Murder at Moot Point

by Marlys Millhiser

  Michael had welcomed Charlie into this place with undisguised delight. He’d been visited by the sheriff’s “lady dogsbody,” sworn truthfully he’d seen nothing of Jack Monroe’s agent, and then had been astonished to notice Charlie prowling around the Bergkvists’ house. He’d known who she was from the dogsbody’s description. “If you hadn’t come up, I’d have come after you,” he’d said and drawn Charlie into his lair.

  She was seated now on a poofy couch, and he poured them both glasses of wine the size of iced teas. But these held no ice. “Nothing much happens in Moot Point, you understand.”

  Charlie just sat and listened, nodded and sipped, unable to believe this could be the same man who’d found her existence such an insult the day before at the lighthouse.

  “But you know,” her host said, “Olie’s usually back by mid-June. He’s late this year.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Three years this month. About two years too long. Don’t tell Gladys, but this has to be my last summer. Ennui can stifle the art inside as well as the man outside.”

  Charlie shrugged—as if she knew all about art and artists. People expected as much from agents.

  Olie was a high liver who had discovered Michael at a New York showing. “I’d been discovered years before of course, but this sounded like a much-needed vacation from the routine and stress of the real world.”

  Charlie thought three years sounded like an incredibly long vacation from any world. But she made her living working with life’s dreamers so she smiled, nodded, sipped. What would Sheriff Wes give to be hearing this bird sing?

  Not all the little pieces of “structure” had settled to the bottom of the glass. A few ended up on her tongue. Must be Oregon wine. But after a few sips the taste grew very pleasant, relaxing.

  Michael had shown Charlie the studio half of the loft first—skylights and the smell of oil paint and the stickiness of plastic sheeting covering the floor. The compelling, disturbing seascapes were banished to one corner and shrugged off as “crowd pleasers,” “hack work” necessary to earn a living—art with a sneer for the subhumans who knew what they liked.

  Michael’s passions were the massive canvasses that hung on the walls and that she could only describe as slash and burns—fiery slashes of bold color that changed perspective when you moved to either side of them. Some reminded Charlie of animals and birds, but in a vague way—perhaps a beady bird eye suggested above a possible beak by the brush strokes—then when she looked again, they didn’t. Charlie didn’t know what she liked, but she found these paintings as disturbing as the seascapes.

  And that surprised her because the man himself appeared so shallow. Libby was always chiding her for judging people too quickly, being too impatient to discover the mysteries behind the face and the style of dress. While Charlie insisted pink and green spiked hair and leather and chains were not necessarily meant to conceal profound minds or sincere hearts.

  Maybe Charlie was too impatient with the people of Moot Point. Maybe if she didn’t look deeply into one of them she’d be accused of a murder that person committed. Or maybe she’d just shrug off some important piece of information it would be to her advantage to have. Or maybe she wouldn’t beat Wes Bennett to an important clue—or the solution to Georgie’s murder even.

  Now who’s the dreamer? her nagging other sneered. But Charlie took a slightly deeper sip of her drink and gave Michael the asshole all the flattering attention she could fake.

  He rose to uncork the bottle again and stood peering out the glass front of his loft. “The law is now zooming off to the lighthouse in hot pursuit of you.”

  Today he looked like a mad, if handsome, scientist or maybe a surgeon. The dark hair in that ragged, arty cut. The high cheekbones and satyrlike brows. The smooth swarthy skin so unusual in this sallow population more accustomed to rain than sun. The white lab coat worn for an artist’s smock and liberally smeared with shades of Michael’s favorite color—red.

  The yappy dogs started off again next door, mercifully muted by the walls of two buildings and the distance between them. “People seem to have a lot of pets in this village,” Charlie said, hoping his delight at fooling the deputy would keep him feeling chatty. He was the type whose moods would change quickly. “How many dogs do the Bergkvists have?”

  “Five.” He waved all the digits on one hand and flounced back into his poofy chair. “Five miniature poodles, every one of which I’d give the earth to throttle with loving care and exactitude. Gladys has given them fanciful, regal, ancestral, papered, registered, purebred, and blue-blooded names. I call them Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe, and Joe.”

