Knockdown: A Home Repair Is Homicide Mystery (15 page)

The meetinghouse, a massive old white clapboard structure, was attached to an even larger old house much like Jake’s own.

Unlike hers, though, it was uninhabited. And there were no curtains at the windows.

Bending to finish shimming the form boxes level again, Jake peeked sideways; no new flash came from the attic window. Meanwhile, the sky went on thickening, pale wisps of humidity sailing across it like ghostly streamers.

With an effort, she restrained herself from looking again at that bare window; half of her wanted badly to concentrate on the concrete and ignore everything else.

But the other half felt as if a target had been painted around her.

“Okay,” she said grimly as the last of the concrete went into the first plywood form box.

Swiftly she set the stainless-steel bracket and bolt into the wet mixture. “Okay, if there’s someone up there, let’s just think about what that means.”

That he’d been watching, that he knew where she was right now …

Ellie shoveled sand into the now-empty mixing trough, then cement mix. A cloud formed overhead, and one fat raindrop fell from it, forming a crater in the dry, powdery stuff.

“Hurry,” she said as Jake picked up the hose. And then: “He wanted you to see him, before, didn’t he? To know he was around.”

“So maybe he does now, too,” Jake agreed. Soon the second form was mixed, poured, and fitted with a bolt.

More raindrops fell. “D’you have another tarp?” Ellie asked.

Despite a forecast promising the first rain and fog-free Fourth of
July in years, Moose Island was not much more than a hunk of rock halfway to the North Atlantic. So forecasts always had an air of fingers crossed behind the back.

Like now, for instance. “Yeah,” Jake said, and dropped the shovel just long enough to retrieve another plastic sheet from the yard shed.

Which posed a further chore: finding enough rocks, bricks, and other heavy objects lying around the yard to hold the tarp down over the newly filled forms.

“Jake,” Ellie said thoughtfully, holding the hose up.

“What?” Jake dropped the tarp and grabbed the mixing trowel again as Ellie ran water into the trough. If you
didn’t
want any rocks, there would be
dozens
of them lying all over the—

“
Why
d’you suppose he’s watching?
If
he is,” Ellie added as Jake stirred the fourth and thank-God-last concrete batch.

“Well …” She thought for a moment, trying on alternatives. Then: “I don’t know,” she admitted at last. “Unless he’s got a high-powered rifle, he can’t do anything from that distance. Can he?” she added nervously.

And if he did have one, all of this taunting he’d been doing would be beside the point. Straightening, she felt body parts protesting; mixing concrete was a lot like lifting it, only you did it while bending over.

“What I do know is,
he
doesn’t know
we
know he’s there.”

“Because?” Ellie shot the hose stream over the shovels, the trowel, the mixing trough, and her own hands.

“Because I just peeked again, and the binoculars are flashing again.” That, or he didn’t care if they saw him; the thought deepened her anxiety.

Naturally, as they spread the tarp over the concrete forms, the rain quit spitting; in the yard, vapor wisps dissolved.

On the horizon, though, that fog bank still squatted. “Yes, I just saw the flash, too,” Ellie confirmed. “So what’ll we do?”

Jake dropped rocks scavenged from the dahlia bed’s edging onto the tarp’s corners. “I don’t know that, either.”

Rain or shine, by tomorrow that concrete would be set up, and the tarp wouldn’t be needed anymore. So for now the job was done; together they heaved the rest of the last bag of cement into the cart and hauled it across the yard to the shed.

“The bottom line is,” she went on, “there’s no way to be sure what he’s up to. But there are twenty-four vacant houses on the island, including the meetinghouse.”

And he was
in
the meetinghouse right now. Or somebody who was likely spying on them was in there, anyway.

They pushed the cart into the shed and closed the doors on it. “I left the houses that are way out on the outskirts of town off the list.…” she said.

