Riptide (10 page)

Becca said finally, “Sheriff, won't you be seated? Now, you have news for us?”

He took the old chair she was waving at, eased down slowly, then cleared his throat. He was ready to make his big announcement. “Well now, it does appear that this skeleton isn't your wife, Tyler.”

There was a sharp moment of silence, but not the surprise he'd expected, that he'd wanted, truth be told.

“Thank you for telling me so quickly, Sheriff. I'm pleased that it wasn't, because that would have meant that someone had killed her and it wasn't me. I hope that wherever Ann is, she's very much alive and well and happy.”

But Tyler hadn't acted surprised. He acted like he already knew. Well, damn, if Tyler hadn't killed Ann, then he would certainly know that the skeleton wasn't her, or if it was, then someone else had put her there. That logic made the sheriff's head ache. “Humph, I wouldn't know about that. I've contacted all the local authorities and they're going to check on runaways from between ten and fifteen years ago. There's a good chance we'll find out who she is. She was young, probably late teens. That makes it even more likely that she was a runaway. She was murdered, though. Now, that makes it a big problem, my big problem.”

“It's not possible that it's a local teenager, Sheriff?” Becca asked.

The sheriff shook his head. “Nobody just up and disappeared in the town's memory, Ms. Powell. Something like that, folk just wouldn't forget. Nope, it's got to be a runaway.”

Adam Carruthers sat forward, his hands clasped between his knees. “You think this old man, Jacob Marley, did it?” He was sitting in a deep leather chair that old Jacob had liked. He looked like he was the one in charge and that burned the sheriff a bit. Fellow was too young to be in charge, not too much beyond thirty, about the same age as Maude's nephew, Frank, who was currently in prison out in Folsom, California, for writing bad checks. Frank had always had soggy morals, even as a boy. Maybe the fellow was shiftless, like Frank. But hell, the last thing this guy looked was shiftless.

“Sheriff?”

“Yeah? Oh, it's possible. Like I told Ms. Powell here, old Jacob didn't like people poking around. He had a mean streak in him and no patience to speak of. He could have bashed her.”

Adam said, a dark eyebrow raised a bit, “Mean streak or not, you believe he actually bashed a young girl in the face with a blunt instrument and walled her in his basement because he was pissed to see her trotting across his backyard?”

Sheriff Gaffney said, “A blunt instrument, you say. Well, the ME didn't know what the murderer struck her with, maybe a heavy pot, maybe a bookend, something like that. Did Jacob do it? We'll just have to see about that.”

“Nothing else makes much sense,” Tyler said, jumping to his feet. He began pacing the room. His whole body was vibrating with tension. He had good muscle tone, the sheriff thought, remembering his own buffed self that the ladies had stared at when he was that young. Tyler whirled around, came to a stop, nearly knocking over a floor lamp. “Don't you see? Whoever killed her had to have access to
Jacob's basement. Surely Jacob would have heard someone knocking away bricks, then putting them back up. The killer had to have cement to do that. Also, he had to haul the body into the house and down the basement steps. That would be quite an undertaking. It had to be Jacob. Nothing else makes sense.”

Adam said, leaning back in that old leather chair now, his legs crossed at his ankles, his fingers steepled, the tips lightly tapping together, “Now, wait a minute. You're saying that Jacob Marley never left his house?”

“Not that I remember,” Tyler said. “He even had his groceries delivered. Of course, I was gone four years when I was in college. Maybe he used to be different, went out more.”

“Two things were always true about old Jacob,” Sheriff Gaffney said slowly. “Two things you could always count on. He was here and he was mean.” He heaved himself from his seat. He froze when the button right above his wide leather belt up and popped off. He watched, paralyzed, as the damned button rolled across the polished oak floor to stop at the big toe of Carruthers's right boot. He sucked in his belly, but he still felt that wide leather belt of his continue to cut him something fierce. He didn't say anything, just held out his hand.

Adam Carruthers tossed him the button. He didn't smile. The sheriff clutched that damned button close. Jesus, maybe he should think about that diet Maude was always nagging him about.

