“He’s usually only home in the summer months, but this year he’s weeks overdue.” She reached for her wine glass and took a quick gulp.
“What’s that got to do with the murder of Georgette Glick? Or the fact some painter can’t find his gun?”
“I don’t know. You’re the professional law enforcement type here. You yourself said this is all a puzzle. Yesterday on the dock, remember? I’m just helping you find some of the pieces.”
“Wharf.”
“Wharf. Did you find Randolph Glick’s randy old daddy in one piece this morning?”
“Yeah, I remembered what you said and we finally found him at the only little old café in Chinook that still makes hot beef sandwiches with real mashed potatoes and gravy, not that packaged glue you—you think you’re real smart don’t you?”
More like desperate. “Brother Dennis’s institute is overbooked and the searchers begin arriving tomorrow. The village will probably be swamped with strangers walking all over and haphazardly destroying clues.”
“Searchers?”
“Searchers of cosmic consciousness and transformitiveness.” Charlie was in too deep again. She poured him more wine and changed the subject. “Do you know what an OOBE is?”
Coffee in front of the fire. Wes finally got the one in the fireplace roaring. Must have used half the wood that empty Japanese ship had wanted to take home. And Charlie was finally warming up sitting next to him. Not that her host had thawed much but he was so big, he radiated warmth no matter what his mood.
“Why is it,” he said, “just when I think I am communicating something relevant to you, you get weird on me? Would you explain that? We have important things to discuss.”
But you haven’t read me my rights yet. Whatever it is, and obviously something I don’t want to face up to has happened, you’re not that sure. “Read Linda’s, I mean Deputy Tortle’s report.”
“So you misplaced your contact lenses under your bed and that means Monroe walks around out of his body? I don’t know what you’re trying to pull here, and frankly, Charlie, I don’t know why, but this stuff is—”
“Wes, you don’t misplace something from your cosmetic case in the bathroom across a hallway, into a bedroom, and under a bed. And if there were no bugs in cabin three, and your deputy and I couldn’t find any, how could Jack know what we had just been talking about? I mean everything we’d just been talking about.”
“You don’t honestly believe in this OOBE stuff.”
“No, but I think it’s got to be another piece of the puzzle.”
“Charlie, you can’t take every little piece of gossip and trivia you overhear in the village and plug it into the murder of Georgette Glick. It doesn’t work that way. You can have too many pieces for a puzzle.”
“But the more pieces you have, the more likely you are to find the right ones.”
“Shit, what do I have to do, draw you a picture?” And he stomped off around a stairway and into a room she’d only glimpsed on entering. It looked to have an odd combination of uses. She’d seen a cluttered desk, a television, a rowing machine, and a bench press.
Wes came back with two oblong boxes and shook them. He set one down, took the lid off the other and handed it to Charlie. The box had a picture of four horses running across a summer pasture, manes and tails flying, a corral and fence in the background, a mountain ridge and cloudless sky behind that. 1000 Pieces, proclaimed the lid.
The sheriff dumped all the pieces on the rug at Charlie’s feet. He picked up the second box and repeated the process, moving slowly and deliberately as if demonstrating a simple procedure to an imbecile. The second box had only five hundred pieces and the lid depicted a mountain stream splashing merrily among rocks and wildflowers. The sheriff got down on his hands and knees and scrambled the puzzle pieces together methodically with big blunt hands, all fifteen hundred of them.
Then he leaned forward on all fours, his head hanging over her lap like a woolly Saint Bernard wanting attention. “Charlie?”
“What?” She very nearly patted his head.
“Wouldn’t it have been easier to assemble either one of these puzzles if I hadn’t mixed them up like this?”
“Oh.”
“Oh, she says. Jesus!” The Saint Bernard stood up into a two-legged sheriff, those blunt hands clenched into fists.
“But what are you going to do with this mess?”
“What am I going to do? I’m going to dump this mess in the garbage can.” That low rumble of a chuckle came out strangely mirthless. “Because, Charlie Greene, both puzzles are ruined now. Because there are too goddamned many pieces to make sense out of anything now. You can’t separate one from another. Any chance any of this is soaking in?”
