Clean Sweep

by Jane Heller

  “But Alison told us to change our clothes,” Tiffany wailed after her mother scolded her and forbade her from playing Nintendo for a month.

  “Yeah. She said we could put on whatever we wanted after she dumped soda on our heads,” Amber added.

  “Dumped soda on your heads?” Mrs. Silverberg said.

  “That’s right,” I admitted. “But you see—”

  “Dumping soda on children is abuse, pure and simple,” she said.

  “I think punishing children for playing dress-up is abuse, pure and simple,” I countered.

  “Here,” she said and handed me a fifty-dollar bill. “I’m afraid I’ll have to make other arrangements for the girls. You can show yourself out.”

  So I was out of a job. What else was new?

  The next morning, Cullie was up and dressed before I was.

  “Hey, Sonny girl. It’s seven o’clock,” he said, tousling my hair as I lay in the berth. “It’s gorgeous out. I had the VHF radio on, and they say it’s going to be ten knots and sixty degrees—a perfect day for a sail.”

  “Sixty degrees? Can’t be. It’s only the end of March. Too cold to go sailing,” I said, still half asleep.

  “I’m telling you, babe. It’s one of those freakish winter days out there—fifty degrees already. I’ve got one house to shoot and then we’re out of here.”

  “Really? We’re going sailing? Today?” I was wide awake now. The thought of finally taking the Marlowe sailing after weeks of talking about it was exhilarating.

  “Yup. You get dressed and I’ll be back in a couple of hours. I’ll stop on the way home and pick up some provisions. Then you’ll help me get the boat ready and off we’ll go.”

  “Aye aye, skipper.”

  “Bye, matey.” Cullie kissed me goodbye and left.

  I bolted out of the berth, threw on a sweatshirt and sweatpants, and headed for the restrooms. By eight o’clock, I was showered, dressed, and ready for my first sailing adventure. But Cullie wasn’t due back for another hour.

  I decided to kill time by reading more of Melanie’s manuscript.

  I reached down into the hanging locker and pulled out the suitcase. Then I unzipped it and lifted out the manuscript. I settled into my usual reading position on the berth and began the third section of the book, the one entitled “The Personal Life.”

  The first couple of chapters chronicled Alistair’s childhood as a somewhat rebellious Irish kid in Queens, who spent more time in the street than he did in school. The book went on to describe his teenage years, his interest in movies, his talent for dancing, and his stint as a teacher at the local Arthur Murray Dance Studio. No big revelations there. But then Melanie really let the sleaze fly. According to her, young Al Downey wasn’t just a dance instructor; he was a gigolo, who was paid to do a lot more than dance with the ladies from Queens. As if that piece of dirt wasn’t sleazy enough, Melanie also claimed he had an affair with a male dance instructor at the studio—and also with the male dance instructor’s sister!

  “God, how do people stand books like this?” I muttered. The whole exposé concept revolted me. And to think I had aspirations of becoming Melanie’s collaborator, of seeing my name appear beside hers on the cover of a book like this. What could I have been thinking? I know what I was thinking: of money. People get rich writing sleazy biographies. But not me. I’d get rich some other way. Or maybe I wouldn’t get rich at all. Maybe getting rich wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

  I got up to get a glass of orange juice, then went back to the berth and picked up the manuscript. Okay, I told myself. Keep slogging through this thing. There may be a clue to Melanie’s murder in here somewhere.

  I was about to read on when I realized I couldn’t: the rest of the section was missing! All that remained were about fifty pages of Melanie’s bibliography, her notes and sources, and her acknowledgments. That left over a hundred pages of section three unaccounted for—a hundred pages that presumably would have dissected Alistair’s marriage to Annette Dowling, the birth of their darling daughter Bethany, Annette’s tragic death, and juicy details about the women he’d bedded after she died. Where were these pages?

  I thumbed through the whole manuscript to make sure the missing pages hadn’t gotten mixed up in the previous sections of the book. They hadn’t. They were gone. But where?

