Rigged for Murder (Windjammer Mystery Series) (21 page)

“Where is he? What happened?” Will asked, more out of morbid curiosity than any genuine concern, Brie guessed.

“The captain and I found his body at the foot of the cliffs on the other side of the island. I believe he jumped to his death.”

“Oh, no,” Alyssa sobbed, burying her face in Rob’s chest. “It’s so horrible. This is all so horrible.” Rob rocked her in his arms.

“If there’s any comfort I can offer, it’s that maybe you can all sleep a little easier tonight.”

As she was finishing, the captain entered. “I’ve notified the Coast Guard. They’re still responding to distress calls from the gale, but they hope to be here by noon tomorrow. We’re going to have to recover Tim’s body.”

“Where will the Coast Guard take the bodies?” Howard asked.

“They’ll bring them back to the Coast Guard station and turn them over to the coroner. Weather permitting, we’ll sail for the mainland tomorrow. I’m sorry things have turned out this way. I’ll see to it that everyone receives a refund for the cruise.”

Rob spoke up. “We’re not worried about that, Captain. None of this is your fault.”

Surprise crossed John’s face. “Thanks, Rob,” he said.

In the last eight hours Brie had actually started to like Rob. She was guarded about those feelings, though. The change in his demeanor had been sudden and dramatic, like the San Andreas fault in some seismic shift.

“Scott,” DuLac said, turning to him. “I’m sending you and George back to the ship for equipment. Rob, I need you to go with them and help carry some of the gear, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“That’s fine, Captain.”

John produced a piece of paper and pen he’d brought from upstairs and started writing a list as he talked. “We’ll need the bosun’s sling, the rescue harness, the 200-foot length of rope, the blocks that suspend the yawl boat, a short length of the braided nylon line that we can run around a tree and attach to one of the blocks, the second backboard, a tarp, rope for lashing, and a roll of duct tape. And Scott, put on your wet suit. You’re going to be in the water when we lower you down there. Make it as quick as you can, okay?”

“Aye, Captain.”

The three men headed out into the hall to put on their raincoats. Brie heard the front door open and close after them.

She walked over to where John was standing. “I’m going to grab a cup of coffee and talk to Will in the library for a few minutes. I want to find out if he got up as far as the bluffs when he left the inn. If he saw Tim up there, he might have something to add.”

John nodded. “Sounds good. I’ll stay here with the others. I’m expecting Glenn and Betty to arrive back soon. We’ll need to use Glenn’s truck to get the body down to the village.”

Brie walked over to where Will was shooting a solitary game of pool. “I need to talk to you in the library for a few minutes,” she said, expecting a dose of his antagonism. She was surprised when he set down his cue without comment and followed her out of the room. She wondered if two deaths in two days was enough to sober even Will.

Brie stopped by the kitchen for coffee and then ushered Will into the library and over to the corner where Howard and Scott had been reading. “The captain told me you left the inn this afternoon while I was down in the village.” Brie sat down across from him. “Where did you think you were going, and why did you sneak out?”

“I didn’t sneak out.” Surliness returned to his voice. “I just walked out. Tim did the same thing, so what’s the big deal?”

“The big deal is that I told everyone they had to stay together.”

“Well, I just went for a walk. That’s not a crime, is it?”

Brie wasn’t about to qualify his wisecrack with an answer. “Scott ran into you on the trail that leads up to the bluffs,” she said. “Did you get all the way to the top of the trail?”

Will hesitated, as if unsure of what he wanted to disclose.

“Will, did you see Tim up there?”

“Yes.”

“Did the two of you talk?”

“Briefly.”

“Can you elaborate, please?”

“I was impressed by the view and the height of the cliffs. The waves were tremendous. It sounded like a cannon firing when they exploded against the rock. I told him he was right about what he said last night. That it was quite a place. He seemed irritated somehow. Asked what I was doing there. Like it was his own private spot or something. I told him I wanted to stretch my legs, and since he thought he could leave the group, I decided I could too. He just turned his back to me and walked over toward the edge of the cliff and stood there, looking off. I yelled to him—told him he shouldn’t get so close to the edge. But he just stood there like he didn’t hear me.”

The surliness ebbed from Will’s eyes. “I know I rub people the wrong way sometimes, but I wasn’t rude to him. If I’d thought he was getting ready to jump off the cliff, I wouldn’t have just left him up there. From what he said last night at dinner, it sounded like he was excited about the Coast Guard—looking forward to going to Alaska. How could he go and kill Pete? Why would he mess up his life like that?”

Brie heard a mixture of fear and confusion in Will’s voice. The kind she often heard when a young person was confronted with the ugliness of death. “I don’t think there’s a way to understand it, Will. It’s not a rational act.” She paused for a moment before pressing on. “Did anything else happen up there?”

“No. He just kept standing there with his back to me, so I headed back down the trail to the inn. I hadn’t gone very far before I ran into Scott coming up the other way.”

“Did you notice what time it was when you were up on the bluffs? It might help establish a time of death.”

“I think it was around four o’clock, but I’m not sure of the exact time.”

Brie sat for a moment deciding if she had any other questions. Will’s recounting of Tim’s agitated state was similar to what she’d seen up on the bluff. She stood up. “Can you think of any other details that might shed light on Tim’s death?”

“I can’t.”

