Past Malice (11 page)

“I’m sure it was an accident,” I said. An accident on his part, anyway: Those holes were deliberately punched into the fuel tank. But trust Claire Bellamy to take comfort in finding fault in the matter. “It’s just that we’ll have to notify the Coast Guard, so they don’t freak out if someone finds the boat empty. I’m sorry, I’m just completely worn out. I should be going now. Thanks again for your help.”

“Certainly. I…good luck with the, ah…” She gestured across the street, toward the Chandler House and I thought she was going to say, “Good luck with telling Aden,” but she paused. “Good luck with the, ah, dig.”

I whipped my head around, tact and discretion burned away by the adrenaline. “The dig?” I barely managed to keep the surprise out of my question.

“Yes, isn’t that what you call it?”

“Yeah, I guess….” She was wishing me luck with the dig, the thing that was the blot on her social landscape? The thing that was robbing her of sleep and adding to the density of noisome tourists? “I guess…we’ll be back at work tomorrow, if the police say it’s okay.”

“Yes, the police.” She seemed to consider, then spoke in a rush. “Well, it would probably be a nuisance for you to fill up your holes and everything, so you shouldn’t worry about that for the weekend. I mean, you really can’t see so much of it from here, and we’ll just whisk people inside and out to the back.”

I couldn’t have been more surprised if she’d suddenly grown a second head. “I…appreciate that. It certainly makes my life easier.” I decided to make a run for it, before she changed her mind again. “Thanks again.”

I walked down the steps and hurried out the side gate, all too aware that Monet and Matisse had lifted their heads to watch my departure. I held my breath until I was safely on the other side of the gate and the latch dropped down, equally aware that Claire Bellamy was watching me too. I sensed rather than heard the kitchen door close silently behind me.

As I crossed the road to the Chandler House, I could see that Daniel was talking to Aden in the parking lot. “—been threatening to do it for ages. I just hope you mean it this time.”

“Trust me, Daniel.” Aden ground out the cigarette he’d been smoking.

Doubt was written large on Daniel’s face. He saw me coming toward them, gave me an odd look, and took my arrival as an excuse to cut the interview short. Aden’s face flickered annoyance and then slid smoothly into a welcoming smile. It was so quick a transformation that it was barely noticeable. Then his smile faltered and turned into a worried frown when he saw that I was soaked through and my hands were covered in Band-Aids. “Emma, what happened to you?”

“There was…someone punched a hole in one of your fuel tanks. I had to ditch it off the Bellamy’s property. I’m sorry, Aden.”

“How could that have happened?”

“Aden, I think someone stuck a screwdriver or something through the tank on purpose. When the first one was empty, I switched over, and after I opened the vent, it began to spill out. It’s anchored out there but have you got any idea who might have—?”

He was silent for a long moment. “Emma, I’m very sorry that this happened. I can’t imagine how it might have…all I can think of is that a lot of unsavory things happen down at the marina. Perhaps it was just vandalism, perhaps it was something directed at me. I don’t know, maybe I took someone’s parking space inadvertently. It’s equally possible that someone tried to sabotage someone else’s launch but got mine instead. I’m only sorry that it happened to you. Are you all right? Nothing broken, nothing…irreparable? How did you get ashore, if you ditched by the Bellamys?”

“I climbed up the cliff.”

“My God.” He stepped back. “But then, how did you get
past those two dreadful dogs, what are they, Mamet and Baudelaire?”

How strange. Someone like Aden would make a point of learning the names of the dogs, I felt sure of it. It felt like he was playing for time. “Monet and Matisse. I didn’t get past them.” I shivered. “But Claire got to me in time, though she claims they wouldn’t have done any damage, that they were just playing.” I looked him straight in the eye. “She was surprisingly nice about the whole thing, once she’d heard what happened. She even wished me luck with the dig. I suppose I have you to thank for that?”

He shrugged. “No, not at all. I had a chat with her; I think we’ve reached a sort of détente, in the matter of the dig. But she should be nice, that’s only what neighbors should do.”

“I think we should call the Coast Guard, shouldn’t we?”

“Yes, and then I’m going straight to the marina, to see if I can’t get some answers to this. But,” he looked at me, “maybe you need to get to the hospital? Let me take you there now.”

“No, no, I think I’m all right. Only tired and shaken. I just want to go home and take a bath. Maybe take a nap.”

“Maybe take a Valium,” Aden agreed. “Good God, what a morning. You’re sure you’re okay?”

“Yes, thanks.” Valium sounded like a nice idea, but it wasn’t actually part of my medicine chest. Aden came up with it pretty casually, though.

