Time and Trouble

by Gillian Roberts

  The sofa was angled with its back to the front door and it was yet again new—an old-fashioned burgundy one. High-backed brocade. A table with curved legs, a lamp with a fringed shade, the arm and foot of an upholstered chair—random pieces at odd angles. You couldn’t read or talk or put things on the tables the way they were. One painting of clouds and angels—hokey, even she knew that—on the otherwise empty walls. What kind of house was this? New furniture all the time, but not enough to make a room, and none of it set so you could use it.

  There was nothing else in the room except a wing chair. She edged over until she could see it.

  Which was when she saw much more. The shadow of somebody just out of sight. A strange light, not the lamp’s, shining on the chair and its people. A male voice, its owner also out of her line of vision, “That’s it, now, again! Come on, give it more!” He sounded like the coach at school. Or a director.

  And the man on the chair, his head back, his suit—his shirt and tie and suit jacket—and his knees—knees, not trousers. Bare knees, naked legs splayed, and between them, a little girl, kneeling, her back to Penny. A really little girl, she thought, her heart racing wildly at the wrongness of the scene. A little girl with a bow in her hair, a white blouse and dark plaid skirt—a school uniform and kneesocks—old-fashioned, like the sofa—a very little girl kneeling in front of the man whose eyes were closed, his mouth half open…

  And Arthur’s voice saying, “Again!” and Arthur himself, his back to Penny but no mistaking his voice or abrupt gestures. Arthur directing them. And the oddly placed light, the shadow that remained at an angle despite Arthur’s movements—Arthur the director and the shadow, a photographer.

  She wondered if they also shouted at the little girl to play the violin. Or had that been for another little actress? She wanted to cry.

  She had imagined another woman, but this was so much worse.

  The camera. She raised it and, holding her breath, pushed.

  The flash went off. When had she set it? Or it was automatic—but for whatever reason, the flash went off and Penny sensed rather than heard a pause inside. She tried to fold into herself, but she was too slow, her feet nailed to the deck, her brain swelling until it squeezed off all signals. She moved one half-asleep foot behind her—and fell, onto her rear.

  The little girl stopped her hideous movements and half turned, her head tilted as if listening for a signal.

  Perhaps because she didn’t know what to do next. No further directions filled the sliver of silence. The narrow figure turned until Arthur Redmond, his facial muscles moving from confusion to shock to rage, stared at his stepdaughter and raised his hand, pointing, as if gathering and urging on his troops, shouting, his protests joined by the man on the chair. But it was only Arthur whom she heard shout, “I’ll kill you!” Only Arthur she saw as she stood, heavy-limbed, and felt the heat of his purple-faced fury as he lunged toward her.

  Twenty-Eight

  Issaquah Dock. She passed blue awning shops—a deli, a wash-and-dry, a bike shop—the necessities of life, and entered the parking lot in search of a greenish Ford, Gary had said. Not new. He didn’t know any more than that. Sorry. His gangly body had listed toward the computer while they’d spoken.

  He was another reason she was glad she had no life. Another eligible male she was delighted to have skipped.

  What was the allure of houseboats to Penny Redmond? If she had indeed returned here, then it was the third time that even oblivious Gary knew about.

  She didn’t ponder this for long. Penny Redmond’s motives were obscure, some muddle of adolescent conflicts not worth the analysis. All Billie wanted was to find the girl and move on, but every time she’d thought this was about to happen, the conclusion wiggled free of her grasp.

  Three “greenish” Fords were on the lot. One a custom and horrifying lime convertible, one a silvery aqua, and one she’d call evergreen. Nobody was on the lot or at the entry to the dock, so she started walking. Worse came to worst, she wouldn’t see anything out there and would come back to the lot to wait for the girl. Catch a few rays meantime.

  The houseboaters were either intensely industrious and off to work, or intensely sluggish, lolling out of sight. In either case, the walkway was deserted and silent, except for soft creaks as it moved, the slaps of water against pilings, the soft music of wind chimes and the occasional outraged shriek of a seagull. What a pleasant way this was to live, with escape always possible. A sort of committed noncommitment with the promise that you could literally cut loose and take off, you and your house, if you needed to.

