A Side of Murder

by Amy Pershing

  A Sunfish in a wind like this would actually be very fast. In it, I could probably be around Skaket Point and completely out of Trey’s sight in about ten minutes. If, in this wind, I didn’t capsize. I tried hard not to think how cold the water was, about how quickly a body can turn hypothermic. But I’d been sailing Sunfishes since I was ten. I wasn’t going to capsize.

  I cinched the hood of my sweatshirt over my head and dashed over to where the little sailboat had been pulled up above the tide line. I was relieved to see that both the rudder and the daggerboard were tidily stowed in the boat’s footwell. I couldn’t steer without a rudder, and I needed the daggerboard to keep us from simply sliding sideways instead of moving forward when the wind was coming across the side of the boat.

  I pinwheeled the boat around in the sand so that the bow was facing the water. Across the stern some proud owner, probably a kid, had stenciled the name Swallow. I couldn’t help smiling to myself. Then, grunting with the effort, I began to push the boat out to the water.

  The tide was getting low, and the minute or so it took me to push the boat fifteen feet down to where the water lapped the beach seemed like hours. I looked behind me quickly. No sign of Trey. God bless you, Mr. Logan.

  I pulled off my Vans, threw them into the footwell, and pulled my jeans up to my knees. I pushed the Swallow out until there was a good foot of water under it. The water was bitterly cold on my legs. No matter.

  Still standing behind the boat, I slid the rudder into the gudgeons on the boat’s stern and straightened out its attached tiller. Then I gave the Sunfish a push and hopped on board. As we slid out into the deeper water, I began to raise the triangular sail, pulling on its halyard hand over hand while simultaneously trying to avoid the wildly swinging metal boom on the bottom of the sail. This probably took less than a minute, but again it felt like an age. I cleated off the halyard and slid the daggerboard halfway down.

  I settled my butt awkwardly on the narrow strip of deck along the windward side of the boat. It was a challenge to accordion my long legs into the footwell. Somehow I hadn’t thought about the fact that a Sunfish, which had fit my skinny ten-year-old self just fine, would be ridiculously small for a six-foot-something woman who hadn’t been skinny since, let’s see, she was ten.

  I tugged the tiller toward me and pulled in the sail until it caught the wind. The Swallow jumped forward and we were off! For a moment I forgot that I was running away from a very bad man who might well want to hurt me. For a moment, I was just a girl on a boat, and I was happy.

  I steered the Swallow between the moored Chris-Craft and Darth Vader’s boat. While we were still close to shore, the wind was strong but nothing the Swallow couldn’t handle. The boat heeled a little, and the side of the boat I was sitting on lifted a few inches out of the water. The leeward side, the side the sail was on, tipped down a bit. None of this alarmed me. Boats sail best on a slight heel. You just hike out, which is using the counterweight of your body leaning out of the boat to adjust the angle at which the boat is heeling. I did it as easily and unconsciously as most people adapt their bodies to upward and downward slopes when they walk.

  I hiked out a bit, and the boat settled back a little. I was already at least thirty feet from shore and well into the channel that Jason and I had traveled only a few days earlier. To my left were the great boulders that ran along the Skaket shoreline on the Big Crystal side of the point. To my right, the big bay stretched as far as the eye could see. Ahead of me, across the bay, the view across to the long stretch of the Outer Beach was uninterrupted except for the bulk of Nickerson Island. I thought back to that day with Jason and our picnic in the marshes behind Nickerson. That had been a wonderful day, and now it was just a memory.

  The wind picked up considerably as I made my way farther out from shore. Now I was grateful for my long legs. I slipped my feet back into my Vans, levered my toes under the opposite lip of the footwell, and leaned back out even farther over the water. When I was a kid, hiking out was my idea of wicked fun. But this time I wasn’t hiking out for fun. This time, it was about sailing as fast and far as possible, which would mean getting as much wind into the sail as the Swallow could handle. Which would also mean that, as we got closer to the tip of Skaket Point and hit the worst of the wind, I would have to hike out even more to keep the boat upright.

