The Maypop Kidnapping

by C. M. Surrisi

  “We have to get out of here,” I scream.

  There is nowhere to hide. There is nowhere to run. Seconds are flying by. Owen Loney will come around in front of the yacht club any second, and we’ll be standing in his boat in plain view. That’s when I hear the splash and see two sparkled feet disappear over the edge of the boat. Ella is in the water, holding the tarp-wrapped evidence over her head. I have no time to consider alternatives. I go over after her.

  And just in time. Another split second, and I would have been seen. Not by Owen Loney but by Mom! She is back and heading for the post office. No, she drives past the post office. She has to be going to Ms. Stillford’s. I’m sure she checked at home and at Gusty’s and didn’t find me. Now she expects me to catch me at Ms. Stillford’s, violating her order.

  “Are you a good swimmer?” I pant.

  Ella shakes her head but keeps the bundle high out of the water. We hang on the outboard side of the Blythe Spirit, trying to decide which way to go. We are sunk either way, because at that moment, Owen Loney’s pickup rounds the bend.

  25

  My clothes and shoes are dragging me down. The deep channel from the Pool to the open Atlantic is swelled to high tide and swirling with strong currents.

  If we try to swim through the channel, we’ll never make it around to our beach. Even if we get to the open ocean, we’ll be slammed against Maiden Rock like all those spinsters in the stories.

  The water, which is too cold for swimming even in the summer, is getting harder and harder to yank our legs through. Ella and I grasp the Blythe Spirit anyway we can.

  Worrying that Ms. Stillford’s house key will come out of my pocket and sink, I lift my right leg as high as possible, trying to keep the pocket closed while I thrash around.

  “What are you doing?” Ella says, spitting out salty water.

  “Quiet,” I say. “He’ll hear you.”

  I don’t think this can get any worse, but then it does. The gunwale above our heads serves as a perch for a trio of seagulls. They look down on us with cocked heads. One turns around and, yup, poops on Ella’s hair.

  No one can tread freezing water, wipe seagull poop out of her hair, and hold a heavy wad of canvas over her head all at once. At least Ella can’t.

  “Give me the canvas.” I bob up and down, trying to take the bundle from her.

  Ella surprises me with her calmness. She tips her head back into the water and shakes it, trying to free the white goo.

  “You look beautiful,” I say.

  “I look better than you do,” she says as she grabs the gunwale.

  “I don’t think so. You have white crap on your hair and green stripes running down you face.”

  We tread water for another couple minutes. I try to decide if Ella’s lips are really turning blue. Mine are starting to feel numb. I realize we have to get out of this frigid water soon. Then Mom’s car zooms by, heading toward home. At the same time, Owen Loney pushes open the screen door and walks toward the boat.

  Ella and I exchange frantic looks and move as quietly as we can toward the end of the dock. As Owen Loney steps into the Blythe Spirit, it rocks, and we make a grab for the framework of lashed timbers that holds the dock up. The bitter-cold seawater bites my legs.

  Ella grabs my hand and mouths, My-phone-is-ringing-in-my-pocket! She points down. In-my-pocket!

  I mouth back, I-can’t-hear-it.

  She mouths, I-can-feel-it.

  Of course, that makes me think about my phone. I hand the bundle back to Ella, who holds it over her head again, and pat myself down through the cold water. Key, yes. Phone, uh-oh! When did I last see it? Did I have it in the boat? I don’t know. Did I have it in the pound? I must have—I took a picture in Owen Loney’s apartment. Did I leave the phone there?

  I look at Ella’s lips again and know that she has to get out of the water right away. Except for the green stripes, her face is gray. Her hair is a mess of knotted ropes spotted with seagull goop. And her fingers are losing their grip on the wooden pillars.

  If only Owen Loney would go back inside the pound.

  But of course, he doesn’t. He’s grumbling to himself and chucking things around in the boat, making it lurch up and down. Then he does something unexpected. He starts the engine, casts off, and eases away from the dock. We watch him head into the channel, making a wake that throws us against the posts.

  But at least he’s gone and we can get out of the water.

