The Mammoth Book of Pulp Action

The Lost Coast Marcia Muller

California’s Lost Coast is at the same time one of the most desolate and beautiful of shorelines. Northerly winds whip the sand into dust-devil frenzy; eerie, stationary fogs hang in the trees and distort the driftwood until it resembles the bones of prehistoric mammals; bruised clouds hover above the peaks of the distant King Range, then blow down to sea level and dump icy torrents. But on a fair day the sea and sky show infinite shadings of blue, and the wildflowers are a riot of colour. If you wait quietly, you can spot deer, peregrine falcons, foxes, otters, even black bears and mountain lions.

A contradictory and oddly compelling place, this seventy-three-mile stretch of coast southwest of Eureka, where — as with most worthwhile things or people — you must take the bad with the good.

Unfortunately, on my first visit there I was taking mostly the bad. Strong winds pushed my MG all over the steep, narrow road, making hairpin turns even more perilous. Early October rain cut my visibility to a few yards. After I crossed the swollen Bear River, the road continued to twist and wind, and I began to understand why the natives had dubbed it The Wildcat.

Somewhere ahead, my client had told me, was the hamlet of Petrolia — site of the first oil well drilled in California, he’d irrelevantly added. The man was a conservative politician, a former lumber-company attorney, and given what I knew of his voting record on the environment, I was certain we disagreed on the desirability of that event, as well as any number of similar issues. But the urgency of the current situation dictated that I keep my opinions to myself, so I’d simply written down the directions he gave me — omitting his travelogue — like asides — and gotten under way.

I drove through Petrolia — a handful of new buildings, since the village had been all but levelled in the disastrous earthquake of 1992 — and turned towards the sea on an unpaved road. After two miles I began looking for the orange post that marked the dirt track to the client’s cabin.

The whole time I was wishing I was back in San Francisco. This wasn’t my kind of case; I didn’t like the client, Steve Shoemaker; and even though the fee was good, this was the week I’d scheduled to take off a few personal business days from All Souls Legal Cooperative, where I’m chief investigator. But Jack Stuart, our criminal specialist, had asked me to take on the job as a favour to him. Steve Shoemaker was Jack’s old friend from college in Southern California, and he’d asked for a referral to a private detective. Jack owed Steve a favour; I owed Jack several, so there was no way I could gracefully refuse.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong with this case. And I couldn’t help wishing that I’d come to the Lost Coast in summertime, with a backpack and in the company of my lover — instead of on a rainy fall afternoon, with a .38 Special and soon to be in the company of Shoemaker’s disagreeable wife, Andrea.

The rain was sheeting down by the time I spotted the orange post. It had turned the hard-packed earth to mud, and my MG’s tyres sank deep in the ruts, its undercarriage scraping dangerously. I could barely make out the stand of live oaks and sycamores where the track ended; no way to tell if another vehicle had travelled over it recently.

When I reached the end of the track I saw one of those boxy four-wheel-drive wagons — Bronco? Cherokee? — drawn in under the drooping branches of an oak. Andrea Shoemaker’s? I’d neglected to get a description from her husband of what she drove. I got out of the MG, turning the hood of my heavy sweater up against the downpour; the wind promptly blew it off. So much for what the catalogue had described as “extra protection on those cold nights”. I yanked the hood up again and held it there, went around and took my .38 from the trunk and shoved it into the outside flap of my purse. Then I went over and tried the door of the four-wheel drive. Unlocked. I opened it, slipped into the driver’s seat.

Nothing identifying its owner was on the seats or in the side pockets, but in the glove compartment I found a registration in the name of Andrea Shoemaker. I rummaged around, came up with nothing else of interest. Then I got out and walked through the trees, looking for the cabin.

Shoemaker had told me to follow a deer track through the grove. No sign of it in this downpour; no deer, either. Nothing but wind-lashed trees, the oaks pelting me with acorns. I moved slowly through them, swivelling my head from side to side, until I made out a bulky shape tucked beneath the farthest of the sycamores.

As I got closer, I saw the cabin was of plain weathered wood, rudely constructed, with the chimney of a woodstove extending from its composition shingle roof. Small — two or three rooms — and no light showing in its windows. And the door was open, banging against the inside wall...

I quickened my pace, taking the gun from my purse. Alongside the door I stopped to listen. Silence. I had a flashlight in my bag; I took it out. Moved to where I could see inside, then turned the flash on and shone it through the door.

All that was visible was rough board walls, an oilcloth-covered table and chairs, an ancient woodstove. I stepped inside, swinging the light around. Unlit oil lamp on the table; flower-cushioned wooden furniture of the sort you always find in vacation cabins; rag rugs; shelves holding an assortment of tattered paperbacks, seashells, and driftwood. I shifted the light again, more slowly.

A chair on the far side of the table was tipped over, and a woman’s purse lay on the edge of the woodstove, its contents spilling out. When I got over there I saw a .32 Iver Johnson revolver lying on the floor.

