by Sarah Graves
“I was about to go see Bob Arnold myself when you two walked in,” he declared defensively.
—and Jake was, too: Randy Dodd was indeed alive, and as recently as twelve hours ago he’d been right here in Eastport.
And that meant anything could have happened. She gunned the engine, causing a couple of blithely jaywalking teenagers to jump back up onto the curb. She didn’t quite give them the old middle-finger salute as they glared at her.
But it was close. In the back seat, Roger went on whining. “Cordelia could’ve been an accident,” he insisted. “How was I to know that Randy had—”
“Yeah, sure,” she cut him off sarcastically. “Her falling down those cellar stairs was just one of those things, huh?”
Sure it was. At the time, everyone had thought so. But now … She met his eyes in the rearview mirror.
“But Anne dying, and the way that she died—come on, Roger, don’t tell me you didn’t know then that something was up.”
Stabbed to death in her own kitchen. Imagining it, Jake just barely managed to restrain herself from stomping the gas pedal again.
“But why am I even asking? You knew it all from the start. You had to. Because here’s the thing, Roger.”
What the brothers had done was falling together in her head now, like a disgustingly graphic picture puzzle. She might not have believed it at all if he’d been talking about some other motive.
But she did, because it was money-related, and money—plus what it could make people do, the wanting and getting of it—had been her bread and butter once.
In the bad old days, when she’d helped pirates of commerce stash their ill-gotten treasure in offshore accounts.
Chip wasn’t comprehending it yet, though. Mostly he just looked frightened.
“Two things,” she corrected herself. “First, you can’t very well inherit any money or anything else when you’re dead.”
Roger’s lips clamped together stubbornly. “And that’s what it was about, wasn’t it?” she continued. “That’s why both sisters died. So you could inherit.”
She thought a moment. “Probably there was a trust fund.” It was how wealth stayed in wealthy families.
“The proceeds would go to the surviving sister. Once she was gone, you’d be a beneficiary. After the dust settled, you’d share the money with Randy.”
Simple. And it had worked, or nearly. But Roger shook his head in denial.
“I thought Randy had drowned, just like everyone else did. I mean,” he added shakily, “a long time ago he’d said something to me, to the effect of how if the girls died, we’d be wealthy men.”
They passed Wadsworth’s hardware store. That insulation, she thought as they went by. Bales and bales of it waiting for her in the attic.
No telling, now, when she might get back to it. In spring maybe. Or never. But who cared? A nice cold layer of ice sounded just right at the moment, like the perfect anesthetic.
“But I told him he was nuts, and to shut up and never talk to me about it anymore,” Roger said. “I never thought of it again, either. It was an awful thing, repulsive, what he’d suggested, and I told him so.”
He looked out the car window; she followed his gaze briefly. Out on the water the little lobster boat she’d seen earlier by the Chowder House pier puttered determinedly across the waves.
“But I guess he must have. Thought about it, that is,” said Roger.
“So, what did he want?” Chip asked quietly. “In the bar last night?”
Roger laughed bitterly. “Money, of course. What he thought he was entitled to. He said he’d earned it. Can you believe it?” His tone was outraged.
Angling for sympathy. Jake parked in front of the police station, shut off the engine. Bob Arnold’s squad car wasn’t there in its usual spot.
Well then, they’d wait. Throwing her keys into her bag, she repressed the urge to fling them backward at Roger’s face.
“Please,” she ridiculed his story. “After what he said to you, first Cordelia has an accident.” She put a scathing twist on the word. “And then some stranger just randomly picks your house to invade, your wife to kill?”
“It’s not the kind of thing that would slip your mind, is it?” Chip agreed. “Randy hinting around about them dying, and then they do? That didn’t, like, tip you off?”
He turned, eyed Roger accusingly. “But I still think the two of you plotted it together. Randy fakes dying, he sneaks back and kills both women … and man, that took some nerve, didn’t it?”
