by Mary Bowers
There would be something like, “He shows up and then the next thing you know,” from Henry, and Logan would agree wholeheartedly, as if it were writ large on the wall behind Henry’s head.
Then Logan would say, “I’m glad you picked up on it, too. They just took way too long.”
I glanced at Nettie from time to time, and she looked pleasant and demure, and not at all confused.
Since Logan hadn’t, I told them about the way we had found Matthew, down on the ground by the side of the road that afternoon. I thought it was a pretty good story, but I only got a few appraising looks and a smile from my aunt, who seemed pleased that we’d been good Samaritans and stopped.
Henry gave a thoughtful little grunt and asked if the bike or saddlebags had sustained much damage. He didn’t seem interested in the damage to Matthew.
“I don’t think so,” I told him. “He’s taking the bike for a tune-up, and he didn’t have the saddlebags with him this time.”
“He didn’t?”
“No, nor his camera bag, either. Logan and I thought that was odd, too.”
“Odd, but lucky,” Henry said, dismissing it. “He has expensive gear. Skidding along the pavement wouldn’t have done those bags any good, and the camera probably would have been smashed. So he left all that stuff behind in his cabin?”
“Must have. The camera bag was still hanging on a hook behind the door, so the camera’s all right, anyway. I didn’t see the saddlebags or the backpack. Running around on that bike seems to be the only thing he cares about,” I added with a touch of disappointment.
This earned another thoughtful little grunt from Henry, but no comment. Logan, apparently feeling more secure now, didn’t react at all. There was something wooden about both of them, and I took it to mean they weren’t all that interested in Matthew or his bike gear.
When there was a knock on the door, I was almost relieved. Maybe it would be someone who would speak to me, since nobody at the table seemed to want to.
I yelled, “Come in.”
It was Arnie, and he had Gail with him. They had become very companionable over the course of the last seven or eight hours, and it showed. He had apparently kept her under his wing all day long.
Arnie looked at the empty pizza box, now dusted with crumbs and cornmeal, and said, “Oh, you already ate.”
“We thought you might want to come with us to a place Arnie knows,” Gail said.
“Just plain and simple fare, but pretty darn good. But if you already ate . . . .” He didn’t seem devastated at the prospect of having Gail all to himself.
Gail did look disappointed, and terribly weary. Her face was still pale and her make-up had been all but erased by tears. In spite of looking less glamorous, she was still appealing, though, probably because she looked so very vulnerable.
“I spent the day in Arnie’s house with his family around me,” she said. “Evaline and Karl are such nice people. They made me feel just like one of the family.”
“I’m so glad,” Nettie said. “We haven’t been able to spend much time with Karl. Is he going to be staying long?”
“Well, he didn’t mean to,” Arnie said. “He was planning on going on again tomorrow. Got some business in Milwaukee, he says. But now with what happened down by the bay last night,” he said carefully, very aware of the victim’s mother beside him, “the Sheriff asked him to stick around awhile longer, and he didn’t mind. He’s got nothing to do with it, of course.”
“Of course he doesn’t,” Gail said firmly.
“These kids,” Arnie said, “they do everything over the internet, even business.”
“Even dating,” Gail said.
“Would you like a glass of wine?” Nettie offered, and I wondered how she was planning to serve it. All available glasses were already on the table with dregs at their bottoms.
“Oh, no thanks,” they said together.
Arnie switched into innkeeper mode and said, “Here, let me get that box out of your way for you. The wastebaskets in here are too small for such a thing.”
He picked up the pizza box from the table and we all said goodnight. They left.
“So,” I said immediately, “where are you taking me for dessert?”
Aunt Nettie treated it as a joke, which it most definitely was not, and my request was ignored.
“Well,” Henry said, looking at each of us in turn, as if a specific question had been asked. “What do you think?”
“It could be,” Logan said, “but I think you were right. There’s a lot going on here under the surface.”
“Even more than you think,” Nettie said. “I don’t think that was Gerda tripping over her feet behind this cabin last night.”
Logan looked concerned. He turned to Henry. “Have you done any checking on that? I mean, it seems obvious to us, but anything is possible.”
Henry, tightlipped as always, only said, “I’ve still got some friends in law enforcement. They’ve been on it.”
Nettie said, “I don’t know how unlikely it all is, but we need to know. It’s lovely that Arnie and Gail have hit it off so well, so quickly,” she said, switching gears abruptly. “Arnie has been alone here for a long time, with just his daughter for company. Of course, a lovely woman like Gail could just bowl him right over.”
“Have you got them halfway down the aisle already?” I asked. I was amused, because Aunt Nettie is famous in the family for reading the worst kind of serial-killer/mass-murderer books and having no interest at all in romance novels. It was cute, seeing her act like the sweet little thing she looked like for once, hoping everybody around her would find love.
“Well, somebody might be thinking that,” she said, and I said something like, “Well, I hope they’ll be very happy together, but they look like an odd couple to me.”
Gail didn’t look like the cabin-in-the-woods type to me, and Arnie didn’t seem like a warm and cuddly guy, but when people fall in love, anything goes.
