Escape Route (Murder Off-Screen Book 1)

by GA VanDruff

  I told her about Bub’s and the park with Doofus. The nail polish. “Mainly, it’s my gut talking, but they did buy ammo, and where is the dog now, if it was their dog? They’re here, and it isn’t.”

  The floorboards groaned again, and I heard the bathroom door shut. “Have they done or said anything unusual? Even the tiniest thing?” I pointed to the ceiling.

  Gertie adjusted her scarf, and looked at me like a mother about to tell her daughter there was no Santa Claus. “Avery asked me if Bub sold shovels.”

  “That’s it then.” I bit the thread off and spit-balled the leftover strand into a tiny knot and tucked it under the patch. “Bullets and shovels.” I pocketed my phone, stood up and hula-hooped the kink out of my back.

  I turned the jacket this way and that, brushed futilely at what remained of Doofus’s hair, and gave the jacket a final shake.

  “King is still out there, Gertie. Alive. I’ve got to find him.” I handed her the jacket. “They are going to shoot him and bury him. Bullets and shovels. Bullets, they’ve got, but without a shovel to bury him immediately, King must still be alive.”

  Gertie held the jacket up by the shoulders. “You might be right.” She dug deep into each pocket, then handed me a fob with two keys attached. “Search their car. Maybe you’ll find something that will help. Put the keys in the mailbox before you leave.”

  “Will you be safe here, alone with them, do you think? They have a gun. Maybe we should just call the sheriff.”

  “For what? If he finds the dog, he’ll return it to the Cuthbarts, and in a month or two, the poor thing will be in the same predicament. Anywho, Sheriff Nilly is on a week-long retreat. Community relations or some kind of waste of tax-payer dollars. Deputy Beatty is on call, though. Home Depot is real good about letting him clock out if we have an emergency. Jaqie, I am a former corrections officer. Remember? I can take care of myself.”

  Gertie made the front page of the Baltimore Sun last year for planting a mugger facedown in a tub of Russell’s coleslaw, made especially for the Fourth of July town picnic. Aunt B sent me a copy of the paper. She doesn’t grasp downloading.

  That Gertie was fifty-seven made it news worthy. That Gertie coleslawed a man half her age and twice her size with two fingers, put the story above the fold.

  Russell’s Sprouts is home to the best darn slaw on the Eastern Shore. Hated to waste it like that, was the caption below the picture of Sheriff Nilly shaking Gertie’s hand and awarding her the official crab hammer to Oakley Beach.

  “I’ll distract them. The chubby one flirted with me. How’s my hair?”

  It hadn’t moved since yesterday, and it wouldn’t move tomorrow. “Great, but don’t go making Dell jealous.”

  “Jealous is what that man should have a taste of. Now, you run on. I’ll keep these boys turning circles as long as I can.”

  “I’ll go out the back.”

  No sooner were those words out of my mouth when the foreigners followed their noses into the kitchen. Gertie’s working man’s breakfast would keep them busy long enough for me to ransack their car.

  Maybe I’d find something—anything—that would convince me Avery and his friend had nothing to do with King, and I would not have to include grand theft auto in my resumé.

  ~~^~~

  The surest way to attract attention in Oakley Beach is to step outside. I sauntered past the car with the Pennsylvania plates. Casual. Nothing to see here. Leaned against the door. Bo Peep’s windows were steamed up on the inside from Gertie’s campaign to hogtie the men with carbohydrates.

  “Hey, Jaqie! How’s it going?” Mildred, the mailman. Mail carrier.

  “Fine, Mildred. And Fred?”

  “Good as gold.”

  “Give him a scratch from me.”

  She tossed me a wave as she shifted her leather pouch and crossed the street. “Will do.”

  “Miss Hollywood. Autograph? Ha. Ha. Not.”

  Terrance Hammermiller.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

  “Flat tire. Had to take the board. See ya’, Jaq. Hey, get me a date with Taylor Swift.” He skated through the stop sign.

  “Jaqie Shanahan. Give us a kiss.”

  Oh, come on. How’s a girl supposed to get any ransacking done with a parade passing by?

  “You first, Mr. Trimble.” It was a thing that we did.

