Ice and Stone

Tuesday, January 15

8:01 a.m.

While I was preflighting my plane at the airstrip, I told Hal Bascomb I’d be returning with a passenger. “How are those motels outside of town?” I asked.

“Grungy.”

“Is there any other place my friend could stay that wouldn’t link her to me? Not Jake’s or Jane’s — she’s an undercover operator.”

“Well, there’s a woman who takes in boarders in season — Hattie Moran. She’s kind of... eccentric but well meaning. And she can be trusted not to gossip.”

“Will you call her and ask if she’ll take in someone off-season?”

“Yes. I’m sure she’d be happy to. She’s a widow living on her husband’s Social Security, and I know she could use the cash.”

1:55 p.m.

The sky had been mostly clear on my flight to Oakland, but on the trip back, thickening clouds over Goose Lake indicated a storm was brewing. I detoured south and set a northeast course for Meruk County. The turbulence wasn’t all that bad, but Rae, never a comfortable flyer, gripped the edges of her seat and looked queasy, her small face white in contrast to her wild red-gold curls.

“There’s a barf bag in the pocket behind you,” I told her.

“I’ll ride it out,” she said through clenched teeth.

“I’m sorry. I forgot you don’t like to fly.”

“I like to fly. I just don’t like little planes. They make me feel like I’m riding in the stomach of a hummingbird.”

To distract her, I said, “You know, I read something interesting about hummingbirds the other day. They’re the only avian species that can fly backward.”

“Well, don’t you fly backward. Forward is fine by me.” She clutched the seat tighter.

I made another attempt to distract her. “What’s the new book about?”

“About four hundred and six pages.”

“Come on, give me an idea.”

“Well, there’s this woman who’s living in Mendocino County, sort of near Touchstone, but higher on the ridge, and militant people from the forest seem to be closing in on her...”

Hal Bascomb was waiting for us outside the largest of the three Quonset huts when we landed. He helped Rae down solicitously and offered her a mint that he claimed was guaranteed to combat air sickness. She accepted it and ate two more during the drive to Miz Hattie’s Victorian cottage in Aspendale.

The cottage was pale yellow, with all the filigrees and architectural frills of that era. And Miz Hattie, even though Hal had described her as eccentric, was a definite surprise. Short — no more than five feet — and fragile looking, she appeared at the door wearing a towering hat covered with plastic fruit on her white curls. She grinned at our startled expressions.

“I take my name seriously,” she said, admitting us and brushing away a pair of ginger cats who appeared to sniff out the visitors. “I have a world-class collection of hats, and I change them every six hours on the dot — except when I’m asleep, of course. This one” — she motioned at the arrangement of various plastic fruits on her head — “is one of my favorites. The fruit is very realistic, and there’s a comb that I can attach a real pineapple to, just like Chiquita.”

“It’s wonderful,” Rae said.

I agreed that it was.

“Thank you. Come back to the kitchen. We’ll have tea and cookies.” She turned and bustled down a hallway, past rooms crammed with velvet settees and carved chairs and rosewood side tables.

Rae and I raised eyebrows at one another and smiled.

The tea was jasmine — “My father was stationed in Japan for much of his naval career” — and the cookies were cardamom — “It’s good for what ails you.” Good for my ailments or not, I ate three and asked her for the recipe.

“Your other hats,” Rae said, “what kind are they?”

“Oh, baseball caps — I’m a Giants fan. Berets, because I can pretend I’m in Paris. I’m particularly fond of my red fedora; it has beautiful feathers on the brim.”

After a while I tuned out the headgear conversation, and when Miz Hattie offered to show Rae her room, I excused myself and left.

3:10 p.m.

Back in the Jeep, I phoned Henry Howling Wolf’s cell, and he answered immediately. He was still in Santa Rosa, but said Sally would be released the next morning. “She’s doing well, really well, and I can’t wait to get her back home.”

“Are you concerned about someone going after her again?”

“No way. I’ve got a Remington 870 Express and know how to use it. If I have to turn the house into an armed camp, so be it.”

