Murder at Moot Point (16 page)

“I won't.”

“So what is it?”

“The revolver in the ditch? It was the murder weapon like we thought. We got fingerprints off it. Your fingerprints, Charlie.”

Chapter 17

“That can't be,” Charlie had insisted all the way down the mountain. “I would know if I had handled a gun. I've never touched one in my life.”

“Prints don't lie, Charlie, and they were very clear.”

“Then why aren't you taking me to jail instead of back to the Hide-a-bye?”

“Because the prints were too clear.”

“Now you're the one not making any sense.”

“I know. The damn thing was in a ditch choked with damp grass and weeds that hadn't dried out since the fog blanket the night before.”

“How could the prints be perfect then? Wouldn't they get smudged?”

“Not inside a plastic bag with a Ziploc top that was zipped.”

“Somebody (supposedly me) shot an old woman on a Schwinn, put the gun in a bag to keep it dry so the sheriff's department could find the prints on it, and threw it in the ditch, maybe four hundred yards from where the body was found under my Toyota. Isn't that a little bizarre?”

“Well, it's not way up there with walking around without your body—but it certainly raises questions. The old sisters who found the bag—”

“Mary and Norma.”

“Mary and Nooormma, said that's what caught their attention. The bag had dew on it and their flashlight made it sparkle. They used a flashlight because they like to pick up litter on their evening walks and bottles and cans show up better that way when the light's not good.”

“I know.”

“You know what?”

“That Mary and Norma pick up roadside litter. I learned that today when I was picking up all those useless puzzle pieces that mess up your murder investigation.”

“Well, did you happen to pick up how your fingerprints got on the murder weapon?”

Charlie wasn't legally under arrest this particular minute only because there was such a fishy smell to the whole business. But a deputy—male and fortunately not poor Linda—was already parked in a car at the cabin door with a bag of sandwiches and a thermos of coffee. Wes informed her that man would stay there all night to see that she did too. “You're costing the county a lot of money.”

“You don't really believe I did it or I'd be in jail.” She followed him as he inspected the closet, peered under the bed, pulled back the shower curtain.

“I've seen people like you who I would have sworn incapable of a serious criminal act. And they've proved me wrong. Shit, my own kid's screwing up every life he can touch and he looks to be as innocent as a newborn lamb. I can't say what you did or did not do yet, Charlie, but for all the chauvinist pig redneck you think I am, remember that if you were a man you'd have been in jail the minute those prints were verified. Don't tell me women don't have privileges.” He peeked out at the fog on the balcony, closed the sliding door, and locked it.

He turned to find Charlie barring his exit by standing in the center of the entrance hall, arms outstretched, hands flattened against the wall on either side.

“Why aren't I in jail?” She felt about as effective as a canoe would have felt blockading that Japanese cargo ship in the harbor at Chinook. “You don't put women in jail? Moot County is an unusual place. It has nothing to do with the fact the evidence is fishy?”

“That, too.”

“And?” Why was he doing this? He could be an incredibly likable oaf. Why did he have to bait her this way? “I mean besides the fact that I'm not knock-kneed, cross-eyed, and forty pounds overweight or the fact there's no motive?”

“Well, the courthouse is old,” he conceded with an impatient shrug, “and there's only a couple of holding cells available for females and they're occupied at the moment. And there could be a motive I don't know about yet. Charlie, those prints will stand up with a jury.”

“And why only a couple of cells for women? Because they don't even begin to constitute half your perps, right? Unless you're going after women who smoke, drink, or swear when they're pregnant, right?”

“Perps? I knew you'd been reading that female police junk just like Doris. I somehow had you figured as a little more intellectual.” He picked her up, set her down in the bathroom doorway, and stalked out into the fog.

“And I somehow had you figured as a lot brighter,” Charlie called after him and slammed the door. This time she locked it.