  After the Senior Citizens’ van took the left at the stop sign, I counted to twenty. If the coast remained clear, I was going in.

  “Twenty-one. Bingo.” I pressed the Unlock button and the car obliged. I opened the door and hopped in the driver’s side. It would be harder to spot me from Peep’s porch, but easier to arrest me, street side. I shut the door, stuck the key in the ignition and turned it one click to engage the battery. It was my first felony. Best to take it one step at a time.

  A country song exploded through the dash and thumped the speakers in the door panels and rattled the rear deck. I turned knobs and pounded buttons, shoved the gear shift in N before I found the right combination and put the singer out of his misery. My lack of new-age automobile technology had happily fired up the on-board GPS.

  I grabbed my cell and took a picture of the screen. No convenient map, though, with a Jaqie, You Want to Go Here arrow, just coordinates, longitude and latitude.

  “Why no address? What is this—a boat? Did they do this? Don’t waste time asking yourself questions.”

  The driver’s door pocket was empty except for a plastic bag with a few beef jerky wrappers. Same for the passenger side, minus the wrappers. Presumably, Costello ate his. The rental agreement was folded up in the glove compartment. Avery was the only name I absorbed before a piece of scrap paper fluttered to the floor mat.

  Hand-drawn, filled-in circles and connecting lines. One round scribble was tagged Start. I took a picture of that, too, tossed the scrap back into the glove compartment and turned off the ignition. The dash lights shut down and the GPS screen went dark.

  That’s when I spotted them. Two dots no bigger than the head of a pin stuck to the GPS screen. Pink. I ran my fingertip over them. Hard, like plastic.

  “Or nail polish.”

  I squirreled around and stuck my upper body through the opening between the bucket seats. The mud, the paw prints, the nose prints—dry now. I already knew they had a dog. I knew they had a dog with nail polish on its ear. What I knew now was they put the polish on that ear right before the dog got in the backseat. No tea party. No passel of little girls. When Doofus shook, he’d sent a halo of tidewater debris a full three-sixty. Two teensy pearls of still-wet polish made it up front.

  Avery and Costello had painted Doofus’s ear, covering up something deliberately, like, oh, say a black mark in the shape of a C. A dog in disguise.

  Time for Plan B. Technically, Plan A, since I’d begun with no plan whatsoever.

  I called Gertie.

  As soon as she picked up, I said, “Don’t say anything.”

  “Hi, Bub. Thanks for calling back,” she hollered into the phone.

  I banged my head on the steering wheel. “Gertie, listen. I am going to steal the car. There’s too much evidence here, and I need them stranded so they can’t get to the dog and finish the job.”

  The sound of silverware on plates, and a belch came over the line.

  “Excuse me, Bub.” Gertie shouted, “No shovels, you say. For how long?”

  “Two, three hours. Tops.”

  “Make it seven.”

  “Six.”

  “And a half.”

  “Done.”

  CHAPTER 15

  It was a stripped down version of a car so mundane, I couldn’t tell you the make or model of the thing. My bike fit in the trunk, no problem. I angled the handlebars and lowered the lid with both arms and the lock clicked shut.

  The only high-end interior accoutrements were the GPS and an OnStar button on the rearview. After the radio incident, I wasn’t going anywhere near that button. Who knew what I
might call down on this drab automobile?

  I pulled away from the curb without incident and drove down a side street that took me past a health food store gone bust. Everybody tried to tell them ... and a boarded up “rooming house.” Sheriff Nilly held no truck with “rooming houses,” so there went the town’s only scandalous landmark. Except for the Tyrell mansion, where Edwin Tyrell, Sr., his wife and two of his three children were shot and dismembered over a decade ago.

  So that’s our claim to fame. The Oakley Beach Butcher. Sheriff Nilly dubbed him that, and always believed the “him” was Edwin, Jr., the surviving son. There wasn’t enough evidence, so the case went cold and the Tyrells slipped into a box of cold cases, and the pages of one very bad book.

  I’d thought of trying it as a screenplay, and talked it over with Jeep, but my heart wasn’t in it. I felt sorry for Edwin, the richest, loneliest boy in town, and just didn’t feel right trying to earn a living on the gruesome deaths of his family.

