Authors: Janet Bolin
46
“
I
’LL GET YOU A SWEATER,” A MAN SAID. TOM.
“I’m freeeeeezing. What’s that beeping?” I placed the woman’s sharp voice. Bitsy from the campground was with Tom. Great. The woman had never seemed particularly helpful.
“Smoke detector. Gotta change the batteries. Wind’s coming up fast. Let’s go inside out of the wind and warm you up.”
My heart beat with sickening thuds. The storage room door had been shut when Haylee and I arrived. Now it gaped open, and I was inside, unable to get up to shut the door, and spotlit in the glare of a flashlight I couldn’t reach.
Maybe Tom and Bitsy wouldn’t come into the front of the shack. Maybe Tom would find the sweater and they’d go back out to the boat and putter away.
Maybe . . .
There was the sound of feet scraping against wood. A scuffle?
Bitsy yelped, “Don’t push me!”
“Shh! Stay behind me. There’s a light on.” His whisper was hoarse. “Someone might be in there.”
Maybe he would call the police without investigating. Either way, I was about to be very embarrassed. I opened my fingers and let the knife drop into the net behind me. I grabbed the rat poison packet and stuffed it into the pocket of my cutoffs. I didn’t want him thinking I’d brought poison to his shack. Or that I’d guessed he could have poisoned Neil.
No,
I told myself,
he wouldn’t have hurt his buddy.
I heard Tom tiptoe closer. There was no point in pretending I wasn’t here. He might attack the supposed intruder first and ask questions later.
Beep.
“Tom?” I called out, but my voice quavered as if I were stuck in a nightmare. “Is that you? Can you help me?”
He ran to the storeroom and knelt in front of me. “Willow! What happened?”
Bitsy yelled, “What is it?” Her voice was more piercing and grating than ever.
Tom called over his shoulder. “It’s okay, Bitsy. Stay where you are.” Quietly, he asked me, “What are you doing here?” In the dim light, his usually pale eyes seemed dark.
I stuck to the truth, but my words sounded unbelievable even to me. “I heard the smoke detector, and then I heard someone moan. I was afraid you’d fallen off a ladder while changing batteries and were too hurt to move or yell, so I came in to investigate.” My shudder was real. “I thought this net might be you.” That was a stretch
.
“So I came closer, but I stumbled and one foot got caught. When I tried to lift that foot, I hurt my ankle, and my other foot got caught.”
He picked up my flashlight and shined it on my legs and feet. “Whoa, you really are snarled up.”
“Who is it?” Bitsy hollered. “Want me to call the police?”
“No,” Tom shouted. He grinned at me. “You don’t want the police, do you?”
He was nice. He couldn’t have hurt Neil.
I grinned back. “No, thanks. I’m glad you understand that I barged in uninvited because I was trying to help. I’m also glad,” I added belatedly, “that you didn’t fall off a ladder and that you aren’t injured.”
Moan
.
“Tom!” Bitsy yelled. “What was that?”
“Yes, what is it?” I asked Tom. “That’s what I heard and thought could be you, too hurt to talk.
Is
somebody else in here?” I had no trouble sounding frightened.
Tom patted my hand and called over his shoulder to Bitsy, “It’s only the door blowin’ in the wind. Don’t panic.”
But she’d obviously had enough of being relegated to the creepy, watery part of the boathouse. She ran inside and stopped beside the storeroom door. “Who’s your girlfriend, Tom?”
“I’m not—” I began.
Tom stood and put his arm around Bitsy. “She’s not my anything, Bitsy. You’re my girl. You know that.”
Bitsy had been Neil’s girlfriend, and now she was Tom’s . . .
Could a love triangle have been responsible for Neil’s murder? Could Tom have killed Neil due to jealousy, or had Bitsy killed Neil because she couldn’t have him? Or maybe it was money. Had either or both of them expected to inherit from Neil?
Beep.
Bitsy was not about to be put off. “Then what’s she doing here?”
“She was explaining that. She heard that door, too, from outside and came in to see if I was okay.”
I added in the most sensible-sounding voice I could muster, “I’m a volunteer firefighter. He needs to change those batteries.” While he was doing that, Ben and Haylee would show up. They’d free me, and we’d have a good laugh. And then we’d all go home.
