CHAPTER 12

HEADING WEST on Main Street, Rosemary remembered Debbie’s information about the availability of the postmortem report and drove right past the turnoff to Highway 3, to aim instead for the big old Trinity County Courthouse down the street. Which was, she could tell even without getting out of her vehicle, closed. Of course, Saturday afternoon; in her irregular new life, she was turning into one of those people who never know what day it is.

Well, Debbie had said the report wouldn’t be useful for Rosemary’s purpose. “But a chat with the sheriff might be,” she said aloud, bringing Tank’s head up. “Do you suppose a sheriff works on Saturdays?”

This one did, it turned out, although he looked weary. “Mrs. Mendes,” he said, as he took off his reading glasses and waved her to a chair in his surprisingly spacious and well-furnished office before sitting down behind his paper-strewn desk. “Or since we keep running into each other, perhaps I should call you Rosemary? This is a small town, after all. And I’m Gus, after a German grandfather,” he added in response to her nod. “I guess you got your truck back?”

“I did.”

“And I’ve learned nothing more about the shooters. Other than that, what can I do for you?”

Rosemary folded her hands in her lap. “First, there’s one bit of information I forgot to give you—about Mike Morgan, not my truck.”

He lifted his chin and narrowed his eyes. “Mrs. Mendes…”

And whatever happened to Rosemary? “I realize that her death was most likely a hunting accident. But one day this week, the girl in the post office—Jennifer, I think is her name—told me about an altercation Ms. Morgan had had recently with a couple of drop-out-types, she called them. Outside the post office. The boys lost the battle, in humiliating fashion, and Jennifer thought Ms. Morgan was way cool.”

“I bet. What day was this?”

“My chat with Jennifer? Wednesday. I wasn’t there to ask about Ms. Morgan; I’d gone in to find out whether the people there would give out my street address to inquirers, and she assured me they wouldn’t. Then she looked out the door and saw my dog, Ms. Morgan’s dog, in my truck. So we talked about her.”

He sighed. “Thank you, I think. I’ll try to stop in to talk to Jennifer, or send somebody. We’re way below authorized strength in the department, because two Army National Guard guys are serving in Iraq.”

No wonder he looked weary.

“Were you worried about your relatives?” he asked before she could comment.

“I’d just received a letter from one of them. It came general delivery, but had been put in my box.”

That brought him straighter, eyes narrowed again. “Rosemary, was that letter a threat?”

“It was quite nasty, but the only specific threat was to sue me for the money which they insist, incorrectly, is theirs. That would be both silly and expensive, and my husband’s aunt is not one to waste money.”

“Nevertheless. Listen, if you do get any threats that feel real, or see any one of those folks around, give me a call. We may be short-handed, but we manage to keep an eye on our citizens. What was second?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You said the information about Miss Morgan was first.”

“Oh.” She gathered herself together and tried to look politely businesslike. “Glenna Doty has asked me to write a sort of obituary, as in ‘Michelle Morgan, the mystery woman among us,’ for her paper. I had lunch today with Debbie Grace, and she told me she was one of the first responders when the body was found. But she said that if I wanted any more information than that, I should talk with you.”

“Good for Deputy Grace,” he said. “Just what is it that you wanted to know?”

“Can you tell me whether you found anything in her personal papers or belongings to tell you where she came from?”

He rolled his chair back from the desk and propped his elbows on the chair arms, lacing his hands together across his chest: man in thoughtful repose. “That’s easy, and not particularly confidential. There were no personal papers beyond the pink slip for her truck and the deed to that property out there; the old guy who’d had it for years left it to her when he died. in her wallet she had a current California driver’s license, a proof-of-auto-insurance card, and a card from the local bank.

“Yeah, she had a savings account,” he said in response to her look of surprise. “I’d say the amount would be considered confidential; it’s not a huge sum, probably what’s left of her inheritance from old Jared. Point is, neither that nor anything else we found gave us any idea at all about where she came from, or why. But in out-of-the-way places like Trinity County, you can find any number of people who didn’t come from anywhere.

