Knockdown: A Home Repair Is Homicide Mystery (18 page)

Eastport’s on the Moo-oo-ve!
read the float’s banner. His heart thudding with excitement, he spared a moment of sympathy for the bunting-draped farm animal, then eased between it and the final float of the parade, a giant sardine on wheels.

Excitement and relief, because while he had been getting recognized, and victimized, and nearly kidnapped with a view to being cannibalized—

—or so he’d feared; who knew what they’d had in mind—

—he’d missed what was going on at his hideout. Now, though, two people were exiting the house. Steven recognized Jacobia Tiptree’s son, Sam, and the older woman, bony and henna-haired, who he thought must be the maid or something.

From their faces he could tell they’d found nothing and no one. Just as he’d planned, he reflected, as behind him a flurry of activity began around the fallen young men; an accusing hand went up, pointing the way he’d gone.

But the sardine float blocked their view of him. Slowly he backed into the overgrown yard of the old house, toward the lattice screening
the back lawn. Glancing quickly right and left, he assured himself that still, no one saw him.

Then, swiftly, he stepped up onto the rotted wooden porch and leaned against the ancient, frame-sprung door, shoving until it opened just enough to let him slip into the darkness inside.

The
welcoming
darkness, a place where he could wash, eat, and rest.

And get ready for his next move.

I
’
M TELLING YOU, JAKE,” SAID EASTPORT POLICE CHIEF BOB
Arnold later that day. “It might not’ve been the dumbest stunt you’ve ever pulled. But …”

Bob stood on the front walk, scolding her while she bent to the porch steps. The second coat of porch primer went on a lot faster than the first, partly because it was easier to paint on than raw wood, whose grain caught the brush bristles.

But partly it was because listening to Bob made her hand move so much faster; her frustration had to go somewhere. And it couldn’t go to him; the police chief was just trying to do his job.

“You and Wade are both lucky the guy doesn’t want to press charges,” he continued. “Menacing, harassment … guy who pushed him, he could be looking at battery, maybe even assault.”

She kept the paintbrush moving. “So why isn’t he? Pressing them, I mean?”

Bob shook his head. “Come all the way down here from Canada, spend money on a lawyer, it’s not worth it to him.” He took a breath. “Besides, truth is that all they really did was scare him, and no guy wants to admit that.”

But then his face grew stern again. “Great big ears, the guy has. The one who got menaced, I mean. And he says the ones who did it told him Wade sent them. Now, why d’you suppose that might be?”

“I have no idea,” she managed through clenched teeth. “Why d’you think I’d know anything about it?”

But that was the wrong question, because Bob had an answer for it, and watching him give it was like watching a teakettle blow.

His pudgy fingers stroked his pink, plump chin in pretended thought. “Jake, first some stranger starts harassing you. Sensibly, you come to me for help, but you don’t get very much satisfaction out of that, because …”

He let his voice trail off suggestively; she finished his sentence for him.

“Garner didn’t do anything illegal, or not anything you can arrest him for right this minute. Also there’s been an accidental death you’ve had to take care of,
and
it’s the holiday, so you’re right out straight, even without my troubles.”

“Key-rect,” he responded briskly. “Absolutely correct on all counts. Which is not to say I haven’t been trying,” he added. “I told all my guys about your stalker or whatever he is, made sure they know to pick him up, they have the slightest reason.”

“I know.” Of course he was trying. But Garner was like the fog, here one minute and dissolving away the next.

“Why couldn’t you just hunker down and wait while we get the computer crime division involved, people who
can
help?” Bob sucked
in a breath. “But no, right away you’ve got to go all proactive about it. You talk to Wade, and
his
next move—”

She cut Bob off briskly. “Wade did not assault anyone. Or ask anyone to.”

The second coat of primer was on the porch already, as if by magic; she couldn’t have done it any faster with a spray painter.

