“The guy with Carlson murdered him. He pulled a knife and was on Carlson before I could do anything t—”
“Do anything? Do anything? What did you expect to do? Beat the killer up? Jesus Christ, Jane, what have you gotten yourself into?”
His question took me by surprise and it was a second before I figured out why. He hadn’t asked what I’d gotten him into. That was the first thing that would’ve come out of my mother’s mouth. Or my sisters’. Or Pete’s. All of them. Would it be the first thing out of my mouth if our situations were reversed? I was afraid it would be, so I quit thinking about it.
I started to reply but then caught my breath as a black sedan, driven at the speed of a meandering beetle, passed the front of the lawn where we’d taken refuge. My mind went blank and I silently chanted, In fifteen minutes this will all be over. In fifteen minutes this will all be over. But would it? I’d witnessed a murder, for God’s sake.
The car crept past, and I let out my breath, reminding myself again that I couldn’t live without oxygen.
“I didn’t know someone was going to murder the man. I was just trying to find out if he lived there.”
“No, you were after something more. We’ll finish this discussion at home, but first I have to figure out how to get you there—alive.”
He was right and I knew it. We couldn’t very well hop onto our bicycles and pedal back to Bryan’s now. Fireplug was looking for me. And neither of us had thought to bring a phone. This was a big lesson to me. The next time I went spying, I was definitely taking my phone.
“I don’t know the owners of any of these homes,” Bryan said, “or we could get help and call the police right now. For all I know, the person who owns this house might be an associate of the guy in the Mercedes.”
His jaw was clenched again, but I didn’t think it was in anger. Probably more like frustration. And fear.
“Look. I’ll bike home and be back with wheels. The Escalade, because it’s black. Stay here and just wait. Keep low, and if he comes back, drop flat to the ground, pull your hood over your face, and put your hands in your pockets. Okay?”
He pulled me out of my crouch and into his arms in what I would call a bear hug. I couldn’t have gotten away, that was for sure. Not that I wanted to. I felt safe and I felt loved.
Tears stung against my eyelids. He was truly worried about me. He cared what happened to me. He wanted to protect me and he wasn’t sure he could. Funny how someone caring could make me want to cry, but it did. Had I ever felt as though someone cared more about taking care of me than himself—or herself, for that matter? I didn’t think so. Not with my mother, my father, or Pete. Or anyone else, until now. I sniffed, and he hugged me tighter. He drew back for a searching look, kissed me lightly on the lips, and let go.
I dropped back to a crouch and pretended to be brave. Thirty seconds later I heard the ching of a bicycle chain catching hold of a sprocket and then all was silent. I was scared and alone, but hopefully, not for long.
*****
Mere minutes passed before a siren wailed. I could tell it was coming from the mainland, closing in on the island. I‘d never paid attention to siren sounds. Police? Fire truck? Ambulance? No clue.
I offered up a prayer. Dear God, please don’t let the police find me flat on my stomach, dressed in black, hiding in the shrubbery two properties down from a murder victim. The siren-blaring vehicle thankfully turned out to be an ambulance rather than a police car, which prevented my sealing the prayer with a promise to God that I’d probably never keep but would feel guilty about for the rest of my life.
Seconds after the ambulance disappeared up the drive, a black SUV, which I hoped was an Escalade, sped past on the other side of the road, made a U-turn, and pulled up in front of my hiding place. I pushed to my feet and scrambled down the hill. As I ran I thought, wouldn’t it be funny if Fireplug had gone somewhere and switched from his Mercedes sedan to an Escalade and was, in fact, luring me toward my death? A wild imagination was crucial for a writer. Right now I wished I didn’t have one.
Bryan gave me the third degree all the way home, making the ten-minute drive seem like ten hours. Had I ever seen the man before, would I recognize him if I saw him again, had I heard what they were arguing about? I mumbled no, yes and no. Then came the clincher.
