“Hey, don’t say that. He probably wanted to hit on you anyway. Who wouldn’t?”
Aaron put an arm around my shoulders, which felt nice, and we sat for a while in companionable silence. The ring of trees began to stir in the wind, and I shivered.
“The photographs must have taken longer than India expected,” I said dubiously.
“Or else she’s off meditating or levitating or something.” He shook his head. “What a space cadet. Listen, it’s almost five o’clock, that’s plenty of room for error. How long shall we give her?”
“Give her before what?”
“Before we call your mother or the Coast Guard or whoever we call to get a ride back. You brought your cell, didn’t you?”
“Well, no. I didn’t think it would work out here.”
“Carnegie!”
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m sure she’ll be here any minute.”
“She’d better be. Anyway, if we don’t get back soon your mother will call her, right?”
“Um, wrong. Mom’s not expecting to hear from me till tomorrow morning, remember?”
He groaned. “You knew that, and you still let India go?”
“How was I supposed to know she’d run late?” I put on my sneakers, damp or not, and cast around for a distraction. “Listen, what do you suppose Jeff was angling for last night? It’s not like I was going to confess over dessert.”
“He was probably just checking out your state of mind.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, most murders are personal, and most people aren’t skilled actors, so you might have given yourself away somehow. Unless the police are focused on some specific piece of evidence.”
“They are,” I said. “Guy’s e-mail gizmo.”
“Which is a technical term for what, exactly?”
I described the little gadget I had borrowed. “I saw his Deleted folder, just for a minute, so I gave the police the names I remembered. But I didn’t read any of the messages—”
“And they would show what Price was up to lately.”
“More than that,” I said. “I bet he got an e-mail from the killer.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Kimmie and Adrienne were sure that Guy was staying in for dinner on Sunday, but instead he rushed off. Now, he told me that his cell phone wasn’t working, and the phone in the house never rang. Something made him change his plans.”
“I bet you’re right,” said Aaron, with growing enthusiasm. I’d seen him in this intensely focused mood before, and it was reassuring to see it again. “So if you were the killer, you’d be trying to get your hands on the e-mailer to erase the files. Unless they were password-protected, in which case you’d just destroy it. But then you’d have to dispose of it somehow. . . .”
The more we hashed over the idea, the more intriguing it became. And there was another missing item: the murder weapon. One electronic device, and one knife of some kind. Either, or both, crucial to solving the case.
“No wonder they searched your rooms on the island,” said Aaron.
“Not to mention my home in Seattle.”
“They searched the houseboat? Oh, to look for a connection to Price. Eddie must have freaked out.”
“Believe me, he did.” I tucked in closer. “I’ve been freaking out a little myself, Aaron. I’m so glad you’re going to help me with this. It makes such a difference to—”
“Wait a minute!” He leaned away from me and frowned. “I’m not helping you with anything, I’m speculating to pass the time. You just answer the cops’ questions when they ask, and otherwise keep your nose out of it.”
“Yes, sir.” If there’s anything I hate more than having people mad at me, it’s having people tell me what to do. That’s one of the many reasons why I’m self-employed. “Any other orders, sir? Permission to go on dating the cops, sir?”
“Very funny. But I’m serious, Stretch. I told you before, don’t get involved.”
“I’m already involved!” I stood up and rubbed my hands together to warm them. “What if they never solve the case and I’m always under suspicion? Besides, you also told me before that you’d help India with her interviews. Unless you planned to help her and not me. Where the hell is she, anyway? I’m freezing.”
“It was your idea to let her go without us.” Aaron rose as well and zipped up his windbreaker. “Though why you thought we could rely on such a flake—”
“You didn’t think India was such a flake this morning at the house,” I said frostily. “You were quite chummy this morning.”
“Oh, grow up.”
He strode to the edge of the clearing and through the trees to peer out at the strait, as if he could summon up Sedna by the mere action. I tried to think of a retort, but I was too cold and too distracted. Where was she?
