Escape Route (Murder Off-Screen Book 1) (7 page)

Make that thirty-five.

My phone rang, and Gertie said, “Oh, hi, Shirley. How are you?”

“Gertie, you called me. It’s Jaqie. Everything okay?”

“I promised you that recipe. I’ll let these boys talk, and go into the kitchen.” She turned away from the phone. “Excuse me, deputy. You just go ahead with your conversation.”

The sound of voices faded as Gertie moved from where “the boys” were conversing—presumably the sitting room off the living room. Costello would be in the red-leather, wingback chair by the bookcases, since it was the sturdiest piece in the room, not counting the raised, stone hearth. Deputy Beatty would take the commanding position immediately in front of the fireplace. Avery would pace. Men with elbow patches, pace.

The back door screeched as Gertie stepped out to the porch. “I told them it was on vibrate.”

“How’s it going?”

“Beatty’s beyond ecstatic that there is real investigating to do. He’s worn out one inhaler, already. Says the wheezing is because of stacking mulch bags at the Depot, but I think it’s because he’s overexcited to find this stolen car. He’s put out a BOLO.”

Gertie is a fan of police procedural TV shows.

“As in—Be On the Look Out for?”

“Exactly. It’s time to ditch the car.”

“How long ago did this get put in motion?”

“Fifteen minutes. Now I’ve got to go. The boys may stay another night if they don’t find it, so I have linens to change. Hide that vehicle, and don’t forget to wipe the fingerprints.”

“Thanks, G—”

I jumped in the driver’s seat. Beatty was occupied now, but it was a real possibility I’d pass him on the road in twenty minutes. He’d probably haul Avery and Costello around in the back of the squad car to backtrack exactly where they’d been. They’d have to cooperate so their story wouldn’t seem fishy. There was no evidence at this spot, so no worries.

Of course, now there was evidence
someone
had been here. The tire prints. My foot prints, but the ground was marshy. They’d get no real help from those, and the tidal ooze would eventually erase my size sevens.

My mind was a blank. The road stretched without a break for miles. Between You Are Here and The Coppers Are There, the route dwindled with no blinding flashes of inspiration of where to hide the car.

In plain sight would not work because of the Pennsylvania plates. What kind of a state does not have front plates? That’s two sore thumbs for this vehicle—the blank space on the front bumper, and the obvious
not
Maryland plate on the rear. The entire stretch of road from the Mercer neck of the peninsula into town had two-foot deep gullies on either side of the blacktop. No pulling off into the woods.

“What would Jeep do?”

Vignettes flooded my imagination. First order of business, he’d stroll into a bar and order up a margarita. He’d stroll into a bar, order the margarita, and stroll out with Vanessa. Lacey. Ashleigh. He’d stroll into a bar ... you get the idea.

“How would he hide a stolen car when there’s nowhere ...”

“Abandoned building.”

Whoa! I slammed on the brakes.

Now, I know there’s no one in the backseat, but Jeep’s voice could not have been any clearer, and the goose bumps parading up my arm agreed with me.

I sneaked a peek in the rearview—fast—in case he
was
in the backseat. Jeep McBain was capable of anything. The only eyeballs looking back were mine, wider than usual, but mine—blue and bloodshot—but mine.

“It’s okay,” I explained to me, stepping on the gas pedal gently. “So I had a great idea, and the voice in my head sounded like Jeep is in the car with me.” That was okay, too, because I’d had him on the brain for over a year, and with the Oscars last Sunday, dredging everything up—one hallucination every twelve months is permissible. Almost required, not to put too fine a point on it.

I drove off in search of an abandoned building.

Which turned out to be right around the next bend.

Not so much a building as a forlorn, foreclosed two-story house with a barn in the back.

“Hello-o-o, Herbert Mercer.” According to Aunt B, his mother died last April in this sad, little house, and rather than take the trouble to fix it up with his five-thousand dollar inheritance, Herbie flew to Vegas, lost every red cent in two hands of black jack, broke the dealer’s jaw and went to jail.

If the bank had staked signs in the yard, they were gone. But from here, I could see the right-side door of the barn was open a foot.

I followed the driveway to the back of the house, pulled up close to the disintegrating back porch and parked. The rental tucked in neatly, out of view of the road. Traffic on Mercer Neck amounts to about one car an hour, but if that one car was Oakley Beach’s only squad car, it was the slammer for me.

Not that Oakley Beach has an actual slammer. Our combo office-slash-jail is a ten-by-fifteen-foot addition to Nilly’s house equipped with an iron hitching post bolted to the floor, next to a bench bolted to the floor.

I popped the trunk, lifted my bike out and leaned it against the back porch.

