Barnstorming (Gail Mccarthy Mysteries) (21 page)

Now what had startled the buck? I waited and watched. And in another few seconds a hiker came into view. The thickset guy with the yellow Lab. Hiking steadily up the trail, the Lab wagging his tail and huffing a little. They both passed under my tree without looking up. The hiker glanced at the Lookout view but kept moving, taking the logging road back down the hill. As before, he carried a machete and wore a pack.

Well, Brandon Carter had said this guy hiked up here all the time. Something about him was familiar, but I just couldn’t place what it was.

I stretched my legs and arms in turn and wondered how much longer I wanted to stay here. Judging by the light, it was about noon. The sky was starting to cloud up. I took a drink of water and settled down to wait some more.

Crossing my arms behind my head, I lay down on my back and gazed upward at the leaves, waving against the drifting clouds. The wind hummed in the branches. Steadily the humming grew louder, and I suddenly sat up straight. That was not the wind. It was an engine.

A sharp, fairly high-pitched engine. And in another moment I was sure. That was the noise of a dirt bike, rapidly approaching up the logging road.

The whine of the motor grew louder and louder, drowning out all other sounds. I stared in the direction of the logging road and saw the motorcycle emerge from the redwoods, shrieking its noisy song. The rider had a beard; it was clearly the same guy I’d seen before. He blasted across the clearing and spun a donut in the middle, tearing up the ground and raising a cloud of dust in the air. Nice.

Pulling up in front of the view, the bearded guy cut the engine and laid the bike down. For a second he glanced around the clearing, and then looked over his shoulder, right at the tree I was in. Purposefully he started in that direction.

Shit. Oh shit. It had never occurred to me that others might climb up in this blind from time to time. For all I knew, this noisy biker might have built the blind. Hadn’t Jeri said that he lived in the big subdivision?

My heart thumped a pounding rhythm as I watched the hiker stride toward me. I fingered the pistol in the pack at my side. Sure. I could hardly go pointing a gun at someone who had done nothing worse than climb into the blind, not knowing I was there. But the thought of being trapped in the blind with this particular individual made the hair rise on the back of my neck.

Something in his very energy was unsettling. His stride, the carriage of his head, his facial expression—all were arrogant, as if the rest of the world should get out of his way. I remembered the several times he had blasted by me on his motorcycle while I was out riding, and what Jane had said about him. Even the idly destructive circular donut dug into the dusty ground of the Lookout was testament to this guy’s obvious jerkdom. At a guess he was a rich kid who had never learned to respect anything, grown to be a lazy man who had nothing better to do than tear up the scenery in a noisy fashion. My hand clenched on the butt of the gun.

He was out of my sight now, right underneath the platform. What had Jeri said his name was? Len something. I heard the clink of the chain ladder. Oh shit.

My heart thudded like it would jump out of my chest. I crouched silently, holding the gun, not sure at all what I should do if this guy emerged on the platform. The feeling of the heavy, solid weight of the .357 in my hand was reassuring, but it didn’t constitute a plan of action.

For a second there was silence. I strained to hear the noise of the ladder squeaking and clanking. Nothing. The chains did not move. What was he doing?

It would be impossible for anyone to climb the ladder without the chains moving and they were still. What the hell was he doing? It was very quiet. I could see the dirt bike lying on its side in the clearing. I thought I could hear tiny rustling noises from beneath the platform. Crouching silently, I strained to hear or see something.

And then I smelled smoke. For a second my mind reeled. Was he setting the tree on fire? I breathed in deeply. The smoky whiff in the air was plain, and something else. A particular distinct herbal smell. I shook my head. Pot. The guy was smoking pot. Sitting under the tree smoking a joint. I knew it as clearly as if I could see it.

The relief was huge. He wasn’t on his way up to the platform, he wasn’t setting the woods on fire. Just smoking a joint. I half smiled. Maybe one that he’d bought from Ross. Perhaps Len was another one of Ross’s customers.