It wasn’t just the autumn chill in the air that was making me uncomfortable. The cloud bank had grown darker and mushroomed higher up the sky, bringing an early twilight.
I joined Aaron there at the top of the bank, jogging in place to get my blood moving while we scanned the water. We could see a few boats in the distance, but none of them was small and white and coming our way. A rush of wind hissed in the fir branches, and pinpoints of water speckled my cheek. Rain.
Aaron flipped up the collar of his jacket and muttered, “I can’t believe you didn’t bring your phone.”
“Well, where’s yours, then?”
He jammed his hands deeper in his pockets. “I let the contract lapse while I was in the hospital.”
I said softly, “You almost let us lapse, Aaron.”
He was saved from answering by the deep, reverberating whonnk of a ship’s horn off to our left. A state ferry, rounding the north end of San Juan Island to pass through Speiden Channel, was warning an errant sailboat to scoot out of its way. The sailboat was headed away from us, but the ferry would pass fairly close.
“Hey!” Aaron scrambled and slithered down the bank, arriving too fast at the bottom and nearly taking a header into the water. He balanced on a shelf of rocks and waved his arms. “Hey! Hey, help!”
I followed him down, but at a much more deliberate pace, unwilling to risk a tumble for the sake of a futile gesture. Because you know what happens when you wave and shout at a passing ferry? The passengers, the ones who happen to notice you, wave cheerfully back, and the ferry continues on its implacable way.
Aaron’s final gesture at it was a rude one.
“I could have told you—” I began, but a big motorboat appeared from behind the ferry and zoomed along even closer to us, so when Aaron started waving again, I did too. They came so near that we could make out the driver, a heavyset man in a red jacket, and his passengers, a woman and two little girls.
“Over here! Help!”
So near and yet so far. We screeched and jumped and gesticulated, but all that happened was that the little girls laughed and waved at us. Then the rain increased, and their mother bundled them into yellow slickers as the boat angled away.
“Why didn’t they stop?” said Aaron. His hair was wet and flattened to his forehead. “This is ridiculous, we’re in plain view.”
“It’s just not plain that we need help. We have to signal somehow.”
But how to signal, that was the question. Setting our mutual irritation aside for the moment, we retreated to the shelter of the trees to brainstorm an answer. A signal fire? No matches, and anyway it would just look like a campfire. Writing SOS on the picnic blanket? Nothing to write with.
The situation was maddening: we could see the boats, and the boaters could see us, but we had no way to communicate our plight.
“OK,” I said at last, “let’s look at it from their point of view. You’re driving along in your boat, trying to get out of the rain, and you see a little island with two people on it. What would make you stop and . . . I’ve got it! Let’s play dead.”
Aaron looked blank. “Dead?”
“Yes, don’t you see? We lie o
n the rocks as if we’re shipwrecked and unconscious, and some Good Samaritan sees us and stops to help.”
“Doesn’t the Good Samaritan resent being suckered?”
“No, because we really are in distress. Am I brilliant or what?”
“Maybe . . .” He mulled it over. “But we’ll get soaked, and if we have to spend the night here we need to be as dry as possible.”
“We’re nearly soaked already, and if this works we won’t have to spend the night. Come on, give it a chance.”
Playing dead is a remarkably tedious business. We tried to keep still, Aaron sprawled on the rock ledge and me draped over a boulder a few feet away, but it was damn uncomfortable. As the minutes crawled by and the rain turned from a shower to a torrent, I felt less and less brilliant.
I raised my head a little, blinking against the drops that bounced off the cold surface of the boulder. “Aaron?”
“What?” he croaked, his voice hoarse from shouting.
“I’m sorry about letting India leave us here.”
He opened one eye but didn’t move. “I’ll only forgive you if this works. And after we kill India for screwing up. Can you spell hypothermia?”
My hands were numb, I realized, and my feet weren’t far behind.
“It was a stupid idea, wasn’t it?” I said.
