Home Repair Is Homicide - Crawlspace Part 28

I'm going to kill you!

"So then I wasn't the only one? Other people had-"

"Complained," said Bella, closing her eyes. Just resting them, of course. "Yes. Your father was here when it happened; he told me all about it," she finished, yawning hugely.

Jake thought about that, and probably would have said something more about it, too.

But Bella had fallen asleep.

CHAPTER 12.

A WEEK LATER, CHIP HAHN AND CAROLYN RATHBONE GOT out of Eastport at last. Or at least, that was the way they thought of it. Carolyn was driving.

"That's what they mean about guys like him getting more grandiose as they get sicker," she said, meaning Randy Dodd.

After five days in the hospital, the doctors had asked Chip if he wouldn't mind sticking around town for yet another day, for a final neurology checkup.

Considering the importance of the equipment that they wanted one more look at, he'd complied. He'd hit his head pretty hard somewhere along the way.

But now they'd p.r.o.nounced him fine. Or as fine as he ever was, he thought ruefully.

"Thinking they can do anything they want and get away with it," she said. "And that they're allowed to."

She glanced at Chip. "He was saving me, you know. To kill me later. Like, to have for a treat."

Randy's body had been found in the flooded cellar of his brother's drinking establishment, the Artful Dodger. His DNA was being matched with evidence gathered from the remains of women down South.

"Yes," Chip said. "I know. I mean, I'd figured it out, that he was keeping you around for a reason."

He let his gaze stray over to her again, enjoying the luxury of being able to look at her at all. She'd had her hair cut in the little salon across the street from the Eastport breakwater, and she wasn't wearing any makeup.

With a lot of little black curls clinging tightly to her head and her blue eyes washed clean, she looked wonderful to him.

Alive, he thought. Just ... what a pleasure it was.

"So, who do you think really did it?" she asked. "Killed the Lang sisters, Roger's and Randy's wives?"

The causeway off the island was a curving concrete band, the water and sky spreading blue on either side of it. But even the beauty of downeast Maine had a horror-show quality to it now, as if any minute something bad could still fly out at them from it.

He thought it might take a lot of miles to lose that gun-shy feeling. "That's obvious," he said as they drove off the causeway onto the mainland.

"To me, anyway," he added. "First Randy Dodd killed his wife, Cordelia. He had to get the ball rolling."

Once she'd been checked over and p.r.o.nounced okay herself, Carolyn had stayed with Chip day and night all the time he was in the hospital. He'd thought at first she just felt obligated to, but then he'd remembered that Carolyn believed obligation flowed only one way.

And it wasn't outward. "But Roger killed his wife, Anne," he told her.

"Why so sure?" Carolyn asked as they slowed for the speed limit in Pleasant Point, then accelerated west toward Route 1. At the intersection, she waited for a highballing log truck to go past, then turned left.

By that time Chip had his answer ready. "If you and I were in a murder conspiracy, would you let me push you into doing all the dirty work so I could testify against you later if I had to?"

She shook her head. The black curls bounced prettily. Chip thought again about her staying with him day and night.

He'd been glad for the company. "Nope," she said. "I'd make you do some of the bad stuff, too. So we'd be equally guilty."

Around them now on either side of the road were only trees; they continued speeding south. "And there's another thing. Those fingernails," he said, still thinking about it.

"What about them?" Carolyn pulled out around a slow-moving pickup truck with a load of lobster traps piled in the bed, sped past it, and tucked the Volvo back into the right lane again.

She was a good driver; a little fast but accurate and very efficient. Chip relaxed in the pa.s.senger seat.

"Randy had to remove them somehow. His own fingernails. Can you imagine how painful that would be? But they had to be found stuck in his trapline so it would look as if he drowned trying to get free. Now, how do you suppose he did that?"

She made a face. "Knowing him, I'd say he just yanked them out with a pair of pliers. But no one could, so ..."

"Right. He'd have needed help. Local anesthetic would be the best. Injected. And Roger Dodd used to be a paramedic."

She looked over appreciatively. "So he could have stolen the painkillers Randy would need. But only if he already knew ..."

Chip nodded. "That he needed them. Which meant he'd have had to be on board with Randy's plan from the start."

Evergreen forest spread out on either side of the road, dark and deep. "But even with a busted alibi, he still has the perfect guy to blame it all on. His brother, Randy."

"Roger threatened those three women. Held them at gunpoint after they got out of that cellar," Carolyn objected. "He was why they were down there in the first place; he lured them there."

"So they say. He tells a different story. He says he called Jake Tiptree only to warn her that Randy might be around. He also says he never harmed or threatened them, that they misinterpreted all that because they were so distraught. He denies everything."

They drove for a while in silence. Then: "They'll get him for being part of it," Chip said at last. "But it all makes me wonder whether maybe Roger was really the one who planned it from the start, and not Randy at all."

Carolyn looked questioningly at him. He could see her mind working behind those blue eyes of hers.

"You mean, maybe Randy just thought it was all his idea?"

Chip shrugged. "Roger ended up with all the money."

"There's that." She frowned, changed the subject. "Listen, I want to talk to you about something else."