“Are you sure you had no idea something like this was afoot?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Don’t answer my questions with questions. That’s what guilty people do.”
Really? And here I’d thought Bryan was a doctor, not a district attorney. Maybe that was what happened when you went to Harvard: you learned medicine and law. I took a deep breath and reminded myself that Bryan was on my side.
“No,” I said, “I had no idea anything was going on. Not anything. How could you think I’d drag you into the middle of a murder?”
“I don’t. You didn’t. You didn’t want me to go up there with you. I insisted. But I knew from the second you asked for my help you were holding back. No one spies on a guy to see where he’s living or with whom.”
Hmmm. Anyone who really knew women would never make such a stupid statement. The fact that Bryan believed it endeared him to me.
“I was hoping to find some kind of dirt on him. It would’ve sounded like a ridiculous scheme if I’d said that in your office.”
“It sounded like a ridiculous scheme anyway.”
“Then why did you say yes?”
“I knew you’d go alone. And, God help me, I wanted to see you again.”
He’d made the statement on the end of a sigh. Now I felt bad. Really, really bad. How can you not feel bad when someone you’re quickly developing strong feelings for wants God to help him quit liking you?
“And now you don’t?”
We swung into my driveway. Bryan cut the engine and the lights and turned to me. His eyes were black in the semi-darkness. Just like his hair, his T-shirt, and his jeans.
“I don’t know what I want, Jane. I do know it’s not a perfect-looking bimbo who pretends to be fascinated by my every thought just because of my name. I like you. Your emotions play across your face, and I like what I see. You’re down to earth, real, sincere. At least that’s what I thought.”
“I am down to earth and sincere.” Usually. Sometimes I was my mother’s daughter … self-absorbed, self-righteous, and, God help me, deceitful. But I was trying to get rid of that part of me, not because Bryan wouldn’t like it, but because I didn’t.
“I wish none of this had happened. It seemed like a lark, and the evening was so perfect, right up until Carlson was murdered.”
Oh, for crying out loud. Did I know how to sound like an idiot, or what?
Bryan reached out and cupped my face, with such tenderness in his gaze that my eyes welled with tears.
“We shouldn’t see each other for a while,” he said. “I’m the one who called the hospital and asked Sally to send an ambulance. I realized on the way back to my house that Carlson’s wound might not have been fatal.”
I gasped, horror-struck. It had never occurred to me that Carlson wasn’t dead. All that time I was worried about my own safety, Carlson could have been fighting for his life. Hank was right. I was just like my family, always thinking of myself.
“I called the police too, and they’ve asked me to give a statement. After I give mine, they’re going to want yours. If there was any way I could keep you out of it, I would. But …”
We both knew what was left unsaid, that I was the only person who had seen the killer, or assailant, at least. I was the only person who could identify him. And nothing Bryan could do or say could change that terrible truth.
Chapter 30
Now that it was morning, the events of the night before seemed unreal. Well, not all of the events. Just those that happened after we cycled into the Twilight Zone. I certainly didn’t want the events that took place at Bryan’s house to be unreal. As incomplete as they were, they might be
my only fantasy material for years to come, especially if I ended up in prison.
The rest of the night seemed as though it had happened in a movie, one I’d fallen asleep watching and now couldn’t quite recollect. I was planning to keep it that way by not reflecting on it one more minute. It was times like these that I was grateful I wasn’t into the news—on paper, on TV, or online.
I threw on all my outdoor gear, grabbed my cellphone just in case Bryan called me (even though he said we should cool things off for a while), and ventured out to the swamp. I’d been thinking about what to do with my personal bog, and I realized I had no idea how deep the water was. Maybe it was only a few inches deep, and in that case I could probably rent a sump pump to pump the water to the street so it could run down the drain. A day or two of drying out, and then the swamp could be ready for weed-cutting and whatever else was required. Sure, maybe it wouldn’t look great at first, but if I killed the weeds, then raked them up, I might be able to get a few pallets of sod and lay it out myself. How hard could that be?
