A Curious Affair Read online

  I didn’t tell Crystal where I was going. I let her believe that I was heading home to write. Usually I did put my nose to the grindstone in the morning, so this inference passed without challenge. I felt pleasantly guilty for telling a lie—even by omission—and getting away with it. I know that sounds odd, but if you aren’t a good liar, there is pleasure in being able to pull off any untruth, however small. It wasn’t that I would have minded her company, but I had taken to walking indirect routes through town that kept me away from businesses with cats, and she would have noticed this change of pattern.

  The road off Viper’s Hill is really more of a tunnel. Ancient oaks have overgrown the street, making it a dark and mysterious place. Even in winter, when they drop their leaves, the parasitic mistletoe still cling to the branches in great falls, casting the lower stretch of the road into a perpetual twilight. Its uncanny nature aside, it is of some danger to a pedestrian because the ancient tree trunks are so thick that there is nowhere to go if cars take the corners wide. Still, the residents always walk into town. It’s a matter of pride in our mountain-strong legs. And also because there is almost no parking in the town proper, designed when the only traffic was a weekly stagecoach and the odd mule team or two.

  I walked cautiously, ears straining for the sound of cars as I crabbed guardedly down the hill. The road was slick with mud and loose gravel.

  Crows cawed suddenly overhead, making me jump. Aerial vermin, Irv had called them. They were the only creatures he didn’t like. He said they were an ill omen, and would throw rocks to drive them away. The rough sound of their voices in the cold air now reminded me of Irv’s death and made me shiver with a sort of atavistic dread. The oaks’ thick shadows grew even darker as my morbid imagination fought for freedom.

  What am I doing? I asked myself. Why did I care what happened to Irv when no one else did? He was a drug-dealing hermit, inarticulate, smelly—repulsive, even. I’d like to tell you I cared because he was a human and I am so spiritually enlightened that I know every man’s death diminishes me. But really, it was probably just guilt for never having repaid all the hours of work he’d put in on my house since Cal died. It’s almost always guilt that moves me to action these days.

  No, Irv wasn’t a friend in the normal sense of the word, but of course I’d grown to know him. I’d seen him so many times, even before Cal got sick. He was a neighbor, sort of, someone you waved at but didn’t stop to pass the time of day. And once people knew about Cal’s cancer, he occasionally dropped around and brought Cal some marijuana, often leaving it in the old wooden message box by the door where one used to leave notes for the milkman in the days when delivery came to the door in glass bottles. He was shy, uncommunicative, and I was happy to have it so. I had no energy for anything except trying to save Cal.

  Of course, that changed one very long, frustrating day soon after Calvin’s funeral, when I decided that I had to fix the front gate that hung so crookedly it dragged on the ground enough to leave a rut. The only tool I could find was a hammer, and I was having little success with my repair efforts. Don’t ask me why, but Irv chose that day to stop in, and though I don’t know exactly how it happened, he somehow ended up fixing the gate while I went inside and made scones, brewed tea and dried my swollen eyes on a kitchen towel.

  After that, every month or so, Irv would drop by to talk about the weather and incidentally fix a few things for me. I wanted to pay him for his work, but somehow the subject of money never came up. I tried once, but the man was evasive when he wanted to be. He seemed to feel that tea and pastry was sufficient payment, so I let it go. Still, I always felt vaguely indebted to him.

  Later, I found out about his collection of feline strays and realized that I was probably just one more lonely creature he had taken under his threadbare wing. The thought was both touching and lowering, the latter because it underlined how pathetic I had become.

  “Let it go,” I mumbled to myself. Then louder: “Shoo! Go away, you loudmouthed buzzards.” I threw the words hard, letting the crows know that I meant them.

  It did no good.

