I just didn’t think he’d set the explosion. Was that LOL intuition? Mine is notoriously iffy. But I thought Brian was simply too devoted to that Porsche to destroy it. His pride and joy. Not all that admirable in itself, being so attached to what was basically just a shiny thing with wheels, but his attachment to that shiny thing was enough to make me think he didn’t do it.
Or was that just stubborn thinking, a refusal to admit I was wrong? Let’s face it. I’ve been wrong before. Could I even be wrong about Brian being the killer? Being unlikeable, even unfaithful, didn’t necessarily mean he also committed a murder.
Then Mac surprised me. “But I don’t think he did it, either.”
“The murder or the explosion?”
“You’re having second thoughts about him being a murderer?” Mac sounded surprised.
“I’m not sure,” I had to admit. “Innocent until proven guilty and all that, you know. But, okay, why don’t you think he set the explosion?”
“The same reason you think it. Too attached to that vehicle. Plus the fact that I have confidence in what you think.”
I kissed him on the top of the head and decided there was no need to point out times my mental workings had hovered around pet rock level. “How about Ric Echol, then?”
Mac nodded. “I’m open to the possibility that he did it, although at this point I have no idea how.”
“We could try to find him. Help out law enforcement.”
“Finding him might be a little like grabbing a tiger by the tail.”
True. I gave this some thought.
Maybe it was time for a different line of thinking. “Deputy Hardishan doesn’t like to mark anyone off his suspects’ list, but I think we’re far down as both explosion and murder suspects. Maybe we should just leave all this to the sheriff’s department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and head for Arizona.”
Mac didn’t hesitate before nodding. “I doubt they need any help from us. In fact, I’m sure they’d rather not have any help from us.”
Over spaghetti we made a decision: we’d leave in the morning. Even though I didn’t think Brian had set this explosion, I wasn’t hardwired to risk my neck to try to exonerate him from guilt. We didn’t listen to a weather report before going to bed. Maybe we should have.
The wind increased in intensity during the night. Mac was already awake when I woke to the sound of wind rattling things I was fairly certain shouldn’t be rattling. The walls shuddered under the assault, and then rain started pounding the roof and battering the windows. Koop was already in bed with us, and BoBandy jumped up to join us. The wind increased in fury, far more than anything we’d yet experienced here. We both got up to peer out the window. Sheila’s yard light illuminated trees bending as if they were bowing to royalty. A chunk of black plastic she’d been using to keep weeds down in a flower bed flew over the garage.
Mac was concerned about the trees close to the motorhome. He turned on the lights, put a jacket on over his pajamas, and slipped his feet into rubber boots so he could go outside and check. I put on a robe and watched him moving outside, his head turned upward to look at the nearby trees. Koop jumped from the dinette onto my back and scooched down into my arms. BoBandy squirmed close to my legs.
Mac came back inside just as Sheila’s yard light and the motorhome lights went off. A power line must have gone down somewhere. Maybe a tree had fallen on it.
“I think we’d better move away from these trees,” Mac said.
We both dressed in the dark. Moving an RV isn’t a major production; RVs are meant for moving, and we intended to head for Arizona in the morning anyway. But water and electrical hookups have to be disconnected, stabilizing jacks raised, and movable stuff put away. Not a quick and easy job in the dark in the middle of a wind and rain storm.
Mac was just headed for the door to go back outside when the hardest gust yet blasted the motorhome. It almost seemed to lift it. Could a motorhome blow over in a hard-enough wind? I grabbed the kitchen counter for balance.
The motorhome didn’t blow over. But something landed on the roof. No, more than landed— A smashing, ripping, tearing crash. As if one of the dinosaurs over at the park had taken flight and crash-landed on us. With it came a strange draft of cold air and an equally strange, raw scent that didn’t smell like cozy motorhome interior. I fumbled for the flashlight that was usually on the bench seat of the dinette and flashed the beam at the ceiling.
