Clean Sweep

by Jane Heller

  He looked longingly at the Marlowe one last time, then turned his attention to me.

  “Okay, matey. Start rowing,” he said.

  “Where to?” I asked, grabbing the oars.

  “Branford.”

  “I’ve never been to Branford. How will I know when I get there?”

  “Just keep rowing till you see land.”

  “Well, here goes nothing,” I said and began to row. And row. And row.

  A half-hour into my rowing, my stomach muscles were aching and my hands were sore with blisters. My back didn’t feel so hot either. What’s more, I was shivering.

  I looked over at Cullie, who was slumped in the stern of the boat, his eyes closed, his body limp from the combination of the painkiller and his ordeal. I felt a surge of love wash over me. I stopped rowing, opened the emergency kit, took out the space blanket, and covered him with it. Then I resumed rowing. And rowing. And rowing.

  I tried to amuse myself as I rowed. I told myself jokes, asked myself riddles, and made up a slew of limericks, some saltier than others.

  Another way I tried to amuse myself was by pretending I was at the Layton Health Club, working out on one of their rowing machines. I imagined how flat my stomach would be after all the rowing, how firm the crepe-y skin under my arms would become.

  I also thought of all the wonderful things Cullie and I would do together after we were rescued—from going to the movies and stopping on the way home for a hot fudge sundae, to getting the state of Connecticut to enforce its death penalty and watching Bethany Downs fry in the electric chair.

  Yet another way I amused myself was by thanking God. I thanked Him for the dinghy that was carrying Cullie and me to safety. I thanked Him for the Demerol that seemed to be easing Cullie’s pain. I thanked Him for all those summers at sleepaway camp, without which I would not have learned how to row a boat. I even made a game out of thanking Him by thanking Him alphabetically. “Thank you for the azure blue sky above us,” “Thank you for the boat I’m rowing,” “Thank you for Cullie,” etc.

  And I sang to amuse myself. Boy, did I sing. Rock songs. Show tunes. Themes from TV sitcoms. You name it. I do not have a good voice, but Cullie, who was out cold, didn’t seem to mind.

  “Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream,” I sang, wondering if the person who’d written that little ditty had ever been forced to row a dinghy all the way to Branford after abandoning ship in the Long Island Sound. “Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily life is but a dream.”

  Some dream.

  Chapter 25

  I’d been singing and rowing in the bone-chilling Long Island Sound for two hours when I saw a motorboat racing toward us.

  “Cullie! Cullie, wake up!” I cried, tugging on his blanket.

  He stirred, opened his eyes, winced from the pain in his leg, and closed his eyes again.

  “Cullie, come on. Listen to me.” I tugged on the blanket once more.

  “Huh? What? Where are we?” he mumbled. He seemed very groggy from the medication. Either that or he was in shock.

  “I think we’re about to be rescued,” I said, trying not to get my hopes up if it turned out that the boat I heard and saw was one of those hallucinations sailors have when they’ve been out at sea too long.

  Fortunately, the United States Coast Guard cutter that was headed in our direction was no hallucination.

  “Oh, thank God,” I cried, a seasoned thanker of God by this time. “You found us. You really found us.”

  There were six men aboard the Coast Guard boat—two petty officers and four seamen—and they were so helpful and caring I wanted to take them home with me.

  They gave us blankets and hot coffee, tied our dinghy to the rear of their boat, and took it and us to a dock in New Haven, where there was an ambulance waiting to transport us to the hospital.

  When we got to Yale-New Haven Hospital, I was treated for hypothermia, an aching back, and some really mean-looking blisters on my hands, then released. Cullie, poor boy, was taken into surgery so his broken bone could be set.

  “Will he have to stay here overnight?” I asked the emergency room nurse.

  “I’m afraid so,” she said.

  I waited around until Cullie came out of surgery. Then I watched him being wheeled to the hospital room they’d found for him.

  “Hey, Sonny girl,” Cullie said weakly when he opened his eyes and saw me.

  “Hey, yourself,” I whispered. “How are you feeling?”

  “Pretty awful. How ’bout you? You did all that rowing.”

