Berried to the Hilt

by Karen MacInerney

  “You bet,” he said, taking a swig of coffee and looking sidelong at Audrey. “Look at what happened to poor Gerald.”

  Audrey’s eyes filled with tears, and she looked away quickly. After topping off their coffee cups, I returned to the kitchen, pretending not to have noticed. I checked the clock when I got back to the kitchen; it was almost nine o’clock, and I hadn’t seen Molly yet, which was unusual. I glanced out the window and felt a pit open in my stomach. The dinghy was gone.

  The rest of breakfast seemed to go by in slow motion. John had gone to the mainland with the scabbard early, so I couldn’t ask him to go and check the beach with me, but with Gwen still with Adam on Mount Desert Island, I couldn’t go myself until breakfast was over. When Cherry finally finished her breakfast—I had to force myself to smile and make polite conversation—I tossed the last of the dishes into the sink, grabbed my jacket, and ran down to my skiff, the Little Marian.

  The sky was leaden, and the wind howled out of the north, reminding me that winter wasn’t far off. I huddled in the back of the skiff, bracing myself as the little boat rode a big wave and then slammed back down into the water.

  What am I doing out here? I asked myself as I fought the choppy water and made for the little strip of beach. I wasn’t sure what I expected to accomplish by finding Molly at the scene of the crime—which I was more than likely to do.

  My body tensed as I rounded the turn before the beach. The dinghy was nowhere to be seen, and I wasn’t sure whether to be frustrated or relieved.

  I made my way in to shore, almost swamping the little skiff twice in my inept maneuvering—and pulled the skiff up onto the sand, making sure the outboard motor didn’t get ground into the beach. When I was sure the skiff was far enough away from the water—the last thing I wanted to do was to have to climb the cliff to get out of here—I hurried back to where we had found the concretions the night before.

  As I guessed, Molly had been hard at work relocating her stash. All but one of the tubs were gone, along with the car battery. I peered into the remaining tub—it contained two medium-sized coin concretions—and then opened the trash bag I had sorted through the night before.

  Everything was as I had left it—the lift bag, the rope, the dive knife, the glow sticks, and the flashlight. And the watch, which was in a Ziploc bag.

  I picked up the small bag and examined it, wondering why the watch was here instead of in her room. The face was blue, with all kinds of dials on it—a compass, a little circle that showed the phases of the moon—even a miniature map of the constellations. It didn’t look very feminine, but then again, neither did the massive dive computer I’d seen on her wrist since I’d met her.

  Using the hem of my T-shirt, to avoid leaving my fingerprints or smudging Molly’s, I turned the watch over to put it back into its baggie, and then froze. There were initials engraved on the back.

  But they weren’t Molly’s.

  _____

  I stuffed the watch back into the baggie and shoved it into the trash bag, heart pounding. Then an awful thought occurred to me. I carefully dug through the bag until I found the dive knife. I unsheathed it slowly, holding it up to the light. At the base of the knife, where the blade met the hilt, there was a rust-colored stain.

  I quickly slid the blade back into the sheath and dropped it into the bag, wiping my hands on my jeans.

  Unless I was very much mistaken, Molly had murdered Gerald with her dive knife, and then planted Eli’s cutlass—the one he had threatened Gerald with hours before—near the dock as a decoy.

  The only thing I couldn’t figure out was why.

  I bit my lip, trying to decide what to do next. If I didn’t take the bag with me, Molly would soon return and hide it where I’d never find it. With no motive and no evidence, there would be no way I could prove to the police that Eli was innocent.

  If I took it with me, though, I’d be tampering with evidence—even if I did have another witness to verify where I’d found it. And I still couldn’t figure out why Molly had killed Gerald. From everything I’d learned, unclaimed treasure was just that—unclaimed treasure. Even if Gerald knew what she was up to, the only leverage he had was telling her colleague what she was doing. It might damage her career, but it didn’t seem sufficient reason to commit murder.

