by Penny Warner
Mickey Arnold, wearing the ubiquitous 501’s and a khaki sheriff’s department shirt, grinned, waved, and needlessly tucked in the shirt as he approached the café window. It wasn’t vanity that caused him to straighten up, more like insecurity, I thought.
I waved back at the thirty-something deputy sheriff, even though his body language was telling me more than I wanted to read. Despite being deaf, I don’t possess super X-ray vision as some “hearies” seem to think. Where I am not able to notice a change in tone of voice or notice a subtle vocal nuance, I can read a face and interpret body language well enough to see what many hearing people overlook. A twitch of an eyebrow or a shift in body weight often speaks louder than words.
Did Mickey realize his current swagger and strut were shouting all kinds of messages? It didn’t matter—all that was about to change dramatically. The still attractive, impeccably dressed Lacy Penzance, her attention focused on the tickets she was stuffing into her bag, was moving toward the door—and heading right toward Mickey.
I waved a warning hand at him, but he apparently mistook it for flirtation. He gave the window reflection another glance, smoothed his buzz-cut hair, and checked his belt for kinks and twists.
“Watch out!” I mouthed through the glass. But Deputy Arnold was too busy primping to read my lips. I’m self-conscious when I raise my voice in public. When I lose control, I’m told I sound squeaky and distorted. I held back for a few moments, then yelled just as he made a turn. Too late.
Too bad, because he didn’t look at all attractive in the Nugget Café doorway, sprawled on top of a startled, gasping Lacy Penzance.
The impact was solid and forceful, obvious from the aftermath. I almost felt it myself. Lacy’s roll of tickets and the contents of her purse had scattered in all directions—under tables, counters, and feet—while the deputy’s hat and sunglasses bit the dust at top speed. He’d smacked into Lacy Penzance so hard, it’s a wonder he hadn’t knocked her unconscious.
Perhaps if he had, I wouldn’t have gotten poison oak, my underwear would still be in my top drawer, and a few more Flat Skunk citizens would still be alive.
As several diner patrons jumped to the rescue, I stared at the usually immaculate Lacy Penzance as she lay gasping at the bottom of the wreckage.
The self-styled first lady of Flat Skunk had been flattened like road kill, her belongings spiraled out around her. I felt sorry for her.
Deputy Arnold clambered to his feet, his face a kaleidoscope of colors. After awkwardly assisting the disheveled woman to an upright position, he knelt down and fumbled with her spilled purse and tangled frog-jumping tickets. I watched him gather up an assortment of coins, keys, papers, letters, makeup, pills, tissues, and other can’t-live-without items and stuff them into her purse. By the time he’d brushed Lacy off and offered his apology, he’d long forgotten about me.
But as flustered and self-conscious as the deputy was by the encounter, Lacy Penzance appeared unruffled. Three generations of cold hard cash did wonders for a person’s carriage, equilibrium, and self-confidence. Although her skirt was slightly off center and her blouse modeled a new smudge, she moved away from the spectacle as gracefully as if she had just danced Swan Lake.
When the performance was over I told myself to get back to work before I caused any more damage. I hoped Mickey would be too embarrassed to join me. I don’t much enjoy small talk, since lipreading is always a challenge for me. And I was definitely not interested in Mickey romantically. Besides, I had work to do.
“Deadline, deadline, deadline.” I chanted my mantra as I stabbed a pat of butter with the latest weapon I’d been turning over in my hand.
“What if I used a knife?” I said, checking my teeth in the shiny reflection. “I could go into the office while the students are at an assembly, close the door and—damn! That won’t work, Connor. This is supposed to be a locked-room mystery. You can’t use a knife without being in the room. And if you leave, you can’t lock the door. Unless—”
I glanced up from the knife and caught Deputy Arnold’s concerned look, as well as a series of side-glances from the few remaining café patrons. You’d think they’d all be used to my verbal idiosyncrasy. After all, I was becoming accustomed to theirs.
