SW01 - The Edge of Nowhere

by Elizabeth George

  Becca didn’t think that having the kids help was what Debbie had in mind, and she knew they would probably just get in her way. So instead of accepting Chloe’s offer, she said, “Here’s what you can do to help. Chloe, we’ll get the sheets and towels and you take them to the laundry room. Josh, you get the cleaning cart and wheel it over to the twelve-sixteen. I’ll meet you there and—”

  They’d come around the corner of the motel. Becca stopped in her tracks and pulled the kids quickly back out of sight. The undersheriff’s car was just pulling into the Cliff’s parking lot. Laurel, San Diego, and the cell phone, Becca thought. It had finally happened. Jeff Corrie was next, no doubt about it. Her day of reckoning was upon her.

  * * *

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  “New game,” Becca whispered to the kids. “Cops and robbers. Be real quiet.”

  The kids squealed. Chloe covered her mouth and bounced from foot to foot.

  “Here’s how it works,” Becca said. “You go to the office without anyone seeing you.”

  “Even Grammer?”

  “Even Grammer. You get my backpack. It’s just inside the door, okay? You bring it back to me without being seen.”

  “What about room twelve-sixteen?”

  “That’ll come later,” Becca told them.

  “Is there a prize if no one sees us?” Josh whispered.

  “There’s always a prize. But later, not now, okay?”

  “’Kay!”

  Becca watched as they slinked along the porch. Then she faded back out of sight and hoped for their success. Even if the undersheriff beat them into the office to talk to Debbie, there was still a chance that they could get in there and snag the backpack without being seen.

  They managed it. Or at least Josh did because Chloe, he said, was “creating a version. She pretended to fall. We had to do it ’cause Grammer was still on the phone.”

  “Great,” Becca said. “Now you head back and I’ll see you later. After the undersheriff’s gone, okay?”

  “But the undersheriff’s not—”

  “Just go back and don’t mention me to anyone. I’ll be back sooner than you think.”

  This last was a lie, and Becca hoped she’d be forgiven for it eventually. She grabbed Josh and kissed the top of his head. Then she cut through some bushes and emerged on Cascade Street.

  She crossed over and dashed behind a long, shingled building that was the Saratoga Inn. This put her out of sight of Cascade Street, where there was little doubt the undersheriff’s car would come cruising the moment he had finished talking to Debbie, which would also be the exact same moment after he was told about the fourteen-year-old girl who was staying at the Cliff, waiting for her mother to show up.

  Becca hunkered down against a Dumpster at the edge of the inn’s property. She was out of sight of the inn’s windows, and that was how she wanted it because she needed to think.

  She could handle seeing the undersheriff. She could even, perhaps, bluff her way through a real conversation with the man. But if Jeff had reported his wife and daughter as missing and if he’d said in his smooth Jeff Corrie way, “Say, let me e-mail you a picture of them so you know who you’re looking for,” there was still a chance that her looks weren’t changed enough and the undersheriff would recognize her, and she couldn’t risk that.

  Becca hit her fists gently against her forehead, as if this would help her know what to do. She rested her cheek on her knees and she saw the lights of the library go out for the end of the day. Next to the library was the tiny brick city hall, also the location of the police department. So she could hardly stay in her present position because surely the undersheriff would check in with the local police and share her picture and tell them whom to be on the lookout for.

  She got to her feet. She crossed Second Street. She made her way quickly to South Whidbey Commons. If anyone on earth was left to help her, she figured it had to be Seth. She didn’t believe in him completely. She couldn’t believe in him completely. But there was no one else.

  He wasn’t there. She looked around in all of the rooms. She finally had no choice but to ask if anyone knew where he was, and she had luck. It turned out that Seth had scrounged money from everyone there and had gone over to Village Pizzeria for a large one with pepperoni and mushrooms.

