I shrugged. “Murray and Joe had to work. Jimbo will meet us there.”
She shuddered. “I don’t like him very much. He’s crude.”
I glanced at her as I turned onto the road leading out to Klickavail Valley. “Crude or not, he helped me save my son. Sometimes the cover really doesn’t reflect the book.”
“Well, he hasn’t got any manners, that’s all I have to say about him.”
Manners? Jimbo? Not for someone like Cathy Sutton. He’d told her just where she could stick her microphone a few months earlier and I had the feeling she was still holding a grudge. Time to change the subject.
“So, do you like your job? You always seem so cheerful on TV.”
She snorted. “I’m paid to be cheerful. I’d love to work at a station over in New York or down in L.A., but it’s impossible to find a good agent when you live in a dump this size.” She studied her nails as we lapsed into an uneasy silence.
So Ms. Sutton was a big city girl stuck in a small town. Considering her attitude and disregard for people, she probably would fare better in a large, anonymous city. Then again, I had the feeling she was blaming her lack of promotion and new offers on Bellingham’s size, rather than on her own shortcomings.
“So…” she said. “Why did you decide to open a china shop?”
I flicked on my right-hand blinker. Not far to go, thank God. “I’ve always loved china and teapots, so when I left my ex, and decided to go into business, it seemed natural to draw on my passion for inspiration.”
“How long were you married?”
I gave her a long glance. Ten to one, Cathy couldn’t hold a normal conversation without digging for gossip. “Too long. I was married too long. And you? Have you ever been married?”
She turned to stare out the window. “Yes, actually, I was. When I was twenty.”
Well, that was a shock. I couldn’t imagine what kind of man could put up with her. “Divorced?”
“He died.” She shrugged. “He was twenty-four. One day he went skiing with a friend and they were caught in an avalanche.”
Oh jeez! I caught my breath and let it out slowly, feeling terrible for all the uncharitable things I’d been thinking about her. “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine how hard that must have been to cope with.”
“It wasn’t easy. His family didn’t think I was good enough for him to begin with.” She shrugged. “Anyway, after Tom died, I sued the resort, and used the settlement to go back to school. I graduated with a degree in broadcasting, got hired at KLIK-TV, and thirteen years later, here I still am, in a dead-end job, with a dead-end résumé.”
Not sure of what to say, I kept my mouth shut and concentrated on the road. After a few more minutes, we pulled into Klickavail Valley and I idled the motor. None of the bikers paid much attention to us—they were used to seeing people coming and going through here by now. “Before we get this show going, I’m going to tell you something and you need to remember it.”
She looked at me, expectantly.
“There are some freaky things out here, including spirits that don’t like people screwing around in their territory. You do what I say, when I say. Got it?” Chances were good I was wasting my breath, but I might as well try.
She grunted and I took that for a “yes.” We eased through the shaded foliage at a snail’s pace, then abruptly shot out into the area where Clyde had lost his life. I shivered. There was something wild and untamed out here, a feeling that the forest could close in and swallow us whole. I looked around, but Jimbo was nowhere in sight. He was running late, as usual.
“Where’s this shack you were talking about?”
Cathy stared at the terrain, sucking on her lip. After a moment, she pointed left, past the outcropping of brambles and bushes that blocked our view. “On the phone, George told me it’s over that way, beyond a huge patch of briars and brambles, a little ways beyond Turtle Rock.”
Hmm. Past the area where we’d found Clyde’s body. I pulled to a stop and we got out of the car and started walking. “That’s where we found Clyde and George.” I pointed out the murder scene. Signs of the investigation still littered the ground. A crumpled cigarette pack, a forgotten latex glove, dark splotches of dried blood. Monuments to unexpected death.
Cathy stared at the patch, somber. “I’ve never seen a dead body.”
“I’ve seen more than I ever wanted to.” It seemed like the past year had been steeped in blood. I’d managed to stumble over several murder scenes and by now, I had realized that the memories and images weren’t going to fade away. “So, where is this shack?”
