That one caught my full attention. I had to lean back to get a good look at the flowery blue scrawl and tried not to look down at the river and the rocks beneath me. Vertigo’s ugly fingers gripped my arm and tugged me backward, toward the river.
Shivering, I decided Marilee was on her own. I sprinted to my car and got out of there. By the time I arrived home, it was dark. The town was quiet except for the Patio Bar on the hill. I tried Marilee’s number again. Her voicemail picked up and I left another message.
The next morning, I was awakened by someone beating on my door. I glanced out of my bedroom window. A police cruiser sat in the road. I headed down the stairs.
“Do you mind if I come in?” Trooper Mason asked. “I need to ask you a few questions.”
I moved aside and he stepped into my living room.
“Have you spoken with Marilee Weber recently?” He pulled out his notebook and pen.
Had something happened to Marilee?
I told the trooper about our game of phone tag and my trip to Confluence.
“May I listen to those messages?”
I pressed buttons on my answering machine to locate them. “Has something happened to Marilee?”
“We don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
I played back Marilee’s frazzled call. Then I let him listen to the messages on my cell phone.
“Where were you all day when Ms. Weber was trying to reach you?”
“Working at the Whitewater.” At least I had an alibi. But for what?
“I’d appreciate a phone call if she tries to reach you again, okay?”
“Why all the questions?”
“Marilee Weber is missing.” He headed for my door. “No one has seen her since yesterday around noon.”
I watched the trooper climb into his car and spotted Josh strolling toward my house.
I opened the door and fell into his arms. Given my choice, I’d have hit the pause button and stayed there all day, but he sat me down at my kitchen table and proceeded to make coffee.
“I was up at the Patio last night,” he said. “Everyone was talking about Anthony.”
“Did you learn anything?”
“You first. What did the state cop want?”
I told him about Marilee’s phone calls and my trip to Confluence. “And now Marilee’s missing.”
“Missing? What’s going on around here?”
“Your turn. What were the guys saying up at the Patio Bar?”
“Apparently our boy Anthony was a popular dude and everyone misses him.”
I’d hoped for a little more than that. “Why?” I asked, only slightly ashamed of my sarcasm. “More beer for everyone else?”
“Yeah, but less weed.”
“What?”
“Apparently the late Mr. DeStephano kept the local boys well stocked in weed.”
“Weed? As in marijuana?”
“That would be the stuff, yes.”
“Is that state cop still out there?” I craned my neck to see out the window.
“I don’t think so. Why?” Josh asked. Then, his eyes widened. “No. You can’t say anything to the police.”
“Why not?”
“Because everyone will know how they found out and I happen to like living here. The cops will probably find out anyway. Just let it go.”
I couldn’t just let it go. I didn’t see state troopers paying early morning visits to any of my neighbors. “Did anyone say anything about Marilee?”
“Not a word.” Josh poured two cups of coffee and set them on the table. He slid into the chair across from me and placed his hand on mine. “Let the police do their job. And for what it’s worth, I don’t believe any of those guys at the Patio had anything to do with Anthony’s death. They truly miss him.”
“They miss their source.”
“That, too. But they definitely didn’t seem glad he was gone.”
I pondered the case through two cups of coffee and my shower. I didn’t want Bob roping me into another daylong shift of dealing with rookie help and demanding tourists. I headed back to Confluence.
Marilee had wanted me to come to the bridge on Route 281 yesterday before she went missing. Why? Graffiti aside, I hadn’t found anything remotely resembling a clue.
I parked my Toyota on Confluence’s town square and wandered around, asking questions. Everyone knew Anthony and Marilee, but no one had seen the girl since Anthony died. She didn’t live in town and no one knew where she was from.
The temperature soared. With sweat trickling down my face and my back, I found a spot along the Youghiogheny where I could stick my feet in the water.
“Nell?”
