“Somebody’s there!” she said, pointing.
“Where?” said her companion. “I don’t see anything.”
“I did. Someone watching with binoculars!”
“Out here? You’re imagining things.”
“You think so, do you? You go back to the ship and get some men in the launch. See they’re well armed. Meet me off that point . . .”
“But, we don’t have time for . . .”
Elsbet cut him short. “What we don’t have time for, Etienne, is you standing there questioning my orders. Now go!”
Reluctantly, Etienne went, at a jog. Similarly, Elsbet headed along the beach toward Woolie’s watchpost. Snake had a dilemma. He felt confident he could overpower either Etienne or Elsbet, and that he had to bring one or the other to ground, but which one, and then what? By the time he was closing in on a decision, it was made for him. Etienne had arrived within hailing distance of the ship, which he proceeded to hail like hell.
Snake scrambled to his feet and, getting the granite ledge underfoot as soon as possible, loped after Elsbet.
Woolie, unaware that the refraction of light from his binoculars had precipitated this unexpected unfolding of events, was watching through them still when, just as she became aware of his presence, Snake flung himself upon her, knocking her to the ground where, inextricably entwined, they began thrashing and rolling around.
Woolie, anticipating events, untied the Mermaid’s Tale, fired it up and, surf-be-damned, got the gunwales within banging distance of the rocks on South East, arriving just as Snake appeared with his unhappy captive. “This little missy wants a ride,” he said. “Jump!” he pushed Elsbet off the ledge and, after a fall of eight feet, she collapsed on the deck. He jumped next, using her prone body to soften his fall. She gasped and groaned as the air was compressed from her lungs.
“That explains a lot,” said Woolie as he spun his boat south and west around the island, into the face of the wind.
“Explains what?” said Snake, rising to his feet.
“Why you have a hard time keepin’ a woman.”
“This ain’t no woman.” Snake rested his buttocks on the gunwale and gave a gentle kick to Elsbet’s backside. “She’s a murderer.”
“You’re in deeper than you can imagine,” said Elsbet, struggling to a sitting position against the transom where, with almost predictable rhythm, the sea breaking the bows would throw icy showers at her until, soon, her uniform was soaked through, and her hair streamed around her face. Like Snake, she was cut in several places, and bruised withal. “When they come after you,” she nodded in the direction of the freighter, “don’t expect any mercy. Those people will cut you open, rip out your heart, and watch you die without blinking an eye.”
The words, spoken with absolute conviction, had a chilling effect on her hearers.
“What are you doing with them, then, plotting to kill Albert?”
“I’m a government agent,” she said. “Working under cover. We’ve been trying to come up with the goods on this organization for eighteen months or better. We had them now. They were going to try to kill Albert, and we were going to catch them at it! Red-handed.”
“Didn’t think to tell him about it, did you?”
Ignoring the question, the woman looked at him defiantly. “All wasted, now, thanks to you.”
Snake sorted through the nest of confusion that was pulling his mind every which way. “What if we put you ashore, and you just say it was nothin’. Just your imagination, like the fella said?”
“Good idea,” said Elsbet brusquely.
Woolie wasn’t so sure. “How do we know you’re working with the government? You got I.D.?”
Elsbet tapped the epaulets on her uniform. “They think I’m with Wildlife and Fisheries, and that they’ve got me in their pocket. Put me off here and, like Snake says, I might be able to convince them I was just seeing things, and you two can get the hell back to Chatham.”
Snake was listening, watching her carefully. Something in her tone of voice reminded him that, when she spoke to Etienne, she’d been the one giving the orders. He made up his mind. “How fast can this tub go, Wool?”
Woolie read his thoughts and, without a word, slapped the throttle against its stop. The Mermaid’s Tale responded beautifully, slicing a perfect wake through the calm waters in the lea of the ledge and into the surging waves to windward, where the neat white stitch of foam was torn asunder.
“You’ll never get away!” Elsbet screamed above the whine of the engine. “Never!”
