Sealed Off

by Barbara Ross

  Tallulah poured a cup of coffee and joined them at the table. “I was so hoping we’d get answers.”

  While I took my turn at the sink, my phone rang. I stepped into the hall to answer it. It was Floradale Thayer with Bill Beal’s contact information as promised. I returned to the kitchen and told the others about it.

  “Bill Beal from the East Busman’s General Store?” Mom asked.

  “Yes. Mrs. Thayer said the phone number at the store was the best way to reach him,” I answered.

  “Marvelous. We should all visit him there,” Mom said.

  East Busman’s was a charming village a few miles out of town. At its center, homes and shops faced a lovely green with a large millpond. There were two antiques shops, a small gallery, and a fancy restaurant.

  The general store was the heart of the village. It was the best parts of a supermarket, convenience store, hardware store, and boat shop, with a post office window that would sell you stamps or mail your packages. It was the place to go if you lived on the east side of our peninsula and didn’t want the bother of going into town to get your errands done, especially during the summer when parking was at a premium. It was also rightfully renowned for its pizza, which was the best in the area, and its ice cream, which came from a dairy on the next peninsula.

  “We’ll have lunch there,” Mom said. “And if he’s in, we’ll pick Bill Beal’s brain for any family stories. We’ll bring the journal. Julia, do you want to come?”

  I was about to say yes when Marguerite spoke. “There is writing in the back of this notebook, but it’s not Lilly Smythe’s.”

  That stopped us all.

  “Look.” Marguerite held a page out for us to inspect.

  “Is that some kind of code?” Tallulah asked.

  Marguerite shook her head. “No. It’s Cyrillic, the alphabet used in Russian and related languages.”

  “Do you read Russian?” I asked. Was there no end to how amazing this woman was?

  Marguerite laughed. “No. I recognize the script is all. And it’s modern. These passages were written with a ballpoint pen.”

  “Can I see it?”

  Marguerite handed me the notebook. There were five pages of writing in blue ballpoint pen. Toward the end of the text, the letters lightened and then petered out, like the pen had run out of ink. Whoever had written it had pressed down hard, leaving impressions of the letters on the blank pages all the way to the back of the notebook. Because the letters were from an alphabet different from my own, I couldn’t tell whether the handwriting was masculine or feminine.

  My heart began to beat wildly. The notebook had been left in the sealed-off room. It was modern, written with a ballpoint pen, so that meant it had been left there sometime after the demo crew had opened the wall. Dmitri had been in that room. Perhaps he had left the note to indicate where he had gone or what had happened.

  Fortunately, I knew someone who could translate it for me.

  “I’m going to take this,” I told them. “The three of you work on the Beal angle.” I put the notebook into my tote bag.

  “Suit yourself,” Mom said. “Wherever you’re headed, our assignment is going to be more fun.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I didn’t wait for the others to organize themselves to leave. I headed straight down to the town pier and got in our Boston Whaler. The demo crew was back on Morrow Island and Alex would be with them. He would tell me what the pages in the Cyrillic script said.

  As I approached the island, I was both sorry and relieved to see the solitary seal still hauled out on his rocky perch at the end of the island. “Hey, boy,” I called as I went past. “It’s time to leave here, just like the humans.”

  The police tape still fluttered around the woodpile. Since the island had been cleared for use, I took it down, wrapping the yellow plastic around my left hand. It wouldn’t do to have the tourists see it on Saturday. I threw it in a covered trash can on my way past the dining pavilion.

  At Windsholme, the whump of the sledgehammers, the whine of electric saws, and the crash of debris thrown into the dumpster signaled the demo crew was hard at work. I walked through the slowly disappearing rooms and found Joe, the crew boss, and two others in the nursery. Alex wasn’t with them and I assumed he was in another part of the house working with the other guy. When I looked in Lilly’s room, sure enough, there was a second doorway in the framing leading to Frederick Morrow’s bedroom, visible now that the plaster was gone.

