Mudlark (2 page)

"Sinister." Bonnie's face darkened. She was only half kidding.

I offered to heat up her coffee, poured a refill, and finished off the pot in my cup. "I'd better brew more.
Freddy's blood flows slowly before noon."

She watched me fiddle with the big fifteen-cup coffeemaker, the kind that turns itself off if you haven't
poured a cup in two hours and leaves you with quarts of cold coffee. "What does your husband do?"

The coffeepot burped. "Jay runs a training program at Monte Junior College. Did you drive up on
Interstate 5? Monte's just north of Mt. Shasta."

She nodded. "Pretty country. Practically in Oregon."

"Yes. Jay's on sabbatical this year writing a book." He was writing a book on physical evidence in the era
of DNA fingerprinting.

Bonnie laughed. "The place is lousy with writers."

I said, "It's a textbook. Jay's working part time at the college in Kayport, setting up a similar training
program for them. That's where he is right now."

"And you're taking a vacation from the retail trade."

Actually I was spending the year trying to get pregnant, but that seemed a somewhat libidinous
revelation to make to a stranger, so I just smiled and sipped my coffee.

I was a little indignant that I hadn't conceived immediately. My body was cooperative, as a rule, but
I--or rather we--had been trying now for three months without result. I had even read a book on infertility.

By way of changing the subject, I asked what Bonnie had done with the note.

"Huh? Oh, the note about carpetbaggers. Dropped it on the porch, I guess. Should I go get it?"

"You probably ought to save it. Handle it by the edges and put it in an envelope." Cop's wife speaking.
Preserve the evidence.

She grinned. "You've been reading Agatha Christie."

I hadn't. I rarely read mysteries, and when I do my taste runs to K.C. Constantine and Eric Wright. I let
her assumption ride, though, and we discussed whether she ought to report the incident.

She decided to toss the gulls in the garbage, put the bag in her garden shed, and save the note if it
hadn't blown away, but not to bother the police. Although Shoalwater was an incorporated town, it was so small
the mayor contracted with the sheriff's office for police protection. We were outside the city limits anyway. The
deputy in charge covered a lot of territory.

I invited Bonnie to dinner, and she said she'd take a rain check. That provoked the usual comments
about the Pacific Northwest climate, though the sun was shining bravely at that moment and the temperature was
probably eighty degrees. Bonnie left, and I dragged out the rented steamer.

Freddy and I spent the day removing ghastly red-flocked wallpaper, vintage 1965, from the living room.
We got it all off by the time Jay came home. Early, around four-thirty, looking pleased with himself. He allowed that
we'd done well by the wallpaper, which lay in nasty pink curls all over the wretched pink shag carpet.

"At least the living room no longer looks like a San Francisco bordello." I wiped my face on the sleeve of
my shirt.

Freddy gathered up an armload of wallpaper. He was red from exertion and the stifling eighty-two
degree heat. He'd been with us for two months. Long enough to acclimatize. "Lark wants to remove the rug," he
said gloomily.

I laughed. "Not today, cowboy. Thanks for wielding the steamer."

Freddy beamed. "I'll take it back for you, Lark." He was rather like a plump Irish setter--he responded
well to praise.

"I got it at the U-Haul place in Kayport."

"No problem. I have to shower first, though. I'm taking Darla out to dinner."

Jay took off his jacket and helped me dispose of the wallpaper while Freddy showered. As we drooped
over the burning barrel I told Jay about Bonnie Bell and her beastly bag. It sounded like a Nancy Drew story.

He agreed that the trick was unpleasant but didn't seem to think it was serious enough to warrant
investigation. That relieved my conscience. Jay sounded preoccupied, so I asked him how the day had gone. He had
got his way with the college administration and was going to set up two tracks of courses--a certificate for people
just starting out in police work and an associate's degree for professionals who were serious about careers in law
enforcement.

Like most state governments, Washington's was strapped for funds, though, thanks to Boeing and
common sense, it was not as near bankruptcy as California. Jay had persuaded the college authorities that many
courses the degree students would need were already in the curriculum--sociology and history and report writing,
that sort of thing. The dean of instruction wouldn't have to hire new professors.

"I told the dean I'd teach the civil rights course myself," he admitted.

"Hot dog."