The broken end of a huge branch protruded into the room. It had smashed right through the roof like some alien visitor from outer space. Rainwater dripped around it. We both just stood there, momentarily too astonished to move.
“Holy cow,” Mac said. It seemed an appropriate comment at the moment. He reached up and touched the sharp end of the branch.
We both went outside. After that oversized gust, the wind had diminished a fraction. I hoped it was a my-work-is-done-here diminishing. Mac aimed the flashlight beam at the top of the motorhome.
The branch sat there like some monstrous growth sticking out of the roof. But when it bounced and flopped in the wind, it looked more like a predator trying to drill or eat its way inside. Parts of the big branch trailed over the windshield. The flashlight beam showed a raw slash on a nearby tree where the heavy branch had split off the main trunk.
“Can we still move the motorhome?” I asked.
“We’re going to try. Hopefully before anything more comes down.”
Using the flashlight, we got the electrical and water hookups undone and raised the stabilizing jacks. Mac gave a couple of huffs while we were doing it. He still had an occasional twinge from the knee he’d injured trying to get over the dinosaur park fence. Inside, I didn’t bother trying to put things away. We weren’t going far. Not with a monster-sized branch growing out of the roof.
Mac got the engine started and the headlights on. He had to peer through the stuff hanging over the windshield, but slowly, very slowly, we moved away from the trees and into the open space beside Sheila’s garage. The wind might not be blowing as hard as that explosive gust that had dismembered the tree, but it was still blowing steadily enough to make the motorhome feel as if it might take flight any moment. Mac shut the engine off and we just sat there in the dark, shaky but thankful it wasn’t either of us punctured by the broken branch.
We didn’t go back to bed. I heated water on the propane stove and made tea, and we sat at the dinette, drinking tea and listening to the branch sound as if it were galloping across the roof. BoBandy, barking and growling, ran back and forth between the bedroom and sofa. Mac and I dozed off and on while leaning against each other at the dinette.
Daylight eventually filtered through the branch-draped windshield. The wind was still blowing, but it wasn’t whipping the branch into a gallop. The room was cold. Without electricity to run the fan on the furnace, the heat had shut off. We were still dozing lightly when a hammering on the door fully wakened us.
“Are you okay?” Sheila gasped when Mac opened the door. She was less nattily dressed today: dark fleece leggings, an oversized coat, and a knit green hat pulled down over her ears, hair sticking out like tufts of red straw.
“We do seem to have a roof problem,” Mac said. “I don’t think it’s a do-it-yourself job. We’ll have to get to a repair shop.”
Sheila peered inside. “I’ll say. But you’re going to have to get that thing off the roof before you can go anywhere. I’ll call Pastor Mike at church. He’ll know someone with a chain saw who can help.”
I went back to the house with her. I hadn’t been inside her double-wide before. It was quite roomy and nice, three bedrooms. The decor was heavy on knickknacks. Two glass hutches of figurines and antique dishes, and more odd items stashed here and there. A stuffed racoon. An old Underwood typewriter. Two lava lamps. Everyone to their own taste, of course.
Sheila called the pastor and he said he had a chain saw and would be over as soon as th
e wind let up enough that he could get on the motorhome roof. She suggested we have breakfast with her, then remembered she didn’t have electricity for her kitchen range, so I invited her back to the motorhome where I could cook on our propane-fueled stove. Her house hadn’t suffered any real damage from the storm, but bits of broken branches scattered both yard and roof, and one gutter drooped at the corner.
Mac switched the generator on to provide electricity for the furnace fan, and the interior of the motorhome warmed quickly. While I fixed breakfast, Mac turned on our battery-operated radio and got a weather report saying a storm had struck all up and down the coast, wind hitting over a hundred miles per hour someplace up in Oregon. Sheila slapped her thighs with her hands and said she’d about had it with this kind of weather and might just take off and visit her daughter in Las Vegas for a few days.