“Way stupid. Let’s give it ten more minutes.”
“OK.”
We only had to give it nine, because that’s when we heard the roar of an approaching motor, the splash of an anchor, and the rasp of a startled male voice.
“Holy moly, Hank, I think they’re drownded!”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Hank and Frank—any other time I’d have found that amusing—were two burly, unshaven geezers in baseball caps. Far from resenting our ruse, they thought the playing-dead idea was absolutely hilarious.
I was relieved about that until I understood the reason for their hilarity: Hank and Frank were drunk. Belching and guffawing, they led me across the shallows and hauled me up a short ladder into their cabin cruiser as Aaron went back up the bank for the picnic hamper.
My first step sent me skidding sideways, because the deck was strewn with beer cans.
“Watch it there, missy,” said Hank, or possibly Frank. “You want a brewski while we wait for your boyfriend?”
“J-just a b-blanket,” I said, through castanet teeth. The rain had stopped, but I was soaked.
“You sure you want him back?” leered the other. “Not much of a boyfriend, gettin’ you marooned like that. How’d that happen, exactly?”
“L-long story. Aaron, come around this side!”
Drunk or not, the geezers were solicitous, and soon we were bundled into their spare parkas, which smelled of fish and cigarettes but were blissfully dry. They offered us the comfort of the cabin too, but one whiff of the stench in there sent us back on deck.
With nothing nonalcoholic on board, Aaron and I shared a warm beer and huddled on the rear bench of the boat while it rocked and bounced across the channel and into the calm, protected, ever-so-welcome haven of Roche Harbor. I climbed onto the dock, equal parts grateful and nauseated, and Aaron handed back the parkas.
“Thanks a million, guys,” he said, reaching for his wallet. “Can I chip in for the gas or—”
“Naw!” said Hank. Or Frank. “You just take better care of missy there in future.”
They shoved off again, leaving us to drip our way toward the parking lot where I’d left Scarlet. Aaron had parked his rental car in a separate lot for Hotel de Haro guests; I’d almost forgotten he was staying here.
It wasn’t all that late yet. The hotel’s lights were just coming on, and the dockside restaurant was bright and bustling with the Friday happy-hour crowd. But it felt like we’d been gone a long time.
I unlocked the SUV and Aaron set the hamper inside.
“Well . . .” I said, hoping he would invite me up to his room to get warm. Then I noticed he was supporting his right arm with his left and saw that his mouth was tight with pain. “Aaron, you’re hurting.”
“A little.”
“What can I do?”
He smiled wryly. “Nothing, Stretch.”
“Let me walk you to your room, at least. I could find you a doctor—”
“Thanks anyway,” he said, but his eyes said Back off. “I’m going straight to bed, and I’ll call you in the morning. Are you all right to drive?”
“Sure. Take care.”
I moved to kiss him on the cheek, but he was already turning away, as if reproaching me. So I threw my soggy jacket into Scarlet, revved her up, and set off back to the Owl’s Roost. First I was going to get clean and dry, and then I was going to find India Doyle and give her holy hell.
I wasn’t really all right to drive. Between the drizzly twilight and my benumbed state of mind, I took the wrong turn going up the hill from the harbor and found myself bumping along a wooded side road with the water to my right instead of my left. I needed to hang a U-turn, but the way was narrow, above a steep slope down to the water, and the jerk who was tailgating me didn’t help any.
The road was twisty, with no real shoulder. I started watching for a pullout so I could let the jerk go by. I overshot the first one, but as the road dipped toward the water another one appeared.
I yanked at the wheel—and whiplashed back in my seat as Scarlet reared up, hovered precariously, and then jolted heavily down. Judging by the nasty scraping noise, we had run aground.
With a dispirited groan, I got out to look. The unpaved shoulder of the road held a number of rocks and, sure enough, I’d picked the nastiest one to slam poor Scarlet into. Shaped like a scraggly tooth, the rock was now wedged securely between tire and fender. We were hung up, but good.
