“That was many years ago. You would not have been born yet, or Baxter either, the last time I went to Crane Hill. I myself was still a young man.”
“What made you stop going there? It’s not very tall by your standards, I guess, but it’s the tallest place around.”
“It was the gravel mining, finally. How can one walk agreeably amid such noise and foul odors? But already I did not go there so frequently.” He smiled. “Already I had discovered taller places. Also, Mr. Toby Babcock was not a hospitable man. To pay for the privilege of hunting on his land I understand. To pay merely to walk …”
“The gravel mining started in the late forties?”
“Yes, and continued well into the fifties.”
“But before that, in the early to mid forties, weren’t there a lot of trucks coming there to dump waste materials? Didn’t they bother you?”
“I was, in 1941, eighteen years of age and in excellent health. Because of my German ancestry, the army sent me to the Pacific, where my second language could not benefit either side. It was 1947 before I returned here. And then, it may have been two or three times more, I paid my money and climbed Crane Hill.”
“What route did you take?”
“Because of the many gullies in the area and the cliffs on the river side there were only two approaches to be considered. The easier was from the southeast, where Crane Hill sloped gradually all the way up, until Mr. Donnelly started wreaking his havoc. This I did not find an interesting route. One rarely emerged from the trees. Thus I walked in more from the north and west, a steeper incline but the views were more open. There was an old logging road one could follow much of the way up.”
Baxter’s track. “Were loggers still using it?”
“No—no, I believe not since the early thirties. After the war one could still follow the left branch of it almost all the way up to the small caves.”
“Caves?”
“Three of them. The one was tall enough, I could stand inside. The others, no.”
“I’ve never heard of these caves. How far up the hill are they?”
“I would say three-quarters of the way. No, no, more than that. High enough, they are no longer exposed, after Mr. Donnelly’s … excuse me—I believe he calls it reshaping. I cannot find the words in English for what I might call it.”
“I understand what you mean. Can you tell me where the other branch of the logging road went?”
“To the cave of the bats, as I remember, and a little past it. When I returned from the Army there were downed trees and displaced rocks as far as one could see, along that branch. I thought to bushwhack it some day, but then the gravel mining—”
“Tell me about this cave.”
“It was remarkably wide for this area and also deep; I would estimate something on the order of ninety by thirty feet. There remained good headroom well toward the back. At one time it was the home of many, many thousands of bats. What I remember best about it was the incredibly foul odor. I only entered once, as a boy. Never did I feel an urge to return.”
“You said ‘at one time’ there was a colony of bats. What happened to them?”
“I cannot tell you. I believe they were no longer there after the war, because many hunters were using the area by that time. Mr. Toby Babcock had complained earlier that too few would come to hunt, because the noise of the gunshots would set the bats to flying out during the daylight and the hunters did not like this.”
The bats mustn’t have been too pleased either, I thought. “Maybe that’s why the right branch of the road was blocked? Maybe Mr. Babcock had found a way to seal off the cave and get rid of them, and he didn’t want anybody trying to open it up.”
“Again, I cannot enlighten you.”
“After the war, did the logging road look as if it had been used recently? Say by trucks?”
“Vehicles did make use of it, frequently enough to keep the tracks smoothed down. Most likely, this would have been hunters.”
“From what Baxter says, the area was still popular with hunters when he was a teenager.”
“Young lady, it continued to be well used until Mr. Donnelly bought the property and began his depredations. Or perhaps you think, like my nephew, that what he has done constitutes an improvement?”
“I think I would very much like to have seen that cave, when the bats lived there.”
• • •
Cool it, I admonished myself, back in the Bronco. The idea of toxic wastes being stashed way the hell up a hill inside a bat cave which was now sealed off under many, many cubic tons of dirt could be a wee bit of a reach. In so many ways, though, it might fit. How did we know we had all Toby Babcock’s records concerning dumping on his land? Mariah had been involved in the controversy over the dump contents. In the process she’d learned a fair amount about Albany Univers and what, in their manufacturing processes, might have constituted toxic wastes. In creating his plateau, Clete ensured the bat cave would be well hidden. Serendipity or intent?
Okay, so there wouldn’t have been anything for Ryan to see on top of the plateau—overhearing was more his style, anyhow. But Skip and I were both supposed to know land. Could somebody have been worried that we might see something, interpret? Still, why would anyone have hauled such stuff most of the way up a hill to cram into a smelly cave when there was so much unused land down below they could have dumped it on? And what, short of a noxious-smelling substance oozing out of the ground, might Skip or I have spotted?
I told myself to calm down and run the idea past Baxter before I tried to take off with it. We were supposed to get together back at his house at two-thirty, which was not much more than an hour away. There were a few things I could check out in the binders first.
Rather than detouring by my house, I used my cell phone to see what my answering machine had to offer. Lots of hang-ups, it turned out. Jack Garrett wanted to talk, as did several other media people. So did Denny, at least that sounded like what he mumbled. Chauncy Bellis, the plant pathologist, said he found the newspaper details about Mariah’s death absurd. Could I verify? I put that one off. He wasn’t a person you told stories to, and I wasn’t sure what to say. The last message on the tape was from Willem, a simple one: “Val, call me. Please?”