  Okay, calm down, I told myself. Maybe Melanie never finished the book. Just because Todd said it was finished didn’t mean it was. After the way he lied about having the original manuscript at his house the night Melanie was murdered, I didn’t believe anything he said. Maybe the missing pages had somehow gotten separated from the rest of the manuscript. Maybe they were still in my sauna at Maplebark Manor, or under the seats of my Porsche, or under Melanie’s bed at Bluefish Cove. Or maybe they were right here on the boat.

  I raced over to the hanging locker and checked to see if there were any stray pages on the floor. Nothing. Then I checked my suitcase. Empty. I was about to thumb through the manuscript one more time when I heard Cullie step onto the deck of the Marlowe. I shoved the manuscript back into the suitcase and returned it to the floor of the hanging locker, just in time to greet Cullie as he came down the hatch.

  “Ready for your first sail, matey?” he said cheerfully. “I’ve got turkey sandwiches and potato chips and plenty of ice cold Heineken. We’re going to have ourselves a good time.”

  I hugged him around the waist. “I can’t wait. When do we leave?”

  “As soon as we prepare the boat. Poor Marlowe hasn’t been out all winter.”

  I helped Cullie remove the boat’s canvas cover, then watched carefully as he put the three sails on.

  “Schooners have two masts and three sails,” he explained. “This sail’s called the jib, this one’s the staysail, and this one’s the mainsail. Got that?”

  “Yup.”

  “Now I’ll turn on the engine and let it warm up awhile,” he continued. “Diesels take warming up.”

  “What should I do?” I asked as we stood in the cockpit. I was eager to be more than a spectator.

  “You’re going to steer us out of here, while I take in the dock lines,” Cullie said, putting both my hands on the teak steering wheel.

  “I am?” I said with alarm. “But I’ve never steered a boat before.”

  “Great. Then this will be a new experience for you.”

  “But what if I put a dent in the boat?”

  “Tell you what,” Cullie said, sensing my panic. “I’ll back us out of the slip. Then you can take over.”

  Cullie put the engine in reverse and backed the boat out of the slip away from the dock. When we were out in the Long Island Sound, a safe distance from the marina, he placed my hands back on the steering wheel. “Your turn,” he said.

  “Tell me what to do.”

  “See those red and green buoys out there? Just stay between them. We’re only going about four miles per hour, so you shouldn’t have any problem. Just take us through the buoys while I go up on deck and hoist the sails.”

  With the sun on my face and the wind in my hair, I clutched the steering wheel and felt a surge of excitement. I, Alison Waxman Koff, the least adventurous, most predictable person I knew, was at the helm of an Alden schooner. I was out on the Long Island Sound on an unseasonably warm March day, guiding the very vessel that had been my home for weeks. The thrill was indescribable. But what really captivated me was the sight of Cullie hoisting all three sails. There they were—the jib, the staysail, and the mainsail, flapping in the wind, crackling and snapping against the brilliant blue sky. Their majesty took my breath away.

  Cullie came into the cockpit and shut off the engine. Then he showed me how to trim the sails and taught me all about winches and sheets. “We’re under sail,” he exulted, gazing out at the sea. “Is this the most fantastic experience you’ve ever had, or what?”

  “It is. It really is.”

  “The first sail of the season is always special. I’m so glad you’r
e here to share it with me, Sonny.” He kissed me. “If anybody told me I’d be out for a late-winter sail with the mistress of Maplebark Manor, I would have said they were crazy.”

  I elbowed him in the ribs. “We’ve come a long way, haven’t we?”

  “Yup. And we’re going to keep going.”

  A profound sense of quiet surrounded us as the wind filled the sails and the Marlowe surged forth upon the waters of the Long Island Sound. As we sailed along, the boat began to tip over on its side. The motion scared me.

  “We’re going overboard,” I cried, tugging on the sleeve of Cullie’s windbreaker.

  “It’s called heeling,” he explained. “The wind pushes on the sails and makes it seem like the boat’s going to tip over but it won’t, I promise you.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The ten thousand pounds of lead in the bottom of the keel will keep us upright. Trust me.”

