Nail Biter (29 page)

She'd arrived just as I was pressing a cold towel to my eyes, and got the story about Victor out of me immediately.

“I'll be no good to Sam or anyone else if I don't do this,” I said, getting a notepad out of a kitchen drawer. I'd promised to let Wade know if I was contemplating doing anything dangerous.

And this qualified. Next to the money lay an item I'd told myself I'd given up using, other than for target practice: the Bisley six-shot .45-caliber revolver with blued steel barrel and walnut checkered grip. It was an Italian-made replica of the gun that won the Old West.

If you can call what happened out there winning. Anyway,
I'm going to get Wanda,
I wrote; and then after detailing where I was going to do it,
I'll be home for dinner
.

I'd rather have waited for him but there was simply no time; he wouldn't be home for several hours. And if my dad was correct, right now there was a chance to bring Wanda home.

But Mac could be deciding to leave any minute. Signing the note, I lowered the loaded Bisley into my satchel.

“Jake,” Ellie argued, “if he knew we were there last night he'll know it for sure in the daylight. And have you ever put an outboard engine on that little boat of yours before?”

“No. But there's a first time for everything.” I slung the satchel over my shoulder.

“In that case, I'm coming, too.” She pulled on her jacket and zipped it.

“No, you're not,” I said. “You've got Leonora to think of.”

Stubbornly she followed me out. I still had to get the outboard engine up through the bulkhead doors of the cellar, and there were only about four good hours left before dark, another reason I didn't want to waste any time. . . .

Speaking of which, that daylight Ellie had mentioned was fading awfully fast. Looking around, I realized: The storm that had been forecast was here, clouds mounding in the sky like dark boulders.

Or almost here; an hour, tops. Any later and I'd need a miracle to get out to Tall Island safely. And I might need a miracle anyway.

“Jake,” Ellie said insistently. Catching me, she turned me to face her by seizing my jacket and rotating it with me in it.

“You're right, there are some things I won't do on account of Lee. But going out in a boat certainly isn't one of them.”

This, I thought, ignored important details about the trip. The fact that at least one Very Large Weapon might be part of the program, for example, didn't seem to be on her radar. And neither did the weather.

But it was also true that Ellie was nearly as comfortable on the water as on land. And that I wasn't. And although I'd loaded the Bisley, there was a chance I'd need to
re
load.

Possibly while on the boat. And for that, a helper could be . . . well, helpful. To handle the all-important steering portion of the program, for instance.

“Letting you do this alone isn't one of them either,” she declared, backing away while holding up something shiny.

My keys. She'd plucked them from my pocket when she grabbed me. Now she dangled them at me, her face defiant.

“Oh, all right.” I gave in. For one thing, I didn't have time to stand there arguing with her. “If you're coming you can help me get the outboard into the trunk.”

“Nuts,” she replied. “Are you crazy? Do you see that sky? If we're doing this we're taking my boat.”

And there was no arguing with her about that either, so we got into her car. On the passenger seat lay the new issue of the
Quoddy Tides,
and as she turned the ignition key I picked it up and scanned it, hoping it might help calm my nerves.

It didn't. “Ellie, have you seen this?” I stared at the page of local obituaries, among them Eugene Dibble's.

“No, what?” She backed out of the driveway, headed toward the water.

“This . . . this . . .” I waved the paper at her. “Remember I told you that Bella Diamond knew Jenny, Gene Dibble's wife?”

“Yes,” Ellie replied patiently. At the foot of Key Street she waited for a group of women in black pointy hats to cross, carrying refreshments; they were having a Halloween party for the kindergarten kids at the public library.

One of the women waved, cackling evilly at us. I scanned Dibble's obituary again. “And Bella said Jenny had a daughter by a previous marriage who was living on her own,” I went on.

Threading between the cars parked in front of the library and a beer truck making a delivery at the Waco Diner, Ellie said nothing.

“The daughter,” I said, throwing the paper down, “is Luanne Moretti.”

That got a response. “Oh, man,” Ellie breathed as we passed the post office. “So for a while at least he must've been living in the same house with . . .”

“Yeah. And what do you want to bet they didn't get along?” I said. “Gene and Luanne . . .”

