Nail Biter (19 page)

All pure improvisation; between paying Luanne
and
Joey Rickert, I was draining a lot of twenties from my cash stash. It would be worth it, though, if it got Mac Rickert into a position where someone could drop a net over him.

Because maybe he had Wanda. But at my words Joey's whiskery face creased with the same animal cunning that a rat's does, after it smells cheese.

“What about Dibble?” he demanded.

“If Mac shot him, he's on his own about that. But at least he won't also be on the run from whoever fronted them the pills in the first place. All I want . . .”

I pulled the barrette from my pocket, waved it at him. “All I want is the girl.”

My working theory now being that Mac shot Dibble, Wanda witnessed the murder, and Rickert saw her witnessing it. And he couldn't have that, so later he came back and took her, using the storm for cover. Kept her here on Joey's boat, maybe, till the weather cleared.

In which theory there were many holes, such as how did Mac know Wanda hadn't
already
revealed what she'd seen? And—since in fact she hadn't—
why
hadn't she?

Furthermore I'd never seen Wanda actually wearing the hair clip, just one sort of like it, but it bolstered my suspicion that she—or some other young girl, and how likely was
that?
—had been aboard the
GhOulIE gUrl
recently.

Joey got up off the floor. “You're crazy. I got girls here all the time, one must've dropped that hair thing.”

Yes, I was sure the young ladies were lining up to be his guests on this floating garbage pail. Also, as he got to his feet Joey was thinking so hard, his eyes were practically crossed; he didn't like it that I'd found the barrette, and why would that be?

“Joey, I'm sorry about what I did just now. I lost my temper. And from all I know, Mac's not even a bad guy.”

Well, except for the part about the hole in Dibble's head.

“Probably he doesn't even
want
the girl,” I said.

Or anyway I sure hoped that he didn't. Hetty Bonham's idea that maybe Dibble's partner in the drug deal was a child molester still weighed heavily on me, too.

But it wasn't a notion I was about to float for Mac's brother. That
would
probably get me tossed overboard.

No, let's just keep it a clean, cash-on-the-barrelhead swap. “So I'll trade. The girl for whatever he owes on the drugs.”

Which was when Joey Rickert dropped the mild-mannered scum-bucket act and
sprang
at me. “Yeah?” His hot, sour breath gusted into my face. “What if I've got a better idea?”

For a boozy little lowlife he was surprisingly strong, and he hadn't forgiven me for kicking him off that stool. His hand fastened around mine, pried my fingers open as he slammed me hard backwards into the bulkhead.

My head smacked a locker and it fell open, showering canned goods down onto my skull, as his grimy fingers closed around the barrette. Then he shoved me toward the hatchway.

“G'wan, get outta here! You don't know nothin' an' you ain't got nothin,' so why'ntcha just get lost, huh? I don't need your aggravation and my brother don't need it, neither. Ya got that?”

I stumbled out into the fresh air and daylight still holding the other twenty-dollar bill, until a hand stretched past me and plucked it away.

I turned, indignant. His face confronted me defiantly.

“Price of admission,” he snarled. “You come back here, I'll take it outta your hide.”

To which there was really not much that I could say. My head felt as if someone had been dropping canned goods onto it and I was pretty sure my thumb had been sprained.

I did manage a parting shot, though. “Tell Mac I was here,” I said once I'd gotten safely back up onto the dock. “Maybe he's got more brains than you. Like I said, I'm willing to give him the money he needs in return for the girl, unharmed. No cops, no questions.”

Joey snorted derisively, forty bucks ahead and with his sad, hungover notion of pride intact.

“Sure,” he sniggered, bouncing unsteadily on the balls of his feet like some punch-drunk prizefighter, goofy with triumph. “How 'bout instead I tell him an' everyone else you paid me forty just to let you come down here with me?” he taunted.

Yeah, how about that?
I thought tiredly. Not many people in Eastport would be willing to believe it; Joey was just too awful.

Still, there were some. And on top of the story about drugs in the Quoddy Village house—not to mention a dead body—as grist for the gossip mill I'd just raised my own standing another couple of notches.

“Tell him, Joey,” I urged, turning away.

