Scenarios nd-29

by Bill Pronzini

  I said, "Isn't there anything that can be done to stop them, Mr. Penrose?"

  "Well, we've hired attorneys, you know-those of us who live here-and they've filed suit to block the sale of the land. But there isn't much hope a judge will rule in our favor once the suit comes to trial."

  "Have you tried appealing to the corporation? To get them to modify their development plans?"

  "Oh yes. They wouldn't listen to us. Awful people. The head of Munroe was an insensitive swine."

  "He died last week," Penrose said, with a hint of relish in his voice. "In a tragic accident."

  "What sort of accident?"

  "He went to blazes," Penrose said, and did his barking sea-lion number again. This time he did not look quite so embarrassed when the noise stopped. "One shouldn't speak lightly of the dead, should one?" he said.

  "You mean he died in a fire?"

  "Yes. In Redding."

  "That's a coincidence, isn't it."

  "Coincidence?"

  "You had a fire here recently," I said. "We noticed the burned-out buildings in town."

  "Oh, that. It was only four of the ghosts."

  "An accident too?"

  He didn't answer the question. Instead he said, "I told the others they should have let the fire spread, let it purge the rest of the ghosts as well, but they wouldn't listen. A pity."

  Kerry said, "You wanted the whole town to burn up?"

  "No. Just the ghosts."

  "But why?"

  "Ashes to ashes," he said. "They are long dead; they would be better off cremated."

  "Why do you say that?" I asked. "Cooperville was once a Gold Rush camp; shouldn't they be preserved for historical reasons?"

  "Definitely not. The past is dead; it should be allowed to rest in peace. Resurrection breeds tourists." He smiled, rubbed his bulbous nose, and repeated the phrase as if he liked the sound of it: "Resurrection breeds tourists."

  "Does everybody in Cooperville feel the same way?"

  "Yes. Leave the ghosts alone, they say. Leave us alone. Let us live and let us die, all in good time."

  "So that's why nobody here ever tried to restore any of the buildings," Kerry said.

  "Just so," Penrose agreed. "Natural history is relevant; the history of man is often irrelevant. You see?"

  I said, "How do you suppose the fire got started? The one here in Cooperville, I mean."

  "Does it matter, Mr. Wade?"

  "I'm just curious."

  "It was a burning curiosity that laid the ghosts," he said, and cut loose with his laugh again. Listening to it, and to him, was making me a little uncomfortable. I get just as edgy around unarmed oddballs as I do around those with weapons.

  "Is it possible somebody set the fire deliberately?" I asked him. "Somebody who feels as you do about cremating the ghosts?"

  It was the wrong thing to say. Penrose's mean little eyes narrowed, and when he spoke again his voice had lost its friendliness. "I think you'd better leave now. I have a great deal of work to do."

  Kerry said, "Couldn't we talk a while longer, Mr. Penrose? I really would like to know more about-"

  "No," he said. "No. Come back and visit me again if you decide to move here. But I don't think you should; it's probably too late. Goodbye, now."

  There was nothing for us to do but to leave. We went out onto the platform deck, and Kerry thanked him for his hospitality, and he said, "Not at all," and banged the door shut behind us.

  On the way down the stairs she said to me, "Why do you always have to be so blunt?"

  "He was getting on my nerves."

  "We could have found out more if you'd been a little more tactful."

  "We? Bill and Kerry Wade, from San Francisco. Christ!"

  "It got him to talk to us, didn't it?"

  "All right, so it got him to talk to us."

  "Which is more than you accomplished with your direct approach to Mrs. Bloom," she said. "You probably blurted out that you were a detective to Gary Coleclaw and that artist, Thatcher, too. No wonder they wouldn't tell you anything."

  "Listen, don't tell me how to do my job."

  "I'm not. I'm only suggesting-"

  "Don't suggest. I didn't bring you along to do any suggesting."

  "No, I know why you brought me along. Women are only good for one thing, right?"

  "Oh, for God's sake-"

  "You can be a macho jerk sometimes, you know that? You think you know everything. Well, why don't you go screw yourself? You've been doing it all day."

