Home Repair 04 - Repair to Her Grave

by Sarah Graves

  The old man leaned hard on the carved cane, anxiety etched on his face. “Winston, what the hell is going on?” I demanded.

  He waved at Raines. “He intended for Charmian to have a change of heart at the news of his death,” Cartwright said. “And to spur you two to further detective efforts. Mapes was hiding him, in hopes of learning more about that blasted map. But—”

  “I think Charmian and Lillian Frey are down there. No sign of them now, though,” I told him. “I don’t know what more to do or where to look. And the caves …”

  His sharp eyes took in the situation. “The tide,” he uttered gravely. “Oh, dear God in heaven.”

  But Raines didn’t pause for praying any more than he had for penance. Instead, he pulled a much-folded sheet of paper from his pants pocket.

  “Sam,” he said crisply, “look at this. Do you think you can find this opening?” He pointed at a spot on the paper.

  “Where did you get…” I began, then stopped as it hit me. He’d made his own copy of the map he’d found in Jane's diary, of course. The one that had been so legible, it had sent Charmian out to try following it at once.

  “Wait a minute,” I started again. “Sam's not going to …”

  Sam just looked at me, and all at once I noticed how tall he was: as tall as Wade. Bigger through the shoulders, actually. And while I wasn’t looking, something had happened to his face.

  That jutting jawline, the shadow along it because he hadn’t shaved. And the eyes, so calm and confident. Much more than mine had been when at that same age I had married his father.

  “Oh,” I said, and the hint of a smile creased the corner of Sam's mouth; he bent back to the paper Raines was showing him.

  “Right here,” he said seriously. “Yeah, I can do it.”

  I turned to Cartwright. “But how did you know? That Raines was alive, I mean.”

  He snorted disparagingly. “Mapes is a hunter. Guns, antlers, trophies. But the box of food and supplies in his truck consisted entirely of vegetables.”

  Cartwright's voice was a low rumble as he watched Raines and Sam. “Thus I concluded the supplies were not meant for Mapes.”

  “You remembered Raines is vegetarian,” I said. “Brilliant.”

  He shook his head sadly, removed the disreputable slouch hat to gaze at it before resettling it. “Not quite brilliant enough, apparently.”

  He caught his breath as Sam disappeared over the edge of the bluffs. Wade went down behind him, carrying the coil of line that Sam would use in case it was murky or he lost his bearings. The very idea made me want to hunker down on the grass and cover my eyes.

  “I still don’t understand why Lillian Frey thinks she’ll find the Strad down there.” I waved at the water. “She's the one who first told me it couldn’t survive the elements, and surely Hayes would’ve realized that, too. I mean, I’d say a flooded cave is a pretty harsh—”

  But here I stopped, as my tactless musing brought a look of anguish to the old man's face. After that, we waited for twenty long minutes until Sam reappeared over the edge of the bluffs. Even from this distance I could tell his search hadn’t been successful. The target cave, the one marked on Raines's copy of the map, was empty.

  “I went all the way back,” he said as we gathered around him. “Nothing. But you know, once you get in there it's not what the map shows.”

  He peered again at Raines's tracing of the sheet from Jane Whitelaw's diary. “See, you start here, but when you get here …”

  His finger moved along a line Raines had marked. Watching, Winston Cartwright paled. Then he understood, too.

  “Idiot!” he bellowed, clapping a massive hand to his forehead. “Oh, I am a foolish old— Give me that.”

  He lumbered hastily to Raines and Sam, snatched the copy of the map from Sam's hand, scowled blackly at it. “Oh, of course, any infant could surely predict that…”

  “What?” Raines demanded, as Cartwright took the map Wade had been carrying and held the two maps up side by side: the invisible-ink map from my dining room wall, and the tracing Raines had made of Jane Whitelaw's map, the one from her diary.

  And finally, finally, I understood what must have happened: two books. Two maps. One for Hayes, one for Jane.

  Different maps. “Compare,” he demanded. “Here, and here. You see?” He looked triumphantly at us. “The maps don’t match. Hayes gave Jane Whitelaw a map, all right. But it was a fake.”