  “Do they bite?”

  “No, they nip. Nip, nip, nip—playful, don’t you know. But mostly they get sick. And therein lies the tale.” He leaned toward her and widened his eyes as if about to tell a small child a bedtime story of ghosts or princesses.

  Charlie felt herself responding in spite of herself. “Tale?”

  “Sick animals require a doctor.” He laughed a laugh every bit as evil as his eyebrows. “An animal doctor.”

  It was Charlie’s turn to laugh. “Doc Withers and Gladys Bergkvist?”

  “Impossible, you say? She must have at least fifteen years on him?”

  That’s exactly what Charlie had been thinking. But she remembered Brother Dennis’s insinuations to Deputy Linda a short while ago.

  “I’d say more like twenty.” Michael Cermack Heathcliff Nureyev sat back looking pleased with himself. “Some men prefer motherly types. Safer than a lot of what’s available these days.”

  “What does Olie Bergkvist think of all this?”

  “He certainly has no right to judge her, from what I’ve witnessed of his travels. But then when one travels three fourths of the year … still … how could he expect the sauce for the goose and the gander to be that different? However, the Bergkvists are good Lutherans whatever else they might be. That may give him the illusion of leverage in the mating game. But I always know when Eenie, Meenie and the rest are sick because they broadcast the arrival of their doctor. Miniature poodles, you see, tend to become ill only at night. I have noticed the emergency is usually over by morning. I, too, keep strange hours.”

  “Wouldn’t the neighbors notice his car here all night?”

  “Unless the downpour is outrageous, no one drives around the village. It’s small enough to walk most places. And he’s a great man for walking, our vet. Especially at night, when others hover inside where it’s dry and warm. He comes to the back door and no one would suspect if it weren’t for the dogs. They’re always yapping their heads off anyway. So I’m probably the only one who notices. He generally leaves at first light.”

  “He’s not the only one out at night. Georgette Glick was riding her bike in the fog the night she was murdered, in the dark, without a light. You’d think someone her age would worry about breaking bones.” Why did you hate her?

  “If she was being chased by someone with a gun, she probably would be worried about a lot more than broken bones.” A slow smile drifted across his face and he lifted his glass to her. “That’s what you’re up to, isn’t it? Playing detective?”

  “It’s my car she was found under. I’m a suspect in the murder of a complete stranger I’d never seen alive. How would you feel?”

  “Decidedly uneasy.”

  Charlie sensed her time was running out here, so she threw all her questions at him at once. “Can you tell me anything that will help? Paige Magill said you hated Georgette. Why? Why does Brother Dennis keep a ferocious dog when he wants people to come and stay with him? Why isn’t there any blue and green paint on your smock from the seascapes? Do you own a gun?”

  Michael the artist set down his glass and then took Charlie’s and set it down too. They were both nearly empty, even of structure.

  “I’m not used to wine this early. I shouldn’t have blurted out all that,” she apologized, but he took her arm, lifted her from the poof
y couch, and walked her into the studio toward the door. He clearly no longer found her or her situation amusing.

  “Paige Magill is a witch. Old Georgette was a bitch, who had to know everything about everyone. In fact, you remind me of her. I told her often just where it was she could stick that nose of hers and leave it. I know nothing about that old crackpot’s dog. His motivations would be a total mystery to me if I chose to take the least interest. I have a separate smock, as you call it, for my hack work.” He took it from a coat tree by the door and held it up for her. There were indeed seascape colors in drips and smears all over it. “And yes, I have a gun. Would you like to see it, too?”

  “Oh, well, no, I believe you. I mean it’s not necessary.”

  “Oh, but I don’t mind at all. Maybe it will save you another trip and me from another of your visits.” He crossed to a row of stacked cupboards and began to paw underneath a pile of colored paper. He tried another shelf and then the next cupboard, finally pulling things out onto the floor. When he turned back toward Charlie the irritation with a lesser being and the jaundiced sneer were gone.

