Dead for the Money (19 page)

W
HILE
THEY
WAITED
for the police to come, Bud and Scarlet widened their search. Due east of their picnic location, Bud found Brodie’s baseball cap on the ground, and a few yards farther, a clear footprint. Reiner and two other sheriff’s officers arrived, covered with seed pods and damp spots of grasshopper juice on their uniform trousers from wading through the tall grass and weeds. Bud showed them where he’d found Brodie’s hat, still trying to quell the panic that lapped at his insides.

Although the deputy immediately called for search crews to begin combing the woods, Bud suspected Reiner thought Brodie was playing games with them. “A kid feels bad when somebody dies, but they can also feel a little left out,” he said, hitching up his pants in a way that could not fail to bring Barney Fife to mind. “The focus isn’t on them. Sometimes they do something to get back that attention they want.”

“Brodie is not like that,” Scarlet said firmly.

Reiner was unable to hide a sneer. “I’ve had a beer or two with Arnold Wilk, Miss McMorran, so I have an idea what Brodie is like.” He went on with his description of what the search would entail, but Bud knew the deputy had come to his own conclusions. Again.

Looking at Scarlet’s white face as Reiner returned to making phone calls, Bud saw his own fear reflected. He led her aside, putting a comforting arm around her. Scarlet leaned into him. “She’s just a kid,” she murmured.

“It’s pretty obvious our local officer of the law thinks she’s a brat.”

“He’s wrong. She had a bad reputation as a child, but she’s grown out of all that.”

“I don’t think people around here know what Brodie went through before she came.”

Scarlet apparently realized she was almost in Bud’s arms and took a step back. “I know she had a difficult start, but I don’t know the details, either.”

Bud frowned. “Gramps didn’t know Brodie existed at first. When he finally went to see if her mother needed help, the way they were living made him sick.”

“It was so bad that he took the child away from her mother?”

“He tried to get the woman to accept help, but she was using drugs pretty heavily. She refused everything but his money. She died a few years after Gramps adopted Brodie.”

Bud turned as a pair of deputies joined those already present. Reiner waved them over, still talking into his phone.

“I wondered where she got her colorful vocabulary,” Scarlet continued, perhaps to keep both of them focused on something other than the search that did not seem to require their help. “She told me once, ‘Gramps doesn’t want me to swear, but it’s hard when you already know all the words.’” She shook her head slightly. “She really does try to be good.”

“When Gramps brought her home, she was like a wild thing.” Bud ran a hand across the back of his neck. “Being a big, bad teenager by then and probably more than a little spoiled, I was pretty unhappy about having her around.”

“I suppose it was difficult.”

He rubbed his hands together. “She was a disaster at the dinner table. My friends made jokes about Gramps’ little freak. I was ashamed of her—of how she acted. Once when she pulled some prank on me, I told Gramps that I didn’t want that little freak going into my room.” The last words came out in a whisper.

Scarlet put her fingers against her lips. “So that’s why she thinks you dislike her.”

Bud shook his head. “It wasn’t my finest moment, but at least I didn’t say it in front of Brodie.”

She gave him a look. “Come on, Bud. You must know Brodie is an A-number-one junior spy.” She added more gently. “I think she heard. She’s told me several times that you hate her.”

“Oh, god.” Bud seemed to deflate. “I didn’t mean it. I was upset.”

Apparently realizing how Bud felt, Scarlet tried to excuse his youthful mistake. “You were what, sixteen? Not a great age for self-control. When we find Brodie, you can make it up to her.”

He glanced at the deputies clustered around a plat map. “First we have to find her.”

“We will.” Scarlet shifted back to Brodie’s past. “How did Mr. Dunbar not know that his daughter-in-law had a child and a drug habit?”

Bud looked at her in confusion for a second before realizing her mistake. “Brodie is not really Gramps’ granddaughter. She’s the child of a distant relative, a third cousin or something. She knows that, but he wanted her to call him Gramps.”

Scarlet sighed. “No wonder she feels she doesn’t belong anywhere.”

“I tried to make her understand that she is part of this family,” Bud said miserably. “I’m not very good with kids.”

