Home Repair Is Homicide - Crawlspace Part 6

He sighed. "But she's not an easy person, Carolyn. And right after we arrived ..."

His hands made those was.h.i.+ng motions again; the guilty look returned to his face. "She'd stolen an idea of mine. I found out last night. We argued about it."

"I see. And did anyone hear you?" The sleet had stopped, but the gray sky over the water was still wintery and the air damply penetrating.

"The bartender heard. I guess it must've been Roger Dodd," Chip replied.

She parked the car and they got out. "And there was another guy at the bar, too," Chip added, sounding as if he was only now re calling this. He zipped his thin cotton jacket, which was in no way adequate for the day's nasty weather. "Just some local, I think. I remember he had kind of a limp. But he had his own troubles, it looked like."

He paused. Then: "I thought about it," he blurted. "About hurting her. Just for a minute, she'd made me so angry, it felt like being rid of her would make things better."

He gazed unhappily at the asphalt parking lot adjacent to the fish pier. "But I'd never really have done anything to her."

Just then Bob Arnold drove by in the squad car, flipping one hand up in a curt wave as he pa.s.sed. If he'd learned anything about where Sam was, he'd have stopped to say so.

"He was right, wasn't he?" Chip said, meaning Bob. "It was stupid of me to let Carolyn come here. And now Sam might be in trouble because of it, too."

But Jake was still mulling Chip's previous remark, that he'd thought about harming the missing woman. That admission, plus his being the last person known to have seen her ...

"Do yourself a favor, Chip. Don't volunteer more information to anyone but me, okay?"

Because nothing good could come of it. She didn't think Chip had done anything dreadful.

But he could still get his name on a warrant by talking too freely; she sensed in him once more a kind of youthful naivete, a too-honest softness about him that could make him easy pickings for a tough prosecutor.

Although of course she didn't really know what Chip Hahn might've turned into in the years since he and Sam had played catch and tossed footb.a.l.l.s around. Reminding herself that she shouldn't take anything at face value, she pulled the Artful Dodger's front door open, gestured for him to go in ahead of her.

"Meanwhile, let's just see what Roger Dodd has to say about all of this, shall we?" she told Chip. "You never know, he might remember something important."

Inside, the air smelled of stale beer and dish detergent. Roger was behind the bar was.h.i.+ng gla.s.ses and placing them on the rinse rack in a.s.sembly-line fas.h.i.+on.

Freshly shaven and dressed as usual in a polo s.h.i.+rt and jeans, he turned the sprayer off and listened while Jake explained who they were looking for and why. After that, she let Chip describe Carolyn and ask about the fellow at the bar, the one with the limp.

Roger's face changed at that part of the conversation, but she wasn't expecting anything to come of it.

So she was amazed when, after giving them the old I-don't-know-anything-about-it routine for a few more minutes, Roger Dodd suddenly broke down.

"I DIDN'T KNOW. WHEN HE WALKED IN LAST NIGHT AFTER two years of me thinking he'd been drowned, I just about fainted," Roger babbled as they went out. He closed the bar's front door and locked it. "Anne said she knew Randy wasn't dead, that if he was, there would have been a body. But I told her no, she was crazy to think that after so long." He sucked in a hitching breath. "My G.o.d, it was like seeing a ghost... . I knew he was dead. He had to be. Anne and I, we even fought about it. We fought about it on the day she-"

"Shut up, Roger," Jake told him in disgust. Beside her on the sidewalk, Chip waited silently. He seemed to know he was out of his depth here.

Me too, Jake thought. "Let's go talk to Bob Arnold," she told Roger, and he came along obediently enough, still justifying and explaining.

"I didn't know," he insisted again as he got into the car. "I loved Anne. I'd never have let anything happen to her."

"Oh?" she retorted. "So that's why when your supposedly dead brother showed up here last night, you didn't tell anyone?"

She pulled out of the parking spot. "Or even before then? That he was still alive, that he'd killed her sister, Cordelia-his own wife-and that he intended to kill Anne, too?"

She felt like punching him, but of course she couldn't. "You kept your mouth shut on account of how you loved her so much?"

Because that, impossible as it seemed, was the gist of what Roger had admitted: that Chip's crazy theory was right and Randy Dodd was alive-though Roger insisted he hadn't known it until his supposedly deceased sibling appeared hale and hearty in the Artful Dodger the night before. But now Roger was convinced- "I was about to go see Bob Arnold myself when you two walked in," he declared defensively.

-and Jake was, too: Randy Dodd was indeed alive, and as recently as twelve hours ago he'd been right here in Eastport.

And that meant anything could have happened. She gunned the engine, causing a couple of blithely jaywalking teenagers to jump back up onto the curb. She didn't quite give them the old middle-finger salute as they glared at her.

