The Legend of Sleepy Harlow (15 page)

Waves pounded the boat and it creaked and rocked. It was too chilly even in the closed-in area near the controls, so Levi and I ducked below deck. There, Luella had a tiny galley, a bunk bed, and benches that fit snugly along either side (I never know which is port and which is starboard) of the boat under the bow. It was warmer, sure, but below the waterline, the power of the waves was more apparent than ever.

I flopped down on the bench. “I suppose we could have dinner while we’re waiting. If you feel like eating. If the waves aren’t making you too queasy.”

“I’m always up for dinner. And don’t worry, I’ll get it.”

A couple minutes later, Levi was back with caprese in one hand. His other hand was tucked behind his back. “Gourmet dining in the middle of nowhere. You think of everything.”

“Not everything, or we wouldn’t still be here.”

“And not wine.” Like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, Levi revealed the bottle of pinot noir he’d had hidden behind his back. Good pinot noir.

My tastebuds applauded . . . right before my radar told me a rocking boat, a handsome man, and a few glasses of wine were probably a recipe for trouble.

“You had no idea we were going to get stuck here, and you still thought to bring wine?”

“I told you I know how to do a lot of interesting things. Being prepared for all events is one of them. When you’re with a beautiful woman, it never hurts to have a bottle of wine around.”

He handed me a glass of the ruby liquid, and I told my radar to shut up. I was a big girl, and nobody’s fool. The wine looked heavenly and smelled divine, and besides, I liked being called beautiful.

Levi and I clinked our glasses together and I tasted the wine and nodded my approval. In silence, we ate our dinners.

“You know . . .” He’d already gotten a second helping of caprese and finished with it. Levi sat back, satisfied. “You never gave me a chance to tell my side of the story.”

“Which story is that?”

“About why I was sorry I kissed you.”

“I thought we were supposed to forget it.”

“We are. We will. But only you got to say how you feel about it. You know, the whole ginormous, horrendous, dreadful, appalling, horrific thing.”

“I never said any of that. Well, except for the
ginormous
part.”

His smile told me he’d just been kidding. It settled into a sizzle. “So my side of the story goes something like this. I said it was a mistake for a couple of different reasons. I’m living in a new place. I’ve got a start-up business I’m trying to keep afloat. I’m busy and I have responsibilities, and I’m not looking for a relationship, and Bea, I knew it the minute it happened—that was the kind of kiss that was definitely going to lead to a relationship.”

What was that I said about radar?

Right about then, mine went completely out of whack.

That would be the only thing that could possibly explain why I leaned closer to Levi. It wasn’t like I had a lot of choice in the matter. Magnet and steel. Moth and flame. “That’s the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me,” I told him.

“Yeah.” He had the good sense to at least look a little nervous. That didn’t stop him from leaning closer to me. His words brushed my lips along with the heady aroma of the wine. “That’s something else I’ve been accused of. Sometimes I can’t help myself. I mean, when I’m with the right woman.” He plucked my wineglass out of my hand and set it on the floor along with his, then slipped an arm around my shoulders. “I don’t know if it’s a mistake or not. And right about now, I don’t care. You’re the right woman.”

When his lips brushed mine, I closed my eyes.

They flew right open again when a voice boomed out on a loudspeaker somewhere very close by, “Canadian Coast Guard. Anyone on board?”

Both Levi and I jumped and scrambled to get up on deck.

A Coast Guard cutter was waiting, its powerful spotlight trained on the
Miss Luella
.

I wonder if they saw the mix of disappointment and relief in my eyes.

Relief, of course, was the wise emotion to stick with, along with the realization that hey, it wasn’t the cavalry riding to the rescue. Not exactly, anyway.

But it would do.

  14  

T
he image on the screen slid and swooped. One second, Marianne was there; then she was gone; then she was back.

“I’ve never done anything like this before,” she said, her voice a little too loud and her words a little too clipped when she fidgeted in her seat and played with the screen in front of her. “Can you all hear me okay?”

We could, I assured her. “And if you’d stop moving around,” I added, “we’d be able to see you better, too.”

“Sorry.” Marianne made a face. “I’ve never done this before.”

“Isn’t it the best?” Chandra was sitting on the couch next to me and she slid my iPad over so that Marianne could see her. “Imagine, there you are in Cleveland and here we are at home, and we can all see each other for book discussion group.”

“It is wonderful, isn’t it?” Marianne looked comfortable in a pink robe, but there was a gauze bandage over her left eye that made her look especially worried when she said, “Except that I hear things haven’t been going so well at home. Kate?” Marianne leaned left, then right, as if she could look around and see Kate somewhere in the room. “Kate, I know you’re there. Just so you know, Alvin and I, we don’t think you did it.”

