1 Portrait of a Gossip

by Melanie Jackson

  “I expect you to behave and leave your catnip in the pot,” she said to Marley.

  “Reow.”

  “I should hope so. It will be ugly if I have to duct tape the pot.” Juliet had one of those unwelcome moments of insight, thinking of her old life, so rich in possessions and prestige, if she wanted them, but completely starved of the thing she really needed. It was good to have a cat.

  It wasn’t until she stepped outside that Juliet became aware of the smell of smoke and the yellow tinge to the air. Marley too was sniffing and seemed restless. The fire couldn’t be that close though and no one had raised the alarm, so Juliet decided to get on with the day.

  She stuck her head into Robbie’s cottage and found him doing something with some rusted parts. No one else was around.

  “Got the water back on at Esteban’s?” she asked.

  “Is the water off?” he asked.

  “I thought Esteban said it was. Maybe I heard him wrong.” She looked out at the parking lot which was nearly empty. “Where is everyone?”

  “The truck came in at the art supply place. Finally. Everyone has headed for town. Say, do you smell smoke?”

  “Yes. The air is a little hazy too.” She shifted the pile of clothing.

  “Guess I better put on the radio and find out what’s what. I hope the fire doesn’t ruin the weekend.”

  He meant that the fire might scare away tourists.

  “Fingers crossed,” she agreed and headed for her car.

  Once she was out from under the trees and on the main road, Juliet could see a thick river of smoke flowing toward town. One of the jet streams had grabbed up the smolder from the fire and was pulling it north. It looked bad, but surely someone would have sounded the alarm if the fire were dangerously close.

  Chapter 15

  “The fire is holding at Gaudyville. So far,” Garret said as she came in the door. He looked harassed.

  Juliet approached the desk, forgetting the t-shirt she had in her hands. The others had been dropped off at the gift shop, which had been empty of customers.

  “Has anyone been hurt?”

  “Not so far. We are lucky for the recent rain and that there are no farms out that way. They have evacuated most of the town though, just in case the fire jumps the freeway. It could happen if the wind veers. They are also bringing in firefighters from outside the county. It’s only about forty percent contained.”

  She nodded and then looked at the image on Garret’s computer.

  “That looks eerily like Jillian Holmes.”

  “Him?” Garret said with surprise.

  “What do you mean—oh my God! That’s Charity King?”

  “You thought it was Jillian Holmes?”

  Before either of them could say or ask more, an alarm went off at the firehouse. Juliet was suddenly aware that the smell of smoke was much stronger. A look out the window showed them that visibility was falling to the yellow-gray haze that was darkening the sun. The winds had moved.

  The phone rang and Garret snatched it up, listened for about ten seconds, and then reached for his hat.

  “The fire jumped the line and is coming this way. We’ve got to evacuate the town and the Wood! We’ll worry about Jillian later.”

  To underline his words, the cars began coming in a wave, clogging the streets with evacuees who opted to travel south to Santa Cruz instead of north to San Francisco.

  “I think everyone is out of the Wood. Robbie gave the all clear. By the way, check your phone, Juliet. I couldn’t get hold of you this morning.”

  Bartholomew’s Wood was evacuated? But what about the cat?

  “Marley!” Juliet breathed in horror and ran for the door.

  “Juliet! I mean it, stay away from Jillian Holmes!” he shouted after her. “And don’t take crazy chances over a cat!”

  Don’t take chances over a cat? Was he kidding?

  Juliet had to drive aggressively and at one point used the wooden walkway by the bakery as a passing lane.

  The wind shifted again as she pulled off the paved road and onto the gravel drive. It blew yellow smoke across the road. It wasn’t as thick as some of the morning fogs, but the smell was evil, threatening.

  Juliet had seen a wildfire once as a child and been terrified by its bellowing fury. She knew that only a few miles away, the dying trees were throwing off fiery bark like shrapnel and the superheated sap had turned into nature’s napalm which stuck and ignited everything it landed on. Flames would lengthen into orange lashes under the wind and then would fall back into hissing blue embers that burned all the hotter. She had hoped to never see such a thing again, but it might happen if the wind didn’t start blowing the fire back.

