by Clover Tate
I wasn’t sure if her question was rhetorical or not. “But they must get permits. Plus, I have names. All you have to do is track them down.”
“The state park issued more than seventy permits this month alone. That doesn’t even touch the number of people who gather without a permit. Or who gather morels on private property.”
“Sam Anderson said they threatened Miles. To his face. Said he’d be sorry. As far as they were concerned, Miles was stealing their business. That’s a reason to kill someone. And it’s more of a reason than Avery has.”
“I know she’s your friend and you’re concerned. Do you have any reason to think Avery knows the mushroom hunters?”
“Absolutely not.” Once the words left my mouth, I saw where the deputy was headed.
“So they wouldn’t know to hide a knife under her bed, would they?”
“Not so fast.” I stood up.
“Sit,” the deputy commanded.
I sat. “Word gets around fast in this town. Once they heard that Avery was under suspicion, all they had to do to seal the deal was to hide the knife under her bed.”
The deputy shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. But mushroom hunters have been threatening each other over territory for decades now, and no one’s been killed.”
“And people have been dating and breaking up for millennia, and no one has been murdered because of it.” I thought again. “Well, not that many people.”
“Look, I’ll make a note of the mushroom hunters’ names. Ron and Monica, you said?” She jotted their names on a notepad, but I had the clear idea she was doing it simply to pacify me.
“None of this leaves Sam Anderson off the hook,” I said.
The deputy seemed to choke a bit. “Sam. Yes. I’m getting to him.”
“That’s what I said. Sam Anderson. Say the Tidal Basin had some financial challenges, and Sam learned that Miles was going to open a competing restaurant. What then?”
“We’ve questioned Mr. Anderson. It’s none of your concern.” Goff’s face was curiously red.
“What do you mean? Of course I’m concerned. I found the body, remember? And it’s my friend you’ve locked up for no good reason.” Damn her. Would she listen to me?
The deputy turned her attention to a stack of papers. “I’ll let Sheriff Koppen know you came by. And don’t worry—we’re doing everything we can to find the murderer.”
“You’re not going to find him sitting around the office,” I shot off.
Fuming, I left. I could only hope Martino’s was planning a batch of garlicky, anchovy-ridden pies for the day. The sheriff’s office deserved some odor therapy.
chapter fourteen
Once Strings Attached was open, I called Dave. I knew I could count on him as an ally. “Could you come see me sometime today? I can’t leave the shop, but I want to talk to you. It has to do with Avery.” That would get him.
He showed up less than an hour later. “What’s going on? Have you heard from her?” Dave’s tall, sober figure contrasted with the fanciful kites around him.
“I saw Avery last night. She’s holding up.”
“I’m going to visit, too. I’m leading a kayak tour in the state park, but after that I’m driving to Astoria.”
“I thought you had guides for that.” Dave would have preferred to spend his time outdoors, but as the kayak store’s owner, he’d explained that he felt he should be around the shop.
“Pete decided to go to school in New Mexico, and Robbie didn’t show up yesterday. Didn’t even call. I had to let him go. It’s not easy finding someone who knows the terrain around here, especially on the water.” He stepped closer to the counter. “How did she look to you?”
I remembered Avery’s tissue-thin skin under the fluorescent lights, her fatalistic attitude. “Not good. Strangely resigned, actually. It worries me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just a sec,” I said. A customer with a grade-school-aged boy in tow had just come in the shop. “Is there anything special you’re looking for?”
“Nathan is begging me to get him a kite. He saw some others on the beach, and—”
“Mom, look at this one.” The boy held one of my favorites, a kite shaped like an owl.
“Have you flown kites before?” I asked.
“No,” both the mother and son said at the same time. “I thought something, you know, not superexpensive would be nice.”
I wasn’t kidding when I told Stella the diamond kites sold the fastest. I’d have to order some more and soon. “You might be interested in one of these. They’re the classic diamond shape and have flown for centuries. Maybe a blue one?” I held up a robin’s-egg-blue diamond kite with a darker blue tail.
“Mom. Cool. Can I have it?” He kept a hand on the owl kite. “Unless I can have this one.”
“The owl kite is one of our easiest to fly. The wind is great today. Just let out the string slowly but consistently, and if it starts to dive side to side, reel it in a bit.”
The mother examined the owl. A slight smile lit her face as she touched its beak. “It’s a little more expensive, but not much. You say it’s all right for a boy new to kites?”
“Absolutely,” I said. The boy was practically holding his breath, willing his mother to choose the owl.
She glanced at him and smiled. “We’ll take it,” she said, and the boy gripped the kite tight.
After they left, Dave returned to the counter. Hands in pockets, he’d been examining the room’s moldings, but his tapping toe belied his anxiety. “What did you want to talk to me about?”
“Mushrooms,” I said.
“What kind?”
I nearly laughed. “Don’t you even want to know why?”
“Well, yes. I guess so,” Dave said.
