Fog

By Linda Howe Steiger

Set in the fog-shrouded mountains north of San Francisco, Fog is a classic murder mystery with an ethical twist. When a boy dies among the redwoods, hot emotions cloud even the coolest heads as a town unites to avenge his murder. Can Morgan Kendall see clearly enough to find out the truth? And what position will she take when the death penalty debate turns personal?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Linda Howe Steiger
• Release date: Oct 10, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301800254

Linda Howe Steiger

A native of Ohio, Linda Howe Steiger was educated at Bryn Mawr College and the University of Pennsylvania, finishing her doctorate in English Literature in 1978. She has held a series of writing, editing, teaching, library, non-profit, and local government posts. Her more than 150 articles and reviews have appeared in diverse publications, from The New York Times and Planning Magazine to Criticism, EduCause Quarterly, and the Transportation Research Record of the National Academy of Sciences. When not busy with some writing or photography project or teaching or learning something new with friends at San Francisco's Center for Learning in Retirement (CLIR), she may be found curled up with a book, working in her sprawling garden, or traveling to distant realms with her husband. She is a member of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America.

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FOG

By Linda Howe Steiger

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Linda Howe Steiger

All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes:

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be reproduced, transmitted, re-sold, or given away in any form to other people. Brief portions of this book may, however, be quoted by reviewers. If you would like to share this book with someone else, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Fog is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously; any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), events, or locales are entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Betsy Joyce

ISBN: 9781301800254

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 - Fog Rolls In

Chapter 2 - On the Crossways Steps

Chapter 3 - Aftermaths

Chapter 4 - Emma Asks a Question

Chapter 5 - The Midnight Intruder

Chapter 6 - Morgan Makes a Start

Chapter 7 - Kit Carson Jalesco, P.I.

Chapter 8 - A Trip Downtown

Chapter 9 - At the Library

Chapter 10 - Helen

Chapter 11 - Hawks, Lions, and a Few Hens

Chapter 12 - An Evening in Berkeley

Chapter 13 - Reflections

Chapter 14 - Jane and Gunther Huddleston

Chapter 15 - Girlfriends

Chapter 16 - Taking Care of Business

Chapter 17 - An Unexpected Encounter

Chapter 18 - More News

Chapter 19 - Fathers and Sons

Chapter 20 - Will Himself

Chapter 21 - Loose Ends

Chapter 22 - Quinn's Place

Chapter 23 - Later That Night

Chapter 24 - Resolution of Sorts

Chapter 25 - The Fog Lifts

Discussion Questions

About the Author

Chapter 1

Fog Rolls In

Fog may have been a factor in what happened, although there’s nothing unusual about heavy fog forming along the Northern California coast this time of year. It has done so for millennia, rolling dramatically off the Pacific in the afternoon, shrouding everything in its cold damp blur. Usually fog burns off before noon the next day to reveal a sky of breath-taking blue, but not always. Fog can hang around too, sometimes for days, becoming part of the landscape, mental as well as otherwise.

Suffice it to say, when fog began to gather early that particular Saturday afternoon out over the cold waters of the North Pacific Current gyring south out of Canada, no-one felt even the mildest twinge of foreboding. Great milky rolls of the stuff tipped eastward and rode inland on winds powered by a late summer heat wave out in the San Joaquin Valley. By four o’clock, dense fog was crawling over the coastal cliffs, billowing like a tsunami in slow motion across the Marin Headlands, and plunging down the red towers of the Golden Gate Bridge. Fog buried everything except the high masts of Sutro’s radio antenna and the wind-swept ridges of Mount Tamalpais. By evening much of the city and the North Bay lay shrouded under its dark, damp, dull grey cloud. All night the foghorns moaned.

