“Bill, I hardly know anybody in Pearson’s Corner.”
“Sometimes it’s the people closest to you that you least suspect.”
“I think you’ve been staring at your computer screen too long. You can’t mean Connie.” Bill shook his head.
“Dennis?” Bill met my gaze with steady, unblinking eyes. “You think Dennis had something to do with my falling overboard? Or the accident? That’s impossible. He’s a cop, for Christ’s sake. Besides, I saw the guys who ran me off the road. I didn’t recognize either one of them.”
“You don’t have to be driving to be responsible for something.”
I felt a sudden chill, as if a shadow had passed over the sun and the wind had picked up. My intuition had been telling me the same thing, but I couldn’t make it fit. “Bill, I think you’re wrong. What possible reason could anybody have for bumping me off?”
“I don’t think they’re trying to bump you off. I think they want you to go home. Mind your own business.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“Don’t know. Just a gut feeling I have.”
Don’t know or won’t tell? I checked off the people I knew: Connie and Dennis. Angie and her mother. Frank Chase and Liz. Bill here … and, Lord help me, Hal.
“Surely you can’t mean Hal? I hardly know the man.”
“That’s not what I hear.” He was folding waxed paper around the sandwich, making surprisingly crisp and neat edges.
“Well, you heard wrong. What is it with this place? Go sailing with a fellow once and every busybody in town has you heading off to Las Vegas for a quickie wedding.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about him.” He slid the sandwich over in my direction and wiped his hands on a dish towel.
“I’m sure there is, and it will probably stay that way.” I couldn’t protest too strongly without sounding sweet on the guy.
“Let me tell you something about that boyfriend of yours.”
“For the last time … he’s not my boyfriend!”
“Did you know that he used to be the coach of the high school basketball team?”
This was his big secret? A wave of relief washed over me. “Yes. Hal told me all about that. He was very proud of winning the state championship.”
“And did he tell you why he left?” I didn’t say anything. Bill wore a self-satisfied smirk. “I didn’t think so. He was forced to resign.”
“Forced? Why on earth?”
“Oh, it was all very hush-hush. Didn’t want to upset the parents, create a scandal.” Bill seemed to be enjoying himself, dragging out the telling of it.
“A scandal about what, for heaven’s sake?”
“It was never proven, of course, but he was suspected of providing some of the team with amphetamines and anabolic steroids.” The corners of his mouth twisted up in a hint of a smile. I wanted to smack it off his face.
“But you were on the team, Bill. Surely you’d have known if the allegations were true or not.”
“Not me. I was second string, one step up from water boy. Nobody told me anything.”
“I can’t believe Hal would do such a thing.”
“I believe the rumors, Mrs. Ives, because there’s more to it.”
“There’s more?” I hadn’t even begun to recover from the first revelation before he zapped me with another.
“I’m fairly certain that Hal was pushing other drugs, too.”
“You can’t be serious!”
“Marijuana. Cocaine. Even heroin. That’s what I heard, anyway. Katie had to be getting them from somewhere. She was high as a kite at her sweet sixteen party, and she was high at the homecoming dance, too, if you ask me.”
My God! Maybe that’s what Angie was getting at when she told me that Katie was totally spaced out at the dance. “Amphetamines and steroids aren’t in the same league with hard drugs,” I reasoned. “Why do you think it was Hal who supplied Katie with the hard stuff? Couldn’t she have gotten them from someone else? Her sister perhaps?”
“Naw, Liz was a straight arrow. Had to be, didn’t she, to get into Harvard Law?” I thought that Bill’s confidence in the selection criteria of the admissions board at Harvard was a bit naive, but I didn’t say so.
“If you know all this, why don’t you take it to the police?”
“It’s just rumor. There’s no hard evidence.”
“Why are you telling me about it then?”
“I like you, Mrs. Ives. You’ve been real nice to Angie. I’d really hate to see anything happen to you.”