  Although, in truth, most looked permanently settled on concrete berths. And the fantastic towering and unbalanced shapes of some made travel in them unlikely. But the idea remained appealing.

  Not a sign of anyone the entire dock’s length. Where was Penny Redmond and how was Billie supposed to find out? She leaned against a wooden railing lined with potted cymbidiums, tight young buds in clusters, wishing her mind were as fertile as the plant.

  A door opened. Hope rose.

  A man exited. Hope faded.

  He looked her way.

  She knew that thirties moustache. Arthur Redmond moved sideways on the walkway, looked back at the house, tilting as if to see around it.

  Why would Penny have come here? Why would Arthur? Was he tracking her, too?

  The open door ejected yet another Redmond, but not Penny. Sophia raced out and pushed at Arthur, who lifted his hand without looking at her and slapped her face, his attention elsewhere.

  “Leave her alone!” Sophia screamed. “Don’t you dare touch her!”

  “You crazy?” Arthur still didn’t look in the direction of his wife.

  “I told you!” Sophia moaned. “I told you she knew!” Then, her voice at a high, painful-sounding pitch, she screamed at the house. “Run away! Run away!”

  And as Sophia screamed, Billie saw a figure in shorts—hair like flame in the sunshine—creep around the side of the houseboat away from Arthur and Sophia. Nearest to Billie. The girl held on to the house, one splayed hand grasping the siding until the next hand pressed flat against another portion. She walked in tight sidesteps on a small ledge that ran the length of the boat, pressing herself against the siding, as if to blend into it, become invisible.

  Billie’s muscles tensed to move toward the girl, catch her and run with her, all of which, of course, was impossible. She was afraid to even utter a sound until she knew why Penny was hiding and Sophia screaming.

  On the other hand, the assignment had obviously resolved itself. The family was together again, albeit peculiarly. Or was the runaway once again trying to escape? If so, there was no chance of that this time. Her parents might not be the wisest or brightest folk, but if they’d stop quarreling, surely even they would remember that the houseboat had two sides.

  “I told you!”

  “You told her!”

  “I’ll kill her!”

  “A camera! Why else—”

  No neighbors popped heads out of houses. Billie would have thought there would have been more of a sense of community here, but maybe they were calling the police or Sheriff’s Office or whoever patrolled this part of the county.

  All in an instant, Penny made it to the front of the house, her face contorted as she raced onto and down the tiny front stairways and away from her parents, who ceased fire when she appeared. Arthur made toward the walkway. Sophia blocked his way, screaming, “Run!” to her daughter until stoop-shouldered Arthur pushed at her with both hands and she fell against the guard rail as he moved on. “Run!” she screamed again.

  And Penny did—away from him, toward Billie who watched in confusion from the end of the dock, a dead end. “Wrong way! Turn around—the other way—run!” she shouted, the bystander suddenly part of the action, encouraging what she’d been hired to prevent.

  Sophia lumbered to her feet, heading after her daughter.

  Lemmings. There might as well have been a gigantic No Exi
t/Final Exit sign at this end. Her peripheral vision caught something else happening at the house and she glanced its way to see three people leaving—two men, one in jeans, carrying a large videocam, one wearing a suit and holding the hand of a young girl in a school uniform. They made their way briskly off the dock, toward the parking lot, and despite the screams and scrabbling of the people with whom they’d just been, they never looked back.

  Penny shouted, “Stop those people!” Sophia glanced their way without interest and turned again toward her daughter. “I can explain!” she shouted, but Penny waved her mother off as if she were foul matter.

  And Arthur exploded into words and motion. “Goddamn it!” he shouted at no one in particular. “You…” It was impossible to tell who he meant, and it was irrelevant because much more to the moment, in a blur of motion, he pulled something from his pocket.

  It couldn’t be, Billie thought. It would be insane—way, way over the edge, but it was, and as clichéd, as stupid as the action appeared, he raised the gun and aimed at his daughter.

  Sophia, screaming and puffing, ran, zigzagging in her own clumsy fashion from one edge of the walkway to the other, like a football player on a tricky play.

