CHAPTER 11

ROSEMARY SAID, “Sit!” to her dog, took a firm grip on his collar, and opened the door to Chuck Ballew, whose white-blond hair and pale gray eyes were clear proof of his kinship to Kim Runyon.

“Here you go, ma’am. Truck’s out front, all clean and tight.” He stepped inside, handed her the keys, and said, “Hey, boy,” to the dog, who shifted his front paws but sat where he was.

“Good boy. Now go lie down,” she said to the dog, and “Sorry,” to Ballew as Tank slunk off to his bed.

“Labs’re good dogs. Smart, too,” he said. “Kim tells me he’s the one belonged to that woman got shot by hunters.”

“True. Did you know her?” asked Rosemary, who had decided that her curiosity was made respectable by her writing assignment.

“Not to know,” he said with a shrug. “We—the shop—painted her truck for her about a year ago. Nice old Chev three-quarter-ton and she’d kept it in real good shape except for the paint. Which was the factory’s fault, not hers.”

There’d been no truck at the cabin. Probably the sheriff had taken it. “She did well by the dog, too,” said Rosemary. “I’m the one who’s learning here; he’s the first dog I’ve lived with. Now, please let me have the bill.”

“No charge, ma’am, I promised Kim. She’s my sis’s only kid, and she’s a good girl even if she don’t always show good sense. Anyway, you got new glass front and back, and we vac’ed out the interior real well and swept out the bed. There’s tape on the new windows should stay there for twenty-four hours. And leave your side windows open an inch or so and don’t slam the doors hard.”

She nodded. “I can do that.”

“Good. Any problems with leaks or cracks—which I don’t expect—you just give me a call.”

Ballew was an inch or two over six feet tall, with heavy shoulders; his rolled-back sleeves revealed thick, well-muscled forearms. Even had Eddie been one of the Runyons who “got off on beating people up,” Rosemary thought he’d have hesitated to try it on this man’s favorite niece.

“Kim seemed convinced it was Eddie who shot my truck, although she didn’t exactly say that,” said Rosemary. “But if he did, I honestly don’t know why.” She let her voice trail up just slightly, question-fashion.

He wasn’t having any. Face a mask of blank politeness, he said, “I sure wouldn’t know either, ma’am.”

Ah, families. “Wait, Mr. Ballew,” she said as he turned to go. “I’d really like to pay you. That truck is my only transportation, and just getting the work done well and quickly is a great relief.”

He was shaking his head before she finished speaking. “Kimmie felt she needed to do this, and I promised to help her out.”

Okay, let’s bargain. “Why don’t I pay for the parts, and your time and labor can count as Kim’s contribution?”

He accepted this plan, and then Rosemary’s check, with reluctance tinged with relief. When she followed him outside to where her truck waited, he glanced down the side of the lot and nodded approval.

“I see your crew got the gate in, so you can park off the road. You take care now, ma’am.”

WAS Eddie the shooter? Or was it Christy, who after all had grown up with brothers and male cousins, hunters all? Rosemary thought it unfair that an innocuous middle-aged woman doing her best to avoid trouble should be faced with a lineup of gun-bearing enemies.

In either case, it was time to deal with the other Mendeses once and for all. Rosemary sat down at the kitchen table with her telephone and placed a call first to her attorney in Arcata. After assuring Alice, the breathlessly apologetic secretary, that her earlier lapse was forgiven, Rosemary learned that Peter Jeffries had left yesterday for a weekend of deer hunting.

“Yuck,” said Rosemary.

“Right. But not to worry, Rosemary, he never hits anything.”

This was not a topic Rosemary cared to chat about. “Just tell him, please, that I’ll call on Monday.”

Her next call was answered promptly by a raspy female voice with “Mattie O’Neill at the golden fuckin’ years Retirement Community. Who’s this?”