  “I do. I do.” The truth was, I did. I trusted Cullie in a way I hadn’t allowed myself to trust any man before. The realization surprised and excited me.

  We sailed along the Connecticut coastline as sounds of Jimmy Buffett, James Taylor, and the Everly Brothers serenaded us from the stereo in the cabin. At about one o’clock, we ate our lunch in the cockpit and toasted our first sail together with a cold beer.

  “Life doesn’t get much better than this,” Cullie said.

  “I don’t ever want to go back,” I said. “Being out on the boat makes me feel so…so…”

  “So free?” Cullie volunteered.

  “Yeah, and so powerful. Out here, I feel like I could accomplish anything.”

  Cullie nodded in assent. “Come here,” he said, motioning for me to come into his arms.

  I let him wrap me in his arms and hold me for several seconds. This feels so good, so right, I thought. “Cullie,” I said haltingly. “I…I…”

  “Me too,” he whispered.

  Was it love we were feeling but afraid to verbalize? Or just the intoxication of a March sail, or the newness of our relationship? Time would hold the answer, I knew. Time would hold the answer to a lot of my questions.

  “Whoa,” I said, clinging to Cullie for dear life as the boat heeled. “I trust you, really I do, but are you sure this thing isn’t going to tip over?”

  “I’m sure,” he laughed.

  “Where are we anyway?” I asked, shielding my eyes from the sun as I peered out over the horizon.

  “About midway between the Connecticut and Long Island coastlines.”

  “How can you tell? I can’t see anything.”

  “If you go down into the cabin, to my navigation station, you’ll find a chart that’ll tell you exactly where we are. Bring it up and I’ll show you.”

  “You have a lot of charts. Which one do you want me to get?”

  “The one marked ‘Western Long Island Sound.’”

  I climbed down the hatch into the cabin and rummaged around in Cullie’s navigation station but couldn’t locate the chart he mentioned.

  “Can’t find it,” I called up to him.

  “It’s there somewhere. Try lifting the top of the desk and seeing if it’s in there. The drawer’s a mess, but you should be able to find it.”

  I went back down into the cabin, into the navigation station, and lifted the top of the desk, as Cullie had instructed me to do. He was right, the drawer was a mess. Papers and charts were scattered everywhere.

  As I fished around in the drawer, my hand rested on a small stack of papers held together by a rubber band. Thinking the stack might contain the chart I was looking for, I pulled it out. To my utter shock, it wasn’t a pile of navigation charts at all—it was the missing pages of Melanie’s manuscript!

  What on earth were they doing in Cullie’s desk? I asked myself. What possible interest could he have in Melanie’s book about Alistair? And why was it the third section of the book that he was hiding in his desk? Why had Cullie stolen these particular pages out of my suitcase?

  I was dizzy with questions. As the boat heeled, I fell across the cabin, nearly hitting my head against the pantry in the galley. Easy, Alison, I told myself. Don’t jump to conclusions. There’s got to be a reasonable explanation for all this. You love Cullie. You trust him. He wouldn’t lie to you. He wouldn’t hurt you. So what was he doing with a section of Melanie’s manuscript, a manuscript that would undoubtedly damage Alistair Downs’s reputation?

  Did Cullie plan to leak the pages to the media in an effort to ruin Alistair? Did he hate the man that much? Or did he mean to hide something from me—something in the manuscript he desperately didn’t want me to read? But what?

  I sat on the settee berth and tried to steady myself. I began to reflect on the months I’d known Cullie. I flashed back to the day he came to photograph my house…to the night we ran into each other at McGavin’s when I was with Julia and he was with Hadley Kittredge, the dockmaster’s daughter…to the afternoon he showed up at Melanie’s when I answered the door in my maid’s uniform…to our first dinner together on the Marlowe when he voiced his contempt for Alistair and bombarded me with questions about Melanie’s book…to the night Melanie was murdered when he brought me home instead of letting me sleep with him on the boat…to the night he invited me to move in with him on the Marlowe when I was being hounded by the media.

