Unhinged (26 page)

“Fran,” I said. “She implied she’d had a rendezvous with Roy since he got back from Portland. Today, maybe. It’s how she knew we’d asked him questions.”

“And Fran’s clever,” Ellie said thoughtfully.

“Yes. She’s had to be, to survive.”

The question was, how clever? As if in answer, a detailed picture of a motel-room dresser top rose in my mind. Loose change from the pockets; wallet, cell phone, too, probably. And . . .

And a ring of keys.

Back at my house, all was peaceful except for the racket
of the men beavering away at the cellar project. But I regard noises made by other people working on my house as music, so that didn’t bother me.

“I’ll be back,” Ellie said. She wanted to find out where Wyatt Evert had gotten to after his poke at Tim, maybe try to float some story whereby Wyatt would agree to talk to us. I had a date with Wade that I didn’t want to break, so I let her go.

At the door she peered at me. “You sure you’re all right?”

“Fine,” I said firmly. The bruise on my face had faded to an exotic greeny-lavender color, and my shoulder only clicked a little bit when I moved it. The swimmy feeling in my head was a constant, mildly annoying backdrop, but it wasn’t getting worse. When she’d gone I took ibuprofen instead of the aspirin I would otherwise have chosen; if the wooziness I felt meant my brain was getting ready to hemorrhage, I didn’t want to encourage it.

Then I returned to the hall, where the old floor lay sanded to the bare wood. I’d run the vacuum over it since otherwise the dust would’ve smothered us all; now I ran it again.

Or rather, I started running it, using the soft dust-brush attachment to clean carefully in the spaces between the flooring pieces and in the corners formed by the baseboard trim. Halfway through, though, I realized: the machine’s roar obliterated other sounds, such as for instance the back door opening.

The thought made my heart lurch. Switching off the machine I stood there with my head pounding and my ears ringing, feeling the presence of someone standing in the hall behind me.

Slowly, I turned to face . . .

No one. No one at all. Cat Dancing sat watching me with a smirky look on her furry features. “Scat,” I told her and she got up disdainfully and stalked away, uttering some feline oath.

And then, unable to help myself, I went around locking doors and windows again; Wade showed up before our appointed time and caught me latching the door from the ell to the yard. He raised his eyebrows, followed me inside, and closed the door behind us.

“Feeling a little vulnerable, are we?” he commented.

“Yep,” I replied shortly. “Not like before, but . . .”

After some thought, earlier that morning I’d waited until I saw Mr. Ash through the kitchen window in the yard with the dog. Then I’d put the Bisley into a secret hiding place in the kitchen mantel; not even Sam knew the sliding door was there, installed when the house was built 200 years ago.

Carrying the gun made me feel even more anxious and paranoid, as if it were a magnet for trouble instead of a tool to fend it off. I would carry a weapon, I’d decided, when I was alone in the house. The rest of the time I could get to it in a heartbeat if need be.

“I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop,” I went on. “You know that feeling?” I handed Wade a tack cloth. “Anyway, thanks for helping me with this.” We knelt side by side, began wiping.

The first pass of my cloth brought up a thick coat of dust from the vacuumed surface. A paintbrush loaded with polyurethane would bring up even more, then deposit it again in hard, finish-coated beads to give the floor a cobbled appearance.

“Wilma Bounce didn’t pan out?” Wade said. “Or Fran?”

“I don’t know yet about Fran,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure about Wilma.”

I turned the tack cloth over; the first side was already clogged with wood dust. “That she didn’t, I mean. I suppose if you wanted to, you
could
still make the case against her.”

We moved forward in tandem, me wiping the left side of the floor and Wade the right. “But now it turns out her cat wouldn’t have wandered as far as Harriet’s house, and Wilma knew it.”

I summed up my visit with Ellie to Wilma’s and our chat with Fran Hanson. “She’s not quite the unredeemed character I thought, either. Wilma, that is.”

I added the kid-care details. Wade wadded the tack cloth and pushed it under the old cast-iron radiator.

“How about a case against Wyatt? Or Wyatt and Fran together?” he suggested, dragging out heaps of dust the vacuum hadn’t been able to reach.

“I guess it’s possible. But that would be awfully detailed, too, wouldn’t it? Making it work right so they didn’t get caught at any of it,
and
making sure it stayed linked to Harry Markle.”

