Trap Door

by Sarah Graves

  “Whatever I did must’ve worked, though. Because they didn’t follow me, did they?”

  I pivoted the kayak, turning to watch the circling animal; I’d never heard of a beaver attacking anyone. I’d had one of them pop up a few feet from the side of my kayak, though, close enough for me to inspect its curved yellow incisors.

  This beaver kept its distance. “Besides, that was then and this is now,” I said.

  Jemmy laughed, not pleasantly. “Okay, so we’re not going to hash over old times.”

  “We already did. Unless you want to talk about you getting your start as a car thief. Stealing them to order off streets and out of garages, chopping them up for parts yourself to save on the middleman.”

  Jemmy liked to pretend he’d always worn good clothes and had clean fingernails. But I knew he had been a wizard with ignition wiring once upon a time, so good he didn’t even have to break anything. If it turned out his buyer didn’t need that particular car after all, Jemmy could put it back where its owner had left it with nobody the wiser.

  “You have warrants out?” For his arrest, I meant, knowing he probably did.

  “A few,” he acknowledged as I sidled the kayak parallel to the beaver dam. It was about seventy-five feet long, twelve feet thick at its underwater base, made of mud, grass, and sticks. A little water trickled through but not much.

  “How’d you hear about another try at getting next to Walter Henderson?”

  “What is this, Twenty Questions?” Jemmy back-paddled away from me. “I hear things, that’s all,” he acknowledged finally.

  “From who? Someone in the program?” Jemmy had always been on speaking terms with a variety of people in and out of the Witness Protection Program.

  But this was different. His paddle trailed droplets in the dying light. “Maybe,” he conceded.

  My ears pricked up; this was the first time he’d ever talked to me about the program without mocking it. “Don’t look shocked,” he said.

  “I’m not shocked.” But there was only one reason for him to be in recent touch with any of those people. And they wouldn’t protect him unless he testified.

  Against Henderson; maybe even against me? And all the head games I’d played with myself back then—no blood money, indeed—wouldn’t cut any ice with a federal prosecutor.

  “Well,” I said. “This is a development.”

  And yet another reason for Walt Henderson to want to kill Jemmy. Anxiously I scanned the shoreline where the new leaves had thickened the underbrush to a screen, especially at night.

  “It’s not a development unless it has to be, Jake, and I’m a long way from it. And don’t look so nervous, Henderson won’t show up while you’re here.”

  We paddled back to the cove and approached the shore; with no dock the kayak dismount was tricky and I reached out to steady his boat for him. But he was, as I should also have remembered, as agile as an eel.

  Slippery, ingenious. The thought wasn’t as comforting as it might have been. “And tonight when we’re gone?” I asked him as we climbed the path to the cottage. “What about Henderson then?”

  It was already nearly pitch dark. Night fell fast here once the sun went down. “I’m a light sleeper,” Jemmy said with a small laugh meant to reassure me.

  It didn’t.

  A full day every week with his daughter Leonora was a privilege George Valentine guarded jealously, so the next morning Ellie and I set out, minus the baby, for St. John, New Brunswick.

  Fog wrapped Eastport like cotton batting; the streets gleamed with moisture and the bright banners in front of the Water Street shops hung soddenly. The tugboats at the fish pier hunkered half-seen, their massive sterns turned to the dead-calm water and their lines creaking with the incoming tide.

  As we pulled into the ferry-boarding area the Island Hopper materialized out of the mist. We drove down onto the beach as the vessel’s metal ramp lowered, scraping the stones.

  Two cars with New Brunswick license plates came off first, pausing for two U.S. border officers in yellow slickers before vanishing uphill into the fog as if through a curtain. We drove on board; minutes later, the ferry reversed away from the shore, diesel engines roaring.

  “Spooky,” Ellie commented as everything disappeared. On a morning like this, if not for the gentle bump of the water under the barge part of the ferry—the Island Hopper was powered by a rebuilt fishing boat fastened alongside—you could believe you’d been transported to some other world.

  “So we get to St. John and we try to find Trish. That’s the plan?” Ellie said doubtfully, peering into the mist.

