Murder at Moot Point (18 page)

A speck broke the monotony of the horizon and gradually became another ship following the path of the first. Must have traffic patterns like an airport out there. The first ship turned its nose toward Chinook and now, with the long side facing her, Charlie could see it was dark gray instead of black. When the second ship reached the turning point it displayed a two-tone hull, red below and black above, and had “HYUNDAI” written across the side in giant white letters.

Watching the big ships passing made Charlie feel even more a prisoner.

Deputy Olsen looked up from his cards. “Want me to turn on the TV?”

“No, please. Daytime television drives me crazy.”

“Too bad you don't have no VCR. There's probably cable if you want to watch a movie.” When Charlie shook her head even harder he said, “I could call Linda, ask her to stop by the library for a book before she comes down if you want. Better yet, she could pick up some mysteries at Mrs. Peterson's just over to the point. She's got tons and she's usually pretty good about lending them.”

“Clara Peterson? The bird lady?”

“The one lives in the trailer house between old Frank Glick and the widowed sisters who found the revolver.” Deputy Olsen had borrowed some mysteries from Clara when he'd had to care for a dying mother who used to live a few miles south of Moot Point. “Mrs. Peterson's got bookshelves covering every wall where there's not a window. Wouldn't be surprised to find she's got boxes of them stashed away too.”

Clara hadn't seemed the type to read mysteries, but she had mentioned she watched
Mystery
on PBS. Charlie sat up straighter. “Do you know the people at the village very well?”

“I got orders not to discuss the case.”

“Not the case, just the people.”

The deputy really preferred talking to solitaire and Charlie flattered him with rapt attention. She learned all sorts of unrelated, probably useless things to mess up the puzzle and a morning that had promised to drag flew by. Deputy Olsen, too, had lived three miles from Moot Point until his mother died just last year.

The Moot Point Consciousness Training Institute was in trouble financially. The deputy's brother was a contractor in Chinook and preparing to take Brother Dennis to court for outstanding debts dating back to the second or third renovation of the place. The main building had been built in stages and improved over the years. “Used to be a money-maker, and if he'd just paid off his bills instead of getting bigger and better, he'd have been all right. The Japanese are buying up everything in sight. It would be a shame to see the institute go, too, but what you gonna do? Guy can't pay his bills.”

“What would the Japanese want with an odd building like that?”

“There's a lot of land with it. And with a prime view. I've heard speculation it could be turned into a fancy restaurant, maybe a luxury hotel built around it.”

“Might not be so good for Rose.”

“Probably close her down.”

“Do you know Olie Bergkvist?”

“Seen him in church a few times. Big good-looking older gent. He's not around much. Usually Gladys comes alone. Got that painter fellow living over her garage. He's a kettle of fish smells, if you ask me. Something unhealthy about that whole setup. Olie spent a lot more time at home when his first wife was alive. So my folks used to say anyway.”

Olie Bergkvist, so the deputy's folks used to say, had made a fortune off the used car business in Portland and then Chinook, but had always had a hobby collecting art. His first wife died of breast cancer about twenty years ago and their only child, a son, in an automobile accident five years later. A year before that Olie had married Gladys, a widow and schoolteacher in Astoria, and installed her in the house he built in Moot Point.

“I think she was Finnish before her marriages, but I can't remember for sure. Either that or her first husband was a Finn. And I believe she was an art teacher, but anyway he leaves her in control of the Scandia when he's away. Which is most of the time. Who better than an art teacher to watch it for him while he's gone?”

“Gladys came from Finland?”

“More likely her grandparents.”

“Well, if the institute goes under, everything in the village, except maybe those living on social security and pension checks … I mean what little business there is will go under too, won't it?”

“Scary what's happening all over the country.”

Charlie set out smoked salmon and hard rolls and cheese and deli potato salad for lunch. And tasty selections of locally grown cherries and berries and plums. Deputy Olsen kept talking while he ate but declined the salmon. “I get so tired of fish. In Texas, I suppose poor kids lived on beans. Well, in Oregon guess what we lived on?”

