Home Repair Is Homicide - Crawlspace Part 4

For a while, anyway. "No more snooping," Jake said as they pa.s.sed through the vestibule and then a second set of gla.s.s doors. Finally: "There he is."

Inside, Chip Hahn sat nervously on a wooden bench, across from the high marble counter where once thrifty Eastport ladies had waited to deposit their savings into the Christmas club. The counter now held a display box of neighborhood-watch brochures.

Chip looked up when he heard the door. He wore a thin polished-cotton jacket over a tired-looking white s.h.i.+rt, no tie, and dark brown slacks. A pair of black wing tips were on his feet.

He'd lost some of his baby fat since the last time Jake had seen him, but his hands still made the anxious, automatic was.h.i.+ng motions she remembered from a dozen years ago, and his round face looked guilty as h.e.l.l about something.

Uh-oh, Jake thought as she spotted this. Chip jumped up when he saw her, his expression changing swiftly to one of relief.

"Hi. Thanks for coming," he began, sticking his hand out as he smiled uncertainly, looking from Jake to Ellie and back again. But Eastport's police chief, Bob Arnold, interrupted this greeting impatiently.

"Is everyone taking stupid pills around here today, or what?" Bob demanded from behind his desk.

He was pink, plump, and balding, with pale blue eyes, a few thin strands of blond hair combed over his s.h.i.+ning forehead, and small rosebud lips that did not look at all as if they belonged on a police officer.

A child beauty-pageant contestant, maybe. "Because first I got a guy," he went on abrasively, "who said his car was stolen, and I drove around half last night looking for it."

He eyed Chip suspiciously, as if the young man now standing across from him might be responsible for the missing vehicle. "But then a couple hours later he calls again, he says the car's right back where he left it."

He took a breath. "So that's a mystery. Next, I got a bunch of middle-school kids hanging out on the breakwater, also last night, screamin' about a guy in a scary mask from a horror movie. They're sayin' he yelled at 'em and chased 'em."

Jake knew better than to interrupt. "Then," Bob went on, "I get this guy, first d.a.m.n thing in the a.m. before I even finish my coffee."

He waved at Chip, then at his big green-and-white paper cup, still nearly full. The local grocery store's delicatessen did a mean hazelnut-mocha lately, and Bob was hooked on the stuff.

"And," Bob finished, "the guy whose car got stolen? He says there's a scary mask in the trunk; he never saw it before."

Chip opened his mouth to speak, which Jake could've told him was a bad idea. She motioned for him to shut up. Wisely, he did.

But she had a feeling that this sort of wisdom was not one of Chip's strong points. Or Charles, as he apparently wanted to be called now. She looked back at Bob.

"So now your friend here says his lady friend's run off to somewhere, he can't find her, and how come I don't hop right to it, bring in the FBI an' call out the National Guard?"

In Eastport, when lady friends ran off, their boyfriends did not often call the cops. More often, they felt lucky the cops had not been called on them. Not all the time, but still.

"She's not my lady friend," Chip protested tiredly and with the air, frustrated and beginning to be annoyed, of a person who has said this a number of times already.

"I told you, she's my boss, and she didn't run off. She's been missing since last night; she just disappeared right off the street. I'm afraid someone took her."

He turned to Jake in appeal. "We were coming out of a bar. The one at the end of the street overlooking the harbor, called The Artful Dodger? I was outside, a little ways down the street, waiting for her, but she didn't catch up, and when I went back to look for her-"

That there was more to this story Jake couldn't help seeing in Chip's expression, and Bob Arnold was even more familiar with the looks on liars' faces than Jake was.

It was one reason why he was not precisely leaping to Chip's aid, Jake realized. But she could get to the bottom of that later, she decided.

"Poof," Bob said, eyeing Chip skeptically. "Gone, like a fart in a hurricane."

"Wait a minute," Jake told Chip. Or Charles. They could get reacquainted later, too.

For now it just seemed clear that a young woman was missing. "Start over, Chip; tell me the whole thing right from the start. Why are you here in the first place, and just exactly what were you and this-"

"Carolyn Rathbone," he supplied. "That's her name. She's a very popular true-crime writer, two bestsellers, you must have heard of her. She wrote Young Blood, which is-"

"I know what it is," Jake said. She'd have had to be dead not to. Even here in Maine, the ads for the book had resembled an artillery barrage: TV, radio, Internet, the works.

"But that doesn't answer my question," she added. "What were you two doing here in Eastport?"

He flushed uncomfortably. "We're writing a new book-Carolyn is, I mean-on the Dodd family crimes. And the ... the weird events that happened here."

Oh, brother, Jake thought. As far as Bob was concerned, Chip might as well have said they were planning to do a tell-all book on the Appalachia of the Northeast, which was what many people who didn't live in downeast Maine thought of the place.

