Say No to Murder

by Nancy Pickard

  Her running lights had been switched on. She was moving. Out of the cove. Away from me.

  “Dad!” I screamed, and took in a horrible mouthful of saltwater. Silently, my brain continued to scream, “Dad! Don’t do this to me!”

  My father had chosen this of all nights to haul anchor and go for a spin. My arms and legs continued their frantic, forward movements, but my heart had come to a dead stop.

  I caught another glimpse of the departing boat, its graceful shape outlined by its lights in the night.

  It wasn’t the Amy Denise.

  It was another boat entirely. There was no other boat in the cove, no other boat in sight. Where was my father?

  I did not know how far I had come from the shore, or even if I was still in the cove or now further out in the wider sea. My eyes stung horribly from the salt and were as good as blinded by the pain, the darkness and incessant waves. The horizon had long since disappeared into that blackness where the sea and the land become one. I didn’t know when the tide would turn. I didn’t want to know.

  I tried to look toward the sky, only to be smacked full in the face with a wave that gagged me. When I could open my swollen eyes again, I was dizzy, confused, completely disoriented. There were no lights anywhere, not on the shores of the cove I had purposely selected for its seclusion, not even a moon to guide me.

  I concluded I was going to die.

  Geof would never know what had happened to me. He would think I’d run away to escape my troubles. Would I be declared dead, like Lobster McGee, with my sister lining up for her share of the spoils?

  Like Lobster McGee . . .

  The phrase ran through my mind, poking me back to consciousness as the water and my own exhaustion carried me limply along.

  Like Lobster McGee . . .

  Engines don’t just fall off boats, I suddenly thought. Oars and life jackets don’t just disappear. Somebody had not wanted me to return safely to the Amy Denise. Somebody had not wanted me to keep on living and asking questions. Somebody had sabotaged the dinghy, and they . . .

  My father, absentminded as he was, would never have left the cove if he thought I’d be returning to it. He was, after all, my father.

  So where was he?

  The chill and fear squeezed my heart. Whoever had tried to kill me might be with my father now, and I couldn’t save him.

  I was so cold I could no longer feel my body.

  I was floating in the Atlantic Ocean, alone, at night. I was being murdered . . .

  Like Lobster McGee . . .

  Leave me alone! I begged my brain. Just let me die in peace!

  Lobster McGee! it said to me again.

  And suddenly I had it. Suddenly I knew who killed Ansen Reich and Atheneum McGee. And who was killing me. And I would not live to tell Geof about it, and the killer would go free.

  With a last burst of desperate fury, I plunged my arms up. Down. Up. Down. One after the other, in a grotesque parody of swimming. Again. Again. Again. I would not be anybody’s victim. I would not be killed. I would not. I would not. Not. Not. I struggled until the searing agony in my back and hips and shoulders went away and I felt nothing at all. Maybe my arms continued to move through the waves, maybe my legs continued a spasm of kicking. I couldn’t know because I couldn’t feel them. Eventually I didn’t feel anything.

  For a very long time, it seemed, I didn’t feel anything.

  And then my left palm came down violently and painfully on a rock.

  The Good Ship Jennifer Cain had landed.

  chapter

  32

  When I woke up several hours later I was furious with Geof for having pulled all the covers to his side of the bed, leaving me so terribly cold and wet. Wet? And why was the mattress stuffed with rocks and why were the sheets so gritty?

  I opened my eyes then and remembered most of it I didn’t recall dragging myself so far up on the beach, out of reach of the grasping fingers of the sea, but somehow I had managed it. Now it was morning, and raining and my body ached as if somebody had run it through a carwash without the car. I knew I had to get to a cop or a telephone, but I didn’t know if my body would agree to go with me.

