Mudlark (3 page)

The man glanced at us as we came in, but the dispatcher must have answered, for he said, "This is Tom
Lindquist at the old McKay place. Two women are here saying there's a body in the dunes." He looked at me. "How
far?"

"About two hundred yards, uh, southwest. More south than west."

He spoke into the receiver. "Couple of hundred yards south of the approach. He'd better come on the
beach. It's foggy up here. Okay. Thanks, Betty." Nothing like a small town. He listened. "Sure. Right away." He hung
up and turned to us.

"I'll get some shoes on. Then I want you to show me the body. We're supposed to wait with it until the
sheriff's car comes. Are you okay?"

Bonnie said, "I need a bathroom."

He gestured through an archway. "It's in there, off the kitchen. Have some coffee." Then he jogged to a
stairway that led up from the small, cramped living room.

Bonnie and I looked at each other. "My need is greater," she said with dignity and bolted through the
archway into what turned out to be a large country kitchen. It was the real thing, not some tarted-up
House
Beautiful
fake, and much more cheerful than the dreary living room. It was cluttered but not disgusting. The
bathroom door--it was indeed off the kitchen, right next to the refrigerator--slammed. I went to the aging electric
range and found the coffee pot. My teeth were chattering.

The old McKay place was a fixer-upper that had not been fixed up. I rummaged in a cupboard with
apple green doors. They had little square panes like an ad from a 1920s
National Geographic
. I found a mug
and poured a cup as Bonnie emerged. The toilet was still flushing. I left my cup on the counter and used the
facilities. Oddly enough, the bathroom was very clean. The fixtures, including a claw-footed tub, were of the same
era as the kitchen cupboards.

Bonnie was drinking my coffee when I emerged. I was about to protest, but at that moment our host
came through the arch. He was shod in sneakers and had one arm in a windbreaker.

"Come on." He struggled into the jacket, pulled the kitchen door open, and stepped out onto a side
porch. "I was upstairs working when you knocked." He led us around the back of the house and across a small, neat
yard to the back gate. "I assumed a bunch of kids were playing games. Sometimes they think the place is
deserted."

"Must be a nuisance."

"Only for a few weeks in the summer." He stood aside to let us pass. "Lead the way."

The fog had not eased. I floundered in what I hoped was the right direction. None of us spoke. Bonnie
spotted her scarf before I did, and we began to jog. It had occurred to me that the children from those mobile
homes on the flat should not be allowed to stumble on the corpse. What was shocking and frightening to an adult
would be downright traumatic for a little kid. I halted about five feet from the body and turned to the others.
"There it is."

Lindquist was staring. He was a dark man, dark-haired and dark-eyed with a tan complexion. His face
turned gray. "My God, it's my wife."

I gabbled some kind of shocked apology, and Bonnie was also making horrified noises.

Lindquist shut his eyes briefly. When he opened them he said in calmer tones, "My ex-wife. Sorry for
the melodrama. I was…surprised." He drew a ragged breath. "I think I'm going to cover her face."

I opened my mouth to warn him that he shouldn't disturb the body, but he just took off his jacket, knelt
by her, and covered the head with its staring eye. He touched the right hand gently, then stood up again.

"I'm sorry," I said.

He shook his head. "It's okay. I wonder what the hell Cleo was doing up here."

The police were going to wonder exactly the same thing. I cleared my throat. "It's hard to tell, but I
think she's been dead for a while."

"Yeah," he said absently. "The birds have been at her."

I gulped. Perhaps the damage to the left eye had not been caused by the death blows. I was fiercely glad
I had not attempted CPR. I am not necrophilic.

"I scared a crow off when I found her." Bonnie's voice broke.

His eyes narrowed. "Are you all right? You've had a shock too. I'm sorry, I don't know your name."

"Bonnie Bell." She pointed due south. "I live in that summer cottage."

"The Williams place? I heard they were selling it." He turned to me. "I think you're probably Mrs.
Dodge."

"Lark," I said. "You must've lived here awhile."

"I grew up here." He looked around. "I suppose one of us ought to walk down toward the ocean. The
dispatcher said the car was just south of Shoalwater. He'll drive up the beach. It's faster."

"At twenty-five miles an hour?" That was the speed limit on the beach.

