A Bat in the Belfry

by Sarah Graves

  Bub Wilson stuck his close-clipped blond head up through the moonroof of the car filled with his buddies as it pursued David slowly up the steep hill of Adams Street.

  “Hey, Dweeb!” Behind the wheel was Jerome Kadlick, a thin, fox-faced teenager with dark eyes and a sullen expression. The boys had caught sight of David on Water Street on his way home from the library, and noticed that he was alone.

  Bogie Kopmeir was keeping a low profile today for some reason; David hadn’t seen him yet. With the boys in the car still keeping pace with him, David walked faster. Just don’t look at them, his dad always said about situations like this. Don’t antagonize them, don’t give them anything to—

  Something buzzed fast past his face with a quick, hot zzzzt! At the same time he heard the snap! of a BB gun being fired.

  “Hey, Dweebles, pay attention when I talk to you,” ordered Bub. Glancing sideways at him, David noted the BB pistol in Bub’s hand. “You ain’t got Bogie with you now, punk, so listen up.”

  Another shot. This one smacked the street, sending sharp grit spraying stingingly up into David’s face. Head down, fists jammed in his jacket pockets, he felt hot tears filling his eyes. Half a block now, past the quarter acre of scrub woods and partly emerged granite boulders of a vacant lot, and he would be able to turn onto the narrow back lane leading to his house.

  He didn’t think the boys would follow him there. The rarely used lane’s ruts were deep, with a rise at the center that would take out the muffler of Jerome’s dad’s car.

  Between here and the lane, though, was the hill’s steepest part. Zzzt! Bub’s third shot caught the bill on David’s baseball cap, nipping a few threads from its tip.

  David flinched hard, provoking gufffaws from his tormentors keeping pace with him in the slowly moving car.

  “Dweeb! Look at me, you little mutt.”

  David stopped, transfixed by the sight of the tiny tear in his Red Sox cap. He’d gotten it at an actual game, in Boston with his father and his uncle Joe, who’d been skinny and pale and who had died a few weeks afterwards of pancreatic cancer.

  “Shut up,” he said, taking the cap off to hold in both hands as he turned to Bub.

  At the same time, he was calculating the distance through the vacant lot to his house. Too far; he should have thought of that before he opened his stupid mouth, he realized. But the words had just come out of him.

  “What?” said Bub incredulously, hauling his slim frame out through the moonroof and leaping easily from it to the street in a single, liquidly athletic motion.

  He stalked toward the sidewalk. David took off running but Bub was on him in a heartbeat, one big splay-fingered hand clamped around David’s arm and the other clutching a fistful of his hair.

  “You little dirtbag,” he snarled, muscling David backwards until he had him shoved up hard against the old gatepost marking what once had been a driveway, curving into the vacant lot.

  Bub’s face contorted menacingly, teeth bared, small ice-blue eyes glaring. His breath smelled like pizza. Pinning David, he drew his fist back, ready to punch and punch for the sheer animal joy of it, and then out of nowhere Bogie was on him.

  Bub staggered backwards, flailing ineffectually, while Bogie clung to the basketball player’s back with his short legs wrapped around the bigger boy’s torso. The amount of blood suddenly gushing from Bub Wilson’s nose shocked David, as did the number of blows Bogie managed to deliver to Bub’s face while essentially slugging him from behind.

  Bogie spat curses, kneeing Bub in the kidneys, scratching and headbutting while the boys from the car scrambled out but then hesitated, unwilling to get within punching range. Bogie aimed a last, open-handed slap at the side of Bub’s head, cocking his arm back and slamming his palm flat to Bub’s red, bitten ear: smack!

  Bub dropped like a felled tree. The other boys started forward. Bogie whirled, screaming, pounding his chest with his fists, which were spattered with Bub’s blood.

  “Yah! Yah! You want summah this? Yah!” he screamed as he advanced on them, whereupon they scuttled back to their car and raced off in it, leaving Bub lying there.

  David stood shakily by the gatepost as Bogie stomped back, not sparing the moaning Bub Wilson a glance. “Come on,” he said.

  Looking back as he followed Bogie into the vacant lot, David faintly suggested that maybe they should call help for Bub.

  “Call him a freakin’ hearse,” Bogie responded irritably. “I hope he freakin’ dies there.”

