Cry for the Strangers (23 page)

Jeff left the wheelhouse and felt the wind buffet him. He clung to the lifelines strung along the length of the boat and made his way slowly forward until he was in the bow pulpit. He strained to see through the fading afternoon light, and his stomach knotted as he thought of what might happen if he failed to see the rocks.

And then they were there, sticking jaggedly above the surface, fingers of granite reaching up to grasp the unwary. Jeff waved frantically, but even before he made the gesture, he felt
Osprey
swinging slightly to starboard: Max must have seen the rocks at almost the same instant he had. He watched the water swirling and eddying around the reef as they swept past; then, when the danger had disappeared beyond the stern, he returned to the wheelhouse.

Max was finishing his coffee, one hand relaxing on the wheel, grinning cheerfully.

“You could have given them a little more room,” Jeff commented.

“A miss is as good as a mile,” Max replied. “Want to take her in?”

“You’re doing fine. I’ll get ready to tie up.”

A few minutes later, as the trawler crept into a vacant slip, Jeff jumped from the deck to the wharf and began securing the lines. On board, Max cut the engines.

Jeff had just finished tying the boat up when he became conscious of someone standing nearby watching him. He straightened up and nodded a greeting. “Some storm,” he offered.

“You planning to spend the night here?” Mac Riley said.

“On board,” Jeff replied.

“Storm’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better,” Riley said dourly. “Don’t think you can do it.”

“Do it? Do what?”

“Spend the night on that boat. We got a regulation against that here. Too dangerous.”

Max came out of the wheelhouse in time to hear the last, and jumped from the deck to join Jeff on the wharf.

“What do you mean, too dangerous?” he challenged. “You’ve got a good harbor here.”

“Didn’t say you don’t,” Riley responded, unperturbed. “But in a storm like this anything can happen. So you won’t sleep on your boat.”

Max stared at the old man, annoyed. “I could take her out in the middle of the harbor and drop anchor.”

“You could just scuttle her right here too, but I don’t think you will.”

Max looked over his shoulder and saw the wind-whipped whitecaps that covered the small bay. All
around him, securely moored though they were, the other boats rocked and groaned restlessly, complaining at their captivity.

“You got any suggestions?”

“The inn’s right up there,” Riley said, jerking a thumb shoreward.

Jeff and Max exchanged a look and nodded in unspoken agreement. While Max prepared the boat for the night, battening her down against the storm, Jeff and Riley started toward shore, the wind and spray whipping at their backs. As they hurried toward the Harbor Inn, a bolt of lightning flashed out of the sky and the roar of thunder rolled in from the angry sea.

The lobby of the inn was deserted, but when Jeff banged impatiently on the bell that sat on the counter Merle Glind appeared at the dining-room door. He blinked rapidly and stared at Jeff over the rims of his glasses.

“Something I can do for you?” he piped anxiously.

“A room,” Jeff said. “I need a room for the night.”

Merle bobbed his head, and scuttled around the end of the counter, flipped open the reservation book, and studied it intently. Then he peered up at the young man and frowned.

“I’ve got a room,” he announced victoriously, as if he had had to search for a highly unlikely cancellation. “Just one night?”

“Depends on how long the storm lasts,” Jeff explained. “My brother and I were heading for Grays Harbor, but it got so bad we put in here. If it blows over tonight we’ll head out tomorrow.”

Merle Glind pushed the register toward him, collected his money, and handed him a key.

“No baggage?”

“We’re not on vacation,” Jeff said. “All we need is a place to sleep.”

Glind nodded amiably and watched the fisherman go up the stairs. Then he returned to the dining room and climbed onto the barstool he had been occupying when the bell had interrupted him.

“Guests?” Chip Connor asked.

“Couple of fishermen coming in out of the rain,” Merle said. He peered out the window, seeing nothing but the reflected lights of the dining room wavering in the rivulets of water that ran down the glass. “Can’t say I blame them. Not fit for man nor beast out there tonight.” He frowned slightly. “One of them’s still out there.”

Chip slid off his own stool, and dropped two dollars onto the bar. “Order me another, will you? I’d better give Harn a call. You know how he is.”

“Use the phone behind the bar,” Glind said. “Save yourself a dime.”

