by Sarah Graves
“Easy,” Chip replied. “All you’d need is a few real bills, plus a good scanner and a really good printer. But, I mean, most of them are really good now. Or good enough, anyway.”
He was trying to fill the silence. “You’d scan in real ones. Then copy them, get a few on each sheet.”
It wasn’t quite that simple. Getting the right paper would be more difficult than it sounded, and getting the page set up to make the fronts and backs of the bills line up correctly would take some skill as well.
But it could be done. In fact, he’d researched a case where someone had, before Carolyn decided that counterfeiting wasn’t a sensational enough crime to be worth a whole book.
“And there’s another thing,” Chip said.
Because as long as Randy was listening, he wasn’t shooting. Also, maybe the way to keep Randy from feeling murderous about Chip was to get him feeling that way about someone else.
Roger, for instance. “See, floating the fake money out there was bad enough. But—”
Chip described in detail how at the very first opportunity, Roger had blamed everything on Randy, how he’d drawn himself as a victim in the whole scheme.
“So what I think is,” Chip concluded—persuasively, he hoped—“I think if Roger hadn’t gotten dragged in to talk to the cops, he’d have gone on his own.”
The more he presented this theory, the more likely it began sounding, too. “I think he was gearing himself up for it, getting his story squared away so it sounded good, but his whole idea all along was to save himself by nailing you.”
That’s why Roger had cracked so quickly. Chip took a breath, hurried on before Randy could decide to shut him up. “Because he never meant to give you any money. So he had to get rid of you, right? Turning you in was one option.”
“Okay,” Randy said, nodding, and his voice still sounded so calm and reasonable that it gave Chip some hope.
“But here’s the thing,” Chip said. “You’re not entirely screwed. Even counterfeit money is worth something. And I happen to know somebody who—”
Will buy it from you, he meant to finish. Ten cents on the dollar, but hey, a hundred grand. Better than nothing.
And he did know someone. Years of research, both online and other wise, had turned up a lot of interesting characters, many of whom had nontraditional ways of earning a living.
But he didn’t get a chance to say so because just then Randy raised the weapon and shot him.
It felt to Chip as if the massive pine tree had swung down and smacked him in the chest. He took a step back into thin air, over the edge of the pit.
As he fell, the sky and trees sailed in circles up and away from him, spinning and shrinking until they winked out.
CAROLYN HEARD THE SHOT FROM WHERE SHE LAY ON THE stones by the water’s edge, trying to crawl. Sam lay a few yards away, where Randy had dropped him.
The boat, she had to get—
Then came the sharp crack through the chill morning air. Chip, she thought, seeing his face so clearly that it was as if he were still right there with her.
But he wasn’t. A dagger of grief pierced her. Gone …
Out on the water, a flock of seagulls swooped low, crying excitedly. Then they settled again. Nothing else moved or made a sound.
A blurry line on the horizon might’ve been Eastport, its wharves and brick business buildings crowded along the bay and the white wooden houses rising behind, uphill from the water.
Or it might have been a trick of light. She pushed herself up on one elbow, then onto her two hands. Her nose was bleeding.
But every minute she was still alive was a minute to the good, she thought as she got her knees bent, sat up, and put a testing hand to her head where Randy had hit her with the gun.
Chip, she thought again, then realized with a jolt of terror that Randy Dodd would be coming back at any instant. It was what he had gone to do, kill Chip and put his body somewhere. So now …
Now it was her turn. Suddenly she was so scared that she couldn’t even feel any of the various parts of her that hurt so much. Only the fear, freezing her where she sat …
The boat Chip had come in was a dozen yards off, pulled up onto the shore in front but with its back end floating. She’d seen how Randy had pulled the engine up, seen him start it, too.
She hauled herself clumsily into the icy water, so cold it made her whole body ache with a deep, dangerous throb that said this wasn’t just uncomfortable. It was deadly, and she had to get out of it as soon as possible.
But not yet. She cast a terrified glance at the place where weeds and sea grasses gave way to the edge of the forest. No one appeared, but now she thought she heard heavy footsteps crunching nearer.
