Death of a Hot Chick (28 page)

So, I’m slow to catch on, but, with
Teddy.... Still, if she hadn’t apologized, I would have remained
clueless. “You blew it. Or is there some other reason you need to
apologize?” Her face flushed and she started hitting keys madly, so
I knew I was right. “Obviously you knew Al was cheating on me and
you never told. Right?”

“
What makes you think
that?”

“
Right?”

Teddy shook her head and let a humongous
sigh rip. “Who could believe such a thing? I didn’t. It was a
rumor, that’s all. And I think he was more into a means of
embezzlement than seeing that girl. She was as snookered as...well,
definitely not as much as you.”

“
Thanks.” I threw the card down,
stood, and realized I had nowhere to go.

Teddy said, “Would you really have wanted to
know? Would you really have believed me, or even Kaye?”

“
Kaye knew, too? Anyone else? Like the
whole town of Smith Harbor?”

“
How about you get back to our game,”
Finley said.

I sat. “You knew, too?”

“
No. I’m just saying, pick up your
cards and play.”

So there I was, trapped in a boat with my
best friend since grade school, the liar. And my sister, the liar
sat outside in her car. I turned on Finley. “So how come you’re so
calm? You’re the one with the hot temper, the mad that won’t end
for all of two minutes. And all you can say is, ‘Play cards?’ ”

“
Doug probably left already,” Teddy
said. “I’m returning to silence. I suggest we continue this
discussion after his next call.”

A
discussion
,
she called it? My whole
life up-side down, and it’s a discussion? I sat, my fists in front
of my face, nibbling a thumbnail. For five minutes I planned, in
great detail, how I would ream Teddy, and even Finley. Definitely
my sister. For the following five minutes I reviewed my plan,
improved it. Then I tried to focus my anger, even to pump it up.
Didn’t work. I noticed Finley had gathered the cards and was
playing solitaire. Teddy stared at her computer, occasionally
keying in a few words.

Let them all go. I closed my eyes and rested
my chin in my hands. I’d think of revenge. No, that was ridiculous.
I’d clear my mind, think about something else. Nicole. Why didn’t
she know who killed her? Then I felt a jerk against my throat.
Nothing. Then a voice....

He took it. He broke it and pushed me. Not
his. Mine!

Slowly, I opened my eyes. Finley gathered
cards after a failed game of solitaire. Teddy whacked her computer
keys. I whispered, “Did either of you say something? Just now?”

Finley shook her head, shuffled the cards,
and dealt out another round of solitaire. Teddy didn’t answer. I
knew I’d heard Nicole. What did she mean?

Twenty minutes later, after not making any
decisions about either anger or Nicole, after Yarnell called Finley
and reported no activity at the marina, I decided. “I could have a
lot to say, but I won’t.”

Did I mean our disagreement was over? Not
really, but Teddy looked up from her computer and asked, “So is
Lizzie all alone? Because Kaye is out there in her car, waiting for
action to turn the headlights on.”

“
Nobody knows where she is but us.
She’s probably asleep. Maybe Kaye is, too.”

“
Sound like a good idea,” Teddy said.
“That radio station has played one song four times since we got
here. Did you know that?”

I didn’t.

Finley said, “Really?”

“
After his next check-in we’d better
put the lights out and turn the radio off,” Teddy said. “It will be
ten, and that’s Lizzie’s bedtime.”

“
So she says,” I muttered. I wasn’t
completely ready to forgive and forget. Except, how could I rave
for two minutes then shut it down? How could I not rave at all?
Maybe that’s why I heard Nicole’s voice again. I was mad, so was
she. No, that’s not any reason. I needed sleep, too. Would I still
be bummed out in the morning, knowing I was the wife who was the
last to know, and the tattle headline of Smith Harbor? Yeah, I
would.

“
Rummy again?” I asked
Finley.

“
Why not?” She shuffled, dealt, and we
started playing.