  “Of course,” Ellie breathed. “He didn’t trust her.”

  “He wanted to appease her, and he loved her. So …” I tried picturing it: the beautiful woman he adored, his growing sense of something amiss, perhaps. He just didn’t know how amiss.

  “Oh, Lord.” Cartwright's voice was despairing as he examined the map we now believed to be the true one: the one Hayes kept for himself. “Haven’t any of you any classical learning at all ?”

  We shook our heads. “Greek to me,” Sam said as a joke, but shut up as Cartwright glowered at him.

  “What does this word say?” he demanded, shoving the frayed sheet of old paper under my nose.

  “It's Latin,” I said. “It says ‘ex,’ which I think means out. But we don’t want to get out of somewhere, we want to get… Oh.”

  “Oh,” Ellie echoed comprehendingly. “Ex. And not as in FedEx, either, but as in …”

  I clapped a hand to my head. “Ex marks the spot. Do you mean to tell me that on top of everything else, this annoying little jerk had to be a bilingual joker on his own damned treasure map? Oh, that's just…”

  I stopped. They were staring at me, Cartwright in despair.

  “If I’m not mistaken,” he said heavily, waving at the water, “the spot this map marks is now entirely submerged.”

  Sam's shoulders slumped. “Yeah. I’m afraid so. When I was down there I saw the opening. Saw it from above, I mean, it's way below the surface now, this entrance.”

  He put a hand on the old man's massive shoulder. “I couldn’t have gotten in even if I’d known it was the right one. I’m sorry, Professor. But this cave here … Well. It's been flooded for quite a while, now. Without air tanks, they couldn’t…”

  Cartwright looked up. His face was desolate. “Thank you, my boy. Thank you for trying to save my niece. You’ve been so kind.”

  He turned away, and we watched him walk slowly back to the pickup truck, leaning on the walking stick. When he got there, he looked at the vehicle as if he couldn’t remember what it was for.

  So there we were, helpless and miserable. It was over for Charmian and Lillian Frey. And there wasn’t a damned thing any of us could do about it.

  “That lying bastard,” Ellie said vehemently, and I knew who she meant: Hayes.

  “He was a fake, and a thief, and a liar. He betrayed the man who helped him. I don’t care if Josephus was a pirate, he was a friend to Hayes. And I hope he's rotting in—”

  “Look!” Sam shouted, pointing.

  A hand flopped up over the edge of the cliff, scrabbled for purchase in the crumbly soil, slipped, finally found its hold. As we stared, a black-clad arm followed, then a face. Blond hair stuck in sodden wisps from a closely fitting drysuit helmet.

  “Jill!” Sam ran a few steps and stopped, just as a car sped down the road at us and swung over.

  Lillian Frey jumped out, her face distraught. In her own car and driving alone. Which meant that the car we were going to find backed up into that birch stand belonged to …

  “Have you seen Jill?” Lillian demanded worriedly.

  “Over there,” I said.

  “Thank God,” Lillian said, “I’ve been frantic. People downtown are saying something happened to Wilbur, and …”

  Then she caught my tone, as Jill climbed over the cliff edge and got to her feet, tugging off her headgear before she saw us all standing there.

  I showed Lillian the opal. “Charmian's ring,” I said.

  And now here was Jill. “She's done something, hasn’t she?” Lillian said.
>
  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, I’m afraid she has.”

  Jill decided how to play it. “Oh,” she cried, “someone help! I saw Charmian fall, she's down there, somebody's got to—”

  None of us moved. Jill came toward us, her face a mask of urgency. As she walked I could see her eyes flicking from one to another of us, deciding which one to manipulate.

  Finally she decided. “Sam, come on, you have to—”

  “Sam doesn’t have to do anything, Jill,” I said.

  She stopped, a glimmer of uncertainty in her eyes. Then her chin jutted, her shoulders straightened, and she stalked past me; she was going to try to bull it through.

  “You don’t know anything,” she snapped. “Sam—”

  “Where is she, Jill?” Sam asked quietly.

