Murder at Moot Point

by Marlys Millhiser

  Clara hadn’t seemed the type to read mysteries, but she had mentioned she watched Mystery on PBS. Charlie sat up straighter. “Do you know the people at the village very well?”

  “I got orders not to discuss the case.”

  “Not the case, just the people.”

  The deputy really preferred talking to solitaire and Charlie flattered him with rapt attention. She learned all sorts of unrelated, probably useless things to mess up the puzzle and a morning that had promised to drag flew by. Deputy Olsen, too, had lived three miles from Moot Point until his mother died just last year.

  The Moot Point Consciousness Training Institute was in trouble financially. The deputy’s brother was a contractor in Chinook and preparing to take Brother Dennis to court for outstanding debts dating back to the second or third renovation of the place. The main building had been built in stages and improved over the years. “Used to be a money-maker, and if he’d just paid off his bills instead of getting bigger and better, he’d have been all right. The Japanese are buying up everything in sight. It would be a shame to see the institute go, too, but what you gonna do? Guy can’t pay his bills.”

  “What would the Japanese want with an odd building like that?”

  “There’s a lot of land with it. And with a prime view. I’ve heard speculation it could be turned into a fancy restaurant, maybe a luxury hotel built around it.”

  “Might not be so good for Rose.”

  “Probably close her down.”

  “Do you know Olie Bergkvist?”

  “Seen him in church a few times. Big good-looking older gent. He’s not around much. Usually Gladys comes alone. Got that painter fellow living over her garage. He’s a kettle of fish smells, if you ask me. Something unhealthy about that whole setup. Olie spent a lot more time at home when his first wife was alive. So my folks used to say anyway.”

  Olie Bergkvist, so the deputy’s folks used to say, had made a fortune off the used car business in Portland and then Chinook, but had always had a hobby collecting art. His first wife died of breast cancer about twenty years ago and their only child, a son, in an automobile accident five years later. A year before that Olie had married Gladys, a widow and schoolteacher in Astoria, and installed her in the house he built in Moot Point.

  “I think she was Finnish before her marriages, but I can’t remember for sure. Either that or her first husband was a Finn. And I believe she was an art teacher, but anyway he leaves her in control of the Scandia when he’s away. Which is most of the time. Who better than an art teacher to watch it for him while he’s gone?”

  “Gladys came from Finland?”

  “More likely her grandparents.”

  “Well, if the institute goes under, everything in the village, except maybe those living on social security and pension checks … I mean what little business there is will go under too, won’t it?”

  “Scary what’s happening all over the country.”

  Charlie set out smoked salmon and hard rolls and cheese and deli potato salad for lunch. And tasty selections of locally grown cherries and berries and plums. Deputy Olsen kept talking while he ate but declined the salmon. “I get so tired of fish. In Texas, I suppose poor kids lived on beans. Well, in Oregon guess what we lived on?”

  Rose came from Astoria too. Rose Kortinemi. “Finn mixed with Italian, if that ain’t a fishy salad.”

  “Rose came from Italy or Finland?”

  “Her father’s family sometime back came from Finland.” Deputy Olsen scraped a Bing cherry off its stem and seed. “Who knows where Italians come from?”

  He was young and pale and pleasantly freckled and, Charlie had a totally groundless inkling, not nearly as tough as Deputy Tortle. If Charlie ever had to elude either one, she’d pick Olsen. If anything, Linda Tortle overestimated Charlie’s capacities and nerve.

  “You said yesterday morning you took your girlfriend to get help for her dreams to Paige Magill and it really helped her. Do you still think I should go?” Charlie rose to put the teakettle on and rummaged through the supplies to find Hostess Twinkies for the deputy’s dessert.

  “I wouldn’t take out an IRA from the Magill woman, mind you, but Stephy certainly got straightened out at the Dream Emporium. And if you knew Stephy, well—”

  “What does Paige Magill do? How long did the straightening-out last?”