Actually what she'd been reading were statistics on the ratio of males and females convicted of serious crimes or even suspected of them. It was all part of a documentary Sid Goldfine had helped script for PBS and she'd seen several versions of it. Frank Glick was right. Women were capable of most all the crimes men were. Women's prisons were overflowing too. Charlie had always accepted that men were more likely to commit a crime. It was a sort of given like boys will be boys and the testosterone thing. But the difference in the number of violent and serious crimes committed by male and female had surprised Charlie.

Right now she stood chilled and alone, the daily paper log already used up, damp fog hovering at the windows, and the deputy outside with his sandwiches and coffee. Charlie was too shocked by her fingerprints on a gun she'd never seen to even attempt sleep. She decided to take a hot shower and crawl into bed with the rest of the proposal on
Death of a Grandmother
. If that didn't put her to sleep
Holistic Health and Nutrition for Your Pet
couldn't miss.

She was down to stripping off her bra and panties before she thought to wonder if Jack Monroe could be standing around without his body scrutinizing hers.

Charlie stood under the hot water until it started turning cold on her. Instead of relaxing, as had been the plan, she allowed the fact of those prints to really soak in. First of all, it was impossible. Second of all, she couldn't go to jail for murder because of Libby and because she had a job. Even by now Edwina and Libby were probably at each other's throats. They got along fine only as long as they had Charlie to gang up on and flay between them. And how would she ever explain this to Richard Morse of Congdon and Morse Representation, Inc.? And what about all her writers? It wasn't as though no one depended on Charlie.

By the time Charlie stepped out of the shower, she was so worked up Jack Monroe could have been standing there completely visible in his body and she'd have just flipped him off on her way past.

She might as well forget sleep for a week. Oh, and she could hear Edwina already, “I told you you'd end up in a bad way. Wreck every life you ever touched.” Well okay, she'd borrowed that from Wes Bennett but it sure sounded familiar.

By now Charlie was in her nightshirt and in bed and so hot under the collar she had to throw aside one of the blankets—only in Oregon or maybe Alaska would there be two blankets on a bed in June and a quilt for a bedspread.

Chapter Two of
Death of a Grandmother
started off with Patsy Prudhomme meeting the big handsome Sheriff Lester of the unnamed county. He questioned Patsy and immediately hauled her off to his bachelor pad on a mountaintop overlooking the Pacific Ocean—instead of to the courthouse for fingerprinting. Paige Magill might have her mystery and her romance genres confused but she sure had visited the home of the sheriff of Moot County.

The lurid details of the fictional encounter would have been funny if Charlie had not just returned from that mountaintop herself.

Of course when Paige was up there, she hadn't been a chief suspect in a murder investigation. Charlie went back over the lurid parts again. Nah, Sheriff Bennett wouldn't have served Patsy (Paige?) California wine and not even bothered with dinner before screwing. No fajitas, no frijoles, no nothing but grunting and some truly incredible positioning? No phone calls about disturbing kids, no mention of former wives and present responsibilities. Just panting and sweat and ecstasy.

“Damn near make you want to go out and commit murder just to get arrested by Sheriff Les.”

Charlie didn't know that there was ever anything between Wes Bennett and Paige Magill. And if there was, they were both well of age. What she should be thinking about is how those fingerprints found their way onto the murder weapon. Did fingerprints never lie? And why, if the sheriff thought he had any case at all, would he confide to her things like the Ziploc bag and the too-clear prints? There must be something very wrong with those fingerprints.

“
There are five totally unexplainable things here. How did the body of Georgette Glick get under my car? How did my fingerprints get on the murder weapon? How did my lenses get under the bed? How could I dream of the wreck of the
Peter Iredale
before I ever saw it, either in Michael Cermack's painting or for real in its grave on the beach? And how am I going to get out of all this?
”

“
You're just tired. It's very simple. The murderer put Georgette under the Toyota to frame you rather than someone he knew. And somehow he got you to touch the handle of the gun without knowing it. Either that or he could somehow transfer the fingerprints from something else you knowingly touched. And Jack came over here while you were away and moved your contacts because he wants you to help him convince the people at Morton and Fish that he really can OOBE. And the
Peter Iredale
is probably much photographed because it is so accessible and you probably saw it in a
National Geographic
or even a poster store and subconsciously registered that it was located on the coast of Oregon, so when you came up here your mind connected the two and threw you a dream about it before you saw it on the beach.
”

