Escape Route (Murder Off-Screen Book 1) (6 page)

“Is it dead, Daddy? Is it?” The boy poked at the dog again.

The man squatted down. “Nah. Might be sick or wore out.” He inspected the hubcap that someone had left as a water dish. “Thirsty and hungry.” He shook the dog. “Dumped him here, by the looks of things. No collar.”

King opened one eye. He didn’t feel like himself, and it took a second for him to understand that what he was seeing was real and not in the dream. He could smell clear enough that this was a New Man and a New Kid.

“Fill this from your canteen. Left mine in the truck.”

Jimmy filled the hubcap and slid it to the dog.

“Think he’s a killer dog, Dad?” The ring of excitement in the boy’s voice said that he hoped so.

“It’s a Lab, Jimmy. Labs aren’t killers less they got rabies.” He watched the dog closely as it half-sat up, and gulped the water, one of the tell-tale signs of rabies. Maybe they should leave it right here and drive back home.

“He looks like that dog on the billboard. Right, Dad? I’ll betcha he’s famous.”

The man took the dog’s head in his hands and turned it left, then right. “Can’t tell. They all look alike until you get to know them. Wonder what this pink mess on his ear is all about?”

“Maybe we could take him now—you know—in case he’s famous.”

The man set the dog’s head carefully on the ground. “Best to play it safe, in case he’s sick. Somebody dumped him here for a reason. Youns give him a burger out of the bag. Just the burger—and the bun. A handful of fries. Nothin’ else. We’ll come back in a bit. If he acts okay, he’s ours.”

The boy took off running. “Ryan! Billy! We got ourselves a free dog!”

The Man ran his hands over the dog’s body. “Good bones, eyes seem okay. You’ll fetch five-hundred easy back home, after we get this mess off your ear.” He chipped at the polish with his thumb nail. “Maybe this trip won’t be a complete bust.” They’d driven down from Harrisburg and had nothing to show for it. Duck season was long over and the ducks were long gone.

King didn’t mind that this New Kid wasn’t as gentle with him as the others back at his house had been. It was okay. He’d brought him meat and more water, but drove away like the Men from before. The Kid waved at him, though, and yelled Good Dog before the truck disappeared around the bend.

All in all, a pretty good day.

Keys.

I blame Jeep.

He’s the one who vanished and knocked me so far off balance that my brain functioned only in Safe Mode. Food. Liquids.
Grey’s Anatomy
. Since Jeep’s been gone, I’ve put my shoes in the refrigerator, sent American Express
all
my money—they were lovely and returned it—but still. And walked into a wall. Twice.

Keys. I played it out carefully in my head.

Find them.

Steal them.

Keep Gertie from pulling up floor boards searching for them.

“How’s it going in here?” Gertie leaned against the door jamb, her back to me, voice low, and kept one eye on the kitchen door. “They’ll be down any minute.”

“Did either of them mention a dog?”

“Not a word. Jaqie, that’s the second time
you’ve
mentioned a dog. Something you need to tell me?”

The jig was up. In spite of the hairspray and the fugue-inducing purple decor, Miss Gertie could spot a situation at fifty paces.

“I think your guests have the Cuthbart’s dog. When I went to the mansion this morning, I didn’t get the slightest hint that Francine was expecting a ransom call. She only wanted to talk about the Oakley Beach Butcher. King gone missing was as about important as a broken nail.

“I believe she
paid
those guys to steal him.”

Gertie spritzed lavender water on the plastic flowers. “She’s a high and mighty one, Francine Cuthbart. Doesn’t strike me as a dog lover. Any kind of a lover.” She hid the atomizer under the sink cupboard, pulled a chair away from the table and sat. “If the Cuthbarts wanted rid of the dog, they’d hire that out. Wouldn’t get their hands dirty.

“If they paid somebody to get rid of the dog, it would have to be a complete disappearance. As popular as that dog was. A rock star. If the voters even
thought
that dog was deliberately done in, Geoff Cuthbart can kiss his political future bye-bye.”

“How could Francine—or her husband—do that to their own children?”

“Not her kids. Geoff Cuthbart’s first wife died in a train wreck. My money’s on Francine as the brains behind this drama. Geoff Cuthbart would not put his children through anymore losses, but why do you think my two boarders are the dognappers?”

I told her about Bub’s and the park with Doofus. The nail polish. “Mainly, it’s my gut talking, but they did buy ammo, and where is the dog now, if it was their dog? They’re here, and it isn’t.”

The floorboards groaned again, and I heard the bathroom door shut. “Have they done or said anything unusual? Even the tiniest thing?” I pointed to the ceiling.

Gertie adjusted her scarf, and looked at me like a mother about to tell her daughter there was no Santa Claus. “Avery asked me if Bub sold shovels.”

“That’s it then.” I bit the thread off and spit-balled the leftover strand into a tiny knot and tucked it under the patch. “Bullets and shovels.” I pocketed my phone, stood up and hula-hooped the kink out of my back.

I turned the jacket this way and that, brushed futilely at what remained of Doofus’s hair, and gave the jacket a final shake.