I was walking around the swamp with a twelve-foot-long piece of bamboo. I’d pieced it together by cutting all the leaves off two branches I’d duct-taped end to end. It would have been better to cut down an actual bamboo tree since they were thick and sturdy, but they were several inches in diameter and heavy, whereas branches were less than an inch in diameter and light. Once again I had to make do with a crappy substitute because I didn’t have the strength of a man.
I stood at the edge of the water and stuck the branch as far out as I could, figuring the swamp got deeper toward the middle. I couldn’t actually get to the middle with a twelve-foot branch, so that was the best I could do. The branch went about a foot and a half below the surface before it hit bottom.
I brought the branch up, pulled it back toward me, and measured what appeared to be the water line on the wood. Forty inches of the stick was wet. What did that mean? I tried to figure it out using the logical approach. Forty inches of wet wood minus eighteen inches down to the actual bottom was twenty-two inches. That probably meant something, but I didn’t know what.
If I could remember anything about geometry, I could approximate the angle at which I’d put the branch into the water and come to some logical conclusion regarding that forty inches. Unfortunately, I couldn’t since I didn’t remember anything about geometry. Chances were that I hadn’t learned enough in geometry to figure out a problem like that anyway.
Then I had the thought that if it seemed like the branch went a foot and a half down before it hit bottom, then the water was probably about a foot and a half deep. Duh. Maybe what I really needed to learn was how not to analyze something to death. Of course, what felt like eighteen inches and what was actually eighteen inches were probably two different things, but maybe they were close enough.
“You’re not tryin’ to skewer dinner, are you?” said a familiar Texas voice. I dropped my branch and twirled around to see Hank standing a few yards behind me. He had on blue jeans and a tight fitting T-shirt that was somewhere between lime and grass green with words in white that said, Wimbledon. The shirt showed off his muscles as well as his Florida tan. His dark brown hair was long enough to cut into a style now, but he hadn’t bothered to have that done. I wondered if he ever would.
I suddenly felt shy—and stupid. We hadn’t spoken since the fight. Well, I called it a fight because in my family if you weren’t showering people with compliments, you were fighting, or at least you were giving someone the devil. In this instance, Hank had given me the devil. And I had deserved it. Easy to admit to myself; so much harder to admit to someone else. So, one thing at a time.
“No. I’m not much for swamp food,” I said. “Or even seafood for that matter.” Though the memory of a certain meal of clams linguine made me want to cry with longing. But I wouldn’t think about that.
“Anything happen with Carlson?” Hank asked.
“What do you mean?” I made myself breathe evenly, in and out, in and out, while I waited for his reply.
“You know, did he back off because you saw him with Richard, did he extend you some time, did he drop dead?”
I choked back a screech that started in my throat. It ended up sounding like one of those nasty noises men make before they spit. Hank stepped back a foot.
“No,” I said quickly, trying to think of something to change the subject to. “I did find out that my longleaf pine trees are the preferred nesting trees for those endangered cockaded woodpeckers. That’s the good news. The bad news is that private citizens can cut down the trees if they want to. It’s just government that can’t hurt the trees.”
“And that’s important because …”
“I don’t know. It was something stupid, I’m sure. I just thought if the county owned the land behind me—which was what I was told when I first purchased my property—then they couldn’t sell it for monetary gains if that meant cutting down the trees. But whoever did own the property sold it six months ago to a land development company. I think. I don’t know what that means, if anything. Like I said, it was probably a stupid thought.”
Hank scanned the land that lay beyond my back property line, looking thoughtful. “I don’t think so. No … not stupid. If someone wanted to buy that land, they’d probably want to buy yours too. And the empty lot at the end of the street. There’s no access to those woods except through one of these lots. As a matter of fact, there’s a nice path back behind that empty lot. Leads down to the lake, like this road back here does. Lakeside property probably goes for a pretty penny these days.”