Silly name or not, the place was apparently taking good care of Rosemary’s eighty-year-old former neighbor. “Rosemary Mendes here, Mattie. You’re sounding good. I’ve decided it’s time for me to deal with an old problem, and I thought you might be willing to help.”

“Ha!” said Mattie when she’d heard Rosemary’s plea. Yes, of course she remembered that night, a year ago last July when she could still get around and be useful, before she broke her goddamn hip. Yes of course she’d be happy to talk about it, with anyone Rosemary might choose. She’d wanted to do that at the time, had thought Rosemary’s reluctance was namby-pamby.

“You call me when you’re ready to come to town, and I’ll take a cab down to the bank to get the notes and pictures out of my safe deposit box. Just be sure you come with a bottle of Bombay gin, Blue Sapphire if you can find it. My daughter’s got born again again and won’t bring me anything so immoral as booze, and the liquor store down the corner just sells some turpentine-flavored equivalent no honest gin-drinker would touch.”

“I promise. And I’ll get back to you soon. Take care, Mattie.”

Rosemary put the phone aside and gave a moment’s thought to a different problem. “Old ladies are good,” she said to Tank, who was stretched out at her feet. “Let’s try another one, on a slightly different subject.”

DORIS Graziewski, probably seventy-five, was Weaverville born and bred. She’d had given up driving, and most cooking, because of arthritis and cataracts; but there was nothing at all wrong with her mental reflexes. Salty-tongued and no sufferer of fools, Doris was the best source Rosemary could think of for information about any local clan.

Rosemary had twice driven Doris home from Enders after dinner. Now she found the correct street readily and pulled to the curb in front of a two-story tongue-and-groove wooden house with a porch that extended across the front and continued along the right side, both porch and house roofed in metal. An above-the-door plaque bearing the numbers 1881 referred, Rosemary knew, not to the street number but to the date of original construction; and the white picket fence was lined with the thick-trunked old climber roses that held up similar fences in half the yards in town. But it was the newish Honda SUV parked in the driveway that caught Rosemary’s interest; if Deputy Debbie Grace was home, too, this would be a doubly interesting visit.

She put her windows down a few inches for Tank, who’d been as reluctant to be left at home alone as Rosemary had been to leave him. Who knew what might happen next on Willow Lane? A person who’d bagged a truck might very well decide to try for a dog. “But Doris has two cats,” she told him as she got out, “and I haven’t checked you out on cats yet. So you stay.”

Rosemary rang the doorbell, waited, rang again. Her finger was hovering for a third push when the door swung open to reveal Trinity County Sheriff’s Deputy Deborah Grace, wearing not her green uniform but a snagged terry cloth bathrobe too short for her five feet eight, and a harassed look.

“Debbie, I’m sorry I’ve bothered you. I wanted to talk to your grandmother.”

“Who…oh, Mrs. Mendes. It’s okay, I’m not busy or anything, just going crazy trying on clothes.”

“Please, call me Rosemary.” She slipped inside and Debbie closed the door. “What kind of clothes?”

“Shit, practically any kind you can think of.” Debbie ran both hands through already tousled dark hair. “I’m trying to get something classy together for a trip east in a couple weeks, to my college roommate’s wedding. Thing is, classy is not my style.”

She heaved a giant sigh, and gave Rosemary a rueful grin. “But that’s not your problem, you wanted Gran. She took the bus to Chico to visit my mom and won’t be back till Monday afternoon. You want to leave a message?”

Rosemary had a pleased sense of an opening awaiting her. “No, I’ll talk to her next week. But maybe I can be of some help with your clothes problem.”

“You?”

