Escape Route (Murder Off-Screen Book 1)

by GA VanDruff

  “That’s why I’m going to Puerto Rico. Maddie bought an island. We’re going to work through a couple of ideas for another movie. She wants me to write it. She’ll direct, produce and star.”

  “An island, Frank. Ever hear of such a thing?”

  “How about an airplane? Ever hear of such a thing?”

  “How about those two guys at Bub’s today?” Time to change the subject. “Jack Sprat and his over-large friend—wonder where they were from.”

  “Pennsylvania. Fools bought ammo for a .38. Said they were hunters.” He snorted and emptied the pitcher of beer into his mug. “Nobody hunts with a .38. Odd ducks, if you’re asking my opinion. These out-of-staters comin’ here—”

  Aunt B dug a pen out of her purse and ripped off a square of our paper table cloth. She clicked the pen open. “Back to business. Jaqie will need ... what? Bottled water, canned goods—”

  “Give me that.” He took the pen and paper and Aunt B gave me a wink. “Those will be the last things going onboard. We’ve got a ton of work to do to get Ovation out of dry dock and seaworthy. When are you wanting to leave?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “Two weeks!”

  CHAPTER 9

  The rest of the evening was pretty much spent dodging shrimp shrapnel, chasing slippery scallops and writing a long To Do list. I was beginning to doubt I could arrive in Puerto Rico by mid-April.

  “We’ll meet you at the car.” Aunt B handed me the keys. “Who knows how long your uncle will be in there.” Uncle Frank felt at home in any bathroom. If it had a TV, there were no odds I’d be willing to take that we’d see him before the weekend.

  But it was a typical Eastern Shore postcard kind of night, so no hurry. A fisherman offloaded his catch at the dock next to the restaurant’s kitchen under a storm cloud of seagulls. I moved away from the drop zone to the parking lot where a row of three benches faced the water at the edge of the gravel. I sat in the middle of the middle bench.

  March. It still got dark early. The day’s warmth had lost the upper hand, and the inlet had grown chilly. The stars and the moon reflected off the water doing double duty in the amazing department. Other than the squalling seagulls caterwauling on the opposite side of the restaurant, it was quiet enough for me to squint my eyes and imagine I was alone on my boat. I sure hoped sailing was like riding a bicycle and that I’d remember the important points like do not get flattened by the boom, never unclip your safety harness and always, always “little miss” hoist the anchor before moving on. I’d committed every one of these offenses, but never solo.

  Solo on land, now, that I had down pat, although it had taken a bit to find my land legs after the divorce, but I was fine.

  “Hey, Jaqs! Miss Big Shot.”

  Until this exact moment.

  “Gotta meet the new missus.”

  Inevitable. I hadn’t seen Ed’s little boy grin or his bad boy eyes since we signed the final papers that said we were too young and foolish to have married, and had thoroughly wasted sixteen months of our lives.

  I stood up and took a quick inventory of my outfit. What did one wear to meet the ex and the replacement? I brushed myself off in case stray seafood parts were buttered onto my sweater or jeans. “Hey, you two.” I pushed the corners of my mouth into a smile and turned around. “Or should I say, you three?”

  Dianne, the new Mrs. Ed, was the most pregnant living thing I’d ever seen, excluding one unhappy bovine at a 4-H show.

  “Four.” Ed patted his bride on her backside. “You know me, Jaqs. Go big or go home. Right, Dianne?”

  Dianne smirked and cradled her bursting midsection in her arms. “Right. Ed.” I recognized the tone.

  “Well, then. Congratulations, you four.” Dianne’s ability to stand defied the laws of gravity. Maybe if she sat down, she’d never be erect again in the foreseeable future. “Are you here for dinner? Uncle Frank and Aunt B are inside. I’m sure they’d like to say hi.” That was a big, fat lie. The list of things Uncle Frank had in mind for Ed did not include any level of pleasantries.

  “Nah. Car’s belly up. Again. I’m walking Dianne to her mom’s to stay. I’m going bounty hunting.” He dug his thumbs into his narrow waistband and puffed out his chest.

  “Not actual bounty hunting.” Dianne spoke to the moon. She’d seen enough of Ed, apparently. “He’s looking for a stupid, lost dog.”

  “Hey, big mama, there’s a reward for that dog.”

