The Conan Flagg Mysteries: Bundle #3

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The Conan Flagg Mysteries: Bundle #3 Page 32

by M. K. Wren


  But Conan had become accustomed to Nina’s taste in clothing in the two years she had lived here. What brought him to his feet now was surprise at seeing her in the shop—not to mention the unmistakable glint of triumph in her eyes. Nina Gillies was a real-estate broker with her own agency, Pacific Futures Realty. She was also local agent for Baysea Properties, Incorporated, part of the California-based conglomerate empire of Isaac Wines Enterprises.

  And in relation to Shearwater Spit and Sitka Bay and to ECon, Nina Gillies was the enemy. At least, the local manifestation of the enemy.

  Nina strode past Miss Dobie, high heels thudding on the wood floor, stopped in Conan’s doorway, and said coldly—and loudly, “I thought you and your bleeding-heart ecology friends should be the first to know. You thought you had Gabe all wrapped up! Well, you were dead, damned wrong! He just signed the papers this morning. He’s accepting Baysea’s last offer—for four million dollars.” The laugh that followed was, for all its lilting softness, decidedly nasty. “So, have a happy Thanksgiving!” And with that she turned and marched out of the shop.

  Conan went to the office door, watching through the front windows as she got into her silver-blue Cutlass and departed with a flourish of squealing tires. Like everyone within earshot in the shop—which meant everyone on the first floor—Miss Dobie was staring at Conan.

  “Well…” she drawled, “I bet little Miss Oregon was never voted Miss Congeniality.”

  Conan frowned, the sinking sensation of sudden disappointment vying uncomfortably with mounting anger somewhere in the region of his stomach.

  He asked distractedly, “Miss who?”

  “Congeniality.”

  “No. What was that about Miss Oregon?”

  “Oh, well, Nina was a Miss Oregon years ago, and before that, either Rose Queen or one of the princesses at the Portland Rose Festival. But as they say, beauty is only—”

  The ring of the phone mercifully cut her off. Conan snapped, “I’ll get it,” on the way to the phone on his desk.

  It was Diane Monteil. “Conan, what happened? Nina Gillies was just here in the shop a few minutes ago looking for Corey. When I told her Corey wasn’t here, Nina went flouncing out, and I just saw her drive away from the—”

  “I’m not sure what happened, Di, but it looks like Gabe has just made colossal suckers of ECon and all of us. I’m going down to the beach to get Corey; I think we’d better have a talk with Gabe. Do you want to go along?”

  She hesitated, then, “I can’t leave the shop, Conan. Not today. Just don’t let Corey do anything…dumb. She gets so angry when it comes to Gabe.”

  Conan laughed bitterly. “I’m the wrong person to ask to do the restraining. Don’t worry, Di. Try not to.”

  When Conan reached the front door, he paused, frowning questioningly at Beatrice Dobie. “Miss Oregon?”

  “Um-hmmm. That was before she married Randall Coburn—you know, the football player—and they went to Los Angeles. Randy had a contract with the Rams, and Nina was going to be a Hollywood star.” A portentous sigh, then, “Things didn’t quite work out for them. Nina—well, she was certainly beautiful, but I guess she couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag. Randy got into drugs. There was quite a scandal.”

  “Nina’s not using his name. Did she divorce him?”

  “Oh, no, Randy died. ODed, maybe. Something like that.”

  “Well, maybe that explains a lot.” Then he shrugged as he opened the door. “And maybe it doesn’t. Miss Dobie, I’ll be back in an hour or so. I think.”

  *

  The black XK-E, trapped in a southbound caravan of camper vans and cars loaded with unhurried sightseers, throbbed futilely, reduced to a virtual crawl on the bridge spanning the narrow channel into Holliday Bay. Many of the caravaneers turned off there, and even more a short distance farther at Shag Point State Wayside. Conan’s foot bore down on the accelerator as the highway angled southeast on the long curve around Sitka Bay.

  Corey fidgeted in the seat beside him, alternately crossing her legs, then straightening them, folding and unfolding her arms. “Conan, he promised me—he gave me his word. I should’ve known, that sanctimonious bastard!”

  Conan didn’t comment on that. “The last time you talked to Lyn Hatch—did he think ECon could come up with more than three million?”