Up in Marin County, north of the Golden Gate, just off the shoulder of Mount Tamalpais and nestled into a valley under Ohlone’s gentle peak, the little town of Quarry Canyon quite disappeared into the fog. Quarry Canyon—so proud of its Gold Rush heritage—was an innocent sort of place by today’s dystopian standards, a kind of sixties Shangri-la, remote from urban crowds and urban angst, yet not so remote one couldn’t hop the freeway and be sitting in the dress circle of San Francisco’s Symphony Hall in under an hour. In Quarry Canyon people knew their neighbors, and, for the most part, liked them. Tolerant of eccentricity, encouraging of diversity, understanding of difference, the citizens of Quarry Canyon believed their town to be a safe haven in post-9/11 America. Or so it seemed until that weekend.

Not that anyone blamed fog for what happened, not seriously, or at least not until later, for people were comfortable with fog up there in Quarry Canyon. Fog is commonplace and despite its hazards most people give it little thought. It’s only weather after all, only the marine layer. So when the fog rolled in, most people did the usual sort of thing: stayed home, stayed warm, watched television, ate ice-cream, had a few drinks, and went to bed early. Next morning, when folks awoke in the wee smalls, most of them, though not all, yawned, rolled over, and drifted back to sleep. It was Sunday after all, and it feels so cozy when a thick fog settles across the valley. Wet, dark, chilly—fog does rather dull the senses.

Rosa Sanchez did not, however, roll over and go back to sleep. Rosa got up as usual and went off to work, parking her ancient Saab as usual in the alley behind the Station Café at a little before six in the morning. She entered the kitchen, switched on the lights, and pulled a fresh apron over her head. Doubling its strings around her waist, she strode through to the front, unbolted the wide door, and stepped outside into the deserted, fog-filled downtown plaza.

Nice plaza, she thought for the umpteenth time, and perfectly sized for this town: small enough to hurry across in a minute or two, large enough for an hour or two’s amusement sitting on one of the benches, watching kids in the tot-lot or people come and go to the shops across the street. At least once a day, everyone in Quarry Canyon seemed to pass through or by the downtown plaza, which of course meant good business for Rosa’s café. At the moment, however, the plaza was empty, empty except for Rosa that is.

Rosa closed her eyes and breathed the sweet smell of earthy, pine-scented, sea-flavored fog. A splash of cold water hit her neck. She frowned up at a leaking gutter. Shivering, she shoved a table out of the way, cranked down the awning, and climbed onto a stool to ignite the propane heaters.

Over the burst of gas, Rosa listened for the baker’s truck. Fog or no fog, her intrepid regulars would soon be appearing, steaming and smelly from their runs on the mountain, demanding lattés and blueberry scones. But Rosa heard no truck sounds, only a quiet rustling in the undergrowth along the creek that curled out of Creekside Park and wandered down one side of the plaza—a cheeky red squirrel, perhaps, or a fat raccoon, snuffling in the ground litter to expose a flash of orange, the first chanterelles of the season.

Eight-year-old Justin Drexel did not roll over either. He opened one eye, then the other, and stared out his bedroom window at the redwoods, hung like Christmas trees with tendrils of silver fog. Justin loved fog. It made him think of Sherlock Holmes, of fog-shrouded moors and creepy London alleys. Justin knew all about Sherlock Holmes because Aunt Izzy, who owned the bookshop down on the plaza, had given him the complete set of Sherlock’s Adventures for his last birthday.

Justin’s bedroom was on the second floor at the back of a rambling old brown shingle house with a mossy slate roof. When the wind blew, branches scraped against the window glass like fingernails on blackboard. When the rain pummeled, the corner of the upstairs bathroom dripped. That made his father curse a blue streak, or so Justin’s mother said. Justin had often heard the curse; he’d yet to see the blue streak.

He rolled onto his back and gazed at the glowing hands of the Mickey Mouse clock on the wall above his high, wooden dresser. He imagined helping Mom fall back the clocks. That would happen soon, for it always happened around Halloween. Then, his mother would let him climb up the dresser. Justin loved climbing, and he was pretty good at it too, although not as good as he thought.