Chapter 17 – Terror in the Night
Lying in bed at night is as alone as you can ever be with yourself, and sometimes when that point in the day comes, you need it more than other days.
The first night of a new love affair (I didn’t think I was rushing things, whatever base he said we were on), was a night when you tried to think, but mostly you just opened your pores and felt. You tried to remember the exact temperature of his body, the perceived strength of his hands and arms. You thought about the sizzle when you realized that first contact was coming, and coming now. You tried to remember the first thing you ever said to him, back when you didn’t know he was going to matter, back when it all began. Well, forty-seven-and-a-half hours ago.
You also tried not to think about the times when that first dreamy night turned out to be the high point of the whole affair. This time would be different.
I was laying there in the dark that night with a sort of purple fog pulsing around me, probing my memories past their limitations, trying to hang onto the moments that were important so I could relive them when I was old and gray.
Like a frog suddenly rising up to be a prince, the guy who’d made the lumberjack remark over a burger had somehow become The Guy. In a good way.
So I wasn’t thinking about scratching sounds against the back wall of the cabin anymore. Didn’t interest me then. Especially since there was no bump to bring me back to my senses before they started, like there had been night before.
The night before.
Gerda.
My eyes opened wide in the dark and the purple fog went pop.
And then I heard voices. Men’s voices.
And then, finally, I heard the bump. Something scratched and slid its way along the siding, and then there was another bump, and then another one, and finally I heard, “Over here, officer. We’ve got him.”
I sat up in bed, and Nettie, not as alarmed as I was, sat up more slowly.
“What’s going on out there?” I asked, because she seemed to know.
“Don’t worry, Paige. The men are taking care of it.”
“What? Wait. You don’t just let men take care of things anymore. You go out there and fight beside them.”
“Not when you’re dealing with perverts, dear,” she said. She was perfectly calm, and when she got out of bed I realized she was still in the Blair top and pants she’d worn all day. All she had to do was slip her feet into her matching moccasins and she was good to go.
I was en dishabille, having sensibly put on pajamas, since I wasn’t in on the pervert deal going on outside, and I couldn’t just go rushing out in my PJs if something was happening behind the cabin that men were having to take care of. Oh, and with an officer standing by.
I got up in confusion and started to get dressed.
By the time I got out there, I found more than one cop, though in the moving glare of flashlights I couldn’t be sure how many. Looking up the back cabin wall, I could see light coming through the acute triangle made by the cheery burgundy plaid curtains that didn’t quite meet in the middle. A ladder was laying on the ground, and somebody was being frog-marched away with a cop on either side of him. Distantly, from inside the main house, I could hear Loki barking, wanting to get in on the action.
“Who was that?” I asked Nettie and Henry, looking from the captured man to the ladder that was now laying on the ground below the window.
It was Logan who answered. I resented the fact that he was in on the whole thing and hadn’t told me, but when he came behind me and wrapped me into his warm, comforting self, I decided to postpone telling him off about it until later.
“Matthew,” he said. “The guy’s a peeping tom.”
“He’s been watching me sleep?” I demanded, outraged and confused.
There was kind of a group “Ahem” around me.
“Not only that, dear,” Nettie said.
I gasped, and I left my mouth hanging open.
The bathroom was too small to dress in, and out of courtesy to Nettie, I got out of there as soon as I was done showering. I didn’t even completely towel off in there, since I had a tendency to bang my elbows against the walls. So I finished drying off and then got myself dressed in the bedroom. For that, I did pull the curtains together, but there was that gap, and behind it, anybody peeping in would have been invisible to me.
“What was he doing, taking pictures of me?” I asked, shivering inside the cocoon of Logan’s body heat.
There was no answer, just a wary stillness.
“He was posting them somewhere in the internet,” I answered for all of them. “It’s all up in the cloud now, isn’t it? We can’t get it back. It’s the new thing trending on Perverts Anonymous, and will be for years to come.”
“Don’t think about it,” Logan said gently against my ear, his voice very deep. “He’s the one who should be ashamed, not you.”
I did a half-turn in his arms and put my face against his chest. “So they all get to see me running around in my panties before you do. Doesn’t that make you mad?” I tilted my head back to look at him, trying to make it a joke somehow.
He pulled in a fiery breath and controlled himself. I could feel the effort rumble through his body. “There’s nothing so far to indicate he posted his pictures anywhere. Even if he did, you didn’t give that privilege to them. They took it. They stole it. That makes all the difference.”
Nettie was suddenly behind me, and when I looked, I saw that Henry was too. I was surrounded. In spite of my shivering, I felt extremely, awesomely safe.
“You all knew? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“We weren’t absolutely sure,” Nettie said. “And we didn’t want to worry you. Come inside now, dear. We’ll tell you everything.”
* * * * *
I was more shaken by it than I realized at first. When they got me back into the cabin and sat me down at the table with Logan, I began to really shake. The kind of thing where your teeth chatter. I couldn’t stop myself.
The main house had been lit up as we’d gone back to the front of Cabin 2, and once she had me settled, Nettie said something about going over there for a pot of hot coffee.
Before she left, she told Henry, “There’s an extra blanket on the top shelf in the armoire,” and he went into the bedroom after it.