Rosemary glanced down at herself: dusty walking shoes, well-worn Levi’s, oversize navy sweatshirt with nary a word or picture on it, red L.L. Bean nylon anorak. Then she looked up to meet Debbie’s embarrassed gaze with a shrug. “I bet I’ll fool you. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Debbie’s bedroom, a large corner space well-lighted by two sets of tall casement windows, was awash in discarded items of clothing. A pair of wool trousers and a pair of stirrup pants, both black, had been tossed over the back of a chair; a long rayon challis skirt, red and silver-gray print on black, spilled off the seat. A fuzzy pink sweater, a deep blue chenille sweater, and a full-sleeved black blouse in some shiny fabric hung on a free-standing rod. On hangers hooked over the top of the open closet door were a tailored shirt-waist in creamy silk and a little-blue-sprigs-on-white cotton print with a full skirt, a fitted bodice, and a scooped-low neck.

On the bed lay a long dress, a luscious sweep of sea green silk with a neckline that consisted of a two-inch-wide band at collar-bone level, leaving the shoulders bare. “That’s my sister’s,” said Debbie. “She says it’s like one she saw on the Oscars last spring.”

“A Helen Wong, that was, and very nice, too,” said Rosemary. “But I don’t think… Debbie, take off your robe.”

Looking startled, Debbie pulled the lapels of the robe together over her chest.

“If I were prowling, I think maybe this time I’d look for a big guy in a leather vest with tattoos and a Harley,” said Rosemary, wondering even as she spoke just where this image had sprung from. She could not remember ever feeling the faintest hint of lust for biker-types. “Since we’re talking dresses here,” she went on, “I need to see what you look like.”

Debbie flushed scarlet, muttered, “Sorry,” and dropped the robe to reveal an athlete’s body in cotton bikini panties and bra. Broad, muscular shoulders, Rosemary noted, probably from weight training. Nice long arms, the muscle there smooth. Good firm breasts, no waist to speak of, flat belly. Narrow hips and—Rosemary moved to one side—a butt that was round but tight. And long legs also muscular but not unattractively so.

“The only thing I see here that might work is the cream shirt-waist,” said Rosemary. “If it’s a good fit. But it’s awfully subdued.”

Debbie cast a longing look at the green silk, and Rosemary shook her head. “Won’t do,” she said. “With those shoulders, you’d look like a linebacker. Here, let me show you a style that might suit, I saw it in a shop in Arcata a year or so ago.” She picked up a notepad from the nearby desk, flipped to a clean page, and sketched quickly.

“See, a plain neck, slightly wide. Sleeveless, because you have nice arms, armholes cut fairly low. The rest of it skims, no waistline and a hem just above your knees. I saw it in a fine wool knit, neck and armholes finished with satin binding in the same shade as the fabric.

“Or,” she went on as Debbie looked at that sketch, “if you want to show off those boobs…”

Debbie laid one hand on her chest and the other on the skirt of the cotton print, and Rosemary grimaced. “No. That’s a dress for a seventeen-year-old blonde or somebody in a young-mother-of-the-year contest. What you need is a good deep V, like a dress in a Nordstrom ad last week.” She did another quick sketch, pulled that page free, and handed it across. “Maybe you can find a seamstress to do you a knock-off.”

“God, I’d love that. Could you maybe…?”

“Oh no. I haven’t sewed for years. What I did do,” Rosemary admitted for the first time since she’d moved to Weaverville, “was work in, and then own, a very classy little dress shop in Arcata. Rosemarie’s, isn’t that ridiculous? When Clara owned it, before me, it was Claire’s.”

“I think maybe I’ve heard of it,” said Debbie. She set both drawings reverently on her desk, then picked up her robe and shrugged it on.

“Now that I’m retired, I’ve made paint strainers out of all my pantyhose and thrown away all my heels. I figure that any event I can’t wear denim or wool pants to, I don’t need to attend.”

“Oh. But…”

“What I can do, if you like,” added Rosemary, “is give you a note to the new owner at Rosemarie’s. She’ll make you a good price, which I have to say will still be fairly high. Or you could just make a quick trip to San Francisco and hit Nordstrom’s. They have things by lesser-known, less expensive designers as well as big names, and you can get one of their ‘personal shoppers’ to help you. Take the sketches along. And here’s the note to Genevieve, at Rosemarie’s.” She picked up the pad again, scribbled briefly, and set the pad atop the sketches.