  “No. He said Sitka Bay is what’s known as a ‘sexy’ project: highly visible, attractive setting—something the corporate donors can relate to. But he said he didn’t think ECon could top three million. Did Nina actually say Baysea offered Gabe four million?”

  “That’s what she said, loud and clear.”

  “I can’t believe it! Yes, I can. For a Californian, that’s probably peanuts. At least, for Isaac Wines. Oh, look at it, Conan.”

  He slowed down so he could look at it, at Sitka Bay, blue-green today, sparkling with whitecaps and peppered with rafts of scaups and scoters. In the shallows near the highway, islands of winter-brown sedge made still channels where coots and goldeneyes bobbed about like animate corks, and blue herons stood graceful sentinel. A mile to the west, ghostly in a veil of spindrift, lay Shearwater Spit, a narrow extension of beach like a long finger pointing north, enclosing the bay except for the outlet at the north end. The southern shore of the bay was shaped by a basalt uplift, crowned with spruce and jack pine, that continued around the curve to the spit, then sank into dune and finally into beach only a few feet higher than the water around it.

  Sitka Bay was a misnomer. This was a tidal marsh, an estuary, and even now in the ebb-season of winter, it teemed with life, most of it invisible to the naked human eye, yet in some sense felt beneath the surface patterns of silver and blue, gold and green. It was a cradle for a multitude of marine species—many of which would become commercially viable in their adult stages—and a vital wintering ground for dozens of bird species. And Sitka Bay was unique because it was so nearly untouched by human hands. There were few estuaries like it remaining on the entire Pacific coast of the United States. One by one the estuaries on this coast were being fouled and destroyed by human hands.

  Conan looked on these resplendent waters with a poignant sense of foreboding, as he might look on the face of a beautiful child doomed by a terminal disease. The issue was, in his mind, a moral one. And it was epitomized by the swans—the swans he did not see gracing these waters today.

  Whistling swans had wintered on Sitka Bay long before human beings had been here to note their presence, but in the last few decades, their numbers had gradually dwindled until finally, two years ago, some mindless idiot shot the female of the last pair. Its cygnets died, and its mate had never returned.

  Such a small piece of the world, Sitka Bay. Was it so much to ask that it be left alone, that its living creatures be left to flourish in peace? Was it so much to ask that Isaac Wines make a few million dollars less this year? He literally would not miss them.

  Corey said, “Look at the way the air shines over the spit. Can’t you just see it bristling with ticky-tack houses down the whole length of it?”

  “Considering what Isaac Wines will be asking for the lots, I doubt there’ll be any ticky-tack built. Nothing cheaper than two hundred thousand, probably.”

  “Ticky-tack isn’t a matter of money. And can’t you see all the cute little motorboats roaring out of the big, fancy marina, dumping gas and garbage, killing ducks and—”

  “Yes, Corey, I know.”

  “And it’s such an incredible rip-off! I mean, for the people who buy Wines’s lots. All it takes is a good storm on a high tide with a west wind behind it, and nothing will be left on top of that spit. It’s happened before and—”

  “I know, Corey.”

  “I know you know, Conan! I’m just—oh, Lord, why did Gabe have to do this? He’s going to force me to…”

  She seemed to run out of steam suddenly, or perhaps she had said more than she intended. Conan glanced at her, then turned his attention to the bridge over the Sitka River. As the h
ighway curved southwestward, he asked, “He’s going to force you to what?”

  She pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, frowning out at the bay. “Oh, nothing. I mean…well, I’ll talk to you about it later. After I talk to Gabe.”

  Conan saw a pseudo-rustic, shake-roofed building ahead on the right; a prominent sign identified it as the Blue Heron Inn. He shifted down and began signaling for a right turn at the junction just past the restaurant.

  “Corey, you can’t talk Gabe out of this.”

  “Probably not. But at least I’ll have the satisfaction of telling him what I think of him. Watch out!”

  That exclamation was prompted by the Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud barreling into the intersection from Dunlin Beach Road. The XK-E was, fortunately, small and quick enough so that Conan could avoid the collision that for a moment seemed imminent.

  “Conan, did you see who that was?”

  “Yes,” Conan replied, eyes down to black slits, “I saw.”