Andrea Shoemaker owned a .32. She’d told me so the day before.

Two doors opened off the room. Quietly I went to one and tried it. A closet, shelves stocked with staples and canned goods and bottled water. I looked around the room again, listening. No sound but the wail of wind and the pelt of rain on the roof. I stepped to the other door.

A bedroom, almost filled wall-to-wall by a king-sized bed covered with a goosedown comforter and piled with colourful pillows. Old bureau pushed in one corner, another unlit oil lamp on the single nightstand. Small travel bag on the bed.

The bag hadn’t been opened. I examined its contents. Jeans, a couple of sweaters, underthings, toilet articles. Package of condoms. Uh-huh. She’d come here, as I’d found out, to meet a man. The affairs usually began with a casual pick-up; they were never of long duration; and they all seemed to culminate in a romantic weekend in the isolated cabin.

Dangerous game, particularly in these days when AIDS and the prevalence of disturbed individuals of both sexes threatened. But Andrea Shoemaker had kept her latest date with an even larger threat hanging over her: for the past six weeks, a man with a serious grudge against her husband had been stalking her. For all I knew, he and the date were one and the same.

And where was Andrea now?

This case had started on Wednesday, two days ago, when I’d driven up to Eureka, a lumbering and fishing town on Humboldt Bay. After I passed the Humboldt County line I began to see huge logging trucks toiling through the mountain passes, shredded curls of redwood bark trailing in their wakes. Twenty-five miles south of the city itself was the company-owned town of Scotia, mill stacks belching white smoke and filling the air with the scent of freshly cut wood. Yards full of logs waiting to be fed to the mills lined the highway. When I reached Eureka itself, the downtown struck me as curiously quiet; many of the stores were out of business, and the sidewalks were mostly deserted. The recession had hit the lumber industry hard, and the earthquake hadn’t helped the area’s strapped economy.

I’d arranged to meet Steve Shoemaker at his law offices in Old Town, near the waterfront. It was a picturesque area full of renovated warehouses and interesting shops and restaurants, tricked up for tourists with the inevitable horse-and-carriage rides and t-shirt shops, but still pleasant. Shoemaker’s offices were off a cobble-stoned courtyard containing a couple of antique shops and a decorator’s showroom.

When I gave my card to the secretary, she said Assemblyman Shoemaker was in conference and asked me to wait. The man, I knew, had lost his seat in the state legislature this past election, so the term of address seemed inappropriate. The appointments of the waiting room struck me as a bit much: brass and mahogany and marble and velvet, plenty of it, the furnishings all antiques that tended to the garish. I sat on a red velvet sofa and looked for something to read. Architectural Digest, National Review, Foreign Affairs — that was it, take it or leave it. I left it. My idea of waiting-room reading material is People; I love it, but I’m too embarrassed to subscribe.

The minutes ticked by: ten, fifteen, twenty. I contemplated the issue of Architectural Digest, then opted instead for staring at a fake Rembrandt on the far wall. Twenty-five, thirty. I was getting irritated now. Shoemaker had asked me to be here by three; I’d arrived on the dot. If this was, as he’d claimed, a matter of such urgency and delicacy that he couldn’t go into it on the phone, why was he in conference at the appointed time?

Thirty-five minutes. Thirty-seven. The door to the inner sanctum opened and a woman strode out. A tall woman, with long chestnut hair, wearing a raincoat and black leather boots. Her eyes rested on me in passing — a cool grey, hard with anger. Then she went out, slamming the door behind her.

The secretary — a trim blonde in a tailored suit — started as the door slammed. She glanced at me and tried to cover with a smile, but its edges were strained, and her fingertips pressed hard against the desk. The phone at her elbow buzzed; she snatched up the receiver. Spoke into it, then said to me, “Ms McCone, Assemblyman Shoemaker will see you now.” As she ushered me inside, she again gave me her frayed-edge smile.

Tense situation in this office, I thought. Brought on by what? The matter Steve Shoemaker wanted me to investigate? The client who had just made her angry exit? Or something else entirely...?

Shoemaker’s office was even more pretentious than the waiting room: more brass, mahogany, velvet, and marble; more fake Old Masters in heavy gilt frames; more antiques; more of everything. Shoemaker’s demeanour was not as nervous as his secretary’s, but when he rose to greet me, I noticed a jerkiness in his movements, as if he was holding himself under tight control. I clasped his outstretched hand and smiled, hoping the familiar social rituals would set him more at ease.

Momentarily they did. He thanked me for coming, apologised for making me wait, and inquired after Jack Stuart. After I was seated in one of the clients’ chairs, he offered me a drink; I asked for mineral water. As he went to a wet bar tucked behind a tapestry screen, I took the opportunity to study him.