“What about Sheriff Arneson?”

“I’m ready to kick his ass if he shows up and hassles us.”

“Not such a good idea to attack the county sheriff.”

“I’m not worried about that. Most of his department would back me up.”

“Sounds like he’s riding for a fall.”

“He is, if I have anything to say about it.”

I shifted topics. “The feather pendant of Sally’s that I found and had taken away from me — was there anything special about it? I mean, something that would make it different from the other two you made?”

“No. It—” He broke off, then said, “Well, maybe. It was numbered. Like many other silversmiths, I sign my work, and number them to indicate the order in which they were produced.”

“So the one I found must be Sally’s.”

“I’m positive it was. After her memory improved, she told me the son of a bitch who grabbed her near St. Germaine tore it off.”

Was the son of a bitch who’d torn it off me the same man? Or somebody else? Whoever it had been, I still didn’t know why.

Or did I?

3:22 p.m.

The Aspendale Civic Building was next to the clinic where I’d been taken after the fire at the shack. I asked the young Native woman at the reception desk in the lobby who the county coroner was, and she told me it was Malcolm Hendley, owner of the Hendley Funeral Parlor. That figured. Often in underfunded rural counties, a local mortician also served as coroner.

The funeral parlor was a white structure that looked like something out of the antebellum South that had been shrunk to fit this small backwater town. I entered and was confronted by the smell of flowers — lilacs, maybe, but the odor seemed artificial. The floors were covered in gray industrial carpet, the walls painted a darker gray. Soft organ music came from loudspeakers mounted near the ceiling.

A man clad in a dark suit emerged from a side door. “May I help you? The services for Mrs. Woods are scheduled to start at four—”

“That’s not why I’m here. Are you Mr. Hendley?”

“I am. Malcolm Hendley, at your service.” He was younger than I’d imagined, maybe thirty, and had the trim body and economical moves of a runner.

I introduced myself. He knew who I was — news travels quickly in places like Aspendale — and was willing to answer my questions. He led me to a small seating area.

“What is it you wish to know, Ms. McCone?”

“You performed an autopsy on Josie Blue four years ago, is that right?”

“I did, yes. The poor girl died of manual strangulation. Her murderer was never caught.”

“And you also handled her burial.”

“Of course. A committal service at the Aspendale Cemetery.”

“Her brother told me a silver pendant his sister always wore was interred with her. Was it?”

“Unfortunately, no. The deceased wore no pendant when she was brought to me.”

“Was it ever found?”

“As far as I know, no, it wasn’t.”

That was all I needed to know.

5:07 p.m.

Rae called with news. “I’m at the Back Woods Casino,” she said. “Those cowboys from the Harcourt Ranch you told me about, Gene and Vic, were here drinking in the bar and only too happy to buy me a couple of beers. I got out of them that they did ‘special jobs’ as well as ranch work. When I asked what kind, they got sort of reticent. But as the bourbon — in their case — flowed, I said I’d heard about the fire at the shack where you were staying, and I got the impression from the sly way they talked and looked at each other that they might be the ones who set it.”

I’d figured as much. And if they had set the fire, it had to have been on orders from one of the Harcourts. The surge of anger I felt started me coughing.

“Shar? Are you okay?”

I cleared my throat. “Yeah. What else did they say?”

“Well, Gene grumbled that they’d been sent on what he called ‘a lot of bullshit errands’ whenever the Harcourts were expecting ‘important visitors’ lately.”

“Did they know who these visitors are?”

“Didn’t seem to. Just important people from out of the area.”

“Congregating at the ranch for what reason?”

“Neither of them could or would guess — they don’t exactly have inquiring minds. And I didn’t want to make them suspicious by pressing too hard. The guests usually arrive by air, although a limo has occasionally been seen in the village.”

“I wonder if anybody in the village has actually seen any of these visitors.”

