Saratoga Woods 02 The Edge of the Water (29 page)

Jenn felt uneasy with all of the implications that were becoming apparent, most of which had to do with the safety of the seal. She didn’t know a thing about the process for declaring something a new species, but she was pretty certain a few photographs of Nera were not going to be sufficient proof to the scientific community. They would need a lot more than that to declare Annie the discoverer of an entirely new species of mammal. They were going to need the animal herself. Failing that, they were going to need a heck of a lot of DNA and whatever else they could get their hands on.

Squat said in a meditative voice, “There’s this one odd thing about all this stuff, though.”

She glanced at him. He was resting back against the sofa, looking thoughtfully up at the ceiling. He had his arms behind his head, and his T-shirt rode up to show a band of white stomach and a rust-colored tuft of hair crawling down into his jeans that made Jenn get hot-faced and look away. She said, “What?”

“Well, all the whacked-out seal spotters on the island know about her, right? She’s got her own website or whatever and they call each other the minute she shows up. They have meetings about her and . . . look at Ivar Thorndyke making sure everyone keeps away from her. You’d think
someone
around would’ve noticed she’s different besides just being black, wouldn’t you? I mean someone a hell of a long time before now.”

“Before Annie showed up.”

“Yeah. So the question is, why
didn’t
anyone? And if someone did . . .” He glanced at her.

“I guess we know who it is, huh?”

“Ivar.”

They looked at each other. “What d’you think he knows?” Jenn asked.

“I don’t think that’s the question,” Squat replied.

“No? Then what?”

“Why doesn’t he want anyone
else
to know?” He yawned then and scratched his stomach. He saw her eyes follow the route his hand had taken. He said, “So . . . ready to pay up?”

“Tongues or what?”

“Or what,” he said. He pulled off his T-shirt.

She had a moment.

Lesbo freak.

No way, she told herself. She pulled her T-shirt off as well.

D
iana Kinsale had learned about the girl at Possession Point the way most everyone else had: through the local newspaper. So she knew whom Becca was talking about the moment Becca brought up the topic. She agreed that something wasn’t right about the whole situation, and when Becca told her that Cilla had no whispers, Diana walked to the window of her sunroom, where she spent a few minutes looking out at Saratoga Passage.

It was one of those moments when Becca wished that Diana herself had whispers. There was something about how gravely she looked upon the water that told Becca once again that more was going on than met the eye when it came to some of the adults in town.

Finally Diana turned from the window. She said, “I’m not sure how useful I can be in a situation of physical illness.”

“I know you can’t make her better,” Becca replied. “But I thought . . . well, maybe between you and me, we could figure out who she is. We could maybe find her parents or something because it seems like they’d want to know she’s sick.”

Even as she said these words, Becca felt the small stone of sorrow that she always carried grow a bit heavier in her chest. Parents. A mom. Her own mom. She coughed, swallowed hard, and pressed her lips together.

Diana watched her, her face concerned. She said quietly, “Let’s go, then. I don’t know what we can do, but trying is better than doing nothing, isn’t it?”

When they arrived at Possession Point, it was to find Chad Pederson’s truck parked next to Annie’s Honda. No one was around the McDaniels house, but Chad and Annie stood out on the dock, and they looked like people having an intense conversation. Becca watched them for a moment, her eyes narrowed. Annie was pointing northeast into the water and then gesturing to the right of the dock where boats pulled up so that Jenn’s dad could sell bait to the fishermen who piloted them. So intent were they upon what they were saying that they didn’t notice Becca and Diana. Becca figured this was all to the good. It would be easier for them if they could see Cilla and try to read from her without Annie Taylor clouding the air with whispers.

They went inside the trailer. Cilla was lying on the couch, a comforter pulled up to her neck. Her breathing was loud and her eyes were half-opened although she appeared to be asleep. Her long dark hair was a tangled cloud around her shoulders. It descended all the way to the floor, and Diana picked up a lock of it and held it gently in her hands.

She said, “Hello, Cilla,” as she sat on a chair that Becca brought to her. “How are you, my dear?” But on the couch, Cilla didn’t respond.

Becca stood behind Diana’s chair. As before, she tried to hear something coming from Cilla. But just like Diana, there was nothing to hear.

With a soft touch, Diana put the back of her fingers on Cilla’s temple in a simple touch. She murmured, “You’re safe. You’ve had a long journey to get here, Cilla. I expect what you’d like most is to go home.”

Becca watched as Diana moved her hand from Cilla’s temple to her forehead, which she massaged tenderly. “It would be lovely, wouldn’t it,” Diana said, “to be in a place where safety is all that someone knows.”

