Murder at Moot Point

by Marlys Millhiser

  Chuck Withers studied with him too and he too had relocated to be near him. “Not that much veterinary business around here, but I make house calls in Chinook.”

  “But what exactly do you study? Why do people relocate to be near him?”

  “Mostly transcendence, overcoming perceived reality, looking at the world through a child’s eyes again but with an adult’s acquired experience.… Haven’t you ever passed by something for the thousandth time and suddenly seen it for the first? And realized that was only a crack in your clouded perception? And wondered what it would be like to open up to the world that way permanently? We study trying to do that. It’s not easy but it’s worth relocating for.”

  Charlie had the feeling that the man’s sudden eloquence was due more to rote learning than to his own vocabulary and inspiration, but she couldn’t fault his sincerity.

  He showed her his surgery in the made-over garage, assuring her he used it only after all nutritional, psychological, and physical therapy techniques had been exhausted. He seemed proud of it though. It was modern and stainless steelish and smelled better than his house.

  She left with a book proposal in a padded envelope, unable to think of a way to gracefully refuse it after accepting his hospitality and then grilling him. Georgette’s calico nearly tripped her as Charlie stepped outside. She’d have known it anywhere by the accusation in its eyes.

  “Frank’s too distracted right now to feed her,” Doc explained, picking it up. “Critters around here know where to come when there’s trouble at home. Poor thing’s trembling.”

  “She doesn’t seem to think as well of me as Mortimer did.”

  “She should, her name’s Charlie too. Talk about your coincidence.” Charlie the cat rode Doc’s shoulder into the house for a meal, staring back wide-eyed at Charlie the agent until the door closed between them.

  Chapter 11

  A white car with an emergency-light bar on its roof pulled to a stop in front of Rose’s down on the first terrace, so Charlie headed uphill. And, as she had yesterday, she came to Brother Dennis’s wooded lot. There was more to it than she’d thought—cabins with porches off in the trees, several ancient vans, an old round-topped house trailer, bird feeders hanging quaintly from tree limbs. But the sound of traffic up on 101 behind the compound undermined the illusion of cozy isolation.

  The car with the light bar moved slowly away from Rose’s and turned up a street toward the next terrace. Charlie stepped into the trees. She felt a little silly, but the thought of being imprisoned in her cabin while everything happened without her, of not knowing what might be said or done that could raise her ranking on the suspect list, was intimidating.

  “Wes Bennett is a trained professional. He has real detectives, crime specialists, laboratories, computers. He probably knows methods and procedures you can’t pronounce.”

  “His job is to maintain his winning streak and find a murderer for Georgie. My job is to make sure it isn’t me.”

  “By not following his orders you’re probably slowing him down and making things worse for yourself.”

  “Ex-football-player Marine types are not into losing. And elected officials can’t be. And being cooped up at the Hide-a-bye, knowing nothing about what needs defending, is hardly going to be a winning situation for me. I’m just trying to talk with as many people as I can before I have to go back and be cooped.”

  “He is here to defend and protect you.”

  “Unless someone convinces him I’m the murderer while I’m pining away in my cabin with no information about this strange place and the strangers in it to use in my defense.”

  “It’s only natural that the sheriff has to keep an eye on you until he has more evidence. But even Rose can see he doesn’t really suspect you of murder and it’s obvious by the way everyone’s so eager to talk to you, nobody else does either … except maybe Gladys. She’s the only one who’s shown sincere fear of you. Let’s face it, you’re paranoid.”

  But Charlie backed deeper into tree shadows as the sound of an engine ground up the mountainside. An olive brown UPS truck roared into the semicircle of drive in front of the octagonal monstrosity. Its horn blasted three short ones and the driver pushed square boxes out onto the gravel. No one appeared from the house, but a dog in high fury erupted like a champagne cork from the trees on the other side. It didn’t touch ground until it was at the door of the truck. The truck promptly bolted toward Charlie, passed her, and tore off down the hill—leaving her once again facing Eddie of the infected dewclaw.