Becca pretended not to see anything. She rose and stuck out her hand to the sheriff. “Thank you for coming and telling us in person. Please let us know when you find out who that poor girl is.”

“Was, ma'am, was. I will. I'm glad I called them. I had to worm it out of them, but I finally got to speak to the main guy, a hardnose named Jarvis, and he finally coughed up the info.” He nodded to Tyler McBride, who looked hollow-cheeked, as if he'd been put through a wringer, and
then to Adam Carruthers, a cocky bastard who hadn't laughed when his button had popped off.

“I'll see you out, Sheriff,” Becca said and walked beside him out of the living room.

Adam said to Tyler, “Becca told me what was going on. I'm glad I was nearby and could get here to help.”

Tyler eyed the man. There hadn't been time to question him before the sheriff had arrived. He said slowly, suspicion a sharp thread in his voice, “I didn't know Becca had a cousin. Who the hell are you?”

A
dam said easily, “Becca's mom was my aunt. She died of cancer, you know, very recently. My mom lives in Baltimore with my stepdad. A great guy, loves to fish for bass.”

Thank God she heard that before she came back into the living room. The man was quick and smooth. He was a very good liar. She would have believed him herself if she hadn't known better. Actually, her mother was an only child, both her parents long dead. Her father had been an only child as well. His parents were also dead. Who was Adam, anyway?

Tyler turned toward Becca and said in a warm voice that was far too intimate, “Well, just maybe Sam can have a stepmom, just like you got yourself a stepdad, Adam.”

Becca felt a jolt that landed a lump in her throat. She couldn't breathe for a minute. Tyler was looking at her like that? A future stepmom for Sam? She cleared her throat twice before she could speak. Well, she'd known him forever and he hadn't killed his wife, but he was a friend, nothing more than a very good friend, which was quite enough, given what her life was right now. “It's getting late. Adam, how about—”

He interrupted her smoothly, standing, stretching a bit. “I know, Becca. I'll be back over in a little while. I've got to get my stuff from Errol Flynn's Hammock. It's a great B and B. That guy Scottie is a hoot. You want to eat out tonight?”

“Becca and I were going to go to Errol Flynn's Barbecue this evening,” Tyler said, and now he was standing perfectly still, his shoulders back, his chin up, ready for a fight, Adam thought, like a cock ready to defend the henhouse against the fox.

Adam grinned. “Sounds good to me. I like barbecue. You bringing Sam? I'd like to meet him.”

“Of course Sam's coming,” Becca said, her voice firm as that of a den mother faced with a dozen misbehaving ten-year-olds. “What street is Errol Flynn's Barbecue on, Tyler?”

“Foxglove Avenue, just across from Sherry's Lingerie Boutique. I hear that Mrs. Ella loves Sherry's lingerie, always in there on her lunch hour.” He shook his head. “It's rather a scary thought.”

“I haven't met Mrs. Ella yet,” Becca said, then to Adam, “She's the sheriff's dispatcher, assistant, protector, screener, whatever—but I know about every one of her pets for the last fifty years. Her job was to save me from hysteria while I was waiting for the sheriff to come.”

“Did it work?” Adam said.

“Yes, it did. All I could think about was the beagle named Turnip who died by running right off a cliff when he missed the corner chasing a car.”

Both men laughed, and the male pissing contest that had nearly made her take a kitchen knife to both of them was out of sight, at least for the moment. She would have to speak to Tyler if it turned out he was getting the wrong idea, and evidently he was. But didn't he realize that being her first cousin meant that Adam was no threat? She didn't need this. She could eat barbecue with them, she supposed. Thank God Sam would be there.

Sam didn't have much testosterone yet.

***

I
t was just after midnight. Tyler McBride was still hanging about at the front door, and Sam was asleep in the car, his bright blue T-shirt and black kid jeans covered with the sauce from the pork barbecue spareribs. The kid hadn't said much—shy, Adam supposed—but he'd eaten his share. He'd finally said Adam's name when he'd taken a big bite of potato salad, then nothing more.

Would the guy never give it up and leave? Adam took a step closer to get him out of there when he overheard Tyler saying quietly to Becca at the front door, “I don't like him staying here with you, alone. I don't trust him.”