  So, apparently, was Michael the artist’s gun.

  Chapter 13

  Michael’s expression had gone from blank surprise, to confusion, to storm warning in less time than it took Charlie to turn on her heel and scoot out the door. She was down the stairs and down the drive to the street (to the tune of Eenie, Meenie, Miney, and friends) before she paused to look back. He did not follow her. He was probably still searching for his gun. Was it registered? Had it shot Georgette Glick?

  Charlie was not accustomed to drinking that much wine without food and certainly not this early in the day. She made it down to the main terrace and was taking deep breaths of what she hoped to be sobering sea air when she nearly ran into the bird lady, who carried a large paper bag held out in front of her.

  “Here now, are you ill?” Clara Peterson set the bag down on the bottom step of the Community Center as Charlie grabbed the railing, embarrassed at how she must reek of wine.

  “I just didn’t see you. Lost in thought, you know. What’s in the bag? It smells wonderful.”

  “Cranberry bread fresh from the oven.”

  “Cranberry bread, how interesting.” Charlie looked over her shoulder. No Michael. “Well, good to see you again. I’ll never forget your bird presentation … lecture … talk.”

  “Have you eaten yet today?” Clara asked in the soft concerned voice of the teetotaler and glanced at several women carrying crockpots into the Center. They were trying to avoid the loose weather stripping on the threshold while staring at Charlie. “We all enjoy guests. It’s the senior potluck dinner. We get so tired of each other, guests are welcome. And I think you need some good wholesome food in you right away.”

  “Dinner? It’s only lunchtime.” And the black-and-white-and-blue was barreling down the road from the lighthouse. Charlie took Clara’s arm and the bag and rushed them all into the Community Center. “I just love cranberry bread.”

  Once you reach a certain age, Clara explained, the big meal of the day ought to come at noon and a light supper sits better at night. Since this was a Saturday, all those who could cook brought their favorite dishes for a potluck. The rest of the week, except for Sunday, a hired cook prepared the meals. “Sundays we just snack or drive into Chinook for an outing after church,” Clara explained. “But Saturdays are best because you get everyone’s specialty.”

  Everyone’s specialty tended toward soft, smooshy, salty, sugary fare—hamburger patties smothered in canned-soup sauce, tuna noodle casserole leavened with soggy potato chips, Jell-O, mashed potatoes, canned string beans or corn, and homemade pies and cakes heavy with meringues and frostings. To Charlie, with one too-small bagel and one too-large wine in her, the buffet looked like a soup kitchen might to the destitute. To her thighs it meant disaster.

  But Clara was right about the popularity of guests. One table against the wall held the hot dishes, plastic trays and silverware, glazed paper plates, and a coffee urn. The rest of the long tables were strung end to end with metal folding chairs for seating. Except for the few men who sat silently at their own table but turned often to eye Charlie, everyone crowded into Charlie’s row. A couple of men did sit next to wives in the sea of macaroni and bosoms, looking like they longed to join the bachelors, but most of the assembled were women who watched her every move and slid questions off their tongues with the next bite raised and ready to enter.

  “You the one that girl deputy’s been asking after?”

  “You a real estate agent?”

  “What’s that Jack need an agent for?”

  “You from California? Hear everybody’s getting skin cancer down there from too much sun.”

  “You shoot old lady Glick?”

  “How much did old Frank pay you for it?”

  Laughter all around. Charlie chewed, mumbled meaningless sounds through the food, shrugged.

  “Suppose we should call that snotty deputy?”

  “Let the poor thing eat, she’s my guest,” Clara insisted.

  “Wonder if Frank will start coming back to the dinners when his family leaves. He sure liked your chocolate pies, Elsie.”

  “Remember the fights them two used to have? It was a relief when they stopped coming.”

  “Never saw a man who could put away mashed potatoes and gravy like he can.”

  “Ain’t you going to put margarine on it or nothing?” This was the babushka lady who lived next to Doc Withers’s animal clinic on the other side from Paige. She still wore her scarf knotted under her chin and sat directly across from Charlie.

