Nail Biter

by Sarah Graves

  I steered the talk back to recent events. “And Marge Cathcart's the intended victim of your scam this time? How'd you pick her, a computer-dating thing?”

  In my opinion, meeting up with some stranger you found on the Internet is equivalent to drawing a dotted line on your throat, with a little legend alongside it that reads “cut here.”

  But people do it all the time. “No, I advertised in a local shopping news,” Greg replied matter-of-factly. “You get a lot of replies from those, and you can pick and choose better than if you have to do it by e-mail.”

  He pushed through a tangle of wild raspberry canes, keeping his hands high to avoid being scratched. “Marge,” he added, “had both of the qualities I was looking for: gullible and rich.”

  At my expression he added, “Not filthy rich. Too much money, people tend to have professional advisors.”

  Correct; advisors like I'd been. If any of my clients had come in with a story about someone like Greg, I'd have popped the top on my industrial-sized spray can of Raid Financial-Parasite Killer.

  “But her husband left her plenty comfortable enough when he died,” Brand finished. “I figured I'd check her out some more at this seminar, see if she's marriage material. After all, Wanda's not going to be around home forever. Pretty soon she'll go off to school, or . . .”

  He eyed me, I supposed to see how I was taking this; I kept my face carefully blank and my fists, both of which still wanted badly to pummel him, stuffed in my pockets.

  “And if not marriage,” he went on when I didn't explode, “then maybe just special friends. It's surprising how much money you can get out of someone like that once she really trusts you.”

  Not to me it wasn't. A new thought struck me. “How'd Jenna Durrell get involved?”

  He made a rude noise. “I wish she weren't. Especially now, the nosy . . .”

  Shorebirds patrolled the beach stones, their heads cocking this way and that as they scanned the crannies for tasty morsels at the edge of the advancing water.

  “Because she's an ex-cop?” I asked as our feet hit sand. The outgoing tide had left parallel lines of foam, now dried to faint white tracery.

  “No,” he replied vehemently. “Because she's an ex-cop who's decided to become an investigative reporter, for God's sake, and she's got a little notebook.”

  We stepped out to the rocks, gleaming wet now. “When she answered the ad I knew right away there was something wrong about her,” he told me.

  Too bad Marge hadn't known the same about him. Ahead, thick green ribbons of seaweed stretched, studded with the picked-over shells of crabs that the seabirds had made meals of.

  “Stay out of the weeds,” I advised him, stepping carefully through the slippery stuff onto a strip of glistening, pea-sized pebbles, then glancing back over my shoulder at him.

  He just stood there studying the water. A few small islands were already in the process of being swallowed by the tide. “Wow, it really does rise fast, doesn't it?”

  “Billions and billions of gallons,” I intoned, thinking that what he'd revealed about Jenna solved one mystery, anyway. Join a group, receive secret knowledge, go on a mystical retreat . . . none of that fit the brisk, competent image I'd formed of her.

  “You checked background on Jenna?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Ex-cop, worked undercover, drug stuff and so on. When she started writing she put up a Web site with a bio.”

  He slipped, then caught himself before he could fall. “Even before she quit being a cop she had a few little things published and they were all exposés—crooked car repair, pyramid schemes, all stuff like that.”

  And he hadn't wanted to turn her away in case rejection made her feel even nosier, probably.

  “So tell me,” he finished, “if I'd worked at it, could I have gotten any more unlucky?”

  Nope. “And you're letting me in on all this because . . . ?” I knew what I thought; I wanted to hear what he had to say about it.

  “Because any minute now the cops are going to connect me and Eugene Dibble,” Brand answered grimly. “It's only a matter of time, and when that happens . . .”

  Right again. He knew as well as I did that dead guys and the live guys who used to be their crime colleagues go together like cookies and cream in the whodunnit department.

  And as I'd suspected, he was telling me about it in hopes he could use me somehow. “You ever do any time together?” I asked. “You and Dibble?”

  Pushed up onto a mound of seaweed by the last high water, the boat sat a couple of hundred feet away. I hoped the oars and life vests were still in her.