I nodded. “I don’t know how to look into it; everything costs money. And anyway, I don’t know that it has anything to do with me. I had some wild idea that I was being forced out because someone wanted my land, but maybe the homeowners’ association really just wants my property to look nice. I don’t even know why I think they’re trying to run me out.”
“Maybe because they’re goin’ above and beyond. You know, not givin’ you any extra time to set things straight. It just doesn’t sit right.”
“To me either.” I looked around at my property. From where we stood, everything in the distance looked nice. The land around my house was weed-free, edged, mowed, and mulched. The second lot had some trees and a few patches of weed-free, mulched palmetto, a small orange grove, plus the pine tree grove running along the back. The fourth lot had only large oaks, one maple tree, one magnolia tree, and the pine grove that continued across the back.
Then there was the lot we stood in, which was fine except for the swamp and the weeds surrounding it. I kicked at the piece of bamboo at my feet. It really wasn’t fair that the association expected me to take care of something that had been here before I moved in. I wanted to cry, probably from self-pity. Here was Hank, being so nice, trying to make me feel better, and all I could do was wallow in my problems.
“Have you thought about turning this into a real pond? A pond would give the animals a place to get water when it’s hot. If you put in the right kinds of plants and small fish, it’ll keep the water oxygenated and control the algae. There’d still be labor involved, but it wouldn’t be so bad. We could rent a Bobcat; I could dig it out.”
“You have experience in that?”
“Enough to get the job done,” he said.
It was a good idea, except for the part about renting the Bobcat. It was just one more blasted thing I didn’t have money for. Still, the fact that he had offered to help after I’d been so mean the last time we’d spoken made me feel guilty.
“I’m sorry!” I blurted out. “You were right. I’m a bitch!”
Hank chuckled and shook his head. Amusement danced in his brown eyes. “I never used that word. You’re not a bitch. Bitchy sometimes, maybe, but not a bitch.”
“I feel like a bitch. I mean, who doesn’t want the best for their best friends except a bitch?” Now that I’d said it out loud, I really felt like a bitch. A neurotic bitch who was about to burst into tears. What
was with this crying thing, for God’s sake? If my father were still alive, I’d kill him because I’d gotten it from him. He’d seemed the most self-indulgent person I’d ever known, what with the women on the side, all the eating and drinking and gambling, but he’d also been this person who could cry at the drop of a hat over anything that could be construed as the tiniest bit touching. One time he’d actually cried at the ribbon-cutting of a Walmart. I later told Sue that if I ever did something like that, I wanted her to kill me right then.
Hank came close, close enough for me to see the gold specks in his eyes. I didn’t know what he was going to say, but I knew it wouldn’t be mean or bad; his eyes were soft and so was his jaw.
“I think you were worried about losin’ your best friends,” he said, “and no one can fault you for that. I was the one who was outta line. I lost it when you compared me to your family. I don’t want to be compared to them, and it’s hard for me to believe you’d defend their perceptions of anyone, considering how wrong they’ve always been about you.”
He glanced away, and I studied him, trying to figure out what he meant. I’d talked to him about my family during the past two and a half months, sure, but had I said things so derogatory that he should have been insulted to be compared to them? I hoped not. That meant I truly was just like them, critical and judgmental. I didn’t want to be like that.
“What was the comparison? I don’t remember what I said.”
“You said your family hadn’t noticed anything between Sue and Mark and they saw them all the time. Implying that I, who’d only seen Mark once and Sue a few times …”
Ah, right. I’d used my family’s lack of perception to support me in my lack of mine. Hank had been right. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
“That’s almost laughable, that I would say that, when I’m always thinking they’ve never known me at all, never bothered to take a real look at me. So why would I have thought they’d take any kind of look at Mark and Sue? I’m sorry for that; I shouldn’t have said it. I certainly don’t think they’re more perceptive when it comes to figuring out people. I don’t think they have any clue at all.”
Rules of Lying (Jane Dough Series) Page 26