Wrongly, smugly, and utterly unfairly, boyfriends and their lady friends' habits notwithstanding, and Bob resented it keenly. Now he leaned back and clasped his hands over his ample front.

"Weird events, huh?" He made a sour face. "Well, whoop-de-do. Now I can die happy."

Even without comparisons to Appalachia, Bob thought most media stories about Eastport ranked right up there with Charmin, in the what-are-they-good-for department. But he saved his deepest scorn for the ones created by persons from away-by which he meant anyone who wasn't actually born right here on the island-and that went double for stories about local tragedies.

Which the Dodd family misfortune certainly was. Jake and Ellie glanced resignedly at each other while Chip rushed on.

"You see, a couple of years ago, these two Eastport brothers married two sisters, also from Eastport. Rich girls, the last two descendants in some big local industrialist family."

"Yes," Jake said. The whole town knew the sad tale. Joseph Paducah Lang, the great-great-grandfather of the "rich girls" in question, had been a prosperous sardine can manufacturer back in the days when the sardine was king around here, in the late 1800s.

If you could call what they did back then "manufacturing." Putting things together one by one with your hands, however fast, didn't seem to quite fit the word's definition. Chip went on.

"Next thing you know, one of the Dodd brothers falls off his boat, body never found," he said. "Randy Dodd, his name was."

This wasn't news, either; the opposite, actually. The story had made the Bangor papers.

"And after that, both women got murdered," said Chip. "Or," he added hastily as Bob made to object, "one did, for sure. Anne Lang Dodd, Roger Dodd's wife, was stabbed in her own kitchen."

Yes, just six weeks ago. By a person unknown, and it's too soon to be here trying to make money on it, Jake thought. Writing a book about it, or whatever.

But perhaps the timing hadn't been all Chip's idea. He had, after all, said the missing woman was his employer, and it was her name on the books' covers.

"The other one," Chip said, "Randy Dodd's wife-"

Cordelia Dodd, he meant. She'd been the pretty one; sweet-natured, too, by all accounts, if not terribly bright.

"Fell down stairs," Jake put in. "Yes, we know that, too. But I still don't see what that's got to do with-"

"Carolyn disappearing?" Chip frowned. "I'm not sure. But I think ... I've just got a funny feeling maybe someone has lured us here."

At this Bob Arnold's white-blond eyebrows rose skeptically. Chip's next words came out in a hurry.

"Lured Carolyn and me, I mean. Someone who knew that she had taken an interest in the Dodd boys and their dead wives. And," he added, "someone who didn't like it."

Bob Arnold rested his chin on his s.h.i.+rtfront and gazed with interest at Chip. "Do tell," he said.

Chip either missed the sarcasm or ignored it. "See, I put out a few requests for information while I was first checking out the whole Dodd case just in general. I mean, to see if it really was anything Carolyn would want to pursue."

He looked around at them. "I have," he added, so modestly that Jake thought it was probably an understatement, "a couple of research contacts."

Bob's eyebrows s.h.i.+fted questioningly.

"People who know things, or people who know how to find them out," Chip explained. "I help them, and they help me."

Jake looked over again at Ellie, found that her friend had produced a small legal pad from her bag and was busily writing on it. Stolen car, mask on the breakwater, miss'g woman, the page read in Ellie's large, clear handwriting.

And on a separate line: SAM???

Ellie had noticed Sam's neatly made bed, too, Jake realized, as they'd rushed downstairs. And Jake had complained bitterly to Ellie about the untended dogs that morning.

A quiver of apprehension seized her as Chip continued: "After I put requests on a few of the members-only true-crime discussion boards, I started getting these strange e-mails."

Bob looked even more skeptical.

"E-mails," Chip continued, "from someone who said he knew more about the Dodds than anyone else." He took a deep breath. "He said he'd tell Carolyn what he knew if she met him, here in Eastport."

Bob cleared his throat, spoke to Ellie and Jake. "The person your friend here's been hearing from says his name's Randy Dodd."

"Chip," Jake said, "I hate to tell you this, but someone's been fooling around with you." It was the nicest way she could think of to put it. "Randy's the brother who drowned, remember? He's been dead for two years. Before his wife had the accident, even, he was already-"

"See, but that's just it," Chip said, undeterred. "Maybe he's not dead. Maybe he faked it and he just doesn't want Carolyn reviving any interest in the whole thing, and he knows she could, so he grabbed her."

Unaware of the disbelieving stares of his audience, or maybe ignoring them, he went on intently.

"See, Carolyn thinks the Dodd boys might've married the Lang girls for the money, and killed them for it. She thinks maybe Randy's supposed death was part of the plan. That he survived going overboard somehow. That he's here, now."

Silence followed this, until: "That's quite a theory you've got there," Bob Arnold said in disgust. For one thing, in the fact-gathering department, he thought websites were about as reliable as Ouija boards.

"It's also just about the dumbest thing I ever heard," he added, getting up from behind his desk.

