Sunflower-gold light
pours through the sagging bean vines -
rich vegetable broth.
I am glad this isn’t a political blog because, well, ohmygod!!! What a truly strange few weeks on the national scene. You couldn’t put this stuff in a novel and be credible - aging war veteran ex-POW running for President picks ex-beauty queen hockey mom from the northern wilderness as running mate. Nah, no one would buy that premise except as an episode of “Northern Exposure”. Causes me to wonder if the Senator suffered an undisclosed brain injury while in captivity. I’m sure he is a wonderful guy but how on earth can he seriously consider that Sara Palin would make a super-duper President - and considering that the esteemed Senator is no spring chicken ... oh wait, this isn’t a political blog. Sorry for the lapse.
But seriously, it appears McCain is making a symbolic gesture knowing that, what the hell, he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance - plus when he loses he can always blame it on his loony choice for running mate. Nice little twofer. I noticed today that the supermarket tabloids haven’t wasted any time - the Republican veep candidate for less than a week and sassy Sara’s already pushed Angelina and Brad to page two. This ought to be a really fun race. Oops, I’m doing it again. Let’s return to Jane Austen Land.
You will remember, back in the first week of June I vowed to read all of Jane Austen’s novels before Fall. Well, I did it! Finished “Lady Susan” on Labor Day. And hard labor it certainly was but I must say it has been a revealing odyssey. For one thing I have learned that the 20th/21st centuries have nothing on the 19th when it comes greed, pettiness, obsessive self-interest, bigotry, gluttony, and at least five other deadly sins - the sinners back then, however, dressed better than they do now. I mean, what is more flattering to the figure than an empire waist gown? Silks and satins and pretty pink ribbons - what’s not to love? Sure beats denim crop pants and torn t-shirts.
It was a pleasant place to visit for a few months but think of the laundry bills if you had to live like that! And what was with those horrible, silly hats? Is there any place in the world (besides jolly ol’ England and the Kentucky Derby) where women still stick fake flowers and pheasant feathers on their heads? Millinery is a justifiably dead art. And while I’m thinking of it, what’s with that nasty glob of snarly hair on Sara Palin’s noggin? Heck, there I go again - my apologies!
PLANT CARE TIP: I haven’t included a plant tip for a while but with Summer winding down it’s time to direct some attention to your poor neglected indoor plants. If you have had them outside for the Summer you should be bringing them in before the nights get chilly. When you do, make sure you check them carefully for insects that might have been vacationing on them. You don’t want to be bringing the bugs inside where there are no cooperative predators. Wash your plants carefully with mild soap and plenty of water. Also check the saucers and bottoms of the pots where slugs, snails and insect pests may be hiding.
RV-GO DOWN TO THE SEA: For those of you who just tuned in, I have been serializing the novel I wrote last Fall during National Novel Writing Month. It is a mystery novel so if you haven’t read it from Chapter 1 you had better go back to the beginning before you read this episode. So, now let’s return to the adventures of Cora Jane Dooley in the tiny fishing village of Westport, Washington:
RV-GO DOWN TO THE SEA - Chapter 5 continued -
Tuesday morning, my day off, saw me biking out along the jetty in a heavy mist. My Irish ancestors called this kind of day a “soft day” but it was not soft on my joints as I bumped over the crushed clam shells and beach gravel that made up the path along the spit toward Bayview Cabins and Gifts. Set at the very end of the crescent that made up the jetty protecting the harbor, Bayview Cabins and Gifts was exactly opposite downtown Westport. I knew there was something out there somewhere in the fog but all I could actually see was the rubble under my front tire.
Bayview Cabins and Gifts was a collection of late twentieth century manufactured cabins lined up like shoe boxes along the ridge of the spit. The gift shop building sat like a hen amid her chicks. I came out here looking for Alice Burnbaum who owned the place. According to Cindy, Mrs. Burnbaum was also curator of the Maritime Museum and president of the local historical society. She had a set of keys to the crime scene which I desperately needed to borrow if I was going to get a good look at where the killing took place.