She pointed to a place where Klickavail Mountain jutted into the strip of meadow, a tiny bump in the manner of mountains, but large enough to obscure our view. In fact, it looked as if the meadow ended there; the forest crowded in around the base of the slope. “There. It should be in the forest over there.”
Hmm. Jimbo wasn’t here yet, but I didn’t want to drag this out. Maybe if I left a message for him on my windshield, telling him where we were going, then Cathy and I could at least take a look at the shack while we waited for him. I told her to come with me and hurried back to the Mountaineer, where I dug around in the back and hauled out my pack, slipping the straps over my arm. “I suppose you didn’t bring so much as a bottle of water for yourself, or even a flashlight?”
She blanched. “Oh. I thought you were bringing those things.”
Good God, either the woman really did believe I could read minds or she expected to be waited on hand and foot. I plastered a huge note on the windshield, and then took another gander at the road, hoping to see Jimbo’s truck. No such luck. “All right, show me this shack. We should be safe for now.”
We trekked back past Turtle Rock and rounded the curve, trudging through the verdant foliage that girded the gigantic boulder. Once we reached the tree line, it only took a few moments to locate the cabin. Weathered and worn, it couldn’t possibly be inhabited.
“The cave is back in the woods, beyond the shack,” Cathy said. “George told me that he marked the path with torn pieces of a canvas sheet. That’s when he said he was going back to explore further,” she added glumly.
I headed over toward the building. The outer walls were gray with age, and if it had been painted, the paint had long since flaked away. I fingered the wood. Rough, splintered. Nope, this didn’t look like a house, even for someone roughing it. Shack was the only word that fit.
“Whose place is this? Do you know?”
She shrugged. “I have no idea, but it looks abandoned, doesn’t it?”
I cautiously ascended the three sagging stairs that led to an even more precarious porch, and sidled up to the door. There was no sign of anyone around, in fact, no sign that anybody had lived here for a long time. If there had ever been glass in the windows, it was so much dust by now. The floor listed under my feet, and I held my breath as I pushed open the door.
Light streamed in from the cracks in the walls and the windows. The cabin was bare-bones, with a rusty old cot pressed against one wall and a rickety table in middle of the room. A couple of stools were drawn up to the table, and there was a dilapidated dresser pushed up against the opposite wall. The drawers were open, and empty, save for the remnants of the canvas that George had found. All of the furniture looked makeshift. The nail heads were rusting, and it was obvious that the mildew had eaten through a good share of the wood. Nothing indicated that this cabin might play home for anybody except the bugs.
“Well, this is a dead end.” I turned to Cathy.
She huddled near the doorway. “This place gives me the creeps. Let’s go look at the cave.”
“No way, not without Jimbo.”
“Oh come on,” she wheedled. “Leave him another note. Tell him to follow the path George left—the canvas ribbons will show up easy enough for him to see. I promise, I won’t ask you to go into the cave until he gets there. Or…” she said, eyeing me speculatively, “we c
an sit here and play twenty questions until he shows up.”
That was enough to get me moving. Talking to Cathy in the car had been agony enough. I followed her back into the sunlight. Jimbo would show up soon and he could easily catch up to us. If anybody knew these woods, he did. But any way you sliced it, I didn’t like this. However, I didn’t have all day to waste, so I maneuvered around till I found a signal for my cell phone and punched in his number. His answering machine beeped, but he didn’t pick up.
“He must be on his way; I can’t get him at home.” I hesitated another minute, then decided that we might as well start back through the woods. The Warriors of the Mountain seemed to only come out near dark, and it was far from evening. If we waited by the entrance of the cave, we’d be safe enough. I dashed off another note and stuck it prominently on the door of the shack.
“He’ll show by the time we’re there. Let’s head out.” We swung around back of the shack and sure enough, there in the bushes glimmered a moldy white ribbon. Maybe this wouldn’t be so hard after all, I thought as I plunged into the bushes, Cathy close on my heels.
