Dead Body Language (21 page)

“Lacy did call the sheriff eventually, when Reuben didn’t come home that night. But by the time we got out there, it was too dark to do much searching. Truthfully, nobody was too worried, not even Lacy. Reuben didn’t always make a regular habit of coming straight home from work. When we got to the spot, there was no sign of the boat. We figured he probably stopped off somewhere. He often did.” Mickey glanced at me with a know-what-I-mean look. “When we finally found Sluice at dawn, wearing his life jacket and holding onto the rock, we knew something was up.”

“How awful,” I said. “What about the boat?”

“Divers went looking for it early that morning. Found it at the bottom of the lake after a few hours.”

“How did Lacy take it?”

“Not good. Seemed to think it really didn’t happen and kept waiting for Reuben to come driving up in his Cherokee. Celeste was a big help for her then. Got her to accept the fact that Reuben was gone and then helped her deal with it. She worked a miracle really.”

“What happened to Sluice? Was he all right?”

“Apart from being cold, waterlogged, and terrified, he was, how shall I put it, shy a few more nuggets. Started muttering all the time. Now he walks around guarding his backpack like it’s some kind of priceless artifact. Nobody pays much attention to him. Some folks think he might have been responsible for Reuben’s death. Who knows? I
doubt we’ll ever know the truth. He hasn’t been very coherent since then.”

I started to head out the door, then paused and turned around. “Mickey, did Wolf say why he happened to be at the cemetery at that time of night?”

“Nope. Maybe he has a relative buried there. Don’t know. I’m sure the sheriff will be asking him about that. Why?”

“Just curious about why a person walks around in a cemetery late at night.”

I said good-bye to the deputy and drove home, taking in the scented air of our skunk population, my knees creaking with residual pain from the bike crash.

Something seemed to be haunting Sluice. Was he involved some way in Reuben’s death? Lacy’s murder? He was certainly familiar with the cemetery since he worked there. And he’d probably have access to all the instruments. But what would be his motive? Maybe you didn’t need one if you were crazy.

Too many questions, not enough beer, I decided, as I put my key in the diner’s lock. I hesitated before opening the door, and called Casper before setting foot inside. When I saw her behaving normally, I moved in cautiously, still uneasy about the earlier break-in. After a thorough search of the place, I flopped on the couch and distracted myself by catching the late movie once again. This one wasn’t captioned, so I watched a bunch of screaming kids running from a schoolhouse in Bodega Bay. A flock of birds was chasing them, trying to peck out their eyes and make nests from their hair. Cool stuff.

I lay down on the couch, kicked off my black, baby-doll Doc Marten’s that seemed to weigh ten pounds, and fluffed the throw pillows, too tired to change, wash up, or eat. The lone beer was enough to put me out. I never did see what happened to those poor little kids after the birds attacked the schoolteacher. But they didn’t give me bad dreams. I had plenty else to give me nightmares.

Early the next morning I put my visit to Arden Morris on hold. Showered and dressed in maroon jeans and a
matching ribbed cotton knit sweater, I fixed up my bike, then rode it back to the cemetery to have a look around. I was no detective; sinister footprints or trampled flower beds were not my forte. But I still wanted to be there, to try to visualize what had happened to Sluice.

The brightness of the day made the cemetery cheery and inviting rather than morose and forbidding, as on the previous evening. A few children were once again at play on the park playground structures, and a young couple sat cuddling on a bench next to a lone man reading a book.

I walked over to the open grave where warning signs were tacked to a pair of sawhorses that now blocked entry to the area. The backhoe was still parked beside the pit, parts of it highlighted with a white powdery film. Dusted for prints? I wondered.

I ducked under the plastic banner that connected the sawhorses and moved closer to the open grave. Peering inside, I saw something glinting in the morning light. Tiny, half-buried, but sparkly, apparently it had been overlooked in last night’s darkness and confusion.

I looked around for something to hook or catch the shiny object but found nothing. I wasn’t about to leap into the six-foot hole and retrieve it—I might never get out again. I pushed away a scene from Edgar Allan Poe and I thought for a few minutes. That led me to the ladder the paramedics had used last night to retrieve Sluice Jackson. Where was it? The landscape shed.