Right now Wade and Sam, her dad and Bella, and Ellie’s husband, George, were entering and inspecting the houses, except for six near Jake’s own place. Those, she and Ellie meant to examine.

“… Because I doubt he’d pick somewhere far away to hide out in,” she continued. “But why would he let the lens glare give him away? It’s not rocket science that it might,” Jake added.

They went inside. From the kitchen, there was no direct view to the meetinghouse’s top floor.

Or vice versa, thankfully. Ellie scrubbed more cement dust off her hands, then splashed her face at the sink. “Unless he …”

“
Wants
us to know he’s watching?” Jake finished for her.

“Because he’s luring us into a trap,” Ellie agreed. “You know, I’ll just bet that’s it, the little sneak.”

Jake wandered thoughtfully to the back door. She looked out into the bright street, just as a gray-haired woman in a purple dress walked by, heading downtown.

The woman looked like her feet hurt, Jake thought, in those heels. “Maybe,” she told Ellie. “Or maybe he just wants …”

The woman smiled shyly, catching Jake’s eye and fluttering her fingers in a shy wave, then limped on.

“I don’t know,” Jake repeated impatiently, turning from the door.
“And you know, I’m already tired of wondering about it. We were going to look in the meetinghouse anyway, weren’t we?”

“Yes,” Ellie replied doubtfully. “But—”

“But nothing.” She plucked a leather leash from the hook by the back door, then a dog collar. Hearing the jingle, the big red Doberman trotted from the parlor inquisitively.

“Come on, Prill,” Jake said. Eagerly the big red Doberman allowed herself to be hitched up to her leash once more.

Then Jake stepped outside with the dog and Ellie followed. On the porch, the faint mingled smells of mothballs and Shalimar perfume hung in the warm air.

“Let’s just get those houses checked—the old meetinghouse first, of course—and get this over with,” Jake said.

Thinking even as she spoke that it probably wasn’t going to be that easy.

And naturally, it wasn’t.

T
HE VAST WHITE BULK OF THE OLD NONDENOMINATIONAL
meetinghouse loomed so tall that from close up, it appeared to be toppling forward. Around it on either side of a cinder-paved circle driveway, the grass had been mowed by someone using a hand scythe; the long cut swathes dried greenish-gold in the afternoon sun.

On the front steps, two massive clay pots of red geraniums bloomed exuberantly; it was where Jake had gotten the idea for her own front porch.

If I ever get back to it
, she thought. The front door of the meetinghouse stood open a few dark inches.

“He wanted us to know he was here,” she told Ellie. “He’s been tricky so far, and that makes me think the binoculars glare was no accident.”

Up and down the streets around the meetinghouse, tourists and locals strolled. On the breeze, the greasy smell of grilling hamburgers floated.

“And that suggests maybe there’s something here he wants us to see,” she added, holding Prill’s leash securely.

But do we want to see it?
she wondered silently, and gave the open door a push. “Hello?”

No answer from inside. Prill stiffened, though, sniffing something. “Easy, girl.”

The dog settled, padding obediently forward. “Look,” Ellie said unhappily.

The main room was a small chapel, with seats and a podium plus smaller tables on which printed matter was arranged: flyers, music sheets, posters for the summer lecture series.

A vase of garden flowers had been knocked off the podium and broken, the water still running between the front pews.

“Oh, what a shame!” Ellie knelt to rescue the scattered blooms while Jake and Prill went on past the podium to the rooms behind: a small kitchen, a lavatory, two parlor rooms, and what had once been a library.

Over the years, the non-chapel area had sometimes been used as living quarters, and intermittent attempts to clean these rooms had been made. But the result was that each parlor still held stacks of things nobody wanted, but no one wanted to take responsibility for throwing them out, either.

A wicker birdcage, for instance, complete with stuffed bird (a parrot, Jake thought) stood on a tall stack of old
National Geographics
in one parlor, while a jumbled collection of skis, ice skates, and snowshoes stuck every which way from behind an old steamer trunk in the other.

