Buoy

by Maggie Seacroft

  “If you tell me why you’re so worked up about Devon’s.”

  Hagen let out a deep breath. “I can’t.”

  “Devon’s, huh? Devon’s, Devon’s, Devon’s.” I repeated the word as though it were a mantra and as if the answer would magically come to me and, when I looked at Hagen, he was beginning to look worried that I’d guess what it was he couldn’t tell me.

  “Devon’s. Hmmm.” I thought about the demeanor of the sales clerk the day I’d popped in to ask about the pendant, about the security guard I’d never noticed before. “Devon’s was robbed, wasn’t it?” I asked and watched as Hagen’s eyes darted away from the hold they had on mine. “I’m right! I know I’m right!” I said, jubilant as a kid on the last day of school. “Tell me I’m right, just—“

  Hagen pounded both fists on the steering wheel. “Dammit,” he scoffed. “Alex, I swear if you tell anyone…”

  “What?”

  “I’ll be blamed and I won’t get that transfer to the marine unit.”

  I weighed my options—either I spilled the beans and Hagen would never speak to me again or I didn’t and he’d get assigned to the marine unit and be eaten by a sea monster. Each one had its drawbacks, that’s for sure. “So, why wasn’t this on the news?”

  “Keeping it hush hush. The chief has a strategy. Alex—“ He turned to face me, and his green eyes were soft this time.

  “I won’t tell anyone. I promise.” I smiled at him and, when he reached across me to get my seat belt fastened, I picked up the scent of the soap he’d used that day.

  ”I still have to take you in. Don’t mention the watch while you’re there.”

  ✽✽✽

  Aggie picked me up at the jail. I’m sure in my lifetime this is not the last time I’ll say those words. I was charged with trespassing. Again, I’m sure in my lifetime I’ll have to repeat that sentence at some point. On the ride back to the marina, I explained to her what I’d found in room 214 of the Vine, and we swore that until we had more information, we wouldn’t tell Jack or any of the gang unless we were confronted. I had to be one hundred percent sure before I became the reason Jack got his heart broken. And so, in an effort to dodge prying questions, we came up with a cover story for my arrest. It had to do with failing to register the truck I’d been driving.

  I decided my best bet was to lay low and not answer too many questions regarding the ridiculous story. Ags was good enough to make me a sandwich before she went on her date, and I was perfectly ready to hibernate on my boat for the night. It was a pleasantly cool November night, the moon was almost full, the stars were plenty, and the bugs were few, and so with the stern door of my boat open, I sat on the grey tufted sofa in the salon, soaking in the night air and reading. That is to say, keeping out of trouble. At the end of the chapter, I folded back the top of the page and picked up the oversized cup of green tea I’d made ten pages earlier, hugging it with both hands. I looked down at my dog and my cat curled up together on a swath of faux sheepskin. With the exception of having been in jail that day, all things considered, it felt like I was having a bucolic little moment from a Hallmark movie. All was peaceful in the world. Until it wasn’t.

  A clang somewhere off in the near distance broke the calmness of the night and caught my attention. I pulled the binoculars from the top of my desk and proceeded to scan the marina for movement. I really ought to be head of the neighborhood watch, don’t you think? I tapped on the button to illuminate my view and strained my eyes—something darker than the night was moving around outside of Aggie’s place and I couldn’t tell if it was of the four or two-legged persuasion. But I knew two things for sure; she was out for the evening and the next day was garbage pickup day and it wouldn’t kill me to put her garbage cans in the shed at the back of her place. It’d save me helping her pick up gunky wrappers from expired food she’d thrown out if the critters got into it.

  “Be back in a sec,” I said in the direction of the comatose twosome on the floor, and I hopped out onto the deck to do my good deed for the night. Thing is, the closer I got to Ags’ place, the less I was convinced there was a trash panda messing with her garbage bin and more convinced I was that it was something of the human variety. The rash of burglaries was making us all a little paranoid, but when I heard someone stifle their cough, I knew for certain there was a person behind the store.

