Death at Devil's Bridge

by Cynthia DeFelice

  I looked at Jeff, shrugged, and smiled. It sounded easy enough. Too easy. “What’s the catch?” I asked.

  Donny gave me a quick grin. “No catch,” he said. “People are lazy. They’re willing to pay big bucks for convenience. You’ll be mostly delivering to tourists. They’ve got money to burn.”

  I nodded. The ridiculous prices visitors were willing to pay for the silliest things was a constant source of amusement to islanders.

  Then Donny’s face grew serious. “The only thing is, you can’t tell anybody about it. Somebody could steal my idea, cut into my profits, you know?”

  That made sense. But I still didn’t like the sound of it. “You really mean we can’t tell anybody?” I asked.

  “Nobody,” Donny said sharply. “Not even your mother, Daggett,” he added, then smiled. “Not that I think your mother’s going to steal my idea. It’s just that the fewer people who know, the better.”

  Jeff nodded eagerly, but I waited to hear more.

  “So are you in, or should I ask somebody else? I’ve got to know now.”

  “Hold it a second,” I said. I felt as if there were questions I should ask, but I couldn’t think of what they were. I looked at Jeff, hoping he’d say something, but I could tell right away that he wanted to go for it. He was already figuring our profits in his head.

  “Daggett, three hundred bucks a week between us! And that’s not even counting money from our other jobs. We’ll have that boat and motor by August!”

  One problem immediately popped into my mind at that: how would I explain to Mom that I was going in on a boat and motor with Jeff, if I couldn’t tell her where I’d gotten the money? I pushed it from my mind. I could worry about that later, when—and if—I had the money.

  Then I had another thought. “What if I make a delivery to somebody who knows Mom? She’ll hear about it. She always does.”

  “Not to worry, Daggett,” said Donny. “Like I said, most of our customers will be people from off-island. I’ll tell my local customers to keep their mouths shut about it.”

  It seemed odd: most businesses, like Barry’s, advertised their services. Donny must have sensed my doubts, because he said, “Okay, another reason for the secrecy is that I’m not real sure this is strictly legal.”

  Uh-oh, I thought. Here we go. No wonder it sounded too good to be true.

  “It drives a lot of people who are renting houses crazy that they have to drive all the way to Chilmark to pick up their mail, you know? So some of the stuff we deliver might be letters or packages, to save people a trip to the post office. And I’m not sure if that’s against some bogus federal regulation, like horning in on the U.S. mail or something. So I’m just playing it safe, you see what I mean?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I guess.” Delivering a few letters didn’t sound like a crime to me. I couldn’t imagine why the U.S. post office would care. Donny probably was just playing it safe. But something was still bugging me.

  Suddenly it came to me. “What do you need us for? Why don’t you make the deliveries yourself? You’ve got a car.”

  “Believe me, I would if I could, Daggett,” answered Donny. “But this business is already so big, I’m going to be busy just taking and filling the orders. Especially since I’m still working at the garage. I’m thinking, if we do this right, we all might be able to quit our other jobs soon and let the good times roll, you know?”

  I nodded slowly, thinking it over. Not that I wanted to quit working for Chick. But the idea of making a hundred and fifty dollars more each week was growing in my mind, making it hard to think of anything else.

  Donny looked at me and said, “Listen, Ben. I know you were kind of freaked when you figured out I stole that stuff. I know it’s not your style. That’s cool. But this is different. It’s a way to make some good money without robbing anybody’s boat. It’s a good thing, Daggett.”

  I was surprised that Donny had even noticed I was upset the night before and more surprised that he actually seemed to care. It was almost as if he was apologizing, trying to make it up to me. He wanted to earn some honest money, and that was a good thing.

  Then he said something that really got me. In a low voice, sounding almost humble, he murmured, “I’ve got to have some cash if I want to keep a girl like Jen happy.”

  Donny, Mr. Cool, was worried about losing his girlfriend? I remembered Jen’s face when she kissed Donny. It had looked to me as though she really liked him.