Charlie was saved by the telephone. Wes stomped off into the weight-lifting television office and she stared at the puzzle pictures on the lids.
“Oh, Christ, not again. Whadya mean he … no, no special privileges cause his dad’s a cop. If anything, make it harder on him … no, I’ll call his mother. And thanks, Harry.” The door closed on the next conversation and all Charlie could hear was the defeated tones of a beleaguered father. Welcome to Parenting 101, Charlie thought.
When he came back he poured himself a brandy and downed it in one gulp like a Hollywood cowboy on a saloon set. “That kid’s going to keep at it until he kills me. Him and his mother too. And what’s his mother say? She says, ‘Life just doesn’t live up to Joseph’s expectations anymore.’ Who ever told him it was supposed to, is what I want to know. Charlie, what are you doing?”
“I’m separating the puzzles. See, if you look closely at the colors in the pictures you can see different shades of greens in the grasses and blues in the skies. The other colors aren’t the same at all, well, maybe the fence in the horse one and the rocks in the stream one could get confusing but—” Charlie’s voice broke in a squeak when he kicked the boxes with some of the separated puzzle pieces already collected in them across the room.
He lifted her off the couch by her upper arms. Her feet were dangling. He asked reasonably, “Why are you doing this, Charlie?”
“Because I don’t want you to tell me the important things we have to discuss. I don’t want to know why I’m the chief suspect. I had the awful feeling those fajitas were a last meal. I don’t want to hear the bad news.”
He lowered her gently back to the floor, but kept a hold of her shoulders, which was good because she didn’t think she could stand on her own.
“You’re going to have to.”
“I know. Don’t let go.”
“I won’t.”
“So what is it?”
“The revolver in the ditch? It was the murder weapon like we thought. We got fingerprints off it. Your fingerprints, Charlie.”
Chapter 17
“That can’t be,” Charlie had insisted all the way down the mountain. “I would know if I had handled a gun. I’ve never touched one in my life.”
“Prints don’t lie, Charlie, and they were very clear.”
“Then why aren’t you taking me to jail instead of back to the Hide-a-bye?”
“Because the prints were too clear.”
“Now you’re the one not making any sense.”
“I know. The damn thing was in a ditch choked with damp grass and weeds that hadn’t dried out since the fog blanket the night before.”
“How could the prints be perfect then? Wouldn’t they get smudged?”
“Not inside a plastic bag with a Ziploc top that was zipped.”
“Somebody (supposedly me) shot an old woman on a Schwinn, put the gun in a bag to keep it dry so the sheriff’s department could find the prints on it, and threw it in the ditch, maybe four hundred yards from where the body was found under my Toyota. Isn’t that a little bizarre?”
“Well, it’s not way up there with walking around without your body—but it certainly raises questions. The old sisters who found the bag—”
“Mary and Norma.”
“Mary and Nooormma, said that’s what caught their attention. The bag had dew on it and their flashlight made it sparkle. They used a flashlight because they like to pick up litter on their evening walks and bottles and cans show up better that way when the light’s not good.”
“I know.”
“You know what?”
“That Mary and Norma pick up roadside litter. I learned that today when I was picking up all those useless puzzle pieces that mess up your murder investigation.”
“Well, did you happen to pick up how your fingerprints got on the murder weapon?”
Charlie wasn’t legally under arrest this particular minute only because there was such a fishy smell to the whole business. But a deputy—male and fortunately not poor Linda—was already parked in a car at the cabin door with a bag of sandwiches and a thermos of coffee. Wes informed her that man would stay there all night to see that she did too. “You’re costing the county a lot of money.”
“You don’t really believe I did it or I’d be in jail.” She followed him as he inspected the closet, peered under the bed, pulled back the shower curtain.
