Murder on the Horizon (12 page)

Allen stood at the huge stainless steel stove on Gracie's left, stirring a gigantic pot of spaghetti sauce. As always, he was dressed in a bright white T-shirt, blue jeans, and work boots. His long hair neatly braided and tucked up into the hairnet. His blue eyes were reflections of placidity, and even, Gracie decided, serenity.

“What?” Gracie said, without looking up.

“What do you mean, ‘what'?” Allen asked.

“You're looking at me. I can feel your beady eyes on me.”

“Can't I look at a beautiful woman with admiration and awe?”

Gracie shot him a look. “Baloney.”

He chuckled. “Was wondering what's on your mind, sugar pea. You've been frowning ever since you got here. I'm concerned for the welfare of the cake.”

Realizing he was right, Gracie tried to unfurrow her brow and concentrated on keeping her cuts parallel. “What do you think,” she asked, “about people owning a lot of guns and spouting rhetoric about Second Amendment rights giving them the right to bear arms.”

Allen stopped stirring and set the ladle down. He dipped into the pot with another spoon, took a sip of the sauce, then added a little pepper and garlic powder to the mix. “I think,” he said finally, “that every Tom, Dick, and Jane owning a gun isn't really the problem. The problem is the few extremists who think it's their constitutionally guaranteed right to amass as many guns as they want without registering them. People have to register their cars. Have a license to drive. Hell, they have to have a license to pull a damn trout out of the lake. Why shouldn't they have to register or have a license to own a high-powered weapon?”

“What about people who don't think they have to obey the laws of the federal government?”

“These the same people who use the Constitution to avow their right to bear arms?”

Gracie looked up at Allen, who shrugged, picked up the ladle, and continued stirring. “Think about it, sweet pea. Can't have it both ways.”

Gracie studied Allen for a moment, then asked, “You study to be a lawyer or something when you were in . . . ? When you were
in
.”

“Nope. But I did find myself with quite a bit of time on my hands. Did a fair bit of reading.”

Gracie finished her cut, turned the tray ninety degrees, and stopped again, knife poised to slice the cake in the other direction. Then she laid the knife down and walked over to a dry-erase board on the wall next to the dining room door. She picked up a red marker, and beneath a
To Buy
list with the single word
cinnamon
written beneath, drew a picture of the symbol she had seen carved into the tree stump, the diamond with legs with “88” beneath it. “Have you ever seen something like this?” she asked.

Setting the ladle down, Allen stepped over and stared at the picture, standing close enough that Gracie could smell his Old Spice aftershave. “Where did you see this?”

“Carved into a tree stump up the hill from my house. You know what it is?”

“Probably.”

Seconds passed.

“Well?”

“I'm not exactly sure what the symbol is. But
H
is the eighth letter of the alphabet. Eighty-eight stands for HH.”

“HH.” Gracie stared at him, her face blank.

“The symbol is white supremacist,” Allen said, his voice bland. “Neo-Nazi. HH stands for ‘Heil Hitler.'”

15

“I
DIOTIC,
high-powered-gun-toting, antigovernment whackos right in our nice little backyard, Minnie,” Gracie complained to the dog, who lay on her bed next to her desk in the camp office. “Now neo-Nazis, too?” She rested her chin on her hand. “Or maybe they're all part of the same group. So much for living in paradise.”

Gracie fired up the computer on her desk and did an Internet search for the diamond 88 symbol, starting with various combinations of
white supremacist
,
symbol
, and
diamond
. When nothing came up, she thought for a moment, started over and typed in
88 symbol hate
. One of the links listed was the Hate on Display page of the Anti-Defamation League's website. She clicked on the link and studied the page. On the right was a box for View Symbols by Category. She clicked on Neo-Nazi Symbols. The number 88 was at the top of the list. She scrolled down the list.

There it was: the diamond with legs.

The symbol was labeled the Othala Rune with a short explanation that, originally Norse, it had been adopted by
neo-Nazis and white supremacists to symbolize pride in their Aryan heritage.

What were the odds that the Othala rune carved into the tree stump was connected to Baxter's family? That not only were they gun-toting extremists, but neo-Nazis as well? “Better 'n two-to-one,” Gracie whispered.

For the next half hour, Gracie sifted through the websites of various groups—neo-Nazis, Aryan Brotherhood, skinheads—all with one common theme: extreme rage and hatred.

Much to her consternation, she discovered a second anti–federal government paramilitary group living in the Timber Creek valley, south of the lake, not far from where Ralph lived. And she learned that a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan resided in one of the towns in the desert an hour's drive down on the backside of the mountain. And multiple white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups were spread out throughout the entire Inland Empire. A neo-Nazi rally was even scheduled the following Friday in the desert community of Desertview, a ninety-minute drive away.

Gracie sank back in the chair, feeling unsettled and on edge.

She had been living in blissful ignorance, with no idea that, all around her, like a mythical leviathan lurking beneath still, dark lake waters, groups of people existed for no other reason than the annihilation of a particular group of humanity. She had never imagined the extent or the sheer variety of people and groups with so much hatred for and the desire to kill others, based solely on race or religion or sexual orientation or anything they believed was different from themselves.