  “Yeah.” He clambered ahead of me toward the vessel. “Went up on fraud charges, did the bit in Springfield, Massachusetts. Six months.”

  Which meant that they could be linked in the computers as known associates. “Well, Greg, I'd have to say you've got yourself a serious problem.”

  It wasn't even high tide yet and the boat's keel was already beginning to float. We'd gotten here just in time.

  And the vests and oars were still in her. “Here,” I said, reaching in and tossing him the larger vest. “You tighten it by yanking on the straps across your . . .”

  But he'd already pulled it on. “I've done a lot of this,” he said assuredly, sliding the boat toward deeper water.

  He swung a long leg over the side to put one foot amidships, then used both hands to steady the little vessel. “Hop in,” he invited.

  So I did, as he pushed smoothly off with the other leg and swung it in, too, all in one practiced motion and without scraping the boat's bottom. Next he chucked the oars into the oarlocks while I sat facing him in the bow; moments later we were away.

  “I didn't mean to make you do all the work,” I called as he hauled on the oars again.

  “Don't worry about it,” he responded. “Once we get out in the current it'll be a piece of cake. Sail us home, won't even have to . . . Whoa!”

  Which was when those smiling waves showed their sharp teeth. At the center of the channel the water churned with the force of the tide pouring in full bore; he struggled for control, then got it and grinned happily.

  “I used to do this all the time with an old lady in Rhode Island,” he shouted over the wind. “Rich as sin. I was trying to get her to give me power of . . .”

  Attorney, he meant to finish, but instead the boat's bow hit the current again a hair sooner than he'd expected and swerved whip-crackingly into it.

  “Urk,” I said, unnerved. The sudden change of course flung me half over the gunwale even though I was clinging to it with both hands, struggling to stay upright.

  “Hang on!” Brand called out unnecessarily, spray hurling into his face as he pulled hard first on one oar and then on the other. Then as water slammed the side of the boat lurchingly, “Lean!” he shouted. “Lean the other way!”

  The bow flew up; behind Brand's desperately rowing figure the transom fell low and to the left, dipping suddenly under the green water. I threw my weight to the right, feeling air time and the conflicting forces of tide and current melding murderously around me.

  My only grip on the boat was through my hands, still fastened to the rail in the clench of imminent death. The water rose greenly toward me, smelling of whatever is kept way down at the very bottom in Davy Jones's locker; they'll have to cut my hands off this boat when they find me, I thought.

  If they ever did. If our bodies didn't get tangled in all the seaweed and just hang there, feasted upon by marine life until our skeletons fell apart and drifted bone by bone to the rocks below. . . .

  The boat fell suddenly as if dropped from the sky, its flat bottom slapping the water with a smack! My butt slammed the hard wooden seat with similar force as we finished coming around, the jolt hurtling up through my spine. Then aligning itself with the powerful current once more, the boat shot forward, nearly tumbling me back out over the bow again.

  But not quite. The boat righted, settled itself.

  “Hah!” Bran
d shouted out exultantly, his dark hair plastered to his forehead by the spray and his eyes alight.

  “Oh, that was a close one!” he laughed, lifting the oars.

  Which was when I understood why he was a con man. Like most of them, he was hooked on risk-taking behaviors. This being a condition with which I, having survived and thrived in the money business, was also reasonably familiar. “Yeah,” I gasped when I could breathe again. “Too close.”

  But after listening to his story I'd gotten the feeling that this time, Greg Brand had grabbed a little more gusto than he could comfortably handle. And when we got back to the cove and pulled the boat up to high ground where the tide couldn't reach it, I said so.

  “You should call the state cops, tell them what you told me, and then cooperate in any way possible,” I advised seriously.

  The answering look on his face was that of a kid being urged to try broccoli just one more time. It was almost enough to make me feel sorry for him.

  Almost. “I know it's not an attractive prospect,” I conceded. “But d'you really want them to have to come to you?”

