Unbelievable

by Cindy Blackburn

  “To get dressed?” Hollis asked.

  Oh, yeah. Everyone got a real kick out of that. I myself wasn’t so amused. My outfit was from hell, which was about the temperature of things under that stupid, stupid, sweatshirt.

  I yanked at the collar and tried to ignore everything and everyone. Everyone except Charlie, that is. The dog sat quietly—Charlie is always quiet—and gazed off toward Mallard Cove.

  I patted his head. “Don’t worry,” I told him. “I’m sure the sheriff is on his way.”

  “Of course he is!” a familiar but unwelcome voice called out.

  I spun around, and Maxine Tibbitts snapped my picture. “Are those your pajamas?” she asked.

  ***

  Maxine Tibbitts. Where to begin?

  Maxine’s a reporter for the Hanahan Herald, Hanahan County’s weekly newspaper. Considering her “beat” is Lake Elizabeth, population about 600 on a good day, you’d think she wouldn’t find all that much to report. But you don’t know Maxine Tibbitts.

  She was probably enough of a menace back when she armed herself with only a yellow legal pad. But she got herself a photograph-capable i-Tablet about the same time I moved in next door to her. Oh yeah. Maxine’s my next door neighbor. Lucky me.

  “Don’t you have to go to work?” I asked while she snapped a few thousand more shots.

  “You look cute as a button!” she said. Snap, snap.

  I glanced at my father, and he reminded Maxine of her other job—she’s the librarian down in Hilleville. “Cassie’s right,” he said. “It must be getting close to opening time.”

  “Silly! It’s not even seven o’clock.” Snap, snap. “And it’s Tuesday. The library’s closed on Monday and Tuesday during the summer. Isn’t that lucky?”

  Oh yeah.

  Maxine stopped snapping to reach for my hand. “I just heard what happened,” she whispered. “Let’s have ourselves a nice little chat before Sheriff Gabe gets here. What do you say, Cassie?”

  I yanked my hand away. “I say, there’s a dead woman in Mallard Cove, and we’re standing here pussy-footing around while you take pictures!” I waved my arms, and she backed off.

  “My goodness,” she said. “You don’t need to get all testy about it.”

  Maybe not. Because about then, the sheriff finally, finally, made his entrance.

  My father reminded me patience is a virtue as everyone watched the Hanahan County sheriff park his car and strut over. Although I had never met him personally, Gabe Cleghorn’s reputation preceded him. Kind of like his beer belly. But let’s face it, my sweatshirt really was making me testy. By all accounts the guy was a terrific sheriff with an impressive record of putting the bad guys behind bars.

  “Sorry for the delay,” he said as he got closer. “Our youngest was up all night with that summertime bug that’s going around. Daddy’s moving kind of slow this morning.”

  No. Kidding.

  “Now then, what’s this about a body?” he asked, and the crowd parted to point at me.

  “Sheriff Gabe Cleghorn.” He held out his hand. “But everyone calls me Gabe.” His smile turned to a scowl. “Are those your pajamas?”

  Chapter 3

  “There’s a dead woman in Mallard Cove,” I said as calmly as humanly possible.

  “Okay, but why are you in your pajamas?” Sheriff Cleghorn asked.

  “Because that’s how I found her.”

  “In her pajamas?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Let me show you.” I gestured to Dustin and Philip, and they maneuvered their boat around the dock. But when Philip held out his hand to help me aboard, the sheriff pulled me back.

  “Better leave this to the experts,” he said.

  I started to argue, but my father stopped me. “Do you really want to see the dead woman again?” he whispered.

  Maybe not. I backed away, and the sheriff lowered himself into the boat. Dustin turned on the sirens and took off, and Gabe Cleghorn fell into his seat.

  The forest rangers invited the Hilleville cops to join them, and they took off, sirens blaring. Ginger Graham tossed her stretcher in the pontoon boat, and once she and the swarm of camp counselors had climbed aboard, that boat set out also.

  “Exactly how do those college kids qualify as experts?” I asked the crowd left behind with me.

  “They give swimming lessons at the beach,” Chester suggested.

  “That explains it,” I said. I’m guessing even Charlie caught the sarcasm.