  Jillian was able to gain speed the further up the mountain she traveled. The smoke had changed hue and aroma in the last several minutes. The fire had reached the pumpkin fields and the air smelled like a perversion of jack-o’-lanterns at Halloween.

  The fields were only fifteen miles away.

  A helicopter carrying a bladder of water flew overhead. Once a fire entered a steep canyon, there was no way for men on the ground to fight it. It was all down to the water tankers and the wind.

  “Hang on, Marley! I’m coming.” She was thankful that she had left her cabin door open but worried about finding him if he panicked and ran.

  She pulled into the nearly empty lot and killed the engine. The compound felt empty like a church on a Monday. None of the usual sounds of music or chisels, or the usual smells of wood or paint were in the air—just smoke and fearful expectation.

  A wheelchair appeared around the side of the caretaker’s cottage.

  “Raphael!” she gasped, leaping from the car, and then, “Marley! You’ve got him! Oh thank God!”

  The cat, looking none the worse for wear, was sitting in Raphael’s lap.

  “Juliet, everyone came down twenty minutes ago except Jillian and Jake Holmes and Carrie Simmons. Esteban went up ten minutes past but he hasn’t come down either and he hasn’t called me to say why he’s delayed.”

  “Damn it. I think Jillian’s the one who killed Harvey.” She took a breath and pulled herself back from the brink of panic. Marley was fine. Raphael was fine. She was able-bodied and could find the others long before the fire reached them. If it reached them. It would have to cross the river first. “Okay. Take my keys and you and Marley get in the car. I’ll go after the others. If there’s time I’ll help you load your paintings when I get back.”

  “Only if there’s time. Find Carrie and Esteban.” He didn’t say anything about either Holmes.

  She started up the hill. It pleased Juliet that he shared her priorities. There was no time to answer questions, though she supposed he had them, and again she blessed his sense of urgency. And maybe her news about Jillian wasn’t shocking. After all, he was the one who had suggested the killer was female.

  The gusts of hot wind made the tree branches grate against one another, hissing protests at the heat and approaching fire they couldn’t outrun. Juliet tasted blood on her lip and realized that she was biting it. Panic wasn’t helpful, but the steady alarm fed her resolve which helped with the pain in her legs and the shortage of oxygen, which simply had to be ignored.

  Her smooth soles slipped and she staggered and almost lost her footing. But a fall was out of the question and she jerked herself upright, refusing to acknowledge the wrenched ankle.

  “Carrie! Esteban!” Her shout wasn’t very loud and ended in a cough. The morning wind that traveled up the draw was carrying smoke up its natural chimney.

  The door to Carrie’s cottage was standing open and a light burned inside. That this might be because the day was fine did not occur to Juliet. Her heart was already laboring but she felt the adrenaline rush hit her as her brain reacted to a new fear.

  She stopped in the doorway; the space beyond was dark and frightening. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust and she stayed by the door until she could see. Juliet had never been inside Carrie
’s cottage and a part of her found it strange and sad that it had taken a crisis to get her interested enough to visit. The room was surprisingly plain, unimaginative white walls, bare wood floors, but there was a large mirror on one wall and when she stepped toward it, it showed the body on the floor beside the bed.

  “Carrie!” Juliet rushed over and felt for a pulse. It was there but weak. The gash in her head was bleeding sluggishly. There was a lot of blood on the floor.

  Carrie was sprawled on her back, her legs at an awkward angle that dimpled her thighs in a way which she would never have permitted anyone to see had she been conscious. Her blouse was twisted so her red bra showed and her stomach was bared. It was only then that Juliet realized Carrie was wearing the same clothes she had had on the night before. Had she been there that long without regaining consciousness?

  “That’s bad—so bad.”

  Jillian looked for a phone but there was only the old crank phone with its internal line.

  She hurried back to within hailing distance of the parking lot and shouted, “Raphael! Does your phone have a signal?”