“God, Rosie, thanks!” said Debbie. Rosemary controlled the urge to wince at this shortening of her name. “Look, there’s ham in the fridge, and I was just about to have a sandwich and a beer to console myself for being a country klutz. Let me make you lunch.”

Turnabout time. “I’d like that, but my dog is waiting in my truck.”

“Oh, bring him in, it’s cold out there.”

“But your grandmother’s cats…?”

“Believe me, they can handle him if he tries anything. Besides, they’re used to dogs. My old beagle, Shandy, died six months ago, and I really miss him. I’m trying to talk Gran into a replacement, but I’m away at work most days and she says she’s too old to mess with a puppy.”

An unpleasant throught struck Rosemary: could Debbie Grace be one of the locals who had asked Gray for Mike Morgan’s home-less dog? She went to the truck nonetheless, opened the door, and clipped a leash onto Tank’s collar, reminding herself of the old saw about possession being nine points of the law (and wondering just what law that was and how many points it had).

“My god, that’s the dog I…” Debbie Grace lived up to her name, biting off the end of that sentence. “God, what a gorgeous boy! He looks a lot happier than the last time I saw him.”

“Oh, did you know her? Mike Morgan? Sit, Tank,” Rosemary added, and perched herself on a chair beside the kitchen table.

“I met her once, when she came in to tell us she was being bothered by prowlers. She’d fired off a couple blasts of buckshot, didn’t think she’d hit anyone, planned to do better next time. Hi, Tank, you like ham?”

Tank grinned widely, wagged with enthusiasm. When Debbie held out a piece of ham, he quivered all over but took the meat delicately, then gulped it unchewed.

“Very cool lady, she was. I’d have liked to get to know her, but she wasn’t much into being sociable. In fact, she was supposed to be more or less of a hermit,” Debbie added. “How did you know her?”

“Oh, I didn’t, not at all. I know Gray Campbell.”

“Doc Campbell.”

Rosemary nodded. “He’s a friend of mine, and I guess he thought we needed each other—Tank and I,” she added quickly.

Debbie gave a little shrug, as if accepting this information provisionally. “You have any idea what his breeding is? The dog, I mean. I really like that stocky style.” She put sandwiches on plates, set plates, tall mugs, and bottles of Red Tail Ale on the table, said, “Enjoy,” and sat down across from her guests.

“That looks wonderful; thank you.” Rosemary took a bite of succulent ham and good rye bread before replying. “Debbie, I don’t know anything about dogs; I’ve never owned one. Gray didn’t know, either, about the breeding; he’d never treated him. Maybe the pedigree is with whatever personal papers your department collected from Ms. Morgan’s house.”

“There weren’t any personal papers, except the deed to her property and the pink slip on her truck.”

“No letters or postcards or…anything?”

“What I said. Any mail she got, and the post office says it was rare, she obviously didn’t save. If Michelle Morgan kept in touch with anybody, it must have been by phone.”

“Or maybe by e-mail,” Rosemary suggested.

“I don’t remember seeing a computer in her cabin.”

“I’d been told she had one.”

This brought a head-shake. “Battery-powered boom-box with a Cd slot and a couple of external speakers, that’s all we found out there.” Debbie set her sandwich down and reached for her beer. “Here’s a funny thing. I heard Mike Morgan’s place got burglarized and trashed later, and you’re the good citizen who reported it, and I’m sorta wondering how that happened?” Debbie Grace was sitting straighter and looking more like a police person.

“All I can tell you is what I told Deputy Olds. Since adopting the dog, I’ve gotten curious about the woman, which is why I drove out that way in the first place. Then Tank took off, and I followed him to the house. The door wasn’t latched, he pushed his way in, I followed. And was so struck by a sense of devastation that I just— stood there looking for quite a while.