But as I made my bruised, unsteady way back up the gangway I had little hope that he would.

“Because I was
stupid, that's why,” I told Wade soon after I got home.

He frowned down at my cut forehead, gently dabbed some more antiseptic onto it as Monday watched alertly, whining a little; Prill the Doberman, that supposedly ferocious breed, had already left the room and hustled downstairs, unable to stand the sight.

“Ouch!” I winced, tears springing to my eyes. But they were more from embarrassment than pain.

I'd managed to slink past Bella Diamond and my father in the kitchen, then crept upstairs to the bathroom to try cleaning up the mess Joey Rickert had made of me. But Wade had been in the bedroom getting a clean shirt, and when he saw me the jig was up.

“I should never have gone there alone, and I shouldn't have antagonized him, should've known a jerk like him can't stand—”

“—a woman getting over on him,” Wade said soothingly, his fingers kind as he applied a square of gauze and adhesive tape.

I examined his face in the bathroom mirror. “You don't sound very angry,” I ventured.

At me, I meant. Because it had been dumb. Joey could've had a knife and the bottled-up rage to use it.

Without warning a sob rose into my throat; I forced it back. “Wade, what if Mac Rickert's really got that girl somewhere right now and he's just gearing himself up to . . .”

“Hey, hey,” Wade murmured, trying to comfort me.

But it was no good. All the fears Wanda Cathcart's situation had reawakened in me were boiling to the surface.

Including the ones I wouldn't reveal. In particular Hetty Bonham's words kept haunting me, triggering old memories.
They find other creeps like themselves . . . his consolation prize . . .

Wade hugged me hard, then pushed me away from him, seizing my shoulders so he could look into my eyes.

“Jake,” he said helplessly.

He didn't know what was wrong or how to fix it and that was terrible for him. I could see it in his face.

Because he was always on my side, no matter what. “Jake, if you wanted me to, I'd go down and smack the living daylights out of Joey. In fact I've got half a mind to do it anyway,” he said.

Monday shoved herself between us consolingly as I dragged in a wet sniffle, trying to get control of myself. Going to pieces never helped anything.

Never had. “No, I don't want you to get your hands dirty. I'm not really hurt. And anyway, I started it. He could have me arrested for assaulting him, for heaven's sake. I just feel like an idiot, that's all.”

He kissed the top of my head. “Yeah, well. I know how it is when your subconscious gets hold of a problem.”

I felt myself go still in his arms. “Missing kid, right away you think of Sam, how he used to disappear for days at a time in the city. Makes you feel the same way as then, I guess,” Wade said.

“You're right,” I agreed. “That must've been it.”

I should have told him the truth right then, of course. But it is a character flaw of mine that I'd rather be burned alive than pitied, especially by someone I care about.

Wade didn't seem to notice anything amiss. “Just don't put yourself in that position anymore,” he added.

I couldn't believe he was taking this so well. “Okay. And the head feels much better, thank you.”

He let go of me. “Smacking Joey wouldn't make him more talkative, anyhow. He's as loyal as a terrier to his big brother Mac, always has been.”

Of course Wade knew Mac; Joey, too. Like Ellie and George, Wade had lived here in Eastport all his life.

“Not that Joey's loyalty is worth much, but there's always the chance he will tell Mac what you said,” Wade continued as we went downstairs together.

In the kitchen Bella ignored us, zipping busily from stove to refrigerator and out into the dining room. Peering in there, I saw the table set with the good china and silver, and the last of the autumn snapdragons from the garden arranged in a centerpiece.

Fresh birch logs lay on the hearth, too, and new candles set into the chandelier promised the kind of light that always makes everyone lovely.

“Oh,” I said, my aching head momentarily forgotten.

“Yeah, huh?” said Wade, catching Bella's eye appreciatively as she hurried on to some fresh task.

“So anyway, don't give up yet on maybe Joey helping you out on this thing,” he said when she had gone.

Bella bustled back in, stopped in front of me, and wordlessly put a big glass of seltzer and ice with a slice of lime into my hand. She really was a very good housekeeper.

