“Ah, Maria. Quite the local character,” Carla said.
“I was going to go to the historical museum and look through their records,” Len said.
“Good luck with that. I’m afraid there isn’t much. The details of the case seem to have been lost in the mists of time.”
“Can you tell us what’s known?”
“It won’t take long. Word has it that Maria was a dancer at one of the saloons. Some people think she worked in a brothel.” She shrugged. “Could have been one, the other, or both. Or maybe none of the above. Anyway, in May of 1852, she was accused of stabbing a miner named Barney McManus to death. Seemed like a pretty open-and-shut case. They put her in a little building that was used as a jail, and after a couple of days, a vigilance committee came by at sunset. It was 40 men against one constable, so he turned her over to them. They took her to the bridge over Dutch Joe Creek — same place back then as the bridge you cross going to your place, Gordon — put the noose around her neck and tossed her over the side. She’s supposed to be buried in Hillside Cemetery, but there’s no marker. That’s about it.”
There was a silence after she finished, and each of them took a couple of swallows of a drink.
“I guess they didn’t bother with trials back then,” Gordon finally said. “Len here thinks she may have been innocent.”
Carla looked at Len. “What makes you say that?”
“It doesn’t add up,” he said. “A woman, and especially a woman of Spanish descent, would have had almost no social standing with the Anglo gold miners and their ilk. She’d have had no reason to kill anyone unless it was in self-defense. The first time I read about the case, I thought I smelled a rat.”
“And what do you intend to do if you can prove that theory?”
“I’m planning on writing a book on wrongful lynchings of the Gold Rush. If I’m right about this, Maria’s story will be the book’s centerpiece.”
“There are a few locals who might agree with you. A lot of them refer to that bridge as Maria’s Bridge. You may have noticed, Gordon, there’s a coffee can at one end of it. Several people are known to put fresh flowers in it from time to time in Maria’s memory.”
“There was a new bouquet when we arrived yesterday.”
“So you saw it.”
“Can I ask you a question?” Gordon said. “Do you have an opinion yourself? Do you think Maria was innocent?”
She twirled her wine glass for several seconds before answering.
“I guess I do. I’m one of the ones who puts flowers in the coffee can, though I didn’t do the ones Friday. When it comes right down to it, I suppose I assume the woman’s innocent until proven otherwise. I even agree with that bumper sticker.”
“Bumper sticker?”
“The one that says, ‘Eve Was Framed.’ ”
IT WAS QUARTER TO TEN when Gordon finally left the Rope’s End. It had turned cold — low 40s — and he was hoping the cold air and the walk back to the house would clear his mind somewhat. He was feeling the effects of the night out, which, these days, almost counted as a debauch.
He also owed Elizabeth a call and wanted to get back by ten to make it. Even so, he stopped by the coffee can at the bridge and smelled the flowers.
Peter was snoring in his room when Gordon came in the front door at three minutes past ten. He figured Elizabeth was probably still up and sat down at the kitchen table to make the call. She answered on the third ring.
“Gordon?”
“In the flesh.”
“I wish.”
“How was your day?”
“The bad news is that I spent all of it grading papers. The good news is that I should be able to finish the rest in the morning and have Sunday afternoon off. How about you?”
“Not bad. We met with Gary Baxter’s childhood friend this morning, got in a few good hours of fishing this afternoon …”
“You’re slurring your words. Have you been drinking?”
“Please. I’ve been doing research.”
“At the Dew Drop Inn?”
“Apparently the place to pick up local gossip in this town is the Rope’s End, where we met Joey Vargas yesterday. You can tell Melissa I’ve been earning my money.”
“You’re not being paid, and if you were, you can’t write the drinks off as expenses. Did any women hit on you?”
He hesitated slightly. “You’d have to define ‘hit on.’ ”
“In other words, yes. Tell me all about it. Even a vicarious thrill would be welcome right now.”
“Well, I was standing at the bar, minding my own business, trying to eavesdrop on some of the local gossip, when a Marlene Dietrich impersonator walked by and gave me a wink and a pat on the butt.”
“You’re putting me on.”
“Believe it, Elizabeth. I don’t have the imagination to make up something like that.”
“You’re right. Your imagination doesn’t work in that way. Was the impersonator male or female?”
“Female, I think.”
“You think? And what did you do after she made that little overture?”
“Under the circumstances, there was only one thing I could do. I bought her a drink.”
“And took her aside to a cozy little table?”
“I was already at the table. In fact, I even had a chaperone. A retired history teacher from San Jose.”
“And what was her name?”
“His name. Leonard T. Vincent. Goes by Len.”
“And how did you meet Len?”
“Turns out he’s up here investigating a wrongful conviction himself. Only his is nearly 150 years old.”
“Do tell.”
“He’s writing a book on wrongful lynchings of the Gold Rush, and he’s convinced the first woman hanged after California became a state — and she was hanged in Dutchtown — was innocent.”
“She probably was.”
“That’s what ‘Marlene’ said, too. You women stick together, don’t you?”
“We have to.”