I picked up my sandwich and prepared to go. “If you ask me”—I jerked my head in the direction of the doctor’s office—“young Dr. Chase over there would have been in a much better position to supply Katie with drugs than Hal Calvert ever was!”
“You don’t have to take my word for it.” I watched while he took a deep breath and held it while he decided what to say next. “Check out the boat.”
“What boat? Pegasus?” Bill didn’t answer but started to walk across the kitchen. “You have some sort of grudge against Hal?” I aimed my remark at his departing back. The screen door slammed behind him, leaving me standing there alone in the store, except for a calico cat curled up, napping, on the front counter.
* * *
Connie was fixing dinner when I arrived, assembling lasagna in an oversize pan. “Thank goodness you’re back! And still in one piece.” She wiped her hands on a paper towel and studied me. “So, how’d it go with Frank Chase at the office today?”
“I was fired.”
“Imagine my surprise.”
“There wouldn’t have been any point in staying on. The man could never trust me again.” I told Connie about my conversation with Dr. Chase and about what I’d learned from Bill.
She ran the back of her hand over her forehead, damp from the steam rising from a pot where the lasagna noodles were boiling. “Do you think I’d have left you alone with Hal if I’d heard even a peep about him dealing drugs?”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“But I sure didn’t know that Liz and Frank were so tight.” She handed me a can of fruit cocktail and a hand-crank can opener. “Drain it in the sink.”
“I need you to come with me, Connie,” I said as I opened the can.
“Where?”
“Bill’s suggesting there’s something not quite kosher about Pegasus.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m not. And he looked so smug.”
“What could be wrong? Last time I saw Pegasus she was up on jack stands being repaired.” Connie had slipped into sailing jargon again.
“What’s a jack stand?” I asked.
“Sorry.” She dumped a container of sour cream into a bowl and folded the fruit cocktail and a cup of miniature marshmallows into it. “They’re metal braces that prop a boat up when it’s out of the water.”
My stomach growled, despite the sandwich I’d gulped down in the car. When I thought Connie wasn’t looking, I snitched a marshmallow from the bowl and popped it into my mouth. “I don’t know anywhere near as much about boats as you do,” I said, “so if I’m going to check out Bill’s ridiculous theory, you’ll need to come with me.”
Connie looked as if she wanted to rap my knuckles. “Hannah, you are trouble on wheels. Leave it be. I want to live to fifty, dah-link. Hanging around with you could be dangerous.”
“But Bill was so insistent, so … triumphant! It made me wonder what kind of ax he has to grind with Hal.”
“Can’t imagine, unless … Bill used to work for the Calverts as a ship’s carpenter until Hal laid him off and started doing the repair work himself.”
“I thought Bill had gone to work for the army.”
“He did, but not until after he’d been laid off. There was a six-month period in there when he had to take a succession of odd jobs just to eat while he waited for the government paperwork to go through.”
I could sympathize with that, but as much as I despised Coop for laying me off,
I doubt I’d have turned him over to the cops. Then I remembered the way he didn’t even look at me when he ushered me out of that conference room in Washington, D.C., all those months ago. On second thought, maybe Leavenworth was too good for the miserable worm.
“C’mon, Con. Dinner can wait.”
“No, Hannah. It’s a complete waste of time. Hal and I go way back. Bill is totally off base.” She ripped a piece of plastic wrap off a roll, stretched it over the bowl, turned it, and smoothed the edges down all around before putting it in the refrigerator.
I picked Connie’s car keys up from the kitchen table where I had laid them not five minutes before.
Connie opened a jar of spaghetti sauce, threw the lid into the trash, and turned to scowl at me. “And you can forget about taking my car.”
I tossed her keys back on the table and scowled back.
“Grow up, Hannah. You should see yourself. Pouting like a three-year-old.”
I didn’t feel like a three-year-old. I felt like a teenager who’d just been told she couldn’t go to a party because her mother knew there would be boys and booze there.