Shoemaker was handsome: dark hair, with the grey so artfully interwoven that it must have been professionally dyed. Chiselled features; nice, well-muscled body, shown off to perfection by an expensive blue suit. When he handed me my drink, his smile revealed white, even teeth that I, having spent the greater part of the previous month in the company of my dentist, recognised as capped. Yes, a very good-looking man, politician handsome. Jack’s old friend or not, his appearance and manner called up my gut-level distrust.

My client went around his desk and reclaimed his chair. He held a drink of his own — something dark amber — and he took a deep swallow before speaking. The alcohol replenished his vitality some; he drank again, set the glass on a pewter coaster, and said, “Ms McCone, I’m glad you could come up here on such short notice.”

“You mentioned on the phone that the case is extremely urgent — and delicate.”

He ran his hand over his hair — lightly, so as not to disturb its styling. “Extremely urgent and delicate,” he repeated, seeming to savour the phrase.

“Why don’t you tell me about it?”

His eyes strayed to the half-full glass on the coaster. Then they moved to the door through which I’d entered. Returned to me. “You saw the woman who just left?”

I nodded.

“My wife, Andrea.”

I waited.

“She’s very angry with me for hiring you.”

“She did act angry. Why?”

Now he reached for the glass and belted down its contents. Leaned back and rattled the ice cubes as he spoke. “It’s a long story. Painful to me. I’m not sure where to begin. I just... don’t know what to make of the things that are happening.”

“That’s what you’ve hired me to do. Begin anywhere. We’ll fill in the gaps later.” I pulled a small tape recorder from my bag and set it on the edge of his desk. “Do you mind?”

Shoemaker eyed it warily, but shook his head. After a moment’s hesitation, he said, “Someone is stalking my wife.”

“Following her? Threatening her?”

“Not following, not that I know of. He writes notes, threatening to kill her. He leaves... things at the house. At her place of business. Dead things. Birds, rats, one time a cat. Andrea loves cats. She...” He shook his head, went to the bar for a refill.

“What else? Phone calls?”

“No. One time, a floral arrangement — suitable for a funeral.”

“Does he sign the notes?”

“John. Just John.”

“Does Mrs. Shoemaker know anyone named John who has a grudge against her?”

“She says no. And I...” He sat down, fresh drink in hand. “I have reason to believe that this John has a grudge against me, is using this harassment of Andrea to get at me personally.”

“Why do you think that?”

“The wording of the notes.”

“May I see them?”

He looked around, as if he were afraid someone might be listening. “Later. I keep them elsewhere.”

Something, then, I thought, that he didn’t want his office staff to see. Something shameful, perhaps even criminal.

“Okay,” I said, “how long has this been going on?”

“About six weeks.”

“Have you contacted the police?”

“Informally. A man I know on the force, Sergeant Bob Wolfe. But after he started looking into it, I had to ask him to drop it.”

“Why?”

“I’m in a sensitive political position.”

“Excuse me if I’m mistaken, Mr Shoemaker, but it’s my understanding that you’re no longer serving in the state legislature.”

“That’s correct, but I’m about to announce my candidacy in a special election for a senate seat that’s recently been vacated.”

“I see. So after you asked your contact on the police force to back off, you decided to use a private investigator, and Jack recommended me. Why not use someone local?”

“As I said, my position is sensitive. I don’t want word of this getting out in the community. That’s why Andrea is so angry with me. She claims I value my political career more than her life.”

I waited, wondering how he’d attempt to explain that away.

He didn’t even try, merely went on, “In our... conversation just prior to this, she threatened to leave me. This coming weekend she plans to go to a cabin on the Lost Coast that she inherited from her father to, as she put it, sort things through. Alone. Do you know that part of the coast?”

“I’ve read some travel pieces on it.”

“Then you’re aware how remote it is. The cabin’s very isolated. I don’t want Andrea going there while this John person is on the loose.”

“Does she go there often?”

“Fairly often. I don’t; it’s too rustic for me — no running water, phone, or electricity. But Andrea likes it. Why do you ask?”

“I’m wondering if John — whoever he is — knows about the cabin. Has she been there since the harassment began?”

“No. Initially she agreed that it wouldn’t be a good idea. But now...” He shrugged.

“I’ll need to speak with Mrs Shoemaker. Maybe I can reason with her, persuade her not to go until we’ve identified John. Or maybe she’ll allow me to go along as her bodyguard.”

“You can speak with her if you like, but she’s beyond reasoning with. And there’s no way you can stop her or force her to allow you to accompany her. My wife is a strong-willed woman; that interior decorating firm across the courtyard is hers, she built it from the ground up. When Andrea decides to do something, she does it. And asks permission from no one.”

“Still, I’d like to try reasoning. This trip to the cabin — that’s the urgency you mentioned on the phone. Two days to find the man behind the harassment before she goes out there and perhaps makes a target of herself.”

“Yes.”

“Then I’d better get started. That funeral arrangement — what florist did it come from?”