  By now Bub was struggling up. So he could still move, anyway, David thought with a combination of disappointment and relief. Bogie chuckled, spinning the BB pistol he’d taken from Bub around his index finger as if it were a six-shooter. He looked happy, like a little kid with a new toy.

  What just happened back there? David wondered. It was as if he’d witnessed some violent force of nature in action, a volcano erupting or something, and now it was over.

  They came out of the vacant lot, crossed the lane into the rear yard of David’s house. A pie was cooling on the small cast-iron café table on the back porch, set on a blue gingham-checked dish towel, and the sight suddenly made David feel like bursting into tears.

  URGENT WEATHER MESSAGE

  WEATHER SERVICE CARIBOU MAINE

  FOR INTERIOR HANCOCK-COASTAL HANCOCK-CENTRAL WASHINGTON-COASTAL WASHINGTON-INCLUDING THE CITIES OF … EASTPORT … PERRY … PEMBROKE … CALAIS … LUBEC … MACHIAS

  WEATHER ADVISORY CONTINUES IN EFFECT UNTIL MIDNIGHT EDT TOMORROW NIGHT …

  THE WEATHER SERVICE IN CARIBOU HAS ISSUED A WEATHER ADVISORY FOR HEAVY RAIN AND GALE FORCE WINDS

  * PRECIPITATION TYPE … RAIN HEAVY AT TIMES. LOCALLY AS MUCH AS 1 INCH PER HOUR.

  * ACCUMULATIONS … RAIN 3 TO 5 INCHES TOTAL EXCEPT WHERE DOWNPOURS FREQUENT.

  * TIMING … TODAY INTO TOMORROW NIGHT.

  * TEMPERATURES … IN THE LOWER 40S.

  * WINDS … NORTHEAST 35-65 MPH. WITH POSSIBLE HIGHER GUSTS ESPECIALLY COASTAL.

  * IMPACTS … IMPACT FROM THIS STORM WILL BE CONSIDERABLE. EXPECT SOME TRAVEL DIFFICULTIES. WIND DAMAGE AND POWER OUTAGES LIKELY, LOCAL FLOODING LIKELY.

  PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS …

  TRAVEL DELAYS MAY OCCUR. TRAVEL WILL BE DIFFICULT. PLAN EXTRA TIME TO REACH YOUR DESTINATION. MARINERS SHOULD STAY IN PORT. SECURE LOOSE OBJECTS. POSTPONE TRAVEL AT HEIGHT OF STORM IF POSSIBLE. DO NOT DRIVE THROUGH FLOODED AREAS. HIGH TIDES. HIGH WINDS MAY IMPACT COMMUNICATIONS TOWERS ESPECIALLY DOWNEAST. EXPECT OUTAGES.

  8

  When I got back to my house after dropping Ellie at hers, I had every intention of staying home for the storm’s duration. But then I went upstairs to wash my hands, and calamity ensued.

  This way: I turned the hot and cold water faucet handles on together, which in my old house is the only way of not either boiling or freezing yourself to death. The faucet gurgled. Some water spat out. Then the water cut off, but the gurgling didn’t, and the next thing I knew, there was yelling down in the kitchen, followed by the banging of pans and clanking of buckets.

  All of which, I knew from my sadly extensive experience in This Old Money-Pit, represented a broken pipe in the downstairs hall ceiling. And since every plumber in town was busy putting sump pumps into cellars not already equipped with them (in towns to our south it was rumored that the animals were lining up two by two), I had little choice but to put on my own plumber’s hat.

  Which resembled a dunce cap, and some people said was made of tinfoil, but I had to do something before it started raining even harder inside the house than out. So I raced to the car, backed out of a driveway so flooded that the animal story started sounding halfway believable, and drove toward downtown and the harbor, where I expected to see an Ark floating.

  There wasn’t, but if it kept raining like this, everything else would be soon. I left the car in a lagoon that hours earlier had been a parking lot, then rushed across the street through what was already a running stream. In the store, clerks hurried to keep up with sales o
f downspouts, drainage tiles, and spray caulk, gutter sections and connectors, and—for when all else failed—truly enormous blue plastic tarps, plus plenty of bungee cords to lash them down.

  In the narrow old building with its wooden floors, exposed brick walls, and wide-bladed fans turning slowly near the high, stamped-tin ceilings, I found my way to the pipe section, where braided steel, copper, PVC, and PEX were all displayed, cut in lengths or dangling from big reels.

