Wash Her Guilt Away (Quill Gordon Mystery Book 2) Read online

  “You’ve never heard of Harry’s, I take it? Not too surprising considering what it’s been like lately, but for almost 30 years after the War, Harry’s Riverside Lodge was a legend in Northeast California.”

  “Was there actually someone named Harry?”

  “Oh, yeah. Harry Ezekian. Born to be in the hospitality business.”

  “Armenian?” Gordon nodded.

  “Originally from Fresno, then he worked at some restaurants in Stockton during the thirties and ended up in Sacramento just before the war, managing a joint where a lot of the politicians hung out. He was in his thirties and had a heart murmur of some sort, so they didn’t draft him. In the next four years he got to know everybody who was anybody in Sacramento, plus quite a few heavy hitters from the Bay Area who had business in the capital. By the time the war was over, a lot of people who mattered knew Harry; he was about to get married; and he decided he was ready for his own place.

  “He was looking for something in Sacramento when the Assemblyman from these parts gave him a tip. Seems one of the logging companies was selling some of its assets in Northern California, and they had an executive lodge and retreat on Eden River that nobody else wanted. Harry realized that with things getting back to normal, there’d be a market for a getaway destination. It was just a few hours from Sacramento, and the roads were getting better all the time, so he had the Assemblyman put in a word for him and bought the place for a song. It was a cash cow from the day it opened.

  “At peak fishing season, you just about had to be the governor to get a room, and it was busy all year long. Even in the winter, a lot of the powerful men realized it was a discreet place for a romantic getaway if you didn’t want to be widely seen with the lady. Story goes that the only employee Harry ever fired was a young waiter who came up to the table of State Senator Ralph Powell and addressed the much younger woman with him as Mrs. Powell. It was a sore spot with the senator because she wanted to be, and he had no intention of getting a divorce.”

  “Sounds like high times,” Peter said.

  “It was. And Harry was at the center of it all. Every night, he worked the dining room with a glass of Ancient Age in his hand. Same glass all night long, and he barely sipped from it. He charmed the women, told jokes and reminisced with the men. Asked everybody if their steak was cooked right, which of course it was. There was a big outdoor patio, and in the summer, he’d work that, too. I heard that north of Sacramento, it was one of the top ten restaurants in terms of alcohol tax paid. And people drank a lot more back then.

  “If there was a wedding, anniversary or birthday party, Harry would stand a round and offer the first toast, and he always hit the right note with it. Like I said, a born host. And he came up with some great stunts. Some time in the early fifties, he got the idea of bringing in the local priest for a blessing of the fish the Friday night before the season opened. All the papers in Northern California did stories on it, and the crowds got so big — a lot of locals, too, by the way — it was almost impossible to make your way to the bar. Yeah, it was crazy.”

  Gordon paused and took a long drag on his soft drink. The waitress brought their lunches, along with a basket of warm corn tortillas. Famished from the long drive, they ate silently and appreciatively for several minutes.

  “But all good things must end some day,” Peter said, “and I take it that happened to Harry’s.”

  Gordon nodded and picked up the story again. “By the late sixties, Harry’s circle of contacts had shrunk, and he wasn’t replacing them fast enough. Then in the early seventies, the new environmental laws hit the logging industry really hard and this area started to decline. That really hurt in the winter, when they have to rely more on locals to keep the restaurant reasonably busy. My dad brought me here one summer in the early seventies. It still seemed pretty lively, but even to my 12-year-old eyes, it was looking kind of retro. Still, Harry kept it going, and he’d made so much money by then he was probably okay if it just broke even. The bar and restaurant were his living room, and as long as he had them to go to every night, he was fine.

  “Then in June of 1978, there was a wedding reception here. It was a beautiful day, and everyone was outside on the patio. Harry went out to offer a toast, like always, and they say he nailed it. They were still clapping when he took one sip of champagne and collapsed from a heart attack. Dead by the time he hit the floor. Would have been 69 in three weeks.”

  “Died with his boots on,” Peter said. “That has a certain appeal.”

