Authors: Janet Bolin
44
O
UR POLICE CHIEF REFUSED TO TALK TO
us. Fine. I took my foot off the brake, pressed on the gas, and eased away from her cruiser.
“What shall we do now?” Haylee asked.
I accelerated, leaving our police chief and Zara Brubaugh behind. Because I’d turned the car around before attempting to talk to Vicki, we were heading back toward the lodge, and not toward home. However, we could return to the village and avoid passing our cranky police chief again if we drove past the lodge, the marina, the wharf, Lazy Daze Campground, and all the cottages along Beach Row. Naturally, I didn’t want to drive
past
the lodge. What if Clay showed up?
I parked in the Elderberry Bay Lodge parking lot again.
“Still hoping that Clay will find us?” Haylee teased.
“Just being cautious.” Vicki would have noticed which direction we went. Maybe she would follow, which would lead her straight to Ben and the interesting photo.
Haylee nodded at the lodge. “I suppose tattling to Ben that my delightful cousin was pulled over in his pickup truck might be seen as unkind, huh.”
“Unkind to your delightful cousin, maybe,” I retorted, “but not to Ben. He might be staying awake worrying.”
We tiptoed to the porte cochere. No lights were on behind the French doors leading to Ben’s office, and even without going into the lobby, we could see that Ben wasn’t there. The lights had been dimmed, and no one was near the registration desk. A bell to ring for service had been placed on it.
We turned around and headed toward my car. “Too bad Ben didn’t accept my offer of a ride,” I muttered. “He’d have seen Zara after she’d been pulled over or whatever.”
“I wonder what story she’ll tell him when she does bring the truck back.”
“
And
wants him to carry that empty foot locker upstairs again,” I added.
Haylee giggled. “She must have gone to that culvert looking for the bag she left there, and thanks to your quick call, Vicki got there in time.”
I opened the driver’s door. “I wish I’d seen Zara’s face when Vicki showed up.”
“I can just hear our police chief, ‘Did you lose something?’” Haylee imitated Vicki’s inflection perfectly.
I wanted to hoot with laughter, but didn’t, for fear of waking people in the nearby lodge.
Haylee slid into the passenger seat. “Do you see Max’s car anywhere?”
“No. Clay’s, either. But I’m not going back home past our ornery police chief!”
Haylee laughed. “She really got to you, didn’t she?”
“Waving us on as if we weren’t important!” I exaggerated my complaining tone.
At the foot of the hill, I steered into the potholed parking lot that served the marina and wharf. Breezes blowing off the lake through the car’s open windows smelled watery but fresh.
Near the row of boathouses, something beeped.
“What’s wrong with your car?” Haylee asked.
Uh-oh.
“I don’t know.” I stopped and listened. Another beep. “I don’t think it’s coming from my car.” I turned off the engine. After about a minute, we heard the beep again, distorted by wind.
“Smoke detector,” we said in unison. It was either in a yacht or a boathouse.
“As firefighters, we should investigate,” Haylee pointed out.
“And help change the batteries if they need it.” The warning didn’t sound urgent, but we needed to figure out where it was coming from and notify the owners that one of their smoke or carbon monoxide detectors possibly needed new batteries. The yachts and boathouses were very close together. A fire in one of them could be disastrous. And carbon monoxide killed with no warning.
Haylee grabbed my flashlight from the glove compartment. We got out and listened.
The beeps drew us east. We stopped in front of Tom’s fish shack.
The moon was three quarters, but since it had just risen, the earth’s atmosphere magnified it. Light from the lot’s only fixture slanted down onto a notice tacked to Tom’s front door:
We will be closed on Monday to celebrate the life of our good friend, Neil Ondover. RIP, Neil, old buddy.
I breathed out a mournful sigh. Neil’s death was all so sad and so needless.
Another notice said that the door stuck and to push hard.
I rammed it with my shoulder the way Tom had shown us.
The door was locked.
We peeked in through cobwebby front windows. “I think there’s a light on inside,” Haylee said.
Both of us knew that meant nothing. We had night-lights in our shops, also.
