“The crud!”
Whoops
.
Would Reverend Timmy-Bob count that as a swear word? Surely he would not under the circumstances
. “Is he truly dangerous?”
“Yes. He is a swine, but good at what he does, so I must flee.”
“I cannot be without you. Where will you go?”
“I must go twenty miles further to the north, to a house belonging to a woman friend of my family. One would not think it was possible to go further to the north from this dismal place, would one?”
“May I come to you there?”
She hesitated a moment. “Of course, as soon as it is safe.”
“Later today, perhaps?”
“With luck. I will write instructions for you. But there is a problem.”
“Yes?”
“The house that I go to, the woman’s son is the unfortunate man you saw on the lawn with the ball bat when you first came. Robert is besotted with me. If he sees us at breakfast together, it could be awkward.”
“Do not say another word. Write those instructions to get there while I shave and wash. I’ll sneak away in ten minutes, and have my breakfast in town.”
“
Mein ubermensch
.”
“My Venus.”
Chapter Sixteen
Fish. Beth could smell fish. And the room, if it was indeed a room, had a subtle, not unpleasant, but curious feeling of movement. She opened her eyes to dim light. She was on a primitive bunk bed in an extremely cramped pine-paneled boat cabin with a grungy round window. She had a killer headache, but her mind was putting itself back into some semblance of order, the past evening’s events coming into focus. “Wyatt Stone!” she shouted.
A narrow door opened almost at once and the light in the room improved. He stuck his head into the space. His eyes looked wild, intensely excited. “Oh good, you’re awake.”
“No thanks to you. What did you give me?”
“Oh, that. It was ether. It’s kind of old-fashioned, but available here. Don’t be angry, Beth. I had to do it to get you out of harm’s way.”
“Harm’s what?”
“Harm’s way. Once I saw you and the others driving out into the country in the dark, I knew I couldn’t leave you with Hawk and that gang. Whatever were you doing out there, anyway?”
“I had some garbage from the re-modeling we were getting rid of.”
“Oh, Beth, I’m sorry but I don’t believe you. Tom Hawk takes crazy chances for a marked man, and he’s been to that house where I found you before. He’s up to something dangerous.”
“You think Tom is in trouble so you kidnapped me?”
“I
rescued
you.”
“When you rescue someone you usually don’t put them out with ether, Wyatt.”
“How could I stand out there and explain things to you when the others were a couple hundred feet away: Tom, Gary, who could have gotten me burned alive, and that predator Dani woman. I’m sorry, but it had to be done.”
He didn’t sound sorry. He kept obsessively patting an unruly cowlick of hair. At least, it didn’t sound like he was a mobster with his main focus on killing her boyfriend. What
was
he up to? “Wyatt, where are we?”
“We’re on a houseboat somewhere on the lake.”
The “somewhere” part didn’t scare her. As soon as she looked out, she would recognize the Portage Lake shoreline, see one of the Tech professor’s giant “cottages” and know where she was.
“Come and have breakfast,” he invited more cheerfully.
She followed him into what seemed to be the main room on the boat: a combined kitchenette, dining nook, and miniscule living room, and a sumptuous repast of toaster pastries and rubbery eggs. This room had larger windows and she went to the left one to see landmarks on the shore.
No shore. To the other window, then. There was only a dim, dark line far away. They weren’t on Portage Lake. Wyatt had motored through the lake, through the channel, and into Keweenaw Bay. In this tub, they might as well be in the
middle
of Lake Superior. “Wyatt, exactly how far out are we?”
“I’m not sure; five or six miles, maybe more.”
She looked around the cabin. It had a look of being home-built from Popular Mechanics plans by a cross-eyed man who didn’t own a carpenter’s square. “We are that distance from land in this scow?”
Wyatt looked hurt. “The rental guy at the marina promised me it was extremely seaworthy.”
“That’s on Portage Lake, a hundred feet from the docks where you got it, maybe.
This
bay gets ten- or twenty-foot waves in a storm. We’re not safe here. Where are the life preservers? I don’t see any locker or closet labeled for them.” Then, for good measure, she lied, “I can’t swim.”
That rattled him. Good. Maybe he wasn’t much of a swimmer himself. They both searched for a few minutes and gave up. At his direction, she sat at a table barely adequate for two people and he brought her burned coffee. She smiled her thanks as she schemed to get him to move this barge off the big lake.
