A PLANT LADY'S LIFE IN GEEKATOPIA
This week I am noticing people's nerves are getting a bit frayed - in reaction to our moribund economy or our brief stretch of hot, humid weather? Both? A woman actually assaulted me in one of my accounts tuesday! That's not something that goes down every day, let me tell you! I had just turned a ficus tree and was about to prune out a small broken branch when a woman came up behind me, grabbed me by the arm pulling me away from the tree, while shouting "Don't do that!". For a second I thought someone was just goofing around, but no, she was perfectly serious - didn't want me to touch the plant near her desk. Quite amazing behavior, I thought. Especially since I've been caring for that particular ficus tree for the better part of a decade without bodily injury (at least to the plant lady).
I'm continuing to revise my RV-GO mystery. If you haven't read Chapter 1 yet, this would be the time to go back to last week's post and catch up. Here's Chapter 2! Enjoy!
(Photo: Maritime Museum, Westport, Wa)
RV-GO DOWN TO THE SEA
Chapter 2
I woke next morning a provisionally-employed, temporary resident of Blue Moon Bay Mobile Manor Community, plugged in and settled like a native between an orange crab-ring festooned single wide and a nearly horizontal pine tree. RV-GO’s windows were opaque with marine fog as I started a pot of coffee in the galley and went to wedge myself into my morning shower.
While I dressed I caught the news and weather on the radio. Cindy, the pink haired chef, had been right. There was a Pineapple Express system they were terming “the storm of the decade” headed right for the west coast. Sixty mile-per-hour winds loaded with rain. I wondered how my new coat would hold up.
Cindy, daughter of Bev the owner of Bev’s Burgers by the Bay, scheduled me for the breakfast shift which started at the unimaginable hour of four-thirty. Trial by fire. She told me if I survived the early rush I’d do just fine. I wondered what kind of a rush could there possibly be at that hour in a nearly empty village.
I found out soon enough. At exactly five o’clock a.m. a half dozen men in work clothes and caps took over the counter stools. Another fifteen minutes and every table in the place was filled. I ran my legs off skating coffee, water, and menus. Not that the men needed menus. They all knew the bill of fare better than their kids’ birthdays. Most of them, I came to discover, ordered the same breakfast every morning. And before they vanished out the door an hour later they all had put in their lunch orders. Later, Cindy told me the guys might as well have saved their breath - they ordered the same lunch day in and day out. Half of the men were workers at the shipyard. The other half were fishermen - mostly charter captains and their crews. No pleasure craft this time of year, said Cindy. Even if these guys didn’t take their boats out of the marina they were accustomed to getting up early every day to work on them, so here they were at Bev’s twice a day, year ‘round.
“Not bad, C.J.” said Cindy after we had loaded the last of the lunch dishes into the washer.
“Thanks,” I said, not sure if I was glad or not that she seemed to think I past muster. “How did you ever manage that crowd on your own?”
“After a while I would just throw the usual eggs and bacon on the grill before the guys even arrived. Slop the coffee around, deal the plates and you got it. Having customers that are compulsive and short on imagination plays to your favor around here.”
“So, every day it’s like this?”
“Pretty much. Today it’s a little more hectic because the storm’s coming. They’ve got to batten down the hatches and sand bag the town,” she said. “You decide whether you are hiring on?”
I took a look at the tip jar. It wasn’t what I was used to at the dinner houses I worked in Boise. But it would suffice to pay the utility bills at the RV park.
“Sure, Cindy, I’d love to,” I said. “Be back tomorrow at four-thirty. Now I’m going to walk around town and get acquainted with the locals.”
“Yeah. Better do that while you still can.” I followed her gaze toward the wide windows. High white clouds scudded overhead. Not all that threatening by the look of them. But then, I didn’t know local weather.
Westport was walkable, situated as it was on a flat spit of land surrounding flat water. Even so, I decided a bike might ease the one mile commute to work from the RV park. I would ask around and see if somebody would sell me a used one that didn’t have an excessive layer of rust. No doubt I could use the exercise as well.