He paused, considering this, then went on. “But you got the money. You inherited, which makes you a perfect suspect right along with him. Lucky you had a good alibi, also twice. Once for his wife, once for yours.” Chip frowned. “So, what I want to know is, how could that happen unless you knew in advance when Randy was going to do it?”
But for this Roger had an answer ready. “Because I always have that alibi,” he retorted. “All I do is work in that bar. And the front and rear doors are in plain sight of all the customers and staff, so everybody knows if I go in or out.”
He opened the car door. “I didn’t do anything,” he repeated. “I knew nothing about any of this.”
Chip made a huffing sound of skepticism as he got out, too. “Yeah, you can say that. But I guarantee you the cops are still watching you and they have been all along.” He grimaced at the chill outside the car. “Waiting for you to make a mistake. And now you have. The two of you have. That’s what I think, anyway.”
He looked back in at Jake. “Carolyn’s book proposal, what she sent in to get a contract this time, was one sentence long: ‘Two brothers in rural Maine marry two rich sisters, kill them for the money, and get away with it … almost.’ ”
Roger winced, listening to this.
“And they bought it,” Chip said. “That’s how obvious it is. One sentence, they took it.”
Just then Bob Arnold pulled the squad car into his reserved parking space, got out, and marched up the station’s granite-slab front steps. Jake slammed the car door, turned to Roger.
“Why?” she asked again. “If you weren’t in on it with him, why didn’t you turn Randy in as soon as you realized what he must be doing when he showed up last night?”
But again, Roger had an answer. He gazed, stricken, at her. “Well. You know that unbreakable alibi I’ve supposedly got?”
The bar, the doors, his being in plain sight of everyone all the time … “What about it?” Jake demanded.
Roger hesitated. Then:
“Randy can break it,” he said. “I was afraid to go to the police, because if he wants to, Randy can make it look like I did it all. Killed Anne, I mean, and Cordelia, too.”
He looked around slowly, as if he thought this might be his last glimpse of freedom. “He can frame me completely. And if he doesn’t end up getting away from here with his money, that’s what he’ll do.”
CHAPTER 3
THE BLANKET’S EDGES PARTED AT LAST AND CAROLYN’S face poked out into the chill air. It was late morning, the sky threatening rain or snow, a sky she’d feared she would never see again.
But here she was. Everything hurt: her hand, her head. Her cheek, raw with so much rubbing, felt sticky and hot, and she was thirsty. So very thirsty … but alive.
Alive … She froze with fresh fear. Would he notice that the blanket was off her face, that she’d somehow found her way so far out of his restraint? If he did, would he kill her at once?
All she could see was the boat’s rough wooden deck with a sort of bench sticking up from it, and the round orange shape of a life preserver roped to the bench.
But he is around here somewhere. Has to be …
She fought the cringing urge to duck back down into the blankets again. She’d thought being able to see what was around her would make her feel better. But instead she only felt more exposed, like a little kid who’d been hiding under the bedcovers. Hiding from the monsters. Which in this case she really was doing. But she
wasn’t a little kid and she couldn’t act like one. Not if she wanted to live.
Painfully, she inched herself up, craning her neck to try locating her captor. There …
A dozen feet away at the front of the vessel, a man stood in an open cubby with his hands on a steering wheel, looking ahead through a curved windshield. His back was turned to her, but she could see his profile.
Something wrong with it … She couldn’t tell what, only that it looked odd somehow. Unnatural. But as she’d thought when he’d first grabbed her, he was a big man, and powerfully built.
Abruptly, the guilt she’d felt over not managing to escape evaporated. He was at least twice her size; as she’d suspected, she’d never had a chance.
Which meant beating him physically wasn’t in the cards as an escape method, either. Not without a weapon, at any rate, and she didn’t have anything like that.
A surge of despair threatened to swamp her, but she resisted, choking down sobs; better to know the truth than to try something that was doomed. And with her hands both still bound to her sides, there was no point even thinking about fighting him.