  The store smelled as usual of paint, sawdust, and 3-in-One oil, mingled perfumes that always encourage me in fond beliefs that I’d be much better off without. Such as, for instance, the idea that no matter how bad the trouble is, a little elbow grease and an insane amount of determination can still make everything all right.

  Well, that and the right tools. Buoyed by this notion, I chose two pieces of PEX pipe and an installation kit. It held a crimping tool, various sizes of compression fittings, and pipe cutters. The whole thing was more expensive in the short run than it would’ve been to splice in more copper piping, but over the long haul I figured I was saving on the psychiatric care I’d be needing if I ever had to work with copper piping again.

  Because of two words: “soldering gun.” Personally, I’d rather try fixing a pipe with an AK-47. As I pondered this, the chatter around the cash register up front began penetrating my plumbing-obsessed brain. And despite the emergency at home, when I heard Lizzie Snow’s name, I couldn’t resist a peek around a display of work gloves—cloth, leather, insulated, rubberized, and thin plastic, just to name a few—to see who was there.

  “She won’t arrest anyone,” said Beanie Rumford, leaning on the cash register counter. “She’ll just nag ’em to death. Make ’em wish they were in jail, y’know? Like their wives do.”

  “Har har,” said his audience, a quartet of Eastport’s least admirable citizens. Lounging by the garden supplies were an enlightened crew of benchwarmers, second-guessers, and armchair quarterbacks, none of whom would ordinarily have been caught dead in the hardware store, since it reminded them too much of work.

  But of course it was raining outside, so they were making an exception. “She ain’t no cop. She’s too good-lookin’ for a cop,” another of them chimed in; I guessed the rocket science programs Dinty Dutton had applied to must’ve been full. “Those legs of hers look like they go all the way to heaven, don’t they?”

  As he glanced around for approval, Barron Hallie spoke up. “Don’t know what a woman’d want with that job,” he commented from behind a shrubby mustache. “Decent one wouldn’t, anyway.”

  They didn’t know I was down the aisle, listening. “Oh, she’s decent, all right.” Beanie sniggered. “I wouldn’t mind her workin’ with me undercover, you know what I mean? Get it? Under covers?”

  Apparently they all did, which surprised me considering that their combined IQ barely exceeded today’s temperature. More hilarity followed until I appeared with my pipes and my pipe-putting-together kit, which I may have set down on the counter a bit more firmly than necessary.

  “Anyone working under cover with you would need a gas mask,” I told Beanie as the clerk rang up my purchases; the cloud of garlic and chewing-tobacco fumes hanging around Beanie today was even more stunning than usual. “Haven’t you got anything better to do than gossip?”

  Because the idea of Lizzie Snow being a cop was silly. For one thing, cops didn’t have to go wandering around on their own snooping into things like missing nieces and possibly murdered sisters; they had all the snooping resources in the world.

  “Ain’t gossip,” Barron protested stoutly.

  The clerk went to check a price. With the pipe stuff, I’d picked up a can of Spackle, some plaster buttons, a putty knife, and a can of white ceiling paint, since the burst pipe was above the ceiling and that meant taking some of the ceiling down.

  “Heard it straight from Paulie Waters,” Barron said, but I ignored him, still busy with my own thoughts.

  Of course, taking the ceiling down meant patching it back up again; besides, I could always use ceiling paint. Oh, the happy life of the old-house fix-up enthusiast; tra-freaking-la.

  “He thought there might be something hinky about her, so he went an’ ran her licence plate,” said Barron. “Turns out she’s a Boston po-lice officer, sure as shootin’.”

  Which got my attention, even if he had mispronounced it: ossifer. I turned sharply to him.

  “That’s right.” Barron looked delighted with himself. “And that’s not all. Paulie says he thinks pretty soon she’s gonna be our brand-new Eastport chief of police.”

  So there, smarty-pants, his defiant expression said, and I was about to reply, but just then, as the clerk returned, Paulie himself came in, the bell over the door jangling brightly. The good-looking young Eastport cop was Bob Arnold’s second-in-command, and so might reasonably have thought the chief’s job would be his should it become vacant.

  But the scowl on his face said something had disappointed him recently. As he caught my eye his mouth formed a bitter line, then he turned away, pretending to compare the advantages of a tack hammer versus a rubber mallet.

