by Ann Cook
From a desk drawer she took a page of notes and stuffed them along with her note pad and pen into a her canvas bag. “My research on ghosts,” she muttered. “Just in case.”
When she pulled up beside John’s Mustang, the sun had already dropped below the fringe of cabbage palms at the rear of the park. She tried not to look at his trailer, tried not to remember his arms around her. When she stepped aboard the pontoon boat and reached for his Styrofoam cooler of ice and cold drinks, their fingers touched. She felt the former electricity and moved her hand quickly away,
“Investigators are entitled to a little refreshment, I guess,” he said, apparently impervious.
Brandy seated herself at the stern while he coiled the line at the bow, took his seat behind the wheel, and backed smoothly into the channel. After switching on the green and red running lights at the bow, he adjusted the tall, white one above the canvas top at the stern, and noted the compass heading for the three mile cruise.
Before them floated a white, misshapen moon. The mansion’s distant cypress trees lifted like spires against the evening sky. Behind them thin clouds were still stained with crimson. The water rose and fell in a black chop. When a late–flying osprey glided overhead, a fish struggling in his claws, John’s eyes followed. “If Blackthorne has his way, there won’t be any birds of prey. No habitat left.”
Brandy moved onto the bench across from the captain’s chair, pulled a billed cap out of her canvas bag, and settled it on her head. She was thinking of another possible prey. “What if we see some kind of a specter tonight?” Her shiver was caused only partly by the wind.
He gave her a fleeting smile. “I’ve watched you work. I imagine you’ll take notes.” Then his smile disappeared and he raised his eyebrows. “Your real agenda, right?”
She ignored the dig. “I’m interested in whatever we find in the boat house, natural or supernatural. People see something unusual around the boat house. When I started to work on this story, I read an article by a parapsychologist. He says what we call “ghosts” are really electromagnetic…” she reached into her bag, retrieved her notes, and read ”biochemical multidimensional organisms. He says they’re the remainders of a person’s aura, which he says are alpha, beta, delta, gamma brain waves. These waves are supposed to make the electromagnetic energy that surrounds all life forms.”
She glanced up, her voice steady. “He says these special impressions in the atmosphere can form at moments of extreme trauma.”
He shook his head, plainly amused. “Not very convincing proofs for a student of mathematics. If you spot one of these multidimensional whatevers, ask if the theory’s right.”
“Not possible.” Brandy sighed. “He says you can’t really communicate with one. It just sort of drifts around. He also says they’re more likely to be seen when the moon is full.” She looked up at the three–quarters moon hanging in the eastern sky. “They’re more frequent around a body of water.”
The stern light cast a sharp band across John’s high cheekbones and left his dark eyes in shadow. “Then conditions are favorable for a sighting. You should be pleased.”
When they passed the Wooten Park pier, she had noticed two night fishermen in a small boat, a yellow lantern glowing at the stern. “Maybe there’ll be other witnesses tonight.” There was no other activity on the silent lake.
“The guys out for catfish are too far away,” John said, “so forget them.”
They had reminded her of her father. For a moment the old sadness returned. “My dad taught me to fish here. How to run a boat, too.”
He leaned forward, scanning the dark water for buoys. “Both useful skills.” As they neared Sylvania’s property, they lowered the canvas top, and he cut off the running lights. John surveyed the shore line. “No use alerting the watchman next door. It’s bright enough to see what I’m doing.” He pulled back on the throttle and turned off the gasoline engine. “When I start the trolling motor, switch on the depth finder.”
At the bow he started the silent electric motor and guided the boat quietly around the spit of land that curved out from the lawn, nudging it along the bank toward the darkened boat house.
Brandy called softly, “Four feet, three feet, two…”
The square hulk now loomed before them, its boat slip clear, a heavy beam spanning the open structure above it. In the past boats would have been suspended from it for dry dock. They glided between weathered posts and a narrow deck that lined the outer walls. As the bow bumped against the side of the slip, John stepped up onto the pier, pulled the prow against a post, and threw a clove–hitch around it. Beside him the deck widened before the padlocked door that led into the storage shed.