And the police could continue their investigation into Neil’s death. Snoozy’s, too.
Bitsy peered more closely at me. “Oh. She’s the one who came pestering me at work one night. Seems to me she likes asking too many questions and going too many places where she doesn’t belong.”
Maybe the gloom in Tom’s shop would prevent them from noticing my struggle to look innocent.
“Bitsy, darlin’,” Tom scolded, “she thought I was hurt and was only trying to help.”
Bitsy folded her arms. “Sure, sure. Where’s that sweater?”
“Hangin’ by the front door. Go get it and put it on, would you? There’s a sweetie.” He bent toward me. “Here, Willow, I’m going to try to pick you up. When I do, see if you can kick the net off your feet.”
Considering that Tom was hardly taller than I was, I didn’t have much hope that his plan would work. Besides, my ankle hurt.
“Could we cut the net off my foot?” I asked. It wasn’t a very nice request. I’d invaded his fishing shack, and now I wanted him to damage his equipment for me.
“I hope we won’t have to resort to that.”
He was being remarkably good-natured about it all.
I raised my arms and let him grasp me in a bear hug. He stood, taking some of the pressure off my ankle, which was a relief.
“Kick your feet,” he grunted.
The fishnet probably weighed just short of two tons. I could barely move my feet, let alone kick them.
Wearing a gigantic beige sweater with dark brown moose heads knit on the front, Bitsy stood glowering behind him. I attempted to shake my feet out of the heavy net, but all I shook out of it was something that rolled across the uneven floor.
Bitsy picked it up. “She brought a spool of thread? She sells the stuff, you know.”
“Hang on to it for her, will you?” Tom growled.
I didn’t want to admit that the spool wasn’t mine, or that Haylee had been here, or that we’d been snooping among the things on his shelves. And I certainly was not about to tell Tom and Bitsy that Haylee was coming back. What if they set a trap for her?
I told myself to calm down. I reasoned that if Tom had knowingly poisoned Neil, he’d have rid his shack of all traces of rat poison, not merely stuck the packet underneath a box of thread. It was only a coincidence that the packet was there. Tom couldn’t have murdered his friend. Wouldn’t have. Tom had told Haylee and me that he’d been sick, too. Maybe someone had tried to dose him with rat poison, but he hadn’t taken his medicine. Maybe the poisoner was right here with us . . .
“Put her down,” Bitsy said. “That’s not doing any good.”
I was afraid she was right, but I was sure that wasn’t her real reason for wanting him to stop hugging me.
“Tom’s a nice person,” I managed, “but don’t worry, I have a boyfriend.”
I wished.
Bitsy just sniffed.
“None of the Threadville women would be interested in old Tom,” he told Bitsy. Did I detect an offended note in his voice? Was Tom the man whose advances Naomi had rebuffed? I could easily see how Naomi might be Tom’s—or any man’s—first choice. But no one, not even easygoing Tom, would live up to Naomi’s memories of her long-gone fiancé. “I’m all yours, Bitsy babe.” In a pleasanter voice, he said to me, “Let’s see if we can drag this thing off you, Willow. It’s so heavy that maybe it will stay behind while we move.” He went around behind me, grabbed me by the armpits, and pulled me toward the back of his shop.
Something else clattered to the floor. Bitsy swooped down on it. “She had a knife!” she shrieked in a shrill voice.
“Relax, babe, will you? That’s my knife.”
“What was she doing with it?”
“I lost it. No telling what all’s fallen into that net since I dumped it on the floor.”
No telling, indeed. Did he know that he’d actually left that knife where he cleaned his fish? Maybe he was trying to protect me from Bitsy. He was certainly trying to dampen her jealousy. He was a nice enough man, but he wasn’t Clay. Besides, the smell of fish around Tom—and his fishnet—was not entirely pleasant.
Bitsy bent and grabbed the fishnet with both hands. “Put her down and maybe we can just pull the thing off her feet.”
“It’s too heavy,” he panted.
“Yeah, she might be lighter than it is.” She braced her feet and tugged, anyway.
I attempted to help by bending my knees and trying to pull my feet out of the net. I heard a wad of paper land on the floor. The crumpled rat poison envelope had fallen out of the front pocket of my cutoffs. I gasped.