  “That must be some reward for you to go and leave your wife.” I head bobbed trying to make him look me in the eye. “Ed.”

  “Thousand bucks. That politician’s dog. The famous one.”

  Dianne rolled her eyes to me. “The dog’s famous. Not the politician. Cuthbart. Everybody voted for the dumb dog.” The temperature was dropping and her breath shot out in clipped puffs.

  I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Dianne, don’t you want to sit down? Is there anything I can get you?”

  “How about a Cesarean?”

  “Ed, let’s move Dianne onto the bench.”

  “Good idea, Jaqster. A set-down will cheer her right up.”

  Jaqster. Ed’s unspoken cry for help.

  It took the two of us to lower her down. Maybe the rest of my family would arrive in time to aid with the upload. “That’ll do ’er.” Ed rubbed his wife’s burgeoning mid-section.

  “Dianne, do you mind if I steal Ed for a minute?”

  “Go for it. Steal him back, if you want.”

  I took Ed by the arm while he was still laughing too loud and marched him out of earshot. “What’s this about dog hunting? Have you noticed how very—extremely—supremely pregnant your wife happens to be?”

  Ed’s eyes danced with excitement. “Story’s all over the TV, Jaqs. This Cuthbart guy’s carrying on and so are his kids. Bawling around about missing Spot.”

  “King.”

  “Spot. King.” He dropped his voice. “Figured to slip Cuthbart old Mr. Gill’s yellow Lab. They all look alike.”

  Same old Ed. “You will not. Mr. Gill loves his dog. Plus, she is still nursing pups.”

  “I’ll have to slap black paint on its ear.”

  “Stop. Ed, just stop.” I dragged him to the car. “What about your job? Are you still working for Tony?” Anthony’s Body Shop—Dirty Dings Done Dirt Cheap. Ed’s big brother always hired him back because he knew what everyone else knew—Ed was a dreamer and a schemer. No 401K in either of those.

  Ed pulled me around the car, and glanced in Dianne’s direction. “Yeah, Jaqster, but I’ve got two kids coming.” He combed the hair out of his eyes. “I need to pick up as much extra as I can. Been selling blood down at the hospital, but that doesn’t even pay for beer.”

  I opened my bag and pulled out a pen and my checkbook.

  “Aw, Jaqs, you don’t have to.”

  “It’s for them,” I flapped my checkbook in Dianne’s direction, “not you. I mean it. You take this to the bank first thing tomorrow, but tonight, get your wife home where she belongs.” I tore the check out of the book and folded it into his hand. “Go home, Ed.”

  “But that bounty, it’s a thousand bucks.”

  “This is two-thousand bucks.”

  “Aw, Jaqs.”

  “There’s a catch, Ed. You have to earn it. Be at Ovation bright and early tomorrow, understood? Tony will let you off work for a day or two. We’re getting her ready for splashdown. Do a good job, and I’ll match that two-thousand at the end.”

  Ed grabbed me into a bear hug. My pocketbook slid down the trunk and landed upside down in the gravel. “I’ll be there. I swear, Jaqs.”

  In the old days, that phrase always triggered the song-and-dance routine—how he wouldn’t drink beer anymore or call Dianne or date Dianne. Or try to use me as a parking space for the Subaru. Ed wasn’t singing or dancing this time. I couldn’t tell for sure, but I think he might have been crying.

  I gathered my cell off the gravel. “What’s your cell? I’ll add your number.”
>
  “Don’t have one. Stocking up on diapers and other baby stuff. Have to watch every penny.” He scratched at his neck and scuffed the ground with his boot.

  “Why Ed Mabry, I do believe you’re almost grown up.”

  “Ed, I have to pee,” Dianne groaned from the bench.

  “Again,” Ed whispered. “And she doesn’t even drink.”

  Like I said, almost.

  ~~^~~

  “His good luck I didn’t run into him.” Uncle Frank chewed on his toothpick and cruised the lot hoping for a glimpse of Ed the Fool. “What’s this bounty hunting crazy talk?”

  Aunt B reached across the front seat and flicked the toothpick. “I told you, Frank. It was on the news while you were in the Little Boys Room. King is missing and the councilman is offering a thousand dollars for his return. Poor dog. Adopted out of a pound and went to live in their fancy mansion. Now this.” Aunt B turned in her seat. “That might make a good movie, do you think? Like Lassie Come Home.”