“Watch your step,” he said. “The platform’s rotten. Could be termites. Maybe that’s why Sylvania and Blackthorne are so eager to get rid of it.”
“But the house is all cypress.” Brandy stood and steadied herself by reaching up to hold the beam above her head. “It’s termite–proof. Maybe the boat house is inferior wood. Sylvania says Brookfield built it in a hurry when he first moved in.”
After she lifted the heavy bolt cutter up to John, he held his hand out for her. No romance in that, she thought as she scrambled onto the rickety platform. He just doesn’t want to pull me out of the lake again.
“I saw lights on the Blackthorne site,” he said, dropping her hand. “We can assume the watchman’s on duty.”
The high shape of the house itself rose to their left, in the dim light the dormer windows of its fourth floor blank, its lawn in shadow. As she stepped forward, a plank cracked. She grabbed for John’s hand just as her foot disappeared into the ragged opening. Carefully she pulled free.
“This place is hard on shoes,” she said, her voice shaking. “I almost lost one pair already.”
John scowled at the uneven boards and the large, rusty nails protruding from the pier and the shed. “This wasn’t built by the same craftsmen who built the house. I guess old Brookfield really did it himself.”
Leaning the bolt cutter against the door, he produced a pen light from his pocket. “Hold the light on the lock. Here goes my first criminal act. Breaking and entering. If we’re caught, an arrest will look great on my resumé. My father and my brother would never understand.”
Brandy trained the beam on the encrusted metal loop. “It may be useful to have a sheriff’s deputy and a retired captain in your family.”
“As soon as we’ve seen inside the storage shed, we’re out of here.”
Gripping one side of the padlock shackle with the bolt cutter, he pressed hard, his lips contorted. “People think metal lasts, but it doesn’t. Natural things like leather and shell and bone far outlast a lock.” There was a loud snap. He rotated the body of the lock and then slipped it off. “I hope we can get the door open.”
Together they lifted the sagging door until they could pry it forward, creaking and scraping against the floor boards. No way, Brandy thought, could anyone have entered either door a year ago. When they had forced it wide enough to see inside, John turned the flashlight beam into the moldering interior. The musty odor of decay and mildew struck them in a wave. From a rear corner came a flurry of movement, and then quiet.
“There’ll be spiders and rats,” he said. “Wait here.” While John inched into the small room, Brandy shivered and halted outside. The flashlight beam played across shelves along the back wall. Above his shoulders she could distinguish dusty cans of paint, a few rotting boat cushions, and scattered among them, hundreds of white, diaphanous insect wings. In one corner sat a rusted tackle box, laced with cobwebs, several bent fishing rods, and a broken bench. There were no windows.
“Fortunately no one can see our light from next door,” Brandy said.
John glanced back at her, frowning. “Looks like nothing of interest, just like Aunt Syl said. You’ll have a hard time making copy out of this stuff.” The flashlight swept over an old battery. “I hope no one notices tomorrow that the lock’s been cut
off.” He stepped toward the door. Boards groaned and sagged.
“I don’t see the ghost, either,” Brandy said.
His iceman voice returned. “Of course not. I’m not hanging around while you wait for some figment of your imagination. Instead you’d better be looking for the watchman.”
Brandy was picking her way toward the boat for a view from the stern, when she heard loud splintering behind her. John muttered, “Damn!”
She turned to see him teeter on the edge of a plank that had cracked in two under his weight, trapping his right foot in the gap. He knelt on his left knee, yanked his foot and leg out, and squatting at the edge of the hole, swiveled his flashlight downward. With the other hand he ripped off more of the rotted wood and shone the light underneath, rotating the beam in all directions.
“The storage shed was built over the ground,” he said, “but I don’t suppose there’s any buried treasure.”