Dad called Mickey Justin’s morning helper, because Mickey told him whether it was time to get up or time to go back to sleep. Justin always checked the mouse before getting out of bed. Not that he always minded the mouse. This morning Mickey’s hands were not yet straight up and down, so Justin knew it was too early to get up. He knew he ought to go back to sleep. But Justin had something important to do, something whose success depended on this nice thick wet fog. He knew Mom wouldn’t like his plan, but if he got up now, he could do what he wanted and be back home before breakfast. She’d never know.

Justin lay in bed listening to the scrape of branches against the house and the drip of fog off the roof, listening for any sounds to suggest Mom or Dad was awake. But all he heard was snoring. Dad said Mom’s snoring sounded like cat-purr. Mom said Dad’s snoring sounded like buzz-saw. If the buzz-saw woke Mom up, she’d stroke Dad’s arm until it stopped. Justin listened long enough to the steady snoring down the hall to convince himself that neither parent was going to wake up any time soon; then he slipped out of bed and began to dress. He hitched his Harry Potter spectacles around his ears, stepped into his jeans, and pulled a shirt over his head. He tip-toed into the hall and pulled closed the bedroom door, waiting for the latch to make its little click . . . If Dad comes down the hall now, heading for the bathroom or for his computer, he won’t be able to see my empty bed. Pleased with this idea, he tip-toed downstairs.

Justin loved exploring the house before the family was up. Dad said he’d become a morning person, although Justin preferred to think of this time not so much as morning but as a secret in-between time, a time no longer night, not yet day. Funny how heavy fog outside made this in-between-time more interesting, more mysterious, quite filled with dangerous possibilities. He aimed a tiny flashlight across the furniture and into the corners, checking for changes since he’d gone up to bed.

From the dried frothy stains on two tumblers sitting side by side on the coffee table, Justin knew his parents sat next to each other on the couch last night, probably with their feet on the table, drinking beer and tickling toes together as they watched Romancing the Stone on DVD. He knew it was that movie because the disk was still in the player and its box open on the top of the TV. He found Maia’s beat-up sneakers piled under the front rung of the telephone stool. His big sister was always running down her cell phone’s battery. He found her phone in the wall charger and checked its history.

Justin was practicing his skills of Sherlockian deduction. He could already amaze Maia, but then his sister was unbelievably stupid and unobservant, even if she was sixteen and a half. This morning, however, his object was not spying on Maia or nosing around the house; his object was to head up the Crossways Steps and hunt for clues in the stream running along beside it. Better get going.

The Crossways Steps was one of Quarry Canyon’s many public stairways. Constructed a hundred years ago, the old stairway was made of rough hewn rock, cobblestone, and redwood boards; it rose out of Creekside Park and marched straight up the side of Ohlone Peak through a fence-lined drainage right-of-way, its route crossing and re-crossing the pavement of Bay View Road as it looped in long, lazy S-curves up the same mountain side. Both stairway and road eventually arrived up on Ridgeline Avenue and an open field at the edge of the nature reserve. The Steps provided a popular shortcut into town for those living up the mountain. Hikers too used the Steps on their way to the trails through the coastal mountains or to one of the state-owned beaches along the Pacific. Indeed, running up the Crossways’ thousand steps was a popular form of exercise. Twice, Justin and his dad hiked all the way to the top, crossed the field, bushwhacked through the nature reserve, and scrambled down a cliff to the ocean. They ate sandwiches on the beach and watched seals dive in the surf and loll on rocks like giant, smiling slugs.

The Crossways Steps was one of Justin’s favorite places in Quarry Canyon. Climbing them was hard, but also fun, for there were many amusements along the way. For example, he could straddle the metal handrail and slide down to the next road crossing. Or he could crouch in the shrubs and spy on joggers. Or he could mess about in the little stream that ran beside the Steps all the way down to Big Creek. Channelized in places, running free in others, this little stream was filled with diversions, particularly where rocks and sticks choked its flow forming pools or little waterfalls. Newts and salamanders lived beside it. Local cats and dogs frequented its route. So did various wild critters, including deer. But for Justin the little stream was all about the detritus, the clues he could find there. People dropped the most amazing stuff. Justin could have spent hours, days, weeks even, playing along the Steps and in the water. But, alas, Justin’s mother didn’t like this at all. She said the stream was nothing more than a filthy drainage ditch, filled with pesticides and fertilizers and who knows what. She said, unless Dad or Maia came along, he wasn’t even to climb the stairway. She said it was treacherous, haphazardly maintained, the stair treads often loose or worn, broken or uneven. Whole sections sometimes washed out in the winter rain. She worried Justin would fall, sprain an ankle, break a limb.