Shoemaker shook his head. “It arrived at least five weeks ago, before either of us noticed a pattern to the harassment. Andrea just shrugged it off, threw the wrappings and card away.”

“Let’s go look at the notes, then. They’re my only lead.”

Vengeance will be mine. The sudden blow. The quick attack.

Vengeance is the price of silence.

Mute testimony paves the way to an early grave. The rest is silence.

A freshly turned grave is silent testimony to an old wrong and its avenger.

There was more in the same vein — slightly Biblical-flavoured and stilted. But chilling to me, even though the safety-deposit booth at Shoemaker’s bank was overly warm. If that was my reaction, what had these notes done to Andrea Shoemaker? No wonder she was thinking of leaving a husband who cared more for the electorate’s opinion than his wife’s life and safety.

The notes had been typed without error on an electric machine that had left no such obvious clues as chipped or skewed keys. The paper and envelopes were plain and cheap, purchasable at any discount store. They had been handled, I was sure, by nothing more than gloved hands. No signature — just the typed name “John”.

But the writer had wanted the Shoemakers — one of them, anyway — to know who he was. Thus the theme that ran through them all: silence and revenge.

I said, “I take it your contact at the E.P.D. had their lab go over these?”

“Yes. There was nothing. That’s why he wanted to probe further — something I couldn’t permit him to do.”

“Because of this revenge-and-silence business. Tell me about it.”

Shoemaker looked around furtively. My God, did he think bank employees had nothing better to do with their time than to eavesdrop on our conversation?

“We’ll go have a drink,” he said. “I know a place that’s private.”

We went to a restaurant a few blocks away, where Shoemaker had another bourbon and I toyed with a glass of iced tea. After some prodding, he told me his story; it didn’t enhance him in my eyes.

Seventeen years ago Shoemaker had been interviewing for a staff attorney’s position at a large lumber company. While on a tour of the mills, he witnessed an accident in which a worker named Sam Carding was severely mangled while trying to clear a jam in a bark-stripping machine. Shoemaker, who had worked in the mills summers to pay for his education, knew the accident was due to company negligence, but accepted a handsome job offer in exchange for not testifying for the plaintiff in the ensuing lawsuit. The court ruled against Carding, confined to a wheelchair and in constant pain; a year later, while the case was still under appeal, Carding shot his wife and himself. The couple’s three children were given token settlements in exchange for dropping the suit and then were adopted by relatives in a different part of the country.

“It’s not a pretty story, Mr Shoemaker,” I said, “and I can see why the wording of the notes might make you suspect there’s a connection between it and this harassment. But who do you think John is?”

“Carding’s oldest boy. Carding and his family knew I’d witnessed the accident; one of his co-workers saw me watching from the catwalk and told him. Later, when I turned up as a senior counsel...” He shrugged.

“But why, after all this time—?”

“Why not? People nurse grudges. John Carding was sixteen at the time of the lawsuit; there were some ugly scenes with him, both at my home and my office at the mill. By now he’d be in his thirties. Maybe it’s his way of acting out some sort of midlife crisis.”

“Well, I’ll call my office and have my assistant run a check on all three Carding kids. And I want to speak with Mrs Shoemaker — preferably in your presence.”

He glanced at his watch. “It can’t be tonight. She’s got a meeting of her professional organisation, and I’m dining with my campaign manager.”

A potentially psychotic man was threatening Andrea’s life, yet they both carried on as usual. Well, who was I to question it? Maybe it was their way of coping.

“Tomorrow, then,” I said. “Your home. At the noon hour.”

Shoemaker nodded. Then he gave me the address, as well as the names of John Carding’s siblings.

I left him on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant: a handsome man whose shoulders now slumped inside his expensive suitcoat, shivering in the brisk wind off Humboldt Bay. As we shook hands, I saw that shame made his gaze unsteady, the set of his mouth less than firm.

I knew that kind of shame. Over the course of my career, I’d committed some dreadful acts that years later woke me in the deep of the night to sudden panic. I’d also not committed certain acts — failures that woke me to regret and emptiness. My sins of omission were infinitely worse than those of commission, because I knew that if I’d acted, I could have made a difference. Could even have saved a life.

I wasn’t able to reach Rae Kelleher, my assistant at All Souls, that evening, and by the time she got back to me the next morning — Thursday — I was definitely annoyed. Still, I tried to keep a lid on my irritation. Rae is young, attractive, and in love; I couldn’t expect her to spend her evenings waiting to be of service to her workaholic boss.

I got her started on a computer check on all three Cardings, then took myself to the Eureka P.D. and spoke with Shoemaker’s contact, Sergeant Bob Wolfe. Wolfe — a dark-haired, sharp-featured man whose appearance was a good match for his surname — told me he’d had the notes processed by the lab, which had turned up no useful evidence.

“Then I started to probe, you know? When you got a harassment case like this, you look into the victims’ private lives.”

“And that was when Shoemaker told you to back off.”

“Uh-huh.”