  “You want something, missus?” Joe asked.

  “No. Just looking.” I smiled politely at the crew like an owner who’d come to check on progress, then I headed back down the hall to the back stairs, looking in each room for Alex. I didn’t find him.

  I sat on the steps to the front porch to wait. While the men could send the debris down a chute they’d attached to a window on the second floor, they would have to use the stairs and come across the porch to use the restroom. The public bathrooms at the Snowden Family Clambake were down on the great lawn behind the dining pavilion. Sooner or later, each member of the crew would have to walk by me. Meanwhile, the porch roof would shelter me from prying eyes on the second and third floors.

  It wasn’t a flawless plan. Three men came in and out while I waited, each one eyeing me as he passed. Soon Joe arrived, alerted no doubt by one of the others. “Do you need something, missus?” he asked.

  “No. I’m enjoying the day,” I answered, which was lame, but appeared to work. He shrugged and moved on.

  Finally, Alex came out the front door, and thank goodness he was alone.

  “I need to speak to you.” I kept my voice low. “I’ll meet you in the dining pavilion in ten minutes.”

  He walked across the lawn toward the bathrooms. I waited a good five minutes and then went to the pavilion, settling at a picnic table in the October sunshine.

  Alex entered the dining room, looking for me. “Over here!” I called. He glanced both ways over his shoulder as if he might have been followed.

  “What are you doing here?” He was clearly upset.

  “I need to talk to you. I didn’t know how to reach you.”

  “Have the police found Dmitri?” He sounded so hopeful, I hated to tell him no.

  “Nothing like that. You haven’t heard anything?”

  “No one says a word. It is like he was never here.”

  “Sit down. Just for a few minutes. I have something I want you to look at.” He sat across from me and I pulled the second notebook out of my tote bag and opened it to the first page of the Cyrillic script. “I need you to translate this.”

  He frowned. “Where did you get this?”

  “From here, in the house. It was hidden among the clothes in the bureau in the sealed-off room. What does it say?”

  He studied the page. As he did, the color drained from his face and his Adam’s apple quivered. “This isn’t Russian.”

  “Oh.” I was deeply disappointed. I’d been sure Dmitri was going to tell us where he was.

  “It’s Ukrainian. But I can read it. The two languages are very similar.” He was silent as he turned the pages, moving his lips occasionally as he read. At last, he closed the volume.

  “What does it say?” I asked.

  “I will not tell you.”

  “What? Are you kidding?” My voice was louder than I intended.

  Alex looked over his shoulder. “Shush!”

  “You need to tell me what this says.”

  “No. It is too dangerous for you to know. It is too dangerous for me to know. You must burn this.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not going to burn it.”

  “Get rid of it when you get to the mainland. Forget you ever had it. It is dangerous to you, and since I have read it, it is dangerous to me. I will tell no one. You mustn’t either.” Alex was plainly terrified.

  “Alex.” I spoke with the voice I used when I caught our young employees doing something stupid or dangerous. “Tell me what it says
.”

  His shoulders slumped. “Okay. But then you must get rid of it.” He swallowed and began. “This was written by a young woman, a Ukrainian. She does not say her name.” He paused, swallowing hard again.

  I got up from the picnic table and retrieved some water from the cooler on the other side of the room. When I gave it to him, he downed it in one gulp.

  “What was this woman’s notebook doing inside Windsholme?” I asked him.

  Alex closed the notebook. “You know there are people who bring others across the border internationally, right? People without proper papers?”

  I sat back down across from him. “Yes.”

  “This young woman was brought into the United States from Canada. She was left on your island during the storm last week. She was scared and hungry. She found the little room. She stayed there very afraid.”

  “But why was she on the island?”

  Finally, he spoke. “This is what I have suspected. What I have feared. They think they don’t talk about it in front of me because I am young, but we are always together. I have heard many things.” He let out a long breath before he continued the story of what he had read. “The woman was supposed to be dropped at a harbor farther south, where she could easily get on a bus or train. Because of the storm, she was left here.”

