A Bat in the Belfry

by Sarah Graves

  His harmless appearance served him well, however, since on account of it many guys didn’t put up a fight early, and by the time they realized their mistake he’d already snapped the handcuffs on them. And even if they did fight, they learned pretty swiftly that looks can be deceiving, which I hoped they were now because Bob looked mad as the dickens.

  “What,” he demanded again, “do you think you’re—”

  He stopped in frustration. Past him in the office area were six identical desks, each with a phone, a laptop computer, a chair, and a wastebasket. On one wall hung a classroom-sized whiteboard, a large calendar, and a big white-faced clock.

  The opposite wall, on the street side, had been the front of the old A&P where the weekly specials on pot roasts, paper goods, and sweet corn had been postered. Now white venetian blinds covered the windows, their louvered slats almost shutting out the rattle of rain mixed with sleet outside.

  “Ugh,” I said, pulling off wet outerwear. After the walk down here, I already felt like somebody had been hitting me with one of my own hammers, and this place wasn’t helping any. Besides the drywall compound, it smelled like latex paint, chemicals from the whiteboard markers, and glue from the indoor-outdoor carpeting, recently installed.

  Bob hated it in here, though, and I didn’t blame him. All this new, supposedly better location needed was a spray-textured ceiling with glitter in it to make the ticky-tacky look complete.

  But that’s not what was eating him now. “I’ve got a dead girl. I’ve got her father. I’ve got the state cops, the medical examiner, the DA, and the Bangor Daily News all crawlin’ up my rosy red—”

  I cut him off. “Bob, have you got Chip? The kid who’s staying at my house, that you picked up just a little while ago on Key Street?”

  I’d already seen copies of Lizzie Snow’s photographs on the office corkboard; Bob must’ve made them when she was here introducing herself. But what I didn’t see, back there among the new desks and chairs all lined up like an ad for Office Depot, was my houseguest. I had a mental picture of Chip Hahn being whisked off for a brief courtroom appearance, followed by a long sojourn in prison while a case against him was meticulously assembled.

  And putting Chip into a prison population was going to work out about as well as dropping a tame mouse into a room full of hungry cats. His only hope would be trading that rabbit’s foot of his for a tommy gun, somehow.

  Bob didn’t answer. Instead, he yanked his slicker and sou’wester from the doorway area’s carved wooden coat-tree, the only item he had managed to salvage from the old cop shop.

  “Bob,” I pressed him, “I really need to—”

  He turned on me. “No, you don’t, Jake.”

  He stomped his feet into rubber shoe covers. “There are people in this situation who need things. You’re not one of them.”

  His tone was as harsh as a slap, betraying, I supposed, the pressure he felt.

  He shoved the heavy door open, then relented. “But I guess you won’t give up until you get what you’ve come for, will you?”

  He squinted up into the thinning rain, and when he did I saw that some of the drops running down his face were tears.

  Shock kept me silent. I’d known Bob for a long time; he was a friend. I’d never seen him this way before.

  “Come on,” he ordered gruffly. “I’m going to take a ride around town, make sure no other catastrophes have hit while I’ve been busy with all this—”

  His own daughter Annie, I realized, would be a teenager in a few years, like the girl he’d found in the church. “If you want to hear what I’ve got to say meanwhile,” he added as we followed him through the chilly drizzle across the parking lot, “you can.”

  I climbed into the squad car’s back seat, grateful as I was sure Chip also had been for Bob’s habit of wiping the seat and door panels with spray cleaner regularly; Ellie got in the front.

  “You can hear it,” he repeated as we belted ourselves in and he started the car, twisting his thick neck to peer past me as he backed it out. “But you’re not going to like it.”

  “Hey, Dweeb!” The shout came from somewhere down the hallway where the guys on the Shead High School basketball team gathered each morning right before first period.

  “Dweeb! Hey, Dweebles!” Shoving his geometry book back into his locker, David ignored their taunts. It was the morning after the late-night stolen bicycle escapade, and his throat still felt sore and bruised from where Bogie had squeezed it.

