Knockdown: A Home Repair Is Homicide Mystery

by Sarah Graves

  That was all, and the power was off. But he wouldn’t have dared use appliances or lights anyway. Things like that could get him caught.

  In the ruined room with the dust motes swirling slowly in the air he’d disturbed, he crouched by the backpack he’d left leaning against a half-collapsed wall. From it he took a box of crackers, a can of green peas, and a can of Campbell’s tomato soup. Placing these on a paper napkin, he sat on the plastic drop cloth he’d spread earlier over the linoleum least affected by the roof leak.

  There was a hole in the wall from a woodstove’s vent pipe, and he also tried to get as far as possible from that. You never could tell what might scurry in and out of such a thing.

  Unseen things, gleefully creeping … No. Grimly, he focused on the good, clean food items before him: Wrapped. Sealed.

  You are what you eat, his mother used to tell him. And Don’t put that dirty stuff in your mouth.

  Sometimes it was only a street vendor’s hot dog that he’d bought on a class field trip, trying to be like the rest of the kids, that aroused her wrath. Sometimes it was worse.

  But he didn’t want to think about any of that anymore. It had taken him a long time to understand how right she was, how a boy had to be careful, sometimes excruciatingly so.

  Because people would try corrupting him. They would succeed, even, sometimes. And what a fellow had to do then was …

  Stop. There was no point to any of those thoughts, either. And anyway, he would never have to do any of those things again.

  Because now … Now he was doing this thing, and not only would it avenge his father’s death—his murder, his mind made sure to correct him viciously—it would also go a long way toward redeeming Steven himself, wouldn’t it?

  Not that he hadn’t already begun taking care of his own problems. And ironically, in the end the help he’d needed in that area had come from the same source as the problems themselves: being a mama’s boy. He knew she had made him … strange. Clean food, meticulously cared-for clothing … These, he had been given forcefully to understand by the other youngsters in his school, were not the concerns of a normal young American male.

  And girls or women were of course out of the question. Having one; being … intimate. The thought made him shiver with revulsion and something else that he did not want to identify.

  But fortunately, being his mother’s son had also given him plenty of time to pursue indoor interests: reading, fiddling with computers—he smiled, thinking about how useful this talent had become lately—and watching TV.

  By chance, one of his TV shows had featured a detective’s obsessive-compulsive symptoms. Portrayed negatively, but for Steven they had turned out instead to be immensely useful.

  He couldn’t figure out why people wanted to get rid of these symptoms. Didn’t their sufferers understand that without them, they might not be able to function at all?

  The minute he’d seen the TV detective engaged in a bout of hand-washing, then wiping down a chair with an antiseptic towelette, Steven had known that as far as his everyday anxieties went, his troubles were over.

  Well, maybe not over over. But at least now he had a way of tuning them out, sometimes long enough to get a few things done. Things like obtaining an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. A drop of blood for a …

  Stop. No sense going on about that, either. He was here, on the brink of a great deed, so he had to keep his strength up.

  With his hands trembling from hunger, he opened the soup, the vegetables, and the crackers. Slowly, not letting himself hurry—

  Without warning, a flashbulb of memory went off: his mother’s face twisted in a grimace, her wild, furious voice—

  Greedy boy!

  —but with the ease of long practice he brushed it aside, went on preparing his meal.

  Crackers here. Open soup can here. Peas, counted carefully, lined up like soldiers.

  He began to eat, dipping the crackers in the soup, following them with peas one by one: dip, chew, pea.

  There had to be an even number of peas and an odd number of crackers, and the cracker with soup on it counted as two things. It took concentration to keep it all straight.

  By the time he had finished, light from the windows slanted in darker gold rays than before, and he still had to clean up.

  Pea can inside the soup can. Soup can in the cracker box and the box out the door, he decided. Hurled as hard as he could.

  Risky, but there was no help for it; leaving trash inside bred vermin. Rats, mice, fleas, flies …

  He opened the back door, peering out. The garden looked onto an alley and beyond that to the rear of a huge, white-clapboarded old church. There were no windows in the rear of the church. No view from the houses next door, either, through the lilacs.