  I eventually staggered out into the light at the end of the oaken tunnel, shutting my dazzled eyes for a moment at the glare of the sun bouncing off the wet parking lot behind the bank. I breathed deeply, sampling the less damp air, and then opened my eyes very slowly. I was not the only stunned mole out that morning, standing in the half-empty lot. We were all eerily pasty extras from Night of the Living Dead, except that we smiled and didn’t bite one another. This was not a sight I had ever seen in the Silicon Valley where we used to live. Down there, people were polished and presented themselves with year-round tans. But mountain people are different. We have accepted our startling whiteness as part of what has to be endured in the winter, and do not try and hide it with cosmetics or long sessions in a tanning booth. I’d tried self-tanner before, but orange is just not my color, and no one had been fooled into thinking that I’d just come back from a Carib be an vacation. Like smile lines and 34B-sized breasts, some things were best accepted with dignity.

  I did a slow turn in the mostly deserted lot, taking in the town, recalling what it looked like without its watery veil; then I began walking slowly. My dream of scones ousted by my appetite-killing memories of Irv, I started for The Mule up on Main. This had been Irv’s home away from home. Business before pleasure, I told myself. What would Miss Marple do? Feeling brave, I took the shortest route, heading up Hard Rock Lane, watching my steps on the uneven sidewalk and keeping my eyes averted from the windows of the used bookstore where Oscar was sure to be napping. Oscar was a nice enough animal, but he was extremely vocal as well as hard of hearing and would caterwaul when he saw me.

  In common with most gold-country towns, we had a Main Street and a Church Street, a Gold Street and a Lincoln Street. What we didn’t have was an Easy Street, real or meta phorical. Nothing had been easy for folks when the forty-niners were naming things in this Gold Rush town, and things weren’t all that easy now.

  As I mentioned before, Irv frequented one of the town’s less tourist-friendly bars, The Three-Legged Mule. Around here, if a bar is historic or charming, it’s usually called a pub or a saloon. The Mule wasn’t charming. For one thing, people still smoked there—excessively. A little foretaste of Hell, Irv had joked. The bar had grandfathered in some clause that permitted both smoking and the sale of firearms on the premises. You walked by it any time from seven A.M. until three a.m. the next morning and belches of smoke and sweaty air would billow at you from under the swinging door. Yes, seven A.M. The Mule opened early, before anything else in town. It was the perfect place to go when you wanted to hurt yourself at sunrise, and sadly there was always a handful of people who did. Rumor also had it that The Mule sometimes served underaged kids equally underaged scotch that hadn’t been brewed by the companies whose names were on the bottle labels. They never had happy hour there trying to attract tourists, either. They were at least realistic about that. Their clientele didn’t actually expect to be happy; getting inebriated cheaply was enough. Having happy people around would have just annoyed the regulars.

  No one was loitering outside in the cold sun today, though there was a bench. Perhaps the break in the weather had gone unnoticed. More likely the bar’s owners and patrons were making an effort to stay out of sight of the mayor, who was getting ready to hold some kind of rally across the street at the courthouse. That didn’t mean the place was empty, though. It never was during business hours. On a successful Saturday night, ranks of patrons would drink until the bar closed and then lurch out to Fremont Creek Ranch, using the Victorian ironwork fences around the Mason’s graveyard as crutches while they pulled themselves along hand-over-hand. After that they would have to lean together, a shambling human tripod, or else crawl the rest of the way up the hill to their shacks and trailers.

  I braced myself and then stepped up to the red door with the small diamond-shaped window now gray with smoke. I was a big girl—I could do t
his.

  I held my breath as I stepped inside. The list of beers on the chalkboard behind the bar was short and boring, but no one went to The Mule because they sought exciting beverages. No one here was seeking excitement of any kind; if anything, they wanted to be numbed as quickly and cheaply as humanly possible. They didn’t bother with microbrews here, though there were many good ones in the area.

  My first impression when my eyes adjusted to the stygian light levels was that everyone in The Mule was suffering from either liver failure or hepatitis. After a second look, I changed that assessment to only about two-thirds. Nevertheless, I resolved not to touch anything or shake any hands. This was the Sierra Nevada’s version of the black hole of Calcutta, and who knew what germs there abideth within.

  The day was just dawning, but business was already being done at some of the tables. There were stacks of dirty cash on a table, and once in a while something that might have been a contract, though this was rare.