“But Bud, Brodie thinks you are good at everything. You’re the perfect heir, and she is the one who is always wrong.”

“Really?”

Scarlet nodded. As one the sheriff’s men approached with a dog, Bud said, “When we get her back, she and I have a lot to talk about.”

T
HE
END
OF
B
RODIE
’
S
unplanned journey was a hard wooden surface, where she was dumped with a great sigh of relief from the man who carried her. Unable to break her fall, she bumped her head painfully, letting out a muffled “Umph!” before pride could withhold it. Sounds echoed, odd and hollow, and dankness permeated the fishy bag’s smell.

She felt a tug, heard a sawing sound, and the tension loosened around her feet. Soon the side seam of the bag was sliced open with a pocketknife, and she could see again.

She knew where she was immediately—an old boathouse on her grandfather’s property. It sat below the bluff, a few hundred feet down from the viewing point, although the canopy of trees blocked the view from above. The original cabin had been here, on a little inlet the owner thought would provide shelter from the harsh winds off Lake Michigan. What those winds had done, however, was fill the inlet with sand so that it took constant effort to keep it clear. Gramps had chosen to build in the open, accepting the winds in return for a spectacular view.

The boathouse was the only structure left on the original homesite, and it was pretty much a wreck. The roof was gone toward the back, and the walls had gaping holes where boards had fallen away. Thirty feet long and fifteen feet wide, the building’s center was open so that a boat could be brought inside and hoisted up on pulleys for repair or a new coat of paint. There were walkways on either side and Brodie had been dumped on the one on the right, which was in a little better repair than its counterpart. An ancient block and tackle that would have been used to lift a boat hung overhead. A few shapeless mounds in the corners suggested once-useful tools, probably broken or obsolete. Below her, the water was greenish and murky.

Brodie had been here lots of times. Gramps often muttered that the place was unsafe and talked about tearing it down. But it was far enough removed from the present house, and therefore from his attention, that he’d never gotten around to it. For Brodie, it was the perfect place to be alone. Getting to it was inconvenient, so nobody bothered her.

But she was not alone now. Beside her crouched the supposed bird watcher she’d met on the bluff a few days ago, smiling as if they’d just bumped into each other at the post office. He removed the tape from her mouth, gently pulling strands of her hair away from the adhesive. She worked her lips and jaw, savoring the ability to breathe in clean air.

“Hey, Brodie.” His voice echoed off the walls and water. He was a bigger man than he’d seemed at a distance two days ago, tall and wide shouldered. When she did not return his greeting, he did not seem to be offended. “Can you walk?” He took her arm and helped her to her feet. “Let’s get you inside.”

She looked around to see what “inside” meant. In the water below them was a sailboat, a little bigger than the one she and Bud had taken out the day before. The bow was draped with a camouflage tarp. The boat looked old, maybe because it was made of wood. It looked perfectly seaworthy, though, floating gently in the shallow water. The mast had been lowered and lay along the length of it. This guy’s secret visit had nothing to do with birds, she concluded. He had sailed right onto Gramps’ property and taken up residency in his boathouse. Why?

Glancing out the open doorway, she could see that a downed tree blocked the shallow channel from the boathouse to the lake. “It’s not as permanent as it looks,” her captor said with a casual gesture. Tracing the line of the tree’s trunk, Brodie saw the raw stump, bright among the darker wood around it. “The tree shields the view from the lake. The tarp hides what planes and helicopters might see from the air.”

Her heart sank. He had planned this, had known the existence of the old boathouse, known it was unused and obscured by years of neglect and overgrowth. He had cleared the narrow channel that led into the trees, concealed himself and his boat here in the half-rotten boathouse, and waited to kidnap her. She didn’t know why, but it couldn’t be anything good.

Responding to a gentle push, Brodie boarded the boat. It was a beauty, although not as well-maintained as Gramps would have required. The man opened the hatch cover and gestured toward the companionway. Even more fearful than before, Brodie regarded the steps down to the cabin. She knew why men took girls, knew what they suffered. Whatever he did to her, she told herself, she would live through it. When she was able, she would escape and go home. She would tell the police all about him so they could put him in jail for a long, long, time.

