Home Repair Is Homicide - Crawlspace Part 7

A burst of sleet stung her eyelids suddenly. It hit the guy, too, causing him to wince and rear back slightly. Then a wave hit the boat, but he was sure-footed, even with that limp he had ....

He leaned over the side again. That limp ... Where had she seen it? A gust of breeze lifted the corner of the paper. It was covered with something s.h.i.+ny, like plastic wrap.

The long pole bent; with a low grunt of satisfaction the man caught whatever it was he'd been fis.h.i.+ng for and swung it into the boat. Some kind of a package ...

It landed on the deck with a wet thud. He rushed to crouch over it, pulling at the soaked wrapping on it. But the wrapping wouldn't come free. He pulled a knife from his belt, slitting it open impatiently, then opened the plastic storage box inside.

Money fell out. Thick, rubber-banded slabs of money. The man gazed silently at them, picked one up and then another. He fanned one of them, as if making sure the interior of the pack held bills, too, and not just the outside.

Then he stuffed all the packets into a big plastic bag, sealed the top, and pushed the bag into a lidded bin that was built into the side of the boat, up near the wheel.

When he straightened, his s.h.i.+rt pocket was empty. While he'd been leaning over the side, the slip of paper must have ...

Another m.u.f.fled sound came from the dark hatchway. Next came pounding and thumping. Leaving the wheel, the man went down there and a smack rang out.

Flesh on flesh, a slap or a punch ... Carolyn cringed as the man came back to move two levers by the steering wheel, one after the other. The engine revved and the boat began chugging forward once more.

No more sounds came from the dark hatchway.

TEN MINUTES AFTER ROGER DODD ENTERED THE POLICE station, Bob Arnold had broken down the last of his lies and evasions, and with them, Jake's remaining hopes that this might all be a mistake.

She sat very still while Roger spoke, meanwhile wanting to run out and start looking for Sam again: somewhere, anywhere. But first she needed to hear what else Roger said.

"Randy started talking about it before the four of us even got married," he began. The big double wedding-Roger to Anne, Randy to Anne's sister, Cordelia-had been the event of the year.

"He had it all worked out, about how if everyone thought he was dead, he couldn't be suspected. And if I had an alibi, then we'd both be in the clear," Roger continued shakily.

"That's not what you just told us," Chip objected. "You said he said that if the wives died, you two guys would get rich. Not that if he murdered them, you would."

Roger looked caught. "Yeah. Well. It was a little more than what I told you, what Randy suggested. A lot more, actually," he admitted.

Clearly he'd decided to throw himself upon the mercy of his listeners. But if so, he'd miscalculated; Jake didn't feel at all merciful, and from the look of him, Bob Arnold didn't, either.

"How did he do it?" Bob asked.

Strictly speaking, in a situation like this he should have been waiting for the state police, whom he'd already called. But Bob knew two people were missing, and that they might both now be in the hands of a double murderer.

And he'd never been a by-the-book guy, anyway. Way out here at the back of beyond, he called them as he saw them; if anybody didn't like it, they could ...

Well, mostly they did like it. But Roger didn't. "Fake his own drowning, you mean?" Roger asked, looking increasingly uncomfortable.

Playing the innocent wasn't turning out to be as easy as he had expected, apparently. A line of sweat rimmed his hairline.

"Simple," he replied, but his voice shook uncertainly. "He set it up like he'd gone overboard. Cut himself, pulled a few hairs out, smeared that mess of blood and whatnot on the boat's rail." He frowned, remembering. "He had a dry suit and scuba gear on board with him, and he knew how to use them. It was the ripped-out fingernails that clinched it, though."

The ones found snagged in Randy's submerged lobster trapline, after he'd vanished off the boat... Jake recalled how this detail in particular had convinced everyone of Randy's demise.

"Even I thought it was real," said Roger. "The scuba stuff was missing, so I knew he must've at least tried the first part of his plan without telling me." His frown creased into a grimace. "But the fingernails made me think something had gone wrong, and he'd really drowned ... ."

He shook his head regretfully. "I thought so until Cordelia died. When she fell down the stairs a few months after he went overboard, I had an awful feeling. Because if Randy were alive, still working a plan to inherit the money-"

"For you both to inherit it," Chip corrected.

"Yes," Roger admitted, "that's what he'd talked about. Both of us. But I never agreed," he added defiantly, glaring at Chip.

"Never mind that," Jake interposed. Every minute this idiot wasted explaining and excusing himself was a minute she could've been- "All right, Jake," Bob Arnold said, putting up a big hand. "Just keep quiet and let the man tell what happened."

Bob had already put every law officer in the state on notice, along with the U.S. Coast Guard and their Canadian counterparts. So serious people were on the hunt for Sam and Carolyn, and for their possible captor.