“Well, then, I’ll see you tomorrow. Take good care of yourself. We don’t want anything to happen to you before the end of the dig.”

“Thanks, Aden.”

He walked me over to the car and waited patiently while I got the key into the lock. I sat down, frowning at the cold fabric chafing against my skin. I waited until he returned to his office, and then went to see if Detective Bader was still
on the site. He was, but when I gestured to talk to him, I realized that we would be directly beneath Aden’s window. The curtain moved, so I suggested we go away from the crime scene to talk.

“What happened to you?”

I told him the story and he frowned. “I’ll look into this. I don’t like the way things are going around here. You’re not badly hurt?”

“No, but I’d like to get going and change out of these things.”

“Sure. Let’s fill out a report too, when you’re feeling up to it. I’ll let you know if I find anything. Just…be careful.”

I nodded and thanked him. Back in the car, and functioning on autopilot now, I pulled out of the parking lot. I got about two blocks along when I had to pull over, just for a minute, because another fit of the shakes came over me. I rested my head on the steering wheel and took some deep breaths until I thought I could drive again.

I sat up, turned the key in the ignition, and frowning, turned it off again. I lifted my foot from the brake and shifted, awkwardly resting it on the passenger side seat so that I could examine my leg. Okay, I wasn’t seeing things. I reached down and poked at the four little tears in the bottom of the leg of my jeans, just above the ankle. Playing, my ass, I thought. Those dogs play rough.

I turned again, squelching against the vinyl seat, and hit the ignition. Claire had been scared into concern and politeness, and I was beginning to suspect that it was Aden Fiske who had scared her. I didn’t know what was going on, I thought as I pulled off the verge, but it was big enough to involve sabotage and the possibility of death. Whatever it was, one thing was for sure. I was done with the eighteenth-century point of view for a while. No more messing around in boats.

I
PULLED UP INTO THE DRIVE OF THE
F
UNNY
F
ARM TO
see the students more or less doing as I’d asked. They were sitting outside with their dishpans full of water, washing sherds. I noticed that they’d taken some of the sawhorses to serve as drying racks, setting window screens up on them. I noticed with some jealousy that they’d had lunch and the drinkers had had beers. Sitting in the sun, laughing, nattering on, and working, they all looked pretty normal. And there was little or no chance that I could sneak past them without revealing that I was soaking wet. I was just glad that Brian wasn’t home to see me like this.

I got out of the car and tried to keep my demeanor as careless as I could. “Hey guys. How’s it going?”

They all looked up and waved. Joe frowned. “Emma, what happened to you?”

“I took a swim.”

“You took a swim.” Bucky stood up, looking like she’d bitten into tinfoil, pained and disbelieving.

“Yep. Pretty embarrassing.”

“Yeah, but how’d that happen?” I noticed that Meg was looking at my hands, which I stuffed into my pockets.

“I was motoring past the Chandler House and Aden’s fuel tank sprang a leak. I decided not to stick around. Man, was that water cold.”

“Not exactly the best time for swimming in New England,” Dian said.

“I wasn’t under the impression that there was a good time for swimming in New England. Brian goes to the beach only for the sun; he wouldn’t get near the surf if you paid him. It’s that thin Californian blood of his,” I said. “Let me get changed, and then I want to take a look at what you’ve got done today.”

I thought I’d made it into the house without further comment, but then didn’t hear the door slam behind me. My sister had followed me into the kitchen, and she had been followed by Meg. When Bucky realized that she wasn’t alone with me, she gave Meg a guarded and irritated look. Meg returned the favor. I realized that each of them, based on our previous history together, believed that she was one who might be able to get the full story from me.

“I’ll be down after I grab a shower,” I said, but I was mistaken if I thought that would put either of them off.

“What happened out there, Emma?” Meg said. Bucky glared at her.

I dropped my bag onto the kitchen table and began to head upstairs. “I’m freezing. We can talk after I get changed.”

“You never would have put out without checking everything first,” Bucky said, following me. I might have been able to put Meg off, but apparently Bucky still thought that she had the right to follow me into my bedroom more than ten years after I left the family home. My sopping sneaker laces seemed all but welded together, but I finally managed
to work them apart. I pulled off my wet things, down to my underwear. My socks landed with a wet squish on the floor.

Bucky sat on the bed as I gathered up my clothes. “So?”

I ignored her and shut the door to the bathroom, stripping down—where to put the wet clothes? The laundry basket wasn’t the place for them and I was about to use the tub; I settled for dumping them onto the closed toilet seat cover. I got the shower going and took a minute to check the bandages on my hands. I’d have to chuck them and then replace them after I got done washing up. I hopped into the shower, immediately grateful to feel how hot the water was; the linoleum floor had been no comfort to my cold feet. As I stood there, letting myself warm up again, I heard the door open and close.

