The Uninvited (32 page)

I know about her, Cramer.

He stood until even in the moonlessness he could make out the shape of the boulders and saplings that dotted the hill down to the creek. His mother must have followed him to the snye. That’s what she meant. That’s where she’d been going in the old canoe. It was the last straw. The very last straw.

He turned toward the panel truck. He tried the back doors. Locked. Good, that meant the cargo was still on board. She was low on her springs, heavy with contraband. What was it this time? He didn’t care. He tried the driver’s door. Unlocked. Good again.

Everything was suddenly going his way. What a change!

There were no keys, of course. But he didn’t really need keys. He let out the emergency brake and put the truck in neutral. Then he climbed out and went to the back of the big truck. He put his shoulder to it. Nothing. Not at first, but Cramer was patient and Cramer was strong. Stronger than anything. You could move a mountain if you were patient and strong. It was all about getting the thing rocking. Once you had the thing rocking, gravity would do the work for you. And he was strong not just from free weights and chin-ups and endless push-ups, but from years of paddling upstream. That’s what his life was, paddling upstream. He heaved and, despite his fatigue, soon enough the truck was moving and moving, and then, finally, it was out of his control.

Foolish of Waylin to park it like this on the lip of a hill,
he thought. Cramer watched the truck smash down the slope, bouncing and swerving. He hoped no tree was big enough to stop it, hoped no boulder would catch a wheel and hold firm. What a noise it made, all its innards crashing around. And then finally—
splash!

Gravity had finished his job for him, and the rest was up to the creek. It was sad, thought Cramer, that Butchard’s was only four or five feet deep. Then he turned away. There were other important things to do now. This was just the beginning.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

I
T WAS UNLIKELY
anyone at the Lee household would check the mailbox on Sunday, but Mimi wasn’t the only one at the snye who made regular trips to the window to peer through the curtains out toward the bridge.

Monday dawned cool and overcast. There was a front moving in. Iris left for work before nine but promised to return that evening. Around noon Jay got a call from his mom. They had been trying to get high-speed Internet service at the Riverside Drive house now that there was finally a transmission tower in the area. Apparently, the man could do the hookup that afternoon sometime between two and five. Could he be there? Jay said he would. He wanted Mimi to come with him.

“Are you kidding?”

“No,” said Jay. “Leave Cramer a note or something; tell him we’ll be back this evening.” He laughed and shook his head. “How ironic. Leaving a thief a note.”

“We don’t know he’s a thief, but I don’t want to have that conversation again,” said Mimi. “I’m going to stay.” Jay looked annoyed. “I’ll be careful.”

Jay sat down. “Fine, then I’ll stay. But you can phone Lou and tell her why.”

Mimi growled. “That’s not fair. Trust me, will you, for God’s sake? I know this guy. I swear. There’s some kind of explanation. Go. Scoot!”

But Jay shook his head and looked away. “What I said yesterday about your choice of guys—that came out all wrong.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“All I meant was that when Lazar started acting out, getting scary, he caught you off-guard, right? You weren’t expecting it?”

Mimi nodded slowly. “I’m naive; is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes.”

“And the implication is I’m being naive about Cramer. How am I doing so far?”

“You’re right on the money.”

“Okay, I hear you. But you have to believe me when I say it’s not the same thing.” Jay opened his mouth to argue, then snapped it closed. He stood up and headed toward the door. “Aw, don’t go away angry,” said Mimi.

“Just go away?” said Jay. Mimi grinned and nodded. He didn’t look happy about it, but he had given in. He always did and she felt a bit guilty about it. He came over to her. “If anything happens to you, I’m going to be really pissed,” he said.

“That is so affectionate,” said Mimi, and went up on her toes to give him a kiss, right on the lips. It didn’t last long—wasn’t meant to. But it was still a bit unnerving. “I’ll be extra specially careful,” she said.

Because the weather looked so bad, he took her car. He hadn’t been gone more than a few minutes when Mimi heard an unmistakable noise out on the driveway.

Stooley Peters had pulled up in his rackety old half-ton. With her own car gone, she thought about locking the doors and pretending not to be there. But considering how quickly he arrived, she figured he must have seen Jay drive away alone. So she bolted down toward the snye, not wanting him to get anywhere near the house, only taking the time to throw on a baggy sweatshirt, which nicely hid her mace canister in its holster.

They met at the snye, she on her side, hoping he’d stay on his. He looked as if he had dressed to go to town. He was in clean denim jeans, a denim jacket, and a mostly white shirt. His hair was slicked down. More like a Sunday-come-calling getup, she thought, which, she had to admit, was better than covered in blood, but not a cheering thought. He didn’t have his dog with him. Mimi wasn’t sure that was a good thing. But what was a good thing was that he was wearing shoes, not rubber boots. If he wanted to ford the snye, he’d have to take the bridge and she’d just pull the plank, if she had to.