Chapter 17
ABOUT THIRTY YARDS behind the shack, the forest curved to meet the mountain, a blending of vegetation and rock, of the ephemeral springing from the bones of the earth. We paused, hunting for the second ribbon. Cathy spotted it, pointing out the strip of cloth tied around a huckleberry bush. The foliage was dense, and I found it difficult to believe Cathy would willingly crawl through the branches and fronds.
“You’re actually prepared to wade through this?”
She eyed the vegetation, looking apprehensive. “I didn’t know it would be so thick. But I want to see that cave. George was there, and I want to know what happened.”
“The cops will be out here poking around in the next day or so. You could just wait for them.”
Raising one eyebrow, she gave me an incredulous look. “I don’t trust the cops any more than you trust the media.”
“This time I side with the cops,” I muttered. Cathy was up to something, I was sure of it. While she really did seem to care about her cousin, it was hard for me to believe that she didn’t have an ulterior motive sneaking around in that bleach-blonde brain of hers. “Are you sure you’re not just looking for more dirt for some news story?”
She planted herself in front of me. “Listen Emerald, you have a tidy little life. You’ve got your shop and your local celebrity status and your kids and your boyfriend and your house. Me? I’ve got squat. I have a lousy job at a cut-rate television station. I make half of what I could in a different city. Would I like to get a good story out of this? Sure, if that happens to be part of the fallout. But this is my cousin’s life we’re talking about. He’s sitting in jail right now, facing a charge for a murder he didn’t commit. We’re out here to help George. I thought that’s what mattered to you.”
I sighed. Cathy would never be anything more than a two-bit anchorwoman, and she’d probably be stuck in Bellingham till the day she died. However, as much as I hated to admit it, she seemed sincere and she was right about George. He might be a little weasel, but I’d be a pathetic excuse for a human being if I sat around and let him get railroaded for a crime he didn’t commit.
“Either you come with me, or I go on alone.” Cathy pointed toward the strip of cloth. “One way or another, I’m going to find that cave.”
Once again, the image of the Death card flashed in my mind and a feeling of dread swept over me. Cathy was heading to her doom if she went into those woods alone. I could either go with her, try to stop whatever was lying in wait, or I could stand back and watch her walk right into the hand of fate. Did the fact that I disliked her mean that she deserved to die?
“Let me take the lead,” I said gruffly. She swung in behind me and, with a deep breath, I plunged into the overgrowth, past the ribbon. As I fought my way through the ferns and berries and salal, the smell of deep woods filtered into my lungs and it hit me that we really were isolated. A scream from here probably wouldn’t reach the bikers in the encampment. Great. If we did run into an emergency, we were on our own, at least until Jimbo hightailed his butt over here.
“What’s wrong?” Cathy bumped up against me, knocking me against a cedar that stood directly in my path. The makeshift trail wound around the tree, hugging the fragrant trunk.
I rubbed my arm where the bark had scratched me. “I don’t like this. I still think we should wait for Jimbo.”
“We’ll wait outside the cave and if he doesn’t show up, we’ll come back. I promise I won’t ask you to go in there without him.”
Not sure how much a promise from her really meant, I sighed. “All right, but at the first sign of trouble, we turn around.”
As we stumbled over leaf and branch, I saw another marker tied to a branch up ahead. Okay, so George had come this far. I turned in that direction. The ground was growing spongy, with moss-covered rocks littering the path. One slip could mean a twisted ankle. I held up my hand for Cathy to stop.
“We need a couple of sturdy walking sticks to help us maneuver around these rocks without breaking our necks.” I looked around; there were plenty of windfalls here and it was easy to come up with a couple of broken limbs from one of the downed firs. I sat down on a fallen log and motioned for Cathy to join me. She gingerly settled onto the moss-and-mushroom-covered log.
“Strip some of this bark off, at least enough to make sure the wood inside isn’t rotten. That will give you a better handhold, too.”
I began peeling away the wet bark. If the branches were too dry, we wouldn’t have been able to do this, but even in the midst of a warm and sunny summer, the inner sanctum of western Washington’s forests were usually moist. A sour smell drifted up. Yep, mildew, but not deep enough to rot through the core yet. I tapped the branch on the ground, and then leaned on it. Good. Sturdy enough to support my weight. I sat back down, waiting for Cathy to finish.