After another half hour with a minimum of
spoken words, after Doug’s call, we each chose our spot, unwound
sleeping bags, and turned off the lights. When there’s nothing
going on, and the lights are out, I just naturally go to sleep.
Unless I can’t. But, it turned out, this was one of those
“go-to-sleep” nights, even curled up on all the pillows on the
floor, the only area left with Finley taking the longest space on
the settee and Teddy claiming the only bed in the V-berth. She was
welcome to it. I much preferred a spot closer to the door in case
of emergency.

At least I’d be rested and ready when the
killer came. After we turned the lights out at ten I woke only
every half hour, first with Doug’s calls to either me or Finley,
and later, after, I supposed, two in the morning, when the calls
came from someone else in the police department. Might have been
the captain.

~
~

Monday, July 31

I woke to Finley yelling. “Nobody came. No
killer.” She bopped me on the arm. “Your trap didn’t work!”

Cautiously, I opened one eye. Sunshine. “Oh,
no,” I muttered. “Maybe.... Would he come during the day? What time
is it?”

“
I wondered when you sleeping beauties
would wake up,” Teddy said. She hobbled out of the forward berth
with one shoe on and holding the second. “Well, that’s that. I
wonder if Zander will fork over the pay I earned working all night
without results.”

“
Oh.” Sleep lingered in my eyes and in
my brain, but I reared up. “Now what? What’s the next
plan?”

“
Leave it to the cops,” Finley said.
“We tried. Not our fault it didn’t work.”

“
What about Lizzie?” I asked. “Just
because the killer didn’t come, she’s not out of danger.” I
uncoiled my body. “Yuck,” I said. “I need my
toothbrush.”

That’s when my cell phone vibrated. It was
Kaye. “Guess your plan didn’t work,” she said.

“
Strange how everybody wants to tell
me how
my
plan didn’t work,” I
said and disconnected. I didn’t need a gloating sister bawling me
out. As I put my shoes on, I remembered.

Liars. Kaye and Teddy were liars. Had been
liars. Knew at least something was wrong with Al and never told me.
I glared at Teddy when she approached.

“
Cyd, it was a rumor I couldn’t
believe. No one could. Really, not until afterward. I mean, he was
a superior actor when you come down to it. Especially around anyone
you knew. I just heard from someone else who knew someone who knew
someone. You get the idea. One of those rumors like, ‘Alien baby
born to mother of five.’ Nothing I could prove.”

“
And Kaye?”

“
That’s the part I shouldn’t have
mentioned, because I don’t know. It’s something we never talked
about. I seldom saw Kaye anyway, but when I did, I certainly didn’t
say anything about alien babies. Or, in this case, possible
infidelity.”

Sounded all too reasonable.
Unfortunately. We all headed out of
Podunk
.

Kaye caught up to us. “It was a good plan,”
she said. “Maybe Mr. Joline didn’t read the paper.”

Did she know about Al’s cheating ways before
he left? Maybe, maybe not. But now was not the time to go into it.
I said, “Not reading the paper would be more Chester’s style, if
you ask me.”

Teddy raced by and hopped in her car. Finley
followed, but she turned with us toward my dock. As we approached,
Finley said, “Is this the right dock? I don’t see your boat.”

I turned. “It’s right...right....”

“
Oh, my god,” Kaye said.

Only the top of
Snapdragon
showed above the water. I ran to the
finger pier where I should have been able to step on my deck.
Instead, I could have stepped on the roof. The tops of the salon
windows were above the water. Everything else, the rest of
Snapdragon
, was below water. Inside
as wet as the outside.

“
She’s sunk!”

Finley squatted beside me. “You didn’t leave
your door open and broken, did you?”

“
No. Why would I do that?” But Finley
didn’t have to add another word. I could see that somebody had
broken my door, got inside, and somehow, sank
Snapdragon
.

“
Probably opened the seacocks,” Finley
said.

But why?

Kaye pulled her cell phone out of her purse,
punched the number, then in a moment said, “Teddy, you better come
right back. There is another crime scene, right here, committed
while we slept. Cyd’s boat was sunk.”

I slid down to sit on the finger pier.
My boat.
Snapdragon
wasn’t a
sailboat, but....