“Or that
he
maybe wanted to get along with her a little
too
well?” Ellie said.

“Precisely.” She took the turn into the parking lot between the boat ramp and the Coast Guard Station. “Damn,” I said, angry with myself. “Why'd I miss this?”

“Because no one you were talking to knew it, and she didn't tell you,” Ellie replied reasonably, shutting the car off. “Spilt milk now anyway,” she added as we got out.

Yeah, and maybe disastrously so. Luanne's hint that she had a weapon seemed even clearer and more ominous, now that I knew her connection to Gene Dibble.

A connection she might've wanted to sever permanently. “And she can get pills,” I said as we approached the metal gangway to the docks. “I don't know how she'd have gotten so many, but . . .”

“Doesn't matter,” said Ellie, starting down. “It doesn't change what we're doing.”

She was right again; it didn't. A few shaky moments later she was helping me board what up close looked even more like a rowboat on steroids: broad beam, high rails, and a big seventy-horse Tohatsu outboard engine that made my little seven-and-a-half-horse Evinrude resemble an eggbeater.

She hadn't forgotten how to run it, either. Bing, bang, boom and we were seated in the boat with the lines cast off and Ellie in the stern, her hand on the tiller as we slid past the mooring dolphin, the docks, and the fish pier.

The tall wooden sides of the docks echoed the engine's deep rumble, making talk impossible until after we'd cleared all the waterfront structures and were headed south, toward the thin line of the International Bridge to Campobello.

Beyond it a wall of dark clouds loomed on the horizon, even more ominous looking than the ones over our heads. Ellie angled her head at them. “Not much time,” she mouthed.

But even now we were passing Treat Island, halfway between Eastport and North Lubec on the next long peninsula jutting out into the bay. As we slid past it a flock of eider ducks clad in sharp black-and-white plumage cooed their soft urgent call, and paddled away at our sudden approach.

The wreckage of an ancient wharf appeared, its massive weed-hung timbers studded with iron spikes dissolving to rust; a few minutes later we entered Tall Island's cove.

Here in the more protected water my fingers loosened their grip on the boat's seat. But the calm was deceptive; Ellie turned her head once more at the gathering weather.

“It's coming in fast,” she said. “He must see it, too. If he really is here, he'll stay put for a while.”

If, she meant, he hadn't cut and run already. My father's take on Mac Rickert was a prediction, after all, not a money-back guarantee.

She cut the engine to idle. “The weather report said gale flags are up all the way to the Carolinas. It's going to get nasty.”

As we approached shore Ellie hauled engine so the propeller wouldn't break on the rocks. I'd have never thought to do that, I realized, glad she was there. We drifted toward the inlet where the night before we'd walked across to Mac's camp, and made shore.

“We were lucky,” Ellie whispered as I clambered out. “The wind blew our engine noise in the other direction.”

“Let's not say ‘lucky' yet,” I muttered.

Because we
were
on land again, a big plus right there in my opinion. And in theory, the rest could be easy: Mac might not be at the campsite, for instance. We might snatch Wanda and be out of here before he even had an inkling of what was happening.

But as I struggled through the brush toward a guy with a gun and a head trip about a young girl somewhere ahead of us, luck was what I wanted.

Not what I thought we already had. Ellie stopped. “There it is.”

In daylight the campsite looked miserable, no more now than a clearing and a doused fire ring. No tent.

And no people. “Hey,” Ellie said, pointing. “Over there by the rocks.”

Tucked into a crevice nearly hidden from view was a pile of gear: a bedroll, a backpack, and a cooking kit of nested skillet and saucepan plus a coffeepot and a bag of canned food.

He was here, all right. But he didn't plan on staying much longer. I didn't see the shotgun anywhere. “I don't get it. Why now, and how's he going to . . . ?”

“Let's work our way around to the other side,” said Ellie, “and see if we can spot them.”

Just what I needed, more bushwhacking. What I wanted was a taxi, preferably one equipped with an electric blanket and a very dry martini.

Instead I struggled after Ellie until we reached a grove of old spruces whose massive trunks stood like sentinels in the silence, the forest floor softly carpeted with their tan needles.

Easy to walk through; easy to be spotted in, too. We hustled through as quickly and quietly as we could. Next came a barrier of wild raspberry cane bristling with what felt like hypodermic needles, then a bog of black mud.