  The barter system is alive and well in Irish Camp, and the underground economy flourishes. It starts in the heart of town where most businesses struggle financially even with the help of the tourists who visit, but the system of barter stretched deep into the forest around the township.

  Here’s a benign example of how it works: Ranchers send sheep and goats to eat back brush that presents a fire danger to some historic old home that belongs to a historic but impoverished family. In return, that rancher gets firewood from trees downed by a storm on the historic property. Sometimes dental work is traded for plumbing or gardening services. A house painter gets his kid’s broken arm fixed by plying his trade for the doctor.

  Then there are the less benevolent forms of barter. Like the trading of marijuana or other drugs for food from the fruit stands or the bakery, or for clothes from the thrift shop, or even for sex or a place to stay when it is snowing.

  I don’t actively partake in this underground economy, but I see it and mostly approve. It’s a system that works in a poor county where there is never enough to go around, and I hadn’t personally seen anyone being coerced into participating. But that morning I thought that perhaps it had a dark side I didn’t know about, and maybe that was what had gotten Irv killed.

  Looking at the motley crew inside the Three-Legged Mule, I had to wonder what they were trading for the swill they drank so freely. None of them had regular jobs, and therefore had little money. Few of them had any skills to trade—Josh had worked as a steamfitter, Dell as a logger, Tim as a stonemason before he lost his left hand—but they showed so little inclination toward sobriety these days that only a crazy person would let them near power tools.

  Being a writer, and given a slightly higher than average degree of imagination—and now a corpse on my hill—I couldn’t help but speculate if any of them might be doing something illegal for Mosconi, the bar owner and tender. Or were the patrons blackmailing him with some knowledge of an old sin even Irish Camp wouldn’t accept? Irv would have known if they were. Irv knew everything.

  But would Irv have cared? Would that knowledge be enough to get him killed by one of these people? He was definitely considered to be one of their own.

  I didn’t know and couldn’t guess. I had nothing in common with this strange community except our mutual acquaintance with Irv, and I didn’t know their stories in any detail, not even Irving’s. Maybe it was the tragedy of broken hearts that had led them to the bar to begin with, but it was broken livers and addiction that got them in The Mule now. There weren’t many places where jaundice looks good and is accepted as normal, but you hardly noticed it in the dim light with the orange shag carpet that had gotten a bad haircut back in the days when The Mule still had enough pretensions of class that they had music to dance to on Saturday nights. Back when they occasionally shampooed the vomit out of the rug.

  I shook my head. Irv wasn’t a tidy man, but this place seemed wrong for him somehow. He liked being outside in the fresh air. Did he perhaps not come here to drink with his ex-girlfriend as he had claimed, but instead to do business? Drug business? Popular songs often insist that love that doesn’t kill you makes you crazy, and this is often so. But there are many other ways to go insane, or at least comfortably numb. Some are available to everyone, but others require a middleman. If you had a friendly doctor like I did, you could do it legally. If you didn’t, you came to a place like The Mule.

  I stepped farther into the room and let my eyes finish adjusting. The clientele looked like they had all just come from a police lineup. I also spotted some large dust bunnies under a juke box that had been dead since the music died in the Easter brawl of ’97, when the owner foolishly left Tim in charge while he went to visit his daughter over the holiday. The fight started, I’m told, when one patron took exception to another’s contention that it was Jesus who hid the first Easter eggs. And to celebrate the day that the Prince of Peace rose from the dead—and maybe hid boiled eggs—the two men spent the morning trying to beat sense into one another with the furniture.

  That could never happen today. Almost everybody involved was either dead or so much older and sicker that brawling held no appeal. The furniture was now bolted down tighter than in a cheap motel. And all the guns and hunting knives were locked in a metal cabinet where there was no casual grabbing. Nevertheless, a low-grade danger rode the smoky air.

  I swallowed, and breathed shallowly. Maybe, I thought, having cats talk to me isn’t so bad a fate after all.