  Was Molly covering for someone else? Had Gerald done something else to merit her anger? Or was she just a psychotic person who enjoyed stabbing people in the back? From the mood change I’d sensed in her over the last day, I wasn’t about to dismiss that as a possibility.

  I would have to take the bag with me, I decided. If I left the evidence here, it would be gone by the time I got back, and then Eli would likely rot in jail while Molly roamed free—and free to kill again. I grabbed the bag and slung it over my shoulder, shuddering to think of its contents. Then I ran across the beach, racing to get to the Little Marian before Molly returned.

  Unfortunately, I wasn’t fast enough.

  I heard the roar of the dinghy’s motor when I was only halfway across the beach. There was nowhere to hide—the skiff was out in plain sight, and in moments, I would be, too. I ran as hard as I could, my feet sliding in the sand, and reached the Little Marian just as the dinghy came into view. I tossed the bag into the skiff, ran to the back, and had just heaved the little skiff into the water when there was a terrible cracking sound. The Little Marian juddered to a halt, throwing me forward, into the bow of the boat.

  Icy water was flowing in through the hole in the side of the boat as I pushed myself up off the boards. My jacket and the front of my jeans were soaked. A hard gust of wind slammed into me, and I gasped at the cold.

  Molly’s cheery expression was gone, and the flatness in her eyes terrified me. “You figured it out,” she said.

  “That you were stealing artifacts?” I said, trying to sound confident and unconcerned, even though I was sitting out here in a wrecked skiff talking to a murderer. No one even knew I was here, I realized. John would figure it out—but by the time he got back, it would be too late. “I guessed it, yes.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about,” she said, “and you know it.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I lied.

  “Then what are you doing with that?” she asked, jabbing a finger at the black bag, which was already half submerged in the leaking boat.

  I shrugged.

  Quick as a flash, she grabbed the bag. I reached for it, trying to pull it from her hands, but she was too fast for me. She dumped the contents on the beach and grabbed the dive knife, knocking me to the ground with her sharp shoulder as I struggled to shake it out of her hand.

  “Damn,” she said, reaching down to scoop up the watch with the hand that wasn’t gripping the now unsheathed knife. I hadn’t closed the bag, and a bit of water had seeped in. “I was hoping not to get this wet.”

  “What do you want it for?” I asked. “A keepsake?”

  “Awfully expensive keepsake,” she said. “Don’t you know? It’s a Tour de l’Ile—worth at least half a million. Maybe more.”

  A watch worth a half-million dollars? I could see why she wasn’t willing to let it go down with its owner. “You were planning to sell it along with the artifacts,” I said.

  “Once I got rid of the engraving, of course. I was a little worried about the serial number, but that can be changed, too.” She shook the watch and peered at it. “Should be waterproof, but you never know.” She pocketed it and focused on me again. “You were right after all. It wasn’t your friend who did Gerald in. It wasn’t his money-grubbing partner, even though I know Frank’s glad I did the dirty work for him. And it wasn’t that pathetic little Audrey, either—although I’m sure she thought about it, once she found out he was using her.”

  “Why did you do it?” I asked.

  She blinked at me. “You don’t know?”

  “I know you killed him, and used the cutlass as a decoy. And even put the scabbard in Audrey’s room—nice touch.”
I glanced over at the Little Marian; to my dismay, the little craft was drifting out to sea. I started toward it, but Molly shook her head sharply, and I had to let her go.

  “Idiot left her door unlocked,” she said. “Of course I took advantage of it.”

  “But what happened that night?” I said. “That’s what I can’t figure out.”

  “I was doing a nighttime dive,” she said. “That’s how I got the coins; I spotted them during the daytime dives, tagged them with glow sticks, and then went back for them at night.”

  “So you did dive off the dinghy,” I said.

  She nodded. “The only problem was, when I came up, guess who was waiting for me?”

  “Gerald,” I said. “On the Lorelei.”

  She nodded. “He invited me aboard, of course, and then told me he knew all about my activities—and the other artifacts I’d fenced. He knew I’d been raiding the university’s finds for years.”