  She slid into the car and sat there with her arms folded, staring straight ahead. I wanted to say something else to her, but I didn't seem to have any words. The thing was, she was right. I had handled things badly with Penrose, and with Gary Coleclaw and Thatcher and Mrs. Bloom. And with Kerry, too. It was just one of those days when I couldn't seem to get the proper handle on how to deal with anybody. But it galled me to have to admit it. Kerry wasn't the detective here, damn it; I was.

  A half-mile farther along there was another homesteader's cabin, this one owned by a family named Butterfield, but I was in no frame of mind for another interview. I drove back into town. When we came to the Coleclaw place I looked it over for some indication that Jack Coleclaw and his wife had returned from Weaverville. There wasn't any-no automobiles, no people, not even any sign of the fat yapping brown and-white dog. So there was no point in stopping there either; I kept on going up the road and out of town.

  Kerry didn't say one word to me all the way back to Weaverville.

  5

  Thirty seconds after I pulled into the lot of the Pinecrest Motel, Raymond Treacle showed up.

  I had forgotten all about him. He lived in Redding, and I had talked to him on the phone last night and arranged to meet him here at five o'clock. It was now two minutes past five. My first thought when I saw him drive in was that it was a good thing I had decided not to stop anywhere else in Cooperville. Failing to show up for a meeting with a man who was willing to pay you five thousand dollars was very poor business. I could not seem to do anything right today, except by accident. Maybe I needed a vacation more than I thought I did.

  Kerry and I were already out of the car, and she had finally spoken to me, saying that she was going to go in and take a shower, when Treacle appeared. He was driving a brand new Lincoln Continental, and in spite of the heat-it was a good ten degrees hotter in Weaverville than it had been higher up in the mountains-he was wearing a three-piece suit. But he was one of these people who manage to look cool and comfortable no matter what the temperature might be.

  He was a handsome guy in his forties, lean and fit, with close-cropped black hair and a fashionable mustache. Throughout our first meeting in San Francisco, which had lasted about an hour, I had kept trying to dislike him. He was glib, he was materialistic and status-oriented, he didn't seem to care much about the feelings of others-he was everything I wasn't and considered distasteful about the modern businessman. And yet he was also so damned earnest, and tried so hard to be friendly, that I couldn't seem to work up much of an antipathy toward him.

  He came over and shook my hand in his earnest way. When I introduced him to Kerry he took her hand, too, and smiled at her approvingly. She seemed to like that; the smile she gave him in return was warmer than any she'd let me have in the past couple of days.

  Treacle said to me, "How did it go in Cooperville today?"

  "I didn't find out much from the people I talked to," I told him, "but I did find evidence that the fire there was deliberately set."

  "Oh?"

  "Whoever did it used a candle," I said. I went back and opened up the trunk and showed him the cup-shaped piece of stone with the wax residue inside. "I found this among the debris."

  He used one of the rags in the trunk to pick it up, and peered at it. "Travertine," he said.

  "Pardon?"

  "That's the kind of mineral this is. Travertine-layered calcium carbonate. Geology is one of my interests."

  "An unus
ual stone?"

  "No, not for this part of the country." He rubbed at it with the rag, ridding it of some of the black from the fire. "It's fossilized," he said, and showed me the imprints in the stone.

  "Bryophytes."

  "What are bryophytes?"

  "Nonflowering plants. Mosses and liverworts."

  "Is that kind of fossil uncommon?"

  "Not really. They turn up fairly often around here."

  Treacle picked at the wax residue with his fingernail. "This is purple, isn't it?"

  I nodded. "One of the women in Cooperville makes purple candles as a hobby. Ella Bloom."

  "That one," Treacle said wryly. "She's crazy. Did you talk to her?"

  "I tried to. She threatened me with a shotgun."

  "I'm not surprised. Do you think she…?"

  "Maybe. I don't know yet."

  I closed the trunk. Kerry was fanning herself with one hand; even as late in the day as it was, the heat out there in the parking lot was intense. Treacle noticed her discomfort and waved a hand toward the motel's restaurant-and-bar. "Why don't we go in where it's cool and have a drink?"