It turned out to be a pretty pleasant stroll around town, working up a glow in the freshening sea breeze. The few people I passed on the way from one end of the street to the other actually smiled at me. You rarely get that response even in sleepy Boise. At the end of the street where it loops around the shipyard toward the road to Grayland I stopped at one of the numerous benches that dot the marina side of the street. There was a bronze plaque attached to the back rest dedicating the bench to a Westport fisherman - Brian Hansen, beloved son and brother, lost at sea, twenty-nine years old. And in that brief message on a gray wood bench I saw the other side of coastal life. I suspected that was why people were so generous with their smiles. Too soon those smiles could fade with the rigors of trying to carve out a living beside a turbulent ocean.
I still sometimes had nightmares of one terrible night off Anchorage when the cannery ship I worked on in Alaska came across a capsized trawler. We hadn’t heard a mayday but there it was almost directly off our bow. Weather can come up fierce and fast in those waters - every year it takes a few boats before they know what’s hit them. We barely avoided cutting the trawler in two. It was a long frustrating, miserable night. Never did locate any of the crew. They hadn’t even deployed a raft.
Gone fishing. For thousands of years the sad reality of men who go fishing is that so many of them don’t come back. I took a seat on the Brian Hansen memorial bench. Morning fog was long gone but it was as quiet as if the town were swathed in cotton. The term calm before the storm came to mind. A trio of seagulls squabbling over a segment of crab, momentarily disturbed the impression that I had somehow gone stone deaf.
Boats put to bed for the winter slept motionless in their berths on Float 3. Most were trawlers - forty-five to sixty feet. Big enough to ply the Pacific coast all the way to Alaska and back. It was a sizable fleet for such a small port. A few boats up the float someone was hosing off his deck. Other than that one person, there didn’t seem to be anyone around. Where were all the guys from lunch, I wondered. Drinking dessert in the galley? Of course it was off season, but I had been hoping I would find someone to talk to about the town. Not too much opportunity to yak while you are running burger orders and refilling coffee mugs.
I walked down the ramp onto the float, reading the names on the trawlers’ sterns as I went. It interests me what folks name their pets, cars, computers, motor homes, kids, boats. Some of the boats on Float 3 were named for women - no doubt in honor of wives or mothers. Others were more fancifully christened. Moored on this float were Alice Ann, Polkadot, Hannasam, Crusader, Eagle Scout II, and Surfergirl. Three of the six sported hand-lettered for sale by owner signs.
“Hey you, what are you doing down here?” came the shout from behind me, the float bobbing with each of the man’s heavy strides.
“Looking at the boats,” I said. “Why, is there a problem?”
The guy looked to be in his mid-forties, roughly the size of a combine, and with all the natural charm of a case of head lice. I thought I remembered him from the breakfast shift at Bev’s. A low tipper if ever I saw one with a few major issues judging by the purple tinge to his cheeks.
“There is if you’re snooping around my fuckin’ boat.”
Yep, issues.
“Whoa, fella. Nothing to be upset about. I am new here in town and just catching the sights,” I said, hoping I was sounding sufficiently non-threatening.
“Catch them someplace else. I don’t like strangers coming around my boat.”
“Well, I don’t know which is your boat so you point it out and I will do my very best to avoid it.”
“You are a smart mouth old bitch,” he growled. “Why don’t you just go sightseeing on some other float.” It was not a question. I abruptly lost my interest in the trawlers. Fond memories of my homicidal husband surfaced like fat globules on gumbo
“Okay, you win, pal” I said. He was still a wall between me and the ramp. “If you will let me get by I can be on my way.”
He allowed me a few inches and I made a speedy scramble up the ramp to the street, my stomach doing nervous little twitches. Looking over my shoulder I saw the guy boarding Surfergirl. Surfergirl? Picturing that unpleasant thug on a surf board jump-started a chuckle. He must have bought the boat off one of the Beach Boys. Or stole it, more likely.