  “And then it came undone,” Gordon said. “His wife, Sophie, couldn’t bear to be at the place without Harry around, so she moved to Sacramento to be near their daughter. Harry’s son, Bob, took the place over …”

  “And ran it into the ground,” said Peter.

  “Not entirely his fault. Like I said, the customers were getting older and the local economy was sinking fast. But Bob didn’t have Harry’s personality — who could have? And just before Harry died, Bob married a woman from the Bay Area and brought her up here. Ariel, if I remember right. She was a city girl at heart, or at least a suburban girl, and clearly something of a free spirit. She didn’t take well to the isolation of Eden River, and with the economy sinking, it was getting more isolated. She began acting out in various ways, and after a while, the locals started talking. Some even said she was starting a coven of witches.”

  “You don’t believe that, do you?” Peter said.

  “Probably not, but the woods around here are vast and lonely. It’s not so hard to understand how people could believe anything could happen in them. Anyway, the business and the marriage both deteriorated, and one day Ariel ran off with a lobbyist who’d been staying here. Just packed a suitcase and left without a word to anybody. But she left a note behind, and in it said something like, ‘And for all the people who called me a witch, I put a curse on this place. There will be no love at Harry’s’ …” Gordon paused and frowned. “I think there may have been a bit more to it, but it’s probably not important.

  “End of the story is this. Things got worse. Bob drank more. About a year after Ariel left, he took a small boat down the river at sunset, put a shotgun in his mouth and blew his head off. It was four years to the day after Harry dropped dead giving the toast.”

  Almost simultaneously, the waitress put the check on the table, and Peter grabbed it. “This is on me,” he said. “The story was worth it.” He took out a twenty-dollar bill and set it on top of the check. “Was Harry’s just deserted after that?”

  Gordon shook his head. “Thanks, Peter. No, it got sold. Several times, actually. There were about a half-dozen owners. A couple of them made it two summers, but nobody ever got through the second winter. I don’t know if there was any love at Harry’s, but there sure wasn’t much business. I was there for a weekend five years ago and swore I’d never come back. Last time I came here I stayed in a motel.”

  “But you changed your mind.”

  “In December, a guy I know in city league basketball told me he’d been there in October and that Harry’s was coming back under new owners and he liked it. It’s always been Harry’s, by the way; nobody even thought about changing the name. Then my friend Sam heard the same thing from someone he knows, and we decided to take a chance. If nothing else, there’s some great fishing.”

  Peter handed the 20 and the check to the waitress, telling her to keep the change. She beamed at the generous tip and cleaned off their table. When she left, Gordon stood up.

  “We’ll see for ourselves soon enough,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  “I was just getting warm,” said Peter, rising slowly. “ ‘There will be no love at Harry’s,’ ” he quoted. “Too bad I never went there with my first wife. We would have fit right in.”

  3

  CHECK-IN AT HARRY’S wasn’t until four o’clock, so to pass time, Gordon drove Peter along the back roads of Paradise Valley. The heavy rains of the winter just ended had saturated the ground of the valley floor, carpeti
ng it with lush green grass, the brightness of which stood out even in the dank of the persistent overcast. Every other field contained grazing cattle — plump, well fed and serene in the ignorance of their fate. The water table was so high that any slight indentation in the ground was likely to have become a miniature seasonal pond. The back roads along which they drove were just wide enough for two large pickup trucks to pass each other, with no shoulders or turnouts. Riotous spring vegetation grew right up to the edge of the pavement, as if straining to keep growing across to the other side of the road.

  “Where’s The Mountain?” Peter asked at one point.

  “That way,” Gordon said, gesturing slightly northwest. The Mountain, a volcano that geologists said might not be dormant, rose nearly 10,000 feet from the surrounding landscape and was one of Northern California’s iconic features. “In good weather it’ll look like it’s right on top of us. You’ll see when it clears up.”

  “If it clears up,” Peter said.

  “No worries. It’s usually sunny and in the seventies this time of year. You’ll see it for sure.”

