Meadowlark (22 page)

He blinked at me. "No."

"You must be Jay Dodge."

Both of us started and stood up. A young woman in a
flowered dress, pumps, and a blue raincoat looked up at us. She was
about five feet two, heels and all.

She held out identification so Jay could inspect it. "I'm
Louise Callender. Dale said you'd fill me in." She had round pink
cheeks and blond hair and might have been Dale Nelson's sister.

Jay shook hands and introduced me.

Dale had called Deputy Callender away from a shopping
spree at the mall. She was detailed to sit outside Jason's room until
he regained consciousness. Dale wanted to question Jason, of course,
but I gathered that Callender was also supposed to guard the boys.
That was interesting, but not entirely surprising. I tried to envisage
her wrestling with a large man, Del Wallace, perhaps.

When Callender had conferred with Jay and was sitting on
the couch with the
National Geographic
, we headed down the
hall, bound for the cafeteria in the basement.

Jay leaned on the elevator button. "How are things at the
funny farm?"

"Uh..."

"That bad, huh?"

The doors opened, and we got in beside a couple of nurses
in polyester uniforms--pastel pants outfits, one with daisies all over
it. They smiled and went back to a conversation about the Portland
Trailblazers. They rode with us to the basement and also made for
the cafeteria. Bill's parents huddled in a far corner over coffee. It
wasn't until Jay and I were sitting at one of the tiny ice-cream parlor
tables that we could say anything of significance.

In other words, I had some time to think up a rationalization
for my wimpishness in the matter of Francis Hrubek. As I had
expected, Jay was outraged. Between savage bites of turkey
sandwich, he forbade me to go, told me I was a dolt and a patsy, and
offered me the use of the Honda. My ancient Toyota is not suitable
for long drives.

I dallied with my cup of bad coffee. "I'll be back by
one-thirty."

"Ha."

I said, "I'll have two and a half hours to persuade him to sign
all his books."

"Wonderful."

I eyed him over my mug. "Let's go home."

He finished chewing the last of his sandwich, patted his
moustache with the paper napkin, and laid the crumpled napkin on
the table. "I can't leave until Jason regains consciousness."

"That could take days!"

He explained that he was convinced the accident had been
rigged and that Jason had seen something incriminating.

I leaned back. "Was he blackmailing the murderer?"

"Maybe, maybe not. The timing is strange."

"Hmm. Hugo is killed. Ten days pass. Mary
disappears--"

"And things start to happen. I think Jason and Bill saw her in
Seaside with the murderer."

"Does Dale agree?"

"He's willing to think about it."

"Hence Louise Callender."

"Yeah." He took a last swallow of tea.

I got up. "I thought your opposition to my little Portland
jaunt was uncharacteristically feeble. If you're going to camp out at
the hospital, I'll bring you a razor and a toothbrush."

"Thanks." He actually looked guilty.

"Do you want me to wait with you?"

"No. It could--"

"Take days," I finished. "All right, Jay, but I don't think Jason
is your responsibility."

He shrugged back into his all-weather jacket. "I don't have a
legal obligation to him, but he is a student. His father's driving down
from Seattle, and his mother and step-father should be here any
minute. I'll have to talk to them."

I shivered. "Good luck."

He walked me out to the Honda. As I unlocked the car, he
said, "Don't let that conniving woman bully you into anything
else."

I gave him a wifely peck on the cheek. "I won't. See you
later."

I didn't stop by the bookstore. From then until the end of the
workshop it would have to wait. When I got home, Bianca had left a
message on the recorder. She sounded urgent. I called Bonnie.

That absorbed a good hour. I took a nice hot shower and
changed into sweats. I read the paper. I packed a duffel with supplies
for Jay. He might as well be comfortable. Then I called Bianca.

Angie answered, sounding tired. When I had identified
myself, she said, "Del just drove Trish to Raymond. She was having
false labor pains. At least she thinks they're false."

"Wow. Bianca called me. Do you know why?"

"It's probably about Bill and Jason. You knew about the
wreck, didn't you?"

"Uh, yes."

"Oh, here she is. She wants to talk to you."

She wanted to rank me down for not telling her about the
wreck.

When she paused for breath, I said, "Bianca?"

"What?"