  We walked up toward the rental house. “Yeah, I guess you're right,” he replied discouragedly. “I just thought . . .”

  Sure; he just thought that he was going to become my new best friend and then I'd be able to put in a good word for him with Bob Arnold or even with the state guys, me being a local and all. But like they say, my mother didn't raise any stupid kids.

  Actually, she didn't raise any kids at all. She died before she could, but that's another story.

  “Where are they all, anyway?” I asked Greg, meaning the other tenants. The house still radiated emptiness and the white van hadn't returned.

  “Out searching for Wanda.” His tone conveyed how useless he thought this was, and how little he cared. But even as he spoke the white van pulled into the driveway, and the three women of the ill-fated group—Jenna Durrell, Hetty Bonham, and Marge Cathcart—got out.

  Wanda wasn't with them. Marge looked devastated, pale and shaky as if all the blood had been let out of her; it occurred to me that if this went on much longer she would need a doctor.

  “Have you heard something, have you found her?” she babbled as soon as she saw me.

  I shot Greg Brand a glare that should've shriveled him in his tracks; bottom line, this was all his fault. But he didn't seem to notice. “No,” I told Marge gently. “Not yet.”

  Her hair was as messy as a tight, graying permanent wave can ever be, her housedress-and-cardigan costume hung disheveled from her slumped shoulders, and her eyes were red with weeping.

  “And since it's been thirty-six hours or so now,” I began, “I think you ought to—”

  “We talked to the state cops again when we were in town,” Jenna put in briskly. “They were at the Eastport police station.”

  Heavying out on Bob Arnold, probably; I imagined the chief's delight at the visit.

  “I told Marge it was about time we should check in with them again,” Jenna went on. “But there was no news about Wanda. That's how we got delayed,” she added, glancing at her wristwatch. “Sorry.”

  “That's okay,” I said. “You're here now. I'm going to do a couple of the repairs you asked for the other night, but I also want to see Wanda's room. And,” I told Marge, “I've got a few questions for you.”

  In response she nodded despairingly at me, waited while I got the toolbox, then tottered beside me up the front walk and into the house.

  Inside, Marge excused herself for a moment. I took the opportunity to corner Jenna, who was in the kitchen making coffee.

  “So have you done any research on the rest of them?” I asked her, hefting the toolbox onto the counter. “I mean besides Gregory Brand?”

  She shot a knowing look at me. “So he made me for a snoop, huh?”

  “Before you even got here.” The faucet dripped steadily; opening the toolbox, I hoped this job wouldn't require the washer I'd already used at Luanne Moretti's.

  “Figures,” Jenna said darkly. “Clever little shit, our Mr. Brand.” She pulled the kitchen's swinging door closed.

  Even with the electricity back on, the little house was as gloomy and chilly as ever, made even less inviting by the clutter of loose-leaf folders and cheaply reproduced booklets all over every flat surface.

  Your Hidden Powers, one cover read; Behold Your Magic, read another. I glanced around for the one called Stick Your Finger Down Your Throat, but couldn't find it.

  “I guess the housework doesn't get done by magic, either,” I observed as the coffeemaker began burbling.

  Neatened up, the place was at least a shelter. But now with dishes in the sink, emptied food packages overflowing the trash, and dirty cups littering the counters, it was becoming a hovel.

  I moved some of the dishes aside, turned the water off under the sink, and started on the repair.

  “Marge was in a hurry to get going this morning,” Jenna explained, but not with a lot of concern. “And I'm sorry but I'm not doing maid duty for this bunch.”

  She took the last two clean cups from the cabinet, offered me one. I shook my head, busy with the faucet handle screws. At least they weren't rusted.

  “You didn't answer my question,” I pointed out. Another day, another faucet, but it is a rule of old-house fix-up that no two jobs are ever quite the same. Even if they seem that way at the start, they won't be when you finish.

  For instance, this time both handles were leaking. Jenna poured coffee for herself. “Did I check up on all of them? Yeah, sure I did,” she said. Then, “Have you seen the paper yet?”

