Murder at Moot Point (32 page)

“We all know about Rose's powers,” she said softly. “We've relied on them before. And if it hadn't been for Charlie here—”

“Or Eddie,” Gladys said desolately.

“Charlie and Eddie,” Paige amended. “With the sheriff out of commission, the party not back yet, the fog still holding—Rose is right. There's no time to lose.”

“Eddie hasn't killed anybody. Olie was already dead when he mauled the body,” Brother Dennis said. “Eddie wouldn't harm a soul.”

“Yeah, but if he hadn't kept digging him up like that, Georgette wouldn't have had to die. I suppose Michael would still have come across Olie's luggage in the garage though,” Gladys conceded.

“I didn't kill anybody either.” Doc Withers was talking to Charlie. “All I did, or Brother Dennis too, was to bury Olie and carry Georgette to the picnic table. All Paige did was to get your fingerprints on Michael's gun. We had nothing to do with Michael, and Olie really did die of a heart attack. It just might have been hard to prove after Eddie got through with the body. And poor Gladys didn't—”

“Yeah, but he had the heart attack because he was on his way up to the institute to confront you about sleeping with his wife,” Rose said.

“Well, he didn't love her. He never stayed home.” Doc turned again to Charlie. “Do you know his will bequeathed almost all his money to an artists' colony in New Mexico in the names of his first wife and their son? Left Gladys nearly nothing. Made her sign an agreement when she married him.”

So if Olie merely stayed missing instead of dead, Gladys could siphon off the money and invest it in certain businesses in Moot Point, among other things. And everybody involved would have a financial stake in keeping quiet about his death. “But Eddie kept digging him up and Georgette wandered across the grave that night in the fog and had to die,” Charlie said. “Which one of you shot her?”

“I did,” Rose answered calmly, “in case you're thinking I won't have the nerve to use this thing.”

“We offered her money too, but she got hysterical and locked herself in my bathroom,” Gladys said. “Rose went up to get Michael's gun—he was eating at the restaurant—and when she came down the stairs Georgie was climbing out the window. Her psychic powers told her Georgie would never listen to reason.”

“Just like you,” Rose said. “It's a foggy night now, too.”

“There's no more time for talk, Rose,” Paige warned.

“You men get away from that dog,” Rose ordered, but a little breathlessly. “And you, California girl, go stand next to him.”

“If Rose killed Georgette and Michael, why do the rest of you have to pay for it?” Charlie tried to keep fear out of her voice but her tongue made funny clicking sounds because her mouth was so dry. “I mean friendship's a wonderful thing but—”

“She didn't kill Michael, I did.” Tears streamed down Gladys Bergkvist's lumpy cheeks. “I had to. He found Olie's luggage in the garage. Said he wanted half of Olie's money to keep quiet.”

“Jesus, you buried your husband,” Charlie said, “why didn't you get rid of his luggage?”

“Well, first there was Georgie snooping around and then the police and then you. Didn't seem like there was time. It's not like it wasn't hidden. Michael really had to—”

“Shut up, Gladys. We're all in this together,” Paige said, “because we're all accomplices. We all knew what was going down. We have to stick together. Do as Rose says and get away from that dog. We can't let one dog stop us now.”

“I didn't know you poisoned Michael.” Doc Withers looked at his lover as if in a new light, but sidled away from his doomed patient. “I thought Rose poisoned his box lunch.”

“I put ground-up cherry leaves and twigs in his wine. He always took a bottle along when he painted. Paige once told me not to let my puppies chew on cherry twigs because they release cyanide when you eat them. I didn't know he'd drive off the point. Don't know what I thought he'd do.”

Rose prodded Charlie over to Eddie with Irene's gun. Brother Dennis stood his ground next to his faithful canine friend. But Eddie bolted and flew through the air.

And Charlie finally managed to scream.

Chapter 35

“Police! Freeze,” Deputy Olsen yelled. “Holy shit!”

Shots rang out. Charlie went down. Eddie sailed past her.

“Eddie, no!” Brother Dennis commanded. There was a definite melee occurring with grunts, shouts, growls, and screaming.