But it was close. In the back seat, Roger went on whining. "Cordelia could've been an accident," he insisted. "How was I to know that Randy had-"

"Yeah, sure," she cut him off sarcastically. "Her falling down those cellar stairs was just one of those things, huh?"

Sure it was. At the time, everyone had thought so. But now ... She met his eyes in the rearview mirror.

"But Anne dying, and the way that she died-come on, Roger, don't tell me you didn't know then that something was up."

Stabbed to death in her own kitchen. Imagining it, Jake just barely managed to restrain herself from stomping the gas pedal again.

"But why am I even asking? You knew it all from the start. You had to. Because here's the thing, Roger."

What the brothers had done was falling together in her head now, like a disgustingly graphic picture puzzle. She might not have believed it at all if he'd been talking about some other motive.

But she did, because it was money-related, and money-plus what it could make people do, the wanting and getting of it-had been her bread and b.u.t.ter once.

In the bad old days, when she'd helped pirates of commerce stash their ill-gotten treasure in offsh.o.r.e accounts.

Chip wasn't comprehending it yet, though. Mostly he just looked frightened.

"Two things," she corrected herself. "First, you can't very well inherit any money or anything else when you're dead."

Roger's lips clamped together stubbornly. "And that's what it was about, wasn't it?" she continued. "That's why both sisters died. So you could inherit."

She thought a moment. "Probably there was a trust fund." It was how wealth stayed in wealthy families.

"The proceeds would go to the surviving sister. Once she was gone, you'd be a beneficiary. After the dust settled, you'd share the money with Randy."

Simple. And it had worked, or nearly. But Roger shook his head in denial.

"I thought Randy had drowned, just like everyone else did. I mean," he added shakily, "a long time ago he'd said something to me, to the effect of how if the girls died, we'd be wealthy men."

They pa.s.sed Wadsworth's hardware store. That insulation, she thought as they went by. Bales and bales of it waiting for her in the attic.

No telling, now, when she might get back to it. In spring maybe. Or never. But who cared? A nice cold layer of ice sounded just right at the moment, like the perfect anesthetic.

"But I told him he was nuts, and to shut up and never talk to me about it anymore," Roger said. "I never thought of it again, either. It was an awful thing, repulsive, what he'd suggested, and I told him so."

He looked out the car window; she followed his gaze briefly. Out on the water the little lobster boat she'd seen earlier by the Chowder House pier puttered determinedly across the waves.

"But I guess he must have. Thought about it, that is," said Roger.

"So, what did he want?" Chip asked quietly. "In the bar last night?"

Roger laughed bitterly. "Money, of course. What he thought he was ent.i.tled to. He said he'd earned it. Can you believe it?" His tone was outraged.

Angling for sympathy. Jake parked in front of the police station, shut off the engine. Bob Arnold's squad car wasn't there in its usual spot.

Well then, they'd wait. Throwing her keys into her bag, she repressed the urge to fling them backward at Roger's face.

"Please," she ridiculed his story. "After what he said to you, first Cordelia has an accident." She put a scathing twist on the word. "And then some stranger just randomly picks your house to invade, your wife to kill?"

"It's not the kind of thing that would slip your mind, is it?" Chip agreed. "Randy hinting around about them dying, and then they do? That didn't, like, tip you off?"

He turned, eyed Roger accusingly. "But I still think the two of you plotted it together. Randy fakes dying, he sneaks back and kills both women ... and man, that took some nerve, didn't it?"

He paused, considering this, then went on. "But you got the money. You inherited, which makes you a perfect suspect right along with him. Lucky you had a good alibi, also twice. Once for his wife, once for yours." Chip frowned. "So, what I want to know is, how could that happen unless you knew in advance when Randy was going to do it?"

But for this Roger had an answer ready. "Because I always have that alibi," he retorted. "All I do is work in that bar. And the front and rear doors are in plain sight of all the customers and staff, so everybody knows if I go in or out."

He opened the car door. "I didn't do anything," he repeated. "I knew nothing about any of this."

Chip made a huffing sound of skepticism as he got out, too. "Yeah, you can say that. But I guarantee you the cops are still watching you and they have been all along." He grimaced at the chill outside the car. "Waiting for you to make a mistake. And now you have. The two of you have. That's what I think, anyway."

He looked back in at Jake. "Carolyn's book proposal, what she sent in to get a contract this time, was one sentence long: 'Two brothers in rural Maine marry two rich sisters, kill them for the money, and get away with it ... almost.' "

Roger winced, listening to this.

"And they bought it," Chip said. "That's how obvious it is. One sentence, they took it."

