by Janet Bolin
Her laugh held no humor. “Running while talking on the phone will be faster than teaching myself to drive a stick shift. Your car might end up on the deck of a sailboat.”
Not a good plan. “I’ll be fine waiting for you and Ben. Or watch for me to come jogging up behind you.” Hobbling would be more like it.
She sprinted to Tom’s front door, unlocked it, pulled hard until it opened, and called back to me, “I’ll leave this door unlocked so Ben and I can rush back in. Maybe I’ll be lucky and find Clay. He’ll have tools.”
Yes, he would. He always did. Would he be pleased because I’d found an innovative way of throwing Haylee and Ben together? Or would he think I’d gone a little far?
Clenching my teeth, I plunked the flashlight on the net and hacked at the rope.
The smoke detector chirped, and chirped again. I was getting nowhere.
I should have known. Haylee was strong. If this fishnet was going to surrender to a serrated knife, it would have already done it.
In weird, shifting shadows, I glimpsed fishing line wrapped around the intersection where two of the ropes in the net joined. Fishing line would be strong, but at least it was thinner than those ropes.
I set my flashlight on its end to shine upward and give me a steadier source of light.
It tipped over and rolled just out of my reach.
I quickly changed my mind about being left alone.
Was Haylee still nearby? In the gloom, I called her. No answer, only that peculiar moan. It seemed to happen each time a breeze touched the door leading to the boathouse. We’d come inside for no good reason, and I’d been suitably punished.
Okay, now that I’d admitted that I’d been wrong, smoke detector or no smoke detector, to barge into Tom’s boathouse, shouldn’t the knife slice through the fishing line uniting a couple of those ropes?
I strained toward the flashlight, and managed to graze it with my fingertips. I tried harder, and nudged it. Its plastic outer shell grumbling against the plank floor, it rolled completely out of reach. I would have to continue working by what little light it shed.
Meanwhile, that smoke detector was becoming really annoying.
My hand brushed against the paper that had drifted down off the shelf when Haylee grabbed the box of thread. I picked up the small envelope.
The world went suddenly still.
I didn’t hear the beeping smoke detector, the moaning door, or the jingling marina. I didn’t hear the licking, lapping water out in the boathouse. All I heard was a deep, red roaring inside my head.
Even in the dim light, I recognized the skull and crossbones on the paper envelope. I didn’t need to read the biggest word, but I could, and I did.
Poison.
A straight red line slashed across the silhouette of a rat.
I dropped the envelope and sawed furiously at the fishing line joining two of the net’s ropes.
I reasoned that of course Tom would have rat poison in a shack where he cleaned and sold fish. Rats could swim. They could probably climb up the posts supporting the pier. They could have been the critters that gnawed the holes I’d seen in the shack’s wooden siding when Haylee and I bought fish here last Sunday evening. Rats could pose a real problem for Tom.
He wouldn’t have poisoned his longtime friend. Tom himself had been sick when Neil died.
Mouth suddenly dry, I whispered again, “Haylee?”
Of course she wasn’t there. She’d be back any minute, with Ben. How much time had passed? By now, she should be almost at the lodge. Or she had called directory assistance and was talking to Ben. They’d both be here soon. The moaning noise became more frequent, coupled with a creak as the back door swung on its hinges. The breezes had accelerated. Gusts seemed to rock the shack.
The smoke detector griped.
I chopped at the thinner cords lashed around the ropes. I couldn’t tell in the lack of light, but those cords also seemed impervious to Tom’s knife.
Panting through my open mouth, I concentrated.
And then I heard a noise that made me clamp my mouth shut, hold my breath, and tighten my hand on the knife’s wooden handle.
An outboard motor chugged softly, coming closer. Wavelets brushed an aluminum hull.
No. A boat couldn’t be coming here, not to this boathouse. Tom couldn’t be returning in his boat. He’d left, for the night, probably.
I told myself I was imagining things. I was imagining the smell of exhaust. I was imagining the engine shutting off. I was imagining water rippling against an aluminum hull . . .
I told myself that no one could possibly have driven a boat into that empty bay in the back of the boathouse.