  “Was it Dmitri who left her here?” I still wanted to make the Dmitri connection.

  He shook his head slowly. “No. She was left here by your friend Jason, the one who was killed.”

  Jason. Of course it was Jason. Jason who disappeared for days at a time. Jason with all the unexplained money. Jason with the big, fancy boat. The boat Mark Cochran had found for the demo crew wouldn’t have made it to the next peninsula.

  “Did she kill Jason?”

  “I don’t think so,” Alex answered. “It is not in the book, but I think she was gone off the island before he died.”

  Now I was as frightened as he was. I thought my heart would hammer itself out of my chest. “Did Joe kill Jason because of this human smuggling? Or did Dmitri kill Jason? Is that why he left?”

  “I don’t know,” Alex said. “Whatever happened, I was not here. The day you found your friend’s body the rest of them, including Dmitri, came over to the island very early in the morning without me. Oleg and Yuri returned around seven-thirty to pick me up. That is all I know.”

  “You told me Dmitri had cleared out by the time you got up that morning.”

  “That is what Joe told me to say.”

  “You can’t go back to work.” I had a terrible feeling something would happen to him. “You and I have to leave right now. We’ll take the notebook to the police. You have to tell them everything you’ve told me.”

  “No.”

  “If you don’t, you’ll get arrested and probably deported.”

  “If I do, Joe will have me killed.”

  “Alex!” Joe’s voice boomed across the open dining room. He spoke rapidly in Russian, judging by the inflection, an alternating stream of rebukes and demands. Alex, whose back was to Joe, leaned across the notebook on the picnic table and then slipped it down into his lap.

  “I was just giving him a glass of water.” I tried to keep my voice even. Alex still faced me, which was good because if he’d turned around, Joe would have seen the terror in his eyes.

  “Water is at the work site.” Joe dismissed me, curtly. Then he said, still in English, “Alex, your partner waits for you to do that big part of the job. You slow up everything. Apologize to Mrs. Snowden and get back to work.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Snowden,” Alex said. He handed me his empty cup with his right hand. Under the table he slipped the notebook onto my lap with his left. He didn’t want me to have it, but he couldn’t be caught with it. Giving it to me was his least bad option. The handoff completed, he got up from the bench, turned around slowly and, head down, shoulders dropping, followed Joe out of the pavilion.

  * * *

  I had to get out of there, off the island and to the police. I put the journal back in my tote bag and walked to the edge of the pavilion.

  Two members of the demo crew were down on the dock. They pretended to do something with their boat, but I wasn’t convinced. Joe had sent them to do what? Make sure I left, or prevent me from leaving? I couldn’t take the chance. When they were both examining the outboard motor, playing their parts, I took off across the great lawn and into the woods.

  I knew the woods better than they did. Enough leaves were off the birches and maples that grew among the evergreens that I could see where I was going. I stopped every ten yards or so to listen for footsteps behind me. The woods were silent. There was only a distant clatter caused by the remaining members of the demo crew inside Windsholme.

  I kept moving over the backside of the island toward the little beach. At the point where I rejoined the path, it split, leading down to the cove or up to the boulder that hung over it. I rested. My breathing quieted and I listened. Nothing. I needed to get centered. Panic would get me killed, I was convinced.

  The channel between Morrow Island and the mainland was narrow, only about three hundred yards. Lobster buoys painted in bright primary stripes bobbed in the water. Straight across the channel, Quentin Tupper’s sleek marble and glass tower stood, rising out of the rocks. Wyatt was probably working there. Pity I had no way to reach her.

  I walked to the edge of the boulder, something we’d dared each other to do when we were kids. The end was about thirty feet up and hung over the water, but barely. Because the little beach was in a protected cove, the shore fell off gradually, giving way to a mucky, rocky bottom. My parents worried about clambake visitors misjudging the depth of the water below and jumping off the boulder, particularly at high tide because it was hard to judge. There was a wooden sign at the end of the path from the woods that warned: DANGER. NO DIVING OR JUMPING. SHALLOW WATER.