Brandy moved back into the doorway while he leaned forward, swore under his breath, and then sat back on his heels.
“There’s something under here,” he said finally. “I’m not sure what.”
Brandy edged into the darkened shed. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know how to tell you this,” he said, “but I think I’m looking down at a skull.”
NINE
“What do you mean, a skull?” Brandy knelt by the opening in the floor.”Maybe they buried cats or dogs here.” “I’m no paleontologist, but I do know a human skull when I see one.” John handed Brandy the flashlight.
The beam played over a brown, dirt encrusted portion of bone, rounded like a cranium, protruding from the damp earth. Brandy could make out the hollow of one eye socket and the open triangle of the nose. The rest was sunk beneath ground.
She murmured, “Oh, my God! It’s not only a skull. Look to the left. You can see the tips of other bones——maybe a rib cage. Looks like a skeleton was buried, but over the years water leached out the soil around it.”
Feeling faint and nauseated, Brandy straightened up. “We’ve got to call the law.”
“Immediately. We can’t touch anything. We’ll have to call the Sheriff’s Office. They’ll keep Blackthorne’s crew from starting tomorrow.” John stood and took Brandy’s elbow. “Maybe there’s some perfectly innocent explanation.”
“Sure. Someone crawled up under the boat house to die. And then conveniently buried himself. Or herself.”
“The criminal division can sort this out.” He guided her across the creaking planks toward the door. “There’s only one thing to do. I’ll have to stay on guard while you get help.” Beside the boat’s aluminum gate they paused. “I’m glad you know boats. You’re going to back out of here as quietly as you can and make a beeline across the lake for help. If the water’s not too rough, you can make it to the Wooten Park pier in maybe twenty minutes.”
“John,” Brandy said, her voice hushed. “I’ve a terrible suspicion about who that skeleton is.”
He pulled the hull closer to the dock. “Don’t stop and think now. There are places I’d rather be, so for God’s sake, hurry. If you tie up at the pier, it’s only two blocks to the police department. This place is in the county, but the police will call the Sheriff’s Office. You’ll probably have to go there and make a report. Give them my brother’s name. Tell them we’ve found a human skeleton, and be sure they know the boat house is going to be torn down tomorrow. They’ll get somebody out here to secure the site.”
In the boat Brandy moved toward the trolling motor at the bow. “Why can’t you come, too? With luck we wouldn’t be gone more than an hour.”
“Because we don’t know whether anyone’s heard us or not. I don’t trust Blackthorne or his guy next door. The skeleton will throw a monkey wrench into his plans, for sure. We might get back and find it gone.”
He lifted the line from around the post and threw it back onto the boat deck. With nervous fingers she switched on the electric motor, grasped its lever, shifted into reverse, and began backing soundlessly out of the slip.
He sat down on the end of the pier. “So much for getting away with the break–in.”
And I’m responsible, she thought, maneuvering around cypress knees that reached, claw–like, out of the water. The motion of the bow startled an anhinga, and she gasped as it flapped suddenly up from a tree limb, its black snake–neck extended. As she glided further out from the bank, she looked up at the tall, silent house along the water’s edge. From the branch of a fifty foot cypress, a web of Spanish moss brushed against the east dormer.
The cold bright moon, now high above the lake, cast a pale light on the pane. Her heart gave a thud. A fragmentary shape wavered in the narrow window, a momentary dark figure like a head and shoulders drifted behind the glass. For perhaps half a second she stared and held her breath, but once again there was no time for her ghost watch. She thought of John, and her glance shifted to the pier where he waited, looking progressively smaller and more alone in the shadow of the boat house. She must hurry.
About twenty yards out from the Able boat slip, she cut off the trolling motor, stepped back to the helm to start the gasoline engine, switched on the running lights, and threw the throttle forward. The engine thundered on and the boat gave a great leap toward Tavares, now a rim of lights to the northwest between the blackness of the water and the sky.