Which explains why Justin had to sneak out that morning.

He dug through the box in the kitchen for his Giants ball cap, wondering why his ball cap always lay at the bottom of the box. He slapped it on with a flourish. He found his yellow sweatshirt wadded into a ball and quickly pulled it over his head, thereby tangling his head, his cap, and his glasses in the hood. Sighing, he extricated himself and started over, first releasing his cap and his glasses from the mess. Then he smoothed the sweatshirt on the floor, flattening the hood and making sure the neck tag was on top so that when he ducked his head through the neck hole, the tag would come out in back. Grandma had taught him this procedure when he was three years old. It still made no sense, but it always worked. Dressed properly at last, he carefully hooked his glasses back over his ears and slapped on the ball cap, backwards this time, so the cap’s bill would protect his neck from the wet drip of fog.

Nearly ready, Justin listened once more for noises from upstairs. No cat-purr now. And no buzz-saw either. Nor any padding of slippers down the hall. Nothing but dead silence. Justin knew that on foggy Sunday mornings, Mom and Dad and Maia could sleep ‘til nine, so he had plenty of time to mess around in the stream, find clues, and deduce their stories; plenty of time even to climb up to the field if he wanted and still get home for pancakes; plenty of time, in retrospect, for trouble too.

Justin pushed his feet into his cool cowboy boots. At least Justin thought they were cool. The boots came almost to his knees and were two sizes too big, but they did have fancy red and blue stitching in the leather and extremely pointy toes, and one-inch heels. The boots made him feel important and tall, although walking in them was a teensy bit difficult. But Justin was careful, and Mom said he would grow into his boots in no time flat.

He tip-toed across the kitchen, took a toaster-tart from the cupboard. Then, holding it in his teeth and not breathing at all, he unbolted the backdoor and eased it open and stepped out into the fog. Gently he pulled the door closed. Then, pausing briefly, he devoured his tart—raw—in three big bites.

The Drexel house sat back among the redwoods on the uphill side of lower Bay View Road. Below lay Creekside Park, shrouded in quiet. Justin galloped round the back corner of the house at top speed and took the steps down to the family’s street-level garage two at a time. He was bursting with energy, and excitement. Suddenly his left boot-heel hit a patch of wet moss. Justin grabbed out at the railing to avoid a head-long tumble. Dumb old boots, he thought, slowing to a walk.

The astringent smell of evergreen mixed with the sweet fragrance of late blooming jasmine. Fog swirled through the towering redwoods, its long tendrils dangling from the canopy overhead. Justin’s imagination shifted into turbo-charge. He saw a bloody-jawed hound poised to leap from the laurels at the edge of the road, Jack-the-Ripper in the shadow of the garage. He half scared himself. Then he remembered Mom’s saying all the real murderers were safely locked behind the walls of San Quentin Prison out on the point beyond Larkspur Ferry. Anyway, Sherlock Holmes was never afraid of what might be lurking in the fog. Justin pushed away thoughts of imaginary hounds and murderers and turned to the real business—finding clues.

Suddenly he stopped his descent, turned, and shoved his way through the brambles behind the garage, coming out again among the ferns on the far side of the driveway. He paused to clean his glasses, then squatted down and began inspecting some tire ruts in the mud. Too narrow for Dad’s SUV, but they matched exactly the wheels on Maia’s ancient vomit-green Beetle. Maia must have taken her car out after all, after Dad told her clearly not to go driving in the fog. And she was probably talking on her cell phone when she returned, or texting, because the ruts went right through Mom’s garden, squashing the biggest fronds flat. Stupid sister. She bragged she could drive with one hand—or none. Wrong!