“Anyway, before I leave this place, I’m probably going to know more than I want to about Maria.”
“Maria? Is she the woman who was hanged, or is that ‘Marlene’s’ real name?”
“The woman who was hanged. Peter and I had a good afternoon fishing today on the upper Bellota. Caught a few.”
“Good.”
“Listen, can I backtrack a bit? Nell Quinn, Gary’s childhood friend, gave me a couple of leads in the Bay Area when we talked today. Is there any chance you could get in touch with them and ask a few questions?”
“I guess I could, but don’t you have a telephone?”
“Interviews like that should be done face-to-face.”
“You’re probably right. What’s the deal?”
“Gary’s half-brother lives somewhere in the East Bay, and Connie Baxter’s sister lives in Marin County. I have their phone numbers here.”
“Just a second.” He could hear rustling in the background. “Shoot.”
He read her the numbers, and she read them back to confirm.
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Meet with them if you can and see what they can tell you about the last few months before Connie was killed. Maybe they’ll remember something that didn’t come out at the trial.”
“Should I say I’m working on Gary’s behalf?”
Gordon thought about it for a moment.
“That should be fine when you’re talking to his brother. For Connie’s sister, I’d make up some other story.”
“But I’m not good at making up stories.”
“You’re better at it than I am — and I mean that as a compliment.”
“I’ll see what I can do. I have Tuesday and Thursday afternoon off, and evenings, of course. I’ll call both of them tomorrow morning.”
“That’s the team spirit. I don’t know if they can help us, but as long as we’re looking into this case, we should try to follow every lead.”
“Are you aware that you just switched to first-person plural?”
“Supremely aware.”
“You’re incorrigible, Gordon. Sleep well tonight and steer clear of ‘Marlene’ for the rest of the trip.”
“No problem. I don’t have to see her again until I give back the keys.”
“The keys?”
“I forgot to tell you. ‘Marlene’ is really Carla, the real estate agent we rented the house from.”
“Maybe I should come up next weekend after all.”
“I’d love to have you. My conscience is clear.”
“Yes, it would be. Sweet dreams, darling.”
“Sweet dreams.”
He set the phone down and shook his head to clear it. He was feeling a familiar kind of tension, and after a moment he recognized it. It was the feeling he had in college when he was playing basketball against a team that had an aggressive full-court press — one that made every move a challenge.
After a few minutes, he opened the sliding glass door to the deck and stepped outside. Dutchtown generated hardly any light to speak of, and in the clear night, he could see a sky full of stars, with the waning moon visible just above the mountain line. He gazed at the stars for ten minutes, until the cold began to get to him. Dropping his eyes, he looked across the creek at the house where the woman had appeared in the window while he was fishing that morning.
It was utterly dark and looked as if no one lived there at all.
Sunday October 18
WELL OVER A CENTURY AGO, a man named Collier built a stage stop on the road from Dutchtown to Bellota Pass. As stagecoaches receded into history, along with the Colliers, the place became an all-purpose stop for motorists. Collier’s (the name never changed, though the ownership did) now consists of a motel, a café, a general store, a post office and two gasoline pumps. It sits just off the state highway, several miles uphill from Pass City. A county road leads into the mountains to the Carolina Lakes, where several lodges and campgrounds accommodate summer tourists. Across the highway, a tract of summer homes, some of them occupied year-round, provide most of the resident population of the area.
Gordon and Peter were headed over the pass to Big Valley on the other side, and Collier’s was on the way, so it was there they stopped at seven o’clock in the morning. It was beginning to get light, but, at just under 6,000 feet elevation, it was a long way from getting warm when they got out of the Cherokee. They walked briskly across the parking lot and up the stairs to the café, which had just opened. A sliding partition separated the café from the store, which would not open for another hour, and the heater had been on long enough to make its presence pleasantly felt.
The interior was a study in pine. The walls were knotty pine; the tables were pinewood, heavily varnished to allow easy wiping; and the condiment trays were hollowed out pine branches. Gordon and Peter were seated at a booth near the back. The walls of the café were covered with old photographs of mining and timber operations, and early-day tourism along the Bellota River and nearby lakes. Directly over their booth was a black-and-white photograph of a man and a boy, father and son, holding a long stick, from which dangled 30 trout that had been caught in a morning at one of the Carolina Lakes. They counted the fish as they sipped their coffee.
“No catch and release in those days,” Peter finally said.
“No limits, either. There was so much land and so few people and so many fish it must have seemed as if it would never end. In a way, it’s amazing that things are still as good as they are today.”
As they waited for their food, Gordon brought Peter up to date on his activities from the night before. Peter listened intently, and when Gordon was finished, said nothing for a minute.
“I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but it seems to me that — aside from running up a substantial bar tab — you really haven’t accomplished much so far. Is there a plan here that I’m not seeing?”
“Nothing as firm as a plan, but things should be picking up. Tomorrow morning, we see the defense attorney. He’s set aside an hour for an interview, and he’ll be turning over a box of documents for me to look through.”
“There goes our fishing.”