  “So this wasn’t the first time,” I said, shivering as another cold gust sliced through my wet clothes. The light glanced off Molly’s knife as she shifted position. How was I going to disarm her?

  “He threatened to turn me in unless I paid him,” she said. “It was either hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, or twenty years in jail. What choice did I have?”

  “So when he turned his back …”

  “Do you know what made him turn his back?” Molly asked. She was enjoying the audience, I realized.

  “The rocks,” I said. “The boat hit the rocks.”

  “Bingo,” she said.

  “So you stabbed him as he tried to save the Lorelei.”

  “Yes, and it would have been perfect if he weren’t so chunky.”

  “Why?” I asked, and then realized what she meant. “Oh. The body floated instead of sinking, didn’t it?”

  “And it was just my luck that your friend was nosing around that night. It was convenient that your friend left his cutlass on your front desk. I took it and ditched it near the dock as a precaution. With divers out there, there was a chance he’d be found—but I never expected he’d be out of the water so quickly.”

  “Are you the one who hit me the other night, too?”

  “You’re always where you shouldn’t be, aren’t you?” she said. “I was just coming back in from a dive to retrieve the last of the bullion. It’s too bad I didn’t hit you harder—I wouldn’t have to take care of you now.”

  I glanced down at the Little Marian, which was several yards away from the beach now. Then I scanned the water behind her, hoping to see a boat—someone I could flag down.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Molly said, reading my intentions. She pushed a ringlet of red hair out of her face, and I found myself wondering how I ever could have found her likeable. “You’ve made things difficult for both of us, you know. I have to get rid of you quietly, or they’ll link your disappearance to Gerald’s, and I don’t want that to happen.”

  I swallowed hard, looking at the knife. “A stab wound would be a clear similarity,” I said.

  “There’s always drowning,” she said, stealing a glance at the Little Marian. “The boat’s already got a hole in it.”

  “If you were going to drop me off the side of your boat, though, someone’s bound to see you,” I said. “It’s a small island, and there are a lot of boats out on the water.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “That is an inconvenience. But not an insurmountable one.” She dug through the bag and pulled out the hank of rope. “I’ll just have to come back for you this evening,” she said. “It’ll look like an accident—only this time, the body will turn up much, much later.”

  “But I’ll have rope burn,” I said as she jerked me around and laid the blade against my throat. The metal was cold and the rough rope grated against my skin as she bound my wrists together.

  “By the time they find you, they’ll have a hard time figuring out who you were,” she said in a voice that made me shudder. “The crabs will have you picked clean.”

  She yanked the rope tight and tied it quickly, then grabbed me by the arm and started marching me to the back of the beach. I started to feel some hope—if John came looking for me when he got back, I had a chance of getting out of this alive.

  Evidently, Molly had the same thought at the same time.

  “Never mind,” she said. “It’s too risky.” She jerked me around and pushed me toward the dinghy.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  She checked her dive computer. “You’ll see.” She pushed me into the dinghy. “Lie down,” she ordered, and I curled up in the bow of the boat, the fishy water on the bottom sloshing up into my face. I felt a wave of nausea, and swallowed down bile. I listened hard for the sound of a boat motor—if we came across Tom Lockhart, or another one of the lobstermen, they’d be sure to see me, and I’d be free.

  The ride wasn’t a long one. Only a few minutes had passed before she idled the engine. I lifted my head to see where we were, but she pushed it down with her foot. “You’ll see where we’re going soon enough.”

  She idled a minute or two more, then gunned the motor and drove the boat forward. The side of the boat smacked into a rock with a grating sound, and my heart juddered in my chest. Then the light dimmed, and the familiar sucking sound filled me with dread.

  “Smuggler’s Cove,” I said.

  She didn’t bother answering, but I knew I was right.

  _____

  She was an expert boatswoman, I’ll give her that. She had the dinghy tied up in no time flat, and her bulky flashlight wedged under one arm. When the boat was secure, she yanked me to my feet and pushed me up the short walkway toward the cave. “Let’s go,” she said brusquely when I resisted, giving me a sharp poke in the back with the tip of her knife. I gasped, feeling a warm spurt of blood. “Give the sharks something to get excited about,” she said, then ordered me to sit on the floor.