The wind had risen, kicking up a heavier chop, and the boat dipped and climbed in the troughs. She gripped the wheel, and reminded herself that a pontoon boat couldn’t actually sink. Of course, she knew, it could turn over.
At the half–way point, while she strained to recognize the street lights of Wooten Park a mile and a half away, she heard the start–up roar of an engine from the shore behind her. Turning her head quickly, she saw Blackthorne’s motorboat leap away from the boardwalk. With quickening pulse she watched as its running lights flicked on, and its nose turned in an arc toward her stern. A pontoon boat is not built for speed. It is built for leisure, for nature–watching, for fishing, for people who are not in a hurry. Now she pushed the throttle as far forward as she could and felt the crashing bounce as she turned into the highest waves. Even at that distance, she also knew, the other boat with its powerful engine could easily overtake her.
The throb of the larger engine rocketed across the lake, the boat’s green and red bow lights locked in a direct line with her own rudder. Plainly someone was aiming straight for her. She knew without looking that the distance between them was rapidly closing. Under the pressure of her engine’s thrust and the heave of the waves, her boat lurched to one side, spray cascaded onto her starboard bow, and drenched her at the helm. She wrenched the wheel to the left, rode heavily into the next swell. The boat rocked violently, then righted itself. Without question, if the motorboat kept up its pace and swept around her, she would be swamped by its giant wake. She had not the strength to keep it upright. No one would have to do her any physical violence. The faster boat could just disappear into the darkness. If she was not struck by the motorboat itself, she would be left clinging to the pontoons on a black night in waters rough enough to wash her away. She could almost feel the bite of the metal into her fingers, the pounding of the waves. She could never swim the distance to the shore. And there would be no witnesses. Then she remembered the night fishermen.
Brandy peered frantically ahead. To the left shone the dim glow of their lantern. Soon she could make out the dark shape of the little Jon boat, rocking at anchor in the calmer water off shore. As she drew nearer she saw two hunched figures. She twisted the wheel to port, the boat tilted deeply into the water, once again righted itself, and she aimed just to the left of the small boat. According to the rules of the road, she should cut her engine as she drew near, but she did not dare. Behind her the motorboat was so close that she could almost see the features of the shadowed figure at the helm. One of the fishermen stood up in the small boat, already pitching from side to side as she bore down on them. She could see his
angry face, white and sharp in the stern light, see the fishing pole still in his hand. In spite of what John had said, they were both witnesses after all.
As Blackthorne’s motorboat shot past, she throttled back her engine at last. The faster boat slowed, curved west along the shoreline of Tavares past the tall, round tower of the old courthouse toward the Dora Canal, and disappeared. Trembling now, she cruised by the Jon boat and raised a hand in an apologetic salute. The man on his feet shook his fist. Although she had frightened away his catfish, they had saved her from far worse than a fishhook.
If the person in the other boat was looking for John’s trailer, he would find no one there. Would he come back? Now she turned, picked up speed again, and raced toward the shelter of the Wooten Park dock. By the time she had pulled into a boat slip, cut off the engine, and thrown a line around the capstan, she saw that it was ten, later than she had hoped. She secured the stern and the bow, snatched her canvas bag off a seat, scrambled up onto the pier, and began to run across the grass and the asphalt parking lot toward Rockingham Avenue.
She could hear an engine churning along the shore toward the park. Had they already found that John was gone? She stumbled over the railroad tracks, glanced with longing at the bright windows of the Pub on the Lake——safety and a telephone would be there——but tore on, unsure where the person in Blackthorne’s boat might have gone, and rounded the corner onto Rockingham.
A couple walked out of the restaurant and climbed into a sedan. Behind her another car started up, and she could hear it backing around. She sprinted past the bank, across a deserted Main Street, along the sidewalk beside the city hall building, and sides aching, rounded the last corner and dashed into the police station behind it just as the car raced past her down the empty street.