Death by Chocolate Cherry Cheesecake

by Sarah Graves

  He let his arm drop around my shoulders. “Jake, when I am out there on the water, there’s three things I always know: where I am, what time it is, and what the tide’s doing.”

  I digested this. “Also,” he went on, “it’s not like the old days when guys hung out on ships’ masts, squinting through a long spyglass. We’ve got high tech now, you know?”

  “Oh.” I felt the air hissing out of my big confession scene. “And by high tech you mean what, exactly?”

  He gave me a consoling squeeze. “FLIR. Stands for ‘forward-looking-infrared. ’ It means,” he added as if I didn’t already know, “that harbor pilots can see in the dark.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake.” Here I’d been beating myself up over not telling him and he’d known all along. “Then why didn’t you—”

  “Get someone out there for you?” he finished for me. To save us, he meant, or at least make sure we got in okay by ourselves.

  We started back downhill between granite outcroppings covered in gray-green lichens. Spruce trees and white pines grew thickly down to where a sharp drop fell off to the waves below; luckily, we knew our way on the trail between the trees, even in the dusk.

  “Well, first of all,” Wade said, “I’d have to find someone crazy enough to go out in the fog after you, wouldn’t I? Or call the Coast Guard on you.”

  Good point. Wrapped in a zinger, but still. From the high, bare bluffs we descended to the smell of the sun-warmed evergreens, which still filled the air, and gray light slanted between the trees.

  “Truth is, you looked okay where you were.” Wade put a hand out to me as I picked my way over the loose stones; as steep as this trail’s uphill portion had been, its downhill was even hairier.

  “I knew the fog was clearing, too. It had already lifted in Cutler and Jonesport.”

  Two of the nearby weather stations, he meant, that his ship would’ve been getting reports from. “So I just asked our comm guy to let me know when you got in to shore,” he added.

  Above us a bald eagle in a nest the size of a Volkswagen spied down, cocking its big white head first one way and then the other.

  “I know it probably felt pretty dramatic,” said Wade. “But what you two did out there last night was not a whole lot more than the equivalent of pulling off the road in bad weather until visibility improves. Not fun, but people do it and survive.”

  I hadn’t thought of it that way.

  “Well, except for the nearly-getting-run-over part,” he said. “Also it’s just possible that the Coast Guard might have had an eye on you. Because . . . did either of you happen to notice a little black box in the emergency gear bin?”

  I stared at him. “You’re kidding.”

  He shook his head. “Nope. It’s a GPS tracker, relays your signal from a satellite.”

  We crossed back over the small wooden bridge. From the park’s gravel parking area the shoreline to the east had darkened to a black cutout against the indigo sky.

  “George put it in the Bayliner,” Wade said. “Boat leaves the dock, it can be located. He could track it on a computer or on his phone, and when he bought it, he said he was going to set it to automatically ping the Coasties, too. Although,” Wade added, “I don’t know for sure that George ever did that part.”

  “So that’s what the wires were,” I said. “From the dashboard through to the box in the gear bin.”

  Wade nodded, watching me digest George’s . . . well, I imagine you’d call it a safety measure. But I couldn’t say I approved.

  “Look, he wanted her to feel free on that boat of hers, you know? Not like she was being supervised,” Wade said.

  I put my hand on the car door. “But she was being supervised. Spied on, even. Her privacy invaded.”

  I heard my voice rising; Wade put his hands up in a gesture of you’ve got this wrong. “He wasn’t going to spy, I guarantee it.”

  I must’ve looked skeptical. “I helped him put the device in,” Wade said. “I’ll bet he hasn’t checked it since. For one thing, I’m not sure he knows how. He was pretty flummoxed by the instruction booklet, as I recall.”

  His hands dropped to his sides. “It’s for emergencies only, Jake. Looked at if she goes missing, but not for keeping routine tabs on her. Her privacy is not going to be invaded.”

  I got in and slammed the car door against the rising wind. Wade settled in the passenger seat.

  “Truth is, he put it in there and then Ellie took all those boating-safety courses, navigation and boat handling, and so on,” he said. “And went out and practiced like a demon.”