A woman whined, “I’m cold.”
The woman’s voice sounded familiar. She wasn’t Haylee.
But whoever she was, her voice was coming from that previously empty bay in the back of the boathouse.
46
“I’LL GET YOU A SWEATER,” A MAN SAID. TOM.
“I’m freeeeeezing. What’s that beeping?” I placed the woman’s sharp voice. Bitsy from the campground was with Tom. Great. The woman had never seemed particularly helpful.
“Smoke detector. Gotta change the batteries. Wind’s coming up fast. Let’s go inside out of the wind and warm you up.”
My heart beat with sickening thuds. The storage room door had been shut when Haylee and I arrived. Now it gaped open, and I was inside, unable to get up to shut the door, and spotlit in the glare of a flashlight I couldn’t reach.
Maybe Tom and Bitsy wouldn’t come into the front of the shack. Maybe Tom would find the sweater and they’d go back out to the boat and putter away.
Maybe . . .
There was the sound of feet scraping against wood. A scuffle?
Bitsy yelped, “Don’t push me!”
“Shh! Stay behind me. There’s a light on.” His whisper was hoarse. “Someone might be in there.”
Maybe he would call the police without investigating. Either way, I was about to be very embarrassed. I opened my fingers and let the knife drop into the net behind me. I grabbed the rat poison packet and stuffed it into the pocket of my cutoffs. I didn’t want him thinking I’d brought poison to his shack. Or that I’d guessed he could have poisoned Neil. No, I told myself, he wouldn’t have hurt his buddy.
I heard Tom tiptoe closer. There was no point in pretending I wasn’t here. He might attack the supposed intruder first and ask questions later.
Beep.
“Tom?” I called out, but my voice quavered as if I were stuck in a nightmare. “Is that you? Can you help me?”
He ran to the storeroom and knelt in front of me. “Willow! What happened?”
Bitsy yelled, “What is it?” Her voice was more piercing and grating than ever.
Tom called over his shoulder. “It’s okay, Bitsy. Stay where you are.” Quietly, he asked me, “What are you doing here?” In the dim light, his usually pale eyes seemed dark.
I stuck to the truth, but my words sounded unbelievable even to me. “I heard the smoke detector, and then I heard someone moan. I was afraid you’d fallen off a ladder while changing batteries and were too hurt to move or yell, so I came in to investigate.” My shudder was real. “I thought this net might be you.” That was a stretch. “So I came closer, but I stumbled and one foot got caught. When I tried to lift that foot, I hurt my ankle, and my other foot got caught.”
He picked up my flashlight and shined it on my legs and feet. “Whoa, you really are snarled up.”
“Who is it?” Bitsy hollered. “Want me to call the police?”
“No,” Tom shouted. He grinned at me. “You don’t want the police, do you?”
He was nice. He couldn’t have hurt Neil. I grinned back. “No, thanks. I’m glad you understand that I barged in uninvited because I was trying to help. I’m also glad,” I added belatedly, “that you didn’t fall off a ladder and that you aren’t injured.”
Moan.
“Tom!” Bitsy yelled. �
��What was that?”
“Yes, what is it?” I asked Tom. “That’s what I heard and thought could be you, too hurt to talk. Is somebody else in here?” I had no trouble sounding frightened.
Tom patted my hand and called over his shoulder to Bitsy, “It’s only the door blowin’ in the wind. Don’t panic.”
But she’d obviously had enough of being relegated to the creepy, watery part of the boathouse. She ran inside and stopped beside the storeroom door. “Who’s your girlfriend, Tom?”
“I’m not—” I began.
Tom stood and put his arm around Bitsy. “She’s not my anything, Bitsy. You’re my girl. You know that.”
Bitsy had been Neil’s girlfriend, and now she was Tom’s . . . Could a love triangle have been responsible for Neil’s murder? Could Tom have killed Neil due to jealousy, or had Bitsy killed Neil because she couldn’t have him? Or maybe it was money. Had either or both of them expected to inherit from Neil?
Beep.
Bitsy was not about to be put off. “Then what’s she doing here?”
“She was explaining that. She heard that door, too, from outside and came in to see if I was okay.”
