Murder at Moot Point (2 page)

“Kneecap.” Jack's eyes followed Buddha's nose down to Charlie's eyes.

“Can I have some more coffee?”

“
The
Morton and Fish?” He poured wine into her
WHOLENESS
mug, but his energy rage had dropped by half.

“You'll have to travel. This kind of book needs author promotion.”

“Promotion.”

“I think you'd be good at it if you didn't swear too much.”

“They want my book? They want me to promote it?”

“I've been here over an hour, Jack. Didn't you once ask yourself why I came all this way? Where is it you live? I can almost understand how you write books in your head instead of on a computer, but is that where you live too?”

“You drove all the way up here from Los Angeles to deliver a book contract, Charlie Greene the agent?”

“I don't have the contract, I had to talk to you first. But the terms sound great to me for an author with no track record. Keegan would have come but he's in a cast. He broke his leg jogging on a bike path. I mean some bikes broke his … this all happened about the time this offer came from Morton and Fish. And I have some vacation time and my mother arrived to take care of my daughter while I was away and I always want to get away from my mother and … you see, Jack, Shelly Hummer didn't forget your book. She loved it. It's just she got an offer for a better job at—”

“Morton and Fish.”

“No.
Field and Stream
. They don't do books. But she passed the word along to a friend at Morton and Fish—Susan Talbot. And Susan asked me for a copy of the proposal and we got a deal if I can get you to okay it. But I couldn't get in touch because you ripped out your phone.” Charlie took a gulp of merlot from her coffee mug and wondered why reasonable, dependable, ordinary, workable people didn't write books she could sell.

“Morton and Fish.”

“
Writer's Digest
doesn't have all the answers, Jack, trust me. And your agent's got mostly questions. Like, I've got reservations for a cabin at a place called Hide-a-bye. Is it near here, I hope? And can I have some more wine?”

Jack Monroe was staring off into nirvana with the Buddha and pouring Charlie more coffee when the door burst in with a gust of fog and heightened warning from the buoy and a man in a beard and yellow slicker over knobby knees and hiking boots.

“Jack,” he shouted and swept the slicker into swirls of plastic crackling mayhem, “who is it drove that Toyota to your doorstep?”

“Frank?” Jack Monroe, the best-selling author, came back from the Oprah Winfrey Show.

“My Georgette, she's under that Toyota. She's dead, damnit.” He spied Charlie peering out from under Buddha's nose. “You're the one. Run her over in the fog. And then have the nerve to stay around and visit. Why'd you do it for? She never hurt no one. Her bike's a mess too.”

“I couldn't have,” Charlie said helplessly as the fury in the yellow slicker advanced on her.

Chapter 2

Not even the emergency lights on the sheriff's car and the ambulance could penetrate more than a few feet of the fog that night.

“Don't know why they sent an ambulance,” Frank of the yellow slicker confided to Charlie. “Told them she was dead.”

Charlie had heard rumors about the Oregon coast. Those in the know would wink as though it were the best-kept secret in tourism. Charlie had yet to see the Oregon coast. All she knew of it was the violent sound of the Pacific against its shore and the haunting groan of a warning buoy. And now the body of a dead woman.

Georgette had worn a shocked gape when Jack Monroe first shone a flashlight on her face. Broken wire-rimmed eyeglasses hung by one earpiece in thin gray hair.

“Not that she was worth looking at anymore, but what'd you want to kill her for?” the poor woman's husband asked. “Rode her bicycle to keep from getting porky, raised the children till they was fine on their own. Not like she'd never done a thing.”

Charlie was about to explain that although the road into Moot Point had been bumpy she'd had no idea she'd run over anyone in the thick fog, when two things happened almost simultaneously to still her tongue. The twisted bike swung through the beam of a headlight on an emergency vehicle as the investigators moved it—somehow more poignant than the broken body of the dead woman herself. And Frank cupped a hand around one of Charlie's buns.

Charlie sat curled up in a comfortably sprung chair and considered the possibility of losing the scrambled tofu and merlot. Between the ambiguous sickness and flashbacks of the mangled bike trailing fog webs as it was handed across headlight beams, a voice in her mind kept repeating—like the lyrics to a television commercial you want to forget but can't—“Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.”