Wolf Quick, sometime gold-mining guide and freelance jewelry designer, gaped at me like a slack-jawed mackerel with a forkful of Hangtown Fry. The ponytailed man cursed as the unique mixture of eggs, bacon, and oysters tumbled back onto the plate. I had been by Wolf’s jewelry store only once, to have him melt down a gold bracelet. I wanted the gift returned to its original nugget state, as a keepsake of five years wasted with the wrong man.
French McClusky, owner of the Memory Kingdom Memorial Park, and Celeste Camborne, the mortuary’s grief counselor, shared a look of moderate concern before resuming their probable discussion of designer headstones and color-coordinated casket liners. Between the balding, middle-aged man and the big-haired, thirty-something woman lay a coil of Lacy’s tickets.
French, looking more like a cheap lounge singer than a mortician in his discount suit and drugstore toupee, owned a chain of mortuaries in the Mother Lode, an area heavy with prospective business thanks to the influx of aging retirees. Celeste, dressed in clothes too young and frilly for her age, served the customers during their time of sorrow by offering a shoulder to cry on, an ear to listen, and a nice sharp fingernail to point out the best buys in bereavement accommodations.
Luckily I hadn’t yet had any use for their services in Flat Skunk.
Even the old prospector, “Sluice” Jackson, paused in his relentless muttering long enough to peek at me from under his caterpillar eyebrows.
“It’s one of those locked-room puzzles, you know … a solve-it-yourself whodunnit, for my newspaper. I’m on deadline and I’m sort of … stuck,” I said to no one in particular, as I made a two-fingered jab to my throat—the sign for “stuck.” Sometimes a sign expresses a concept better than two dozen words. But I could tell by the way Jilda snapped her gaping mouth shut and the rest of the diner patrons glanced at each other, that I hadn’t convinced anyone of my sanity.
I ran my fingers through my hair again, a habit I’d developed since I’d cut it on impulse the day I left San Francisco. I felt to see if my side part was straight, then stretched a knot out of my back. Anything to avoid work, as William James once advised. This damn puzzle was not coming together easily and I had other news stories demanding attention.
Like those who long to sing at the Met, play pro ball, or strike it rich in the gold mines, I’d dreamed of owning my own weekly newspaper. After six years of writing, editing, and fluff-reporting for the San Francisco Chronicle, I had abandoned everything to become publisher of a Mother Lode tourist guide, reviving the name my great-grandfather had christened it back in 1864: Eureka! It fit me; I, too, had found something.
Sort of.
I surprised the hell out of my hearing parents and ex-lover when I renounced urban life for a claim in rural Flat Skunk nearly six months ago. But when my grandparents died several years earlier, they left the Westphals their antique printing press and a run-down fifties diner in Fiat Skunk. When I asked my parents if I could take over both, they never thought I’d actually pick up and leave. But I never looked back. I feel at home here, at least more than in the city.
Except I do miss my mocha.
I gave my audience a reassuring smile, then turned to the window and stared out at the distant sprinkle of evergreens freckling the Sierra. That was the trouble with a small town. Everybody heard you when you talked to yourself—especially when you were plotting a murder.
Everyone but me, that is.
Being deaf isn’t really a problem. A nuisance now and then when there’s a new song on the radio everyone’s buzzing about, or when a siren comes up behind me on the freeway, but that’s about it.
I contracted meningitis when I was four, which left me with almost no hearing in either ear. By that age I had a fairly good foundation for
language and speech. People who hear me speak for the first time often ask if I’m coming down with a cold, or if I’m from the Midwest.
Aside from not being able to sing on key, my biggest frustration is trying to read a pair of mumbling lips or exaggerated mouthings. And the ignorance. The misconceptions are worse than the silence. That’s how I ended up working for a newspaper. When I write, there is no silence.
I took another bite of toast. I was glad not to be in San Francisco, writing stories about workout wear, paying too much for a one-bedroom condo overlooking an alley, and waiting for my boyfriend to make a commitment to monogamy.
In addition to the small inheritance, Sierra Westphal’s diary was also responsible for my being here. Flat Skunk seemed just the right place for a displaced person like me, a town built out of gold dust and spit by a bunch of hard-luck gamblers who came to make their fortunes in the rich ore buried beneath the red clay. Only a few had made their claims in gold. The rest had just gotten dirty, gone hungry, and died broke.
Except my great-grandfather William “Corny” Westphal, Sierra’s husband, and old Septimus Penzance, two of the luckier gamblers in town. Corny had made his living off the miners, selling eggs at two bucks apiece and bacon at five dollars a slab. Old man Penzance had struck it rich buying up land when the first depression hit. Corny had launched the newspaper, which my grandfather, Jack, had continued until the town nearly died when the gold mines dried up.
As for Septimus, his bloodline ended just before my arrival in town, when they pulled the bloated body of Reuben Penzance from the Miwok Reservoir, his feet tangled in fishing line, a hook caught in his nose. The full story had never been explained to me. But town folks said old Sluice Jackson hadn’t been the same since.
I was scratching out the fifth in a series of mystery puzzle dead ends when a shadow danced on my annotated napkin. The heavy scent of hair spray made the latest bite of toast taste like bad French cologne.
Jilda stared down at me with her mouth agape—it seemed to be the style around here. Her ill-fitting uniform was too short to please the feminists and her blouse was buttoned too high to entertain the new generation of miners. I was tempted to give her a few tips on subtlety, but with two pots of hot black liquid balanced on a pair of breeding hips, she was unfairly armed. Besides, she was sweet, always cheerful, and knew everything that was going on in town. She was a great source for my paper.
“More coffee, Con?” she asked, raising one of the pots.
“Better run,” I said, and downed my not-quite-mocha.
If I had known how busy the next few days were going to get, I would have stayed. I never did finish that mystery puzzle.
“Damn!” I said, looking at my watch as I pushed through the door of the Nugget. Where had the time gone? Taking in the pungent air that gives Flat Skunk its name, I jogged across the street, hoping to make up for lost time. I headed up the back stairs of the old Penzance Hotel two at a step.
The Eureka! newspaper office, such as it is, occupies a large room on the upper floor of the hotel. Built in 1861, the rambling, hodgepodge structure has been renovated numerous times over the years, serving periodically as a church, an assay office, a jail, a morgue, and at its peak, a brothel for lonely miners.
When gold mining dwindled and respectable women started moving west in greater numbers, the brothel was revamped as the decorous Penzance Hotel. About five years ago the Penzance Development Company decided to close the hotel, but preserved the historic landmark by dividing it up into rentable offices and touristy boutiques, in keeping with its gold fever heritage.
I entered the tiny hallway that linked a number of small offices on the second floor. Boone Joslin, part-time private investigator/attorney/notary public and whatever else he could do to make a buck, occupies the first office; mine is next door. The remaining cubicles are currently vacant except for a room down at the end of the hall where Jeremiah Mercer, the sheriff’s twenty-five-year-old son, runs a combination comic book/skateboard/used CD/computer games store. I help support Miah’s business by paying him for interpreting services and light office work.
I had just slipped the key into the lock when I felt the vibrations of a heavy thud through the floorboards. I looked around for the source of the disturbance, thinking Miah had dropped a skateboard or Boone was rearranging the furniture in his office again. I couldn’t tell where the jolt had come from so I backed up to the detective’s door and tried the knob. It was unlocked.
I opened the door expecting to see Boone at his desk reading another Kinky Friedman mystery. But his chair was stacked with a pile of papers. Instead of the fiftyish, gap-toothed, balding Boone Joslin, a younger man stood in the middle of the room. Midforties maybe, with a mouth full of perfect white teeth and a head full of dark brown wavy hair, almost long enough to wear in a ponytail. In contrast to all that dark hair, his beard had a startling amount of blond.
It looked like the guy had been tearing the place apart. Filing cabinet drawers were pulled open, file folders, papers, and boxes of stored junk were dumped unceremoniously around the floor.
It was even messier than usual.
“What are you doing?” I asked the man in the middle of the chaos holding a filing cabinet drawer in his sculptured arms.
“I pulled it too far … it slipped out … I was … Hey, are you Connor, uh, Westphal?”
The bearded man set the drawer down, swiped at his hair with thick, callused fingers and reached out to shake hands. I ignored the gesture.
“Who the hell are you?” I said like I owned the place. “What are you doing in Joslin’s office? Where’s Boone? I think I’d better call—”
“Wait! Hold on a second.” He raised his hands as if he were being held up in a robbery. As I reached for Boone’s phone he placed one of those rough hands over mine; I pulled back. Of course there was no way I could use Boone’s phone in a meaningful manner, but this guy didn’t know that. I get a lot of distance out of bravado.
Besides, if I had to, I could dial the sheriff’s number and just talk and talk and talk and eventually someone would pick up the phone on the other end and hear me. But I didn’t get the chance.
“Listen, I’m not a burglar or anything. I know this looks kind of funny—” He turned his head and swept the room with his arm, then faced me again. I missed a few words.
“… this mess. I’m Boone’s brother. My name is Dan Smith.”
As long as he didn’t turn his head away, I could follow every word. Maybe those perfect white teeth made it easy. Or maybe it was the way his mouth was outlined by that disconcerting blond beard. Or maybe his lips—
“You don’t believe me,” he said, breaking my wandering train of thought. I must have looked unconvinced. Deaf people tend to show their thoughts and feelings through vivid facial expression and body language. I was apparently an open book.
“Here—” He pulled an ornately tooled wallet from the back pocket of his jeans, removed the driver’s license, and handed it to me.
Daniel Webster Smith. Address: Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Born forty-two years ago. Six foot two inches tall. Six inches taller than me. Two hundred and twenty pounds—almost twice what I weigh after a week on Slim-Fast. Brown hair, blue eyes. Donor. License recently renewed.
But the picture wasn’t recent. His hair was shorter, there were no indications of newly sprouting gray along the temples, and he was clean shaven. I returned the license and watched him stuff it into his wallet.
He extended his hand again and this time I shook it, quickly, noncommittally. His hand was dry and softer than it looked. I let it go, then glanced around the room at the disarray.
“Your name’s different from Boone’s. And you don’t look like him, either. Where is he, anyway? And what are you doing here?” I shook my head at the mess.
Dan Smith pulled out Boone’s swivel chair, removed the stack of papers, and gestured for me to sit down. When I passed, he sat down himself.
“Well, t
he truth is, we had different fathers. Boone’s my half-brother.”
I blinked and waited for him to go on. He could tell I wasn’t satisfied.
“Our mother remarried after he was born and I came along ten years later. Kind of a surprise.”
At first I thought he said his mother’s name was “Mary,” but that didn’t fit the context so I tried “remarried” and it worked. I took a closer look around the office, trying to figure out what had happened, then looked at him for an explanation.
“It was like this when I got here.”
The place hadn’t been vandalized, exactly. There weren’t any overturned tables, menacing words written in lipstick on the windows, or other indications of a break-in. But drawers had been pulled open and papers were strewn about haphazardly as if someone in a hurry had been searching for something important.
Dan Smith looked pensive, as if waiting for me to speak. It was a look I was familiar with. He’d probably said something while my head was turned and was expecting an answer. I said “What?” just in case.
“Got any idea who might have done this?”
“Frankly, I thought it was you. Boone’s a slob, but he’s not this bad. So where is your brother, anyway?” I was still not convinced they were blood relatives.
“I don’t know. I thought he’d be here. He knew I was coming to visit for a couple of weeks. I was … thinking of staying a while, if things worked out. But he didn’t show up at the train station in Whiskey Slide so I rented a car and drove over. He mentioned you a couple of times, said you had the office next door. Told me I could get his key from you if he wasn’t in. Turns out I didn’t need it. The door was unlocked.” He paused then said, “You are Connor Westphal, aren’t you?”
I nodded reluctantly. I wasn’t sure it was any of his business. “He’s probably out on a case. He sometimes takes off for days at a time. And he’s kind of bad about remembering things. I guess that’s why he gave me a key, which I’ve had to loan him on a number of occasions. But you know all this if you’re related. Funny he’d forget to mention his own brother, though.”