“What?” Tom asked. From the sound of it, he toed the balled-up envelope aside. With any luck, he didn’t recognize it and hadn’t noticed it tumbling out of my pocket.
In the silence between the smoke detector’s complaints, I attempted to explain my involuntary gasp. “I wrenched my ankle when I fell.” It throbbed, and I was certain it had swollen, which would make it even more impossible for me to shake the net off.
“Stop yanking at her, will you, Bitsy?” Tom could have spoken in nicer tones to his girlfriend. “Come around here and give me a hand.” With Bitsy’s help, he dragged me and the fishnet past the moaning door, out of the shop, and into the boathouse. I was becoming seriously frightened. We were much too close to those narrow catwalks.
“Can’t we just cut the net?” I asked loudly, hoping someone might hear me and come to my aid. Where were Haylee and Ben? They should be on their way, unless Ben had already fallen asleep and was hard to awaken. Would the teen looking after the lodge’s reception desk be any help cutting a fishnet off my feet?
“That’s what I’m plannin’.” Was it my imagination or had Tom’s tone with me changed, also? He now sounded peeved with both Bitsy and me. “I’ve got the right tools, but not here. Let’s see if we can get you into my boat.”
“Boat?” Bitsy parroted. “Wouldn’t your truck be simpler?”
“How would I lift that fishnet into a truck?” He was more than peeved. He was angry. He and Bitsy dragged me onto the catwalk. It bent underneath the weight of the fishnet and three humans.
“Don’t take me anywhere.” I tried to hide my rising panic. “Call the fire department. They’ll bring the jaws of life.” I was becoming as shrill as Bitsy.
“Nah,” Tom scoffed. “That’d take too long. We can get you fixed up sooner than that.”
“No!” I yelled. Maybe someone in one of the yachts would hear me and come out to investigate. Despite Vicki’s complaints, snoopy civilians could come in handy.
The smoke detector beeped.
Grunting, Tom pulled me up the catwalk. Bitsy pushed at the fishnet, which might have been more effective if I’d straightened my knees, but I wasn’t about to cooperate. I made myself go limp. Still, they managed to haul me all the way to a boat.
It had to be the one Tom had piloted into his boathouse only minutes before. It was large, made of aluminum, with an outboard motor in back, a steering wheel and windshield in front, storage containers that served as seats lining the gunwales, and the floor between the seats puddled and smelling of slime.
“Bitsy,” Tom ordered. “Help me get this thing into the boat.”
He and Bitsy hopped onto the nearest seat. The boat tilted, putting its gunwale at the same height as the catwalk. They reached over the side and rolled me and the heavy fishnet onto the seat. Pain seared my right ankle.
I twisted my body enough to lever myself up to a lounging position with my elbows as props. My legs were stretched out on the seat, and my feet were still tied together as if I’d created a clumsy mermaid outfit for myself. “This is not a good idea,” I protested.
Tom had stepped out of the boat again and was kneeling on the catwalk, breathing heavily. His face was only slightly above mine. “You think I can’t handle a boat?”
“Of course you can, it’s just—”
By the feeble reflections from the glow of my flashlight inside his shack, his teeth looked wolfish. “I have a radio on board. I can radio for help. I can also whisk this boat up the river. I can land it behind your house so quietly no one will notice.”
And he could do all that, and probably had done all that with this boat, and after he’d landed, he’d dragged a body wrapped in quilt batting up the riverbank, had dumped it in my yard, and had shoveled dirt over it until the sound of my sliding glass door or of Sally-Forth’s collar had scared him. Then he’d jumped into his boat and drifted off down the river, steering between silent eddies without bothering to restart his outboard motor until he reached the lake . . .
It was probably as much of a confession as I would ever receive from him.
Obviously, he didn’t expect me to ever repeat it.
“Haylee!” I yelled.
As if I hadn’t made even a peep, Tom directed Bitsy to undo the last line and jump into the boat. Calmly, he hopped in and started the outboard motor.
Bitsy clambered out, unwound the line from a cleat on the catwalk, leaped in, tumbled onto the fishnet, and landed on the floor. Shrieking, “It’s wet,” she crawled up onto the seat opposite mine and sat hunched over, her arms wrapped around Tom’s huge sweater, holding it closed.