Any illusion I might have harbored that all of Westport was ready to bend over backward to welcome me to the community could have evaporated right there. But people are people everywhere - no one knows this better than a waitress - so I shrugged it off as par for the course and decided to check out the Maritime Museum. A few musty dioramas and I’d have a feel for the area. I figured a museum was likely to encourage rather than object to my sight-seeing ways. I should have known better, considering how the afternoon had started out.
The museum was an impressive white three-story Nantucket style building complete with six gables and topped with a widow’s watch cupola. According to the wooden sign out front it had originally been a Coast Guard Station. I stepped onto the wide porch and tried the door. It was locked. Only then did I notice the small hand-lettered sign taped to the window. Closed for the season. That figured. Just when I was getting in the mood for a quiet stroll amid dusty ship models. Ah well, such is life. No doubt I should take the hint, I thought, and high tail it back to the RV for a nap.
“You here to see the lens?” said a voice from behind me.
“Lens?” I said, turning to see a shriveled figure in a yellow slicker. The man looked salt-cured as a strip of jerky and somewhere around ninety years old. If he turned out as nasty as the guy on Float 3 I thought I could probably take him.
“Yeah. The Fresnel lens. You know, from Destruction Island Lighthouse,” he said. “You here to see it?”
“Sounds interesting,” I said, having no idea what he was talking about. “But the museum is closed.”
He coughed up a lung and spat on the grass.
“Don’t matter. I’m a docent as well as the watchman. If you want to see it, I got a key.”
“Thanks for the offer,” I said. “But I can come back another time when the museum is open.”
“It’s not in the museum. Got its own special-built building ‘round back,” said the old man. “I could power it up for you.”
Power it up? How do you power up a piece of glass, I wondered. This, I had to see.
“If you are sure it’s no trouble . . . “
“No trouble at all, young lady,” he said. I liked the young lady part. A real smooth talker.
“I’m Cora Jane Dooley, by the way. I just hired on over at Bev’s,” I said.
“Glad to meet you,” he said, offering his hand. “Carl Heslop, retired Coast Guard.”
“How long have you been a docent, Carl?” I asked as we walked around the side of the main building.
“Since ‘85 when Westport turned the building over to the historical society. Served here myself back in the 70s when I was in the Guard, so I know every inch of the old girl,” he said. “This here, though, is new. They had to build this when they got the lens a few years ago.”
Carl brought out a ring of keys and unlocked the door of what looked like a large boat house. When he flipped on the room lights I understood why an entire building was needed for a lighthouse lens. The thing looked like a gigantic twenty foot tall Christmas tree ornament constructed of a zillion cut glass prisms and surrounded by an observation ramp.
“Wow!” I said. “That’s one hell of a beautiful thing!” No doubt about it, that was one over-the-top Christmas ornament.
“You ain’t seen nothing yet, young lady. Wait ‘til I get it fired up,” he chuckled, moving to a control box. “Just take a second.”
Carl flipped a few switches and a motor hummed to life somewhere under the lens.
“Okay, here she goes,” he said.
A blinding light strobed from the center of the Christmas ornament which began to rotate slowly, splashing the room with rainbows of brilliance.
“It is breath taking!” I said.
“Yeah, like one of those laser light show things, but better. If it was outside, you could see this puppy for miles. Sometimes I like to come in here and just watch it go ‘round and ‘round. Down right hypnotizing,” said Carl. “Costs some money, though, every time it gets turned on.”
Oops. Here comes the bottom line, I thought. I should have known the old boy wasn’t giving me the grand tour out of kindness to a stranger.
“Is there an admission charge, Carl?”
“Nah. But we do take donations,” He pointed to a bronze model of a lighthouse on a pedestal next to the door.
“I don’t understand . . .”
“It is a big piggy bank. Well, a lighthouse bank. We collect money for the Ashes Fund.” He was not quite getting his point across.
“We call it the Ashes Fund,” he said. “’Cause it is like a burial fund only for scattering ashes, ya see? Lots of times fishermen die and there is no money to scatter their ashes at sea. A friend of mine is licensed to scatter ashes from his fishing boat so this fund pays him for the gas to take the ashes to sea.”
“Well, I don’t have much with me but I really appreciate seeing this amazing lens so let me leave something in the box for your trouble, okay Carl?”