I spun and almost lost my footing on the rocks. Marilee stood on the bank. Her hair was pulled back in a disheveled ponytail. Her clothes were wrinkled. She wore no makeup.
“Marilee, where’ve you been? I’ve been leaving messages on your cell phone.”
She scowled and patted her pockets. “I must’ve lost it.”
I sloshed back to dry land and grabbed her by both arms. She was trembling. “What’s going on, Marilee?”
“What are you doing here?” Her voice sounded strained.
“You called me. Yesterday. A bunch of times. You asked me to meet you here.”
“Oh. You didn’t come. You didn’t answer your phone.”
“I didn’t get the message right away, but I did come.”
“You did?” Marilee worked her fingers through her hair, loosening the ponytail.
“Yes. I did. What’d you want? Why’d you want to meet me here?”
“Not here,” she said. Her voice sounded childlike and small. “At the bridge. I needed to show you the bridge. I know who killed Anthony.” She turned and ambled away, moving like something out of an old zombie movie.
I hopped first on one foot, then the other, to get my shoes on. “Where’re you going? Who killed Anthony?”
“You’ll see.”
We walked back to the bridge. She climbed onto the low concrete barrier edging the span and stood up, her arms slightly away from her body for balance.
“Hey, Marilee,” I said. “Come down from there. It isn’t safe.”
“Anthony really loved me, you know?” she said, her head tilted to one side. A faint smile played on her lips. “The way you love Josh.”
“Really, Marilee, you should come down. We can talk down here.”
She acted like she hadn’t heard me. “Do you think Josh loves you the way you love him?”
“Um, I hope so.”
She gave a little knowing nod. “We do, don’t we? Hope the person we love loves us back? But sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they can’t because they love someone else.”
I didn’t like the direction this rambling tale was taking. Josh loved someone else? And what did any of this have to with Anthony and Marilee?
“I never realized,” she went on. “Never suspected a thing. I was so happy with Anthony. He was my soul mate.” She took a few pointed-toe steps, moving like a gymnast on a balance beam. “But then he started leaving messages on my voicemail.” Her voice turned bitter.
“He? Who?” I asked. Josh?
“Next he started leaving me notes and sending me e-mails. They were sweet and romantic at first. I admit I kind of liked it. I thought of it as a game. He flirted with me. I flirted back. Harmless stuff. You know?”
No, I didn’t know. Marilee and Josh? My Josh?
She paused for a moment and struck a pose. Then she teetered and leaned precariously, waving her arms. I gasped. She regained her balance, both feet on the bridge’s edge, arms extending to the side. “Ha,” she said. To my horror, she started the routine all over again. “Where was I?” she asked. “Oh, yeah. I never thought anything of it, all of this flirting and love notes. I never took it seriously.”
She stopped again, made a little flourish with her hands, and performed a 360 degree turn on one foot. This time she didn’t wobble.
&nb
sp; This was insane. “Marilee, stop it. Come down so we can talk.”
“Anthony always loved it when I played around like this. He called me his little ballerina.” Marilee performed a couple more slightly off-balance moves on her tiptoes.
I wanted to grab her, but was afraid she’d topple over the edge before I could get to her.
“So, as I was saying, I didn’t realize he was serious. Until after.” She stopped her antics and stared off at the distance. “He came to me and told me he’d done it for me. He’d gotten Anthony out of the way so we could be together. He told me everything. How he’d taken Anthony out drinking and then brought him here. To sit, he said, and just talk. Then he got Anthony to show him how I always do my gymnastics routine. And when Anthony was up here clowning around, he pushed him over.”
I’d been so focused on Marilee, I hadn’t noticed the approaching footsteps. But the flop, flop, flop of sneakers on the pavement grew fast and close.
“Oh, my god. Get down from there, Marilee.” Josh’s voice was frantic as he stopped at my side, panting.
He was a stranger. He looked like the man I’d lost my heart to, but that man was a lie. This man in front of me now was capable of deceptions and murder.