“The week before Miles was killed, some mushroom hunters came to the Tidal Basin’s back door and threatened him. I told the sheriff’s office about it, and the deputy I talked to said it would be impossible to chase them down, that fighting over mushroom territory is pretty common.”
“True enough.”
“If I could give the sheriff names, maybe they’d follow up.”
“Yes. I can see that. Did Sam have their names?”
“No, they’re on a first-name basis only. So I thought I’d try to find them.”
Dave dropped a hand to the counter. “And how are you going to do that?”
“If I knew where morels were growing right now, I could lurk, see who’s picking lots of them, see if I find people matching Sam’s description of them.”
“It’s high morel season now. There’ll be dozens of people out.”
“I have their first names. Ron and Monica.”
“And then what? You find a couple that matches Sam’s description and say, ‘Hey, Ron and Monica, kill anyone lately?’ Not a great plan. Plus, what if they think you’re poaching on their territory?”
“I have a plan. I’ll pretend I’m sketching, and they’ll be able to see I don’t have any mushrooms with me. Once I see them, I’ll follow them back to their car and get their license-plate number.”
Dave walked to the front door and looked out the window. Beyond the stoop he’d see the beach and a slice of ocean. I knew he was thinking of Avery.
Finally he turned to me. “I want to help find Avery’s killer, but your plan isn’t well thought out. For one thing, morels could be growing just about anywhere.”
“Which is why I wanted to talk to you. Where do they grow?”
“Different spots every year. Morels love natural disasters. Flooded areas, land after a forest fire, places like that.”
“So where around here would there be a place where a lot of morels grow? Enough to make it worth a picker’s time?”
He returned to the counter. “There is one place along the river tha
t flooded pretty badly last fall. I kayaked past a few days ago, and the riverbank was covered with morels. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s been popular with pickers.”
“Anywhere else?”
“Maybe. Probably. That’s where you’d find the most in one area, though.”
My pulse quickened. “Yes. I bet that’s it. Where is it?”
A hand reached to his beard. I’d come to recognize this as Dave’s sign of deep thought. Or worry. “I’ll tell you, but only because it’s popular enough that you won’t be isolated.” His hand dropped to the counter. “Do you have paper?”
I rushed to the workroom and brought out my sketch pad. With his concise, even hand, Dave drew a map.
“You won’t approach anyone, right?”
“No. Scout’s honor.” I held up two fingers and avoided telling Dave that I was kicked out of Brownies for having a loud mouth. “In fact, I’ll bring a friend.” Stella would go with me, I was sure. “All I want to do is get a license-plate number and let the sheriff take it from there.”
“When are you going?”
There was no reason to wait. “Tomorrow morning.”
“I expect a call by noon, then.”
I didn’t know why Avery didn’t jump all over Dave. He was quiet and methodical—not exactly bursting with spontaneity—but he was a solid, caring guy.
“Remember,” he said. “Noon. And who is this friend who’s going with you?”
“Stella. She’s totally on board.”
* * *
“Absolutely not,” Stella said over the phone.
“But,” I said, “this is our perfect chance to find the person who might have killed Miles.”
“And get ourselves killed in the process? I know you care about Avery, but in this case you really do need to leave it to the sheriff.”
“He won’t follow up on it. I talked to the deputy. Besides, why are morel-mushroom pickers so much more dangerous than anyone else? And if they are, isn’t that even more of a reason to find out who they are?”
I could almost see Stella shaking her elegant head as she replied. “Picking and selling morels is quick cash and doesn’t require a lot of skill.”
“And?”
“That means you get an unpredictable bunch doing it. People who can’t hold jobs or who skirt the law. It’s common knowledge that if you want to pick morels out here, you do it on your own land or at your own peril.”
I couldn’t believe it. Stella was bailing on me. “So you’re just going to give up.”
“No. I’m not giving up.” She paused long enough that I noticed the falling dusk outside. “But I just don’t think it’s for us to follow up that lead. Leave it to the professionals. We don’t need to get into the middle of a mushroom-territory dispute and get our tires slashed, or worse.”
“I told you. The deputy basically told me, ‘Tough luck.’”
A sigh. “Listen. What else happened when you talked with Sam? Anything else interesting?”
“No, but I talked to Jeanette down at the post office. She hinted that the Tidal Basin has a few unpaid bills, but she wouldn’t tell me much more. I saw a ‘Final Notice’ bill on Sam’s desk when I visited. Maybe he was threatened by Miles’s idea of opening a new restaurant.”
“Jeanette’s a tough number, isn’t she?”
“She definitely believes in the tit-for-tat method of information exchange.”
“Hmm. Let me work on her. I might be able to squeeze out something more,” Stella said. “As for Miles’s restaurant, we don’t even know how old that idea was.”
“True.” I balled up a piece of paper and squeezed it in my palm so hard that my thumb cramped for a moment before I released it. So much promise with leads, but so little opportunity to follow up. Meanwhile Avery rotted in jail.
“I can tell you’re upset,” Stella said.