She looked at her hands on the wheel. "When we get back, I'm signing the rights from the first two books over to you. And I'm not writing the one about Eastport. About Randy and ... all that."

She paused to pa.s.s another slow-moving vehicle, this one an old Ford sedan with a dead deer lashed to the hood. Its eyes were open, and its antlers reminded Chip of a crown of thorns.

"You can write it, though, if you want to. I'll fix it with Siobhan," Carolyn went on.

Shocked, he stared at her. "I don't want anything from any crime victims anymore," she explained. "Money, or anything else. Like I said before all this happened, I can't. And especially not now. Know what I mean?"

It sounded crazy. But he did know. He heard the words come out of his mouth. "Yeah. I guess I can't, either. But ... listen, Carolyn. If we did write it, all about what just happened, we could give the money we made on it away. To a victims' organization. Or to something else entirely."

He took a deep breath. But what the heck. Might as well say it. "We'd keep just enough to live on. Say, for a year or so. And we could write the novel together. The one you-"

"The one I stole from you," she finished for him. "That I told Siobhan Walters was my idea, that I was going to do it."

"Well, yes," he admitted. On the face of it, that sounded like the craziest thing of all.

But he'd been thinking about it, and what she'd said a week ago-G.o.d, was it only a week ago?-was true: That he'd never get anywhere with it by himself. Not for the reason she'd thought, though. But because he didn't want to do it without her.

Excitement coursed through him. "Look, I've got the research chops, what little we'll need. The organization skills and the outlining thing ... I've got that down, too."

She laughed bitterly. "And what've I got, a good face for the jacket photograph?"

"No, no." He turned to her again. "Carolyn, you've got the heart."

It had always been true, he realized. What she'd said about the most important thing being the emotions ...

Until now he'd never understood that, never felt it. And she always had. That's why writing true crime had gotten to her, had burned her out, finally.

That's why she was so good. "Look, Carolyn. I've got some of the skills, you've got the others and more. I just don't see why we can't put all that together and come up with something great."

She didn't say anything. He thought he'd made a mistake. Then he saw her lower lip quivering.

"Maybe," she whispered. "But ... I don't deserve it."

It was probably the closest thing to an apology he'd ever get. But somehow, it felt like enough. Sliding a new CD into the player and turning it up- "I don't know why I love her like I do ..."

It was one of his favorites, Talking Heads's cover of "Take Me to the River"- "... all the changes you put me through ..."

-Chip felt as if he might just possibly be enough, too.

For now. Which, come to think of it, was all they had.

"I'll be the judge of that," he told her.

AND THEN THE LAST THING HAPPENED:.

It was just past four in the morning on the day after Chip Hahn and Carolyn Rathbone left Eastport when Bella Diamond woke suddenly, slipped out of bed, and padded from the room.

Her husband slept peacefully on; downstairs in his own room Sam slept, too, still sore but already remarkably recovered.

She continued on to the kitchen; even the dogs barely stirred while she made coffee and a slice of toast. She took her coffee to the laundry room, where she put on the clothes she'd left there, then in the back hall donned boots, a warm hat, and her winter jacket.

Outside, it was not yet light and the motionless hush was like a spell. She stepped quietly to avoid breaking it, along the dark sidewalk.

By the time she reached the Dodd House, she was tempted to turn back, but soon the door would have a new lock on it and it would be too late. A whiff of wild-animal stench met her nose in the front hall. Closing the door behind her, she lit her flashlight, then continued to the cellar stairs and down them.

At the bottom she paused; the habit of fear died hard, and if a sound had come she might have run back upstairs and out the door again, and all the way home. But no sound did.

And the earring was down here somewhere. She felt certain of it. Anne's last gift to her ... She couldn't just leave it here.

She had to give it a chance. At the cellar's far end gaped the tunnel's mouth. In trepidation, Bella approached it.

The smell of the sea coming out of it like cold breath set her heart hammering. At the other end, so much had happened. She didn't even like thinking about it.

But she wasn't going to the other end, was she? Only here, where in her rush to find where Jake had been calling from ...

Calling for my help, she thought with a quiet little moment of pride. It buoyed her for what came next: a few steps into the darkness along the rails.

That was where she'd glimpsed a gleam of gold. Just a spark, but ... Her flashlight's beam found it, centered on it.

Bending, she picked it up. A farewell gift, as it had turned out; not for the first time, Bella wondered what Anne might have known, especially at the end.

But she supposed she might never find out. Or not for a long time ... Closing her hand tightly around her friend's final gift to her, Bella glanced around the cellar, not fearing it anymore.

Goodbye, goodbye, she thought. To Anne, to all of it.

Until we meet again ... if we ever do.

Then she went back up the stairs and along the hall to the front door of the old house, and stepped out into the light.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.

SARAH GRAVES lives with her husband in Eastport, Maine, in the 1823 Federal-style house that helped inspire her books. This series and the author's real-life experience have been featured in House & Garden and USA Today. She is currently at work on the newest Home Repair Is Homicide mystery, which Bantam will publish in 2011.

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