Every day since Carl was killed I studied the Grays Harbor Gazette for updates on the murder investigation. There had not been much to read. It looked to me that the police were running out of ideas, though I could not exactly drop in at the police station and ask for a personal briefing. If the old man’s murder was to be solved - and my name cleared where Mert was concerned - it was up to me. My instinct was to high tail it out of town and never come back, but how could I leave with Mert thinking I had something to do with that poor old fellow’s death? Well, I couldn’t. I would have to stick around and do whatever I could to run down the real culprit. A logical place to start was the crime scene.
Alice Burnbaum was standing behind a long counter cluttered with revolving wire racks displaying postcards and embroidered souvenir baseball caps. She was a rangy, whippet thin woman with crisp white hair and a leathery face that caused her to resemble a salt cured strip of jerky. She looked up as I entered, her mouth creaking into a tight startled smile.
“May I help you?” she asked, without sounding particularly helpful.
“I will just look around for a minute, if that is okay,” I said, not ready to start asking favors from the woman right off the bat.
It was an intriguing shop. There were glass shelves displaying all sorts of made in China bric-a-brac printed with “Westport, Wa” and racks filled with tee shirts, sweat shirts, and jackets decorated with silk screen depiction's of light houses, whales, sailing ships, and fish. The shop also sold a wide selection of fishing tackle, crab rings, hunting knives, clam guns and buckets.
On the back wall under a wide window blind with mist were three small tables and some wooden chairs where customers could sit and enjoy a cup of espresso but there were no customers. No one in the shop except me and the shop keeper. I picked up a small wooden jewel box encrusted with delicate white shells, turned it over. Made in Taiwan. It was pretty even though the shells had never seen this side of the Pacific. I thought I had better buy something so took the box to the counter where Mrs. Burnbaum waited patiently for me to make it worthwhile for her to stay open.
“Will that be all?” she asked, disappointment in her voice.
“Yes. You have a very nice shop,” I said, looking around.
“Thank you. Would you like the box gift wrapped? I can do that for you, if you wish.”
“No thanks,” I said, searching my imagination for a way into my question and coming up with dry. Nothing to do but to plunge in.
“Are you Mrs. Burnbaum, the historical society president?” I asked lamely, knowing very well that no one other than the owner would be manning the shop in off-season, in pea-soup fog.
“Yes, I am,” she offered, handing me the paper sack encasing my shell box.
“Well, Mrs. Burnbaum, I just arrived in Westport a few weeks ago and I was disappointed to learn that the Maritime Museum was closed for the winter. I hate to ask, but is there any way I could see the exhibits? I am really very interested in the history of this area but I plan to leave before Spring.”
I was winging it again and doing a piss poor job of it but it was all I could come up with. I hoped she had not been keeping her ear to the rumor mill and picked up something of Mert’s reservations about me.
“Oh, what a shame!” she said. “I am sure we can fix you up with an off-season look-see. Why don’t we talk about that over a cup of espresso?” She motioned me to the back of the shop and I sat down at one of the fog-side tables while she busied herself with the espresso machine.
After a cyclone of whooshing and hissing she joined me, setting before me a tin tray with two demitasse cups and a plate of sugar cookies.
I introduced myself and she told me to call her Alice. We had a companionable chat, sipping thick black coffee in the cluttered shop surrounded by marine fog. To my surprise Alice proved to be a charming, friendly woman, grateful for an audience for her pet topic - local history.
I mentioned Pine Dunes Lodge and was treated to an epic tale of gangsters and smugglers made to order for a Hollywood block buster. Prohibition and the Roaring Twenties was her favorite period, she said, with its illicit pleasures and skimpy silk dresses. Her eyes twinkled merrily. Alice, it appeared, had a wild side she found little opportunity to express in this sleepy coastal village.
“People out here on the edge have always been on the wild and enterprising side,” she said, as if reading my mind.
“It seems like such a quiet place though.”
“Still waters run deep, as they say. You would be surprised what goes on around here.”
“You know, Alice, just the other day I was talking to a fisherman who hinted that a lot went on that would surprise me,” I thought of the sadness in Mert’s brown eyes. “I wondered what he could have been talking about? This is not exactly the big city where drive-by shootings are a way of life.”
“Oh, we have our moments,” she said, winking. “Most of our crimes are the sneaky, under the radar types of crimes, if you get my meaning.”
