The woman's name, according to the information I'd been given by Raymond Treacle, was Ella Bloom. She and her husband had moved to Cooperville in the late 1950s, after he sold his plumbing supply company in Eureka in order to pursue a lifelong ambition to pan for gold. He'd never found much of it, but Mrs. Bloom must have liked it here anyway; she'd stayed on after his death eight years ago.
She quit hoeing and glared out at us as she had earlier. She was tall and angular, had a nose like the blade of a paring knife and long straggly black hair. Put a tall-crowned hat on her head and a broomstick instead of a hoe in her hand, I thought, and she could have passed for a witch.
I got out of the car, went over to the gate in the picket fence that enclosed the yard. I put on a smile and called to her, "Mrs. Bloom?"
"Who are you?" she said suspiciously.
I gave her my name. "I'm an investigator working for Great Western Insurance on the death of Allan Randall-"
That was as far as I got. She hoisted up the hoe, waved it over her head, and whacked it down into the ground like an executioner's sword; then she hoisted it again and pointed it at me. "Get away from here!" she said in a thin, reedy voice. "Go on, get away!"
"Look, Mrs. Bloom, I only want to ask you a couple of questions-"
"I got nothing to say to you or anybody else about Munroe. You come into my yard, mister, you'll regret it. I got a shotgun in the house and I keep it loaded."
"There's no need for-"
"You want to see it? By God, I'll show it to you if that's what it takes!"
She threw down the hoe and went flying across the yard, up onto the porch and inside the house. I hesitated for about two seconds and then moved back to the car. There wasn't much sense in waiting there for her to come out with her shotgun; she wasn't going to talk, and for all I knew she was loopy enough to start blasting away at me.
"Christ," I said when I slid in under the wheel. "The woman's a lunatic."
Kerry wasn't even ruffled. "Maybe she's got a right."
"What?"
"If somebody was trying to turn my home into a gold-country Disneyland, I'd be pretty mad about it too."
"Yeah," I said, "but you wouldn't start threatening people for no damn reason."
"I might, if I was her age."
"Bah," I said. But because Mrs. Bloom had reappeared with a bulky twelve-gauge cradled in both hands, I started the car and swung it into a fast U-turn. Kerry might not have been worried, but she'd never been shot at and I had. People with guns make me nervous, no matter who they are.
4
Brewster, but with Mrs. Bloom and her shotgun nearby, I decided talking to them could wait. The atmosphere in Cooperville was a lot more hostile than I'd anticipated; I was beginning to regret bringing Kerry with me. I considered calling it quits for the day and heading back to the motel we'd taken in Weaverville. But if I did that, Kerry would never let me hear the end of it; and I couldn't believe that everybody up here was screwy enough to threaten us with guns. I decided to try interviewing one more resident. If that went down as badly as the other attempts had, then the hell with it and I would come back alone tomorrow.
At the fork, I took the branch that led away from town and up onto the wooded slopes to the west. The first dwelling we came to belonged to Paul Thatcher; the second, almost a mile farther along, was a free-form cabin that resembled a somewhat lopsided A-frame, built on sloping ground and bordered on three sides by tall redwoods and Douglas fir. It had been pieced together with salvaged lumber, rough-hewn beams, native stone, redwood thatch, and inexpensive plate glass. A wood butcher's house, wood butchers being people who went off to homestead in the wilds because they didn't like cities, mass-produced housing, or most other people.
When I slowed and eased the car off the road behind a parked Land Rover, Kerry asked, "Who lives here?"
"Man named Hugh Penrose," I said. "He's a writer, so I was told."
"What does he write?"
"Articles and books on natural history. He used to be a professor at Chico State. Treacle says he's an eccentric, to put it mildly."
"He sounds interesting," she said. "How about letting me come with you this time? You don't seem to be doing too well one-on-one."
"I don't think that's a good idea-"
"Phooey," she said, and got out and headed for the cabin.
I caught up with her and we climbed a set of curving limb and-plank stairs to a platform deck. From inside, I could hear the sound of a typewriter rattling away. I knocked on the door. The typewriter kept on going for half a minute; then it stopped, and there were footsteps, and pretty soon the door opened.
The guy who looked out at us was one of the ugliest men I had ever seen. He was about five and a half feet tall, he was fat, he had a bulbous nose and misshapen ears and cheeks pitted with acne scars, and he was as bald as an egg. His eyes were small and mean, but there was more pain in them than anything else. He was a man who had lived more than fifty years, I thought, and who had suffered through every one of them.
He looked at Kerry, looked away from her as if embarrassed, and fixed his gaze on me. "Yes? What is it?"
"Mr. Penrose?"
"Yes?"
Before I could open my mouth again, Kerry said cheerfully, "We're the Wades, Bill and Kerry. From San Francisco. We're thinking of moving up here-you know, homesteading. I hope you don't mind us calling on you like this."
"How did you know my name?" Penrose asked. He was still looking at me.
"The fellow at the store in town gave it to us," Kerry said. "He told us you were a homesteader and we thought we'd come by and look at your place and see how you liked living here."
I could have kicked her. It was one of those flimsy, spontaneous stories that sound as phony as they are; there were a half dozen ways Penrose could have caught her out on the lie.
But she got away with it, by God, at least for the time being. All Penrose said was, "Which fellow at the store?" and he said it without suspicion.
"Mr. Coleclaw."
"Which Mr. Coleclaw?"
"I didn't know there was more than one. He was in his twenties, I guess, and the only one there." Kerry glanced at me. "Did he give you his first name, dear?"
"Gary," I said. "Dear."
"What else did he tell you?" Penrose asked. "Did he say anything about the Munroe Corporation?"
Kerry simulated a blank look that would have got her thrown out of any acting school in the country. But again,
Penrose didn't notice; he still wasn't looking at her, except in brief sidelong eye-flicks whenever she spoke. "No," she said, "he didn't. What's the Munroe Corporation?"
"Poor young fool," Penrose said. "Poor lost lad."
"I beg your pardon?"
"He has rocks in his head," Penrose said, and burst out laughing. The laugh went on for maybe three seconds, like the barking of a sea lion, exposing yellowed and badly fitting dentures; then it cut off as if somebody had smacked a hand over his mouth. He looked embarrassed again.
Another fruitcake, I thought. Cooperville was full of them. But Penrose, at least, had my sympathy; the strain of coping with physical deformities like his was enough to unhinge anybody.
"That was a dreadful pun," he said. "Gary can't help it if he's retarded; I don't know what makes me so cruel sometimes. I apologize. No one should make fun of others."
I said, "You mentioned the Munroe Corporation, Mr. Penrose. Is that something we should know about?"