I added in the most sensible-sounding voice I could muster, “I’m a volunteer firefighter. He needs to change those batteries.” While he was doing that, Ben and Haylee would show up. They’d free me, and we’d have a good laugh. And then we’d all go home.
And the police could continue their investigation into Neil’s death. Snoozy’s, too.
Bitsy peered more closely at me. “Oh. She’s the one who came pestering me at work one night. Seems to me she likes asking too many questions and going too many places where she doesn’t belong.”
Maybe the gloom in Tom’s shop would prevent them from noticing my struggle to look innocent.
“Bitsy, darlin’,” Tom scolded, “she thought I was hurt and was only trying to help.”
Bitsy folded her arms. “Sure, sure. Where’s that sweater?”
“Hangin’ by the front door. Go get it and put it on, would you? There’s a sweetie.” He bent toward me. “Here, Willow, I’m going to try to pick you up. When I do, see if you can kick the net off your feet.”
Considering that Tom was hardly taller than I was, I didn’t have much hope that his plan would work. Besides, my ankle hurt.
“Could we cut the net off my foot?” I asked. It wasn’t a very nice request. I’d invaded his fishing shack, and now I wanted him to damage his equipment for me.
“I hope we won’t have to resort to that.”
He was being remarkably good-natured about it all.
I raised my arms and let him grasp me in a bear hug. He stood, taking some of the pressure off my ankle, which was a relief.
“Kick your feet,” he grunted.
The fishnet probably weighed just short of two tons. I could barely move my feet, let alone kick them.
Wearing a gigantic beige sweater with dark brown moose heads knit on the front, Bitsy stood glowering behind him. I attempted to shake my feet out of the heavy net, but all I shook out of it was something that rolled across the uneven floor.
Bitsy picked it up. “She brought a spool of thread? She sells the stuff, you know.”
“Hang on to it for her, will you?” Tom growled.
I didn’t want to admit that the spool wasn’t mine, or that Haylee had been here, or that we’d been snooping among the things on his shelves. And I certainly was not about to tell Tom and Bitsy that Haylee was coming back. What if they set a trap for her?
I told myself to calm down. I reasoned that if Tom had knowingly poisoned Neil, he’d have rid his shack of all traces of rat poison, not merely stuck the packet underneath a box of thread. It was only a coincidence that the packet was there. Tom couldn’t have murdered his friend. Wouldn’t have. Tom had told Haylee and me that he’d been sick, too. Maybe someone had tried to dose him with rat poison, but he hadn’t taken his medicine. Maybe the poisoner was right here with us . . .
“Put her down,” Bitsy said. “That’s not doing any good.”
I was afraid she was right, but I was sure that wasn’t her real reason for wanting him to stop hugging me.
“Tom’s a nice person,” I managed, “but don’t worry, I have a boyfriend.” I wished.
Bitsy just sniffed.
“None of the Threadville women would be interested in old Tom,” he told Bitsy. Did I detect an offended note in his voice? Was Tom the man whose advances Naomi had rebuffed? I could easily see how Naomi might be Tom’s—or any man’s—first choice. But no one, not even easygoing Tom, would live up to Naomi’s memories of her long-gone fiancé. “I’m all yours, Bitsy babe.” In a pleasanter voice, he said to me, “Let’s see if we can drag this thing off you, Willow. It’s so heavy that maybe it will stay behind while we move.” He went around behind me, grabbed me by the armpits, and pulled me toward the back of his shop.
Something else clattered to the floor. Bitsy swooped down on it. “She had a knife!” she shrieked in a shrill voice.
“Relax, babe, will you? That’s my knife.”
“What was she doing with it?”
“I lost it. No telling what all’s fallen into that net since I dumped it on the floor.”
No telling, indeed. Did he know that he’d actually left that knife where he cleaned his fish? Maybe he was trying to protect me from Bitsy. He was certainly trying to dampen her jealousy. He was a nice enough man, but he wasn’t Clay. Besides, the smell of fish around Tom—and his fishnet—was not entirely pleasant.
Bitsy bent and grabbed the fishnet with both hands. “Put her down and maybe we can just pull the thing off her feet.”
