A Curious Affair (13 page)

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.”

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, creeping 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
.

There was a moon, so I didn’t need the flashlight. Nor did I turn on Irv’s sorry lamp when I reached the cabin. Perhaps I was showing off for Atherton; perhaps I was just giving in to paranoia and trying to stay invisible to any eyes that might be watching from the forest.

I had no trouble opening Irv’s panel and fetching out the nugget and the photos. But as I was putting the board back, I heard a sound that raised those fine hairs rooted in the nape. Not a creak exactly, or a rustle. It was just a slight noise of complaint that oak trees make if you lean against them when they are bitterly cold and resentful of added burden. I’d had cause to hear that sound all too often that winter.

Unbidden, unwanted, a line from Hansel and Gretel popped into my head:
Nibble, nibble, little mouse. Who’s
that nibbling at my house?

Jillian
. Atherton’s hair was standing up, too. His silhouette in the window looked enormous.

“I hear it.” My voice was hardly louder than a sigh. “Do you see anything?”

No
.

The sound repeated. It was soft but not safely distant, and it cast a dank shadow somewhere in my brain, blotting out my earlier confidence that I was doing the right thing by coming out in the dark and cold.

You know what fear tastes like, at least to me? It’s like sucking on a dirty penny. If you never tried this as a child, let me fill this gap in your education. Instants after it hits your tongue, the mouth floods with coppery saliva and the sourness dribbles down the throat where it smacks the stomach. Muscles clench from your jaw to groin and you feel queasy. You get focused on the sick feeling and forget to breathe. The world starts to close in, to go brown and then black. Of course, you spit the penny out, but the taste won’t go away, at least not for a long time. You’ll taste it in your fillings for days.

“Do you smell anything?” I barely whispered. Fear burned up my oxygen and kept my paralyzed lungs from drawing more.

No, but the noise is out front.
Atherton was facing the door now. He looked at least twice his normal size. It could have been anything out there—a deer, a raccoon, even a mountain lion—but I didn’t bother suggesting this to the cat. We had to assume that it was something less benevolent.

“Come on. I’ll put you out the bathroom window.” I crawled silently toward the bathroom, testing each board before putting weight on it. If our observer wasn’t certain that the cabin was occupied, I preferred that he remain unenlightened.

What about you?
Atherton padded after me. His voice was low and oddly menacing. If he was afraid, it didn’t show.

“I won’t fit. You go around front and see if anyone is there. If it’s safe, I’ll come out.”

If not, I’ll go and get the others
. Atherton showed initiative and I was glad he had a plan. I appreciated that tremendously, though I wished that he could fetch Tyler and not just the other strays. Whatever was out there probably required bullets rather than cat claws to discourage it.

“Okay. Let’s do it.”

The window opened reluctantly but without the tremendous amount of sound I feared. My heart was thudding hard enough to make my sweater twitch as I lifted Atherton and put him on the sill.

I’ll hurry
, he promised. And then without any hesitation he jumped into the night, disappearing immediately.

He did hurry, but by the time Atherton had crept around to the front and investigated, our visitor was gone. Atherton found no smell except for something that sounded like rubber when he described it—a smell, he said, like the latex gloves I keep under the bathroom sink. I didn’t like the sound of that at all.

I also didn’t know what to make of this odd event, but I didn’t for one minute think that we had imagined hearing someone outside Irv’s cabin. I knew that we could very well still be in danger if our observer had simply pulled back a few dozen yards beyond the range of sight or smell. I thought about calling Tyler, but what could I tell him—I’d heard a noise?

We hurried home, sticking to the middle of the road where we could not be easily ambushed, and once safely inside, we treated ourselves to more tea and tuna, and then tried to embrace the peace of mind that comes with a solid door loaded with deadbolts and chains.

Still, even with every lock in place and the house alarm turned on for the first time in three years, I couldn’t shake the sick feeling of unease. Though Atherton
smelled nothing definite as we hurried home, and I saw even less when I looked over my shoulder at the deeper night beneath the trees, I couldn’t put an end to the belief that something malevolent had followed us down the hill and was still watching the house from the deep shadows of the trees up by the road. What it made of me and the cat visiting Irv’s cabin in the dark, I couldn’t say.

I believed then and now that the malevolence was called Peter Wilkes.

I didn’t sleep well that night, but though I kept an ear cocked for any alien sounds, no one came scratching at the windows or tapping on the door. The deck didn’t creak. The bushes didn’t rustle. Whatever it was, whoever it was, it had decided to leave us alone for the time being.