I found the ladder propped sideways against the side of the dilapidated building. In a matter of minutes I had lowered it into the pit and was climbing slowly down inside, checking first to see if anyone might be watching. The coast was clear.

Digging around the crumbly red clay, I picked up the shiny object, dusted it off, and slipped it on my finger reflexively. A ring—large, gold and ornate. Obviously created for a man. A worm sticking out of the sides of the dirt wall reminded me where I was. I quickly climbed back up the ladder.

Replacing the ladder where I found it, I scanned the area near the backhoe on a hunch. After several minutes of
bending and swiping, I found what I was looking for hidden beneath a nearby bush.

Sluice’s backpack. He never went anywhere without it. Except maybe the hospital.

He’d apparently set it aside when he went to work on the backhoe. I thought he might have done as much. It wouldn’t have been easy to hold onto the bag while operating the big machinery. But I’d never known him to let it out of his sight. The backpack had been passed over last night in the dark. No one had even thought to look for it.

I sat down on a nearby cement bench and opened one of the zippered compartments. Two Cornish pastie meat pies, still in their wrappers, slightly squished, and smelling pungent. A pencil engraved “dom,” which I took to be what was left of the name of the mortuary, knife-sharpened nearly to the nub. Four Q-Tips. A small tube of Vaseline. A set of dentures. A postcard from a country western singer, well known on the Mother Lode circuit, with the inscription: “To Sluice Jackson. Keep the fuck away from me. Stacey.” A gold locket with a picture of a young girl inside. His sweetheart? His daughter? And at the bottom a crumpled piece of paper.

I unfolded the paper and smoothed it in my fingers. The name “Leonard Swec” was written in smeared pencil.

I returned the items to the bag and closed the flap. Nothing of any particular interest that I could see. The name Swec rang a tiny bell—I’d have to check it out.

I pulled the backpack’s leather strap over my shoulder, hopped on my bike, and rode on to the sheriff’s office. He’d want to see the pack and the ring, I was certain. No one was in the office except the dispatcher, who was busy taking a call. As I waited to explain my find, I watched her animated lips as she spoke into the tiny microphone attached to the headgear.

“Yes, French. Three? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And you don’t know where they could have gone to? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Can you describe them? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay. I’ll send Deputy Arnold over as soon as he gets back from another call. Try not to touch anything in the area. I understand, French. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yes, French.”

She pulled the earphone from her head and shook her bouncy dyed-brown permed curls. “If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. Hi, Connor. Whatcha got there?”

Rebecca Matthews was an old pro on the dispatch circuit. And when I say old, I mean seventy-four and proud of it, still feisty, alert, and reminiscently beautiful, with a pink little smile, a creamy albeit crinkled complexion, and sparking green eyes, slightly bloodshot. She smoothed her sundress as she spoke.

I explained my find to Rebecca and asked her to keep the backpack for the sheriff until he returned. She promised she would.

“But it’ll probably be awhile before he can take a look at it. He’s out to the hospital where Sluice Jackson was admitted and I’m sure he’ll be there a bit. I could give it to Deputy Arnold when he gets back from a domestic, but first I need to send him to the mortuary on a five-oh-one.”

“Five-oh-one?”

“Suspected burglary. French claims one of his client’s jewelry is gone and the family is having a nit-fit, making all kinds of accusations. They’ve threatened to sue him if he doesn’t get it back. He says nothing like this has ever happened before. Says it will ruin his business. You know how he is, so quick to panic.”

Jewelry. “Did he say what’s missing?” I asked, my heart beginning to pound out a rap beat.

“Some rings. Three of them. Gold.”

“What’s the name of the family?”

“Sweat. Or something like that.”

I pulled the loose ring from my finger and examined the inside. In tiny script the letters L.F.S. were engraved.

Swec. L.F.S. Leonard Swec. I thought, as I spun the ring around on my finger.