Becca’s throat closed. Like Cilla, she found it hard to breathe. It was the thought of safety, which she had not known in these many months since she’d come to Whidbey. It was the thought of a gentle touch on a feverish forehead. It was missing everything that she had lost.

Diana looked at her. She seemed to read it all. She said, “I would make your journey easier if I could, but there are limits to what’s possible for me. And for you, too.” And saying this, she drew Becca around to her side while still she caressed Cilla’s forehead. Becca felt Diana’s arm encircle her waist and a warmth took the place of the desolation she was feeling.

Then it changed. Instead of Cilla lying on the couch in front of her, Becca saw water. It was calm and dark as the night and she was moving through it. She was under it. She was on top of it. She heard the
thrub
of an engine flowing through it. Then the water was heavy, like a canvas weighed down by a thousand stones. She rose to the surface but it was black night and there were no stars. She could no longer breathe. She twisted and turned and looked for someone, for something, for a way to go until she felt hands, gentle as a sigh, and they smoothed and smoothed the length of her body. She was a butterfly emerging from a cocoon and outside the cocoon there was air,
air
. And then there was nothing but stumbling on unsteady feet and falling onto sand in the moonlight. Then the sound of footsteps. A gasp. And then in water nearby a smooth head rose. Then bright lights struck and they were everywhere and whatever it was in the water was gone.

Becca’s vision cleared. Her heart was slamming in her chest, and she saw that Cilla’s eyes were open and that Cilla was watching her. Diana’s arm was no longer around her waist. She, too, was watching Becca.

She said to Becca, “Something’s happened, hasn’t it? And it happened once before, with Sharla.”

Becca didn’t know how to tell her or even what to tell her. She had no possible way to explain. It was being there with her and with Cilla but not being there with her and with Cilla; it was being there with her and with Sharla and not being there with her and with Sharla. It was like the whispers but it was more than the whispers. She didn’t know what to call it.

She said, “This’s about water. But I don’t know why.”

Diana said thoughtfully, “Yet things generally end the way they begin, in my experience.”

Becca said, “Eddie Beddoe. He’s where it started. That day on Sandy Point when he was shooting at the water.”

“You’re probably right,” Diana told her.

• • •

THEY WENT TO
Eddie Beddoe’s car repair shop, across the street from a line of renovated old mercantile buildings that comprised the shops of Bayview Corner. As they approached the ancient gas station that housed Eddie’s establishment, Diana pulled to one side of the road. She said to Becca, “A reason for showing up would be good,” and she got out of the pickup and fiddled underneath its hood. When she got back in and turned on the engine, the truck misfired badly. Diana pulled into the forecourt where once the gas pumps had stood. Eddie came out of the shop, frowning at the noise from her truck and wiping his hands on a stained red rag.

Diana glanced at Becca before she climbed out of the pickup. “Ready, then?” she asked.

“Guess so,” Becca told her. She wasn’t sure how they were going to get anything out of the unpleasant man, but she would wait for a moment when it looked as if she could make a connection that he wouldn’t be wise to.

Diana said to Eddie, “It’s misfiring badly. Do you have time . . . ? To tell you the truth, I dread knowing. If it’s a head gasket, I’m in big trouble.”

Eddie glanced at Becca briefly. He said to Diana pleasantly enough, “Didn’t sound like a head gasket to me when you pulled in,” but his whispers told another tale about how he was feeling about their presence.
Little bitches two of them . . . all the trouble . . . no way are they . . . with that hot pants scientist . . .
came to Becca broken in parts as always, but it was a simple matter to interpret them. “Lemme take a look at her,” he said.

He lifted the hood. After a moment, he said, “Yeah, that ain’t no head gasket. Shut her down, will you?” and when Diana did so, he messed around under the hood. He emerged with two spark plugs, saying, “This here’s your problem. One of them’s wasted and the other’s about to be. Wait a second,” and off he went into his shop.

“Anything?” Diana murmured to Becca.

“Just that he’s mad at me and Jenn. Or you and me. It was hard to tell. And . . . he’s not a very nice man.”

As Eddie approached again, Diana smiled at him. He disappeared beneath the hood, replaced the spark plugs, and told Diana to start the truck up again. It purred. Diana thanked him and said, “What do I owe you?” to which he answered, “Come on inside.”

Becca followed them into the office, which was redolent of motor oil and grease. It was also so filthy that she took care not to touch anything, since it looked as if flesh-eating bacteria was the most likely resident of the place, and she waited for the moment to present itself.