“King is still out there, Gertie. Alive. I’ve got to find him.” I handed her the jacket. “They are going to shoot him and bury him. Bullets and shovels. Bullets, they’ve got, but without a shovel to bury him immediately, King must still be alive.”

Gertie held the jacket up by the shoulders. “You might be right.” She dug deep into each pocket, then handed me a fob with two keys attached. “Search their car. Maybe you’ll find something that will help. Put the keys in the mailbox before you leave.”

“Will you be safe here, alone with them, do you think? They have a gun. Maybe we should just call the sheriff.”

“For what? If he finds the dog, he’ll return it to the Cuthbarts, and in a month or two, the poor thing will be in the same predicament. Anywho, Sheriff Nilly is on a week-long retreat. Community relations or some kind of waste of tax-payer dollars. Deputy Beatty is on call, though. Home Depot is real good about letting him clock out if we have an emergency. Jaqie, I am a former corrections officer. Remember? I can take care of myself.”

Gertie made the front page of the
Baltimore Sun
last year for planting a mugger facedown in a tub of Russell’s coleslaw, made especially for the Fourth of July town picnic. Aunt B sent me a copy of the paper. She doesn’t grasp downloading.

That Gertie was fifty-seven made it news worthy. That Gertie coleslawed a man half her age and twice her size with two fingers, put the story above the fold.

Russell’s Sprouts is home to the best darn slaw on the Eastern Shore. Hated to waste it like that
, was the caption below the picture of Sheriff Nilly shaking Gertie’s hand and awarding her the official crab hammer to Oakley Beach.

“I’ll distract them. The chubby one flirted with me. How’s my hair?”

It hadn’t moved since yesterday, and it wouldn’t move tomorrow. “Great, but don’t go making Dell jealous.”

“Jealous is what that man should have a taste of. Now, you run on. I’ll keep these boys turning circles as long as I can.”

“I’ll go out the back.”

No sooner were those words out of my mouth when the foreigners followed their noses into the kitchen. Gertie’s working man’s breakfast would keep them busy long enough for me to ransack their car.

Maybe I’d find something—
anything
—that would convince me Avery and his friend had nothing to do with King, and I would not have to include grand theft auto in my resumé.

~~^~~

The surest way to attract attention in Oakley Beach is to step outside. I sauntered past the car with the Pennsylvania plates. Casual. Nothing to see here. Leaned against the door. Bo Peep’s windows were steamed up on the inside from Gertie’s campaign to hogtie the men with carbohydrates.

“Hey, Jaqie! How’s it going?” Mildred, the mailman. Mail
carrier
.

“Fine, Mildred. And Fred?”

“Good as gold.”

“Give him a scratch from me.”

She tossed me a wave as she shifted her leather pouch and crossed the street. “Will do.”

“Miss Hollywood. Autograph? Ha. Ha. Not.”

Terrance Hammermiller.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

“Flat tire. Had to take the board. See ya’, Jaq. Hey, get me a date with Taylor Swift.” He skated through the stop sign.

“Jaqie Shanahan. Give us a kiss.”

Oh, come on. How’s a girl supposed to get any ransacking done with a parade passing by?

“You first, Mr. Trimble.” It was a thing that we did.

After the Senior Citizens’ van took the left at the stop sign, I counted to twenty. If the coast remained clear, I was going in.

“Twenty-one. Bingo.” I pressed the Unlock button and the car obliged. I opened the door and hopped in the driver’s side. It would be harder to spot me from Peep’s porch, but easier to arrest me, street side. I shut the door, stuck the key in the ignition and turned it one click to engage the battery. It was my first felony. Best to take it one step at a time.

A country song exploded through the dash and thumped the speakers in the door panels and rattled the rear deck. I turned knobs and pounded buttons, shoved the gear shift in N before I found the right combination and put the singer out of his misery. My lack of new-age automobile technology had happily fired up the on-board GPS.

I grabbed my cell and took a picture of the screen. No convenient map, though, with a
Jaqie, You Want to Go Here
arrow, just coordinates, longitude and latitude.

“Why no address? What is this—a boat? Did they do this? Don’t waste time asking yourself questions.”

The driver’s door pocket was empty except for a plastic bag with a few beef jerky wrappers. Same for the passenger side, minus the wrappers. Presumably, Costello ate his. The rental agreement was folded up in the glove compartment.
Avery
was the only name I absorbed before a piece of scrap paper fluttered to the floor mat.

Hand-drawn, filled-in circles and connecting lines. One round scribble was tagged Start. I took a picture of that, too, tossed the scrap back into the glove compartment and turned off the ignition. The dash lights shut down and the GPS screen went dark.

That’s when I spotted them. Two dots no bigger than the head of a pin stuck to the GPS screen. Pink. I ran my fingertip over them. Hard, like plastic.

“Or nail polish.”