  “On a tortilla?” Charlie looked at the warm paper-thin flour tortilla she’d just rolled up.

  Laughter again. Clara Peterson nudged Charlie’s shoulder companionably. “That’s not Mexican, dear, it’s lefsa. Made out of potato flour. Sort of a Norwegian flatbread.”

  A plastic tub of petrochemicals slid down the table and stopped in front of Charlie’s plate. Plump, healthy, wise, grandmotherly faces beamed as she spread plastic fat on her thighs.

  “I remember back when it was thick cream and brown sugar we rolled lefsa around,” the babushka lady said wistfully. Her name was Mrs. Olafson and she was only one generation away from the old country, she informed Charlie. Mrs. Olafson had made the lefsa.

  “Won’t find that in no fast-food joint,” one of the bachelors said, and then looked quickly back to his plate when he realized he’d admitted to listening to the old biddies who’d cooked and brought his food.

  Mrs. Olafson’s given name was Irene and Charlie was working up the nerve to ask her a leading question about her neighbor, the animal doctor, when someone else asked an even better one.

  “So, do we have that place ready for the guests, Irene? Himself says they start arriving again tomorrow. Been missing my programs. And my knees won’t take no more floor scrubbing for awhile I can tell you.”

  “Don’t have to do nothing more but pick up our checks. Place is spitless.”

  “Spotless,” Clara Peterson informed Irene kindly and slid a slice of cranberry bread onto Charlie’s plate, whispering that cranberry bread was much better tasting than lefsa.

  So the Consciousness Institute also provided widows with cleaning jobs. Was there anything in Moot Point that didn’t depend on Brother Dennis’s talents of persuasion?

  “I suppose you eat across the street at Rose’s sometimes,” Charlie said, “when you aren’t in the mood to eat here. Or in the evenings.”

  General disbelief and still more laughter.

  “At her prices?”

  “Would you rather be eating things like sprouts and tofu and cement doughnuts right now?”

  “Bagels,” Clara Peterson corrected Irene in a tired voice, “they’re a bread also, but from a different culture just like lefsa and tortillas.”

  So Rose depended on outsiders for her business too.

  “She’s half Italian, you know, Rose is.”
r />   “Irene.”

  “Well, it’s true.” Irene made a face at Clara and then looked over her eyeglasses at Charlie’s plate. “You didn’t hardly take any to begin with and you only ate half of that. What’s the matter, you don’t like good food?”

  “It was the best meal I’ve had in months and months. You all cook so well. Really, I ate more than you realize.” Charlie realized everyone else had finished long ago, even those with mounded plates who’d gone back for seconds. These people didn’t waste time eating. “Thank you all so much and, Clara, thank you for inviting me. It was sweet of you.”

  “Aren’t you going to have any pie or cake?”

  “What are we going to do with all this food?”

  “Here, you old coots take a plate of stuff home with you, warm it for supper. And Clara, you taking some over to Mary and Norma?”

  Dirty disposable dinnerware was soon whisked into plastic garbage bags to enhance the landfill, elderly gentlemen shuffled out carrying heaped plates covered in plastic wrap, and Charlie offered to help Clara carry similar ones to Mary and Norma.

  “That’s the least I can do for such wonderful food.” And Mary and Norma were the ladies who found the gun in the ditch last night.

  “Well, I suppose there would be less chance of mushing things together if the plates were carried separately. That is if you’re sure you feel … steady enough.”

  It turned out there were three plates because the slices of pie wouldn’t fit on the dinner plates. It looked like enough food to feed Mary and Norma for a week.

  Clara explained that her neighbors usually came to the Saturday potluck but were feeling tired after all the hubbub over their finding the gun the day before. “Oh, dear, I forgot that you …” She pushed her trifocals higher on her nose with the back of a wrist because her hands were full. “But … you didn’t even know Georgie.”

  “How did Mary and Norma come to find the gun in the ditch?” Charlie asked quickly before suspicion turned the conversation in the wrong direction. “Were they out walking like Frank?”