  Becca felt the panic of having to go outside again, but she made herself do it. The pizzeria was on First Street, at nearly the highest point of the bluff overlooking the passage. Next to it and behind a picket fence and a hedge, there was a little garden filled with wrought-iron tables where, in the summer, tourists ate their pizzas. Becca waited here anxiously, but when Seth didn’t emerge as soon as she thought he would, she steeled herself and went inside.

  He was just paying. Becca approached, but the noise assailed her. The place was filled with a combination of music, talk, and whispers, and for a moment she fell back a step because it felt like something was clawing at her eyes.

  Seth turned, as if he could feel Becca’s panic. He said, “Hey. Happenin?” as the pizza was handed over to him.

  She said, “You’ve got to . . . Seth, I need help . . . I don’t have anyone—”

  He nodded at the door and said, “Outside.”

  “I can’t! They might see!”

  “What’s going on? Alien invasion? Come on,” and he led her out the door but not onto the sidewalk. He went into the little garden at the pizzeria’s side and Becca told him the undersheriff was at the motel.

  He said, “So?” and a single whisper broke through Becca’s panic. Paranoid, it claimed.

  “You don’t understand.” She babbled about the undersheriff’s appearance at the school, about the questions he’d been asking, about the cell phone, about tracing the cell phone, about her mother’s name coming up and the fact that the undersheriff now knew it. She said, “They’ve probably talked to my stepfather by now. They have to have talked to him. I can’t go back to the motel because if the sheriff sees me and my disguise isn’t good enough and he tells my stepfather . . . The undersheriff’s going to lead him right to me, Seth. He’ll kill me then. Do you get it? He’ll kill me.”

  “What the heck . . . ?” Seth looked at her strangely. She could hardly blame him. The more she told him, the more insane the story sounded. He said, “Want to tell me what’s really going on?” and all that she could hear beyond that was careful, careful accompanying this. He trusted her about as much as she trusted him, and she didn’t know what to do about this.

  She said, “I can’t. Seth, please. Please. I don’t know anyone else who can—”

  “Okay, okay.” Seth shifted his weight as Becca watched over his shoulder for the lights of the undersheriff’s car to come cruising along First Street. He finally said, “You wait here. I got to take this back over to the commons. You hungry? Here. Have a piece of the pizza. Go ahead. No problem. It’ll be my piece.”

  Becca took it although her hands were shaking. She could hardly hold the pizza, and lifting it to her mouth was something of a joke. Seth closed the box and told her to sit in one of the wrought-iron chairs at the far end of the garden. He said no one would see her there, and this was the truth for it was shrouded in shadow.

  When he was gone, Becca made her way to the far end of the garden. From here, the noise from the pizzeria was muted. She could hear the sound of water in the passage slapping against the shore at the bottom of the bluff. But aside from that, it was only a car passing that she heard, and she couldn’t tell if it was the undersheriff because behind the shrubbery at the garden’s edge, she could see nothing.

  She thought about Jeff Corrie and what it would mean if he showed up. He’d be able to grab her, and what could she do to stop that? He wasn’t her father, but she didn’t even know who her father was. All he had to do was to produce the marriage certificate to prove he was married to Becca’s mother. He’d think ahead the moment he got the phone call from the undersheriff. He’d lay his plans. He was good at that, and she knew he had
a plan for what to do with Becca when he found her. And how was she supposed to prevent this: tell the sheriff that she’d read her stepfather’s mind and knew he was a murderer? What a great idea.

  “Okay.”

  Becca jumped. Seth had come into the garden and she hadn’t heard him.

  He said, “Come with me. I know a place you can stay. You’ll have to be careful and keep out of sight, but if you do that, you’ll be okay” and he headed back toward the street.

  Becca whispered fiercely, “I can’t go back out there!”

  “We won’t be on the street for long. It’ll be all right.”

  She felt the sting of frightened tears. “Seth, I can’t.”

  He said patiently, “Becca . . .” and then he seemed to reconsider because he altered to, “Okay. There’s another way, but it’s not easy and there’s gonna be blackberry bushes if we miss the jump. You okay with that?”

  “Anything. Just not the street.”