I dug around in my pocket where the morning’s tips nestled.
“Nah, don’t worry ‘bout that. No trouble at all. I was out here anyway.”
“If you are sure. But tell you what, Carl, let me buy you breakfast over at Bev’s some time.”
“That’s a deal, Cora Jane Dooley.”
He shut the lens down and turned off the overheads. Though Carl had said it was unnecessary, I tucked a fiver in the donation box anyway on the way out the door. He thanked me and locked up the Lens Building.
“Carl,” I said, before I turned to go on my way. “You must know most of the people around town. Do you know the owner of the trawler Surfergirl?”
“Why do you want to know?” he said, a frown playing across his face.
“I was down on Float 3 and the guy chased me off. He seemed to have a real problem with people coming around.”
“His name is Eddie Roy Singer. You want to avoid that one. He’s bad news. Stay clear of him if you don’t want to get yourself hurt.”
That sounded a bit melodramatic but what did I know? Every town has it’s characters. Could be Carl was one. Could be this Eddie Roy Singer was another.
“Well, I have to be off,” I said. “Thanks for the advice and thanks again for the tour. That lens is a marvel.”
“Glad to do it,” he said, locking the door. “You take care, little lady. Storm coming, you know.”
I headed back to Blue Moon Bay Mobile Manor and RV-GO for a late nap, wondering where this supposed storm was and when it was finally going to show up.
* * *
It was not much of a nap. Just as I was drifting off the southbound Union Pacific clobbered the side of my rig. At least that was what it felt like as my eyes sprang open. RV-GO was rocking and rolling like Elvis on speed. I unwound myself from the tangled sheets and staggered into the living room. I could not see a thing out the windows for all the water pouring down the glass in torrents. Something was banging against the door. I pulled it open and Ron from the single wide next door fell in, dripping water all over my scatter rug.
“What’s going on?” I shouted, as I slammed the door behind him.
“Storm,” he said. I had already pretty much figured that out. “Bunch of us are going downtown to help with the sand bagging. Wondered if you wanted to go along and help. We can use all the hands we can get.”
“They left it a bit late, didn’t they? How come they didn’t get it done yesterday? Isn’t this supposed to be the storm of the decade or something?”
“Hell, who knows. There is always a blow heading our way. Nothing generally comes of it so folks wait to see if it’s serious before they bother. So, you coming?”
“What about the mobiles and RVs? Is there something we should be doing? This thing feels like it is about to be blown over!”
“Nothing to be done now,” he replied. “They will either be here when we get back or they won’t. Anything that could have blown away easy, like tarps and garbage lids, is already half way down the coast by now.”
“Okay, Ron, let me get my coat.”
At that moment the microwave oven squawked as the power fizzed out. I pulled the plug on it and my countertop television to prevent any electrical fireworks once the juice came back on. If it came back on. Ron loaned me a heavy yellow slicker which smelled of sweat and rotting shrimp. I thanked him profusely.
Six other people from the mobile park were already wedged into Ron’s antique Volkswagen bus. I squeezed myself in between his wife and a thick necked man I did not know. Nobody talked as we inched our way into town through the six inches of water that covered the roadway. Ron had the wipers flapping wildly but visibility was next to zero. We might have gotten into town faster walking though we would have run the risk of drowning. As we finally reached The Inn of the Westwind I could just make out that they still had power. Maybe they had a generator. The parking lot was jammed with pickup trucks , the cafe clearly serving as a command post for the operation. Ron pulled the Volkswagen into the flooded lot next to a truck with a Coast Guard logo on the side doors.
We pushed through the door into a vortex of voices. The wall heater was blowing full blast but making little progress at drying jackets and slickers as a couple of teenage girls threaded their way through the crowd dispensing coffee to the throng. Nothing gets done in this town without a liberal application of caffeine. Amazing that this fact hadn’t yet been discovered by the Starbucks people. Of course this town wasn’t exactly upscale. I accepted a steaming mug of what tasted like Folgers drip and tried to make sense of what was going on in the terrible, steaming din of the room. I scanned the faces for Cindy but didn’t see her. Carl, the old guy from the museum, wasn’t there either. Neither was the thug from Float 3, a fact that cheered me somewhat.