"You've looked for her, right? Your little girlfriend. You checked her motel room, all that."

"She's not my girlfriend," Chip repeated, starting to sound impatient. "And of course I looked for her. The only reason I waited so long before I came in here to see you was that I still thought she might show up. I mean, what d'you think, I'm some kind of a fool?"

Bob's answering look said that early indications were not in Chip's favor on this question. "Son, I'm not sure what you are or what your problem is," he said.

"But," he went on, holding up an admonis.h.i.+ng finger, "I do know Randy Dodd was out lobsterin' all alone one morning a couple years back, slipped on a piece o' herring bait, an' went over the rail."

Herring chunks were what the lobstermen used to get their prey to crawl into the traps. Bob's voice dropped.

"Drowned," he p.r.o.nounced gravely. "Body never found. Left three torn-out fingernails, though, meat an' all still attached to 'em, stuck in his trapline where he must have got tangled in it. You get me?"

He held Chip's gaze. "I mean, that fella struggled. He tried but he died. Coupla men do it every year or so, tryin' to make a living. And I don't know how things are wherever you come from, sonny, but around here that's no joke."

Bob headed for the gla.s.s doors, grabbing his hat and duty belt and putting them on as he spoke.

"And that's what happened. So you can tell any tall tales you want to about how come your girl took off on you," he said. "I'll keep an eye peeled for her, and put the word out, just in case. That's my job and I'll do it, don't worry about that. But probably she went home."

He turned. "Unless by some awful coincidence, in the next day or two, she shows up dead, which you better hope she doesn't. Because if that happens, the first one I'm coming to talk to about it is you," he finished scathingly.

Which was a little tough on Chip, Jake thought. But she, too, felt skeptical about his story.

For one thing, if Randy Dodd had wanted people to think he was dead, why reveal otherwise to Chip? Or to his friend Carolyn Rathbone? Or his employer, or whatever? But ...

"Bob? Where did you go last night? I mean, after you looked for the guy's stolen car?"

"Out on the causeway," he replied. The one that connected Moose Island to the mainland, he meant, linking Eastport to the rest of the world.

There was no ferry, except for a few weeks in summer. The rest of the time there were not enough people living in Eastport to support ferry service.

"Took the night s.h.i.+ft for Howie Crusoe. He's on leave 'cause his wife's havin' a baby. Sat there like he always does, trolling for speeders. Why?"

"Oh, just something that occurred to me." She put the timing together: a stolen car, a disguised guy on the breakwater scaring everyone else off, and- "So you saw everyone who came onto or went off the island, between-"

"Between ten and three," he finished for her. "Knew 'em all, too. All their cars, where they're going, what they're doing. All the same ones as go back and forth every night for their jobs and so on. No mysterious strangers," he added dryly.

"And the guy wearing the horror movie mask," she persisted. "Did he scare the bunch of kids right off the breakwater? I mean, completely off? They ran away?"

Which at that hour would've left the breakwater empty, most likely. Bob snorted.

"Sure did. Anyway, that's what all their moms said when they called me up to complain about it. Although where any of 'em got the nerve to do that, I don't know. Eleven-thirty's a good couple hours past when youngsters that age oughta be out on the street at all, you ask me." Bob shook his head. "Maybe I'll get myself a mask like that. Sounds useful. Anyway, is that all?" He eyed Chip balefully.

"Yes, Bob," said Jake. "Thanks very much."

The police chief slammed out. A silence followed. Then: "Is he always like that?" Chip asked shakily.

Outside, Bob's old Crown Vic started up with a roar, nearly stalled, and coughed back to stuttering life again a few times more before dying completely.

"Only when he thinks someone's trying to take advantage in some way," Jake said. "Stir up something people here would rather forget, maybe, just to make something for themselves out of it."

Which was how Bob Arnold would've viewed a Carolyn Rathbone book, even one that didn't happen to be about Eastport. He called people who wrote or made films about true crime "the blood-and-guts-ers."

"And by the way," she added, "the bar you two were in last night right before your friend vanished? Or boss, or whatever," she added quickly before Chip could correct her. "That's Roger Dodd's place," she finished.

Chip looked stunned. "Oh."

"Bought it right after he got married," she said. With his wife's money, she didn't add, though that was common knowledge.

"Before that, he was a paramedic on the town ambulance." A job, she also could've added, that he'd been happy to give up in order to buy his own business. With his new wife's cash.

But by all accounts the marriage had been happy. "He just reopened the bar a week ago. Word around town is he's still pretty torn up about Anne."

At first Roger had of course come under suspicion; husbands always did. Roger Dodd had an ironclad alibi for the time of his wife's murder, though, and ever since, he'd been walking around town like a grief-struck ghost.

People felt awful for him. "So if I were you, I don't think I'd be going on about how the Dodd boys killed the Lang girls for profit. Not around here, anyway."