From this close, the beep was more like an angry chirp. If the batteries died and a fire started before new batteries were put in, I would have a hard time forgiving myself for not investigating. I suggested, “Let’s check around the back of Tom’s shack, where he parks his boats, and see if we can pinpoint where the smoke detector with the low batteries is.” Even if Vicki showed up, she couldn’t scold us for snooping. We were only doing our job as firefighters. And she could patrol the area frequently during the rest of the night until we managed to call Tom.
“Okay.” Haylee handed me my flashlight. “And then let’s go home. This place gives me the creeps. Doesn’t the water lapping at the posts beneath the pier sound like something licking its lips before it pounces?”
I smothered a laugh. “Not to me.” Haylee wasn’t usually a wimp. Maybe she just wanted to go back up the hill and take a few more longing looks at Ben’s lodge.
I nearly chickened out, though, when I shined my light on the catwalk leading to the back of Tom’s shack. The line of wooden planks was barely wide enough for my feet, and the water below was a deep, ominous, oily black.
And did Haylee have to mention that lip-licking sound again?
I reminded myself that I’d heard of record-setting catfish and sturgeon in Lake Erie, but the lake couldn’t possibly harbor women-eating monsters.
Gamely, Haylee followed me down the catwalk. Narrow boards sagged and creaked as we shuffled along them.
Tom’s commercial fishing boat was moored to the wharf running along the shore ahead of us.
The closer of the two garage doors at the back of Tom’s fishing shack was rolled all the way up. A motor launch swayed gently in the far bay of the boathouse, but nothing was in the nearer section.
“Does Tom usually keep another boat in here?” Haylee asked. “Does he fish at night?”
“Maybe he uses a smaller boat to commute to and from his home. Or he rents out space.”
The catwalk running along the inside wall of the boathouse was almost as narrow as the one outside.
The smoke detector chirped again. This time it sounded louder.
From where we stood, trembling in the suddenly chilly evening, it was easy to tell that the smoke detector with the dying batteries was inside Tom’s fish shack, and not in the one beside it or on his fishing tug.
Just one look, and then we’d go, I promised myself. I shined my flashlight around the interior of the boathouse.
The door leading inside to the sales area was ajar.
45
S
OMETHING GROANED. HAYLEE GRABBED
my arm.
I extinguished the light, but then we couldn’t see our way out of Tom’s boathouse. I heard the groan again and turned on the light. Had the door leading into the sales area of his fish shack moved?
I dug in my bag for my cell phone.
Our police chief’s answering system went straight to messages, but I didn’t feel like going through the entire rigamarole about investigating smoke detectors with low batteries after midnight on a Sunday morning—she would undoubtedly say we were snooping—and I didn’t leave a message. “I’m going to peek inside,” I said. “It’s probably only the door creaking in the wind, but what if Tom’s in there, and all he can do is groan? What if he fell off a ladder while trying to change the smoke detector’s batteries, and now he’s too injured to move or yell for help?” In that case, I’d call emergency. Bothering Vicki would be pointless. I thrust the cell phone back into my embroidered bag.
“Okay,” my intrepid friend said. “I’ll come with you.”
The smoke detector let out another loud beep.
We tiptoed around coiled ropes, floats, nets, and cans of motor oil. I pushed the door open.
Inside the boathouse, a restaurant-style sink and stainless steel counter dominated the first room on our right. That would be where Tom cleaned the fish.
Another beep sounded, so we kept going, into the familiar shop, with its refrigerated display unit, counter, scales, and cash register. Between the wind, the smoke detector, and the eerie echoes in the fish shack, we couldn’t be sure where the groans originated.
I whispered, “Tom?”
No answer
I opened the door beside me and found a small, shelf-lined storeroom. Something heaped on the floor made both of us jump and catch our breath, but when I shined my flashlight at the thing, we clutched each other in relief. It was only a fishnet made of thick green plastic rope.
The smoke detector made another insistent beep. It was on the ceiling above the display case, too high to reach without a ladder, and there was no ladder in sight.