  ***

  What a shocker, things actually went well for a few minutes. Dad convinced Maxine not to put any pictures of me in my pajamas in the newspaper, Hollis and Chester fetched some folding chairs from Town Hall and offered me a seat, and Oliver took a break from running the store to deliver more coffee.

  The mayhem resumed soon enough, however, as a new wave of people gathered around.

  “Round two,” I told my father, but I shouldn’t have been surprised. Virtually every Elizabethan visits the Lake Store virtually every morning. For coffee, for the newspaper, for lunch to go, for conversation, for whatever. I was simply witnessing the typical weekday morning rush hour at Oliver’s.

  Well, maybe not so typical. Everyone forgot their rush to get to work when they saw the hubbub at the dock. And the hubbubbier things got, the hubbubbier things got. Maxine resumed the picture-snapping thing, and Chester and Hollis resumed their roles as emcees.

  “This is even better than last summer when Natalie Pope got attacked by turkeys,” Hollis told the crowd. “Remember that?”

  “Who could forget?” Chester agreed, and with the help of his co-host, he explained Natalie’s trouble with the turkeys for Dad and me.

  She had been riding her motor scooter on one of the trails not too far up Elizabeth Mountain when she disturbed a wild turkey roost. The birds went for blood and chased her down the hill and straight into the lake. It happened on a Sunday afternoon when everyone was out on the water, so lots of people had ringside seats as Natalie’s scooter careened down the hill.

  “Even people who didn’t see her, heard her,” Chester said.

  “She screamed for dear life as she flew through the air.” Hollis flapped his arms to demonstrate Natalie flying and added a loud “Whoosh!” to mimic the sound she and her scooter made when they hit the water.

  “And the turkeys!” Chester added. “Who knew they could gobble that loud?”

  “Not I,” Dad answered.

  “I wish I had my i-Tablet back then,” Maxine said. “I could have captured it on video.”

  Oh, but that reminded her. She stopped snapping photographs and started shooting a video.

  I stood up and grabbed the binoculars from my father. Nothing. The boats were still in Mallard Cove and out of sight.

  “Put those things down before you get even more worked up,” Dad insisted, so of course I kept looking. Which is when I discovered that every Elizabethan who hadn’t joined our party on Oliver’s dock was standing on his or her own dock, watching us from a distance.

  I braced myself and directed the binoculars toward our little neighborhood across the water. Obviously our dock was empty, as was Maxine’s. But our other next door neighbor, Josiah Wylie, was most definitely out on his dock, binoculars in hand, staring back at me.

  Insert colorful words … Here.

  Oden Poquette’s arrival on the scene actually did improve my mood. Here was one person completely unfazed by my pajamas. Oden was too busy looking for his goats.

  FYI, Oden is almost always looking for his goats, since Rose and Ruby are almost always lost. They roam the Lake Bess community, eating anything in their path.

  Oden poked his head into Town Hall. Finding no goats there, he jogged toward us. “Has anyone seen my goats?” he asked, and the gang groaned in unison.

  I jumped up from my chair. “They were there!” I blinked at my father. “Rose and Ruby were in Mallard Cove.”

  “Were they swimming?” Hollis asked.

  ***

&nb
sp; “Here they come!” Dad jumped up and pointed.

  I told Oden where I had seen Rose and Ruby, he trotted off down Elizabeth Circle, and I turned to welcome the returning regatta.

  “Where is she?” I called out as the first boat drew closer.

  Chester elbowed his way through the crowd and stood next to me. “And who is she?”

  “We didn’t find anyone,” one of the Hilleville cops shouted.

  “But that’s impossible,” I shouted back.

  Dad held onto me and tilted his head toward the pontoon boat.

  “No canoe!” several of the camp counselors shouted from about halfway across the lake. “There’s nothing there!” a tall blond kid screamed. “No body!”

  In case anyone on Planet Earth had failed to hear, Maxine shouted back, “What’s that you say, Richard? Nothing? No body whatsoever?”

  “No body whatsoever!” Richard shouted back.