Hurry … She pulled herself up, gripping the boat’s rail in both trembling hands. Up and over …
One hand slipped off; she fell back. Flailing, she clutched at the rail again and missed, then clamped her fingers around it. Her shoulders felt as if they were coming out of their sockets, and the awful cold made both hands numb.
But her fingers, even on the injured hand, finally locked on. Gritting her teeth, with a terrible effort she forced herself to her feet. The water sucked the sand from beneath them as she dragged herself higher, until her hips were on the boat’s rail.
Crying as she did it. Weeping with fear. Only a little more now, though, just one solid push …
A wave made the boat lurch, sending her tumbling forward. She let go and rolled, and crashed out of control into the boat’s bottom, panting with terror.
Still no one stopped her. But the crashing sounds through the brush on shore were louder now, and she could hear Randy Dodd’s voice approaching, spewing a low harangue of profane complaining and cursing.
He sounded very angry, which was new for him. Something must have happened. Chip had done something, or said something … .
She peered over the rail just as Randy appeared from between the trees with the gun in his hand, his strange face convulsed with fury. As he approached she fought her way up from the boat bottom, then got her chest up onto the transom seat in front of the engine.
His presence behind her, coming nearer, felt like a black, sucking hole, pulling her down into it. Lunging up, with both hands she raised the engine and got the propeller back down into the water, thinking, Where, oh God let me find the starter button, where—
She found it and pushed it. The engine grumbled to gurgling life. Now the throttle, how do you work the throttle …
But it was easy, there were arrows on it to show you how to do it. Go, the girls in her head chorused sweetly, their voices a dead choir. She turned the sleeve on the throttle.
Yes, she thought exultantly in the instant before the engine revved with an agonized whine, shooting the boat forward a dozen feet or so to where it beached itself with a scrape of metal on rocks. Something in it banged once, then it stopped dead.
She hadn’t thought to put it in reverse. And now …
Randy stopped also, raising the gun. Fish in a barrel, she thought as he aimed it lazily, cocking his head slightly to one side as if wondering how many shots it would take.
Or how few. Carolyn held her breath and it seemed everything else did, too: the water, the sky. Her heart. Even the dead girls were silent as he stood there, seeming to consider: Kill her now? Or later?
This isn’t happening, Carolyn thought as the small dark eye at the end of the gun barrel gazed flatly at her. But it was, and as she realized this she saw his arm move and his eyes narrow. He was adjusting his aim a little. No …
Before she could even think about it, she was rolling to the left, hurling her body over the side of the boat, hitting the icy water and choking on it. No, she thought, no, no—
Under the boat. If she could get under there, maybe there was a chance for her still. Her hands felt around blindly in the cold water, now thick and gritty with stirred-up sand. Maybe there was an air pocket under the boat—
Maybemaybemaybe, the
girls sang. She opened her eyes, heedless of the way they stung in the salt water, fought her way past the propeller, a silvery clover shape turning loosely in the current.
And then she saw them, their drowned pallid faces and dark dead eyes all turning toward her at once. Their hair streaming, their mouths moving. Their long, graceful fingers beckoning.
Their broken fingernails. And their smiles … mocking her. Terror worse than any Randy Dodd had ever inspired went through her. Because they weren’t encouraging her, were they?
Those girls in her head, the ones she’d earned her bread and butter on, whose agonies had brought her a fortune. Made her …
Famous, they all whispered gleefully. Don’t forget that. They weren’t helping her. They were luring her. Suddenly she knew why: They wanted her to be one of them … .
She wouldn’t be able to hold her breath for much longer. Suddenly a hand reached down in front of her, fingers searching.
Fright punched the breath out of her. Bubbles rose past her face, and in the next instant he grabbed her hair, dragging her up and out of the water. She coughed up bits of seaweed, heard a voice shrieking.
Her own voice. He shoved her back into the boat. Not even bothering to keep an eye on her while she lay there gasping and shaking, he found a small plastic box under the transom seat and selected some small parts out of it.