Fire required three components to burn: fuel, oxygen, and heat.
Maybe that's what happens with some people
, Gracie mused. Maybe the inferno that was hatred required anger and fear in order to thrive. While some used logic and knowledge and just plain goodness of heart to douse the flames, others fed the blaze willingly, actively, enthusiastically, wanting to hate, wanting to hurt, wanting to kill.

Gracie simply couldn't fathom that level of hatred for anyone.

She sat up straight in her chair. “Yes, I can,” she said aloud. “Morris.”

If the blinding red mist of rage that obscured her vision whenever she thought about her stepfather wasn't hatred, it was the next closest thing to it.

“That's different,” she snapped to the room, suddenly irritated and not quite sure why.

She tapped a fingertip on the desk for several seconds, then clicked on another website.

She scanned an article about a white supremacist who had murdered his sixteen-year-old babysitter by injecting her with heroin and methamphetamine. Pictures of the man showed him as frightening, glaring, with elaborate tattoos covering his entire body.

Gracie frowned.

The Edwards/Ferguson clan had tattoos. Lots of them.

Gracie started.

But so did Allen.

And Allen had known immediately what the symbol 88 meant.

Don't jump to conclusions, Kinkaid.
She exited the site, leaned back in the chair, and rocked.

Lots of people had tattoos nowadays. It was way too much of a coincidence that Allen was a white supremacist working right there in camp. It might just mean Allen and the guy in the article had both spent time in prison. Or maybe they just both liked tattoos. And Allen might have seen the symbol in prison as well. Plus he seemed well-read, well-informed. Knowledge didn't equal guilt. Her labeling Allen a white supremacist simply because he and a white supremacist had multiple tattoos was like someone painting her a mass murderer because she and a mass murderer both liked to drink Coors Lite.

Allen a white supremacist was a ludicrous idea.

Wasn't it?

Gracie leaned forward once again, backed out of all the sites, and closed the browser altogether.

All this hatred was making her suspicious of someone she liked, darkening her mind, sapping her energy. “I need to do something else,” she said, pushing away from the desk. “Something constructive. Something fun. Something outdoors.”

*   *   *

BALANCING ON THE
top step of an eight-foot ladder, Gracie rolled smooth lines of Nilla Vanilla paint along the front boards of the Gatehouse.

After the mad Labor Day rush, when camp had been bursting at the seams with families and church groups, the number of guests diminished to a less frantic, more manageable level and would remain so for the next six or so months of fall and winter. Now Gracie had time to catch her breath, actually learn the job for which she had been hired, and start on all the ideas and projects she had in mind for fixing up the camp, increasing its business, and improving its bottom line.

With the approaching winter, outdoor projects took precedence. Deciding the general air of seediness and neglect at the entrance to camp presented a poor welcome to incoming guests, Gracie had placed sprucing up the exterior of the Gatehouse at the top of the to-do list.

She mowed the small square of grass in front of the building with a push mower, relishing the strain on her muscles. Banging around in the maintenance shop, she had unearthed several cans of unopened paint. After pressure-washing the old and peeling yellow paint from the front of the building, she began painting the exterior walls the Nilla Vanilla, intending Calypso Blue on the trim and shutters.

There was something Zen-like in birds fluttering and chirping in nearby bushes and trees, the September air warm
and soft, the afternoon sun on Gracie's shoulders and the backs of her bare legs. Physical work was the perfect antidote to thoughts of neo-Nazis and white supremacists and a fire raging down the hill. As Gracie painted, she hummed a little ditty to herself, aware of her mood lightening perceptibly.

The revving engine of a large vehicle engine climbing up to camp intruded on the peace. Gracie rolled the excess paint from her roller, then wrapped it in a plastic grocery bag to keep it from drying out.

She stepped off the ladder onto the grass just as a pickup truck roared up the final rise into view—a dark green Ford F-350.

Gracie went very still.

She had seen that same truck before, on the day Lee Edwards had tried to use his son as a punching bag.

She watched the pickup turn into a parking spot next to the Ranger and stop. The door opened and Winston Ferguson climbed out.

There was no time to hide, no time to pretend she wasn't there.

Winston had already seen her.

Gracie's eyes moved to where Minnie was lying in the shade, curled up on the mat before the front door. At Winston's appearance, the dog had raised her head, tail swishing the sidewalk.

“Stay, Minnie,” Gracie said, sidling over until she stood beside the dog, so that, if need be, she could grab her, jump inside the building, and lock the door.

Perhaps Gracie's trepidation revealed itself on her face or in her posture. Or perhaps Winston had a sixth sense for it. But, for whatever reason, the huge man stopped a nonthreatening twenty feet away, and said in his characteristic high voice, “Hi, Grace.”

