by Sarah Graves
“Right. For her research,” I added, the word sour in my mouth. “You must’ve believed she’d hold on to it, and keep her mouth shut about it until you could steal it from her.”
“That way even if things went badly,” said Ellie, “no one would find such an incriminating piece of evidence in your possession.”
“Very clever. I’m flattered,” Merkle remarked with a touch of sarcasm. He still wasn’t admitting anything, though.
“But afterward Ann and Jason were dangerous to you,” I said. “Jason was loyal, but who knew how long he’d stay that way? And Ann—well, she started bragging practically right off the bat. So you had to get rid of her, too.”
Even as I said it, I wondered why she’d bragged. You’d think she’d keep quiet about it. But then, common sense hadn’t been her strong point. And in any case, we’d never know, now.
Ellie took up the story. “It was dark and noisy on the dock. People had been drinking. Ann, especially. And it all must’ve happened so fast. You meant to invade her house and take the book just as she’d done at Horace Robotham’s after his death. But Jake and Dave DiMaio beat you to it.”
As she spoke, she picked up the electric snippers from the table and pressed the switch experimentally. The thing whirred; she put it down.
“I might have watched Horace for a few days or even weeks and learned his routine, that he always went out for a walk in the evening,” Merkle said as if testing the idea. “Alone.”
He looked at me. “Theoretically I might have asked Jason to follow him, strike him with something—a rock, a brick—which he’d have tossed away somewhere later. And you’re right, once Horace’s house was empty I could’ve sent the Talbert woman in to take the item I wanted. If,” he added, “I’d wanted it.”
He joined Ellie by the table, gripped the tin snips, turned them on again. The sharp, serrated edges moved in a blur.
Yeeks. I hoped Bob Arnold really was right outside as he’d promised. Merkle’s gaze flickered at me. “As for the rest, that might’ve worked as you’ve described, too. But—”
Theory, schmeory. I needed him to say he’d committed fraud, or some other criminal act, so Bob Arnold could grab him up and clap him into handcuffs and deliver him to people who were much better at rattling bad guys’ cages than I was. Let them work on getting Merkle prosecuted for murder; right now I just wanted the process begun, starting with him in custody.
“Look,” I said, interrupting him. “If you’ll just fix up the book you faked so I can sell it as authentic, obviously it’ll be in my best interests to forget anything else you might’ve done, and—”
“Right. Me, too,” Ellie agreed, nodding energetically just as a loud thud! hit the trailer’s door.
I jumped. “What was that?”
Another bout of hammering, and then several more in quick succession, rattled the trailer. Merkle frowned, rushing to the door. He grasped the handle, which turned easily enough.
But the door didn’t open. Bert yanked on the knob, then put his shoulder to the door; nothing happened, though. And unless I missed my guess nothing would.
Fixing up an old house makes a person pretty familiar with the sound of a hammer. Which is used, of course, to pound nails. Or spikes. Whichever; that door was shut.
And now I thought I smelled smoke. “Is there another way out of here?” I asked Merkle, who looked alarmed.
Me, too. “No,” he growled. “No, there’s only the—”
“Hey!” said Ellie as a grayish wisp of something floated in through the tiny window.
That is, too tiny for us to crawl out of. Her freckled nose twitched unhappily. “What’s . . . ?”
But we both knew. It was smoke, and not the stuff coming out of Merkle’s burn barrel. This was the heavy, acridly oily kind from flaming rags or papers, if they’re doused in something.
Say, charcoal-starter fluid. And Merkle’s trash wasn’t only in his yard; there’d also been plenty shoved under the trailer itself. Suddenly an errand I hadn’t bothered telling anyone about because we had Bob Arnold riding shotgun for us didn’t look so guaranteed-safe anymore. The opposite, in fact, because come to think of it, where was Bob?
I shoved past Merkle and Ellie to the window. “Fire! Help!” But the only reply was the crackle of flames under the trailer. And then I glimpsed it, crumpled in the weeds a dozen yards from the trailer. Something that glittered.