“And just so you don’t think I forgot about the computer…” Rosemary flushed, and he grinned. “I checked with Sabrina Petrov, and her son said it was a PC laptop of some kind. Turns out he’s Mac, and not very noticing about the other faith. But we haven’t located any record of an e-mail account for Michelle Morgan.”

“Maybe in some other name? her original name?” said Rosemary, and he nodded. “It’s possible. We’ll keep looking.”

“Okay, but can you tell me,” she went on, “whether there was anything useful, for either your purposes or mine, in the postmortem report?”

“You can get a copy of that at the courthouse.”

“But not on a Saturday.”

“True. I don’t remember anything particularly startling beyond the fact of the bullet in the head, but I suppose we can have a look.” he rolled the chair further back, got to his feet, and moved to one of the gray file cabinets along the wall, to pull a folder out and lay it open before her on his desk.

“That’s fine. Thank you,” said Rosemary in a small voice a short time later.

“You’re welcome. No charge today.” He put the folder away and turned to face her. “Were you happy with the condition of your truck?”

”Absolutely. Kim Runyon, who’s a neighbor of mine, told me to call her uncle at Acme Auto Body, and he was very helpful. They do good work.”

“That’s right, the Runyons live down the road from you. Ever have any trouble with Eddie?”

“Is that a question, Gus, or a fishing expedition?” His shrug was noncommittal, and she decided that reading a cop’s intent was beyond her skills. “He thought I’d accused him of being the person who’d trashed and robbed Mike Morgan’s cabin. I assured him, through Kim, that I hadn’t.“

“Think he believed you? Or maybe took a shot at your truck instead?”

“I have no way of knowing either for sure.”

“For sure is not what I asked.”

“Sheriff, you now know as much about it as I do,” she said, and got to her feet.

“Draw,” he said, lifting both hands high. “Tell you what, Rosemary. I’ll have a further look at the file on Michelle Morgan, and if there’s anybody who has personal anecdotes to offer, I’ll send ’em— the people—on to you. For your story.”

“Thank you, Gus.”

“And if you come across anything I should know…”

“For your story. I’ll see that it gets right to you.”

REMEMBERING that she needed wine to take to Gray’s tonight, Rosemary backtracked eat down Main Street past the historic section with its nineteenth-century buildings and the newer commercial district to the single supermarket in Weaverville, called TOPS. The nearly new building was spacious and well supplied; each checkout counter had a banner suspended above it bearing a picture of a specific local mountain. Rosemary had been to only one of these, in a breathtaking drive with Gray Campbell to the lookout atop Weaver Balley, a post which looked directly down on Weaverville.

“Hi, Mrs. Mendes.” The checker under the Weaver Bally banner was Sandy, a lean and angular woman probably in her mid-forties whose weathered face suggested that she spent her off-work time outdoors. “Heard there was some trouble out at your place night before last.”

Wandering absentmindedly up and down the long aisles of this could-be-anywhere supermarket, Rosemary had temporarily lost the sense of being in a small town. Of course everyone had heard. “It certainly got me up earlier than I’d have wished,” said Rosemary. “Fortunately, last night was quiet.”

“I bet you’re thinking it was local kids did it.” Sandy’s quick glance at her customer was bitter, and Rosemary remembered that the woman had several teenagers at home.

“The deputies suggested that,” said Rosemary. “But I didn’t see anyone. It was just a very nasty experience that I hope not to have again.”

“God, yes, I can believe that.” Sandy’s voice softened, and she swiped the last of Rosemary’s purchases, a large bag of kibble, over the code-reader. “Oh, yeah. I heard you took in Miss Morgan’s dog. That was nice of you.”

“He’s a nice dog. Did you know her?”

Sandy shook her head. “Just about like I know you, or maybe less. She wasn’t real chatty. But my boys did. She ran ’em off her place one day, said they couldn’t hunt there.”