  He threw the cracker box out into the ruined yard, where it was swallowed up by rank weeds between the trunk of a gnarled apple tree and a massive hydrangea, each blue bloom as big as a human head.

  Blue head. Blue face … Another memory flash, more hideous than the earlier one, took him by surprise, sending him reeling back blindly so that he nearly stepped off the rotten porch. He grabbed the decrepit porch rail; it held … barely.

  Gasping, he hurled himself back into the house and put his shoulder to the door until it shut with a groan. Staggering to his pack, he dug frantically in it for the pump bottle of hand sanitizer.

  He squirted the chemical-smelling stuff into his hands, then rubbed madly, scrubbing it onto his arms and slapping it on his face, where it stung his eyes and its taste nearly made him gag.

  But gradually he relaxed, his panicked breath slowing. The relief would not hold; he would have to do it again many times before the day was through.

  Still, now he could think again, exist again. If only, he thought as he tucked the germ killer into his pack once more—

  There was another bottle in there, too, and a third one just in case.

  If only he could drink the stuff.

  BY THE TIME JAKE AND ELLIE GOT BACK TO THE KEY STREET house, it was mid-afternoon and four more email messages had arrived.

  WATCHING YOU, said the first. THINKING OF YOU, declared the second. MISS ME? asked the third.

  And finally: YOU CAN’T ESCAPE, said the last one.

  Earlier, Jake had been using the computer to learn how much paint she’d need, to put two coats of exterior latex onto thirty-two hundred square feet of siding. But now she felt like pitching the thing through a window.

  Ellie appeared from the kitchen, where she’d been making tea, and saw the look on Jake’s face. “You know, maybe we should just call up Bob Arnold and tell him—”

  “What? That I want him to stop some anonymous pen pal from sending me mean messages?”

  With its elaborately tiled fireplace mantel, chair rails and wainscoting, and the original wavery-glassed windows hung with heavy green silk draperies, the dining room looked much as it had nearly two hundred years earlier. Ordinarily, Jake found it all immensely tranquilizing.

  Just not now. “I don’t think Bob’s got time in his holiday schedule for a wild-goose chase,” she added. “Besides, even if it is the bike guy, he can’t possibly really do anything to me. I’m surrounded here by my family and friends.”

  As if to emphasize this, Prill the Doberman stalked in with neck hairs raised and ears pricked. Not that she would really do anything, either; since her days as a rescue, Prill had mellowed so that now she only looked like a furry killing machine.

  Jake smoothed the dog’s hackles. “Don’t worry, girl. I’m just annoyed.”

  And really, calling Bob truly was out of the question. With the town so full of visitors they were practically spilling into the bay, he was already way overworked.

  On top of which, computer crime was hardly his specialty. If this even was a prosecutable crime …

  So Prill let herself be persuaded that nobody needed biting, and lay down. Changing her mind about tea, Ellie started the percolator; she preferred i
t to the Mr. Coffee.

  And Jake returned to the porch, where she collected tools: scrapers, sander, extension cord, gloves, safety glasses.…

  With her arms loaded with stuff, she staggered forward. One more trip with a broom and dustpan and she was done for now.

  Good old belt sander, she thought, then stopped as an odd feeling prickled between her shoulder blades; a targeted feeling.

  Ridiculous, she told herself. It was only her imagination, all roiled up by the stranger on the bike and those weird emails.

  But when she went into the house, she made sure to hook the screen door. She closed the inside door and locked it, too.

  Just in case.

  DOWNTOWN AT THE CORNER OF WATER AND DANA STREETS, the new Pickled Herring restaurant offered fresh grilled vegetables and delicately sauced entrées, a level of cuisine Eastport diners had once had to travel to Portland to enjoy.

  Standing in the backyard examining Wade’s freshly cleaned catch, Jake thought eating out was sounding better and better.

  But: “Brook trout,” Wade said stubbornly. “Grilled ones.”

  He was tall and solidly built, with blond brush-cut hair, eyes that were blue or green depending upon the weather, and the kind of square-jawed good looks that she’d thought occurred only on the covers of romance novels until she met him.