  “I told you, she—”

  “Yeah, she fell.” His tone was icy. “So instead of calling the cops or getting an ambulance, you went home and got dive gear and came out here, all on your own.”

  Jill stared at Sam, her face like that of an animal caught in a trap.

  “I think you brought her here,” Sam said.

  “I didn’t!” She clenched her fists as Lillian put a hand out to her. “Get away from me!”

  “You know what I think? I think Charmian called your mother to tell her about her find. The original map, she thought, and it was readable!” I said. “But you answered, and she was so excited, she told you instead. That's what I think happened.”

  No reply from Jill.

  “You’ve been planning something all along, haven’t you?” I went on. “Hanging around with Sam, pumping him for information. A pretty girl, and smart. You probably knew Raines was coming and why long before he even got here, from when you were staying with your uncle Wilbur. You know where Wilbur was searching, too.”

  She smirked at what she thought at first was a compliment, scowled resentfully as I went on.

  “Too bad you take after your father, instead,” I said. “Who thinks life is about expensive toys, and the money to buy them.”

  Something sparked in her eyes at the mention of her father, a look of sharp caution. But I didn’t care about that now.

  “I’ll bet we find out that your mother's gun is the one that shot Wilbur, won’t we?”

  New knowledge creased Sam's face. “So that was why. A girl like you, wanting to hang out with me …”

  “Oh, shut up!” she spat at him, then whirled on me. “If my moron uncle Wilbur would’ve just… None of this is my fault. I just wanted to move back with my dad,” Jill insisted.

  “And bring him something when you went?” I suggested.

  “Yes,” she hissed. “Something to make us rich. I want it. Or do you think I should stay here in this hick town, marry someone like your son? So sweet,” she added venomously. “And dumb?”

  Sam flinched once, but that was all. For an instant I wished she’d known him a few years ago: angry and strung out, crippled with dyslexia but not knowing what was wrong, hooked on anything he could get his hands on, and so afraid. Afraid that he was stupid.

  Maybe she’d have liked him then, I thought, wanting to slap her. But I didn’t need to. Sam had gotten over lots worse things than Jill, mostly without my help. Now he turned away, walking back toward the car where Cartwright leaned against the bumper.

  The rest of us followed, leaving Jill. By now she’d begun stripping off the drysuit; Lillian got a blanket from the trunk of her car and brought it to the girl, saying nothing. Without many clothes, Jill looked more her age: young. Very young.

  And scared; with the blanket around her she peered up and down the little road for some way of escaping us. But there was none. She walked as far as the pavement, picking her way in bare feet, before Wade seized her arm.

  “Let go of me, you—” She tried to jerk away, at which Wade grasped her other arm and turned her to face him. He outweighed her by a hundred pounds, but that wasn’t what stopped her.

  It was the look on his face. I’d never seen it before, and you wouldn’t want it aimed at you. Wade went along so peacefully most of the time, you could forget that such a look might be in there.

  But of course it was; the look of a boy whose father has been beaten to death outside a bar. Anger and grief, the wanting to hurt someone, wanting to be able to undo some terrible thing that has happened and not being able to: all the fight went out of Jill at the mere sight of it. She sat down hard on the side of the road and began crying.

  Wade called police dispatch on his car phone and asked them to send the ambulance; by now, it would have finished delivering Mapes to the hospital. After that he called Bob Arnold, who was returning from the mainland, filled him in, and got him to send a tow truck to take Jill's car.

  And that, we all thought, was all we could do.

  Until Jonathan Raines spoke: “Sam. Give me your dive gear.”

  “Oh, hey, you can’t— Listen, it's way dangerous. You don’t even know how to—”

  “Sam.” In that moment the shark's tooth Raines wore at his throat looked suddenly appropriate. Remembering the snapshot of him at the edge of that cliff, I knew any fears I might have had about his inexperience were groundless.

  He checked the tanks and regulators while Sam watched, but didn’t pull them on; the cliff was too steep for their weight.

  “Lower these down for me, will you?” he said to Sam. “I’ll put ’em on down there.” Then Sam had another bright idea, one I thought was even worse than Raines's brainstorm.