Chip suppressed a grin and didn’t tell Merle that he had never intended to use any other phone. He went to the end of the bar and fished the phone off the shelf below it. First he dialed the police station. When there was no answer there, he called Harney Whalen at home. He let the phone ring ten times, then dropped it back on the hook.

“Well, I tried,” he said, picking up the fresh drink that waited for him. “At least I tried.” Then, remembering what Harn had had to say to him that morning
when he reported not having gotten much information out of Glen Palmer, Chip made a mental note to try to reach the chief later.

“So that’s what happened,” Glen Palmer said. He had just finished telling Rebecca about the strange sequence of events that day—first Chip Connor’s questioning and the near fight, then Whalen’s deliberate attempt to ruin the paintings, and finally Chip’s help at the gallery all afternoon.

“First I thought he was just trying to cover Whalen’s ass,” he mused. “He wouldn’t admit Whalen did it on purpose, and I figured he hung around for a while just to calm me down, but now I don’t know. If I hadn’t called a halt I think he’d still be there, tearing apart everything I’ve done and doing it all over again.” He grinned, remembering. “You should have seen him. It was like what I’d done was a personal affront, but he never said a word. Just kept fixing things. I have a feeling I haven’t seen the last of him. Oh, and we now have a charge account at Blake’s.”

When Rebecca made no reply Glen came out of his reverie and studied his wife. Her brow was knitted into a frown. She seemed to be listening to something, but Glen was sure it wasn’t him.

“Rebecca?”

She jumped a little and smiled at him self-consciously. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t listening.” Then, with an apologetic smile, she murmured, “It’s the storm, I guess. I’m still a little nervous. It seems like whenever there’s a storm out here something terrible happens.”

“Now that isn’t true and you know it,” Glen protested. He was feeling very good and wasn’t about to let his wife spoil it.

“I know,” Rebecca agreed ruefully. “I suppose I’ll get over it. But there’s something else too.”

“Something else?” Glen’s voice took on an anxious tone, and he wondered what she hadn’t told him.

“It’s Missy. She says there was someone in the old house this afternoon. The Randalls’ house.”

“How did she know?”

“Search me,” Rebecca said, shrugging helplessly. “Robby says they weren’t anywhere near the place, but Missy insists that someone was inside the house.”

Glen frowned, then called the children. They came out of their bedroom, Robby carrying Scooter. The puppy squirmed in his arms, and when Robby finally set him down he hurled himself at Glen, scrambling clumsily into his lap and licking his face.

“What’s this I hear about someone being in the Randalls’ house?” Glen asked as he struggled to contain the puppy.

“I didn’t say anyone was there,” Robby said self-righteously. “Missy said someone was there, but she was wrong.”

“I wasn’t either,” Missy said hotly. Her tiny face screwed up and she looked as though she was about to cry. “I said Snooker wasn’t coming back too, and he didn’t, did he?” she demanded, as if it would provide proof of her honesty.

“No, he didn’t,” Glen said patiently. “And I’m not saying no one was in the Randalls’ house today. I only want to know how you knew someone was there.”

Missy, mollified by what her father had said, turned
the matter over in her mind. When she finally spoke her face looked perplexed. “I don’t know how I know,” she said. “I just know.”

“You don’t know,” Robby said scornfully.

“Now, Robby, don’t say that,” Glen objected. “She might have seen something, or heard something, and has just forgotten about it.”

“Smoke,” Missy said suddenly. “I saw smoke coming out of the chimney.”

“You didn’t either,” Robby argued. “Smoke’s the same color as clouds, and you wouldn’t have seen it even if there was any.”

Missy started to argue but Rebecca cut them both off.

“That’s enough. Now take Scooter back into your room and get ready for bed.”

“Can he stay inside again tonight?” Robby demanded. It was a request he had made every night since the arrival of the puppy, and it had always been granted, partly because of what had happened to Snooker, and partly because Scooter was so tiny and appealing that neither Rebecca nor Glen had had the heart to make him stay outside. Now Rebecca nodded her head in resignation.

“Just make sure he stays in his box. I don’t want him messing up the blankets.”

