Flipped Out (26 page)

“Tony could have texted her while he sat in the car and waited. On the sly, so Nina wouldn’t notice. Or Nina could have done it after the murder to frame Melissa. In case the robbery story didn’t pan out.”

“That makes a certain amount of sense,” Derek admitted.

“Well, who else is there, after all? Fae was hanging out with Shannon. Ted and Wilson went to Portland together.”

“Adam,” Derek said.

“Why on earth would Adam kill Tony?”

“He was having a sordid affair with Nina and got jealous? Or he had seen Melissa and been overcome by passion?”

“I suppose that’s possible. Although it doesn’t seem like a good enough reason.”

“I was kidding, Tink,” Derek said. “Here’s the food. Can we talk about something else while we eat? Not that I’m queasy—I’ve seen a lot worse than Tony in my day—but murder just doesn’t make for nice dinner conversation.”

“Sure,” I said as Grant put my crab cakes and Derek’s burger and fries on the table. “What do you want to talk about?”

“How about the weather? That’s always safe.”

“If that’s what you’d like.” I lifted my fork. “It’s been nice the last few days, hasn’t it? Hopefully it’ll last for the rest of the week. If we run into rain tomorrow or Friday—especially tomorrow—we’ll be in trouble.”

Derek nodded and took a bite of his burger.

We spent the rest of the meal in idle chitchat and plans for the rest of the week. All in all, things at the house were not going too badly, even with being behind schedule. I wouldn’t have time to go hunt down a porch swing, but we figured out the details for how I could make my own, and Derek suggested I could take the old Adirondack chair in Aunt Inga’s garden shed and do something with that, as well. It needed paint, obviously, but if I cleaned it, and painted it—the same color or a complementary color to the door and/or swing—it would look great sitting on the porch.

“Ooooh!” I said, excited, “I know what I can do! I saw this in a magazine once—”

“The same magazine where Kate saw the porch swing?”

“I have no idea. But . . .” I stopped and squinted at him. “Are you making fun of me?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Derek said, but not without a twinkle in his eyes. “Your projects always end up looking great, even if they sound crazy at the outset. If anyone can make a porch swing made from an old door look good, you can. So tell me about the chair.”

“I saw this in a magazine. It was an Adirondack chair—new and unfinished, but I don’t think that matters—that someone had drilled holes in and then painted yellow. It looked great. Like—”

“Cheese,” Derek said. “You want to make the chair look like it’s made of Swiss cheese and put it on the front porch.”

“I can, can’t I?”

“Like I said, you can make anything look good. So go ahead. I trust you.”

I smiled. I love my boyfriend.

We ended up sharing a whoopie pie for dessert—whipped vanilla cream between two soft chocolate cakes; a Maine delicacy and a favorite of mine—and then we headed outside and home. Josh’s car was already gone, I noticed. Maybe he was taking Fae for another drive up the coast to “talk” more.

It was a lovely summer evening, nice and cool now that the sun had set, and with just a faint sparkle of stars up above. The horizon was still light, orange just fading to peach and then purple where the sun had set. The entire Atlantic Ocean was spread out to our left as Derek maneuvered the truck down the ocean road toward Waterfield. A few of the islands had summer homes on them, so lights blinked here and there, and there were also a few pleasure boats floating across the water, some of them with strings of colored Christmas lights festooning their masts, like strands of brightly colored beads moving through the darkness.

When I was five and visited Waterfield for the first time, my mother had warned me about the cliffs. Here and there along the coast, there are tall cliffs that go pretty much straight down into the ocean. A few old houses sit on them, and I knew from experience that at least one of them—Cliff House, sitting empty now while the Historical Society prepared to open it as a part-time museum—had smuggling tunnels and secret storage rooms carved into the rock underneath.

Anyway, I’ve always had a healthy respect for the cliffs, instilled in me at an early age. When I drive myself along the ocean road, I drive slow. Derek doesn’t, but he’s driven these roads his whole life, so I wasn’t worried. I leaned back, my head against the seat, my eyes half closed as I watched the scenery fly by.

And then I scared Derek into practically running off the road when I shot up straight and shrieked, “Stop the car!”

“What!” For a few seconds we fishtailed, before he got the car under control and slid to a stop at the side of the road. “God dammit, Avery, don’t do that! Did you forget your purse at the restaurant?”

I shook my head. “Go back.”

“Back where?”

“Back up the road. I thought I saw something. Back up. Slowly.”

Derek arched his brows, but he did it. Put the truck into reverse and moved carefully back the way we came, his arm slung over the seat and his eyes out the back window. I, meanwhile, was staring out the window on his side, scanning the shoulder of the road. Until . . .

“Stop. Stop! You see it? There.” I pointed.

Derek breathed a very bad word before he jumped out of the truck and ran toward the cliff, between the two tire tracks leading directly off the edge.

17

By some miracle, or maybe just Josh’s ability to maneuver the runaway car down the curving ocean road until he got to this spot, the car hadn’t flown off into nothingness, Thelma and Louise style, before plunging like a rock toward the ocean below. Instead, there was a somewhat less than gentle grade that ended in a few jagged stones down at the water’s edge. Still, it could have been so much worse. The small Honda must have picked up quite a lot of speed on the way down, but even so, Josh had managed to keep control of it for long enough to avoid hitting the big rocks and to aim for a spot where he could shoot straight into the water. They hadn’t crashed into anything. And because the water wasn’t that deep right here, the car hadn’t sunk. Not yet, anyway. When we hurtled over the edge of the road and started sliding down the steep grade, we could see that Josh had made it around the car and was trying to open the passenger-side door. After a moment of wrestling, he wrenched the door open and leaned in.

