Unbelievable

by Cindy Blackburn

  “The turbo thrust is what makes deliveries beyond the Crystal Void even possible,” Dad said. “Without it Chance and the Spaceship Destiny are stranded on the planet Whoozit—the most remote corner of the Hollow Galaxy—until further notice.”

  I glanced down. “I take it there are no propulsion pistons on Whoozit?”

  “Nope. They have to be delivered. And guess who would normally make that delivery?”

  “Chance Dooley.” I tackled a particularly stubborn strip of the peeling lime green near my left elbow. “Can’t someone from Planet Peacock beam it up?” I asked. If you’re still actually following this, Planet Peacock is Chance Dooley’s home base.

  Dad was shaking his bald head down there. “Think,” he said. “If this so-called beaming up business were even remotely possible in the year 5035, there’d be no need for Dooley’s Delivery Service.”

  He sighed again. “Bark if she falls,” he told Charlie and went inside to help Chance.

  ***

  I didn’t fall, and Charlie didn’t bark. Charlie never barks. He doesn’t growl, whine, or whimper, either. The vet says there’s nothing wrong with him, but Charlie is profoundly mute.

  The FN451z suffers from no such affliction.

  “It must have propulsion pistons to spare,” I mumbled as it went into beeping-burping-chirping mode for the umpteenth time that day.

  “What’s a propulsion piston,” an unwelcome voice called up.

  I glanced down to see Maxine Tibbitts’ i-Tablet aimed at my backside.

  “Go away,” I yelled down.

  Maxine asked what I was doing, but it seemed perfectly clear to me. “Go away,” I repeated.

  “I was hoping we could have a nice chat, Cassie. It won’t take but a minute, and the Herald is most interested in what you have to say.”

  “Go. Away.”

  “Did your redhead sound familiar to Sheriff Gabe? Has he found her yet? Has he called?”

  I tried to ignore her, but even from ten feet above, I knew she was still snapping pictures.

  “Would you stop doing that?” I said. “The Hanahan Herald does not want pictures of my backside.”

  “You don’t need to get all testy about it.” Snap, snap. “These aren’t for my column, anyway. They’re for the Herald’s new digital archives. For the official record.”

  “Since when does painting a house deserve recording?”

  “But the old Tumbleton place is one of the architectural marvels of Lake Elizabeth, Cassie.”

  I had news for Maxine—Lake Bess has no “architectural marvels.” The town does have some charm, but people have been building their cabins, cottages, and houses along the shores of the lake for about two centuries. The architecture is a hodgepodge of mismatched sizes and styles.

  “And isn’t this color a marvel?” Maxine continued. “Mr. Tumbleton had such an eye for aesthetics. Have you talked to the folks at Hilleville Hardware, Cassie? Will they be able to match the green?”

  “I’m going gray,” I said.

  “Silly! No you’re not. Just look at those blond curls of yours.”

  I rolled my eyes. “The house, Maxine. I’m painting the house gray.”

  “Oh, but the Kelly green is so jolly.”

  Luckily the phone rang. And luckily Dad called out that it was for me.

  Maxine held the ladder as I descended. “I hope it’s Sheriff Gabe,” she told me.

  Chapter 7

  “Is it Gabe?” I asked as I reached for the phone.

  “It’s Arlene Pearson.” Dad cringed, and I dropped my hand. “She’s in a foul mood.”

  Arlene and her sister Pru own the Fox Cove Inn. And Arlene Pearson is always in a foul mood.

  “Worse than ever,” he added.

  I braced myself and took the phone. “Gabe must have been there,” I whispered.

  “Of course Gabe was here!” Arlene snapped.

  “Was she one of your guests, Arlene?” I found a seat at the kitchen table. “I’m sorry.”

  “Who? What?”

  “The dead woman,” I said. “Was she staying at the B and B?”

  “Of course not! How dare you accuse me.”

  “I’m not accu—”

  “The first sunny day we’ve had in months, so what do you do? Send in the sheriff to harass my guests!”