Connie stood at the sink, arms folded, the cleft in her chin deepening and becoming more prominent by the second. Emily had inherited that chin from her father. How many times had she glared at me the way Connie was glaring at me now? Hundreds probably. When I’d grounded her for lying about attending a mixed-sex slumber party, I got the full sulk treatment; we didn’t speak for days. But we Alexanders can be stubborn, too. I was now doubly determined to check out Hal’s boat.
I stomped over to the kitchen door and grabbed a key ring off its hook. “If you don’t go with me, I’m going to take that old truck out of the barn and drive over there myself.”
Connie snatched the truck keys out of my hand. “What the hell are you doing? You should be doing everything you can to get out of here and go home to Paul. He needs you, Hannah!”
“I told you. I don’t have his number.”
“Well, it doesn’t seem to me that you’re trying very hard to find it. You seem less interested in patching up your marriage than you do in running around Pearson’s Corner trying to clear the name of some potential lover!”
“Lover! And how about you and Dennis? Don’t think I haven’t noticed what’s going on between the two of you.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Why not? It’s not as if either of you are married.”
Connie stared at me with wide eyes, looking as surprised as if I’d slapped her. She opened her mouth to say something, then apparently thought better of it. “If you’re that determined,” she said at last, “then let’s go. Let’s get it over with.”
Connie stooped to pick up Colonel’s water dish, then thrust it in my direction. “Here. Fill this up while I lock up the house.”
I stood there for a moment, feeling foolish, holding Colonel’s dish in both hands. As I ran water into the bowl with Colonel frisking about my legs, I was determined that it would take more than a few dead bolt locks and an unreasonable sister-in-law to keep me away from the truth.
chapter
16
I slouched in the passenger seat of Connie’s car, uncomfortably strapped in, with the seat belt webbing chafing my neck. As we passed Ellie’s Country Store, I checked the porch, but there was no sign of Bill. I was glad. He’d have recognized the car at once and would have known exactly where we were going. I didn’t want him to think I’d paid the least bit of attention to all that garbage he’d told me about Hal.
Where High Street dead-ends at Ferry Point Road, Connie turned left. She pointed out the condo where Frank Chase lived, an attractively landscaped end unit, but his car wasn’t in the drive. I assumed he was still at his office, struggling to manage the workload alone. In spite of the lies he had told me, I felt a little bit sorry for the guy.
Five hundred yards ahead I could see the entrance to the marina which was marked by a sign, CALVERT MARINA AND BOATYARD, painted in bold blue letters on a white background. A pair of stout brick pillars flanked the entrance, from which a well-established boxwood hedge fanned out to form a fence, separating the marina grounds from the village of Pearson’s Corner. An anchor the size of a wheelbarrow, painted white, rested against one of the pillars.
Skirting the marina to our right, the road followed the water, snaking past the boat slips off docks A, B, and C and ending at a small parking lot. A large grassy area extended well beyond the edge of the parking lot, where boats of all types and sizes were stored, propped up by triangular wooden braces and paint-spattered metal tripods. To my surprise, Connie steered straight through the lot and onto the grass and began to weave cautiously between the boats.
“Where on earth are you going, Connie?”
“To park.”
“Excuse me, but wasn’t the parking lot back there?”
“When your boat’s out of the water and you’re working on it, it’s much more convenient to drive up and park right next to it.”
As we snaked through the land-locked fleet, I gazed out my window at a confusion of masts and rigging; some boats had been placed so close together that the bow pulpit of one vessel extended practically into the rigging of another. Beyond the boats, nearer the water, I thought I recognized the shed that Hal had pointed out to us when we went sailing, where he said Pegasus had been hauled.
Connie parked between a small blue cabin cruiser from Wilmington, Delaware, named My Mink and a large, nameless wooden vessel being painted dark green. When we climbed out of the car, seagulls were circling the area. One of them settled near an empty paint can and pecked halfheartedly at a discarded sandwich wrapper. I thought Connie’d feel right at home here among the boats and the birds, the fresh, sharp odor of paint and new varnish. From somewhere nearby the familiar whine of a power sander momentarily drowned out the cries of two angry gulls fighting over the remains of a hamburger bun.