“When was this?”

“About five weeks ago.”

“I wonder why he waited so long to hire me. Did he, by any chance, ask you for a referral to a local investigator?”

Wolfe frowned. “Not this time.”

“Then you’d referred him to someone before?”

“Yeah, guy who used to be on the force — Dave Morrison. Last April.”

“Did Shoemaker tell you why he needed an investigator?”

“No, and I didn’t ask. These politicians, they’re always trying to get something on their rivals. I didn’t want any part of it.”

“Do you have Morrison’s address and phone number handy?”

Wolfe reached into his desk drawer, shuffled things, and flipped a business card across the blotter. “Dave gave me a stack of these when he set up shop,” he said. “Always glad to help an old pal.”

Morrison was out of town, the message on his answering machine said, but would be back tomorrow afternoon. I left a message of my own, asking him to call me at my motel. Then I headed for the Shoemakers’ home, hoping I could talk some common sense into Andrea.

But Andrea wasn’t having any common sense.

She strode around the parlour of their big Victorian built by one of the city’s lumber barons, her husband told me when I complimented them on it — arguing and waving her arms and making scathing statements punctuated by a good amount of profanity. And knocking back martinis, even though it was only a little past noon.

Yes, she was going to the cabin. No, neither her husband nor I was welcome there. No, she wouldn’t postpone the trip; she was sick and tired of being cooped up like some kind of zoo animal because her husband had made a mistake years before she’d met him. All right, she realised this John person was dangerous. But she’d taken self-defence classes and owned a .32 revolver. Of course she knew how to use it. Practised frequently, too. Women had to be prepared these days, and she was.

But, she added darkly, glaring at her husband, she’d just as soon not have to shoot John. She’d rather send him straight back to Steve and let them settle this score. May the best man win — and she was placing bets on John.

As far as I was concerned, Steve and Andrea Shoemaker deserved each other.

I tried to explain to her that self-defence classes don’t fully prepare you for a paralysing, heart-pounding encounter with an actual violent stranger. I tried to warn her that the ability to shoot well on a firing range doesn’t fully prepare you for pumping a bullet into a human being who is advancing swiftly on you.

I wanted to tell her she was being an idiot.

Before I could, she slammed down her glass and stormed out of the house.

Her husband replenished his own drink and said, “Now do you see what I’m up against?”

I didn’t respond to that. Instead I said, “I spoke with Sergeant Wolfe earlier.”

“And?”

“He told me he referred you to a local private investigator, Dave Morrison, last April.”

“So?”

“Why didn’t you hire Morrison for this job?”

“As I told you yesterday, my—”

“Sensitive position, yes.”

Shoemaker scowled.

Before he could comment, I asked, “What was the job last April?”

“Nothing to do with this matter.”

“Something to do with politics?”

“In a way.”

“Mr Shoemaker, hasn’t it occurred to you that a political enemy may be using the Carding case as a smokescreen? That a rival’s trying to throw you off balance before this special election?”

“It did, and... well, it isn’t my opponent’s style. My God, we’re civilized people. But those notes... they’re the work of a lunatic.”

I wasn’t so sure he was right — both about the notes being the work of a lunatic and politicians being civilized people — but I merely said, “Okay, you keep working on Mrs Shoemaker. At least persuade her to let me go to the Lost Coast with her. I’ll be in touch.” Then I headed for the public library.

After a few hours of ruining my eyes at the microfilm machine, I knew little more than before. Newspaper accounts of the Carding accident, lawsuit, and murder-suicide didn’t differ substantially from what my client had told me. Their coverage of the Shoemakers’ activities was only marginally interesting.

Normally I don’t do a great deal of background investigation on clients but, as Sergeant Wolfe had said, in a case like this where one or both of them was a target, a thorough look at careers and lifestyles was mandatory. The papers described Steve as a straightforward, effective assemblyman who took a hard, conservative stance on such issues as welfare and the environment. He was strongly pro-business, particularly the lumber industry. He and his “charming and talented wife” didn’t share many interests: Steve hunted and golfed; Andrea was a “generous supporter of the arts” and a “lavish party-giver”. An odd couple, I thought, and odd people to be friends of Jack Stuart, a liberal who’d chosen to dedicate his career to representing the underdog.

Back at the motel, I put in a call to Jack. Why, I asked him, had he remained close to a man who was so clearly his opposite?

Jack laughed. “You’re trying to say politely that you think he’s a pompous, conservative ass.”

“Well...”

“Okay, I admit it: he is. But back in college, he was a mentor to me. I doubt I would have gone into the law if it hadn’t been for Steve. And we shared some good times, too: one summer we took a motorcycle trip around the country, like something out of Easy Rider without the tragedy. I guess we stay in touch because of a shared past.”

I was trying to imagine Steve Shoemaker on a motorcycle; the picture wouldn’t materialise. “Was he always so conservative?” I asked.

