Home Repair is Homicide 13 - Crawlspace (14 page)

“Bob, when I got up this morning, all I needed to do was put enough shredded cellulose to insulate a battleship into my house, and now Sam might be with a murderer.”

She took a breath. “I can’t reach Wade, and in a situation like this it might be nice to have my husband around. Ellie’s got her hands full,
because her husband is with my husband, so she’s on full-time parenting duty.”

Ellie had gone straight home from the police station after they’d found Chip there. After that, she had called every twenty minutes to be updated on what was happening.

But at age four, Ellie’s little daughter, Leonora, was a handful; whenever George was away, the mornings when the child attended prekindergarten were just about the only waking hours that Ellie didn’t spend dashing after her offspring. So when Ellie had Lee, Jake didn’t have Ellie—not for snooping purposes, anyway.

“And as if that weren’t enough, I’ve got some idiot prankster calling here, saying he’s going to kill me,” Jake said. “So, Bob, if you could just stop—”

Pestering me to tell you things I couldn’t possibly know
, she wanted to finish. But of course he wasn’t doing that. He was trying to help, she told herself firmly.

Which gave him a chance to talk, but he didn’t say that Sam had been found. And since that was the only thing she wanted to hear, it just made her furious again.

“How’d Randy even get hold of a boat, anyway?” she demanded.

“Seems Roger helped him out there, too,” Bob replied. “A few days ago, Roger called the marine store and asked them to get it out of storage, put it in the water.”

In the boat basin, he meant. Bob went on: “Roger rented a slip for it, said he was going to sell it and wanted it out where somebody could try it out. So,” he finished, “we think Randy’s on that.”

“Oh, that’s just great,” she began, but Bob was talking over her. Or trying to. Exasperated, she interrupted Bob’s well-meant advice to stay calm, sit tight, and—

“Bob, I’ve been babysitting this phone for hours now. I’m losing my mind here, just doing nothing. Can’t I even—”

Drive around some more. Walk up and down the street calling Sam’s name
.
Give one of the dogs his sock to sniff, and let them go roaming around trying to find him
.

But Bob just kept talking. In his voice she heard the same reassuring tone that in the past she’d heard him use while telling recent automobile accident victims that they weren’t seriously injured, even when they were.

In other words, he was handling her. The thought frightened her badly. “All right,” she said, chastened. “And I appreciate it, Bob, you know I—”

In the kitchen, Bella Diamond went on scouring the sink. Any minute now she would polish through the enamel, right down to the steel beneath.

Jake thought about taking up a useful activity, too. Putting in all the insulation material using a teaspoon instead of an air compressor sounded about right at the moment.

“Yes,” she told Bob Arnold again. “I know someone’s got to be here to answer the phone, in case—”

But at the thought of what exactly she might need to answer it in case of, her throat closed.

“—and if Chip gets in touch, I’ll let you know right away,” she finished.

“Yeah, do that,” he agreed dryly. “I’ll get in touch with the wardens up north, too, see if they can get hold of Wade and George Valentine.”

Wade’s hunting partner, he meant: his best friend, and Ellie White’s husband. “And, Jake, one more thing. Right now it seems like maybe Randy Dodd’s got himself some hostages. That’s bad enough. But—”

“What?” Because what could possibly be worse? But he sounded very uncomfortable, so something must be.

“Randy had to be somewhere all this time while we thought he was dead—when he wasn’t here, that is—and now Roger says it might have been South Carolina that Randy went to. I mean, after he supposedly drowned.”

That traffic ticket, she thought. The one Chip had found a record of. She’d forgotten all about it. She told Bob about it now.

“Yeah, well. Seems Randy’d been there before,” Bob continued, “and Roger thought that maybe he might’ve gone there to work construction.”

“What?” she demanded again. “What are you trying to say?”

“Jake, the thing is, some things happened down South.” Bob sounded sorrowful. “Women went missing. Three of ’em. While maybe Randy was around.”

He liked it
, Roger had said when they were with him in the police station.
I think he got a taste for it
.

Killing, Roger had meant. Her knees went watery.

“Of course, we’re not sure of anything,” Bob said. “Maybe it was just a coincidence, but—”

She sat down. It was not a coincidence. There was no such thing as that much coincidence. She told Bob about the speeding ticket again, meanwhile trying very hard to keep her voice from quavering and her hands from shaking.