“I just don’t know what to do. Avery even told me to lay off, that I should just leave it alone. But how can I when she’s in jail and shouldn’t be there? Every day that goes by the harder it’ll be to find evidence that points away from her.”
“And Miles’s murderer is still free.”
“Exactly.”
The tick of the mantel clock mocked me. Time was wasting, and I was useless.
“What are you doing tonight?” Stella asked.
“Nothing.” Nothing but burnt pizza at home.
“Why don’t we meet later at the docks? The old docks. The sheriff said they found bloodstains on the boat, right? Plus, Miles had a note in his calendar about meeting Avery there.”
“True.” I liked this idea, even if I had no idea what exactly we were looking for. But was that so different from searching Miles’s cabin?
“Do you know what time they were to meet?”
“No, but it had to have been later on, about the time Dave and I were at the bonfire.”
“How about if we meet at eight? We’ll check it out, get an idea of what it was like down there the night Miles was killed. Maybe we’ll notice something the sheriff missed. It’s not much, but it’s something.”
“It’s a plan.”
* * *
So far I had two possible murder suspects. The mushroom hunters might have killed Miles for revenge, or to stop him from poaching their mushrooms. Perhaps they also had a boat at the dock. Or maybe they “borrowed” Avery’s. The blood might have come from Miles after he was killed elsewhere and hauled to the boat. Once they figured out the boat belonged to Avery, they hid the knife at her house. That didn’t explain the calendar entry, though.
Miles’s boss, Sam, might have killed him to make sure he didn’t open a competing restaurant. Or maybe he simply got mad at Miles for not turning up for work, or for ordering a lot of expensive seafood, and stabbed him in a fit of passion. Miles was tall but thin. Sam could have loaded him into a wheelbarrow or something and wheeled him to the docks. Of course, he risked being seen. That’s what I was counting on.
I parked the Prius near the Tidal Basin and walked the short distance to the docks. A light drizzle dampened its planked surface. Stella, right on time, came down the hill toward me. She wore European-styled flats and had wrapped an embroidered black cotton scarf around her neck, letting its fringed edges hang down her chest. Honestly, that woman would look refined shoveling cow manure.
“Ready?” she asked.
“As I’ll ever be,” I said. “Should we make a plan?”
“How about this? You’ll say you were just having a bite at the Tidal Basin, and you decided to check Avery’s boat, to make sure it’s secure.”
I buttoned my jacket up one more notch. The evening was chilly. “I just—the sheriff should have done all this questioning already.”
“I’m sure he did. Our job is to make something fresh from the information, then give him something to follow up on. We might see something he didn’t. Besides, sometimes people will tell things to an attractive woman they won’t tell to the police.”
“People probably do tell you a lot,” I said.
“I meant you, silly,” Stella said. We reached the dock. The mist had turned to a light rain. “Do you know which boat is Avery’s?”
I didn’t. Strangely enough, for all the time I’d spent in Rock Point, we’d never gone out on her family’s boat.
Stella took my expression for the “no” it was. “Well, I guess we can fake it.”
It’s true that the old docks were close to the Tidal Basin, but they felt like a different town altogether. The new marina, where the cruising yachts and weekenders’ boats were kept, was solid and well lit. A security guard kept tabs on comings and goings. Not so for the old dock. The relative lack of light and double row of boat slips between the old and new docks gave the old dock a seedy air. Especially after dark.
“I guess we’d better check it out,” I said.
“What are we looking for, exactly?” Stella said.
“What do you mean? It was your idea to come down here.”
She took in the dark pier and pulled her scarf closer. “Yes, but now I’m not sure it was a good one.”
I scanned the boardwalk. This late at night it was deserted. The air smelled of seawater and tarred fir. We were on the opposite side of town from the rental cottages, but a few of the town’s residents lived on the block above the docks.
“Do you think anyone saw Miles and—well, you know—that night?”
Stella squinted. “The dock’s so dark. And they’d need binoculars. If the murderer pulled in with their lights on and made a lot of noise, I guess it’s possible.”
“I’ll make sure the sheriff talked to them.”
We both faced the dock and looked at each other as if willing the other to go first.
“All right, let’s do it,” Stella said. She strode down the pier and slowed as the light faded and footing became less sure.
I was right behind her. I nearly tripped on an uneven board but righted myself with only a quick yelp. “Sorry. Clumsy,” I whispered.
“Careful, there’s no railing,” Stella said.
“Believe me, I know.”
The dock had about a dozen slips on each side. I knew from an earlier, daytime visit that the boats were mostly old—some better cared for than others—along with a few better-maintained fishing craft. Now they all just looked like darkened hulks.
“So, Miles came down to the dock to meet Avery. Or so he thought.” There was no one around, but I still felt I had to keep my voice low, yet firm enough to be heard over the bay lapping on the pier. “He would have waited at the entrance to the dock, don’t you think?”
“Unless he expected Avery to be in the boat already.”
Too bad I didn’t know which boat was Avery’s. It was too dark even to read their names.