  “Got her to keep going over her dreams until she figured out what they meant. See, the dreams was telling Stephy something in her life was wrong and it was daytime stuff that was actually bugging her, but the dreams were trying to work it out. They finally decided it was because she was still living with her folks and her dad’s always making her feel dumb. She moves in with me and she stops dreaming altogether.” He reddened slightly when he thought about that and Charlie covered her grin with the pretense of wiping cherry juice from her lips. “It took a couple of months is all, her going once a week.”

  Stephy had been out of high school for five years and had worked her way up from stocker to checkout at a Chinook supermarket. Deputy Olsen droned on and Charlie’s attention had begun to wander when suddenly he was talking about Paige Magill again.

  “I hear she has lots of men friends,” Charlie said, trying to catch up with the conversation and aim it to suit her.

  He shrugged as if he didn’t pay attention to that sort of gossip and squished the filling pulp out of his Twinkie to lick separately. Then he paused with a glob still on his lip. “Well, I did see her once in the little red Ferrari with that painter, Michael. He drives like he’s demented which, if you listen to him at all, it appears that’s just what he is. People like him shouldn’t have a driver’s license, let alone a Ferrari.”

  This sounded promising and Charlie was about to pursue it when someone knocked at the door. Her jailor went to answer it. It was Jack Monroe.

  He was in his body.

  He kept trying to peer over the deputy’s shoulder or around it to talk to Charlie but was told no visitors. “But she’s my agent and I just sold my book and—”

  “I heard about that. Congratulations, Mr. Monroe.”

  “Thanks, but you see,” and he raised his voice to be sure Charlie heard, “I’ve got this chapter here and I’d like her opinion on it. It won’t take long. If you could just give us a few minutes.”

  “Sorry, but I’ll give it to her for you.”

  Charlie groaned and rubbed the back of her neck like the sheriff had this morning. Needing constant reassurance each step of the way was the sign of an amateur. A professional, whether it was his first book or his fifth, did his own work and took his lumps. If Charlie praised the chapter, Jack would waste weeks daydreaming of glory and perhaps refuse to heed an editor’s call for revisions.

  “But my agent said this was the best part.”

  “Your agent’s not the one buying the book, Jack.”

  If Charlie panned it or sounded a sour note he could very well be unable to complete the manuscript, so deep in despair would she have flung him. Charlie’s favorite amateur clients had spouses or live-ins to inflict this torture upon by making them read and comment on the manuscript-in-progress every day and letting Charlie off the hook.

  “I should look at this first,” the deputy apologized when he brought the chapter back to the table, its author shut out in the cold, gray day. “Be sure he’s not passing on some kind of information about the murder, you know.”

  “Deputy Olsen, be my guest.” This was the very last time Charlie would allow herself to get horned into representing an amateur who did not have either a fall-over-dead blockbuster idea going for him or superstar status already established in another field, so help her God.

  “You know, my Stephy writes a pretty mean poem. Maybe you should look at some of her writing. She’s a lot better at typewriting than Jack Monroe too.”

  “Agents don’t handle poetry, Deputy.”

  “Ooo-ob?” he asked, puzzled. “Ooooo-bee? What’s he talking about?”

  Charlie
grabbed the first page, ignoring the misspellings and clumsy typing, and read about Jack’s first experiments with out-of-body experiences.

  He’d kept thinking he was lying on the ceiling and that he was asleep.

  Chapter 20

  When Deputy Tortle came to relieve Deputy Olsen, she found her colleague and Charlie deep in contemplation of OOBE’s and Jack’s chapter. Linda Tortle carried in still more groceries and put them in the refrigerator. Sheriff Bennett either assumed everybody ate like he did or wanted to make sure Charlie had no excuse to leave cabin three at the Hide-a-bye for the rest of the week.

  “So what are you scheming now?” Linda asked once she’d shooed Olsen on his way and taken his place in front of Jack’s chapter.