Marilee pivoted slowly and looked down on us. “Hey, Josh. How ya doin’?”
Was I in an episode of Twilight Zone? Or maybe I was being punked. But this wasn’t some sick joke. Anthony was dead.
“You,” I said, pointing an accusing finger at Josh, “need to get out of here. Now.”
“What?” He seemed startled. Give the guy an Oscar. “Why? We need to get her down from there.”
Yeah. Down the long way, to the rocks and water of the river below. “You should just leave.”
“It’s okay,” Marilee said in her little girl voice. “He can stay.”
She intended on jumping. In front of Josh. “No, Marilee. Don’t do it.”
“We’ve got to stop this,” Josh whispered to me.
“This? This is all your doing,” I said, keeping my voice low.
He frowned. “What are you talking about?”
Marilee picked up her “routine” where she’d left off, as if Anthony’s killer and I weren’t there. A car crested the hill and I stepped closer to the side of the bridge. Marilee walked to the end of the concrete edge. The car slowed as it reached us and then braked. Marilee paused. She bent her knees as if she were going to sit. Instead, she sprang into a series of back flips across the length of the bridge. Any other time or place, I’d have been impressed. My breath stuck in my throat right next to a scream.
She slipped. One foot landed too close to the edge and in less than a heartbeat, she was tumbling toward the river, arms flailing, fingers grabbing at the concrete. Josh and I leaped toward her. Behind us, a car door slammed. I caught one thin arm as Marilee dangled above the water. Josh had the other. Her face was frozen in a silent scream. The vertigo returned as I looked down at her and beyond to the rapids and the rocks.
“Don’t let her go,” Josh said.
“Don’t you let go,” I screamed.
“I won’t.”
Together we hauled up Marilee. Thank heavens she was so small. Josh reached down and caught her by the waist, hoisting her to the relative safety of the concrete edge. I kept my grip on her arm.
“How could you?” I asked him. “I thought you loved me. I thought—”
“I do love you, Nell.” He sounded confused
“No, you don’t.” Tears dampened my face. “Marilee just told me everything.”
Panting, Marilee gave me an odd look.
“She told me how you flirted with her and told her you loved her and killed Anthony for her.” The words spilled out. I was helpless to stop them at that point.
“What?” Joshua said.
“What?” Marilee echoed. Her eyes shifted from him to me and then over my shoulder. She gave a little cry. “No. Not Josh. Him.”
Josh and I both turned.
The car was parked in the center of the bridge, a familiar looking heap. Standing next to it was the driver.
Bob.
“You moron.” Bob’s face glowed red. “Why did you have to go and mess everything up? Why couldn’t you keep your mouth shut? I had it all set up to look like Anthony was involved in a drug deal gone bad. You and I . . .” He extended his arms toward Marilee. “We could have been together, no questions asked.”
Whoa. I owed Josh one major apology.
“Look what you’ve done,” Bob went on. “Now I’ve got to do something with the two of you. And, my darling Marilee, since you obviously don’t care for me the way I care for you . . .” An eerie smile crept over his face. “But you’ve all given me a prime opportunity here. Of course.” He reached inside his car and came out with a wooden ball bat. “Poor distraught Marilee tries to jump. You two try to save her. But instead, she pulls you both over, too. Such a tragedy.”
He charged us, cranking the bat back with one massive arm.
Josh still had an arm around Marilee’s waist. He pulled her hard to one side and shoved her down, out of the arc of the swinging bat. I dived the other way and forward. The heavy wood caught Josh with a thud. I heard him grunt. Somehow, he managed to grab the bat and wrest it from Bob’s hand. Bob caught me with his free arm, driving me back toward the barrier. I lost my footing. Then I was looking at sky and Bob’s weight was on me. I heard a scream, but still don’t know if it was mine or Marilee’s.
This was it. I was going over the edge, backwards and headfirst. Deep inside, a little survivalist voice cried, “No.”