I squirreled around and stuck my upper body through the opening between the bucket seats. The mud, the paw prints, the nose prints—dry now. I already knew they had a dog. I knew they had a dog with nail polish on its ear. What I knew
now
was
they
put the polish on that ear right before the dog got in the backseat. No tea party. No passel of little girls. When Doofus shook, he’d sent a halo of tidewater debris a full three-sixty. Two teensy pearls of still-wet polish made it up front.

Avery and Costello had painted Doofus’s ear, covering up something deliberately, like, oh, say a black mark in the shape of a C. A dog in disguise.

Time for Plan B. Technically, Plan A, since I’d begun with no plan whatsoever.

I called Gertie.

As soon as she picked up, I said, “Don’t say anything.”

“Hi, Bub. Thanks for calling back,” she hollered into the phone.

I banged my head on the steering wheel. “Gertie, listen. I am going to steal the car. There’s too much evidence here, and I need them stranded so they can’t get to the dog and finish the job.”

The sound of silverware on plates, and a belch came over the line.

“Excuse me, Bub.” Gertie shouted, “No shovels, you say. For how long?”

“Two, three hours. Tops.”

“Make it seven.”

“Six.”

“And a half.”

“Done.”

It was a stripped down version of a car so mundane, I couldn’t tell you the make or model of the thing. My bike fit in the trunk, no problem. I angled the handlebars and lowered the lid with both arms and the lock clicked shut.

The only high-end interior accoutrements were the GPS and an
OnStar
button on the rearview. After the radio incident, I wasn’t going anywhere near that button. Who knew what I might call down on this drab automobile?

I pulled away from the curb without incident and drove down a side street that took me past a health food store gone bust. Everybody tried to tell them ... and a boarded up “rooming house.” Sheriff Nilly held no truck with “rooming houses,” so there went the town’s only scandalous landmark. Except for the Tyrell mansion, where Edwin Tyrell, Sr., his wife and two of his three children were shot and dismembered over a decade ago.

So that’s our claim to fame. The Oakley Beach Butcher. Sheriff Nilly dubbed him that, and always believed the “him” was Edwin, Jr., the surviving son. There wasn’t enough evidence, so the case went cold and the Tyrells slipped into a box of cold cases, and the pages of one very bad book.

I’d thought of trying it as a screenplay, and talked it over with Jeep, but my heart wasn’t in it. I felt sorry for Edwin, the richest, loneliest boy in town, and just didn’t feel right trying to earn a living on the gruesome deaths of his family.

Avery and Costello’s GPS hadn’t moved since I pulled away from the curb—a tech glitch I wouldn’t be able to figure out, so I pulled over and set my phone. Start Here, Go There. I hit the voice direction option so the rude woman in the phone could give me an inferiority complex when I made a wrong turn. “Turn right in six hundred feet.” I selected satellite view and the coordinates turned into street names.

“I know this road.”

I zoomed in to the upside down, red, teardrop marker speared on the end point of the journey.

“Not a clue where that is, though.”

My phone dinged. A text from Gertie.
Beatty on the way here!
Emphasized by a yellow face with blue sweat popping out of its forehead.

This was good news. With the sheriff gone, Deputy Beatty would fill out every form he could get his hands on, and fill them out by hand.

Doofus and I had just bought more time.

~~^~~

Mercers Neck Road was a mirrored image of Mercers Landing Bar Road and a duplicate of Mercers Bar Neck Road. Two generations back, the Mercers used to be a big deal on the Eastern Shore.

A “foreigner” could drive forever on these back roads and never spot a landmark to find their way around Mercers share of the good life.

Completely flat. A field here. A field there. Trees blocked the views to the water and the mansions that sat fat and happy along the shoreline.

But I knew where I was going.

Past the Cuthbarts.

Past fields and tree lines and marsh grass and deadfalls.

Seventeen miles from Peep’s.

Turn right one-half mile
, my phone lady said.
Moron
was implied.

One-half mile was one-half mile in the middle of nowhere. “That makes sense. Foul deed territory.”

Turn right. Your destination is on the right
. She wasn’t nearly as nervous as I was.

The right turn was a turn to nowhere but a gritty, soggy half-circle of sandy soil about the size of a basketball court curved on one side to accommodate the tide from the Chesapeake. Its main body of water was a mile offshore from this secluded cove. Perfect place to shoot a dog and bury it.

That had not happened here. No fresh tire tracks, no mound of a telltale grave. The ground was pristine. Not even a sign of teenage l’amour in such a secluded place.

I was here. I had to check it out. My phone rang as I stepped out of the vehicle.

“Hi, Uncle Frank. I’m late, I know.”

“Jaqie, I’m only going to say this once. If you don’t get it in gear and get yourself down to this marina, you will be a widow in an hour or less.”

The area around the car was untouched, but I started stepping the first of three paths heading east for thirty yards. I would grid them with three more headed north, trisecting the original three. “You’re right, Uncle Frank, I’m late. Listen, killing Ed won’t make me a widow. Killing Ed will make
Dianne
a widow, and she’s having twins.”

“Great Scott! The fool’s fathering more of that gene pool?”

“Be nice, Uncle Frank. I’ll be there in twenty-five minutes.”