  “I’ve learned that either Jack Monroe has the same dreams I do and thinks they’re OOBE’s, or I have OOBE’s like he does and think they’re dreams.” At first, Jack wrote, he could never remember these dreams, would just find himself in a panic trying to return to his body. But then he’d visit a place and know he had been there in his dreams. The chapter ended with the hook, “And then one day I realized these experiences weren’t dreams!”

  “I’ve had this feeling of flying out of control and getting all tingly just as I fell asleep before,” the deputy said after she’d read for awhile.

  “I think everybody has,” Charlie assured her. Jack made it sound as though at certain times in life and under certain circumstances, even in certain places, it was likely to happen to anyone, but that only he and a few others had recognized it for what it was and perfected a technique enabling them to do it at will and to have some control over destinations.

  Charlie tried to think of what she’d tell Jack. Actually it wasn’t bad for rough copy but a chapter does not a book make and she didn’t have her copy of his proposal to fit this chapter into the total picture. For lack of anything else to do Charlie retrieved Death of a Grandmother. She’d read the sample chapters but hadn’t finished the summary of the rest.

  After Sheriff Lester and Patsy Prudhomme’s steamy session in the sheriff’s mountaintop home, he had to arrest her for the murder of Gertrude Geis. Seems that Gertrude was shot and Patsy’s prints were found on the gun and the gun was found in the trunk of her car. Meanwhile, Patsy was having dreams very like the ones Charlie had described to Paige over teacups.

  Once in jail Patsy was subjected to “horrid abuse” but couldn’t convince her lawyer of that. And the sheriff refused to see her. This was all very generally summarized, but Charlie found it chilling. Which of course was the intent.

  “Deputy Olsen let me call my family and my office this morning,” she told Linda. “My boss claims you people will have to charge me pretty soon or let me go. He says—”

  “You’re not in jail, are you? You could be a prime witness being guarded by the department.”

  “Or a chief suspect nobody can quite believe committed the crime in spite of fingerprints on the gun.”

  “Revolver.”

  “Sheriff Bennett’s just trying to keep me from mixing up the puzzles, isn’t he?”

  “If you mean from interfering in a murder investigation, yes.”

  “Did you tell him about Death of a Grandmother?”

  “It’s in my report.” Deputy Linda rose to switch on the television, knowing better than to ask Charlie’s permission.

  Charlie made it about halfway through a talk show that delved into such deep and mind-numbing problems as, How do you feel when you’re feeling feelings, before she jumped to her feet and insisted they take a walk.

  “Why? The weather’s crummy.” Linda squinted up at Charlie as if trying to place her.

  “Either that or let me call my lawyer.”

  Charlie was a little surprised to find herself strolling along the path to the lighthouse minutes later. “Never assume a door is locked to you,” Richard Morse of Congdon and Morse Representation, Inc. had told her more than once, “until you have tried the knob, knocked, and then rammed it. People will always let you assume what it is most convenient for them to have you assume.”

  Charlie glanced at the tall authoritarian figure beside her. “Did you know that Deputy Olsen’s brother is preparing to take Brother Dennis to court over long-standing bills?”

  “Deputy Olsen was told not to discuss the case and so was I.” But Linda’s steps had paused.

  “His brother’s a contractor who’s done a lot of work on the institute’s main building and I didn’t know we were discussing the case and I’m sure Olsen didn’t either. We were just talking about Brother Dennis.”

  It wasn’t so cold that they saw their breaths, but dampness on the chill wind insinuated itself through their clothes. It was hard to believe they’d worked up a light sweat walking the other direction the day before.

  “The institute sells all those books and tapes, charges the earth for its seminars. The town’s packed with searchers today and cars and—” Linda shrugged, “—sure seemed like a going concern.”

  “And the village lives off it, has grown very used to the extra, and sometimes the only, money other than social security and pension checks coming in. And most of the money from them is spent elsewhere, where there’s services like groceries, drug and clothing stores, that kind of thing.” Charlie thought of trying to raise Libby here and shuddered. And she tried to figure how this puzzle piece could possibly fit into the one about a seventy-eight-year-old woman getting shot off her Schwinn on a foggy night.

