by Sarah Graves
She bit her lip. “I wish I’d tried to be friends with her, back when . . . but that’ll never happen, now. Serves me right.”
As she reached for the car door again I found my voice. “Jenna.”
She turned inquiringly. “Jenna, if you tell Sharon what you’ve just told me, that you’d like a fresh chance, I’m certain she will—”
“Right,” Jenna replied bleakly. She leaned back into the car.
“Anyway, what I saw in the Ducky the other night. I thought you’d want to know, that’s all. And I will tell Bob.”
Before I could answer, she strode away toward the house, and I drove off. I’d have gone downtown to talk to Bob Arnold myself, but those baked goods we’d promised to the lady in Machiasport weren’t going to deliver themselves, and now I was behind schedule.
So minutes later I was sailing over the causeway with the water wild and whitecapped to my right while to my left, a sandy expanse of clam flats gleamed. I’d put the windows down and the breeze smelled like smoke from a bonfire someone had built of driftwood on the beach.
At the Route 1 intersection I pulled up behind Marienbad Jones, who was waiting to make the turn. Wearing a pair of movie-star shades and with her masses of brunette hair sticking out from beneath a bright pink ball cap, the proprietor of the Rubber Ducky was driving an old Ford sedan that by the sound of it had a hamster wheel under the hood.
Behind her, and just ahead of me, was Norm McHale in his little green MG. Still with the top down, he looked jaunty in a beret, wire-rimmed sunglasses, and a navy windbreaker; tossing me a friendly wave when he spotted me in his rear-view, he pulled out heading south, opposite the direction Marienbad was going.
But as he made the turn, he took the glasses off and looked hard at me again, watching—or so it seemed—to see which way I would go.
To see, I mean, if I was following him. The thought wouldn’t even have occurred to me if not for Jenna’s recent revelation, but now I turned reflexively the other way, then drove another quarter mile to the Farmers Union store and turned in.
Silly, I told myself as, inside, I bought a bottle of water and a package of pretzels. By then I’d had a chance to consider, realizing that Jenna’s story about Norm was odd, but that she’d been fairly drunk even by her own admission and might have misconstrued what she saw.
Or the whole thing might’ve been, as Sam would’ve put it, a Fig Newton of her imagination; anyway, by the time I got back on the road headed south again, I was well and truly late.
Fields, farms, forests, and the tidal reaches of rivers zipped by; forty-five minutes later with my arm aching miserably, I turned off Route 1 onto a narrow, winding road along a cove’s edge.
Soon I was passing between small houses and mobile homes, their driveways piled high with lobster traps. Here and there stood antique center-chimney colonials, their front walks flanked by ancient trunks of trees that were saplings when the houses were built.
Finally, I reached Jasper Beach, a wide, curving expanse of stones all polished smooth by the ocean and heaped by the tides, so you had to climb up to get to the beach, then down again to the water’s edge.
Neither of which I did, instead continuing past a small, haunted-looking collection of a dozen or so identical ranch-style houses lining both sides of a gated-shut cul-de-sac: KEEP OUT, said the sign on the chain-link fence.
Unnecessarily, I thought; who’d want to go in there? The ominous-looking dwellings had been homes to families stationed at a nearby, now-decommissioned Air Force base. But now they resembled the set of a horror movie: blank windows, boarded doors. Leaving them behind with a shiver, I drove uphill through a pine grove, then past more vintage homesteads, between ancient stone fences lining the twisty roadway.
And then I was at my destination. The house was a nicely revived old shingle-sided waterfront cottage with a slate front walk, massive granite chimney, and an arbor with neatly pruned grape vines spreading by a gravel path that led down to the yard and the rocky shore.
Mulched perennial beds lined the path. When I got out of the car all I heard was the rush of waves on the stony beach and a few gulls crying distantly.
Then a woman came out of the house. “Hello!” She hurried toward me. “Here, do let me help you with those.”
She was mousy and pale, with gray-blond curls falling loosely around her face and small, soft-looking hands. But her arms with her cardigan sleeves pushed up were tautly muscular and already tanned; all that gardening, I supposed, but always in gloves.
