Nervous Water

by William G. Tapply

  “I assume you got the West Canterbury cops on the case.”

  He smiled. “There are no cops in West Canterbury.”

  “The county sheriff, then.”

  He shrugged. “We got a call in to his office. I’m not holding my breath.” Horowitz glanced at his watch, then reached over and tapped the two lists of phone numbers with his forefinger. “You done with these?”

  I took another look at the 207 number, then nodded.

  He picked up the lists, shoved them into his manila folder, and stood up. “Gotta go.”

  “Thanks for dropping by, sharing this with me.”

  He shrugged. “Courtesy call. Just filling you in. Since you found that body and took a whack on the head for your trouble, I figure you’ve got an interest in the case. Thanks for the coffee.”

  He left the way he’d come in—through the garden gate. I guessed he’d parked in the alley out back, so as not to draw my neighbors’ attention to the fact that I was being visited by a state police officer.

  Or maybe he just couldn’t find a parking space on the street out front.

  His visit wasn’t a courtesy call, of course. Horowitz had no interest in courtesy.

  He wanted me to check out Roy’s convenience store in West Canterbury, Maine, see if I could figure out who had made all those calls to Grantham Webster.

  He couldn’t come out and ask me, a mere layperson, to help him. Cops didn’t work that way.

  Whatever I chose to do on my own, though, wasn’t Roger Horowitz’s responsibility.

  He thought he knew me pretty well.

  He was right.

  As soon as he left, I wrote down that 207 number in West Canterbury before I forgot it.

  Twenty-One

  After Horowitz left, I called Julie and told her I’d be gone for the afternoon and would be spending the morning working at home. She gave me a list of phone calls I should make and said she hoped I caught lots of fish.

  I told her I wasn’t going fishing, but it was pretty clear that she didn’t believe me.

  Next I dialed the 207 number for the convenience store in West Canterbury, Maine.

  It rang five or six times, and then a man’s cheerful voice said, “Hay-lo.”

  “Is this Roy’s store?”

  “Ayuh. You lookin’ for Roy?”

  “It’s UPS,” I said. “I got a delivery for Roy’s in West Canterbury. I’m not sure where you’re located.”

  “This ain’t Roy,” said the man. “Roy ain’t here. He went bass fishin’. Dot’s inside. You wanna talk to Dot?”

  “I bet you can help me,” I said. “I just need directions to the store.”

  “Where at you comin’ from?”

  “Kittery.”

  He laughed. “You cain’t get here from there.”

  “That’s a pretty old joke,” I said.

  “Pretty much true, though.”

  “Maybe you better put me on with Dot,” I said.

  “Nah,” he said. “I kin tell you good as her. Comin’ from Kitt’ry, you want to head west and git onto 202. Then you start looking for the West Canterbury sign. Mile or so after that, you come to a fork where 202 hooks around to the right? Take that left fork. You’ll find Roy’s a mile or so down there on your left. If you come to the bridge goes over the river, turn around, ’cause you went too far. You got all that, Mr. UPS man?”

  “Got it,” I said. “Thank you, sir.”

  I worked at my desk for a couple of hours, and around eleven I went upstairs and changed into my comfortable old jeans and a T-shirt and sneakers. I wanted to leave by noon so I could get there by two. I figured it wouldn’t take more than an hour and a half to find Roy’s, but I didn’t want to be late.

  I intended to stay until four. That’s when the phone calls to Grannie Webster’s office were made. Between two and four in the afternoon on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.

  When I came down, Henry took one look at me and ambled over to the front door. Sneakers and blue jeans meant I was going somewhere more interesting than my office. He sat there on full alert with his ears perked up expectantly.

  “Sorry, pal,” I said.

  His ears drooped. He glared at me for a moment, and when I didn’t relent, he crawled onto the sofa, curled up in the corner, tucked his nose under his paws, and pretended to go to sleep. He was sulking.

  He understood the word “sorry,” and he didn’t like hearing it.