  ***

  Keeping his record of being the last to the party, Sheriff Gabe Cleghorn was in the last boat to make it back to the dock. He stood at the bow and addressed his audience. “You can all go home now,” he said. “Ms. Baxter was mistaken. There is no body, dead or alive.”

  I glanced at Philip and Dustin, and they gave me the thumbs down.

  “Poof, she’s gone?” Dad asked. “That’s impossible.”

  “Dead people don’t move,” I said.

  Gabe wasn’t the most graceful guy to ever exit a boat, but at least he did better than the Hilleville cops, one of whom ended up in the water.

  But the cop-clown act wasn’t enough to distract the crowd from what the sheriff said next. “I need to ask you a few questions,” he told me, loud and clear. “You do know it’s against the law to issue a false alarm?”

  “What? What do you mean false alar—” I stopped myself. I plopped down into my folding chair and closed my eyes, but I could still sense movement in front of me. I opened my eyes to see Maxine Tibbitts’ i-Tablet about an inch from my nose.

  “Would you stop doing that?” I held my hand up to block my face, and several people told me there was no need to get all testy.

  About then, I heard the first whispers of “Miss Looney Tunes.” Somehow I knew they weren’t discussing Maxine.

  Chapter 4

  I might have been Miss Looney Tunes, but the sheriff still wanted to hear my story.

  “Not until you get rid of this circus,” I told him, and Dad, Charlie, and I watched in awe as he set about dispersing the crowd. He even managed to shoo away Chester, Hollis, and Maxine.

  “Thank you,” I said sincerely as Maxine finally left.

  “Just doing my job.” Sheriff Gabe gestured to the folding chairs, and we sat down.

  Dad and I waited while he took a small notepad from his back pocket and drew a diagram of Lake Elizabeth. “For the record,” he said.

  For the record, the hand-drawn map looked like an upside-down Mickey Mouse head, with the main body of water being Mickey’s head, and Mallard Cove and Fox Cove at the south end being his ears. Downtown Lake Bess, where we were currently located, was at the north end of the lake, at Mickey’s chin.

  But don’t let the word downtown fool you. Gabe only had to draw four buildings to depict town center. The Lake Store and Town Hall sit adjacent to each other in front of the lake. And across Elizabeth Circle are the Congregational Church and the Lake School. He didn’t bother drawing in the eighty or so houses that dot the perimeter of the lake, but he did put three squares on the edge of Mallard Cove to represent the houses down there.

  He handed me the pen. “Put an ‘X’ where you claim you saw the dead woman.”

  I marked the spot, and with a warning that our interview was “official,” Gabe got started. “First question. Why were you out there at that ungodly hour?”

  “It was either that or eat waffles.”

  “Excuse me?” he asked, and I gave my father a withering glance.

  “Cassie was mad at me,” Bobby said. “I woke her up too early.”

  “It was the middle of the night,” I clarified. “4:30.”

  Dad shrugged at Gabe. “She told me she was going bird watching and stormed out of the house.”

  “I paddled over to Mallard Cove to watch the geese,” I said.

  “As in Canada Geese?” Gabe wrinkled his nose, and I admitted the geese aren’t everyone’s favorite bird.

  “I know they’re messy,” I said. “But the goslings are so cute. They were tipped upside-down eating something near the shore. While I had my binoculars focused there, my kayak drifted toward the cattails.” I tapped the ‘X’ on the map. “And that’s when I saw her.”

  Gabe studied me for a long time. “You haven’t lived here long, have you, Ms. Baxter?”

  “It’s Cassie,” I said. “I’ve been here two months.”

  “That’s what Phillip told me. You moved from New Jersey, correct?”

  “No.” I tilted my head. “Dad moved here from Jersey, but I’ve lived in Vermont for decades.” I told the sheriff I teach history at Crabtree College in Montpelier, but have summers off.

  “And this summer you up and moved to Lake Elizabeth?” he asked. “All of the sudden?”

  “Not so sudden,” Dad said. “It took me months to get her here.”

  Gabe frowned at my father. “I want Ms. Baxter to answer the questions.”

  “Cassie,” I reminded him.