  Avery and Costello’s GPS hadn’t moved since I pulled away from the curb—a tech glitch I wouldn’t be able to figure out, so I pulled over and set my phone. Start Here, Go There. I hit the voice direction option so the rude woman in the phone could give me an inferiority complex when I made a wrong turn. “Turn right in six hundred feet.” I selected satellite view and the coordinates turned into street names.

  “I know this road.”

  I zoomed in to the upside down, red, teardrop marker speared on the end point of the journey.

  “Not a clue where that is, though.”

  My phone dinged. A text from Gertie. Beatty on the way here! Emphasized by a yellow face with blue sweat popping out of its forehead.

  This was good news. With the sheriff gone, Deputy Beatty would fill out every form he could get his hands on, and fill them out by hand.

  Doofus and I had just bought more time.

  ~~^~~

  Mercers Neck Road was a mirrored image of Mercers Landing Bar Road and a duplicate of Mercers Bar Neck Road. Two generations back, the Mercers used to be a big deal on the Eastern Shore.

  A “foreigner” could drive forever on these back roads and never spot a landmark to find their way around Mercers share of the good life.

  Completely flat. A field here. A field there. Trees blocked the views to the water and the mansions that sat fat and happy along the shoreline.

  But I knew where I was going.

  Past the Cuthbarts.

  Past fields and tree lines and marsh grass and deadfalls.

  Seventeen miles from Peep’s.

  Turn right one-half mile, my phone lady said. Moron was implied.

  One-half mile was one-half mile in the middle of nowhere. “That makes sense. Foul deed territory.”

  Turn right. Your destination is on the right. She wasn’t nearly as nervous as I was.

  The right turn was a turn to nowhere but a gritty, soggy half-circle of sandy soil about the size of a basketball court curved on one side to accommodate the tide from the Chesapeake. Its main body of water was a mile offshore from this secluded cove. Perfect place to shoot a dog and bury it.

  That had not happened here. No fresh tire tracks, no mound of a telltale grave. The ground was pristine. Not even a sign of teenage l’amour in such a secluded place.

  I was here. I had to check it out. My phone rang as I stepped out of the vehicle.

  “Hi, Uncle Frank. I’m late, I know.”

  “Jaqie, I’m only going to say this once. If you don’t get it in gear and get yourself down to this marina, you will be a widow in an hour or less.”

  The area around the car was untouched, but I started stepping the first of three paths heading east for thirty yards. I would grid them with three more headed north, trisecting the original three. “You’re right, Uncle Frank, I’m late. Listen, killing Ed won’t make me a widow. Killing Ed will make Dianne a widow, and she’s having twins.”

  “Great Scott! The fool’s fathering more of that gene pool?”

  “Be nice, Uncle Frank. I’ll be there in twenty-five minutes.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Make that thirty-five.

  My phone rang, and Gertie said, “Oh, hi, Shirley. How are you?”

  “Gertie, you called me. It’s Jaqie. Everything okay?”

  “I promised you that recipe. I’ll let these boys talk, and go into the kitchen.” She turned away from the phone. “Excuse me, deputy. You just go ahead with your conversation.”

  The sound of voices faded as Gertie moved from where “the boys” were conversing—presumably the sitting room off the living room. Costello would be in the red-leather, wingback chair by the bookcases, since it was the sturdiest piece in the room, not counting the raised, stone hearth. Deputy Beatty would take the commanding position immediately in front of the fireplace. Avery would pace. Men with elbow patches, pace.

  The back door screeched as Gertie stepped out to the porch. “I told them it was on vibrate.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “Beatty’s beyond ecstatic that there is real investigating to do. He’s worn out one inhaler, already. Says the wheezing is because of stacking mulch bags at the Depot, but I think it’s because he’s overexcited to find this stolen car. He’s put out a BOLO.”

  Gertie is a fan of police procedural TV shows.

  “As in—Be On the Look Out for?”

  “Exactly. It’s time to ditch the car.”

  “How long ago did this get put in motion?”