As Rosemary was considering this interesting bit of information, Sandy went on. “They really liked her. She had a sign on her fence with a picture of this critter they call Bigfoot, and she told them all about him. it. Did you know there’s a computer website for people interested in Bigfoot?”

“No, but I’m not surprised.”

“YOU should have told Gus more about Runyon,” said Gray flatly several hours later. Having just heard further details of the shooting of Rosemary’s truck, and the aftermath with Kim Runyon, he was being uncharacteristically forceful.

“Thank you very much, and why didn’t I think of that,I wonder?” Rosemary snapped. “Eddie Runyon is a jerk who believes life has cheated him and besides, he views women with the combination of lust and distaste that’s more or less normal in a thirteen-year-old.” Rosemary had a sip from her glass and took a moment’s pleasure in the clean taste of chilled gin. “But his wife, who works hard and apparently loves him, has one baby on her hip and another in her belly. I’m not quite willing to get their daddy sent off to jail for an assault on my truck. If he was the one who did it.”

She set her glass down on the counter and glared at Gray, who sensibly said only, “Mm.” A distant mournful wail underlined that noncommittal sound, followed by a higher-pitched yap-yap-yap.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Will they eventually stop that?” Rosemary’s uneasiness about leaving her dog at home alone, fitting neatly with Tank’s unwillingness to be left, had resulted in his accompanying her tonight. Gray’s German shepherd and Jack Russell, both objecting strenuously to this invasion of their territory, had been banished to the barn, Angel the peaceful Greyhound loping along with them in some version of canine solidarity.

“Rocky will. Aggie probably won’t. Come on, we’ll take our drinks into the other room, hardly hear ’em from there.” Gray Campbell’s house, east of Highway 3 on Rush Creek Road, was a low-slung open-space building, but the kitchen, at the end nearest the barn, could be closed off from the living–dining–lounging area. Rosemary, who’d been pacing the whole length while Gray washed and tore lettuce, picked up her glass and stalked off, Tank on her heels.

“Sorry,” she muttered when Gray joined her moments later. “But it’s irritating. I didn’t come to Trinity County expecting Eden, just a chance to live quietly on my own without bothering anybody or being bothered. I don’t think that’s asking a lot.”

Gray sat down on a low couch, propped his heels on a scarred Stickley coffee table, and stared thoughtfully into his glass. “Okay, maybe I was wrong and your best bet would be to just stay quietly out of Runyon’s way for a while instead of calling the law further down on his head. He’s lived here for twenty-five years and so far as I know he’s never hurt anyone other than in a fistfight.”

Right, thought Rosemary, and moved to the buffet to add an ice cube and a small splash of gin to her glass. She’d decided that Eddie Runyon was a lot like his two-year-old son, full of bluster but quick to retreat from real risk. Except… “I think he’s particularly offended by independent women. He referred to Mike Morgan as ‘that dumb dyke’ when I came across him out at her place; and he wasn’t very happy to see me wandering around out there alone, either.”

Gray savored a mouthful of his scotch and then balanced the glass on the flat of his belly. His silence was expectant.

Rosemary was having trouble understanding her own behavior. A self-contained woman accustomed to working hard and not looking for trouble, she seemed to have come upon a reservoir of ready outrage she hadn’t known she harbored. She settled into a chair that felt too soft. “So here’s the other thing. I irritated him, big dumb Eddie, and he shot my truck. It appears.”

“It does at that,” agreed Gray.

“So. What I keep thinking is, Mike Morgan irritated him, too. Suppose he just—came across her the way he did my truck, and had his gun with him. And blasted off in her direction and killed her. Not necessarily even meaning to. That’s what I keep thinking.”

Gray frowned at his feet, way down there at the ends of his stretched-out legs. “Rosemary, I know Gus Angstrom either talked to or inquired about all the local guys who hunt. And Gus is a lot smarter than Eddie Runyon.”

Rosemary, sipping gin, considered this and had to agree.

