by Sarah Graves
“Send Sam home if you see him,” I called as she went out.
Ned took a swallow of his beer, looking satisfied. Watching him, I had the feeling that I ought to be asking him something. But the experience of holding Mulligan’s breathing passages open while Victor drilled a hole in the top of the kid’s head had wiped everything else out of my own.
With the relief of pressure in the skull, Mulligan’s pupil size had equalized. This, Victor had said, was a good sign, but it didn’t guarantee anything. Victor had also informed me that if Mulligan died after Victor drilled a hole in his head with a power drill, Mulligan’s parents could sue Victor for everything he had.
“So I hope you’re happy, Jacobia,” Victor had said tightly, which was when I knew that the aberrant little moment of normal human feeling we had shared was exactly that: an aberration.
Outside, the sky was brightening in a last blast of sunset brilliance: high, puffy cumulus clouds the exact same pale yellow as french vanilla, each with a heart of ripest pink.
“You know,” I said, “Sam really ought to be home by now.”
Wade put his hands on my shoulders. “Hey, it’s not like Sam doesn’t know his way around town. He’ll show up any minute.”
“Yeah. But …”
I’d made some calls. “Tommy Daigle’s mother says Tommy dropped Sam off down at the dock. But Dan Harpwell says he hasn’t seen him, that he’s not on the Eric. And that was hours ago.”
Montague watched us interestedly, his eyes beginning to get a little bleary with the beers he had consumed.
“Golly bejesus. Did you ever—”
“See anything like that. No, Ned, actually I haven’t.”
Worry made me snap at him, but it didn’t faze him. He just took another sip of his beer.
“I saw Sam and Tommy earlier,” Wade said. “The two of ’em, when we were all still wondering where Victor was. Probably,” he added reassuringly, “Sam got interested in that big cruiser, the Triple Witch. Maybe talked her crew into letting him aboard like he planned. Now he’s forgotten what time it is.”
That sounded reasonable; Sam would have killed for a close-up look at the Triple Witch. Maybe he’d seen Victor too, and knew he was okay.
But when he heard Wade’s theory, Ned looked uncomfortable, downing the rest of his beverage in a single tip-up.
“Ned,” I said to him as the look on his face came into focus. “What do you know about this?”
He stared innocently at me. “Nothing. How would I know about it? I mean, know about what?”
“The Triple Witch. When Wade mentioned it, you looked like somebody poked you with a pin.”
His gaze skittered guiltily to the phone. “Nothing,” he repeated, sounding frightened.
And then I understood. “Wade,” I said slowly, hearing my own voice as if from a distance. “Did the guys at the dock find out who that cruiser belongs to? When they were trying to move it?”
Wade shook his head.
“Because you can tell them,” I went on without waiting for him to reply further, “that I know who the owner is.”
I couldn’t even feel my feet touching the floor, but somehow I got across the room, leaning over the kitchen table to confront Ned Montague sitting there like some evil little toad.
“You didn’t just call the ambulance, did you? When Victor sent you up here, you called someone else, too.”
“No!” His face was ashen.
Now I understood why he’d obeyed Arnold’s order to stick around with only perfunctory complaining: it suited his purposes. He’d been told to stay by someone else, too, to keep an eye on us.
“Mulligan was about to say something more when you hit him. What was it, Ned? Why did you take the risk of clobbering him?”
“He was going to shoot me!” Ned whined.
“No, he wasn’t. Another second, and Ellie would have had the rifle. You hit him to keep him from saying something about you. Something about what happened when Hallie died.”
Unnerved by our emotional voices, Monday sat up and barked.
Then I had it. “You,” I told him quietly. “What Peter said was partly true. Hallie was arguing with someone else, when he came along. You’re the “older guy” she was seeing. Hallie was arguing with you, because you stole her drug stash from where she hid it, out of Ken’s old junk car.”
Cornered, Montague got all blusteringly defensive. “You can’t talk that way to me!” He made as if to get out of his chair.
I reached out and pushed him hard. “Sit down and shut up. I hear another word out of you, I’m going to shoot you with this.”
