Ransom at Sea (32 page)

She nodded. “I received a call the day before we left. All the person said was that I was to deliver the thing to someone at a place called Lookout Point at this stop. After the steward put the case in my cabin, I went down and looked in it. There was nothing there! No package! And I thought … I thought that maybe Johnny was finally coming to himself, and he decided not involve me.”

“But then he called you?” Emily asked.

Tears flooded her eyes again. “To say he was sorry. That was when I found out that something had gone terrible wrong. But I wasn't sure … He'd lied to me so many times before. I didn't know what to do … I was beside myself. I couldn't sleep, so I went up to the deck that first night out, sometime in the middle of the night.”

“So it was you who overheard Lynn and Rebecca.”

She nodded. “I knew at once what had happened. That foolish old woman! I didn't mean to scare her. I … I should have waited to look in her cabin, waited until the next day. But I was frantic! I was supposed to meet those dreadful people the next day, and I had to have it!”

“So you left the boat with us the next day, then came back to try to get the package from Marcella Hemsley's room.”

She nodded. “Yes. But I couldn't, they were doing the cabins—the stewards—and all the doors were open. They would've seen me … and I couldn't wait any longer, because I was supposed to be there at eleven o'clock. So … I had to go.”

“Without the package?” Barnes said, a faint note of admiration in his voice.

“I thought it would be more dangerous for Johnny if I didn't show up at all.”

“And were they there?”

She gave a shudder. “Yes. I was so afraid … there were two of them. Very young. A girl with dirty, stringy hair, and a young man with brown hair … He had hard, mean eyes. Tiny eyes…”

“The hikers,” said Emily.

“I told them what had happened, and they didn't believe me. At least, not at first. The man accused me of lying. He said Johnny had stolen the … the ‘catch,' I think he called it, to sell for himself. And that … well, I was terrified.”

“Because you feared it might be true,” said Emily.

Claudia nodded reluctantly. “But Johnny had been adamant about having put it in my suitcase on the phone. And I finally convinced—at least I think I did—those two people that it was onboard the boat, even that I knew what had happened to it.”

“Do you mean you told them who it was you thought had it?” Ransom asked.

She averted her eyes. “I told them that I could get it for them as soon as I could, and bring it to them.” She sputtered and broke down, holding the back of her right hand to her trembling lips. “They said if I didn't find it, they would kill me and then kill Johnny.”

Barnes waited a while before asking his next question. “So you did come back to the boat a second time.”

She looked up. “Yes, of course. But—” Her jaw dropped open and her eyes grew wide. “No! I don't mean that! I didn't come back right away. After they left me, I sat there for quite some time and … I just didn't know what to do. I couldn't believe what Johnny had gotten me involved in. By the time I got back to the boat, the hue and cry had already begun. Marcella had been discovered dead … and … and…”

Emily was gazing at her shrewdly. “And you thought that the young couple had come to the boat looking for their package and murdered her.”

Claudia nodded briskly. “I've never been so frightened in my life! She was murdered, and once everything was … over … once everyone was gone, and Rebecca had been taken away, while everyone was at dinner I searched Marcella's room. The package was gone! And the sheriff's people hadn't said anything about finding it when they searched the room. Don't you see? That couple had taken it!”

“Yes, I do see,” Ransom said flatly

Claudia looked over at Barnes. “Please … please, I'm so tired. Could I go now? I need to lie down.”

“Yes, I think that's all for now,” Barnes said after a beat. “We'll need a full description of the couple, but that can wait a while.”

“Thank you,” she said. Without a word or glance at Ransom and Emily, Claudia got up shakily and left the dining room.

“You seem angry,” Emily said to Ransom.

“I am—at the thought that that woman, knowing what she did, would let an innocent woman go to jail rather than risk herself or that strung-out grandson of hers.”

“I daresay you're right,” Emily said with a sigh. “But familial devotion can be very strong—and very misguided. Particularly if it is for one's only living relation.”

