“Do you still own the property?”
“No. Sold it to an oyster company in '53, but they went out of business. Man named Corda bought it twenty years ago. Dairy rancher. Still owns it.”
The smell in there was beginning to get to me—a musty, gamey mixture of dust, fog-damp, old cooking odors, and the carcasses of all the dead things strewn around. Even breathing through my mouth didn't quite block it out. Another fifteen minutes in there and I'd be ready for stuffing myself.
I asked him, “Do you remember the last time Crane was up here, about six weeks before his suicide?”
Bertolucci gave me a sidewise look. “Why?”
“There was an earthquake while he was here. About as strong as the one the other night.”
He didn't say anything at all this time. Just stood there looking at me, still stroking the owl.
“You did see him then, didn't you?”
“No,” Bertolucci said.
“Why not?”
“Only time I ever saw him was when he come to town to pay me his rent.”
“Then you don't know if anything happened while he was staying at the cabin that last time.”
“Happened? What's that mean?”
“Just what I said. Something that depressed him, started him brooding and drinking too much when he went back to San Francisco.”
Silence.
I said, “Do you have any idea why he killed himself, Mr. Bertolucci?”
More silence. He turned away from the owl, gave me one more expressionless look, and shuffled through the doorway at the rear—gone, just like that.
“Mr. Bertolucci?”
No answer.
I called his name again, and this time a door slammed somewhere at the rear. Ten seconds after that, as I was on my way out, there was a booming explosion from the yard outside, the unmistakable hollow thunder of a shotgun. I reversed direction, shoved through the litter of stuffed animals and furniture, and hauled back the blind that covered one of the side-wall windows. Bertolucci was thirty feet from the house, stooped over in a meager vegetable patch, a big .12-gauge tucked under one arm. When he straightened I saw what he had in his other hand: the bloody, mangled remains of a crow.
I walked to the front door and out to my car. Through the windshield I could see him still standing back there, shotgun in one hand and the dead crow in the other, peering my way.
The girl at the general store hadn't exaggerated him either, I thought. Angelo Bertolucci was every damn bit as creepy as his surroundings.
ELEVEN
I
drove south on Shoreline Highway, following the eastern rim of Tomales Bay. The bay is some sixteen miles long and maybe a mile at its widest, sheltered from the rough Pacific storms by a spine of foothills called Inverness Ridge that rises above the western shore. The village of Inverness lies over there, along the water and spreading up into the hills; and beyond the ridge are the white-chalk cliffs, barren cattle graze, and wind-battered beaches of the Point Reyes National Seashore. On this side are a sprinkling of dairy ranches and fishermen's cottages, a few oyster beds, a boatworks, a couple of seafood restaurants, the tiny hamlet of Marshall, and not much else except more wooded hills and copses of eucalyptus planted as windbreaks. It's a pretty area, rustic, essentially untarnished by the whims of man—one of the last sections of unspoiled country within easy driving distance of San Francisco. That wouldn't be the case if it weren't for the weather; developers would have bought up huge chunks of prime bay-front property years ago and built tracts and retirement communities and ersatz-quaint villages, the way they had farther up the coast at Bodega Bay. But down here the fog lingers for days on end, so that everything seems shrouded in a misty, chilly gray. Even on those rare days like this one when the sun shines, the sea wind is almost always blustery and cold; right now, gusting across the bay, it had built whitecaps like rows of lace ruffles on the water, was tossing anchored fishing boats around as if they were toys, and now and then smacked the car hard enough to make it reel a little on the turns. Out on the National Seashore, I thought, it would be blowing up a small gale.
Bad weather doesn't bother me much, though; I come out to Tomales Bay now and then for a picnic, a visit to the Point Reyes lighthouse, fried oysters at Nick's Cove or one of the other seafood restaurants. The bad weather hadn't bothered Harmon Crane, either. It didn't bother the people who lived out here now, nor would it bother the people living elsewhere who could be induced to move here when one or another gambling developer finally pulled the right strings and the inevitable rape of Tomales Bay began. Onward and upward in the name of progress, good old screw-'em-all free enterprise, and the almighty dollar.
Bleak thoughts, a product of the mood Eberhardt's no-show and my unorthodox meeting with Angelo Bertolucci had put me in. Gloom and doom. It was too bad the sun was out; a dripping gray pall of fog would have been just the right backdrop for a nice, extended mope.