  Roy’s was typical of the mom-and-pop stores that serve small villages all across Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. It looked like an old-fashioned New England farmhouse—which it may originally have been. An open porch spanned the front. The big window beside the door was plastered with hand-printed signs—Sandwiches to Go, Crawlers and Live Bait, New Videos, Ammo, Homemade Ice Cream, Fresh Vegetables. There were two dormers on the roof with curtains in the windows, indicating an upstairs apartment where the proprietor probably lived.

  I got there a little after one thirty—early as usual. I backed into a space between a newish Ford pickup truck and a battered old Toyota Corolla in the crushed-stone parking area that bordered some woods beside the store. I got out, walked over to the front, and climbed the three porch steps. On the porch were two weathered wooden rocking chairs on either side of a low plastic table. An old-fashioned black telephone with a rotary dial—the phone I was looking for, I assumed—sat on the table, along with a red plastic ashtray brimming with butts and two Diet Coke cans.

  I went into the store. A plump sixtyish woman with a long gray braid and round rimless glasses was sitting on a stool behind the counter just inside the door. She was looking down at a magazine that was open on her lap.

  I said hello, and she looked up and smiled at me.

  I wandered the narrow aisles between the free-standing shelves that were stacked with canned goods. In the back I found a cooler and picked up a bottle of orange juice and a tuna sandwich. The sandwich was wrapped in waxed paper and secured with masking tape. I didn’t know they even made waxed paper anymore.

  I took my juice and sandwich up front and put them on the counter. “Nice day,” I said to the woman.

  “Could use some rain,” she said. “That’s a buck twenty-five for the juice, three ninety-five for the sandwich.” She rang them up. “Five twenty.”

  I took out a five-dollar bill from my wallet, found two dimes in my pocket, and put the money into her hand. “Wonder if you might help me out,” I said.

  She shrugged. “Might. Depends.”

  “I have a cousin, haven’t seen her in years. I seem to recall she was living in West Canterbury. Her name’s Cassandra Crandall.”

  The woman’s eyes flicked up to the ceiling, then came back. “Cassandra, huh? Nope. Don’t know no Cassandra.”

  I’d remembered to bring the photo that Uncle Moze gave me. I took it from my pocket and put in on the counter. “This is Cassandra. Everyone calls her Cassie. That’s my uncle with her. It was taken a few years ago.”

  The woman glanced down at the photo. “Never laid eyes on either one of ’em,” she said.

  I smiled. “I bet you know everybody around here.”

  “Just about, I guess.”

  “I must be remembering wrong, then,” I said. “Thanks anyway.” I hesitated and pretended to look around. “Say, you don’t have a pay phone, do you?”

  “Out there.” She jutted her chin toward the porch. “It ain’t exactly a pay phone. You can make a local call, no charge. Otherwise you gotta use one of them company cards, or I can sell you a phone card.”

  I thanked her, went out to the porch, sat in one of the rocking chairs, and used my MCI card to call Evie’s cell phone. I figured, having asked about the phone, if I didn’t use it the woman would be suspicious. The fewer suspicions I aroused, the better.

  Evie didn’t answer, so I left her a message. “Hi, honey,” I said. “It’s around two o’clock. I’m in Maine looking for my cousin. I should be home for dinner. If it doesn’t look like
I’ll make it, I’ll let you know. Hope you’re having a good day.”

  I took my sandwich and juice to my car and got in behind the wheel. From where I was sitting I could watch the front porch of the store. Although I was somewhat hidden by the truck and the Corolla on either side of me, I knew my BMW was not exactly inconspicuous, but I didn’t know what to do about it.

  I took my bird-watching binoculars out of the glove compartment and put them on the seat beside me.

  I sat there, ate my lunch, and watched the front of the store.

  Now and then a car or a truck with Maine plates pulled into the lot. Somebody got out, went inside, came out ten minutes later carrying a plastic bag or a six-pack of Coke, and drove away. None of them was Cassie, or anybody else that I recognized.

  Around three a pair of teenage girls went in. A few minutes later they came out with Popsicles and sat in the rocking chairs to lick them.

  While they were there, a man on a motorcycle stopped out front and used the phone.