And then Becca's voice, calm and soothing, and he could practically see her lightly touch her fingers to Tyler's arm as she said, “He's my first cousin, Tyler. I never did like him growing up. He was a bully and a know-it-all, always pushing me around just because I was a girl. He's grown up into a real sexist. But hey, he's here and he is big. He's also had some training, something like army special forces, I think, so he'd be useful if someone came around.”

“I still don't like it.”

“Look, if something happens, he's an extra pair of hands. He's harmless. Hey, I heard from his stepdad that he is probably gay.”

Adam nearly lost it then. The laughter bubbled up. He practically had to slap his hand over his mouth to contain it. The laughter dried up in less than a second. He wanted to leap on her, close his hands around her skinny neck, and perhaps strangle her.

“Yeah, right, sure,” Tyler said. “A guy like that? Gay? I don't believe it for a minute. You should stay with me and Sam, to be on the safe side.”

She said very gently, “No, you know I couldn't do that, Tyler.”

Even after that, it took her another couple of minutes to
get Tyler out of the house. She was locking the door when he said from behind her, “I'm not a sexist.”

She turned around to grin at him. “Aha! So you were eavesdropping. I thought you were probably lurking back there. I was afraid that you were going to try to throw Tyler out of the house.”

“Maybe I would have if you hadn't finally gotten a grip and pushed him out. I wasn't a bully or a know-it-all, either, when I was growing up. I never tortured you.”

“Don't become part of your own script, Adam. I can also write whatever I want to on that script, since it involves me.”

“I'm not gay, either.”

She just laughed at him.

He grabbed her by the shoulders, jerked her against him, and kissed her fast and hard. He said against her mouth, “I'm not gay, damn you.”

She pulled away from him, stood stock-still, and stared at him. She wiped the back of her hand over her mouth.

He streaked his fingers through his hair, standing it on end. “I'm sorry. I don't know why I did that. I didn't mean to do that. I'm not gay.”

She started shaking her head, then, just as suddenly, unexpectedly, she threw back her head and laughed and laughed, wrapping her arms around herself.

It was a nice sound. He bet she hadn't laughed much lately. She hiccuped. “You're forgiven for trying to enforce your manhood. Got you on that one, hmmm?”

He realized he'd leapt for the bait. How could that have happened? He looked down at his fingernails, then buffed them lightly against his shirtsleeve. “Actually, what I should have said is I'm not at all certain yet that I'm gay. I'm still thinking about it. Kissing you was a test. Yeah, I'm still not certain one way or the other. You didn't give me much data.” Not much of a return hit, but it was something.

She walked past him into the kitchen. She started measuring out coffee. When she finished, she turned the
machine on and stood there, staring at the coffee dripping into the pot. Finally she turned and said, “I want to know who you are. Now. Don't lie to me. I can't take any more lies. Really, I just can't.”

“All right. Pour me that coffee and I'll tell you who I am and what I'm doing here.”

While she poured, he said, leaning back in his chair, balancing it on its two back legs, “Because you're an amateur I looked at the problem very differently. But like I already told you, you didn't do badly. Your only really big mistake was your try at misdirection with the flight from Dulles to Boston, then another flight on to Portland. Another thing: I reviewed all your credit card invoices. The only airline you use is United. Since you're an amateur, it wouldn't occur to you to change.”

She said, “Trying another airline flicked through my brain, but I wanted out as fast as I could get out and I feel comfortable dealing with United. I never thought, never realized—”

“I know. It makes excellent sense, just not in this sort of situation. I didn't even bother checking any of the other airlines.”

“However did you get ahold of my credit card invoices?”

“No problem. Access to any private records is a piece of cake, for anyone. Thankfully, law enforcement has to convince judges to get warrants and that takes time, a good thing for you. Also, I've got a dynamite staff who are so fast and creative that I have to give them raises too often.

