Knockdown: A Home Repair Is Homicide Mystery (27 page)

He couldn’t help it; he laughed out loud. Because it didn’t get
any better than this, did it? The
police chief
had been here;
he
said there wasn’t anyone in here.

So they wouldn’t be back. They’d be looking elsewhere, while he—oh, it was perfect.

It was just too perfect. In the cellar’s far corner, under a pile of musty old curtains, he’d stashed all his stuff, his pack and floor tarp and the bag with his few remaining groceries in it. He’d planned to hoist them up the stepladder once the search of this house was done, back into the ruins of the kitchen.

There, with the windows covered and the hunt for the missing woman going on everywhere but here, where she actually was—

Because maybe he hadn’t had time to learn much, but he had absorbed one rule about hideouts from his old man: the best ones were the ones that had already been ruled out
twice
.

—he’d execute the final activities of his mission.

And of her life. Now, hoisting the stepladder, he placed it under the cellar door. It didn’t go quite all the way up, but it would do; he was a young man, and agile enough.

He could make it from the top of the stepladder to the door and through it. As for Jacobia Tiptree, well …

She wouldn’t be going up again, anyway, would she? The minute he’d seen the hooks, he’d known that hauling all his stuff back up the ladder was going to be unnecessary, as well.

Because down here was
better
. Rummaging in the pack, he brought out a coil of clothesline. With his jackknife he cut off three lengths of it, made a noose at one end of each—that Cub Scout experience, again—then tied slipknots at the other ends and hung them one apiece on the iron hooks he’d found, tugging on them to tighten them.

By the time he was finished, his eyes had adjusted to the darkness of the cellar, but he realized he would have to cover up the grimy cellar windows, too, before night fell. If enough light came in now for him to see by, then it could leak out. And—

Candles, he would have to bring all the candles down here.
Dozens of them, but that was all right. He had time; that broken beam had held up this long.

It would last for another night. Meanwhile, between now and nightfall he could wash again, eat up the rest of the peas and crackers he’d brought with him, even have a short rest. But for now …

Now he examined his handiwork. Three ropes, each with a loop at its end, hung from the iron hooks.

Two cuffs and a collar.
Perfect
, he thought, beginning his climb up the ladder.

Absolutely perfect
.

“WADE’S NOT GOING TO LIKE IT,” DECLARED ELLIE AS JAKE
hauled the first of two cast-iron porch railings across the back lawn.

They needed painting, to go with the newly painted porch. And the only sensible way to do it was with a spray can.…

But in Jake’s experience, a can of black spray paint near a white clapboard house was certain disaster. So she’d set up some wire tomato-plant cages to lean the railings against, far enough from the house so that even she couldn’t have an accident with the spray paint.

Well, probably she couldn’t. And anyway, Wade wasn’t here. “And don’t you try to talk me out of it, either,” she told Ellie determinedly.

Tomato-plant cages, when you lined up enough of them, were surprisingly strong, and it didn’t matter if they got black paint accidentally sprayed on them.

But that wasn’t what she meant. “I’ve already told the rest of them, and they’re all on board.”

Sam, her father, Bella … Surprisingly, Bella was the most enthusiastic of the three. Or maybe it wasn’t; the mess in Wade’s workshop had struck at the heart of all Bella held dear: order, cleanliness, and Jake’s own safety.

Not in that order. But right now, Bella was up there wiping off all
Wade’s tools one by one with a soft cloth; she’d already done the windows and the floor.

“All I need now is for you and George to help, too,” said Jake.

“Your dad’s even going along with this?” Ellie hauled the second cast-iron porch railing across the lawn to the tomato cages, then checked to be sure that the fastener screws for both railings were still safely in her pocket.

“He wasn’t at first,” Jake admitted, surveying the rest of the equipment. Big sheet of cardboard, check; big box of latex gloves, check. She glanced at the house, whose white clapboard back wall was so tall, it appeared to lean down at her.

“But when he heard what went on here last night, he was all for getting one of Wade’s shotguns and going out after the guy himself.”

Both ridiculously early risers, Bella and Jake’s father had come home from St. Andrews that morning just after Bob Arnold had departed.