  “Get out of there!” Arthur shouted, leaning left, then right.

  Sophia’s bulky body blocked her husband’s clear view until she stood between him and her daughter.

  Billie looked at Penny. “Jump!” she said. “Jump now!”

  “I’m afraid,” Penny said.

  “You have to!” Billie was going to have to as well. In a second. If he was crazy enough to shoot that thing.

  “Get out of my way!” Arthur shouted at his wife. “You were in this together!”

  Billie screamed. “Call the police! Call the police! Nine-one-one! Anybody—everybody! Somebody!” Her phone was in her glove compartment, but there were at least six houses that could hear her—surely somebody was at home in one of them. This wasn’t a damned bedroom suburb, this was Sausalito’s houseboat colony—there had to be an artist, a computer genius, a trust baby, a cantankerous retiree…somebody had to be home. Somebody had to hear her.

  “You!” Arthur bellowed. “The goddamned girl snoop—what the hell are you…? We hired you—you were supposed to…” He grew silent, then his skin darkened. “You found her, then, didn’t you? And switched sides.” He waved the gun in the direction of his cowering stepdaughter, who looked at Billie in confusion. “You brought her here, you bitch.” he shouted at his daughter. “A detective! Goddamned detective to spy on your own family—to ruin me!”

  “Jump!” Billie shouted, although the girl was within a hand’s reach.

  “Sharks,” Penny whimpered. “Or I’ll drown.”

  “It’s shallow here. No sharks. Jump!”

  “I’m afr—”

  “Jump! Get behind a boat and hide!”

  The girl looked at her with wide, crazed eyes, looked at her stepfather and mother, and climbed the wooden railing.

  Arthur bellowed and raised the gun just as Penny was on the top rail, her head and shoulders vulnerable above her mother’s silhouette.

  Sophia screamed, “Don’t shoot her!”

  Penny jumped and screamed.

  Arthur pulled the trigger.

  Sophia gasped and crumpled onto the planks.

  Arthur looked down at her, then back at the end rail. His stepdaughter was no longer visible.

  Billie was. Very. Her outlines ached, she felt them so acutely. An accidental visitor, she wanted to say. Not part of whatever this is. But Arthur, looking again at his wife, who lay motionless, a dark stain edging her midriff, seemed no longer to notice Billie.

  Billie’s mind turned over the controls to her muscles. Her legs and arms reached out, forward, and she sprinted, top speed—before he snapped back, before he synthesized what he’d already done—forward into Arthur. And then used the only self-defense technique she really knew—the knee. Up, hard. Arthur’s grunt sounded as if it emptied out all the air in his lungs. He doubled over. She grabbed at his hand, dug nails into his palm, felt the split second his hold loosened, and yanked away the gun.

  And then she backed off, stunned, looking at her hand, as if someone else had forced the gun into her grip then forgotten to say what to do next.

  But she had seen movies. You pointed it. You cocked the thing on top and pulled the trigger. Or you didn’t have to cock it, you simply pulled. If thugs could figure it out, so, surely, could she. The thing was to look as if she knew, look as if she’d won marksmanship medals. The thing of everything seemed to be to pretend competence. She held up the pistol and pointed it at him. “Don’t think about moving except where I tell you to,” she said. “I have a phone in the parking lot. I’m going to use it. Walk in front of me and do not try anything stupid.” That sounded right. As long as he hadn’t left home with only one bullet in his gun this morning. Even if he had—as long as he didn’t remember.

  Apparently, he either hadn’t or didn’t. He seemed cowed, stuck in a mix of furious disbelief and shock.

  And with each duo of boats they passed, she shouted again. “Call nine-one-one—somebody’s shot!” She shouted it twice each time, herding Arthur.

  “What did you think you were doing?” Billie asked between shouts. “Shooting your wife? Maybe your daughter? With an eyewitness here? Were you going to kill all of us—me, too? Did you think nobody would figure that out? How stupid can you be, Arthur, and for what? What is wrong with you?”