We roared out of the boathouse and into the harbor.
I yelled for Haylee. I yelled for Ben.
I screamed Clay’s name.
The wind blew off the land. It pushed my voice out over the lake.
47
T
OM HAD HINTED HE MIGHT HEAD TOWARD
the mouth of the Elderberry River and pull his boat up behind my shop and apartment. Maybe he’d drag me up the riverbank and leave me on the trail beside my yard. Eventually, if I couldn’t rouse my neighbors with my shouts, early-morning birders would find me and get help.
But Tom steered his boat straight out into the lake. Maybe he needed to avoid the shallows close to the beaches? The good news was that I could no longer hear that annoying smoke detector.
Tom cut the motor. The boat bobbed up and down. From the tops of waves, I could see the shore on both sides of downtown Threadville. The state forest and the river’s mouth—close to home but unbearably far away—were dark. A row of streetlights marked Lake Street. Lights shone from a few beach cottages and the lodge’s veranda. A pair of headlights wended down the hill from the lodge toward the wharf. Ben, in the car he said he kept at the lodge, bringing Haylee and a long, sharp pair of shears? Clay, searching for me?
Maybe Haylee and Ben would see Tom’s boat out here and race to my rescue in one of Ben’s boats. The moon was fairly bright, and Tom should have running lights on.
I couldn’t see any. What were the chances of anyone on land spying a small boat riding up and down on waves?
Tom crept between boxes of fishing gear toward me.
He reached for me.
I shoved him away.
He merely laughed. “Bitsy, get over here and give me a hand.”
Scowling, she boosted herself off her seat and joined him. “What do you want me to do?”
I noticed insignificant details, like she still hadn’t buttoned the sweater.
Focus, Willow, focus.
On what?
Saving myself.
Right. How? It’s a little late . . .
Tom growled. “Let’s get this net into the water where it belongs.”
Bitsy slapped at him, but it seemed more playful than violent. “We can’t. It’s still attached to her. She’ll be pulled under. She’ll drown.”
“She knows too much.”
“What does she know? Nothing. All she did was dig up those jewels you promised me.” She huddled into the sweater. “Easy come, easy go. I didn’t believe in those jewels, anyway.”
He straightened and glared at her. “Didn’t believe in them? Didn’t you believe in the money I gave you, either? Didn’t I buy you a whole entire campground?”
“The campground is real. And it’s a lot of work, besides. Jewelry, though? What woman believes a man who offers her diamonds and rubies?”
He clenched his hands into fists. His muscles bulged with the apparent difficulty of keeping his arms at his sides. “The campground’s too much work for you, is it? Cleaning bathrooms is beneath you? How would you like to gut fish all day every day, instead? You help me push this fishnet into the lake, or there won’t
be
any campground. You’ll be cleaning bathrooms in prison.”
“I never did anything. I never hurt those guys. I was in high school when Snoozy disappeared. We were just kids—you and me and Neil and Yolanda. We didn’t have anything to do with how he disappeared. And Neil wasn’t bad. He was your friend. Why did you have to . . . ?”
“For you, babe. And for him. Neil was deathly sick from that flu. He
begged
me for medicine. I had some medicine for upset stomachs in the shack, so I took him there in my boat, joked he couldn’t blame seasickness for the way he felt, you know, just trying to jolly him into feeling better. And I had just the right thing to fix him up. Lucky thing he got that flu, because until then, I wasn’t sure how to give him the other medicine he was going to have to take. But I was smart. I mixed the two medicines together, then took the empty bottle to his apartment and put it in the trash there.” He studied her face. “You told me you didn’t like him anymore.”
“I didn’t.” She didn’t meet Tom’s eyes. “Not as a boyfriend.”
“You’re lying,” he accused. “You still liked him.”
Shaking her head, she backed away from Tom. “No. I always liked you best.”
Tom snorted. “You should have. Neil wasn’t the smartest cookie in the box, but sooner or later, he was going to figure out why Snoozy never made it to Mexico with his loot, and who really went to Cleveland and bought a ticket to Mexico in his name, which, by the way, I cashed in later.” He tapped the side of his head. “I was always the smart one, but Neil was getting suspicious. If he’d clued in, I’d have been in hot water, and
you’d
have lost that campground that I thought you liked. Or was it all about being Mrs. Snooty-Tooty landowner? You thought you weren’t going to have to work.”