  He’d had only a glimpse of the driver, but the car itself was identification enough; there were few Rolls Royces in Taft County. Leonard Moskin, who had always reminded Conan of a Middle Eastern potentate in impeccable Western attire—which had to be tailored to accommodate his enormous girth. Even his car, so the rumor went, had to be altered for his driving comfort. There were also rumors rampant about the means by which Moskin had acquired his apparent wealth, and Conan was inclined to believe some of them. Leo Moskin had been a power in Taft County politics for fifty years and had never been constrained by vagaries like ethics.

  But what Conan found interesting about Moskin’s appearance here at the junction of Dunlin Beach Road was that it was highly unlikely that he’d been visiting anyone on Dunlin Beach. The only other alternative was Gabe Benbow. Gabe and Moskin had been cronies for decades, and Moskin was at present chairman of the Taft County Planning Commission. The sale of any property to be included in the proposed Baysea development would be contingent on the approval of the Planning Commission.

  Corey slumped down in the seat, mouth drawn in a tight, contemptuous line. “I wonder how much Baysea is paying Leo under the table to get their plans approved.”

  Conan laughed humorlessly. “Corey, you’re too young to be so cynical.”

  “I’m not that young. Two years over the hill, and you haven’t got that many years on me to sound so fatherly. And I’m not cynical. But I’m not stupid, either.” Then with a sigh and another restless regrouping of her long limbs, “Maybe I am stupid, accepting a verbal promise from Gabe. Kate Benbow would’ve laughed in my face at that. She knew him. She…knew him inside out.”

  Conan glanced at Corey, noting the break in her voice. Kate Donovan Benbow had been her mother-in-law and more a true mother to Corey than her biological mother had ever been. And Kate and Mark Benbow had died in the same car accident five years ago. Conan focused his attention on the narrow road, dappled with shadows cast by the pine and spruce crowding the left shoulder. The road followed the contour of the south shore of Sitka Bay, shearing uncomfortably close to the edge of the cliff above a trio of monoliths called Reem’s Rocks, then made a tight westward curve up a steep incline as it departed from the bay. An open metal gate marked Gabe Benbow’s property line, then a northward curve down the slope toward the spit. The trees gave way to Scotch broom, salal, kinnikinnick, and finally to beach grass, and the road dead-ended in the parking area west of Gabe’s house.

  It was only eight years old, and Gabe modestly called it his retirement home, but nothing else about it was modest. Except, perhaps, the architecture. That Conan regarded as so lacking in imagination it hardly deserved the name. He was convinced Gabe had acquired the plans from a mail-order catalog. The house consisted of two rectangular wings joined in an obtuse angle with the apex pointing north—like two giant boxcars that had inexplicably collided atop this dune and had simply been left here, with the addition of huge expanses of windows on the north to take advantage of the view. That, at least, was magnificent. The house was at the heel of the spit and high enough above it to be safe from storms—and no doubt Gabe had considered that danger, even if Baysea’s designers hadn’t—and high enough to have an unobstructed view of the entire spit, like the flat of a knife blade separating the foam-scalloped waters of the ocean from the quieter waters of the bay.

  The interior of the house, Conan knew, was no more imaginative than the exterior, but he gave Gabe credit for a respectable job of landscaping. That, however, must be attributed in part to the expert advice of Gabe’s daughter-in-law, Frances, who considered her own gardens as much a status symbol—and therefore something to be pursued with assiduous determination—as her antiques, electrical appliances, designer clothes, and diamonds.

  Conan was reminded of France Benbow at the moment for the simple reason that the maroon Cadillac Seville in the parking area belonged to her and her husband, Moses, and they were presently lounging on the deck fronting the west wing of Gabe’s house.

  Corey had also seen them, and she didn’t immediately leave the car after Conan turned off the motor, but sat glaring up at the deck. Or perhaps her baleful look was for Gabe, who was pruning the rosebushes in front of the deck. He straightened and looked toward the XK-E, but made no move toward it.

  Corey muttered, “I should’ve known Moses and France would be here. She’s probably going to put on the big Thanksgiving dinner for the family.”

  “You weren’t invited?”

  “What do you think?” She opened the car door and got out, slamming it behind her, and marched up the flagged walk toward Gabe. Conan followed, a pace behind. Gabe hadn’t moved, nor had France left her chair, but Moses was standing at the edge of the deck, waiting and watching. Closely.