  He closed the car door gently, shutting Marley inside, and looked up at her.

  “Yes.” Even in crisis his voice was moderated and it occurred to her to wonder if his injury had affected him in other ways.

  “Call the sheriff. I know it’s all hands on deck for the evacuation, but we need an ambulance at Carrie’s cottage right now. Someone has bashed her head in. She’s alive but looks bad.”

  “I’m on it. Juliet, do you have a gun?”

  “I’m going for it now,” she said and began to jog up the trail. She knew that she would have to search every cottage in case Esteban or Jake were injured and lying there, bleeding like Carrie, but first she wanted a weapon. Clearly Jillian had snapped. Juliet would be of no use to anyone if she also got injured or killed.

  Why on earth had she decided to wear a dress and sandals?

  She went into her cottage quickly, holding a fist-sized stone and braced to find an intruder, but it was empty. She went to the rag bag under the sink and pulled out the scraps of cloth until she found her gun. It was a G26, a “baby Glock,” more gun than most ladies liked, but Juliet had always believed that if the moment came that she needed to shoot someone she didn’t want to have to do it more than once. Guns only do one thing; they should do it magnificently.

  She hated to take the time but kicked off her sandals and stuffed her feet into sneakers. It felt odd to be without socks, but she didn’t waste time putting them on or changing out of her dress. She could run if she had to. That was all that mattered.

  The gun was reassuring but Juliet wasn’t sure where to start searching. Up or down? It was a small theater of operations but time was running out. The thickening air was hard on the lungs and ash had begun to fall in an ugly parody of snow. Weathermen talked all the time about chill factor, but in a fire there was the opposite problem. She stood outside the bungalow, sweating, turning in a circle, straining ears and eyes for some indication of where people were. The lack of human noise was sinister.

  Then she saw the ravens sitting in a distant tree that marked the path to the upper gate and the river. They had their heads turned and were staring fixedly at something that was moving slowly upward.

  The gate. The river. Where someone could perform acts they didn’t want witnessed, and hide away things they didn’t want found.

  “Oh no,” she whispered and started to run.

  The carrion eaters were watching something and she could only hope that she wasn’t too late.

  Her breath grated, but she still heard the sirens as they neared the compound. It should have been reassuring to know that assistance was coming up the hill but she feared they wouldn’t arrive in time for whoever was nearing the gate. Supposing that the victim was alive. That was a large assumption.

  There was lots of cover on the lower part of the hill, but after the last cottages there was little cover or concealment. Whoever was up there would see her coming. Juliet tried to be quiet. She did some fast dashing while avoiding patches of broken stone, aware that she was pushing the limits of what guardian angels could do to preserve their charges.

  It was Jake Holmes and not his wife who was dragging a dead or unconscious Esteban through the withered uprights of the open gate.

  Juliet leveled the gun, hoping the thuds of her heartbeat would not make the pistol waver. This would be a bad moment for the killer to think that she was too frightened or incapable of using her gun.

  “Stop, Jake.” He did stop for a moment, just long enough to lift his head, see who was there, and then dismiss her as a threat; an older woman in a dress who couldn’t hold her small handgun steady. Then he tensed his muscles for a final heave that would send Esteban into the river.

  She could use cooler blood, but her head was clear and training took over. Juliet exhaled, stilled her hands, and then fired. The bullet took him in the shoulder. The small handgun had a lot of power at close range. It spun him around and it was Jake and not Esteban who went over the cliff and into the river.

  It took Juliet a second to lower the gun and then to force her legs into walking. She went to Esteban and dropped by his side. The rock burned on her bare legs and drops of her sweat rolled off her face and onto the stone. The sun was pitiless and she tried to maneuver so her shadow fell on his face. It seemed odd that she was sweating when she suddenly felt so very cold.

  “Esteban.” She laid a hand on him when he stirred. One of his arms and shoulder hung over the crumbling edge and Juliet, who suffered from vertigo, prayed that it held a few minutes more because she felt too weak and dizzy to move him more than a couple feet. Especially when she didn’t know how badly he was hurt. His shirt was unstained on the chest side but there was blood, a long trail of it over the rocks suggesting an injury to his back.