  “Aw, I don’t think Jen’s snobby like that,” I said.

  “Maybe not,” said Donny. “But her family’s got money. She’s used to nice stuff. You didn’t see her when that Cameron Maddox guy pulled up in his expensive sports car and asked her to go for a ride. She wanted to; I could tell.”

  Donny looked so downcast that I found myself feeling sorry for him. It was amazing to discover that a big shot like Donny had such thoughts.

  “So,” he said, looking at me from under his eyebrows. “What do you say?”

  Before I could answer, Jeff said, “When do we start?”

  Donny didn’t react but continued to look at me, waiting. Jeff was watching me, too, his eyes willing me to say yes.

  I gazed from one to the other and made up my mind. “Yeah, when do we start?”

  “All right, Daggett!” Donny pumped his fist, then lifted his eyebrows tantalizingly. “How about right now?”

  “Why not?” Jeff said, turning to me with a huge smile.

  “No reason, I guess,” I said. “I’ve got nearly an hour and a half before Mom gets out of work. I might as well use the time to make a little cash.” Why not?

  “Excellent. But first I need to know I can trust you.”

  Jeff looked wounded, and I felt the same way. “You can trust us, man,” Jeff said. “You didn’t see us telling anybody about the other stuff, did you?”

  “No, and that’s how I know I can trust you,” Donny said soothingly. “Otherwise, I’d never have let you in. This is just to make it official. You don’t talk to anyone about this. If anybody asks where the extra money’s coming from, what are you going to say?”

  “I could say it’s from tips,” I said.

  Donny nodded. “Good. How about you, Manning?”

  “From doing lots of lawns and odd jobs.”

  “Okay. No matter what, you never mention me, right?”

  “Right,” Jeff and I agreed.

  “Okay.” Donny extended his hand to Jeff, who shook it, trying to look solemn, but I could see the excitement shining in his eyes.

  Next, Donny reached his hand over the seat to me, and I took it. I felt a thrilling jolt of heat and power as Donny looked into my eyes and tightened his grip. “Partners,” he said, and gave me a wink.

  “Okay,” he went on, “your first job is to deliver these two packages right here.” He reached into the glove compartment and took out two identical-looking manila envelopes sealed with the little metal fasteners bent shut and taped over.

  “What’s in them?” I asked. “Mail?”

  Donny nodded. He handed one envelope to me and one to Jeff, and gave each of us directions.

  “The person there will give you an envelope with the money in it. Bring it to me, and I give you your share. Simple.”

  “No problem,” Jeff said.

  “Where will you be?” I asked.

  “Just stop by my house when you’re done.”

  “Okay,” I said. Donny lived pretty close to both Jeff and me. His father was never around, and his mom worked, so the coast would be clear.

  I placed the envelope in the clip on my rear bike rack. My directions were to head down State Road, turn left at the white picket fence right before Ida Hill’s house, where she sold homemade chocolates, go right at the next two forks, and look for a house marked with a big red K at the entrance to the drive.

  I didn’t know whose house it was, and it was probably being rented, anyway. Lots of people we knew lived in little dumpy shacks or moved in with relatives fo
r the summer so they could rent their own houses to tourists for a lot of money.

  As I rode down State Road, I saw HAVE YOU SEEN OUR SON? posters on almost every telephone pole. The Maddoxes had really covered the territory. I thought about when Pop was missing and how worried Mom and I had been, then how frantic she was last year when I’d run away during the night. I hoped that kid would turn up soon and give his parents a break.

  I found the house and knocked at the door. A woman peered through the screen at me, looking puzzled. Then her face brightened. “Do you have a package for me?” she asked.

  I nodded, holding up the envelope. She disappeared for a couple of seconds and returned with a regular letter-sized envelope, which she handed me in exchange for mine.

  “Thanks,” she said. She closed the door and was gone.