  “I’ve had my mouth set for those fish since this morning,” said Wade, resting his chin gently on the top of her head.

  “Mm-hmm,” said Jake, who with his arms around her and his heart beating close to her cheek would’ve agreed to anything.

  But the fish were tiny. “No one would have to cook. Or,” she added, “wash dishes.”

  This being, she knew, a persuasive argument, just not quite persuasive enough. Then inspiration hit her.

  “Maybe we could get the chef at the Pickled Herring to cook your catch,” she suggested.

  Because grilled fish was indeed a tradition for them on the Fourth. But starving wasn’t, and although the boys had brought home a dozen fish, the edible portion of each was smaller than her hand.

  “Done up quick with that mustardy dill sauce you like,” she went on temptingly. “For hors d’oeuvres.”

  Which was how a few hours later they all sat at the Pickled Herring’s largest table, next to the big front window, devouring these crispy delicacies while drinking appletinis.

  “Elegant,” pronounced Jake’s stepmother and housekeeper, Bella Diamond, taking her first sip from the frosty glass.

  Rawboned and henna-haired, with big green eyes and a jaw full of mismatched teeth, Bella had work-worn hands that could have belonged to an auto mechanic, and in the lace-trimmed blue shirtwaist she had on, she was way overdressed.

  But she had the best heart in the world and would have stepped in front of a locomotive for the family she’d acquired by marrying Jake’s dad, Jacob Tiptree.

  Also, Bella was adventurous when it came to mixed drinks. “Watch out for those things,” Jacob cautioned his wife.

  Lean and hawk-faced, with stringy gray hair tied back in a leather thong, wearing bib overalls and a flannel shirt over work boots so battered they resembled Civil War relics, he was an unusual-looking person, too.

  To put it mildly. “I think the word appletini might be code for dynamite juice,” he added to Bella.

  “Watch out yourself, old man,” Bella retorted. “Who had to help who upstairs the last time we tried a new beverage?” But her voice was warmly affectionate.

  “Tell Wade about your pen pal,” prompted Ellie. In a sparkly little black dress whose hem fringe hit her knee, a silvery-gray crocheted shawl light as a spiderweb, and heeled sandals, Ellie appeared as usual to have floated down from some idiosyncratic fashion heaven.

  “Nasty emails,” she added, at Wade’s inquiring glance. “But we don’t know who sent them. So … more like a secret pal.”

  Jake glanced uneasily through the restaurant’s front window to the street as a chill went through her. Great, now she was feeling superstitious about the bike guy; speak of the devil, etc.

  She opened her mouth to change the subject, but Sam got in ahead of her. “Yeah, I saw those.”

  He reached out and speared another hot grilled brook trout with mustard sauce. Crispy, smoky, and melt-in-your-mouth tender, the things were addictive.

  “They were weird,” Sam added. “I borrowed your laptop when I got in,” he added, to explain how he’d seen the emails.

  Nearly as tall as Wade, with dark, curly hair and matinee-idol good looks, Sam bit the trout in half, washed it down with a swallow of root beer.

  He didn’t drink alcohol, after a time of drinking a lot of it. Jake hoped his abstinence would continue, but with Sam you never knew; it was the dark side to his otherwise sunny character. She and the rest would’ve gladly drunk root beer along with him, but he insisted people enjoy their favorite beverages.

  The world would always have alcohol in it, he said; it was his job not to drink it. “I could try tracing them down for you,” he offered. “The emails.”

  Meanwhile, Wade shot her a pointed Why didn’t you tell me about this? look. “No ideas who sent them?” he asked.

  Drat, she thought. This weekend was supposed to be a stress-free holiday for him: no freighters to bring into the harbor, no antique firearms waiting to be worked on.

  “Well,” she began slowly, but just then the waiter brought platters out.

  Baked haddock for Ellie and Bella, a T-bone for Sam, duck in orange sauce for Wade, for Jake’s dad, and for George Valentine, plus pizza for Jake: specifically, artisan pizza with barbecued chicken, caramelized onion, and enough blue cheese to sink a barge.