  She pushed the morning's issue of the Bangor Daily News across the counter at me. Missing Girl Search Continues, read one headline. Downeast Death Investigated, read another.

  “It says they got a .38 slug out of Dibble's head,” Jenna said, waving at the second story. “But that they won't be able to do much with it.”

  I turned inquiringly to her. “It's not like on TV, you know,” she explained, “where the coroner gets a pristine bullet out with a forceps, ten minutes later they know the gun and who it's registered to.”

  I did know, actually. In the operating room, Victor had evicted lots of bullets from the unfortunate skulls in which they'd been lodged. Half the time he'd had to dig them out in pieces; many of the others were so badly misshapen someone might as well have taken a hammer to them.

  “Anyway, Hetty's a piece of work, too,” Jenna continued. “Plenty of convictions, for fraud, mostly. What d'you want to bet they were really Greg's idea but he let her carry the load?”

  I nodded, pushing the paper away. The headline story about the missing girl said a group of local mothers were putting flyers together for store windows and bulletin boards, and that an Amber Alert had been issued.

  But there was nothing else in there I didn't already know. I fished around in the packet of faucet washers; two of them fit, but one of the screws I'd removed was stripped. I searched the toolbox, hoping there was a matching one in it.

  “Any drug problems, either one of them?” I asked Jenna.

  “Not that I could find out, which means probably not.”

  She drank some coffee. “Hetty was in California for a while, acting in movies. X-rated ones, Greg's listed as the producer. Which I figure must mean the bankroll.”

  I glanced queryingly at her. “He's this black-sheep kind of guy,” she explained, “rich family. In real estate development out West.”

  So much for good old Greg looking out for his abuse-scarred stepsister. Or whatever she really was; I'd had a feeling there was more to that story, too. Then a puzzle piece clicked into place in my head, just as the toolbox yielded up a pair of possibles in the faucet-screw department.

  I held the screws up alongside the stripped one. “That Brand family, huh?” The smaller screw looked better for the job. “Interesting. I hadn't made the connection.”

  But now I did. In the old days when I'd navigated big money the way Greg B
rand had just piloted my rowboat through wild water, Brands International's head money guy was in the news for raiding the Brand family trust funds, with special emphasis on some that were really just overgrown piggy banks.

  But Brand kids got lawyers pretty much the way other kids got driver's licenses, the minute they turned sixteen. The lawyers let it be known that the kids didn't want to own ranch land in Utah or silver mines in Colorado; they wanted the cash.

  Got it, too, via some tactics that would've done their old man proud if the fallout from the scandal—it turned out that the trust-fund raider wasn't exactly working alone—hadn't ended up giving him the stroke that killed him.

  Talk about your basic evil empire. “To be a black sheep in the Brand family,” I remarked, “you'd need to be Jack the Ripper at least. Anything less, they'd figure it's just business as usual.”

  I dropped the screw in, tightened it; so far, so fine. “Don't you want to know,” Jenna asked, “why the rich kid turned into a rip-off artist?”

  What the heck, she'd done all that research work. “Sure.”

  “Greg and old man Brand had a falling-out. Join the business or get cut off. It's all been written about, anyone can find it,” she added. “I guess Greg didn't like wearing a three-piece suit, or something.”

  Yeah, or something. Then a different thought hit me. “Listen, Jenna, about the boat.”

  As I explained what had happened she bit her lip, looking embarrassed. “I'm so sorry, I had no idea that rope wasn't—”

  I cut her off. “No, that's okay, the line was my problem. I got it back, anyway.”

  “You did?” Relief brightened her face. “Oh, that's—”

  “But I need you to be sure you wear the life vest if you take it out again, okay? Because really, the water is very . . .”

  That much Greg Brand had been right about. Jenna was already nodding agreement.

  “You're right,” she admitted. “I should've worn it. And you know, I think I won't be taking your boat out anymore anyway. They've got some rentals down at Quoddy Marine, I saw when we were in town. I might just try paddling around in the boat basin. Get my sea legs,” she added a little shamefacedly.