Who had moaned? I went back into the storage room and shined my flashlight around the walls. No one was near the net on the floor, and the shelves along the walls were too narrow to hold anyone, groaning or not.
Behind me, Haylee gasped.
“What?” I didn’t see anyone.
“Shine your light up to the right again.”
I did.
“See that small box?” she whispered. “That’s the box of water-soluble thread that went missing from the sidewalk sale.”
“How did it get here?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but . . .” She plucked the box from the shelf. A small paper packet like a seed envelope must have been underneath the box. The envelope drifted down and landed on the fishnet. “Shine your light on this box.”
I did.
“It sure looks like what I lost.” She turned the box over. Spools of thread fell out and bounced into some of the holes in the fishnet.
“Oops.” Haylee added a few stronger words. “I should have checked if the box was closed before I tried to read the words on the bottom.” She stared down at the net. “I’m sure I had more spools than the few that fell out.”
“So maybe it’s not your box of thread,” I said sensibly. “But we should pick them up, anyway.” I leaned forward, grabbed a spool, and handed it to her. She put it into the box. I couldn’t reach the next spool without stepping onto the mounded net.
My foot slipped between the ropes of the net. I fell, and both my hands slid into holes in the net, too. This was getting ridiculous.
“Here, grab my hand,” Haylee said.
Flashlight and all, I forced my right hand out, and reached back toward her. She took the light and pulled at me, which helped extricate my left hand, but as I twisted toward her, pain shot through my right ankle, and to take pressure off it, I let my free foot land on the net. It slipped into the mess of connected ropes, too. Worse, my left foot was now pointing north while my right foot was pointing east. “Stop pulling,” I panted. “I hurt my ankle and we need to untangle this net so I can get my feet out.”
She set the flashlight on one of the lowest shelves. Together, we tried to move the rope netting so we could squeeze one of my ankles out, but the ropes were thick and stiff and wouldn’t budge. I couldn’t wriggle out of my sandals, either. Both of my feet were stuck, and I couldn’t straighten one without causing a lot of pain in the other.
Haylee shined the light at the storage room shelves. “Tom must have a knife.”
Naturally, I had to be stubborn. “I’d like to get out of this mess without damaging Tom’s net.” The smoke detector beeped again.
Haylee grabbed my flashlight, jumped up, ran into the fish-cleaning room, and returned carrying a knife with a long, serrated blade. She handed me the flashlight, got down on her knees, and edged the knife between my right ankle and the rope. Holding the knife away from my ankle, she began sawing.
After what seemed like an hour but, considering the number of times the smoke detector beeped—exactly once—had to be less than a minute, she rocked back on her heels and rubbed her wrist against her forehead. “Either this knife is duller than it looks or that fishnet is made of very tough ropes. And I’m afraid I’ll hurt you.”
Not worse than I’ve already hurt myself.
I didn’t say it. Haylee would only worry and I needed her to think clearly, since, thanks to the pain in my ankle, my reasoning seemed fuzzy. “Let me try,” I said.
She left the knife where it was, between my bare ankle and the rope. “I’ll call for help. Vicki Smallwood?”
Despite my pain, I laughed. “That would be a last resort. She didn’t look very pleased with us.”
“Well, she should have been. We found the yarnbomber. I know—I’ll call Ben! He can be here in a few minutes. I’ll tell him to bring sharp tools. Or a chainsaw,” she teased.
“Ouch. Maybe I can free myself in the meantime.”
“Do you know the lodge’s number?” she asked.
“No, but information . . .”
She stood and looked down at me doubtfully. “I don’t want to leave you here alone, but how about if I run up toward the lodge while I try to phone Ben? That way, if I don’t get his number before I arrive at the lodge, I can grab him and his chainsaw and we can zip back down here.”
My bag was on a shelf high above my head. I nodded toward it. “Get my keys and take my car.”
Her laugh held no humor. “Running while talking on the phone will be faster than teaching myself to drive a stick shift. Your car might end up on the deck of a sailboat.”
Not a good plan. “I’ll be fine waiting for you and Ben. Or watch for me to come jogging up behind you.” Hobbling would be more like it.