“Such as?” I asked, though I thought I got her drift.
“The fishing industry has been in a terrible decline for decades,” Now I was not sure I was following her. “What with short fishing seasons, dwindling salmon runs, offshore pollution and high fuel prices - if the men down at the marina had to depend on fishing they would all slowly starve to death.”
“So, what are you saying?”
“Our economy out here is based on fishing, boat building, lumber, cranberry and oyster farming - not to mention tourism. None of those industries are all that robust on a consistent basis . . . “
“You are saying that people have to have a ‘sideline’, to quote the fisherman I was talking to the other night. Smuggling.”
“It is the worst kept secret in town,” said Alice. “Everyone knows, but nobody mentions it because without it Westport would be even more of a ghost town than it is already.”
“Drugs?” I asked, having in mind the legendary “B. C. bud”, a super-strength marijuana grown in British Columbia.
“Oh yes, drugs are a very big part of the trade. Always has been. It was like the Wild West out here in the 60s, the larger trawlers ranging up and down the coast from here to Alaska and even into Soviet waters, then down into Oregon and California.”
“And now?”
“As I say, drugs are big,” she said. “Though they are not the only cash crop. Lots of things change hands, or at least that’s what I hear. A person hears rumors, you know, but if there is money in transporting something - anything - there is bound to be someone ready to make a tax-free dollar. But you did not hear it from me, if you get my meaning.”
She left it open for me to speculate - automatic weapons, explosives, stolen geoducks to Japanese clam traffickers?
“But Cora Jane, you said you wanted to visit our museum,” said Alice. “How about if I close shop and we go over for a while? This is not exactly rush hour. I can give you a leisurely tour. We have a wonderful gift shop there too if you’re interested in books about the area.”
“Great! I do not want to put you to any trouble, Alice, but I really would appreciate looking around. It is such a beautiful building, what I have seen of it.”
“Yes, isn’t it. I suppose you know it used to be the Coast Guard station?”
“That is what I heard. Back in the 40s wasn’t it?”
“That is right, though there was a Coast Guard presence in the neighborhood as far back as 1858,” she said. “Used to be a thriving whaling trade out here too, did you know that?”
“Whaling? No, I had not heard that. I thought that was just on the east coast, like up in Maine.”
“Oh, we had whaling here too. A big whale meat cannery just out of town at Bay City, not to mention the whale oil they processed there and shipped all over the world” she said. “We have a large exhibit at the museum I can show you, if you’re interested.”
I was not particularly interested in seeing photos of dead whales though I kept that piece of information to myself. I put my bike in the bed of her truck and she drove to the museum where she parked around back in the spot designated “Curator Parking Only”. I was getting the royal treatment all right.
Alice unlocked the back door and pushed ahead of me. The beep beep beep of an alarm explained the seeming bad manners. On the wall beside the door was alarm box. Alice punched in the numbers, the thing emitted a chirp as if someone had stepped on its tail, then went silent.
“Don’t you just hate these awful things?” she said. “I know I do, but the board of directors insisted we install one. I argued that we weren’t exactly displaying the British crown jewels in Westport. They out voted me though.”
“I know what you mean. I had a security system on my house back in . . . back home. I never set it because I tended to set it off.“
“I know just what you mean! I must have set this monstrosity off a dozen times - could not remember the code to save my life. I started putting the code on a Sticky note beside the alarm, which they frowned on as being poor security practice. Finally our resident techie set it to 1940 which is the year of my birth as well as the year the building was dedicated. Haven't set it off since.”
I wondered if she realized she had just let the cat out of the bag. I also wondered how many other people in town knew the code.
“This room to the left used to be the station galley - or kitchen. Now it is the staff and volunteer office. If you do not mind, I will just pop down the hall to the Director’s Office for a second to see if there are any phone messages.”
“No, that’s just fine,” I replied. “Go ahead, Alice. Did you say there was a gift shop?”
“Straight ahead through that door. Used to be the mess deck.”
My heels made a hollow cadence as I walked to the end of the hall and into the gift shop. There were book racks crowded with paperbacks and hardcover books on topics ranging from lighthouses, Native American culture, fishing boats, natural history to shell art and bird watching. They had it all covered. The books shared space with souvenir tee shirts and picture postcards.
