Although I had played along with the “aren’t we having fun?” conversation in which I basically accused Greg of trying to get rid of Carter by blowing him up and he denied it, I was still thinking about it. Because who better than someone who liked to blow things up blowing up their archenemy, aka Blogenstein, as Max liked to refer to him? But was it so obvious as to not hold any water? I decided that I wanted to see where this led, and although spending a little time shadowing Greg might not tell me anything, it also wouldn’t make me late for dinner, so I had nothing to lose.
Greg was a townie and lived in the direction of Lydia’s house, that is, away from the river. So I was shocked when he left the shop with a small bag under his arm and started for the river, just as Lydia had a few minutes earlier. I waited until he was almost out of sight before getting up from the bench and starting after him, staying on my side of the street. There was no way I was going to lose him unless he jumped in a cab, but cabs meandering down sleepy village streets on warm summer nights are fortunately in short supply.
Things got a bit more complicated when he started for the bridge that arched over the train tracks. I would have to follow directly behind him rather than from a safe distance across the street and I wondered how this was going to work out. I decided that if he saw me, I would lay blame on the beautiful night and my desire to spend some time at the river. It wasn’t completely outside the realm of possibility, yet in case it hasn’t been established thus far, I am a terrible liar. Which is why I try not to do it with any regularity.
We continued across the bridge, me a safe distance behind Greg. It was a little after six and there was still plenty of sunlight left in the day and dusk was at least two hours off. He finished his journey across the bridge and took a seat on one of the benches on the train station platform. I decided then and there that I wasn’t going to follow him into New York City or up north toward Poughkeepsie, depending on which train he was waiting for. I stole into the ticket office and looked at the schedule, deciding that he was waiting for a New York City–bound train, one of which was on its way into the station in less than a minute. I watched him from the ticket window office, a man deep in reverie on a balmy night with seemingly not a care in the world.
The train screeched into the station and several rush-hour passengers disembarked, while a few got on to head south into New York City. Greg was not one of them. When the train had left the station, he was still sitting on the park bench, enjoying the view, the plastic bag in his hand.
I observed this curious behavior for another hour, while trains came and went, and when the sun had finally set completely over the mountains on the other side of the river, he got up. I left the ticket office and followed behind him, glad that it was dark and that he probably wouldn’t be able to tell that I had been tailing him for the better part of two hours. He made his way down toward the river and the boat slips; I was close enough now to hear him whistling what sounded like “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” by Simon and Garfunkel. He walked along the dock and finally arrived at his destination, which was surprising, to say the least.
He boarded The Lydia.
Not at all what I was expecting, but then again, not sure what I was expecting. I stood on the dock, watching the boat list to and fro, and waited for him to come out.
While the darkness had brought a drop in temperature, it also brought mosquitoes. Big, giant, nasty, bloodsucking mosquitoes. And I don’t know what it is, but I’m one of those people to whom mosquitoes gravitate. Crawford could be sitting outside wearing a fructose bodysuit and he wouldn’t get one bite. I, on the other hand, am descended upon like an open container of raspberry jelly at a picnic. As soon as I felt the first sting, I knew I was in trouble, but I had invested too much time in this surveillance operation to give up. I was going to see what was happening on board The Lydia if it was the last thing I did. Which, I was afraid to admit, it might have been, if my internal radar was any indication.
I couldn’t not find out, though. It was too tempting, and too bizarre. The Greg that I had known all of these years as the affable coffee shop owner was different today. And that made me curious.
I had almost reached the boat when the door to the sleeping quarters opened and Lydia emerged. She took off her sunglasses when she reached the deck, realizing that she no longer needed them. It was pitch-black on the water, with only the lights from town and the small dock lights illuminating her way as she stepped off the boat. I jumped onto a boat closer to the end of the dock, praying that no one else was on board, and got on my stomach so she wouldn’t see me, listening to her high-heeled sandals making a clicking sound on the wood as she got closer and then hit the pavement, making her way back up toward town. When I no longer heard the sound of her footsteps, I got up and returned to the dock, making my way toward The Lydia.
The boat was running, its engine making a loud clicking sound in idle mode. Greg appeared on the deck just as I stepped onto the boat, scaring both of us. He grabbed his chest. “Dude!”
“Oh, Greg, you scared me,” I said, acting a little bit. Obviously I knew he was on the boat, but I had no idea that he would appear at that exact moment and scare the bejesus out of me. Surprised? Yes. Scared? No.
He looked around as if searching for someone else. “What are you doing here?” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t see you for over a week and then I see you two times in the same day. What are the chances of that happening?” His demeanor was old Greg: friendly, a little loopy, and nonthreatening. Maybe I had exaggerated the whole exchange in the coffee shop to be more sinister and loaded with innuendo?
He had a large screwdriver in his hand and I kept my eyes on it. “What are you doing on Lydia’s boat?” I asked.
He held the screwdriver up and waved it in my direction. “Repairs.”
“What kind of repairs?”
“What do you know about boats?”
“Why?”
“Because you’d have to have some knowledge of boats to understand exactly what I’m doing,” he said. Although he was wearing a tool belt and could have stored the screwdriver in one of its handy pockets, he kept it in his hand.
