Murder at Moot Point (8 page)

“Charlie, are you and the sheriff dating already? You work fast. He's the most eligible bachelor in the county.”

“He told me he's been married and divorced three times.”

“That's what makes him so eligible. Women figure he's hopelessly addicted.” She glanced over her shoulder at the trailer. “Has he taken you to his house yet?”

“He has to take me out to dinner because I'm stranded without my car until it's been investigated enough.” Charlie disobeyed orders and climbed down to join Paige. “Who lives here?”

“Mary and Norma. They found the gun. Jack's been asking for you. He tried to call you at the Hide-a-bye.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I was on my way to see Jack when I saw all the lights up the road. Mary and Norma were standing out here watching the commotion and then Georgie's oldest went thundering past. When the sheriff's car started toward us the ladies headed for their door and I dove for the shadows. Wes Bennett is a sweet old teddy bear and we all love him, but he's so into the cop thing—you know. Want to come to Jack's with me? He's really anxious to talk to you for some reason.”

“I don't want to meet up with Georgie's son. He thinks I killed his mother. He went on a rampage up there, threatened the sheriff.”

“I'll scout ahead, see if there's anyone outside. He might not even know what you look like.”

Because she didn't want to miss dinner, Charlie tore off the bottom of a blank piece of paper on a clipboard hanging from the dash and used the pen attached to it by plastic coil to tell Wes where to find her. He'd be furious of course. Charlie figured he'd earned it.

“Tell me about Mary and Norma,” she told Paige as they set off. She was willing to bet they were the two women trying to comfort Frank last night.

“Mary Hitch and Norma Nelson, widowed sisters living together. They've been here for a long time, originally from Portland and Eugene. I don't know which, where.”

“Do they hate Michael too?”

“Shhhh, wait here.” Paige scuttled ahead to check out the Glick house.

Charlie noticed a drawn curtain pushed aside an inch or two on Clara Peterson the bird lady's picture window, the pulsating color of a television screen flickering in part of the crack. A woman living alone would be anxious at night where a murder had taken place the night before. Anyone standing alone outside in the dark should be too.

Paige reappeared suddenly to pull on Charlie's sleeve. “Way's clear, Holmes. Follow me.”

“Holmes?”

“Well, you ask more questions than the sheriff, Sherlock.”

“Georgie was found under my car. Why is it everybody expects me to sit around and twiddle my thumbs at the Hide-a-bye like a good girl? Do Mary and Norma hate Michael, the painter, like Clara Peterson does?”

“Charlie, you're barking up the wrong alley. Everybody hates Michael. He's the ultimate jerk.”

There was something about Paige Magill that Charlie's instincts didn't trust—but it wasn't her ability to judge people. The door to the Earth Spirit was locked, the windows darkened.

“Maybe he's not home. Maybe he's asleep,” Charlie offered.

“Or on an OOBE. With all the wine he'd had at Georgie's celebration that could be fatal, Charlie. I'm scared.”

“You saw him after he left the celebration? Where was this celebration held? And what's an OOBE?”

Paige scurried back to the hidey-hole under the stair. “It was up at the institute. Jack staggered into my house, demanding to use my phone to call his agent—big-deal drunk author like—and he became truly uncentered when you didn't answer. You realize half the people in this town write, but old Jack's got an agent. Oh, shit, the key's gone. Now I'm really worried.”

“Isn't there a back door?”

“Good thinking.” Paige scuttled off into the shadows and Charlie raced after her.

The back door was unlocked and led directly into the bathroom. The light was on here. The warning buoy burped an “ooowaaaa” just as Charlie closed the door behind her and checked out the tub/shower for her author.

“Ohhh, Jack!” Paige said from Jack's living quarters, sounding more dire than the buoy.

Charlie joined her to find the budding author spread-eagled on his paltry single mattress, his face lit from the bathroom, mouth gaping like he was trying to remind Charlie of the woman under the Toyota.

“Should we call nine one one?”