Did people still mail postcards to each other from far locations? “Wish you were here”. Who would I send a postcard to if I wanted someone to know where I was and what I was doing? It occurred to me there was nobody I wanted to share that with, no family to wonder where I had gotten off to, no one who would come looking for me if I fell off the edge of the earth. If I died here who would show up for the funeral? I know that should make me sad. Someday perhaps it will, I thought.
I thumbed through a book on female lighthouse keepers. Gave a whole new meaning to light housekeeping. Apparently there were just as many women who “manned” the lights as men. The boys would be out on the boats doing manly things like fishing and whaling while their spouses kept the lights on - literally. Had I lived during the days of lighthouse keepers that would have been just the job for me. These days lighthouses were automated devices with all the romance of a can opener. What a loss! I could almost see myself searching the horizon for sails as the sun sinks into a turbulent sea.
“Did you find something you wanted, C. J.?” said Alice joining me in the gift shop. “I can’t make change because we do not stock the till in off season but if you want to buy something I will take a check.”
“This is a lovely book but it is beyond my budget this month, I am afraid. But it is so very interesting. I had no idea women manned lighthouses. Somehow I always thought that lighthouse keepers were antisocial old men.”
“Yes, it makes you think doesn’t it,” she said. “I can imagine the women’s children running up and down the spiral staircases while their mothers polished reflectors and lenses. Come to think of it, who would do that job better than a woman - meticulous, tireless, dedicated. Quite inspiring, don’t you think?”
“I do. In fact I was just thinking how much I would have loved that job. Well, except for the part about children running around. That would have been quite a challenge. Too much work and way too much responsibility! I have all I can do to take care of myself.”
“They were tough and resourceful women back then,” she said. “Follow me, C. J., and I will show you around. We can start with the C.O.’s Quarters which is where we have our ships and shipwrecks display.”
I thought it was a bit ironic that the commanding officer’s bedroom now housed the shipwreck display. I wondered how his ghost felt about that. Alice led me past the welcome station in the main entry to a room opening on the right. The cases were filled ship models and maps showing all the shipwrecks off the Westport, Grays Harbor, Long Beach coast. There were hundreds! I was astonished.
“This is amazing, Alice, it looks as if it was a rare day a ship got into the harbor unscathed,” I said, stepping up to a photograph of wreckage strewn the length of a beach.
“It was always dangerous. Still is, especially going over the bar at the mouth of Grays Harbor. Rip tides and obstructions, you know. We lose a boat every once in a while even with the high tech navigation they use these days.”
“This is quite a photograph.” The caption said it showed the wreck of the H. Charles Porter, a freighter out of Seattle that ran aground in 1959.
“It was taken by a Coast Guard photographer,” said Alice. “The Coast Guard documents every wreck. Their records are a valuable source of information about the maritime history of this region. One of our own docents was a retired Coast Guard photographer. This photo was one of his. He was always so proud of his work - an artist if there every was one. Just last year the museum presented a one man show of his work.” Her lines in her face softened as she spoke of him.
I could guess who the docent was. Now the camera equipment at the cabin made perfect sense. I had blown any opportunity I might have had to ask Mert about his friend Carl Heslop, but here was someone else who had obviously known and cared for the old man. Maybe I could still fill in a few of the blanks. In fact, there was a chance Alice knew what Carl had been doing at the Lens Building that afternoon. If I played my cards right she might even tell me.
“Come on upstairs with me,” she said. “You have to see our cranberry room.”
I followed like a puppy up the creaky stairs to the second floor. The building seemed so much older than its fifty-odd years - parched and swaying in the sea wind - salt cured like a cod. It felt as if time stopped at the front door. The stairs were very slightly concave, worn by countless rough boots pounding up and down from quarters to mess deck and back.
“You are going to like this room,” said Alice as we reach the landing. “We have an early cranberry picker.”
I hoped she was talking about a machine and not some ancient mummified field hand.
“You probably know this already, C. J. - you had to have passed the Ocean Spray plant on your way into town - the salt marshes down by Grayland produce huge crops of cranberries each year. There were native wild berries growing here before white men settled in 1856 but now the cranberry farmers grow a larger hybrid. More juice. But unlike east coast growers we harvest most of our bogs using the dry method.”