I took the little weapon out of my sweater pocket. In the suddenly silent moment that followed, it looked ugly and deadly.
Like the orders Ned Montague had been following.
“You called Willoughby. Right after you called the ambulance, you called him and told him what we knew.”
Wade came back from the phone alcove where he had been making a call himself. “Registration for the Triple Witch is in New York State,” he said. “Principal owner Baxter Willoughby.”
His gaze still fixed on Montague, he went on. “The guys at the dock say the Triple Witch weighed anchor, half an hour ago.”
Turning, he saw the gun in my hand and stopped. “Well,” he murmured. “I see there’s been a development.”
Montague eyed Wade hopefully for about half a second. But Wade didn’t ask me to put the weapon down, nor did he do anything else to make Montague believe that he could divide and conquer. So that Montague, after that fragile instant when anything could have happened, slumped in his chair.
“Call Arnold, please,” I told Wade. “Find him and tell him we need him here right away. Then call Ellie and tell her we need her, too, and please not to wait until after she cooks dinner for George. Tell her,” I added, “George can eat here if he wants to. If he’s got any appetite after he finds out what’s happened.”
Wade did as I asked, then returned and without any warning slapped Ned hard on the side of the head.
Ned yelped and cowered pitifully, cringing as Wade raised his hand again.
“What’s the plan, Ned?” Wade asked.
“I don’t know! I don’t know anything—”
Whap. “You think I’m going to let you get another kid killed? Think I won’t smash your teeth down your throat?”
“I’m telling you, I don’t—”
Wade closed his fist meaningfully.
“Wait!” Ned cringed, blubbering. It was awful to watch, but not as awful as what I feared might be happening now, out on the water.
“Okay, look.” Ned was breathing hard. “I was just supposed to watch you, so he could get a head start.”
“Willoughby?” I put the gun into my bag and slung the bag over my shoulder, worried about what I might do with the weapon if I were holding it and Ned told me anything too terrible.
“Y-yes. He doesn’t even care about the money anymore. He just wants to get away.”
“The money we found on Crow Island?” I asked. “That was his stash? But what was it doing out there?”
Ned gulped a frightened breath. “Willoughby stockpiled cash. I’d bring it from New York, he’d stash it in his barn, and then when there was a big bunch of it, Ken took it out on his boat.”
He frowned, appearing to think hard. “But he must’ve gotten nervous after he had Ken killed. If anyone came asking questions about Ken, I guess Willoughby didn’t want the money to be around his place, just in case.”
That made some sense, especially if the deaths were part of a general reins-tightening program: shut big mouths, remove incriminating materials, etc. “So he told you to find another hiding place.”
Ned shook his head. “No. Ike—he told Ike to do it. And it was the last I ever saw of Ike, so until you two found the money on the island, I thought he had taken it.”
“But now the police have it, so Willoughby owes some very nasty guys some very big bucks,” I theoriz
ed. “Money he’s got no way to repay, and no time to figure out a way, either. Which he knows, because you called him and told him. So he’s running.”
Ned nodded. “I helped flush him out, actually,” he ventured.
“Yeah, Ned. You were a big help,” I told him sarcastically, and he withered at my tone; under other circumstances I might have found it satisfying.
“What about Sam,” Wade demanded again.
“Willoughby knows Arnold will be onto him about the murders, too,” Ned replied, “about hiring Ike for them, I mean, and for all I know killing Ike, afterwards.”
I stared at him.
“Well, Ike hasn’t showed up, has he?” Ned said defensively. “Anyway, Willoughby’s snuck away from that British guy who was watching him. He’s got your boy—said he heard from the crew on the Triple Witch that the kid had been hanging around. He told ’em to invite him on board.”
He gulped, sniffling. “So I guess that’s where he must be.”
Wade seized him by the collar. “With Willoughby on the Triple Witch, headed out to sea? What’s he going to do with him, Ned?”
“Nothing! He promised … he promised he wouldn’t hurt him!”