The screaming was Charlie. “Stop it, damn it. Am I hurt? I don't think so.” For once nobody was paying any attention to Charlie. Not even Eddie.

He was trying to maul Deputy Olsen but the lamp shade kept getting in his way. Olsen was on the ground under the dog, both Doc and Brother Dennis trying to pull him off. Gladys Bergkvist was curled up like a slug under attack. Her half sister, Rose, stood mumbling down at her own foot, Irene's deceased husband's long-barreled gun dangling from her hand. Paige Magill was on her knees struggling to get Rose's shoe off.

But over it all, somehow, a quiet, relaxed voice of reason managed to prevail. It drawled, “That dog has got one second to live unless you get it under control before then, dudes. And you ladies freeze for serious, because I don't plan to miss.”

The tall lean shadow of Deputy Linda Tortle squatted in the classic television stance with gun held balanced and aimed in both hands out in front of her.

That voice moved the dudes to heroics and Eddie was saved. He went to the animal shelter in Chinook. What was left of Olie Bergkvist joined Michael in the morgue. The others went to the jail in the Moot County Courthouse. Except for Rose and Charlie. They went to the hospital.

Somehow, in the chaos of the leaping dog and people scurrying every which way, Rose had shot herself in the foot. She got nowhere insisting her doctor of choice was Paige Magill.

After making Charlie perform various eye and balancing exercises, another doctor decided her head injury was not serious.

“How bad is he?” Charlie asked Linda Tortle when they finally leaned against the two-toned wall (hospital puce and mortuary gray) outside Wes's room, waiting for the nurse to complete her ministrations and give them permission to enter.

Linda peered down her long nose at Charlie and smiled a lazy, triumphant smile. “Bruised, scratched, dislocated shoulder, lumps, aches and pains. Miracle it wasn't worse. He was really tooling.”

“But Rose made it sound like all three were near death.”

“That's because she got her information from two highly excited sisters. Frank and Clara are a little worse off, but not much. Lucky they were wearing seat belts and driving big, heavy, rusty, old Detroit steel though. Makes me think I'll keep my Pontiac yet a while after all.”

“If you can afford to feed it,” Charlie parried, vastly relieved they weren't about to die. “So, uh, while he's sitting in the hospital getting his cuts and scrapes cleaned up, a female detective overhears the confessions and saves the life of another intended victim. Good work, Deputy Tortle, but the bumbling Olsen will probably get the credit for it.”

“I can't discuss the case of course, but I expect there's a certain intended victim witness who'll be called back for the trial to tell it like it really was.”

“I think it's bargain time again, don't you?” Charlie asked nonchalantly.

“Jesus, you're cold-blooded. Okay, one question.”

“Two.”

Linda groaned behind clenched teeth, raising her palms toward the ceiling in a pleading gesture. “Okay, two. But that's it. You are something else, you know that?”

“It's what I
don't
know. I don't know why you lied to me about Olie's airline schedule. Or didn't he come by plane?”

“Right on schedule. So Georgette Glick probably did see Gladys Bergkvist driving him into town from the airport. All I didn't tell you was that there was a computer shutdown on Delta's files for that time and when I talked to you, Delta was the one airline we hadn't been able to check out. I walked back in the courthouse after our lunch today and they'd retrieved damaged files and there his name was.”

“Was Wes rushing to the village to tell me that when he had his accident?”

“You know what the real mystery is here? Why didn't anybody hear Rose shoot Georgette in such a small, quiet place as Moot Point? The shot was fired outside, it wasn't that late at night, and sound carries on fog. I doubt there was a silencer for that revolver.”

“Backfires,” Charlie assured her. “Was he rushing to save me when he had the accident then?”

“What do you mean backfires? Oh, trucks on 101. People probably hear them all the time. Good work, Agent Greene. Hell, I should have thought of that.”

“Well, why
was
he rushing to Moot Point?”

“Don't ask me. So, you tell it exactly like it happened when the first one of them goes to trial. Deal?”

“I haven't asked my second question yet.”

“You sure as hell have. Why was the sheriff rushing to Moot Point? And why didn't I tell you all I knew about Olie's flight schedule? And I did. I just didn't know it all when I talked to you this noon. So, we got a deal?”