  Moaning, hugging my limp arms to my sore ribs, I struggled to my knees in the sand, then to my feet, and ran in a staggering crouch to the shelter of the firs at the edge of the deserted stretch of shoreline on which I had beached the night before. Jesus, I thought, this instinct-for-survival business could kill a person. But I was moving, so I just kept stumbling on until I came out of the trees into a clearing where there stood a car and a miracle.

  It was my car. That was the miracle.

  Unbelieving, I circled it warily like a dog that’s afraid the fox will bite him. How could this be? How could I swim for hours, be carried for miles, only to land a few hundred yards from where I’d launched the dinghy? Had Neptune himself speared me on his trident and tossed me back to shore? Shivering, suspicious, still not thinking straight, I stared around me until I had to admit the humbling truth: this was indeed the cove in which we’d anchored the Amy Denise and I had not really swum for hours and been swept for miles. It had only seemed that way to a frightened and out-of-condition swimmer on a dark, lonely night.

  At last, the cold and rain cleared the fog from my brain, I trotted quickly to my car and fumbled under the front bumper for the hide-a-key. Within seconds, I was racing down the road, with the heater blasting, in search of the pay phone from which I had called my stepmother only the day before.

  My wallet lay in my purse at the bottom of the cove, so I used my credit card number. While I waited through one ring, I stared at the bruise on my left hand where palm had met rock.

  “Police. Sergeant Cramer.”

  “Geof Bushfield, please. It’s important.”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Jennifer Cain.”

  “Oh, Miss Cain.” Evidently, he’d heard of me via the station grapevine, even if I didn’t know him. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but Detective Bushfield’s gone. We had us a domestic early this morning down on Seventh, with a probable homicide, and he’s on the scene. I could maybe raise him. for you . . .” The sergeant’s tone said more clearly than any tax referendum editorial could express. “We are’ overworked and under-manned, ma’am, and we need him right where he is and I sure hope you don’t insist.”

  I thought quickly. What could Geof do with my hunch that I couldn’t accomplish in the same amount of time? Besides, when I finally gave him a name, I’d have more of the actual proof he would rightfully demand of me. As for my father . . . in the relatively clear light of morning, I no longer believed he was in danger, and yet . . .

  “Tell him I seem to have misplaced my father,” I said, knowing Geof would initiate a search for him. “And tell him I’ll be in touch later today.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “Thank you.”

  He hung up before I did.

  I looked at my watch, which had taken a licking but kept on ticking. It was much too early to make the other phone calls I had in mind, but I didn’t know what else to do in the meantime.

  A glance in the rear-view mirror, when I returned to the car, suggested a course of action.

  “My God,” I said to the swollen-eyed, salt-encrusted creature who stared back at me. “No wonder Neptune didn’t want you.”

  I reached under the seat for the envelope that held the emergency cash my mother always told me to keep on hand and counted twenty dollars in one-dollar bills. Then I drove to the nearest convenience store and bought a comb, some cheap makeup, bandages for my assorted small cute, ribbon to tie back my hair, a tube of liniment for my bruises and stiff muscles, a microwaved sandwich and a cup of blistering hot coffee.

  When I stepped out of the store’s restroom, I smelted like a pharmacy and looked like a hooker who specialized in the more esoteric forms of satisfaction.

  “Listen, honey,” said the middle-aged clerk as I pushed open the front door, “you don’t have
to take that from no man, you know what I mean? You ought to have the son-of-a-bitch arrested.”

  My answering smile was grim.

  “I’ll do that,” I said, “if it kills me.”

  I sat in my car in front of the convenience store and thought and planned until eight o’clock. Then I stepped up to the pay phone in front of the store and called the mayor’s office.

  “I’ll put you through,” her secretary said cheerfully, only to come back on the line a few seconds later to say in a quite different tone of voice, “I’m sorry, Miss Cain, but the mayor is unavailable to talk right now. Give me your number, and shell get back to you.”

  In a blue moon she would; the mayor was getting back at me for my behavior in her office the day before. I said, “Tell her I’m calling to offer a contribution to her reelection campaign.”

