A Corpse at the Cove
Page 14
We sat in silence for a moment, the trees lining the road whirring by in a wall of green, dust rising up in a cloud behind us.
“None of that explains a motive,” Mason said.
He was right. Mrs. Smith positively identified that Jude had the same boat as the one Theodore was likely planning to buy, and the mermaid placed Jude’s boat at the location where the body was discovered, but none of that explained what could have driven him to murder.
“Maybe he didn’t do it,” I said, doubt seeping into my mind. “Maybe there is another explanation.”
“Maybe,” Mason said hopefully, though I felt the car’s speed increase ever so slightly. “The only thing we can do is get to the Marina and make sure Page is okay.”
Page. She’d left on foot—no car, no cell phone. We only knew where she was because of Mrs. Smith, but she could have left the Marina by now. She could be anywhere on the island. Wherever she was, I only hoped Jude hadn’t found her yet.
Reading my mind, Mason cleared his throat and asked, “Do you think Page recognized Jude’s boat in the ad?”
“She had to have recognized it. That’s the only thing that explains why she left so quickly,” I said.
There was a pause. “Why didn’t she say something?” he asked.
This question had been tugging at my thoughts since we left the house. Why wouldn’t Page have said that the boat in the ad was Jude’s? “I think,” I said, the theory still formulating, “she was feeling the way we are now, only one million times worse. She liked Jude, and she didn’t want to think he could be capable of murder.”
Jude had been her first date since her divorce. He paid her special attention, made her feel pretty and desired. He gave her the confidence she had lost after sixteen years married to a man who preferred being out on the golf course and working in his shop to spending time with her. Of course she’d want to try and clear his name before mentioning it to anyone. She’d want to be absolutely certain before she ruined any chance they had at a real relationship.
“Let’s hope we’re all wrong, and he didn’t do it,” Mason said. “We’ve been wrong before. This wouldn’t be a first.”
I nodded. “You’re right. There’s a chance we’re wrong.”
The words felt hollow, and rang untrue in my ears. I didn’t believe any of it for a second, but if I wanted to hold it together and do my best to protect Page, I had to believe it.
Cars filled the Marina parking lot, and people were crossing the street in front of us, lugging kayaks and inner tubes.
Mason pounded once on the steering wheel. “Do these people honestly have nothing better to do on a weekday afternoon?”
Most of the pedestrians were retired fisherman and young families on the island for a beach vacation, so they didn’t have anything better to do, but anxiety was rolling off Mason in waves, so I decided not to say anything. I was too nervous to speak, anyway. From the moment the Marina had come into view, I’d been wordlessly scanning the roads and sidewalks, looking for any sign of Page. Jude had left at least fifteen minutes before us, so he had a good head start. If he was the murderer, he would certainly be after Page. He knew she’d seen the boat and heard our theory. If he was even slightly cunning, which I suspected he was, he would want to silence her before she could spill his secret. And as much as I still wanted to believe Jude liked Page, I had to face the harsh reality, which was that Jude had (most likely) killed before, and he would not hesitate to do it again.
We pulled out of the parking lot and onto the main road only to find it clogged with cars.
“What is with the traffic today?” Mason cried. “This place is a madhouse.”
I followed the line of cars and saw a large banner hanging from the Marina.
BOAT SHOW TODAY 12-6
I pointed it out to Mason, and he groaned.
Not a single car was moving, and when Mason shifted into park, my decision was made. I unbuckled my seatbelt and leaned across the console. Mason turned to me, and before he even realized what was happening, I kissed him, thanked him for the ride, and jumped out of the car.
“Be careful,” he called.
Despite everything, I smiled to myself. I was dating a man who told me to be careful as I ran down the road to confront a potential murderer. If he wasn’t the perfect man for me, then I had no idea who was.
Even through thick clouds, the Texas heat beat down on the asphalt road, and I could feel it radiating through my thin slip-on shoes. A few rowdy men honked at me as I ran along the road, their obnoxiously loud truck horns making me jump, but I did my best to ignore them.