Perhaps it was because Frank and Georgette's living room was heavily accented with embroidered signs similar to those in Jack's store. A calico cat lounged on top of a darkened television set, staring hatred at Charlie.

“Ms. Greene, I'll admit this fog is heavy even for us, but I can't believe you didn't see a thing in front of your headlights when you struck Mrs. Glick and her bike. Particularly since you were pulling to a stop at the Earth Spirit at the time. I can't believe you didn't feel a bump or hear any sound of impact.”

“I can't either,” Charlie told Sheriff Bennett, trying to avoid the accusation in the cat's stare. She'd read that cats won't look you directly in the eye for long but this cat hadn't heard about that.

Sheriff Bennett sat on a coffee table facing her. Jack Monroe and Frank Glick perched on the edge of a leather couch peering around him to watch Charlie. Frank wore a safari outfit—shirt and shorts and hiking boots. His stick legs had no shape except bulges for knees. A neighbor stood behind the couch fussing around him. Another offered coffee and some kind of sliced nutty/fruity bread on a tray, setting her lips in grim disapproval when nobody took any.

This was one of those double trailer homes you'd never want to move, set on a concrete foundation with a patio and porch. It sat next to Jack's store.

“Wes,” Jack touched the sheriff's shoulder, “could Georgette have ridden by Charlie's car when it was parked and slid underneath it?”

“Hard to see how that would crimp up her bike that way and how it would kill her.” The sheriff shifted slightly and Charlie waited for the coffee table's legs to buckle. “We'll have to wait for the coroner's report.”

One of the women bent over to whisper in Frank's ear and he brushed her away like a mosquito. “Don't want no doctor, no hot milk, no sedatives. I do want to hear what it is this young lady has to say for herself. Now you old bats just get on home and leave me alone. My wife that was killed.”

The women retreated toward the door, but didn't leave. The one with the refreshment tray asked, “Shouldn't you call the family, Frank?”

He sat up and rubbed at his beard. Without the slicker he was skeletal. “Hadn't thought of that yet. Would you do that for me, Martha?”

“Mary.”

“Mary. Oh, and tell them to make reservations someplace else cause I can't house 'em all here, that's for sure.”

Sheriff Wes of Moot County drove Charlie to her cabin at the Hide-a-bye instead of to the jail because her car was impounded for the investigation and because it seemed clear that she hadn't run over Georgette Glick on purpose, nor had she fled the scene of the accident. They stopped at the main lodge on the road to pick up the key and allow the sleepy girl at the desk to imprint Charlie's American Express card, and then parked at one of a series of cottages presumably overlooking the ocean. That's what the brochure had said, that's what the sound on the fog sounded like.

Sheriff Wes followed Charlie into the cottage carrying her suitcase, briefcase, and garment bag. First door to the right opened to the bedroom—old knotty pine furniture and paneling that reminded her of Frank's knees. To the left was the bathroom. A short hall opened to one room divided into carpeted living room and tiled kitchen areas.

Two recliner-rockers in the middle of the carpet could swivel between the TV and the stone fireplace built into the inner wall shared with the bedroom. A couch sat against a side wall. A Formica table with plastic chairs graced the kitchen end. The place smelled of moldy carpet and sour drains. Sliding doors and picture windows formed the outside wall.

“The agency paid all that for this?”

A chuckle rumbled behind her. “Just wait till the fog lifts and you won't believe the view. People come clear from foreign countries for
this.
”

Even though they were pulled open, sections of the drapes on the Pacific wall pouched loose from their hooks. Only a blanket of dark showed through from outside. The sheriff lit one of those pressed logs in the grate and they sat in the recliners to watch it burn as if they'd never seen fire.

He was built like a tank. All square edges. Massive, but solid. Not a soft-looking place on him except where he smiled. “We keep having to go to all these consciousness-raising seminars,” he said finally. “When you're trying to help little kids through some of life's shit it's teddy bears. But for tough agents from LA, I'm not sure what's best.”