A
fter talking with the dispatcher, once again I postponed my visit to Arden Morris in Rio Vista. Something more interesting had come up and Arden Morris could wait.

I parked my bike in front of Wolf’s Gold Expeditions and Jewelry at the corner of Main and Church streets and smiled at the incongruous shop, located between the Naughty Lingerie boutique and Liquid Gold Cappuccino Café.

The jewelry shop was faced in weather-distressed wood made to look like an old mine. The logo had been hand-lettered in black paint with a large brush, reinforcing the image of a fortunate prospector who had just set up shop.

Once inside the swinging saloon doors, I moved over to the display case, which featured sparkling gold rings, necklaces, bracelets, watches, and the like. They were nestled on a bed of soft river sand and interspersed with large faux nuggets I suspected were iron pyrite. The jewelry, however, looked real, and had prices to match. Wolf did excellent work and his ornate pieces were unique.

When I first visited the store to have my ex-boy friend’s
gold bracelet melted down and returned to a nugget, Wolf had been accommodating but not overly friendly. Perhaps the gruff demeanor was part of the gold country show.

Wolf was attractive in a grungy sort of way, a kind of aging hippie, probably in his forties or fifties—it was tough to tell from the outdoorsy exterior. He wore his long, unkempt hair in a ponytail tied with a leather strap. His body, tall, thin, but muscular, was usually displayed under motorcycle-emblazoned tank tops and cutoff jeans. He probably kept a few women’s eyes averted from the jewelry case for longer than necessary. His knit brows seemed never to relax over his dark eyes, and he hid his mottled, uneven teeth beneath a bushy mustache and a closed mouth.

Wolf was waiting on a customer at the back of the store where he promoted and sold gold-panning tours. A family of five, in Hawaiian shirts, Bermuda shorts, and straw cowboy hats, was signing up for the Gold Star Excursion, which would take them to three mines and guarantee them a few grains of ore from the streams. All that starting at $19.95 per person.

The family seemed eager to start buying the equipment that was de rigueur for the trip: picks, pans, vials to hold all that sifted loot, compasses, knives, the works. Their investment would be nearly two hundred dollars; the gold-dust payoff would be more like fifty cents.

I looked over the jewelry case while I waited for the transaction to be completed and wondered about the quiet, unobtrusive Wolf Quick. What had he been doing at the cemetery so late last night? How did he happen upon Sluice Jackson?

A murder mystery in the rough-and-ready gold country would be great for business, especially Wolf’s business, I thought. Tourists would flock to the town out of morbid curiosity and vicarious thrills, and while visiting, might opt for a tour of the depleted gold mines and dry creeks. They might even buy a few pieces of expensive gold jewelry while they were at it.

I scanned the glittery rings beneath the clear glass.
Some with jewels, some randomly shaped, some smooth and shiny, some rugged and nuggetlike. Each was detailed and costly. A small hand-lettered sign read:
No Two Alike
.

I looked up from my sparkling daydream and noticed the tourists had vanished. Wolf sat perched on a stool in the back corner, talking on a cellular phone while polishing a bracelet. I watched his lips move but couldn’t make out any of the words, his mouth obscured by the receiver and his thick mustache. I waited for him to hang up, then I moved over casually.

“Hi, Wolf. Business seems good today, huh?”

He glanced up to acknowledge me and went back to his work.

“I was looking for a ring for my uncle … Remus. The ones in the cabinet are nice, but do you have anything else that’s more, I don’t know, something different?”

Wolf finished polishing the bracelet and slipped it into his pocket. With a side nod of his head, he indicated I was to follow him into the back room.

We passed behind a tie-dyed curtain and entered Wolf’s workroom. The small, cramped space was taken up by three massive, distressed-wood tables, each covered with a jumble of tools, molds, pots of melted wax, knives, chunks of gold, and other jewelry-making supplies I couldn’t identify. A couple of bracelets and a necklace rested in molds, waiting to be set free. Underneath one of the wooden benches, Wolf pulled open a drawer to reveal a scatter of rings of varying shapes and sizes.