Not yet. She peeked over the blanket again, trying to spot anything that might help her get free. To the left of the wheel and the instruments near where the man stood, a small hatchway gaped, dark and forbidding-looking.
No one else was on the deck. The groaning she’d heard must have come from down there, but she hadn’t heard it in a while.
The thought flew from her head as something struck the boat with a muffled thump. Her throat closed with renewed terror, but at the sound the man at the wheel only let out a triumphant bark of laughter.
He slowed the engine until it made a thick gurgling noise, the boat’s lunging movement over the waves subsiding. Hurriedly he left the wheel, peered eagerly over the boat’s side, then grabbed a long pole—the phrase boat hook popped into her head—and began poking around in the water.
He seemed to be trying to snag something. One shove, she thought bitterly, and you’d be fish food.
He went on straining with the pole. But whatever it was out on the water went on eluding him, no matter how he tried.
Then she noticed that each time he leaned out, a slip of paper in his shirt pocket slid up a little more. As if alerted by her thought, he jerked up suddenly, squinting suspiciously around.
Carolyn held her breath. If he turned his head toward her, he would see her face poking from the blanket. His eyes narrowed further as he listened, tipping his head.
He looked familiar to her, almost as if …
Satisfied, he returned to his efforts. The slip of paper in his shirt pocket now stuck out from it about two inches. He still hadn’t noticed it.
“Damn,” he muttered as a gust of wind caught the edge of the paper, fluttering it. Painfully, Carolyn worked her head around so that if she had to duck and cover quickly, she could.
She hoped. God, she was so thirsty. Her tongue stuck sourly to the roof of her mouth, and her broken hand felt like a flaming club at the end of her arm. But he hadn’t killed her.
Yet. Please, she thought. Please, if I get out of this, I’ll be good for the rest of my life.
The rest of her life being all she wanted now. All she could think of … That and that damned slip of paper poking out of the guy’s shirt pocket.
A burst of sleet stung her eyelids suddenly. It hit the guy, too, causing him to wince and rear back slightly. Then a wave hit the boat, but he was sure-footed, even with that limp he had ….
He leaned over the side again. That limp … Where had she seen it? A gust of breeze lifted the corner of the paper. It was covered with something shiny, like plastic wrap.
The long pole bent; with a low grunt of satisfaction the man caught whatever it was he’d been fishing for and swung it into the boat. Some kind of a package …
It landed on the deck with a wet thud. He rushed to crouch over it, pulling at the soaked wrapping on it. But the wrapping wouldn’t come free. He pulled a knife from his belt, slitting it open impatiently, then opened the plastic storage box inside.
Money fell out. Thick, rubber-banded slabs of money. The man gazed silently at them, picked one up and then another. He fanned one of them, as if making sure the interior of the pack held bills, too, and not just the outside.
Then he stuffed all the packets into a big plastic bag, sealed the top, and pushed the bag into a lidded bin that was built into the side of the boat, up near the wheel.
When he straightened, his shirt pocket was empty. While he’d been leaning over the side, the slip of paper must have …
Another muffled sound came from the dark hatchway. Next came pounding and thumping. Leaving the wheel, the man went down there and a smack rang out.
Flesh on flesh, a slap or a punch … Carolyn cringed as the man came back to move two levers by the steering wheel, one after the other. The engine revved and the boat began chugging forward once more.
No more sounds came from the dark hatchway.
TEN MINUTES AFTER ROGER DODD ENTERED THE POLICE station, Bob Arnold had broken down the last of his lies and evasions, and with them, Jake’s remaining hopes that this might all be a mistake.
She sat very still while Roger spoke, meanwhile wanting to run out and start looking for Sam again: somewhere, anywhere. But first she needed to hear what else Roger said.
“Randy started talking about it before the four of us even got married,” he began. The big double wedding—Roger to Anne, Randy to Anne’s sister, Cordelia—had been the event of the year.