My first boat burned to the waterline. My
second boat sunk in six feet of water.

Chapter 23

Teddy rushed up with her cell phone in hand.
“Reba can’t make it.” She held up the phone and flashed off a few
shots. “Were there any witnesses to your boat sinking?”

Then the whole thing got a lot more
weird. No witnesses popped up, but within minutes the dock
around
Snapdragon
was a mob
scene. First, five biking teenagers appeared. A few walkers from
the neighborhood, then a couple of over-nighters from the marina
strolled onto the scene. By the time Teddy was gone, nearly
everybody else in Smith Harbor had arrived one way or another. They
cluttered the dock, yakked about possibilities, then, when nothing
else happened, they drifted off. Kaye and Finley stayed, but we
didn’t have a quiet moment. Wes had arrived, with Slim showing up
two minutes later.

Wes yanked the electric line leading to the
boat, then stuck something in the water. “No electricity,” he said.
“Gotta get a dive team in here.” He headed for the marina
office.

Slim took his shoes off and lowered himself
into the water and, using a combination of a frog swim and
hand-over-hand walking, went inside the boat. He came back out and
said, “How many seacocks you got, Cyd?”

“
Three? Five? Give me a minute to
think.”

That’s when the local police showed up with
Officer Ramiriz in the lead. “You, on the boat,” another one said.
“What do you think you’re doing?”

“
He’s trying to close the seacocks,” I
said. I noticed that Officer Doug wasn’t one of the police. He’d
had a late night.

Wes returned. “It’s gotta be holed,” he
said. “Dive team’s coming.” He turned to me. “Cyd, you gotta get
that boat out of here.”

Slim said, “Ain’t no way this here boat’s
going anywhere with that load of water.”

“
It’s a crime scene,” I muttered.
Nobody messes with crime scenes.

“
Time for all sightseers to leave,”
Ramirez said. “You stay,” she said, pointing to me.

“
I’m staying too,” Kaye said. “I’m
Cyd’s sister.”

Finley said, “That Brandon Bates is a sneaky
one. He got in here past Kaye in her car and Officer Yarnell
driving back and forth all night.”

“
It is hard to find a logical reason
for Mr. Joline to do this,” Kaye said. “Perhaps he realized Cyd had
all the law on her side.”

I didn’t offer up Chester. I shook my
shoulders, rubbed my wrists. I had to engage the brain, try to
think what happened, who did it. Was it the killer?

“
So what happened here?” Officer
Ramiriz asked.

Kaye answered for me. “I’m sure you
know we were waiting for the killer in Lizzie’s boat last night. He
didn’t appear. This is what we found when we returned to Cyd’s
boat.” She waved her hand toward
Snapdragon
.

“
Cyd?” the officer asked.

“
That’s the story. The whole
thing.”

Which is when she turned to Slim, asking him
what he saw inside.

Slim started talking, embroidering the
danger he braved, which was okay by me. We stepped back to give
them room.

Finley fidgeted. I recognized the signs:
hands in pockets, hands out, pace, squat and stare, pop up. She was
so ready to leave, but she didn’t. Instead, she asked, “So where do
you stay tonight, Cyd?”

“
At Lizzie’s.” Okay, I’d started
thinking. A bit belatedly, but that happens. “Chester sank the
boat, and killed Nicole. Maybe he didn’t read the paper. Maybe he
did read the paper and he thought he was getting rid of me first
and he’d head for Lizzie next. Lizzie is still in
danger.”

“
That is certainly true,” Kaye
said.

“
Yeah, send out a bulletin. Kaye
admits....” Finley hesitated. “Sorry Kaye. Old habits die
hard.”

“
Finley, are you agreeing that Chester
killed Nicole?”

“
Hey, Brandon did that.”

I shook my head. I knew it was
Chester. Or, was this sinking completely unrelated? But that didn’t
make sense either. Okay, so practically everyone I’d met wanted to
get inside
Snapdragon
. Did
they all want to find treasure or had they all wanted to sink
her?

~
~

I sat cross-legged on the finger pier,
elbows on my knees and chin resting on my fists.