“Miz Hattie claims she has, but I’m not sure that’s true. Anyway, the cowboys left me at that point. Gene said they might be back later if they didn’t decide to stay at the peak tonight, and Vic told him to shut up. What’s this about a peak?”

“Sheik’s Peak. It’s a big rock formation north of town. I gather those two guys go around the countryside camping out when they’re banished from the ranch, like they did at the shack.”

“Well, it could be they’re up to more mischief. I followed them out and heard the fat one say, ‘As my sainted Irish grandfather would put it, maybe we should spend some time riding the dolly.’ That earned him another ‘Shut up’ from Vic.”

“Odd phrase, ‘riding the dolly.’ You have any idea what he meant?”

“No.”

I didn’t either, unless it was a reference to one of the dollies I’d seen at the warehouse in Allium.

I asked Rae, “So what’s on your agenda for the rest of the evening?”

“Paul Harcourt. He came in alone a while ago — the cowboys pointed him out to me just before they left. Harcourt’s playing blackjack. I’m going to try to get next to him, see what I can find out.”

“Be careful. He’s dangerous.”

“I can be dangerous too, you know.”

6:30 p.m.

Jake agreed to meet me at the Brews to talk about the Sheik’s Peak area. I didn’t tell him my other reason for wanting to see him; I would do that after he gave me the information about the Peak.

He was seated in a booth looking worn out. His eyes were reddened from his rubbing them, and his skin was drawn tight over his cheekbones.

We ordered drinks, and when they came I opened the sectional I’d brought with me. “Let’s look at this map. How do I get to Sheik’s Peak?”

“You’re not planning to go out there alone? That’s pretty rough country.”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll be careful.”

He uncapped a felt-tip and began drawing on a napkin. “You take the main highway north for five miles or so and turn left on Powder Gap Road. There’s an old, rusted-out Mobil gas sign that tells you when it’s coming up. From there it’s about two miles before you see the peak. It stands out because it’s on one of the high rises of land out there — big, crumbling granite thing. Some of us used to try to climb it, but as far as I know, no one ever did.”

“The road doesn’t go all the way to the peak.”

“No. It ends in a clearing a quarter mile or so below the base.”

“Jane Ramone told me there are hiking trails in the area. Is there one leading out of the clearing?”

“Two. One that leads up to the base of the peak, the other parallels it lower down.”

The second was the one I wanted. “How long a hike is it” — I tapped the sectional with my finger — “to this land mass here?”

“A couple of miles. But that’s on Harcourt land.”

“I know.” I tapped another spot. “The building marked here near the base of the peak — what is it?”

“An abandoned cabin built by a crazy miner a long time ago.”

Gene and Vic’s other camping place.

“Tell me again why you think one of the Harcourts killed your sister.”

He sighed, took a deep drink of beer. “She’d been seen with one of them, walking around by the reservoir. More than once.”

“By whom?”

“Several people.”

“Did you hear this before or after she died?”

“Both.”

According to Josie’s former boyfriend, the Berkeley professor, on her return to Meruk County she’d found the love of her life. A Harcourt?

“Could she have been seeing one of them regularly without you knowing it?”

“What do you mean, seeing him?”

“You know what I mean, Jake.”

“She had better sense than that.” He grimaced. “Or, hell, maybe she didn’t. Anyhow, she didn’t talk about her love life.”

I asked, “What motive would either have had for strangling her?”

“I don’t know. They’ve got a mean streak, a crazy temper. All the Harcourts are crazy.”

I said, “All right. Now let’s talk about the feather pendant that was stolen from me.”

“That pendant! What the hell is so important about it?”

“Henry Howling Wolf made only three of them: one for Josie; one for a friend who’d moved to Portland; one for Sally Bee. You told me Josie was buried with hers. But that was a lie. Malcolm Hendley told me hers was never found.”

Jake sagged over his beer, both hands now pressed to his forehead.