  Ella and I swim around the dock to the ladder near the lobster buoys. I take the canvas while Ella climbs up and then hand it to her. She pulls me up, and we collapse onto the planks, trying to take in what heat the air offers.

  “We have to get out of here, now,” I say, not making a move.

  “I know.” Ella lies flat as a sand dollar, unable to raise her voice.

  The wind blows a wave of cold air through our bones, and we struggle to our feet. We both still have our shoes on. Stupid. We should have kicked them off when we got stuck in the water. But I’m happy to have them now.

  There is no doubt in my mind about next steps. “I have to go back up to Owen Loney’s apartment and find my phone, if he hasn’t already found it.”

  “We’re dripping wet,” Ella says.

  “I don’t care. I have to have that phone. It’s bad enough that it’s the third phone I’ve lost since Christmas. It’s worse that I lost it at Owen Loney’s.”

  “I know, I know. Do you want me to go with you?”

  “No. You wait on Miss Wickham’s porch, where you’ll be out of the wind. I’ll be right there. Then we’ll go to Ms. Stillford’s, where we can warm up and look for more clues.”

  Our shoes squish as we walk, and we leave big wet footprints on the dock. Ella looks over her shoulder as she heads to the B&B, keeping her eye on me until I open the door to Loney’s Lobster Pound.

  Either the daylight has faded or Owen Loney’s turned off the lights, because it’s much darker in here. I look to the door that leads upstairs, and it’s shut. Pulled shut. That door is never shut. He knows. What if he has my phone? What if he saw the picture?

  My legs are like lead. It takes all my energy to place my feet, one after the other, on the steps. I listen for the boat in case it’s coming back into the channel. Nothing.

  Pay attention and hurry up, I tell myself. Hope, hope, hope the phone is there, get it, and get out. I know I’m leaving wet footprints on the stairs, but at least they won’t point a finger directly at me like my phone will. And if he stays away long enough, maybe they’ll dry up.

  I reach the landing and run to the spot where Ella and I took the picture. I scan the floor like a searchlight from a lighthouse beacon. Nothing. Under the bed, dust wads but no phone. Under the bureau, no phone. Every surface, no phone. The laundry basket—empty!

  He took his dirty laundry out to sea?

  A distant glugging sound tells me a boat has entered the channel. My heart nearly leaps into the Pool. Halfway down the stairs, I bang my elbow and wince with pain. Outside the door, I stop to listen for the rumble of motor blades coming closer. Nothing. False alarm. Ella sees me coming and jumps up. We run up the street to Ms. Stillford’s house. I reach into my wet pocket as we run. Feeling for the key. Yes.

  26

  There’s no crime scene tape around the house, but I still don’t want to disturb anything. That doesn’t keep me from getting us two big towels to wrap around our shoulders. We sit on Ms. Stillford’s living room floor with the canvas thing between us.

  “Can you feel your toes?” I ask Ella.

  She wiggles her toes.

  “Your fingers?”

  She fans the air with her hands.

  “Your lips?”

  She smacks them. “Still work.”

  I finger the corner of the rolled canvas bundle. “We have to look inside.”

  Ella points to a red tinge on the canvas. “Okay, but I’m pretty sure that stuff’s blood.”

  If this were two days ago, I�
��d run home and thrust the bundle at Mom so she could put on surgical gloves, peel back the tarp, and take pictures. But I now know that if I do that, she’ll ask me where I got it, and when I tell her, she’ll be furious. Worse, she’ll probably show it to Owen Loney, which will give him a big fat chance to explain it away.

  Not today. The bundle is going to be part of the unofficial investigation until I can tie it to the shirt. And maybe we’ll find something else here at Ms. Stillford’s. If only I had my phone—I’d have pictures of the missing shirt.

  Random images of wild eyes and a taped-shut mouth swim through my head. Before I know it, I’ve buried my face in my hands and started whimpering.

  “Hey, Quinnie, it’ll be okay,” Ella says. “Hey. He loves her. Right?”

  “This could be”—I start to say it out loud. “This could be”—then it dawns on me that Ella has her phone. “Can I see your phone?”