Swiftly he pulled the engine up, removed something from the propeller and tossed it aside. He’d done this before, she could tell, as he replaced it without hesitation with the part from the plastic box, then lowered the engine again.
She’d broken something on the engine, hitting those rocks with it. But he’d fixed it. Whatever he’d done was routine, easy if you knew how.
When he had finished, he seated himself by the tiller, facing her. “Change of plans,” he said, and started the engine.
BACK IN EASTPORT, JAKE SAT IN THE MEDICAL CLINIC WAITING room until her name was called, then let her ankle be x-rayed, pronounced unbroken, and wrapped in a pressure bandage so tight she thought her toes might pop off.
Wade waited outside, then drove her home. It was nine in the morning, and up and down the Eastport streets the daily routines were well under way: in and out of the post office, the hardware store, and the IGA, normal people and their ordinary chores.
All present and accounted for; all but Sam. At home, Jake’s father was in the kitchen cooking oatmeal.
He wore denim coveralls, a plaid flannel shirt, and beat-up work boots. He’d been dressed since five that morning, when he’d woken to find Bella’s side of the bed empty.
No stranger to disaster, he’d gotten up immediately to start making phone calls. But first he’d shaved and dressed, since at that point he still didn’t know who he might end up talking to: a ransom demander?
Or maybe a coroner’s deputy. All this she’d learned from Wade; her dad still wasn’t talking much.
“He’ll settle down,” Wade told Jake when they got inside, putting a gentle hand up to push her damp hair off her forehead.
“I hope so,” Jake replied guiltily. She still felt ashamed, as if she and Bella had chickened out instead of getting out of the water because it—or Randy—had been about to kill them.
An impulse seized her, to skip the shower she’d planned and instead crawl into Sam’s bed and stay there. But:
“You can’t try again if you’re dead,” Wade said, pulling a set of fresh towels out of the linen closet for her.
And in the end it was this remark that got her through the shower, the rewrapping of her ankle, and the putting on of clean clothes, even the application of a little makeup.
When Sam came home, she would want to look decent. Back downstairs, she found her father still in the kitchen stirring steel-cut oats.
“Don’t you dare blame her,” Bella said.
Jake’s dad’s gaze remained on the oatmeal.
“I made her take me,” Bella said. “I was the one who decided to go.”
The oatmeal spoon stopped moving. “You might have both said something to me.”
Bella got a coffee cup from the cabinet and filled it for Jake. “Why, so you could make a fuss? Try talking me out of it? Forbid it?”
Before he could answer, she went on. “I’m too far along in my life to start letting you tell me what to do, old man.” Her big green eyes flashed with anger. “So if you were thinking that, you can stow it.” She passed Jake the cream. “We’re sorry we worried you. But I married you, and I can unmarry you.”
His lips pursed. But there was no hiding the smile twitching at their corners. Seeing it, Jake knew why he’d married Bella.
Exactly why. “Eat,” he said, putting two bowls of steaming mush on the table.
The women looked at the bowls, and at each other. Neither of them felt anything like eating.
“Unless,” he added, “you both want to lie around all day on fainting couches, sighing and weeping. ’Cause that’s what you’ll both be doing if you don’t get some food into you.”
So they dug in, mostly just to placate him. But it turned out that bowls of hot mush slathered with cream and maple sugar were just what the doctor ordered.
Jake was working on a second bowl and Bella was drinking another glass of orange juice when Bob Arnold came in and laid a hundred-dollar bill on the table.
“I just had a talk with Roger Dodd,” he said. “Turns out he bought a lot of electronic equipment not long ago. Copier, and a scanner.”
Just then Wade came in with the dogs. Behind him came Ellie White and George Valentine. They’d all heard what the chief said.
“Why?” asked Ellie. “I mean, why would he buy …”
But Jake understood. “He copied it, didn’t he? The money, he faked it up.”
It was, she realized, the thing that had been bothering her all along. “He faked Randy out with it.”