It was Bob Arnold’s utility belt, and the shiny thing on it was his pair of handcuffs reflecting a fire. And the crumpled thing—
That was Bob. I stared as the orange gleam grew brighter and he didn’t move.
“Jake,” Ellie managed, then stopped as a bout of coughing seized her.
Merkle vanished into the trailer’s inner recesses. He came back gripping a fire extinguisher; he aimed it around uncertainly, his eyes streaming.
Uncertainly, because from where we were there was nothing to extinguish. The fire was beneath us, not inside, spewing toxic smoke up into the trailer, and the tiny window did little to vent it.
“Jake,” Ellie repeated, sounding frightened. “We’ve got to do something. . . .”
I felt the floor under my feet growing warmer. The fire was now visible through a crack in the linoleum by the door. “Bert,” I demanded, “do you have a crowbar, or anything we could use to pry the—”
Coughing convulsively, his eyes streaming with tears, he shook his head. “No,” he choked.
I struggled to think clearly. But the fumes made me dizzy, burning my throat and blurring my vision. Ringing in my ears rose to a siren sound I thought might be real, even though the trailer was out of sight of any neighbors.
Someone passing might’ve seen something and called 911. But when I peered desperately out again no truck or emergency vehicle—no help—was anywhere in view.
And Merkle, damn him, didn’t even have a phone. I hurled myself against the door but it didn’t budge, then punched the window hard, agony exploding up my arm. Behind me Merkle reeled like a helpless animal, kicking walls, shoving me aside to rattle the doorknob again as the fire’s crackle deepened to a rumble, whoofed to a roar.
Ellie’s coughing grew uncontrollable; she couldn’t speak but I felt her gaze on me, begging me to do something.
Only I couldn’t, and moments from now this place would be an inferno. It’d only been a matter of a few seconds but it already seemed we’d been in here forever.
And we’d be here forever, too, I thought in despair, until our blackened bodies or what remained of them got sorted from the charred rubble.
But then . . . blind, deafened by the fire’s greedy roar, and terrified out of my wits, I remembered the tin snips lying on the table. The power tool Merkle had been using . . .
Where? Fumblingly I located the table’s corner, groped my way across its surface until my fingers closed on the tool. Or tried; a searing bolt of pain jolted from my bruised knuckles, and my fingers wouldn’t grip the tool’s handle firmly enough to use it no matter how hard I willed them to.
“Bert!” I snarled. Ellie was coughing too hard to help, what breath she had left coming in short, scary-sounding whoops. Any moment she’d be unconscious.
And so would I. “Bert! Where the flooring’s loose, over by the door . . .”
He flailed like a wounded beast, but got the snippers into his hands. The spot where I’d first seen the fire’s glow was an orange-red triangle, bright licks of flame greedily poking up through it as if sampling a delicious meal to come.
“Cut there!” I gasped. “Then up and away from . . .” A convulsive fit of gagging stopped me, but he half-crouched, half-fell toward the flaming gap.
Because the door’s frame was likely made of reinforced steel, but the area nearby was obviously thinner and flimsier. And I’ll say one thing for the weird old goofball, he might not have given two figs about us but Bert Merkle had a powerful sense of self-preservation.
Through the smoke and flame I saw the blade tips, black in
silhouette, against the enlarging fire. Hearing the tool’s busy whirring I thanked my stars the flames hadn’t yet burst through.
But that’s all the stars granted; I couldn’t see Ellie. Or hear her. Don’t panic, I told myself, but we were locked in a box and it was on fire; any instant those flames would erupt.
Terror flooded me, drowning me in grief; the roaring in my ears built to a howl, rising and falling, and still the door didn’t open.
No air, just a desperate absence of it. Heat, smoke . . . The flames faded. I hit the floor hard, grasping for some handhold to pull myself up again but not finding one.
The smothering dark closed in, blacking out everything else. I fought for another breath, just one more sweet, precious gulp of fresh air, but there was no air.
There just wasn’t any.
Chapter 17
* * *
Jake? Come on, damn it.”
It was Wade, coming out of the darkness at me . . . the darkness of death, I supposed, because surely this was it.