  She wondered if he lived here, because it was clear that this dog was not into loving or transcendence or higher consciousness. This dog was into growling and snarling.

  “Knock it off, Eddie, right now!” Charlie said in her take-charge, no-nonsense tone and gave the creature a glare calculated to melt railroad tracks.

  This dog was not into intimidation either. His tail didn’t wag. His eyes didn’t blink. His hind feet were set wide apart, his back end hunkered slightly in full preparation for leaping. The only thing on him that moved was the panting of his chest and the expectant drool dripping off his tongue. Eddie’s teeth looked strong, clean, well used. The steady growl seemed to operate on its own.

  Instead of going dry as she would have expected, Charlie’s own mouth filled with saliva that demanded swallowing. She was afraid to move even that much. Perhaps it was empathy with the drooling mouth in front of her. Eddie had freckles on his gums. He had lots of gums, Eddie. Charlie wished mightily that Deputy What’s-her-face would drive up, kick Eddie in the freckles, and haul Charlie off to the Hide-a-bye.

  Just when she knew she would choke on her own spit, a sharp whistle sounded from behind the house and Eddie blinked. He looked away and then back at Charlie, undecided. It took a second whistle before he split. Charlie heard Brother Dennis scold the approaching animal, whose posture went suddenly contrite with head down, tail curled between his legs.

  The man shook his finger as though at a naughty child and scratched the dog’s ears, ruffled its neck fur, patted its rump. Tail up and wagging, Eddie tagged along behind him around the house, Charlie following in the trees and at a distance. She’d wanted to speak to the man without the dog present and hoped to see him tie Eddie up and go back into the house, and then she could go knock on the front door.

  Brother Dennis did even better. He opened the gate on a dog run with chain-link fencing on the sides and across the top. Eddie’s tail went down again but he obeyed the finger pointing him inside. Charlie turned to move back the way she’d come, careful to be out of his sight before she left the trees.

  The house was not one of those domes the hippies of old built to live in, in communal peace and poverty, but a suggestion of that style was there. Except for the windows the whole place seemed covered with wooden shingles growing moss. Charlie didn’t know why she’d had the impression of an octagon. To prove that she would have had to circle the house and count the wings. She was not about to offer Eddie that thrill.

  A second floor perched on the center of the sprawl. It had windows all around, calling to mind a head with eyes, and wore what looked like a one-room cupola on top like a hat. The roof on the ends of the wings dipped almost to the ground rising in between to allow first-floor windows and an occasional door.

  The jumble of boxes from the UPS delivery still sat on the drive. The boxes were all the same size and shape—square. Chinook County Printers and Bindery was listed as the sendee on all, and all were addressed to the Moot Point Consciousness Training Institute. Books, self-published. Charlie looked at the envelope full of proposal she was already carrying and sighed. Maybe she should quit while she was ahead.

  But now that Eddie was safely incarcerated, maybe she should talk to the guru of Moot Point, Oregon. How often did anyone get such a chance for free? Self-publishing was a lot more expensive than it looked because you had to find your own outlets. This octopus of a house offering lessons on transcendence and consciousness training w
ould be one of them, but these operations were probably pretty expensive too.

  Charlie knocked on the door of carved wood and wondered why there were no students here now. It was June, and no small business no matter how sublime could afford to waste this season. The door slid silently open on its own, showing her a darkened entryway.

  “Hello?” she called and took a short flight of stairs to a platform overlooking a sunken gymnasium or auditorium with cushions and those web-and-aluminum chairs without legs. Television monitors hung from the ceiling, all running the same picture like home-appliance departments at Christmas.

  Each monitor showed a head shot of Brother Dennis exposing his stained fillings, his eyes boring into Charlie’s from eighteen different directions. Charlie took herself and Doc Withers’s book proposal down the five steps to a legless chair and relaxed for the first time in hours.