“What about Sam?” Ellie asked. “Because the very idea of you wandering around downtown alone, just waiting for some nutcase to
grab
you—”

“He didn’t like it, either. But the whole point is that I won’t be alone,” said Jake, shaking a spray can of Rust-Oleum hard so the metal ball inside bounced, to mix the paint.

“Step back,” she warned, because Ellie’s dungarees were old and faded, but over them she wore a white cotton peasant blouse with red embroidery on it, an obvious black-paint magnet.

Next she pulled on a pair of the latex gloves, held the sheet of cardboard behind the first porch railing with one hand, and pressed the sprayer button with the other.

“I won’t be alone,” she went on as black aerosol hissed from the can, “because you’ll all be
strategically stationed.
”

Paint blackened the cardboard she’d positioned behind the porch railing, and the glove on the hand she was using to position the cardboard with, too. And as if by an afterthought, some paint did manage to reach the railing itself.

Which was the difficulty with spray paint. “I will be lollygagging,” said Jake, stopping to shake the paint can again, but not for too long; if she did, the nozzle would clog up.

“
Strategically
lollygagging,” she emphasized. Then: “Remind me again why I’m not using a brush?”

A globby blob of black paint spat out of the nozzle and began dripping down the railing—the
other
difficulty.

“Because I am,” said Ellie, stepping forward briskly to dab at the drip with one. “Anyway, I assume you’re going to do all this tonight when everyone’s downtown, waiting for the fireworks?”

“Correctamundo,” said Sam, coming out the door and across the lawn to inspect their progress.

Ellie looked disapproving. “I’m amazed you’d let your mother go down there unprotected,” she told Sam, “knowing how …”

Jake shot Sam a warning glance. If Ellie—or, God forbid, Bob Arnold—found out she was planning to let Sam carry a weapon no matter what Bob had said, the resulting sucking noise would be the sound of her plan going down the drain.

Not that there’d be any reason for him to fire it, she told herself. With as many people as were expected in town tonight, to fire a weapon anywhere near them would be a disaster.

But he could
aim
it, and Steven Garner Jr. would be able to see him aiming it. And
that
was the important part. Jake put the emptied spray can down on the grass, picked up the full one.

“He’s only doing what I’ve asked him to. He’ll be watching me every minute, from one of the upstairs windows overlooking Water Street,” she finished, aiming the fresh can with a flourish.

She pressed the spray button. Nothing happened. “And if one of you is stationed in each one of those buildings, I don’t see how he can get near me without someone noticing.”

She quit pressing the button, shook the can hard again. “So if you see him, you’ll call all the others’ cellphones.”

Which of course they’d be carrying. “And,” she added, still shaking the can, “I’ll have one, too.”

“Uh-huh.” Ellie still looked doubtful. But she was starting to come around. “And then what?”

“Well, the next part’s a little tricky,” Jake admitted. “You wait until he does something. Grab me, probably. Or try.”

She pressed the button again; nothing. The very idea of Mr. Crazypants getting near her made her cringe. But the only way to catch him was to lure him out into the open, it seemed.

And tonight was the night. “How do you know he’ll do that, though?” Ellie asked. “Try something, I mean. For that matter, how do you know he’ll even be there, or do anything at all?”

“Because this is his last chance. Tomorrow everyone leaves. Eastport won’t be crammed to the gills with strangers anymore; he won’t be able to blend in.”

She scowled at the spray can, which still wasn’t working. “Bob says the guy’s got some prior offenses,” she added. No sense going into more detail. “So once we get hold of him, the cops will take him into custody and that will be that,” she finished.

Ellie looked suspicious. “If Wade were here …” she began.
He wouldn’t approve
, she’d have finished.

“But he’s not.”
Wouldn’t approve
was a mild phrase for what Wade’s reaction would be if he heard about this.

Which he wouldn’t, until afterwards. Ellie still didn’t like it, either. She was going for it only because at the end of it Jake’s problem would be over, and that was really all she cared about—Jake’s dad and Bella, too.

Jake gave the spray-paint can a final, ferocious shake. On any other day, she’d have already gone to Wadsworth’s hardware store on Water Street for another.