“So I think you can decide what to do, or not, based on your own situation. Besides,” he added, “don’t you think you’re maybe a little over-involved with a woman you never even met?”

Startled, Rosemary pulled herself straight in the too-soft chair and glared. “You stop that!”

Tank, dozing beside her feet, rolled over and gathered himself, as if for quick movement. He looked at her, and then at Gray, and gave a worried whine.

“Tank! No!” At Rosemary’s words, the dog lowered his head in what looked a lot like embarrassment.

“I’m sorry,” she said to Gray. “I don’t know…why did he do that? What’s wrong with him?”

“It’s all right. It’s okay, Tank, “ he added to the dog, holding out a hand. Tank got to his feet, nudged Gray’s hand, returned to his position at Rosemary’s side.

“Nothing’s wrong, Rosemary. He’s just been over-socialized. ‘Over-habituated’ is the term they use with wildlife.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It’s the kind of attitude I’ve seen in dogs that live with homeless people, street people. This guy probably spent every waking moment with Mike Morgan. She was his friend, and his family, and his job. And she wasn’t a particularly sociable person, from what I’ve heard.”

“Oh.”

“So now you’re it, for him,” Gray added with a shrug. “He’s not a naturally aggressive animal. I think he can be a bit overprotective without becoming a problem. If it worries you, I’ll try to find a busier home for him.”

“No.”

“Or, if you want to break the pattern a bit, you could trade him for a different dog. A female,” he added quickly.

“I don’t think so.” She reached down and kneaded the dog’s shoulders. “Good boy, Tank.”

Gray tipped his glass up, drained it, got to his feet. “Let’s eat. The fire’s hot, and it will take me about ten minutes to grill the salmon one of my clients just brought me from the coast.”

Rosemary carried dishes from kitchen to dining table: brown rice with mushrooms, a platter on which slices of late tomatoes from Gray’s sheltered garden were topped by thin slices of red onion, a bowl of mixed lettuces with blue cheese dressing.

“I’d had in mind a nice venison roast,” said Gray as he served the salmon. “But I decided that might conjure up unhappy images. Hardly anybody is offended by the idea of a fishing line.”

He poured wine, sat down, then got up to close the kitchen door. After all the back-and-forthing from kitchen to table, Aggie’syap-yap-yap had been joined again by Rocky’s booming roar.

“Maybe we should have all our dinners at my house,” Rosemary said. “You could cook there as well as here.”

“A cook likes his own kitchen, his own stove and pans.” To Rosemary, a pan was a pan, but the tone of Gray’s voice told her he wasn’t joking.

“So if you think you’ll want to keep bringing your dog along…” Clearly Gray could read her face as readily as she could his voice. “My dogs will adjust, or you and I will refuse to let a little noise spoil our meal.”

“Right.”

With coffee and dessert—apples baked in little folded-up squares of piecrust with what smelled like cinnamon and brown sugar—they moved back into the living room, where Rosemary found the too-soft chair comfortable after all and Gray put on a DVD. “I’m not good at judging what somebody else might find funny, but this is the kind of silliness that always cheers me right up.”

An hour later the plates were empty, the coffee cups held only dregs, and Rosemary was still stifling the occasional giggle. “If my boys were still around, they’d have made sure I got to meet Wallace and Gromit. Thank you, Gray.”

“My pleasure. You know, maybe some week we should drive to the coast, for dinner and a movie.” He caught her involuntary wince, and said, quickly, “Or Redding. That’s a lot closer.”

“We could do that, certainly. Although there’s a lot to be said for a comfortable living room and a vid shop.”

“True. Well, we can think about it,” said Gray. “Rosemary, what took you to see Gus today?”

“You don’t want to know.” Rosemary felt her nice easy muscles tightening once again.

“What? Yes I do.”

She got to her feet and collected plates to carry to the kitchen.

“Rosemary?” He followed with the tray of coffee gear.

“Well. That woman I’m obsessed by?”