We were in my parlor, and Kate was settled in a chair that sat at a right angle from the couch where I sat. Anyone who knew Kate as well as I did couldn’t fail to notice that there wasn’t as much of a gleam in her green eyes as usual, and nowhere near the enthusiasm in her voice. She looked stiff, brittle, like the real Kate had been put aside somewhere and a cardboard replica had been sent to book discussion group in her place. In fact, she didn’t turn the tablet around so Marianne could see her when she said, “Thanks, Marianne. I wish Hank felt the way you do.”

“Hank!” There was a platter of chocolate brownies on the coffee table in front of the couch and Chandra grabbed one and took a chomp. “The man couldn’t find a barn with a searchlight. He should look for the real killer and leave Kate alone.”

“Well, of course he’s just trying to do his job,” Marianne said, but as much as she tried to be the voice of reason, she couldn’t erase the edge of worry from her words. “Bea, what are you doing about this? You are trying to find the real killer, aren’t you?”

“Oh, Bea’s been too busy for that!” Even talk of murder couldn’t keep Chandra from squealing with delight. “I bet she’s been too busy to read our book for the discussion group, too. You should know that, Marianne. Go ahead, ask her. Ask her what she’s been up to.”

Chandra must have seen me roll my eyes, because instead of giving me a chance to defend myself, she went right on. “Ask her how she could possibly have time for reading or investigating when she spent last night with Levi.”

Marianne let out a giggle that would have done a teenage girl proud. At least I think she did. Since I was grumbling, it was a little hard to tell.

I grabbed the iPad and yanked it back in my direction. “We didn’t spend the night together,” I insisted, and don’t ask me why, but I felt compelled to add, “And I did too read
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
.”

Chandra yanked the tablet away from me and set it on the coffee table in front of her. “Okay, they didn’t spend the night together, but it was all day. Alone. On an island,” she told Marianne. “And they didn’t get home until really late last night.”

I snatched the iPad back. “We were stranded,” I said in no uncertain terms, not only for Marianne’s sake, but just in case Luella and Chandra and Kate (who didn’t join in the gentle teasing) had forgotten what I’d already made perfectly clear to them when they showed up at my place for book discussion group and peppered me with questions about why I’d gotten home so late and what Levi and I had been up to out on Middle Island.

Yes, there are plenty of advantages to living in a picturesque town on a small and lovely island.

Everyone knowing everyone else’s business is not one of them.

“We went to Middle Island yesterday and we got stranded.”

“All alone! On a deserted island!” As if she’d been skewered by one of Cupid’s arrows, Chandra clapped one hand to the nose of the jack-o’-lantern that adorned her purple sweatshirt and flopped back. She grinned, and the magnanimous part of me knew it was because this was more of her teasing. The less kind and gentler Bea Cartwright suspected it was a ploy; Chandra was determined to get the details of our trip to Middle Island out of me. She thought there were plenty of them and she was convinced they were wonderfully, gloriously, and deliciously steamy.

Wouldn’t she be surprised to know how very wrong she was!

Chandra swooped up the tablet, and I imagined all Marianne could see was a close-up of Chandra’s face.

“Anything could have happened out there in the middle of nowhere,” Chandra purred, fishing for more information, hoping I’d rise to the bait.

“Anything did happen.” Luella was in the tobacco-colored chair across from Kate’s, and when I glanced her way I saw that she looked thoughtful. “But not the kind of anything Chandra’s talking about. Getting stranded like that . . .” Though Luella is as tough as any Great Lakes captain, a shiver skidded across her shoulders. “It’s not a joke. The lake can be a dangerous place, and whoever did that—”

“Really? It was on purpose?” Marianne’s question reverberated with a frisson of excitement. “You mean the murderer—”

“We don’t know that,” I assured her, and looked around the group to make sure everyone else got the message, too. I didn’t even try and make a grab for the iPad. Even if Marianne couldn’t see me from her hotel room in Cleveland, she could hear me plenty clear. “We can’t jump to conclusions. We don’t know who it was.”

“Of course we do.” Chandra set the iPad on the coffee table and sat up straight, her hands on her knees and her shoulders back. “It’s about time we stopped kidding ourselves, ladies. We know exactly who stranded you. It was Sleepy Harlow.”

In my defense, I wasn’t the only one who groaned.

“You can make fun of me all you want.” Chandra’s voice was as tight as her jaw. “And you can make up all the theories you want, too, but you have to admit, it’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“Except that it doesn’t,” I told her. “Somebody else was on the island. That’s for sure. But that doesn’t mean that somebody else was a ghost. The person could have been there because—”

“Why?” Chandra demanded.

I threw my hands in the air. “Something fishy, obviously,” I admitted. “Otherwise he wouldn’t have swiped our boat battery so we couldn’t follow. But that doesn’t mean he was the murderer.”

“Of course not,” Chandra agreed. “Because it was Sleepy.” Her eyes flew open. “Unless Sleepy is the murderer!”

Luella is as good as anyone when it comes to ignoring Chandra’s flights of fantastic fantasy, and that’s exactly what she did. Instead of giving in and trying to reason with Chandra, Luella cocked her head, thinking. “So someone was on Middle Island. Someone other than you and Levi. That’s a given. So what could that someone have been there to see?”