  “Gabe doesn’t take orders from m—”

  “He barged in here and demanded to know what we were doing at five a.m. Five!” she screamed. “What did he think we were doing? Eating waffles?”

  I bit my lip.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m painting the house.”

  “Good! That place is an eyesore. It’s bad for my business.”

  I took a deep breath. “Sooo,” I said as calmly as humanly possible. “What did you tell Gabe?”

  “I told him we were asleep! Like normal human beings! In our own little beds like good little boys and girls.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “What!?”

  “None of your guests could tell Gabe anything?”

  “What?” she snapped. “You think I actually let him talk to my guests? Gabe Cleghorn can get himself a search warrant before showing his sorry face around here again.”

  “But surely he doesn’t need a warrant just to talk to—”

  “What the hell were you doing out there at the crack of dawn? A dead woman in Mallard Cove? Yeah, right! My sister is furious!”

  Yeah, right. I don’t know the Pearson sisters well, but I do know Arlene’s the angry one, and Pru’s the meek, timid, tired one. I doubt Pru has ever mustered up the energy to be angry.

  But in case you haven’t quite caught on, I have no problem with my anger-energy. I told Arlene that whether or not it hurt her business, I know what I saw. “Someone is dead, Arlene. Dead.”

  “Someone is lying, Miss Looney Tunes. Lying.”

  ***

  “Careful, Charlie,” I called down. I’d been up on that stupid extension ladder for hours, and I didn’t need the dog to start helping.

  He bumped into it again.

  “Charlie!” I looked down and almost did fall. Yes, Charlie had heard his name and stood at attention. But he wasn’t alone. Rose and Ruby were down there also, one goat on either side of the ladder, trying to—

  I squinted. “Trying to what?” I asked them.

  They looked up, and Ruby, the one with floppier ears, baahed at me.

  I considered climbing down to call Oden, but the girls found a patch of fiddlehead ferns at the edge of the driveway to occupy themselves, and I decided they couldn’t bother me much more than all my other distractions.

  The FN451z was still at it, of course. And I was constantly interrupted by all the boaters who “just happened to be floating by.” It was a Tuesday afternoon, so most people were at work, but enough folks still managed to find me.

  Everyone asked about the dead redhead, and everyone asked how Gabe’s investigation was coming along. They were more polite than Arlene, and no one actually called me Miss Looney Tunes to my face, but still.

  When they got tired of harping on about the missing woman, and whether or not she really was dead, they’d point to the extension ladder and ask what I was doing.

  Oden Poquette was the only person who couldn’t care less what I was doing. I heard him calling for Rose and Ruby while he was still out on Elizabeth Circle. And then again as he ran down Leftside Lane, the dirt driveway leading to our house, Joe’s, and Maxine’s.

  “Last I saw them, they were headed to the Gallipeaus’ yard,” I told him as he rounded the last bend.

  He thanked me and would have jogged on, but I called him back.

  “Have they been missing all day?” I reminded him I had seen Rose and Ruby at Evert Osgood’s early that morning.

  “The gals almost always wander off after their four a.m. milking,” Oden said.

  “Bobby should have been a farmer,” I mumbled.

  “What’s
that?”

  “I said,” I spoke up. “Where did the gals end up this morning?”

  “At the Fox Cove. Thankfully Pru found them.”

  “Let me guess. Arlene doesn’t like Rose and Ruby?”

  “She says they’re bad for business.” Oden finally took a good look at me. “You’re on a ladder, Cassie.”

  About then, we heard the baahing of a lost goat, and he took off. “Please don’t change the color,” he called over his shoulder.

  ***

  “Want some help?” Joe called down from an open window next door.

  “No thanks.” I tried sounding way more breezy than I felt. “I can manage.”

  “I know. But would you like some help?”

  I stopped struggling with the extension ladder that had gotten heavier and heavier as the day progressed, caught my breath, and looked up. But Joe was no longer at the window.

  “Have you heard from Gabe?”

