Don't Take Any Wooden Nickels (26 page)

“Sorry, Eli, but around here
everyone
has access to a boat.”

“Okay, then let’s come at it another way. Look at this man’s history. He’s got drug smuggling in his past. Maybe tracking down this stupid capsule made him think of some new way to smuggle drugs.”

“You mean the GPS idea? I’m sure drug smugglers have caught onto these things way before now,” I said. “Nothing new there.”

“Maybe when he was looking for the capsule, he stumbled across something else nearby.”

“Now there’s an idea. The area was very deserted, plus it was right along the Intracoastal Waterway. Maybe something valuable had washed onto the shore there or something. Ships lose cargo all the time. Maybe he found something valuable and planned to sell it.”

We tossed that idea around, trying to decide how I should proceed. Eli gave me some good suggestions. Still, no matter how
many ideas we considered, we still couldn’t come up with something that would have led to Eddie Ray’s death.

“And this whole bleach thing is bothering me,” he said. “That’s weird. Very weird.”

“I know. Once the police confirmed that it wasn’t a chemical spill, I wasn’t sure what to think. They searched the area but never came up with any discarded bleach bottles or anything.”

“Then, of course, you smelling it later at your house changes everything,” Eli said. “My mind jumps to all sorts of possibilities. Someone cleaning something? Someone trying to mask a different odor? You know, bleach can destroy DNA. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if someone was trying to mess up that murder scene with a hefty splashing of Clorox.”

“But nothing was disturbed when I got there,” I said. “In fact, the murder scene was perfectly intact. Besides, why would I smell it again later that night? My house wasn’t anywhere near the scene of the crime.”

“Maybe you were being watched,” Eli said. “Maybe the person watching you had spilled bleach on his clothes and that’s the smell you picked up at both places.”

“Yes, I had thought of that, too.”

“Of course,” Eli added, “there is the drug angle.”

“The drug angle?”

“Some addicts think you can use bleach to sterilize needles. Maybe somebody was shooting drugs nearby and you smelled them cleaning their needles.”

“In both locations?”

“Maybe not.”

We were both silent for a moment, thinking.

“You sure it wasn’t just somebody cleaning out their swimming pool? Chlorine has that same smell.”

“No, this was stronger than that. Completely concentrated, and then it disappeared.”

“Maybe somebody was using bleach instead of black pepper or gasoline.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“To disguise their trail. From police dogs. Most people would use pepper or gasoline to throw off the scent. But maybe this guy didn’t have any of that, so he tried bleach instead.”

At the murder scene, that would’ve made a fair amount of sense. But later, at my house, it just didn’t hold water. I told Eli to keep thinking, that one of us was bound to figure it out sooner or later.

“So before we hang up,” he said, “tell me what else has been going on. The last time I talked to Tom, he told me the two of you still hadn’t had a chance to meet in person. I wish you would. I think you’d really like him.”

“I already like him, Eli. We’ve become very close, even if it is only over the phone.”

“Such safety,” he chided. “Sounds like every other relationship in your life. I tell you what you need to do. You need to go out and buy yourself a barbecue grill.”

“A barbecue grill?”

“Yeah. Once you got a grill, you gotta have a party. You start having parties, you start making friends, you stop being such a hermit—”

“Hey,” I said, “I’ll have you know I spent the day with a very handsome man, and tonight he almost kissed me.”

“Almost?”

“I…I turned away.”

“Aha! And if this fellow was so handsome, why did you do that?”

I told Eli to mind his own business. He laughed and said that had never been his strong suit.

But once we hung up, I had to ask myself, why did I do that? I had told Kirby I simply wasn’t interested in dating anyone, which wasn’t entirely true. I didn’t object to the
idea
of dating.

But the reality of it scared me to death.

Twenty-Eight

After yet another night spent tossing and turning, I finally sat up at 3:00
A.M.
The room was silent and dark. Sal was asleep, curled against my side as usual, but I was wide awake, my head spinning, my stomach churning. I knew it was a combination of things, not the least of which was eating such a big, rich dinner. I took some Tylenol and some Tums, brushed my teeth, fluffed up my pillows, and laid back down.

Things weren’t progressing quickly enough on Shayna’s investigation, I decided, with too much of my time devoted to wild-goose chases. Still, something about that place out on the waterway pulled at me. I needed to return there, alone this time so I could concentrate and see if I could figure out what it was.

By 3:30 I had to admit I wasn’t going to fall back to sleep. I got out of bed, showered, and dressed in black jeans and a black shirt. As long as I was awake, I might as well make myself useful.

Driving at a more legal speed than Kirby had used, it took me about an hour and 15 minutes to get to my destination. I glanced at my watch as I got out of the car. It was nearly 5:30, at least an hour before the sun would come up. I locked up the car, but instead of clicking on the flashlight, I tucked it into my backpack and flipped on my black light. You never knew what it might illuminate in the dark.

Now that the terrain was familiar, it wasn’t hard to make my way across the field to the rocks where the capsule was hidden. Once there, I spent a lot of time with my light, shining it on different surfaces, looking for evidence of blood or sweat. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but it seemed as good a place as any
to start. Perhaps Eddie Ray had buried something out here. Perhaps this light would show me where or what it was.