“No, not until he moved back to Eureka and went to work for that lumber company. Then... I don’t know. Everything changed. It was as if something had happened that took all the fight out of him.”

What had happened, I thought, was trading another man’s life for a prestigious job.

Jack and I chatted for a moment longer, and then I asked him to transfer me to Rae. She hadn’t turned up anything on the Cardings yet, but was working on it. In the meantime, she added, she’d taken care of what correspondence had come in, dealt with seven phone calls, entered next week’s must-do’s in the call-up file she’d created for me, and found a remedy for the blight that was affecting my rubber plant.

With a pang, I realised that the office ran just as well — better, perhaps — when I wasn’t there. It would keep functioning smoothly without me for weeks, months, maybe years.

Hell, it would probably keep functioning smoothly even if I were dead.

In the morning I opened the Yellow Pages to Florists and began calling each that was listed. While Shoemaker had been vague on the date his wife received the funeral arrangement, surely a customer who wanted one sent to a private home, rather than a mortuary, would stand out in the order-taker’s mind. The listing was long, covering a relatively wide area; it wasn’t until I reached the R’s and my watch showed nearly eleven o’clock that I got lucky.

“I don’t remember any order like that in the past six weeks,” the clerk at Rainbow Florists said, “but we had one yesterday, was delivered this morning.”

I gripped the receiver harder. “Will you pull the order, please?”

“I’m not sure I should—”

“Please. You could help to save a woman’s life.”

Quick intake of breath, then his voice filled with excitement; he’d become part of a real-life drama. “One minute. I’ll check.” When he came back on the line, he said, “Thirty-dollar standard condolence arrangement, delivered this morning to Mr Steven Shoemaker—”

“Mister? Not Mrs or Ms?”

“Mister, definitely. I took the order myself.” He read off the Shoemakers’ address.

“Who placed it?”

“A kid. Came in with cash and written instructions.”

Standard ploy — hire a kid off the street so nobody can identify you.

“Thanks very much.”

“Aren’t you going to tell me—”

I hung up and dialled Shoemaker’s office. His secretary told me he was working at home today. I dialled the home number. Busy. I hung up, and the phone rang immediately. Rae, with information on the Cardings.

She’d traced Sam Carding’s daughter and younger son. The daughter lived near Cleveland, Ohio, and Rae had spoken with her on the phone. John, his sister had told her, was a drifter and an addict; she hadn’t seen or spoken to him in more than ten years. When Rae reached the younger brother at his office in LA, he told her the same, adding that he assumed John had died years ago.

I thanked Rae and told her to keep on it. Then I called Shoemaker’s home number again. Still busy; time to go over there.

Shoemaker’s Lincoln was parked in the drive of the Victorian, a dusty Honda motorcycle beside it. As I rang the doorbell I again tried to picture a younger, free-spirited Steve bumming around the country on a bike with Jack, but the image simply wouldn’t come clear. It took Shoemaker a while to answer the door, and when he saw me, his mouth pulled down in displeasure.

“Come in, and be quick about it,” he told me. “I’m on an important conference call.”

I was quick about it. He rushed down the hallway to what must be a study, and I went into the parlour where we’d talked the day before. Unlike his offices, it was exquisitely decorated, calling up images of the days of the lumber barons. Andrea’s work, probably. Had she also done his offices? Perhaps their gaudy decor was her way of getting back at a husband who put his political life ahead of their marriage?

It was at least half an hour before Shoemaker finished with his call. He appeared in the archway leading to the hall, somewhat dishevelled, running his fingers through his hair. “Come with me,” he said. “I have something to show you.”

He led me to a large kitchen at the back of the house. A floral arrangement sat on the granite-topped centre island: white lilies with a single red rose. Shoemaker handed me the card: “My sympathy on your wife’s passing.” It was signed “John”.

“Where’s Mrs Shoemaker?” I asked.

“Apparently she went out to the coast last night. I haven’t seen her since she walked out on us at the noon hour.”

“And you’ve been home the whole time?”

He nodded. “Mainly on the phone.”

“Why didn’t you call me when she didn’t come home?”

“I didn’t realise she hadn’t until mid-morning. We have separate bedrooms, and Andrea comes and goes as she pleases. Then this arrangement arrived, and my conference call came through...” He shrugged, spreading his hands helplessly.

“All right,” I said, “I’m going out there whether she likes it or not. And I think you’d better clear up whatever you’re doing here and follow. Maybe your showing up there will convince her you care about her safety, make her listen to reason.”

As I spoke, Shoemaker had taken a fifth of Tanqueray gin and a jar of Del Prado Spanish olives from a Lucky sack that sat on the counter. He opened a cupboard, reached for a glass.

“No,” I said. “This is no time to have a drink.”

He hesitated, then replaced the glass, and began giving me directions to the cabin. His voice was flat, and his curious travelogue-like digressions made me feel as if I were listening to a tape of a National Geographic special. Reality, I thought, had finally sunk in, and it had turned him into an automaton.