  I leaned against the siding on the front of the store. I could see the lights on in Bugsy’s cottage and, recalling Hagen’s chastising me for being impetuous, I texted Bugsy’s new number. “Are you there?”

  I waited for an interminable amount of time, which in truth, was probably no more than thirty seconds. No response. Dammit.

  Flashes of memories from Hagen’s self defence/wrestling class in the park flickered in my mind. What was it he said? If all else fails, go for the groin. What else did he say? What were my other options? Why the heck did I have to make contact with someone’s groin, anyway? My blood was pumping so hard I could feel my earlobes throbbing as I made my way around the side of the building and peeked at the back.

  There was someone. On a ladder. He went up the rungs in clangs until he was near the top of the ladder, just below Aggie’s bedroom window. Not on my watch, buddy! He took a rung down and then another, and I knew that If I was going to catch him off guard, I had to do it quickly, before he got to the bottom of the ladder and took off. In my head I counted down from three, took a deep breath, and rushed the side of the ladder. My feet dug into the gravel with every step. The ladder scraped along the siding of the building until it clanged down. I thudded down with it, landing on the hard aluminum rungs, hitting my chin on one rung with such force that I swear it rattled all the teeth in my head. The ladder wasn’t resting on the ground, though. Somehow, I’d managed to trap part of the prowler under the cold aluminum frame.

  “What the hell are you doing?” the agitated voice blustered nasally.

  “Listen, dirtbag, you’re busted,” I said in my most menacing voice, the one I use when I want to sound taller.

  Next there was a distinctly exasperated sigh. “Alex Marie Michaels. You drive me absolutely crazy,” came the pained words of Bugsy and, from the sounds of things, he was getting a cold.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked as I pushed myself up from the rungs I’d landed on. One of them had really smarted.

  “The question is, what are you doing here? Haven’t we talked about your little heroics before?”

  “I’m not the one skulking around Aggie’s place in the dark, am I?”

  “Sure you are,” he said and pushed the ladder off himself.

  “Well, so are you!”

  “I wasn’t skulking, I was replacing the light in the motion detector up there,” he carped.

  There was a long pause between us. “Oh,” I said, and looked up at the building.

  Bugsy put his hand on my leg to push himself up. “Here, help an old guy up. Are you ok?” he asked.

  “Me? Oh sure,” I said, lying. I knew I was in for a fresh bruise or two, but nothing I couldn’t handle, and I helped Bugsy to his feet. “Sorry, are you ok?”

  “Yeah,” he said and, against the dark of the night, I saw him arch his back. “What are you doing here anyway?” he asked, swiping the pea gravel from his jeans.

  “Well, I saw some movement. Why didn’t you answer your phone? I texted you.”

  “Probably because I was putting up this lad—“

  Bugsy’s words were cut like a knife with the sound of the shrill alarm that came from inside Aggie’s.

  “Don’t move!” he said and ran around to the front of the store. I watched as he flicked on the inside lights and I pulled out my phone from my back pocket and dialled 911.

  “911, what’s your emergency?” I could just barely make out the words of the operator over the shrill, incessant mechanical sound of the alarm.

  “Break in. We need the police,” I shouted.

  “There’s a break in where you are?”


  “Yes.”

  “Are you calling from within the structure?”

  “No, I’m outside. My, um, friend has gone in to catch the guy,” I said and stood on my tiptoes to try to see into the glass of the back door. “You better hurry. Is Hagen on duty?”

  “What’s the address?”

  “Aggie’s place at the Marysville Marina. Please hurry.”

  “We have a unit nearby.”

  “Thanks.” I disconnected and shifted nervously from one foot to the other and wondered what to do with myself when, out of the back door, a figure crashed and knocked me ass over teakettle into the steel garbage bins. It just wasn’t my night. Hadn’t been my day either, come to think of it. I looked up to see Bugsy run out the back door, the glow from the inside of the store backlighting his figure. “That way.” I pointed toward the pavilion behind the store and Bugsy gave chase.