“Rosemary, I didn’t say ‘obsessed.’ ”

“Funny, that’s the way it sounded to me. Anyway, Glenna Doty asked me to write a kind of obituary of Michelle Morgan, and I’ve been working on it, talking to people. I decided it might be useful to talk to the officials as well.”

“You did,” he muttered, leaning against the kitchen counter and folding his arms.

“Yup. And Sheriff Angstrom was in the office, and willing to answer a few questions. He even got out his copy of the postmortem report and let me look at it.” Rosemary clasped her hands under her chin and began a recitation. “Michelle Morgan was six feet one inch tall. She weighed one hundred forty-five pounds. She was healthy and in very good condition. She’d given birth at least once,” she added in lower tones, wondering anew what had become of that baby. “She’d had her left little finger amputated long ago. And she had a number of very old broken bones: wrist, forearm, collarbone. The doctor thought she’d probably been abused as a child.”

“Which would have been a good reason for her avoiding any family she might have,” said Gray. He frowned at Rosemary, whose eyes had widened as a new idea struck her. “What?”

“Rodeoing! She liked Thea Petrov, and once she told Thea her brother cut off her little finger; but the next time she said she’d lost it rodeoing. Which, believe me, is not unlikely, nor is breaking bones. Risk-taking kids who grow up with horses do that a lot; I had two little brothers who always had one limb or another encased in plaster. I should probably tell Gus about that.”

“Gus, is it?” Gray raised an eyebrow.

“What you call him, I believe,” she remarked. “He seems a nice enough guy, actually. Tired as he looked, he could have been a lot less tolerant of an inquisitive civilian than he was.”

“He’s shorthanded. He’s tired of politics; I’ll be surprised if he runs for another term. His wife died a few years back. And,” Gray added with a shake of his head, “his only son is in Iraq with the Marines.”

“Oh, shit,” said Rosemary. She clenched her jaw and tightened her shoulders against the shiver that hit her at the mention of anyone’s son, anyone’s child, in that war. Any war, she reminded herself.

“Gray, that was a wonderful dinner, and a nice evening,” she said, with a glance at her watch. “Thank you. Now I’d better take my dog and myself home to bed.”

“Yes ma’am.” Gray helped her into her coat, snapped Tank’s leash to his collar, and walked the pair of them out to her truck.

“Rosemary.” He took a deep breath. “Believe me, I’m not trying to run your life. But Gus Angstrom is ninety percent certain, and then some, that Michelle Morgan was killed accidentally by a hunter. in any case, I think you should leave the serious investigation to the professionals. And I don’t think you’ll do anyone any good by taking on Eddie Runyon about it.”

This, she thought, was most probably true. She said as much, and thanked Gray again.

“Maybe your best bet would be to concentrate on putting together the piece for the paper, as a kind of memorial. If I come across anyone who has anything to add, I’ll have him, or her, call you. If that’s okay?” At her nod, he bent his head to drop a quick kiss on her cheek, and opened her truck door for her. He was still there watching as she drove off.

Good advice, she told herself. Probably she’d follow it. Still, as she pulled out onto Highway 3, she wondered how she could reasonably, safely find out from Kim where Eddie was around the time of Mike Morgan’s death.

“No way,” she admitted sadly to Tank. “No way at all.”

Rosemary drove homeward slowly, mindful of her coffeedrenched but still probably high blood-alcohol level. Good thing she’d tucked her rifle away at home earlier; this time of night, a gun in her rack might have attracted notice. All was dark and quiet on Willow Lane; she drove into her yard, closed the gate behind her, and locked the truck while Tank did the usual perimeter check of his property and found nothing amiss.

In warmer weather she might have turned off the outside lights and sat for a while on her terrace, enjoying a place where the only lights were those of the stars and moon and there was no freeway within earshot. But the air was chilly, so she went sleepily to bed, was wakened by Tank’s barking only once, gave a moment’s fuzzy thought to checking the cause, and decided it was probably a deer. It wasn’t until morning that she discovered how correct she’d been.