Also nonthreatening was the pink Oxford, button-down shirt he wore, perhaps, she thought cynically, for that very
reason. The casual-day-at-the-office look was marred by steel-toed boots with red laces and a California Angels baseball cap. Winston's use of ball caps, sometimes incongruously, now made sense to Gracie. He used them to hide his shaved head in public.

She was reminded again how puny and weak and defenseless she felt in the face of such brawn. Being able to fend off any unwanted attack with a soggy paint roller didn't seem likely. Still, wanting to leave no mistake about exactly how she felt about seeing Winston again, Gracie lifted her chin, folded her arms in front of her, planted her feet apart another foot. Feeling like the boy shepherd in front of the giant Goliath, she asked, “What do you want?”

“Well, first, I want to apologize for barging in on your day unannounced. I don't suppose ‘I was in the neighborhood and thought I would stop by' would fly.” He smiled at her, showing surprisingly white, even teeth. The blue eyes with light, sloping eyebrows were soft, almost kind.

“Don't suppose it would,” Gracie said.

“Well, to be honest, I wasn't in the neighborhood. I drove up here specifically to see if I could find you, talk to you.”

“What do you want?” she asked again, having no trouble maintaining her stony glare.

“I wanted to say again how sorry I am for what happened this morning—for frightening you. I wanted to check on you. Make sure you're all right.”

Don't get sucked in, Kinkaid.
“I'm fine.” She cocked her head. “You can go now.”

Instead of being put off by her rudeness, Winston smiled again, this time wide and appealing, so disarming that Gracie almost shook her head in an attempt to retain her sanity and not succumb to the apparent remorse, the smile, the easy style, the kind eyes. This was, she reminded herself, the same man who might very possibly be a neo-Nazi, who most certainly allowed very small children to run around with semiautomatic weapons and point them at people, at her.

Winston's eyes slid over to Minnie “Is that your dog?”

“She's a trained killer,” Gracie said.

Ears perked, Minnie wagged her tail as if begging to be noticed and petted.

Thanks, Minnie.

“She's cute.” Winston glanced over at the ladder, the paint can, the half-painted front wall. “Sprucing things up a little? It looks nice. Makes a big difference. Good Christian people own this camp?”

“A church in L.A.”

“Ah,” he said, nodding his head. “Could you use a hand?” Without waiting for a reply, he rolled up his sleeves, crossed the lawn, picked up the hedge clippers lying on the grass, and began to trim back the shaggy yews in front of her office window.

Undecided, Gracie watched Winston. Then she shrugged. Why not?

Not wanting to work with her long, bare legs at Winston's eye level, Gracie moved the ladder to the other end of the building and started painting the Gatehouse wall from that end.

What would have taken Gracie an additional afternoon to complete took her and Winston three hours. With steady work, the big man's muscle, and minimal conversation—light and congenial for Winston's part, terse and clipped for Gracie's—they painted the rest of the front wall, as well as the window trim, gutters, and front door, installed a new front doorknob, trimmed the bushes, disposed of the clippings onto a new compost pile just outside the maintenance yard, pulled up the weeds in the sidewalk cracks, and returned the lawn mower and all the painting supplies to the shop.

Gracie stood at the far end of the front lawn, hands on hips, admiring how one afternoon's work had transformed the entrance of the camp from the dour grimace of Baba Yaga's hut into the cheerful welcoming smile of Snow White's little cottage in the woods.

She turned toward Winston, who was standing next to his truck. “Thanks for your help,” she said, and almost stuck out her hand to shake his.

“You're welcome,” Winston said with a nod. “I wondered . . .” He stopped, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets, scraping at little stones on the asphalt with his boot. “I wondered if you would honor me by having a cup of coffee with me sometime.”

“Uhhh.” Whatever she was expecting from Winston, it wasn't this. “Probably not a good idea.”

“I didn't think so. But I figured there was no harm in asking.” He smiled again. “In case I'm lucky enough for you to change your mind, here's my phone number.” He reached through the driver's window of the F-350, grabbed up a piece of paper, tore off one corner and scribbled a phone number on it with a pen, walked over, and handed it to Gracie. “Call me anytime,” he said, backing away again. “If you need help with something. Anything. I'm happy to come.”

Winston climbed into the pickup and started the engine. He backed out of the space and, with a lift of his huge hand, drove out of camp.

As the cloud of dust drifted into the air and dissipated, Gracie ciphered on the walking conundrum that was Winston Edwards. Every time she had spoken with him, he had been polite, well mannered, almost deferential.

Yet, in spite of his kind eyes and easy smile, in spite of the good manners and benign temperament, there wasn't a doubt in her mind that she had just spent the afternoon tap-dancing with a Nile crocodile in a top hat.

Gracie had just turned off the computer in her office for the day when she heard another vehicle rumble up the dirt road and into camp. “Who's this now?” she wondered, pulling the front window curtain aside to peer outside. “I'm a busy woman. Got people to do. Things to see.”

She watched as a red Jeep Wrangler convertible, the top
down, pulled into a parking space next to the Ranger, the same space Winston had vacated less than an hour before.

A man climbed down from the Jeep.