  More catcalls followed him as he slammed his locker door and merged with the jostling, chattering mass of kids headed for the gymnasium, where a schoolwide assembly had been called. The guys weren’t trying to be friendly; far from it. Instead, by using the nickname that Bogie had given him, they were reminding him that if not for his association with the thuggish little freshman, David would be dead meat. As if he needed reminding …

  In the gym, which still smelled of popcorn and grilled hot dogs from the refreshments sold at last night’s basketball game, the mood seemed oddly subdued. Clusters of girls huddled in their usual cliques, their faces shocked and their eyes, he noted with puzzlement, red from crying. Teachers came over and patted them on their shoulders; David hadn’t seen any TV yet today or been on his computer, and he wondered if there’d been a big terrorist attack somewhere. Or maybe the president had been assassinated.

  He found a spot on the bleachers and sat, positioning himself between the area customarily reserved for teachers and the nearest exit as he noted that Bogie wasn’t here today. Not that Bogie’s presence was necessarily required to ensure David’s safety—Bogie found out everything that happened in school, sooner or later, and he carried a grudge—but David didn’t see any sense in letting himself get trapped, just in case.

  The first-period warning buzzer sounded as the principal made her way to the center of the floor. Bogie, David imagined enviously, was still asleep in bed, having blown off school again. They’d parted last night at the cemetery gates, David to hustle on home, where he’d sneaked back in holding his breath, mindful of his parents both snoring at the top of the stairs, and Bogie to head down to the breakwater, probably, where Harvey Spratt and the rest of his crew would still be hanging out even that late at night.

  The principal, a white-haired, gravel-voiced woman named Mrs. Krause who also taught math and whose sharp-eyed gaze missed nothing, gestured once for silence and got it. David thought that if she called down a lightning bolt to strike them all dead, she would probably get that, too; she was that kind of teacher.

  “Today,” she intoned, “is a sad and terrible day in the life of our school.”

  A sob from somewhere high in the bleachers interrupted her; she glanced up impatiently, then went on. “We have lost an important member of our community, a young person whose life had barely begun.”

  Some in the audience, mostly the girls, seemed to know this already. Others didn’t, and looked either frightened or bored.

  “Jeez, cut to the chase, will you, you old hag?” one of the basketball players muttered, loudly enough for her to hear. His pals elbowed him appreciatively, but the flicker of her answering glance made David glad he hadn’t been the one who said it.

  She went on: “Last night, sometime around midnight—”

  Home, David thought automatically. When whatever it was happened, I was still—

  “… Karen Hansen, a beloved member of our freshman class and valued citizen of our school community …”

  A cold feeling came over David. That must’ve been what the sirens last night were all about, he realized. Around him the sounds of weeping intensified, and even some of the boys looked troubled.

  “… murdered …”

  At the word, loud sobbing broke out somewhere behind him. A girl got up and ran from the gym. The first-period late buzzer sounded, loud and obnoxious as an alarm in a nuclear power plant, he imagined, but nobody seemed to hear it.

  Sitting there, silent and still amid what felt like
utter chaos, David struggled to make sense of it all. Karen Hansen? A girl he knew slightly, funny-faced, faded clothes, just someone he’d brushed past in the hall sometimes—

  Karen Hansen got killed last night? Murdered?

  “Christ,” breathed one of the basketball guys, whose name was Bub Wilson, and his buddies looked stunned as well. David felt a mean pulse of grim satisfaction at this evidence that the guys had feelings, that they could be made unhappy, too, even if it took a murder to do it.

  Mostly, though, he kept circling around the other thing Mrs. Krause had said: “… sometime around midnight …”

  Now the assembly was ending, and she was talking about grief counselors, a memorial project, and getting together in groups to discuss their feelings. David got up. The idea of talking about his feelings only intensified his certainty that very soon he’d need to run to the boys’ room and vomit.

