by Nicole Ellis
“Isn’t Declan’s boat gorgeous? I can see why he’s so proud of it, although I’m going to scream if I ever have to hear him bragging about it again.” She shook her head. “I’m not sure when he brought it over, but it was probably on Becca’s schedule.” She paused and looked at me as if just now seeing the terror on my face. “What’s wrong?” She scanned the dock.
I pointed into the water near the back of the boat. Her eyes followed my fingertip.
“Yeah, it’s Declan’s boat. I know.”
“No,” I said. “Look in the water.”
Desi moved closer to the edge of the dock and her eyes widened. “Is that what I think it is?”
She stared at the red object in the water and then back at me.
“Unfortunately, I think it is.”
“Who is it?” She backed away.
“I don’t know.”
Feeling a little more composed now, I stood and walked over to stand next to her. We both stared into the water. The body bobbed just below the surface of Puget Sound. A massive cruise ship went by, and even though we were protected by the jetty surrounding the Ericksville Marina, the waves shifted the boat a little away from the dock. The body rolled in the water, coming to rest face up in the water, then flipping back over as another wave came through.
Desi’s face blanched. “Is that—”
I interrupted her. “Declan Becker.”
We looked at each other.
“How did he get in the water?” I couldn’t take my eyes off of the body.
She seemed to have the same problem. “Do you think he fell in last night? He had a lot to drink—maybe he never left. Did you see him out here when you locked up?”
“No, he was down here, but he was so drunk that I chased him off the docks and onto the deck. I came down here to clean up his beer bottles, but when I got back up to the deck, he was gone.” Had he fallen off the deck? I peered up at the deck railings. No, they were too high to fall over accidentally, and I was sure that I would have heard something if he had fallen while I’d been here.
“Maybe he came back after I left?” My words were dull, and I felt like someone had stuffed cotton into my head. The gate from the Boathouse’s deck to the parking lot was locked from the outside, but anyone who tied up at the dock could get out.
She chewed on her lip. “But if he was already here, where did his boat come from? I don’t think you’d be able drive a truck and boat trailer from Lake Elinor all the way here, launch the boat, and tie it up to the dock if you were so drunk that you could fall into the water.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. The boat definitely wasn’t here last night. I would have seen it.” I turned slowly around on the dock, checking to see if anything else was different. A few beer bottles lay on their sides behind a dock cleat.
I put my hand on her shoulder and pointed at the bottles. “I don’t think those were there last night, but I might have missed them in the dark.”
She eyed the beer bottles. “We’d better call the police.”
“They’re going to start thinking that I’m a magnet for dead bodies.” This was the third one I’d found in less than a year.
“Jill,” Desi said. “I mean this in the nicest possible way, but you do seem to have a way of finding bodies. I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody else who has even found one, much less three.
I glared at her. “Just call the police.”
She nodded and pulled out her phone. When the operator came on, she gave them the necessary information and hung up. Less than ten minutes later, sirens sounded in the parking lot.
“I’ll go open the door to the Boathouse for them,” she said. “You wait here.”
“I can…” I started to squeak out, but she was gone. I sat back down again with my back to the boat, trying to avoid looking at Declan’s body. The slapping of the water against the boat and the dock made me want to go over there, but I knew I didn’t need to increase the chance of the horrifying image imprinting on my brain.
A crowd of people appeared on the deck in front of the Boathouse, with Desi in the lead. Emergency personnel hurried down the ramp toward Declan’s Runabout. Their weight caused the floating dock to lurch up and down, and I almost lost my balance. I stared at the chilly water. I didn’t want to end up in the drink like Declan had. I gave the police my information and, to lessen the load on the dock, I went up to the main deck where Desi watched the commotion from a position near the railing.
“We should call my parents and let them know about this,” she said, her eyes locked on the recovery efforts down below. “I can’t believe he’s gone.”
In the confusion over finding the body, I hadn’t thought about Desi’s friendship with Declan.
I touched her arm. “I’m so sorry. Are you ok? I know you’ve been friends for a long time.”
She gave me a teary smile. “We were friends way back when, but not so much now. I just feel so bad for Lindsay. It’s such a shock. At least she’s at the lake house, so she’ll have friends around when they notify her.”
I stared at her. “Becca and Bill’s wedding. Do you think they’ll want to cancel it? I mean, Declan was a groomsman.”
“I don’t know. It’s certainly a possibility.”
We gazed down toward the dock where they were busy recovering Declan’s body. A policeman walked up the ramp and approached us.
“Mrs. Andrews?” he asked, his eyes shifting between the two of us.
I held my hand up like a little kid. “I’m Jill Andrews.”
He smiled at me disarmingly. “I have a few questions to ask you.”
“Of course.”
“You said you’d seen Declan Becker on the docks last night after the event.”
I nodded.
“Had he been drinking at the event? Was he drinking on your dock?”
“Yes, but we didn’t overserve him,” I said quickly. “We cut him off after a few drinks, but I saw him with a flask earlier in the evening. When I saw him later, I managed to get him safely off the docks and to the upper deck. Then he just disappeared. I didn’t see him again… I mean until I found his body this morning.”