“I’ve seen people like you who I would have sworn incapable of a serious criminal act. And they’ve proved me wrong. Shit, my own kid’s screwing up every life he can touch and he looks to be as innocent as a newborn lamb. I can’t say what you did or did not do yet, Charlie, but for all the chauvinist pig redneck you think I am, remember that if you were a man you’d have been in jail the minute those prints were verified. Don’t tell me women don’t have privileges.” He peeked out at the fog on the balcony, closed the sliding door, and locked it.
He turned to find Charlie barring his exit by standing in the center of the entrance hall, arms outstretched, hands flattened against the wall on either side.
“Why aren’t I in jail?” She felt about as effective as a canoe would have felt blockading that Japanese cargo ship in the harbor at Chinook. “You don’t put women in jail? Moot County is an unusual place. It has nothing to do with the fact the evidence is fishy?”
“That, too.”
“And?” Why was he doing this? He could be an incredibly likable oaf. Why did he have to bait her this way? “I mean besides the fact that I’m not knock-kneed, cross-eyed, and forty pounds overweight or the fact there’s no motive?”
“Well, the courthouse is old,” he conceded with an impatient shrug, “and there’s only a couple of holding cells available for females and they’re occupied at the moment. And there could be a motive I don’t know about yet. Charlie, those prints will stand up with a jury.”
“And why only a couple of cells for women? Because they don’t even begin to constitute half your perps, right? Unless you’re going after women who smoke, drink, or swear when they’re pregnant, right?”
“Perps? I knew you’d been reading that female police junk just like Doris. I somehow had you figured as a little more intellectual.” He picked her up, set her down in the bathroom doorway, and stalked out into the fog.
“And I somehow had you figured as a lot brighter,” Charlie called after him and slammed the door. This time she locked it.
Actually what she’d been reading were statistics on the ratio of males and females convicted of serious crimes or even suspected of them. It was all part of a documentary Sid Goldfine had helped script for PBS and she’d seen several versions of it. Frank Glick was right. Women were capable of most all the crimes men were. Women’s prisons were overflowing too. Charlie had always accepted that men were more likely to commit a crime. It was a sort of given like boys will be boys and the testosterone thing. But the difference in the number of violent and serious crimes committed by male and female had surprised Charlie.
Right now she stood chilled and alone, the daily paper log already used up, damp fog hovering at the windows, and the deputy outside with his sandwiches and coffee. Charlie was too shocked by her fingerprints on a gun she’d never seen to even attempt sleep. She decided to take a hot shower and crawl into bed with the rest of the proposal on Death of a Grandmother. If that didn’t put her to sleep Holistic Health and Nutrition for Your Pet couldn’t miss.
She was down to stripping off her bra and panties before she thought to wonder if Jack Monroe could be standing around without his body scrutinizing hers.
Charlie stood under the hot water until it started turning cold on her. Instead of relaxing, as had been the plan, she allowed the fact of those prints to really soak in. First of all, it was impossible. Second of all, she couldn’t go to jail for murder because of Libby and because she had a job. Even by now Edwina and Libby were probably at each other’s throats. They got along fine only as long as they had Charlie to gang up on and flay between them. And how would she ever explain this to Richard Morse of Congdon and Morse Representation, Inc.? And what about all her writers? It wasn’t as though no one depended on Charlie.
By the time Charlie stepped out of the shower, she was so worked up Jack Monroe could have been standing there completely visible in his body and she’d have just flipped him off on her way past.
She might as well forget sleep for a week. Oh, and she could hear Edwina already, “I told you you’d end up in a bad way. Wreck every life you ever touched.” Well okay, she’d borrowed that from Wes Bennett but it sure sounded familiar.
By now Charlie was in her nightshirt and in bed and so hot under the collar she had to throw aside one of the blankets—only in Oregon or maybe Alaska would there be two blankets on a bed in June and a quilt for a bedspread.
Chapter Two of Death of a Grandmother started off with Patsy Prudhomme meeting the big handsome Sheriff Lester of the unnamed county. He questioned Patsy and immediately hauled her off to his bachelor pad on a mountaintop overlooking the Pacific Ocean—instead of to the courthouse for fingerprinting. Paige Magill might have her mystery and her romance genres confused but she sure had visited the home of the sheriff of Moot County.
