Murder at Moot Point (6 page)

Sea wind tore her hair out of the rolled scarf she'd subdued it with and teased her face with blasts of fresh salt air. Sea birds shrieked derision.

“
All the desperate people in this world and you're feeling sorry for Charlie Greene. You're not that desperate teenager of fifteen years ago.
”

“
Fuck off.
”

“
The minute they find you have no gun, no motive, and have never had contact with the late Georgie, you'll no longer be a suspect. The worst that can happen is you'll have to come back up here to testify in a murder trial. Probably Brother Dennis's or even Jack's. You don't know when she was shot.
”

“
I know she was still bleeding.
”

“
Then there's Gladys Bergkvist. And the dimpled, luscious Paige.
”

“
If you like drumsticks.
”

“
There's also Rose, at the restaurant.
”

“
What about the obvious suspect
—
the husband
—
old randy, handy Frank?
”

“
And don't forget Sheriff Wes. At least we know he has a gun to shoot someone with. Or this Michael who hated Georgie. Or someone we haven't met. Which is almost everyone in Moot Point.
”

“
It could have been anyone within shooting distance of Moot Point last night. Someone on the highway.
”

“
Someone with a motive and a secret and a gun.
”

Charlie realized she'd missed the path down to the beach when she rounded a curve in the road and came out into the full brunt of the wind. The road continued on up to the lighthouse above her and she could look over at the tops of the massive rocks off the point. She gave up on the scarf and held it in her hand, let it snap in the wind that slapped her hair across her face. This might be June and the sun might be out but it was cold here. A heartier soul would have called it brisk. She could see nesting birds on the rock rookeries and occasional battles when a nest seemed threatened. Had Georgette Glick threatened something that basic to someone in the village?

Someone's home, business, livelihood, relationship? Surely not someone's life.

Charlie wanted to look over the cliff edge to see if the tide threatened her pathway to the Hide-a-bye but knew she could handle high places only if she didn't look down.

Instead of walking back to the path to find out she started up the road to the lighthouse. The path ended in a paved parking lot with plenty of room for visitors who liked lighthouses. But they still had to climb what looked like a hundred and fifty stairs to get to the lighthouse itself. A big rusting Ford, a small red Ferrari, and a pickup were parked in the lot.

Though there was no fog today the light at the top of the tower still rotated and the buoy out at sea still warned ships off the rocky shoreline. Charlie had been hearing that sound for so long she'd forgotten to listen for it.

A lady in a windbreaker and stretch jeans stepped out of the old Ford and waved at Charlie. “Have you come to see the birds? Did you park along the road?”

“I walked up from the village.”

She smiled and all her back teeth appeared to be made of gold. “I should have too, I know. Such a waste of fuel. But there's no shelter from the wind here and after a while it forces the chill right into your bone marrow. You won't welcome that either when you get to be my age.”

“I don't welcome it now.” Charlie hunched her shoulders in her light jacket.

“Would you like a cup of hot coffee? I have a thermos in the car and we can get out of the wind.” She'd let her hair mature to a lovely gray with silver highlights. It would have settled into short smooth waves if not for the wind. “We can see the birds through the windshield and I can explain them to you in comfort.” She turned to the car and then turned back before taking a second step and said, “Oh, I'm sorry. I'm Clara Peterson. I live in Moot Point.”

Charlie had no idea why this woman wanted to explain birds to her, but it was a chance to talk with another citizen of the village before her own identity was discovered. The bird lady soon had her ensconced in the passenger seat with a paper cup of coffee, a pair of binoculars, and a leaflet describing tufted puffins, common murres, storm petrels, cormorants, and sea gulls.

“Are you with the Audubon Society?”

“Oh no, I'm just with the Senior Volunteer Corps. We take turns explaining things to visitors. We help the Forest Service and the state parks people with whatever natural wonders are near our homes. It's something to do and fun to meet people. Although it seems all too often to rain on my shift and make the visitors leave and the birds hard to see.”

“All the more reason to bring your car.”

