A Bat in the Belfry (18 page)

Ellie turned to me, her look beatific; that tiger had a pretty smile. But there was something else going on behind it. Again it struck me that I’d had a different existence before I came here: city living, fancy apartment, a job that I supposed must’ve at least looked glamorous.

Not to mention the high heels and fancy makeup. But Ellie’s life was Eastport. Always had been and always would be, probably, and she wanted all of it.

The whole shebang, murders included. “So, no assistance from that department, either, probably,” she said, meaning Cahill. “Or at least not soon.”

Then she added the zinger, which by then I’d figured must be coming:

“You know, Jake, I’m beginning to think the only way we can help Chip Hahn is to find out who killed that girl ourselves.”

“L
isten, Carol, I’m kind of busy here.”

Sam hauled six more just-delivered cartons of teak oil off the pallet and hoisted them onto the metal shelving behind the counter, then checked them off the delivery sheet with his penlight pen. Stock handling was boring, but it was part of his job at the boatyard two miles out of town on Deep Cove Road.

He wished he could be with Chip, trying to help. “I mean, I’m on the clock here, you know?” Sam told Carol, who did not seem impressed. Sucking on a cherry Tootsie Pop, she toyed with a box of paper clips on the counter.

Heck, Chip couldn’t have done anything like what they said. Sam knew Chip, and he was sure of it. But there was nothing Sam could do about his friend’s troubles until the cops got finished questioning him, and released him.

Which Sam had no doubt they would, but the whole thing was very worrisome, and meanwhile Sam was stuck out here instead of at the breakwater in town. That was his next choice for where he’d rather be, helping guys secure their vessels against the big blow that was coming.

But the boss wanted him at the boatyard in case customers needed a new cleat or more line to tie to the new cleat. And for sure he’d already sold plenty of those, plus blue tarp, deep-cycle batteries, boat bumpers, and the kind of chemical hand-warmer pads you could put in your gloves so your fingers wouldn’t freeze while you tried like hell to keep your vessel from sinking.

“You don’t look busy.” Carol leaned on the counter, a cell phone in one hand and the glistening Tootsie Pop in the other. At intervals, her cherry-red tongue flicked out at the Tootsie Pop.

Sam tried not to watch, but it was difficult. “Sam,” she repeated insistently. “Where’s your friend?”

Sam heaved the last carton of teak oil up, then turned to grab another few boxes of battery cables. He’d have gone outside to escape her if he could; she wasn’t supposed to be here, anyway, and if the boss came back and found her, he’d be in trouble.

But with the storm raging the way it was, the only work he could do around the marina was indoor stuff. And Carol, of course, had figured that out.

“You mean Chip?” He hung the cables on display hooks mounted in a pegboard behind the counter.

“Who do you think I mean? You have some other guy staying at your house?”

She eyed him mischievously over the Tootsie Pop. With her dark hair in a ponytail and her long, athletic legs covered by a pair of gray sweatpants, his old high school football jacket over her shoulders and battered sneakers on her feet, she looked just barely plausible as a boat-supply customer. If the boss did come back, it was what Sam intended to tell him.

That is, he would if Carol didn’t decide out of spite—she was still irked that he hadn’t come out to the party last night—to put the moves on the boss, first. She was just bratty enough to do it, too.

“What d’you want with Chip, anyway?” Sam had introduced them when Chip first got here, a few days earlier. He dropped fuses of varying sizes into their proper small clear plastic drawers in the display case. “I didn’t know he’d made an impression on you.”

“He didn’t.” She sounded bored. “I just wondered. Why, is that a crime?”

No, of course it wasn’t. Just thinking about Chip made him feel anxious, was all.

“Sorry,” Sam said as a customer came in wanting cotter pins; motoring over here to get his Chris-Craft onto a safer mooring on the lee side of the island, he’d strayed near shore and hit an outcropping of granite ledge with his propeller.

Then as the customer went out, the phone rang. “She’s there, isn’t she?”

It was Maggie. “Uh …”

“I saw her heading out Deep Cove Road in that little car of hers.”

Carol’s red Mazda Miata, Maggie meant. Anybody else would’ve had the car safely under cover for the storm, but for Carol danger only made things more fun.

Still, was it his fault Carol had shown up?
Grow a damned spine, Tiptree
, he thought. “Yeah. She’s here.”