He grinned. "I'll have your mother give a guest lecture."

My mother is a poet of note and a civil rights activist. I thought she could probably handle a classful of
cops.

We spent the evening in amiable anticipation of another attempt at parenthood. Freddy returned
around 2:00 a.m., squirreling gravel in the drive. Jay roused briefly. "Lark?"

"Mnnn?"

"Are you sure you want a kid?" The front door slammed, and we lapsed into unconsciousness.

Jay was already gone when I staggered downstairs at seven-thirty. A pot of fresh coffee awaited, along
with a big pink rose he had clearly swiped from Matt Cramer's yard. The rose reposed in a juice glass. I drank
coffee and looked at the late-blooming flower. Outside the air was gray with mist.

I was dressing to go out for a run on the beach when the doorbell rang. I stumbled back downstairs
with my shoelaces dragging. It was Bonnie and she looked guilty.

"I saw a light."

"I'm up," I said. "Come in." I hoped she wasn't going to want to talk a lot at that hour.

"It's a bit foggy but I wondered if you like to walk on the beach."

I explained that I ran. She shuddered. I offered her a cup of coffee, and we agreed to go down to the
beach together. I would run, and she could walk around looking for sand dollars and interesting driftwood. I
suppose she didn't want to go out alone in the mist. I didn't blame her, but I still felt cross as we made our way
through the dunes in front of her cottage to the beach.

I ran north past the wreck of the
Mollie McKay
. At that point I turned my ankle on a bit of
driftwood. The damage wasn't serious, but the fog was thickening, so I turned and trotted back. I had meant to run
a good five miles.

In the dim light, the ribs of the vessel--it had sunk in 1901--looked like ghostly fingers grasping at
something just beyond reach. The fog was heavier, almost spooky. I wondered if Bonnie had gone in. The beach
itself lacks benchmarks, no rock outcroppings or streams or cliff faces, just bare sand, and I was beginning to feel
disoriented. If I missed the access road I could wind up miles to the south without knowing it. I veered left onto
softer ground and stopped running.

I crossed the ruts of the access road and noted a light in the old McKay place. No sign of Bonnie on the
beach--no sign of anyone. It was suddenly very cold and the fog beaded on my eyelashes. I climbed to the edge of
the dunes, plodding now in the soft sand. My ankle hurt. I concentrated on the surface under my feet. Dune grass
grew in tough, ankle-twisting clumps and pieces of driftwood tossed high by winter storms made the going
awkward. I didn't want to miss our path so I kept my eyes on the ground. I had gone perhaps fifty yards when a
scream tore the air. Wings flapped by me--a crow.

I whirled, peering, but saw nothing. Sound does odd things in a fog. The scream had seemed to come
from all directions at once. My pulse thrummed in my ears as I tried to listen.

"Help!" This time the voice came ahead of me and slightly above me. "Oh, please, somebody, help!"

I started into a stumbling trot. "Where are you?"

"Lark?" It was Bonnie and she sounded closer.

"I'm coming." I skirted a small clump of pines. "I don't see you."

"Over here." I could hear her weeping, hiccupping.

"Where?" I stopped again and stared around me. The fog was so thick I could barely see beyond my
groping hands.

I had taken a tentative step forward when she loomed suddenly from behind another clump of
shrouded beach pine. She careened into me, and I steadied her. "For God sake, what's the matter?"

"A body," she panted. "There's a body over there. In the dunes. Oh God, I'm going to be sick."

I turned her away from me in the nick of time, and she threw up the coffee I'd served her half an hour
before. When she stopped retching I gave her a little shake. "Show me."

"I...no, I won't go back."

"Cut it out, Bonnie. If it's dead it won't hurt you."

She blinked at me and gave a shudder I felt the length of my arm. "I'm being stupid, aren't I?"

I ignored that. "Show me the body and then we'll go for help. Where is it?" Truth to tell I didn't believe
there was a body.

She looked wildly around. The fog had not lightened.

"Follow your footprints," I suggested.

She heaved another shuddering breath. "Okay, but don't leave me. I was lost in the fog, all alone up
there. I heard a crow cawing. It flapped in my face. Then I... I stepped on her hand. Jesus." She was tugging me
along, bent over her own trail as if she were in pain.

"Her?"

"It's a woman."

