Murder at Moot Point by Marlys Millhiser Page B

murderer, that’s pretty stupid.”
    â€œYou know perfectly well I’m not the murderer.”
    He poured Oregon cabernet into a thick wine glass, Hide-a-bye scrolled in white letters across it, and handed it to her, his brow heavy with menace. “So what have you been up to?”
    She took a sip and glared back at him. This guy was getting to her. “This wine’s sour.”
    â€œOregon wine has structure.” His glance kept shifting back and forth from her face to the television screen behind her. “So what have you been up to? Or have I already asked that?”
    â€œI tended the Earth Spirit for Jack while he went to the celebration for Georgette.”
    â€œWhere? What’s to celebrate?”
    â€œI don’t know where. But Georgette is to be congratulated because she has now entered the highest consciousness possible.”
    â€œShe’d dead.”
    â€œRight.” The second sip wasn’t so sour. The third began to feel good. “Then I had tea and sympathy with Paige Magill, the greenhouse dream counselor. She left the celebration early.”
    â€œâ€¦ the Soviet foreign minister said today while on a tour of day-care centers. ”
    â€œWhat’s a dream counselor do?”
    â€œBeats me. You’re the sheriff, you find out. Then I sat still for a full lecture on sea birds off the point from the bird lady, you know—puffins and murres and cormorants. Then I met Michael-Nureyev-Heathcliff-Hilsten, probably the rudest artist in the world. He does the seascapes in the Scandia. Oh, I forgot, in between the bird lady and the tea and sympathy I met Gladys Bergkvist at the Scandia Art Gallery.”
    â€œJust out visiting, or doing a little detecting on the side? I don’t need anymore screwups on this case. My own are enough.”
    â€œWhy would I be out detecting, Sheriff? Why not just sit around and wait for somebody to drop the answers in my lap, give me back my car, and let me go home? Wait maybe three, four years? I have nothing better to do. Except a daughter, a job, a mortgage, car payments, assorted bills, and if I’m not careful—a cat. Your problem is, you watch too much television.”
    â€œMy second wife reads nothing but mysteries, not even newspapers. Won’t read anything where the woman doesn’t solve the crime on her own and show up the law. What comes from having been married to a cop.”
    â€œ The Dow Jones was down again today but trading on the world markets remained steady. ”
    â€œWhat do women cops read?” Charlie asked him.
    â€œ Famed film star, Mitch Hilsten, broke ground for a hospital for sea and shore birds and mammals in Anchorage today. He says the new two-million dollar installation will help save the lives of hundreds of thousands of creatures caught in the deadly mire of oil spills in one of the last inhabited pristine areas left on earth. ”
    â€œI do not understand what you women see in that guy,” the sheriff said when Charlie turned back from the television screen that had finally caught her attention. “He can’t even be six foot.”
    â€œSo what have you been up to?” she asked.
    â€œTalked to some of the same people you did. But nobody mentioned a bird lady or a Michael Heathcliff.”
    â€œClara Peterson. She lives next to the Glicks, explains sea birds to tourists for some senior volunteer organization. Did you ask Frank why his wife was out riding her bike in the fog at night? His seventy-eight-year-old wife? Clara didn’t think the bike even had a headlight.”
    Sheriff Bennett took a small notebook from his shirt pocket and flipped through a few pages. “Clara Peterson, sixty-eight, widow. Lives in the house just behind the Glicks’. Wasn’t home when I called. What else did you find out about her?”
    â€œShe used to slip desserts to Frank when Georgette was away. Georgette wouldn’t let him have