by Sarah Graves
Down the corridor a tall man wearing glasses, a dark sweatshirt, and jeans stood at the nurses’ desk, not liking what he was hearing. Marla leaned forward in the wheelchair and peered out.
“. . . but I was told she was still . . .” The man’s raised voice carried down the quiet hall.
Marla cringed back. “He must have called here, and they told him I was still a patient,” she whispered urgently as footsteps stomped toward us.
“Sir!” From behind him the nurse’s voice rose in protest. “Sir, you can’t just . . .”
One after another, doors opened and slammed shut again as he inspected every room on the corridor. And here we were, meanwhile, trapped among the clean towels and washcloths.
“You guys,” Ellie repeated insistently, “right here! Look!”
Angry footsteps thumped nearer as the nurse upped the ante: “Sir! I’m calling security!”
I had a feeling that our guy out there wouldn’t care, though, and I wasn’t interested in hanging around to find out for sure. So while Ellie shoved mountains of laundered sheets and pillowcases aside, I pushed Marla in her wheelchair to the back of the closet.
But when we got there . . . “Darn,” she breathed.
The closet, I saw, served both the small hospital’s patient-care wards. So there was a door at the front, and another from the back; that way, either ward could access it.
Which meant we could get out of here, or we could if the door at the closet’s rear would just open, which it was refusing to do.
The footsteps stopped outside the closet. Then came a man’s deep voice: “Sir, I’m with security and I have to ask you to . . .”
“Hurry,” whispered Marla as a thud shook the wall nearby: the security guard slamming the guy against it, I thought, or vice versa. Ellie rattled the door lever to our escape route once more, then let go of it and turned to me in defeat.
Whereupon the knob rattled again, all by itself, and the door swung open to reveal another nurse standing there, her head turned away to talk to someone behind her.
“Keeping these linens locked up,” she was saying, “is such a pain in the . . . Oh!”
She jumped back as we hustled unceremoniously out past her; no one yelled “gangway!” but no one had to. Down the corridor, through the lobby, and out the sliding-glass front doors we ran, pushing Marla and not looking back.
“Ouch,” Marla said as we bundled her from the chair to my car’s backseat; I hoped one of the pills she’d gotten was for pain, because we didn’t have time to be gentle.
Then glancing back, I saw a shadow cross the hospital lobby.
“Get in,” I snapped to Ellie. “Buckle up.”
Moments later we’d started the car and rolled downhill out of the parking lot, then around the corner onto the street, which was where I snapped the headlights on and floored that sucker.
“Talk to us,” I told Marla when we’d gotten back out onto the highway. Raindrops sparkled in the headlights and splattered on the windshield.
“About the photographs and the money we found,” I went on, my own voice sounding not particularly friendly.
But I wasn’t feeling very friendly, either. In the rearview no headlights appeared . . . yet.
“And about who attacked you, too. Everything, Marla. Or we can just drive straight to the police station in Eastport and wait for Bob Arnold to show up.”
Marla’s eyes met mine. In the dim passenger compartment her sewn scalp looked awful.
“Okay,” she said defeatedly, and then lights did appear in the rearview.
The car was a mile or so behind us, but coming fast. Luckily, the Robbinston volunteer fire station was around the next curve; I pulled in behind the big sand pile there and cut our own lights.
A few instants later the other car flew by. “No way he could have seen us, right?” Marla worried aloud.
“Not unless he’s got night-vision equipment,” I replied, and the rest of the trip home was uneventful except for the deteriorating weather.
But that was bad enough, wind and rain shoving us around on the dark road so that I clung to the steering wheel. When at last we reached Eastport and pulled in at my driveway, I let out an exhausted sigh that came all the way up from my toenails.
And from my twisted ankle, which still felt like hell. “Okay,” said Ellie when we’d gotten Marla inside. “Where do we put her?”
We hadn’t been able to fit the wheelchair in the car, so we’d left it behind. “I can walk,” Marla insisted, and I’ll give her this much: she took two or three more steps before she collapsed.
