Don't Explain: An Artie Deemer Mystery (23 page)

“Excuse me,” I said, and straightened up.

So did Crystal and Hawley. We stepped astern to talk it over.

“Well, what do you think?” Hawley asked, puffed with pride.

“I don’t know, Hawley. I appreciate the thought, but this might not be them.”

“What do you mean? Why? Because they
say
they aren’’t?”

“Well, we don’t know. Look at them down there…We’d have to prove it and all. I can’t prove it.”

“Yeah, well, one way to prove it would be to dump them out to seaward of the Disappointments with an anchor each. Glub, glub. If Jellyroll stops being stalked, then you could be pretty certain you got the right fuckers.”

That contained a certain dreadful logic I found attractive. Hawley was clearly ready to go. All I needed to say was okay. They’d be gone. Granted there could be complications, but they’d still be irrevocably gone. Bodies never come up to haunt one… No, I couldn’t do it under the circumstances. Maybe if I could have been sure these two were guilty, if I had had clear evidence, but of course I didn’t. I had a bowling motif. And I had the only strangers on the island. The bowling motif would blow away with the first stiff breeze. And I couldn’t go around killing people for the crime of being unknown to me. What an insular lifestyle.

“You
said
this was them,” Hawley pointed out.

I felt Crystal’s face spin around toward me. She didn’t know I’d said that. But how could I deny it? “Yeah, but I didn’t think you were going to go straight out and kidnap them,” I heard myself muttering like a Milquetoast.

Hawley thrust his hands into his pockets and looked at his black rubber boots. He was embarrassed. “Okay, so I take them back to the Crack, give them some free seafood, and say, ‘Ooops.’ What’s the worse that could happen? They could sue me, I guess.”

“It was my fault.” I could feel Crystal beside me readily nodding agreement. “If they sue or press charges, I’ll own up to it.”

“You did me a good turn, I wanted to do you one. I guess I got carried away. What do you call it? Hasty,” Hawley said. “I got hasty.”

Then we heard the siren echoing around the hills, coming fast.

“Oh, shit,” said Hawley. “Kelso. Somebody must’ve ratted. There was a lot of goings-on up at the Crack because of the Commander drowning and all. Somebody must’ve seen me snatch them and ratted.”

“You snatched them from the Crack?”

“That’s where they were.”

“How could you snatch somebody in the Crack and expect not to be seen?”

“I told you, I got hasty. Gimme a break, okay?”

“I’m sorry.”

Kelso skidded around the corner with the whole side of his boat out of water, spray flying, siren and light pulsing, shaving a sunker close. There were two men in the boat. Kelso wasn’t driving. A skinny kid with a blue wool watch cap pulled down low over his brow was behind the wheel. Kelso held on tight in the turn. I’d never seen a boat go that fast in Dog Cove, and its wake was beginning to bounce back and forth between the sides. The urgency of the sheriff’s approach did not bode well for us kidnappers.

The skinny guy slowed as soon as he completed the turn, but the waves were still reverberating, seemingly gaining energy with each wash across the narrow cove. Hawley’s boat began to pound against the flat rock. Dick Desmond and his son screamed from below.

The police boat skidded to a stop rail to rail against Hawley’s boat, and the rocking and rolling increased. Everybody on both boats gripped things to keep their feet. Hawley’s boat thudded harder against the rock. There were grinding sounds. It must have been hell down there in the brig.

“Jesus, Earl,” said Hawley to Kelso’s driver, “you’re fuckin’ up my entire starboard chine.”

“Sorry, Hawley,” said Earl, who was trying to grow a beard. “ ‘Full speed ahead.’ That was the sheriff’s orders.” The wake still bounced chaotically.

The red light was still flashing—

“Sheriff? Is that police? Help! Help! Down here, help!”

There was a third person in the police boat. Edith Hickle sat on a seat in the back grinning sweetly at us. She wore the same print shift as at the launching under a thin nylon windbreaker, sneakers with the pom-pom socks. Her hands looked white and cold as she held on—

After the boats stopped bouncing against each other, Sheriff Kelso slung his leg over the rail and followed it aboard. He
shoved Hawley aside and looked below. “Jesus,” he muttered to himself. “Excuse me,” he said to Dick and Dick Junior, “I’ll be right with you.” Then he turned on Hawley and said, “Have you lost your mind?”

“These fuckers’ve been stalking his dog!”

“No, he kidnapped us off the street!”