“Complicated things do happen sometimes,” he pointed out.

“Sure. It would also hinge on the tourist’s having found out about Wyatt’s racket, though, and threatening to expose it, which I have no way to confirm, either. And after that . . .”

After that a whole string of things would have had to line up; improbable things like Wyatt happening to see Harriet’s newspaper and pay attention to it while he was upset about something else.

“Ellie and I still plan to talk to Wyatt. But I don’t have high hopes. As for Fran, that theory’s got other problems.”

Such as how could she be
sure
she would get my key back to Roy before he noticed it was missing? “I hope she’s
not
involved. Just being hooked up with Wyatt, that girl’s in way over her head.” A sigh escaped me. “Maybe Harry Markle’s got the right idea after all, and it
is
all about him. Now,
that
would be simple.”

Like puppets on the same pair of strings Wade and I turned, opened new cloths, and started back. “Harry’s still working on that?” Wade asked.

“Uh-huh. I guess. But he hasn’t said much about it and I’ve got to believe that means he’s not getting anywhere, either, any more than we are.”

“Paint after this?” Polyurethane, he meant.

I nodded, sighing again. “Wade, I’m starting to think the only way anyone will get to the bottom of this is if some culprit walks up and
confesses
to killing Harriet. And to the rest of it, too.”

Meanwhile when you already have a headache the best thing to do is open a can of polyurethane floor finish. That way, at least you’ve got an excuse. “Is it hot in here?”

I pulled off my sweater and hung it on the radiator. Wade reached out and laid a hand across my forehead.

“No. But you look sort of pale. Maybe you should let me put the first coat on.”

I’d already opened the can of poly and was stirring it with a paint stick. The sludge at the bottom was fudgey-thick, and you can’t have it shaken at the paint store; it puts bubbles in it.

“Uh-uh. The first coat dries too fast, so you won’t be able to keep a wet edge if you’re working by yourself. Gad, it stinks.” The fumes rose up medicinally.

Wade went to open the door, feeling that the last thing I needed was chemical brain damage, and in fact when you are finishing a floor it’s a good idea to do it outside. But like so many aspects of do-it-yourself home repair, this is impossible.

Finally the polyurethane was stirred. Also we’d taken the brushes outdoors and gotten the loose bristles out of them (me taking breaths of fresh air, trying not to let on how nauseated I felt) which meant there were only about a zillion loose bristles still left in the brushes.

And we’d locked Monday and Cat Dancing in Wade’s shop where Monday could sleep and Cat could amuse herself by, I imagined, learning to load, aim, and fire a variety of deadly weapons. At last we knelt at the end of the hall, the polyurethane can open between us and brushes in hand, like runners on their marks.

“Ready?” Wade asked. Finishing a floor is a sprint; it takes only a few minutes but while you’re doing it, you can’t stop.

“Ready,” I replied. I loaded my brush with the watery stuff and applied it to the raw wood in long, even strokes as Wade did likewise. The dull, pinkish-white surface glistened and came alive; the old wood glowed richly, pale radiant gold.

Which naturally was when urgent knocks sounded first on our front door, and then on the back. Both phone lines began ringing and a
ping
! came from Sam’s computer, signaling e-mail.

Also, Mr. Ash chose that moment to climb the cellar steps. “Ahem,” he said, or something ominously like it. “We have a small emergency in the cellar.”

“Oh,” I said clearly, watching the light-shards sparkle in the scimitar-shaped panes of the fanlight over the front door. I was thinking how
interesting
they were, really
interesting
.

And then I passed out.

“I’m fine. Utterly
fine. I’ll shoot anybody who tries saying otherwise.”

Focusing on Ellie, I attempted a grin, meanwhile realizing that for a moment I’d forgotten I didn’t still have the Bisley bulking in my sweater pocket. Or the sweater, either.

Not a good sign. The
yes
or
no
question is the crucial one about gun possession, I feel, including any that are in my own possession. But never mind; they thought I’d meant it as a joke.

Now my head was clearing except for the odd noise I kept hearing. “I was only out a few seconds. You’d think I’d been in a coma for a month, for heaven’s sake.”

Wade frowned down at me. “You’re sure it was just the smell of the polyurethane?”