I had one stop to make before heading out to the coast, but it was right on my way. Morrison Investigations had its office in what looked to be a former motel on Highway 101, near the outskirts of the city. It was a neighbourhood of fast-food restaurants and bars, thrift shops and marginal businesses. Besides the detective agency, the motel’s cinder-block units housed an insurance brokerage, a secretarial service, two accountants, and a palm reader. Dave Morrison, who was just arriving as I pulled into the parking area, was a bit of a surprise: in his mid-forties, wearing one small gold earring and a short pony tail. I wondered what Steve Shoemaker had made of him.

Morrison showed me into a two-room suite crowded with computer equipment and file cabinets and furniture that looked as if he might have hauled it down the street from the nearby Thrift Emporium. When he noticed me studying him, he grinned easily. “I know, I don’t look like a former cop. I worked undercover Narcotics my last few years on the force. Afterwards I realised I was comfortable with the uniform.” His gesture took in his lumberjack’s shirt, work-worn jeans and boots.

I smiled in return, and he cleared some files off a chair so I could sit.

“So you’re working for Steve Shoemaker,” he said.

“I understand you did, too.”

He nodded. “Last April and again around the beginning of August.”

“Did he approach you about another job after that?”

He shook his head.

“And the jobs you did for him were—”

“You know better than to ask that.”

“I was going to ask, were they completed to his satisfaction?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any idea why Shoemaker would go to the trouble of bringing me up from San Francisco when he had an investigator here whose work satisfied him?”

Headshake.

“Shoemaker told me the first job you did for him had to do with politics.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “In a matter of speaking.” He paused, shrewd eyes assessing me. “How come you’re investigating your own client?”

“It’s that kind of case. And something feels wrong. Did you get that sense about either of the jobs you took on for him?”

“No.” Then he hesitated, frowning. “Well, maybe. Why don’t you just come out and ask what you want to? If I can, I’ll answer.”

“Okay — did either of the jobs have to do with a man named John Carding?”

That surprised him. After a moment he asked a question of his own. “He’s still trying to trace Carding?”

“Yes.”

Morrison got up and moved towards the window, stopped and drummed his fingers on top of a file cabinet. “Well, I can save you further trouble. John Carding is untraceable. I tried every way I know — and that’s every way there is. My guess is that he’s dead, years dead.”

“And when was it you tried to trace him?”

“Most of August.”

Weeks before Andrea Shoemaker had begun to receive the notes from “John”. Unless the harassment had started earlier? No, I’d seen all the notes, examined their postmarks. Unless she’d thrown away the first ones, as she had the card that came with the funeral arrangement?

“Shoemaker tell you why he wanted to find Carding?” I asked.

“Uh-uh.”

“And your investigation last April had nothing to do with Carding?”

At first I thought Morrison hadn’t heard the question. He was looking out the window; then he turned, expression thoughtful, and opened one of the drawers of the filing cabinet beside him. “Let me refresh my memory,” he said, taking out a couple of folders. I watched as he flipped through them, frowning.

Finally he said, “I’m not gonna ask about your case. If something feels wrong, it could be because of what I turned up last spring — and that I don’t want on my conscience.” He closed one file, slipped it back in the cabinet, then glanced at his watch. “Damn! I just remembered I’ve got to make a call.” He crossed to the desk, set the open file on it. “I better do it from the other room. You stay here, find something to read.”

I waited until he’d left, then went over and picked up the file. Read it with growing interest and began putting things together. Andrea had been discreet about her extramarital activities, but not so discreet that a competent investigator like Morrison couldn’t uncover them.

When Morrison returned, I was ready to leave for the Lost Coast.

“Hope you weren’t bored,” he said.

“No, I’m easily amused. And, Mr Morrison, I owe you a dinner.”

“You know where to find me. I’ll look forward to seeing you again.”

And now that I’d reached the cabin, Andrea had disappeared. The victim of violence, all signs indicated. But the victim of whom? John Carding — a man no one had seen or heard from for over ten years? Another man named John, one of her cast-off lovers? Or...?

What mattered now was to find her.

I retraced my steps, turning up the hood of my sweater again as I went outside. Circled the cabin, peering through the lashing rain. I could make out a couple of other small structures back there: outhouse and shed. The outhouse was empty. I crossed to the shed. Its door was propped open with a log, as if she’d been getting fuel for the stove.

Inside, next to a neatly stacked cord of wood, I found her.

She lay face-down on the hard-packed dirt floor, blue-jeaned legs splayed, plaid-jacketed arms flung above her head, chestnut hair cascading over her back. The little room was silent, the total silence that surrounds the dead. Even my own breath was stilled; when it came again, it sounded obscenely loud.

I knelt beside her, forced myself to perform all the checks I’ve made more times than I could have imagined. No breath, no pulse, no warmth to the skin. And the rigidity...

