, where was the gun? Boyles was keeled over sideways and wrapped around a chair, hugging its legs. He wasn’t moving, but his chest heaved. The gun—it had to be here. There it was—the barrel underneath his leg. She squatted down, giving up on the idea of not looking. She reached around to where the grip should be and dug for it under his grimy jeans.

A hand clasped her forearm, locked on and dug for blood. She grabbed the gun by the muzzle and whacked the knuckles hard. The hand bounced off and she sprang away, shuddering.

She and the gun sat in the front seat of the 4Runner. Now make that 911 call. Two rings. She spewed out just enough information and gave directions, let the phone dangle off the hook after saying she was heading out to look for help.

The clutch went in too fast the first time and she killed the engine. She concentrated on being smooth, deliberate. The second time the engine snapped off with such authority she thought she might have done damage. The third pop with the clutch, the 4Runner jerked backward but kept rolling. She cranked the wheel after the car was outside to turn it around. With the clutch down, she practiced finding the four gears, keeping a nervous eye on the door to the house.

First gear. A lurch and she was off, down the driveway hill. She would get better at it. She was free.

“Meow.” It was a high-pitched whine but most likely an echo in her head.

She took the main road back to the interstate. Third gear, fourth. Keeping her mind alert, supple, focused, relaxed. Relaxed? Impossible. The world was vivid and alive and coming at her in a Technicolor rush.

“Meow.”

Even more demanding. She risked a look around. “Good Lord, Fossil. What are you doing?”

Two yellow eyes peeked out from a ball of black fur that had found a bed on her big winter coat. The cat didn’t move, but answered politely with the only word it knew.

Twelve

Allison’s A-Frame looked friendless and neglected, an untended orphan, in the dusk-lit clearing. But she wouldn’t be alone.

A boxy station wagon was parked off to the side of her house. The car was broadside to her view from the top of the road leading down. She couldn’t make out the car’s color, only the shape and its odd parking place off to the side as if it knew it didn’t belong.

A figure moved from her front stoop to the car.

She stood with Bear for a second in the road, kept an eye peeled on the car and headed down.

The man drifted back to her front porch. Something about his gait and build looked familiar, but she couldn’t connect her gut with good or bad.

Flame from a match made a gentle arc from waist-high up to his face and then was gone, replaced by a hot red dot that repeated the arc in reverse. There was a quick glimpse of skin, no meaning to it, even though she was much closer now.

One gentle turn remained in the road to the A-Frame. Now at least she knew he wanted to be seen. Bear snorted on cue.