  “Yeah, but think how much bigger my tits will be now. Rowing bulks up the chest muscles.”

  He smiled. “I love your tits. I don’t want them bulked up.”

  “Thank you. I love yours too.”

  I blushed when I suddenly remembered that we weren’t alone: Cullie had a roommate on the other side of the curtain.

  I pulled the curtain back and sneaked a look at the man in the next bed. He was fast asleep, but I recognized him right away.

  “Cullie!” I whispered. “You’ll never guess who your roommate is.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “Who?”

  “Dr. Weinstein. Sandy’s shrink.”

  What was Dr. “Whine-stein,” as I used to call him, doing at Yale-New Haven Hospital? I wondered. Then I remembered he had a weekend place in Guilford and had probably been vacationing there.

  “What’s wrong with Dr. Weinstein?” I asked one of the nurses.

  “One of his patients tried to kill him,” she said. “Threw a Molotov cocktail in his bedroom window.”

  “Was he badly hurt?” I never thought Dr. Weinstein was much of a shrink—look at Sandy, for God’s sake—but I certainly didn’t wish him any harm.

  “No. Just some cuts and bruises. It’s the depression we’re concerned about. He says he feels like a failure, a fraud, and an impostor. He’s being transferred to the psychiatric ward as soon as there’s a bed available.”

  “How sad.” And it was. Everybody felt like a failure, a fraud, and an impostor now and then, I realized.

  I tiptoed back into Cullie’s room. “I guess I’ll go,” I said softly, kissing the tip of his nose. “You must be pretty out of it.”

  “I am. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Just rest.”

  “Sonny?”

  “Yeah?”

  “The Marlowe’s gone, isn’t she?” His eyes filled with tears.

  “She went down, yes,” I told him. “But that doesn’t mean she’s gone. You rigged a marker buoy, remember? The Coast Guard will help us find her, if they haven’t found her already.”

  His expression brightened. “I forgot about that buoy. Maybe there’s hope,” he said.

  “No ‘maybe’ about it. Now get some sleep. I’ll be back in the morning to take you home.”

  “Home?” His face clouded over again.

  “That’s right. My home. I’ve still got one, sort of.”

  “I guess so,” he mumbled.

  “Hey, perk up,” I said, hoping Cullie would snap out of his depression so he wouldn’t have to be moved to the psychiatric ward like Dr. Weinstein. “Maplebark Manor’s not so bad when you get used to it.” Of course, it wouldn’t be wise for Cullie to get used to it, seeing as the bank would be foreclosing on it any day. “Let’s look on the bright side. We didn’t drown in the Long Island Sound. We’re alive. We have all our body parts. We have enough evidence to put Bethany away for life. This is where the good times begin. This is where we get to love each other and support each other and watch Little Miss Downs get what’s coming to her. What’s to be depressed about?”

  I left Cullie at the hospital and waited in the lobby for my mother. I had telephoned her from the Coast Guard cutter when I realized I didn’t have a dime, my money and credit cards having gone down with the ship.

  “Are you all right, dear?” she’d asked on the phone.

  “Sure, Mom. Cullie’s got a broken leg, but there’s nothin
g to worry about.”

  “Nothing about which to worry.”

  “Exactly. Just meet me at Yale-New Haven Hospital, okay? I hate to put you out, but I’ll need some cash and a change of clothes. Something warm.”

  “We’ll be right there,” she said.

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “Louis and I.”

  “Mr. Obermeyer?” He and my mother seemed to be getting awfully chummy lately, what with their dinners at the Club and telephone conversations about my case.

  “Yes, dear. But don’t read anything into it. Louis and I are not having sex. We’re just friends.”

  I laughed. One of the petty officers from the Coast Guard cutter asked me what was so funny. I told him I was just happy to be alive.

  Mr. Obermeyer got rooms for us in a motel near the hospital—three separate rooms. We checked in and I changed into the clothes my mother brought me: a black gabardine suit (Chanel), black silk blouse (Anne Klein), and black leather pumps (Ferragamo). I looked like I was dressed for a funeral.