“Damn it, I’m going to break a nail,” she said.
“Better than breaking your leg.”
She glanced at me, but didn’t answer. After a few minutes, she’d managed to strip off enough bark to give herself a firm grip. I motioned for her to shadow me as we followed the ribbons, picking our way through the pebbles and rocks and broken branches that littered the ground. The entire world seemed to be composed of a kaleidoscope of leaves and fern fronds and overhanging branches. At our current vantage point, we couldn’t see the shack or the meadow, and I was grateful that I’d brought my cell phone. I plunged out from a dense stand of fern and vine maple and found myself standing face-to-face with Klickavail Mountain.
To our right, up a graduated slope on the mountainside, a ragged ribbon marked a thicket of mountain ash. The trees sported a tinge of color edging the unending green of the leaves—the first hints of autumn. Dense clusters of red berries dangled from the branches like ornaments. We picked our way up the slope until the cliff face of Klickavail Mountain soared directly in front of us. To our right, shaded by dense undergrowth, a hole had been gouged into the side of the mountain.
I hesitantly moved toward the opening. “George’s cave?” I asked, pushing back the branches so we could see better.
The entrance was uniform, about seven feet tall, and its gentle gradient sloped downhill. The ground in front of the opening was covered with moss and mulch, springy to the touch.
Cathy eyed the entrance nervously. “On the phone, George said he saw bats circling around here. Do you think they’re in there?”
I strained to remember what Murray had tried to teach me about bats one lazy evening when we’d been discussing favorite critters. “Maybe, though it seems a little early for them to go into hibernation. They swarm during August, though, usually for mating. Maybe they roost here in the winter? I think Murray said they hibernate.”
“Hibernate? Bats hibernate? You just know about all sorts of creepy things, don’t you?”
“I didn’t come here t
o be insulted. Do you want my help or not?”
Cathy sighed. “Yeah, yeah… sorry. Well, let’s go.” She started to push past me toward the cave entrance, but I stopped her.
“You promised to wait for Jimbo.” I knelt down and slid the backpack off my shoulders, fishing out the flashlight, as well as my cell phone which I flipped open. I managed to get enough of a signal to punch in Jimbo’s number, but there was no answer. Where the hell was he? I clipped the phone on my belt.
As I was fastening my pack, I noticed several splintered pieces of wood poking up through the mossy carpet. I tugged at one, finally encouraging it to slide out of its spongy womb. Déjà vu. I stared at the splintered wood, trying to conjure up just what it reminded me of.
“Hmm… what does this look like to you?”
“Paul Bunyan’s toothpick?” She snickered and, my train of thought disrupted, I tossed the foot-long sliver aside.
“Did anyone ever tell you just how helpful you are, Cathy?”
She let out an impatient sigh. “I’m tired of waiting.”
“So am I, but we aren’t going in until Jimbo gets here.”
Just then, a low growl emanated from within the stand of mountain ash. I whirled, my skin crawling as the sound echoed through the trees.
“What’s that?” Cathy straightened, her eyes growing wild.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Could be a bear, or cougar, or maybe…” I didn’t want to scare her but there was another possibility that was creeping through my mind and I really hoped I was wrong.
“Just say it—you know you’re thinking it. Maybe that thing is the Klakatat Monster!” Cathy frantically looked around for an escape. Just then, a loud shriek reverberated out of the tree stand and the bushes began to rustle. Something was headed our way.
“Oh shit, what’s that?” Cathy began to back up toward the cave.
“Stop—if you run and it’s a cougar, it’ll come right for you!”
But my words evaporated as a muster of crows, startled by the noise, launched out of the trees. There must have been fifty of them, at least, and their wings glistened in the light as they swooped in Cathy’s direction. She just had time to scream before they were sweeping past, cawing wildly. Flailing to keep them away from her head, she plunged into the mine.