“Do you know what we are waiting for?” I yelled to the young man at my elbow.
“Someone screwed up and left a pile of sand bags behind at the Coast Guard Station. A couple of guys have gone back to get them.”
“What do we do with the sand bags once they arrive?”
He threw me a look that spoke volumes.
“Fill them with sand and pack them against all the doorways so the shops don’t flood. You are new around here, right?”
“Just came in this week.”
“Yeah, well, I thought so,” he said, stating the obvious. “See, Westport is only a foot above sea level. When the tide is high, like it is right now, and it is stormy like it is now, before long the whole damn ocean is blowing up over the breakwater we are all up to our asses in salt water.”
“I don’t know, but it seems to me you folks ought to move the town to higher ground.”
“Tell me about it.”
A tall fellow in a Coast Guard Reserve jacket came through the crowd counting us off into teams and before I finished my coffee we were herded back out into the driving rain.
The four on my team shoveled sand into an unending assembly line of sopping canvas bags for hours while the water poured over us like the last gasp of the Titanic. Water blew in under my hood and ran down my neck but I was too busy to mind. I could not see anything beyond the mouth of each bag I held open for my teammate to fill. When the bag was full I closed it, slid it to the next person down who fit it against the door jam, then I grabbed another empty bag to fill. I kept my head down, clinging to the sand bags to keep from being blown over, knowing that if I managed to survive the day, my lower back promised to be a permanent pretzel.
I heard the wind howling through a forest of whipping masts across the street in the marina, mast rings clanging like church bells on dooms day. Then a loud crack like a tree splitting in half pierced the screaming wind. Boats breaking up. My teammate gasped and cut a curse as he shoveled sand into the bag. No time to wonder if it was his or a friend’s boat. A gust hit me, knocking me flat on my rear in swirling water. He helped me to my feet and handed me the next empty bag.
It was dark when we placed the last bag against the last doorway - ironically, Sailor’s Kite Shop. Dark as the hold of the Flying Dutchman. Dark and loud with rushing water, screeching wind. We staggered to the vehicles and drove back to the Westwind. I don’t remember how I got back to Moon Bay Mobile Manor.
No surprise that the power was still out. Soaked to the bone, my teeth rattling in my pounding head I could have murdered a hot shower. It wasn’t going to happen. I felt my way to the bathroom, peeled off my clothes, threw them in the shower and left them there to drain.
I pulled on a pair of sweat pants, woolly socks, a sweater and wrapped myself in two blankets before passing into a blessedly dream free oblivion.
The phone woke me a few minutes past four. If I had been expecting to sleep all day I was sadly mistaken. Sometime during the night the storm passed, lights had snapped back to life and Cindy was determined to open Bev’s for breakfast. Business as usual. The short bike ride into town was an agony of sore muscles and angry bruises. The rain had stopped but the streets were silted over and strewn with snapped branches, slick sorrowful leaves and broken shingles. Shopkeepers were already out shoveling muck from the sidewalks. Boat owners swarmed over the floats retying lines and accessing the damage and at the jetty a fire truck was pumping water back over the breakwater into the bay. Westport mopped up and brushed itself off. This was one tough town.
* * *
“Suspicious death,” said Cindy, answering my question.
The last cop car had just pulled away from the curb. I had served them their breakfast but made myself scarce when they started asking questions. I had had my fill of police back in Idaho. A whole raft of police show up and I clam up and slip out the back door. Besides, what could I tell them? The person they had wanted to talk to was Cindy.
“What did they ask you?”
“They wanted to know if he came in as usual for supper the other night,” she said. “Which he didn’t. I told the cops his buddy Mert came in, expecting the old man to meet him for the liver and onions special. But Carl was a no-show.”
“What happened, did they say?” I asked, a sick dread creep through me. Poor Carl - he had seemed like such a nice old guy.
“Only that one of the shipyard workers heading into work this morning saw a light in the Lens Building. He thought that was weird so he went to check it out, found the door open and Carl dead under the lens.”