Grinning, he rose from the ferns and pulled his hood up over his ball cap. He trotted down the driveway and turned right on Bay View Road. The roadway was narrow, curvy, and lined with shrubs and oaks and redwoods. He circled a place where the roots of a huge tree heaved up the asphalt, taking care not to catch his boot heel again, and remembering to tune his ears for the sound of motors coming from behind, to keep his eyes alert for headlights breaking through the blur ahead. Condensation dripped and drizzled as great puffs of fog billowed off the mountain, cloaking the houses up the slope and shrouding the park below. As usual, Justin walked down the middle of the road, watching out for hubcaps, for scars in tree trunks smashed by cars. He himself once crashed his bike along here somewhere, pedaling too fast around a curve, skidding out on the gravel, nearly careening over the embankment and down into Big Creek. He imagined the excitement of a high speed car chase down Bay View Road. Or a motorcycle chase!

At long last, a pair of low concrete pillars emerged from the blur ahead of him. These marked the bridge over Big Creek. On the other side of this bridge rose the Crossways Steps. Already Justin could hear the lively splash of the little stream dumping through the culvert into Big Creek. Good, he thought. Lots of water mean clues for sure.

He stopped to stare into the fog below him. Something was moving in the bracken along the Big Creek, a big dark shadow. The rump of a deer? He tossed a stone. The shadow moved away. Curious to see what it was, Justin turned and began to work his way down the bank towards the creek, hoping to catch sight of a deer, or its half-grown fawn. The vegetation was thick and soggy. A branch punched him in the ear. But for his efforts, all he found were some muddy people prints, a burnt match, a crumpled cigarette pack. He picked up the cigarette pack, crushed it, and shoved it into his pocket. It might turn out to be a clue. Then, hopping from rock to rock along the creek, he crossed under the bridge and scrambled up the embankment on the other side, pushing out of the weeds near the life-sized effigy of an old sawmill cantilevered over the water. As he stared up at this structure, an idea crossed Justin’s mind: maybe he wouldn’t climb the Steps today, maybe he’d climb the roof of this old mill-thing instead. Of course, it wasn’t a real sawmill, more like the suggestion of a sawmill, an open frame of two-by-fours with a shingled roof and a platform floor on which stood some picnic tables. Dad said it was supposed to remind people of the first sawmill in the county, built centuries ago by the lumbermen who chopped down all the old redwoods to build houses in Quarry Canyon and San Francisco. The real old mill burned down years and years and years ago: this one was fake.

Fake or not, though, from the roof of this mill-thing, a boy could see all the way downtown to the stores around the plaza and the high school and the public library on the other side of the park. Now could be his chance, for the high school boys usually had the ridgeline staked out. They’d sit up there smoking and laughing like stupid crows, shouting off the grade school kids. Justin once before climbed this roof, when no-one was around. It was not that great. He saw four dogs running in a line behind the library. Still, he felt almost like a teenager up there—even though he didn’t smoke. Justin touched the crumpled cigarette pack in his pocket. Then his attention was drawn once more to the sounds of splashing, and he imagined all the clues washing down. Well, he wasn’t stupid—climbing the mill-thing was dangerous in cowboy boots. Justin turned and headed off towards the Steps.

Too bad he didn’t climb the roof.

Chapter 2

On the Crossways Steps

The stone treads of the Crossways Steps were smooth and flat, set solidly on cobblestone risers that were firmly anchored deep into the damp earth. Patches of moss and grey-green lichen clung wherever their delicate roots could find a crack or imperfection in the rock, and tiny ferns peeked from under any lipped overhang that protected them from the daily pounding of human feet. Remembering how he’d nearly fallen on his own front steps, Justin ascended slowly, keeping one hand on the worn iron handrail.