But the truth was, with Garner still on the loose, she was afraid to. The rest of them didn’t quite get it yet, not even Bob Arnold, and not even after last night.

But she’d seen it in Garner’s eyes, heard it in his voice, and felt it in his murderous grip: that now, he was just toying with her. But what he wanted to do was kill her.

Vengeance: in his own time, and on his own terms. In the place of his choosing, too. She hoped that the next time she saw Garner, she wasn’t in it.

Thinking this, she pressed the button on the paint can once more. To her surprise, it worked perfectly.

Too bad the nozzle had somehow gotten turned around, aimed straight at her. A black splotch bloomed on her sweatshirt front.

Like a bull’s-eye … and that spooked her, somehow. In the next moment, she’d have opened her mouth to tell Sam there’d been a change of plan, that not only was he officially disarmed but he wasn’t going downtown with them tonight, either.

That they’d have to come up with some other way for him to be useful. He’d have raised a fuss, of course. But she could’ve thought of something to placate him.

Perhaps having spied something in her expression that he didn’t like, though, he was already walking away from her across the summer-green grass of the front lawn.

Worse, though, was who else she saw when she looked up from the spray can: her husband, Wade, crossing the lawn toward Sam.

And worst of all was what
he
saw: that damned pistol, still sticking up out of Sam’s pocket.

“SO YOU WERE GOING TO DO ALL THIS WITHOUT ME.” IN HIS
workshop, Wade sat on the antiseptically clean maple stool pulled up to his similarly clean workbench.

A surgeon could’ve transplanted kidneys on that bench, it was so spotless. But even through the fragrance of Bella’s Pine-Sol, the air up here still stank of smoke.

The burnt washtub pretty much gave it away, too, and if she’d gotten rid of it, he’d have asked about it.

He scowled. “You were going to go downtown alone tonight and dangle yourself in front of that lunatic?”

Not
were, she thought.
I
am
going to. Just not alone
. “Wade, it’ll work.
Wherever Garner shows up, there’ll be at least two people to rush down and …”

He shook his head in disgust. “You couldn’t have held off? I said I’d only be gone for—”

“Right, two days.” As it turned out, the ship’s crew member had resolved his security difficulties, so the vessel didn’t need to come into Eastport after all, eliminating the need for a harbor pilot.

“But if our situations had been reversed, would you have held off?” she asked, and when he hesitated, she went on.

“He’s been in our house twice.” Well, the time with the rat, he’d only thrown something in, but that was close enough.

“He’s harassed me, he’s taunted me, he’s terrified me, and he’s attacked me. He’s nearly burned the place down.”

She met his gaze. “He killed a girl on Sea Street, or I’m pretty sure he did. It’s a good bet that he stabbed a kid over on Washington Street, too.”

Swiftly she filled Wade in on the rest of the details, including that the New York cops were on their way here this very minute, and why.

“But they won’t be in time, Wade. He’s planning something. I can feel it, he’s just gearing himself up for …”

Downstairs in the kitchen, Bella was taking all the knobs off the cabinets again, this time scrubbing them with her special toothbrush, the one with the wire bristles.

“You’d have done the same,” Jake repeated. “If you were here and I was away, you’d have tried to do something, too.”

Surprisingly, Wade hadn’t objected at all to seeing Sam with a weapon, which was the part she’d felt most doubtful about. That she’d meant to carry out the plan alone, though …

Exhaustion hit her—that, and her ongoing feeling that this was all her fault. “I should have just given his dad that money.”

Because if she had, who knew what would have happened? But whatever it was, a disgruntled offspring wouldn’t be blaming her now. Blaming her, and trying to get revenge …

But to this Wade reacted sharply. “Oh, come on. Is that how you want to live your life? Doing things a certain way, or not doing them, just because someone else threatens to make you feel bad?”

He had a point. But in the mood she was in now, she couldn’t resist turning it around.

“So when someone else threatens to make me feel bad, I should resist. But not when you do about this, is that it? Now I should be reasonable and let you tell me the right thing to do.”

Wade pursed his lips, narrowed his eyes. “It’s not the same” was all he could think of to say. “It’s not the same thing at all.”