  “Hang on, Esteban. Help’s almost here,” she tried to say but her voice was no more than a croak. She realized that the straightjacket of shock was buckling her in and there was nothing she could do to stop it. Jillian was somewhere, if not in the river then lying dead or injured in the compound, but she couldn’t leave Esteban. Couldn’t leave period. Her legs had stopped working.

  His eyes flickered open and tried to focus.

  “It’ll be okay,” she whispered, not knowing if that was true.

  Juliet heard shouting below. She tried yelling back but her throat was too constricted and the world was going dark. Instead she raised her gun and fired a guiding shot into the air. Then set the gun down carefully. Garret would probably know straight off that she hadn’t harmed Esteban, but it might be state police and not the sheriff who was coming up the hill, and with the police it was a good idea not to confront them with a gun in your hand.

  Unable to fight off the dark, she lay down beside Esteban and surrendered.

  Whatever happened next could happen without her.

  Chapter 16

  Garret, Juliet, and Raphael were sitting by Esteban’s hospital bed. Quarters were tight and Juliet was pressed against Raphael’s wheelchair. They had traveled down together in his car, stopping at the bakery to get Esteban a contraband cinnamon-maple cupcake. She hoped Raphael didn’t mind the enforced intimacy. If he objected he was too polite to make any sign.

  Though her throat was still a bit raspy, Juliet felt better than she had since Harvey Allen was killed. Her sense of order was restored. The snake had been driven from her garden. The compound and White Oaks were safe and Esteban and Carrie Simmons were well—or would be eventually, though Carrie would need her walker for real, at least for a while.

  “So it was Jillian and not Jake who killed Harvey Allen?” Garret asked. He had invited them to write out their statements while they were there, but also to help him create a sensible timeline for the report that would have to be filed with the state police since they had been on the scene. Paperwork had been delayed a few days because of the aftermath of the fire, but everything was back to normal
, the wildfire defeated, evacuees returned home, and reports needed to be filed. “’Cause it seems to me that you could write it both ways.”

  “Yes. I know Jake looks like a better choice, and you can hang the whole case around his neck for all I care, but I don’t think it happened that way.”

  “Why not?” Garret asked. “He was able and sure as hell demonstrated a propensity for violence, which is more than you can say for his wife.”

  “I know.” Juliet gathered her thoughts, trying to explain how she knew what she knew. Somehow she didn’t think that Garret would understand about the empty birdcage and how it was symbolic of Jillian letting go of the last thing she loved in her old life.

  “It all starts with Jillian. Rose Campion can tell you more than I can about her past. We’ve all known women like her. Abused as a child, she was damaged inside, in places and at depths where the pain could never be plucked out or completely healed over. She lived for her brother and later she was her husband’s shadow. We didn’t think of her as being a person in her own right—at least I didn’t. Probably she didn’t think of herself as a whole person either though she carried around enough pain for any two people. And she carried it until she broke under the load.”

  Raphael nodded. He had known her longer than the rest of them.

  “And since, though a good illustrator of others’ thoughts and deeds, she herself had little imagination—clearly not enough to envision letting go of the past and forgiving trespasses against her—killing the thing that gave her daily pain seemed like a good idea. And God knows a case can probably be made that Harvey deserved it after driving her twin brother to suicide. You all know about that?”

  Juliet got nods from everyone. They knew about Charity King.

  “The irony is that Harvey didn’t know he had moved into a compound with the sister of his victim. He didn’t recognize Jillian, but of course Jillian and Jake knew him.” Juliet swallowed. “But it wasn’t her way to just charge out with guns blazing and confront the creature. She didn’t know how to confront anyone. So she waited, maybe needing a sign. Who knows how often she sat in the woods in her little copse, watching Harvey as he watched others with his binoculars and his parabolic mike, waiting for the right time to finally kill him. We know it was Jillian and not Jake who hid in the woods because we found no trace of cigarettes and Jake was unable to go any length of time without smoking.”