But Bob already knew; cops, as it turned out, could check records better than even Chip Hahn could. And doing so was the first thing Bob had thought of, as soon as Roger Dodd mentioned his rogue brother’s possible hiding place.

“So,” she said, “maybe we should try wrapping our minds around the idea that Sam’s in real—”

Trouble. Bad trouble
. The kind he wasn’t going to get out of without help. But Bob knew that, too. He was just trying not to scare her. Or no more than she already was.

“Yeah.” He sighed resignedly. “I’m just saying, Jake. Don’t do anything dumb. Because Randy’s got his money, probably. That means he’s happy. But maybe he’s also got Sam and this girl who’s missing. One good thing, he doesn’t know yet that his plan’s gone all to hell. So let’s not do anything to make him feel—”

Worse. Like he’s got to kill them right away
.

Unless he decides to do it for fun
. She bit her lip.

“Okay, Bob,” she managed, and after that he reassured her some more: State cops, Canadian authorities, local law officers, and marine enforcement, including two coast guards on both sides of the water, were on the job.

The coast guard services were most familiar with possible hiding places and ways to get out of the country, Bob added. That last being what fugitive Randy Dodd would want most if he knew people were onto him.

And Randy was very familiar with the water and coastline, too, from his fishing days. All the little hiding places, inlets and coves … There was no guarantee that anyone, even marine law officers, would be able to find him.

“So let’s not any of us tell Randy, by word or deed, that he needs to get any sneakier than he already is,” Bob finished, and hung up.

“Yeah, right,” Jake whispered to no one. Around her the big old house seemed to hold its breath, as if just waiting for Sam to return and bring life back into it.

IN THE DINING ROOM, THE GOLD MEDALLION WALLPAPER
glimmered in the thin light of a November afternoon. In the hallway, the stairs were silent, no young-man feet thudding energetically up and down them.

In the kitchen, the dogs sniffed around restlessly, hunting for their pal. At this time on any other day, Sam would’ve had them out for a walk.

“Drink this,” Bella Diamond commanded as Jake wandered in there and sank down at the kitchen table. The room smelled like kitchen cleanser and lemon-scented spray cleaner, but the cup of tea the housekeeper handed her—her stepmother, Jake corrected herself impatiently—smelled suspiciously like whisky.

Tall and rawboned, Bella wore her white bib apron over a navy
blue sweatshirt, blue jeans, and loafers with white socks. “Your father’ll be back soon,” she said. “He’s just out walking around. Just in case.”

Looking, Bella meant. Hunting for Sam. Jake felt a pang of envy for her father, who could at least be out there trying to do something, instead of sitting here just-She gulped the spiked tea. Bella’s face creased in sympathy. “Here,” she said, and held out a paper bag. “A little chore I’ve been waiting for someone to have time for.”

In it were a half-dozen antique cut-glass doorknobs. All were coated in thick white paint, the result of some previous house owner’s ham-handed attempts at interior decoration.

“You might as well be doing something,” said Bella, handing over an X-Acto knife to go with the paint-coated doorknobs.

Jake looked at the doorknobs, and at the knife, and then at Bella, who had of course known Jake’s usual method of coping with problems, or at least of thinking about how to cope with them.

But Bella had gone further, apparently taking some trouble to put together a sort of kit for this purpose. Touched, Jake looked down at the items again.

The X-Acto knife consisted of a metal handle with a small, arrowhead-shaped blade sticking out of one end. She tested the blade with the tip of her finger and found it so sharp that she could’ve used it to split atoms.

Perfect for paint-peeling. But it was no use. “Thanks, but I can’t just sit here and—”

Bella wasn’t listening. “Finish that tea,” she said. “And a cup more, if you can. And while you’re working there, you just tell me about whatever it is.”

Sam’s vanishing, she meant. And Chip Hahn’s collaborator on the true-crime books, Carolyn Rathbone. Plus Randy Dodd, and—

Fifteen minutes later Bella had finished scrubbing the sink and wiping down all the kitchen counters and polishing the stove top, and
had started on the old woodwork. Jake looked down to discover that she’d already peeled all the old paint off three doorknobs.