  I rode to Donny’s house and found him sitting in a lawn chair in the yard, working out some figures on a notepad. He took the envelope, looked in, smiled, and handed me a five and a ten.

  “No problems?” he asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Told you. Easiest money you’ll ever make.” Donny used the envelope to tap out a little rhythm against his thigh. “So, this time of day is good for you, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Between four and five-thirty.”

  Jeff rode up on his bike, sweating slightly from the ride, but smiling. He handed Donny his envelope and collected his money, reporting that everything had gone smoothly for him, too.

  After agreeing to meet at the West Basin parking lot around four o’clock the next day, Jeff and I biked home. We decided that if there was time after we’d made our deliveries, we’d go to the beach and try out the new plane.

  “See you,” I called, turning off at my house. I could feel the grin on my face and the significant bulge of sixty-five dollars in my pocket.

  It was going to be a great summer after all.

  Thirteen

  The next morning, Chick greeted me with the words, “Ben, I hope you got a good night’s sleep. We have a tough day ahead.”

  I groaned. “What does that mean?”

  “We’ve got four guys, all meat fishermen.”

  I must have looked puzzled, because he explained. “They’re going to want to catch and keep as many fish as they possibly can, and not release anything. They’ll want to fill up their coolers with fillets, so they can go home and show off all the fish they caught, and tell themselves it was worth the price of the charter ’cause they’re feeding their families. The only problem is, no matter how many fish we catch, they’ll think it should have been more.”

  “Oh, boy,” I said. “So what do you want me to do?”

  “The main thing is to get the fish in fast and be ready to catch another one. These guys aren’t going to want to play the fish, or enjoy the fight.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But it kind of takes the fun out of it, don’t you think?”

  “I know, but this is their day, so we’ll try to do it their way. I’ll need you to keep a churn line going, and to keep the hooks baited.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” I said. “One good thing, I guess: it won’t be boring.”

  Chick laughed. “Oh, no,” he said. “I can promise you that.”

  We were right, it wasn’t boring. But I didn’t look forward to fishing like that again. It became a day-long competition among the guys as to who had the most fish. I understand a contest. I always entered the annual island-wide fishing derby with everyone trying to catch the biggest fish and win. Well, everyone except for me in last year’s derby, when I caught what was probably the winning fish and let it go. Anyway, I loved fishing and took it really seriously. But it was supposed to be fun. These guys were just serious.

  Chick and I turned to each other after they left and smiled tiredly.

  “All I can say is, I hope they actually eat all those fish I cleaned,” I said. “And did you notice? No tip.”

  “I should have warned you not to expect one,” Chick answered. “Not from those guys. But, listen, have you given any thought to working some more? I’ve got tomorrow off, but I’m booked for three days after that.”

  “Sure.” I pretended it was no big deal, but I was really happy that Chick wanted me back.

  “Good,” Chick said, grinning and putting his arm around my shoulders. “You’ve been doing a great job, Ben. Your dad would be proud.”

  I never knew when it would happen, and it always took me by surprise. For some reason, at the mention of Pop, my eyes got all blurry with a sudden rush of tears. I didn’t bother to turn away or pull the cap of my hat lower so Chick wouldn’t see me cry. Chick understood how grief can sneak up and pull the rug out from under a person. His wife had had cancer and died about a month after Pop did.

  “Yep,” Chick went on, “we ran into some tricky situations the past few days. Jack would have liked the way you handled yourself.”

  Ordinarily Chick’s praise would have made me feel great, but my insides felt uneasy. I’d been in a couple of tricky situations during the past few days that Chick didn’t know about, and I was pretty sure Pop wouldn’t have been proud at all of how I’d handled them. It was something I’d been trying hard not to think about. I reached up and roughly wiped the tears away, trying to brush away my disturbing thoughts, as well.

  “Thanks, Chick,” I managed to mumble.

  “So you want to sign up for three more days?” he asked.

  “Definitely,” I said.

  “Good. Same time Wednesday, then. Have a good day off, partner.”

