by Misty Simon
“Change of plans,” I said pulling over to the side of the road before exiting the car.
Ben joined me, giving me a look like he had no idea what was going through my brain. He usually didn’t, or we’d never get anything done, but this time I didn’t blame him. The idea was only slightly formed in my own head. As far as I was concerned, whoever was heading into that house probably shouldn’t be there any more than we were supposed to be. I wanted to know who and I wanted to know why. I highly doubted I’d have the cajones to actually ask, but if we could get close enough, then I might be able to at least get the who and then discern the why. (Good word. Please let it keep me from doing something stupid.)
Like that had ever worked before.
Chapter Thirteen
Ben was happy enough to hoof it through the dark, back the way we had come. Me, on the other hand, well, I was swiftly coming to the conclusion that this was the most idiotic thing I had ever thought of.
I was not an exerciser. I certainly wasn’t a walker. I’d run after the kids when I had to, but I had never joined a gym for a very good reason. I didn’t trust them, and I didn’t like exercise. So sue me.
We were halfway down the road when I started a litany in my head—This was my idea, and I will see it through. This was my idea, and I will see it through… But man, did I wish I could ask for a piggyback ride, or a push cart, or even a wheelbarrow ride. My legs were screaming at me.
But finally we got there. We were quiet as we approached. I saw someone on the front porch and motioned to Ben. He saw the figure, too, and grabbed my hand.
“Pretend we’re out for a walk to enjoy the night air,” he whispered.
I didn’t even bother to respond because I was pretty sure I did not have enough air in my lungs to make the word “yes” come out. My lack might have been from the excitement of discovery, but I thought it probably had more to do with my being a wuss and totally out of shape.
“Nice night,” Ben called out to the person on the porch.
Even from this distance I could see the person stiffen up and hunch his shoulders. The full moon came out from behind the trees and beamed like a spotlight on the guy. He was balding, a little paunchy, and short. Where had I seen him before? His face wasn’t familiar when we’d passed him on the road, but there was something about him that struck a chord for me.
“Uh, yeah.” His voice was average, not deep but not high. He held something up in the air. “Shame about Mr. McIntyre, isn’t it? I was just collecting his mail since he can’t do it anymore.”
And I was the fricking tooth fairy.
But I smiled anyway. Not that he could probably see it.
Ben saved me from having to answer. “That’s nice of you. Are you a relative? We were sad to hear of his passing. Such a tragedy.”
The guy snorted, then tried to turn it into a cough. I really wanted to see his face better so that I could give a good description to Debbie. Not that she’d listen, since in her point of view that case was open and shut and an accident of nature. Nothing to see here, folks, move on along.
He cleared his throat. “Yes, a real tragedy.” He stepped back into the deeper shadows. “Well, I’d better get this to his niece, like she asked me. Nice girl, that Carmen, so heartbroken over her uncle that she didn’t even want to come out and get his mail. Said the house holds too many memories she just can’t face right now.”
What a load of hooey. Her name was Chloe, and she had only cried when she realized she probably should have and it would get her something from Harlow. Earlier, I’d heard that she was totally calm when Harlow had questioned her before, but then broke down when she wanted to go home. Now I was highly suspicious, while before I was merely curious. But we couldn’t exactly ask him his name, and I couldn’t demand he step out of the shadows. We could wait on the side of the road and get his license plate, though. Yeah, that was the ticket.
Ben waved, and I did the same, even though I wanted to run up to the porch and demand the guy explain what he was really doing there.
It took Ben three tries to get me to move.
“Don’t look at him so suspiciously or we’ll never find out who he is. If nothing else, we can ask Chloe who she would have asked to pick up the mail,” he muttered low enough that I had to lean in close.
He kissed me on the nose, waved to the guy again, and we got moving.
“I want that license plate when we leave,” I said out of the corner of my mouth.
“And you’ll get it, but not if we hang around and make him not want to leave.”
“You’re right.”
So we walked. Again. And again I started up the litany—This was my idea, and I will see if through. This was my idea, and I’ll see it through even if tomorrow my legs are going to feel like they want to fall off.
After five minutes, I began to wonder why the man wasn’t coming along in his car. Maybe he was watching for us to enter a house or turn down at the end of the road. I started pulling Ben along behind me in a power walk I knew would totally make me useless later on. Then again, I also knew I had a husband who gave killer massages, with the rest of the night to coax him into giving me one.
We got to the end of the street, turned to the right to get to our vehicle, then waited another ten minutes. No one ever came out of the street. How was that possible? Or was he waiting a half an hour? Was he inside the house? Was he going to go into the carriage house and destroy all the evidence and leave me with only the pictures and no reference point?
Crap.
Before I could fall farther into the thought, a car came roaring out of the road and whipped to the left. I turned quickly in my seat but muffled my scream when I realized that the damn license plate was covered in something that made it impossible to see.
