Rigged for Murder (Windjammer Mystery Series) (20 page)

Brie admired Anna’s spunk and wouldn’t have minded passing a little more time with her, but she needed to get back to the inn. Something was bugging her, picking around the edges of her brain. Something about Pete and the rock climbing accident, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. Now she knew why he hadn’t mentioned living on the island. A girl had died on his climb—he probably felt responsible. She finished her last swallow of coffee, stood up and thanked Anna for her time. Leaving her in the wheelhouse, Brie walked to the stern of the boat, stepped up on the dock, and headed back toward the village.

Her encounter with Trudeau ran through her mind as she moved briskly along the road and started up the hill toward the inn. His desire for her had struck some repellent yet fascinating chord, and it played on her, eventually transposing itself to another key. She increased her pace in an attempt to clear her head, but it was suddenly full of the thought, the image, the very scent of John DuLac. And Garrett’s words: “Sounds like the captain’s falling for you.” Desire clung to her, fogging her mind. DuLac had somehow managed to make his way under her skin, and his presence there, coupled with the brisk walk up the hill, was pushing beads of sweat up through her pores, making her layers of clothing suddenly uncomfortable. She wondered if this uncontrolled desire was a healthy thing—a sign of recovery—or a sign that she was losing it completely.

“Snap out of it, Brie,” she scolded herself loudly. She stopped in her tracks, unzipped her raincoat and turned to face the raw wind. “Now, focus,” she told herself. She thought again of Trudeau’s account of the accident, and the name he’d assigned to the dead girl. Madeleine. Something about that name. What was it? Why did it ring some distant bell in her consciousness?

“Think, Brie. Madeleine—Elaine—Adelaide—Mad—
Maddening
—Madie. Madie!” It struck her like a hard slap. She’d seen that name just this morning. It was tattooed across Tim’s chest underneath a rising sun. Madie. Could it be a coincidence? Madeleine—Madie. No way.

Pieces began to fall into place. The tattoo, the name, and the picture she’d seen in Tim’s cabin of the group of young people. There were packs and ropes on the ground—climbing equipment. And the wild look in Tim’s eyes when she’d encountered him on the bluffs. His need to stay there and the anguish in his voice when he spoke about the relationship that had ended. Tim’s girl, the one the sun rose and set in, had died up on the cliffs that day. Died on the climb that Pete was in charge of.
Oh, motive, sweet motive
, Brie thought.

But her exuberance was short-lived as another thought immediately registered on her radar. She took off at a dead run up the hill. Two breathless minutes later she rounded a sharp turn in the road and nearly collided with John. She skidded to a stop as he caught her in his arms.

“God, you scared me,” she said, stepping back. She bent over from the waist, placing her hands on her knees, and gulped in air, trying to recover from the jog up the hill.

“I thought I’d better come find you. Tim hasn’t returned to the inn—I sent Scott out to look for him, but no luck. What’s more, Will managed to sneak out.”

“What!” Brie came to attention.

“I said Will snuck out of the inn.”

“How?” Brie demanded in a February-in-Minnesota tone of voice.

“He went down to take a shower not too long after you left. I’d been down once to check on him—make sure he was still down there—and when I came up the phone rang. I grabbed it in the library, and when I came out a few minutes later Will was nowhere to be found. I immediately sent Scott after him.”

“Did he find him?”

“Yup, he was heading back toward the inn. Said he wanted to get a little exercise.”

“Yeah, right, I’ll believe that when mooses fly. He’s the laziest, whiniest excuse for a human I’ve encountered in a long time.”

“I think it’s moose,” John said.

“What?”

“I think it’s just moose—you said ‘mooses.’ I think moose is the plural too.”

“
Really
. Well, thank you for that, Mr. Grammarian. Now, if you could just be that conscientious about policing the showers, we wouldn’t have to keep retrieving people.”

“Sorry, Brie. I admit I’ve never been good at bathroom patrol. In grade school I always got in trouble for letting too many boys in there at once. And you’re starting to remind me of this one nun…”

Brie held her hands up in surrender. “Okay, enough,” she said, suppressing a smile. “We have to find Tim.
Now
. So where did Scott look?”

“After he brought Will back to the inn, I sent him out again to get Tim. Will said he’d seen Tim near the cliffs, so Scott headed up there. When he didn’t find him, he checked a couple of adjoining trails—one that drops down toward the village and another one that runs toward the western side of the island. After about forty minutes he came back to the inn to see if Tim had returned. I told him to stay with the rest of the group while I went to find you.”

“Come on. We’ve gotta hurry.”

“Where are we going?”

“I just hope we’re not too late,” she called back. She was already jogging up the remainder of the road.

They rounded the inn without stopping, heading for the trail that wound up to the bluffs. Once in the woods their jog was reduced to a brisk hike due to the uneven ground. Brie’s body was damp from the exertion. She wished she’d waited on that shower. Finally she shed her raincoat, laying it by the side of the trail. “I’ll get it on the way back,” she said.

Within ten minutes they stepped out of the woods onto bare granite and looked around. There was no sign of Tim. Drawn by the sound of the pounding surf, Brie walked toward the edge of the cliff.

“Brie!” John caught up with her and grabbed her by the wrist. “Be careful—there’s loose rock.”

“It’s okay, John. I’m not a child you need to keep well in hand.”

“Just be careful, okay?” he said, moving back from the edge.