The pastor and another man I remembered seeing at church arrived in an old, mud-streaked pickup about an hour later. Pastor Mike was wearing jeans and, under a rain jacket, a sweatshirt that said Will preach for food. Rain was falling now, but not pounding, and he climbed the metal ladder on the back end of the motorhome and wielded the chain saw with the expertise of someone who sawed logs as well as preached sermons. Within a few minutes he had the branch cut into several chunks, and the other man stacked them in a pile. They decided the section of branch actually going through the roof would be best left in place rather than pulling it out and leaving a gaping hole for the rain to come through.
After finishing with the motorhome, the two men cleaned off Sheila’s roof and fixed the gutter. They didn’t hang around after they were done; another parishioner needed help with a couple of broken windows. Mac tried to pay them, but they wouldn’t take anything, so all we could do was thank them profusely. Before they left, Pastor Mike gave us the name of a shop in McKinleyville where we might get the roof repaired.
Mac called the shop and they said bring the motorhome in and they’d get to it right after they replaced the metal roofing that had blown off their own building. I called our insurance company and got a claim for repairs started. On the way out the driveway, with Mac driving the motorhome and me following in the pickup, I stopped and went in to tell Sheila we might not be back for a few days.
“This isn’t going to be a fifteen-minute repair job. We may have to find someplace in town to stay for several days.”
“You don’t need to do that. Just come back here in the pickup and stay in that room over the garage. The refrigerator isn’t working, and, with the electricity out, neither is the kitchen stove, but maybe you could get by with an ice chest for a few days. I have an old Coleman camp stove in my garage sale stuff you can use. I think everything else is okay. We can go out and take a look at it if you’d like.”
I ran back out to tell Mac and it took us about thirty seconds to decide we didn’t need to look. The room would be fine. With both a cat and dog, finding a motel or other temporary living quarters in town might not be easy. I ran back in to thank Sheila for her generous offer and tell her we’d be back later.
***
Windblown debris scattered the highway on our drive down to McKinleyville. We were right about the repairs taking several days. They couldn’t just yank the branch out and patch over the hole. They’d have to replace a whole section of roof. We wouldn’t be blithely taking off for Arizona as planned. They faxed the repair estimate to the insurance company. They did, fortunately, have an indoor storage area where the motorhome could sit until they could work on it. We got clothes and personal belongings out of the motorhome, plus dog and cat food, battery radio, BoBandy’s leash, and Koop’s cat carrier, and emptied the contents of the refrigerator into an ice chest. We were back at Sheila’s by midafternoon.
She came out with the key to the garage. “This is another reason I don’t like to rent the place. The inside stairs are the only access to the room, and I don’t like people traipsing through the garage with all my yard sale stuff in there. I guess I should have outside stairs built.” She smiled. “Although I don’t think you two are going to steal the Tarzan books or elephant-head nutcracker out of my garage sale stock.”
I doubted the over-the-garage room was legal without some different exit in case of emergency, but we weren’t worried about legality at this point. The room was modest, the slanted ceiling low, but the décor didn’t include any stuffed dead animals or ancient typewriters, and it was certainly acceptable for our needs. Small kitchen stove, refrigerator, TV, and microwave, none of which worked without electricity, of course, but Sheila brought up the two-burner Coleman stove. The tiny bathroom was shower only, no tub, but that was fine. With no electricity to run the pump on the well, there was no water available for showers now anyway. Koop prowled around and found a window ledge acceptable as an observation post. BoBandy could also look out the window by standing on his hind legs.
The last thing Sheila said before handing me the garage key was, “I called Vivian and I am going down to visit her for a few days. She says the sun is shining there. So you can kind of look after the place, and Duke too, while I’m gone, okay?”
“We’ll be glad to,” Mac assured her.
“And if anyone comes looking for my garage sale, tell them it’ll be open when I get back. And I expect Brian to be under lock and key in jail by then too!”
Sheila didn’t waste time. I didn’t think she’d leave so late in the day, but she was packed and gone within a couple of hours. She said she liked driving at night.
“So, what are we going to do while we wait for repairs?” Mac asked after I’d fixed ham and eggs on the camp stove for supper.