I had no idea what she meant.
“Back east they flood the bogs in the fall, then loosen the berries until they float free to the surface of the water. Then they just scoop them out and bag them. All but one of our farmers use dry method however,” she continued. “Unlike the wet harvest or flood method, our cranberries are picked with machines something like big lawn mowers that comb the berries off the vines. It is really amazing to watch.”
I am sure it was. I will from here on drink my morning cranberry juice with renewed appreciation.
“What are these things?” I stopped before a display of wooden shoes that looked like medieval patens.
“Cranberry shoes,” she said. “Oh, the little label has fallen off! I will have to get that fixed. Berry pickers in the early days of the industry would wear these shoes while they picked to keep themselves elevated off the berry plants so they would not crush the crop.”
“They must have had small feet.” The cranberry shoes looked like they were made for a platoon of Munchkin warriors
“The pickers were usually women and children in the days before machines took over stripping the bogs. See this photo over here? It was taken in the mid-thirties - the women lined up on their assigned rows, smiling for the camera. You can’t tell me they were all that happy to be hand picking berries in a stinky bog. The camera man must have been a real good looking fellow.”
“The kids worked too?”
“Oh yes. That was before all those silly anti-child labor laws. You’re probably too young to remember but before the sixties children were expected to contribute to family income. They all had summer jobs in the fields or helping on the fishing boats. Now days our kids are spoiled and lazy, if you ask me. No wonder there’s an epidemic of childhood obesity. Doesn’t hurt a youngster to learn to earn, I say.”
“You have a good point,” I said. “I remember that my friends and I used to pick strawberries and green beans during summer vacations to help pay for school clothes. We thought it was kind of fun even though we were filthy and exhausted by the end of the day - which was when it got too dark to see the plants. Dawn to dusk in the fields but nobody complained that we were being abused.”
“I am willing to bet you complained plenty at the time,” she laughed “Though it was no doubt the best thing for you in the long run, don’t you think?”
I was actually enjoying myself but this was not getting me any closer to finding out what Carl had been doing at the museum.
“Alice, you said there was a whaling exhibit?”
“Yes, in the next room. We have a complete set of tools the men used to cut up the whales,” she said. “Oh, and you might have seen our Whale House next to this building. It houses a complete whale skeleton. It’s an awe-inspiring sight.”
The curator launched herself into a detailed and rather graphic description of whale disassembly. I tuned out and looked around me. The room looked out over the harbor. From the vantage point of the window I could see the marina from the sweeping jetty wall to where the Lens Building obscured the view in front of the Museum.
“Alice, what’s on the third floor?”
“It’s not open to the public. We store many of our revolving exhibits up there. There is also a meeting room for the Historical Society.”
“Do volunteers have access to that floor?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Just wondered,” I said. “There must be a great view from up there.”
“There sure is! I could show it to you if you like,” she said. “After all, I can’t get into trouble - I’m the boss.”
She unlocked a narrow door in the hallway and we climbed a steep set of stairs to a long, low room cluttered with carefully labeled crates.
“Come on over here to the gable window,” said Alice.
Yes, it was a panorama all right - though not quite the angle I remembered from the photo above Carl’s sofa. There must be a way to the roof.
“This is magnificent!” I enthused. “I can see all the way from your shop on the jetty to the Coast Guard Station at the edge of town. Amazing. Did your docent photographer ever take pictures from here? It would make a perfect place to take photos of the boats coming into the harbor.”
“He may have. He loved to spend time up here, I know that. Used to come up here at night, he said, to watch the harbor lights play on the water,” she said. “I swear, the old fellow was a bit of a romantic.”
“You say ‘was’ - he has passed on I gather?”
“Yes, just recently. You probably heard of a very tragic death here a few weeks back. That was our Carl. It was a horrible shock for us all here at the museum.”
“I'm terribly sorry for your loss, Alice.” It was a lame thing to say but I had nothing else to offer her.
I prayed that she never found out I had met Carl Heslop shortly before he died. If she did she would have every right to think I was a deceitful cow. And I would hate that because I genuinely liked what I had seen of Alice Burnbaum so far. Had I not been concentrating so hard on finding the old man’s killer I would have enjoyed making friends with her - I just didn't have the luxury of a lot of bonding time right then.