He’s not too keen on heights
, she thought. Stepping cautiously up to the very brink, she looked over. Her fears were confirmed. Death floated a hundred feet below. Tim’s body bobbed face down in the surf, held captive by a group of boulders that kept his body from being carried away on the undertow.

“He went off the cliff, John. He’s dead.” She stared down as if mesmerized by the scene below.

John stepped up beside her and looked over. “My God, Brie, what could have happened? Do you think he slipped?”

“I think it’s more likely he jumped,” she replied. “I believe he killed Pete to avenge the death of his girlfriend, Madie. I learned from Jack Trudeau that she died here on a rock-climbing outing Pete was leading.”

“I remember the story about that girl’s death.” John watched the sea surging far below. “It was in the papers two or three years ago. Pete’s name had to have been there too, but it never rang a bell when I hired him.”

“It’s not that surprising, John. You deal with lots of people and lots of names every season.”

Brie stepped back a few feet and was studying the ground for any signs of a struggle when the ghost of a movement drew her attention to the edge of the woods. As she approached, she saw it was a piece of paper. Caught in the brush near the ground, it flapped erratically up and down.

John was lying on his stomach looking over the edge of the cliff, trying to decide the best course of action for recovering the body, when Brie hailed him. Carefully getting up from his prone position, he made his way over to her. The damp rag of paper she handed him had a notch torn from the top, as if it might have been nailed to a tree. In blue printing Tim had penned his final words:

B
RIE AND JOHN HIKED DOWN the narrow trail toward the inn. Several silent minutes passed before either of them was willing to talk about the next move. Brie finally broke the silence. “How will we retrieve the body?” she asked.

“We can’t get to it by boat—the waves are too high. We’d be smashed on the rocks. I’ll radio the Coast Guard when we get back and see if they can’t get to us before dark, but my guess is we’ll have to deal with this. There’s a rescue harness on the ship for retrieving a man from the water. One of us will have to go down the cliff after the body. Scott’s the best choice—he’s used to working up high on the masts. We’ll rig up the boson’s sling to a rope and pulley. With a few of us on top of the cliff, we shouldn’t have any trouble hauling the body up.”

“I guess Fred will have to make room for one more body,” Brie said, imagining what his reaction might be. “That cooler’s really filling up. I don’t know if he’ll be able to stand the excitement.” Like many cops, Brie tended toward black humor in moments of stress.

“He’ll have a story to tell,” John said. “Everybody should have at least one really good one.”

They tramped on in silence for a couple of minutes. “If you want, you can stay at the inn with Alyssa and Howard when we go up after the body.”

“I should really be there to examine the body when it first comes up. But I see no problem with leaving Howard and Alyssa at the inn. She’s so distraught she certainly doesn’t need to see another body. And Howard is very fatherly—he’ll keep an eye on her.”

“Sounds like a plan. You know, Brie, my shakedown cruise has turned into the cruise from hell. When word of the murder gets out—and it will—I’ll be hard pressed to fill my summer schedule. The cancellations will come flying in like geese on the migration.”

“I’m sorry, John.”

“Maybe I could coin a new slogan for my mailing piece,” he said cynically. “Sail with DuLac—you may never go back.”

Rain began to fall. Brie donned her raincoat, which she’d reclaimed from the side of the trail on the way down. “I have a confession to make,” she said suddenly.

“Oh?”

“My gun fell over the cliff when I went up to find Tim the first time.”

“Really?” he responded uncertainly.

“Just thought I’d tell you. And you know what’s funny?”

“I could use some humor. What?”

“I don’t even care. Which isn’t normal. Normally, I’d beat myself up for at least five years over one like that. I spent so many years trying to be the perfect cop, and what did it get me? My partner’s dead, and I went through something not far from a nervous breakdown. So much for perfection.”

John remained silent.

“Don’t you see?” Brie pressed on. “Something in me has changed.” There was a note of happiness in her voice. “Something has changed—and I think I like it.”

“Maybe the Maine air agrees with you,” John said hopefully.

“Maybe.” They emerged from the woods and within a minute stepped in the back door of the inn. They shed their coats and shoes and headed toward the front of the inn. “I’ll share the sad news with the others if you want to radio the Coast Guard,” Brie said.

“Okay. I’ll be down in a couple minutes and send Scott and George to the ship for what we need.”

She stopped for a moment, placing a hand on his arm. “At least we can let our guard down a little now, since all the evidence suggests that Tim killed Pete. When we get back to the ship I’ll look for a sample of his handwriting that I can compare with the note we found. My guess is they’ll match. Considering how he was up on the bluffs this afternoon, I think it’s a safe bet this was a suicide. I just wish I hadn’t left him there. I should have tried harder to bring him back. I wish I’d had an inkling about Madie.”

“It’s not your fault, Brie. If he was determined to kill himself, I don’t know if anyone could have stopped him.”

Brie checked her watch as she headed for the game room—5:40. At least they had plenty of time to get the equipment from the ship and recover the body before dusk. Everyone but Howard and Scott was in the game room. She found the two of them reading in the library and asked them to join the others.

“I’m afraid I have some distressing news.” She paused, grateful there was no relative or friend of Tim’s here to receive the blow. The one truly terrible part of her work was breaking the news of violent death to a victim’s loved ones. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Tim is dead. It appears he murdered Pete, and then committed suicide.”