  The next voice I heard was the mayor’s.

  “Jenny!” she said brightly, all my sins forgiven. “Great to hear from you! What’s this about . . .”

  “Barbara, I have a question for you.”

  I asked it.

  She answered it.

  “Now then, Jenny,” she said, “how much are you thinking of contributing to the campaign? I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that you’ll receive a tax credit of $100 for every . . .”

  “Yes, I’ll send you a check.”

  “For how much?” she said bluntly.

  I told her and she, sounding surprised, thanked me. She probably thought it was my way of apologizing; or maybe she thought I was trying to buy support for my father. She was wrong on both counts. We hung up, after exchanging brittle but friendly farewells. Well, I thought, I could always contribute twice that amount to her opponent to balance, and tip, the scales.

  My single question had turned out to be an expensive one, but not nearly so costly to me as to someone else.

  I dug more change out of my pocket. After only a short wait, Jack Fenton came on the line.

  “Jenny,” he said, “what have you been up to?”

  “You’ve been talking to Barbara?”

  “No, Webster. He says . . .”

  “I can imagine what he says. Listen, Jack, I’m sorry but I don’t have much time. I desperately need some information that you can provide and I don’t have time to get the police to get a court order to do it.”

  “Jennifer, I won’t do anything illegal.”

  “I’m only going to ask you to do something that you have every legal right to do. And then, once you have certain information, I’m only asking you to give me a simple yes or no answer, nothing else.”

  “What do you want?” he said, so that I felt like a bad risk for a loan. I was borrowing heavily on his goodwill, and from the sound of his voice, I was nearly to my limit “Jack, there should be a checking account in your bank under a certain name.” I gave him the name. “Would you please look it up and see how it’s been used lately?”

  “Jennifer, I . . .”

  “Wait Just do that, then you can decide whether to take the next step.”

  “Which is?” he said forbiddingly.

  “You don’t have to give me an answer to this, Jack, but if you happen to know if the person who holds that checking account has a trust either in your bank or somewhere else, would you, could you also check on the status of that trust? Has it been paying out, and where have those payments been going?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Jack? Will you do that?”

  “I’ll look up the checking account,” was all he would say, but that was enough for now. I knew that if he found out what I thought he would find out, he would feel morally obligated to take the next step.

  “That’s all,” I said.

  “Call me back in an hour,” he said, and hung up. If he didn’t get the answers I expected, I was going to lose a friend, an ally and possibly my job.

  For the time being, that was all I could hope to accomplish on the phone.

  I returned to my warm, dry car. I had an errand to run.

  * * *

  This time, the police had not only padlocked the front door of Lobster’s house, but they had an officer assigned to watch it. He was parked a few unobtrusive yards away in a brown sedan, looking as if he had only stopped long enough to eat a sandwich. But I was willing to bet his coffee break would last all day, until someone came to relieve him and take the next shift. Geof was making sure that no one could get inside the house, including me.

  With that route closed to me, I drove back up on the highway, then into the cul-de-sac and parked at lover’s leap at a discreet distance behind a red station wagon in which I could see only a man’s head; it was bent as if toward another, but invisible, occupant. I got out of my car and closed the door quietly, then walked a long way around toward the fence, as far from their activities as possible.

  I looked long at the panorama before me: Lobster’s decrepit house, the vandalized windows, the lobster pound, the old man’s boat bobbing in the bay; at Webster’s new shack, the wrecked and fire-damaged pier, at Goose Shattuck’s black Cadillac. And I decided that my theory was fact, not only possible but probable, not merely conjecture, but truth. Now I had only to wait long enough to call Jack Fenton back, and then I would have all my ducks in a row for Geof to try to shoot down. And he would try, for mine was a saddening conclusion; he would demand proof before he made a move. And I would have proof, because by then the coincidences would have piled up until they looked irrefutably like evidence.