“I hope not. I’ll be doing document review in the evening, and, as you may have noticed, it gets dark pretty early this late in the season.”
“Aren’t you a bit surprised that the attorney is being so cooperative? After all, if his client was innocent, it doesn’t reflect well on him that the poor devil was convicted.”
“An astute observation, Peter. But from my short conversation with him, I got the impression he doesn’t expect me to find anything that would contradict the trial verdict. If he’s right, and his client wants me to take a look — well, where’s the harm?”
“Maybe none. But anytime you start in on something open-ended, and there’s no telling where it will go, you’d better be fine with whatever you turn up. That’s why I hate exploratory surgery. It seldom turns up anything good.”
“What’s the alternative?”
“I don’t know. But sometimes, in those cases where the problem’s beyond fixing, I do wonder if the patient would be better off not knowing what’s there until it gets worse.”
“I guess there’s no good answer to that.”
“None that I’ve found.”
Breakfast arrived, and they dug in.
“So where do we go from here?” Peter asked.
“Over the pass. On the other side is one of the largest valleys in the Sierra. Prime grassland and cattle country. We go through the town of Sierra Ford — not much of a town, really — then follow the highway east about eight miles. A gravel road goes off into the mountains to the south, ending up seven miles away at a campground on upper Pioneer Creek. Three miles before the campground, where the valley meets the mountains, we’ll be turning right into Monroe Ranch. Over a mile of the creek runs through it, and the water’s hardly been fished by anyone other than the ranch hands in nearly a century. It’s all ours today, and unlike most of the streams in the Sierra, it’s mostly Brown Trout. You’re in for a treat. Any questions?”
“I have three,” Peter said, after a sip of coffee. “First, do you think there’ll be any snow on the pass from Friday’s storm?”
“There may be a few small patches in shady areas along the side of the road, but the road’s definitely open.”
“Next question: What’s the name of the valley?”
“Big Valley.”
Peter took another bite of his food and chewed it slowly. After washing it down with a swallow of coffee, he said:
“Do you ever wonder about place names, Gordon? I mean, the people who settled this country were risk takers and visionaries. And yet, given the opportunity to invent their new home by naming the places around it, they so often settled for the most ordinary names imaginable. Doesn’t that strike you as strange?”
“Is that your third question, or just a follow-up to the second?”
“The latter.”
“I suppose it doesn’t strike me as being all that strange. They probably used up most of their imagination figuring out how to just survive, and they didn’t have much left for naming things. Now, what’s your third question?”
“I’d really like to know how you got us a day on this seldom-fished private ranch.”
OSCAR MONROE WAS 75 but looked 57. His short hair, normally matted down under a hat, was still more sandy than gray. His weather-beaten face clearly owed more to long exposure to the elements than to the passage of time. He bounded out of the ranch house and down the front steps with a spring in his gait and was at the Cherokee as Gordon was getting out. He shook Gordon’s hand with a powerful grip and did the same to Peter.
“Wonderful to see you again, Gordon. It must be ten years.”
“Closer to 15, I’m afraid,” Gordon said.
“That long? Well, it could be. You were still a bit of a callow youth then, and you’re a man now. Your father must be proud.
And how’s he doing?”
“Very well, thank you.”
“Still working?”
“I don’t think he’d know how to stop. The law is his life.”
“As this ranch is mine. What an amazing thing that our lives came together in that way, so many years ago.”
That was the answer to Peter’s third question. More than three decades earlier, before most current environmental laws had been passed, a well-funded private water company in Nevada was planning to build a dam on Pioneer Creek above the campground and divert most of the water to Nevada via a pipeline. Fearing for their livelihood, the ranchers in Big Valley banded together to hire an attorney, and settled on Richard Gordon, at that time in private practice and rumored to be a candidate for Superior Court Judge.
He took their case, and, unlike some of the other cases he tried as an advocate, came to believe in it fully. Through hours of hard work and legal ingenuity, he put together an airtight argument for the ranchers’ water rights under state law. After two years of wrangling, the court ruled against the water company, killing the project.
As the rancher closest to the proposed dam site, Monroe had been the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, and in appreciation of a job well done, promised Richard Gordon that he and his heirs could fish Monroe Ranch any time they wanted. The promise was never put in writing; Monroe’s handshake was enough.
“You know,” Oscar continued, “I’ve spent an awful lot of money over the years. A cattle ranch is really a beautiful façade built over a money-sucking pit. If I had to add it all up, the sum would terrify me. But the day I sat in court and watched your father destroy the attorney for the water company, I thought to myself that never in my life had I spent money so well.”
After a brief pause, Gordon said:
“But I thought the water company paid the legal fees.”
“Oh, they did, but that day in court, I still thought we were on the hook for them, and I think all of us would happily have paid them. Well, I’ll leave you to your fishing — that’s what you came here for, after all. But do stop by the house around two or three. Betty was going to make some cookies when she gets back from church.”
“We’ll do that. Do you have any advice on the fishing?”
I Scarce Can Die (Quill Gordon Mystery Book 5) Page 7