  I jumped and turned, and my neighbor was now at the edge of our adjoining yards greeting Charlie. He stood up and smiled, and I gave him a withering look. Or at least I tried to. I was feeling a little weak in the knees from all the climbing up the stupid ladder, and down the stupid ladder, and moving the stupid ladder.

  I leaned against the stupid ladder. “You’ve been spying on me all day,” I said, but Joe claimed innocence. Supposedly he had only poked his head out the window to see how I was doing every once in a while.

  “I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to spook you.” He glanced up at where I’d been balancing on the top rungs. “It’s a long way down.”

  “You were spying on me this morning also.” I pointed to his dock, and he shrugged.

  “Guilty as charged. Has Gabe called?”

  “No.”

  “You haven’t heard from anyone?”

  “Oh, I’ve heard from all kinds of people.” I tilted my head toward the looky-loo boaters on the lake. “And Arlene Pearson called. Lucky me, she was even nastier than usual. It sounds like she was pretty nasty to Gabe, too.”

  “Probably because she knows something.”

  I held onto the ladder. “Say what?”

  “Your father described this redhead to me.” Joe bent down and found a stick for Charlie. He tossed it into the lake, and the dog took off. “I’ve lived here my whole life and she doesn’t sound familiar—”

  “She exists,” I interrupted, and he held up his hands.

  “I know that, okay? I’m only saying this woman wasn’t an Elizabethan.”

  I squinted. “You think she was staying at the Fox Cove?”

  “It seems logical.”

  Charlie brought the stick to me, and I tossed it for him. A very wimpy toss.

  “Maybe a dead guest would be bad for Arlene’s business,” I said. “But covering it up seems pretty extreme.” I watched Charlie return the stick to Joe. “Would Arlene actually do something like that?”

  “I wouldn’t put much past Arlene.”

  Charlie nudged Joe, and he bent down to give the stick a great big toss. Then he turned and pointed to the ladder. “Want some help?”

  Chapter 8

  I may be nuts, but I’m not crazy. I accepted help to move the ladder for one more round of scraping, but called it quits by late afternoon. The boats floating by hadn’t exactly thinned out, and my knees were getting shakier by the minute.

  I took a second shower for the day, and put on a coat of mascara, my nicest pair of shorts, and my brightest Hawaiian shirt to revive myself.

  Dad looked up from the stove as I walked into the kitchen. “Your knees are shaking.”

  I held onto the counter and pointed to the pot he was stirring. “That will help,” I said, and he held out a spoonful for me to test. Not that it needed testing. My father’s spaghetti and Bolognese sauce has been my favorite meal since I had teeth.

  I made sure I had time to run an errand and headed for the door.

  “Where to?” he asked, and I told him the hardware store down in Hilleville.

  “I need some supplies.”

  “No paint.” Dad used his teacher-voice. “No gray, especially. I want to help choose the color.”

  I promised the painting part of this project was a long way off, grabbed my purse, and walked outside. And straight into Maxine Tibbitts.

  I stopped short and took notice. She had planted herself directly under the kitchen window. The open kitchen window. Within easy ear-shot of where Dad and I were just talking. She held up her i-Tablet and took my picture.

  “Would you stop doing that!” I snapped, and she snapped another. “Maxine! A trip to Hilleville Hardware does not merit documentation.” I jerked my head at the kitchen window. “And of course you know where I’m headed.”

  I darted around her, but she followed me to the driveway.

  “I didn’t mean to overhear,” she lied. “But I was hoping you’d have time for a chat. Now that you’re off your ladder.”

  “Go away,” I said and kept moving. “No chats.”

  “Have you heard from Gabe?” She was still right behind me.

  “No! No chats.” I got into my car and started moving. The woods along Leftside Lane looked beautiful in the late afternoon sun, but I snarled anyway. No chats with Gabe Cleghorn.

  Insert colorful words … Here.

  ***

  “I don’t suppose Gabe called?” I asked as I climbed the stoop to the porch.

  My father, Joe Wylie, and Charlie shook their heads.

  I dropped the bag from Hilleville Hardware at my feet. “Where’s the wine?” I said and headed to the kitchen. Joe followed.