It was no use. Everything was coming up shiny—a problem I attributed to the wildness of the area and to the abundance of animal urine and the like. Finally, I clicked off the light and sat down on the highest rock, peering out over the landscape.

I don’t know how long I sat there before I realized that this area wasn’t quite as deserted as I had originally thought. There were lights in the distance, obviously from a house out on one of the islands. That surprised me, because I was vaguely familiar with those islands, and I had been under the distinct impression that they were deserted.

After the sun began to creep close enough to the horizon that a ring of purple framed the edge of the sky, I took out my binoculars and trained them on the third island out, the one with lights on. As I watched, the lights were extinguished, and the place once again gave the appearance of being empty. I looked closer, trying to figure out if I could see what was there.

At first, all I could pick up were trees. But the more the sun came out, the more I thought I could make out a few things hidden there among the trees. A metal folding chair. Bits of trash on the ground. A discarded sneaker. Finally, I saw a man with straight black hair come out of the woods, set something down on the ground next to the chair, sit, light up a cigarette, and smoke.

Was there a park out there? Some sort of campground, maybe? I kept my eyes trained on the man, thinking that if it were a resort he definitely had to be an employee and not a guest. He was dressed poorly in a tattered jacket and darkly stained jeans. Perhaps he was an illegal squatter using the island as a temporary home.

The man finished his cigarette, stood, walked to the edge of the water, and flicked it in. Then he came back to the chair, folded it up against the tree, and bent over to retrieve what he had set down in the first place.

It was a gun, but not a hunter’s rifle. It was a
machine
gun, which he proceeded to sling over his shoulder. Then he disappeared once again into the trees.

A machine gun!

Lowering the binoculars to my lap, I thought back to what Shayna had said, that Eddie Ray had come home that night with nothing but the GPS unit, a flashlight, and a pair of binoculars.
Binoculars.
Maybe, like me, Eddie Ray had seen something suspicious out on that island—something he wasn’t meant to see. Sitting here on these rocks certainly provided the perfect vantage point.

I realized this could be another wild-goose chase. It was hunting season, after all, and not everyone used weapons that were perfectly legal. But something felt so creepy about what I had just observed that I thought it deserved at least a second look. Ignoring the goose bumps covering my arms, I gathered my supplies and walked as quickly as I could back to my car.

Twenty-Nine

I pulled up to the public boat launch at a few minutes before 11:00
A.M.,
nervous but ready to do a little exploratory paddling. I had gone home and changed from my all-black outfit into the “yuppie outdoorsman” coat my mother had given me for Christmas last year. I wore jeans with hiking boots, the red-plaid flannel coat, and a bright red wool cap. I looked like something straight out of an L.L. Bean catalog, which was exactly the idea I was going for. Knowing that an AK-47 might be trained on me from within the trees on that island, I also had a fishing rod, a picnic basket, and a tourist’s guide to the Chesapeake Bay area.
When all else fails,
I thought,
just try to look like an idiot.

Weighing in at 49 pounds, my V-bottomed ABS travel canoe was a good deal lighter than my regular canoe. It didn’t handle quite as well in rough water, which made it a bad choice for today, but it was the only one I had that was light enough for me to get on and off the cartop rack all by myself. Now, I portaged it down to the edge of the water, loaded it up, climbed in, and pushed off.

According to the chart I had studied at home, it was about a mile, over water, to the island in question. I would be coming at the island from a different direction than I had seen it from this morning, but I felt sure I would know it when I got there. In the meantime, I had to concentrate on every stroke. The canoe felt wobbly to me, probably because I hadn’t used it in a while. That, combined with the wind and the tide, made for some slightly scary conditions. A hundred feet out, I paused to strap on my life jacket. Better safe than sorry.

I continued paddling, making the right turn and then the left that would take me close to the island. When I rounded the final curve, I saw a pair of tundra swans floating ahead—graceful, beautiful, and startled by my appearance. They took off into the air and I watched them fly, hoping they wouldn’t go far. This was the first pair I’d seen this fall, a sure sign that winter was well on its way.

I slowed my paddling to what looked like a leisurely pace, just in case anyone on the island was watching. Then I let myself coast to a stop as I put away my paddle and got out my fishing rod.

The water was a little smoother here, I was glad to see, primarily because the islands formed a protective string of land between the main waterway and this inlet. In the distance I could see the rocks where Kirby’s dad’s capsule was hidden. I felt more and more certain that I was on the right track, that Eddie Ray had blundered his way into something here that had gotten him killed. I knew I had to be careful, or I could very well meet the same fate.

I fished for over an hour, catching one little trout for my trouble, which I gladly unhooked and threw back. The point
wasn’t the fish; it was to establish a presence out here on the water, the aura of an innocent fisherman.

Finally, just before I was about to make some sort of move that would bring me closer to the island, I picked up the faint whiff of cigarette smoke. A casual glance told me my machine-gun-toting friend was back. He was simply sitting in the chair, smoking and watching me.

Gathering my courage, I sat up straight, turned, and waved. He waved back. Clenching my teeth, I reeled in my line, set the pole down into the canoe, and picked up my paddle.