  He led her back to the pizzeria, but rather than turn toward its front door, he turned toward the bluff. There at the end of the building, a picket fence blocked the entrance to a bed and breakfast built into the bluff below the pizzeria. Here, bedrooms opened off a balcony that gave them each a view of the water. Seth climbed over the picket fence to stand on the balcony and at first Becca thought, despite his words about a jump, that he intended to break into a room as a hideout. But he motioned her to follow him over and once she’d joined him, he took her to the balcony’s edge and said, “That’s where we’re going,” and she saw he meant that they were going to drop from the balcony into the bushes below.

  These grew wildly everywhere, holding back erosion. They comprised blackberry brambles with thorns the size of a child’s thumb, ivy, salal, ferns, and ocean spray. The plan, Seth told her in a whisper, was to lower themselves from the balcony as far as they could and then make the drop into the bushes. With luck, he explained, they’d hit ocean spray and not land in the middle of the blackberry brambles.

  At the bottom of the bluff lay Seawall Park, a grassy walkway that ran most of the length of First Street high above it. Lights along it made it accessible at night, but few people used the place after dark when summer ended, and there was not a soul in Seawall Park now.

  “Ready?” Seth asked her.

  Becca licked her lips. She said, “Okay,” and she watched him slide between the top and middle of the balcony’s rails. He held on to one of the posts and lowered himself. When he’d gone as far as he could, he said, “Here goes,” and made the drop to the bluff. She heard him cursing. He’d hit the brambles. She winced and said, “Seth, I’m sorry.”

  He said, “Damn! I got one in the butt. Toss your backpack down first. Then use the next post over, and you should be okay.”

  She was. The drop was at least ten feet, but the bushes formed a living mattress beneath her. She made her way through them like a jungle explorer, descending to the bottom and out into Seawall Park. Seth was waiting.

  He led her silently along the grassy walkway. When he came to the end of the park, he stopped and said, “Here.”

  Above them hung the backs of the shops on First Street. Next to them was the water of Saratoga Passage. Becca looked around and said, “Where?”

  Seth indicated the backs of the shops, particularly the last one in the row. It had a concrete base built into the cliff, and it rose above them three stories. It was painted a bleak and faded red. It was completely dark inside.

  Along the west end of this place, a tarmac slope gave service vehicles access to Seawall Park. It was to this slope that Seth next headed. Fear shot through Becca. At the top of the tarmac was First Street once again.

  Seth hadn’t gone five feet upward, when a city police car pulled onto the tarmac, its lights shining out at an angle over the water. Seth dodged into the darkness at the side of the building and whispered fiercely, “What the hell? The local cops after you, too?”

  This was the nightmare Becca had anticipated. She said, “Oh my God!” But then the police car backed up to finish a three-point turn, returning the way it had come along First Street. Becca waited for a moment, then joined Seth in the shadows.

  He said, “This way,” and he led her to the back side of a staircase that rose above them, along the side of the building with the concrete base.

  “What is this place?” Becca asked him.

  “The Dog House,” he said.

  “That old tavern?”

  “Yep. Been closed for years. No one wants it torn down, but no one can figure out what to do with it.” He grinned at her. “Good thing I can, huh?”

  As she watched, he approached a small door of plywood, perhaps four feet high. It had a simple hasp closing it, and from this a padlock hung. Seth jerked the hasp and it loosened from the wood, which had long ago rotted in the rain. He opened the door just wide enough to slide inside and he said to Becca, “Come on.”

  It was completely dark inside. The smell was of mildew, dust, and old stones. It was as cold as a witch’s heart and what little light there was came from outside on the tarmac. Becca could see piles of sagging cardboard boxes. She could also hear the skittering of rat feet nearby.

  She backed up. “I can’t—”

  Seth said, “Just wait here. It’s not as bad up above. But I can’t take you up there without some stuff.”

  “What stuff?”

  “Stuff I’m going to get. I’ll get your stuff, too, back at the motel. It’ll all take a while. Couple of hours. But I’ll be back.”