As I neared the Marina, I saw what had caused the back-up. A large truck hauling a boat had jackknifed across the road, blocking traffic in both directions. The driver was halfway hanging out of the driver’s side window, his face red and beaded with sweat, while his wife waved her arms frantically to try and direct him out of the tight spot. Nearby cars honked at the couple, as if that was even remotely helpful. I tossed the wife a sympathy smile as I ran by, but I was secretly hoping they stayed stuck for a while. As long as the road was blocked, no one could get in or out. I could only hope Jude was stuck in the traffic, as well.
People were lined up outside the Marina’s main office, and the line was so long it ran out the door and around the back of the building. Several people yelled at me as I cut through the line, but I ignored them. It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the gloom inside the office. Matthew had all of the shades drawn. The room was stagnant and warm. The smell of sweat and sand filled the small space.
I ran to the desk and cut in front of a burly woman wearing a t-shirt with a picture of a howling wolf on it. She was complaining that she should receive a refund on the inner tube she rented because it inexplicably popped while her son was riding it. Her son, equally burly and no more than ten-years-old, had a pocket knife clipped to the elastic waistband of his swimming trunks. Mystery solved.
“Watch it, lady,” she said, raising her voice as I moved in front of her, but stepping back to let me through. She was the epitome of all bark, no bite.
Matthew looked haggard. Dark semi-circles were painted under his eyes in thick strokes, and he had gone so slack-jawed that I began to wonder whether I shouldn’t look for a lobotomy scar.
“Have you seen my sister?” I asked, the words tumbling out of my mouth, tripping over one another.
Matthew started as if he had been sleeping with his eyes open, and then blinked once, focusing on my face. His eyes went wide. “Oh, thank God,” he said, reaching across the laminate desk to grab my arm. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with Blaire all day.”
Hope swelled in my chest. Did he know something about Page that he’d been trying to alert us to? Had he seen her?
“She won’t take my calls. I know she’s mad at me, but I need to explain,” he said.
His words were like a needle to the hope filled balloon in my chest. Pop.
“Matthew, I’m not here to help you get Blaire back. I need to know if you’ve seen my sister.”
He released my arm and shook his head, and his forehead furrowed in concern. “I saw her walk by when I went to close the blinds earlier, but I haven’t seen her since.”
It was my turn to grab his arm. I pulled him across the desk towards me and looked directly into his eyes. “Was she by herself or was she with someone?”
Matthew had been happy to see me, but I could see that emotion waning rather quickly. “Alone, headed for the docks.”
“Where does Jude Lawton keep his boat?” I asked.
“Who?”
I didn’t have time for this. I walked around the desk, ignoring Matthew’s protests, and found a map of the docks pinned to a bulletin board hanging on the wall, each tiny rectangle along the dock labeled with a number and a letter, but no names. I moved to the file cabinet under the desk and pulled open the drawer I’d seen Matthew open a few hours before when I rented the boat I’d taken to the cave. The file folde
rs were alphabetical, and I flipped to the ‘L’ file. Lawton was printed in big block letters on the third form.
“You can’t look through the files,” Matthew said as I pulled Jude’s file. “No one is supposed to be behind the desk.”
“Should we call someone?” the woman in the wolf shirt asked. “This can’t be legal.”
I tuned all of them out as I skimmed Jude’s file. He had been docking his boat on the island for almost six months, but according to the file, he was two months behind on his fees. I filed that information away in the back of my mind, and scanned the page for his dock number. Written in tiny scrawl in the top corner was ‘6M’. Grabbing the map and Jude’s file, I bolted around the desk, dodging Matthew’s half-hearted attempt to stop me from stealing a customer’s file, and ducked outside.