“Thanks so much for coming, I really appreciate it. I’m afraid I don’t drive anymore.” The glasses she peered at me through made her eyes look huge, each pale blond eyelash magnified.
“Oh, no trouble at all,” I lied as she took two trays of baked goods and I took the other two—with difficulty, but I did it—and followed her in.
“Here we are, then,” she called over her shoulder to me. “Home sweet home.”
I’ll say it was; the cottage’s interior smelled clean and sweet, like the inside of a well-maintained cedar chest. Pine-plank floors glowed with polish, a green glass jug of English ivy stood on each windowsill, and a small fire blazed cheerfully on the hearth.
I set my trays down on a cherrywood sideboard. Chintz covered the neat but comfortable-appearing furniture. Bright pillows put splashes of color everywhere.
Rich-looking rugs lay on the floors, plush under my feet. “Would you like coffee? Or tea?”
Sally Sanborn was her name, I recalled just in time. “No, thanks. I’m afraid I can’t.”
The only blot on the interior was the blob in the corner. Wearing a gray sweat suit, a Red Sox ball cap, and a pair of sneakers so horridly disreputable-looking it was a wonder the health department hadn’t confiscated them, the blob shifted and spoke. “Umph.”
Which I thought probably translated to “hello.” With no further remarks the blob left the room, its hunched shoulders and averted gaze telling me that it did not want me to see its face.
The smell of stale tobacco hit me as it—he, rather; a glimpse told me it was a young man of about twenty-five—went by. Then Sally was there again, holding up a coffee carafe inquiringly.
I shook my head regretfully. “I’ve left my partner alone in the shop, you see.”
Yet another thing I’d be losing when the shop closed, I groused inwardly: my best excuse when I wanted to get away from anywhere. But the view was too spectacular to resist when she waved me toward the long row of windows overlooking the water.
“Wow,” I breathed, letting my gaze range inland along the curving shoreline, all the way to Jasper Beach on my left and out to the misty shapes of the Spectacle Islands on the right. Then, “Huh,” I said, because there was a car in the beach’s primitive parking lot. I hadn’t seen it on my way in here; you couldn’t, from the road. But it was a small car. . . .
“In fact,” I said, hastening from the window, “now that I think of it, I’d really better get back there to help her as soon as I can.”
No more sign of the blob, although a nice, late-model sedan in the driveway said that he at least had a way to get around.
“Oh, that’s too bad. I don’t get much company out here. Those baked things you brought are for a church supper tonight,” she added at my questioning look.
A large supper, I hoped; there was dessert enough for an army. Sally walked me out to my own car, a little dog frisking around her feet.
“So . . . do you get out of here at all, otherwise? Besides to the church suppers, I mean?”
Sally seemed nice enough, and I couldn’t help thinking that in Eastport, where she could walk everywhere, she could have a social life if she wanted one.
“Oh, no,” she smiled regretfully. “It’s my own fault, though, I just get so busy and . . . and involved, sort of, what with—”
She stopped, glancing back toward the house as if worried that the blob might be listening.
“My son keeps me company. Anyway, thanks so
much,” she finished warmly, but the glance had chilled me and by the time I pulled out of her driveway I was even more relieved not to be staying any longer.
“Come back anytime,” she was urging me a little desperately as I got behind the wheel, and I assured her that I would.
“And thanks again!” she went on as I retreated, while behind her the bright blue waves rolled onto the pebbled beach and the pines sighed overhead.
Then, hitting the gas, I started back toward Jasper Beach and the lot where I’d seen the small car parked. The small green car . . .
Probably, I told myself firmly, it wasn’t who I thought it was, and even if it was him, it didn’t mean anything.
Or . . . did it?
* * *
The parking lot at Jasper Beach was a sandy unpaved track leading in from the narrow, paved road and ending in a weedy turnaround.
I parked and walked the rest of the way in, between scrubby sumac and beach-rose hedges covered in pink blooms, past the beginnings of foot trails that rambled off uphill along granite outcroppings, vanishing into the dense brush.