  My plan was to take the channel along the Skaket waterfront, then tack around the point and into Little Crystal, where I’d beach on a stretch of bayfront that had at least a dozen houses, some of them year-round. I could pull up the Sunfish on shore and find shelter with whoever was home. And if someone wasn’t home, I knew where to find the spare key. This made me smile a little to myself. I’d probably been a little dramatic in my “escape” from Bits and Bites. And then I heard the motor. I turned to look behind me.

  Darth Vader’s boat was heading out from shore, coming straight for us.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  No, not Darth Vader’s boat. Worse. Trey Gorman’s boat.

  “That fancy boat out there” Mr. Logan had called it. The Mad Max. The tinted windows that wrapped around the enclosed wheelhouse safely hid whoever was inside. But I knew it was Trey Gorman, Trey Gorman coming after me in the Mad Max.

  Which was not actually my immediate concern.

  In the few seconds it had taken to glance behind me, the Swallow had found the stronger winds that I’d been anticipating. As a formidable gust hit the sail, the boat tipped dangerously. I forgot the speedboat behind me. I leaned farther back, hiking way out to level the boat while at the same time letting the sail out a bit to spill some wind. The maneuver worked. The boat righted itself, and though we’d shipped some water into the footwell, it wasn’t a lot. The boat’s self-bailer valve would drain it quickly.

  I pulled the sail back in, and glanced behind me again. The Mad Max was gaining on us. The fact that I couldn’t see the man at the wheel made it somehow more menacing, as if the boat itself was after me. I scanned the bay. No one else was on the water. It was a Saturday, so no lobstermen were out and pleasure boaters would be waiting until the cold, gray, windy weather turned. I was alone with the Mad Max.

  I told myself to breathe. What did I actually think was going to happen? Was Trey going to risk everything by running me down? Sure, we were alone out on the water. But he knew as well as I did that Mr. Logan was probably watching the course of true love from his vantage point on the shore. Nonetheless, I was scared, and I concentrated hard on getting as much speed out of the Swallow as I could.

  I heard the Mad Max roaring up behind me. It would be on me in only a few seconds. I was determined not to look back. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. He was just flexing his muscles, trying to put a scare into me.

  The relief when I heard and then saw the huge craft zooming by my little boat—very close to it, to be sure, but by it, not over it—was enormous.

  Probably Trey hadn’t even known it was me on the Sunfish. To him I was just some sailor in a red hoodie out for a joyride. He was probably checking something along the Skaket shore, maybe looking for some more baby birds to stomp on. Nonetheless, I kept my face down and firmly away from him.

  A heavy powerboat going at top speed creates a trail of wake behind it with waves that can reach two feet. That wake is no picnic if it hits a small sailboat broadside. And there’s pretty much no sailboat smaller than a Sunfish. That’s why powerboats are supposed to slow down when passing sailboats.

  Trey’s boat had not slowed down. I was so relieved that it hadn’t actually hit us that it wasn’t until the first enormous wave of its wake slapped the side of the Swallow that I woke up to what was going on.

  Trey was trying to capsize me.

  My fragile craft tipped violently to leeward and water began to pour into the footwell, much faster than the self-bailer could handle. In the space of a few seconds, we’d be over. Fortunately, my body and my instincts were worki
ng more quickly than my brain. I kept the sail tight to keep the wind and maintain our headway and threw myself back, hitching my butt right off the boat and hiking out until I was essentially straight, like some kind of human pontoon over the water. Three-quarters of my body—the heavy three quarters of my body—was outside the boat. I felt the Swallow begin to right itself.

  This was both good and bad news. We were no longer shipping water. On the other hand, in the second or two that it would take for the wave to slide under the boat, the Swallow would rock back to its other side, the side I was on. When that happened, unless I moved very, very quickly, first my head and then my shoulders would slip under the cold waves. In all likelihood, I would be pulled off the boat.

  I forced myself to keep leaning out to windward, waiting for my body to tell me the boat was righting itself. It was a risk, but I needed to be sure that, as I started moving my body weight back onto the boat, the water we’d shipped wouldn’t pull the opposite side back down again. But if I waited too long and the boat tipped too far toward me, I was going to be taking a swim.