  “Fifteen minutes. Now I’ve got to go. The boys may stay another night if they don’t find it, so I have linens to change. Hide that vehicle, and don’t forget to wipe the fingerprints.”

  “Thanks, G—”

  I jumped in the driver’s seat. Beatty was occupied now, but it was a real possibility I’d pass him on the road in twenty minutes. He’d probably haul Avery and Costello around in the back of the squad car to backtrack exactly where they’d been. They’d have to cooperate so their story wouldn’t seem fishy. There was no evidence at this spot, so no worries.

  Of course, now there was evidence someone had been here. The tire prints. My foot prints, but the ground was marshy. They’d get no real help from those, and the tidal ooze would eventually erase my size sevens.

  CHAPTER 17

  My mind was a blank. The road stretched without a break for miles. Between You Are Here and The Coppers Are There, the route dwindled with no blinding flashes of inspiration of where to hide the car.

  In plain sight would not work because of the Pennsylvania plates. What kind of a state does not have front plates? That’s two sore thumbs for this vehicle—the blank space on the front bumper, and the obvious not Maryland plate on the rear. The entire stretch of road from the Mercer neck of the peninsula into town had two-foot deep gullies on either side of the blacktop. No pulling off into the woods.

  “What would Jeep do?”

  Vignettes flooded my imagination. First order of business, he’d stroll into a bar and order up a margarita. He’d stroll into a bar, order the margarita, and stroll out with Vanessa. Lacey. Ashleigh. He’d stroll into a bar ... you get the idea.

  “How would he hide a stolen car when there’s nowhere ...”

  “Abandoned building.”

  Whoa! I slammed on the brakes.

  Now, I know there’s no one in the backseat, but Jeep’s voice could not have been any clearer, and the goose bumps parading up my arm agreed with me.

  I sneaked a peek in the rearview—fast—in case he was in the backseat. Jeep McBain was capable of anything. The only eyeballs looking back were mine, wider than usual, but mine—blue and bloodshot—but mine.

  “It’s okay,” I explained to me, stepping on the gas pedal gently. “So I had a great idea, and the voice in my head sounded like Jeep is in the car with me.” That was okay, too, because I’d had him on the brain for over a year, and with the Oscars last Sunday, dredging everything up—one hallucination every twelve months is permissible. Almost required, not
to put too fine a point on it.

  I drove off in search of an abandoned building.

  Which turned out to be right around the next bend.

  Not so much a building as a forlorn, foreclosed two-story house with a barn in the back.

  “Hello-o-o, Herbert Mercer.” According to Aunt B, his mother died last April in this sad, little house, and rather than take the trouble to fix it up with his five-thousand dollar inheritance, Herbie flew to Vegas, lost every red cent in two hands of black jack, broke the dealer’s jaw and went to jail.

  If the bank had staked signs in the yard, they were gone. But from here, I could see the right-side door of the barn was open a foot.

  I followed the driveway to the back of the house, pulled up close to the disintegrating back porch and parked. The rental tucked in neatly, out of view of the road. Traffic on Mercer Neck amounts to about one car an hour, but if that one car was Oakley Beach’s only squad car, it was the slammer for me.

  Not that Oakley Beach has an actual slammer. Our combo office-slash-jail is a ten-by-fifteen-foot addition to Nilly’s house equipped with an iron hitching post bolted to the floor, next to a bench bolted to the floor.

  I popped the trunk, lifted my bike out and leaned it against the back porch.

  The barn was a barn. The barn you see on any farm, in any TV show about America. Classic, worn, red paint, brighter at the eaves, fading out like a watercolor painting to the stone foundation. The boards were unevenly spaced. Keeps the air moving. Keeps hay from rotting.

  The doors were heavy and crooked. I leaned my back against the splintering wood, dug my heels into the dirt for traction, and pushed and heaved until they stood wide open so I could gauge what I was dealing with.

  The plank floor was solid. By that I mean, it didn’t cave in with my one-hundred-seventeen-pound-frame jumping up and down on it. I kicked at stray lumps of straw—or hay—who can tell the difference, and didn’t slice my foot on hidden sickles or scythes. No John Deeres taking up valuable real estate.