So we helped her in and set her up in the sunroom on the chaise lounge across from my father’s daybed, where her dog, Maxie, brightening at the sight of her, plopped protectively down onto the floor beside her.
Back in the kitchen with coffee and pieces of Bella’s fresh raspberry pie in front of us, Ellie and I stared in amazement at each other.
“Well, that was interesting,” Ellie said finally.
With her henna-red hair wrapped in a towel and her skinny arms sticking out of an old pink chenille bathrobe, Bella padded around, pushing various forms of nourishment at us.
“Wasn’t it, though?” I replied evenly. No sounds came from outside, no vehicles went by in the street, and there was no sense in alarming my devoted housekeeper-slash-stepmother, either. Not yet, anyway.
But there was still a chance that our attacker had recognized me or Wade when we were out at Roscoe’s. If he had, he might just put two and two together and figure out where Marla had gotten to now, without having to follow us here.
Wade appeared in the kitchen doorway. “How’s it going?” he asked, smiling.
But it was the smile on the face of the tiger. Also he was holding a small pistol, which by the smell of the gun oil that floated from it he’d recently finished cleaning.
Wade collected firearms, hunted with them, and repaired them, and goodness, wasn’t I ever pleased by his interest in them now.
“Oh, we’re doing just great,” I said. “How about here?” I looked at the gun. “Prepared for any eventuality, I see.”
He tucked the weapon into his waistband. “All quiet. I’m just being a good Boy Scout.”
He patted the weapon. But Wade wouldn’t be bodyguarding us with it; he had his own obligations, what with the weather deteriorating the way it was.
“It turned out the dog Roscoe was taking care of needed surgery,” he added. “Bob noticed it limping. Some of the buckshot from earlier must have winged him in the butt.”
At the mention of buckshot Bella glanced anxiously at him. “Don’t worry,” he told her, “the dog just had a little accident, that’s all. Bob took it out to the vet, it’s fine, now.”
Much more of that and Wade’s nose would start growing, but she accepted it. “I told Bob to let the vet know to go ahead and do it,” he went on to me, “and that you and I would take care of the payment.”
Oh, of course we would. I strode over and wrapped my arms around him and pressed my face into his broad shoulder, inhaling the twin perfumes of fresh salt air and pine tar soap.
“I don’t suppose Sam called again?” I asked. I’d already learned from Bella that he’d left no message on his earlier call, just hung up when no one answered.
Which was odd right there. Wade shook his head. “Nope, still nothing more from Sam. I’m pretty sure Roscoe knows who was after us out at his place, though. Same one who hired him, I’ll bet.”
And chased us up Route 1 and through the hospital, too, I felt certain. Swiftly I summarized this for Wade, who frowned.
“So somebody’s getting worried,” he echoed my opinion. “You and Ellie are getting a little too close to something, and someone wants to discourage you.”
Right, but close to what? “But Roscoe’s still too scared to say who hired him, and Bob hasn’t had much time to try getting it out of him, either,” Wade went on.
Bella put sandwiches, a handful of cookies, and som
e fruit into a paper bag, her big grape-green eyes fixed on her task.
“I tried talking to Marla,” said Ellie. She seems okay—alert and aware and so on—but she’s in a lot of pain and she’s really scared.”
Ellie had rinsed her hands and face at the sink and pulled her hair into an elastic band; she looked as fresh as a daisy. “So I couldn’t get much out of her,” she finished.
By contrast I felt like ditch muck, despite the shower I’d had earlier; the only one here who needed a bath as badly as I did was Maxie, and he, at least, was supposed to smell like a dog.
Ellie went on, “So we’ll need to talk to her more about what happened, but—”
She held her wristwatch out demonstratively; at the sight of it a jolt of anxiety hit me. “The cheesecakes! What time were they supposed to come out of the oven?”
“Right now.” Ellie grabbed up her satchel, her sweater, and the lunch bag Bella had packed, and made hurriedly for the door.