“Look at that dog,” insisted Hawley. “The cutest fucking dog in the world. They meant to
killl
that dog! They came out here to do it!”

Now Kelso turned on me. “Is that true?”

“Ah, yes, well, it sure could be—”

“Why?” Kelso wanted to know. “What makes you think so?”

I was afraid he’d want to know that. All eyes fell upon me. “Well, you see, we’ve, uh, been getting these threatening notes written on bowling sheets…score sheets, you know? Strikes and spares?” He glared at me, that withering New York–cop look that seems to assume you’re insane, and I began to babble. “That’s Dick Desmond down there, and he used to be on a TV show about a bowling alley. Bowling. You put that together with them being the only strangers on the island, and, uh, there you have it.”

“Okay, you’re under arrest. You, too, Hawley.”

“Aww, come on, Teddy—”

Eyes burning, Kelso shoved Hawley by the chest. “Get those people out of there, Hawley, right now.”

Earl let slip a giggle, and Kelso spun on him—“You like driving boats, Earl, or you want to go back to rehab?”

“Uh, no sir.”

“Then get over here and help.”

“Hello, Ms. Hickle,” said Crystal.

“Hello, dear.”

“I’m Crystal Spivey.”

“Yes, I know. You could call me Edith.”

When Jellyroll saw Edith, to whom he’d taken a shine back at the Crack, he leapt over the rail and sat down at her feet.

“Awww,” she said cuddling and hugging, “he’s smiling at me!”

Kelso turned on Crystal and me. “I’ll thank you to get off this boat and wait in the house.”

He politely fetched Edith, assisted her ashore, and told her to go with us. As Crystal and I were helping Edith toward the steps, she said to Crystal, “I’ve confessed, you know.”

“You have? To what, Edith?”

“I drowned him, you know. It was sabotage. I undid a bolt. That’s all it takes in a submarine, you know.”

“Don’t confess,” said Crystal. “Don’t ever confess. Do you have a lawyer?”

“A lawyer?” Her right eye was clouded with a cataract.

“He habitually abused you, didn’t he?”

“How do you mean?”

We helped her up the steps. As we climbed, I heard this exchange from aboard Hawley’s boat:

“What’s the holdup?” Kelso demanded down the companionway.

“Lock’s all seized up. I gotta get some WD-40 in there.”

There was a pause, but it didn’t last long. Dick Desmond and his boy screamed and coughed and sputtered. “He’s drowning us in oil! Help!”

Hawley came topside: “Gotta let that
pene
trate.”

How quickly things can go absurd on you…

It turned out to be a delicate procedure, getting two people of such size discrepancy chained closely by the neck back to back out of a space that small. After I put water on to boil, I went out on the porch to watch, while Crystal made Edith comfortable on the wicker sofa. I knew Crystal would be giving her an earful about her rights.

Dick Desmond’s face was screwed up, teeth bared in a kind of rictus grin as he emerged first from below. His fingers clawed at the chain tightening around his esophagus. Desmond sort of crawled out of there with his son almost riding on his back like
a papoose, Kelso supporting him from under his butt. It was an ugly scene. Earl helped, with a smartass smirk on his narrow face, as Hawley fiddled fruitlessly with the lock.

“Little more WD-40 ought to do it—”

“No! No more, please!” screamed Junior.

“Get him away from us!” screamed Dick Desmond.

Now that father and son were out of the hole, Kelso tried to figure out what to do with them while the oil penetrated. He suggested they sit down on the engine box. As he manipulated the duo, he looked up and caught me watching. I braced myself for hostility, but the look on his face reflected stress, exhaustion, and sadness. He stuck a rubber bumper under Master Desmond’s ass to even things out.

Now I saw the son for the first time without a camera in front of his face. He was small, but he didn’t look young enough to be Dick Desmond’s son. Of course, he had a chain locked tightly around his trachea, and that tends to alter the set of one’s features, but from up here on the porch, he looked like he was over forty-five; he looked like a retired jockey who hadn’t ridden a lot of winners. His hair was jet black, combed straight back, but it was thinning. His face was wrinkled, and his left eye drooped at the outer edge.

Kelso yanked the key away from Hawley, and now he tried to get it to open the lock. This caused the boy to look up. Our eyes locked…I’d be pissed, too, if I had just gotten a faceful of propelled lubricant while chained by the neck to my old man. But this guy looked at me with mortal malice. If I saw a stranger looking at me like that on the street, I’d duck into the nearest doorman building and ask for a phone to call 911. His black eyes burned with hatred, yet at the same time the look was glacially cold. His eyes frightened me, even from that distance. I avoided them, turned, and went inside.