“Why suspicious?,” I said. “It was a terrible night last night. Maybe he went to batten down the museum and had a heart attack.”
“Would the police be crawling all over town if that were the case?” Cindy asked, already knowing the answer. “It had to have been something obvious to get those good old boys going.”
As we cleared the tables I couldn’t stop thinking about poor Carl. What in the world could have happened to him? Suspicious, the cops said. That usual meant violence. Murder. An unsettling thought surfaced - I may well have been the last person to see him alive. Except of course for his killer.
I was not about to volunteer that information to anyone, however. If I put in my oar, the cops were sure to run a check on me. And what would they find? The wife of a serial killer visits with their homicide victim right before he dies. How many red flags does it take before I could kiss my restful retirement bye-bye?
But what if I kept my mouth shut and they found out anyway? It would look like I was hiding something. Which of course I was. They would circle like sharks and it wouldn’t matter how innocent I was. Either way I was implicated A little more information might go a long way toward keeping my neck out of a noose. Maybe I should have had more faith in the wheels of justice. I did not. The wheels had very nearly missed grinding up my unlamented ex next of kin. He almost dodged the bullet when his idiot attorney tried to get the case thrown out on a technicality. Unbelievable that they almost threw that monster back out on the street to kill again. Any faith I had in the system died that day.
And from the moment the police cuffed my husband and led him away I, as his wife, was convicted in the eyes of the community. Most people were careful not to ask but I could see it in their eyes. One reporter with the delicacy of a Jerry Springer regular asked me outright on the six o’clock news the obvious question. The one I had no good answer for. Living with the guy for twenty years how could I not have known? How did I miss the signs? There must have been signs, right? You don’t live with someone in intimate association and not observe . . . something. Odd patterns of behavior. Unsettling interest in the dark side of life. Blood stains? Anything?
It was clear early on that I would not be able to stay in Boise. Couldn’t get a job anywhere that the patrons would not recognize me. Stares followed me everywhere - the speculations - the morbid curiosity. The trouble was I asked myself many of the same questions strangers were asking, replaying all the years of my marriage over and over through long twisting sleepless nights for even the smallest clue.
It was no use. People don’t want to see what they don’t want to see. To be sure the wife is always the last to know, be it infidelity or homicidal tendencies. All the nights when he came home late from the dealership complaining about endless paperwork, tax audits or personnel troubles - there was always something - on how many of those nights, I wondered, someone died by his hand? The same hand that had held mine when we said our vows so long ago.
In my mind I saw the ranks of black and white photos - in some cases mug shots - of women who never seemed to have been able to catch a break. Young women wearing the labels of society’s condemnation - drug addict, shop lifter, prostitute, homeless. Their eyes will haunt me until my dying day. The last thing those terrified, little girl eyes saw in life was my husband.
I felt I had let those women down. Deep in my gut I knew it. If only I had been more observant, more aware, they might have lived - might have had the chance to turn their lives around. And I let their families down. Their daughters, mothers, sisters were dead because I had not stopped their murderer. How I failed those people never leaves my thoughts. That horrible man will live his life out behind bars and not feel a moment’s remorse while I drag around enough guilt for the both of us.
“Hey, C.J., you okay,” said Cindy.
“Sorry, I was day dreaming,” I said, glad to be jarred out of that particular line of thought. “Cindy, did you say Carl’s friend Mert was here the other night?”
“He was at breakfast this morning. Hang Town omelet with sour cream on the side. Though how he could eat this morning beats me. His boat too a hit last night,” she said. “Mert is a partner in Captain Garvin’s Charters downstairs - owns the trawler Angel Face at Float 12.”
In Westport a guy’s identity seemed to be inseparable from his affiliation with a boat.
“The silver fox with the pony tail?” I said. Yes, I remembered him. Stocky and rugged like an advertisement for Fisherman’s Friend. Blue eyes and a twenty percent tip.
“I never thought of him that way,”said Cindy. “But yeah, a silver pony tail.”