She sprinted to Tom’s front door, unlocked it, pulled hard until it opened, and called back to me, “I’ll leave this door unlocked so Ben and I can rush back in. Maybe I’ll be lucky and find Clay. He’ll have tools.”
Yes, he would. He always did. Would he be pleased because I’d found an innovative way of throwing Haylee and Ben together? Or would he think I’d gone a little far?
Clenching my teeth, I plunked the flashlight on the net and hacked at the rope.
The smoke detector chirped, and chirped again. I was getting nowhere.
I should have known. Haylee was strong. If this fishnet was going to surrender to a serrated knife, it would have already done it.
In weird, shifting shadows, I glimpsed fishing line wrapped around the intersection where two of the ropes in the net joined. Fishing line would be strong, but at least it was thinner than those ropes.
I set my flashlight on its end to shine upward and give me a steadier source of light.
It tipped over and rolled just out of my reach.
I quickly changed my mind about being left alone.
Was Haylee still nearby? In the gloom, I called her. No answer, only that peculiar moan. It seemed to happen each time a breeze touched the door leading to the boathouse. We’d come inside for no good reason, and I’d been suitably punished.
Okay, now that I’d admitted that I’d been wrong, smoke detector or no smoke detector, to barge into Tom’s boathouse, shouldn’t the knife slice through the fishing line uniting a couple of those ropes?
I strained toward the flashlight, and managed to graze it with my fingertips. I tried harder, and nudged it. Its plastic outer shell grumbling against the plank floor, it rolled completely out of reach. I would have to continue working by what little light it shed.
Meanwhile, that smoke detector was becoming really annoying.
My hand brushed against the paper that had drifted down off the shelf when Haylee grabbed the box of thread. I picked up the small envelope.
The world went suddenly still.
I didn’t hear the beeping smoke detector, the moaning door, or the jingling marina. I didn’t hear the licking, lapping water out in the boathouse. All I heard was a deep, red roaring inside my head.
Even in the dim light, I recognized the skull and crossbones on the paper envelope. I didn’t need to read the biggest word, but I could, and I did.
Poison
.
A straight red line slashed across the silhouette of a rat.
I dropped the envelope and sawed furiously at the fishing line joining two of the net’s ropes.
I reasoned that of course Tom would have rat poison in a shack where he cleaned and sold fish. Rats could swim. They could probably climb up the posts supporting the pier. They could have been the critters that gnawed the holes I’d seen in the shack’s wooden siding when Haylee and I bought fish here last Sunday evening. Rats could pose a real problem for Tom.
He wouldn’t have poisoned his longtime friend. Tom himself had been sick when Neil died.
Mouth suddenly dry, I whispered again, “Haylee?”
Of course she wasn’t there. She’d be back any minute, with Ben. How much time had passed? By now, she should be almost at the lodge. Or she had called directory assistance and was talking to Ben. They’d both be here soon. The moaning noise became more frequent, coupled with a creak as the back door swung on its hinges. The breezes had accelerated. Gusts seemed to rock the shack.
The smoke detector griped.
I chopped at the thinner cords lashed around the ropes. I couldn’t tell in the lack of light, but those cords also seemed impervious to Tom’s knife.
Panting through my open mouth, I concentrated.
And then I heard a noise that made me clamp my mouth shut, hold my breath, and tighten my hand on the knife’s wooden handle.
An outboard motor chugged softly, coming closer. Wavelets brushed an aluminum hull.
No. A boat couldn’t be coming here, not to this boathouse. Tom couldn’t be returning in his boat. He’d left, for the night, probably.
I told myself I was imagining things. I was imagining the smell of exhaust. I was imagining the engine shutting off. I was imagining water rippling against an aluminum hull . . .
I told myself that no one could possibly have driven a boat into that empty bay in the back of the boathouse.
A woman whined, “I’m cold.”
The woman’s voice sounded familiar. She wasn’t Haylee.
But whoever she was, her voice was coming from that previously empty bay in the back of the boathouse.