I stared at the tiles in front of me. “Bucky, go away.”

“Not until you tell me what happened today.”

The tiles were in good shape, but the grout needed work. “Could I just have a minute?”

“Sure. You’ve got a minute, and then I call up Brian to see if you told him anything.”

I stuck my head out around the shower curtain to glower at Bucky. She’d dumped my wet clothes onto the floor and was sitting on the toilet seat, using my hand mirror to check for blemishes on her face. She put the mirror down when it became too clouded to see anything.

“I mean, you guys tell each other everything, right?” The little wretch had the audacity to pull the wide-eyed innocent look that hadn’t worked on me or anyone else with sense for years. “No secrets from each other, right?”

“I haven’t had the chance to call Brian,” I said. I pulled myself back around the curtain and into the shower; I was still raisin-fingered and wrinkly, but far less shivery. I washed my hair and began to soap off, not because I was dirty, but just out of habit: that’s what you do in the shower.
“I’ll tell him when he gets home; I’ve got work to get finished up today.”

“I’ll call him, then. He’d want to know.”

Shit. I turned off the shower and stood there. “Go get me my robe, would you?”

I heard the door open and shut again and grabbed a towel. I blotted my scrapes carefully and had replaced the antiseptic and the bandages by the time that Bucky got back with my robe. Snatching it away from her, I pulled it on over my towel and found another towel to start work on my hair. Bucky sat herself down on her throne again, this time using my razor to get rid of a few stray hairs around her ankle.

“Stop that.” I took the razor away from her and went back into my room. “Jesus.”

She followed me. “Well?”

“There was a hole punched into the spare gas tank. I wasn’t about to start the engine again and I wasn’t going to just sit there, so I ended up climbing up some rocks to safety.” No sense telling her about the dogs and Claire, I reckoned.

“So you don’t think the punctured tank was meant for you?”

I stopped looking for clean underwear. “Of course not. It was some stupid prank, something that someone did down at the marina. Maybe Aden pissed someone off. Maybe it was just something that someone was doing because they were taking it out on the Stone Harbor Historical Society. It was nothing to do with me. How could it have been? No one knew I was going to use that boat.”

“Except for Aden.”

“How could he have known I would be interested in borrowing his boat? And he would have been supremely stupid to give me the boat he’d tampered with. Jesus, Bucky, leave it alone. It was a dumb accident that I got the boat first, that’s
all.” I got dressed hurriedly and began to brush out my hair; Bucky was looking through the change on the bureau, sorting it out by denomination.

“Of course I’m going to tell Brian,” I said, working out a huge tangle. “I will always tell Brian everything. I just think an accident like this doesn’t need to be blown out of proportion.”

“And he’d take it better when he hears it with a couple of beers in him and you looking dry and warm and safe and making light of it all.”

“Yeah, well, there’s no point in making things out to be worse than they are, my little drama queen, is there?”

She watched as I ran the towel over my hair again; there was a lot of it and it took some work to get it dry. I began on another tangle.

“You should cut that hair of yours. It’s nothing but trouble.”

“Thank you for your opinion. I happen to think long hair suits me.”

“It doesn’t, really.” Bucky swept all the quarters in the stack into her hand and pocketed them.

“Do you mind?” I shoved the dimes away from my sister before she could get them too. “God almighty.”

Bucky wasn’t a bit deterred, and not embarrassed either. “It makes you look too old-fashioned, even just plain old. I think it’s just vanity, or maybe it’s something to put people off. You know, when it’s all pulled back and all, it gives you a rather fierce look. Quite the disciplinarian, or maybe that’s what you’re going for.” Now she was rooting around in my dresser drawers. “How old is this lipstick?”

“I don’t know, last summer, I think. Could you please just—”

“I never see you wearing any.” She tried it on, cocked her
head trying to decide whether she approved of the color. I took it away from her and shooed her out of the room.

“Enough. I don’t need your help with my marriage, I don’t need your help with beauty tips—” I called through the door.

“That’s what you think.”

“—And I especially don’t need your help making trouble. God, Bucks, you really are a pain in the ass.”

“You’re right there; you’re good at making trouble all on your own. And I’m not the one messing around in boats, Ratty.”

“Yes, yes, trust me when I say the
Wind in the Willows
reference already occurred to me. Now just stop poking your nose where it doesn’t belong.” I thumped down the stairs. Meg was still in the kitchen and could hear Bucky’s voice as well as I could as my sister called downstairs:

“Isn’t that what everyone always says to you, Emma?”