“I should add that Deputy Olds was not impressed by such behavior in a woman my age. I think he put it down to menopause.”

Debbie’s shoulders relaxed and she grinned. “Ray Olds thinks women are okay in their place and he really wishes they’d stay there.”

“Mm.” In Rosemary’s opinion, Deputy Olds fit neatly into the group Kim Runyon had called “too goddamned many male people.” Deciding to press her luck, she went on. “From the stories in the papers, it appears her death was the result of a hunting accident?”

“That’s what it looks like,” said Debbie.

“Were you there when the body was found?”

“I was one of the responders when the hunters called it in. She was a real mess, and ol’ Tank there wouldn’t let us near her. This one flatlander offered to shoot him, but I told the jerk where he could put his thirty-thirty.” She paused for another hearty bite of her sandwich.

“Then we called doc Campbell, and he didn’t even need tranqs, just talked. I gotta say, Tank was one lucky dog that day. And it looks like he still is. But if you should change your mind about keeping him…”

“Oh, no, we’re very well suited,” she said, with a sidelong glance at the dog in question. “Has there been an autopsy yet?”

“Why would you want to know that?”

Oh ho, back to snippy. Watch it, sweetie, or I’ll have Genevieve sell you something in salmon pink with ruffles. “Glenna Doty asked me to write a piece on her for the Courier.”

“Oh. Well, I think the doc did the P.M. right away, and it will be a matter of public record. You can just go down to the courthouse, make a written request giving your reasons, and pay a fee. But I gotta tell you, there’s not likely to be anything in it that you’d be able to use in a newspaper story. Your best bet, I guess, would be to go around town and try to find somebody who knew her.”

“Thank you, I’ll do that.” Rosemary swallowed the last of her sandwich, picked up her beer mug, and decided it was time to switch gears. “There’s one other bit of confusion in my life, which is what really brought me here. At five A.M. yesterday morning, I called the sheriff’s office to report that someone had just put a bullet through the windshield of my pickup truck.”

Debbie snapped to attention right there at the table. “I was off yesterday. Who was the shooter?”

“As I told the sheriff, I have some unpleasant former in-laws in Arcata, and they were my first thought. But then,” she said, “my neighbor, Kim Runyon, came by all on her own to assure me that her husband Eddie hadn’t done it. Although he is, she says, mad at me.”

“Why?”

“It appears that he believes, incorrectly I should add, that I accused him of being the person who robbed and vandalized the Morgan cabin.”

Deputy grace opened her mouth, closed it, shook her head. “Okay. Did you accuse him when you reported the damage to your truck?”

Rosemary shook her head. “It didn’t occur to me then, and the deputy, whose name I don’t recall?it was very early in the morning—seemed to think my truck was just a happenstance target for wandering kids. But then came Kim. She’s been friendly to me, and I’d like to believe her, but I don’t want to be foolish. So I thought it would be useful to find out more about Eddie Runyon—which is why I came to talk to your grandmother.”

Debbie sighed and pushed her chair back to stretch her legs under the table. “Gran has no use at all for the Runyons’ kind, what she calls ‘backwoods trash.’ She says they all drink and raise hell and beat each other up—and that’s the women as well as the men— because that’s what they’ve always done and they enjoy it.”

“And what do you think?”

Debbie picked up her beer mug, drained it, and got to her feet. “What I think, it’s time for another beer. You?”

Rosemary shook her head. “One was fine. Two would make me sleepy.” She sat neatly and quietly where she was, possessing her soul in patience while noting inwardly how very weary she was of doing that.

Debbie fished a fresh bottle from the fridge, opened it, and took a drink before returning to sit at the table again. “The thing you need to remember is, people born and raised up here in the northern kingdom really hate to leave it. I mean, look at me. Four years of college, two years with a good job in San Bernardino, and I couldn’t stand it another minute.”

“Northern kingdom?”