  We had dinner at the small, family-owned restaurant adjoining the motel, where the menu featured only two entrées: baked scrod and broiled sirloin steak. No contest, obviously. But before I could give the waiter my order, my mother ordered for me.

  “She’ll have the scrod,” she said.

  “I’ll have the steak,” I told the waiter. “Medium rare.”

  “Steak is high in cholesterol,” she said.

  “It’s also high in protein,” I countered. “I’ve just spent the past several hours fighting for my life. I deserve a steak. Screw the cholesterol.”

  “Watch your language,” my mother scolded.

  “Let her have the steak, Doris,” Mr. Obermeyer jumped in. “What does she want with scrod? She’s probably seen enough fish today.”

  “You’re right, Louis. Of course,” said my mother, then addressed the waiter. “She’ll have the steak.”

  Mr. Obermeyer, my hero.

  Over dinner, I told Mr. Obermeyer how Cullie and I suspected Bethany of disabling the boat in an attempt to silence me and the manuscript.

  “Did you hear that, Louis? She said the manuscript was on that boat.” My mother looked as if an enormous weight had been lifted from her bony shoulders. “That means no one will ever find out about Al and me.”

  Apparently, my mother had told Mr. Obermeyer all about her long, sordid past with the senator.

  “What’s happening with the murder investigation?” I asked my lawyer.

  “Here’s the good news. The fingerprints on the wineglass were a match with the prints on the murder weapon,” he said. “The police have a case against Bethany Downs now, what with the prints, the donut sugar, and the fact that she was at your house the night the cocaine was planted.”

  “So what are they waiting for?” I said. “Why doesn’t Corsini arrest her?”

  “Here’s the bad news. Corsini’s a star fucker,” Mr. Obermeyer replied, then belched.

  “Louis, your language is as bad as Alison’s,” my mother scolded, then handed Mr. Obermeyer a roll of antacid tablets from her purse.

  “Thanks, Doris. You’re a sweetie.” He smiled and patted my mother’s cheek. Then she patted his. Just friends, my ass.

  “You mean Corsini isn’t going to arrest Bethany? Because she’s Alistair Downs’s daughter?” I was flabbergasted.

  “It isn’t just Corsini,” Mr. Obermeyer explained. “The whole department kisses Alistair Downs’s butt.”

  “Louis, please,” my mother scolded again.

  “Well, if all the evidence we’ve gathered against Bethany isn’t enough for Corsini,” I said, “wait until the Coast Guard finds the Marlowe and confirms the boat was tampered with. That’ll be the nail in her coffin, won’t it?”

  “Maybe. If someone at the marina saw her tamper with the boat,” Mr. Obermeyer said. “If not, there’s no way to prove she did it.”

  “Then I’ll find someone who saw her,” I said. “In the meantime, there’s another way to put pressure on the Layton Police: get the media to do it for us.”

  Why not? If the vultures smelled a cover-up, they’d be all over Corsini like a cheap suit. Maybe I’d just have to tell “A Current Affair” and the other tabloids everything I knew about Bethany.

  We brought Cullie home from the hospital the next morning. As the bed in the master bedroom was Maplebark Manor’s only remaining piece of furniture, I settled him in there. I made him some lunch, brought him the phone, and told him I loved him.

  “You must feel pretty lost without the boat,” I said.

  “I do, but I’m gonna get her back. I’m calling the Coast Guard right now to see if they’ve had any luck in locating her.”

  “Great. You do that while I have a little chat with some of the reporters outside.”

  “Yeah, I noticed they were still out there.”

  “More than ever, thanks to our excellent adventure on the high seas. We’ve even got reporters from ‘Wide World of Sports’ out there now.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ve decided it’s time I addressed the troops, made a statement. Justice moves a tad too slowly around here for my taste.”

  “You’re gonna go before all those TV cameras and tell them about Bethany?”

  “Yeah. I’m also gonna tell them about Corsini’s—how shall I put it?—ineffectuality.”

  “Wow. My very own media star. Can I get your autograph before you become so famous you forget your old friend Cullie?”