She whined, “You said I wouldn’t have to work after you cashed in those jewels. And we were going to build a mansion where the campground is. Lakefront, almost.”
“Yeah, well that’s not an option, thanks to this Willow broad prowling around where she shouldn’t have been. Bitsy, last chance—are you going to help me or not?”
She folded her arms. “Not. Don’t do it, Tom. Don’t. It’s . . . it’s wrong.”
“Right, I’m going to just sit here and let her put me in prison?”
I tried to give him a way out. “Did Snoozy
force
you to help him steal that jewelry and cash?”
“Him? No, that gig was all his. I knew he was up to something, though, and watched him. Dumb guy went out in plain daylight, carrying his chest of treasure out to the hole he’d dug in the woods. So I followed. Taking the box from him wasn’t easy, though. He fought. He shoulda known better. Luckily, he’d dug a nice, big hole. He tried to bury me in it. I had no choice.”
“And then you had to cover his body,” I prompted, “and go off to Blueberry Cottage and dig underneath there, too.”
“Nah, didn’t have to dig. Part of that cottage was sitting on stone piers, with a big, bare hole underneath. I just took out the cash, then slipped the box between the piers where no one would see it while I waited for everyone to stop looking for those jewels. I didn’t go near there for a whole year, and when I did, I couldn’t find the box.”
Clay must have guessed right. Floods and ice may have moved that box.
Maybe I could make Tom believe he could get away without hurting anyone else. I suggested, “Take us back to shore. Let us off the boat. Or just me, if Bitsy wants to go with you.” Just how anyone was going to
let
me off the boat, I didn’t know. “Then take your boat and leave.”
“You think I’m stupid, don’t you. Stupid old fisherman Tom, not good enough for the shopkeepers of Threadville.”
“What do you mean, not good enough?” Bitsy’s voice was as bitter and squeezed as a dried-up lemon. “That’s the second time you’ve hinted something about that. Did you go and ask one of them out?” She glanced down at me. “Her?”
“Of course not, babe. You’re my girl. But talk about snooty-tooty, Willow—you and those snooty-tooty friends of yours would send someone after me. Stupid old fisherman Tom was pretty smart after all, getting stuff from those women’s shops before I needed it. As soon as the police figure out whose stuff that was, Willow and her snooty-tooty friends will be blamed for burying poor old Neil.”
I didn’t tell him that the police already knew whose stuff it was, and I didn’t inform Bitsy that I suspected Tom had asked Naomi out—what would be the point? “I won’t say anything for a week,” I promised rashly and not exactly honestly. “Go get the rest of the cash you took from Snoozy and do what he planned to do—go to Mexico. Go anywhere. Just take me back to shore, first.”
“That cash is gone. Spent. I bought my first fishing boat with some of it, and bought Bitsy her campground with the last of it.” In the light of the three-quarter moon, his eyes seemed wide with a combination of simmering rage and canny determination.
I told myself he wouldn’t push me into the cold, dark water. No one would be that evil. He was bluffing, trying for more concessions from me.
Bitsy must have thought so, too. “We’ll never tell anyone what we know about you,” she pledged. “If you just disappear, we’ll never say a thing.”
“And you wouldn’t come with me, Bitsy babe? You’d just let me go? You wouldn’t miss your old Tom, who gave you your very own campground? And Willow is buddy-buddy with the police. I’m surprised she’s not dialing 911 in her pocket.”
I would have been if my cell phone had been in my pocket and not in my bag in his shack, and if I weren’t still propping myself up on my elbows with my hands behind my back.
Suddenly, he came at me and shoved. Knocked off balance, I lashed out with my fingernails, but didn’t do more than scratch his arm, maybe.
And then I was tipping sideways, scrabbling with my fingers for the gunwale, the oarlock, anything. And that heavy fishnet was being pushed, with my feet trapped inside it, over the side. And Bitsy was screaming.
As Lake Erie, colder than I’d guessed it would be, closed over my head, my most encouraging thought was that Haylee knew where I’d been, and Tom wouldn’t get away with murder, at least not with
my
murder.