“Why did you wait until dark to come on the boat?”
“Because Lydia asked me to wait. She wanted to spend some time here. It’s the only place she can go to get away from everything. But the engine needs work and I came to fix it.” He held up the screwdriver again. “What are you doing here, by the way?”
“Me?” I asked.
He pointed the screwdriver at me again. “Yeah. You.” Although the screwdriver gave me pause, he was the same old goofy Greg right down to his old Birkenstock sandals, which he wore with white socks.
I decided not to go with my first choice: I think you wanted to blow Carter Wilmott up and that you had means, motive, and opportunity. I thought that might sound a tad impolite. So I went with my second choice. “Just out for a stroll.”
“On the dock?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said, backing up toward the edge of the boat, taking in the appointments of each boat tethered to a slip. None of them, as far as I could see, had a deep gash in their seats, like The Lydia did. I felt vaguely remorseful for bringing Trixie on the boat the week before.
Greg smiled. “Were you always playing Nancy Drew? Even as a kid?”
I laughed. “No. This is a recent development.”
“I can’t believe you thought that I would blow Carter up.”
I wasn’t sure where this was heading, so I played it casual. I waved my hand dismissively. “Oh, sorry, Greg. I don’t know which end is up anymore.”
He sank into one of the tufted benches, and put the screwdriver on the floor of the boat. “Me, neither,” he said, and put his head into his hands. “Having a guy die in your store is not the best thing for business, in case you couldn’t guess.” His voice was muffled. “I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose the store.”
“You won’t lose the store!” I said, now feelin
g guilty for having suspected him of murder. I rushed over and sat beside him, my arm on his back. The plastic bag was next to me and I put a hand on it to ascertain its contents. Not too mysterious—they were more of the almost-stale muffins that he had offered me from the case in the store. “It will take a couple of weeks to come back but—”
At this, he moaned.
“Or maybe not! Maybe people will start coming back sooner.” I didn’t think so, but it was worth a try, if just to get this hulking bear of a man to stop sobbing. “Maybe you should have some kind of event or something.”
He wiped his hands across his face. “Maybe. What were you thinking?”
I wasn’t really thinking anything so I came up with a couple of weak suggestions. “Maybe you could have Mrs. Brown’s tap class come in and do a show?”
He looked at me as if this were the worst suggestion I could possibly have made. Mrs. Brown’s tap class consisted of three octogenarians who insisted on wearing spandex, despite their advanced age and less-than-supple skin.
“Or have an art show,” I said. “We’ve got tons of artists in the village just looking for a place to exhibit their art.”
He looked like he was considering that. “I’ll think about it.” He sighed heavily. “First, I had Carter’s horrible blog saying things about me and the store and then the bastard goes and dies there.” He picked at a hole in his jeans. “The guy really wanted to see me fail.”
“He was just a mean, angry guy, Greg,” I said. “Everyone knows you have the best coffee in town.” Except for Dunkin’ Donuts, I thought, but I kept that to myself. Now I really had to go to Beans, Beans on a regular basis if only to single-handedly keep the guy in business and atone for my lies about his not-very-delicious coffee.
Greg looked up at the starlit sky and took a deep breath, changing the subject from failing coffee shops to the splendor of our environment. “I love being out here. I’m glad you take advantage of it, too.” He looked back at me, his face calm and serene. “Not too many people stop to smell the roses. Know what I mean?”
I relaxed a little. We were on the same conversational path that we had been down a thousand times at Beans, Beans and it felt like old times before the two of us had seen a man die, and a car blow up, and a woman jump off a bridge. “I know what you mean. Life gets a little hairy.” I swept my arm out, taking in the view. “And look at this view. How could you not walk around down here?”
Greg walked up a few steps to the steering wheel and fiddled with something on the control panel. The clicking of the engine morphed into a smooth rumble. “Isn’t this a gorgeous boat?”
I moved back over to the bench that Trixie had ruined with her sharp nails, covering the wound in the seat with my butt. “It certainly is.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Greg said, and powered up the boat. The roar of the engine startled me and I jumped up from the torn seat.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking you,” he said, pointing at me, “for a ride.”
“No, thank you,” I said, trying not to sound panicked, while opening up all of the bench seats to look for a life preserver. I found some twine, a deflated beach ball, and a few empty beer cans, but no flotation devices. I lurched forward a little bit as Greg eased the boat out of its slip and headed toward the middle of the river.
He turned around. “What’s the matter? It’s a gorgeous night.”
“I’m sure Lydia doesn’t want you sailing this thing, does she?”
“Of course she does!” he bellowed. “That’s another reason she hired me. Nobody would ever take this baby out if it wasn’t for me.”