“It’s too heavy,” he panted.
“Yeah, she might be lighter than it is.” She braced her feet and tugged, anyway.
I attempted to help by bending my knees and trying to pull my feet out of the net. I heard a wad of paper land on the floor. The crumpled rat poison envelope had fallen out of the front pocket of my cutoffs. I gasped.
“What?” Tom asked. From the sound of it, he toed the balled-up envelope aside. With any luck, he didn’t recognize it and hadn’t noticed it tumbling out of my pocket.
In the silence between the smoke detector’s complaints, I attempted to explain my involuntary gasp. “I wrenched my ankle when I fell.” It throbbed, and I was certain it had swollen, which would make it even more impossible for me to shake the net off.
“Stop yanking at her, will you, Bitsy?” Tom could have spoken in nicer tones to his girlfriend. “Come around here and give me a hand.” With Bitsy’s help, he dragged me and the fishnet past the moaning door, out of the shop, and into the boathouse. I was becoming seriously frightened. We were much too close to those narrow catwalks.
“Can’t we just cut the net?” I asked loudly, hoping someone might hear me and come to my aid. Where were Haylee and Ben? They should be on their way, unless Ben had already fallen asleep and was hard to awaken. Would the teen looking after the lodge’s reception desk be any help cutting a fishnet off my feet?
“That’s what I’m plannin’.” Was it my imagination or had Tom’s tone with me changed, also? He now sounded peeved with both Bitsy and me. “I’ve got the right tools, but not here. Let’s see if we can get you into my boat.”
“Boat?” Bitsy parroted. “Wouldn’t your truck be simpler?”
“How would I lift that fishnet into a truck?” He was more than peeved. He was angry. He and Bitsy dragged me onto the catwalk. It bent underneath the weight of the fishnet and three humans.
“Don’t take me anywhere.” I tried to hide my rising panic. “Call the fire department. They’ll bring the jaws of life.” I was becoming as shrill as Bitsy.
“Nah,” Tom scoffed. “That’d take too long. We can get you fixed up sooner than that.”
“No!” I yelled. Maybe someone in one of the yachts would hear me and come out to investigate. Despite Vicki’s complaints, snoopy civilians could come in handy.
The smoke detector beeped.
Grunting, Tom pulled me up the catwalk. Bitsy pushed at the fishnet, which might have been more effective if I’d straightened my knees, but I wasn’t about to cooperate. I made myself go limp. Still, they managed to haul me all the way to a boat.
It had to be the one Tom had piloted into his boathouse only minutes before. It was large, made of aluminum, with an outboard motor in back, a steering wheel and windshield in front, storage containers that served as seats lining the gunwales, and the floor between the seats puddled and smelling of slime.
“Bitsy,” Tom ordered. “Help me get this thing into the boat.”
He and Bitsy hopped onto the nearest seat. The boat tilted, putting its gunwale at the same height as the catwalk. They reached over the side and rolled me and the heavy fishnet onto the seat. Pain seared my right ankle.
I twisted my body enough to lever myself up to a lounging position with my elbows as props. My legs were stretched out on the seat, and my feet were still tied together as if I’d created a clumsy mermaid outfit for myself. “This is not a good idea,” I protested.
Tom had stepped out of the boat again and was kneeling on the catwalk, breathing heavily. His face was only slightly above mine. “You think I can’t handle a boat?”
“Of course you can, it’s just—”
By the feeble reflections from the glow of my flashlight inside his shack, his teeth looked wolfish. “I have a radio on board. I can radio for help. I can also whisk this boat up the river. I can land it behind your house so quietly no one will notice.”
And he could do all that, and probably had done all that with this boat, and after he’d landed, he’d dragged a body wrapped in quilt batting up the riverbank, had dumped it in my yard, and had shoveled dirt over it until the sound of my sliding glass door or of Sally-Forth’s collar had scared him. Then he’d jumped into his boat and drifted off down the river, steering between silent eddies without bothering to restart his outboard motor until he reached the lake . . .
It was probably as much of a confession as I would ever receive from him.
Obviously, he didn’t expect me to ever repeat it.