“Hal mentioned he’d been experiencing chronic blistering problems on Pegasus,” Connie said as we wound our way on foot through the maze of boats toward the shed. “He’s had to repair her several times.” The shed loomed before us, an enormous white Conestoga wagon top, open at both ends.
Inside, the heat intensified. I expected the air to be heavy with moisture, like a greenhouse, but way overhead plantation-style fans nudged any stagnant air gently downward, to be swept away by the cool breezes that passed through the open ends of the shed.
Pegasus was a large boat, longer than Sea Song, I suspected, and it nearly filled the space, although there was room to work around her on all sides. I stood with my back resting against the vinyl-coated canvas wall of the shed and admired Hal’s boat. From the varnished teakwood trim to the six-inch-wide blue stripe that circled her bright white hull, she was a perfectly proportioned beauty.
“Nice racing stripe,” I commented.
“It’s called a boot top,” she snapped. Connie was still mad at me.
“Why?”
Connie stood at the stern, considering the rudder. “I don’t have the foggiest.”
“What kind of boat is it, Connie?”
“A Cal 40. Lovely old thing. They don’t make them anymore.” She took the rudder in both hands and wiggled it from side to side. “They’re great cruising and racing boats. Hal loves to race.”
I strolled around Pegasus, examining the hull. Like the other boats I’d seen, Pegasus stood upright, cradled between metal jack stands, curious V-shaped contraptions padded with carpet remnants. Below the white hull, the keel, painted brick red, extended down like an inverted shark fin, touching the ground.
Connie circled the boat twice, hands clasped behind her back, while I stood to one side, wondering what she was looking for. She started tapping on the hull with her knuckles.
“Why are you doing that?” I asked.
“Remember when Hal said his hull was delaminated? I’m checking for that. You know how you tap the wall to find a stud when you’re going to hang a pi
cture? Same thing, except I’m listening for the hollow sound you get when the layers of wood that form the hull separate and get all mooshy.” Connie tapped her way all around the boat with one of her car keys, too, making sharp, bright cracking sounds. Nothing sounded hollow to me.
Then the tapping stopped. “Hmm, that’s odd.”
“What?”
“Come here, Hannah. Walk around the boat and tell me what you see.”
I circled Pegasus, looking at the hull and the keel, feeling like a total dummy. “What the hell am I looking for?”
“Did you notice that one side of the keel has barnacles on it? On the other side the bottom paint is fresh.” I could see what she was talking about. The side of the keel nearest me was pockmarked by circular shells the size of my thumbnail. The other side was smooth as a baby’s cheek.
“But Hal said it needed repair.”
“I know, but you’d expect to see blistering on both sides of the keel, not just one. And another strange thing … see that scum line?” She pointed to a brownish green ring that circled the boat several inches below the boot top, like the ring around the inside of a bathtub.
“What’s so odd about that?”
“Cal ’40s are heavy cruising boats. She ought to be riding lower in the water. This boat’s riding high.”
“Does that mean she’s lighter than she should be?”
“Exactly! Hand me that rag, will you?” Connie indicated a tattered, paint-stained undershirt that had been draped over a nearby sawhorse. I snatched it up with two fingers and tossed it to her. Connie began to rub vigorously on the freshly painted keel until the rag was red with paint particles. After a bit she stopped rubbing and bent over, her face close to the surface of the keel, then stepped back and surveyed the spot from several angles. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“What?”
“There’s fresh fiberglass here, right in the middle of what should be a solid lead keel.” I looked where she pointed and saw the hint of a rectangle, just a shadow about the size of a suitcase beneath the brick red bottom paint. “See, it’s duller than the rest of the keel. I suspect someone was in a hurry, and it wasn’t primed first.”
Sing It to Her Bones Page 17