“I also have very little patience for stupidity,” Ransom said. “Especially when a seemingly intelligent woman can't see what her grandson's friends are really trying to do.”

“She knew there were drugs in that package, all right,” said Barnes, “even if she won't admit it.”

“I don't mean that. These people were trying to get her on the hook. They must've known where the grandson was getting the money to pay them off. They thought if they could just get her to do this one little thing, they could bleed her of all her money. They could hold over her head that she'd been involved in drug trafficking, or something of that sort. I doubt if she would've tried to fight them.”

Emily clucked her tongue.

Ransom continued. “I would be even angrier if it weren't for one thing—I don't think that couple did the murder.”

“What?!” Barnes exclaimed.

Emily's brows had risen to points. “Really?”

“We already know one or both of them could've sneaked onto the boat unseen,” said Barnes. “Claudia Trenton did it.”

“Not entirely unseen,” Emily reminded him.

“They could've gotten on the boat,” Barnes said, “and then when they were in her cabin, she could've come back unexpectedly and found them, and they killed her. Makes perfect sense to me.”

“It would to me as well if it weren't for one thing,” said Ransom, the right corner of his mouth turned upward. “Unless I miss my guess, that young couple is currently staying at my motel.”

“Well, that's great! Then we don't have to look for them!”

“Yes, but that's just the point.”

“Oh, I see … yes…,” said Emily.

“You want to tell me?” Barnes said.

“You see, it's easy to believe that they would stay here if they were waiting for Claudia Trenton to come up with the package. It's much harder to believe they'd stay after committing murder and getting what they wanted.”

After a moment, Barnes sat back in his chair dejectedly. “I see what you mean.”

“Although…,” Emily began, her gaze becoming somewhat distant, as if she were picturing something written in the air, “although they might have stayed if they committed the murder, but hadn't been able to find the package, knowing that Claudia had ample incentive to find it for them.”

“Whatever's in that thing, it would have to be awfully valuable.”

“I'm sure it is,” Ransom said darkly.

“So we just go over there and talk to them,” Barnes said impatiently.

“No. In the first place, I don't
know
it's the same couple. Secondly, we don't have any evidence that they had anything to do with the murder. There were no strange fingerprints in the cabin, remember?”

Barnes huffed irritably. “We just sit on our hands?”

He hadn't noticed Emily's cunning smile. “There is one way we could get evidence, at least of one crime.”

“How's that?”

Her eyes twinkled. “Would you happen to have a shoe box we might use?”

10

It had taken Barnes nearly an hour to come up with a box of the right size, wrap it in brown paper, tie it with twine, and get back to the boat. He appeared on the deck carrying the box concealed in a black plastic bag, just in case the boat was being watched.

“How are we supposed to contact those people?” Barnes asked.

“They must have given Claudia a way to do that,” said Emily. “Remember, we were supposed to sail the morning after she saw them. There was no guarantee we'd still be in Macaw when she was able to get the box, so she'd have needed some way to let them know she'd found it and where she was.”

“If the boat was going to sail,” Barnes said, “I don't know why they would be hanging around here.”

Ransom supplied the answer. “If they've gone out of their room at all, they know the boat's still here. Everyone within a twenty-mile radius knows about the murder, and they'd know the boat was being held. I've never been anywhere that news travels as quickly as it does here.”

“You don't get out of Chicago much, do you?” Barnes said with a sly smile.

“No, thank God,” the detective murmured.

The trio found Claudia sitting on the bed in her cabin. As Emily had predicted, the couple had given her a number to call when she'd found the package, presumably for another cell phone.

“We want you to call them,” Ransom explained, “and let them know that you've found the box.”