He didn't smile. "I think he'll move it a little."

I sighed. "I'll go. What do I do, wave my arms?"

"Whatever." He met my eyes. "If you're afraid, I'll go, but someone has to stay with the...with Cleo."

"I don't mind." I did rather, but I was sure Bonnie would not want to walk alone across the featureless
dunes to the beach.

Lindquist pointed me in the right direction, and I went fast.

I perched on a driftwood log a few feet back from the packed sand that was safe to drive on. The fog
was patchy by then with odd swirling patterns that magnified and distorted the gulls probing the waterline. I
watched a skitter of sanderlings, tiny sandpipers, hop at the edge of the surf. Each was mirrored on the wet surface.
Far off, I thought I saw a man walking a dog, but I was not at all sure.

At last the sheriff's car, with its lights whirling, raced up from the south. I jumped up and waved wildly.
The driver skewed the car round when he saw me and got out. He was wearing the brown county uniform. He was
fair, and his face was as open and ingenuous as a ten-year-old's. He had round pink cheeks.

He introduced himself--Dale Nelson--and I told him I could lead him to the body.

"Up by the old McKay place, Betty said."

"That's right."

"Get in, then. I don't want to leave the car here. Tide's coming in. Besides, there's a lot of kids around
here."

"Where's your partner?"

"What partner?" he said wryly. "We're shorthanded." His voice sounded less innocent than his
face.

I got in, and we jounced over to the access road and up to Lindquist's graveled drive. Nelson parked
behind the pickup, I got out, and he locked the car.

"You find the body?"

"My neighbor, Bonnie Bell, found it and, er, got my attention. I did check to make sure she...the woman
was dead. We asked Mr. Lindquist to call in. All three of us went back to the body."

"Know who it is?"

I hesitated then said neutrally, "I'd never seen the woman before, but Mr. Lindquist said she was his
former wife."

Nelson stopped dead. "You don't say? Cleo Hagen?" He whistled through his teeth. "I'll be damned. Cleo
Cabot Hagen. I think I'd better call in, Ms., er."

"Mrs. Lark Dodge. I live down the road."

"Okay, back in a minute." He returned to the cop car, and I could hear the radio crackle. I waited. He
must have had himself put through to the head of the CID at least, maybe even the sheriff.

I was thinking about the dead woman's name, trying to remember where I'd heard it. One difficulty of
moving to a new community is that you have to deal with a lot of unfamiliar names in a hurry. I sorted through the
names of people I knew of until I thought of Annie McKay, the editor of the Kayport
Gazette
. A small light
flashed. Cleo Cabot Hagen had been the target of one of McKay's many editorials on the deterioration of the local
ecosystem.

The dead woman was associated with the group building the resort complex half a mile south of
Bonnie's cottage. The resort would include a lodge with spa, shops, restaurants, and the usual condominiums.
There was a golf course in the works and, surrounding it, a number of single cottages. Although no buildings had
yet been erected, bulldozers had kept busy all summer rearranging the sandy soil, and helicopters had flown in and
out bearing engineers, architects, and company executives.

The dead woman's name recurred in news releases about the resort. I had gathered that Cleo Hagen
was the local liaison and probably fairly important in the organization. Annie McKay had printed news stories
about the elaborate project. The editorial in which she attacked Cleo Hagen had also bitterly condemned the county
commissioners for permitting a development of that size in an ecologically sensitive area. The planned population
density, McKay claimed, would disrupt wildlife habitats and threaten both the razor clam and Dungeness crab
harvests along our stretch of beach.

I thought Annie McKay's editorial was strong and well-reasoned. My neighbor, Matt Cramer, cut it out
and gave me a photocopy, though we had subscribed to the
Gazette
as soon as we moved to Shoalwater. I
think Matt blanketed the area with copies. In the editorial, Cleo Hagen was characterized as the representative of
rapacious California real estate interests. Apparently she had been associated with other large resorts.

California. That word again. I remembered Bonnie's bag of seagulls and the words of the note, which
Bonnie had not found, "California Carpetbagger Go Home." Bonnie was not a great threat to the ecology of the
Shoalwater Peninsula. I wondered if anyone had sent Cleo Hagen a similar warning. It was a troubling
thought.