  “It’s dead, done, destroyed by the deep blue sea.”

  “I thought it rang underwater,” I say.

  “I think that was a muscle twitching in my leg.”

  I take a deep breath. “Okay, let’s get this over with. Ready?”

  I pull one corner of the tarp and feel something heavy clunking as it flips over and lands on the floor in a thud. We scream in unison.

  “What is that?” Ella’s eyes bulge.

  “It’s a gaff hook.” I hear my voice as if I’m wearing earmuffs. A black iron tool with a swooping curved neck and barbed hook electrifies the space between us. “It’s for snagging a lobster crate.”

  Ella shutters. “It looks like a fishing hook on steroids.”

  “It could do some damage,” I say, staring at the large red stain on the tarp.

  “Looks like it already has. Should we take it to your mom?”

  I don’t hesitate. “No. We should hide it for now.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Just until I can get the picture of his shirt off my phone and check this place for any Owen Loney kind of evidence.”

  “I don’t know, Quinnie.” Ella points at the gaff hook. “This could be—”

  “My mom won’t believe it unless we have more proof.”

  “Right. Okay. How do we do that?” Ella bites her hoodie string, “Monroe Spalding says, ‘Always look beyond the obvious.’”

  She’s talking like one of those text messages again. “Did you send me those texts?” I ask her.

  “I told you already,” Ella says, “they’re probably from your Ouija board. Now let’s hide this thing.”

  I get busy rewrapping the hook. “Let’s bury it in the woods. But before we do, I want to sweep the house, the shed, and the garage.”

  “And put these towels back.” Ella gives hers up.

  * * *

  We don’t find anything Loney-like in the house, so we head to the potting shed. I keep thinking through every move I made since I had the phone in my hand by Owen Loney’s window. I don’t remember having it after that. Now it’s probably in Loney’s pocket.

  The shed looks the same as when I last looked in it. I think.

  “What are all these?” Ella looks at the shed’s volumes of botany books.

  I lean over the little seed starter pods. Each has two-leaf buds pushing out of the dirt.

  “Wow, that’s fast. These weren’t up last Friday.”

  “What are they?”

  I pick up the empty seed envelope. “It must be this stuff. Maypop.”

  Ella reads from an open book. “‘Passiflora incarnata. Common name passionflower or maypop. The leaves and roots have a long history of use among Native Americans. Tea makers have used maypop to treat insomnia, hysteria, and epilepsy. Maypop is also valued for its analgesic properties.’”

  “Do you think this is what’s in the sisters’ tea? The one she helped them with?” I ask.

  “Yeah, Sanctity Tea. ‘It’s not only for relaxing, it’s for giving.’” Ella makes a face that almost looks like Sister Rosie, and I laugh. I laugh because I need something to laugh about.

  We grab shovels from the shed and run deep into the woods beside the house, where we dig like mad, toss in the tarp and its creepy contents, and rake the soil over it—leaves and all. I mark a nearby tree with an X, and we return the shovels.

  The sun has shifted to about two o’clock, and I know Mom is at home doing about ten different things, one of which is grumbling because Ella and I aren’t sitting at the kitchen table discussing a book.

  “Okay, we’re supposed to be discussing a book. We need to go to my house and face the music.”

  “Yep, Springsteen,” Ella says and looks at me like we’re going to laugh some more.

  I know we just nearly drowned together, and lost our phones together, and dug a secret hiding place in the woods together, but joking about Mom’s Springsteen ringtone? I don’t think so. Not yet.

  27

  Ella and I march up the steps and stand in Mom’s office door. She’s sitting at the sheriff’s desk with her back to us, rifling through a thick pack of papers. She swivels her chair and looks at us and does a double take.

  “What the heck happened to you two? I’ve been calling you. Why are you wet? Mariella, what’s in your hair?”

  “I lost my phone,” I tell her.

  She throws up her hands. “Quinn, that’s what? The third one? Help me out here.”

  I’m almost glad the lost phone distracts her, because it gives me a chance to invent the lie of the century about where we’ve been.