“We found some beer bottles on the dock near his boat. Do you think he came back with the boat and had a few beers out there?” He jutted his head toward the dock below.
“I’m sorry, I really don’t know. His boat wasn’t there when I left last night.” Icy fear shot through me. Would the Boathouse be held liable for Declan’s drinking?
He wrote something down on his notepad.
“We’ll be in touch if we have more questions.” He pivoted and returned to the rest of his team.
I knew I hadn’t seen Declan out on the docks when I left the night before. His boat definitely hadn’t been there. The most likely scenario was that he’d sobered up and returned with his boat, then had some celebratory beers and fallen off the dock, becoming entangled in his mooring lines.
Whatever had happened, it wouldn’t be good publicity for the Boathouse.
I turned to Desi. “We definitely need to call your mom and dad. Do you think that Lindsay will sue?”
She scrunched up her face. “Sue? Why would she sue? Declan was probably drunk as a skunk.” She flushed. “I shouldn’t be talking ill of the dead. We don’t know what happened.”
“This is private property. If they determine we were negligent in some way, the Boathouse could be liable.”
She sucked in her breath. “Do you really think that could happen?”
I stared blankly at the emergency personnel. “I really hope not.” Having met Lindsay, though, I didn’t think we’d have a chance of making it through this unscathed.
Desi slowly pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and speed-dialed her father. I watched her talk to him, much as I’d done yesterday with Adam.
She nodded a few times and paced around the deck in a circular pattern. “Ok, so you’ll take care of calling the insurance company. Jill and I will figure out what w
e want to tell the press.”
I gawked at her. The press?
She hung up and looked at me. “We need to come up with something to tell the news crews when they arrive.”
I groaned. I did not want to deal with news crews.
“Ok. What should we tell them?”
“I think just stick with the basic facts. He was a guest at an event here last night, but we don’t know what happened to him. The police can fill in the rest.”
I nodded—that seemed easy enough.
She patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, it will be ok. No one is going to blame us for Declan’s death. My dad said there was nothing we could’ve done to change what happened.”
I hoped she was right.
7
After the police questioned us, Desi gathered up the pastries she’d baked that morning and left to go open the BeansTalk Café for the day. Even with all the commotion outside and the staff members trickling in to work the day’s events, I felt strangely alone in the Boathouse. I admit I was a little shell-shocked by what had happened. Never in my life had I expected to see Declan’s body floating under the water, tangled in a rope from his own boat. I pulled Lizzie aside to explain what had happened and instructed her to tell the rest of the staff as needed. We didn’t have any events scheduled until that evening, and I fervently hoped things would be back to normal by then.
Although Lincoln had said there was nothing I could’ve done to change what had happened, I still worried about any potential lawsuits or negative publicity as a result of Declan’s death on our property. I paused by the window in the main hallway that overlooked the docks. Outside, the police were still examining his boat and the adjacent boat dock. Reporters stood outside the Boathouse, talking into microphones. Overhead, the KINO news helicopter hovered over the water near the event center. I thought I even saw a news boat out in the water taking photos. It was all too much.
I ducked back into the Boathouse and scurried down the hall to my office. Sitting down at my desk, I buried my head in my hands. I had to get some work done. With Beth gone, there was way too much to do for me to slack off. I turned on my computer and checked my e-mail. The message from Nancy Davenport was still there, unread. I quickly scanned it and sighed. She had wanted me to come in by the end of this week to check in with her—I wasn’t sure what for. It was already Thursday and I was probably in deep gerbil droppings for not getting in touch with her sooner.
The whirring of helicopter blades circling the Boathouse drew my eyes toward the windowless walls of my office. Part of me wanted to know what was going on outside, and the other part wanted to forget the whole morning had ever happened. I forced my attention back to the computer screen, but my eyes glazed over after less than a minute as I read the same three lines over and over again. I wasn’t going to get anything done at the moment, so time to find out what Nancy wanted from me.
I avoided the few reporters who were still lingering outside the Boathouse and hiked up the hill, past the long-term ferry parking lot, to Mikey’s preschool. Unlike this morning, the walk did nothing to soothe my nerves. I walked there as if in a daze, somehow avoiding any traffic as I crossed streets.
Outside of the school, in the parking lot, I spotted a minivan with a family of stick figures stuck to the back window—Nancy’s car. I took a deep breath. Part of me had hoped that she wouldn’t be there so I could get out of whatever it was that she wanted to talk to me about. Unfortunately, it looked like I wasn’t going to get off that easily. I walked past the parking lot, stopping just short of the door to the Busy Bees Preschool and peeked in the side window.
Mikey was in there with the rest of his preschool class, sitting on the alphabet rug and listening to his teacher read them a story. A smile flickered across my lips. I loved seeing him so into a book, but I didn’t want him to see me. As every mom knows, if you show up at your child’s preschool in the middle of the day, just like the mouse and the cookie story, they’re going to think it’s time to come home. How was I going to avoid Mikey seeing me? Behind me, a car honked loudly at another vehicle.