“You believed her killer might have taken hers, maybe threw it away in the woods. When you saw me wearing the one I found and I told you where I’d found it, you thought it might be Josie’s. You didn’t know then that Sally Bee was missing, or that she’d been abducted on the trail to the monastery and the pendant was likely hers. So you followed me back to the shack that night—”

“All right!” He lowered his hands, but his eyes avoided mine. “Yes, I followed you. Yes, I wanted the pendant because I thought it must be Josie’s, the only thing left of hers that meant anything to me. Jesus, I’m sorry, Sharon, I’m sorry...”

“Why didn’t you confess to me later?”

“I was too ashamed. I didn’t want you to hate me after the way I jumped you, knocked you down...”

“I don’t hate you. I’m just disappointed in you.”

“No more than I am in myself.”

“Okay. Where is the pendant now?”

“In my freezer. Under the mac and cheese. I guess I’m not very original about hiding places.”

“You know now that it most likely belongs to Sally Bee. You’ll have to return it to her when she comes home.”

“I will. That’s a promise.”

He looked totally bereft when I left him, as if he were reliving all his mistakes and losses.

6:50 p.m.

The odd phrase Rae had reported to me — “riding the dolly” — echoed in my mind again as I climbed into the Jeep. It had an unpleasant ring to it, although none of the individual words implied anything terrible.

I thought of the warehouse full of stolen goods in Allium. There had been dollies lined up to move the cartons. But you didn’t ride them; you pushed them. Anyhow, what could that have to do with Gene and Vic? Or Sheik’s Peak?

Maybe it was an Irish slang term. But for what?

“Riding the dolly.”

Dolly. Doll. That was a slang word for woman—

All at once I remembered the Irish friend I’d had in college; in his parlance women were “dollies” — and “riding” was a euphemism for “fucking.”

Oh my God!

7:24 p.m.

I set out north on the highway from Bluefork toward Sheik’s Peak. When I saw the old Mobil gas sign loom ahead, I slowed and soon turned onto Powder Gap Road. It was paved but potholed, and its condition deteriorated even more as it zigzagged upward onto the long, steep hillside that stretched out below the monolith. Made of rough gray granite, Sheik’s Peak towered above its desolate surroundings.

The clearing where the road ended was ringed by pine trees. It was deserted — no sign of Gene and Vic. But the Jeep’s headlights picked out a rutted crisscrossing of recent tire tracks. At this elevation there were still patches of snow on the ground, even though it hadn’t snowed in several days. The peak jutted up from atop a wide rock formation whose sides were steep and eroding. It had been battered by the elements over thousands of years; there were deep fissures in the granite, filled by ferns and lichen, and broken rocks were scattered across the rising ground above. It was at once a symbol of the effects of eternity and a reminder of how we humans crap up the planet.

I parked and got out into an icy wind that made me wish I had a warmer coat and mittens instead of gloves. I couldn’t see the cabin Jake had told me about from here; it must be hidden behind the wooded area off to my left. The beam from Hal’s flashlight picked out two hiking trails that led across the damp, rutted grass, one upward into the pines, the other in a lower, northerly direction. I took the upper one, aiming the light just ahead of my feet when I entered the copse of pines.

The trail was tough going. I stumbled over rocks, slipped on the icy pine-needled ground, ducked to avoid branches. Fortunately it wasn’t a long trek. The copse soon thinned, the ground leveled into another, smaller clearing, and then I saw the cabin — a dark, rectangular shape huddled against the steep wall of granite in the monolith’s shadow.

I made my way to it along a barely discernible extension of the trail. It was in far worse shape than my former hideout, built of weathered logs, its sagging roof topped by a lopsided tin chimney. No lights showed through the gaps between the logs. There was no visible window, just a door hung crookedly in its frame.

The door wasn’t locked. I took my .38 from the plastic pack in my deep pocket, then threw the door open, recoiling from the cold, fetid air as I flashed the light inside.

Just a single room, the floor warped and caked with dirt and rodent droppings. A rough table with two mismatched kitchen chairs and an extinguished oil lamp. A red-and-white cooler on a makeshift counter. A cot — with its covers hanging to the dirt floor. And on it—

“Sasha!”