“Cindy, are you going to need me for the dinner shift tonight?”
“Nah. I’ll be fine. Mona is coming in. Why? You want more hours?”
“No, that’s okay,” I said, trying not to sound disappointed. If Mert was a regular there was a better than even chance he would be in for supper, eager to spill the beans on whatever it was happened to his friend Carl. And I really needed to know what happened - and if the police had any leads. Because I like the old guy and because . . . well, because I needed to know whoever did it would pay. Unaccountably, it seemed personal to me. As if something filthy and ugly had followed me here.
I would prefer to have a nice to have a quiet word with mister silver pony tail over the dinner special but as a plan B I could check out Float 12 before I went home. If that didn’t pan out, there was always breakfast. “See you in the morning, Cindy,” I said, starting down the stairs to the street. “Did you say Mert works for the charter downstairs?” I asked.
“Yeah. A partner actually.”
“Thanks, Cindy.”
At the bottom of the stairs I took a hard right into Captain Garvin’s Charters, stepping on a rubber mat that set off a buzzer somewhere in the back room. While I waited for someone to surface I flipped through brochures in a rack by the counter. According to the literature I could take my pick from tuna, halibut, salmon or bottom fish. Sounded like a combo plate at Skipper’s. Photos of pickup truck-sized fish cradled in the arms of startled tourists alternated with snaps of the charter company’s small fleet.
Second down was the trawler Angel Face. A fine looking trawler but then things are supposed to look good on a brochure. At the bottom of the brochure beneath the standard promises of limit catches and whale watching, Angel Face offered to scatter the ashes of your nearest and dearest upon the wide ocean. “Fully licensed and providing tasteful secular and religious services.” I wondered what a secular service entailed and imagined the recently bereaved rushing into Captain Garvin’s Charters with a jar under one arm and a fist full of dollars in the other for a quick trip out of this world on Angel Face.
“Hep ya?” shouted a disembodied woman’s voice from the back room. A restless spirit?
“Is anybody here?” I asked the air.
“Who wants ta know?”
The invisible woman needed a short course in customer service.
“I am new in town. Thought I might like to go fishing.” The words no sooner left my mouth than I realized how silly they sounded, spoken so soon after the nasty storm we just weathered. Yet I realized at that moment that they were true. I would not mind at all heading out for a fish or two. Fresh air and sea breezes sounded like just the thing to clear my head and help restore some sense of perspective.
I suppose I had been landlocked in Idaho long enough to have sanitized my memories of Alaska salmon fishing. All the slime, the dead eyes, the blood, and icy water had long ago sunk into the enveloping mists of my youth.
“Season’s over,” hammered the voice from the back room. “Come back in the Spring for fish. Crab season is next month.”
Spirit or no, she was pissing me off. I had just worked two shifts and my feet were killing me, not to mention the tortured muscles from hours of sand bagging. Pain has a tendency to bring out my stubborn side so whoever Miss Congeniality was she was not going to get rid of me until I was damn good and ready.
“Okay, let’s try crabbing. You got any brochures on that?” I yelled at the empty doorway.
“Hold yer horses out there,” was the return holler.
I heard what sounded like someone pushing a recycle bin to the curb and wondered if the invisible woman had taken up roller ball.
“Here, what you say about crabbing?” said the now visible woman, as she rocketed her wheel chair through the door like a berserk ballistic missile. She was ancient, leathery, mostly bald and she was glaring at me as if I had dropped a dead rat in her lap. I felt like backing very slowly out the door through which I had come.
“That’s okay,” I stammered. “I think I will come back some other time. As you say, in the Spring.”
“Spring’s too late for crabbing. Gotta be next month for that,” she said. “Garvin’s don’t take nobody out crabbing but if ya want I can fix ya up with some names of those that do. Can’t think why you would want to go though. Ya want some crab just wait 'til the fellas bring ‘em in and dump ‘em in the bin. Crabbing ain’t exactly exciting. Throw out a crab ring and come back tomorrow. About as exciting as a coma.”
“I am sure you are probably right,” I said. “Guess I will have to wait for salmon season. I heard someone say Mert was the one to talk to. Is he around?”