But it didn't make Jake feel any better. Listening, she held her tongue as best she could.

"Okay," Bob told Roger, "so your brother's rich widow dies, by whatever means. Your wife inherits all the Lang family money, being as she's the last surviving member of the family. Then what?"

Roger sighed heavily. "Then nothing. Time went by, a year. Two years. I decided Cordelia really had just had an accident, that maybe Randy had tried the first part of the stupid plan he talked about but that was all."

He looked up at Bob Arnold. "I told him not to, told him it was crazy, but he did, and it killed him. The end. I mean, why shouldn't I think so?"

His voice turned pleading again. "And no matter what, even if he was alive, never in a million years did I ever think he'd come back and ..."

"Okay, that's it," Jake said suddenly. Before Bob could stop her, she stood up and grabbed a handful of Roger's sandy hair. It was a.s.sault just to be touching him. But she didn't care.

"Where is he?" she hissed, yanking hard. "Your crazy brother who was in your bar last night, where has he gone?"

She let go, shoving his head away roughly. "With my son," she added. Let him swear out a complaint against her if he wanted to.

"Jake," Bob began cautioningly, but she cut him off, bending to speak urgently into Roger's ear.

"He's got my son, that whack-job you protected. The one you didn't call the cops about even when he showed up in person. You knew, but you didn't-"

"I didn't even know who he was! Not at first ..." He cringed away, glancing up fearfully at her.

She lowered her hand. "Go on," she commanded.

"He'd ... changed," Roger faltered. "Once I saw him straight on, I realized who it was. But at first, when he walked in, he looked so different. He'd had surgery. His nose, his eyes ..."

He looked helplessly around. Poor baby, she thought. And to think she'd felt sympathy for him. The whole town had.

"Anyone who knew him would've recognized him, close up. And when I saw those fingers of his, with the fingernails gone ..." He made a face. "But just at a glance ... and that limp he's got now. Even I would've walked right by him," Roger said.

"So, Sam might've known him, though?" she demanded. "Say, if he saw Randy in a good light?"

There were dark places on the breakwater, in the shadows behind the barge-loading crane and the winch shack. But most of it was lit up like an airport.

Roger nodded sullenly. "He could've. But if it happened, it must've just been bad luck. He wouldn't have wanted to hurt Sam. Not unless he had to."

She laughed in disgust: had to. Right, like someone had his arm twisted behind his back. "You pathetic little piece of-"

"Get back to your story, Roger," Bob Arnold cut in. "Your wife, Anne, inherited the money. You thought you were home free. And-"

"Yes. And then Anne died." Roger spoke resignedly. His eyes filled with tears. "I was next in line for the estate. I didn't care, but I did what the lawyers said and the estate got closed. I thought it was all over, so you can imagine how I felt when he called me two weeks ago-"

"So you did know he was alive," Chip pounced.

"After he'd called, yes," Roger admitted defensively. "But not before. I suspected, like I said, but ... anyway, Randy said I had to get his half of the money in cash. A million."

"Dollars?" Jake blinked. But of course he meant that. And no one in town knew precisely how much the Lang sisters were worth, only that it was a lot. So it was at least possible.

Roger nodded again. "I was supposed to put it in a waterproof container and float it on a buoy."

An anch.o.r.ed buoy like the ones lobster traps hung from, he must have meant. It would keep the container from drifting away.

Roger waved miserably in the direction of the bay. "Out there. He gave me the coordinates, where to put it."

"Just leave it?" Chip asked. "And you did that?"

"Yeah," Roger replied defeatedly, his shoulders sagging. "I got it, and I did it."

Jake opened her mouth, but Chip got in ahead of her, tipping his head skeptically. "What size bills did he ask for, exactly? And how big was the package?"

Not bad, she thought. Roger looked annoyed at the obvious trap Chip was setting for him, but he answered.

" Hundred-dollar bills. Some small ones, too. Walking-around money, I guess. But mostly hundreds. For the package itself ... I don't know, six by eight, maybe. Inches, that is. And what, about two feet tall, each stack? Or a little more. Twenty like that." He looked at his hands. "I put it in a big plastic storage box, the kind you store blankets in. And sealed it up tight."

Chip's face gave nothing away. "So Randy was the guy with the limp in the bar last night. You knew who he was by then. But you still let Carolyn shoot her mouth off in front of him."

Oh, come on, Roger's answering grimace said. "What else could I do? Just blab the whole thing to her, tell her to shut up because the guy she's all hot to catch is sitting right there at the end of the bar, listening to her?"

Chip got up. "It might've been better than just letting her walk into a trap."

He pressed on. "So, what do you know about him e-mailing her? Luring her here, promising her an interview, because he knew she didn't think he was really dead and he wanted to stop her?"