Fuzziness, flares of light, incomprehensible sounds mingled strangely with voices of the living. . . . I couldn’t find my body and I guessed this must be what it was like to be a ghost.
Ellie. A wailing ghost, because I’d killed her, too, hadn’t I? Brought her along on a damn-fool errand . . .
“Oh!” I lurched up, fumbling at the cool moisture on my face. Not dead, but if this was living there was one crucial adjustment that needed to be made right this instant . . .
I ripped the oxygen mask off, leaned sideways, and let my stomach turn itself violently inside-out. “Oh, god . . .”
“Here, put this back on,” Wade said, wiping my face with a damp towel and replacing the mask.
I don’t know what else they put in those oxygen tanks, but it tasted like champagne. “Thank you,” I murmured, unable to muster the breath for anything more, and fell back on the grass.
My throat was afire, my head felt like tons of wet concrete had been dropped on it and left there to harden, and an elephant sat on my chest.
And that was nothing compared to the way my conscience felt. Bob Arnold, Ellie, and probably Bert Merkle, too . . .
Gone. “I’m so sorry,” I muttered.
Wade bent over me. “Sorry? I don’t—”
Somebody pushed him aside: Ellie. Her red hair, fluffed out around her face, resembled a halo.
“Jake? Can you hear me? Oh, my god, she’s awake. Oh, Jake, I thought you were dead!”
She crouched and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. “Oh,” she wept, “I’m so glad you’re alive, I thought—”
I pushed her away just far enough to see her face again; her beautiful, living face. “I thought you were . . .”
“Yeah, well, you both almost were. And me, too,” growled Bob Arnold, fingering the back of his head. “Somebody must have hit me with a two-by-four or something, knocked me right out cold.”
“Merkle?” I whispered. Bob’s look turned grave.
“Took him in the ambulance, they were workin’ on him when they left. Can’t tell, from what I saw, whether he’s gonna make it or not. But it didn’t look good.”
I sat up, still dizzy and nauseated. “Ouch.”
Wade was working on my hand, cleaning and taping the places I’d crunched by punching that window with it. Ordinarily it would have been one of the med techs’ jobs, but Wade wasn’t letting anyone else near me.
“Who?” I grated at him through a throat that felt shredded from the smoke and the screaming. “Have they . . . ?”
He shook his head grimly. My knuckles were very painful but his touch wasn’t. Sitting there, I thought that if I could only keep my hand in his forever, I might be all right.
“No,” he said, applying a gauze pad. “Whoever hit Bob and started the fire must’ve been following you. But they got away.”
He finished securing the gauze with tape. “You might end up needing an X-ray on that,” he said, not meeting my gaze.
He was crying, his breath coming in gasps he was trying hard to control. He kept looking down at my hand, then leaned forward to wrap his arms around me and hold me, his tears leaking down my neck.
“Don’t let me lose you,” Wade whispered. “Please don’t.”
By then I was weeping, too, because it had been close, hadn’t it? It had been so terribly close, our losing each other. Which of course we would do someday; everyone must.
But not today. “I won’t,” I whispered, his warm arms wrapped tightly around me feeling like a gift I didn’t deserve.
He released me as George’s truck skidded to a halt down on the street and George jumped out. Spotting Ellie he ran to her. His embrace nearly knocked her off her feet.
By now it was late in the afternoon, the setting sun a pale disk in the gathering fog. I tried to get up and couldn’t; not on the first try.
The medical technicians were gathering their equipment. “Any word on the other fellow?” I asked.
Whispered, actually. Other than my knuckles the worst injury seemed to be to my voice.
If you didn’t count my conscience. Because even though no one was dead on account of it—yet—this all still felt like my fault.
The ambulance tech shook her head. “No, we haven’t heard.”
She might’ve said more, but Bob Arnold broke in. “When you feel better, Jacobia,” he began, his eyes like ice chips. “And by that I mean tonight at the very latest.”
I nodded obediently. The gesture only made the whole world tilt a few sickening times. “You want to talk to me,” I finished.
Or listen, more likely. Because this wasn’t a mugging, or an accidental drowning, or a suicide. This was attempted murder.