“I’ll deal with them,” she went on, letting herself out onto the porch, “and you . . .”
Yeah, I knew: me everything else.
“Ellie,” Wade called after her, “be careful, do you hear? Keep your eyes open and your phone handy, and lock the shop door.”
He spoke quietly, but his tone was unmistakable. She smiled at us both while the wind, now back in full force after its brief break, whipped her ponytail around.
“Right,” she promised, and vanished into the rainy night.
Which left the information-gathering portion of the program to me. And while I fully understood that Marla Sykes was probably exhausted and in pain, there were worse things.
Being dead, for instance. Because someone obviously wanted her silenced, and I needed to know who and why. So I turned to my housekeeper-slash-stepmother, as I so often did.
“Bella, could you please put some of that lovely raspberry pie onto a small plate for me, warm it up just a little bit, and put some vanilla ice cream with it?”
Bella’s lip thrust out skeptically at first, but then she caught on: “Ohh,” she breathed in delighted comprehension.
Because of course she’d overheard Ellie’s comment about needing to get more info out of Marla. And Marla was a chocolate maker with highly developed taste buds, wasn’t she?
Which Bella knew. But chocolate wasn’t the only treat around here; Bella’s fruit pie was nothing short of spectacular, and the fat red raspberries on the vines out in our garden were extremely tasty right at the moment.
Tasty enough to loosen a person’s tongue whether they wanted to or not, in fact. Bella smiled conspiratorially.
“Just give me a minute,” she said.
* * *
Five minutes later in the sunroom I held a loaded dessert plate in one hand and pulled a wicker chair up to the side of Marla’s chaise lounge with the other.
“Here.” I touched the edge of the pie-laden spoon to her lip and she opened her mouth reflexively.
“Mmm.” She savored the tiny bite; then she opened her eyes. Fear leapt into them as she remembered, and she tried to get up.
“Uh-uh.” I guided her down again. “Have a little more.”
She subsided obediently; that pain pill, I supposed. “Now,” I went on, “I need to know a few things.”
Her lips clamped tight stubbornly. “Look,” I said, “we’re trying to help you.”
Right, by kidnapping her from the hospital a few hours after a serious head injury. Way to go, I thought. The cops are going to love that one when they find out about it.
Trespassing, witness tampering . . . Oh, I was going to be real popular. But I’d had no choice, and anyway, here we were.
“Marla.” I fed her another bite of pie. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but are you by any chance involved in some kind of illegal scheme?”
Because right now it was the only thing that made sense: packages of hidden money, somebody in a boat at night who didn’t want to be seen or interrupted, a rash of violence . . . and murder, of course.
“Marla?”
No answer. Apparently, now that she was relatively safe, she’d rethought her earlier promise to tell all.
But I still had another ace up my sleeve. “Bella?”
She hurried to the doorway. “Bella,” I said, “melt some of the stuff from the butler’s pantry, will you, please?”
After we’d returned from Lubec the other night, I’d put a little stash of the semisweet chocolate away. Not much, just enough for a taste now and then.
That was why, a few minutes later in the kitchen, I was able to prepare a special truth-serum concoction.
Then I returned to the sunroom. “Marla,” I repeated. The bruised, battered woman opened her eyes. “Eat this.”
I spooned a bite of my newly invented secret formula into her mouth: raspberry pie, vanilla ice cream, and . . . chocolate! Just a drizzle, since this was, after all, the good stuff, so it didn’t take much.
She chewed . . . frowned . . . and stopped. Her eyes opened wider. “Wow.”
“Good, huh?” I gave her a little more, then set the plate and spoon aside. “Glad you liked it. You can have the rest of it after you tell me what the hell is going on.”
I got up. “Because so far I’ve been shot at, car chased, stalked, and nearly drowned. And on top of that, Ellie’s suspected of murder, and when the holiday weekend’s over I have little doubt that she’s going to be arrested.”