  ✽✽✽

  Ten minutes later, red and blue lights were strobing in Aggie’s parking lot and a pack of curious onlookers had assembled. Among them, the couple that bickered the whole of the previous weekend, Sefton, Peter Muncie, Stephen Richards, Seacroft, Jack Junior, and Cary Tranmer. Apparently, they keep the police scanner on at the VFW hall and the gang wasted little time in getting back to the marina.

  Lights from one of the cruisers were angled toward the back of the store and shone on the ladder on the ground. I had considered hiding from the police so I wouldn’t have to explain my second run-in with them in the same day, but Bugsy talked me out of it.

  After a few preliminary questions from everyone’s favorite officer, Ben Hagen, he got to the nitty gritty. “So, what’s with the ladder?”

  “That ladder?” I asked.

  Hagen looked from me to Bugsy and back to me. “Yes, that ladder,” he said, and he was ornery already.

  “Oh, well that has nothing to do with the break in,” I said.

  “Humor me,” he said with no humor whatsoever.

  I looked at Bugsy and sighed. “Well, if you must know–“

  “That’s why I’m asking,” Ben cut in.

  I smirked, surprised at his impatience. “I was just about to tell you, but if you’re going to be like that about it…” I shook my head and pulled my hoodie closer, wincing at the tenderness on my side.

  “I was on the ladder,” Bugsy spoke up.

  “You?” Hagen asked, his voice up in tone and volume.

  “Yes, the light in the motion detector wasn’t working and I was replacing it.”

  “So, when the guy came out the back door, he knocked down the ladder?” Hagen asked.

  “Yes,” I said. Lying. It’s so much easier in the dark.

  “No,” Bugsy sighed. “Nancy Drew here came and knocked me off the ladder.”

  “Is that true?” Hagen turned and asked me, shining his flashlight in my face.

  I put up my hand to block it. “Maybe. Yes. Now that I think about it, that’s the way it happened.” I nodded and looked agitated as if to add credibility—like that ship hadn’t already sailed.

  “And why would you have done that?”

  “Well, I... I didn’t know it was Bugsy.”

  “Mr. Beedle,” Bugsy corrected me.

  I chuckled. “Yeah, right. You see, it’s simple. I saw some action over this way and thought it might be an animal in Aggie’s garbage, but then I saw someone on a ladder and–“

  “And you took it upon yourself to try to catch him? How’d that work out for you? Didn’t we just have a conversation about jumping head first into situations?” Hagen looked at his watch. “Wasn’t that, oh, less than six hours ago?”

  I was pretty sure that was a rhetorical question, though he looked at me with expectation in his eyes.

  Hagen was still humorless. “Then what happened?”

  “Then? Well—“

  “You mean after she pinned me with the ladder and called me a dirtbag, or before?” Bugsy interjected.

  Hagen sighed and tapped his pencil on his notepad.

  “Why aren’t you looking for the guy in the field?” I asked, trying to change the direction of the inquisition.

  “That guy’s gotta be ten miles away by now.” Hagen sighed. “You have a description of him?”

  “Well, one thing’s for sure, he’s a fast runner,” Bugsy grumbled.

  “Said the slow runner,” I muttered.

  “Look, I’ll have you know I was on the track and field team in my day.”

  “For the one-room schoolhouse?” I asked, smiling.

  Hagen unhitched his handcuffs from his belt and, having had a brief encounter with them already that day, I wasn’t looking forward to wearing them again.

  “What, uh, what are you doing?” My smile dissolved as I looked from the glint of the cuffs to Hagen’s humorless expression.

  “You two are about an inch away from obstructing justice,” he said. “And furthermore–“

  “The lady who owns the store just got here,” another officer approached Hagen to say.

  “Tabarnac.” Ags sighed when she got closer to Bugsy and I. “What happened?” She searched my eyes.

  “Sorry, Ags, we couldn’t catch him,” I said.

  She looked at Hagen. “Can I go in?”

  “Sure.”

  “Can I go with her, you know, moral support and all?” I smiled at him.

  “Alright, but I’ll have to talk to you later,” Hagen said and turned to Bugsy. “Ok, so give me details. Straight this time, Beedle.”

  As I turned to walk with Ags, the pain in my side sharpened, I winced, and my hand shot to hold my side.