  She bound my feet expertly. “I’ll be back tonight,” she said. “I’m sure we’ll find the dinghy this afternoon, and I’ll volunteer to help out with the search and rescue.”

  “Do you really want more blood on your hands?” I asked weakly, my back still smarting from where she had jabbed me.

  “In for a penny, in for a pound,” she said. “See you tonight.”

  Then she retreated toward the dinghy, taking the flashlight with her.

  I don’t know how long I lay in the darkness on the cold rock in my damp clothes, but slowly, the sucking sound diminished, the faint hint of light at the mouth of the cave faltered, and then I knew the cove’s entrance was completely submerged. I worked at my bonds, wriggling around on the bumpy floor and trying to saw through them by rubbing the rope against a sharp rock, but all I managed to do was bloody my wrists.

  It was the second time I had found myself confronted by a murderer in Smuggler’s Cove, I thought to myself as I lay like a beached fish on the rocky floor. I’d escaped—barely—the first time, but I was afraid Molly was too smart for me to hope I’d get lucky a second time. The next low tide was well after midnight—and after finding my skiff in the water, no one would think to look for me here. John might suspect Molly was involved in my disappearance, but what would he be able to do? The evidence was gone, and no one had seen Molly and me together. And even if I did get free of my ropes, what then? If I managed to swim out of the cove, the current was strong and the rocks jagged. If I did manage not to be smashed against the side of the cliff, it was still a long swim to a place where I could haul myself out of the water. I would likely die of hypothermia before I was found.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of a plan B, so despite the less than rosy prognosis of plan A, I went back to trying to cut through the ropes with a dull rock. If nothing else, the movement kept me slightly less frozen, the effort passed the time—and the pain in my raw wrists distracted me from the terror.

  As the hours passed with no discernable change in the condition of the ropes binding my wrists, the ee
rie sucking sound of the waves against the rocks returned, and I knew the tide was going out. When I gauged the tide to be halfway out, I wriggled toward the mouth of the cave and started yelling. It was likely that the pounding waves drowned out my voice, but I called out until I was hoarse, then took a break and started yelling again.

  It seemed like an eternity that I lay there, shivering in my damp clothes, back and shoulders aching from my efforts to saw through the ropes, praying for someone other than Molly to come back and discover me. When I heard the sound of a motor, I renewed my yelling, and felt a surge of hope when the motor grew closer. But when the boat entered the cove and no one responded to my call, I knew with a sickening certainty that it was Molly, not John, who had come to retrieve me.

  All too soon, the flashlight appeared at the opening, and Molly was yanking me to my feet.

  “You can’t do this,” I said, my voice hoarse from yelling.

  “Let’s go,” she said, slicing through the ropes that bound my feet and pushing me toward the dinghy.

  My feet were numb from being bound tightly for so long, and I stumbled, but Molly’s grip was like steel. I reeled against her once, hoping to knock her down, but she quickly evaded the move. I crashed into the floor on my side, grazing the side of my head on a rock.

  Mercilessly, she hauled me up again and shoved me down into the dinghy. Then she climbed after me, still brandishing the knife. “Shut up and stay down,” she hissed. The motor started on the first try. She set the flashlight on the bench seat and untied the ropes, but left them looped around the iron rings until a big wave filled the cave. As the water receded, she released the ropes and gunned the engine, and a moment later, I left the cove for the last time.

  There were no stars in the sky. I couldn’t see anything—Molly had doused the flashlight—but from the moisture in the air, I was guessing there was fog. My already low hopes dropped even further.

  I don’t know how far we went, but with every moment, I felt more frustrated, hopeless, and angry—both at Molly and at myself. Why had I gone to the beach without telling anyone where I was going? Why hadn’t I brought something to defend myself with? I’d dealt with murderers before. Why had I not had more common sense?