A winding stair led to the second floor. “No one down here,” Ellie reported, dusting her hands after disposing of the vase pieces.

Jake looked up the stairs. “Mmm. Someone was, though. Unless you think that vase hopped off the podium by itself.”

“No,” Ellie agreed unhappily. “And that front door didn’t end up standing open by itself, either.”

Jake dropped the dog’s leash and made an
after-you
gesture, Ellie returned it theatrically, and while they were standing there debating the question of who went first, Prill started up, her muscular legs making quick work of the stairs.

But at the top the dog let out a low growl, and Jake hurried up after her into the smells of long-abandoned clothing, long-unused bedding, and mouse droppings.

“What is it?” called Ellie from below.

Jake stared, reaching down to calm the suspicious animal with a pat on the flank. “I’m not sure. Maybe nothing.”

Prill tended to growl first and ask questions later. “Be careful,” Ellie warned as Prill advanced along the hallway to an open door, toenails clicking.

“I will,” Jake said, taking a step forward onto the hall’s old linoleum. Its pattern, tan lattice entwined in cabbage roses, was one she recognized from her broom closet at home.

“I’m just going to—” she began, and then too late realized she’d hit a trip wire of some kind, Prill’s lower profile having passed without triggering it.

A swishing sound came through the air, and so did a paint can. The can
flew
at her, missing her head by inches as she ducked fast.

Then it sailed on by, hitting the wall beyond with a hollow-sounding
clank
. White primer splashed out over the wallpaper, a faded lavender scenery print of milkmaids lugging milk cans.

“Jake?” Ellie sounded alarmed. Jake stared at the paint trickling down as if running into the wallpaper’s milk cans.

Then she found her voice. “I’m fine,” she called. Prill came out of
the first bedroom and stalked into the second one, ears pricked and neck hairs bristling.

Ellie reached the landing, took in the situation. “Wow,” she breathed. “Someone set up a—”

“Booby trap,” Jake agreed. The trip wire was a thread stretched waist-high between the top railing post and the wall, where a hook had once held something: a baby gate, maybe.

Something long gone. Like her jokester/assailant was now.

“You okay?” Ellie’s face was full of concern.

“Yeah.” Still, her heart thumped against her ribs. “Surprised me, is all.” She sat down on the top step, unwilling to admit how much it had unnerved her to see the shape flying out of the hall’s gloom.

But Ellie knew. She stepped past Jake, to give her a chance to compose herself. “Prill?” she called.

The dog came obediently out of the second bedroom. Ellie turned to the door to the third-floor stairs.

“We’re going up,” Ellie told Jake. “Whatever this is, we might as well get it over with.”

With that, she opened the door and went through it; Prill followed as Jake got to her feet and hurried to catch up.

“Hey, you two …” The stairs were narrow and steep.

At the top, Ellie passed through another door, with the big animal close behind. Again Jake followed, emerging into a light, airy chamber, framed and plastered but with no further ornament.

Even the doorframes, unlike the elaborately carved and varnished woodwork of the lower floors, were plain, flat planks, two simple uprights capped by another untrimmed board.

“Wow,” she said inadequately, almost whispering it.

Windows on all sides let the sky into the empty room, its raw plank floors bleached by sunlight over the decades. Nothing had been stored here; too many stairs, she supposed. “This is …”

Beautiful
. The walls, the floors … all bare, and someone had whitewashed the plaster a long time ago, so that now it was the color of old
bone. That and the room’s emptiness made it feel almost weightless, as if it might sail off the top of the house.

“Look,” said Ellie, turning from the bare window.

Crossing to it, Jake peered out. Even without binoculars, she could see the concrete-mixing trough leaned up against the cellar doors, the hose coiled by the spigot.

She could see the corner of the front porch, too, where earlier she had set the near-empty gallon can of white primer.

Now it was gone. “He used it,” she said, staring out at her house. Her own home, where her family lived …