  Brother Dennis talked, smiled, squinted, nodded, blinked, winked, cajoled—all wise and serene and convincing—all silent and in living color. Charlie yawned. Eddie barked savagely, but far away in his Hide-a-bye out back. Exercise mats lined the walls, stacked under the windows facing the sea. They looked like the naptime cushions Libby’d had in day care, but these were longer, fuller, not as sticky.

  She felt the last of the adrenalin rush from her confrontation with Eddie drain peacefully away and must have dozed, because she was startled aware suddenly by voices in midconversation.

  “… agent, if you can believe Jack Monroe. No, I haven’t seen her since yesterday.” Brother Dennis’s voice seemed pitched too high for the compelling man on the monitors above her but Charlie recognized the soothing tones and softened consonants of a man trained to speak distinctly yet without suggestion of threat. “But if I do I’ll let her know you’re looking for her, Linda.”

  “Seems like everybody’s seen her but me. Wes’ll platter my head and stick an apple in my mouth.” This Linda spoke with a drawl that sounded more like low blood pressure than region. She had to be What’s-her-name. Charlie sat very still and very quiet.

  “Saw a sheriff’s car down at Doc’s. Wondered if it was you. He’s been seeing a lot of Gladys, Doc has. But I expect you know that.”

  “Yes, Dennis, dear. Now you phone the dispatch the minute you see that woman and ask them to notify me.” Linda said it slow and insulting. Her shoes scraped the step and soon a car door slammed. She threw more gravel on her takeoff than the UPS man.

  Brother Dennis winked at Charlie on the eighteen TV screens and mouthed the answers to questions she’d never asked. She lip-read the word “universe” several times. Off-screen, he grunted and swore under heavy boxes hauled in from the drive, up the lower steps across the platform to more steps, and along the floor above to drop them with a thud and return to repeat the sounds, his breathing growing less meditational by the minute.

  Charlie lost count of the number of trips he made but waited until he’d kicked the door closed, then rose like a Phoenix from her floor seat. He stood panting and sweating on the platform hallway with stacked boxes in his arms, staring down at her with wonder and suspicion.

  Brother Dennis made no rush to call “the dispatch” and notify Deputy Linda of Charlie’s presence. Instead he showed her around the Moot Point Consciousness Training Institute—his gentle and benign condescension gradually returning.

  “Why aren’t you having seminars now? Seems like summer would be a great time,” Charlie asked as they explored a bookstore and reading room filled with the local guru’s publications and tapes.

  “We’ve got a two-day, a three- and a five-day all overbooked and that’s just for starters. Searchers begin arriving tomorrow. The whole village is gearing up.”

  “Sounds like Georgie’s murder was poorly timed.”

  “You’d know more about that than I.”

  “Oh, come on, you don’t think a total stranger dropped in to town to murder an old woman. I don’t see you yelling for Linda the deputy.”

  A twist of his hair had loosened from the leather clasp of his ponytail. Holding the clasp in his teeth, he deftly gathered all the flat-black strays and imprisoned them once more. “Three wings are dorms. One male, one female, and one for couples. But it’s not unusual for two of the dorms to be taken up by single females. Women are more transformative.”

  Each “dorm” had plaid spreads and matching curtains for those lucky enough to have windows. Each pair of beds shared a dresser, a tiny closet, and a rocking chair and were partitioned off from their neighbors. Each two partitions shared a tiny bath. Colorful rag rugs sat next to every bed on polished wooden flooring. Brother Dennis explained the rugs were handwoven by ladies of the town and on sale for students at the craft center next to the Scandia. “Many searchers buy so many rugs and other crafts they send them home UPS rather than take them on the plane.”

  “Do they fly into Chinook?”

  “We arrange with a van service to bring them over from Portland International. Some people from Oregon or Washington or Northern California just drive it. There’s a row of tourist cabins along the main street they can rent and two bed-and-breakfasts we sometimes fill with searchers as well.”

  He didn’t show her the upstairs, which he shrugged off as his living quarters, recording studio, and storage. The dining room was cavernous, with trencher tables on a flagstone floor. Couches, chairs, and floor pillows grouped around a fireplace. But the kitchen was no bigger than Charlie’s.