  Conan occasionally felt some sympathy for Moses Benbow, Gabe’s older son, and for all intents and purposes, his only son, since Jonas had departed Holliday Beach in 1955—after embezzling $20,000 in county funds—and vanished from Benbow ken. But Moses had stayed in Holliday Beach and made a success of his insurance agency and real estate investments.

  Conan’s sympathy stemmed from a perception of Moses as a man caught between a domineering father on one side and an ambitious wife on the other. But that sympathy was probably misplaced. At the moment, Moses Benbow seemed very much in control of himself and his destiny, looking rather like an English country squire, fit and tweedy and considerably younger than his sixty-one years. That was due in part to the fact that his hair was a youthful brown with only a touch of gray on his sideburns. He wasn’t as tall as his father, nor as angular, but he had Gabe’s pale blue eyes. In Moses they were enlarged by the thick lenses of his glasses, and he had always been capable of a direct, unblinking gaze that Conan occasionally found disconcerting.

  France Benbow, like her husband, seemed younger than her years—fifty-eight, according to Corey. She was tall and thin enough to have been a fashion model, and she always seemed ready for a nonexistent camera. She sat now with her legs crossed, calves parallel, elbows resting on the arms of her chair, left hand raised to hold a glass of iced, dark-brown liquid and show off a cluster of spectacular diamonds. Today she was being casual in a wool walking skirt and Shetland sweater. Her black hair was drawn back into a bun secured with a bright silk scarf, the severity of the coiffure emphasizing high cheekbones and heavy-lidded eyes under thin, arched brows. That face was a conscious art object, expertly embellished with cosmetics, and Conan never remembered seeing her without her face very much on.

  Gabe was displaying an affable smile for Corey, which only added to the tension evident in her posture. Before she got a word out, he said, “Well, Corey, it’s nice to see you on a Thanksgiving Day. Where’s that great-grandson of mine?”

  “Don’t give me that fond great-grandfather crap. And I don’t have anything to give thanks for today, and you goddamn well know it!”

  Conan almost smiled. Gabe brought out the worst in Corey; at least, in terms of language. Except when speaking to or
of Gabe, she seldom used words that wouldn’t be appropriate in a Walt Disney cartoon.

  Gabe frowned, shaking his head. “I just hope you don’t talk like that around that boy. ‘Thou shalt not take the—’”

  “Stuff it, Gabe!”

  His frown deepened as his eyes slid toward Conan.

  “Flagg, y’know, what this girl needs is a man to keep her in tow. I thought for a while you might be that man.”

  To avert a real explosion from Corey, Conan moved up beside her and said levelly, “Gabe, we didn’t come for a lesson in Pauline morality. Did you agree to accept Baysea’s last offer for the spit?”

  Gabe mulled that over, jaw muscles bunching. “Who told you that?” He glanced up to the deck at Moses and France. The latter was standing beside her husband now, glass still in hand, a cool smile shadowing her mouth.

  Conan answered, “Nina Gillies.”

  Gabe pursed his lips, then shrugged and knelt to resume pruning the rosebushes. “Well, it doesn’t matter. Hey, France, maybe the young folks’d like one of those…concoctions you mixed up.”

  France looked startled, then put on a gracious-hostess smile.

  “Oh, uh, yes. Black russians. We discovered them when we were in Acapulco this fall. I know it’s a bit early for the happy hour, but it is a holi—”

  Corey ignored her altogether. “Gabe, did you accept Baysea’s offer?”

  He looked up at her, still smiling. “Y’know, I just never could understand why all you knee-jerk ee-cologists got so excited over this little piece of property.”

  “Of course you don’t understand!” Corey retorted. “You don’t even know what an estuary is. You’re so pious, a damned pillar of the church, and you think God made heaven and earth just for your benefit!” She paused, shoulders slumping. “No, you don’t understand, and you never will. And I don’t understand you. Gabe, did you accept the Baysea offer?”

  Gabe had listened with mocking attentiveness, but now he turned his attention to the rosebushes, casually snipping stems as he replied, “Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I did. Signed the papers this morning. Now all I have to do is wait for the Planning Commission to pass on it—and they’re meeting next Friday—then Isaac Wines is going to send me a nice check for four million bucks.”

 

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