Nightshades

CHAPTER EIGHT

The cottage on the adjacent hillock was owned by a couple named Brewster, but with Mrs. Bloom and her shotgun nearby, this was not the time to talk to them. The atmosphere in Musket Creek was every bit as hostile as Frank O’Daniel had suggested it would be; bringing Kerry along had definitely not been a good idea. I considered calling it quits for now and heading back to Redding. But if I did, Kerry would never let me hear the end of it-and I couldn’t believe that everybody up here was screwy enough to threaten us. I decided to try interviewing one more resident. If that went as badly as my other attempts had, then the hell with it and I would come back tomorrow alone.

At the fork I took the left branch that led away from town and up into the wooded slopes to the west. The first house we came to belonged to Paul Robideaux; the second, almost a mile farther along, was a free-form cabin that resembled a somewhat lopsided A-frame, built on sloping ground and bordered on three sides by tall redwoods and Douglas fir. It had been pieced together with salvaged lumber, rough-hewn beams, native stone, redwood thatch, and inexpensive plate glass. A woodbutcher’s house, woodbutchers being people who went off to homestead in the wilds because they didn’t like cities, mass-produced housing, or most people.

When I slowed and eased the car off the road next to a parked Land Rover, Kerry asked, “Who lives here?”

“Hugh Penrose. He’s a writer.”

“What does he write?”

“Articles and books on natural history. He used to be a professor at Chico State. Apparently he’s an eccentric.”

“Mmm. How about letting me come with you this time? You don’t seem to be doing too well one-on-one.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea-”

“Phooey,” she said, and got out and went up toward the cabin.

Well, damn! But there was nothing I could do except to follow her, telling myself this was the last time I brought her along on an investigation.

We went up a set of curving limb-and-plank stairs to a platform deck. From inside I could hear the sound of a typewriter rattling away. I knocked on the door. The typewriter kept on going for half a minute; then it stopped, and there were footsteps, and pretty soon the door opened.

The guy who looked out at us was one of the ugliest men I had ever seen. He was about five and a half feet tall, fat, with a bulbous nose and misshapen ears and cheeks pitted with acne scars, and his bullet-shaped head was as bald as an egg. His eyes were small and mean, but there was more pain in them than anything else. This was a man who had lived more than fifty years, I thought, and who had suffered through every one of them.

He looked at Kerry, looked away from her as if embarrassed, and fixed his gaze on me. “Yes? What is it?”

“Mr. Penrose?”

“Yes?”

Before I could open my mouth again, Kerry said cheerfully, “We’re the Wades, Bill and Kerry. From San Francisco. We’re thinking of moving up here-you know, homesteading. I hope you don’t mind us calling on you like this.”

“How did you know my name?” Penrose asked. He was still looking at me.

“The fellow at the mercantile gave it to us,” Kerry said. “He told us you were a homesteader and we thought we’d come by and look at your place and see how you liked living here.”

I could have kicked her. It was one of those flimsy, spontaneous stories that sound as phony as they are. But she got away with it, by God, at least for the moment. All Penrose said was, “Which fellow at the mercantile?” and he said it without suspicion.

“Mr. Coleclaw.”

“Which Mr. Coleclaw?”

“I didn’t know there was more than one. He was in his twenties and the only one around.” Kerry glanced at me. “Did he give you his first name, dear?”

“Gary,” I said. “Dear.”

“Poor young fool,” Penrose said. “Poor lost lad.”

“Pardon?”

“He has rocks in his head,” Penrose said, and burst out laughing. The laugh went on for maybe three seconds, like the barking of a sea lion, exposing yellowed and badly fitting dentures; then it cut off as if somebody had smacked a hand over his mouth. He looked embarrassed again.

Definitely an oddball, I thought. Musket Creek seemed to be full of them, all right. But Penrose, at least, had my sympathy; the strain of coping with physical deformities like his was enough to throw anybody a little out of whack.

“That was a dreadful pun,” he said. “Gary can’t help it if he’s retarded; I don’t know what makes me so cruel sometimes. I apologize. No one should make fun of others, should they.” It wasn’t a question, so he didn’t wait for a response. He went on, “What else did the boy tell you? Did he say anything about the Northern Development Corporation?”

Kerry simulated a blank look that would have got her thrown out of any acting school in the country. But again, Penrose didn’t notice; he still wasn’t looking at her, except for brief sidelong eye-flicks whenever she spoke. “No,” she said, “he didn’t. Is that something we should know about?”

“Yes. Oh yes. If they have their way you won’t want to move here.” He paused. “But I’m forgetting my manners. I haven’t many visitors, you see. Would you like to come in?”

Kerry said, “Yes, thanks. That would be nice.”

So Penrose stepped aside and we went in. The interior of the cabin-just one big room-was furnished sparsely with mismatched secondhand items and strewn with books. Against the back wall was a long table with a typewriter, a bunch of papers, and an unlit candle on it. The candle caught and held my attention. It was fat, it was stuck inside a wooden bowl, and it was purple-the same color purple as the one I’d found at the burned-out ghosts.

I went over to the table for a closer look. When Kerry finished declining Penrose’s offer of a cup of coffee I said to him, “That’s a nice candle you’ve got there.”

“Candle?” he said blankly.

“I wouldn’t mind having one like it.” I gave Kerry a pointed look. “We collect candles, don’t we, dear.”

“Yes, that’s right. We do.”

“Did you get it locally?” I asked Penrose.

“From a widow lady who lives here, yes.”

“May I ask her name?”

“Ella Bloom. She makes them; it’s her hobby.”