  They drove over Eden River on one of the many narrow bridges that spanned it on its serpentine meanderings through the valley. Upstream of the bridge, a 14-foot boat holding two anglers was anchored in the middle of the river.

  “Is that what we’ll be fishing from?” Peter said.

  “Pretty much. The Fisherman’s Friend uses those aluminum boats with battery-powered motors. They help keep the speed down to five miles an hour, which is the limit on this river, and they don’t leak fuel into the water.”

  “Is The Fisherman’s Friend the place we stopped on the way up?”

  Gordon nodded. “They have the best fly selection of any tackle shop, and offer the best guide service around. We’ll be going out tomorrow with Johnny Bauer, their number one man.”

  “Won’t the water be muddy from the heavy runoff this time of year?”

  “Not at all. Eden River doesn’t get much runoff. It’s a spring creek, really. All the snow that falls on The Mountain during the winter — a lot of it goes underground, then comes to the surface somewhere else. A little ways upstream from Harry’s there’s a wall of porous lava about 30 feet high. That underground water comes out there, and that’s where the river starts. It’s an even flow all year round, and the water temperature is always between 52 and 54 degrees.”

  “Perfect for trout.”

  “Exactly. If they’re not biting, we’ll have to come up with another excuse, because it won’t be the heavy runoff.”

  At 3:30 they were on a road at the edge of the valley, where the meadows filled with cattle were giving way to increasingly forested land. The scenery was broken up by occasional residences, ranging from mobile homes to houses of recent vintage running 3,000 to 5,000 square feet. It was easy to tell which dwellings were occupied at the moment by the smoke coming from their chimneys.

  A couple of miles into the forest, a well painted, professionally made sign announced, “Harry’s ¼ mile ahead.” Enhancing the lettering were images of The Mountain, snow-covered, and a jumping rainbow trout. Gordon turned right on to the next road, paved not too long ago, but hardly wide enough for two cars. They drove a few hundred yards through the woods, then emerged at a slight rise overlooking a large cleared area fronting on Eden River.

  It was a beautiful, secluded spot. A full acre of manicured lawn, beginning at about 500 feet of riverfront, rose up a gentle slope to the main lodge. By all rights, the building should have been too big for its surroundings, but perhaps because it was made of logs from the forest in which it stood, it managed not to overwhelm. Gordon and Peter drove down the slope to a parking area near the river and a pier. Looking up at the lodge, they could see the main entrance, framed by a massive wooden arch decorated with a dozen sets of antlers. To the right of the main entrance was a large dining room, with the outer wall made entirely of glass, giving diners a fine view of the river. Along the right side of the lodge and part of the front by the dining room was an L-shaped deck for outdoor meals in better weather. To the left of the front door was the Fireside Lounge, with its own bar and tables where, in more electronically challenged times, people could play board games. Smoke rose from the chimney as Gordon parked the Cherokee, but the wind, which hadn’t let up at all, blew the smoke sideways as soon as it escaped. On the second story of the lodge, the building was marked by a row of individual windows from some of the 20 guest rooms in the main building.

  “I think we’re going to like this place,” said Peter, after taking it all in. “It’s kind of like coming out of the mist into Brigadoon.”

  “We have one of the cabins,” Gordon said, gesturing down to the river. A foot and a half above water level and extending 50 feet back from the river bank stood a shelf of flat land. Five cabins, built of blond pine wood that looked freshly varnished, had been built on the shelf, with a path in front of them leading to the lodge and to a crosshatched wooden fence at the far edge of the property, 30 feet beyond the last cabin. Downstream, close to the parking area, a pier jutted out 20 feet into the river, whipped into small whitecaps by the wind. A kayak and three aluminum boats, like the one they had seen earlier, were beached and anchored at the edge of the river next to the pier.

  “Let’s go down to the river first,” Gordon said. “We’re still a bit early.”

  Outside the car, the only sound was the whistling of the wind and the rustling of the trees. It seemed that, absent the wind, the silence would have been absolute. Gordon and Peter walked down the road to the pier, their feet crunching on the gravel, adding to the windsong. They walked onto the pier, which was rolling slightly from the wind-induced waves, and went out to the end, a ten-foot by ten-foot square of synthetic material. The cold wind stung their cheeks and made their eyes water.