  “You ok?” she asked, looking over at me.

  “Yeah, I’ll tell you all the gory details inside,” I said a little breathlessly.

  “Ma’am, do you need an ambulance?” a young officer approached me on the steps into Aggie’s place.

  I sucked in through clenched teeth—he was about to find out that today was not his day. “First of all, I’m not a ma’am, I’m a miss, and I do not need nor do I want an ambulance. Thank you for asking, though!” The young officer looked petrified and backed away.

  I strained up the steps into Aggie’s store. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, maybe for it to be ransacked, but it didn’t look much different than usual. Ags ran to the back part of the building toward the little office she hated spending time in, and I slowly made my way to one of the red and chrome seats at the counter.

  Russ Shears bounded up the stairs and into the store. “What happened?” His eyes were big. Angry mixed with concerned.

  I couldn’t help but look at him critically. He was wearing the hoodie from Pike’s machine shop and, I swear, so was the guy who knocked me over. I didn’t like where my mind was headed. “There was a break in.”

  “Your leg’s bleeding,” he said, and when I looked at my jeans there it was—an expanding blood stain on my best pair of ripped jeans. I looked away. I’m not so good with blood.

  Ags emerged from the back office, her hands lifted out at her sides, an exasperated look on her face. “Took the safe,” she grumbled and shook her head. She perked up a bit when she saw Russ.

  “How ‘bout I make some coffee, babe,” he said, already poised at the machine. “And you should probably see a doctor about that.” He nodded in my direction.

  Copy that, Sherlock.

  The young officer from earlier poked his head into the door. “Ma’am, I mean Miss… I know you didn’t want an ambulance, but this man says he’s—“

  I rolled my eyes and thought about changing my name from Alex to Ma’am, but all I could envision was the mountain of paperwork that’d require. “I told you—“

  “Hi.” Doctor Richards took the door handle from the officer and entered the store. He looked casual in a heathered grey shawl collared sweater, faded jeans, and short brown suede boots. I looked at him wondering why I never managed to look as good as he does for such impromptu get-togethers.

  I waved off the young officer. “I
t’s ok.”

  While Russ made sympathetic noises to Ags in the kitchenette, throwing in an embrace for good measure, Doctor Richards took a seat on the chrome stool beside me. “You’re hurt,” he said, looking down at the wound on my thigh.

  “It’s nothing. I’m fine,” I said and winced to let out a breath.

  “You don’t sound fine. Hop up here,” he said and patted the Formica countertop, now a makeshift exam table.

  “It’s just a scratch.” I moaned a little breathily and gingerly eased my butt onto the counter.

  “I’ll be the judge of that. What else is going on?”

  “Hmm?” I asked, wrapping my right arm around my middle and putting pressure on my left side.

  “There, what happened?”

  “Oh, I crashed into a ladder,” I said and took a sip of the coffee Russ Shears had placed beside me.

  “Thanks,” I said over my shoulder to him.

  “You what?” Ags squawked and put a first aid kit on the counter.

  “Thank you,” Richards said and opened the box, looking at the contents like a kid at Christmas. He selected from it the tiniest pair of scissors I’d ever seen. They looked ridiculous in his massive hand but some how he used them to enlarge the hole in the thigh of my jeans. He wet a cotton pad with something from a bottle that turned out to be liquid fire, at least that’s what it felt like when he dabbed it on my skin. I tried to pull my leg away, but Richards kept a firm grip on me; he must know the type. He pulled the backing off a few bandages and smoothed them on my leg while I recounted the play by play of the intruder to Ags and sipped on the not-half-bad coffee Russ had made.

  I tried to turn to make a point to Ags in the kitchen and couldn’t. I sucked in air through clenched teeth as my side smarted, worse than before. It felt like my ribs were going to poke through my vital organs at any moment. Doctor Richards looked up at me from the stool in front of me. His blue-grey eyes were intense, and I found myself suddenly unable to maintain eye contact.

  “Let me take a look.”

  “What?”

  “You may have cracked a rib. Just let me take a look.”