I groaned. I could feel twenty sets of four-year-old eyes on me. Reluctantly, I pushed open the door, hoping that by some stroke of good fortune he hadn’t seen me. Luck wasn’t on my side. By the time the door slammed shut behind me, Mikey was in the lobby, bouncing around me.
“Mommy, Mommy!” he said. “Is it time to go home?”
I ruffled his hair. “Not yet, sweetie. I came in to talk to Mrs. Davenport, but then I have to go back to work. Remember, Grandma is in Portland, so I have to do some of the things she’d usually do at the Boathouse.”
His face fell. We hadn’t told him that Beth had been ill, just that she was staying longer with her sister. Still, he was used to seeing her almost every day, and he knew things weren’t quite right in his world. I knelt to talk with him on his level.
“How about you and Daddy and Ella and I have a special dinner out tonight?”
“Really?” His face lit up.
I nodded solemnly. “Really.”
“Where are we going?” He returned to bouncing enthusiastically in front of me.
“I don’t know,” I said mysteriously. “I was thinking maybe somewhere with pizza.”
He bounced faster. “Pizza Palace? Where they have all the games?”
I held him in place and kissed his head. “Yep, that place.”
The assistant teacher stood in the entrance to the classrooms.
“Sorry, Jill, he ran out before I could catch him.” She beckoned to Mikey. “The rest of the class is still listening to Ms. Shana read a story.” She held out her hand to him.
“Bye, Mommy,” he shouted. “I want three pieces of pizza tonight, ok?”
“Sure, sweetie.” I grinned as he ran off, following his teacher back to the classroom. Mikey’s eyes were often bigger than his stomach.
I ducked my head into the office to see if Nancy was in there working on some paperwork. She was sitting at the computer with her back to me. I rapped sharply a few times on the office door and she turned, pulling her lips into what passed for a smile.
“Jill, nice to see you. I thought you weren’t going to show up.”
I smiled weakly at her. This was why I hated coming to my son’s school unless I was there to pick him up and run. Nancy was so aggravating.
“Yes, of course,” I said. “Work has been pretty crazy this week, and I just now had the chance to read your e-mail. What did you need to see me about?”
She gave me a look of disapproval, as if I’d committed the sin of the century by not leaping at the chance to read an e-mail from her.
“I was e-mailing you about your parent volunteer commitment. Mikey is so excited about you being in his classroom next week.” She shuffled some papers on the desk.
I had no clue what she was talking about. Being in his classroom? I didn’t have any plans to be at the preschool next week. I narrowed my eyes at her.
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
She shot me a condescending look. “Don’t you remember? You signed up at the beginning of summer to be a parent assistant for next week’s summer camp.”
My blood ran cold. I vaguely remembered signing up to help out in my son’s classroom sometime that summer. Summer was winding down, and I guessed that time was now. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to help out in his classroom, but this was not the right time to do it. Twisting threads of anxiety shot up through my chest, and I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. I wasn’t sure how I was going to manage Beth’s responsibilities until she got back in addition to my own. This could put me over the top. I crossed my fingers behind my back.
“Is there anyone else who can do it? This is a really bad time for me. I could help out next month.”
Her eyes bored into me, and she pursed her lips. “Jill, all of the parents have taken a turn helping out with summer camp. Do you really want to disappoint Mikey?”
I felt like a deer in the
headlights, waiting for her to run me over. “It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that there’s so much going on right now at work.”
She shook her head. “You know, Jill, we all have lives too. But this is for the kids.”
I wasn’t getting out of this one.
“Ok,” I said reluctantly. “What do I need to do?”
She shoved a piece of paper at me. I read the details on it.
“I need to be here for the whole week? And for all four hours of summer camp?”
She sighed. “Yes, Jill, that is what you signed up for.”
I took a deep calming breath to avoid passing out in the office from stress. With tight lips, I said, “See you next week.”
As I walked back toward the front door of the preschool, I passed by the two gerbils racing around the wheel in their cage. I felt like that, as though I was a gerbil running around on a wheel. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I’ve given up my high-powered corporate job when I had Mikey, and only recently had returned to work. I thought working for the family business would allow me time to spend with my kids and give me the adult interaction that I desperately needed. It’s only temporary, I told myself. I pushed open the door to the street outside and felt a sense of freedom as soon as I was out of eyesight of Nancy Davenport.
8
When I woke up on Friday morning, I felt much more relaxed and happy than I had the day before. As I’d promised Mikey, we’d all gone to the Pizza Palace for dinner. Surprisingly, Mikey had eaten three pieces of pepperoni pizza. My little boy was growing up so fast. Even Ella enjoyed it, although she was somewhat afraid of the giant dancing mice, which I couldn’t blame her for. I tried to avoid them myself, even though as an adult, I knew they weren’t real. Most of all, it was nice to have Adam home. I was hopeful that him having his own practice in Ericksville would be the best thing for our family.
My good mood dissipated when I pulled into the Boathouse’s parking lot. A horde of reporters was camped out near the door. As soon as they saw me, they rushed over in a teeming mass of microphones and video cameras. They bombarded me with questions about Declan’s death, each talking over the other.