He didn’t quite add
Wanna make something of it?
But from Maggie’s reaction, he might as well have.

“You know, Sam, I understand that she’s pretty, and that she has nothing to do all day but hang around revving your motor.”

Ten feet away, Carol touched the cherry-red Tootsie Pop very deliberately to the tip of her tongue, then slid the candy slowly between her lips.
Oh, holy criminy
.

“But I’m getting pretty tired of playing second fiddle to a woman whose only real assets are in her … assets,” Maggie added.

In the background at Maggie’s, a string quartet was playing. “And it’s not like she’d ever settle down with you, be part of a team, you know, to do anything worthwhile.”

Carol, she meant, the girl batting her long lashes at him right now, her mouth making kissing movements and her eyes bright with suppressed laughter.

“I mean, I know her type,” Maggie went on. “She’ll play with you, but in the end she just wants some guy with a lot of money.”

Carol, whose other-woman radar had twigged instantly to the fact that it was Maggie on the telephone, flapped her fingers and thumb together in a “blah-blah-blah” motion.

“Seriously, Sam,” Maggie said, “don’t you ever get tired of her? I mean, all she’s doing is yanking your chain.”

Yeah
, Sam thought, transfixed by the sight of Carol doing something he hoped to hell his boss didn’t walk in on.

Or anyone else.
Pull your shirt down
, he mouthed urgently at Carol, and in response she began undoing her sweatpants drawstring.

“What?” said Maggie.

He swallowed hard. “Maggie, look, I’ve got a whole lot of customers here, I’ve got to—”

“Forget it,” snapped Maggie, whose own radar was nothing to fool around with, either. “I’m not going to try talking to you if she’s … what’s she doing, a striptease or something?”

Carol kicked off a shoe. “Carol!” he hissed urgently at her as his boss’s big Chevy Silverado pulled into the lot outside.

“Goodbye, Sam. I’ll give you a few days to think about it. If you’re not wised up by then, though, don’t bother to call me.”

Oh, hell …
Through the shop’s front window, Sam watched his boss hop down from the truck and sprint hard through the pounding rain. Kicking off her other shoe, Carol turned, giving Sam a view of that gorgeous backside of hers.

Then, spotting the boss, she snatched her shirt up off the floor, snagged both her shoes, and ran, hiking her pants back up first one leg and then the other, giggling as she went. She’d just made it behind a display rack loaded with boat cushions and hatchway covers when the bell over the front door jangled and the boss rushed in, dripping and cursing.

Luckily, he’d only come for the bank deposits, and he was in such a hurry that he didn’t smell the cherry-candy perfume still wafting in the air. Two minutes later he was gone, and soon after that Carol was, too, but not before protesting petulantly that she’d just wanted to have some fun, and couldn’t he, Sam, loosen up a little once in a while?

“You’re as bad as Chip,” she complained.

Her car was right outside. Sam wondered if maybe the boss had noticed it; how could he not have?

Then what she’d said hit Sam. “What do you mean? Have you been pestering Chip?” He wouldn’t have put it past her.

Not that Chip would’ve cooperated; he was so crazy about his own girl back in the city. Too crazy, maybe, but there was nothing Sam could do about that, either.

Carol pouted, tossing her glossy dark ponytail. “No. Chip’s not my type, I told you.”

“Yeah, well.” He ushered her toward the door. It was still raining pretty hard, but she’d made it in here from her car all right. She could make it back out again, too.

“Just make sure you don’t, that’s all. He’s got enough of his own problems.” It came over Sam again just how much trouble his friend might really be in. But …

It’s a mistake, though. I mean, it’s got to be a mistake … doesn’t it?

At the door Carol kissed him, reaching up with both hands to pull his face down and plant her warm, moist lips on his. The shock of electric pleasure this sent through him immobilized him for an instant, long enough for her to let go of his head and let her hands roam over his body lingeringly.

“There,” she said finally, pulling away when she was sure he didn’t want her to. “See if Miss Goody Two-Shoes can match
that
.”

Gasping, he straightened. “Wait,” he managed.

But it was too late. The bell over the door jangled and with a mocking laugh she was gone, dashing to her car through the pounding rain, spinning up wet gravel as she accelerated out of the parking lot.