  He was right. That whole first summer, Ellie’d been on the water more than she was on land.

  “So George got more comfortable, and I think he sort of lost interest in the tracker,” Wade said. “We were going to go look at it again together, but we never did.”

  He rolled his window down; a fresh salt breeze drifted in. “That was good thinking, by the way, using that depth finder.”

  “And if we hadn’t?” I turned the car around and headed back toward town. “What would you have done then, if we’d still been in the shipping lane, smack-dab in front of you?”

  He shook his head slowly. “Nothing I could do. It was too late. Changing course on a freighter . . . it would be like trying to turn this whole island on a dime.”

  A deer leapt from a thicket. I slammed on the brakes, the car stopped suddenly, and the deer vanished obliviously into a bunch of saplings on the other side of the road.

  I unwrapped my fingers from the wheel. Across the darkening bay in Lubec, tiny, twinkling lights were coming on in the houses and shops.

  “But never mind that,” Wade went on, and I can’t tell you how glad I was that he was taking such a reasonable “no harm, no foul” view of what had happened with the freighter.

  “What I want to know is,” he said, “are you going to tell Ellie about the tracker or not? Because I’ve been thinking,” he rubbed a hand over his brush-cut hair, “and what I think is . . .”

  If I did intend to tell her, he’d have to speak with George about it, he meant; it would be only fair to warn the poor guy that the secret was out, on account of Wade telling me about it when he must have at least implied that he wouldn’t.

  Meanwhile, until now, he hadn’t; told me, that is. That was a fact that didn’t escape me, either. But under the circumstances I figured I’d let that little omission go by.

  On Key Street the kids ran, shouting and waving sparklers. From the porches wafted the sickly sweet smell of citronella candles. In the still, heavy air before the storm that was coming, barbecues spat fat flares, the flames lighting backyards crowded with kids and grandparents, lawn chairs and picnic tables.

  “What I think . . . ,” I began, turning into our driveway. No barbecue grill here, and there weren’t any lights on in the house, either. The sight of the dark windows filled me with sudden worry.

  “I think if you don’t tell George what happened to us out on the water in the fog and so on, I won’t tell Ellie about the GPS tracker he put on her boat,” I said.

  Not that I didn’t still have misgivings—big ones. In fact, the whole idea was repulsive to me. But if Ellie and the Bayliner got in trouble, I wanted to be able to rush out and find her like right the hell now, didn’t I?

  Sure I did. And George hadn’t been thinking of snooping on her for any bad reason, I was certain; he was a lovely guy and he adored her, but he was not—how shall I say this?—the most imaginative fellow on the planet.

  He’d just wanted her to be safe, and he hadn’t told her about it because . . .

  Well, for that one I had no ready answer, and I still didn’t like this at all. But Wade had to keep his trap shut about our watery adventure or George would be reading my friend Ellie the riot act about it until hell froze over.

  So I was stuck. “Okay,” Wade agreed easily as we got out of the car. “It’s a deal, I won’t tell George.” Then:

  “Ellie dropped that heavy
anchor all on her own, though, did she? Scrambled right out onto the bow and handled it okay?”

  “She certainly did. Hauled it up again, too.” We walked toward the house together, his arm around my waist, through the shadows under the maple trees.

  “It was a little nerve-wracking sometimes,” I admitted. “But I never felt like things were out of control.”

  That was pushing it; in the moment of first seeing that huge freighter coming out of the fog at us, things had seemed . . . well, “unregulated” was putting it mildly.

  “Ellie took care of it all,” I said, “and she knew just how to tell me what to do about everything.”

  “Really?” On the porch he captured me in a surprise embrace. “You think she could teach me that trick? Telling you what to do about everything?”

  “Ha.” Flattening my hands against his broad chest, I made as if to shove him away but didn’t; for pure delight Wade’s embrace is right up there with a mouthful of good chocolate.

  “Anyway,” he said, “it still sounds to me like she handled it all just fine. It’s the little boat that buzzed you that I’d like to know a lot more about.”