  "I could use one," Kerry said.

  I said, "I thought you were going to go take a shower?"

  "I'd rather have a drink. Do you mind?"

  I sighed. I seemed to be doing a lot of sighing today. And the three of us went off together to the bar.

  Inside, the air-conditioner was going full-blast and it was nice and cool. We sat in a booth, away from the half-dozen other patrons, and ordered drinks-beer for Kerry and me, a Tom Collins for Treacle. While we were waiting for them I filled him in on how my interviews, or attempted interviews, had gone in Cooperville.

  "Didn't I tell you they were a bunch of loonies?" he said. "Yeah."

  Kerry said, "They're not such loonies. They only want to be left alone. And they're frustrated." I gave her a warning look, but she ignored it. "Mr. Treacle, may I ask you a frank question?"

  "Go right ahead."

  "Don't you or your partners give a damn what happens to those poor people?"

  I felt like kicking her under the table. You didn't talk that way to clients, especially not to clients who were willing to part with a nice fat chunk of money for services rendered. At least, I didn't talk to clients that way; if I had I would have ended up unemployed. But she got away with it, just as she'd gotten away with fast-talking Hugh Penrose earlier.

  "Of course we care, Ms. Wade," Treacle said. He didn't sound ruffled or defensive, he didn't even sound surprised. Maybe it was a question he'd heard a number of times before. "None of us has a heart of stone, you know."

  "Then how can you just waltz into Cooperville and take their land away from them?"

  "We're not trying to take their land away from them," Treacle said patiently. He paused while the waitress set our drinks on the table and then moved off again. "They are perfectly welcome to continue living in Cooperville after we've restored it."

  "You mean turned it into some kind of tourist-trap Disneyland."

  "That's not true. Our plans call for careful, authentic restoration. The Munroe Corporation is a reputable development company, Ms. Wade; we're interested in improvement and preservation of historical landmarks…"

  I quit listening. Things were going on inside my head, things that had to do with rocks and stones. I picked up my beer and nibbled at it. When I put the bottle down again I had nibbled it dry. And I had an idea. A couple of ideas, maybe.

  Kerry was still picking away at Treacle, but there wasn't much heat in her voice; she was being controlled. So was Treacle.

  I cleared my throat, loudly, to get their attention. They both looked at me, and I said, "If you don't mind, Mr. Treacle, I'd like to cut this short. There are some things I have to do."

  "Oh?" he said.

  Kerry said, sounding annoyed, "What do you have to do?"

  "Drive back to Cooperville."

  "Now? What for?"

  "There's something I want to check on."

  "I don't feel like going all the way back there."

  "That's good, because I'm going alone."

  "Are you serious?"

  "I'm serious," I said, and to prove it I got out of the booth. "I'll be back in a couple of hours-three at the outside. Then we can have dinner."

  "I don't think so," she said, miffed again. She leaned across the table. "Mr. Treacle, do you have any plans for the next few hours?"

  "Why no, I don't."

  "Fine. How would you like to have dinner with me?"

  I blinked at her. A minute ago she'd been haranguing him for being unfeeling and greedy; now she was asking him to have dinner with her. Treacle was just as surprised as I was. He looked at her, looked at me, looked at her again, and said, "Well, I don't know…"

  "Go ahead," I told him. "Ms. Wade can be pleasant company. Sometimes."

  "Well, if you're sure you don't mind..

  "I don't mind. I'll call you later with another report." I glanced at Kerry before I started away. "Enjoy your dinner." She stuck her tongue out at me.

  6

  It was nearly six-thirty when I came down between the cliffs and back into Cooperville. The sun was dropping behind the wooded slopes to the west; evening shadows had begun to gather among the ghost buildings along the creek. The meadow grass had a warm golden sheen. Cooperville was a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't have wanted to live there-not now and especially not after the Munroe Corporation finished with it.