Meanwhile, I was having my hand held. Like a yearning couple in one of Wilkie Collins’ novels, I was being comforted by Logan’s warm and manly hand across the top of the small table. There were still pizza crumbs on the tabletop, and I brushed them away right onto the floor, like it was all their fault. I felt like I should swear or something, assert my capable womanhood. We were being so very proper and correct I half expected somebody to come up with smelling salts. It was ridiculous and comforting at the same time to be fussed over like that.
“I’m all right, really,” I said. My voice came out so shaky, I decided to shut up until I stopped shivering.
It was more disappointing than scary, really, I told myself. How little we can trust our fellow man, just because of the occasional creep like Matthew. I wasn’t ashamed of my body. It wasn’t that. And Matthew had never tried to touch me, physically. But the violation was complete anyway.
“How much of a perv is he?” I asked.
Henry was back by then, and he put the blanket around my shoulders and sat down near us. “Only his shrink knows for sure.”
I turned to face him. “That’s what you meant by your contacts in law enforcement? You had him checked out?”
He shrugged and gave a slight nod.
“So he’s been caught doing this kind of thing before,” I said.
“He’s got issues, that’s for sure,” Henry said as he got up to help Nettie bring in the tray loaded with a coffee pot and cups.
The Sheriff was right behind her, and to my surprise, he came on in and shook hands with Henry. They murmured cop-talk for a few seconds, and from what I could catch, Sheriff Appleton was thanking Henry for the tip.
Henry asked him how things were going up at the main house, where they were doing a preliminary interview with Matthew.
Appleton shrugged. “About like you’d expect. He’s been in counselling, talked about trying to control his urges, but when he sees his ‘type,’ another personality takes over and he can’t stop himself, blah, blah, blah.” Turning to me, he said, “Sorry, ma’am.” Whether he was sorry I’d been peeped at or that I was the “type” he didn’t specify.
It was gaslight era stuff. I was still hanging onto the edge of the blanket, but I was starting to bring myself back into focus again.
“He was out there last night, too?” I asked the Sheriff. “That must have been him I heard. He might know something about the attack on Gerda if it was.”
I could tell right away that I was missing some important implication, but nobody would say out loud what it was. Henry simply turned to Appleton with inquiring eyes.
“He’d be better off trying to be our friend right now,” the Sheriff said. “It’s what I would have expected in any other situation. Giving us information on a murder would be a way to downplay his sick little hobby. But he’s being cagey, which makes you wonder.”
Henry nodded, as if it all sense.
“He can’t deny he was doing his thing last night, because he’s still got the pictures on his digital camera and they’re date-stamped – sorry, ma’am – and he’s admitting to all that, but he swears he didn’t see anybody else or go anywhere else. From the way he’s talking, he didn’t even know there was water in the bay.”
“Well, did your people see any of his footprints down by the bay when they went over the crime scene?” I asked.
“We’re looking into that, ma’am,” he said distantly.
“And of course, you’ve searched his cabin,” I said, almost to myself. He seemed a tad irritated at my nosiness, but in view of my maidenly distress, he didn’t tell me to back off.
“Look for his backpack, and those saddlebags he uses on his bike,” Logan said. “You might f
ind more evidence in them. He didn’t have them with him when we gave him a ride back here, but they’re sure to be inside his cabin. His bike isn’t in working order and he doesn’t have a car.”
“Already done,” the Sheriff said. “Now what’s this about you bringing him back here?”
Logan briefly explained the near-miss with Ollie and the way we’d loaded both Matthew and his bike into the SUV and brought them back to Trollhaven.
“And he didn’t have them on his bike at the time?”
Henry gave the Sheriff a sharp look. “They’re not in the cabin?”
“Nothing’s there but the bike in the sitting room and the backpack in the bathroom. It’s only got a few toiletries and his skivvies in it.”
“They’re gone already?” For a moment, Henry couldn’t hide his surprise.
The Sheriff gave him a look and said, “What?”
“I was up early. Sometimes, I can’t sleep. I decided to sit out on my porch until the sun came up, and I saw Matthew leave on his bike, just as it was getting light out. He had the saddlebags with him then.”
“This morning?” the Sheriff asked sharply.
Henry nodded. Then he stopped talking.
I gave it some thought. “Could he have been robbed and then hit by a truck, all in the same day? Right after there was a murder?”
I was about to suggest that maybe Matthew himself was a target, but I was already getting pitying stares. I decided to drop out of the conversation for a while.
After studying Henry quietly, waiting for more, the Sheriff finally said, ““It almost looks like he was getting ready to make a run for it, but he couldn’t resist the urge, just one more time . . . .” He gave me a sliver of a glance, then looked down at the floor. In a lower voice, he added, “If we hadn’t caught him in the act tonight, he might have been gone by morning.”
Henry nodded, just taking it in, not working it out yet.
Meanwhile, Nettie was pouring the coffee and offering it around, even to the Sheriff, who declined. I only realized I was still grabbing the blanket with one hand and Logan with the other when I had to let go of something to take the cup from her. The blanket slipped, but by then I didn’t need it so much anymore.