  “Rose caters our meals,” he explained.

  “Sounds like Moot Point relies on your institute for its livelihood.”

  “A good portion of it—your client, for example. Jack Monroe’s a lucky man. His son has an agent to share with him, and his store has a built-in clientele coming to town eight months a year.”

  “Even in winter?”

  “The storm season has an aura all its own,” he said ominously. “It might appeal to murderers more than summer.”

  They stood toe-to-toe before the great stone fireplace. There was no question of standing nose to nose. Charlie refused to bend over backward to challenge his stare and lose more of the advantage.

  “The odds are,” she informed the third shirt button up from his belt buckle, “that Georgette was shot by a male of her acquaintance. Not a total stranger with no motive.”

  “We don’t know you are a total stranger or have no motive, but we have just established that it is hardly in the interest of an inhabitant of this village to have something so disquieting as murder done here. Therefore it must have been an outsider like yourself who shot that poor old woman.” And with that he stalked off.

  Chapter 12

  “Therefore it must have been an outsider like yourself who shot that poor old woman,” Charlie mimicked to a tree on her way off the institute compound. Something about Bro. Dennis was formidably convincing even when you knew better. Even when you were only staring at his shirt button. Charlie would hate to have him testifying against her on a witness stand. These were all things she wouldn’t have known had she not disobeyed the sheriff and avoided Deputy Linda, she pointed out to her nagging rational self.

  Why would anyone eager to entice “searchers” keep a man-eating dog in the backyard?

  Charlie clutched Doc Withers’s book proposal and searched the lower terraces for a Moot County sheriff’s car. It was just backing down a driveway on the second level. She waited until it meandered over to Jack’s store and then she headed for the last place Wes Bennett’s little watchdog had visited, figuring that would be the safest bet at the moment.

  Speaking of watchdogs—drawn drapes and a high crescendo of doggy ferociousness bounced against the windows on three stories of the redwood, glass, and deck creation when Charlie rang the chimes. That was all that happened. Keeping an eye on the black-and-white-and-blue sedan with the light bar, still parked in front of the Earth Spirit, she followed a deck around to the back door. The grating din of what sounded like ten or fifteen yipping, slavering ankle biters begging for a swift k
ick in the incisors erupted now on this side of the house. Some human to answer the door did not.

  Behind the house and to the right was one of those ostentatious three-car garages. One for her car, one for his car, one for the boat? Pickup? Motorcycle? Servant’s car?

  Above was an apartment with its own deck along the front to face the Pacific. And beneath the deck rose a flight of redwood stairs. And down by the sea Linda the law backed her black-and-white-and-blue away from the Earth Spirit.

  The space above the garages held an artist’s studio and apartment, both on the lavish side—Charlie was used to starving writers. Michael Cermack was not a starving painter. He was, if you could believe him, a gold mine of information. He was also still an asshole.

  Charlie had stumbled across Gladys Bergkvist’s little place on the hill, and the proprietor of the Scandia Art Gallery rented out her “loft” to visiting artists.

  “More like leases it for next to nothing,” Michael said in a bored-to-tears tone, lifting palms and eyes upwards in an appeal to the deities for a clue as to the mentality of Gladys and her ilk. One had to bear so much in life. “But then she’d have to, wouldn’t she, to lure anyone with options to this backwater?”

  Visiting artists lasted as long as they could bear it or as long as their work sold at the Scandia to tourists and students of consciousness-raising. “Gladys and Olie, of course, take an enormous commission. But since so much is provided and there’s so much space and privacy to work, they’re hard to refuse.”

  Olie, pronounced with a long “O” in the Scandinavian manner, was Mr. Bergkvist. But his wife was the one with whom everyone had to deal because good old Olie was on the road most of the year looking for artists and products for the gallery. “At least that’s the excuse. My hunch is he can’t stand the gloom of the rainy season—which is most of the year. And he can’t abide Gladys—which is most understandable.”