“We might see what we can find out about Ric Echol.” Before Mac could remind me of the dangers of tiger-tail catching, I added, “We don’t have to try to grab him or anything like that. If we find out anything, we can just tell Deputy Hardishan where he is, and let them take it from there. The deputy almost asked that we do that.”
“Sometimes you can make the most outrageous ideas sound reasonable,” Mac muttered.
Chapter 18
IVY
Sometime in the night the electricity came back on. We must have left the light switch on when we’d tried it while the electricity was off, and we woke in the middle of the night with the light glaring like some all-seeing eye overhead. Ever-protective BoBandy gave a couple of warning barks to the invasive light. Unexcitable Koop opened one eye, stood up and stretched, and went back to sleep.
We eventually went back to sleep too and slept later than usual the next morning. Unpredictable weather had decided on sun today, and it was a beautiful, windless day. All the appliances, except the refrigerator, were working nicely. Although the water heater hadn’t been turned on to begin with, so there was no hot water. Mac did a manly cold shower, but I settled for more of a toe-dip rinse. We had scrambled eggs and toast but no coffee for breakfast. Coffee wasn’t a refrigerator item and so we hadn’t brought it from the motorhome. We had plenty to eat, but breakfast without coffee felt unfinished, like missing the end of a movie.
We’d also forgotten Koop’s litter box when we left the motorhome in the shop. I found a cardboard container in Sheila’s garage, and Mac dug up dirt to make a back-to-basics box for him. I was hoping we’d hear from Private Investigator Megalthorpe. The laptop was another item we hadn’t brought, but he could call, or we could pick up email with our cell phones. He should have the rock by now, but I didn’t know how long checking for fingerprints might take. Of course, if the rock didn’t reveal anything, we might never hear from him anyway.
After breakfast we decided to go over and check on Duke. First glance showed broken branches on the ground around his trailer but no damage to the trailer itself. A dark rectangle of burned asphalt scarred the parking lot and, in spite of the storm, a faint acrid scent of burned Porsche lingered. What was left of the car was gone, no doubt hauled off for analysis by the experts. I expected the old Honda would now have moved up to residence in
the carport, but it wasn’t there either.
Kathy came out of Duke’s trailer as we started up the ramp to the door. She was wearing a ruffled apron over leggings and a sweatshirt with a colorful spray of flowers on the front.
“How’re you doing?” Mac asked.
“We didn’t have any damage to the building from the storm, though Brian says there may be trees down in the park. Our electricity came back on sometime in the night.”
“Brian’s . . . okay?” My subtle way of asking if he’d been arrested since he didn’t appear to be around.
“He’s feeling terrible, of course, about what happened to the Porsche. He’s been talking with the insurance company on the phone, but you know how hard dealing with insurance companies is. Like pulling wisdom teeth.” Her mouth pulled down into a frown. “I made a batch of whole-grain cookies and just brought some over to Duke.”
When the going gets tough, the tough bake cookies.
“Brian drove down to Eureka in the Honda this morning,” Kathy added, apparently in response to Mac’s glance at the empty carport. “He’s thinking perhaps we should get a lawyer.”
“To deal with the insurance company?” Mac asked.
“I-I don’t know why, I can’t imagine why, but I’m almost sure the people investigating the explosion think Brian may have blown up the Porsche himself. Can you imagine them thinking that?” Kathy tried for indignation, but her voice wobbled, and she had to blink back tears. “After the explosion they even wanted him to come into the sheriff’s office to take his fingerprints. He refused, of course.”
“He did? Why?” Mac sounded so innocent asking that question, but I knew what he was thinking. The answer to why Brian didn’t want his fingerprints taken was because they’d reveal something incriminating about him. More than ever I hoped we’d hear from PI Megalthorpe soon. I also had to wonder why law enforcement wanted Brian’s fingerprints now. They surely couldn’t get his or anyone else’s prints off the barbecued remnants of the Porsche. Were they zeroing in on him on Renée’s murder?
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