I was cold in my sweat-soaked running suit and almost as freaked out, by then, as Bonnie. The fog was
demoralizing. The setting came straight out of Poe.

We climbed a fat, grass-choked dune, stumbled down the other side, and rounded a single coast pine.
Bonnie was right. A woman lay sprawled in a small hollow beyond the tree. Someone had bashed in the left side of
her head.

The blow or blows to the woman's head had done evil things to her left eye. The right stared upward.
Dried blood crusted the wound and some had splattered on what looked like a silk patchwork jacket, but there was
none I could see on the ground around her. She had fallen almost gracefully. I had a weird impression of
elegance--matching silk trousers and beige leather sneakers, slim gold watch, rings, designer scarf. I didn't see a handbag, but
the woman had obviously not been raped or robbed, just killed.

Though I was almost sure she was dead, I forced myself to kneel by her and hunt for a pulse. I didn't
look at her face very closely. Her skin was cold and yielded to my touch. I detected no sign of a heartbeat. The
thought of attempting CPR was nauseating, and I also began to worry about disturbing the scene of the crime.
There obviously had been a crime, and the crime looked like murder. All the same, I had to check for signs of life.
There were none I could detect.

I looked up at Bonnie. She stood by the pine, and she was staring off into the fog, anywhere but at the
corpse. She was rubbing her arms in her bright red sweatshirt.

I levered myself up. "We'd better find a phone."

"She's dead?" Bonnie had also had doubts.

I swallowed. If I tried CPR... "I think so," I muttered. "Head injuries can be deceptive. Can you tell where
we are?"

"We must be near that McKay place." She waved her hand landward. "What if the killer is still
somewhere around?"

I was pretty sure the woman had been lying there for a while. Hours perhaps. The silk fabric was
soaked and so was the smooth blond hair, but I was no expert on the condition of corpses, nor was I without
imagination. We needed a phone.

"Let's go." I still couldn't see much, but I thought the McKay place lay back toward the access road and
farther inland, over the crest of the dunes, so I took a couple of steps in that direction. Then I stopped. We needed a
marker of some kind. "Give me your scarf."

Bonnie was wearing a pretty red-flowered scarf around her neck. She yanked it off and handed it over
without question. The same thought had probably occurred to her.

I am six feet tall. I tied the scarf to the tip of the squat pine tree. "Let's go."

We trudged more or less northeast. A breeze had begun to swirl the mist, and I thought the fog was
easing, but I could see no more than four or five yards in any direction. The dunes were without distinguishing
feature, bland humps of dun-colored sand and gray-green grass. The walking was strenuous. I could hear Bonnie's
labored breathing. She didn't say anything. Neither did I.

After what seemed like half an hour but was probably much less, I saw the wooden fence that rimmed
the McKay property and I picked up my pace. I was not running exactly, the ground was too treacherous, but I
pulled away from Bonnie.

A gate in the façade of pale, unpainted boards led to the dunes but I couldn't unlatch it. By that
time both of us were yelling for help. When no one responded, I led the way around to the north side of the
enclosed yard. I knew it opened on a short graveled drive with a big garden on the left and the house on the right. I
ran up the drive with Bonnie at my heels and began to pound on the weathered front door.

At first I thought the house was empty, though the blue Toyota pickup with its metal camper sat in the
drive. I was beginning to wonder if we'd have to break in when the door yanked open. A dark-haired man in jeans,
an old gray sweatshirt, and bare feet scowled at us.

"What the hell?" The expression on my face must have registered. The frown eased and he said, less
belligerently, "What's the matter?"

I gulped for air. "There's a dead woman over there in the dunes. I think she was murdered. Will you call
911?"

He stared, frowning, and then opened the door wide. "Come in."

He was already poking out the numbers on a gray desk phone when Bonnie and I entered the house.
The phone lay on an end table beside a tired-looking Morris chair. The table held a lamp and a stack of paperbacks.
An oval rag rug lay on the linoleum floor and a couch, circa 1950, sagged against one wall. There were a couple of
floor lamps. Books, mostly library books with slips of paper sticking out of them, littered a dark sideboard of the
sort that usually stores linen and silverware. The sideboard needed to be refinished. Above it hung a beautifully
framed two-color print of Killerwhale. I thought it might be Kwakuitl work.