  “Maybe a documentary. King was a rescue?”

  Uncle Frank slipped his toothpick back in his pocket. “Yeah, Saint Cuthbart claims to have saved the mutt from the gas chamber. Got the fool elected, is what that dog did.”

  “Everybody’s a fool tonight, according to you.”

  “Am I wrong, Missus? Who loses a Lab? Labs don’t get lost. Stolen, but not lost. Not unless they are lost on purpose. There’ll be a bunch of morons running around tonight chasing a ghost. People better lock up their dogs.”

  My writer’s mind started plotting. “Why would Cuthbart deliberately lose the dog? Why would he lie about it? Especially the dog that won him the election?”

  Uncle Frank studied me in the rearview. “Really? My big time writer girl can’t put that together? Mrs. Councilman didn’t want dog poop on her fancy mansion grass, or those gardens she gave tours of on the Fourth of July. Simple as that.”

  Aunt B lit up. “I think you’re right. That Frannie Cuthbart has won the blue ribbon for her geraniums two years straight.” She slapped Uncle Frank’s knee. “I married the smartest man in town.”

  “Which makes you the smartest woman in town.” It was how they said I love you. “Mark my words,” he said to me with narrow eyes in the rearview. “That’s one dog who’ll never see the light of another day. Mrs. Councilman probably didn’t like that the dog had that black mark, either.”

  I leaned forward, over the back of the front seat. “Wouldn’t be much of a stretch to think someone stole the dog, and is holding it for ransom. Since it was Geoff Cuthbart’s running mate, the dognappers would think they’d struck it rich.”

  “Cuthbart wouldn’t go blabbing all over creation that it was missing, if that’s the case,” he said.

  “Your uncle makes sense. Ransom is always top secret. Don’t call the cops—that sort of thing, at least on the TV shows.”

  “Ed mentioned a black mark,” I said. “What black mark?”

  Aunt B toggled her earlobe. “Like the letter C. A black letter C, on his right ear. Maybe his left. I can never remember. First yellow Lab I’ve ever seen with a mark like that.”

  Just like I’d never seen a yellow Lab with pink nail polish on its right ear.

  “Uncle Frank, I’ll be a tad late getting to the marina tomorrow.”

  He took his eyes off the road and scowled at me over his shoulder. “Jaqie, if you’re serious about sailing to Puerto Rico, this is not playtime.”

  “I’ll be there after lunch, but I hired a guy who’ll meet you at Ovation in the morning. He’ll help us get her in the water. Promise you’ll be nice to him when he comes.”

  “I’m nice to everybody. Where will you be?”

  “Helping a friend.”

  If King was Doofus, then Doofus could be in deep trouble. Lost or stolen, I wasn’t up to losing anyone else in my life, even if he’d only been in it one minute. I needed a starting place, and that place was the Cuthbart mansion.

  CHAPTER 10

  He woke up early, yawned, stretched his front half, then his back half after he stood up. He trotted the full length of the rope to do his morning routine as far from his food source as possible. There was no food, but this was one of the first lessons his mom had taught him and he’d never forgotten.

  Buttons of morning dew shimmered on the water dish. He stood on the rim of the dish to hold it steady and licked it clean. There was a bitter aftertaste. He recognized it from the Man’s garage. The crinkled wrapper from yesterday’s meat logs was trapped in the tall grass just beyond his reach, but before the bright ball of light got too high in the sky, a skiff of wind blew it right to him. The wrapper smelled as good as the meat had tasted. He licked it clean of flavor and, finally, ate it, too.

  The protected water of his cove hid under the heavy mist, but he could smell it, and hear it lapping the shoreline, and the geese, still asleep, probably, heads tucked under, except the guardians. They would keep an eye out, and might be aware of him beyond their line of sight.

  Boats motored even further out, but King did not bark. He’d learned that lesson the hard way at the first house where the Man was always thirsty, and hit him with whatever was in reach. “No bark!” he’d shout, which King thought sounded exactly like barking.

  He napped fitfully, rousing himself to avoid the narrow sundial of shade around the tree. It was warm and the stiff blanket the Men left behind blocked the chill from the soggy ground around him. He checked the water dish, but no joy. He heard Cars far off and wished he could bark. They might have water. The breeze blew south-to-east. Perfect. The sound of barking would carry. But he didn’t.