Woolie reached into a box beneath the console and removed a roll of duct tape, which he tossed to Snake, who didn’t have to be told what to do with it. “I don’t know what you’ve been up to,” he yelled above the wind and wave, his lips not three inches from her ears. “But I know who does, and he wants a word with you!”
Elsbet’s response, though vigorous, was—given the three layers of duct tape around her mouth—inarticulate. Snake then bound her hands and feet in the same manner, then pulled himself to Woolie’s side at the console. “They’re gonna be after us.”
“Already are,” said Woolie as two pursuit boats exploded into view a quarter mile off their stern. Snake took them in at a glance. “Dual 150 Yamahas on both of ’em,” he said. “Looks like we’re not gonna be outrunnin’ ’em.” He studied their pursuers through his binoculars. “And they’ve got guns. Big ones.”
Woolie gripped the wheel and, although it was already against the stop, gave the throttle a quick jab to coax another few rpms out of the already straining engine. He tossed a glance over his shoulder. The pursuit boats would be rounding the ledge to the east. Between the ledge and the island was an angry sluice of water not sixty feet wide and smack in the middle, he knew, was a boulder that, at this tide, was just visible between waves.
“Grab that rope!” he yelled. “Loose it up, and hold on!”
He snapped the wheel and the Mermaid’s Tale nearly pirouetted on her axis, briefly burying her starboard rail six inches deep. Recovering quickly, she righted her keel and made hell-for-leather at the narrow maelstrom separating the ledge from the island as the following boats—metallic banshees swaddled in foam and fury—rounded the eastern edge.
“What in hell you doin’, Wool?”
“Threadin’ a needle at twenty-seven knots!” Woolie yelled. He was exultant. Fear, desperation, and righteous wrath fueled the adrenaline burning in his veins.
To Snake, frantically uncoiling the rope in her stern, the Mermaid’s Tale seemed to absorb her master’s madness as she surged and pounded toward her own destruction. “You’re never gonna make it!”
If he’d hoped for some small comfort—the sudden unfolding of some reasonable plan—in Woolie’s reply, it was not forthcoming. “No one lives forever!” A bullet, probably meant as a warning shot across the bow, but poorly timed or simply thrown off its trajectory by the surging waves, splintered the windshield.
“Oh Jesus!” said Snake, as the pounding bow took aim at the seething vortex of contrary forces. He’d never prayed more earnestly in his life. “Jesus!” he concluded.
“Amen!” Woolie cried. The pursuers were now pounding in the relative calm of his wake, not fifty yards behind. “When we slip through there, toss the line over.”
It was a plan! Something Snake could get his dentures into: toss the rope overboard, and let it foul the props of the following boats. “Put ’em out of commission!” he practically sang to himself.
“Time it just right!” Woolie yelled. “You’ll know!”
“You get us through this,” Snake bellowed, for they were already in the grip of the sluice that thundered around them, battling Woolie for control of the boat, “I’ll take care of the rest!”
Snake was kneeling on the deck, watching over the transom for that split second in which the hindmost of the pursuers would be committed to the sluice—making it impossible to turn around or back out—and perfectly timed his throw.
For the nearest boat, there was no time to react. Almost immediately the long, free-floating rope, spun itself around the propellers of both outboard motors and strangled them to a halt. Deprived of that momentum—the only control of any kind—the boat spun sideways to the current where it fetched up on the rocky sentinel in the middle of the watercourse and tipped up on its side, emptying its contents: gas cans, floatation devices, and weapons into the ocean, as well as its four occupants who clung to the hull.
In the second boat—in the few extra seconds they had to react—the crew first shut down the motors, then, rushing to the stern, raised their shafts from the water, so keeping the line from fouling the props. But what saved the motors doomed the ship; as with the first boat, the second immediately turned its starboard side to the current and, just as the crew of the first boat abandoned ship, crashed into it, splitting it in two.