He said, “Do you have any cassette tapes, Beth?”
“Huh?”
“Cassette tapes. They’re going to replace vinyl records.”
“No, I don’t have any. I’m not much into music. Do you have them?”
“Quite a few, and lots of records too. Even forty-fives. I play the clarinet.”
He seemed willing to answer questions, so she asked, “Are you going to kill Tom?”
Shocked, he let toast crumbs drip from his mouth. “My God, no, Beth, how could you think that? I’m here to protect him.”
“You’re a cop?” She couldn’t keep an incredulous tone out of her voice.
“No.”
She stared at him as though he was a puppy that had soiled the carpet until he continued. He could not stand her disapproval.
“My family has a detective agency—three generations, if you count me. My uncle Lester runs it now. We were hired to keep Tom alive until he can testify at Tony Sartorelli’s trial.”
It was possible. It could explain the notes she’d found in his room. “The California authorities hired you?”
“No. Someone else did. I can’t talk about it.”
Tom had mentioned that Tony had some business rivals anxious to see him get sent away for the pizza oven thing.
Oh well,
the enemy of my enemy is my friend
.
“What if I told you that all of Tony’s guys are dead, that if you are telling me the truth about not wanting to hurt Tom, the danger is over? Then can we go home?”
“What are you saying, Beth? Angelo is dead, sure. But Tony has two brothers.”
“I know; Harv and Marv. Wyatt, Harv is dead. I have seen the body.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, two hundred thirty volts off my cellar door passed through him on the way to ground. It was kind of an accident. We were putting him to rest when you grabbed me.”
Wyatt shivered involuntarily. “What about the other one, Marv?”
“He burned up in the grocery store fire. He’s…” Then she stopped. Wyatt was supposed to know that, wasn’t he? He had been in there too, hadn’t he? But he had just told her he was not working with the Sartorellis, and she’d believed him, hadn’t she? She made an effort anyway, saying, “He died in Gary’s store.”
“That can’t be. Gary locked me in there. But then another man came in who didn’t look at all like Harvey or Marvin. That guy was Scandinavian or something. We fought and I locked him in the same place where Gary had locked me. This is my first real case so I went to call in. While I called, the place started burning. I thought my man was still inside but I couldn’t get back in to save him. They recovered his body. Oh, God, the image of that tough blond guy will be in my brain until I die.”
Blond? How about that? The intruder that Wyatt had miraculously overpowered had to have been Horst, Renada’s Stasi assassin ex-boyfriend, gone to the store to kill Robert. It looked like Robert and Renada could relax, but unhappily it meant an un-dead Marv was still out there. Beth shivered violently.
The wind was picking up and the boat was rocking noticeably. It was getting darker at mid-morning. She turned on the feeble overhead light as Wyatt sat lost in memories of the fire, rubbing his eyes with both fists. It could be his allergies or it could be weeping. His defenses were down, and she had a chance to take control. When she thought he could concentrate she said, “Wyatt, you have to get away. They’re blaming the fire and a murder on you. Gary is telling them you are at fault.”
“Oh, God, no!”
“Yes. And Tom has gone away by now too. I convinced him it was dangerous for him here. So there is no reason for you to stay and get caught. We have to go back to shore.”
She thought she could hear water running under the cabin floor. The boat was creaking so desperately that conversation was becoming difficult. Plus, making up lies was hard for Beth even when she
wasn’t
afraid of drowning in the arms of a lunatic junior gumshoe.
“Who do you think it was died in the fire, Beth?”
“Oh, poor, dear Wyatt, how can I say this? From the description you gave me, it had to be Renada’s brother.”
“Her brother?”
“Yes, the priest who won that big peace prize for his selfless work in Africa. He’d just arrived.”
“I’ve killed a prizewinning priest!”
“I’m sure he’ll go straight to Heaven.”
“I suppose. But Marv is still out there, and if he wasn’t mad enough before, now you guys have juiced his brother along with drowning that Angelo guy. Beth, you will never be safe until I find Marv and kill him.”
“Yes, but later. Wyatt, a storm is coming up. We need to take this boat in right away.”
He became aware of their surroundings and peered out of the cabin at the blackening western sky. “A storm?”
