by Sarah Graves
I kept my eyes on the road as a rainsquall struck suddenly. “The big dark car again?”
Sam nodded. We rounded the sharp curve toward Custom Street. “Yeah, it’s him, all right. Turn in here.”
He pointed to a sandy track leading down to the water. “Just do it,” he said.
Sam’s youthful stage as a beach bum was coming in handy. I jerked the steering wheel, bumping us downhill over a steep, sandy slope studded with tide-scoured stones.
At the bottom a weathered wooden shed sagged with age. When the tide was high, you could pull a little boat into it. But right now the tide was low; hurriedly I drove in under rickety-looking rafters.
Sam hopped out of the car and peered out between the shed’s slats. Gusts threatened to reduce the old structure to matchsticks as I waited nervously; finally he got back into the car.
“The guy’s gone by. Didn’t see us, I’m pretty sure. Man, it’s getting wild out there.”
I backed out of the shed again, impressed by how unflappable my son was proving to be. “Now what?” he wanted to know.
The envelope I’d taken from Marla’s cellar was still in my shirt. But Roscoe was still in the town lockup, too, and maybe not for long. “Any minute,” Bob Arnold had said.
Bob must’ve had a reason to think the young man Wade and I had visited—and been shot at with, let’s not forget that part— might be feeling more talkative than he had earlier. A reason for thinking it, I mean, and a reason for telling me about it.
So instead of pulling out the envelope, I gunned the car back up onto the road, and minutes later we were outside the Eastport lockup.
“Ma,” Sam said. “Listen, I’m sorry about everything.”
“Sam, I wish you had told me about it first, that’s all.”
Or even asked me or Wade for advice, I added silently, not wanting to push it. “But I’m going to assume you know what you’re doing,” I said.
What I actually assumed was that there was nothing I could do about it, so I might as well make the best of it.
“And for what it’s worth, from what little I’ve seen of her, Mika does seem to be a very nice girl,” I went on.
“Oh, she is,” Sam burst out, “and isn’t she pretty? Talented too. She’s a violinist, on top of everything. That’s why she’s been in Boston, to take lessons.”
The words tumbled from him in a rush until they ran out. But all I really heard was the way his voice softened when he spoke of her, which was how I knew two things:
He was in love, all right: truly, deeply. And it wasn’t my business to try to meddle in that, was it? My boy . . .
But the truth was, he wasn’t a boy any longer; and if I wanted a relationship with him at all, I would have to accept that.
He broke the silence, changing the subject. “So what are we doing here, again?”
At the lockup, he meant. I hesitated, not ready to end our talk; the other thing I hadn’t said to him, of course, was that he could marry a sword swallower from the circus and I’d still count it as a win as long as he wasn’t drinking again.
He looked good, actually; his high cheekbones sun-burnished and his eyes bright. Now he caught me assessing him.
“I’m fine, Ma,” he said. “Really.” He peered up at the old redbrick bank building. “C’mon, let’s go in.”
So we did, finding Roscoe in the clean, well-lit, and decently furnished cubicle used for housing local miscreants who couldn’t be transported at once to the county jail in Machias, thirty miles to our south.
“Hi,” Roscoe said, getting up to greet us. Fang stayed on the rug, asleep. Some of the fur on his rear had been shaved, and he had a few small wounds where the buckshot had been plucked out by the vet. But otherwise he seemed fine.
On the wall-mounted TV, an episode of Family Feud played; I wondered how long it had been since Roscoe, who’d cleaned himself up nicely at the room’s little sink, had enjoyed cable television.
“Howdy,” he greeted Sam, sticking his scrubbed-pink hand out when I introduced them. “Nice to meet you.”
The place wasn’t locked. Roscoe could’ve walked right out. But Bob Arnold always said that when you treat people well, they’ll behave well in return, mostly. In the case of the lockup this had turned out to be true; there’d never been an escape.
“Listen, Roscoe,” I said. “I know you’re scared of somebody, okay? And I don’t blame you. I’m scared, too. But I want to help.”
The wind howled between the buildings outside; Fang lifted his head and moaned, and Roscoe blinked with fright.