In the seat next to me, Ben had taken his hyper-focus camera out of the bag and was leaned over the backseat waiting to get the picture. He swore under his breath. “Mud! The guy has mud all over his license plate.”
“Did you at least get the make and model?”
“Yeah, but I doubt that’s going to do us much good.” He sounded defeated, so I squeezed his knee, then a little bit higher, then a little bit higher than that.
“We’re going to get him and find out what he has. I can’t follow him now, since he went the opposite direction, but we’ll figure something out. At least we have someone else on our list besides the Pickle Guy.” I was very tired of the Pickle Guy and almost ecstatic to have a different suspect. Now if we could just figure out who he was.
****
Work the next morning was uneventful. I used a laptop Ben had gotten me for Christmas to look up vehicle registrations, but without a license I had nothing more to go on. Ben had gone in to the newspaper and was going to do more research there, around his ongoing articles about gardening, fatherhood, and culinary delights.
By noon I was antsy. And then Charlie showed up, bless his heart. I blew him an air kiss as I headed out the door. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized he hadn’t blown one back, and he looked down in the mouth. I’d ask him about it later. Ben had called at eleven to let me know that he was taking me on a special picnic and to go home and put on a pretty sundress, underwear optional. I opted out and waited on the front sidewalk, praying that a stray breeze would not whip up and show the whole world the raw Ivy.
Fortunately, the fates were smiling down on me. Ben ran around to open the door for me and then handed me into the car so we could get rolling.
When he pulled up at the marina on the Chesapeake Bay, I began to get a little nervous.
When he came out of the marina office with a key in hand, I started sweating. And when he guided me down the dock, I made a last-ditch effort to make a joke. “So we’re going to sit on the dock of the bay and eat lunch?”
“Good song reference, but no. I’m taking you out cruising.”
I removed my hand from his and started backing away. “Uh, no, you’re not.”
He made a
grab for my hand. “Yes, I am. We need a break from all this, and I want to have some fun with you. I’ve taken the girls to this little island out in the bay a bunch of times, and they love it. Every time, they ask if you’ll come along, because they want to show you things. You always find a reason not to go. I thought it might be easier if it were just you and me the first time, so if you have to throw up or have a freak attack they don’t have to watch it.”
“Thanks,” I said grudgingly, knowing that he was probably right. I’d probably do both.
He helped me into the small craft. Before I sat down, that breeze I’d been hoping wouldn’t blow did, and my skirt lifted up and out. Ben let out a low whistle.
“You might have to wait to throw up if I saw what I think I just saw.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Why don’t you sit on the starboard side? I’ll get things moving so we can get out to that deserted island posthaste.”
I blushed and arranged my skirt around me on the bench seat thing. Who knew if I was aft or starboard or port side? I wasn’t even sure those were the right terms, but I did know unbridled lust when I saw it lighting my husband’s eyes, and I wanted more of it.
****
The water itself wasn’t bad, and when we arrived at the island, Ben moored the boat in the sand, then helped me out, making sure to put his hand under my dress to boost my rear end.
I giggled, he smiled, and then he chased me around the small swatch of land in the middle of the bay.
I expected him to catch up with me relatively fast. But when I looked back over my shoulder, he was standing about twenty feet back with his hands on his hips and a very concerned look on his face.
“Don’t tell me I just ran past a body,” I joked, really hoping I hadn’t done just that.
“No, but come over here for a second.”
Was he simply trying to get me to fall for that so he didn’t have to chase me? Maybe I wasn’t the only one whose legs were tired from our walk last night.
I joined him, and he pulled me close, kissing me full on the lips.
“First I had to do that because I don’t know if this is going to be quite the fun you thought it was going to be.”
What did that mean?
I let him turn me around and found myself staring at rows upon rows of tomatoes. And they were all decorated with stakes, with barbed wire surrounding the whole patch. I had a feeling these weren’t growing wild.
Ben walked away from the tomatoes.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Searching for a long stick with a fork at the end, to snag a tomato.”
“And why is that?” Like I actually had to ask.
“I’m not leaving the island without one of these. They look familiar.”
How about that for being right? And didn’t one tomato look like the next? “Why can’t we leave without one?” I whined. I swear I didn’t think I ever wanted to see another tomato in my whole life. Ever.
“I have to see if these are what I think they are.”
I huffed out a breath. “And what do you think they are?”
“I think they’re Irma’s tomatoes.”
I gaped at him. “Do you think she grew them out here every year? Wouldn’t someone have noticed or come upon the island like we did today and think they looked like awesome tomatoes? No way could she have hidden them for forty-nine years and no one knew she was growing them out here.”
He put a finger to my lips, and I licked it, just because I could. He was quick to snatch his hand back and then waggle that finger at me. “You are not going to distract me.”
I get points for trying. I’m just saying.
But I smiled sweetly at him. “Okay, then, tomato guru. Why do you think they’re Irma’s tomatoes? And why is this significant when we have a dead judge to look into?”