Rose came from Astoria too. Rose Kortinemi. “Finn mixed with Italian, if that ain't a fishy salad.”

“Rose came from Italy or Finland?”

“Her father's family sometime back came from Finland.” Deputy Olsen scraped a Bing cherry off its stem and seed. “Who knows where Italians come from?”

He was young and pale and pleasantly freckled and, Charlie had a totally groundless inkling, not nearly as tough as Deputy Tortle. If Charlie ever had to elude either one, she'd pick Olsen. If anything, Linda Tortle overestimated Charlie's capacities and nerve.

“You said yesterday morning you took your girlfriend to get help for her dreams to Paige Magill and it really helped her. Do you still think I should go?” Charlie rose to put the teakettle on and rummaged through the supplies to find Hostess Twinkies for the deputy's dessert.

“I wouldn't take out an IRA from the Magill woman, mind you, but Stephy certainly got straightened out at the Dream Emporium. And if you knew Stephy, well—”

“What does Paige Magill do? How long did the straightening-out last?”

“Got her to keep going over her dreams until she figured out what they meant. See, the dreams was telling Stephy something in her life was wrong and it was daytime stuff that was actually bugging her, but the dreams were trying to work it out. They finally decided it was because she was still living with her folks and her dad's always making her feel dumb. She moves in with me and she stops dreaming altogether.” He reddened slightly when he thought about that and Charlie covered her grin with the pretense of wiping cherry juice from her lips. “It took a couple of months is all, her going once a week.”

Stephy had been out of high school for five years and had worked her way up from stocker to checkout at a Chinook supermarket. Deputy Olsen droned on and Charlie's attention had begun to wander when suddenly he was talking about Paige Magill again.

“I hear she has lots of men friends,” Charlie said, trying to catch up with the conversation and aim it to suit her.

He shrugged as if he didn't pay attention to that sort of gossip and squished the filling pulp out of his Twinkie to lick separately. Then he paused with a glob still on his lip. “Well, I did see her once in the little red Ferrari with that painter, Michael. He drives like he's demented which, if you listen to him at all, it appears that's just what he is. People like him shouldn't have a driver's license, let alone a Ferrari.”

This sounded promising and Charlie was about to pursue it when someone knocked at the door. Her jailor went to answer it. It was Jack Monroe.

He was in his body.

He kept trying to peer over the deputy's shoulder or around it to talk to Charlie but was told no visitors. “But she's my agent and I just sold my book and—”

“I heard about that. Congratulations, Mr. Monroe.”

“Thanks, but you see,” and he raised his voice to be sure Charlie heard, “I've got this chapter here and I'd like her opinion on it. It won't take long. If you could just give us a few minutes.”

“Sorry, but I'll give it to her for you.”

Charlie groaned and rubbed the back of her neck like the sheriff had this morning. Needing constant reassurance each step of the way was the sign of an amateur. A professional, whether it was his first book or his fifth, did his own work and took his lumps. If Charlie praised the chapter, Jack would waste weeks daydreaming of glory and perhaps refuse to heed an editor's call for revisions.

“
But my agent said this was the best part.
”

“
Your agent's not the one buying the book, Jack.
”

If Charlie panned it or sounded a sour note he could very well be unable to complete the manuscript, so deep in despair would she have flung him. Charlie's favorite amateur clients had spouses or live-ins to inflict this torture upon by making them read and comment on the manuscript-in-progress every day and letting Charlie off the hook.

“I should look at this first,” the deputy apologized when he brought the chapter back to the table, its author shut out in the cold, gray day. “Be sure he's not passing on some kind of information about the murder, you know.”

“Deputy Olsen, be my guest.” This was the very last time Charlie would allow herself to get horned into representing an amateur who did not have either a fall-over-dead blockbuster idea going for him or superstar status already established in another field, so help her God.

“You know, my Stephy writes a pretty mean poem. Maybe you should look at some of her writing. She's a lot better at typewriting than Jack Monroe too.”