"Nothing," Roger said flatly. "But then, why would I? If he thought she was onto him ... I don't know. It sounds kind of crazy. But I guess he is, too. So maybe. I guess it could've happened."

"Do you think he knew Carolyn and I were together in the bar last night?"

Roger shook his head. "From the way you two were acting at first, you could have just happened to walk in at the same time. You didn't start arguing until later, when he'd gone." He looked up. "Anyway," he added meanly, "you're not quite the kind of guy a woman like that would be with ordinarily, you know?"

Chip flushed. But he returned the shot swiftly. "Yeah, I do know. Last time I looked, she wasn't hanging out with wife killers, either, though. So we're sort of even."

"Never mind that," Jake said impatiently. "The coordinates where Randy said to float the money ... I want them. Now."

Chip handed Roger a pen, Bob supplied a sc.r.a.p of paper, and Roger scribbled hastily. When he was finished, she s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper from him. "This had better be-"

"Tell me about the alibi now," Bob interrupted. "The one you told this young fellow here that your brother could break if you didn't do what he said."

Roger looked sly all at once. "You didn't read me my rights, you know. I've got rights. None of this stuff can be used against me. You know that, don't you? That nothing can-"

Suddenly, Chip was standing beside Roger. He'd taken a small black electronic device from his pocket.

He's still working on the book, Jake realized. Even with all that has happened ... He waved the tiny machine in Roger's face. "If you don't answer the nice policeman's questions right now," he said, "I'll shove this thing so far down your throat, you'll hear your own voice every time you swallow."

Gulping, Roger looked at Bob. "Are you going to let him threaten me?"

But Bob only smiled. Maybe this kid had possibilities after all, his look seemed to say.

"All right." Roger gave in resentfully. "The house Anne and I lived in, the old Lang House."

On Was.h.i.+ngton Street, he meant, a block uphill from the bar. It had been the Lang girls' family home before they married, and Roger had lived in it for a little while after Anne's murder.

But then he'd moved out. He couldn't stand it anymore, he'd said, and people had understood: Poor Roger.

My foot, Jake thought as he went on: "After Randy married Cordelia, Randy liked coming over so he could go down to the cellar and see if he could find any things to sell. Antiques or whatever." Roger sighed heavily. "And you know the girls' great-great-grandfather, in the old days he had the factory on their property attached to the house?"

Jake knew. Everyone did. "Get to it," she said.

"Well, they needed a way to get the raw materials, the sheet tin and soldering stuff and so on, from the wharf to the factory, and then the finished cans down to the cannery by the water," said Roger.

He relaxed a little. "Even in bad weather, which back then was even worse than it is now," he went on easily, beginning to sound conversational, "they needed to-"

"Roger?" inquired Chip. "Do you think you'll like eating this recorder? Or is there some other reason you're stalling?"

Roger blinked nervously, seeming to remember why he was here. "All right, all right." He sat straighter. "There's a tunnel down there, okay? In the cellar, for the can factory. It goes down the hill a block and a half or so, to where the wharf was way back then, right underneath my bar."

He looked down at his hands. "It comes out in a room under my cellar. Randy found the tunnel, pried a bunch of boards off the entrance, and opened it up when he was hunting for valuables."

"So, you could've gone back and forth between the house and your bar without anyone ever seeing ..." Bob Arnold began.

Outside, the clouds parted, sending a stray shaft of light onto Chip's face.

"I think what Roger's saying is that for his wife's murder-and his sister-in-law's-he has no alibi whatsoever." He put the recorder into his pocket. "And Randy threatened to remind everyone of it if Roger didn't play ball, didn't he?"

Roger nodded silently as Chip's voice turned confidential. "So, where's he going, Roger? Your dead brother, who drowned off his own boat and was never seen again-where's he headed now?"

Roger shook his head. "I don't know."

Chip was on him suddenly, one hand on Roger's throat and his fist c.o.c.ked in Roger's face. "You tell me, you-"

"I don't know!" Roger cried, shrinking back in alarm. "Don't you think I would tell you if I did?" He looked around desperately. "I'm afraid of him now, don't you get it? He's different, and not just his face. He's changed."

"What do you mean?" Chip demanded grimly. But he took his hand away.

"I'm not sure," Roger muttered, fingering his throat. "But the things he was saying last night before you two came in ... all crazy, violent things."

A tear slipped down his face. "He killed Anne and Cordelia, I know that now. But while he was away, I think he got a taste for it. Maybe it started out being for the money, but"-his voice dropped to a whisper-"I think he got to like it."

A chill sense of foreboding invaded Jake, as if Sam's being missing wasn't the worst thing about this mess, suddenly.

As if maybe the worst thing about it was who Sam was missing with.