  If Lilly Smythe had jumped from here and succeeded in her suicide attempt, she had most likely died from a broken neck or back. She wouldn’t have drowned. Perhaps a slip from a high place would be easier for her family to accept. I was overwhelmed by the thought of Lilly Smythe plunging to her death. And now this new young woman, the Ukrainian. Had Jason moved her off the island before he was killed? Had the Russians? Where was she?

  I considered whether I could swim for it. The air was still, the channel calm and clear, not a ripple on the surface. It wasn’t impossible. People did it. But not in October. The water was cooling rapidly. I’d risk hypothermia in addition to the current. No one knew I was attempting it. No one would know where to look for me. It was too risky.

  I had two choices. I could go to the little house, get on the radio, and beg someone to call the authorities. Then I would have to wait at least twenty-five minutes, possibly cornered in the house, until they arrived. Or, I could get to the Whaler, go to the mainland and find Binder and Flynn, give them the journal, and tell them what I knew.

  I stared into the water, working up my courage. The rocks and branches that had fallen into the water long ago created sepia designs on the mucky bottom. I often studied them, the way people look for patterns or pictures in clouds. But the boulder wasn’t working its magic. My fear for Alex’s safety and my own kept pushing its way in.

  I was about to turn away when I spotted it. At first I thought it was a couple of large rocks forming the head and torso of a man with branches and old marine rope forming the hips and legs. But the more I looked at it, the more I was certain it was a man.

  I couldn’t be absolutely sure, but there was a man missing from this island and the image of a man was on the bottom, tied up in ropes, perhaps weighted down. My heart raced and I felt bile rise to my throat.

  I didn’t take the time to be certain. Instead I headed for the dock, moving not over the top of the island past Windsholme and the open lawn, but around through the woods. At times I was able to run, but at others the terrain was too difficult and I had to take my time, thrashing through the underbr
ush.

  I emerged near the woodpile. The dock was deserted. The two Russians must have given up or gone to report to Joe.

  I sprinted onto the dock as quickly as I could. There was a shout from up at Windsholme. I looked in time to see the two Russians who’d been on the dock take off running toward me.

  Focus, focus, focus. My hands shook as I untied the Whaler and started her up. She was by far the faster boat. If I could get away from the dock they wouldn’t be able to catch me. I heard their heavy boots pelting down the wooden planks as the Whaler moved away from the dock. I put the throttle down and sped away as fast as I dared.

  When I looked back, the two Russians were on the dock, joined by Joe. They knew they couldn’t catch me, but I doubted they would stay there long.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The door to the multipurpose room was closed when I got to the police station.

  “I need to see Lieutenant Binder immediately,” I told Marge.

  “He’s in a meeting. I’ll let him know you’re here when he’s done.” She stared at me and I realized how I must look—scratched, leaves caught in my clothes, my hair windblown and crazy.

  I couldn’t wait. I turned the knob and burst through the door.

  “You can’t go in there!” Marge’s voice echoed after me.

  Inside, at least two dozen law enforcement personnel stood listening to a man who was at the whiteboard. There were men and women in uniforms, in suits, in shirtsleeves, and in windbreakers, the alphabet soup Jamie had described.

  I searched the crowd and found Lieutenant Binder, staring at me like the others. The man at the whiteboard stopped talking.

  “I found another body on Morrow Island,” I shouted. “Not on the island. In the channel. And I believe there’s a man in danger out there.”

  Binder stepped forward, put a hand on my shoulder, and looked directly at me. “One thing at a time. Tell us about the body.”

  As I told them about the body in the water, I blushed furiously. What if I was mistaken and it really was a pile of branches and debris? “I can go with you and show you,” I said.