  From the trees behind them, three crows flew forth simultaneously, their cawing momentarily overlaying the wind noise. They flew toward the river, then turned left as they reached it and flew over the bank, heading upstream to the forest beyond.

  “I hope that’s not an omen,” Peter said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Three crows. Three black birds. There has to be some sort of superstition associated with that.”

  Abruptly, the wind stopped. The surface of the river quickly became smooth and placid. Looking at it, Gordon and Peter could see the leaves and pine needles on the surface moving ever-so-slowly from left to right with the gentle current. Gordon turned to his left, wiping the tears from his eyes, and looked back toward the bank and the cabins beyond. He grabbed Peter by the arm.

  “Look!”

  “What?”

  “Just off the pier. Mayflies. They’re hatching, even on a day like this.”

  A half dozen insects, pale tan in color with white wings flapping valiantly, were flying out over the water, moving slowly and erratically as if they couldn’t believe they were no longer fighting the stiff wind. They began to fly farther over the water, dipping lower over it as they moved out over the middle of the river. The men watched raptly.

  “Hardly fair, is it?” Peter said at last.

  “Meaning?”

  “The life cycle of a mayfly is one day, right? It hatches, mates and dies in 24 hours. These poor bastards only get one day in their whole lives, and it has to be a crummy one like this.”

  They watched the insects flutter over the water. In the silence, a door could be heard opening and closing. Peter kept watching the insects intently, but Gordon looked up toward the cabins in the distance. From the farthest cabin, at least a hundred yards away, a man emerged — at least, Gordon assumed it was a man. It was a figure dressed in dark clothing and a dark cap. The man, if such he was, walked from the front door of the cabin to the path leading to the lodge and turned left, facing them. Then he seemed to notice the two men on the pier and stopped. He turned around and walked the other direction, going through the opening in the fence and disappearing into the forest beyond.
/>
  A loud splash, resonating like a thunderclap in the silence, came from the river. Gordon turned to see a widening ripple about 20 feet out from the pier, where a couple of the mayflies were hovering.

  “Poor devil,” Peter said. “Didn’t even get his full day and ended up as dinner for a fish. ‘Nature red in tooth and claw.’ Was that Wordsworth?”

  “Tennyson,” Gordon said.

  The wind started up again. They heard it moan through the treetops for several seconds before they felt its cold breath lash their exposed bodies at the end of the pier, going straight through their heavy pants and jackets as if they had been dressed for the tropics. Gordon looked back toward the cabins, but saw no sign of the dark-clad figure.

  “I think we’ve had quite enough fresh air,” said Peter. “Let’s go to the lodge.”

  4

  STEPPING THROUGH the front door of the lodge, they were greeted by a blast of warmth that contrasted sharply with the outdoor chill. A small reception counter stood before them, slightly off to the left; to its right was a hallway leading back into the rest of the building. To their immediate left was the Fireside Lounge, where a fire was burning down in the fireplace, which was framed with river rock and had an opening six feet wide and five feet high. Gordon stepped up to the reception desk, found a call bell with a button on top, and tapped it briskly with the palm of his hand. Its ping was unnaturally loud in the empty space.

  The last of the bell tone was fading away when a young woman came through the hallway entry to the front desk. She was in her early twenties, five-eight, full figured without being plump, and walking with an affected swagger that seemed more practiced than natural. Her shoulder-length blond hair was cut, no doubt by a local stylist, in a way that seemed not quite right for her, yet didn’t unduly diminish her overall projection of attractiveness. Three small earrings formed a metal cascade on her left ear. Her blue eyes were complemented by mascara daubed on a touch too heavily, but the apricot lipstick framing her smiling mouth was just right. Her tight-fitting knock-off designer jeans worked for her, and the unbuttoned, dark green short-sleeved top she wore was cut just low enough to show the beginning of some cleavage. Above her left breast was a small tattoo of a rose, which came down to the fabric line and seemed to be establishing roots underneath the blouse.