Not until his vision had cleared, his heart rate slowing from its thud-thud gallop, did he notice the other car, idling at the far end of the lot.
Damn …

It was Maggie’s beat-up Toyota. Knowing her, she’d come out to … well, not to apologize. This was Maggie, after all, and she actually hadn’t said anything unreasonable. But to put things on a better footing, maybe; they’d been friends for a long time.

More than friends … But now, through the Toyota’s fogged-up windshield, he could just make out the white of her face, two dark smears for eyes, and a downturned mouth. Guiltily he reached for a slicker from the rack by the door, but before he could pull it on, a puff of exhaust bloomed from the Toyota.

“Maggie!” he shouted, scrambling out to catch her before she could race off. Obviously she’d seen Carol leaving, but how much else?

“Maggie, wait, I can—”
Explain
, he’d meant to finish, but before he could reach it the Toyota swung hard through a three-point reverse out of the lot and sped away. Watching it go, Sam felt Carol’s kiss still on his lips, and at the same time heard Maggie’s voice—her melodious, sensible,
indispensable
voice, so dear and familiar he hardly knew what he would do without it—issuing its really quite sensible, understandable ultimatum.

Me or her
. And why not? Guilt washed over him as he turned and slogged back across the wet parking lot, its crushed-stone surface deeply rutted by Carol’s flashy departure.

Inside, he paced angrily, disgusted with himself. Maggie didn’t deserve this. Hell, even Carol didn’t.
And I don’t. Man, this kind of behavior is effed up
.

So I’m going to stop it
. Now, before being a dumb jerk began sliding irresistibly—and at least in his own experience, also inevitably—into being a drunk dumb jerk.

Because that was how it always went: first behaving like an ass, then drinking like one. Grabbing up the phone, he called his boss’s cell and said what he had to say, and hung up before he could change his mind. Then he dialed his own home phone number.

“Mom? Yeah, it’s me. Yeah, I’m okay. No accidents, no, I haven’t gotten injured or anything. Everything’s fine. That is, I mean, not
fine
fine. But—”

It had stopped surprising him, how relieved she always was to hear that he was still alive and intact. Hey, he’d bought that trip. “Mom, I quit. Yeah, my job. Until Chip gets out of whatever this is that he’s in, I’m going to—”

Outside, the big Silverado roared back into the parking lot again, its big tires digging their own ruts in the gravel as it braked hard to a stop, wipers sloshing ineffectively through what looked like rivers on the windshield.

“And, listen, Mom? If Carol calls, or if Maggie does? Say I’m busy, I’m not seeing anyone for a while. But make sure neither one of them thinks I’ve dropped her to go with the other one, all right? Because I’m not. Going to, I mean.”

I hope
. He half listened while the burly figure of his boss loomed larger outside the front window, shoulders hunched in the deluge. Frowning, Sam turned away from the figure.

“Fine. See you soon,” he said hurriedly into the phone, and hung up as the bell over the front door jangled violently.

Turning back, he faced the music.

T
he fried haddock sandwich in the New Friendly restaurant was delicious, the white flesh moistly flaky and batter coating perfectly browned.

“Not bad, huh?” Dylan ate a french fry from the single order they’d agreed to split, while outside the rain-splashed window the weather went on deteriorating swiftly

Lizzie sipped her Pepsi, which had come in a tall glass with a lemon slice in it. “Excellent,” she agreed, and then, “So tell me about this thing last night.”

Getting Dylan talking about something he was interested in had always been the way to get other information out of him. His answering shrug-and-headshake combination, though, meant that in his opinion there wasn’t much to tell.

“Girl got killed. Throat cut. You ask me, they got the guy. Case closed.” He bit into his own sandwich, captured an escaping drip of tartar sauce with the tip of his tongue.

She looked away. “Who, that kid? Come on. I know he was at the scene, but he looks like Mr. Respectable to me.”

“Yeah, well.” Dylan ate another french fry, first dipping it in the blue cheese dressing he’d ordered on the side. He’d never had to pay attention to calories, always just burning up whatever he ate.

“He might
look
innocent.” He drank some of his milkshake, another of his quirks. Dylan could pack the booze away with no problem, never even seeming to get tipsy. But with his meals, he chose kids’ drinks, a root beer float or maybe a frappe.