Walling up both sides of the public stairway were six-foot high fences, their boards dark and weathered. Behind these fences lay quiet backyard gardens that Justin liked to peek into when an owner forgot to close the gate. Clouds of thick fog drifted down the mountain, wrapping him in its drippy dampness, blurring his bespectacled vision, and muffling the normal sounds of early morning. As he climbed, Justin imagined he was struggling up a narrow mineshaft filled with smoke from an explosion below, he the only survivor. It felt good to be here all alone: no parent instructing him to move his short legs faster or to slow them down; no other climbers shoving by, calling out, On your left, kid or On your right; no joggers beating rapidly down the steps, all sweaty and breathing hard.

Beside him, the little stream sluiced merrily down its narrow cement-lined channel. Justin hopped across a narrow foot bridge to rub the head of a jade turtle guarding the entry into someone’s garden. A squirrel rustled through a nearby pine. A cone bounced and disappeared. He paused to kick away a loosened cobblestone, punting it down the stairway into the obliterating fog before returning to his climb. He tried to watch his feet so he wouldn’t trip, but he was also watching the little stream for clues and watching up ahead for the dark shapes of the line of boulders that, like spectral guardians, marked each intersection between the routes of the Crossways Steps and the Bay View Road. So sometimes he did catch a heel or a toe, but at least he didn’t fall.

At last the guardian stones did emerge from the blur. He patted a big stone fondly as he hurried over the pavement to the next flight of stairs. This section was in less good condition, and the steps were higher and a little out of line. Thus by the time Justin reached the next road crossing and the next set of boulders, he was feeling a tiny bit winded. He stopped to rest, leaning for a minute or two against a guard stone higher than his chest while he caught his breath, thinking: how queer of fog to hide both where he’d been and where he was going.

Justin was starting to realize that this climb was tougher than expected. Probably the ill-fitting boots. Well, maybe he wouldn’t make it all the way to the top today, but he would make it as far as the flat rock place, for this was where the little stream slowed way down to form a quiet pool, and this pool was the very best place on the whole Crossways to look for clues. Justin looked around for a good stick with which to poke at things in the pool. At last he saw one he liked and crawled under the handrail to get it, wet and black with mud. A small, brown, tiger cat watched him from her perch on the top of the fence, its tail tick-tocking like a pendulum, back and forth.

Hello, Kitty, said Justin, wondering whether this was the same cat as last time he had looked for clues in the pool.

Miaow, said the cat, jumping down and coming over for a pet. She purred as Justin stroked her skinny back and scratched behind her ears, but she didn’t like it when he teased her with his stick and skittered back to the fence. The cat leapt up attempting to regain her elevated position, but lost her footing and fell into the weeds. She made a second try, scrambling awkwardly for a second or two, all four feet off the ground. But she failed again and crashed again. Embarrassed, she stalked off up the fence-line, tail erect. Better work on that jump, Kitty, called Justin after her.

At the next line of guardian boulders, he paused and climbed up on the largest one. There he sat, catching his breath, casually poking his stick at some weeds, prying at a beat-up men working sign that was lying on its side. When he looked up, he saw the cat across the road, sitting on the bottom step of the stairway placidly washing her face. Justin slipped down off his rock and went over to pat her, then returned to his great ascent. Now the little stream was running full and unrestricted by any concrete channel, over-splashing its muddy banks and loosening the stones put in to firm up any sagging treads and risers. Justin, however, climbed carefully, even though his legs were aching and his boots were rubbing blisters. He almost wished he’d worn his sneakers.

Justin lost track of time. Suddenly he remembered he’d forgotten to count the number of road crossings, so he wasn’t sure how far he’d come, or how far it was to the pool. The weather was turning drippier, wetter, colder, darker. His route was rampant with weeds; vines covered the fences, now set back a yard or more from the little stream. Brambles abounded. Justin’s stomach growled. He considered going home, but then he heard a rustle in the shrubbery up ahead. Had the cat overtaken him? Or was it a squirrel? Or maybe a deer? A different deer this time, or the same one? He’d find out in a minute or two, he thought as he stopped to drag his stick in the water to