I dropped my voice to a whisper. “And you know what? I’ve got a feeling it’s all your fault, no one else’s, and so will Bob Arnold. Who, by the way, already knows about all the money we found hidden at your place, and pretty soon the state cops will know about it, too.”
I leaned down, angling my head at the dark windows. “Also, in case you’ve forgotten, that guy who chased us tonight is still out there, whoever he is.”
Marla had sat motionless throughout all this; but now at the mention of our stalker from the hospital she shuddered visibly, a tear leaking down her bruised cheek.
“So speak up the way you said you would,” I told her. “While you still can. Because time is passing, and so are our chances to fix all this, whatever it is. That’s my advice, at any rate.”
Marla looked at me, at the dark windows streaming with rain, and at the big German shepherd still stationed loyally beside her. Then she reached for the plate of pie and ate it, and drank up the grape juice and ginger ale I’d brought along with it.
Finally she began, her voice weak but steady: “So this guy came to me this past spring and asked me if he could use some of my rented space in the old mill building.”
The place I’d visited, where she actually made the chocolate, she meant. Wade came to the door and saw us, eased in and silently built the fire back up in the little fireplace, and left again.
“What for?” I asked. “Why did he want the space? And did you know the guy?”
Marla shook her head wincingly as the fresh logs stacked in the fireplace blazed up.
“He said he wanted to store a few things,” she replied, “and I didn’t know him. I still don’t even know his name, or where he stays.”
A gust rattled the windows as she went on. “I’d seen him in Lubec a few times, in the Salty Dog and so on, but only since . . . oh, a few months ago, maybe.”
I thought about this. Before they’d put him in the ambulance after the shooting incident at his trailer, Roscoe had told Wade and me one thing: the guy who had hired him as a sort of seagoing security guard had first broached the idea to him this past spring.
A few months ago, in other words, around the same time that Marla’s stranger had approached her about renting mill space.
“Then what happened?” I asked. “How’d you end up with all the money we found at your place?”
Marla tried to laugh, but she nearly wept instead. “That’s what he was storing, it turned out,” she said when she could do it without sobbing.
“And some of it was what he paid me,” she
added. “But the thing was, he said I couldn’t spend it or even put it in the bank. Instead I had to get all of it into my business receipts somehow, then pay myself out of that.”
She looked up at me. “You know, phony up some fake orders to account for the income, then give most of it back to him by making it look as if I was paying a bill he’d sent me.”
“So you were money laundering, in other words?”
Suddenly I understood how a schoolteacher with no other clear source of income had been able to buy two houses, fix them up, rent a workspace, and stock up on all the equipment and ingredients she’d needed to start her chocolate-making business.
She nodded. “Right. Money laundering. I guess that is what it was. Not that I thought of it that way.”
Sure you didn’t, I thought skeptically. But never mind: “So what went wrong?”
She was tiring, but she managed to lift her head again. “I don’t know. Until yesterday I had no idea anything had. I don’t know the guy who chased us last night. Never saw him before.”
Summoning strength, she sat up straight. “I never saw who attacked me and Maxie, either. It might’ve been him, but I don’t know any more than I just told you about what’s going on.”
Then with a deep, shuddery breath she leaned back and closed her eyes. In the darkened windows the firelight’s glow reflected onto her face: pale, exhausted.
“Okay, Marla,” I relented. “Just one more thing. How was he getting all this money? Where was it coming from? Did you ever get any information about that?”
But when I looked at her again, she was sound asleep.
* * *
Gray light crept into the sunroom, around five in the morning. I opened my eyes. The fire was out, and its ashy remains a cold heap on the tiled hearth. The slate floor was cold, too, under my back.
I sat up. Maxie lay stretched out on the daybed; Marla snored softly, still on the chaise lounge, with a blanket draped over her. From the kitchen the mingled smells of bacon and brewing coffee drifted in like a blessing; I climbed to my feet.
Wade was out there eating breakfast. “Guys’re having to move boats, I said I’d come help,” he explained after washing down his last bite of egg with a final swallow of coffee.