“No, and keep your voice to a whisper or you could kill him. Charlie, I'm almost certain he's on an OOBE.”

“He looks dead, I'll run for the sheriff.”

“No,” Paige grabbed her wrist with surprising strength and forced her hand to just brush Jack's forehead.

“He's warm, almost hot.”

“In the condition he was in tonight, this is the sickest thing he could have done.”

“Paige, we have to do something—cover him up, call a doctor.” Charlie bent to lift one arm hanging off the side of the bed, but the girl stopped her.

“Please, if we move him it might scare him and he could panic and get lost.” She crossed her ankles, bent her knees outward, and lowered herself smoothly to the floor pulling Charlie down beside her.

“If we're just going to let him sleep it off, why can't we cover him up?” Charlie's client had removed his shoes but was otherwise fully clothed. Still, it seemed wrong to leave him on top of the covers like that.

“He's not here, Charlie. Just his body is. He's left it for a little while. And he doesn't know how to do this very well. He says it's really scary but he can't stop experimenting with it. The worst part is being afraid he can't get back or that something's happened to his body while he's away.”

“How do you know he's not dead drunk or drugged?”

“Because he's so still. You even thought he was dead, period. The real Jack isn't in there. His body's waiting for him to come back.”

“Paige, you either explain all this fast or I'm going to pull him off the bed, run out on the porch and scream for Wes Bennett, and then—”

“An OOBE is an out-of-body experience. The others don't believe Jack can do it. But I know he can. And when he's gone he can still feel some things—like he senses his arm has gone to sleep or his body's getting cold. And he rushes back, but he can get disoriented and confused and panic. Then he has trouble getting back. He's never experimented with an OOBE when he's been full of wine before, that I know of. I don't know what effect it'll have, but it can't be good.”

“Grape-Nuts.”

“What?”

Charlie saw with relief that Jack's chest was moving ever so slightly but regularly. “You say the others don't believe he can do this OOBE thing but you know he can. How?”

“Well, one day Jack said he'd prove it with a controlled experiment. So Brother Dennis and I had a late dinner in my kitchen and talked about some dreams he was having and Jack came down here, got in bed, and as he was falling asleep he left his body and came up to my kitchen.”

“What did he look like without his body?”

“We didn't see him.”

“Then how do you know he was there?”

“Because he called afterwards and told us almost everything we'd talked about. Brother Dennis said Jack was listening at the window outside in the dark. But he couldn't have been because Rose was the control part of the experiment and she stayed out in the store the whole time and peeked in Jack's room every few minutes. And she says he did not leave the Earth Spirit. But Brother Dennis says it was either a trick or someone's lying.”

Charlie was inclined to agree with Brother Dennis. “Rose at the restaurant? Is she in all this New Age whatever-it-is too?”

“She's flirting with it. She realizes she needs centering. And also she's naturally psychic and doesn't know how to deal with that.”

Jack Monroe's body moaned, twitched. Charlie looked away from Paige's plump sincere face to find him staring at her. “Jesus, Charlie, where've you been? I was looking all over for you.”

Chapter 9

Charlie's dinner that night was like a trip into the past. She'd eaten so much Kentucky Fried while growing up that she hadn't touched it since. Edwina hated cooking and cleaning up afterward and the Colonel was made to order.

But the greasy, salty, aromatic, spicy, tangy combination of original recipe, coleslaw, potatoes, gravy, and fluffy biscuit with yellow petroleum product to dribble across it was irresistible this late at night. She and the sheriff dined at the first scenic overlook they came to on Highway 101 on their way back from Chinook's fast-food strip.

Sea and sky were blue-black now except for where the moon glittered on ridges of rolling foam. The couple in the car next to them disappeared from view.

They ate in silence because Wes refused to discuss what Mary and Norma had said to him and was predictably pissed that she had not waited docilely in the Bronco for his return. Charlie yearned to share the funny story of Jack's OOBE, but the sheriff's attitude now and his sexist remarks earlier made that impossible.