  “And you live across the way?” He pointed to our house, and I frowned, too. Even from a distance, the house stood out. It was bright green. Lime green. The stupid house matched my sweatshirt.

  “We haven’t had a chance to paint yet,” I mumbled. I wasn’t using the binoculars but noticed that someone was still out on Joe Wylie’s dock. Two people, actually.

  “We love our house,” Bobby said. “Don’t we, girl?”

  “Mr. Baxter,” Gabe scolded.

  “Bobby,” Bobby said.

  Gabe sat forward. “Listen, Bobby,” he said. “I’m trying to understand your daughter’s actions this morning. So please stop trying to protect her.”

  I looked up. “Do I need protection?”

  “No. But it’s against the law to issue a false alarm. You needed to be more cautious.”

  “Of course!” I said. “How silly of me to report a dead body.”

  The sheriff raised an eyebrow. “Maybe she wasn’t dead. Maybe the fog was playing tricks on you.”

  “There was no fog.”

  “Maybe she was just resting.”

  “She was dead.”

  “Did you take pictures?”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake! Do I look like Maxine Tibbitts?” I stood up to pace, and Charlie scooted his front half under my chair.

  “Pictures would have been helpful,” Gabe said.

  “Great!” I stepped around Charlie’s tail. “Next time I run across a dead body, I’ll be sure to snap a few shots.”

  Dad winced, but I kept pacing as the sheriff tried to convince me the woman was asleep, woke up after I left Mallard Cove, and was right then back home, all safe and sound.

  He waved at the houses dotting the eastern shore. “And now she’s probably too embarrassed to come forward and admit she was the person you saw.”

  “Half the town was out here this morning, Sheriff. Why didn’t anyone else see this sleeping-beauty woman canoeing around?”

  “Because they were too busy watching you.” He made a point of staring at my outfit.

  I sat down and sighed. “Why are you so sure she was alive?” I asked.

  “Why are you so sure she was dead?”

  “Her eyes were open, and she was staring straight into the sun.”

  “What color?”

  “The sun’s yellow, her eyes were green, and she had red hair. She was young, and tall. And in case you haven’t quite caught on—she was dead.”

  “Did you recognize her?”

  I held my face in my hands, and Bobby answered for me. “I think Cassie’s made that clear
also,” he said. “My daughter’s new in town.”

  “Maybe this woman’s a visitor,” Gabe suggested. “She’s probably staying at the Fox Cove Inn down that way. Or maybe she’s a camper.” He pointed toward the state park. “You’ll probably see her at the Lake Store before the day’s through.”

  “So dead people make a habit of shopping at the Lake Store?” I asked. “I didn’t see a ghost, Sheriff.”

  “Please call me Gabe.”

  “I don’t believe in ghosts, Gabe.”

  ***

  “Let’s look at the map again.” Gabe tapped at the houses he had drawn around Mickey Mouse’s left ear. “There’s three houses in Mallard Cove,” he said. “Right where you saw this supposed body.”

  “Actual body.”

  He drew a large square beside Mickey’s other ear. “Not to mention the Fox Cove Inn across the way.” He pointed to the new square. “Anyone would have heard you.”

  “Heard me what?”

  “Scream for help. I can tell you have a voice. A very loud voice, considering your size.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You know how to scream,” my father informed me.

  Gabe asked again why I hadn’t screamed. “Sound carries across water. Anyone would have helped you, Ms. Baxter.”

  “Would you please call me Cassie?”

  “All you needed to do was yell for help, Cassie.”

  I took a deep breath and apologized for not yelling. “I didn’t think of it.” I looked at my father. “I get kind of flustered around death.”

  “An understatement,” Dad mumbled.

  Gabe looked back and forth between us. “You folks want to tell me what you’re talking about?”

  “No,” we said in unison.

  The sheriff shook his head. “Okay, so why’d you come all the way down here to report it? Why not go home?” He pointed to our house across the lake, about halfway down the western shore.

  I stared at the house. “It never occurred to me,” I said honestly. “When I’m flustered I tend to move very quickly.”

  “An understatement,” Dad said again.

  I shrugged at the sheriff. “I paddled down here to get to Oliver, okay? I knew he’s the person to see in an emergency.”