“A big one.” She reached across and caressed his hand. “Wyatt, you really need to take us to shore now. Can do that for me?”
“Oh, yes, Beth. We’re forming a real bond here, aren’t we?”
“Sure. Now let’s head for the harbor. I’m really scared, even with you with me. I don’t swim, Wyatt.”
He gave a jerky nod. “Oh boy. We’ll go in. I’ve got my stuff in that locker. Could you pack it up for me?”
“Of course. You just drive the boat.”
“We should clean up the kitchen. I don’t want to get in trouble with the boat rental people.”
“I’ll do that too.” She watched with satisfaction as he left the cabin. She opened the locker and stuffed his scant belongings in a worn duffel bag, finding nothing incriminating or even interesting. Playing the part to the hilt, she ran water into the miniature sink and loaded the dishes. She’d just found some soap when Wyatt re-entered the cabin.
“Beth, do you know anything about starting boat engines?”
****
Tom awoke with a start. He had slept four hours. After they’d moved Harvey’s corpse, he’d spent two more fruitless, middle-of-the-night hours searching for Beth, without luck. He dressed hastily and telephoned an equally worried Mildred. There was no sign of Beth. The police had given Mildred a hard time when she’d reported her missing. No, she’d admitted, it hadn’t been twenty-four hours, only a few hours. Yes, her grandniece was twenty-six, almost twenty-seven years old, an outdoors woman and healthy. She told Tom, “Those clowns are so busy investigating that precious mystery body in Gary’s store that they won’t take this seriously.”
He headed to the kitchen. To his surprise, Dani was up and making coffee, one of Beth’s ball bats in easy reach. “I called her aunt, but there’s no word,” he told her.
She only nodded. She was worried too. She didn’t try to flirt as she gave him his mug of morning brew. She pleaded, “Tom, what should we do?”
“We have to look for Wyatt’s car again, see if he has her.”
“You know, don’t you, that I don’t believe he’s working for Tony. Tony and his brothers would never have hired a kid like Wyatt.”
“I hope you’re right. Are Gary and Robert around?”
“They should be down in a minute or two. I think Robert was up all night. He knows his alarm system fried Harvey. Renada has a sign on her door alleging a migraine, so he’s worried about her and if she likes him even a little.”
“Oh. Really?”
“Uh-huh. He thought they were clicking the last couple days, what with her teaching him all this espionage stuff and them watching
The Lawrence Welk Show
together. Welk reminds her of her mother and him of his father. But this new guest seems to have her attention now.”
On cue, Robert walked in rubbing his eyes and headed to the coffee pot. He said, “I just hope she can get through all this.”
“We’re going to find Beth today,” Tom assured him grimly.
Dani whispered gently, “He means Renada, Tom. He’s moving her to his mother’s place right after breakfast.”
Robert overheard her. “I’m sorry Tom. Of course I’m terribly worried about Beth. As soon as I get Renada out of here I’ll come back and help. What can I do?” He looked awful, not capable of doing much of anything.
“We need to find Beth and Wyatt. So get out and look for them the minute you get back. Can you do that?”
“Sure.”
Gary arrived in the kitchen, asked the same things as Robert, and got the same answers. He said, “I’ve got another short legal meeting this morning with a lawyer down in Chassell on some, uh, patent infringement thing, but I’ll come right back and help look for Beth.”
“Can’t it wait?”
“Tomahawk, I can’t search for Beth if I’m in jail.”
After breakfast Gary left for his appointment and Dani took her car to look for Wyatt’s Firebird in Houghton.
Tom spent some precious time in the garage cleaning up evidence of Harvey’s body’s presence in the station wagon before squeezing into the Nash and heading for town.
A cruise around the back streets of New Range yielded nothing. Tom headed the Nash toward Houghton to help Dani look for a gold Firebird. He found the local radio station on the car radio, a bit surprised that the Nash radio worked. “The Blue Skirt Waltz” ended and the news began. Tom pulled to the shoulder after hearing the first several words.
“Police today seek two local residents and a student. Mr. Gary Grant is a local businessman who is involved in several pending civil actions against him by the Tribal Council, the U.S. Defense Department, the Northland Associate Grocers, the Girl Scouts of America, this radio station and others. Also sought is Grant’s cousin, Miss Beth Kessler, who was reported missing last night by another relative.