Jack had even claimed that when he was out of his body he had visited her cabin at the Hide-a-bye and, finding her gone, had rearranged some of her things to prove he'd been there. Charlie wondered how he could move things without a body that had hands on it, but in the interest of client relations she kept quiet.

Wes Bennett had come pounding at the door of the Earth Spirit before Charlie could discover what Jack Monroe was so anxious to discuss with her that he'd committed “OOBE” to do it. First thing in the morning she'd call the office and then trot along the beach to the village and talk to Jack.

Sheriff Wes Bennett finished off the last drumstick, dropped the bone into the bag, and tore open the little square packet of alcohol-soaked paper washcloth. He cleared his throat of grease and gravel.

“I can't—” he paused to wipe each finger carefully and to swivel the inside of his lips across his teeth repeatedly and then to clear his throat some more, “I can't give you your car back now, like I'd planned to—”

“You didn't tell me you'd planned any such thing.”

“—now that we have a weapon to trace. And now that I know I can't trust you to cooperate with the sheriff's office on this investigation. There will be a deputy outside your cabin in the morning to guarantee you stay there. Understood?” When she didn't answer he added, “Charlie, I've done everything I can for you, more than I should considering the questionable position you are in. And I know there are things you know that you're not telling me. Why I do not know. But I do know my patience is at an end.” The most eligible bachelor in Moot County backed the four wheel out of the paved overlook with such drama the couple next to them sat up again to watch.

It might have been because of the heavy hit of the dinner or because of the sheriff's latest power play but Charlie felt like she had a lead basketball in the pit of her midsection by the time she crawled into bed her second night at the Hide-a-bye. She resigned herself to a sleepless night after an exhausting day and was about to get up and get some aspirin when it seemed like too much effort to disturb the basketball.

That tingly feeling began to overtake her as it sometimes did when she was about to fall asleep so she decided to lie still and concentrate on not thinking, on just relaxing and breathing. It was rather pleasant the way those tingles could just engulf the body like tiny bubbles in the blood, zipping around everywhere.

Of course there was another sensation that often accompanied this one. A less pleasant sensation which made her feel as if she were soaring helplessly, unable to stop or to order her direction. She remembered telling friends of this once at a college party and discovered it was not at all an uncommon dream. Which was a comforting thought that settled her more comfortably with the tingles now.

Charlie was idly wondering if this could be what Jack Monroe experienced when he thought he was having an OOBE when something hard came up out of the bed and struck her shoulder. She tried to sit up but, in her panic, couldn't seem to find the proper leverage. Rolling over quickly onto her side Charlie pushed herself up with the other arm.

That's when she realized there was something wrong with the window. It was too low on the wall. She could see amazingly well in the darkness but it took her a moment to figure out that she was looking up at the top of the lamp shade on the unlit lamp on the bedside table. And then at the top surface of her bed. It must have been five feet above her. There was even someone in it, completely defying gravity. Someone with hair like hers …

The hard thing banging on her shoulder was the ceiling.

Charlie was bobbing upside down near the ceiling.

“Oh, no, I'm not.” She knew a grease-induced nightmare when she saw it. “I'm waking up right now!”

She dropped with a terrifying rush and came to a stop nose to nose with the dark form in the bed. It was Charlie all right.

Knowing this was a dream kept panic at bay but it hovered as close as she did. Charlie rolled over to face the ceiling, high above her now, and that's all it took. She was together again. Probably more than anything because this time she was awake for real.

She lay there a long while, alternately hot and chilled in reaction to her dream, before feeling herself begin to slide into a more natural sleep. Charlie was certain now that this was what Jack Monroe was actually doing when he thought he was OOBEing. Should she tell him? He and Paige clearly believed it was something else and their minds would probably be closed to any rational explanation. Still …

It wasn't until she'd showered and dressed the next morning that Charlie thought to check the cabin for things Jack thought his bodiless person could have rearranged for her. She wasn't surprised to find nothing misplaced.