The barn was a barn. The barn you see on any farm, in any TV show about America. Classic, worn, red paint, brighter at the eaves, fading out like a watercolor painting to the stone foundation. The boards were unevenly spaced. Keeps the air moving. Keeps hay from rotting.

The doors were heavy and crooked. I leaned my back against the splintering wood, dug my heels into the dirt for traction, and pushed and heaved until they stood wide open so I could gauge what I was dealing with.

The plank floor was solid. By that I mean, it didn’t cave in with my one-hundred-seventeen-pound-frame jumping up and down on it. I kicked at stray lumps of straw—or hay—who can tell the difference, and didn’t slice my foot on hidden sickles or scythes. No John Deeres taking up valuable real estate.

I dashed back to my out-of-state plunder, cupped my ears and listened hard. Sparrows were my only witnesses, chirping to each other about the fine weather.

The barn fit the car like a glove. I slipped the key ring under the driver’s side floor mat and reset both wood doors exactly as I found them.

Five minutes later, my knees pumped up and down at a furious pace, like an adult on a child’s bicycle because that’s exactly what this was. Twenty-six-year-old Jaqie pedaling like a wild woman on twelve-year-old Jaqie’s pink-and-chrome getaway bike.

It didn’t matter in the least that I could not talk when I arrived at Dumford’s Marina. While Uncle Frank recited the speech he’d been crafting, I took the opportunity to glance around the immediate area for an oxygen canister. When that produced no results, I went to my Zen place to regulate my breathing and lower my blood pressure which was so high, I couldn’t hear most of Uncle Frank’s diatribe for the blood pounding in my ears.

Ed had pried my cramped fingers off the handlebars after I bobbled into the parking lot, and moved the grotesque bicycle under the eaves near the marina’s front door. That eliminated any hope someone might steal the thing.

“Now, you and this idiot,”—pronounced “idjit” in this circumstance—“take my truck and head to Bub’s and pick up six cans of WD-40.”

I caught the keys in mid-toss and turned a three-sixty. Dumford’s Marina was
the
marina in a hundred-mile radius. The main building was the size of an airport hangar. Dozens of boats were cradled over the ten acres of prime waterfront that also offers fifteen docks for rent. Dell’s crane would make short work of stepping
Ovation’s
mast. Mumford’s had it all.

“Uncle Frank, seriously. You’re telling me there’s not one can—”

“Get.” Pronounced “git” in this circumstance.

“Come on, Idjit.” Ed and I headed for the truck.

If Ed, who never lifted a finger for the slight duration of our marriage, had let my bike alone, I could have easily backed right over it. Maybe next time.

“Where have you been?” Ed almost slammed the door, but thought better of it with Uncle Frank still in pummeling distance. “Don’t ever let me alone with him again.”

“Want to earn another thousand?”

He buckled his seatbelt and cleared his throat. “Well—duh.”

Underneath it all—way, way down—Ed is a good sort, in a fourteen-year-old-boy kind of way. Cute, fun to be with in short spates, but not reliable. To use Ed’s word—reliable? Duh. But you’ve got to work with what you’ve got, and what I “got” was Ed and a truck.

“Listen up. I’m trying to find a yellow Lab.”

Ed gave me the blank stare. “Jaqie. This is Oakley Beach. We have more yellow Labs than sand.”

I started over. “A
particular
yellow Lab. Two very bad men are going to kill it, and I’ve got to find it before they do. I mean, they already have the dog, but they can’t get to him because ... their car is missing. I’m pretty sure. That’s what took me so long to get to Dell’s.”

The silence from the passenger’s side of the truck was physically painful. Ed putting pieces together wasn’t easy to watch. I paddled the steering wheel with my thumbs as I drove and waited. Then, finally, thankfully, “
You
stole that car you called me about!” He threw his head back and it bounced forward off the head rest. “Jaqie Shanahan, goody two-shoes, took the keys and stole a car.” The hooting and knee slapping continued through two stop signs.

“Anyway. I didn’t steal the car. I
moved
the car. Now, they have to stay in town another night.” I stopped at the third and last stop sign in Oakley Beach. “You’ve got to help me find that dog.”

“Well, sure, Jaqs.” He cleared his throat again and wiped the palms of his hands on his jeans. “And you don’t have to go paying me a thousand dollars. You know I love Labs. Who doesn’t?”

I waited for the thinking process to grind through again while I parked in front of Bub’s.

“Hey,” Ed said, finally, “is this about that Cuthbart dog?”

I nodded. “That’s why I want you to take the money, Ed. It’ll be kind of like the reward money Cuthbart would have paid if the hunt was for real. Which it isn’t. Besides, I’m keeping that dog, so you’ll be earning
my
reward money, instead.”