“Seat belt,” Derek said breathlessly. I tried to nod, but it was hard to do, what with running flat out down an unstable forty-five degree hill and trying not to topple. And in platform shoes, too. Derek was hauling me along, and I was slowing him down. I twisted my hand out of his.

“Go. Help him. I’m gonna call nine-one-one.”

Derek dropped my hand and picked up speed, slipping and sliding in the dirt, sending small avalanches of pebbles and sand down with him. I turned and started crawling back up in the other direction, literally on my hands and knees, trying to catch my breath before I got to the car and the phone in my purse.

As soon as I had connected with 911 and told them where to find us—“On the ocean road a few miles outside of town; look for the black truck with its hazard lights on!”—I slipped out of my shoes and headed back down to the water again. A lot faster this time.

By the time I got there, the Honda had slipped farther into the water to where it was almost submerged, but Josh and Derek had gotten the unconscious Fae out of the car and had laid her on the dirt at the water’s edge. I plopped down on my knees next to her, breathless. “How is she?”

And then . . . “That’s not Fae.”

For a moment the world spun dizzily, and if I hadn’t already been sitting down, I think I would have been reeling. Bad enough while I thought it was Fae lying there, unconscious and bleeding. Worse when I realized it was Shannon.

Josh shook his head. He was sitting a few feet away, shivering, his arms around his knees and his glasses missing but his myopic eyes glued to the still form next to me. I tossed him one of the blankets I’d grabbed from the truck. Derek keeps an emergency stash behind the seat: flashlight, a couple of blankets, a small spade, and a bag of kitty litter. Here in Maine, you mostly expect to need those things in the winter, but there was no denying the supplies came in handy right now.

“It was Shannon you were with at the Waymouth Tavern?”

“Obviously,” Josh managed, pulling the blanket around himself. I turned to Derek.

“How is she?”

“Knocked out. She’ll probably turn out to have a concussion. And the seat belt bruised her some. But she’ll be all right. I don’t think there are any internal injuries.”

He didn’t look up at me as he said any of it, just concentrated on taking care of Shannon. She had a bleeding gash on her forehead that looked like it might need stitches. Josh had a few scratches on his face, too, I noticed, one of them rather close to his eye. It was bleeding, but not profusely.

“What about you?” I wanted to know.

Josh didn’t look away from Shannon to answer me. “Glasses broke. Seat belt hurt me some. I twisted my ankle on something in the water. Don’t think anything’s broken, though.”

“I called nine-one-one. They’re on their way. So is your dad.”

Josh nodded.

“So . . . um . . . what happened?”

“No idea,” Josh said. “The car was fine when we drove out here earlier. And I didn’t notice anything wrong when we left the restaurant. It wasn’t until we hit the hills that the brakes didn’t work. By then there was nothing I could do.”

Been there, done that. “Did you try the brakes at all between the Tavern and here?”

Josh shook his head. “Can’t be sure. I think I would have slowed down to get on the road, but maybe not. You go pretty slow in the parking lot anyway, and if I saw that there weren’t any cars coming . . .”

He thought for a second, and then added, “And I did. I remember looking and there was nobody coming in either direction, so I’m not sure I put my foot on the brake then. And there’s no real need to brake between the Tavern and here. Not until you get to the downhills . . .”

And by then it would be too late. “When was the last time you had the car serviced?”

“Two or three months ago,” Josh said. “In the spring. My dad’s pretty rabid about safety. And Kate knows I drive Shannon a lot.”

Unlikely the brake lines would have unraveled on their own, then. Or whatever brake lines do. And, I realized, it said rather a lot about what my life had become over the past year that I should immediately jump to a conclusion of foul play rather than natural or mechanical failure.

The chain of events was suggestive: Stuart’s accident, Tony’s murder, and now another accident that might very well have become fatal, too, had Josh not known the road well enough to steer the car to the only place along the coast where he wouldn’t plunge the pair of them directly into twenty-plus feet of water.

In the distance, I could hear sirens approaching, and then we could see the flashing lights of the ambulance moving up the ocean road toward us. A pair of headlights followed close behind, probably Wayne and Kate. Both cars screeched to a halt on top of the cliffs, and a few seconds later, powerful flashlight beams started playing over the hillside. They focused on our little group, and then several dark forms started down, causing scree to rain down on us.

A few minutes later, the situation was under control. The paramedics had lifted Josh—who couldn’t walk on his twisted ankle—and Shannon—who was still unconscious—up the steep hill to the road. Derek had provided the same service for me, since I’d come down here barefoot the second time, and the soles of my feet had taken a beating. Kate had visibly paled when she saw her only daughter, while Wayne had been rigidly professional, his lips and jaw tight and his eyes hooded and angry. Law enforcement personnel tend to take it very personally when someone targets their families, and that seemed to be the case this time.

He asked Josh the same questions I’d asked, and Josh gave the same answers. Wayne went on to ask Josh whether he’d noticed anyone in the parking lot when he came out of the restaurant earlier, and Josh said no. He also hadn’t seen anyone he knew inside, and had never noticed Derek and me. He’d been too preoccupied with Shannon to notice anything or anyone else. He didn’t say that, but it was definitely the impression I got.

“What about you two?” Wayne turned to us, standing at the edge of the road while the paramedics were busy getting Shannon situated in the back of the ambulance and while Josh sat in the open door waiting his turn.

“I didn’t notice anyone.”

Derek shook his head.

“We did ask the staff about Nina and Tony,” I added.

“Anything?” Wayne asked.

“Not much. The waiter said they seemed to get along reasonably well. They weren’t arguing but their conversation seemed ‘intense.’ He only caught a few words. Someone never meant for something to happen, and the name Rory. Or maybe Corey or Laurie.”