  “Anything else to unload?” he asked from the doorway.

  “Lots of primer. But I don’t need your help.”

  “Yep,” he said and left.

  “Go ahead and make yourself useful,” I muttered. I poured myself some wine from the bottle on the counter, registered “good stuff,” and read the label. The Malbec was way nicer than anything my father and I would have bought for ourselves.

  “Maybe he is useful,” I told Charlie, and as if on cue, Joe stood in the doorway holding two five-gallon buckets of primer.

  “Where do you want these?”

  I gestured to the porch, gave the spaghetti sauce a stir, and grabbed the wine.

  I refilled everyone’s glass, Joe set the primer in a corner, and we sat down in the rocking chairs on either side of my father. Conversation went immediately to the dead redhead.

  “What do you know about her?” Joe asked me.

  “How about nothing, nothing, and nothing?”

  “No,” he said. “I bet you know more than you think you do. For instance, what was she wearing?”

  I sipped my wine and pictured her. “Cut-off jeans and a tee-shirt,” I said. “Nothing special.”

  “What about the tee-shirt? Did it have a logo?”

  “Like the sweatshirt you were wearing this morning?” Dad added helpfully.

  I watched a few ducks float by. “It was gray,” I said.

  Dad stopped rocking. “Like the color you’re painting the house?”

  I nodded. “Yes, actually.”

  “What!?” Joe exclaimed, and I jumped a little. “You’re painting the house gray!?”

  “Gray,” I said firmly. I pointed at my father. “Not one word, old man.”

  Bobby smirked, and Joe told me how much he liked the Kelly green. “It’s so jolly!”

  I blinked at Joe. I turned and blinked at my father. “So exactly how long did you guys rehearse that?”

  When they stopped high-fiving each other, Joe cleared his throat and insisted he really was serious about the dead woman’s tee-shirt. “A logo could be a clue,” he said.

  I thought back. “You know what? It did say something.” I shook my head. “But I don’t know what. I was too flustered.”

  “That’s okay,” Dad told me.

  “No, it isn’t,” Joe said. “What made you so flustered?”

  “
I get flustered around death.”

  “An understatement,” Dad mumbled. “Don’t even ask what she did when her mother died.”

  “What did you do when your mother died?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Can we get back to the redhead, please?”

  “Okay, so how did you know she was dead?” Joe asked, but he stopped me before I went ballistic. “I’m not implying she wasn’t dead. But what made you so sure?”

  “She was staring straight into the sun, and she was almost as gray as her tee-shirt.”

  “Maybe she drowned,” Dad said. “Maybe we should have the lake dragged.”

  I argued that wouldn’t help at all. “Whether or not she drowned, she was in a canoe.” I caught sight of our canoe and stood up. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s try an experiment.”

  Dad reminded me dinner was almost ready, but I reminded him he should like experiments. “Mr. Science Fiction Writer.” I tilted my head. “And Mr. Mad Scientist.” I pointed to our canoe. “Let’s put that in the water.”

  They obeyed, and I settled in.

  “She was on the floor.” I scooched onto the floor, trying to imitate the redhead’s position. “And her arms and legs were sprawled out all over.” I spread my arms wide and tried to get my knees to extend to the sides of the canoe like hers had.

  “That’s not a very flattering pose, girl.”

  “The redhead didn’t look so good either.” I tucked my legs back to a semi-normal position and stared at my knees. “She was way taller than me.”

  “What a surprise,” Dad said. “She was over five feet.”

  “Five feet, one and a half,” I corrected and looked up at the two men standing on the dock.

  My father’s a small, tidy, dapper sort of guy. He’s pushing seventy, but other than his bald head, you’d never guess it. Bobby has big brown eyes like me, a baby face like me, and is pint-sized like me. He’s taller than five-one, but was nowhere near dead-woman height.

  I checked out my neighbor. Twenty years younger than my father, and a giant in comparison. Blue eyes, more rugged features, brown hair, some gray. Bambi says hunky-boo—