This thought brought another flurry of ideas. Could Ross and his pot growing operation have more connections to the shooting deaths in the woods than I had ever supposed? I couldn’t imagine what the connections might be, but pot seemed to keep coming up. Trish had said that Juli smoked it and had bought it from Ross. Juli was currently hiding Ross and Tammi. Ross and Tammi’s indoor gardening was the source of the mysterious light on the ridge which had puzzled me for months. And now the bearded dirt bike rider who had come close to mowing me down was enjoying a joint while I crouched above him. It all seemed very odd.

More rustling noises from underneath the platform. And then the bearded guy emerged, stretching his arms above his head. I longed to do the same but didn’t dare move. I noticed that he had a small daypack on his back, very like my own. Big enough to conceal a pistol.

The man had his back to me now; he was walking away. Headed toward his motorcycle. Once again I was struck by the arrogance of his stride. I could still smell the lingering odor of marijuana.

I watched him walk to his motorcycle, jerk it up off the ground, throw his leg over it, and start the engine. For a second he glanced around and then revved the motor and took off, back wheel spinning in the loose dirt. I sighed and stretched my legs and arms, while the dirt bike disappeared down the trail in a blast of angry sound.

Grateful to see the last of this visitor I scanned idly around the clearing and nearly jumped a foot. Someone was there, standing in the grove of redwood trees where the logging road emerged. Looking very carefully around the bluff. And I knew who that someone was.

Brandon Carter stood in the shadows of the redwood grove, his rifle cradled in his arms. For a second he squatted and peered at the ground in front of him, then he stood up and looked carefully around the clearing. Every inch of his demeanor proclaimed he was searching for something. The question was what?

After a moment he walked forward slowly, turning his head from side to side like a satellite dish scanning for a signal. At one point his eyes rested on the blind where I crouched, holding my breath. For some odd reason I had the notion he could see through the screen and knew where I was hiding.

Brandon kept walking, glancing down from time to time at the ground in front of him. He was tracking something, I thought. I just hoped it wasn’t me.

Brandon strolled quietly across the clearing, his eyes shifting downward from time to time. Eventually he stopped, about twenty feet from the tree where I was hidden. He looked down and then up. For a long moment he seemed to meet my eyes through the screen.

I stayed frozen, holding my breath. But I had the inescapable conviction that Brandon guessed I was hidden in the blind.

Brandon Carter’s body language remained relaxed. The rifle was carried loosely in his right hand, not pointed at anything. After a minute his gaze shifted from the blind and he looked out over the ocean. One shoulder twitched in what might have been a minuscule shrug. And then Brandon moseyed slowly off in the direction of the trail that led to the reservoir and disappeared from my sight.

Whew. I had no idea what was in Brandon’s mind, but I suddenly wanted out of here. I did not want to be trapped by a guy with a rifle.

I hesitated, not wanting to leave the blind until I was sure Brandon was long gone. Wind skimmed through my hair and the air was getting colder. By my reckoning it was midafternoon. Time to go home.

I stared around the clearing and could see and hear nothing. Just the wind in the trees. I scooted to the edge of the platform and froze. Motion from the direction of the logging road—something was coming.

The movement shortly became a bicycle. A bicycle being pedaled by a guy with a shiny bald head. Oh shit. As the form came closer I was sure that it was Buddy. I immediately pictured his odd eyes with the white rims and quickly tucked my feet out of sight.

Buddy pedaled on, crossing the clearing and stopping in front of the view. He carried a small pack on his back, and wore ragged jeans and a T-shirt. Taking a drink from a water bottle hung from his pack, he glanced around the clearing in an idle way, and then swung the bike around and pedaled towards my tree. In a minute it became obvious that he was headed down toward the pretty trail. I watched him disappear down the hill.

Now that was one guy I really did not want to meet up here.