  Not even the lighthouse beacons penetrated this stuff, and the foghorn when it let out a long mournful bellow made me jump, sounding unnaturally close.

  “That’s it,” I agreed grimly. Halfway between Eastport and Deer Island lay the Old Sow whirlpool, the largest in the Western Hemisphere and a notorious mariners’ hazard. “Trow isn’t a common last name. With any luck she’ll have relatives in the phone book. One of them will tell us where she is.”

  “Hmm,” Ellie commented. “Or they’ll shut up like clams.” The Island Hopper entered the whirlpool with a faint lurch.

  There was an Old Sow Survivor’s Club open to anyone who made the crossing, with a plaque suitable for hanging and framing. My breakfast did a buck-and-wing in my stomach, then settled; I was going to earn that plaque, I suspected.

  “We’ll just have to risk it,” I said, rolling the car window all the way down and sticking my head out. Why being miserably damp and chilly helped seasickness I had no idea.

  But it did. “Because you were right, the way to stop Walter Henderson from killing Jemmy or vice versa is to get Henderson put away.” Also it would keep Jemmy from having to enter the Witness Protection Program, with all the inconvenient revelations that might entail.

  “You still think Henderson killed Cory?” Ellie asked. Deer Island loomed suddenly out of the fog. The ferry made the turn into the landing and scraped ashore.

  “Oh, of course he did it,” I replied impatiently as we drove off. “He wanted Cory to leave Jen alone and Cory wouldn’t. And Henderson’s a man who’s accustomed to getting what he wants, one way or another.”

  The next leg of our journey was a narrow, winding lane between stands of old tamarack, pristine freshwater ponds, and clusters of small wooden houses, most with boats in the yards and lobster traps piled alongside the gravel driveways.

  “So there’s your motive. As for method, if you hold a gun to a fellow’s head, he’ll probably cooperate pretty nicely in letting a rope be put around his neck,” I added.

  Compared to the tiny Island Hopper, the St. George ferry was a huge industrial-looking beast with high steel-mesh rails and a towering superstructure, loaded with cars and trucks. As we got under way the sun burned at last through the morning fog; Ellie and I squeezed between vehicles to reach the observation deck.

  Cold salt breeze swept away the reek of diesel exhaust, the thrum of engines vibrating in the big steel plates under our feet. “But why would Cory agree to meet Henderson in the barn?” Ellie objected, leaning on the rail. “Seems to me he’s about the last person Cory would want to run into.”

  “Maybe that’s not who Cory thought he was meeting,” I said. “Maybe he expected Jen. It would account for a lot if she lured Cory out there, maybe not even knowing what her dad had planned.”

  A wonderland appeared through the shining remnants of mist: low gray islands with tiny cabins clinging to rocky outcroppings, bald eagles sailing above. Porpoises arced in the waves, running alongside us; a humpback whale slapped flukes and flippers, then rolled massively and sank once more into the briny depths.

  A low shore with wooden piers and a narrow road leading from it materialized on the horizon. “Anyway,” I said as we returned to Wade’s truck—after Sam’s accident in the Fiat I didn’t feel confident enough to take the car on a long journey—“Trish wouldn’t be on the run unless she had a reason. And I wa
nt to know what it is.”

  Before we find out by accident and it bites us in the butt, I added mentally. We drove off the ferry past a low motel and a few small dwellings, following signs leading to the main highway. Here it ran through territory so remote and sparsely settled, it had only three lanes: two for travel, a center lane for passing and left turns.

  That and the hills, like foothills of a mountain range, made the road feel as if it deserved its local nickname: Death Alley. But owing to my habit of letting even the slowest other vehicles pass, we survived with only a few close calls—motorists out here seemed to believe you really could outrun death if you drove fast enough—and three hours later reached St. John, New Brunswick.

  A bridge led through a tollbooth and over the St. John River, a waterway whose massive flow ran upstream twice a day on account of high tides in the Bay of Fundy. Nova Scotia was a mere two hours east by ferry. Beyond that lay the vastness of the open Atlantic. “Now what?” Ellie asked.

