by Janet Bolin
“Haylee!” I yelled.
As if I hadn’t made even a peep, Tom directed Bitsy to undo the last line and jump into the boat. Calmly, he hopped in and started the outboard motor.
Bitsy clambered out, unwound the line from a cleat on the catwalk, leaped in, tumbled onto the fishnet, and landed on the floor. Shrieking, “It’s wet,” she crawled up onto the seat opposite mine and sat hunched over, her arms wrapped around Tom’s huge sweater, holding it closed.
We roared out of the boathouse and into the harbor.
I yelled for Haylee. I yelled for Ben.
I screamed Clay’s name.
The wind blew off the land. It pushed my voice out over the lake.
47
TOM HAD HINTED HE MIGHT HEAD TOWARD the mouth of the Elderberry River and pull his boat up behind my shop and apartment. Maybe he’d drag me up the riverbank and leave me on the trail beside my yard. Eventually, if I couldn’t rouse my neighbors with my shouts, early-morning birders would find me and get help.
But Tom steered his boat straight out into the lake. Maybe he needed to avoid the shallows close to the beaches? The good news was that I could no longer hear that annoying smoke detector.
Tom cut the motor. The boat bobbed up and down. From the tops of waves, I could see the shore on both sides of downtown Threadville. The state forest and the river’s mouth—close to home but unbearably far away—were dark. A row of streetlights marked Lake Street. Lights shone from a few beach cottages and the lodge’s veranda. A pair of headlights wended down the hill from the lodge toward the wharf. Ben, in the car he said he kept at the lodge, bringing Haylee and a long, sharp pair of shears? Clay, searching for me?
Maybe Haylee and Ben would see Tom’s boat out here and race to my rescue in one of Ben’s boats. The moon was fairly bright, and Tom should have running lights on.
I couldn’t see any. What were the chances of anyone on land spying a small boat riding up and down on waves?
Tom crept between boxes of fishing gear toward me.
He reached for me.
I shoved him away.
He merely laughed. “Bitsy, get over here and give me a hand.”
Scowling, she boosted herself off her seat and joined him. “What do you want me to do?”
I noticed insignificant details, like she still hadn’t buttoned the sweater.
Focus, Willow, focus.
On what?
Saving myself.
Right. How? It’s a little late . . .
Tom growled. “Let’s get this net into the water where it belongs.”
Bitsy slapped at him, but it seemed more playful than violent. “We can’t. It’s still attached to her. She’ll be pulled under. She’ll drown.”
“She knows too much.”
“What does she know? Nothing. All she did was dig up those jewels you promised me.” She huddled into the sweater. “Easy come, easy go. I didn’t believe in those jewels, anyway.”
He straightened and glared at her. “Didn’t believe in them? Didn’t you believe in the money I gave you, either? Didn’t I buy you a whole entire campground?”
“The campground is real. And it’s a lot of work, besides. Jewelry, though? What woman believes a man who offers her diamonds and rubies?”
He clenched his hands into fists. His muscles bulged with the apparent difficulty of keeping his arms at his sides. “The campground’s too much work for you, is it? Cleaning bathrooms is beneath you? How would you like to gut fish all day every day, instead? You help me push this fishnet into the lake, or there won’t be any campground. You’ll be cleaning bathrooms in prison.”
“I never did anything. I never hurt those guys. I was in high school when Snoozy disappeared. We were just kids—you and me and Neil and Yolanda. We didn’t have anything to do with how he disappeared. And Neil wasn’t bad. He was your friend. Why did you have to . . . ?”
“For you, babe. And for him. Neil was deathly sick from that flu. He begged me for medicine. I had some medicine for upset stomachs in the shack, so I took him there in my boat, joked he couldn’t blame seasickness for the way he felt, you know, just trying to jolly him into feeling better. And I had just the right thing to fix him up. Lucky thing he got that flu, because until then, I wasn’t sure how to give him the other medicine he was going to have to take. But I was smart. I mixed the two medicines together, then took the empty bottle to his apartment and put it in the trash there.” He studied her face. “You told me you didn’t like him anymore.”