The lurid details of the fictional encounter would have been funny if Charlie had not just returned from that mountaintop herself.
Of course when Paige was up there, she hadn’t been a chief suspect in a murder investigation. Charlie went back over the lurid parts again. Nah, Sheriff Bennett wouldn’t have served Patsy (Paige?) California wine and not even bothered with dinner before screwing. No fajitas, no frijoles, no nothing but grunting and some truly incredible positioning? No phone calls about disturbing kids, no mention of former wives and present responsibilities. Just panting and sweat and ecstasy.
“Damn near make you want to go out and commit murder just to get arrested by Sheriff Les.”
Charlie didn’t know that there was ever anything between Wes Bennett and Paige Magill. And if there was, they were both well of age. What she should be thinking about is how those fingerprints found their way onto the murder weapon. Did fingerprints never lie? And why, if the sheriff thought he had any case at all, would he confide to her things like the Ziploc bag and the too-clear prints? There must be something very wrong with those fingerprints.
“There are five totally unexplainable things here. How did the body of Georgette Glick get under my car? How did my fingerprints get on the murder weapon? How did my lenses get under the bed? How could I dream of the wreck of the Peter Iredale before I ever saw it, either in Michael Cermack’s painting or for real in its grave on the beach? And how am I going to get out of all this?”
“You’re just tired. It’s very simple. The murderer put Georgette under the Toyota to frame you rather than someone he knew. And somehow he got you to touch the handle of the gun without knowing it. Either that or he could somehow transfer the fingerprints from something else you knowingly touched. And Jack came over here while you were away and moved your contacts because he wants you to help him convince the people at Morton and Fish that he really can OOBE. And the Peter Iredale is probably much photographed because it is so accessible and you probably saw it in a National Geographic or even a poster store and subconscious
ly registered that it was located on the coast of Oregon, so when you came up here your mind connected the two and threw you a dream about it before you saw it on the beach.”
Sometimes Charlie’s rational mind simply astounded her. But it didn’t usually work this efficiently until after her first cup of coffee in the morning. “And the last one? How am I going to get out of this?”
“Relax and let the law do the investigating as I’ve said all along. You’re well aware of the sheriff’s attraction to you. He’ll find the answers to clear you. He knows his job, he likes you, and all you’re doing is making it harder for him by mixing up the puzzle pieces.”
Charlie was right. She really ought to listen to herself more often. She sighed, stretched, reached up, and turned off the lamp on the bedside table. Just for kicks she slid out of bed and to the window, pulling a crack open where the short drapes met in the middle. The deputy was drinking coffee and reading a magazine under the patrol car’s inside overhead light. He must have a powerful battery.
Back in bed, snuggled under both blankets now and cuddly warm, Charlie had almost drifted off to sleep when her eyes popped open. “That still doesn’t explain how Jack Monroe knew everything Deputy Tortle and I said.”
She and her rational mind began chewing it over again. Charlie just knew the answers lay in all the little puzzle pieces she’d collected. If she believed everything people told her—Paige Magill played Brother Dennis off Jack Monroe, Doc Withers slept with ducks and Gladys Bergkvist, Rose was a part-Italian natural psychic who had to sell control of her restaurant to a Japanese concern, Brother Dennis practically supported the little community with his institute, Michael Cermack had either misplaced his gun or someone had stolen it to murder Georgette, sisters Mary and Norma wandered around after dark with flashlights to clean up the roadsides, Jack Monroe wandered around without his body, Clara Peterson—as sweet as she was—didn’t really seem to approve of anyone except maybe Mary and Norma, Frank Glick let his wife go off on a foggy night on a bike without lights, Gladys Bergkvist did not associate with her poorer retired peers and did not believe in subsidizing them, Olie spent only the summer months at his home and was late getting back this summer, and you ate lefsa with margarine.
Murder at Moot Point Page 12