The gray sky had finally opened up in a heavy mist, and the boat show goers and regular Marina visitors were taking refuge under the small amount of protection provided by the Marina’s awning and the surrounding trees. I, on the other hand, darted into the wet road and sprinted for the docks. According to the map, 6M was at the end of one of the furthest docks. As I ran, the mist steadily turning to rain and clouding my vision, I prayed Page was still at the Marina. More than that, I prayed Jude hadn’t found her yet.
I tucked the papers against my chest as the rain pounded down around me. People were running past me headed towards the Marina, inner tubes and body boards held above their heads to protect them from the rain. Several of them shot me confused looks as I squinted into the storm, searching for Jude’s boat.
By the time I made it to the end of dock 6, it was clear which boat was Jude’s. It was the only boat missing from the dock. I ran to the empty space, and triple checked the map to be certain I’d gone to the right dock. I had. Page was gone.
I pulled out my phone to call her before I remembered she didn’t take her cell phone with her when she left. Page was gone. And so was Jude’s boat.
A hand landed on my shoulder and I screamed, turning and swinging with my free arm at whoever had grabbed me.
“Whoa, sorry. It’s me. It’s me,” Mason said, raising his arms in surrender.
“Page is gone,” I said, rain freely pouring down my face now.
“I know,” Mason said.
I shielded my eyes with my hand, and tilted my head to the side. “What do you mean? How?”
“I asked some of the guys at the Marina if they’d seen your sister or Jude. They said they saw them leaving together fifteen minutes ago. Jude had his boat keys with him.”
“They’re out on the water?” I asked, turning towards the bay. Visibility was almost non-existent and the tide would be coming in any second. Following them would be incredibly dangerous.
“I got a boat for us,” Mason said. “We can follow them.”
Almost as a warning from Mother Nature, a strong wind roared through the bay, rocking the boats docked at the Marina.
“I can’t ask you to go out there and risk your life for me,” I said. “I’ll go.”
Mason looked at me as if I’d just told him I was planning to chase my sister on the back of a narwhal. He grabbed my hand and pulled me after him. “The boat is this way.”
Clearly, there would be no arguing with him on this point. Despite the anxiety of not knowing if Page was safe and growing steadily colder and wetter, my heart swelled. Once again, Mason was putting himself in harm’s way to protect me and my family.
Even though I’d told Mason he didn’t need to go out on the water with me, I was immeasurably glad he’d decided to come. The rental boat he acquired was in considerably better shape than the one I’d had earlier in the day, but it was still small, and Mason knew how to navigate it around the swells to avoid a good deal of jostling.
“Where are we headed?” he asked.
I pointed in the general direction of the cave and told him which landmarks to look out for. He nodded, and then gave all of his attention to steering the small boat into the increasingly choppy waters.
“How did you manage to rent a boat?” I asked. Not only had the line outside the Marina been considerable, but the Marina had a policy about renting boats during a storm.
Mason cast a nervous glance back to me and then to the floor of the boat. “I kind of went behind the desk and stole a key.”
I couldn’t help it, I burst out laughing, throwing my head back and letting my laughter join the roar of the storm. Mason raised his eyebrows at me, no doubt thinking I’d finally lost it.
“I dug around behind the desk and found where Jude Lawton kept his boat,” I explained. “After this, we will probably be banned from the Marina for life.”
Mason smiled at me. “We are like a regular Bonnie and Clyde.”
“A proper criminal couple,” I added.
We smiled at one another, enjoying the sweet moment in the midst of our crazy reality. As my smile began to fade from my lips, I saw the outline of the cave begin to break through the mist.
CHAPTER 19
“There it is,” I shouted, pointing through the rain towards the shore. The cave was a large, dark bullseye in the storm. A beacon helping us find our way. I could only hope my sister wasn’t lying inside it the way Theodore had.
Mason followed my finger and nodded, doing his best to head straight for the shore despite the waves continuously knocking us off course.
As we neared the shore, we could see the small wooden dock jutting out into the water with a boat tossing next to it.
“Is that Jude’s boat?” Mason asked.