“Because if someone is growing Irma’s tomatoes, then someone could be rigging the contest, and that is not good for anyone. Tomatoes have to be planted every year, Ivy. Every year. So these have to be recent, far more recent than Irma’s death.”
He finally found a piece of driftwood big enough, with a forked piece on the end, that he used to pull a tomato from the vine. He did a little awkward dance when he got it. And now we could picnic.
There was nothing too exciting about the picnic, though I was happy we were out in the middle of nowhere when Ben found out I really had forgone the underwear portion for the day.
Amidst laughter and teasing, we headed back to our tiny boat. This water thing hadn’t been so bad. I might not love the open water, or be interested in taking some long sailing trip, but this little jaunt into the bay hadn’t been nearly as scary as I’d feared.
There was every possibility I would no longer be making excuses when the girls said they wanted to go out with both of us. It could be fun to bring them out here and have them show me their treasures and finds. They weren’t going to be little forever, and I didn’t want to shy away from any of the stuff they wanted to share with me.
Ben handed me back into the boat, using his hand-under-the-dress thing to make sure I was seated completely. I laughed and threw my head back in the light breeze that had come in over the bay.
We were maybe just a little closer to finding out what had happened to Mac. We were only days away from the tournament, and then maybe my life could go back to normal for a little while before the next crisis reared its ugly head. Until then, I was going to enjoy the moment and breathe in the peace.
I laid my head back as the roar of an engine whipped by us.
“I wish people would respect the other, smaller craft out here,” Ben said. “He’s got the whole bay, and he has to run alongside us,” he grumbled.
“Should I be concerned?” My eyes popped open as I grabbed the sides of the boat and rode the wavelets that were making our small boat bob from the guy’s wake.
“What the hell is that?” Ben was staring at something to our left.
I followed his lead and was not amused or pleased to find a huge fiberglass boat bearing down on us.
“Oh, my God, don’t they see us?” I yelled.
“Yeah, I think they do see us, and that’s the problem. Hold on, hon. I think we’re in for a bumpy ride.”
I made sure my life jacket was tight enough to double for a corset and then waited for my life to flash before my eyes. I had a lot to be thankful for, and some things to wonder what in the hell I was thinking, but little regret other than not being able to see my kids again.
I was jammed into the side of the boat and Ben pushed my head down as he executed a turn that I was certain the little motor couldn’t handle and the steering thing, whatever that was called, would just break in two.
But Ben had been sailing his whole life, having grown up here. I had to have faith that he’d get us out of this. And then I’d give him the biggest kiss he’d ever had in his life. Swear!
Another jolt to the side landed me on my ass, and this time I didn’t even care if everyone saw my lady bits, as long as I was around long enough to be laughed at.
I sat up just in time to see that we were careening fast and furiously toward a sandbar that we would never be able to clear. I shouted, Ben smiled, and we skimmed over it into a cove that there was no way the bigger boat could follow us into.
I did give Ben that amazing kiss and also a squeeze or two in promise for later, in a thank you for saving my life.
“Phew!” we both said at the same time.
We laughed and kissed again.
Quickly that turned into a sobering moment. “What the hell just happened?” I asked.
“I have no idea, but I will definitely be finding out, because this is far more than just trying to figure out what happened to Mac. Someone’s after us.”
Apparently we were now fully committed. Hopefully we wouldn’t have to be committed to a mental hospital once this was all over.
Chapter Fourteen
At a much slower pace, Ben pulled us out of the cove and moved sedatel
y along the shoreline, looking out for the big menacing boat again.
“So what the hell was that?” I pushed my hair back off my face. Maybe I’d have to rethink this boating thing if that could be an everyday occurrence.
“That was someone trying to keep us away from that island. You didn’t by any chance get the name on the boat, did you?”
I laughed derisively. “I barely remembered my own name there for a few minutes, so no, sorry. Was there anything distinctive about it that we can use to identify it?”
“Not that I could tell, but then I was doing water acrobatics that should not have worked, no matter how much I wanted them to.”
I smacked his arm, aghast at what he’d just said. “Do you mean to tell me you weren’t sure we would be able to make it over that sandbar?”
“What sandbar?” he said with a straight face.
“Well, all I know is that someone is very serious about their tomatoes.”
“But serious enough to kill a judge?” Ben asked the question that had been running through my head.
“But what purpose would that serve? I would think they’d need all the judges present to win the tournament, and really, what do you get other than a sense of satisfaction from winning this thing? I don’t want to dull your shine at the prospect of your tomato being the fairest in the land, but it’s still going to be used to make a salad or my next BLT. What on earth is so special? They don’t bronze the thing, or anything, do they?”
Ben stopped in his tracks and stared at me as if I had just spoken in Swahili. That, or I had something stuck to my chin.
“What?” I asked, all self-conscious anxiety now.
“You really don’t know?”