“I didn’t.” She didn’t meet Tom’s eyes. “Not as a boyfriend.”
“You’re lying,” he accused. “You still liked him.”
Shaking her head, she backed away from Tom. “No. I always liked you best.”
Tom snorted. “You should have. Neil wasn’t the smartest cookie in the box, but sooner or later, he was going to figure out why Snoozy never made it to Mexico with his loot, and who really went to Cleveland and bought a ticket to Mexico in his name, which, by the way, I cashed in later.” He tapped the side of his head. “I was always the smart one, but Neil was getting suspicious. If he’d clued in, I’d have been in hot water, and you’d have lost that campground that I thought you liked. Or was it all about being Mrs. Snooty-Tooty landowner? You thought you weren’t going to have to work.”
She whined, “You said I wouldn’t have to work after you cashed in those jewels. And we were going to build a mansion where the campground is. Lakefront, almost.”
“Yeah, well that’s not an option, thanks to this Willow broad prowling around where she shouldn’t have been. Bitsy, last chance—are you going to help me or not?”
She folded her arms. “Not. Don’t do it, Tom. Don’t. It’s . . . it’s wrong.”
“Right, I’m going to just sit here and let her put me in prison?”
I tried to give him a way out. “Did Snoozy force you to help him steal that jewelry and cash?”
“Him? No, that gig was all his. I knew he was up to something, though, and watched him. Dumb guy went out in plain daylight, carrying his chest of treasure out to the hole he’d dug in the woods. So I followed. Taking the box from him wasn’t easy, though. He fought. He shoulda known better. Luckily, he’d dug a nice, big hole. He tried to bury me in it. I had no choice.”
“And then you had to cover his body,” I prompted, “and go off to Blueberry Cottage and dig underneath there, too.”
“Nah, didn’t have to dig. Part of that cottage was sitting on stone piers, with a big, bare hole underneath. I just took out the cash, then slipped the box between the piers where no one would see it while I waited for everyone to stop looking for those jewels. I didn’t go near there for a whole year, and when I did, I couldn’t find the box.”
Clay must have guessed right. Floods and ice may have moved that box.
Maybe I could make Tom believe he could get away without hurting anyone else. I suggested, “Take us back to shore. Let us off the boat. Or just me, if Bitsy wants to go with you.” Just how anyone was going to let me off the boat, I didn’t know. “Then take your boat and leave.”
“You think I’m stupid, don’t you. Stupid old fisherman Tom, not good enough for the shopkeepers of Threadville.”
“What do you mean, not good enough?” Bitsy’s voice was as bitter and squeezed as a dried-up lemon. “That’s the second time you’ve hinted something about that. Did you go and ask one of them out?” She glanced down at me. “Her?”
“Of course not, babe. You’re my girl. But talk about snooty-tooty, Willow—you and those snooty-tooty friends of yours would send someone after me. Stupid old fisherman Tom was pretty smart after all, getting stuff from those women’s shops before I needed it. As soon as the police figure out whose stuff that was, Willow and her snooty-tooty friends will be blamed for burying poor old Neil.”
I didn’t tell him that the police already knew whose stuff it was, and I didn’t inform Bitsy that I suspected Tom had asked Naomi out—what would be the point? “I wo
n’t say anything for a week,” I promised rashly and not exactly honestly. “Go get the rest of the cash you took from Snoozy and do what he planned to do—go to Mexico. Go anywhere. Just take me back to shore, first.”
“That cash is gone. Spent. I bought my first fishing boat with some of it, and bought Bitsy her campground with the last of it.” In the light of the three-quarter moon, his eyes seemed wide with a combination of simmering rage and canny determination.
I told myself he wouldn’t push me into the cold, dark water. No one would be that evil. He was bluffing, trying for more concessions from me.
Bitsy must have thought so, too. “We’ll never tell anyone what we know about you,” she pledged. “If you just disappear, we’ll never say a thing.”
“And you wouldn’t come with me, Bitsy babe? You’d just let me go? You wouldn’t miss your old Tom, who gave you your very own campground? And Willow is buddy-buddy with the police. I’m surprised she’s not dialing 911 in her pocket.”