“No, don't stiffen up like a poker. We're talking absolute discretion here. Now, there were only sixty-eight tickets issued to women traveling alone within six hours of the flight you took to Washington, D.C. I believed it would be three hours, but we all wanted to be thorough. It turned out you called the airline to make reservations only two hours and fifty-four minutes before the flight, as a matter of fact. You moved very quickly once you made up your mind to get the hell out of Dodge. Then you had to buy a ticket to
Boston, then on to Portland, Maine, when you arrived at Dulles in Washington, D.C. You didn't want to buy it in New York, for obvious reasons. You ran up to the ticket counter, knowing full well that the next flight to Boston was in a scant twelve minutes. You wanted out of the line of fire and to get where you were going as quickly as you could. There was a flight from Dulles to Boston leaving only forty-five minutes after you landed in Dulles, but you turned it down. You didn't have any checked luggage, too big a risk with that, which was smart of you. The woman at the check-in counter recognized your photo, said she realized you might miss that plane, but you insisted even though she tried to talk you out of it. She didn't understand at the time, since there was another flight so soon. She told you the chances were very high that you'd miss the first plane to Boston.”

“I nearly did miss it. I had to run like mad to catch it. They were ready to close the gate and I just slipped right through.”

“I know. I spoke to the flight attendant who greeted you at the door when you came rushing onto the plane. She said you looked somewhat desperate.”

She sighed, but didn't say anything, just crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him, still as a stone. “Come on, let's hear the rest of it.”

“It didn't take long to find you on that flight to Portland. Your fake ID was pretty amateur. I'll bet they were really busy at the check-in counters in New York and Dulles for you to get passed on through. At least you were smart enough not to use that driver's license again to get yourself a rental car. You waited an hour for a flight from Boston to Portland, then you took a taxi into Portland—yes, one of my people found the driver and verified that it was you—and went to Big Frank's Previously Owned Cars on Blake Street. You wanted your own car. That told me that you had a definite destination in mind, a place where you were going to burrow in for the long haul. I got all the particulars out of Big Frank, including your license plate number,
the make, model, and color of your Toyota. I called a friend in the Portland PD to put out an APB on you and it didn't take more than a day to net you. Remember when you got gas at the Union 76 station when you were first coming into town?”

She'd paid cash. No trail. No record. “I didn't make any mistakes.”

“No, but it turns out that the guy who pumped your gas is a police radio buff with an excellent memory for numbers. He heard the APB, remembered your car and license plate, and phoned it in. It got to me really fast. Don't worry, I canceled the APB. Needless to say, I owe a good-sized favor to Chief Aronson of the Portland PD. Also I spoke to the kid who pumped your gas, told him it had all been a mistake, thanked him, and slipped him a fifty. Oh yes, I got a good laugh over the name on the fake ID—Martha Clinton—a nice mix of presidential names.”

“I did, too,” Becca said, wondering why she'd bothered at all.

“At least Martha was young and had blondish hair. Did you buy it off a street kid in New York?”

“Yes. I had to try six of them before I could find an ID that looked anything remotely like me. I liked the name. When did you get here to Riptide?”

“Two days ago. I went immediately to the only bed-and-breakfast in town and of course you had stayed there for one night. Scottie told me you'd taken the old Marley place.” He splayed his fingers. “Nothing to it.”

“Why didn't you come to see me right away?”

“I wanted to get the lay of the land, watch you awhile, see what was happening, who you spoke to, things like that. It's an approach I've always used. I've never believed in rushing into things, if I have a choice.”

“It was so easy for you.” She sighed, her arms still crossed over her chest. “That means that the FBI should be ringing the doorbell at any minute.”

“Nah, they're not as smart as I am.”

She threw her empty coffee cup at him.

He snagged the cup out of the air and set it back on the table. His reflexes were good. He was very fast. She said, “I'm awfully glad I didn't come any nearer to you. You could have nailed me in a flash, couldn't you?”

“Probably, but that's not the point. I'm not here to hurt you. I'm here to protect you.”

“My guardian angel.”

“That's right.”

“Why don't you think the cops and FBI will be here any moment?”

“They have to follow all sorts of legal procedures to get to the goodies. Also, they tend to use a shovel when a scalpel would work best.” He paused a moment, grinning at her. “And I also sent them on a wild-goose chase. I'll tell you about it later.”