"Shut up. If you want me to drive to Portland tomorrow you
will speak to me very, very softly."

She made a noise of protest.

"Jay and I found the boys this morning. I didn't tell you
because Dale Nelson told me not to."

"But I was so worried about them--" She broke off. When
she spoke again, her voice sounded scared. "Did somebody cause the
wreck?"

"I don't know, Bianca, and I'm not going to talk about it." I
had just talked about it to Bonnie in considerable detail, including
speculation, but Bonnie was a friend and Bonnie was discreet.

After that Bianca made a disheartened attempt to get me to
hang around the airport for another hour waiting for two of the
workshop participants. She wasn't up to her usual form, however,
and I managed to resist.

I drove back to the hospital at six. Jason was still
unconscious. It would be days, of course, if not weeks, before Bill
could be interviewed. The doctors now thought he was paralyzed
from the waist down, though there was some possibility of partial
recovery of movement. They still had no firm opinion about
permanent brain damage. Jay had been dealing with the Johnsons
and Debbie Davis, Jason's mother, all afternoon.

I dragged Jay down to the cafeteria again and we had a
macaroni and cheese casserole for dinner. A noisy family group
dominated the restaurant area, so it wasn't until we got to the Jell-O
pudding that we had an opportunity for real conversation. The
family dissolved, leaving us alone except for the servers, who were
doing a desultory clean-up.

I don't know what it is with cafeterias and the Jell-O
company. You can go for years without seeing a Jell-O
pudding--except in cafeterias. I toyed with mine. It tasted of cocoa and
cardboard, except for a blob of white stuff on top. That tasted of
plastic.

Jay dug in without hesitation. He scraped the last of the
chocolate from the glass cup and shoved the cup back, swabbing his
moustache with a paper napkin. "Dale got preliminary results from
the crime lab this afternoon." He crumpled the napkin.

He meant the state crime lab's analysis of the scene of
Hugo's murder. I wondered what the crime lab would make of my
pudding. "And?"

"This is confidential--"

"For God's sake, Jay."

He scowled. "You don't seem to be able to resist Bianca
Fiedler's blandishments. We want Bianca and her staff kept in the
dark."

This was unsurprising, but I was interested to observe that
Jay was using the pronoun "we" without consciousness. That meant
he thought of himself as inside the investigation. He wouldn't think
that unless Dale did, too.

"My lips are sealed." I shoved my unfinished dessert away.
"Probably permanently, by that fake mousse."

"Aw, it wasn't that bad. Comfort food."

"Jay," I said gently, "tell me about the lab report."

"They found traces in the wheelbarrow."

The wheelbarrow he was referring to was one of those large,
low-slung carts used to haul plant clippings. "Hugo was carried to
the ice house in the wheelbarrow?"

Jay nodded. "Postmortem."

"So he was killed near the greenhouses." I brooded. The
wheelbarrow was stored near the greenhouses--Angie's territory.
Not Del's. "But Angie--"

"Has an alibi." He smoothed his moustache. "At least, she
does if we can definitely establish that Hugo was alive until one in
the afternoon. I think we will."

"When Jason wakes up?"

"Maybe."

"Then the mutilations and the ice house business were a
sort of post-meditation--whatever the opposite of premeditation
is."

"Maybe." He drew a breath. "I think Groth had an
appointment with his killer at the greenhouses, probably around one
or one-thirty. They quarreled for whatever reason, and Groth was
killed in the fight. The M.E. thinks he took a while to die from the
head wound, as long as an hour, though he would have been deeply
unconscious. The body was moved maybe as much as two hours
after he died."

Envisaging the scene was making me sick. Or it may have
been the Jell-O pudding. "So he was transported to the ice house in
the wheelbarrow, and there was a time gap. I don't see that that gets
you further along. You still have two suspects."

He raised his eyebrows.

"Del and Keith."

"Five," he said. "Wallace, McDonald, Marianne Wallace,
Bianca Fiedler, and Angie Martini. But we're pretty sure now that
we're looking for an impulsive personality."

"An improviser." I nodded. "But Angie's alibi--"

"Could be after the fact, or even before it."

"So the timing is crucial. I don't see Marianne."

"She's not very likely--no apparent motive--but she would
have had the opportunity." He stood up. "Dale is going to do another
round of interviews."