Wade let go of Ned’s collar; Ned slumped, fingering his throat. “Willoughby says the British guy’s on his way back to New York—that he’s already called his bosses. But they’ll be too late. And Willoughby’s promised to set your boy adrift in a life raft, as soon as Willoughby’s safely away. So the kid’ll be all right. Mr. Willoughby promised.”
Great: a promise from Willoughby. Somehow I didn’t think I could put much faith in that.
Because I’d ruined him.
Twice. And he knew it. And now …
Now it was payback time.
Wade seized Ned by his shoulders and held him for a moment, visibly deciding whether or not to break his neck. Then with a sharp exhalation of revulsion and dismay, he shoved Ned into his chair again. “You don’t understand,” Ned wailed.
But I did understand, although of course by now it was way too late: for the Mumfords and Hallie Quinn, for Ike Forepaugh, and possibly for Peter Mulligan, too.
I only hoped that by some unlikely chance or blessing it was not too late for Sam.
47 Ellie pulled the Land Rover to a halt and swung out of the cab. I grabbed my satchel containing my cell phone, the Bisley, and the smaller weapon; for this kind of emergency I had not known what I might need, and I’d have brought along an elephant gun if I’d had one.
She was already in the boat by the time I got onto the finger pier. I jumped in, she gave the starter cord a pull, and we were away. Aiming the boat past the dock’s end she turned to starboard, gunning the Evinrude; the boat’s prow lifted, then settled as we ran northeastward, toward the light on Deer Island.
The water was as bright as aluminum foil, the moon overhead so luminous that it blotted out the stars. But to the southwest at Lubec, an ominous pale curtain turned the bridge lamps to smeary gleams, and on the horizon the clouds marched, darkly threatening, into Passamaquoddy Bay.
I waved at the ominous-looking front. Ellie nodded in reply. “I checked the weather radio,” she called. “Line of squalls. We might have to make land, later. But we’re okay for right now.”
Fabulous. Even if Willoughby kept his unlikely promise and set Sam adrift, a life raft wouldn’t last long in heavy seas. And Sam was a good swimmer, but you don’t have to drown, around here, to die in the icy water; even in summer, hypothermia can get you long before your energy gives out.
“Wade’s down at the Coast Guard station, now,” I shouted over the roar of the outboard. The boat slammed through the increasing wave action as we approached Old Sow. The whirlpool, shoving and sucking with the force of a billion gallons of water, can lift a ferry six feet out of the water, then slurp it swirlingly downward the same distance. There is even an Old Sow Survivors’ Club.
Which, I gathered, I was about to join; Ellie made no move to avoid the worst of the turbulence, and I swallowed my protest.
“We see his lights, I’m going to get on the phone to him.”
Willoughby, I meant; under the threat of another headslap from Wade, Montague had given me the number to raise the Triple Witch.
“I’ve got to try,” I shouted, gripping the gunwales as the water beneath us churned, “to negotiate. It won’t do any good in the long run but it might stall him.”
The Evinrude’s prop whined as it flew up out of the water, strained and gurgled laboriously as it bit into the chop again. A green wave rose up and slapped me chillingly in the face, filling my mouth with salt.
“Right,” Ellie called. To handle the boat in this water was a muscle-busting task, but her voice betrayed no trace of the strain she was putting forth. “There they are.”
The Triple Witch looked lit up like a Christmas tree. “They’re beyond Head Harbor’s light.”
“I see.” Ellie’s reply was grim, underlining what I already knew: zooming around Passamaquoddy Bay in an open boat was one thing in daylight and good weather, something else in darkness with a line of squalls marching in. We could follow for as long as our fuel lasted, but if we did, we’d be too far from shore to make land when the storm hit us.
Ellie gunned the Evinrude through the last turbulence, then cursed as we struck a vicious eddy. The boat swerved, tilting as water hammered over the stern, twisting the wooden craft nastily before sucking it abruptly downward. For a horrid instant the seas loomed above me on both sides, preparing to swallow us.
Then we bobbed up as, capriciously, the bay spat us out again. When I looked back at Ellie, she was drenched, her red hair plastered to her neck, her white fist gripping the throttle.