  So maybe, I thought with dismay as the clerk told me what I owed—if there were taxi meters for old-house fix-up expenses, mine would’ve overheated and burst into flames by now—maybe the stories about Bob leaving Eastport were true.

  And maybe that was Lizzie’s secret: she was replacing him. No wonder Paulie’s face looked stormier than today’s weather …

  So forbidding, in fact, that although I approached him, when I got up close he looked exactly as if he might bite my head off, and I decided to ask Bob Arnold about it instead.

  If the rumor was true, though … oh, man, just what I needed: a smart, energetic, and slim-as-a-switchblade cop zipping around town, reminding me every day with her edgy style and her fearless attitude that she was, as Sam would have put it if he weren’t so mad at her, da bomb.

  And I wasn’t, anymore. Not to mention that if she had lied by not saying she was a cop in the first place … well, why?

  Oh, I didn’t like it a bit. Or what I found when I got home, either: when I walked in the door, I found that the pipe leak had enlarged quite a lot, and as a result my back hall bore a strong resemblance to a certain famous watery honeymoon destination.

  So I spent the afternoon replumbing not only the bathroom but the mysteries of compression fittings, which when you’re perched atop a stepladder with your head stuck up through a hole in the ceiling is not exactly a cakewalk. But finally I got it sorted:

  First, shut off all the water in the house. Next, hacksaw out the broken part of the pipe. Measure the cut end’s diameter, slide on the correct compression fittings, butt the new piece’s ends up to the existing-pipe ends, and slide the fitting over the two mated pieces like a sleeve. Then crimp the fitting and repeat the process at the other end of the replacement piece, and …

  Presto, no more Niagara Falls. And with any luck, that would be the day’s final emergency, since besides fixing the leak I’d also done what I could about that carpenter-ant-weakened church steeple; not much, but at least it would get looked at soon.

  As for Chip Hahn, he had a lawyer, so we didn’t have to set that up for him. I’d called the courthouse, talked to a pleasant clerk, and discovered that yes, he was still there, but no, he had not been arrested. I asked the clerk to find out if he wanted us to come and stay with him, or bring him anything.

  Which wasn’t strictly in her job description, of course. But she did it and the answer came back no. Meanwhile, Ellie and I had agreed that we’d start asking around in the morning, once the storm had gone by, in case anyone in town knew anything we might find interesting on Chip’s behalf.

  Ellie had said she’d email Lizzie Snow’s photos of her niece around, too; what that increasingly odd story was really all about I couldn’t begin to guess. Could the guys in the hardware store be right?

  Looking out into the rain-swept evening, I hoped not, and not only
for my own sake. As a potential police chief, Lizzie fit Eastport the way a roofing tack fits a finishing nail’s pre-drilled hole: you can hammer it in there, all right, but it’s not going to do the job like you wanted and it’ll always look funny.

  For now, though, all I could do about any of it was stay home, with no plans to go out any more tonight. But that just goes to show how life can turn on a dime, doesn’t it? Because not much later I was in a strange car, sneaking down a dark street through wind-driven rain while following a possible murderer.

  And that was the good part of the evening.

  • • •

  “That’s them.” Lizzie pointed across the dark expanse of rain-swept Water Street.

  “I’m telling you, they were there last night, and they were watching.”

  At the church, she meant, right after poor Karen Hansen had been knifed to death. “I mean they were fascinated. Way more than the rest.”

  She’d arrived at my place while I was in the hall, cleaning up after the pipe repair.

  “Jake,” she’d said, standing on my back porch with the rain hammering down behind her, “can I come in?”

  “Sure,” I said. What I wanted to say was “Liar, liar.” The more I’d thought about it, the more believable that rumor about Lizzie being a cop sounded.

  But I didn’t feel like confronting her about it; for one thing I had no control over who the next Eastport police chief might be, and for another, with my hair still full of Spackle globs and my eyes gritty with plaster dust, I didn’t give a hoot if she was secretly Bozo the Clown as long as I could get into a good hot shower real soon, now.

  So I just stood aside to let her past the stepladder, the spackling tools, the hacksaw, a tub of Spackle, a plastic drop cloth, the opened can of plaster buttons, and the electric screwdriver.

  Due to the leak, I’d had not only a water emergency but also a ceiling emergency, and when I reached up to smooth Spackle onto a plaster button, I’d nearly had a ladder emergency. But she didn’t go past the mess, because she wasn’t staying; instead, she wanted me to go with her.