“This place is okay,” he whispered. “Besides, I ain’t got no other one to go to. But I gotta leave, because, you know, what if he finds me down here?”
His fear is realistic, I thought. “Roscoe, how about if I took you to my house? My family’s there, and Wade. You could stay with us until the storm ends, anyway. Would you feel safer there?”
Roscoe brightened. “Fang, d’you hear that? We can go to this nice lady’s house!”
“But you will,” Sam put in sternly, “tell her whatever she needs to know?” He caught on fast, that kid of mine.
Roscoe nodded, his eyes huge. “Oh yes, I surely will. Why, if you’re going to make it so I don’t have to be scared of that guy no more, I’ll answer whatever you ask,” he declared firmly, and then he did tell.
Oh, did he ever.
Twelve
Ten minutes later, in my wind-battered driveway, I sprinted from the car to the house. A metal trash can rolled, clattering up the street, and then a lawn chair, toppling end-over-end.
I flung myself inside, with Sam and Roscoe and the dog Fang scrambling in right behind. “Bella?”
She came in a hurry with a pan of garden peas in her hands, while I stood there in the back hall, shaking the rain off myself.
“Where’s Marla?” I looked around. The slicker I’d lent Marla the night before wasn’t on its hook.
Bella frowned. “I don’t know where she is. Not upstairs. I was up there with a dust mop a minute ago and I didn’t see her.”
Outside, the storm was cranking up for the main show, wind shrieking in the chimneys and thumping the roof, lifting shingles and rattling them down again with a sharp snappity-snap-snap.
“You know, though,” Bella mused, “I did think I heard a car slowing down on the street out front, not too long ago.”
A true storm veteran, she’d gotten out batteries, candles, and propane cylinders for the camp stove, and arranged them on the kitchen mantel. All the dinner materials, except for the beef roast, were out already, too, so they’d be handy when she wanted them.
And Sam was already in the sunroom with my dad, introducing Roscoe and telling him to make himself comfortable. “Get him some dry clothes, Sam,” I called, “and some for yourself, too.”
Marla could be just about anywhere by now, especially if she’d been picked up by someone in a car. That meant I desperately needed information of some kind, right this very minute.
So instead of going out on a rain-drenched wild-goose chase, I pulled the envelope from under my shirt, yanked the papers from it, and spread them on the kitchen table.
And stared. “Damn,” I uttered. They were bank deposit receipt slips, a hundred or more all with the same account name, Sykes Chocolate Creations. Also in the envelope: a checkbook, its ledger showing both the deposits and the withdrawals that followed.
The deposits were in varying dollar amounts. To unsuspecting eyes, they’d have looked as if they represented payments from her customers for the chocolate they had purchased.
Just as she’d said. But for each deposit three withdrawals of equal amounts had been made right afterward.
And that wasn’t what she’d described at all. Marla had said she was being paid a small percentage of what she deposited.
But this money, a hundred thousand or more dollars in total, was being divided into equal thirds. And after what Roscoe had told me . . .
Marla wasn’t
a victim, as Ellie and I had believed. Instead she was . . . Oh, what a fool I’d been.
“What?” said Bella, looking alarmed at my expression as I headed for the door again.
“No time,” I told her. “Tell Sam I said for him to stay here with you and Dad and watch out for everything, okay?”
Rain hat, slicker, umbrella, keys . . . The gun was still in my pocket. “Tell him I’ll be back.”
The storm outside now was just flat-out ridiculous, wind and rain in torrents shoving me around as I crossed to the car. Down Key Street, rushing rivers overflowed in the gutters and boiled in the storm drains. When Bob Arnold’s squad car raced by me in the other direction, with lights flashing and its siren wailing, I knew conditions were bad.
For someone else, that is. But it also meant that if things got dicey for me, Bob was already busy. And that, considering the unhappy thoughts I was thinking, didn’t comfort me at all.
“Ellie?” On rain-swept Water Street I shoved open the shop door and flung myself into the Chocolate Moose. The smell of warm chocolate enveloped me in sweetness, but it wasn’t enough to banish my bitter fear.