On the average — although there’s a wide variance — rigor mortis sets in to the upper body five to six hours after death; the whole body is usually affected within eighteen hours. I backed up and felt the lower portion of her body. Rigid; rigor was complete. I straightened, went to stand in the doorway. She’d probably been dead since midnight. And the cause? I couldn’t see any wounds, couldn’t further examine her without disturbing the scene. What I should be doing was getting in touch with the sheriff’s department.

Back to the cabin. Emotions tore at me: anger, regret, and — yes — guilt that I hadn’t prevented this. But I also sensed that I couldn’t have prevented it. I, or someone like me, had been an integral component from the first.

In the front room I found some kitchen matches and lit the oil lamp. Then I went around the table and looked down at where her revolver lay on the floor. More evidence; don’t touch it. The purse and its spilled contents rested near the edge of the stove. I inventoried the items visually: the usual makeup, brush, comb, spray perfume; wallet, keys, roll of postage stamps; daily planner that had flopped open to show pockets for business cards and receipts. And a loose piece of paper...

Lucky Food Centre, it said at the top. Perhaps she’d stopped to pick up supplies before leaving Eureka; the date and time on this receipt might indicate how long she’d remained in town before storming out on her husband and me. After I picked it up. At the bottom I found yesterday’s date and the time of purchase: 9:14 p.m.

“KY SERV DELI... CRABS... WINE... DEL PRAD OLIVE... LG RED DEL... ROUGE ET NOIR... BAKERY... TANQ GIN—”

A sound outside. Footsteps slogging through the mud. I stuffed the receipt into my pocket.

Steve Shoemaker came through the open door in a hurry, rain hat pulled low on his forehead, droplets sluicing down his chiselled nose. He stopped when he saw me, looked around. “Where’s Andrea?”

I said, “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? Her Bronco’s outside. That’s her purse on the stove.”

“And her weekend bag’s on the bed, but she’s nowhere to be found.”

Shoemaker arranged his face into lines of concern. “There’s been a struggle here.”

“Appears that way.”

“Come on, we’ll go look for her. She may be in the outhouse or the shed. She may be hurt—”

“It won’t be necessary to look.” I had my gun out of my purse now, and I levelled it at him. “I know you killed your wife, Shoemaker.”

“What!”

“Her body’s where you left it last night. What time did you kill her? How?”

His faked concern shaded into panic. “I didn’t—”

“You did.”

No reply. His eyes moved from side to side — calculating, looking for a way out.

I added, “You drove her here in the Bronco, with your motorcycle inside. Arranged things to simulate a struggle, put her in the shed, then drove back to town on the bike. You shouldn’t have left the bike outside the house where I could see it. It wasn’t muddy out here last night, but it sure was dusty.”

“Where are these baseless accusations coming from? John Carding—”

“Is untraceable, probably dead, as you know from the check Dave Morrison ran.”

“He told you— What about the notes, the flowers, the dead things—”

“Sent by you.”

“Why would I do that?”

“To set the scene for getting rid of a chronically unfaithful wife who had potential to become a political embarrassment.”

He wasn’t cracking, though. “Granted, Andrea had her problems. But why would I rake up the Carding matter?”

“Because it would sound convincing for you to admit what you did all those years ago. God knows it convinced me. And I doubt the police would ever have made the details public. Why destroy a grieving widower and prominent citizen? Particularly when they’d never find Carding or bring him to trial. You’ve got one problem, though: me. You never should have brought me in to back up your scenario.”

He licked his lips, glaring at me. Then he drew himself up, leaned forward aggressively — a posture the attorneys at All Souls jokingly refer to as their “litigator’s mode”.

“You have no proof of this,” he said firmly, jabbing his index finger at me. “No proof whatsoever.”

“Deli items, crabs, wine, apples,” I recited. “Del Prado Spanish olives, Tanqueray gin.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I have Andrea’s receipt for the items she bought at Lucky yesterday, before she stopped home to pick up her weekend bag. None of those things is here in the cabin.”

“So?”

“I know that at least two of them — the olives and the gin — are at your house in Eureka. I’m willing to bet they all are.”

“What if they are? She did some shopping for me yesterday morning—”

“The receipt is dated yesterday evening, nine-fourteen p.m. I’ll quote you, Shoemaker: ‘Apparently she went out to the coast last night. I haven’t seen her since she walked out on us at the noon hour.’ But you claim you didn’t leave home after noon.”

That did it; that opened the cracks. He stood for a moment, then half collapsed into one of the chairs and put his head in his hands.

The next summer, after I testified at the trial in which Steve Shoemaker was convicted of the first-degree murder of his wife, I returned to the Lost Coast — with a backpack, without the .38, and in the company of my lover. We walked sand beaches under skies that showed infinite shadings of blue; we made love in fields of wildflowers; we waited quietly for the deer, falcons, and foxes.

I’d already taken the bad from this place; now I could take the good.