  I pulled the blanket off Cullie, exposing the virgin white cast that enveloped his broken leg. Then I fished around in the night table for a pen.

  “You want my autograph?” I said, signing my name. “You got it.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the media,” I said. I was standing on the steps of Maplebark Manor, about to address twenty-five reporters, photographers, and cameramen, including a crew from “A Current Affair.”

  I proceeded to go into detail about Melanie’s murder, Corsini’s botched investigation, and most of all, Bethany’s evil deeds and the evidence the police had against her but refused to acknowledge. The vultures loved it. So did all the Laytonites when they caught my act on the eleven o’clock news. One minute I was a murderer in their eyes, the next minute I was a heroine who had single-handedly saved their town from dethroning Miami as the nation’s hot bed of murder and mayhem. Only Sandy, who had recently remarried the very pregnant caterer-whore, felt I’d made a fool of myself. It wasn’t what I told the media that bothered him; it was the fact that I told them for nothing.

  “You did it for free?” he asked when he called the next night, minutes after seeing me on “A Current Affair.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “They would have paid you big bucks, Alison. Maybe fifty thousand dollars. They do it all the time.”

  “I don’t think people should be paid to tell the truth,” I asserted. “Money isn’t everything. Besides, seeing that justice is done is reward enough.”

  Pretty high-minded stuff for a recovering member of the money obsessed. Sure, I could have used fifty thousand dollars. I had no home, no job, and no prospects of either but I was not about to be subsidized by “A Current Affair,” thank you.

  Two days went by, and despite the fact that the media vultures had departed Maplebark Manor and were now camped outside Evermore, demanding a statement from either Bethany or Alistair, the Layton Police still did not make an arrest.

  Then came several significant breaks for the Good Guys.

  First, the Coast Guard located the Marlowe. Cullie was ecstatic when he heard. He whooped and hollered and played the drums on his cast. So much for depression.

  Then the marine contractors that Cullie’s insurance company had hired to salvage the boat pulled it out of the water and hauled it back to the Jessup Marina. It was pretty beat up, but all in one piece—so much so that Cullie figured it would only take three or four months to restore it to its former glo
ry.

  Then the boat was examined by the authorities, who found that the stuffing box had been tampered with, the sea cocks had been disabled, and the diaphragm seals on the bilge pumps had been broken. “Whoever messed with this boat left no stone unturned,” said the Coast Guard’s chief investigator.

  Then came the best break of all: Hadley Kittredge, the dockmaster’s daughter, told Cullie that she had seen Bethany Downs at the marina the day before our sailing trip from hell and would be glad to testify to that effect.

  “We did it, we did it,” I exclaimed, hugging Cullie as he lay on his back on my bed. It was nearly midnight and we were too excited about the day’s turn of events to sleep. “Now the cops have to put Bethany away. Before we know it, this whole nightmare will be over.”

  “Let’s celebrate,” Cullie suggested.

  “How? You’re lying here with a cast on your leg.”

  “Yeah, but there’s no cast on my Johnson. Wanna mess around?”

  I considered the question. I wasn’t exactly Nadia Comaneci, and I wondered how I would mount Cullie without putting pressure on his cast. But hey, if you don’t try, you don’t get.

  I took off my clothes and pulled down his pants. Then I straddled him, making sure I kept my thigh off his cast, which wasn’t easy. I ended up doing a little straddling, a little squatting and a whole lot of squirming. My various contortions reminded me of some of the routines on Jane Fonda’s workout video. The key thing was that I got the job done.

  For the next hour or so, I lay awake next to Cullie, imagining what path our lives would take next, wondering how the events of the past few months would finally shake out.

  Suddenly, I heard a noise. I listened more intently. There it was again. A distant creaking? A suggestion of movement downstairs? I couldn’t be sure. Maplebark Manor was an old house, and old houses make lots of noises.

  I turned over and closed my eyes. Try to relax, I told myself. It’s nothing.

  Then another noise. A bump in the night? A fallen object? Someone knocking something over? But it couldn’t be. Nobody could have gotten inside the house without the burglar alarm going off. I’d armed it before I came upstairs for the night.