Because once Roscoe had felt safe enough to talk, he’d said that the person who’d hired him for lookout duty out on the water hadn’t been a guy at all. It had been a woman: Marla Sykes.
And the deposit receipts told me why. I didn’t know yet why Matt Muldoon had needed to get murdered over it all, but . . .
“Ellie!” The lights were on, the ceiling fans turning, two cheesecakes cooling, and the oven timer ticking steadily, showing a minute left to go on some chocolate macaroons that she and Mika must have been baking together.
I yanked them out; to hell with the extra minute. “Ellie, are you here somewhere?”
But of course she wasn’t, and neither was Mika. I ran next door to the Second Hand Rose, where an old Joni Mitchell album was on the CD player and a small battery-run water fountain trickled prettily on the massive old mahogany cash register counter.
“Hello?” Racks of vintage cashmere sweaters, suede coats, and leather jackets crammed the shop’s tiny front space, along with silk scarves and pillbox hats, lace shawls and fancy blouses.
I pushed through the beaded curtain to the back of the shop, where I’d never been, and where a jumble of as-yet unsorted items (feather boas, a gold lorgnette, what looked like a real, no-kidding, mink coat) overflowed from cardboard boxes.
On the rear wall an old framed poster advised me curtly to BE HERE NOW. But still no Miss Halligan . . . until from behind the boxes came a low moan.
Squeezing past them, I found a sort of nest: a narrow mattress with blankets, an alarm clock, and a tiny TV. A romance novel lay on the plastic milk crate serving as a night table; this was where she slept, I saw, now that her own bed was no longer available.
And it was where she lay now; a burst of fury washed over me as I knelt. “Miss Halligan? What happened? Are you all right?”
A spot of blood stained her clipped white hair, and the lump on her forehead was swelling rapidly, turning an ugly purple.
Her eyes fluttered open. “Oh . . .”
“Was he here? Miss Halligan, where’s the guy who’s staying in your house? Do you know? And who is he, anyway?”
If I knew who he was, it might help me to find him, and get Ellie and Mika out of his clutches when I did. “Miss Halligan?”
And Marla as well; I couldn’t imagine his intentions toward her were good, even if she’d gone with him willingly. This was all coming apart, whatever it was, and for a while she’d been a co-conspirator.
But now she was a witness against him. “Look, just tell me who he is and I’ll get the police to go after him,” I said.
But this didn’t get the reaction I expected. “Who? Clark?” she said fearfully, struggling up. “Oh, please don’t do that! He’s my son. Please don’t hurt him. He didn’t do anything. He couldn’t . . . He wouldn’t be out in the daytime like this and be seen by anyone. He’s got—”
Her mouth snapped shut, but I already understood: her son. It explained why she let him live in her house, and why he wanted to. Because he knew she would no more betray him than I would my own.
“Warrants out on him, huh?” I said, and she nodded sadly.
Our tiny, remote town must’ve looked to him like a place he could hunker down in, I supposed, with a mother whose devotion he could depend on. He must’ve been the one who’d gotten Marla into whatever scheme she was involved in, too.
Miss Halligan shook her head mournfully. “Poor Clark, he’s always had bad luck. First all the eye problems he had as a child and now—”
Yeah, poor Clark. “Was it him? Was he here? Did he hurt you?”
“No!” Miss Halligan climbed to her feet, tried vainly to put herself to rights.
“No, I’d just talked to him on the phone. He was at my house, when I heard someone out front in the shop.”
I didn’t believe her. “Who, then?” I followed her to the tiny bathroom, where she splashed water onto her face.
“Who, Miss Halligan?” Outside, the storm clamored wildly and the rain slammed down. “If it wasn’t your son, Clark?”
Miss Halligan turned, her clipped white hair blood-streaked and her heavy black eyeliner running like dark teardrops down her cheeks.
“I saw a hand come up with something in it. Something heavy.” She winced again, remembering. “I ducked, so it didn’t hit square on. A glancing blow, but enough, I guess.”