And me with no phone, dammit. I looked around the darkening woods, hoping for house lights, and saw only the sky’s reflection on the little bay down below me. But was that a boat near the shore?
“Hello? Hello down there!”
As I called out, I took a few steps down the hill to get a better line of sight. It was dark in the woods but still light on the water, and the surface of the bay was pale between the fir trees. That was definitely the outline of a boat showing dark against the silvery gleam, but it was empty, just drifting in the shallows. . . .
No, not empty. A limp shape lay in the open boat, and though I tried to deny it, I knew in my horror-struck heart what the shape was.
“India? India!”
I plunged down the embankment, slithering out of control and then catching myself on the rough trunks of the trees, again and again until I reached the bottom. There was no beach, just a narrow ribbon of gravel, and I splashed knee-deep into the icy water. Gasping from the cold, I grabbed the boat’s fiberglass side and pulled it firmly ashore.
India lay faceup at the bottom of Sedna with her sightless eyes open to the sky. There was a dark round hole in the center of her forehead.
It wasn’t the wisest thing I’d ever done, but who possesses wisdom at a time like that? I clambered aboard and crouched beside her, and as I did my knee came down painfully on something hard. When I reached to push it aside, my fingers closed around a gun, some kind of small handgun that was cold to the touch.
I dropped it in revulsion and cradled India in my arms. I don’t know how long I knelt there, weeping. “Oh, India—”
“Hands out where I can see them!” The harsh voice came from the shoreline, but the speaker was hidden behind a powerful flashlight beam. The light struck me full in the face, its glare blinding my dark-adjusted eyes.
“Get ’em out there. Now.”
I lifted my empty hands in innocent appeal as the light moved down the slope. I didn’t recognize the voice, but I did have a suspicion about who the speaker was. And once he stepped into the open at the water’s edge, where the last light of day caught his stocky build and round pallid face, my suspicion was confirmed.
Moonface—Larry Calhoun, the cop who’d been t
ailing me—was still on the job.
This time there was no gallant gathering me up in anyone’s arms. Moonface was no giant like Jeff Austin, and anyway he didn’t see me as a distressed damsel. He saw me as a killer. That was evident from the way he kept his gun on me as he played the flashlight over India’s body, and from the keyed-up excitement in his voice as he radioed for backup.
“I just found her,” I said. “It’s India Doyle, she’s a friend of mine, and I only just found her.”
I kept on saying that as Moonface herded me up the slope to his patrol car, but he didn’t respond except to make little conversational gambits like “Stand facing the car!” and “Hands behind your back!” The man had no people skills at all.
Then, as another patrol car came screaming up beside us with its red light slashing through the gloom, he snapped a pair of handcuffs on my wrists. Handcuffs! Finding India’s body had felt like a dark fantastical dream, but the cold metal biting at my skin was all too real.
“What are you doing?” I sputtered, as he guided me into the backseat. “Am I arrested?”
Moonface conferred with the occupants of the other vehicle, then got in the driver’s seat and slammed the door. “I’m just asking you to come in and make a statement.”
“You call this asking?”
I lurched against the car door as he took a tight turn, and for the rest of the drive I kept quiet and worked on choking down a rising sense of panic. It’s a horribly vulnerable feeling, not having your hands free. There were so many questions to consider, about India, about Aaron, about my own fate, but I concentrated on staying upright and remembering to exhale every time I inhaled.
After an eternity or two, I found myself in a small beige room inside the Friday Harbor courthouse. The only window in the room was a little slot in the door, and the only furniture was one of those cheap stacking plastic chairs you see in discount stores, and a set of bunk beds bolted to the wall. Each bare mattress had a shrink-wrapped blanket and pillow sitting on it. Sanitized for Your Protection, You Perp.
A middle-aged woman in civvies came in, removed the handcuffs, and searched me quite thoroughly.
“Am I under arrest?” I asked again.
You May Now Kill the Bride Page 15