Charlie managed a grin to thank him for not leaving her alone just yet. None of the people she'd met tonight fit her expectations. This man was no exception. She leaned toward the welcome warmth of the fire. “What I can't help thinking of is how unsad her husband was about the whole thing.”

“Probably hasn't hit him yet. Men of that generation grieve different, but they grieve.”

“He felt up my ass while you were hauling hers out from under my car. That's grief?”

Now he grinned. Even his teeth were big. “You one of those feminist types?”

Charlie stared down the challenge in his drawl and sat a little straighter. She heard the hardness in her voice that her mother hated. “I was not speeding down the road, Sheriff. I was pulling to a stop in front of the Earth Spirit. I can almost rationalize not seeing Mrs. Glick on her bike because I was so relieved to have finally found Moot Point and my client. I'd been nervous driving for nearly an hour on a strange road, unable to see … but I'll be damned if I can believe Mrs. Glick and her Schwinn wouldn't have felt like more than a bump in the road.”

There was still a sympathetic twinge to his grin but he rose and yawned. “Get some sleep. It'll all shake down when the investigation gets in gear. Complimentary packets of coffee over by the sink, teakettle and cups in the cupboard. Since you don't have a car I'll pick you up for breakfast in the morning.”

“Do all suspected killers get such thoughtful treatment in Moot County?”

“Just tough little agents named Charlie, with gravelly voices and brassy coils.” He gave her a fatherly wink and moved down the hall to the door with the stealthy tread of a cat burglar. Which didn't seem possible for a man who must weigh over two-fifty.

It was too late to call her mother and she didn't know if she needed a lawyer yet. Charlie fell into the oversoft bed, so exhausted from a day of driving and its inexplicable aftermath she was sure she wouldn't be able to sleep, not sure she hadn't left reality behind her when she crossed the Moot County line.

The next she knew she was coming straight up out of the bed, yelling
no
silently in her head as loud as she could, heart pumping panic to the tips of her toes and the ends of her hair, and daylight seeping around the curtain at the small window. By the time Charlie stood in the shower washing away the terror, she'd forgotten the dream that had caused it. By the time Sheriff Wes arrived she was dressed in loose forest green pants with a leather jacket dyed to match and had her “brassy coils” tied back with a scarf. All this dampness gave them a life of their own.

“You were right about the view.” She handed him a mug of instant motel coffee and took hers to the deck outside that had been a blank wall of darkness and fog the night before. What greeted them now was endless sky filled with sun and puffy clouds, and rollers eight deep washing onto a nearly white beach about fifty feet below the railing.

Charlie took a closer look at the law. “Did you get to sleep at all last night?”

He studied her face for a drawn-out moment and turned to stare at the sea. Last night he'd worn a sport coat and tie while his deputies were in uniform. This morning he wore jeans and sneakers and dark patches under his eyes. Finally he drained the mug, which in his hand looked like a Chinese teacup. “Tell you one thing. I need breakfast. Let's head for Rose's.”

Rose's was in the village of Moot Point, which was on the other side of the headland from the Hide-a-bye. The road took them up along the mountainside and Charlie could see the Moot Point lighthouse at the end of the promontory sitting white in a sea of dripping jade vegetation. Its light still circled in the old way but modern antennas poked into the sky around it.

They turned off the highway onto the road Charlie had followed, but could barely see, the night before. It swooped down through trees and thick underbrush, then broke out into a dramatic view of the bay. The village stair-stepped by street up the hillside. Rose's was on the lowest step just above the beach, a building of sea-weathered gray wood with old-fashioned oilcloth on the tables, candles in miniature ships' lanterns, a black wood stove taking the chill off the morning, padded cushions on ancient hardwood chairs, and the odor of careful cooking.

Sheriff Bennett sat with his head between the tremendous breasts of a woman adorning a fake ship's figurehead that sprouted from the wall behind him. Rose herself came to fuss over him.

“She the one?” Rose stared openly at Charlie. She was short and heavy, wore a saggy cardigan over a shapeless dress and floppy terry-cloth bedroom slippers. The other waitpersons wore tailored black pants, white shirts, black string ties, and straight spines.