Bob turned to her. “Somebody wants a million from you, and you don’t want to give it, it stands to reason you might try and fool ’em.”
She got up. Cooked steel-cut oats, her father had once told her, put hair on your chest. She thought that if it ever came to a choice between the way she felt now and low-cut blouses, she’d take the oats.
Thank you, she mouthed at him, and he nodded in reply, not unkindly.
“Why?” said Ellie suddenly again.
She’d dressed in a white blouse, black wool slacks, and a red sweater, plus stockings and loafers. Even her hair was pinned up in a neat, reddish gold braid.
“I mean,” Ellie said, “why would Roger try to pass phony cash off on his brother?”
No sequins, no glitter were anywhere on her. Wade and George were cleaned up, too: George in clean, pressed jeans and a blue chambray work shirt with pearl buttons, Wade in corduroys, a good collar shirt, and a navy crew-neck sweater with the words Maine Fish & Game embroidered on it in crimson.
A thump of fright hit Jake as she realized why they looked so respectable, all of them: Like her dad, they didn’t know who they might be talking to. A police detective, a reporter …
An undertaker. “He knew,” Bella said. “He knew Randy killed both those women—his own wife, Cordelia, and Roger’s wife, Anne. And he knew that Randy would be coming back for the money.”
Bob nodded in agreement. “Turns out that two days after Anne died was when Roger went online and bought all that equipment.” He scowled communicatively. “Hadn’t even had Anne’s funeral yet. So you’re right, he knew the score. Or he was an awful good guesser. But he says it was all for menus and place mats, for the bar.”
A likely story, Bob’s face said.
“Where is he now?” George Valentine wanted to know. “I’ll go ask him a couple of pointed questions of my own.”
Ellie looked warningly at him. Small and compact, with hard, work-toughened hands that clenched readily into fists, George was the type of fellow who, if he asked a guy a few questions and the guy didn’t answer fast enough, would speed the responses pretty effectiv
ely.
“Okay, okay,” he relented. “I just wanted to help.”
“He’s in custody now, though, right?” Jake asked Bob. “Roger is?”
But Bob shook his head. “For what? Getting threatened and blackmailed by his brother, who by the way we also haven’t proved anything against?”
His tone said that, left to his own devices, Bob would have locked Roger Dodd up permanently just on general principles. But:
“No. He’s got a date with the state cops later today. And I guess someone’ll be wanting to talk about that fake money with him.”
Bob moved toward the door. “But as of now I’ve got nothing. I wouldn’t have even known about the copying equipment if Roger hadn’t been trying to fast-talk me about the cash. First he said he went to Bangor and got it, then that a courier delivered it… . I guess he never thought anyone would ask. So he had no story.”
He looked at Bella and Jake. “That got me thinking, and the fancy copier and so on are right there in his office.”
With the result that, as usual, small-town cop Bob Arnold had put two and two together, then pulled a rabbit out of a hat. Jake felt a burst of gratitude for him.
But it didn’t last. “Anyway, I just came up here to make sure you two were okay,” he went on, “and tell you the Canadian Coasties’re on the way to where you think you had a sighting.”
She stared in disbelief. “We think?”
Wade stepped in front of her. “Okay, Jake,” he said. “Bob, has Roger said anything more about where he thinks Randy went?”
Bob frowned. “No. I went back down to the Artful Dodger and asked him again just now. But since this morning he’s hooked up with an attorney and now he says he won’t be making any more comments about Randy or anything else.”
Bob pulled the back door open. “Also, he says as far as he’s concerned the statements he’s already made were under duress.”
“Fine,” Jake managed to reply when she found her voice again; the nerve of the guy. “Let’s leave it like that, then.”
She stepped up to Bob. “But tell him this from me.”
Because maybe she wasn’t a money person anymore, and maybe her days of cash clients so crooked that just talking to them was a prosecutable felony were over. But she remembered the important parts of that old life, where what you really needed was a cool head, a keen eye, and the ability to make good on your threats.