“Oh … oh, I couldn't,” said Claudia, her eyes wide with fear. “They're killers! I couldn't…”

Ransom crouched in front of her so he could look her in the eye. “I know it's difficult, but I believe you can do it, Miss Trenton. Tell them you'll bring the thing to Lookout Point. Tell them it has to be today, because the boat is definitely going to sail in the morning.”

Tears coursed down the old woman's face. “I can't … really, I can't.”

Emily sat down on the bed beside her and laid a stabilizing hand on her leg. “Yes, you can,” she said firmly. “You have always been a very strong woman—you've already faced much more than most any other woman I know could bear—and I know that you can gather the courage to see this through. I also know how much you must have loved your grandson, and this may very well lead the police to the people who so callously used him, and killed him.”

She had chosen her words judiciously, and they had the desired effect. Claudia's back straightened as she listened to Emily, and the tears stopped. She gave a final sniff, then said, “All right.”

The tragedy of her grandson's death, the stress she'd already been under, and the genuine fear she felt at dealing with the people who were involved in the murder, gave Claudia's telephone demeanor the exact note of distress it needed to convince the young man who answered the phone that she was in earnest. He told her to be at Lookout Point in an hour, then abruptly hung up.

“Well done, Claudia,” said Emily once the call had been completed. Then she went into the hallway with Ransom and Barnes, closing the door after them.

“She made the call,” said Barnes, “but I don't think she's going to be able to do the rest of it.”

Ransom sighed. “Perhaps not.”

*   *   *

Trail number six was much like the other paths at its start: wide enough to be comfortably walked, with occasional plaques describing the local flora and fauna. The old woman wended her way carefully along the path, clutching the parcel in both hands. The woods smelled musty and dank. The path was deserted except for the lone figure in the floppy sunhat, its string tied beneath her chin.

Half a mile into the woods the land to the left of the path began to fall away, forming a ridge along which the path continued, protected by an old fence of dark brown wood.

Lookout Point was a semicircular natural balcony on the edge of the ravine. From its bench, one could look down through the trees below and see the dried bare outline of the stream that had created the anomaly.

The old woman sat down, laid the package to one side, and waited with her hands neatly folded in her lap. The scene was silent except for bird calls and an occasional rustling in the woods behind her. Under normal circumstances, she would have found the peacefulness a welcome change, but at the moment she was far too concerned with the matter at hand. Her back was straight and stiff, her ears pricked up, listening for the stealthy approach of the man she was supposed to meet.

She needn't have bothered to strain her ears. After an interval of about a quarter of an hour, a loud voice cut through the tranquility with a booming, singsong air: “‘Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, It's through the woods we go.'”

It was a male voice, not too far off and approaching at a steady pace. It sounded unnaturally—almost menacingly—carefree as it sang the same lines over and over again.

The old woman listened as not one but two sets of footsteps sounded on the wooden floor of the lookout.

“Hey, old lady,” the man's voice demanded, “where's my stuff?”

The woman turned around and looked up from under the hat. There were the two of them: a young man with stiff brown hair and pale skin. His nose was slightly bent in the middle as if it had been broken and hadn't set properly. His cheeks were sunken, and his chin came to a narrow nub. His eyes were exactly as Claudia had described them: small and cruel. With him was the young woman with long, stringy blond hair. She was severely emaciated and had dull, vacant blue eyes. She wore a formfitting shiny pink knit top and a pair of skintight blue jeans.

“Hey! You ain't old lady Trenton!” said the young man.

“No, I'm not,” Emily Charters replied, manufacturing an excessively timid manner. “I'm just acting as … her agent. Miss Trenton was not well enough to come, so she asked me to do it for her.”

“Well, you better've brought my stuff. I don't care who you are, you ain't got it and you're gonna get hurt!”

“I wouldn't … I wouldn't … what is the phrase for it? The one they use in the movies? Oh, yes—double-cross! I wouldn't double-cross you,” Emily fluttered. “Neither would poor, dear Claudia. She told me what the … consequences would be!” She widened her eyes. “She told me about her grandson!”