I slithered to the edge of the platform, grabbed the ladder, and began to lower myself. I was done. I wanted out of here. Hand over hand, one step at a time, I descended the swaying chain ladder until my feet touched the ground. Heaving a sigh of relief, I glanced quickly around the deserted clearing and headed off in the direction of my truck and the logging road. I was going home.

Twenty minutes later I pulled in my own driveway. I had seen no one on my return trip, and my truck appeared undisturbed, though it seemed to me that there were unfamiliar footprints around it. More than one set, I thought.

Blue and Mac were home, both hanging out in the little house. Blue was playing his pipes and Mac was immersed in a book on physics, one of his favorite subjects. Freckles and Star were asleep on the floor. Everybody seemed happy to see me; nobody asked where I’d been. Good.

I went over to the main house and made a sandwich and a cup of tea and sat down on the porch. The wind riffled across our little hollow in the hills, rustling the drooping sunflowers and the dry bean vines on the garden tepee. Whirling leaves whipped through the air. Fall was really here.

I took a sip of tea and squinted through the steam at the distant ridgeline. There, silhouetted against the cloudy sky, was the grove of redwoods that stood near the Lookout. The Lookout bluff and the oak tree with the blind were hidden behind the tall eucalyptus trees on the ridge trail in the foreground, but I knew exactly where the blind was in relation to the redwoods I could see. Less than an hour ago I had been there, hidden on that platform, watching the woods.

The notion of here and there, now and then, still fascinated me, even embroiled in the mystery of the trails as I was. I sat on my porch and sipped my tea and reviewed the hours I had waited in the blind. I’d seen a number of things—I just wasn’t sure what they all meant.

Sandwich eaten and tea drunk, I went into the house to call Jeri Ward.

She answered on the first ring. “Hi Gail. What’s new?”

“I’ve been watching the woods. I saw some people.”

“You’ve been what?”

“Watching up in the woods.”

“What are you talking about exactly?”

“Jeri, I’d rather not tell you exactly. Do you want to know who I saw?”

There was a moment’s silence. Then, “I’ll be over there in about an hour. It’s better if we talk there.”

“All right,” I said, and hung up.

I spent the next hour playing with Mac and Star in the new house, while the sky grew darker. Evening was drawing in and it felt like a storm was coming. The light had that odd greenish hue it often got on the brink of blustery weather. Eventually Mac and Blue decided to make tacos for dinner and headed over to the main house to build a fire in the woodstove and begin their cooking. I fed the horses and then waited in the little house for Jeri.

The sight of headlights coming up my driveway caused me to sit up straighter in the rocking chair. Jeri parked her car and strode up the hill at a brisk pace. Looked like she was in a hurry.

I stood up and pulled the sliding glass door. Jeri walked through it talking. “What were you doing, Gail?”

“I was up in the woods, watching,” I said. “There’s no law that says I can’t hang out in the woods.”

“Well, it’s pretty goddamn dumb,” Jeri snapped. “Do you want to be the next victim?”

“I wasn’t riding, and no one knew I was there. Besides I thought you guys had decided that Sheryl shot Jane and Doug killed Sheryl.”

“Sheryl’s gun did not kill Jane, as it turns out. And it looks as though the same gun killed both of them,” Jeri said tersely. “We haven’t arrested Doug Martin. There is still the distinct possibility that these shootings were random.”

“Just happened to be two women on horseback? Who happened to both be dating the same guy?”

“I know,” Jeri sighed. “I just got done interviewing Bill Waters, the guy with the white dog. He is hostile enough to take out a whole boatload of horse people. He went on and on about how the horses tear up the ground and so forth. He admits to blocking the trails and siccing his dog on riders. And he says he did not hear the shot that killed Sheryl, though he was at home with no alibi on Tuesday afternoon. Neither does he have an alibi for Saturday afternoon when Jane was shot. So he’s definitely on my radar.”

“How about Ross and Tammi?”

“I went out to Lazy Valley to pick them up, but the owner swore she’d never seen them. My next step is to get a search warrant.”