I shrugged. “We explored the whole island.”

“When you weren’t doing other things,” Chandra butted in, her voice a singsong of unspoken anticipation.

I pretended I didn’t hear her. “There’s not much to see. A few crumbling ruins. A whole lot of cormorants. Nothing of any significance.”

“Which proves that it was Sleepy.”

It didn’t, but I didn’t bother to point this out. Instead, I reminded Chandra, “Only if ghosts need boats to go back and forth between islands.”

This she found perplexing, and, considering it, she chewed her lower lip and the purple lipstick she’d told us when she arrived was her fashion tribute to the season.

That gave Luella a chance to discuss the problem dispassionately. “So the person might have been looking for something,” she suggested. “And if the old structures on the island aren’t all that interesting, what else is there?”

“Sleepy’s treasure?” I guess Kate was listening, since she roused herself long enough to make the suggestion.

“Except . . .” I thought about the slim pile of manuscript pages in my office. In all of Marianne’s book, I had yet to discover one mention of the word treasure. “What do you think, Marianne?” I asked her. “When it comes to Charlie Harlow, you’re the expert. Was there really a treasure?”

I turned the tablet so I could see Marianne when she answered. “There’s no proof. Which is why I don’t devote any time to it in the book. You’ve probably noticed that, Bea,” she added because she assumed I was a conscientious friend who did not let other friends’ cats pee on manuscripts. “Oh, I’ve heard the stories. Just like everyone else on South Bass has. But there’s no historical data to back them up.”

“But that doesn’t mean someone else hasn’t heard the story,” Luella said. “And that someone else might not care about historical data. Whether the story is true or not, that person might believe there really is a treasure.”

“It’s possible,” Marianne conceded.

“So let’s pretend it’s more than possible,” I suggested, getting back to that
what-if
game I’d played with Levi. No, no, not
that
what-if game! The one about coming up with theories and motives that might help explain why Noreen was murdered and who had done it. “Let’s say someone does believe there’s a treasure, and that someone wants to find it. What is it, Marianne?”

“You mean, what’s the treasure?” She shifted in her easy chair. “Well, it depends who you talk to, doesn’t it, Luella? The old guys down at the docks who still talk about Sleepy swear it’s money. A whole lot of money.”

“Other people say it’s a map that shows where Sleepy stored the liquor he brought over from Canada,” Luella added. “I’m not much of a connoisseur when it comes to liquor. If it’s true and there is old liquor tucked away somewhere, would any of it still be any good after all these years? I suppose even if what was in the bottles wasn’t very good, the bottles themselves might be collectors’ items. Somebody might want to buy them just because they’re associated with bootlegging and the whole mobster culture of the twenties.”

“Money, liquor . . .” I thought this over. “Could any of it have anything to do with Noreen?”

“Noreen. You mean the woman Kate
didn’t
kill.” Marianne made sure she emphasized the
didn’t
just to show her support.

“Could Noreen have found something? Could she have known something?” Yes, this particular version of the
what-if
game was pretty pointless, but I couldn’t help myself. “Could there be a connection? And what if the person hunting for Sleepy’s treasure actually found it? I guess we’ll never know. But if he didn’t find it, he might . . .”

What?

Honestly, I didn’t know. Except that if he hadn’t found the treasure out there on Middle Island . . . if there was no treasure to ever find . . . it meant our mysterious treasure hunter would keep looking.

But where? And how would we know?

And even more importantly, what did it have to do with Noreen?

I twitched away the thought. Rain pounded outside the parlor window, and this Monday was even grayer and gloomier than it had been the day before, when Levi and I ventured out onto the lake. I’d made lattes for everyone, and I wrapped my hands around my coffee mug, enjoying the warmth when it spread from my fingers to my hands.

“We’re not going to find the answers; not right here, not right now,” Luella said, as if she were reading my mind. “And something tells me Marianne needs her rest. So let’s do what we’re supposed to be here doing. Let’s talk about the book.” Luella reached for the slim volume she’d dropped at the side of her chair. I wasn’t surprised that she was the one who’d so deftly changed the subject. Luella loved to read, and she always had a book with her when she took a fishing charter out on the lake.

“Anybody have anything to say about the Sleepy we’re supposed to be talking about?” Luella asked.

“Well, that’s the whole point, isn’t it?” Chandra said. “In the book, it’s the headless ghost that’s trying to scare that Isaac guy—”

Kate’s voice was flat, sure, but Kate was not one to let a mistake go uncorrected. “Ichabod. Ichabod Crane.”

“Yeah, Ichabod, like I said,” Chandra breezed on. “The ghost is trying to scare Ichabod away. Just like our headless ghost was trying to scare you and Levi yesterday. Unless, of course, you and Levi were too busy doing something else to even notice the ghost.”