Ed unbuckled the seatbelt and leaned forward until his forehead rested on the dash. “Mmm-hmm-um?”

“What? Ed, sit up. You’re talking to the floor.”

He sat up. “Jaqs, since Hollywood and everything ... I mean since your movie ... are you rich?”

“Yes, Ed. I’m rich.” Sort of true. In Oakley Beach, if you didn’t live in your pap’s camper in the driveway, you were rich. In Hollywood, I was a two-on-a-scale-of-infinity rich, which meant I could afford the camper, but not the driveway. “So, are you in?”

“What do these guys look like? Say,” Ed turned to me with an expression I’d never seen, “they didn’t try to hurt you?”

“No, no. They don’t know I know. I’m invisible.”

“Okay, then, but how will I recognize them?”

“Abbott and Costello.”

“Who?”

“Exactly.”

“What?”

“Who’s on first?”

“What? Jaqs, what are you talking about? They play baseball?”

I held up my hand. “Never mind. Remember Mr. Nederlander?”

“Ninth-grade science. He flunked me.”

“Remember he was real thin and wore ...” I waited for him to create the picture in his mind.

“Those jackets with stupid patches on the elbows!” He grinned like he’d won the car on
The Price Is Right
.

“And Mrs. Maloney?”

He stuck his finger under his nose. “Mustache.” Then he circled his arms in front of his own flat stomach. “Bigger than Dianne.”

“Right, the second man is as big as Mrs. Maloney, but no mustache. Just a flushed face.” He snickered. “Red face, Ed. He has bright red cheeks.”

The light dawned, and he rubbed his hands together. “Gotcha. What kind of car? Where did you hide it?”

“Green. A rental. I won’t tell you where it is. That way Deputy Beatty can’t beat the location out of you.” The word there should’ve been “tricked,” but I didn’t want Ed to think Beatty could fool him into talking.

“Rental? They might already have found it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s only been missing for ...” I checked the clock across the street in the pharmacy window, “... two hours.”

“They put trackers in them, now. Those GPS things. They can tell where you are. They can even tell how fast you’re going.”

My mouth was hanging open because Ed reached across the bench seat and shut it for me. “That’s not fair! That’s an invasion of privacy. How’s somebody supposed to steal—
move
a car and hide it in an
excellent
place if the rental agency is spying on you with a satellite?”

“Guess we’d better hurry up and find that dog.”

~~^~~

There is a long list in a folder at my divorce attorney’s office of things that Ed does not do.

Ed does not work.

Ed does not stop dating after marriage.

Ed does not avoid beer.

Ed does not run.

That last one is not really on the list, but it is true. He saunters through thunderstorms, strolls out of burning buildings, would perambulate from the base of an erupting volcano—if Oakley Beach had one.

Ed running out of Bub’s with a bag full of WD-40s did not compute. But there it was.

He yanked open the door and jumped in. “They were here.”

“Who?”

“Those baseball guys. Nederlander and Maloney.”

“Abbot and Costello?”

He nodded, out of breath from the running. “Skinny guy bought a shovel. Bub remembered them from yesterday. Said they were down here hunting, then bought a box of .38s. Nobody hunts with a .38. Well, sure, rabbits or squirrels—but even that is weird.”

“You’re positive it was our guys?”

“Fat guy bought the bullets, yesterday. Today, ten minutes ago, Nederlander bought the shovel.”

My phone rang. Gertie. “Jaqie, they bought a shovel. Bub called.”

“I know. Ed and I are at Bub’s now. Oh, Gertie. It’s over. They’re gone.”

A commiserating silence filled the space between us. “They did the strangest thing, though,” Gertie said. “I don’t know if it means anything, but as I headed out to the garage—I wanted to see if I could catch up to them, somehow, they came back. Drove past the house. I thought they’d forgotten something, but they didn’t stop. Made a U-turn, and drove off.”

I sat and stared at my phone. I was too late. Poor Doofus. They’d go straight to where he was and finish the job. Why was there even a job to finish? Why did they have to shoot him? Tears stung my eyes.

“Gertie, is it too late to follow them? Could you trail them?”

“I tried. I saw them turn up Nichols, and I got the car out of the garage in record time, but they were out of sight. Al and I are sitting here in the church parking lot. We don’t even know where to start. I’m so sorry, baby girl.”

Start. I mumbled a quick good-bye, and flipped to my photo album. I thumbed to the picture of the scrap of paper from Avery’s glove box. I turned the picture to Ed. “It’s a map. Where does it go? Can you tell?”

“That’s a map? A picture of dots?”

Dots.

I grabbed Ed’s face with both hands and kissed him smack on the lips. “Genius, sheer genius.”