  Because he’d been home, all right. When the clock on the living room mantel struck twelve last night, he’d still been in his own bed. Bogie hadn’t shown up until about twelve-thirty. But …

  Bogie … and Harvey Spratt.

  A full-on druggie and all-around creep, Harvey was the downside of being protected by Bogie Kopmeir. Harvey had Bogie’s back the same way Bogie had David’s, or anyway Bogie thought Harvey did. David had his suspicions about what would really happen if Bogie ever actually tried to depend on Harvey. He was pretty sure that Harvey’s ideas of loyalty only ran one way, toward himself.

  But right now that was neither here nor there, David decided as he made his way out of the gymnasium with his classmates. Right now what he knew was that after their outing together, Bogie would’ve probably gone downtown to the breakwater to meet up with his unsavory older friend.

  What one of them might’ve been doing before Bogie came to roust David from his bed, though, was David’s question. Because Bogie was tough and violent, but Harvey was another can of worms altogether.

  Harvey was nuts.

  6

  “Rats.” Lizzie Snow faced herself in the motel room mirror. “Of all the damn fool …”

  A knock at the door stopped her. Great, she’d come back too soon and the maid wanted in. “No, thank you,” she called, making her voice sound as cheerful as possible.

  Which wasn’t very. Nice work, genius. In less than twenty-four hours, you’ve made an enemy of a local cop, gotten a pair of town busybodies involved in your private business, and fixed it so some poor guy just out for a late-night stroll is sitting in an interview room right now, wondering what hit him.

  If they even had interview rooms here. Eastport was pretty, but that was about all; as far as she could tell, the only hot spots were the hardware store and the marine-supply shop.

  At least if I need a boat hook or belaying pin, I’ll be all set. Not that she actually knew what those things were, nor did she want to. Most everyone else in town seemed to, though, at least to judge by their clothes: jeans and sneakers, mostly, with here and there—on men and women both—a pair of work boots so big and clunky, you could drive railroad spikes with them.

  Among them, her own skinny black pants, polished boots, and leather jacket looked wildly out of place, and so did her careful makeup, which back in the city had looked normal, even restrained. But up here I might as well be wearing a clown costume, a big red nose, and some floppy shoes. Maybe a squirt-gun daisy in my lapel.

  Defiantly she ran a comb through her hair and freshened her lipstick. Pretending to be one of the gang hadn’t ever gotten her anywhere, and she doubted it would here, either, no matter what the accepted costume might be.

  Or pretending she was anything but what she was. She’d begun brushing more blush onto her cheeks when the knock came again.

  “I said I don’t any need maid service, thanks,” she called, somewhat less pleasantly than before, because what she really didn’t need was more hassles, not even of the well-meant variety.

  “It’s not maid service I’m offering,” came the reply. That voice …

  Dylan’s voice. Her heart punched the inside of her chest. Until last night, she hadn’t seen him in over a year, hadn’t thought she’d ever see him again. But now—

  One year, three months, and five days, a sly whisper in her head commented knowingly before she could shut it up. D’you want to know how many hours and minutes?

  Oh, but I forgot—you already do. She strode to the door and yanked it open. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  He stepped past her into the room, taking in her bag messily unpacked with its contents strewn all over the bed, makeup scattered across the dresser, and the new bottle of bourbon on the bedside table, beside the room’s plastic ice bucket.

  “Made yourself at home already, I see.” He let his gaze rest a little too long on her unmade bed, the sheets in disarray from where she’d tossed and turned in them, unable to sleep.

  Thinking of him, replaying the glimpse she’d caught of him at the crime scene last night … Damn, damn.

  He caught her expression and a look of innocent hurt crossed his lean face. “Aw, Lizzie, don’t be that way. It’s me.”

  Tall and slim, with dark, thick-lashed eyes and high cheekbones, he held his arms out the way he used to, for her to step into them. “You know I don’t bite,” he said.

  The look of innocence changed. “Not too hard, anyway,” he added softly. “Remember?”