“Nah. He’d tell ya the same as me - no fishing 'til Spring.” It looked as if I had about the same chance of getting usable information from her as trying to crack open a clam with my bare teeth. Too bad I didn’t have a cookie jar filled with cremated remains to dispose of. I was willing to bet that was one thing that was always in season at Captain Garvin’s Charters.
“Do you know where he might be?”
“Try the marina. He’s probably working on the boat. She got roughed up pretty good last night,” said the woman. “Say, you that new girl Cindy hired?”
Considering that I would never see sixty again I wondered if the woman was blind as well as mobility challenged.
“Yes, I am waiting tables for her. How did you know?”
“Cindy brings me my meals. I’m not much for stairs,” she said, motioning to her chair.
“That is really very nice of her.” I didn’t know where this was going.
“She’s my niece, my sister Bev’s kid.”
“Oh, I see. She is a very sweet girl. And an excellent chef,” I said. “You and your sister must be very proud of her.”
Her face solidified into a frown.
“Always thought Cindy would go on to college. Smartest kid in town, but then her dad died and her mom got sick. Damn unfair, that was.”
I did not know how to reply to that but I understood just what she meant. A lot of things in life were unfair. In point of fact I had often wondered who the chuckle head was that first came up with the fairness concept. In my experience if you bought into the notion that things are supposed to be fair you were doomed to disappointment from the get-go.
“Well, maybe she will get to college eventually,” I offered, easing toward the door. “Guess I will be on my way. I will get back to you in Spring about the fishing.” The last thing I wanted was to get into a lengthy discussion of my young employer’s personal business.
“You said you wanted to talk to Mert?” she said, as I reached the door.
“Yes,” I said. I had almost forgotten what my cover story had been.
“This about what happened to Carl Heslop?” she said. “You maybe a reported? Mert’s not going to want to talk to you about that.”
“I’m not a reporter. But how did you . . . “
“Come on girl, you didn’t expect me to buy that fish story of yours did ya?” she said. “You got a particular reason for poking your nose in?”
Sometimes - just sometimes - the truth is the best tactic. My ex told me that one day, though I am sure he thought he was lying when he said it.
“I feel so bad about the poor old guy. He was kind enough to show me the lens over at the museum. Now I hear that was the afternoon he died,” I said, not sure why I felt I could level with the woman. “I haven’t told the police that.”
“You’re thinking the police might try to pin it on you, do you?”
“No, not really but I don’t much like police. Bad memories from a long time ago. Something that happened to a friend.”
“Police do have a knack for complicating a person’s life, that’s for sure,” she said. “You think Mert can tell you something that’ll let you sleep better tonight?”
“Carl seemed like such a nice old guy,” I said. “I can’t help thinking he might have been safely home if he hadn’t stopped to give me the tour.”
“Don’t you fool yourself, girl. Knowing old Carl, he probably thought he had a chance with you,” she laughed. “You know what I think? I think that was a pretty happy last thought for a guy to have, so don’t feel too bad for him.”
Somehow it didn’t help at all to think Carl might have seen me as a hot number.
“I’m Mert’s business partner, Marg Garvin, Captain Earl Garvin’s widow,” she continued, offering her hand.
She had a firm hand. She had probably boated her fair share of tuna in her time.
“Glad to meet you, Marg,” I said. “So, you think I will find Mert down at the marina? I really would like to talk to him.”
“Yeah. You go on down there,” she said. “Could be a kind word from a stranger would be just the ticket right now. He’ll be on Angel Face moping around and mopping up. Off Float 9.”
“Thanks, Marg,” I said. “And I really would like to get a little fishing in - in the Spring. Salmon.”
“You bet. We’ll get you fixed up with a fish come Spring and have Cindy poach it up in that wine sauce stuff she does,” she said. “Wait, did you say you saw Carl at the museum in the afternoon?”
“Yes.”
“Pretty strange time for him to be there. He was the night watchman”.
“So I heard.”
Pretty strange indeed. What had the old man been doing there? And could, whatever it was, have led to his death?