“I'm so glad you understand. I thought you might be one of those young fitness people opposed to automobiles and packaged foods and homemade jam and refined sugars and every good thing that makes getting older at all comfortable. Oh, look, there on the rock closest to us, just to the right of that thumb-like outcrop near the end away from us and down about three feet? All the movement and color there? It's a nest of puffins the gulls have been after and the parents are afraid to leave, even though all the eggs I can see have hatched.”

Charlie obediently wedged her cup between her legs and raised the binoculars. She pretended to find the puffins and their endangered nest but managed to adjust the focus in time to catch the lesson in cormorants and their diving and fishing skills and the common murres who were supposed to look like penguins.

“My husband wanted to retire near the ocean.” Clara Peterson's husband had died two years later and she stayed on for the last fifteen alone. “Had I known I wouldn't have left Milwaukee and near and dear friends. But Ralph loved oceans and mountains and there's both here in very close proximity. Still, I've always enjoyed birds. I've made a life for myself. Moving home would be so expensive by now and most everyone's passed away.”

“I heard a woman passed away in some mysterious way last night.”

“A neighbor of mine.” Clara sat silent staring out the windshield but not at birds. “I still can't believe it. One of the reasons I'm delighted my shift is sunny and I have an excuse to come up here.” She didn't look delighted. She looked half sick.

“I thought I heard someone say she was riding a bicycle at seventy-eight? In the fog? At night?” Charlie took another slug of coffee and raised the binoculars again. “Obviously I heard wrong.”

“Georgie was an amazing woman. So is Frank for that matter. That's her husband. She scorned my driving up here, Georgie, and my using sugar in my baking. She wouldn't let Frank eat meat or come to the senior citizen dinners at the community center. So he would walk into Chinook, mind you at his age, along the beach, and eat hot beef sandwiches with mashed potatoes and gravy and wash them down with chocolate malteds. Sometimes, when she was at a group meditation or whatever, he'd sneak over to my place for a piece of pie.”

“Are you telling me that old a woman could still ride a bicycle because she didn't eat meat or sugar and that her husband could walk clear to Chinook because of that?”

“Oh, no, they obviously must have extraordinary health to begin with. But she used medicinal herbs and positive thinking and made her husband do it too. They never doctored that I know of, even when the county nurse would come around and check blood pressure, cholesterol, vision, and hearing free for seniors. They even took their cat to this holistic veterinarian we have in Moot Point. Georgie said it was all a different way of living and thinking and perceiving.”

“Well, the results were certainly impressive. Did she often ride her bike at night?”

The bird lady stared owllike through the magnification of thick trifocals. “That is odd, isn't it? I don't remember that it even had a light on it. But then I've thought recently she's been getting a little strange. Old people often do, you know.”

Charlie could see suspicion forming in three different sizes behind the trifocals so she changed the subject. “That artist, Michael, who has so many paintings at the Scandia down in the village, has he done any of the rookeries or the birds, do you know?”

Clara's dawning suspicion switched to disapproval in a blink and a distinct straightening of the spine. “I wouldn't know. His ‘art' is far too expensive for me to bother with. He's up at the lighthouse right now. You can ask him.” The lighthouse, she explained, her manner less friendly, was manned by the National Guard and visitors were rarely allowed inside. But the view was
stunning
.

Charlie thanked her and headed for the wooden stairs, knowing she should be heading for the Hide-a-bye instead. Stunning views, she'd found, often meant yawning areas of nothing where next you step. Besides, she'd have to come down them again. A dangerous thing if you're afraid to watch your feet.

Charlie stopped at the top of the stairs to catch her breath and tried not to stare. Michael was what was stunning. Michael brought to mind a combination of Heathcliff and Nureyev, and his bored glance carried the wallop of Mitch Hilsten, the superstar. He sat on a folding canvas stool, a sketch pad crimped between his knees, a camera hanging by a strap down his chest, a palette and brush in hand. His easel was hammered into the soil, the canvas lashed to it with an intricate arrangement of wires that kept it from being blown off the point.