CHAPTER 16
Well, I wanted to see him too, I reasoned. And it wasn’t like there was anything urgent to look at in those binders. I punched in Willem’s office number.
The day remained dreary, the moisture receding to a gentle mist. Excellent planting weather. There were still those few mums to set in at Mariah’s, plus all the mulching to do, the paths to lay. She’d never see it now, but I wanted to finish up for her. I’d ask Baxter when I could get in there.
I’d told Willem twenty minutes, so I could arrive first, check if any media people had mounted an empty-house watch, and warn him off if necessary. From down the road I could see one car in the driveway—not his, not anybody’s I knew. Wrong again, I corrected, turning in. I didn’t recognize the vehicle, but I could put a name to the man who stood facing the house, camera up to his eye. Good old Jack Garrett.
A little farther along I could also read what he’d found interesting enough to photograph: in time-honored white block letters, someone had chosen to paint on the wall of my house, directly under the high bathroom window: GO AWAY, BITCH! A person with neat hand and artistic inclination. The first two words descended vertically; the last, in larger letters, saucered around the base of them. Too bad Jack’s publication had liberalized its vocabulary of what was fit to print for family reading. If it wasn’t already too late, I’d make damn sure the anonymous artwork didn’t get captured for television.
He opened the conversation: “Make any more interesting discoveries today?”
“I liked your article, but bug off” was my response as I strode toward the kitchen door. Not noticeably offended, he followed. “I’m not inviting you in,” I cautioned.
“Your choice. Rule of thumb: one murder’s good f
or two or three days’ coverage, unless there was something special about the victim or the juicy details keep coming along. Two murders in a row in a small town like this, both bodies found by the same person? Honey, trust me—that’ll keep a dozen of us on your tail for weeks. There might even be a book in it, or a miniseries.”
“What makes you think it’s two murders? Look, there isn’t an awful lot I can tell you. If you want to wait while I get something from inside we can talk for a few minutes, okay?”
“An improvement.”
There was plenty of leftover paint around to do the job but I opted for a quicker temporary fix. My tatty old king-size blue blanket had more than sufficient dimensions. Patting Roxy on my way through, I fetched it from the bedroom closet. My household tool stash in one of the kitchen cabinets yielded hammer and nails. “I should’ve left you out, sweetie,” I told the dog. “We both know you wouldn’t bite, but all that open-air barking might have unsteadied their hand.
“Out you go,” I instructed, back-stepping as she bounded through her run door. I emerged from the house in time to see her give up barking at Jack Garrett and make a beeline for some object about a third of the way along the length of the run, a few feet in from the fence. I thought I’d better check it out. “Roxy, no!” I yelled, spotting the ragged porterhouse bone. And when she’d backed off a little, “Sit! Stay!”
Dropping the blanket and tools, I opened the outside run gate and raced toward the bone. Roxy watched, her entire body pulsing with the desire to seize her treasure before I appropriated it, but she held position. “You are a wonderful, wonderful dog,” I said hugging her with my free arm. “And you will have a wonderful supper. I promise.”
Jack Garrett had come over to the fence to watch. “Your dog isn’t allowed bones?”
“Only the ones I give her—which would never be a porterhouse, with that thin spine. Did you pitch this in here?”
“I let restaurants cook my steaks. They keep the bones.”
“Was it here when you came?”
“Who knows? I was focused on your graffiti. You think somebody was trying to poison her?”
Belatedly I sniffed at the bone. All I could smell was overripe steak. Paranoia setting in? “I’ll have it checked. Maybe it was there just in case she came out, to divert her attention. I’d better see if anything else is lying around that shouldn’t be.”
A patrol of the run yielded nothing further. I got the kiddie snow shovel I keep in there for pickups, removed the sod in the area where the bone had lain, and threw it outside the fence. “Okay, you’re set,” I told Roxy, patting her again.
In the kitchen, the bone went into a large Ziploc bag. I put the package on top of the refrigerator, washed my hands, and went back outside. “So,” I told Jack Garrett, picking up the blanket and shaking it out, “how about making yourself useful?”
“Can you talk and hammer at the same time?”
“Let’s find out. Here, we’ll start with this corner. Just hold it right where your hand is. How long have you been here?”
“Twenty minutes, maybe.”
“Was there anybody around when you came?”
“Not a soul. Your graffiti was dry, so I didn’t just miss them.” He winced as I started pounding in the first nail, though it was a good foot from where he was holding. “My turn. This Mariah Hansen was a friend of yours?”
“Friend and client. I was working on her garden.”
“You do that evenings?”
“I’d told her the day before I wanted to stop by and check on some plants I just put in,” I improvised.
“How’d you get in?”
“I have a key to one of the gates. In case I wanted to work when she wasn’t there.”
“You weren’t expecting her to be there?”
“I rang the front bell and there was no answer, so I assumed she was out.”
“Your sheriff’s allowing as how it might be a suspicious death. I suppose you’ve got an alibi for this one, too?”