I would have been if my cell phone had been in my pocket and not in my bag in his shack, and if I weren’t still propping myself up on my elbows with my hands behind my back.
Suddenly, he came at me and shoved. Knocked off balance, I lashed out with my fingernails, but didn’t do more than scratch his arm, maybe.
And then I was tipping sideways, scrabbling with my fingers for the gunwale, the oarlock, anything. And that heavy fishnet was being pushed, with my feet trapped inside it, over the side. And Bitsy was screaming.
As Lake Erie, colder than I’d guessed it would be, closed over my head, my most encouraging thought was that Haylee knew where I’d been, and Tom wouldn’t get away with murder, at least not with my murder.
48
I NEVER REALLY BELIEVED THAT THE ENTIRE life of a drowning person could pass before her eyes as she sank into the water. How would there be enough time?
But I also wouldn’t have believed what I saw. Not my past, but a future, a future that might never exist. Me cuddling babies that belonged to Haylee and Ben . . . Clay at my shoulder . . .
I had instinctively filled my lungs before I hit the water, but I wasn’t going to be able to hold my breath much longer. My lungs burned.
Clay, I thought, Clay.
Which way was up? I held as still as possible in hopes that my air-filled lungs would raise my head close to the surface and then I could flutter my hands and lift my face out of the water for another breath.
A lessening of the inky darkness penetrated my eyelids. A breeze whispered across the top of my head. I opened my eyes. My nose cleared the water. My mouth did, too. Bitsy was still screaming. I let out my breath and gulped in another. Something splashed nearby. Another wave washed over my head.
This time, I was able to see the bright moon and keep track of which way was up. I surfaced long enough for another gasp of breath.
A motorboat roared. Away from me. Tom and Bitsy must have been leaving.
Another wave knocked me under, but I let my natural buoyancy carry me up again. Why wasn’t the fishnet dragging me under? The floats attached to it were designed to keep the edges up, but the rest of the net would sink, allowing fish into the net. The whole net was bunched up, though, so the floats were keeping the net from plummeting. It and my trapped feet stayed just underneath the water.
Near me, a reedy voice gasped. “Help!”
Bitsy?
Instinctively, I kicked my feet. The water was so cold that my ankle had stopped hurting.
Hypothermia would be next.
I could breathe between waves, but if I became too cold for my organs to function, I would never know Haylee and Ben’s babies.
I heard wild splashing and another small, hopeless call for help. It had to be Bitsy.
I treaded water with only my arms and hands again, and the movement seemed to warm me up a little, but the sluglike fishnet kept me from turning quickly toward Bitsy. In a trough between waves, I called to her, “Tread water!”
“I don’t know how!” Another splash and a burble. “I can’t swim!”
At least I had a good excuse for not having worn a life jacket. Bitsy and Tom hadn’t bothered with them.
Where were Haylee and Ben? Where was Clay?
And . . . what had happened to the fishnet?
It was no longer stuck on my feet. My normal swimming reflexes had caused me to kick, and what had been impossible on land had happened easily in the water.
I had kicked myself free.
I could tread water. If I watched for incoming waves, I could keep my head above water. I could float. I could swim back to the wharf. I shook water from my face. It wasn’t far, wasn’t far, wasn’t far. I’d live to see Clay again.
“Help!”
I could save myself, but if I didn’t at least try to rescue Bitsy, who had told Tom not to throw me into the water, I would never be able to live with my conscience, would never be able to look Haylee and Ben’s mythical babies in the eye . . .
“Relax!” I shouted to Bitsy. “Lie on your back with your arms straight out like a cross.”
“I can’t!” The woman would drown in panic before she drowned in water.
Finally, I saw her, only one wave away from me. She was still wearing Tom’s sweater, which was soaking up water like a sponge. “Kick off your shoes,” I yelled, “and take off that sweater and let it go.”
I’d heard that people who were drowning would fight with potential rescuers until they both drowned. Sure enough, as soon as I swam close, Bitsy grabbed for me. I ducked out of her reach, treading water backward toward shore. She lunged toward me again. She’d obeyed me and removed the sweater.