  In 1877 a fire in a hay barn had ended up consuming most of the city because in a cost-saving measure the fire-engine horses were out with a road-repair crew that day. Now brick commercial buildings lined the central streets; urban blight had taken a nibble here but not a big bite.

  “Damn.” I dug around in my satchel one-handed. “Forgot the phone book.”

  Ellie shook her head at me but came up with a backup plan. “Trish was going to pawn jewelry. So let’s go to pawnshops, and while we’re in one we’ll ask to use theirs.”

  “Great. Trouble is, we’ll need one to find the pawnshops.”

  A man went by pushing a shopping cart with what looked like all of his belongings in it. St. John had a fabulous harborside shopping district, I recalled, but this wasn’t it.

  An Indian takeout joint crouched between a discount store and an outlet for hair salon supplies. Stenciled signs advertised the businesses of tenants upstairs: AAA-1 Accounting, The Beauty Part Hair Weaving and Straightening, and Dr. Bontatibus.

  His area of expertise was Painless Dentistry. “Jake?” Ellie said. “We don’t need…”

  At the moment, my own stupidity was giving me a toothache. How could I be so dumb as to forget the…

  “What?” I snapped. But I followed Ellie’s gaze, and sure enough there it was right in front of me: a pawnshop.

  A bell over the door jingled merrily as we entered. Inside, the shop was jammed full of furniture, ice skates, silverware, paintings, and just about anything else a human being could sell for money—except guns. Canadians were funny about those, preferring their citizens not to be armed like the Seventh Cavalry Division.

  The jewelry was under the counter in a glass case. Watches, eyeglasses, a clutter of old wedding rings and costume items spread out in tarnished splendor, none worth much.

  “Help you?” the proprietor inquired, not quite rubbing his hands together at the sight of potential customers. He had on a fraying cardigan over a dress shirt whose collar had seen better days. Ellie was already in a far corner examining a box of books.

  “Just a question,” I began, and his smile dimmed. I had a feeling more stuff came in here than went out. But he was nice about it. “I wonder if…”

  “Psst!” I glanced sideways. The sound came from somewhere near a tangle of musical instruments: banjos, guitars, fiddles, mandolins, each with at least one broken tuning peg and a snapped string. A tuba topped the shelf.

  “Psst!” A guy peeked out from behind the display: maybe five feet tall, bald and delicately featured, with a long waxed mustache.

  A familiar mustache. It was the guy who’d been staring at me in the Bayside when I’d met there with Ann Radham.

  Ellie turned curiously from a bin full of women’s gloves, their yellowish softened shapes creepily recalling the outlines of the original owners’ hands. She’d already taken possession of the book box.

  The guy jerked his head in summons: Over here! Today he wore a crisp white shirt with some kind of an official emblem on the pocket, navy uniform pants with matching jacket, and shiny black shoes. A red tie knotted with military precision held his collar tight.

  “Psst!” he repeated urgently, waving his small, fussy-looking hands for additional emphasis.

  “Excuse me, please,” I said to the pawnshop man, who didn’t look happy. Another minute, he likely thought, and he could have sold me one of those mandolins or maybe even the tuba.

  Impatiently I approached the fellow. “Okay, what do you…”

  Want, I would’ve said. And who the hell are you and what’ve you got to do with…? But Ellie interrupted.

  “Fascinating,” she exclaimed, meaning his outfit and his perfect grooming, right down to his clear-polished nails. Except for the mustache his shave was so close it looked as if he’d gone over his skin with emery paper.

  The shoes were patent leather. “Why were you in Eastport?” I demanded. “Were you following me in St. Stephen, too?”

  His small pink mouth opened but no sound came out. “Jake, you’re scaring him,” Ellie admonished.

  “That’s not all I’ll do if he doesn’t speak up,” I said as the feeling of nearly being run down by a speeding car came over me again. I seized his shoulder; as he jerked away, a sound came from one of his pockets.

  It was the clink of jewelry. Good jewelry, maybe, the kind someone might pawn if she needed money.

  “Come on,” I told the little man brusquely, hustling him along. The bell over the shop’s door jingled again as we went out.