I headed down into the sleeping quarters, continuing my quest for a life preserver. In the room were two twin-sized beds with beautiful quilts, nautically themed, on top of them. In between the beds was a deep chest on top of which sat an alarm clock and some sailing magazines. I pulled open the drawer on the front of the chest and riffled around in it for something to keep me afloat in the unlikely event that we capsized. My terror at being on the water was unmatched by anything else; not being able to swim had put me in many a precarious position, not limited to an almost drowning at the Jersey Shore when I was sixteen. Although I had managed to get myself out of the river when Ginny had pushed me in, I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to save myself if I happened to fall in the middle of the river, where the depths were far greater. I dug around in the cabinet, coming up with a few packages of M&M’s—which I promptly stuck in my pocket for later—and an envelope out of which fell the most disturbing pictures of the relationship between Ginny Miller and Carter Wilmott that I could possibly see.
“What are you doing down there?” I heard Greg bellow from above me.
“Nothing!” I bellowed back, throwing the envelope across the room as if it were a hot iron that I had picked up in error. The pictures flew from the envelope and scattered across every flat surface. I sat on the bed and put my head between my legs. Between my panic at being brought out to the middle of the river and seeing what could only be described as extremely unpleasant amateur shots of a sexual nature, I was feeling queasy. The boat continued its steady path toward the deeper part of the river, a competent Greg at the helm.
If Ginny Miller had thought that the photos that Carter had posted on his Web site were incriminating and unflattering, they had nothing on this set of prints. Seems that The Lydia did more than sail; the boat also provided the trysting spot for Carter and Ginny, whose naked body was prominently featured in every single photo.
I don’t know how long I sat but at some point during that time, I realized that there was only one reason that Ginny Miller had been on The Lydia and it was to find those pictures, something that she was unable to accomplish before her death. She had lied to me about her original intent but that didn’t matter. She had found the arsenic … or had she? Had the arsenic already been in her possession? One thing I did know was that George Miller was never going to see those pictures if I had anything to say about it. I picked them all up and shoved them in the back of my waistband, thinking that we would have a bonfire later this evening when I was home and in the pleasant company of Kevin and Queen.
Greg appeared in the doorway of the cabin just as I had finished shoving the pictures into my underwear. “What are you doing?”
“I’m looking for a life preserver,” I said. And that was the truth. I just hadn’t been successful in my quest and I had come across a set of photographs that would require me to gouge my eyes out when I returned home.
He opened a door in the floor that I hadn’t noticed and pulled out a bright orange flotation device. He tossed it to me. “Why do you want a life preserver? Planning on going for a swim?”
I grabbed the life preserver and held it in my hand. “I can’t swim.”
“Dude! Really?”
Why does this shock everyone so much? So I can’t swim. It’s not a skill that’s required on a regular basis and it certainly is one that you can avoid having to do if you’re smart and prepare ahead. I got a little indignant. “No. I can’t swim,” I said, starting for the stairs. I pulled the life preserver over my head. “You got a problem with that?”
Greg followed me back up to the main deck. “No. It’s just surprising. You look like someone who’d be able to swim.”
“And what does someone who’d be able to swim look like?”
“Like you. Tall. In pretty good shape.” He walked back up to the steering wheel. “Broad shoulders.”
“Let’s end this conversation before I have to kill you,” I said. “Can we go back now? I don’t want to go for a ride.”
“This is really freaking you out?”
“Yes. It’s really freaking me out. Please, can we go back?”
He fiddled with some dials on the dashboard and turned around. “You got it.” He smiled, something that he had done a lot since I had boarded the boat and which had put me at ease. “Sheesh—you see a guy die of arsenic poisoning in my shop and you don’
t freak out, but we go for a little boat ride and you become a complete mental case.”
“Wait,” I said before I could think. “Arsenic?”
“Yeah,” Greg said casually.
A pregnant beat hung heavy in the air, both of us realizing at the same time that there had been no mention in the paper about exactly what kind of poison had been used to kill Carter. Greg looked down at me, and seemed to read my mind, which wasn’t hard; I don’t have much of a poker face. “Hey, let’s continue the ride,” he said cheerily.
My fencing skills were going to come in really handy now, I thought, as I watched the twinkling lights of the village fade. As were my scrapbooking abilities. That was another class that I had been subjected to by my mother, her hope being that I would meet other nice nerdy girls with similar interests. I looked over the side of the boat and stared into the murky depths of the Hudson, trying to judge exactly how far we were from shore and how deep the water was. I pulled the straps of the life preserver around my body and attempted to tighten them. No luck. It was so dark that I couldn’t see what I was doing, and it became immediately apparent that whoever had worn it prior to me had the circumference of a three-year-old. The straps wouldn’t come all the way around and they wouldn’t reach the buckles in which they needed to be inserted.
From his perch, I heard Greg muttering. “Gosh, dude, I wish you hadn’t followed me.”
“You poisoned him,” I said. I continued to fiddle with the straps, my fingers shaking.
Greg looked at me, still in front of the steering wheel, sad.
“God, Greg! What were you thinking?” I asked. I hugged the life preserver, my arms wrapped tightly across its puffed front.
“That guy ruined me!” he said, taking a step away from the steering wheel and closer to me. “Have you read any of the shit he posted on his blog? Every week, the same thing. And still he had the nerve to come into Beans, Beans every day! Like nothing had ever happened between us. It was all I could do not to kill him with my bare hands.”
Third Degree Page 23