Finally we reached the relative safety of a sweetgrass field, still wet underfoot but at least not threatening the tops of my boots, and the grass itself was tall enough to hide in.

“Which way?” All this freestyle tracking had spun my sense of direction around.

“Ssh,” Ellie warned, parting the grass with both hands to peek through it. Squinting past her, I saw that we were on a narrow spit of land angling back toward Rickert's camp. And from here it was clear he'd chosen his location with skill.

You could've walked right past it on the beach and never known it was up there, and from the water it was curtained by the bushes so the campfire was hidden at night. Then:

“Oh,” Ellie breathed. “Just look at her. Look at them both.”

“Who?” But suddenly the camouflage of leaves, trees, and grass resolved, and I did see. Twenty yards off at the edge of the grassy clearing stood Wanda Cathcart, her hands at her sides and her dark head cocked slightly at an inquisitive angle.

But it was the thing standing there with her that made the breath stop in my throat: a big buck deer with a thick rust-brown coat, its huge eyes rolling in pain so the whites showed and its massive sides heaving with anxiety.

“Oh. My. God.” The buck wore the biggest rack of antlers I'd ever seen that wasn't already mounted on a wall with the rest of the hunting trophies. And if it happened to toss its head in the wrong direction, Wanda would be skewered.

The animal pawed the earth with a powerful hoof and emitted a loud, unhappy-sounding snort. And now I saw why. An arrow was stuck in its neck.

Or rather stuck
through
it. The point had pierced its hide just above the animal's shoulders and come out the other side. Now it hung there as if the buck had sprouted long thin wings.

“That thing has to hurt,” Ellie murmured as Wanda took a step.

“Don't do that,” I whispered, “don't get closer . . .”

Because a scared buck was bad, but a pain-maddened one was worse. They don't call them
wild
animals for nothing.

“Ellie, what's she . . . oh, hell, we need to stop her.” But we couldn't just jump out; it might startle the buck. “Any ideas?”

No answer. “Ellie, I'm not kidding, if we don't . . .”

“Mmmf,” Ellie replied.

Not the reply I wanted. “Can't you be a little more—
mmf!
”

Something covered my mouth, spun me around. Ellie's eyes flashed, her own mouth closed by Mac Rickert's other hand. He let go of me, pushed me back hard, and backhanded the side of my head as I staggered, knocking me down.

Then he put his boot on my neck in a way that reminded me unpleasantly of spinal paralysis. “You move an inch and I'll kick you to death,” he growled, and threw Ellie down beside me.

But he didn't take my satchel, either because I'd fallen on it and he didn't see it, or because he thought a foolish woman like me probably only owned one weapon and he'd taken that away from me a few nights earlier.

“So you didn't drown,” he said with a glint of dark humor. Not the kind that made me want to trade jokes with him, though.

The kind that made me want to shoot him. Which I was going to do the very instant he gave me a chance; any deal notions I might have had were long gone.

His humor didn't last long, either. “Keep your mouth shut,” he growled. “You too,” he told Ellie. “The both of you've screwed things up enough already.”

He shook his shaggy head at us scornfully. “You want to sneak up on someone at night,” he added, “skip the flashlights.”

So he had known we were here the night before. Which meant he'd figured out who sent the cops to try catching him, too; no wonder he was angry.

But his anger faded as he turned to watch Wanda again, only glancing at us often enough to prevent me from getting the Bisley from the satchel without him noticing.

“This is her last chance,” he said. Wanda still stood by the animal, her body and expression passive.

Not coaxing, the way you might try to draw in a creature you wanted to feed or capture. Only waiting . . . but for what?

With my eyes I drew Ellie's attention to the satchel. She understood, nodding minutely.

Just then Wanda took another step. The big buck snorted once more but held its ground. “I told her what to do,” Rickert said. “I told her, but if she can't . . .”

All at once I understood: Mac Rickert the outdoorsman, the well-known animal lover.

And a deer wounded by a poacher. Must've been, since no one was allowed to hunt on Tall Island. Rickert would've known what fate awaited the animal, doomed to die slowly and painfully over the course of a coming winter it couldn't hope to survive.