“No, this is what we've got. Olie Bergkvist comes home and learns of Gladys's affair with the local veterinarian and stalks off to the institute to confront him. Why not to the holistic animal clinic?”

It was Tuesday night, Linda explained, and when there were no outsiders in for seminars the privileged few met for the heavy stuff with Brother Dennis at the institute on Tuesday nights. Channeling and telepathy, tarot and even séances. “So Doc would have been at the institute. Probably Gladys too if Olie hadn't come home.”

“How do you know all this?”

Linda shrugged. “Common knowledge. And I did have some contact with Doc and the institute once, remember. I heard they were seriously looking into Rose's psychic powers too. Gladys told me on the way to the courthouse that she was running along behind Olie trying to reason with him when he went down. She left him there in the woods to get help at the institute. When they all got back, Olie was not only dead but being mangled by good old Eddie, who ‘would never harm a soul.'”

“And so they talked it all out to their mutual advantage.”

“And decided a missing Olie was more profitable than a dead one, so Gladys could liquidate the assets. Paige said as long as he was dead anyway, they weren't hurting Olie. But Eddie kept digging him up and Georgette Glick snooped it out and Brother Dennis discovered her at the grave and convinced her to go down to Gladys's with him where all would be explained and they could con her into joining into the conspiracy for a price. Georgette wouldn't con. She locked herself in the bathroom and tried to crawl out the window, whereupon Rose shot her.”

“Do you really think Rose's psychic powers told her to run up and find Michael's gun so, just as she was coming down the stairs from his studio, Georgette was climbing out the window?”

“Who cares? She confessed. You're a witness and Olsen and me. And the rest are going to fall apart and spill all to make it easier on themselves anyway. Meanwhile, a suspicious artist named Michael Cermack comes across Olie's luggage in the garage his Ferrari shares with the Bergkvists' cars and demands more quiet money than Olie's widow is prepared to pay, and she doses his wine with cherry debris. He probably convulses, and having started the car stomps down on the accelerator and runs the Ferrari off the point. It's all there.”

“Jack wasn't part of it? He was closely connected with the institute,” Charlie said.

Jack Monroe and Brother Dennis had grown apart recently and Jack was no longer of the inner circle. Deputies Tortle and Olsen had come into town looking for Charlie and stopped at the Earth Spirit where the party was in full swing. Jack had told them he hadn't seen Charlie since the picnic but he had an uneasy feeling something weird was going down up at the institute because Brother Dennis had insisted on crowding the party into the Earth Spirit. “Jack said it would have been easier for him to nip down to get the tapes and take them back up to the institute which has a lot better sound system. Then Brother Dennis orders him to keep the searchers there and runs off with Rose. How many questions is this, anyway?”

“How did Paige Magill get my fingerprints on Michael's gun?”

Deputy Tortle couldn't answer that one. Neither could Wes Bennett. He manufactured his own release, prematurely Charlie thought and so did the hospital staff, by the sheer force of his size, his office, and his bullheadedness. Charlie rode back to the courthouse with him and he spent the entire trip gloating over the fact that both confessed killers were women. “Have to see about building more female holding cells.”

Paige wouldn't see her but she did see Jack Monroe, who was busily rounding up legal counsel for his friends, and what comforts were allowed them. “I'm sorry I got you involved in all this, Charlie,” he said as they both stood wearily on the courthouse steps and watched a glimmer of dawn lighten the foggy night. He mussed her hair in a fatherly gesture. “I just can't fathom five intelligent people getting themselves into such a mess. It's heartbreaking. Nor why I was so dense I didn't suspect anything until it was nearly too late for you.”

“Did you ask Paige about my fingerprints on the gun? It's driving me crazy.”

He nodded. “She said she took it to your cabin to hide it in your car to further connect you to Georgette's murder, but the sheriff had taken your car. Then she found your door unlocked and slipped in, thinking to hide it inside. But you slept so soundly she was able to get your prints on it without waking you. So she put the gun in a Baggie and threw it in the ditch, knowing Mary and Norma would find it if the sheriff's department didn't.”