Her fingers went to her head again and came away red. “They must’ve been looking for something,” she said about the front of the store’s disarray.
Just as they had been at her house, in her little office, and at Marla’s. But I didn’t have time to tell her about that.
“After that, I don’t remember anything, really, until you woke me up back there,” Miss Halligan finished.
Outside, another couple of sirens wailed distantly. Whatever Bob Arnold was racing to, it was big. But as I thought this, my cell phone cheeped at me and it was him.
“Yeah,” he said through a background of wind noise and phone static, loud and electrical-sounding, “I’m jammed up out here, but I thought you ought to know.”
The phone cut out briefly, then back in again. Bob went on: “State cops called. They’ve had pressure from the district attorney. They wanted to know if I thought Ellie’d be around tomorrow. Or if—”
The high whine of a tow truck winch interrupted him. I waited anxiously. “Or if she might hightail it,” Bob finished.
Which meant they intended to take my friend into custody in the morning, and never mind that it was a holiday, unless instead they came and got her tonight despite the storm.
“. . . told ’em she’d be here,” Bob’s voice came tinnily through my phone, “but I figured you’d want a heads-up.”
“Yes,” I shouted back; he was fading out. “Thanks, I . . .”
His voice came intermittently: “. . . accident . . . high tide now for . . . stuck here on the mainland side of the causeway until . . .”
The call dropped. But I’d heard enough. “Listen, will you be okay?” I asked Miss Halligan, and she smiled tiredly in reply.
“I’m a tough old bird, I’ll be fine. Please don’t call the police. And please . . .”
I turned from the door. Her eyes were tragic.
“If anything happens, try not to let them hurt him.”
* * *
Back at the house I grabbed Sam out of the sunroom, leaving Roscoe chatting amiably with my dad. Once we were in the car, I told him what had happened: about Miss Halligan’s son being the guy who’d followed us, and that Mika and Ellie were missing, and so was Marla Sykes, and that probably the guy had them all.
“Marla was in on it with him but now I’ll bet he’s turned against her. He can’t get off the island until the causeway’s clear, but then he’ll run. So we don’t have much time – ”
Sam cut me off. “Ma, what in the world are you thin
king?” He hauled out his cell phone and began punching numbers into it. “We’ve got to call the cops.”
Right, only we couldn’t. “Sam, look at this storm. You know that by the time anyone gets all the way out here . . .”
In Bob’s absence it would be either the county sheriff or a state patrol officer, and in this kind of weather it could take a couple of hours or more for any of them to arrive.
Assuming, I mean, that they weren’t all tied up with whatever was occupying Bob right this minute; a bad traffic accident in the storm, it had sounded like.
“And I’m sorry, but we’ve got to find them a lot faster than that,” I said.
Sam grimaced, accepting this. On Water Street the incoming tide sent waves exploding upward like geysers between the pier’s planks.
“Look,” I said, “the one thing I know is that Marla Sykes was laundering money through her chocolate business.”
She’d admitted that much. “But maybe Muldoon found out about it. If he did, knowing him, he probably threatened her.”
“So to keep him quiet she got rid of him, and because she knew a lot about the Chocolate Moose, she was able to do it in a way that directed suspicion at Ellie?” Sam theorized.
“Right. She might even have been in the shop when George was doing the floor, so she’d have known about the trapdoor.”
Wind buffeted the car. “Although,” I added, still doubtful, “I’m not sure of that.”
Sam scowled. “But then how’d she get hurt, herself? Or Miss Halligan, either? And why take Ellie and Mika?”
“I don’t know.” I gripped the steering wheel. I didn’t know what the photos of Miss Halligan had to do with it, either. But maybe this was all a lot simpler than I’d thought. Sam pulled his phone out again.
“This is crazy, I’ve got to call someone.”
“Fine, go ahead if you think it’ll do any good. But I’m telling you, nobody can get here until the accident’s cleared and the tide goes out, so the traffic can use the causeway again.”
I pulled over on Washington Street and dug out my own phone, intending to call Wade. If I could get hold of him, he could come with us while we hunted for Ellie and Mika.