“That’s all, then.” Brie said. Will got up and they headed back down the hall to join the others.

Scott, George and Rob arrived back at the inn within forty-five minutes, loaded down with the equipment the captain had requested. They set everything down on the porch and came inside.

Brie asked Howard if he would stay with Alyssa at the inn while the rest of them went up to retrieve the body. Howard happily agreed and immediately took Alyssa under his wing, asking her if she’d play a game of gin rummy with him. She was relieved to be left out of this harrowing task, and gladly settled in with Howard at the card table near the windows.

Out in the hall everyone donned raincoats and headed for the porch to collect the equipment. There was a lot of gear, but with six people no one was overburdened. Coming back would be another story. They walked around the back of the inn toward the trail that led to the cliffs and were soon marching along single file into the woods.

D
ULAC LED THE PARTY OF SIX up the trail to recover the body. The rain was coming down hard again, making the footing quite slippery. Winding their way down the muddy trail carrying a body on a backboard would be some trick. They climbed through the spruce forest, finally stepping out onto the granite shelf where Tim was last seen alive. Piling the equipment on a slab of rock, they walked to the edge. Far below Tim’s body bobbed up and down, still held prisoner by boulders near the base of the cliff.

“Let’s get started,” DuLac said. “We need to find the closest sturdy tree and tie off to it.”

Scott walked back to the tree line. “There’s one right here, Captain,” he called.

“Good. You and George run a loop around the tree with the braided line and tie off to one of the blocks. Will and Rob, you rig up the long rope between the two blocks and tie one end to the bosun’s sling.”

Brie, Rob and Will got busy uncoiling the two hundred feet of rope and rigged it up as ordered. When they were ready, Scott stripped down to his wet suit, rolled up his raincoat and foul-weather pants and stowed them out of the wind. He walked over to the edge of the cliff. They’d found a good spot to lower him that would put him near the inlet where the body was trapped. Scott climbed into the bosun’s sling; John checked the knot on the sling and handed him the U-shaped rescue harness. He stationed Brie at the top of the cliff to call back directions, then walked back and formed a line on the rope with the other men.

“All set?” he called to Scott.

“Ready,” Scott yelled. The men took up the slack, and Scott backed slowly over the edge. They played out the rope, and when he was near the bottom, Brie called out, “Just a few more feet. Okay, stop, he’s in the water.”

Scott found his footing in the chest-deep water and climbed out of the sling. Pulling it behind him, he swam toward Tim. The waves were breaking on a submerged rock ledge no more than fifteen feet beyond the body, and the tide was ebbing—both factors making Scott’s job easier. Once he reached the body, he worked the rescue harness around Tim’s back and under his arms. While doing so, he took in the damage caused by the fall. Tim’s eyes were open, permanently fixed on the cloud deck sailing overhead. Long, thin fronds of sea wrack draped his body, their float bladders bobbing up and down as if they were keeping him suspended. His left leg splayed out at an unnatural angle below the knee, and the left side of his head was crushed.

Even though Scott came from a medical family and had learned not to be squeamish, his stomach turned over at the sight. He worked as fast as he could in the frigid, chest-deep water, the cold already penetrating his wet suit. Balancing on the slippery rocks underfoot, he untied the rope from the sling and attached it to the harness. He turned and signaled Brie to lift away.

“Start hauling up,” Brie called back to the men.

Slowly they brought up the body, the rescue harness holding it in a vertical position. When it was within three feet of the top, Brie called for them to stop. She went over to help on the rope, and DuLac sent Rob and Will to maneuver the body over the edge of the cliff. They carried it back ten feet and laid it on the outspread tarp. Rob quickly untied the rope and brought it back over to the edge.

Scott had swum back to the foot of the cliff. Seeing the rope on its way down, he bobbed under water and pulled the bosun’s sling between his legs. As they hoisted him up, the wind swung him pendulum-like toward the wall, and he used his feet to repel off of it. As soon as he was safely on top, he climbed out of the sling and immediately headed for his pile of clothing. He shivered as he pulled on his foul-weather pants and raincoat, and then sat on the ground to put on his socks and hiking boots.

Brie was looking over the body, mentally cataloging the damage from the fall. When she got to his hands, she paused. The skin on his right hand had been completely scraped off.
Strange
, she thought. It almost looked like he had grabbed for something on the way down. In that fateful moment, when he went over the edge, could he have changed his mind? Had he tried to grasp at something, tried to save himself, tried to call back his deadly decision?

The only other possibility immediately registered in her detective’s mind. He hadn’t gone over voluntarily. But, thinking about Madie’s death and the suicide note, she was inclined to dismiss this possibility.

Brie stood up and walked to the edge of the cliff where she’d last seen Tim alive. She looked over. Approximately ten and again twenty feet below the edge, a couple of rock ledges jutted out slightly. After that, nothing but water and rocks far below.

She walked back to the body, folded the tarp over it and taped it closed. The men were busy collecting the equipment and coiling the rope into a figure-eight-shaped pile. When they were finished, she called them over to lift the body onto the backboard. After they had tied it securely to the board, John and Rob took the front corners with Scott and Will at the rear. Between them George and Brie carried the heavy coil of rope and the rest of the equipment. The group disappeared into the pine forest, navigating slowly down the rain-soaked trail.