  Something about Cullie’s interest in me just didn’t play. When we met, he was openly antagonistic toward me. Then he found out I worked for Melanie and invited me to have dinner on his boat. Then he showed up at Maplebark Manor bearing gifts and take-out dinners. Then he asked me to move in with him. Why? I asked myself. Why the sudden interest?

  And why had Cullie really come to Melanie’s house the day he found me dressed as a maid? He’d said he was there to shoot her house for a real estate brochure. But where was his equipment? He’d come empty handed. And why didn’t the security guard at the Bluefish Cove gatehouse phone ahead to let us know Cullie was coming? Nobody was allowed into Bluefish Cove without a pass or a phone call. What’s more, Melanie had never mentioned anything about a photo shoot. If she’d been expecting a photographer, she would have had me Windexing up a storm. What was Cullie really doing there that day? Did he know Melanie? Were they friends?

  Come on, Alison. Get a grip. Your imagination is getting the best of you as usual. Fine, but what was he doing at her house that day?

  Had he come to steal the manuscript, the very manuscript he’d now stolen from me? Did he go back to Melanie’s house to steal it the night she was killed? Was he the one who killed Melanie?

  I gasped when I remembered that he had no alibi for the night she was murdered. He claimed that after he dropped me off at Maplebark Manor at eleven o’clock, he drove straight back to the boat and went to sleep. But did he? Or did he drive over to Bluefish Cove, sneak into Melanie’s office to steal the manuscript, surprise her at her desk, and then hit her over the head and kill her? With what? And why? And what would make him want to get his hands on the manuscript so badly he’d commit murder for it? So he could ruin Alistair, the man he says ruined his father? Was that why he invited me to live with him on his boat? Because he knew I had the manuscript?

  I couldn’t think straight. I only knew I wanted desperately to get off the boat, to go back to Maplebark Manor where I could think clearly, try to figure it all out. But I wasn’t going anywhere—I was stuck in the middle of the Long Island Sound.

  Clutching the pages of Melanie’s manuscript, I ventured up the stairs to the deck and entered Marlowe’s cockpit. Cullie was standing at the steering wheel, whistling along with the Everly Brothers’ rendition of “Bye Bye Love.” I prayed the title of the song wasn’t some kind of an omen.

  Chapter 16

  “Did you find the chart?” Cullie asked in a cheery voice when he saw that I had returned to the cockpit.

  “No,” I said defiantly. “But I found these.” I held the missing manuscript pages in front of his face so he couldn’t possibly miss them. The e
nds of the pages flapped in the wind.

  “So you did,” Cullie said matter of factly.

  “I want to know why you stole this manuscript.”

  “I stole the manuscript? You’re the one who stole it.”

  “Yeah, but you stole it from me, and I want to know why. What were you looking for? Why did you steal these pages and not the rest of the book?”

  “Would you believe they made better reading than the rest of the book?”

  “Turn this boat around right now,” I insisted. “If you’re not going to give me a straight answer, maybe you’ll give the police one.”

  “Why would I want to talk to the police?” he said, appearing puzzled. “I’d much rather stay here and talk to you.”

  “All right then. Answer my question: Why did you steal Melanie’s manuscript?”

  “Same reason you did. I wanted to know what was in it.”

  “I stole it because I thought it might contain clues to Melanie’s murder—clues that might come in handy if the police decided to make me a suspect. What’s your excuse? Were you worried the police might make you a suspect?”

  “Me? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Lies, that’s what I’m talking about. What were you doing at Melanie’s house the day you came over and found out I was her maid? And don’t tell me you came over to shoot her house for a real estate brochure. I happen to know that line was bullshit.”

  “Fair enough. I didn’t come over to shoot her house. I came over to talk to her.”

  “Aha! So you did lie.”

  “Sure, I lied. I didn’t know you from Adam back then. I had no reason to trust you with my personal business.”