“Just purple ones? Or other colors too?”

“Just purple. Her favorite color.”

“Does she sell them to anyone besides you?”

“Oh, I didn’t buy it from her. She gave it to me. She doesn’t make them to sell.”

“Does she give them away to everyone around here?”

“Yes. Everyone. Maybe she’ll give one to you, if you ask her. Her house is right near the mercantile.”

So much for the purple-candle angle.

I steered Penrose back to the topic of Northern Development, and this time he managed to stay on it without getting sidetracked. He launched into a two-minute diatribe against the developers and what he called “the warped values of modern society.” He didn’t seem quite as militant as Robideaux and Mrs. Bloom, but then he didn’t know I was a detective.

I said, “Isn’t there anything that can be done to stop them, Mr. Penrose?”

“Well, we’ve hired attorneys, you know, and they’ve filed suit to block the sale of the land. There’s nothing else to be done until the suit comes to trial.”

“Have you tried appealing to the Northern people? To get them to modify their plans?”

“Oh yes. They won’t listen to us. Awful people. The head of the company was an insensitive swine.”

“Was?”

“He died a few days ago,” Penrose said, with a hint of relish in his voice. “A tragic accident.”

“What sort of accident?”

“He went to blazes.” Penrose did his barking sea-lion number again. This time he didn’t look quite so embarrassed when the noise stopped. “One shouldn’t speak lightly of the dead, should one,” he said.

“You mean he died in a fire?”

“Yes. In Redding.”

“That’s a coincidence,” I said.

“Coincidence?”

“You had a fire here recently. We noticed the burned-out buildings on the way through.”

“Oh, that. It was only four of the ghosts.”

“Another accident?”

He didn’t answer the question. Instead he said, “I told the others they should have let the fire spread, let it purge the other ghosts as well, but they wouldn’t listen. A pity.”

Kerry said, “You wanted all the buildings to burn up?”

“All the ghosts, yes.”

“But why?”

“They’re long dead; cremation is fitting and overdue,” he said. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

I said, “Shouldn’t the buildings be preserved for historical reasons? After all, this was once a Gold Rush camp-”

“Definitely not. The past is dead; requiescat in pace. Resurrection breeds tourists.” He smiled, rubbed his bulbous nose, and repeated the phrase as if he liked the sound of it: “Resurrection breeds tourists.”

“Does everybody in Musket Creek feel the same way?”

“Oh, yes. Leave us alone, they say. Let us live and let us die, all in good time.”

“So that’s why nobody here ever tried to restore any of the buildings,” Kerry said.

“Just so,” Penrose agreed. “Natural history is relevant; the history of man is often irrelevant. You see?”

I asked, “How do you suppose the fire got started? The one here, I mean.”

“Does it matter, Mr. Wade?”

“I’m just curious.”

“Curiosity kills cats and lays ghosts,” he said, and cut loose with his laugh again. Listening to it, and to his slightly whacky comments, was making me a little uncomfortable. I get just as nervous around unarmed oddballs as I do around those with weapons.

“Is it possible somebody set the fire deliberately?” I asked him. “Somebody who feels as you do about cremating the ghosts?”

It was the wrong thing to say. Penrose’s mean little eyes narrowed, and when he spoke again his voice had lost its friendliness. “I think you’d better leave now. I have work to do.”

Kerry said, “Couldn’t we talk a while longer, Mr. Penrose? I really would like to know more about-”

“No,” he said. “No. Come back and visit me again if you decide to move here. But I don’t think you should; it’s probably too late. Good-bye.”

There was nothing for us to do but leave. We went out onto the platform deck, and Kerry thanked him for talking to us, and he said gruffly, “Not at all,” and banged the door shut behind us.

On the way down the stairs she said, “Why do you always have to be so damned blunt?”

“He was getting on my nerves.”

“We could have found out more if you’d been a little more tactful.”

“We? ‘Bill and Kerry Wade, from San Francisco.’ Christ!”

“It got him to talk to us, didn’t it?”

“All right, so it got him to talk to us.”

“Which is more than you accomplished with your direct approach to Mrs. Bloom,” she said. “You probably blurted out that you’re a detective to Gary Coleclaw and that artist, Robideaux, too. No wonder they wouldn’t tell you anything.”

“Listen, don’t tell me how to do my job.”

“I’m not. I’m only suggesting-”

“Don’t suggest. I didn’t bring you along to do any suggesting.”

“No, I know why you brought me along. Women are only good for one thing, right?”

“Oh for God’s sake, I didn’t mean-”

“You can be a macho jerk sometimes, you know that? You think you know everything.”

She got into the car and sat there with her arms folded, staring straight ahead. I wanted to say something else to her, but I didn’t seem to have any words. The thing was, she was right. I had handled things badly with Penrose, and with Gary Coleclaw and Robideaux and Mrs. Bloom. And with Kerry, too. It was just one of those days when you can’t seem to get the proper handle on how to deal with anybody. But it galled me to have to admit it, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Which was silly and petulant, but it was also a pride thing, however much of a macho jerk it made me. Kerry wasn’t the detective here, damn it; I was.

A half-mile farther along there was another homesteader’s cabin, this one owned by a family named Butterfield, but I was in no frame of mind for another Musket Creek interview. I drove back into the valley. When we came to the Coleclaw place I looked it over for some indication that Jack Coleclaw and his wife had returned from Weaverville. There wasn’t any-no automobiles, no people, not even any sign of the fat yapping brown-and-white dog. So there was no point in stopping there either.

I kept on driving up the road and out of Ragged-Ass Gulch.