  Finally, it came, the moment when the fulcrum had been reached, when my body knew we were safely upright. I jackknifed up. The Sunfish rocked dangerously, but stayed upright. Despite my best efforts, though, the sail lost its wind and flapped madly. We had no headway. We were literally dead in the water. But at least we weren’t dead.

  I knew I had almost no time before the second line of wake would hit the Swallow broadside and the whole nightmare began again. I needed to turn the little boat directly into the wave so its pointed prow could nose safely up and over the rough water. But to do that, I needed headway. I needed wind in my sail. I pulled the tiller toward me with one hand and yanked the sail in with the other.

  “Come on, fill,” I breathed (okay, I prayed). “Please fill.”

  The sail filled. If I’d had a hand free I would have done one of those fist pump things that athletes do.

  The little boat jumped forward, and I used our momentum to turn its bow directly into the oncoming wake, which the Swallow obligingly sliced through as smoothly as a comb finding a center part. I could see the water in the footwell receding as the bailer did its work. We were out of danger.

  The whole thing had taken no more than a few minutes, but Trey’s boat by this time was well away, almost to the channel markers at the end of Skaket Point. It had not slackened its speed, nor come back to see the results of its little game.

  So maybe I was wrong. Maybe Trey hadn’t known it was me in the Sunfish. Maybe in his monumental self-absorption he hadn’t even realized how close he’d come to capsizing it.

  I watched, hardly daring to hope, as the Mad Max began to make the turn away from us and around the point into Little Crystal. And then I stared in disbelief as, instead of going through the markers, the sleek gray-black monster made a complete circle until it was pointed back at the Swallow.

  This time there was no denying its intent. The Mad Max was coming back. At top speed.

  There was nowhere to safely beach along the rocky shoreline to my left. The rocks would have made mincemeat of me and my little boat. To my other side, there was only the empty expanse of Big Crystal. Nickerson Island and the Outer Beach lay ahead, but too far ahead. I was alone on the bay with a crazy man. And I had nowhere to hide.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Nowhere to hide. The words seemed to echo in my skull. Nowhere to hide.

  And then, in some kind of interior point/counterpoint, it came to me. Jason’s secret creek. I could hide in the secret creek in the marshes behind Nickerson Island. If I could get to the island before Trey. Which was a pretty big if.

  Both Trey and I were in the channel that circled the shallows created by the sandbars that stretched across to Nickerson. If I tacked around and stayed in the channel, following the route around the bars that Jason and I had taken the other day, there was no chance I’d get to the island before Trey got to me.

  But I didn’t have to stay in the channel. At this tide, the water over the bars would be about a foot deep. The Swallow drew only a couple of inches with the daggerboard out and the rudder tipped up. With the wind directly behind me, I wouldn’t need the daggerboard and I could skim right over the shallows, making a straight shot to the island and then the river behind it in about five minutes. I had no doubt that Trey would try to follow me. But to get to the island, the Mad Max would have to stay in the looping detour of the channel around the shallows. It had taken Jason at least ten minutes in the Zodiac. The much heavier Mad Max would take longer, maybe even fifteen minutes.

  I pulled the tiller toward me and let the sail out, turning the boat toward the bars and Nickerson Island. Looking over the side, I could see the deep darkness of the channel’s weedy bottom change almost instantaneously into sandy bar only a foot or two below me. I pulled up the daggerboard. I was on my way.

  Behind me, the Mad Max zoomed by harmlessly.

  * * *

  * * *

  The wind stayed with me all the way across the shallows, and soon I was dropping the daggerboard and tacking into the river behind Nickerson. I wasn’t home free, though. The tide was going out fast, but I knew there was still enough water over the sandy mouth of the river for Trey’s boat to get into the river. Before the island blocked my sight, I could see the Mad Max across the bay coming around the channel but still a good five minutes away.

  I was glad when the island blocked my view of the channel. If I couldn’t see Trey, he couldn’t see me. I needed to find the spot that led into the secret creek, and I needed to find it fast. “Please, please, please,” I prayed.