  I do, indeed, she thought. But if you think that’s going to get you anywhere, you can go piss up a rope.

  “Hello, Dylan,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  The night before, she’d turned her back on him and walked away, not giving him more than a flat “hello.” Yeah, like that was really going to work.

  “You look great, Lizzie,” he said, ignoring her question. “A little thin. And sad, as if you haven’t been having enough fun.”

  His eyes said he could remedy that last part, if she would let him. Dream on, Binky.

  “I’m fine. Working in Boston until recently. You know the drill, guns and knives, a poisoning now and then, and—oh, yes, a disemboweling a couple of months ago. That one was a pip, you probably read about it in the papers.”

  She’d been censoring her thoughts since even before she’d arrived in Eastport, knowing that the first rule of keeping a secret was keeping it from yourself. People here didn’t need to know what she was.

  But Dylan already knew. She turned back to the mirror, began combing her hair again though it didn’t need it.

  “Tons of fun,” she said. “A laugh a minute, actually.”

  He came up behind her, not touching her. “Oh, really. That why you quit?”

  She met his gaze in the mirror. “How’d you know about that? And how’d you find me, anyway?” She’d have sworn he hadn’t followed her from the church last night.

  His answering glance was mocking, as if he’d read her mind. But then he gave up the Lothario act. “I saw your car outside.”

  Which could be true. She’d had the same car back when they were … but no, don’t think about that, she ordered herself. “And I know you quit because I keep track of you,” he added.

  He let his hands rest lightly on her shoulders. “Or is that not allowed, caring about what’s happening to someone I was close to?”

  She stepped briskly sideways, out from under his touch. “I’m not in charge of what you do or don’t care about. But I can tell you that you’re wasting your time.”

  “Come on, Lizzie, I’ve really changed—” he began again, but she cut him off roughly.

  “No. No, you haven’t. You’re a liar, Dylan. And that’s never going to be different.”

  She took a shaky breath, fighting tears suddenly. But no, she was done weeping about him, had been for a long time. “But maybe you don’t remember. Maybe it’s slipped your mind, what you told me.”

  He looked caught. Too late, buddy. You bought this trip by knocking on my door after all this time. And now—

  No
w he was taking it. “You told me she was leaving,” Lizzie snarled the words out at him. “You said your marriage was over. While you and I were in bed together, you said she’d be glad,” Lizzie finished, feeling again the fresh anguish of his betrayal even though it had happened over a year ago.

  Not that a year was long enough. A century wouldn’t be long enough. Her nails stabbed the palms of her hands.

  He stared at his shoes, his easy, charming line of chatter stopped in its tracks by her outburst. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  And to his credit, he actually looked sorry; sounded it, too. That didn’t undo any of what he’d put her through, though. And anyway, this could all be a charade; Dylan was an actor par excellence, as she knew only too well.

  A master at the art of keeping a secret. After a long moment, he spoke again. “We did have a good time together, though, didn’t we?” His tone softened as he reached out and plucked her bone-handled jackknife from the dresser top, then put it back. “I mean, come on, Lizzie, admit it. It wasn’t all bad.”

  “I don’t have to admit a thing to you. I thought I’d never see you again. Which was fine with me,” she retorted.

  Lies, lies … and then you accuse him of being deceitful? His glance went to the bottle on the dresser and then to her face, questioningly.

  Right, like you care. It never bothered you before. “No, I was not having a drink,” she told him. “That’s for later.”

  There’d been a while there, right after she found out about his wife, that she’d hit it a little hard. But bottle-emptying was a fool’s game, even more than he had been. “And anyway, may I remind you that until I met you, I’d never tasted a drop?”

  Strange but true; her tenement upbringing, in a neighborhood known for drug busts, domestic abuse, and arson, had featured a dad so deadbeat that he couldn’t even be bothered to leave. She might’ve just numbed herself to it, but after their mother died she’d needed to stay alert to protect her younger sister from her dad’s drunken outbursts and—just once—his midnight attempt at groping Sissy.