I shouted at her, “You’re swimming! Do that again, and keep your head above water.”
I backed away from her.
“I can’t!” With her awkward attempts to reach me, she kept moving forward.
“You can!” She was on her stomach. “Straighten your knees, point your toes, and kick your feet. Do the doggie paddle with your hands and keep your chin up.”
I demonstrated, always leading her toward the calmer water of the harbor.
Bitsy might have been cantankerous, but her desire for self-preservation was strong. That night, in the cold, wavy waters of Lake Erie, I gave Bitsy Ingalls her first swimming lesson.
It was the first swimming lesson I’d ever taught, also. Almost drowning was causing clichés to pass before my eyes. Now it was the one about necessity being the mother of invention.
And inventing a mother. As Bitsy and I neared the wharf, I admitted to myself that Haylee’s future children existed only in my imagination. I would have to try not to plague my best friend with the insistence that she had to have children because I’d seen them during my near-death experience.
I didn’t have to warn Bitsy to be quiet. Both of us needed all of our strength just to stay afloat in that cold water. And she probably knew as well as I did that if Tom discovered that we’d survived, he’d do everything he could to finish the job he’d started out there in the wave-torn lake.
We were almost back at the wharf when I had second thoughts about returning to it. For one thing, unless I’d gotten turned around out there, Tom had sped his boat toward the wharf. For another, the wall between the wharf and the water was made of steel. The wind was still coming from the land, so waves weren’t exactly slamming into the wall, but they could scrape a person against it. Crawling out onto a beach would have to be easier than scaling rusty, algae-coated steel.
However, I wasn’t sure I had the energy to turn around, tackle the deeper water again, and swim to a beach. Bitsy was probably more exhausted than I was.
I’d hoped I was wrong about where Tom had piloted his boat after he pushed me out of it, but I wasn’t. His boat was again in his boathouse.
Bitsy must have seen it, too. She flinched. I led her, still practicing her doggie paddle, underneath the pier jutting out from the wharf until we were close to Tom’s market. Both of us grabbed for posts. Th
ey were slimy. I let the next wave carry me upward where I could grab a less slippery section of the post.
Bright light filtered down between planks. I’d seen headlights when we were out in the lake. Had that vehicle stayed, or was Tom in his truck, about to go home and pretend he knew nothing about Bitsy’s and my disappearance?
There was no way I was showing myself until I was certain I was safe from him.
That smoke detector was still bleating. I almost considered swimming back into deep water.
Something sharp banged into my elbow. A scrap of plywood swayed back and forth under the pier. I shoved it toward Bitsy, and both of us rested our forearms on it. But my teeth were chattering loudly enough to alert Tom, if he were still nearby, to our hiding place. And hypothermia had to be threatening Bitsy, also. With her hair pasted to her head, her mascara streaked, and her eyes wide with fear and anger, she resembled a sea monster. I probably did, too.
“Where’s Willow?” Haylee shouted.
“How would I know?” Tom answered.
“She was in your shack with her feet tangled in a fishnet, and now she’s not there.” Haylee was very angry.
“I was out fishing. I just got back. I haven’t been inside. Maybe she’s still there. And I have to ask you what you think you were doing inside my fish market after I closed it.”
He sounded very threatening. Was she confronting him by herself?
Leaving Bitsy and the plywood behind, I glided toward where I might get a better look at the situation, but for my own safety, I stayed hidden underneath the pier.
The night was bright with lights—including reassuringly red and white strobing ones—and noisy with voices, everyone yelling at once.
Despite Haylee’s and the cruiser’s presence, though, I felt vulnerable. If Tom saw or heard me, he could throw a stone that would accomplish what his fishnet had failed to do.
I swam back to Bitsy. She clung to the piece of wood, but her eyes seemed to roll back in her head. I touched her shoulder and murmured, “Is there a ladder so we can get out of the water?”
She nodded and pointed at a narrow channel underneath the catwalk leading to the back entrance of Tom’s boathouse.