The young woman I’d met in the Good Price Store lay on her back. Lengths of clothesline bound her at the wrists and ankles. When I said her name, her eyes fluttered open and she cringed like a frightened animal.

“Don’t be afraid,” I told her, “I’ve come to help you. I’m going to get you out of here.”

She shook her head violently and her eyes moved from side to side, as if looking for a way out. Her face was grayish, her hair matted; she licked dry, cracked lips but didn’t speak.

Her eyes met and held mine as I went to the cot. Hers were swollen, bloodshot.

I sat on the edge of the cot and managed to untie the knots in the clothesline. She shivered. All that she wore was a man’s ragged red plaid flannel shirt. Once I had her free, I took off the wool-lined coat the Sisters had provided me and placed it around her shoulders.

“They hurt me.” Her voice was hoarse from crying out to be released from this place, or from disuse. “They both... hurt me.”

Gene and Vic. Goddamn them!

A panicked thought widened her eyes. “What if they come back?”

“They’ll regret it if they do before we get out of here. Can you walk?”

“Think so.”

I helped her up, supported her with both hands, and led her out of the cabin and down the trail through the trees. Although she’d been badly abused, Sasha was able to walk and didn’t stumble or fall. When we reached the clearing below, I belted both of us into the Jeep and drove away from there as fast as I dared.

Sasha slumped against the passenger window, her arms tightly folded across her breasts. She breathed raggedly and coughed a few times, but otherwise was silent.

I said, “Did those two men take you from the cemetery when you were delivering the flowers?”

“Yes. I knew them from town; they’d been giving me the eye, and I’d tried to be polite, but this time they didn’t say anything, they just grabbed me... There was nobody else around. They put a cloth over my face before I had a chance to scream, and I guess I passed out.”

“Did you smell anything on the cloth?”

“...Yes, something like the chlorine in the community center pool.”

Chloroform. The bastards had gone to the cemetery fully equipped.

“And then?”

“When I woke up in that godawful place they were drinking. Really bombed. They... they’d raped me. The pain, it was awful, but I lay still pretending I was still out and praying they wouldn’t do it again. After a long time they left. One of them said, ‘We’ll be back, sweetheart.’”

I was sickened by what she’d gone through. Sickened, and determined that the two would pay. I put my free hand on Sasha’s arm, and we rode the rest of the way to Aspendale in silence.

9:55 p.m.

Willa Sharp Eyes, the nurse who had attended me after the fire at the shack, was standing at the admissions desk at the clinic when I brought Sasha in. Immediately she asked who had harmed her. I told her I’d found Sasha near Sheik’s Peak and didn’t know who was responsible for her condition. If I’d named Gene and Vic, it would have meant reporting the kidnapping and rape, and I didn’t want to be detained and questioned by Arneson or his deputies. There’d be time enough later to make sure those two bastards were arrested and charged.

Willa dispensed with the usual protocol of forms and insurance information and took Sasha directly to an examining room. When she came back, she phoned Dr. James Williams at home, and he agreed to come in and attend to the patient.

I checked for voice mail messages when I left the clinic. There were two. One was from Ike Blessing, finally, saying he and his partner would be at the Bluefork airstrip tomorrow. But what time tomorrow? I called the mobile number he’d left and was told Blessing was scheduled on an early-morning flight from Washington, D.C., to SFO, ETA as yet unspecified.

The other message was from Mick. “I’ve got that last batch of info you wanted about Dierdra Two Shoes and Sam Runs Close,” he said when I reached him. “They both had allotments of land up there.”

“Did they claim the allotments?”

“No, they were killed before they could. But they must have been aware of them.”

“What are the allotments worth?”

“There’s no way of telling. There aren’t any comps. I mean, it’s not like measuring the value of a house on Tel Hill versus one in Visitacion Valley.”

“Any indication that either woman was approached about selling?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

“What about Sally Bee? Did she have an allotment?”

“No riches there.”

“Josie Blue?”

“Nope. And I’m fresh out of information.”