I squinted away the water, but it was impossible to tell. Not only did I have a rather mediocre knowledge of boats, but I was fairly certain the rain had washed out one of my contacts. “It has to be,” I said. “Who else would be out in this storm?”
Mason’s shirt and jeans were thoroughly drenched, his dark hair plastered across his forehead, and I could tell by the tense look on his face that he agreed with me. “What do we do when we reach shore?”
I’d been thinking the same thing, but I still had no plan. We’d run out of the house so quickly that we hadn’t thought to grab any weapons. I searched the bottom of the boat and found a broken fishing pole, some rope, and an empty metal tackle box. “I guess we’ll figure that out when we get there,” I said.
We pulled up to the dock opposite Jude’s boat and I was scrambling out of our boat and onto the wood before Mason could even kill the engine. Jude’s boat was empty, which was a relief. Images of Page tied up in the bottom of it had filled my mind the entire time we were crossing the bay. However, not seeing her created an entirely new anxiety. Where had Jude taken her?
Mason threw a rope around the dock and secured our rental before following me out and onto the sand.
“We have to be careful,” Mason said. “If they’re nearby, they definitely heard us arrive. I should have killed the engine further out so we could have snuck up on them.”
“It’s fine, Mason. If you had killed the engine, I would have jumped out and swam,” I admitted. “I needed to get here as soon as possible.”
The sand was thick and wet like cement, and it tried to suck my shoes off with every step. I looked behind me and watched as our footprints filled in with water, the sand clamoring to fill the holes as quickly as possible. If Jude and Page had walked through here, it would be hard to tell now.
“Do you see anything?” Mason asked.
I shook my head. “The rain is erasing their tracks.”
A scream broke through the storm, a high-pitched whine amidst the low rumbles of thunder, and the hair on my arms stood up.
“Page!” I screamed back, twisting my head from side to side, looking up and down the beach. I’d recognized her voice, but I couldn’t pinpoint where it had come from.
I sprinted straight ahead towards the cave, throwing caution to the wayside. Mason shouted after me, and then I heard his heavy breathing as he followed me.
The ground levelled out as I ran, the sand
growing thinner until I was standing on a large stone surface at the mouth of the cave. Even in the gloom brought on by the dark storm clouds, I could see the back wall of the cave. It looked much as it had a few hours earlier, only much wetter. Rain had drifted in on the wind, leaving muddy puddles in the low spots of the cave floor.
“Page!” I screamed again, though it was clear she wasn’t in the cave.
“I couldn’t tell where the scream came from,” Mason said. “Are you sure it’s Page?”
“Positive,” I said, nodding my head emphatically, though I wished more than anything there could be even a shred of doubt. I didn’t want to believe my sister was in serious danger. As I turned to leave the cave, a glimmer caught my eye. I dropped to my knees and crawled towards the edge of the cave. Lying half submerged in a puddle was the mermaid.
I picked it up and held it out to Mason, my eyes wide. “Page had this when she left the house today.”
Mason tightened his lips into a straight line just as another scream crashed around us. Inside the cave, the noise sounded impossibly far away.
I groaned in frustration, throwing the mermaid at the cave wall, where it hit with a sickening metal crunch and bounced to the floor.
Mason grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the relative safety of the cave and back onto the sand. The storm was raging in full force—lightning flashing across the sky in a near-continuous light show, thunder rumbling low and loud like a drumroll.
He let go of my hand long enough to clench and unclench his fists, then he turned to me, grabbing me by the shoulders. “I’m going to sound like the guy who plays Body #1 in a horror movie, but we have to split up.”
I bit my lip and glanced around, hoping to see a large arrow pointing to where Page was being held. When that failed to materialize, I nodded in agreement. “You head east, I’ll head west. Shout if you find something. If neither of us finds anything,” I paused, praying that wouldn’t be the case. I had to find Page. Failure was not an option. I took a deep breath. “If neither of us find anything, we meet on the back side of the island and then walk back here together, so we can go to the mainland and get the police.”