  Me, too. Besides not liking the feeling of keeping secrets from him, it was a lot of the reason why I’d told him the whole story, actually. The little boat hadn’t seemed like a big deal then, but now . . .

  I looked past him through the screen door.

  “Not,” he added with caution, “that you two ever need to pull a stunt like that again.”

  Inside the house early evening and the lowering storm clouds cast a bluish gloom into the silence. No music or voices. No blare of a TV from anywhere.

  No nothing. I pushed past Wade and rushed inside.

  Seven

  “Bella?” I peered into the pantry, the laundry room, and the phone alcove, then down the cellar steps and up the hall stairs. “Dad? Is anyone here?”

  The private apartment I’d had remodeled for them was on the third floor, once the servants’ quarters back in the 1830s when it took plenty of help to run a big house like this one.

  Still did, actually. I started up the stairs, then paused at the sound of Wade’s voice. “Jake.”

  Crooking a finger at me, he spoke quietly from the other end of the hall, his burly shape shadowy in the faint gleam from the fanlight over the big old front door.

  I tiptoed toward him, and he steered me gently to the doorway of the sunroom, where the lights were turned low and a small fire burned cozily on the tiled hearth.

  There together on the daybed, each with an arm curved comfortably around the other’s shoulders, lay Bella and my dad, sound asleep with the quilt pulled up over them. And at the foot, positioned so his big body wasn’t crowding anyone, lay Maxie the dog.

  The dog’s head lifted alertly. My dad’s hand still rested on it, his gnarled fingers nesting in the animal’s thick tan fur.

  “Wuff,” uttered Maxie, settling again. My dad didn’t stir, nor did Bella. The firelight flickered warmly over all three of them.

  “This is the dog I was telling you about,” I murmured.

  Wade took in the scene: dog, Dad, Bella. “I get it. Sure, I guess I can live with that for a while.”

  He turned thoughtfully to me. “So listen, I guess I’m going upstairs to take a shower.”

  Real life hit me again with the realization that I probably wasn’t exactly daisy fresh, myself. “I could use one, too.”

  He shrugged. “In that case there’s really no sense wasting water, is there?”

  On separate showers, he meant. So we didn’t.

  * * *

  Afterward we lay together in the big bed in our room, under the light-as-a-cloud blue cotton blanket that Ellie had crocheted and given to us for our fifth wedding anniversary.

  “I’d better go see how she’s doing,” I said drowsily.

  The next pair of cheesecakes was in the oven by now and while they baked she was probably mixing up a batch of cookie batter; after all, we still had to open the shop tomorrow. So we’d need just as many delicious chocolate baked items as on any other day, and probably even more.

  “I’m going to try getting hold of Sam again, too,” I said. But when I tried raising him on my cell phone, there was still no answer.

  Wade swung out of bed and pulled on a pair of boxer shorts: blue, with little yellow bathtub duckies on them. I swear there are parts of my life that if I could just sell tickets to them, I would be a kazillionaire. However:

  “No luck?” Wade asked, indicating my phone. He hauled a navy sweatshirt on, then stepped into a fresh pair of jeans.

  I shook my head and began dressing as well—miles to go, et cetera. “No. And I’m really starting to get concerned.”

  Outside, the wind rattled the gutters; peering past the drawn shade, I glimpsed the leaves in the treetops thrashing about.

  “Young guys in their twenties don’t always stay in touch with their moms,” Wade observed.

  “Right. But Sam does. Or he always has before, anyway.” It was possible, I supposed, that he was on his way here right now.

  He could’ve had a cell phone malfunction, for example, and instead of trying to find some twentieth-century vintage relic of a pay phone, he’d figured he’d just tell me about it when he got home.

  Unfortunately, though, that’s not what the mother of a recovering drug-and-alcohol abuser tends to assume. At one point Sam was little more than a walking chemistry set.

  I mean, when he could walk. Sitting there on the edge of the bed, I recalled very clearly the time the Bangor cops called me to say he’d been arrested and was in jail, and it was the best news I’d had all week.

  Because he wasn’t dead.