Anger, the other home-repair tool
, she thought. “You want to ask him about that,” she continued, getting up, “he’s upstairs in his workshop.”

She dragged the brush bristles hard against the paint can’s rim. “And even if he did tell somebody what’s been going on—” she began, because she hadn’t specifically asked him not to, had she?

Bob rolled his eyes. “Oh, here we go now,” he groaned.

She tapped the lid onto the paint can with a tack hammer. “If he did,” she insisted, “it’s because he’s trying to help me.”

Once they’d left the chapel, it hadn’t taken her and Ellie long to check the remaining vacant Eastport houses on their list. But they’d come up empty, as had the other searchers. Afterwards she’d thrown herself into the painting project again, just so she wouldn’t feel later that she’d wasted the whole day.

Bob’s squad car idled at the curb. The paint-stirring stick lay on the grass. She plucked it up, wiped both sides of it with a bit of rag, and laid it on the paint can.

“Just some poor guy, a case of mistaken identity,” said Bob, “he gets hassled because of your—”

“Hey, I said I was sorry.” She was, too, about the mistaken identity part.

“Listen, though,” she added, relenting. “Would it help if I went over to where this guy’s staying and apologized? Because it is …”

My fault
. She’d told Bob so. “I mean there’s really no getting around it that if it weren’t for me …”

Bob took off his uniform hat, gazed downhill at the water as he slicked his few sweat-damp strands of blond hair back, put the hat back on. “Nah,” he said finally. “Let’s just leave well enough alone for now. Guy calms down, no reason to chance riling him up again.”

Which made sense; Jake nodded in agreement, closing the subject. So now the way was cleared for what she really wanted to talk to him about.

“Hey, Bob,” she said mildly. “Look over there on that lawn chair, will you? Under the brick.”

Sighing impatiently, he plucked the photo from the chair and squinted at it. “What’s this?”

“It’s a snapshot of Sam, taken by Steven Garner. He left it in the meetinghouse for me and Ellie to find earlier today after he lured us there by making me think he was spying on me from an upstairs window.”

She took a breath. “Which he also was doing.”

Bob looked up from the photo. “You sure about this? I mean, you can …”

“Prove it? No, of course not. No more than I can prove any of the rest of it.”

“Still think he was involved with the thing on Sea Street?”

The girl’s death, he meant. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

From downtown, random blats and bleats of the high school band’s instruments sounded at irregular intervals. A firecracker went off, and then another.

Jake regarded the porch she’d just painted. “And Bob, here’s the other thing I think about it.”

Paint dripped off one of the risers. She swiped at it with the brush and made it worse, then smacked the brush down hard.

“He believes I killed his dad. Or that I was responsible for him getting murdered, anyway. And he’s been thinking about that and mulling it and obsessing over it since he was ten years old, and now he’s here to do something about it.”

“You don’t know that,” Bob protested, spreading his hands. But this time she wasn’t having any.

“I may not be able to prove it. But I do know.”

Inside, Bella was running the vacuum cleaner. Wade was up in his workshop, as she’d said; together with Jake’s dad he was busy sharpening all the small tools he used on gun-stock repairs.

And Sam was in his room trying to trace the scary emails she’d gotten, still without success. “Tell me, Bob, does the idea of a dry run sound reasonable to you?” She took the photograph from him. “Or do you really think a local girl got a few beers too many in her and proceeded to walk off a thirty-foot cliff that she’s known about all her life?”

Bob looked uncomfortable. “Yeah, well …”

He really did mean well. And he was a friend. She sat down on the lawn chair.

“Bob, that picture was a message to let me know it’s not just me he’s after. He’d hurt Sam to get at me, I’m certain of it.”

“You think maybe he killed the girl for practice. And … he’s making you feel guilty a little, too?” Bob asked perceptively. He was a very good cop.

“Yeah.” She looked up at him. Creating order from disorder by way of the old house wasn’t having the desired effect lately—not on her conscience or on the rest of her life, either.