“Of course it was.” I looked away. “What about the hall?” I’d forgotten that, too. And I felt dizzy; fumes, I decided.

“Mr. Ash and one of his guys are finishing it,” Wade replied as he ran me a glass of water. “Here, drink this.”

I gulped it, heedless of the chlorine flavor, eager to do whatever he asked so as not to be sent to the clinic. Our recent run of medical emergencies had impressed Wade with the idea that Victor’s professional skill made up for his many personal sins.

But the only time I wanted care from Victor was if I needed actual neurosurgery. Otherwise I’d prefer some wild-eyed quack who spoke in tongues and handled live rattlesnakes on Friday night.

“I found Wyatt,” Ellie told me. “Or I think I have. Talked to Fran, again, and she told me where he said he was going. Jake, you look ghastly.”

“Oh, thanks.” All that knocking I’d heard had been Ellie at the back door and Mr. Ash at the front; he’d finally gone around and entered from the yard, through the open Bilco door, and come up through the cellar.

“What emergency?” I asked him now. We’d deal with Wyatt Evert later.

Mr. Ash cleared his throat, readying himself to deliver bad news. “Old water main was behind a foundation stone. One of the fellows, he smacked that stone with a big hammer.”

Suddenly I identified the sound I kept hearing: roaring, but not in my ears. “An
empty
old water main,” I said hopefully.

“’Fraid not,” Mr. Ash said. Now came another sound: trucks. Big ones, the kind the city sends when a water main gets broken. A backhoe rumbled off a flatbed, thunderingly. Through the screen door I glimpsed its toothed yellow blade, ready to bite.

“You deal with that,” Ellie told Wade decisively, gesturing toward the backhoe, “while we go up to the Calais emergency room and have Victor check on Jake. Just to be on the safe side,” she added, looking meaningfully at me, and I agreed at once.

For one thing, if I didn’t, Wade was going to haul me there kicking and screaming. “I’ll be fine,” I assured him.

And for another, Victor wasn’t in Calais, today. He had a regular schedule and this afternoon it put him at the Eastport clinic, no need for a car trip.

And Ellie knew it.

Five minutes later
we were headed out of town. “So you know where Wyatt is right now?”

“I do, indeed,” Ellie said. “If he went where Fran Hanson said.” We passed Bay City Mobil where the fellows had Joey Robley’s old Dodge on the lift, peering into it; Joey had 200,000 miles on the car and said he would drive it into the ground, after which he intended to go there, too. And Joey was ninety-six so the Bay City fellows took him seriously on this.

Ellie pushed the accelerator. It was low tide, and on either side of the causeway acres of clam flats lay sparklingly exposed. Moments later we were on Route 1 heading north through the woods, Ellie as usual passing any car that didn’t match her exotic speed.

“Well,” I demanded, “are you going to tell me?”

“Wyatt’s up at the Moosehorn. He spotted us talking to Fran and had a fit about it, she said, and he knows she told us about the ledger. He
said
he was going up to collect some things he’d left at the ranger station.”

She ripped past a lumbering dump truck; my heart only stuttered a little. “But he could be at the marsh double-checking, to be sure there’s no evidence to tie him to the boots incident,” she added. “And then he would skedaddle.”

Suddenly, talking to Wyatt felt urgent again. “And if he leaves, experienced scam artist that he is, we’d never—oh god—find him again.”

She swerved back into the right-hand lane a good millisecond before a highballing log truck barreled by on our left. “That’s what I thought. So I hope you’re telling me at least a little of the truth about your fainting episode back there.”

That I’d passed out on account of the fumes, she meant. “I
think
I am. But Ellie, I can see a doctor later if need be. Right now—”

She turned to me. “You promise to go to the hospital right afterward and get looked at. We told Wade we would, so . . .”

“Ellie!” Doom roared at us in the shape of a driver whose notion of proper passing space was even smaller than Ellie’s.

She yanked the wheel and put both right tires suddenly into the shoulder, soft sand inches lower than the pavement. The car did a buck-and-wing, fishtailing slipperily out of danger before Ellie jounced us expertly into the travel lane again.

“. . . we’re going,” she finished, unfazed.

Just at the moment I’d have agreed to go to Borneo if only I didn’t have to go there on this death trap of a road.