At the place where the sandy soil ended and beach stones began, I found the car I’d spotted from Sally Sanborn’s house. As I’d thought, it was Norm McHale’s small green two-seater MG; when I touched it the hood was still warm, so he must’ve arrived not long ago.
I trudged on past it over the massive mound of beach stones that ringed the cove. The round, smooth stones, polished by eons of rolling over and over one another in the tides, slid and slithered under my shoes as I made my way uphill over them, toward the water.
At the top I could see half a mile to my left and right, around the crescent-shaped beach; straight ahead lay the bay with its foamy breakers rolling in and pulling back again, over and over.
Norm was down there, crouched at the water’s edge, where the foam dissipated into the stones. I opened my mouth to call to him, then saw what he was doing.
He was burying something, I couldn’t see what. A brisk wind off the water made me shiver as I realized just how visible I was, if he should stand and turn.
No one else was on the beach. And call me paranoid, but I was all at once not eager at all to confront Norm McHale on a deserted stretch of remote Maine shoreline with nobody around.
Possibly there was an innocent reason for what he was doing; probably, even. But I still wanted to know what he thought needed burying in a place that was only accessible at low tide, on a beach made of what must have been millions of identical smooth, round stones, each about the size of a baby’s fist.
Once he walked away, even he might have no idea where to look for it again. Surely I’d never find it; no one would. Which was the whole idea, probably; slowly I began backing away down the high stone ridge, sliding and leaning to keep from falling.
Out on the bay, a fishing boat strained at its mooring, pulled stern-first toward deeper water as the last of the tide went out. Small birds skittered along the wet stones, and from behind me came the sounds of a group of hikers, starting up one of the trails.
Relief touched me. Norm still didn’t turn; as I retreated, my last sight of him was the same as my first had been: digging. Moving the stones, making a hole, placing something in it. Then covering it again, replacing the stones he’d set aside one by one to cover whatever it was he’d buried.
Darn, I thought, but I still didn’t want to confront him alone. In my car I backed out quickly onto the narrow shore road, then drove slowly again toward the old, gated chain-link fence that bounded the abandoned housing compound I’d passed earlier.
There was a stone caught in my hubcap, I noticed distractedly as I scanned the edge of the pavement for a place to pull over. Tink-tink-tink . . . I hoped he couldn’t hear it.
Eventually, a wide, sandy shoulder spread off the road, ending in a clover patch. I parked and waited, rolling down the car window so I’d be able to hear the growl of the MG’s engine when Norm started it up. By now the day had grown warm, the stiff breeze I’d felt earlier dropped to nearly nothing; I opened my water bottle and drank.
A flock of goldfinches cheeped excitedly in a thicket of last year’s thistles, a springtime banquet for the tiny yellow seed-eaters. A hawk soared overhead with something silvery flapping in its talons.
Bees droned in the beach roses and my eyelids grew heavy in the perfumed warmth. My arm ached, and I wondered if maybe I had it wrong, if Norm wasn’t leaving in his car or if maybe it wouldn’t start.
And it was, after all, just a short walk back down to the parking lot. It wouldn’t be very much trouble to at least find out if he was already gone—could I have missed hearing the MG somehow?—and if he wasn’t gone, I could decide then what, if anything, to do next.
That was what I told myself as headed back down the road on foot, past a row of cedar trees on one side, then an overgrown berry thicket—blackberries, I realized, wincing at the thorns—on the other.
From there it was only a hop, skip, and a jump, as Bella would have put it, to the parking lot, where the green sports car still sat parked with its leather seats gleaming richly and its wire wheels glinting.
Slowly, I approached the little vehicle. I didn’t know much about vintage cars, but I didn’t think leaving the seats to bake in the sun was a recommended care strategy. In the distance, out of sight past the barrier ridge of stones on the beach, waves hissed onto the shore and retreated, louder now that the tide was coming in.
Standing there smelling salt water and feeling the sun beating down on my head, I wondered if maybe I should just find Norm McHale and ask him what he was doing, burying something at the beach.