By the time Deputy Nelson had finished his conversation, the fog was definitely beginning to burn off.
Also my running suit had dried out. I was conscious of needing a shower, and I was sweating again by the time
Nelson and I reached Bonnie and Lindquist.

Nelson shook hands with the other man, and I introduced Bonnie. Nelson took her name, address, and
phone number, and mine as well. Then he turned to Lindquist. "What do you know about this, Tom?"

"Not a damned thing."

"I heard you was married to her."

"We were divorced six years ago."

"And you haven't seen her since?"

Lindquist shoved a wing of blue-black hair from his forehead. "I saw her off and on in San Francisco
before I came north."

"Let's see, that was when, four, five years ago?"

"Five."

Nelson waited.

After a pause Lindquist said, "I saw her at the bluegrass festival in April. And once, at a distance, at the
Blue Oyster." The Blue Oyster was a pricy restaurant on the Shoalwater Bay side of the peninsula. "And she called
on me at the house yesterday."

Nelson whistled. "Just dropped by for old times' sake?"

For some reason the question eased Lindquist's air of tense wariness. The muscles at the hinge of his
jaw relaxed. "Don't be a horse's ass, Dale. She came to proposition me."

Nelson's eyebrows rose. Like his hair, they were blond.

Lindquist said amiably, "She made me an offer for the house. I told her I'd think about it."

"That was the proposition?"

"That was it. We had a cup of coffee. I congratulated her on her marriage. She congratulated me on the
book. She drove off around six-thirty, said she was going to dinner at the Blue Oyster."

Book. Bonnie's eyes had widened. I remembered the stacks of library books on the old sideboard. She
was right. The place was lousy with writers. At least Tom Lindquist wasn't a poet. Or maybe he was. Hastily I
reviewed the poets I knew of who were roughly Lindquist's age--roughly my husband's age, I guessed. Lindquist
was one of those men who could be anywhere from thirty to fifty-five. He was clean-shaven, had a lean, wiry build,
and moved with no sign of stiffness, but something about his eyes suggested he was not thirty. I couldn't remember
a poet named Lindquist.

Abruptly it came to me.
Starvation Hill
. A novel, a very good novel, in my opinion. It took the
Western Book Award the year it came out, but the small regional house that had published it in hardcover went out
of business shortly after the book was released. That had been three years before. It was only just coming out in a
trade paperback.

A whooping in the distance distracted my attention. I looked north. Now that the fog had burned off I
could see as far as the access road. A clutch of kids in bright sweatshirts were heading for the beach. They didn't
seem to notice us. Nelson had been shrewd to move the cop car to the driveway.

"Are you going to do something about Cleo's body, Dale, or are you going to stand here all morning
chewing the fat?" Lindquist's tone sharpened. He had seen the kids, too.

The deputy said, "Now, Tom, you know we're short-handed. I sent for the ambulance out of Kayport
and they'll be here pretty quick. Ms. Bell, if you and Mrs. Dodge want to leave, I reckon I know where to find you. I'll
need to take your statements sometime today, though."

Bonnie said, "I'm not going anywhere except the grocery store."

I had to run in to Shoalwater, too. I said, "If you want to ride to town with me, Bonnie, I'll fix us lunch
afterward, and we can wait for Deputy Nelson at my house."

Bonnie agreed to the plan a little too fervently. I think she was afraid of being alone, and I didn't blame
her. I had a strong reluctance to watch the removal of the body. It was a relief that we had permission to go, though
a bit puzzling at that point in a murder investigation.

Deputy Nelson shook our hands and thanked us in a semi-courtly way for being good citizens. For all he
knew, we could have bashed in Cleo Hagen's head.

We walked back to the beach approach and homeward on the paved county road. An elderly woman in
the yard of the mobile home across the street from the McKay place stared at us as we passed by her. I gave her a
big smile.

We walked homeward on the roadway because neither Bonnie nor I wanted to tackle the stretch of
dunes to the south. In any case, Nelson had intimated that he was going to have the area searched. There was no
weapon at the scene and Cleo Hagen's handbag was missing. None of us thought a woman of her obvious wealth
and polish would have been strolling on the dunes without some kind of purse. She would have had a car, too.
There was no abandoned vehicle on either side of the road.