“He had it all worked out, about how if everyone thought he was dead, he couldn’t be suspected. And if I had an alibi, then we’d both be in the clear,” Roger continued shakily.
“That’s not what you just told us,” Chip objected. “You said he said that if the wives died, you two guys would get rich. Not that if he murdered them, you would.”
Roger looked caught. “Yeah. Well. It was a little more than what I told you, what Randy suggested. A lot more, actually,” he admitted.
Clearly he’d decided to throw himself upon the mercy of his listeners. But if so, he’d miscalculated; Jake didn’t feel at all merciful, and from the look of him, Bob Arnold didn’t, either.
“How did he do it?” Bob asked.
Strictly speaking, in a situation like this he should have been waiting for the state police, whom he’d already called. But Bob knew two people were missing, and that they might both now be in the hands of a double murderer.
And he’d never been a by-the-book guy, anyway. Way out here at the back of beyond, he called them as he saw them; if anybody didn’t like it, they could …
Well, mostly they did like it. But Roger didn’t. “Fake his own drowning, you mean?” Roger asked, looking increasingly uncomfortable.
Playing the innocent wasn’t turning out to be as easy as he had expected, apparently. A line of sweat rimmed his hairline.
“Simple,” he replied, but his voice shook uncertainly. “He set it up like he’d gone overboard. Cut himself, pulled a few hairs out, smeared that mess of blood and whatnot on the boat’s rail.” He frowned, remembering. “He had a dry suit and scuba gear on board with him, and he knew how to use them. It was the ripped-out fingernails that clinched it, though.”
The ones found snagged in Randy’s submerged lobster trapline, after he’d vanished off the boat… Jake recalled how this detail in particular had convinced everyone of Randy’s demise.
“Even I thought it was real,” said Roger. “The scuba stuff was missing, so I knew he must’ve at least tried the first part of his plan without telling me.” His frown creased into a grimace. “But the fingernails made me think something had gone wrong, and he’d really drowned … .”
He shook his head regretfully. “I thought so until Cordelia died. When she fell down the stairs a few months after he went overboard, I had an awful feeling. Because if Randy were alive, still working a plan to inherit the money—”
“F
or you both to inherit it,” Chip corrected.
“Yes,” Roger admitted, “that’s what he’d talked about. Both of us. But I never agreed,” he added defiantly, glaring at Chip.
“Never mind that,” Jake interposed. Every minute this idiot wasted explaining and excusing himself was a minute she could’ve been—
“All right, Jake,” Bob Arnold said, putting up a big hand. “Just keep quiet and let the man tell what happened.”
Bob had already put every law officer in the state on notice, along with the U.S. Coast Guard and their Canadian counterparts. So serious people were on the hunt for Sam and Carolyn, and for their possible captor.
But it didn’t make Jake feel any better. Listening, she held her tongue as best she could.
“Okay,” Bob told Roger, “so your brother’s rich widow dies, by whatever means. Your wife inherits all the Lang family money, being as she’s the last surviving member of the family. Then what?”
Roger sighed heavily. “Then nothing. Time went by, a year. Two years. I decided Cordelia really had just had an accident, that maybe Randy had tried the first part of the stupid plan he talked about but that was all.”
He looked up at Bob Arnold. “I told him not to, told him it was crazy, but he did, and it killed him. The end. I mean, why shouldn’t I think so?”
His voice turned pleading again. “And no matter what, even if he was alive, never in a million years did I ever think he’d come back and …”
“Okay, that’s it,” Jake said suddenly. Before Bob could stop her, she stood up and grabbed a handful of Roger’s sandy hair. It was assault just to be touching him. But she didn’t care.
“Where is he?” she hissed, yanking hard. “Your crazy brother who was in your bar last night, where has he gone?”
She let go, shoving his head away roughly. “With my son,” she added. Let him swear out a complaint against her if he wanted to.