“Crystal, look at the son. The son’s visible. Come see—” I importuned. I held the door for her, and we went to the rail to
see. But now Kelso, working on the lock, blocked our view of the fruit of Desmond’s loins.

She looked at me. “What’s wrong, Artie?”

“I don’t know, he
looked
like a psycho killer.”

“Didn’t he have a chain locked around his neck?”

“I know, I know, but still—”

“Just because a person looks like a psycho doesn’t mean he is a psycho. Just look at our neighborhood.”

“But most of the people in our neighborhood are psychos.”

“You didn’t plan this kidnapping job, right?”

“Absolutely not. Hawley just went and did it. All I did was shoot my mouth off.”

“I just wanted to know for sure. We don’t want to let the stalker business get us nuts.”

“No, you’re right.”

She took my hand, and we watched the operation continuing below, but we never saw Sonny’s face.

“They’ll probably sue you. I would.”

“Me, too.”

The oil penetrated, but it took an uncomfortably long time. I made sure I was not visible when release came for the Desmonds. They left quietly with Earl in the police boat. He was going to take them to the Crack and their boat, then return for Kelso. I didn’t incur any shit face-to-face with the Desmonds, but I wouldn’t be so lucky with the sheriff. Kelso was heading for the stairs. He climbed heavily.

We were standing in a line across the living room—Hawley, whom Kelso had sent up here before the penetrating oil had finished its work, Crystal, Jellyroll, and I. Who would take the fall?

Kelso entered without knocking, but he didn’t look threatening. He looked distracted, just as before, and sad. He looked up at us and stopped in his tracks.

“It was all my fault, Teddy. Artie didn’t tell me to do it or anything like that,” Hawley insisted. “Why, I just went and did
it. Artie and Crystal, they did my family a good turn, and well, I got hasty.”

“It was my fault,” I said. “I told him they were the stalkers.”

Kelso looked from one to another, even down at Jellyroll, who cocked his head from side to side. “Do you folks have anything to eat?” he asked.

“Sure!”

“Does that mean they ain’t pressin’ charges?” Hawley asked.

“No, it doesn’t mean that at all. It means I’m hungry.”

“How about a meatloaf sandwich and some chowder?” Crystal proposed.

“Terrific.”

Jellyroll strolled into the bedroom to visit Edith.

Everybody liked the idea of food. Crystal and I hadn’t eaten anything yet. I sliced the Selfs’ meatloaf, Crystal slathered on the mustard, and Hawley formed them into sandwiches. I set a table, but we didn’t use it. Instead we stood around in the kitchen eating sandwiches and drinking beer. Teddy Kelso wasn’t nearly as pissed as I feared. Maybe this kind of thing happened a lot. I felt disoriented by the weird hours and events.

Jellyroll came back when he got a whiff of the meatloaf and planted himself in position to intimidate Hawley, whom he’d judged to be the easiest mark. I told him no begging, and he slunk off, giving me the starving-pariah-dog look as he went.

“Sheriff Kelso?” said Crystal.

“Call me Ted. Don’t call me Teddy.”

“She’s taking her confession back, Ted.”

“Oh yeah? Okay.”

“You aren’t angry?”

“At you for butting in?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t believe she did what she says she did. Dwight and a couple of the other guys looked the sub over. They’re no submarine experts, but they’re experienced mechanics. They found no
obvious sabotage. It looked to them like it leaked along a weld between two metal plates.”

“You mean she’s not under arrest?” Crystal asked.

“Hell no, I’m taking her around to my wife’s sister’s place.”

“Your wife’s sister?”

“My mother,” Hawley clarified. “Roxanne Self. The sheriff is kin.” Hawley grinned.

“By marriage,” Kelso emphasized. “By marriage.”

“Roxanne told us there was another killing in Micmac,” said Crystal.

“It’s true. A man this time, about forty-five. Money in his wallet, watch on his wrist. One of the lobstermen spotted him bobbing on the bottom under the pier. The crabs had been at him, but it was still clear what killed him. Same thing that killed the girl from Hartford. This is going to start attracting some nasty attention if I don’t close it quick.”

We ate our sandwiches in silence.

TWENTY-TWO