And it had helped. Her hands weren’t shaking, and her heart didn’t feel as if it were about to jump out of her chest. She was still very frightened. But her mind didn’t feel as if a bomb had gone off in it, blasting her to bits.

I thought it would bring order to my life
, she’d told Chip Hahn, of buying and fixing up the antique house. And it did.

It had. Outside, the sky had taken on its afternoon-in-November look, which was indistinguishable from dusk.
Sam
, she thought.
It’s getting dark wherever he is, too
.

“So there’s a tunnel,” Bella said, scrubbing at a stubborn finger mark on the pantry door.

“Yes
,” said Jake. “Seems that’s how Randy kept Roger quiet, by threatening to tell about it.”

She started on another doorknob, pausing to sip cautiously at another cup of tea. “Roger used being in the bar as an alibi, but in fact he could’ve gone back and forth between the bar and his house without anyone knowing.”

Roger had since moved into a small apartment upstairs from the bar, leaving the house empty. The Dodd House, it was called now.

“The house where the two of them lived. So he could’ve killed Anne,” said Bella.

Her voice gave little hint as to how she felt about this, but if she rubbed that area of finger-marked woodwork any harder, Jake thought smoke might begin rising from it.

“He could have,” Jake agreed. She got up and rinsed her cup.

“But according to Roger, Randy planned the crimes and did them by himself, then came back for the money he thought Roger owed him. It sounds as if Roger might’ve suspected, but that the whole idea was horrible to him. So he didn’t dare examine it very closely until he had to.”

And by that time, Anne was already dead. “It would’ve worked
the way Randy planned it,” she said, “except for Chip and Carolyn Rathbone’s interest complicating it for him. A well-known writer, raising questions.”

“And except for Sam,” Bella pointed out. “Even without them, Sam would still have run into Randy on the breakwater last night and recognized him. If that’s what happened,” she added. “So—”

Bella was right, it was probably good luck that Chip and his writer friend arrived just when they did. Because otherwise, Jake wouldn’t have known about any of it.

Sam would just be gone. If that was what had happened … A thought struck Jake. “Bella, you didn’t by any chance make Sam’s bed this morning, did you?” She turned hopefully. “I mean, we really are sure this isn’t all just a—”

Mistake. Because Bella adored Sam and would’ve made his bed every morning of his life without complaint if Jake had allowed her to, and Sam felt the same way about Bella. He’d even gone so far as to call her “Grandma” a few times, although mostly in jest.

While I
, Jake thought guiltily,
am still trying to wrap my mind around the concept of my dad’s new wife at all
. “Bella? Did you?”

Bella touched her gold hoop earring distractedly. “What? Oh, no. I didn’t make it for him. How could I? He hadn’t slept in it, had he?”

Jake’s heart sank; of course he hadn’t. “Has anyone looked in that tunnel?” Bella asked, cupping her hand to sweep crumbs off the trash bin’s top before wiping it down thoroughly for the third time that day.

Jake put the X-Acto knife down. “Not yet. The state police don’t have a key to the house or to the Artful Dodger.”

Bob Arnold had told her this, too, apparently feeling that since he couldn’t give her good news, he would at least give her what news he did have.

“They’ll need to get them from Roger, and he’s refusing any searches until he’s spoken with an attorney.”

After Roger went all tearfully blabbermouth on them that morning in the police station, Jake thought his caution belonged firmly
in the locking-the-barn-door, horses-gone category. But it was what Roger wanted, Bob said, and he had a right to want it.

For now. “Hmmph,” said Bella expressively. “Can’t they get a warrant?”

“Well, yes. But …” If Roger didn’t change his mind, there would be one, but it would take time. Search warrants didn’t get handed out like candy in Washington County, where a person’s home was still his or her castle until a judge heard something very convincing indeed, and ruled on it.

Even then, the whole thing sometimes had to be forced to a conclusion, certain householders tended to feel that they might’ve lost the argument but they hadn’t lost the battle, not until the sheriff got inside.

Bella wrapped a spray-cleaner-soaked paper towel—she made the cleaning solution herself out of white vinegar, lemon oil, and some other ingredients that she wouldn’t divulge—around a faceted glass cabinet doorknob, twisting the paper towel—she’d have made those, too, if she could have—vigorously back and forth. “You know, I’ve been thinking about that phone of yours, too.”