“I come by yesterday,” he said, from the other shore. “No one was home.”

“What can I do for you, Mr. Peters?” she said in a businesslike way.

He rubbed his hand down the side of his jeans, as if he wasn’t used to wearing clean clothes and they felt odd. “I got to thinking about last week when I was over here, eh?” he said. “I guess I got a little outta hand.”

He paused but Mimi didn’t respond. If he thought she was going to let him off the hook, he was dead wrong.

“Anyway,” he said. “I thought I owed yous an apology.”

“Apology accepted,” she said.

“I figure it was probably the head injury, eh? Kinda made me … you know…”

“Randy?” she said.

“Yeah, well… uh…”

“Like I said, apology accepted.”

He made a salute as if he were tipping the edge of a cap. He smiled—not a good move on his part, because his teeth were anything but inviting. Then he pulled a flat brown bottle from his jacket pocket and held it up for her inspection. It was a Mickey of something; she could guess what.

“Thought maybe we might have a little Canadian Club to celebrate,” he said.

“To celebrate?”

“Hell, yeah,” said Peters, and he was beaming now. “You see I know who’s been messing around up here.” He looked triumphant. “Your secret admirer.”

This caught her off-guard, but she hoped it didn’t show. “You do, huh,” said Mimi, without a trace of happy surprise in her voice. Which seemed to tick Peters off.

He flung up his finger pointing west, up the road. “It’s the Lee boy,” he said, his voice less cheery by a few degrees. “Seen him with my own eyes.”

Mimi tried to maintain her composure, but it was an effort. “Where’d you see him?” she asked.

“How ’bout I come over,” he said.

“How ’bout you don’t,” she said, her voice sharp. “Just tell me where’d you see this … this person?” He looked put out. “What was he up to, Mr. Peters?”

“Well, I’ll tell you. I seen him a couple times, you know, but the last place I seen him was up that tree,” he said, pointing at a thick and many-branched maple right behind her. She didn’t bother to look. She knew pretty well which tree the stranger had been in Saturday night. And as much as she didn’t want to believe it had been Cramer, it was hard to refute the old codger.

“And what was he up to?” she asked.

“I didn’t stay around to find out,” said Peters, with a great deal of self-satisfaction. “As soon as he was up that tree, I took off to where he hides his boat.”

“His boat?”

“His canoe. A nice one, or it used to be.” There was no way of misinterpreting the mischief in his voice or the smugness in his expression. His crooked canines were on showy display. “I don’t think you need to worry ’bout him no more.”

“Mr. Peters,” she said, her hands on her hips, “what are you saying?”

“I’m getting to it. Keep your shirt on.” She bit her tongue. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “The lad was coming down here by way of the river, see. In his canoe. Down the Eden, then up the snye. But I got him. Got him good.” Then his hand went into his jacket pocket, and he pulled something out and held it up for her to see.

“Know what this is?” he asked.

She peered at the thing gleaming in his hand. “Some kind of drill bit?”

“You got ’er. A nice big five-eighth-inch bit. I put half a dozen holes in his little red boat. Fixed his wagon, I guess you could say.”

Jesus,
thought Mimi. “You put holes in his boat?”

“Damn right. Scuppered him.”

She nodded, not sure what to say, surprised to find herself worrying about Cramer. “And what happened?” she said.

But Peters was in no hurry to answer her question. “You see, I got a pasturage backs down onta the river. I was out in the tractor one afternoon a couple days back, and I seen him, the Lee boy, out on the Eden. Didn’t make nothing of it at first. Seen him out there lots. Except, when I looked again, this here time, the other day, like, the boy was gone. That got me to thinking. So I tracked him down.” Peters sniffed and stood up tall.

“So, did he sink? Did he drown?”

“Damned if I know. But I’m guessing he got the message, loud and clear.”

Mimi felt very ill at ease. “So what if he comes around with a shotgun or something?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” said Peters, but it was clear to Mimi from the tone of his voice that he hadn’t thought about it one bit. He hadn’t thought beyond getting vengeance. That’s what this was about. It must have been Cramer who cracked him one on the head. Peters hadn’t done this for her. Or maybe he had, in a way.

“Sure you won’t have a little snoot of this?” he said, holding up the bottle.

“No thank you,” she said.

“Aw, come on,” he said. “Let’s let bygones be bygones.” And now he did head toward the bridge, in surprisingly large steps, and by the time Mimi could get in motion, he was already on the plank that spanned the broken arch. But he stopped in his tracks.

The silence was shattered by the sound of the truck starting up.

The smile vanished on Peters’s face. He spun around. “What the—”

But his words were drowned out by the sound of his vehicle backing down the driveway. Peters turned and ran after it, and Mimi followed, rounding the bend in time to see the truck pull out onto the Upper Valentine, and then with a screeching of the gears and a roar of the engine take off west, with Peters in hot pursuit, yelling his head off and soon enough left in the dust.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO