A Curious Affair

by Melanie Jackson

  Yes, I figured that the gold was secreted away somewhere on Irv’s property. Irv could have hidden it anyplace, but it seemed to me that he would want it someplace both safe and where he could get to it anytime he wanted. That probably meant somewhere in or near the cabin. Which, I thought for the tenth time, would be torn down soon because it was an illegal structure and no one wanted vagrants moving into it.

  There was also the matter of the nephew who would be looking for the gold. And he was still looking, of that I was sure. It was like with the pot: If he’d seen the stash of nuggets, he’d have taken what he found and skipped town.

  Unless the source of the gold was on Irv’s land and the nephew knew there was enough ore to make mining it worthwhile. I hadn’t found out for sure, but he likely would have mineral rights if he’d inherited Irv’s land—almost all property comes with those rights up here.

  Regardless of whether it was drugs or gold, what all this meant was that I needed to make my move, investigate the crime now or forever hold my peace. Even though Tyler had specifically warned me against doing it.

  I exhaled slowly and gave myself a count of five to change my mind about being impulsive and imprudent. When I got to six I went to the garage to fetch a hammer and screwdriver, as well as a strong flashlight. Irv might have hidden his hoard in a cookie jar or spare boots beneath his bed, but I’d read a lot of Nancy Drew, and I was betting it was under the floorboards.

  I think that Irv did have a hole in the floor, Atherton said. I heard him taking up boards sometimes.

  “Then you can come with me,” I said, reaching for a jacket. “I’m going to try my hand at cat burglary. You can give me pointers,” I joked.

  Atherton wasn’t enthusiastic about a trip to Irv’s, but was still agreeable about coming and acting as lookout while I dismantled the place.

  I told myself that I needed to find something concrete to give Tyler so he could make an arrest. Without dope or gold, Irv’s death looked like a senseless, random killing by druggies looking for a fix. Of course, it wasn’t senseless. People always kill for a reason—a host of reasons sometimes—even if they are ones we don’t understand. But Tyler needed something tangible he could take to the DA. And so did I. Because if the law couldn’t take care of Irv’s nephew, I would have to. Or let the cats do it.

  Looking at these words now, I feel queasy. Revenge. That’s what I was talking about. I know that’s a very Old Testament way to think, but I was only a few days away from having almost killed myself because I couldn’t think of any reason to go on living. Getting rid of a cold-blooded murderer didn’t seem like such a bad a thing to do, comparatively speaking, supposing I could get over my general squeamishness about breaking the law and fear of blood.

  How does cat burglary differ from other kinds of robbery? Atherton asked, after giving the matter a ponder.

  “Well, you need to very secretive and stealthy.” Atherton winced as I stepped on an acorn cap and it crunched noisily. “I’m better at the secretive part,” I admitted. “Mostly cat burglary is about finesse rather than brute force. And it usually involves taking gold or jewelry.”

  Ah. I didn’t think it was about food.

  We walked on. I made an effort to be more careful about where I placed my feet. I was a bit nervous, but not actually afraid. Irv’s nephew—even should I run into him, which wasn’t likely—had no reason to think that I was anything other than a helpful neighbor, stopping by to put out cat food for the strays who were living under his cabin. Of course, Tyler would be annoyed if he found me at Irv’s, but he rather owed me for the meth dealer and would probably cut me some slack. So, there was no reason for fear. None.

  Still, the woods were very dark and very cold with the sun down, and the trees were filled with stealthy noises. Though the trek up the hill had gotten easier with practice, it was still not enjoyable and I arrived at Irv’s winded, my heart shuddering in my chest.

  Time hadn’t improved the view of Irv’s place. The cabin was still so lonely and sparse that even a Spartan would have disdained the accommodations. The mold was getting bad enough, too, that even a coal miner might have moved due to caution for his lungs. I wished that I had brought a dust mask.

  Atherton and I crossed the threshold anyway. Clearly I had abdicated all caution and regard for the law. There was no crime-scene tape in evidence, but I certainly could never claim that I was unaware that this was the site where a crime had been committed. And I knew that when Tyler had mentioned expecting a degree of eccentricity in me because I was a writer, he hadn’t meant that to include trespass and tampering with evidence. Perhaps he would believe me if I told him I thought I had heard one of the cats trapped under the house.

  I flipped on the overhead light, which drove back the dark to a limited degree but did nothing to banish the stealthy shadows where spiders watched with too many eyes. I looked around carefully, but saw no obviously loose or ill-fitting boards near the door. Clearly my disrespect of property was progressing from trespass to vandalism. I decided, after a moment’s cogitation, that the most likely spot for a cubbyhole was under the mislaid hearth that Irv had only recently installed.

  Atherton jumped up on the table to watch my deconstruction. I pulled my limited tool supply out of my pocket and laid the screwdriver beside him. Reversing the hammer so it was claw-side down, I began pulling up the small sheets of sandstone that had been jigsawed together with loose sand instead of mortar.

  Unfortunately for my hands, the most likely spot was not the spot. I dropped the last abrasive stone back into place, not being particularly careful of where I let it fall. The nephew might notice that someone had pried up the stones, but that information wouldn’t help him any. Wearing a fine and probably not terribly attractive sheen of perspiration flecked with white sand, I started testing the floorboards next, searching for one that was loose.

  Again, the view of Irv’s cabin did not improve from my position on hands and knees. Down there it was easy to see that not only did the floor sag, but the walls and tired old beams overhead did too. I was hoping that the worst bowing was just an optical illusion brought on because there wasn’t one thing in that room that was square or level, but I knew it was just as likely that the inadequate supports were actually buckling under the combined cruelties of old age and termites, whose small piles of sawdust on the floor and furniture were a dead giveaway that they had taken up residence along with the spiders.

  You’ll need another bath, Atherton said.

  I laid the hammer aside and sank back onto my butt. My knees were beginning to holler about all the crawling and squatting.

  “I’ve been over the whole floor and haven’t found anything. Are you sure you heard him taking up the floor?”

  Atherton considered.

  I heard him shifting wood. It might have been low down on one of the walls.

  I looked at the room and groaned. There were four walls. That was four more surfaces, and the floorboards had already taken me a painful hour to go over.

  “It can’t be the walls,” I said, realizing that they were only a single board thick. The planks had been nailed to the two-by-four framing and there was no interior paneling. Take down one of these boards and you opened the cabin to the outside—except at the tiny room he had erected for a bathroom when Molly had started visiting. Those walls had been sheathed on both sides.

  Scooting across the floor, I began pulling at brittle pine siding and quickly found Irv’s cubby. “As we seek, so shall we find,” I muttered, feeling vindicated.

  Most of his treasures were worthless—an Agnew for President button, an old black and white photo of what I assumed was Irv and his mother, along with his birth certificate and a deed for the land, which was terribly faded and would need to be read in better light. There was no will naming Wilkes as Irv’s heir, but that didn’t prove anything one way or another.

  I opened an envelope from the photo shop on Lincoln Street that was new but smudged with red earth. There
were only two prints inside. The quality was poor, like they had been taken by a disposable camera. The pictures were of a familiar gold pan, which now that I thought about it was also missing from the cabin. It was sitting on the bank of some creek, half-buried in Mountain Misery. I couldn’t tell what was in the pan. It looked like rocks and water.

  The gray hue to the picture suggested the sky was overcast the day the photo was taken. The foliage around the pan was also thick with red dust. That meant the picture was from late summer or early autumn. Late in August the winds start blowing in from the east, a dry hot airstream that carries much of the mountain with it. If there are fires, the mountains get coated in light gray ash. If there are no conflagrations in the desert then everything is covered in red iron-rich dust, and it stays covered until the first rain of autumn. Last year we had been blessedly fire-free, all the serious firebugs and lightning storms having headed for southern California in July and deciding to remain there for the season.

  I turned the photo over, seeking confirmation of my suspicion. The date stamp was for October second of last year. That was when the film was developed, not necessarily when it was taken. The date was familiar, though. A surprise snow that night had shut down both the one-oh-eight and the forty-nine, stranding in the high country more than a dozen campers who had needed rescuing. Irv wouldn’t have been able to get back up the mountain for the better part of a week, and by then the river would have been in full and violent spate.

  I looked through the envelope, hoping for other photos, but found only strips of blank negatives. Irv had only shot two pictures and then taken the film in to be developed. My intuitive radar was blipping like crazy.

  I went back to the cubby. The last item was a dirty hankie wrapped around something hard and heavy. I opened it up and found what I was looking for. In it was an irregular-shaped nugget about the size of my thumb. The handkerchief was stained with red earth and showed the imprints of several other stones, leading me to believe that there had been more than one nugget in there.

  Something began to tickle the back of my brain. Where had I recently seen a gold nugget like this one? It was somewhere strange…out of place….

  It was Dell! He was wearing a nugget on a cord that day I went to The Mule. But not on the evening of Irv’s wake. His chest had been bare that night. “Why take it off?” I asked, thinking aloud but also hoping Atherton might have some thoughts to share.

  To hide it. The cat’s voice was practical.

  “Right.” So that no one—like the sheriff or Irv’s nephew—would see. Could Irv have given Dell the nugget as proof of his find and perhaps as earnest money for the new business? If I could convince Dell to produce it—a huge if—would this be evidence enough for Tyler of the business venture Josh had been talking about? And would this be motive enough to convince him that the nephew was the murderer and to investigate him rather than the meth dealers? Or would it send him after Dell?

  I had another of those disconcerting flashes, this time a clear image of Irv’s hands as he fixed my gate. They were hard hands, scarred hands that had worked at manual labor all of his life. And now they would never work again. My own hands clenched around the nugget, and I felt my face get hard.

  Jillian?

  “I’m okay. I was just thinking of Irv. It’s so wrong that this happened.”

  Atherton padded over and sniffed at the hankie I was clutching.

  That was Irv’s. He kept things in it. Rocks. Lots of rocks. There should be more.

  “Yes? I thought so. But now what?” I asked Atherton. “Do I take the gold with me now? Or do I put all this back and call Tyler so he can see it for himself?”

  Is this the kind of proof humans would believe?

  “Maybe. It depends on the human.”

  What kind of human is the sheep man? Atherton asked. Doesn’t he trust you?

  That was the six-million-dollar question.

  “I guess we’ll find out.” I got to my feet slowly. My body felt stiff and I noticed that night had begun to fall in earnest, along with the temperature. Reluctantly, I rewrapped the nugget and put it back in its hole. We’d try it Tyler’s way first.

  It’s getting dark now.

  “Yes.”

  I hate twilight—always have—and at that moment I was very grateful that Atherton was there with me. For the first time I admitted to myself that I was glad he could talk to me, and that I would be very sorry if anything ever happened and I lost the ability to understand him. I had come to rely on his company and common sense.

  “Let’s go. I think it’s time for some tuna and tea and then I’ll call Tyler. We may as well find out if he’ll help us or if we’re on our own.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  A kitten is so flexible that she is almost double; the hind parts are equivalent to another kitten with which the forepart plays. She does not discover that her tail belongs to her until you tread on it.

  —Henry David Thoreau

  Darkness tumbled down fast, especially when driven by a north wind that had sharp, biting teeth. It took hold of my exposed flesh and proceeded to gnaw on it. I squinted against the pain and promised myself a pot of steaming Darjeeling tea just as soon as we got back to the house.

  I was almost home when the car came at me, going far too fast for a rainy night, on the blind curve at Abby’s house. I snatched up Atherton, turned my back on the lights that threatened to sear my retinas and cowered against the nearest oak, whose trunk was slightly indented due to an ancient lightning strike that had split the bark into a coffin-sized wound that almost—but not quite—accommodated me.

  Gravel flew as the car lost traction and began to drift. The tree was peppered with rock and I huddled my body around Atherton, trying to protect him. Which was dumb. He would have been far more capable of escape without my so-called protection.

  I grew lightheaded as I waited for death. My diaphragm refused to work. What good was breath when I was certain of being ground into the wood of the tree where I stood shivering? To the right I saw my shadow spring up, grow long, climb the tree across from where I sheltered and then disappear, run over by the old black Volvo with noisy tires that were underinflated. Thanks to the light reflecting off the white rocks of Abbey’s wall, I saw who was driving the car. It wasn’t anyone I knew. A stranger—and one with an odd pallor—was trespassing on our mountain.

  Atherton hissed and began to struggle.

  Stinky-foot man. I can smell him.

  Stinky foot. The meth cooker. Now that Atherton mentioned it, I could smell something too, though it didn’t remind me of feet. I squinted at the license plate as the car disappeared around the bend, taking a fair amount of flora with him. As I listened, I heard him make a sharp left and head out Twilight Lane. It dead-ended at Cemetery Road. Many outsiders made the mistake of thinking it was a shortcut to the freeway. This time of year, it was an absolute bog. He’d have done better driving into quicksand.

  “One-why-ex-be-three-four-seven. One-why-ex-be-three-four-seven. One-why-ex-be-three-four-seven,” I muttered over and over again, fixing the license plate number in my head. “We have to call the sheriff!”

  I put the cat down and raced for my house. Tyler’s birthday had come early this year. He was going to get his second meth dealer, courtesy of an overly curious me and the cat who was the only witness to Irv’s murder.

  As I ran, I wondered what the hell the man was doing on our hill. Could he have had something to do with Irving?

  Tyler had gotten adept at understanding me and was able to take down the license plate number as well as my description of the car and driver, though my jaw was pretty clenched up by the time I got home. I think he also heard me tell him that there was something at Irv’s he needed to see, but he chose to ignore that part of my message until the meth dealer was found.

  I understood his priorities. Irv’s place wasn’t going anywhere, I assured myself a half a dozen times. Nevertheless, I felt this strange premonition, a hunch, creepin
g up on me like a pair of ill-fitting panties, and it made me squirm. There was only one way I could think of to get rid of my brain wedgie that was getting worse by the minute. After Atherton and I had shared some dinner and tea, I decided that maybe I should go back to Irving’s—immediately—and get that nugget out of the wall. Chances were excellent that nothing would happen to it—after all, it was too wet for a forest fire to get started, and the cabin wasn’t in so bad a shape that it would collapse overnight—but there was the matter of Irv’s nephew roaming at large. If he knew about Irv’s stash then he would probably still be looking for it. He’d especially be looking if he happened to glance out his hotel window that conveniently overlooked the sheriff’s office and noticed the entire police force heading out of town. Certainly he wouldn’t be sleeping yet. The inn where Wilkes was staying had a sign boasting that Mark Twain had slept there. Of course, Mark Twain seems to have slept in every haystack and flophouse in Calaveras and Tuolumne counties, so this isn’t any kind of a recommendation. And I knew for a fact that the lumpy mattresses at the inn were from about Mark Twain’s era. No one would linger in the sheets for a moment more than they had to.

  I didn’t want to go out again, but after the sheriff’s Jeep and a squad car came back down the hill—the meth dealer in the cage, his car doubtlessly left in the mud pit until morning—I decided that maybe I had better make sure that Irv’s gold stayed safe for the night. I could always put it back in the morning before I brought Tyler up to see Irv’s stash.

  Atherton came with me again, though he was becoming quite accustomed at darkfall to curling up in a nest of pillows on the sofa while I read or, less frequently, wrote.

  “Onward,” I mumbled.

  Upward, corrected Atherton.

  He was right. It was very upward, about three paces of upward to every pace ahead. My legs were beginning to protest the walk and my jaw the cold, which had only increased in the last hour. I kept assuring myself that only hell was forever. This task would be over soon. The walk seemed endless, but eventually even the strongest mountain tires of pushing aloft, and there you get either a peak or a plateau. Ours had been the former until some ambitious lads with dynamite and dreams of gold got to working on it. Irv’s family was not the first to be certain that there was gold in them thar hills.