  Ella jumps in. “We were by the ocean, and a gull pooped on my head”—she gestures to her hair—“and I freaked and I jumped in the water, and while I was there, I lost my phone and I freaked a second time, and Quinnie jumped in to help me, and now she’s lost her phone.” She takes a deep breath.

  Mom looks at Ella like she isn’t sure whether to believe a word of this or not.

  Ella adds, “My dad is going to be so mad.” She pauses. “Are you going to tell him?”

  In an instant, Mom relaxes like she completely believes Ella’s story. I can tell she’s thinking about whether she should get involved in this or not.

  Then she resumes pawing in her papers. “I’ll let you handle this with your father yourself, Mariella. You guys get cleaned up. Quinnie can loan you some dry clothes.” She turns to me. “Did you get the statements from the people who left the phone messages?”

  “Not yet,” I say. I don’t make it sound like an apology, or like I forgot, or even like I’m defying her. I just say, “Not yet.”

  She gives me a look that says she knows I’m making a point.

  “Did you find anything on the search this morning?” I ask.

  “No, but I can’t really talk about it,” she says. She changes the subject in a hurry.

  So that’s the way it’s going to be. Now I know I made the right decision about the gaff hook.

  * * *

  Sitting at our kitchen table, wearing my clothes, Ella looks pretty much like a Maiden Rocker. I think about the lie she just told my mom and I remember the text message. The cleverest lie is the one that’s closest to the truth. Ella’s lie was definitely closer to the truth than the whopper I was working on. But what made it great was that she asked Mom if Mom was going to tell on her.

  If I had my phone, I’d send a message to the mysterious texter that says: A good lie shifts the focus from the liar to the listener.

  This makes me wonder if I am thinking about Ms. Stillford’s disappearance in entirely the wrong way.

  * * *

  Ella and I spend most of the hour between three and four trying to figure out a book we’ve both read. Mom comes in and takes pity on us and sends us to Gusty’s for dinner. She says she has to meet a new real estate client. I’m not happy that she’s meeting clients instead of searching for Ms. Stillford, but I’m learning that Mom’s talent for multitasking isn’t something she can turn off.

  We go next door and listen at Ella’s dad’s office door. The keybo
ard is clicking at a snappy pace. Ella knocks and puts her ear to the door. “Dad?”

  He yells from behind his office door, “In the zone.”

  She pulls at my sleeve. “Come on. He’ll be in the zone all night.”

  * * *

  We’re heading for Gusty’s when Ben charges up behind us, every inch of him sweaty-cute.

  “Hey,” he says, “the convent van is parked down by the Abbotts. What’s up with that? And what’s up with you not answering your phone, Q?”

  He squints at Ella like he can tell something’s different but he doesn’t know what it is. She picks at her eyebrow, trying to cover up her naked eyelids.

  “I lost my phone in Owen Loney’s apartment after I used it to take a picture of his bloody shirt,” I tell Ben. “Then we found a bloody gaff hook in his boat and buried it in the woods by Ms. Stillford’s.” I pause to see if he’s paying attention.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” He rakes his hands through his hair. “What did you say?”

  “Oh yeah, and the sisters are selling herbal tea online as a fund-raiser,” Ella says.

  “Tea?” Ben is completely lost now.

  Ella and I look at each other and say at the same time, “Sanctity Tea. ‘It’s not only for relaxing, it’s for giving.’”

  “Get it?” Ella asks.

  “For-giving!” I add.

  “Stop!” Ben says. “Overload. Tell it to me in chro-no-log-i-cal order.”

  By the time we reach Gusty’s, Ella and I have given Ben a blow-by-blow of our adventures. Before we walk into the parking lot, I slap myself in the forehead. “That’s why they have the lights on all night. They’re grow lights. They’re growing plants for tea in the solarium.”

  “People must really like this tea,” Ben says. “And that explains the fifty-pound bags of bat guano.”

  “Whose car is that?” Ella asks. She’s pointing to the black Escalade.

  “Oh, no,” Ben groans. “They’re back.”

  “The rockers,” I say.