  “So what have we here?” I demanded as soon as we reached the sidewalk. Plunging a hand into his jacket pocket, I extracted a pair of bracelets, one set with red stones and the other with green. Last to emerge was a ring with a diamond as big as a Ritz cracker in it.

  Well, maybe not that big. But back in my glory days of money handling in the city, I’d gotten familiar with the things rich people liked to transform into cash: coins, furs, diamonds, and gold bars, plus sealed packets of cocaine as fat and white as the ones you find in grocery-store boxes of powdered sugar.

  Even so, I couldn’t tell paste from the real thing without a jeweler’s loupe. But I knew nobody put worthless stones into platinum Tiffany settings, and those I did recognize.

  “They b-belong to Trish,” the little guy managed. He’d gone completely white.

  I let go of him. “What’re you doing with them, then, and how do you know her?” I demanded. “And…did Cory know about them?”

  As the guy reeled away from me it occurred to me again that maybe Trish Bogan didn’t even know Cory was dead; she could’ve been running from him.

  The mustached guy interrupted the near-fainting process to shoot me a look of scorn. “Cory,” he uttered. “As if.”

  Scorn and something else. At my mention of Cory a surge of visceral hatred radiated from him, powerful as a slap. Ellie was still inside; through the store window I saw her buying the books.

  Sighing at the very thought of putting even more old objects into my house—with baby gear practically falling out the windows, Ellie’s certainly had no room for them—I decided that maybe Bella would like the volumes. Besides her incessant puzzle solving she read everything, so fast that Wade said it was a wonder wisps of smoke didn’t rise from the pages.

  Meanwhile out here on the street, pedestrians glanced at me and the quivering mustached guy, no doubt wondering whether to call a cop. “Come on,” I told the fellow as Ellie emerged with the box in her arms. “You’re coming with us.”

  I shoved him toward our car. “And you’re taking us to talk to Trish.”

  “N-no!” He squirmed from my grasp. Frowning, a woman clad in business garb—suit, heels, briefcase—drew a cell phone from a bag. And at the moment we did not need the Canadian Mounties.

  “I…I drove here. You can follow me,” he said. He reached into his breast pocket—for an instant I thought Gun!—and drew out a small white card.

  Puppets in Motion, Fred Mudge, Puppeteer, it read; address and phone be
low. “You’re Fred Mudge?”

  I looked from the card to his face, which had regained some of its color. He nodded energetically. “I’m a friend of Trish’s. She sent me to pawn these things for her.”

  He reached out his small manicured hand for the jewelry. I dropped the items into my bag instead. “Uh-uh. Not so fast, bud. First you take us to Trish and we’ll hear what she has to say.”

  Surprisingly, he accepted this. “Okay. That’s my car.” His wave indicated a midsize sedan, medium green.

  Not a white rental. And what the heck; it sure seemed like he wanted us to find Trish. So we followed him to the industrial side of the harbor: tank farms, warehouses, and truck terminals.

  “Are you sure we ought to be doing this?” Ellie asked as we drove. “I mean, without letting anyone else know where we are?”

  Mudge signaled a turn well in advance so we could get into the proper lane behind him. Along the working harbor’s edge were streets full of three-story brick row houses, now divided into three-family dwellings with iron-railed steps leading up from the basement apartments.

  Moms in blue jeans and sweatshirts sat out on the stoops chatting and smoking cigarettes as they watched the kids playing on the sidewalks. Down the block a guy worked on an old car, its hood up, radio blaring. Two mutts sniffed a fire hydrant.

  “I don’t know,” I said, pulling in behind Mudge to park in front of one of the buildings. He had driven very sedately, not at all like a wise guy. “Guess we’re going to find out.”

  In front of one of the better-looking row house entries—no basement apartment, only one doorbell at the top of the steps—Fred Mudge waited, then led us inside.

  I sent Fred to pawn the jewelry,” Trish Bogan confirmed when we’d entered the row house he led us to. “I thought he’d get a better deal.”

  She was maybe eighteen and from the curl of her eyelashes, the angle of cheekbone still visible in her heart-shaped face, and her full, bitten-looking red lips, you could tell that not too long ago this girl had been what Sam would’ve called a fox.