  I put the phone away while Wade tied his sneakers. “What’re you going to do?” I asked.

  He thought for a moment before replying. Then, “This thing about the cheesecakes. Does Ellie really need you there right now? At the shop?”

  “Um,” I began doubtfully. Strictly speaking, she probably didn’t. But before I could say so:

  “Because I was thinking about that guy you said rushed you. Took a run at you in his little boat the other night.”

  I finished dressing: sneakers, dungarees, long-sleeved tee. The wind shook the windows harder; I pulled a cotton sweater on.

  “Thinking what about him?” I took a look at myself in the mirror over the dresser: long, narrow face, dark eyes, short brown hair. I could comb it into a neat cap, but it tangled to a rat’s nest again as soon as I stopped combing.

  I wasn’t going to scare small children is about the best I can say about my appearance; it had been a long couple of days. Wade came up behind me and kissed my neck.

  “About whether the guy really came at you on purpose and if so, whether he’s hooked into any of this other stuff you and Ellie have been dealing with,” he replied.

  Into Muldoon’s murder, and the attack on Marla, the photos of Miss Halligan, the money in the cellar, and . . .

  And his own truck, which somebody had sabotaged because of me, I was fairly certain now. To distract me by hurting Wade.

  I turned from the mirror. “Yes, if you want to know the truth, I do think it was on purpose. I just can’t prove it.”

  In my mind’s eye I saw the little boat again, charging out of the darkness at us. Our running lights had been on; he couldn’t have missed seeing us. The only way he’d missed slamming into us was to swerve away at the last instant.

  “He must have seen us,” I said, “or we’d have collided. No doubt in my mind at all, actually. I just didn’t want to sound too paranoid about it.”

  Wade looked convinced. “Okay, then, listen to me a minute. I think I know who the guy is. Small open boat, little outboard hung on the transom? He bombs around in it at all hours, keeps it about as tidy as your average trash pit.”

  I recalled the decrepit small vessel that had been tied up at the Lubec dock, and the junk that was in it. “Could be the one. You know him?”


  We started downstairs toward the tantalizing smell of fresh coffee and the sound of the small TV that Bella had set up in the sunroom.

  “I know of him. You know, nod when I see him, and so on. We aren’t pals or anything.”

  At the foot of the stairs Wade bent to greet Maxie, who’d gotten up. The German shepherd was even more imposing-looking now than he had been when I first met him: thick, wolflike pelt, huge dark paws the size of softballs, and those amazing eyes, whiskey-colored and so intelligent that they practically looked human.

  “Hey, buddy.” Wade crouched by the dog, who tipped his head queryingly. “How’s life in dog world?”

  Maxie let out an expressive sigh and put his chin on Wade’s knee.

  “That good, huh?” Wade smoothed the fur between the dog’s ears. “Well, don’t worry. You just stay here with us and we’ll take care of you until your own human gets better, okay?”

  The canine’s ears pricked up as if he understood, and we all walked together out into the kitchen, where Bella was putting the finishing touches on a plate of sandwiches.

  “Take one,” she urged me, so I did, plus one of the pickles that she’d made from some of the tiny cucumbers just now showing up on the vines in the garden.

  “You eat?” I asked Wade around a mouthful. I was famished, I realized, and Ellie probably was also. He nodded, sipping coffee as Bella poured lemonade and handed me a glassful.

  “Yup,” Wade replied, heading for the utility closet in the back hall.

  “You girls,” Bella began, “need to take care of yourselves if you’re going to . . .”

  She let the words trail off. In the dim glow of the kitchen night-light, her rawboned face was pinched with fatigue and worry.

  “How is he?” I asked, because of course she was worried about my dad. I finished the second glass of lemonade, refused a third.

  In the hall Wade rooted through the utility closet. Bella looked grim. “Fine,” she said. “The dog helps.”

  Her face crumpled, ugly with tears. “But he thinks he’s dying, and if he is, he insists that he wants to do it here. That he won’t go back to the hospital no matter what. So now if he does get sicker again, I don’t know how I’m going to manage.”