  “C’n we leave the door open?”

  “No way. The cops check it. It has to stay closed, but don’t worry. Like you saw, the hasp’s broken so you won’t be locked in and all they’ll do is shine a flashlight on it. It’ll look locked to them. Long’s you’re quiet, it’s cool. Okay? Look, don’t worry. I’ll be back. I got to go to my granddad’s. That’s where stuff is.”

  “What stuff?” she asked again.

  He sounded patient when he replied. “The stuff you’ll need. Okay?”

  She nodded. And then he was gone, with the door closed in place behind him. The last thing she heard him say from the other side was that she could trust him. In the dark and the cold, with the rats skittering around her, Becca desperately needed to believe just that.

  IT SEEMED TO Becca that days passed while she waited for Seth in the basement of the Dog House. There was a sketch of light around the door leading to the tarmac slope, but that was the extent of it.

  It was an odd sensation. Becca realized that there were no whispers. The only other times she’d experienced this was when she was too freaked out by something to hear them clearly—as she’d been with Seth—or when she was in a cemetery or with Diana Kinsale. That was it.

  When the little door to the basement finally opened, Becca held her breath for a moment, thinking about the police. But then a duffel bag was crammed through the opening, followed by a sleeping bag, followed by a pillowcase filled with something, followed by Seth’s grunt, followed by Seth himself. He said, “Whew, that wasn’t easy. Grand moved a bunch of things.”

  Becca said, “Seth! Did you tell your grandfather—?”

  “Chill. He didn’t see me. He was doing something in his shop. Now lemme see . . .” He rustled inside the pillowcase and found what he was looking for. He pulled closed the plywood door and flicked on a powerful flashlight. He shined its beam around the basement, highlighting cobwebs, spiderwebs, and a few tiny rat eyeballs “Sheesh. Let’s get outta here.” He grabbed the duffel bag and the sleeping bag. Becca picked up the pillowcase and followed him.

  The stairs were in the far corner, toward the front of the building. They climbed up to another door, this one regular sized and unlocked. Seth pushed it open, and they were in a commercial kitchen. It was small and smelled of grease. It contained a stove with a massive griddle, a large refrigerator, and a bathtub of a sink.

  “Don’t use anything in here except the water,” Seth advised her. “You li
ght that stove, and the whole place’ll probably explode. Come on.”

  From the kitchen, they went through swinging doors and here Seth extinguished the flashlight, for this part of the Dog House looked out onto First Street. The room they were in contained a bar, a pool table, small tables, chairs, and a huge mirror reflecting it all. The windows had been soaped over, but muted light still came through them. Outside, the winter bulbs on a restaurant across the street twinkled in the cavity of its porch.

  At the back of the building, the windows overlooked the water, and here there were dusty tables and chairs that gave evidence of the place once serving food. But Seth didn’t put the duffel bag down here. Instead, he opened another door, this one to a stairway leading to the second floor of the building.

  The room above was large. Here, Seth said, was where she was going to set up shop. He began to unpack the duffel, and Becca saw that he’d brought her camping supplies. A small propane stove, cooking utensils, collapsible water bottle, some packets of dehydrated food. He even put together a stool from various parts that toppled from the bag. From all this Becca realized that her stay in the Dog House was not intended to be a single evening’s affair.

  She said, “Seth, no! Am I gonna have to stay here?”

  He looked up. “No place else. You go to someone’s house and their parents are going to ask questions. Maybe not the first night, but after that? Oh yeah, they’re gonna want to know what you’re doing there. You want that?”

  “But what’ll I do for food when I run out? What’ll I do for . . . It’s freezing in here.” Becca could, indeed, even see her breath. She wondered how much colder it was going to get as the night wore on, not to mention how much colder it would get as time itself went on. She thought about going to Diana Kinsale and asking for her help, but how could she? She would have to tell Diana Kinsale about everything, including the whispers and how the whispers had caused the trouble she and Laurel had been fleeing in the first place. Becca couldn’t do that. She absolutely couldn’t.