“We're going to miss him so much,” she said, then burst into ragged sobs.
I was seriously out of my comfort zone at that moment. What sprang immediately to my mind were the wives, mothers, and sisters of my husband’s victims weeping at his sentencing hearing. I had sat in the back of the court room while, one after another, the bereaved family members stood and poured out their anguish and venom on the monster who had taken their loved one. I heard that heartbreak once more as Alice wept. I put my arm around her and gave her a hug, having no illusions that a hug from a total stranger would make much of a difference.
“I wish there was something I could do,” I said, more to myself than to her.
“He was such a sweet man,” she managed through her tears. “I can’t imagine who would have wanted to . . .” And she was overcome once more.
I patted her back and waited for her to get control of herself. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve.
“It was the shock more than anything. No warning,” she said, when she could finally speak. “They found him right here at the museum the day after the big storm. When the police told me he had . . . passed, I right off thought to myself it must have been the storm - some wood flying through the air, or maybe a tree falling and hitting him. Then they told me how it had been. I still cannot believe it, that someone killed him.”
“That's horrible,” I said. “Do they have any idea who was responsible?”
“No, none at all from what I hear. There is an investigation going on, of course, but I get the impression there is not too much to go on.”
“You say he was here at the museum that day?”
“Yes, in the Lens Building,” she said. “You have to see it, of course. They have taken the yellow tape down so I can show you when we go down stairs. It the famous Fresnel lens from the Destruction Island Lighthouse. Maybe you've heard of it.”
Remembering all those shipwreck maps I saw in the other room I could imagine how Destruction Island got its name.
“Alice, what was the man doing here that day if the museum was closed?”
“I don't have the foggiest notion,” she said. “He was our night watchman and was here most nights but he didn't start work until after his supper.”
“Year ‘round? Even in the off season?”
“Yes. Another security measure the board insisted upon even though I told them it was silly to pay someone to walk around in the empty building, especially after they put in the alarm system. Yet again I was out voted. Though it could be that Carl - that was his name, Carl Heslop - could be Carl volunteered to keep an eye on the place for free. He liked hanging around the old building. Used to tell people how he served here at this station before they built the new one down by Float 21.”
“He must have been a wonderful man. I can understand how tragic such a loss would be to the whole community.”
“Oh yes, tragic. He was well liked,” she said. “I keep thinking it had to have been a stranger, C. J. . No one who knew him could have done such an awful thing to Carl. It was all so peculiar, especially what with his cabin burning down, not more than a few days after his death. Terribly strange.”
“His cabin burned down!” I almost screamed. “Do you mean someone burned down his house? I didn't see anything in the paper. I can’t believe it! Do you think it could be connected to his murder?”
There went any chance I might have had of returning to the cabin to do a little breaking and entering. I had toyed with the idea that perhaps Carl had photographs or negatives that could provide someone with a motive for murder. Now I would never know.
“Oh, I'm sure it was no more than a coincidence. Probably electrical problems of some sort. After all, why would someone would want to burn his house on purpose?”
“Alice, you know Captain Merton or the Angel Face, right?”
“Yes, of course. He was a good friend of Carl’s,” she said.
“Something very disturbing happened to him recently,” I said. “It was shortly after Mr. Heslop’s death. I am wondering if there is a connection. Someone cold cocked Mert and searched his boat. Then a few days later they searched his house.”
“How would that be connected, C. J.?”
“I only think that because they were friends. And now you say someone burned Mr. Heslop’s cabin.”
“But why would someone be doing these things?”
Why indeed.
“What an awful loss - all those beautiful photographs,” I said, though I wasn’t thinking of their aesthetic qualities.
“Oh, Carl’s photographs weren't lost,” said Alice. “He didn't store his photographs or negatives or digital whatnots at the cabin. No storage room out there. It was just a little bitty shed of a thing. He stored his work in our archives here at the museum. We have climate control for all our fragile documents and records.”
I thought of that panorama above his sofa, now ashes as was the sofa itself. I had a sudden inspiration.