When she reluctantly made her way down the four steps to the cabin, there was another surprise. A woman sat on one side of the tiny table, smoking a cigarette and working on something with a pen. As Brodie got closer, she saw that it was a word find puzzle.

The interior was a mess, with musty clothing in one corner, used paper plates and cups on every surface, and stale cigarette smoke hanging in the air like bitter fog. Brodie’s presence seemed to make the man take note. “You could clean up a little down here, Cher.”

Looking up, the woman noticed Brodie for the first time and turned a cold glare on the man. “What is this?”

He seemed to shrink from large to medium. “It’s the girl I told you about. Brodie.”

Taking in Brodie’s frightened demeanor and tousled appearance, the woman said accusingly, “You kidnapped her.”

“Cher, we will talk about this later.” Something in his reply reminded Brodie of one of her vocab words from the month before:
bravado
.

“We already talked about it. I said it was a stupid idea.”

He drew himself up. “It’s done now. We need to get ready.”

Cher rolled her eyes and went back to the puzzle she’d been doing when they arrived, making angry circles as her chest heaved and her jaw clenched. The man’s tone became pleading. “Cher, I promise, it will all work out, just like I said.”

Brodie stood there, unsure what to do. Should she run? The woman, Cher, obviously did not want her there. Maybe Cher would stop the man from chasing her. But he blocked the path of her retreat. She waited. Maybe Cher would insist that he let her go.

Unable to decide what her part was in this little drama, Brodie looked around. Cher sat at the sort of down-sized table common to boats, with bench seats that folded out to make bunks for sleeping as well as providing storage underneath. A tiny sink off to her left looked unused except for a few beer cans set in it. If this boat was like others she’d seen, there was a commode under the steps. Not much here.

What did the man mean about getting ready?

“I want to go home.” Geez. She sounded like a little kid. But it was how she felt.

The birdwatcher seemed glad to have someone to talk to other than the angry Cher. Clapping a hand on her shoulder, he moved in front of her and squatted down until they were eye-to-eye. “That’s exactly what we want for you, Brodie. You are going home.”

That was some relief. Apparently he didn’t plan to kill her. “But first I need to talk to you.” He glanced at the woman, whose disapproval was obvious. “I will explain all of this, but I had to get you away from Bud and his little girlfriend, the teacher. You know they’re screwing each other.”

That was a crock. She would know if anything like that was going on between Bud and Scarlet. Although…she forced her mind off that topic. She needed to figure out what this guy wanted. She knew they could be deceiving, the men who hurt kids.

“Sit down,” he urged, indicating the bench opposite Cher. “We’ve got some things to do.” Brodie obeyed, and the man began emptying his pockets. From the large side pocket of one pants leg he took her sneaker. “You can have this back now.” She took the shoe and sat there, holding it and feeling lost. When the man unzipped his pants she froze, but he did not even notice. She relaxed a little when she saw that he had swim trunks under the jeans he’d been wearing. “Cher?” It was half an order, half a plea.

The woman sucked on her tongue  and then said in a tone of defeat, “You’re nuts.”

“We’ve got an hour, maybe a little more, before the cops get involved. Once we’re out of here, we’re just another boat on the big lake.”

“And slower than a turtle,” Cher commented. “They could stop us anywhere along here.”

“But they aren’t thinking water. And who would suspect this old tub of being a getaway vehicle?” The man grinned at his own genius. Then he turned serious. “If we get going.”

“It’s supposed to storm. You said we’d take off in the morning, after it clears.”

“That was the old plan. This is the new one. They’ll be looking for her, and someone might remember this place and check it out. Besides, a storm is a perfect cover. They’ll be busy helping boats in distress and won’t even notice us.” He spoke more forcefully. “We have to hurry to beat the weather, though, so let’s move.”

“Whatever you say,
Captain
.” Slamming her pen down to underscore her objections, Cher rose and stamped up the steps. As she retreated, Brodie saw that below the waist she was huge, like someone’s size eight top had been grafted onto a triple-X bottom.