  There was a dark green pickup parked alongside the Cooperville Mercantile, which probably meant that Jack Coleclaw and his wife were back from Weaverville. I wasn't interested in talking to Coleclaw, at least not yet, but when I saw the other cars parked over near the cottage I turned in there on impulse. There were five cars altogether, among them Paul Thatcher's jeep and Hugh Penrose's Land Rover. The way it looked, the residents were having some kind of town meeting.

  I stopped where I had that afternoon, alongside the gas pump. When I got out of the car, the door to the mercantile opened and Gary Coleclaw came out with a can of Coke in one hand and a half-eaten sandwich in the other. As soon as he saw me he did an about-face and went right back in again. There was no sign of the fat brown-and-white dog. And nobody else came out of the store.

  I was not about to go over to the cottage; facing the entire population of Cooperville was something I had no desire to do. I started to get back inside the car-and a man came hurrying around the far corner of the mercantile, from the direction of the cottage. He was alone, and he was somebody I had never seen before.

  He stopped two feet away, put his hands on his hips, and stared at me with eyes as cold as winter frost. He was about my age, mid-fifties; dark-complected, powerfully built, with not much neck and not much chin. Running to fat, though. You couldn't see the belt buckle of his Levi's because of the paunch that hung over it.

  "You're the insurance detective," he said.

  "More or less. And you?"

  "Jack Coleclaw. If you're here to talk to me, you wasted the trip. I've got nothing to say to you."

  "Nobody seems to have anything to say to me. Why is that, Mr. Coleclaw?"

  "You're trying to make out one of us killed that Munroe man in Redding, that's why. No one here had anything to do with Randall's death, mister; no one here started any fires. Now suppose you just get back in your car and get the hell out of Cooperville. And don't come back, if you know what's good for you."

  "Is that a threat, Mr. Coleclaw?"

  "Nobody's threatening you."

  "Two people this afternoon made a pretty good imitation of it."

  "Feelings run high around here where Munroe is concerned," he said. "All we want is to be left alone. If we're not…"He didn't finish the sentence.

  "Suppose I go to the county law and tell them I'm being harassed? Do you want that kind of trouble?"

  "You can't prove it. Besides, we cooperated with the county cops when they made their investigation. They didn't find anythi
ng; there wasn't anything they could find. The sheriff's department doesn't worry us, mister."

  "Then why should I?"

  "You don't."

  "No? How come the summit meeting, then?"

  He scowled. "What?"

  "It looks like you're entertaining everybody in town tonight," I said. "I figure that's because of me. Or do you all get together regularly for coffee and cake?"

  "What we do of an evening is none of your business," Coleclaw said. "You keep coming around here, you'll get the same you got today-and more of it. Now that's all I got to say. You've been warned."

  I watched him stalk off the way he'd come and disappear around the far corner of the store. I did not like the feeling I had now: bad vibes, a sense that there was more to this business than the idea I had developed back in the motel bar in Weaverville. There was too much hostility here, that was the thing. And it was too intense. But I couldn't seem to get a handle on what lay at the root of it.

  I drove away from the pump, out onto the road again. If anybody was watching me from inside Coleclaw's house, the curtained front windows hid them. I couldn't see anybody anywhere now. The whole damned town might have been a ghost, lying still and crumbling in the golden light of an approaching sunset.

  When I got to the fork I took the branch that led between the abandoned mining-camp buildings. I parked in front of the hotel, got my flashlight from its clip under the dash, and locked the car. Then I went around to the rear, to where the back door still stood hanging open on one hinge. I stepped inside.

  Not much light penetrated now, at this time of day, through the chinks in the outer walls. The place had a murky, eerie look to it, as if there might actually be spooks and specters lying in wait on the shadowed balconies and among the decaying rubble. I switched on the flashlight, crossed the rough whipsawed floor.

  The light picked up the collapsed pigeonhole shelf, the door in the wall behind it. I swung the door open. Mica particles and iron pyrites gleamed in the flash beam when I played it across the tier of shelves and their collection of arrowheads and chunks of rock. I moved over there. Some of the rocks had fossils embedded in them, all right. Bryophyte fossils, just like the ones in the stone cup in the trunk of my car.