Eddie wrote up the bill for the spark plugs. As she waited, Diana said to him in a friendly way, “I heard the good news about your boat being found, Eddie,” and in that way she had of connecting with people, she put a hand on his arm. “Becca here was the one to tell me. Have you two met? She was with me that day on the beach at Sandy Point, but I don’t think I introduced you two then.” She extended her hand to Becca, and Becca took it, seeing the direction in which they were heading. She said to Eddie Beddoe, “Oh yeah, hi,” and she heard Diana add, “Becca and I met in the most unusual—” before silence hit her.

She was in open water. But this time, she was on a boat. She saw its stern along with the waves that hurled themselves onto its deck. And then beyond the boat . . . the sleek black head of Nera in the water. She was a bare ten yards away, but she didn’t come closer. She rode the waves with ease. The boat’s motor gunned. Then things went awry as the boat came about. The boat aimed for the seal. Nera dove. Water washed the deck.

Becca struggled to escape Diana’s hand on hers. She knew where the vision was heading.

Eddie was saying, “Piece ’f crap and I should’ve knowed better but I didn’t. Thing is, people got to stay away from that wreck. Wreck’s dangerous and them two girls should’ve knowed it.”

He didn’t look at Becca as he spoke, but this was just as well because she was feeling light-headed and a bit sick to her stomach. It wasn’t all due to the sudden sensation of being out on the water, though. It was also due to understanding what Eddie Beddoe had tried and failed to do to the seal.

T
here was only one way to get out to the place where Eddie Beddoe’s boat had gone down. The problem with this was that there were only two people who could help her get out there: Chad Pederson or Ivar Thorndyke. One word to Chad, and Annie Taylor was going to know they were up to something and she was also going to want to know exactly what that something was. That left Ivar, who might agree to ferry Jenn and her out to Eddie’s boat, but only if he was certain that the coal black seal wasn’t anyway near it.

“No big deal,” was how Jenn put it when Becca laid the facts out for her. “The seal spotters’ website tracks every move she makes. If she’s anywhere near that boat it’ll be on the Web.”

The best idea seemed to be to make Ivar part of the expedition’s planning. So when Becca found him in the kitchen of the farmhouse cooking up a batch of Thorndyke’s Famous Fire-on-the-Tongue Chili, she began cleaning up the mess he was making, and she waited for a chance to bring up the subject of another scuba dive to that boat.

She used the idea of getting back on the horse that has bucked one from the saddle. She’d been spooked and so had Jenn, but she thought it might be a good idea for them to try another dive to Eddie Beddoe’s boat together. They were certified now, so they didn’t need Chad Pederson to accompany them. Would Ivar be willing . . . like maybe on a day he was fishing or something? She let the rest of her request hang in the open air.

At first Ivar said no how, no way. That seal was hanging around the boat, hanging around Langley village, hanging around Sandy Point. She’d even swum as far as Bell’s Beach one day—way up along Saratoga Passage—and no one knew where she’d turn up next. Becca was pleased at this turn of topic, since it allowed her to bring up the seal spotters’ website, which she did.

They continued their conversation over dinner, an invitation to taste the Fire-on-the-Tongue chili. The evening was fine, so they took their bowls out onto the farmhouse’s wide wraparound porch and they sat there with Sharla, sharing a pitcher of lemonade, a box of saltines, and a tossed green salad. Sharla was quiet, but she was listening. At the first mention of Eddie Beddoe’s boat, her whispers shot straight into the air.

Where it sank . . . that’s where he . . . I swear I swear . . . it’s all over unless he can . . . if he does then I will go . . .
we both said that Sharla’s calm presence hid a troubled mind. But she said nothing, and Ivar’s whispers of
try something I know they will and then when she comes to the shore . . . damn . . . if I’d never seen the blasted woman
 . . .
confirmed that Annie Taylor and her intentions remained large on his mind. So Becca played that angle with a by-the-way. She told Ivar she’d seen Annie Taylor and Chad Pederson on the dock at Possession Point. They were up to something, and since Annie’s pictures of Nera had been taken at Eddie Beddoe’s boat . . . Didn’t it all seem to tie together? If she and Jenn did their get-back-on-the-horse dive down to Eddie Beddoe’s boat, maybe they could find out why the seal had been hanging around it.

Sharla whispers went loony with
no no no . . . stop . . . don’t you dare . . . if you take her
while Ivar’s grew furious with
stop her
and
because if she knows then God help us all.
Everything combined to tell an even stronger tale about the need to get down to that boat. Becca wanted to yell, If I know
what
, Ivar?, but instead she made a dive with Jenn, and Eddie Beddoe’s boat, and Annie Taylor’s intentions all seem part of a reasonable whole.