"Tomorrow?" I thought of Bianca's probable reaction and
groaned. "That should enliven the morning."

"What's it to you, my sweet? You'll be in Portland."

I groaned again. I also wondered whether I might not return
to discover that the show was over--that Dale had made an arrest. It
was not that I wanted to be in at the kill, but I didn't want to miss
anything crucial either.

We went back upstairs and I met Jason's mother. She was a
cocktail waitress and seemed more worried about missing work
than about Jason, but that may have been my imagination.

I drove to Portland International Airport via Interstate 5
and 205, by-passing Vancouver and catching a picture-perfect view
of Mount Hood from the Glen Jackson Bridge. Sunday traffic was light
on the bridge, and had been on Highway 30, all the way from Astoria
to Longview, where I crossed back over the Columbia. The weather
was brilliant, our first real spring day.

I took the cell phone with me. The evening before, I had left
Jay prepared to spend the night at the hospital. He wasn't beside me
when my alarm woke me at five-thirty, so I gathered that Jason must
still be unconscious. I didn't call the hospital before I left. It was too
early. Once I reached the highway on the Oregon side and saw how
beautiful the weather was, I forgot to call.

When residents of the area say "the mountain is out," they
mean that the native fog, smog, and low-hanging clouds have finally
cleared away, and the mountain, whichever mountain it may be, is
visible. Or it may have gone away and come back, who knows?

That morning
all
the mountains were out. Just before
I crossed the Lewis and Clark Bridge at Longview, I saw the
truncated cone of Loowit, Mount Saint Helens. Approaching
Vancouver, I saw Mount Saint Helens again, its shy twin, Mount
Adams, and, a bit farther on, Mount Hood. I thought I also caught a
glimpse of Mount Rainier in my rearview mirror, but that may have
been an illusion.

I did not forget murder and mayhem, but my mind was tired
of running in futile circles. Getting out of the Shoalwater area filled
me with something like exuberance. "Nothing is so beautiful as
spring."

I swept along in my spring daze, ten miles an hour above the
limit on US 30 and five on the Interstate, when I reached it. At the
airport, I left the car in the short-term parking facility and headed
across the zebra-striped crosswalk to the terminal. As I approached
the wide revolving door, a mellifluous male voice welcomed me to
Portland International Airport. It went on to assure me that parking
was limited to the curb lane for a maximum of three minutes, and
that the middle lane was for active loading and unloading.
"Violators," the voice said sadly, "may be cited and towed."

Undaunted, I whisked past the clump of smokers standing
near a vast concrete ashtray and whirled through the door. I took the
north entrance because Hrubek was coming in on a Delta flight. I
rode the escalator up behind an impenetrable barrier of passengers
with large suitcases, checked the monitor above one of the Delta
desks for the gate number, and trotted on in.

PDX is an airport like any other with one small exception. It
has a superb bookstore. Powell's City of Books had opened a branch
at the airport after the last remodeling session. Most airport book
displays are marginally less interesting than the ones at
supermarkets. Sometimes an airport has a Barnes & Noble or a
Smith's. The Powell's airport branch is a store for people who
actively love books. It does very well. It also opens at 9:00 a.m. It was
ten of nine.

I drank a cup of espresso in one of the many coffee
boutiques, and then strolled across the teal-and-purple carpet to the
bookstore. Thanks to my light heart and lead foot, I had forty-five
minutes to squander. I admired the displays, chatted with the clerk,
bought Jay a pioneer diary in facsimile and Bonnie a guide that laid
out walking tours of Paris. I also found a slim collection of Francis
Hrubek's early essays I didn't have in stock. As I paid for my loot, I
mentioned that I'd come to the airport to meet Hrubek.

The clerk's face lit up. "One of the gods," she breathed. "Do
you think he'd autograph our books?"

I had no idea, but I agreed to raise the issue with Hrubek.
Then I headed for the D concourse. The remodeled north wing
featured skylights that would brighten even a gray day, and that
morning the effect was dazzling. I laid my handbag on the conveyor
belt of the nearest metal detector and walked through the little gate
without setting off the alarm. The man behind me was less lucky. I
glanced back and saw him unbuckle his big studded belt. Things have
changed at airports since then.