“Alice, is there any way to get up to the widow’s walk from here in the museum?”
“Certainly. There is a ladder. Carl liked to take his Thermos of coffee up there.”
So that must have been where he has taken the panorama shot. From that high up there would be a clear view of the entire marina. A chill went through me.
“Alice, who besides yourself knows Carl’s photos are stored in this building?”
“Why do you ask? Is there something wrong?”
“I'm not sure,” I said. “It just seems, as you say, strange that his cabin burned right after he was killed. Too strange. Maybe I have been watching too many crime shows on the television but I am wondering if someone thinks Carl took a picture of something he should not have.”
“Oh my lord,” she whispered. “If that is true, the museum . . . “
“Might be the next place this person looks,” I finished the thought. “I think we should see if we can figure out how to change that alarm code, what do you think?”
“It couldn't hurt,” she said. “But really, C. J., don’t you think that is a little far fetched? What could be so important to someone that they would kill a nice old fellow like Carl?”
I had no answer for her. In fact I wasn't sure I wasn't totally off my trolley. There could have been any number of explanations for what had happened. And she could be right about the fire having nothing to do with Carl’s murder. Still, I just could not buy such a convenient coincidence. There must be a connection with that event and the break-ins at Mert’s boat and house. Someone was searching for something - that was the inescapable conclusion. And if they had not found what it was they were searching for they would most certainly keep looking until they found it. I thought, given Carl’s hobby, it had to be a photograph.
“Alice, where is this storage facility where Carl kept his photos?” I hadn't noticed any doors labeled storage or archive.
“It's in the basement.”
“I thought buildings in town didn't have basements.”
One morning I had overheard a few locals discussing in unflattering terms the stupidity of a certain real-estate developer who thought he was going to build condos with underground parking out by the tsunami warning tower. They could not stop laughing at the idea that someone would sink a basement garage into a sand dune when the water table at high tide was only couple of feet down.
“They built things right back in the 30s and 40s - lots of unemployed men were glad to have any jobs at all, so they made the ones they had last as long as possible. The Coast Guard wanted a sturdy building and that was what they got - even if it did take nearly five years to get it built. This building has a basement built more like a bomb shelter or a munitions bunker than the usual basement. And as a matter of fact I do believe they did store weapons down there at one time. The walls are constructed of two foot thick concrete. Not a drop of water has ever seeped into that basement even when the town floods - which it does on a regular basis. Such as during the storm last week.”
Once Alice got going she was a one woman historical lecture tour. It was easy to see how she got the job of curator at the museum. But I had to keep her focused.
“Could I see it, do you think?”
“I don't see why not.” She was such a dear trusting soul. How did she know I was not the evil doer come to wreck havoc? Had it been Mert I asked, he would have booted me out the door, locked it behind me, and barred all the windows.
A twinge of unease crept over me. Something was not adding up. Well, a lot of things really but one thing in particular did not seem to make sense to me. I was assuming what happened was that Carl had tried his hand at blackmail or extortion. Sure, he was a sweet old coot but that did not mean he was not up for supplementing his modest government pension.
But why had the killer automatically assumed Mert had the incriminating material? I would have thought the logical place to start was Carl’s cabin on the dunes, but his first stop had been Mert’s boat. Could Carl have hinted to his killer that Mert held a copy of whatever it was just in case something nasty went down - a kind of insurance policy so he would stay healthy? If so, he had overestimated the guy’s restraint.
My guess was that Carl tried a bluff that fizzled. Or he actually did stash the goods with Mert. But either Mert was the best liar on the continent or he really did not know what Carl had been up to. The killer had not found what he was searching for on the boat or he would not have needed to go through the house. And it was not in the house or he would not have gone to the cabin.
But why burn the cabin? Why not search it as he had Mert’s house? Of course! The alarm system! The killer could not get into the cabin without setting it off so he must have lit a fire in the woodpile next to it and let the brisk onshore wind take care of whatever the cabin contained - camera, computer, photos and all.
Another thought surfaced. Maybe the item the killer searched for had actually been on the boat all the time but he did not find it because he did not know what he was looking for. This was way too nebulous and complicated. I had nothing really to go on, when it came down to it.
TO BE CONTINUED ***
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