Or if Bert Merkle didn’t survive, never mind the attempted part. “I want to know each and every single solitary thing you and Ellie have done, what you saw and heard, who you talked to and what you told them and what they said back, since this whole mess started. Have you got that?” Bob inquired grimly.
Peering at me not with his friend face on, but with his cop face: no fooling around.
“I’ve got it, Bob,” I replied. A fresh wave of guilt washed over me. Because if I’d let all this alone, who knew what might’ve happened?
Not this. This wouldn’t have happened.
“How’d we get out?” I asked as Wade helped me into the truck.
Through the rear window, Merkle’s trailer was a blackened heap of junk. The neighbors are probably thrilled, I thought distantly.
“Merkle.” He threw the truck into reverse, backed out of the trash-heaped lot.
The fire still crackled in my ears. “But . . . I don’t get it. I thought the smoke . . .”
“Took him down, right. But he was out, first. He went back in after you and Ellie. That’s when it got him. According to the EMT guys, Merkle shoved you two out the hole.”
Those snippers . . . Bert had done what I told him to. “And then he collapsed. EMTs pulled him out,” Wade said.
“Oh.” It was coming back to me, Merkle and the tin snippers, hands gripping my shoulders in the dark, a hard shove.
“Wade, if Merkle wanted to, he could’ve left us in there. Besides DiMaio we’re the only ones who know . . .”
“Jake. Maybe you should rest for a while.”
Let it rest, he meant. Because Wade was a patient man, and a kind one, and to his mind a fully formed independent spirit was necessary equipment in a wife. He’d married me in part because I was, as Bella would’ve said, as independent as a hog on ice.
But this was bad. He turned onto Key Street. In the dusk our own house-lights glowed, yellow bars slanting onto the lawn.
We pulled into the driveway. “I can’t,” I said.
Because Merkle hadn’t struck Bob, or started that fire. Or left Ellie and me to die in it; someone else had.
Someone who would try again. “I can’t let it rest,” I repeated. But Wade was already out of the truck and coming around to open my door, so he didn’
t hear me.
Inside, I learned that the news of my narrow escape was already all over the island. “That phone,” Bella grumbled irritably as it rang again.
“Give it to me,” I said as once more she went into her “Missus Tiptree can’t be disturbed” speech.
She’d already mouthed Merrie Fargeorge, at me, and if I told Merrie the truth maybe that would start setting the gossip-wires humming with facts, instead of the nonsense burning them up now.
That Bert Merkle and I were having an affair I’d tried to end, for instance, or that he and Ellie were having ditto, or in the most extreme version that both Ellie and I were . . .
You get the idea. “Hello, Merrie,” I whispered. My throat felt like steel wool. “I guess you’ve heard all the excitement.”
“I have,” she replied crisply. In the background an old cuckoo clock sounded the hour; six o’clock. “I trust that you and Ellie weren’t badly injured?”
“We’re shaken up,” I admitted. Also my hair, skin, clothes, shoes, and the insides of my eyeballs stank of smoke.
Which I’d have taken care of already, but the shower still wasn’t working. So I’d been contemplating another washtub bath.
That is, until I heard what Merrie said next.
It took me about two minutes to put together a kit bag of soap, shampoo, towels, and an outfit of fresh clothes. Trying to talk Wade into letting me walk to Merrie’s was harder, though, and in the end I gave up.
“Sorry, but you can get your fresh air by rolling the window down, and as for solitude, you’re not getting any of that until I know for sure some lousy son of a bitch is behind bars.”
He started the truck. “You can call me when you’re ready to come home, Jake, and I’ll pick you up again,” he finished stubbornly.
Well, I couldn’t blame him. So with my bath kit on my lap we set off for Merrie’s house and more specifically for her tub and shower, which she’d generously offered to let me use.
Downtown we passed the fish pier with the tugboats tied up alongside it, their deck lamps glowing against the darkening sky. Across the water the lights of Campobello gleamed fuzzily through the gathering fog; approaching Dog Island, the fog thickened to a gray curtain.