Dark, jagged-cut, shoulder-length hair whipped out behind him as did a white scarf tied about his neck above a Navy pea jacket. He was beautiful and looked completely mad.

Charlie stepped quickly out of his line of vision.

“Glance at my work, madam, and you are dead,” he said between his teeth. He sounded like Peter O'Toole but more arty than British.

“I was just looking for a pathway down the north side of the headland to get to the Hide-a-bye. Is there one?”

“Behind the lighthouse and assorted buildings and then behind the latrines, you will find a macadam pathway leading down off this precipice, across a small meadow, and to your destination. Please do make haste so that you will not be late.”

Charlie copped a glance at the canvas and took off for the lighthouse. This was obviously not the time to ask him why he hated Georgette Glick, but she could certainly see how she might have come to hate him.

The lighthouse was solid and uninformative, but a one-story building nestled up against it was half window on three sides. A woman in a uniform and a ponytail dangling from under a baseball cap, worn backwards, talked into a microphone hanging from the ceiling and chewed gum at the same time. There were several sheds behind the lighthouse with the same whitewash and red roofs and then two Porta Potties. Next to them a blacktopped trail had been cut between bushes.

The path was certainly preferable to a flight of stairs. But as Charlie followed it, it grew darker, more claustrophobic. The bushes wanted to grow together across the path. They'd been sliced off smooth on either side but rebellious twig fingers poked through a restraining fence of wire mesh and caught at her hair, prodded her shoulders as if to get her attention. Charlie was highly aware of unknown bird calls and rustlings in the impenetrable underbrush to either side.

Chapter 7

Charlie's breath came in labored gasps as she climbed the path up from the beach to the Hide-a-bye. She'd been alone for what seemed hours with the sounds of Mother Nature menacing her every step. She'd seen not one other soul since the lighthouse and had ended up walking so fast she was soon running in a body highly unaccustomed to such things.

She was half ashamed for letting herself get so spooked, but her kidneys were in full agony because of the tea and coffee she'd consumed while being nosy. So when she saw the lights in the windows of her cabin and the official county Bronco parked at the door behind, she stormed inside. “Just what the hell do you think you're doing?”

Which was a stupid question. The sheriff obviously was sitting at her table stuffing his face again and watching the tube at the same time. Before he could answer her, she raced back to the john.

“And where the hell have you been?” he countered when she returned. “You knew you were supposed to stay put.”

“How did you get in here?”

“Through the door. You left it unlocked.”

“I did not.”

He lifted her room key, unmistakable on the end of its plastic sea urchin, and waved it at her. “There's been murder done around here and you don't even lock your door. Unless you're the murderer, that's pretty stupid.”

“You know perfectly well I'm not the murderer.”

He poured Oregon cabernet into a thick wine glass, Hide-a-bye scrolled in white letters across it, and handed it to her, his brow heavy with menace. “So what have you been up to?”

She took a sip and glared back at him. This guy was getting to her. “This wine's sour.”

“Oregon wine has structure.” His glance kept shifting back and forth from her face to the television screen behind her. “So what have you been up to? Or have I already asked that?”

“I tended the Earth Spirit for Jack while he went to the celebration for Georgette.”

“Where? What's to celebrate?”

“I don't know where. But Georgette is to be congratulated because she has now entered the highest consciousness possible.”

“She'd dead.”

“Right.” The second sip wasn't so sour. The third began to feel good. “Then I had tea and sympathy with Paige Magill, the greenhouse dream counselor. She left the celebration early.”

“…
the Soviet foreign minister said today while on a tour of day-care centers.
”

“What's a dream counselor do?”

“Beats me. You're the sheriff, you find out. Then I sat still for a full lecture on sea birds off the point from the bird lady, you know—puffins and murres and cormorants. Then I met Michael-Nureyev-Heathcliff-Hilsten, probably the rudest artist in the world. He does the seascapes in the Scandia. Oh, I forgot, in between the bird lady and the tea and sympathy I met Gladys Bergkvist at the Scandia Art Gallery.”