Phrasing it, of course, in some other, less confrontational way. And while I was thinking this, I must already have made my decision, because my feet were moving: back out to the beach, up the stone ridge and down the other side of it, finally to the water, lapping a little higher than it had been earlier.
But no Norm—no anyone, in fact—was at the water’s edge now. Not a person was in sight, and the only sound was the rush and retreat of the waves rolling on the stones, plus an occasional gull’s crying.
Suddenly I felt afraid. Even the sun pouring bright, warm light down onto my head didn’t encourage me; all I wanted was to go home, I didn’t know why.
Oh, stop, I scolded myself. It was a public beach, more people would be along anytime, and the hikers must still be around here somewhere, too. And anyway, I would only be a minute.
Because if I left and came back later, I’d never re-locate the spot where I’d seen Norm burying something. In fact, I was fairly sure I couldn’t even do it now.
Still, I had to try. And I had my phone on me—I’d tried it, just to be sure it worked this time—so if anything bad happened. . .
Which it wouldn’t, I instructed myself firmly. Then before I could talk myself out of it, I strode to where I thought I remembered Norm crouching on the stony beach.
The spot was nearly underwater now as the tide rose, but luckily he’d left a bit of a depression where he’d been excavating. I bent and pulled out one smooth, egg-sized stone after another and tossed them aside.
But I found nothing, just more stones, cold seawater, and . . .
Suddenly there it was, a small bundle wrapped in a blue bandana. I plucked the bundle from the hole, rose, and turned.
And ran smack into Norm McHale. “Hello, Jake.”
He was standing way too close, as if he’d been about to pounce and I’d foiled his intention at the last instant.
“Hi, Norm,” I managed. He’d made it across the beach while I had my back turned. “What’s up?”
My hand moved toward my bag, which was slung casually over my shoulder; speed dial, I thought.
Norm reached out suddenly and in a fast, utterly decisive grab, he snatched the bag away from me.
Then he jabbed me with something sharp, a warm sensation flooded through me, and I passed out suddenly and completely. I didn’t know anything anymore.
/> * * *
“I’m not going to tell you the name of the drug, but it won’t do you any harm.”
“So you say.”
I’d been walking and talking for some time now, it seemed, but I didn’t remember it, courtesy of whatever had been in the needle Norm had jabbed me with back there on the beach.
“It just put you out and made you cooperative when you came to again,” he said, “so I could get you in here without trouble. And I took no other advantage of you, by the way,” he added.
“Gee, that’s so reassuring,” I responded sarcastically. “Guess I should be glad it wasn’t cyanide. I feel so safe and secure, now.”
You son of a bitch, I didn’t add, but he heard it anyway, as I intended.
“I’m sorry about this, Jacobia, I really am. I hope when it’s all over you and Ellie will forgive me.”
“Fat chance. Norm, what’s going on? What the heck are you up to, anyhow?” I demanded.
Hey, you never know, he might feel talkative. Meanwhile, I took in as much of my surroundings as I could, trying to make a plan; somehow, I had to get out of this mess that I’d put myself in.
But he didn’t answer. “Why did you have to follow me?” he wanted to know instead.
“But, Norm, I wasn’t . . .” I began, then stopped as I understood what must have had happened.
Back at the Route 1 intersection he’d seen me, and assumed I was following him. Once he didn’t see me behind him anymore, he’d have relaxed. But when he found me on the beach trying to dig up what he’d buried, he must’ve thought it was all part of a scheme.
Right, I wish. Even after what Jenna told me, I’d just thought maybe Norm heard sounds from the walkway below the Ducky, too, and had gone out the Duck’s emergency exit to find out what was going on.
There’d be no convincing him of that, though, and, anyway, it hardly mattered. So instead I went on taking in details of my current location, hoping to make it my previous location as soon as possible.
I was in the living room of a house. Sheetrock, pine trim . . . a decent but not luxurious house. Cheap wall-to-wall carpeting covered the floor. A child’s faded, water-stained coloring book lay facedown on the kitchen linoleum. An empty house . . .