  At that moment, Donny drove into the lot, music blasting as usual from the open windows of the Tomahawk. My other partner, I thought, feeling like a regular business tycoon.

  I said good-bye to Chick and started walking toward the car. As I drew close enough to see Donny’s face through the windshield, he shook his head slightly and waved me away, with a nod in Chick’s direction.

  I was confused for a minute, then figured out that Donny didn’t want Chick to see me meeting him. It seemed to me Donny was going a little overboard with the secrecy thing, but I busied myself near my bike, fiddling with the shift knob, until Chick drove away.

  Jeff showed up then, and Donny gave us two more envelopes to deliver. I was surprised that they looked pretty much like the ones from the day before. Were we going to deliver only mail? Anticipating the possibility of carrying something larger, such as groceries, I had dug my old basket out of the garage and put it on the handlebars of my bike. It looked as if I wasn’t going to need it, at least not today.

  My delivery was pretty close by, up a dirt road off the Moshup Trail. “This won’t take long,” I said to Jeff. “We’ll have time to fly the plane when we’re done.”

  “Mine will take a little longer, so I’ll call you when I get home.”

  “Great. Let’s go.”

  We raced each other up to where I had to turn off and Jeff kept going straight. Everything went pretty much as it had the day before, except this time it was a teenage guy who came to the door and took the envelope.

  I pedaled as fast as I could back to Donny’s to collect my money. As he handed me three fives, I caught a glimpse of a lot of other bills. “Tomorrow I’ll meet you at the beach parking lot on the circle,” he said.

  “How come?” I asked.

  “Just a precaution. Somebody might get wise to us if we keep meeting at the same place,” Donny said casually.

  I thought about how he hadn’t wanted Chick to see us together that afternoon. “Okay,” I said. Donny was making such a big deal about keeping our business secret. Maybe he was simply enjoying acting like a spy in a movie or something. I left, eager to meet Jeff and fly the plane.

  When I got home, I called Mom at work. “Is it okay if I go to Philbin Beach with Jeff to fly his new plane?”

  “What about dinner?”

  “Could we eat a little later than usual? Like seven?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “Great.
Thanks. Hey, guess what? I have tomorrow off and then Chick wants me to work for the next three days.”

  “That’s wonderful, Ben.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “Jeff and I might even be able to get a boat before the end of the summer.”

  “That would take an awful lot of money.” I could hear the doubt in her voice.

  “If I keep getting big tips, who knows?” I said in a deliberate attempt to get Mom thinking I was making more than I really was working for Chick. I was a little surprised by how easy it was to lie to her, now that I’d gotten started.

  Again that uneasy feeling squiggled through me, but I tried to ignore it. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, really. As Donny said, I just had to keep quiet so nobody could steal our business.

  Mom laughed. “Maybe I should quit here and work charters, too, Mr. Moneybags.”

  As soon as Mom and I hung up, Jeff called, and we agreed to meet at the entrance to Philbin Beach. After hiding our bikes in a tangle of beach plums, we began walking up the beach past our secret cave in the clay cliffs toward a wide, open spot where we could launch the plane.

  We neared the rocky point of Devil’s Bridge, got the plane, the battery, and fuel ready, and were about to start to crank ’er up when something caught my eye.

  “Look!” I said, pointing. A group of gulls was hovering excitedly over the water, their shrill, raucous cries making a racket that carried over the boom of the surf. Jeff and I had fished together enough times that I didn’t have to say any more. When birds acted like that, it meant there was food around. Often, it meant that fish were feeding right under them, and they were hoping for scraps. Even though we didn’t have rods with us, we had to take a look.

  We both shielded our eyes from the sun, trying to catch a glimpse of a fin or tail beneath the screeching flock.

  “There can’t be fish there,” I said after a minute. “The water’s not deep enough.”

  “But there’s something,” said Jeff. “You see it?”

  “Yeah,” I said, squinting even harder. “Right near that big rock.”