  Hours later, when they poked him in the ribs, he nearly slept right through it.

  CHAPTER 11

  I know that most of the innocuous lanes that disappear into the woods on the Eastern Shore have a fabulous house attached to the end of them with the Chesapeake Bay in the backyard. It was no surprise that the Cuthbart’s share of the bay was even more magnificent than the mansion. The slight chop twinkled in March’s watered-down sunshine.

  Rusted trucks with beds full of mulch, wheelbarrows stacked with hoes and rakes ringed the mansion’s driveway. Piles of black, pungent mushroom soil waited to be spread in the raised flower beds, but not a gardener in sight to make that happen. Maybe Mrs. Cuthbart worried I was an ICE agent moonlighting as a screenwriter. An elegant woman in a cashmere shawl and flowing skirt stood at the understated, custom-made front door.

  “Ms. Shanahan. Delighted.” Francine Cuthbart met me half-way down the semi-circular, brick steps and offered a hand as soft and limp as her shawl. “A bicycle? How unusual.”

  “Trying to get back in shape. LA, you know. Nobody walks.” I said it because Frannie Cuthbart was a groupie, or would be if I had a group. The Hollywood connection. It’s why she’d agreed to meet with me. Why she was “beyond thrilled” to meet with me at seven o’clock in the morning.

  “I can imagine. I’ve read about Los Angeles traffic, and the smog. Come in.” She stepped aside and opened the door into the foyer.

  My sneakers squealed across the marble-tiled, double-decker entry hall as I followed my hostess into the family room. Not a chew toy or flea in sight. No Lost Dog posters scattered on the mahogany dining table for her children to staple to telephone poles after school. “You have a beautiful home.”

  “Thank you, Jaqie. We enjoy it. May I call you Jaqie?”

  “I hope your husband won’t be too busy to enjoy it now that he’s our councilman, Francine. May I call you, Francine?”

  “Geoff has always loved politics. He plans eventually to be Senator Cuthbart. No doubt we’ll live in Georgetown and keep this as our summer cottage.”

  She motioned me toward a sofa while she draped herself along the curve of a matching chaise. Maddie could do that, too,—meld into a serpentine piece of furniture without squirting out the other end. Francine rang a silver bell on the side table.

  I made a show of absorbing my surroundings. “I’m so sorry
not to meet the famous King. Have you any word?”

  She stiffened slightly and shivered. Gertie calls that “when someone walks over your grave.” Francine adjusted her skirt and smoothed it carefully. “Everything will turn out as it should,” she said and offered me a smile of sorts. “Geoff’s children are over-wrought, but time heals all wounds.”

  “They must be just sick about losing him. I hesitated to come, in case—”

  Her mouth pursed like she’d bit a lemon. “I’m confident it will turn up. Geoff is searching everywhere.”

  A young woman drifted into the room, carrying a china tea service. She set in on the coffee table. “Ma’am?”

  “Evita, hold my calls.” Francine’s eyes slid toward me, and back again. “Unless it’s Mr. Cuthbart, of course.”

  Evita dipped a shallow curtsy and backed out of the room.

  King’s mistress appeared not to be perched on pins and needles waiting for a ransom demand.

  “Labradors are excellent dogs. I missed the election, but my family said King quite stole the show.” I felt my mouth growing rounder and smaller, talking in polite society. It would be shaped like a prune by the time I got to the marina. “I am so sorry to hear he’s run away. Most unusual behavior for a Lab.”

  “You’re an early bird, Jaqie. You must be anxious to discuss the Oakley Beach Butcher. How exciting you might actually write a movie about it.”

  It appeared the lost dog segment of our conversation had concluded. Maybe for her. “This is the worst timing on my part,” I said. “I must apologize. Listen to me talking movies, when I know you’d much rather be searching for King.” Did Manolo Blahnik make hiking boots? “Let’s reschedule—”

  “The dawg will be fine.” Our Francine was from Baltimore—possibly Philly—if my ear caught that momentary slip. She had no interest in discussing a missing dog when there was a perfectly good mass-murderer a stone’s throw away. “Your work must be terribly demanding.” Her pinkie shot sky-high, lifting her cup of tea—case closed.