  Ellie’s husband, George Valentine, ate a bite of duck breast and sighed happily. Compactly built, with the jutting jaw and milk-white skin that ran in many of the old families in downeast Maine, he had the banty-rooster bearing of a fellow who talked with his fists.

  Which he often did. Besides being the man you called for a bat in your attic, skunks in your trash cans, or a massive old tree limb balanced atop your roof beam after a storm, George had been known to throw a first punch just to get the fight started, so he could get it over with.

  Now, though, a guitar duo played jazz standards at one end of the room, a grill man tossed pizza at the other, and in the middle, George ate duck à l’orange and liked it.

  But then Wade started in on the nasty emails again, and this time the food didn’t keep him from wanting an answer, pronto. So Jake supplied one as best she could:

  “Youngish guy. Clean-cut, riding a bike.”

  There was no point in mentioning how familiar he’d looked and sounded. She still didn’t know why, or even if the sense she had that she knew her visitor from somewhere was accurate.

  She glanced uneasily out the window once more and spied no one looking in. But the street was still jammed with people, and among that many faces, who could be sure of picking out just one?

  “He seemed to have a grievance against me,” she went on. “I got the feeling that taunting me was why he was here.”

  Her dad’s bushy eyebrows knit with concern. “And then the emails started?”

  “Yes. But there’s no way of knowing if they’re connected.”

  The jazz guitar duo reached the final notes of “Take the ‘A’ Train” and began playing “Stardust.” Jake’s father patted Bella’s left hand as with her right she finished her appletini.

  George winked at Ellie. Wade got his wallet out. Sam filched the last slice of pizza from Jake’s plate and devoured it. I am, Jake thought with sudden clarity, the luckiest woman in the world.

  “The guy on the bike and those emails coming right after, it could’ve all just been a—”

  “Coinky-dink,” Sam supplied, taking a swig of root beer, and the rest nodded in agreement.

  But none of them really believed it; she knew from the looks on their faces.

  And unfortunately, neither did she.

  ONCE IT GOT D
ARK, STEVEN FELT SAFER ABOUT LEAVING THE vacant house. One more stranger in a town that was full of them at night on a holiday weekend … Who would notice?

  But just to be sure, he propped a hand mirror on one of the sagging shelves in the ancient pantry. Switching on his battery lantern, he got to work with a tube of surgical glue.

  His nose wrinkled, partly from the pungent glue smell but mostly at the sight of himself in the cheap little mirror. Those big ears of his belonged on a cartoon character, the way they stuck nearly straight out from his head.

  But now a firm squeeze of the glue tube here, a dab and a push there, and one ear was firmly secured flat to his head. Next he did the same on the other side, and presto: perfectly normal.

  On the outside, anyway. He frowned, wondering if the ears might’ve given Jacobia Tiptree a clue to his identity earlier. Probably not, though. The one time she’d seen him before, he’d been only a kid and his father had been her focus.

  His father, and what she’d refused to do for him. Such a small thing, really, that she could have done so easily. And if she had helped, everything would have been different.

  But no sense crying over spilled milk, as his mother used to say, although she’d never said it when Steven spilled it. Then, somehow there’d been plenty of sense in making him cry.

  But done was done, and what he needed to think about now was what he meant to do. Soon …

  Now, in fact, because all this was part of it, his mission already well under way. Tease her, torment her … these thoughts calmed his nerves, slowed his angrily pounding heartbeat. He left the mirror on the dusty shelf and returned to the old kitchen.

  The smell here was of wood rotting and rodents multiplying. Stealthy flapping sounds from somewhere upstairs said that bats made their homes here, as well. His flesh crawled at the idea of the creatures swarming over him if he should fall asleep.

  But that wasn’t likely, or at any rate not soon, for he had things to do, didn’t he? And his eagerness would keep him awake.

  He shut off the lantern. But he would need it when he came back to the house later. Climbing onto a shaky chair, he began pulling shades made of big black trash bags down over the kitchen windows.