And it certainly wasn’t helping put the past in perspective where Steven Garner Sr. was concerned. “I mean, I’m still pretty sure that if I’d given his dad what he wanted, the exact same thing would’ve happened. Only first he’d have gambled it all away, and
then
they’d’ve killed him.”

But not
absolutely
sure. And almost as much as anything else, it was still the notion that she could’ve prevented all this that was driving her nuts.

Regret for the past is a waste of spirit
, they told Sam at his AA meetings. What they didn’t say, though, was how to stop regretting it.

“Anyway,” she said. “We did look in all the empty houses we could think of, in case he was in one. But no dice.”

A static burst from his radio distracted Bob; he went over to the squad car to listen. When he returned:

“I gotta go now,” he told her. “But, Jake, I wish you’d talk to Wade, before he …”

Gets anyone else beat up
. Bob didn’t finish. But it was what he meant. “Why don’t you tell him yourself?” she asked mildly.

Bob gave her a look. “Because if I do, he’ll say something and then I’ll say something. And you know how that might end up.”

She did.

“But
you
could. If anyone can,” he added.

Without answering, she put the paint can and bag of wadded-up papers against the house, on the lee side where a breeze wouldn’t scatter them; the sky was gray now, with little gusts rustling.

“Because bottom line, it’s called conspiracy to commit a felony,” Bob continued. “Now, I’m not threatening,” he added hastily as she turned, outraged.

“Bob, if a man can’t try to defend his wife, I don’t know what—”

He held his hands up, palms out. “I’m not saying he can’t, Jake, I’m not saying that at all. I’m just pointing out the possible downside if it happens again. Already I’ve got to track down that first bunch and give them a talking-to.”

The ones who’d menaced the unfortunate Canadian, he meant. “But hey, do whatever you think is right. I’ve got to go.”

He strode toward the squad car; she followed, knees creaky from the hard porch steps. “What’s going on?” Hope pierced her suddenly. “They haven’t picked my guy up, have they? That’s not what the call was?”

Littering, jaywalking … anything to get him off the street. But of course that would have been too easy; Bob got behind the wheel.

“No. It was from the hospital up in Calais. Some local boys got their butts kicked a little while ago on Washington Street.”

While they’d been talking, the squad car’s engine had died; the chief made a face at the key hanging in the ignition. “You prob’ly know ’em, that bunch that’s been running wild downtown the last few months.”

In Eastport, knuckleheads were as common as anywhere else, but hardened delinquency was rare. Hanging out and drinking beer, maybe a little pot smoking in the wildest cases …

Mostly that was as bad as it ever got. But the bunch that Bob meant was an exception. “With the black jackets?”

“Yeah,” he replied, settling uncomfortably in the squad car’s buttsprung driver’s seat while waiting for the engine to quit racing. At 110,000 miles, the only part of the vehicle still in decent condition was the sunrise stencil on the door panel.

“Same ones I caught trying to blow up the hot dog stand on the breakwater a few weeks ago,” Bob said.

With, of all things, wired-together bundles of M-80s plus remote triggering devices that they’d found on the Internet and ordered with their parents’ credit cards. It seemed that even the dumbest clucks—and in the most remote places, too, like Eastport—could get hold of sophisticated stuff to do mischief with now.

“Funny thing, though,” Bob said as the car stalled. With a sigh, he started it again. “Well, not ha-ha funny,” he amended as the Crown Vic’s big engine roared to life. “That call I got?” He touched the accelerator cautiously to steady the idle. “Call was to say one of ’em just died. Weird part is, all of ’em got stabbed by someone at the parade, and they won’t say who. Like they’re scared of whoever it was.”

“No kidding.” The ghost of a chill went through her.

But that was ridiculous. Garner’s gripe was with her alone, so why would he pick a street fight?

Unless maybe they’d picked one with him.… “Stabbed with what?” she asked distractedly.