I clamped my heels down against the barrier and twisted. Just a little.
Just enough.
Bob’s momentum shifted. The brute force intended to push the three of us over the edge, instead carried him over it.
Josh, still clutching the bat, lunged for him. He got a hand on Bob’s shirt, but the fabric slipped through his fingers. With a scream that I remember to this day, Bob fell.
I don’t know the sequence of events afterwards. My mind went blank. I think Josh called 911, because police and ambulances and fire trucks soon crowded the bridge and the hillside leading down to the river.
Marilee looked down, over the edge at the scene below. “He really thought he loved me.”
“You don’t need to watch,” I told her.
“I’m not. He’s gone anyway. Downstream somewhere.”
I imagined Bob’s body floating up to a rock, disturbing someone else’s riverside picnic.
“See?” Marilee pointed.
I leaned over to see what she was indicating. She was pointing at the graffiti.
“Marilee loves Anthony,” I read.
She gave a sad smile. “Yeah, I did that one. But look.” She pointed again. “R.T. and M.W. in a heart. That was Bob.”
It clicked. Bob. Robert Taggart and Marilee Weber. The vertigo hit me again and I sat down on the bridge deck. At what point, I wondered, had the simple sweetness of R.T. heart M. W. grown so unbalanced as to drive a man to murder and send him plummeting over the edge of sanity?
Josh appeared and joined me on the concrete. He held one arm around his ribs where the bat had caught him. He slipped the other around my shoulders.
“The cops want to ask you a couple questions. Then we can go home.”
Had he really said ‘we’? “Josh, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I thought she was talking about you.”
Josh pressed his lips to my forehead. “Yeah, I’m really disappointed in you. But I have some ideas how you can make it up to me.”
My vertigo melted away, replaced by a deep inner stillness. “I love you,” I whispered.
But he’d better never expect me to put it in graffiti.
__________
Annette Dashofy’s short fiction includes a finalist for the 2007 Derringer Award. She is vice-president of the Mary Roberts Rinehart chapter of Sisters in Crime and is the Pittsburgh area representative for Pennwriters. She lives in
rural Washington County, Pennsylvania with her husband of 26 years and one spoiled cat.
DEAD-EYE GRAVY, by Krista Davis
Dana paid for her allergy medicine, shocked by the price. “Has it gone up?”
The pharmacy clerk smiled at her and winked. “I put your husband’s medicine in there, too, dear.”
Dana thanked her out of polite habit. A prescription for Jeff? She didn’t even know he’d been to a doctor. She tore open the bag, but the not-so-discreet cough from the man behind her prompted her to move away from the cash register. She walked toward the door, pausing briefly in the privacy of an aisle to pull out Jeff’s prescription. Viagra.
So that was why he’d been excited about their weekend away at the cabin. She couldn’t help grinning. But now she wished she could stop for a pedicure and a leg wax. She glanced at her watch. She should have left town over an hour ago but the Flower Club luncheon she’d catered ran long. Which, in turn, made her late picking up her son, Mark, to take him to the airport. It seemed as if she was always running behind and playing catch-up these days.
She wondered if she should check on Mark yet. At twenty, her son was a fearless rascal at heart, but the poor kid hated flying because of the peanuts served on board. Not all airlines offered a peanut buffer zone and his peanut allergy caused him stress every time he flew. He even had to cover his seat with a plane sheet to protect himself from peanut crumbs. She made a quick call to be sure he was all right before putting the hybrid SUV into gear and heading for the highway.
Her cell phone rang and she glanced at the caller. Of course, Mr. Viagra himself. She didn’t want to tell him she’d just left. She’d wait until she was at least an hour down the interstate before she called him back. As she expected, when she stopped for gas and called him, he wanted to know where she was. If she knew Jeff, she’d still manage to beat him to the cabin.
Fish Tales: The Guppy Anthology Page 16