“Look at a map, at the space north of the Sacramento Valley and mostly west of I-Five. It’s practically all green. National forests, wilderness areas, eight or nine mountain ranges, half a dozen major rivers, and hardly any towns. Trinity County has thirteen thousand people in thirty-two hundred square miles. Get used to that, it’s real hard to settle for something else.” She took a long drink of beer and wiped her mouth. “Even outlanders get hooked, like Mike Morgan. Or you. Why are you here?”

“I was running away from home and stopped to rest at Wyntoon, up by Trinity Center,” said Rosemary. “Camped there in a tent for a week.”

Debbie goggled at her a moment. “Right. And you’re still here.”

“And I don’t intend to be intimidated into leaving, so if there’s anything useful you can tell me about the Runyons, I’d appreciate it. Otherwise, I’ll wait until Monday and come to talk with Doris.”

Debbie sighed and yielded. “This generation of Runyons—my generation—was five or six boys, brothers and cousins. I went to high school with Steve and Les; Eddie and the others were younger, so I didn’t really know them. But from what I’ve seen the last few years, Eddie is mostly bluster and attitude.” Debbie’s grimace of distaste made Rosemary wonder whether cops saw a fake bad guy as less respectable than the real thing.

“’Course, he made a good move when he got married. Kim Ballew comes from the other kind of local poor folks—hardluck but hard-working. And she’s tough.”

Maybe, but she’s also tired, thought Rosemary. And pregnant. “Are any of the others—your generation—still around?”

?Les got sent to Susanville for drug dealing and general stupidity. I don’t know whether he’s out or not. Steve went to the police academy and worked as a deputy here for a while.”

“And?”

Debbie’s lean cheeks flushed slightly. “He’s some smarter than the rest of the family. He’s not bad-looking, and women seem to like him, at least the ones with their brains in their—uh, between their legs. Problem was, he had a rotten temper and felt free to punch out anybody who pissed him off, including his then-wife. Otherwise, he wasn’t the worst cop I’ve ever seen, so he might still be in law enforcement someplace. Or more likely in private security.”

And probably somewhere in the northern kingdom? A clock struck somewhere in the house, a single note that Rosemary’s watch told her meant one P.M. As if the mellow sound had called her to attention, Debbie squared her shoulders and frowned.

“And that’s about all I can say, Mrs. Mendes. If you want more information, you should talk to the sheriff.”

“I understand.” Rosemary got to her feet, and Tank got up as well. “Thank you for your help, Debbie, and for lunch.”

“Thank you, ma’am, for your professional help.” Debbie put the bottle on the counter and reached out a hand to clasp Rosemary’s. “And listen, if Eddie Runyon or any of his relatives come around bothering you, you let me know.”

“I certainly will,” said Rosemary. “What does Steve Runyon look like?”

Debbie blinked, and then giggled. “A whole lot like that biker hunk you said you might go prowling for.”

“Ah,” said Rosemary, as a flash of memory struck belatedly. She’d seen a muscular, bare-armed, vested and booted man in Kim Runyon’s company once?no, twice, the first time in town, in conversation outside the beauty shop. The second time, at least two months ago, they’d ridden past Rosemary’s place on a big authorita-tive-looking motorcycle, Kim astride the rear seat with her arms around the driver and her body glued to his back. She herself had thought nothing much of it, except to remember an article she’d read about the resurgence of the Harley motorcycle. Which was now not at all the interesting part of the picture. As she and Tank started down the steps from the porch, Debbie, who had followed her out, said, “Hey!”

“What?”

“Is that your truck? With a gun in the rack?”

“Yes, it is. I see guns in racks all around town. I didn’t realize it was illegal.”

“It’s not, but most women don’t.… ” Debbie let that comment die. “Is it loaded?”

“No,” said Rosemary truthfully; the clip was in the center console. She opened the door, put Tank in the truck, waved good-bye to Debbie, and climbed in herself.