“Golly bejesus,” she grated out through a clenched grin.
The fog advanced stealthily, thickening as it came, and the new calm settling on the water felt unnatural. Dead ahead, the tall white shape of the Head Harbor lighthouse loomed like a ghostly pillar, its brilliant beam strafing the rocks and the entrance to the harbor. Between the jagged rocks of the lighthouse promontory and land’s end was a wide patch of inky darkness.
“I’m calling,” I said, fumbling for the cell phone, “before he spots us and does something hasty.”
I didn’t let the thought continue as I punched in the codes. Willoughby was going to set Sam adrift, all right, but I doubted he’d bother with a life raft. Sam’s only chance was to be alive when he hit the water, and for us to get him out before the cold killed him. Otherwise, he was—
“Fish food.” Willoughby’s voice came clearly through the cellular, full of its usual arrogance. “That’s what this kid of yours is going to be, if you keep being uncooperative.”
I swallowed hard. “Come on, Willoughby, you can’t expect me not to try to get him back. That’s all I’m doing out here, so why don’t you just let me come and get him?”
“No.” He snapped it out furiously. “I said all I want is to get away clean, and I meant it. I said I’d drop the kid in a raft. And I’ll keep my promise,” he lied smoothly, “unless you get in my way, Jacobia Tiptree.”
He said my name as if spitting out mouthfuls of filthy stuff. “The way,” he added chillingly, “you did, before.”
“Listen, Willoughby, all that was just business. You had a job, I had one, too. You know how it is, nothing personal.”
As soon as I’d said it, I wished I hadn’t. To Willoughby, his business was personal, and so was his hatred of me. I could hear it in the bitterness of his reply.
“Sure.” His chuckle was like a drop of poison. “But that’s not how Dysbart sees it. I can’t replace that money. His bosses have recalled him while things are in an uproar here. But he’ll be back to kill me if he can. It’s his job.”
“Dysbart?” The name rang a bell, ominously:
Never seen, shadowy and deadly, an enforcer. When I’d had the guard dog, back in Manhattan, it was Reginald Dysbart the dog was guarding against.
Willoughby’s voice c
hanged threateningly. “Just stay back. Let me hear that engine of yours throttle down.”
I waved at Ellie; she twisted the throttle lower. The little wooden boat slowed sickeningly, keeping me from getting nearer to Sam. Keeping Willoughby where he wanted to be: in control.
“I don’t have to get much farther. I’ve got a plane waiting in Canada, you don’t need to know where. So just stay back and I’ll read you our coordinates, so you can locate the life raft.”
He read me the numbers and letters that would place him on a chart; I scribbled them, squinting as the gathering clouds pulled a shroud over the moon.
“I’ll signal you. And then you can come and get him where I’ve put him into the water.”
It wouldn’t be that easy even if Willoughby did what he said. Once they got here, the Coast Guard could use the coordinates to create a search sector. But the currents were terrific, the tide was flowing, and the wind kept rising; Sam could drift quite a distance before anyone found him.
If they did. Time was what I needed; time and a clear thought. What did this bastard want?
Revenge, of course: to hit me where it hurt. He wanted to see Sam go into the water, but more, Willoughby wanted me to see it.
Then he would be happy, because Baxter Willoughby at heart was the equivalent of a playground bully. It wasn’t enough just to do bad things; someone had to know.
That was how I’d caught him the first time; he hadn’t covered his tracks quite well enough. Willoughby always had wanted someone to know how clever he’d been, how powerful he was.
So: he was a bully and a braggart, and he was impatient. None of these qualities, combined with his current desperation, made me feel confident of our prospects.
But they were something. “Throttle up,” I told Ellie. “Let’s get out there right now.”
In the last of the moonlight, her eyebrows went up, but she did it. “Hey,” Willoughby’s protest barked from the cell phone.
“We’re coming out,” I told him. “I want to see my son alive before I agree to anything. Once I do, we’ll back off. We won’t interfere with you. But first I want to see Sam on deck, under a light, so I know it’s him and that he’s okay.”