I decided not to tell him Baxter hadn’t bothered to ask. “Absolutely.”
“So, what do you think? Was it a suspicious death?”
I stretched the blanket across the lettering and started attaching the other top corner. “That’s not my call. Besides, I wouldn’t want to say anything that might hamper the investigation.”
“We’ll make it off the record then. Scout’s honor.” To his credit, he smiled a little. “You do think it was murder?”
“Yes,” I decided.
“On what grounds?”
Kneeling, I went to work on a bottom corner and prepped myself. I didn’t want to talk about that awful scene, but obviously I was going to have to, at least a little. Jack’s “off the record” was like hoping Roxy would sit and stay three feet from a steak bone—you couldn’t expect to win them all—so I’d best get my official version laid out right. “Mariah would not have owned a hair dryer like the one that was in the spa with her body,” I began after a minute. “It was big and black, looked like a discount store special. Not her type of shopping, not remotely her taste. I also don’t believe she’d have tried to use one sitting in the spa, or anywhere near it. There’s a bathroom right inside the house, with one of those hair dryers that’s fitted on the wall. That’s the only one I’ve seen her use.”
“If it’s murder, do you figure there’s a connection to the first one?”
Another point for decision making. “Well, there aren’t that many people around here. But those particular two would’ve recognized each other on the street, is about all.”
“Oh, we can knit them together better than that. There’s you finding both bodies. If that’s a coincidence, it’s a damn bizarre one.”
“I was meant to find Ryan Jessup’s body. Finding Mariah’s was pure chance.”
“In my book, chance is never pure. Then there’s the fact that Ryan Jessup was associated with Etlingers’ Garden Center as an employee, Mariah Hansen as a client. What do you suppose is it makes the Garden Center such a dangerous place to be associated with?”
“I don’t know how to answer that.”
“Maybe you’d just rather not. Rumor has it you and Willem Etlinger have had a thing going now for a few years. Also Mariah Hansen and Willem Etlinger. This guy does spread himself around. He was also the main person Ryan was moving in on, careerwise. Giving us another link, of sorts.”
“If your bottom line is that I think Willem is a double murderer and am trying to protect him, you’re wrong on both counts. I’ll take it further for you. I very much want these two murders to be solved, regardless of who committed them. How else am I going to get my privacy back? Or my sense of safety?”
“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t feel all that safe at the moment either, in your position. But you know, publicity can be a damn effective defensive weapon.”
“Meaning?”
“If there’s somebody you think might be a threat to you, throw out the name a few times. To me, or whoever—you won’t have any trouble getting media space. No need to make accusations. Merely establishing the association has a good chance of backing him off, because the law would know where to come looking.”
I reminded myself that this was a man after a story. Still, I told him, if I had a single name, or a couple of them, I’d be tempted to buy into his theory. Seven or eight names seemed excessive. That I didn’t tell him.
“If you come up with something, give me a buzz. I’ll be in touch anyhow, I expect.”
I had to laugh. “So do I.”
• • •
To my considerable relief, he was out of there a good five minutes before Willem showed up. I probably shouldn’t have had him come to the house. No telling who might drive by, recognize his car, and draw troublesome conclusions. But I did want to see him, and he’d sounded like he very much wanted to see me, and when or where else could we hope for a private get-together any time soon?
Even through the screen door, I could see the change. Willem
was blessed with a truly sunny disposition. The defects in his home, family, and professional life affected him only in shallow, transient ways. Unlike most of us, he never had to struggle to be happy. I’d sometimes suspected he’d find it a struggle not to be.
Until that afternoon. I was looking at a man no longer charmed. I opened the door, and we were holding each other tight, sobbing.
Rarely had we been together in that sort of isolated proximity without making love. That afternoon it wasn’t even a matter of temptation resisted. There was no residue of tension, no anticipation, just … nothing. Except the need to hold on to one another.
It was a while before either of us formed words, longer still before we could let go and start moving beyond fragmentary expressions of loss and condolence. It didn’t feel that great, being separate again. I poured him a glass of wine and opened myself one of the leftover Molsons.
“It was you on the phone last night, wasn’t it?” he asked, leaning against the refrigerator. I nodded. “I’m so sorry. I should’ve called to check, but Kate was in her ‘I’m going to stay up as long as you do if it means all night’ mode.”
Because she already knew? “There wasn’t anything you could’ve done. I wanted to be the one to tell you, was all. How did you end up hearing about it? Radio, TV—?”
“Mother was the first of us to hear. I’ve never seen her so shaken. I know she and Mariah didn’t get along and there was that nonsense about not speaking, but … She was calmer about Ryan, although that’s making us some heavy problems.”
“Maybe she feels guilty.”
He looked briefly startled. “Oh, you mean for not making up before it was too late? Having to do that one-sided, at the wake.”
I silently contemplated Mariah’s response, were she granted one, and managed not to smile.
“Val, this had to be an accident, right? I haven’t been able to make sense of the story. Something to do with a hair dryer falling into the spa? But Mother says the radio referred to mysterious circumstances. And Baxter’s making the rounds again, wanting to know where everybody was late afternoon yesterday.”
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