I waited until Brian came home to tell him what had happened; there was no use in getting him worried at work when no real harm had been done.

“Isn’t that the house with the big dogs you’re always talking about? The ones that bark all the time?”

“Yeah. They were there, but the owner was too, so it wasn’t any problem.”

Bucky had come in just in time to hear Brian ask about the dogs. “You didn’t tell me about any dogs,” she protested. “What else did you leave out in the version you told me?”

“Nothing, Bucky. Take a hike.”

I stole a quick look at Brian, who was frowning deeply. “Hmmm.”

I told them about the change that had come over Claire
when I mentioned Aden. Brian didn’t seem much more pleased, but at least he wasn’t thinking about the dogs anymore.

“I wonder what happened there.” He threw some diced carrots into the coleslaw that he was making.

“I don’t know. I don’t particularly care, either, now that I know she’s going to be off my back.”

After we ate, the seven of us sprawled around the porch, drinking beer until the bugs drove us inside, and I took the excuse to head up to my room early. I was unbelievably tired and flopped onto the bed, relieved at last to have a little space to myself. The day had been so chaotic that I felt as though I’d been through at least two days in the space of one. I was so tired I didn’t even pick up the book I was reading, but turned out the light to think while I waited for Brian to get done in the bathroom. Who would have wanted to sabotage the boat? Did it have anything to do with Justin’s death? I couldn’t think about that now: I tried to occupy myself by making plans about the site, when we could get back out there. Putting two or three more units to the north of the house might reveal whether there was an outbuilding over there, perhaps a storehouse or a stable or something. There was an outline of a structure I couldn’t make out on the insurance map, and it was worth investigating. Even if nothing appeared, the units would give us a couple of windows onto what was going on over there. Maybe there’d even be enough to talk the Chandler House people into letting me continue working on the site after this survey was done. Did I know for sure that Justin had been killed? Maybe there was so much blood because of….

I yawned and was surprised to find that I’d closed my eyes. I rolled over onto my side, curled up a little, and went back to my plans.

If the outbuilding was near the way down to the water,
perhaps that’s where a counting house was. Or maybe boating equipment was stored there, oars and ropes and such…I must remember to look into the possibility of renting a boat for the students at the end of the dig. Haven’t been for a sail in, what, years…out on the water…in the sun….

Something warm and soft pressed against my side and I started awake, legs shooting straight out. I heard a yelp and a thump and I realized that it was Brian; he’d kissed the spot just above the waistband of my pajamas where my T-shirt had hiked up.

“Oh God, Bri! Please tell me I didn’t kick you,” I said, sitting up.

“No, you just scared me. I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were asleep.”

“I didn’t know I was either. I’m sorry, come to bed.”

“Okay.”

But instead of walking all the way around to his side, Brian climbed in over me, making more of a production of it than was actually required. There was some rolling around and a lot of kissing before he actually got over to his side, and then he sighed.

“Well, I’m wide awake now. I’m coming back over there. It’s much nicer over there, where you are.” He scooted over and rested his head on my stomach, looking up at me, and walked two fingers up my arm. “Much nicer.”

“Hey!” I whispered, pretending to slap his hand away. “We can’t do that, not with a houseful of people….” But I wasn’t all that sleepy anymore, either, and something about all I’d been through earlier in the day suddenly made Brian’s suggestion that much more attractive.

“They’re practically outside and Bucky sleeps like the dead. You can’t tell me you never learned how to sneak around with boys without getting caught back in high school.”

“I was a good girl in high school,” I whispered, primly and a little untruthfully. “But I’m always ready to learn.”

The next morning, I called Detective Bader and got the word that it was all right for me to return to the site. When I asked him if he’d learned anything, he only said, “We’re pursuing every lead at the moment and treating the case as a homicide.” An unreasonable part of me pouted, believing that having handled myself so well on the discovery of Justin’s body, I should get more than that, but I thanked him and hung up.

Leaving Bucky again asleep in the car when we got to the site, I was surprised to see Perry Taylor was back at work. Her arm was in a sling, which she’d covered up with a pretty colored silk scarf, the sort that is sold in expensive museum shops. I’d given my mother one just like it years ago, as a birthday present. Perry looked surprisingly well for her ordeal, maybe a little pale, but she brushed off my concern.

“I’m fine, just a little shook up, you know? When I stop to think about what happened….” She swallowed. “I decided I just had to get back to work. Put as much of that out of my mind as possible.” Then she smiled. “The great thing is that they gave me some absolutely
outstanding
painkillers. I highly recommend codeine and acetaminophen for putting your cares behind you.”