Sometimes Charlie's rational mind simply astounded her. But it didn't usually work this efficiently until after her first cup of coffee in the morning. “
And the last one? How am I going to get out of this?
”

“
Relax and let the law do the investigating as I've said all along. You're well aware of the sheriff's attraction to you. He'll find the answers to clear you. He knows his job, he likes you, and all you're doing is making it harder for him by mixing up the puzzle pieces.
”

Charlie was right. She really ought to listen to herself more often. She sighed, stretched, reached up, and turned off the lamp on the bedside table. Just for kicks she slid out of bed and to the window, pulling a crack open where the short drapes met in the middle. The deputy was drinking coffee and reading a magazine under the patrol car's inside overhead light. He must have a powerful battery.

Back in bed, snuggled under both blankets now and cuddly warm, Charlie had almost drifted off to sleep when her eyes popped open. “That still doesn't explain how Jack Monroe knew everything Deputy Tortle and I said.”

She and her rational mind began chewing it over again. Charlie just knew the answers lay in all the little puzzle pieces she'd collected. If she believed everything people told her—Paige Magill played Brother Dennis off Jack Monroe, Doc Withers slept with ducks and Gladys Bergkvist, Rose was a part-Italian natural psychic who had to sell control of her restaurant to a Japanese concern, Brother Dennis practically supported the little community with his institute, Michael Cermack had either misplaced his gun or someone had stolen it to murder Georgette, sisters Mary and Norma wandered around after dark with flashlights to clean up the roadsides, Jack Monroe wandered around without his body, Clara Peterson—as sweet as she was—didn't really seem to approve of anyone except maybe Mary and Norma, Frank Glick let his wife go off on a foggy night on a bike without lights, Gladys Bergkvist did not associate with her poorer retired peers and did not believe in subsidizing them, Olie spent only the summer months at his home and was late getting back this summer, and you ate
lefsa
with margarine.

According to Paige's mystery proposal Paige knew the layout of Michael's loft as well as the sheriff's eyrie. Linda Tortle had attended the institute and she had had an affair with Doc Withers. And Georgette Glick was nosy. The gun was found in the damp ditch last night, so Charlie's prints (if they indeed were) must have gotten on it between the time Georgie was shot and the next evening. What had Charlie touched during that time? All kinds of things at the Earth Spirit and here at the Hide-a-bye, some at Page Magill's house and at Rose's. Probably a few things in Frank's trailer home, nothing she could remember at the Scandia.

The next thing Charlie knew she was sitting up in bed watching the door to the outside fly into the entryway through the open door of the bedroom, the sheriff following his shoulder right behind it and yelling her name. It was daylight.

Chapter 18

“This time you lock the door.” Wes sat on the side of the bed, the deputy leaning in the doorway. They had rushed in, Wes searching the room for an intruder, the deputy with gun drawn heading to check the rest of the cabin only to come back and eye Charlie skeptically. “What were you screaming for?”

“I wasn't screaming. Was I screaming?”

Wes rubbed the back of his neck, rolled his head from side to side. Charlie could hear his neck cracking. “Not only am I losing sleep and the department is going to have to pay overtime for Tuttle and Olsen here, but we're going to owe the Hide-a-bye for a goddamned door, just because you decided to have a nightmare. You are a walking disaster area.”

“Nightmare, that's it. I was having a dream.”

“Great.” He cracked his neck so hard Charlie winced and Olsen grimaced. “Get dressed. I'll take you to Rose's.”

“No, wait, I sort of remember this one. I just don't remember screaming.”

“There's a lady over at Moot Point who can really help you out if you're bothered by dreams,” Deputy Olsen offered. “Finally took my girlfriend there and after about five or ten sessions she ain't had a—”