  Below me, the construction continued unabated, just as the murderer so desperately wanted it to. He was getting that wish, but he wouldn’t get all his wishes. I shivered then, suddenly overwhelmed by the magnitude of what I was doing: pinning a murder, more than one murder, on a person, and sentencing him to live forever in the hell inhabited by killers, child molesters and other permanent outcasts from the human race. But if I was right, hell was where he belonged, and was, in fact, already where he lived and made himself most at home. His wickedness was frightening; already it had nearly been the death of me. I shivered again, wanting to get off that hill and out of that place.

  I did not know anyone had approached until I felt the hand on my back.

  chapter

  33

  “Be careful, Jenny, don’t fall!”

  Pete Tower grabbed my arm as I stumbled. The pressure of his hand had not been enough to push me over the edge; it was my own overwrought nerves that propelled me away from that hand and too near the dropoff. I let him pull me back, to safety, my heart beating like a piston, my lungs trying to find some air.

  “Gee, I’m sorry,” he said, his round face pink with embarrassment. “I thought you heard me. I didn’t mean to scare you like that. Are you okay?”

  “Sure, Pete. Don’t know . . . what got into . . . me.”

  “I saw you walk over here,” he said, releasing me. “That’s my car over there, that station wagon. But you seemed lost in thought, and you looked kinda, well, sad, so I didn’t know whether to interrupt you.”

  “That was you in the station wagon? Just you?” He nodded, as if it was perfectly normal to find him on lover’s leap by himself in the middle of the week. He said, “I was going over some of our financial records, trying to figure out what to do next.”

  “Next?”

  He seemed to find something very interesting to peer at over my shoulder in the bay. “Uh, Jenny, I’m kind of glad I ran into you like this. I want to thank you.”

  I looked at him in amazement. “What for?”

  “You know when you were at our house yesterday?”

  “Oh, Pete, listen, I owe you both an apology.”

  “No.” For once, Pete Tower looked strong, decisive. “Hear me out, Jenny. See, I overheard what you and Betty were saying, and I knew what you were talking about. Heck, Jenny, I’ve always known my wife’s a drunk.”

  I didn’t know what to say. My hands hung at my sides, despite the urge I felt to pat him comfortingly. But Pete bore too mu
ch of a resemblance to a chubby rabbit who, if touched, might startle and run.

  “I’ve always known, it,” he was saying, “but I never had the courage to do anything about it. But, Jenny, she tried to kill herself last night!”

  “Oh, Pete.”

  “It was terrible, I was so scared! She said she’d rather die than stop drinking, and she ran into the bathroom and when I followed her she’d already emptied the whole medicine cabinet in her lap. And I didn’t know what to do, Jenny! So I called that suicide center real quick to get their help. And there was the nicest young fellow, Frank Dickens. I’ll never forget him; he talked to me, and then I got her to talk to him, and well, we lived through it this time.”

  “I’m so glad.” And so guilty.

  “So, you see, I thought I needed her . . .” He flopped his pudgy hands helplessly at his sides. “But she’s the one who needs me, Jenny.”

  “I think so, too.”

  “So she’s going to go to one of those places where you dry out, just as soon as I can get her into it. I want her to be well again, like she was when we were young.”

  “I know you do.”

  “And so, well, thank you.”

  “Pete, please. You heard me, you know I didn’t confront her out of the goodness of my heart. I don’t deserve for you to he so nice to me.”

  “We’ve all got our problems, Jenny.” He looked at me so sympathetically, I felt teary. “Listen, I’m sorry about them kicking you off the committee. I told Betty, I said, we better think this through., it’s not Jenny’s fault that her dad . . .”

  “Thank you. But I doubt that Betty will . . .”

  “Betty will do what I tell her to do,” her husband said sturdily, and then he grinned sheepishly, “At least until she’s well enough to talk back to me. If we’re lucky, maybe this time next year, everything will be okay with us again.”

  “What about the café, Pete?” I gestured toward the bay.