The whole dance had taken less than fifteen seconds and as the Mermaid’s Tale shot from the sluice—its bow pointed unerringly north—Snake hummed the martial strains of Ride of the Valkyries in the chaos of the waves. “Damn!”
“Damn!” Woolie exulted. Not wishing to tempt fate, in the event there were launches aboard—other than Elsbet’s launch, which, though a sturdy vessel, had no chance of catching the Mermaid’s Tale—Woolie took the ledge on the starboard side and, once more, headed south around the tip of South East Island and from there across the two miles of open ocean to the eastern shore of Pitt, then north half an hour to Waitangi Wharf, where they unceremoniously offloaded their cargo in a heap on the dock.
“Well dang, woman,” said Frenchie, her knuckles on her hips, “what’s this, the latest fashion out’ve Pitt?”
Elsbet emoted into the tape that bound her lips.
“She mumbled something,” Frenchie observed.
“She does that a lot,” Woolie said in agreement. “I expect it’ll lead to singin’ in the long run.” He nudged Elsbet with his booted foot. “Sing good and loud, won’t you?”
Several people had gathered around by this time and, observing the unexpected haul, asked in how many fathoms of water it had been caught. After which, while Snake and Frenchie got to the nearest phone, Woolie wrung out the adventure of the Mermaid’s Tale to the last drop.
Chapter TwentySix
“Why did it take so long for them to figure out it wasn’t an accident?” Jeremy Ash wanted to know. He and Wendell had returned on a special Wednesday flight from Chatham, accompanying Constable Tipene Patuai, Snake, Woolie One, Mr. Pyle and their prize captive who had been promptly taken in hand by the authorities and was now a guest of the taxpayers of New Zealand at an undisclosed location.
The late afternoon sun filtered through the curtains and slowly examined the welcoming and familiar precincts of the Braemar’s living room and the people seated there discussing the death of Dr. Marcos.
Jeffreys finished his tea and placed his cup on the silver tray Bindy held out as she passed. “Well, what they usually look for in cases like that is some sign of tampering with the brake line or the gas line, and that’s what they did. Nothing out of the ordinary. But now that his nurse is tied up in all this nasty business, they looked elsewhere.”
“And?”
“And found that the bolts on the wheels had been sheered.”
“Meaning,” said Jeremy Ash, “the first sharp turn they came to . . .”
Once again, Wendell dipped into the reserve of sound effects and, underscoring them with sweeping gestures, illustrated a car going off a cliff. “Sweet as . . .”
“Sounds a pretty iffy proposition,” said Mr. Sweetman, filling his pipe with his trademark soap-scented tobacco and lighting it. “Mightn’t it just as easily have come off just rounding a corner. Nothing more than a nuisance, really.”
“I guess they have an ‘if at first you don’t succeed’ mentality,” said Jeffreys. “Anyway, they almost got away with it. I mean, well, they have gotten away with it, so far. Because we don’t know who ‘they’ are. But we know now that he was murdered.”
“Why?” said Woolie. “If he was the one at the bottom of all this—all this business—who killed him, and why?”
“Falling out?” suggested Sweetman. “Often happens amongst thieves, so they say.”
“I expect they’ll know a good deal more when they finish interviewing our catch of the day,” said Snake, trying to make it seem as if sipping tea from a china cup in a chintz-covered chair with a lace antimacassar was something he did every day. He even held his pinky up as he sipped.
“I don’t guess they’ll find it that easy to tip her punt,” said Woolie. In response to the interrogatory looks directed at him, he added. “Took two of us sittin’ on her to get ’er here. And between the two of us, that’s a fair amount of sittin’.”
“So, what have we got so far? Nurse Ratchet,” said Jeremy Ash, ticking her off on a finger.
“Hogan, I believe,” said Pyle. He looked from one to the other of those from whom he had bummed a lift from the island. He was now booked into the last of the Braemar’s available rooms. “I believe that’s what they said her name is. Hogan.”
“Figure of speech,” said Jeremy Ash.