“He’s almost housebroken,” Robby said eagerly, hoping he could gain a little ground in his campaign to make the dog a bedmate. Unfortunately Scooter chose that moment to squat in the middle of the floor and form a puddle under his belly. Neither Glen nor Rebecca could contain the urge to giggle, and Robby, realizing he and Scooter had lost the argument,
snatched the puppy up and scolded it severely. Scooter lapped wetly at Robby’s face.

“Get him out of here,” Rebecca cried. Laughing, she shooed her children and their pet back to their room and wiped the mess off the floor. As she finished she realized Glen was putting on his raincoat.

“Where are you going?”

“I think I’ll take a walk down the beach and have a look at the Randalls’ place. If there
is
someone there, I’ll report it to Chip Connor.”

“In this rain?” Rebecca protested. “Honey, you’ll be soaked to the skin—it’s pouring out there, and the wind’s nearly tearing the roof off.”

“Does that mean you don’t want to come with me?” Glen asked innocently. Rebecca glared at him.

“That means I don’t want you to go at all.”

Glen gave her a quick hug and kissed her on the nose. “Well, I’m going and that’s that. If we’re ever away, I hope the Randalls will keep an eye on this place. It seems to me that the least I can do is keep an eye on theirs. And if Missy thinks she saw someone—”

“She didn’t say she saw anyone.”

“Well, she saw smoke.”

“She said that tonight,” Rebecca argued. “She didn’t say anything about it this afternoon. I think she was just trying to convince us that someone was there. I probably put the idea into her head myself when I said she might have seen something.”

“But she might have seen smoke,” Glen countered, “and if she did I want to know what’s going on.”

Rebecca sighed, knowing further argument was useless. “All right, but be careful. Please?”

“Nothing to worry about,” Glen reassured her. “I’ll be back in half an hour, probably sooner.”

A moment later he was gone. Rebecca strained to see him from the window as he went out into the night. But the storm swallowed him up, and she was left to wait alone and worry.

16

Max Horton surveyed the cabin of the trawler, making a final inspection before going ashore. He’d been working steadily for half an hour, though he could have finished the job of putting the boat to rights in ten minutes. He’d been dawdling, making the work last, enjoying his solitude, enjoying the boat. But now the job was done and he could no longer delay joining his brother at the inn. A slight smile crossed his face as he anticipated the warm glow that a hot brandy and water would bring.

Then he heard a sound. It was faint, nearly drowned out by the storm raging in from the sea, and indistinct. But it sounded like a hatch cover being dropped into place.

A sense of impending danger made Max’s spine tingle, and he moved quickly to the hatchway.

He was only seconds too late.

Osprey
was adrift.

It was already too far from the wharf for Max to attempt a jump, and even if it had been closer, the water was too rough. Then, as a bolt of lightning lashed out of the sky, Max saw the figure on the wharf. It stood perfectly still, hands on hips, head thrown
back as if in laughter. The screaming wind drowned out any sounds and the effect of the silent, maniacal laughter chilled Max.

The brilliance of the lightning faded away as the crash of thunder shook the pitching trawler. Max ducked back into the wheelhouse, fumbling in his pocket for his keys. He jammed the ignition key in its lock, twisted it violently, and pressed the starter of the port engine.

Nothing happened.

He pressed the other starter. Again nothing.

He glanced out the window in time to see the wharf disappear into the darkness, and realized the boat was riding the turning tide. He was being drawn toward the mouth of the harbor—and the waiting rocks.

He jabbed at the recalcitrant starter buttons once more, then threw the switch that would drop the main anchor. When it too failed to respond, he left the wheelhouse and moved as swiftly as he could to the stern. He kicked open the anchor locker on the deck and hurled the anchor over the side.

Then he watched as ten feet of line played out and the frayed end of the line disappeared into the blackness of the water.

Something had done its job well.

Max yanked open the hatch cover over the engine compartment and dropped nimbly into the space between the two big Chrysler engines. At first glance everything seemed to be normal, but as he flashed his light over the immense machines he noticed something.

The wiring.

The new wiring that he and Jeff had installed only
a week ago had changed. The insulation was gone, burned off as if it had been hugely overloaded, or struck by lightning. The copper wiring, pitted and looking worn, gleamed dully in the glow of his flashlight.