“
But,
” Wade added when she'd gone, “from what you're telling me, you don't
know
the barrette belonged to Wanda and you
also
don't know that Dibble and Rickert
were
partners in drugs or any other scheme, either. Something else could be going on.”

Something, his tone implied, that didn't necessarily merit my going off the deep end.

It was what Ellie had tactfully implied the night before, too; that maybe I was getting too preoccupied by all this. And that she didn't understand why, which she liked even less.

Wade took my glass and had a sip from it, then handed it back to me.

“Something else entirely,” he said.

There were still
a couple of hours left before our guests arrived, so when I'd finished my seltzer I went out to bash at the porch some more. Every jolt of the hammer sent a throbbing surge of pain through my head, but I needed to hit something.

And the porch didn't hit back, unlike some other obstacles I'd hurled myself at lately, though even with my dad's new method it still resisted very stubbornly my ongoing efforts to dismantle it. Hauling on yet another of the old boards, I reflected how shaky a structure could seem until you tried knocking it down.

Or how solid, until you stepped in the wrong place and your foot went right through.

Like me
. I swung the hammer viciously in full view of the street, not caring who saw me making a fool of myself. And as it turned out, that was just what the job needed; soon only the side supports remained, so soft they broke off when I pulled on them.

Then they were gone, too. I was muscling the last one up over the side of the half-filled Dumpster when Ellie came out with an aluminum lawn chair in one hand and the baby in her other arm.

“Hi,” she said, and sat down on the chair with the baby in her lap.

The baby wore a red long-sleeved tee, a navy jumper with an American flag embroidered on the bodice, and tiny little sneakers in blue denim over red socks with red-white-and-blue cuff trim.

“Hi, yourself,” I replied, wiping hastily at my face with my sleeve.

Ellie gave no sign of having seen that I'd been weeping as I worked. But after a minute she pulled some tissues from her smock pocket and held them out to me.

“Blow,” she commanded.

I obeyed. “Thanks.”

She didn't ask what was the matter, either; Ellie rarely did. As a result people told her things they'd never dreamed of telling.

But not this time. She just sat silently again as I finished cleaning up the remnants of porch.

There wasn't much left; a few wood scraps, some brick chips from an earlier time when the porch had apparently been held up by masonry, and a heap of newly exposed leaf mold, thick and darkly ancient.

“Okay,” I said finally, dusting my hands together. But just then the baby laughed, waved her arms around, and began wiggling as if trying to escape.

“Leonora,” Ellie admonished the infant smilingly, “what are you going on about?”

Which was when I too spied the tiny yellow gleam that had attracted the baby's attention, shining from between the layers of leaf mold. I picked it up as Ellie came over to peer at it with me.

“Wah!” Leonora said, reaching out. It was an old gold coin, just one edge of it eye-catchingly bright. Rubbing grime from it, I exposed the number 1823.

The year the house was built. “Oh my gosh,” Ellie breathed when I showed it to her. “That's weird.”

“Yeah. Someone dropped it here. Or put it here.”

A long time ago. “What's that?” Ellie pointed at the coin's back. The front showed a man's head: George IV, probably, the king of England at the time.

“I'm not sure. A man and a sea monster?”

Then the answer popped into my head; I'd had a client once who collected old coins. “Saint George and the dragon,” I said.

Across the lawn, late-afternoon sunlight caught in droplets from the storm still clinging to the grass blades, creating tiny mirrors. Ellie hoisted the baby over onto her other hip.

“How'd it get here?” she wondered. “Maybe a worker dropped it or something when they were building the house?”

“I don't know,” I said doubtfully. “This was a lot of money back then.”

The coin-collecting client had known a lot, and even then I'd had what's called in the money business a head for the stuff. So facts about cash stuck with me.

“Maybe about ten dollars,” I said. “And that was at a time when a good dinner cost about a nickel, a night in an inn maybe a dime. Two thousand or so in today's money.”

“Wow. That's a lot to lose.” The baby put her head back and yodeled cheerfully, singing to the sky.

“If it was lost. If it wasn't put there on purpose,” I said. “Sometimes the old builders did that sometimes, left something of value inside a wall or under a floor. Like a kind of good-luck charm for the house.”