He held up another finger, and pressed it down as he spoke. “The padre and Colleen found six people with the ‘F’ and nut ring at the hospital and morgue.”
“Right. And four with Caduceii,” said James Simon, “excluding Hogan. Five all together.
“Think I’ll change my name to Caduceus,” said Snake. “Classy.”
“You’d have to learn to spell it, first,” said Woolie.
Albert entered the room and stood there, turning slightly and scratching his head.
“You look like a lighthouse that can’t make up its mind which way to spin, A,” said Jeremy Ash. “What have you been up to?”
Albert stopped revolving. “I’ve been on the phone.”
“I didn’t hear it ring.”
“I called.”
In their personal acquaintance Jeremy Ash had never known Albert to call anyone; in fact, had known him to go to extraordinary lengths to avoid the phone all together.
“Who?”
Albert subtly directed the young man’s attention to Mr. Sweetman and shook his head.
“I feel like gettin’ some fresh air,” Jeremy Ash announced. Wendell began to rise from the table, but Jeremy stayed him. “Stay put, Otis,” he said. “A’ll take me.”
And so, a few minutes later, Albert and Jeremy Ash were seated in conference in the darkened park across the street, which began with Albert telling him who had been on the phone.
“Sergeant Hawkes? What’d you call him for?”
“Senior Sergeant Hawkes,” Albert corrected, determined the keep the characters straight. “I wanted him to weigh Mrs. Sweetman’s ashes.”
“Weigh her ashes? What are you talking about?”
“I was watching my cigarette burn,” Albert explained. “I just let it burn until there was just one long ash.”
“That’s one way to make an ash of yourself,” quipped the young man. “So?”
“I did it to another one,” said Albert. “Then another one.”
“And?”
“And they were all exactly the same.”
“Surprise!” snarked Jeremy Ash. “Of course they were. What else did you expect?”
“But, if you just burn half a cigarette, it only makes half as many ashes.”
Jeremy Ash knew that, somewhere in his mind, Albert was on to something—or thought he was—and that the circuitous, likely tortuous route he had to follow to get there wasn’t one that couldn’t be rushed. Hard as it was, he waited for Albert to express his thoughts.
“If there’s less to burn,” said Albert, once his thoughts had coalesced into words, “there’s less ashes.”
Albert expected Jeremy Ash to say something. It was during this hiatus that he typically formed his next thought. He looked at the boy.
“I got nothin’” said Jere
my Ash.
“I took the ashes from Mrs. Sweetman’s bottle.”
“Bottle?” Jeremy Ash allowed the inference to confer at the junction of his eyebrows, which—when consensus was reached—vaulted in alarm. “You mean the urn? You took Mrs. Sweetman’s ashes from the urn?”
“It’s okay,” said Albert, with a trace of a smile. “I replaced them with other ashes . . . from the ash trays.”
Once again Jeremy Ash’s eyebrows convened, and once again they vaulted—bettering their previous mark by a considerable margin. “You what?”
Albert thought he’d been fairly succinct but, nevertheless, repeated what he’d done.
“I heard you the first time,” said Jeremy Ash. “I just couldn’t believe my ears.”
“I gave them to Inspector Naples when he was here.”
“Naples? Naples was back in Massachusetts, A.”
“I mean Inspector Hawkes.”
“Sergeant Hawkes.”
“Senior Sergeant Hawkes,” said Albert, nudging the needle back into the groove. “Yes. I gave him the ashes in a little sandwich bag.”
“In a sandwich bag?”
“With a zippy thing,” said Albert, mimicking the zip-sealing of a plastic sandwich bag. “Bindy gave it to me.”
“Bindy gave you a sandwich bag for Mrs. Sweetman’s ashes?”
“Yes. But I didn’t tell her that. I thought it might upset her.”
Jeremy Ash, accustomed to inhaling and exhaling long and deeply when talking to Albert, did so now.
“Okay. You took Mrs. Sweetman’s ashes from the urn and put them in a sandwich bag and . . . gave the bag to the senior sergeant?”
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