  By quarter past three the urge to urinate dominated my thoughts. Gordon Cahill, my friend the PI, once told me that he never brought anything to drink on a stakeout. I’d remembered this important piece of wisdom too late.

  I slipped out of my car, ducked into the woods, and pissed against a big pine tree. When I got back, it didn’t appear that I’d missed any excitement.

  I kept checking my watch. The hands were moving very slowly.

  At 3:52 a woman pedaled a bicycle up to the front of the store, got off, leaned the bike against the porch rail, and looked around.

  I sat forward. Strands of black hair straggled out from under her blue baseball cap. Under the visor, she was wearing sunglasses. She wore baggy sweatpants, a man’s shirt with the tails flapping, and sneakers. From the distance between us, I might have mistaken her for a man.

  But I knew I was not mistaken. She moved with the grace and sway of a woman, and even under her loose-fitting clothes, you couldn’t mistake the shape of a woman’s body.

  Cassie. It had to be.

  I picked up my binoculars, put them to my eyes, got them focused, studied her face.

  I recognized her from the photo. She had the sharp Crandall nose, the high, elegant cheekbones, the slightly pointed chin, the large expressive mouth—every feature that I’d seen in every photo of her on Uncle Moze’s television from the time she was a toddler.

  She could have been Moze’s flesh and blood, but, of course, she wasn’t. She was his niece, his sister Mary’s daughter.

  I slouched in my seat behind the wheel of my car, though I didn’t think she could see me through the glare on my windshield. I felt sneaky and vaguely unclean, spying on her.

  But that didn’t stop me from doing it.

  She went up onto the porch and sat in one of the rockers by the telephone. A young guy—he looked like a high-school boy—came out of the store. He stopped and said something to her. She took off her sunglasses, looked up at him, smiled and shook her head. They talked for a minute, and then he shrugged and waved and headed for his car.

  Cassie watched him until he drove away. Then she picked up the telephone. She dialed a number, put the receiver to her ear, looked up at the sky, and listened. Then she shook her head and replaced the receiver on its cradle.

  She sat there for a minute, rocking in the chair. Then she picked up the phone again, dialed a number, listened, frowned, and hung up.

  She made a fist and punched the palm of her hand. Then she puffed her cheeks, blew out a breath, put her sunglasses back on, stood up, and went into the store.

  I’d found her, but I hadn’t figured out what to do next. I thought about getting out of my car, walking up to the store, and saying hello to her. It was the logical, straightforward thing to do.

  But Cassie’s body language made me hesitate. I read alertness, apprehension, caution, maybe even fear in it. She was hiding out. She wouldn’t be happy to know she’d been found. I couldn’t predict what she might do when she realized it.

  So I sat there and pondered my next move.

  When I was a kid, I used to drive my old man nuts. He’d say, “Brady, my boy, would you prefer to mow the lawn or wash the car today?” and when I’d pause to weigh the pros and cons of those distasteful options, he’d look at me, shake his head, and say, “That’s right, Mr. Hamlet. Don’t just do something. Sit there.”

  I was still sitting there considering my choices when Cassie emerged from the store with a plastic bag dangling from her hand. She descended the front steps, put the bag into the basket on the handlebars of her bike, then hesitated. She turned around slowly, pulled the visor of her cap low, and looked directly at my car. It seemed as if she was staring straight into my eyes from behind her sunglasses. There was no expression that I could decipher on her face.

  I suspected that the woman at the cash register had told her that some guy with a Boston accent had been in a few hours ago. This stranger had shown her Cassie’s photo, asked if she knew her, inquired about the telephone.

  The woman, of course, had denied recognizing Cassandra Crandall’s name or picture. Local folks watch out for each other. They respect each other’s privacy. They mistrust people they don’t know.

  The woman had probably noticed the car the stranger was driving—it was a noticeable vehicle, an expensive-looking green foreign job with a sunroof and Massachusetts plates—and pointed it out to Cassie.

  Or maybe I was imagining all that.