  She enjoyed venting spleen. Easy, too, when pointing a gun. Easy to be the tormenter. The bully. Everything she hated. Horribly, guiltily, pleasurable, too. Burns the adrenaline, perhaps, blocks the physical memory of the fear.

  They didn’t need to go the distance. She heard sirens. Thank you, whoever had called. A sense of community—or fear—lived on. Then there they were, two men in blue, guns in their hands, followed by paramedics, running.

  “Drop it!” the police shouted at Billie. “Drop it right now!”

  “Okay, sure, but I’m not the—”

  “Drop it, lady!”

  “She killed my wife!” Arthur shouted. “About to kill me, too! Thank God you’re here!”

  “His wife’s hurt—shot—bleeding—out there,” Billie said to the paramedics, who set off, top speed, around her. She put the gun down on the boardwalk, afraid to literally “drop it” the way they said because guns went off accidentally all the time in movies, her only firearms text.

  She tried for a beguiling, ingenue smile. “That’s his gun,” she said. With her prints all over it. “Officers, you surely don’t believe I was the one who—”

  They looked as if they surely did, until one of them, having taken his good time about it, spoke. “We’ll decide that, but the first caller said it was a man waving the gun. Big ruckus, the caller said. Another caller said a man shot somebody. You want to explain that?” he asked Arthur.

  “There’s a girl in the water,” Billie said. “Hiding. Maybe hurt. She’s behind a houseboat. Can I— Can somebody get her back up here? She’d explain everything.” She sincerely hoped there was some truth in that.

  Arthur’s mouth curled downward sourly.

  “Freeze her toes off,” the blond policeman muttered. He glanced at his partner, who nodded, and he moved past Billie.

  “Her name is Penny!” Billie called after him. “I don’t know if she’ll trust you. Even in uniform.” Billie turned to the remaining cop. “She’s pretty freaked-out. Could I— Could we all get back there?”

  The paramedics looked up from Sophia as Billie, the second policeman, and Arthur approached. “She’s alive,” they said. “Bleeding pretty bad, but alive.” They stood and lifted the gurney.

  “Want to leave a blanket?” the dark cop said. “A girl’s coming out of the water.”

  The medics left a packet, a silvery thermal blanket folded inside, the sort that earthquake kits supplied, and then they were off with the pallet between them. Billie heard a reassuring m
oan from Sophia, her eyes still closed, as they moved out of sight.

  “Penny!” Billie called out. “It’s okay—it’s over—the police are here. Come out. Come back up.”

  By the time they were at the end of the walkway, Penny was being helped back up over the wooden railings by the blond policeman. She winced as she touched her foot to the ground. “I hurt it,” she said. “When I jumped.”

  “I said it was shallow,” Billie said.

  “You didn’t say that shallow.”

  “Low tide,” one of the cops said.

  “I could probably have gotten off the houseboat that way. Instead of coming back to the dock,” Penny said. “Could I have walked across to Tiburon?”

  Both cops shrugged. “Varies with the tide. Be chilly.”

  “Your mother’s alive,” Billie said, although Penny hadn’t asked.

  “I guess I’m glad.” The girl was wet only to her waist, which was still enough to leave her shivering. She looked at Billie. “She knew. My mother knew about this.”

  The silvery blanket was wrapped around her. Billie stood, unsure what the girl had meant or of what to do now. It seemed less than necessary to pass on her mother’s message not to return home. This job was over.

  “You keep your mouth shut,” Arthur Redmond told his stepdaughter. “You just shut up with your lies that nobody would believe anyway. You just keep your lying mouth—”

  “That’s enough,” the blond cop said. He looked at Billie. “This more than a domestic call?”

  Penny stared at her stepfather and spoke as if half-asleep. “He wanted to kill me,” she said, “not my mother. But she”—she gestured toward Billie—“told me to jump. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have, and he’d have killed me.”

  Arthur glared at his stepdaughter. “Everybody knows you lie—”

  “I said enough!” The sound and its intimations were powerful. It comforted Billie to see the dark side of the police force of postcard-pretty Sausalito, to know it existed. Once you knew Arthurs existed, you needed to know the other, too. The cop handcuffed the mustachioed man and read him his rights.