Just then Bob Arnold pulled the squad car into his reserved parking s.p.a.ce, got out, and marched up the station's granite-slab front steps. Jake slammed the car door, turned to Roger.

"Why?" she asked again. "If you weren't in on it with him, why didn't you turn Randy in as soon as you realized what he must be doing when he showed up last night?"

But again, Roger had an answer. He gazed, stricken, at her. "Well. You know that unbreakable alibi I've supposedly got?"

The bar, the doors, his being in plain sight of everyone all the time ... "What about it?" Jake demanded.

Roger hesitated. Then: "Randy can break it," he said. "I was afraid to go to the police, because if he wants to, Randy can make it look like I did it all. Killed Anne, I mean, and Cordelia, too."

He looked around slowly, as if he thought this might be his last glimpse of freedom. "He can frame me completely. And if he doesn't end up getting away from here with his money, that's what he'll do."

CHAPTER 3.

THE BLANKET'S EDGES PARTED AT LAST AND CAROLYN'S face poked out into the chill air. It was late morning, the sky threatening rain or snow, a sky she'd feared she would never see again.

But here she was. Everything hurt: her hand, her head. Her cheek, raw with so much rubbing, felt sticky and hot, and she was thirsty. So very thirsty ... but alive.

Alive ... She froze with fresh fear. Would he notice that the blanket was off her face, that she'd somehow found her way so far out of his restraint? If he did, would he kill her at once?

All she could see was the boat's rough wooden deck with a sort of bench sticking up from it, and the round orange shape of a life preserver roped to the bench.

But he is around here somewhere. Has to be ...

She fought the cringing urge to duck back down into the blankets again. She'd thought being able to see what was around her would make her feel better. But instead she only felt more exposed, like a little kid who'd been hiding under the bedcovers. Hiding from the monsters. Which in this case she really was doing. But she wasn't a little kid and she couldn't act like one. Not if she wanted to live.

Painfully, she inched herself up, craning her neck to try locating her captor. There ...

A dozen feet away at the front of the vessel, a man stood in an open cubby with his hands on a steering wheel, looking ahead through a curved winds.h.i.+eld. His back was turned to her, but she could see his profile.

Something wrong with it ... She couldn't tell what, only that it looked odd somehow. Unnatural. But as she'd thought when he'd first grabbed her, he was a big man, and powerfully built.

Abruptly, the guilt she'd felt over not managing to escape evaporated. He was at least twice her size; as she'd suspected, she'd never had a chance.

Which meant beating him physically wasn't in the cards as an escape method, either. Not without a weapon, at any rate, and she didn't have anything like that.

A surge of despair threatened to swamp her, but she resisted, choking down sobs; better to know the truth than to try something that was doomed. And with her hands both still bound to her sides, there was no point even thinking about fighting him.

Not yet. She peeked over the blanket again, trying to spot anything that might help her get free. To the left of the wheel and the instruments near where the man stood, a small hatchway gaped, dark and forbidding-looking.

No one else was on the deck. The groaning she'd heard must have come from down there, but she hadn't heard it in a while.

The thought flew from her head as something struck the boat with a m.u.f.fled thump. Her throat closed with renewed terror, but at the sound the man at the wheel only let out a triumphant bark of laughter.

He slowed the engine until it made a thick gurgling noise, the boat's lunging movement over the waves subsiding. Hurriedly he left the wheel, peered eagerly over the boat's side, then grabbed a long pole-the phrase boat hook popped into her head-and began poking around in the water.

He seemed to be trying to snag something. One shove, she thought bitterly, and you'd be fish food.

He went on straining with the pole. But whatever it was out on the water went on eluding him, no matter how he tried.

Then she noticed that each time he leaned out, a slip of paper in his s.h.i.+rt pocket slid up a little more. As if alerted by her thought, he jerked up suddenly, squinting suspiciously around.

Carolyn held her breath. If he turned his head toward her, he would see her face poking from the blanket. His eyes narrowed further as he listened, tipping his head.

He looked familiar to her, almost as if ...

Satisfied, he returned to his efforts. The slip of paper in his s.h.i.+rt pocket now stuck out from it about two inches. He still hadn't noticed it.

"d.a.m.n," he muttered as a gust of wind caught the edge of the paper, fluttering it. Painfully, Carolyn worked her head around so that if she had to duck and cover quickly, she could.

She hoped. G.o.d, she was so thirsty. Her tongue stuck sourly to the roof of her mouth, and her broken hand felt like a flaming club at the end of her arm. But he hadn't killed her.

Yet. Please, she thought. Please, if I get out of this, I'll be good for the rest of my life.

The rest of her life being all she wanted now. All she could think of ... That and that d.a.m.ned slip of paper poking out of the guy's s.h.i.+rt pocket.