“Agents don't handle poetry, Deputy.”

“Ooo-ob?” he asked, puzzled. “Ooooo-bee? What's he talking about?”

Charlie grabbed the first page, ignoring the misspellings and clumsy typing, and read about Jack's first experiments with out-of-body experiences.

He'd kept thinking he was lying on the ceiling and that he was asleep.

Chapter 20

When Deputy Tortle came to relieve Deputy Olsen, she found her colleague and Charlie deep in contemplation of OOBE's and Jack's chapter. Linda Tortle carried in still more groceries and put them in the refrigerator. Sheriff Bennett either assumed everybody ate like he did or wanted to make sure Charlie had no excuse to leave cabin three at the Hide-a-bye for the rest of the week.

“So what are you scheming now?” Linda asked once she'd shooed Olsen on his way and taken his place in front of Jack's chapter.

“I've learned that either Jack Monroe has the same dreams I do and thinks they're OOBE's, or I have OOBE's like he does and think they're dreams.” At first, Jack wrote, he could never remember these dreams, would just find himself in a panic trying to return to his body. But then he'd visit a place and know he had been there in his dreams. The chapter ended with the hook, “And then one day I realized these experiences weren't dreams!”

“I've had this feeling of flying out of control and getting all tingly just as I fell asleep before,” the deputy said after she'd read for awhile.

“I think everybody has,” Charlie assured her. Jack made it sound as though at certain times in life and under certain circumstances, even in certain places, it was likely to happen to anyone, but that only he and a few others had recognized it for what it was and perfected a technique enabling them to do it at will and to have some control over destinations.

Charlie tried to think of what she'd tell Jack. Actually it wasn't bad for rough copy but a chapter does not a book make and she didn't have her copy of his proposal to fit this chapter into the total picture. For lack of anything else to do Charlie retrieved
Death of a Grandmother
. She'd read the sample chapters but hadn't finished the summary of the rest.

After Sheriff Lester and Patsy Prudhomme's steamy session in the sheriff's mountaintop home, he had to arrest her for the murder of Gertrude Geis. Seems that Gertrude was shot and Patsy's prints were found on the gun and the gun was found in the trunk of her car. Meanwhile, Patsy was having dreams very like the ones Charlie had described to Paige over teacups.

Once in jail Patsy was subjected to “horrid abuse” but couldn't convince her lawyer of that. And the sheriff refused to see her. This was all very generally summarized, but Charlie found it chilling. Which of course was the intent.

“Deputy Olsen let me call my family and my office this morning,” she told Linda. “My boss claims you people will have to charge me pretty soon or let me go. He says—”

“You're not in jail, are you? You could be a prime witness being guarded by the department.”

“Or a chief suspect nobody can quite believe committed the crime in spite of fingerprints on the gun.”

“Revolver.”

“Sheriff Bennett's just trying to keep me from mixing up the puzzles, isn't he?”

“If you mean from interfering in a murder investigation, yes.”

“Did you tell him about
Death of a Grandmother?
”

“It's in my report.” Deputy Linda rose to switch on the television, knowing better than to ask Charlie's permission.

Charlie made it about halfway through a talk show that delved into such deep and mind-numbing problems as, How do you feel when you're feeling feelings, before she jumped to her feet and insisted they take a walk.

“Why? The weather's crummy.” Linda squinted up at Charlie as if trying to place her.

“Either that or let me call my lawyer.”

Charlie was a little surprised to find herself strolling along the path to the lighthouse minutes later. “Never assume a door is locked to you,” Richard Morse of Congdon and Morse Representation, Inc. had told her more than once, “until you have tried the knob, knocked, and then rammed it. People will always let you assume what it is most convenient for them to have you assume.”

Charlie glanced at the tall authoritarian figure beside her. “Did you know that Deputy Olsen's brother is preparing to take Brother Dennis to court over long-standing bills?”

“Deputy Olsen was told not to discuss the case and so was I.” But Linda's steps had paused.