  That reminded me again I had to pick up some cat kibble and bowls. I’d be able to hide them under the steps in the side yard for now. That would give the cats some shelter and conceal them from my neighbor, Abby, whose house overlooks mine. She is a kind and generous soul, but she had never approved of Irv’s feline philanthropy, and I didn’t think she’d appreciate having the cats at my place either.

  “Jillian!”

  I turned in the direction of the surprised voice and saw Molly sitting in a shadowy corner with a half-empty glass of beer. At the sound of my name, Dell got up from his place at the bar and walked over to Molly’s table. His posture was protective.

  Dell isn’t my favorite person, nor am I his. He comes from a family whose gene pool runs deep with DNA designed for violent, drug-addicted men. Aside from being a drunk, he is sly in mean ways. Such as, he has the disconcerting habit of playing with his dentures—which I am quite certain were not originally his own, since they seem too large for his jaw—popping them in and out with his tongue in a disgusting game of oral peekaboo. It makes his Adam’s apple bob up and down, and reminds me of a dog trying to lick a glob of peanut butter off the roof of his mouth. He does this on purpose, mostly to tourists, smiling meanly whenever someone looks away in discomfort.

  I approached Molly anyway.

  “Molly. Dell.” They didn’t ask me to sit down, but I did anyway. This uncharacteristic action made Molly’s eyes get big and a little frightened. I cleared my throat, not sure what to say now that I was there. After a moment I fell back on training. Mother was right—good manners cost nothing. And besides, they give you a cliché for every occasion. Molly would understand the ritual. She had been a businesswoman until she gave up cooking to become a full-time alcoholic.

  “Molly, have you heard about Irv?” I waited for the slow shake of her head. I hadn’t asked Dell anything, but his head wagged back and forth too. I noticed then that he was wearing a chain, and at the end of it was a raw gold nugget that was almost hidden by his silvering chest hair. The sight surprised me. Dell wasn’t the type who adorned himself with jewelry, and I would have thought that anything valuable he came across would have ended up at the Red Hawk pawnshop.

  “What…what about Irv?”

  “I’m sorry.” And I was sorry, which made the next part easier. “Irv died last night. He…” He what? Was murdered? I was pretty sure that one shouldn’t blurt out something like that. Especially if one was trying to find out what might have happened to the victim and the people you were dealing with were
highly allergic to anything that might bring them into contact with the law.

  Fortunately, Molly covered for me. She began to cry. She reached for my hand under the table and clutched at it with chapped fingers. I had been hoping to avoid this contact, but couldn’t very well pull away.

  “Poor Irv. It was his heart, wasn’t it?” She pulled a napkin out of the dispenser with her left hand and wiped at her eyes. Dell began patting her shoulder. Both looked upset, if not surprised. If anything, I would have said that Dell looked chagrined, maybe even annoyed.

  Again, since I am not the best liar—at least not in person—I opted for a version of the truth when answering.

  “I’m not sure, Molly. I think the sheriff has ordered an autopsy. Maybe they’ll find out what happened.”

  “The sheriff!” As I expected, the tears stopped instantly and her hand withdrew. “Did Murphy hurt Irv?”

  “No!” My reaction was immediate and strong. “No, I got the sheriff after I found Irv.”

  At their continued looks of absolute incomprehension, I felt compelled to explain why I hadn’t called them instead.

  “You know how my jaw is sometimes.” I waited for a nod from Molly. Practically everyone in town knew about my jaw. “Well, it was terrible last night. I could barely move it at all. I knew I couldn’t call anyone on the phone. And I had been drinking. A lot.” That was something they would understand. “The sheriff…was closest.” This wasn’t as lame an excuse as it might appear. Molly and Dell lived deep in a ravine on the other side of town, at the end of an unpaved, unlighted road. Given the weather last night, only a madman would have been up for a slog through the dark and mud.

  At last I got a nod of understanding, but no comment. This annoyed me. I was looking for answers and getting silence instead. Why couldn’t they cooperate and just let the clues come tumbling out of their mouths so I could solve this case and go home where the air was clean?