  Cassie got on her bike, turned it around, looked in my direction again, then pedaled away. Maybe I was wrong, but I read that look as an invitation. Or maybe it was a challenge. “Come on. Follow me. I dare you.”

  She was riding one of those old one-speed bikes with fat tires and a crossbar. A boy’s bike. Girls’ bikes didn’t have those unladylike crossbars that would interfere with their skirts.

  I wondered if they still made girls’ bikes.

  She turned left out of the parking lot and pedaled south along the side of the winding two-lane roadway until she disappeared around the bend. I gave her another few minutes, then started up my car, pulled onto the road, and turned in the direction Cassie had taken.

  I drove slowly. For a mile or so the road twisted through woods and fields. Cassie had put enough distance between us that she was always out of sight around the bend or over the hill ahead of me. I kept my eye out for places where she might turn in, but there were no side roads, no old overgrown woods roads, even, so I was pretty sure she was still somewhere in front of me.

  After a while the road climbed a long gentle hill, and I imagined Cassie standing on her pedals as she pumped up it. Where it crested and sloped away, she would coast down with the wind in her face.

  At the bottom of the long hill I came upon a trailer park tucked into a pine grove on the left. A couple dozen small, dingy trailers were spaced out under the big pines. A few cars were parked near them.

  I slowed to a crawl as I drove past, looked hard, but I didn’t see Cassie, or anybody else for that matter, moving around.

  Past the trailer park, the road flattened and straightened in front of me. I speeded up, but there was no figure on a bike in sight.

  The pine woods petered out into scrub, then meadow, then a marshland. Soon I crossed a bridge that spanned what appeared to be a tidal creek. A sign indicated I’d entered the town of Amidon. Still no sign of Cassie on her bike.

  A minute later the road I was on intersected a busy three-lane highway at a yellow blinking light. There was a gas station on one corner and a real estate office, a snowmobile shop, and a lumberyard on the other three. Here, suddenly, was commerce.

  I stopped at the intersection. If Cassie had come this far, I’d lost her. She could’ve gone three different ways.

  I had to assume she’d turned into the trailer park.

  I turned around at the gas station, drove back to the trailer park, and pulled into the sand driveway. I stopped in what appeared to be a parking area near the road and got out
of my car. The trailers were widely spaced and laid out randomly among the trees, about half and half single- and double-wides. They sat up on cinder blocks, stained with rust streaks and smudges of dirt and splotches of pine pollen and general neglect, although a few of them sported brave window boxes of marigolds and impatiens. Propane tanks leaned against their outside walls, and beat-up automobiles and muddy pickup trucks were parked in front. Kids’ tricycles, plastic ride toys, and doghouses were scattered around some of the sand-and-pine-needle yards. Here and there a clothesline was strung between two trees. Flannel shirts and blue jeans and bath towels and women’s underwear flapped from them. TV antennas sprouted from the roofs of several trailers.

  It took me a few minutes to spot Cassie’s bike. It was leaning against the side of a single-wide at the rear of the park near the bordering woods.

  I still hadn’t exactly planned out how I was going to approach her or what I would say. But it was time to do something, and since subterfuge and misdirection were not my strong suits, I walked directly over to Cassie’s trailer. The heavy bass-line beat of rock music came thumping at me from inside. As I got closer, I recognized the tune: “Sympathy for the Devil,” by the Rolling Stones. A very good oldie.

  A single cinder block served as a step up to the trailer’s only door. Just as I put my left foot on it, I sensed rather than heard something behind me—a quick inhalation of breath, maybe, or a moccasin stepping softly on pine needles, or just the movement of air when a body moves through it.

  If the music hadn’t been so loud, I might’ve sensed it earlier and had a chance to react.

  But as it was, before I could move, something hard rammed into my kidneys. “Put both hands flat against the door where I can see ’em,” came a growly woman’s voice behind me.

  I knew what was poking into me. It had happened before. It was the business end of a gun barrel.

  I did as I was told. Now I was standing awkwardly, bent forward, with one foot on the ground and one on the step and all my weight supported by my arms.

  “Cassie?” I said. I started to turn my head.