So ultimately, Ivar agreed. Plans were laid. She only needed Jenn to snag Annie Taylor’s equipment, and they’d be ready to roll.

• • •

JENN GOT HER
hands on the scuba equipment without any trouble. Annie and Chad, she reported to Becca, were gathering what they needed to entrap the seal: nets and floats and her dad’s guarantee of excellent bait. When they weren’t doing that, Annie was tending to Cilla or—with a scoff—she was “tending to Chad, if you know what I mean.” Scoring the scuba equipment? No problemmo. Annie didn’t even know it was missing.

Becca and Jenn donned their dry suits as Ivar chugged clear of the marina. Becca had a plan to find the boat a second time, and Ivar agreed that it might well work. She’d remembered from their previous dive that the boat was lying offshore not too far east from Sandy Point, where a funicular railway gave a house on the bluff access to the beach below. All they needed to do was to find that same funicular railway once again, motor out from that point to where Ivar’s depth gauge told them the bottom was at fifty feet, and swim down to the wreck of Eddie’s boat, which should be right there. Just as it had been lying there when they made their dive with Annie and Chad.

Ivar agreed to this. Once out of the marina and the environs of the harbor, he opened the throttle. Sandy Point was no great distance away, and the funicular was even closer. Within ten minutes they were bobbing in the water, where it was deep enough for the boat to rest and where they could see the same funicular carving its mechanical pathway straight down the side of the bluff. From there it was all about the depth finder. They slowly headed out into the passage, whose water on this fine spring day was glassy and clear. At fifty feet, Ivar tossed the anchor over the side. He said to Becca, “You be careful,” and to Jenn, “You, too. I want you back up here in less than fifteen minutes or I’m coming after you, dry suit, wet suit, or no suit. Understand?”

They nodded and donned the rest of their equipment. Becca said to Jenn, “Ready?” and when she heard the whisper of
no Chad in case anything happens down there
, she added, “Don’t worry. We’re dive buddies, right?”

Jenn didn’t look reassured but she nodded gamely. Becca took the lead once they were in the water. The seal spotters were claiming on this day that Nera was in the Glendale area heading toward Columbia Beach, both of which were north of Possession Point. That put the Mukilteo ferry between where they themselves were and the seal. She might return, but probably not this day. At least that was what Becca told herself and what she told Ivar once he showed her where Columbia Beach actually was on a map of Whidbey Island.

Down they went. Slowly, the shape of the sunken wreck emerged below them as it had before. Becca kept her eyes open for a sighting of the seal, but she didn’t see her. Just lots of fish that she couldn’t name, Dungeness crabs scuttling on the bottom, and the torpedo-shaped hollows that were left by gray whales in their search for ghost shrimp.

Because of the depth, they didn’t have much time to see if the boat sheltered something that Nera had wanted. In the years since the craft had sunk, salt water and the tide and rough weather had done a lot of their searching job for them. There was little enough around the boat, so when Becca saw the box half-wedged into the sandy bottom, she was sure that was what they were looking for.

She turned to Jenn and pointed to it. Jenn nodded, glanced around fearfully, as if expecting Neptune to arrive and go after her butt with his trident, and she indicated that she would follow. Becca felt her close behind, so close that her fins were scraping Jenn’s face.

The box was metal, in part corroded and in part hosting tiny crustaceans. It was tipped drunkenly to one side, and while it looked heavy, this did not turn out to be the case. It was, in fact, disappointingly light. When she and Jenn jiggled it to release it from the sand, it came quite easily, as if it had merely been waiting for them to show up and take it out of the water.

This, too, proved easy. One of them could carry it under her arm. Clearly, if they were venturing into the area of finders/keepers, whatever was inside the box, it wasn’t going to be pirate’s gold.

Slowly they surfaced, watching their depth and taking their time. When they made it to the top, Ivar was waiting for them on the platform on the stern, by the boat’s engine. Becca shoved the box onto this platform and took the hand that Ivar extended to her. Jenn did the same. In short order, they were back on the deck of the boat and along with Ivar they inspected the box.

Ivar picked it up and shook it, saying, “What’ve you got here?”

“Don’t know for sure,” Becca told him. “But it could be what Nera’s been after.”

They inspected the box and found it locked. The lock was crusty, and even if they’d had its key, no key was going to open the thing.

“C’n we break it?” Jenn asked.

“Back at the farm,” Ivar said. “I’ve got the proper tools there, if you think it’s worth it.”

“Oh, I definitely think it’s worth it,” Becca said.