  “Your tanks down there?” he asked Jill, and she shrugged in sulky assent, not looking up at him.

  The gun, probably, too, that Lillian had thought Jill didn’t know about, and that I thought Jill had used to menace Charmian into doing as she was ordered: it hadn’t been in Jill's hands as she came up over the cliff. By now it had likely been swept out in the torrent of tide and currents.

  “Sam, don’t you think you should wait for—”

  “Hey, Mom, I’ll be fine.” He grinned briefly at me, but I could see the smile was only for show.

  The set of his jaw and the toss of his head as he bent to gather the rest of Jill's gear—were all business.

  Ellie saw it, too. “He looks like Victor,” she said.

  “Yeah. Doesn’t he, though?”

  “Except for the eyes. The eyes are all you.” She meant well, but it wasn’t true.

  Like the rest of him, Sam's eyes were a mixture of traits I would never be able to sort out. Nor could I stop trying.

  But I could stop taking it out on him. As he went over the cliff edge I gave him a small salute, two fingers touched to my eyebrow: Good luck. But I wasn’t sure he saw it.

  “What are the chances?” Winston Cartwright asked Wade. His voice craved reassurance, though he must have known it wasn’t possible to give any honestly. “Of being alive in …” He angled his massive head slowly at the churning water. “In that,” he finished brokenly.

  Wade didn’t lie to him. “I wish I could say something more optimistic to you, sir. But …”

  Cartwright nodded. “But the tide is high, and the water is cold, and the current is swift and vicious. Jonathan's bravery is admirable. I only hope his life, and that of the boy, aren’t put at risk, too.”

  “They are, sir.” Wade shot a swift glance at me. “But Sam's a good diver, and I gather Raines has some experience?”

  Cartwright laughed harshly. “More than you would believe. He is, despite his scholarly appearance, a very physical young man.”

  Time passed with excruciating slowness until Sam's head popped up over the side of the cliff. It was all I could do not to run over to him and fling my arms around him, gear and all. Instead I waited.

  “No go. Currents are murder,” Sam said when he got to us. “Raines went ahead. I tried to wave him back, but he wasn’t having it, he went in a cave.”

  He coughed, and I realized it was worse in the water than he was letting on. “He's trying to save her,” Sam finished.
>
  Jill, silent and resentful over no longer being the focus of everyone's attention, looked up and laughed bitterly.

  “Grow up. He's not saving anybody. He's finding the gold.”

  Cartwright's head turned slowly, and his stare made Wade's earlier look resemble a loving glance. “What do you mean?”

  She tossed her blond hair carelessly, recovered a bit now, and pleased to have information that someone wanted. And a way to feel she was both superior and interesting to us again.

  “That's what's down there,” she replied scornfully, as if this must be obvious to all but the fools we were. “Not some old crummy violin. Mom told you it couldn’t be. I knew it, too.”

  Right. Everyone knew it. And yet… “What's there, Jill?”

  She smirked at me. “Gold. And another way out. A tunnel.”

  Those account books, I realized; the hidden one, especially, where Hayes had written the truth about his illicit income. And then I wondered all at once: so much gold. Where had it all gone?

  “How do you know?” Cartwright's big fist tightened on the head of his walking stick; Jill caught the movement and flinched away from what it implied.

  “Well,” she quavered, then regained her confidence, secure in her belief that we wouldn’t let an old man beat her to death, although in this by now she was only barely correct.

  “I found a piece of it. A big gold coin, when I was diving here with Sam. But of course I didn’t show him,” she added with a scathing twist.

  Sam's face remained impassive. “And just now?” I prodded. “More when you were down there with Charmian? Or is this all just another lie, something to keep us fascinated?” I turned away.

  “No!” As I’d expected, she reacted swiftly to the threat of being ignored again. “I could prove it, I’d show it to you, but I gave it…”

  And there it was, the lie within the lie. Her mouth snapped shut as she realized what she’d nearly said. More tiny pieces of the puzzle fell into place for me, like the glass bits at the end of a kaleidoscope.

  “A friend,” she finished weakly.

  “No,” I said. “Not to a friend. You haven’t any of those.”