  “Well, there’re tourists.”

  “Who come in the summer months mostly, right? Just like the searchers. This is June and Moot Point doesn’t seem that full of tourists. June is when an awful lot of people travel in this hemisphere.”

  “It’s a long coast,” Linda said defensively.

  “And the long, rainy, stormy winters attract only a select tourist trade.”

  The trail with its chopped-off bushes on either side reminded Charlie of the arbitrarily contoured bushes of a maze in the garden of a mansion in Beverly Hills. It had once belonged to a silent screen star and was now the residence of kids little older than Libby who’d made it big in the video biz.

  Long strong thorns and pale pink roses decorated much of the thick growth behind the fence—the bushes droned with bees.

  The deputy turned away from the lighthouse when they reached the Porta Pottis and headed up another paved trail running along the headland. Here tall grasses and wildflowers threatened the trail—swaths of purple lupine, yellow daisies, and a large clump of white lace on a tall stalk.

  Ahead, a line of bicycles zigzagged down 101, and behind them a solid wall of rain forest, pine and deciduous with bushy undergrowth choking the trunks, rose up the mountainside to be lost in cloud. Charlie could see how the bigfoot phenomenon started in such forests. If you saw something suspicious, you couldn’t chase it down without a machete. And it would be a lot harder to shoot than an old lady on a bicycle in the fog.

  Deputy Linda and the trail turned suddenly and swooped down off the headland toward the road that led to the Hide-a-bye. When they reached it Linda turned toward the sea and the cabins, but Charlie crossed it and picked up the path again on the other side. The deputy swore behind her but turned back to follow Charlie.

  What was it Richard Morse often said? (The man overflowed with his own peculiar brand of homily.) “Your trouble, Charlie, is you keep thinking the system works. While thinking people work the system.”

  “What’s so damn funny now?” Linda asked behind her.

  This trail continued down to a small inlet and left them. Charlie’s only recourse was to follow the trickle of water emanating from the rain forest through a sewer pipe under 101 as it headed for the sea.

  Once she reached the beach she turned north and averted her eyes toward the bank of sand and clump grass on her right when she passed the rusty ribs of the skeleton ship on her left.

  “Look, you said a walk, not a marathon,” Linda complained.

  The sea m
ist left the taste of salt on Charlie’s lips and was so thick it looked like rain up ahead. But when they reached “up head” it looked like rain where they had been. Another headland stopped her finally. Sudsy breakers exploded against and over rocks, sprayed into bushes and shore pines that grew right down to the water wherever they found foothold. “Must be high tide.”

  “High enough.” Linda Tortle squinted into the wind, her permed hair escaping the comb clasp in frizzy, gyrating streamers. “Time to go back.”

  She looked dangerous again, still, steely. They had a staring match. Charlie was angry too. She wouldn’t have gotten this far if the Moot County Sheriff’s Department had any right at all to keep her under surveillance without charging her with anything. She was about to say just that when a siren wailed in the distance and the deputy’s radio went off up close.

  “What the hell are you doing down there?” Wes Bennett’s voice crackled from the box Linda had taken from the hook on her belt. The official Bronco crested a dune about forty yards back the way they’d come and hurtled down a sand road Charlie hadn’t noticed, siren and lights at maximum flash and octaves.

  Charlie sat in back this time, chain mesh separating her from the officers so she couldn’t attack them from behind. The sheriff had been on an emergency run from Chinook when he spied them on the beach below.

  “We’ll drop her off,” Wes interrupted his deputy’s attempt to explain the walk on the beach. “You follow me in your car.”

  “She won’t stay put. You’ll have to lock her in somehow.”

  Charlie could remember watching her parents’ heads from the back of the family car when she was a kid as they discussed her in the third person this way.

  The sheriff made frustrated noises in the back of his nose and ended up taking Charlie with him. He made unintelligible sounds in answer to the unintelligible sounds coming in over the radio as they careened down off Highway 101 into the village of Moot Point, siren screaming, and Deputy Linda not far behind.