  For the life of me, I couldn’t see the entrance to the secret creek at all. There was a trick to finding it. What was it? I felt my brain fritzing as I moved into panic mode. What had Jason said?

  “The opening is directly across from that high sand dune on Nickerson Island—you know, the one everyone used to run down when we were kids.”

  This, I knew, was not my memory working overtime. This was Jason’s voice as clear as if he were right there with me in the boat. I didn’t doubt it for a minute.

  In about fifteen feet I would be exactly opposite the high dune to my left. To my right was, as far as I could tell, unbroken marsh. I knew that if I overshot the opening, I’d have to waste precious time pulling the Swallow off the solid peat of the marsh and trying to find the spot again.

  I steered the boat along the marsh side of the river, so close that the grass on my right brushed the Swallow like a whispered warning. I was now exactly opposite Nickerson’s high dune.

  I yanked the tiller to turn the boat directly into the marsh grass and then quickly hauled up the daggerboard. In seconds I would know if I’d calculated correctly. In seconds, the boat would either slide over the small shelf of water and grass into the hidden creek or, more likely, drive itself onto a mud flat.

  The Swallow glided over and through the grass and into the creek. Never had the words “safe harbor” been so real to me.

  No time for celebrating. Time now for step two. I steered the Swallow across the creek and gently into the cordgrass on the other side until the marshy bottom took hold of the bow and held us fast. As quickly as I could, I uncleated the sail’s halyard and let it down until it was just a heap of aluminum spars and nylon on the deck. I carefully crawled up to the bow, blessing the marsh grass for giving the very tippy boat some stability. Even more carefully, I stood and wrapped my hands around the light aluminum mast, then lifted it up and out of the shallow fiberglass cup in the deck that held it upright. I laid the mast down on top of the pile of sail and spars and heaved a huge sigh of relief. Now nothing of the boat could be seen from the river behind the island.

  Nothing except you, you big dope.

  I ducked down hastily and crawled back to the Swallow’s footwell, where I shoved aside enough of the sail that I could sit in it, knees up around my chi
n. To add insult to injury, a cold drizzle of rain, almost a mist, had begun, and I tried to wrap a bit of the sail around me to stay at least partially dry. I maneuvered my cell out of my jeans pocket, but still no bars. And I knew that even 911 wouldn’t work if there were no cell towers in range. I considered the acres of treacherous, boggy marsh sheltering me but also effectively holding me hostage in my hiding place. There was nothing to do but wait . . . for what? My deliverance? Or my doom?

  * * *

  * * *

  I had nothing to do but think. Why would Trey go after me in clear sight of Mr. Logan? But he had. There was no doubt now that the man at the helm of that boat was after me.

  The man at the helm of that boat . . .

  Was it possible that the man at the helm of that boat wasn’t Trey? What if Trey’s “fancy boat,” as Mr. Logan called it, was the other powerboat moored off Reedie’s landing, the Chris-Craft, not the Mad Max? In that case, the Mad Max belonged to someone else. Someone else like Krista’s friend Curtis Henson? Miles had said that Henson had an old family place on the hillside above Reedie’s landing. That he had a boat moored off Reedie’s where he and Krista met. Was the Mad Max Henson’s boat, not Trey’s? Was that Curtis Henson at the helm of that boat?

  But, no. But Krista had told me that Curtis had been with her the night that Estelle was killed. Had Krista lied to me? Something in me protested the thought. Not Krista. Krista never lied. Plus, she didn’t even like the guy. But still she’d given him an ironclad alibi. So, no, not Curtis Henson.

  So it had to be Trey in the Mad Max. Had Mr. Logan told him I had Estelle’s phone? I could just hear him, chatting away at Trey. “Do you know, I’m going to learn how to use one of those mobile cellular telephones. I have one that belonged to a friend of mine who passed away last week and Samantha Barnes is charging it up and she’s going to teach me how to use it.” And then, when Mr. Logan was sure I’d had time to make my escape, he probably took Trey into Bits and Bites to show him the phone. Which was gone. Because I’d taken it with me. And Trey knew it. Oh, Mr. Logan, what have you done?