Reilly 04 - Breach of Promise (49 page)

“I just can’t.”

“But if he did . . . he’s not just dangerous to Genevieve, Nina.”

“There’s an explanation. There has to be.”

“Just don’t let friendship blind you. Watch yourself, okay?”

His words evaporated behind the rattle and roar of the
Andreadore
as she set off for Emerald Bay.

Paul ran the engine at full throttle for about ten minutes. Immediately, the cool wind of late May gusted inside Nina’s clothes to chill her limbs and bite at her neck.

A heavy spray flew off the choppy water below. “Would he swim to Fannette in this weather?” she said.

“I believe Matt told me once you can pull up to the rocks in a kayak,” Paul said. “You might be able to get there without even wetting your feet.”

“I wish we weren’t doing this,” said Nina. “I’m freezing already. The lake is getting really wild. And look at those clouds coming in.”

Paul didn’t reply, seeming lost in his own thoughts.

The wind rushed by. Ten thousand white caps adorned the vast expanse of lake. “And I’m scared,” she shouted over the motor and the wind. “Slow down.”

“We’re in a hurry, remember?”

She remembered. She remembered that she should be sitting at a safe desk somewhere, in a warm room, with everything in control, not out here on the lake with the afternoon wind coming up, in control of nothing, with Paul, who was supposed to be gone. . . .

“What’s this?” she said, stopping a leather case that was rolling across the deck. “Oh, good, Matt’s binoculars.”

“Here,” Paul said. “Wrap yourself in the blanket.” He threw a picnic tablecloth to her and she put it around herself.

She pulled out the binoculars and adjusted them to her eyes. For several minutes, she scanned Lake Tahoe for as far as she could see, almost across its entire twelve miles to the eastern shore. “Anybody who was out here today was smart enough to dock before now. There’s nothing out there, not even the ghost of the drowned sailor.”

“What drowned sailor?”

She told Paul the story Andrea had told her about the sailor who ended up at the bottom of Lake Tahoe instead of in the tomb he had built on the island.

Something she said must have verified something he was already thinking. “This damn lake. This whole place. It’s so beautiful on the surface.” He looked out at the uneven waves, and hung on to the wheel with fingers so tightly clenched they had turned white. “But underneath . . .” As if to help him make a point, the engine sputtered, then reengaged.

Before Nina could ask if the comment had some hidden double meaning only a literature major could figure out, he said, “We’re almost at the entrance to the Bay. Get those binocs up.”

And there it was, a boat with the figure of a woman at the helm. “It’s Genevieve,” she said, handing over the binoculars so Paul could look.

“What’s she doing over there? That’s not the way into Emerald Bay,” he said, and for the first time Nina realized that the irritation in his voice, his absorption, probably masked a certain amount of fear. Paul didn’t spend all his time messing with boats either, she reminded herself. An equivalent to her five-minute lesson with Matt probably constituted the bulk of his boat lore.

But he had never failed her, had he?

They tried to hail Genevieve, but in the wind, she could not hear them.

“Damn and blast!” said Paul. “She didn’t even look this way. She’s headed straight out to the middle of the lake. Is she trying to get to the other side? Where on God’s blue water is she going so fast?”

“We can’t catch up to her, now. Her boat’s in better shape than this old rattletrap. Anyway, she’s alone, Paul. She’s okay. I don’t even see Winston.”

“Don’t knock Matt’s boat. You don’t want her taking offense. We’ve got a long way to go. And we don’t know what’s going on. It’s possible Winston’s in that boat somewhere. Now let’s just give her a little gas“—he pushed the throttle—”and we’ll just see who’s a rattletrap.”

He got the boat up to top speed, which wasn’t fast enough to overtake Genevieve, but felt very fast to Nina. Holding on to the windscreen with one hand, she stood up and waved the paper bag in the wind. Genevieve’s boat rumbled purposefully ahead, jumping and dipping in the waves, sometimes heaving to one side or the other, looking dangerously unstable. At one point she turned her head, and Nina saw her lips moving, as if she was saying something, but she continued at full speed, apparently blinded by her resolve. Then, suddenly, about four miles out from land, she shut the engine off and bent over out of sight.

“What’s she doing?” Paul said, adjusting the motor down, trying to close the gap between them without running into the other boat.

“I can’t see her.”

When they were as close as possible, he cut the engine down to low. The noise made no impression in the wind, apparently, because the next thing they knew, a startled Genevieve almost fell over at the sight of them.

“What the hell!” she called to them. “Where’d you come from?” She had a somnolent Winston caught by the arm, and as they watched, she propped him against one of the seats. He was sitting on the deck of the boat, eyes closed.

They pulled in next to Genevieve, and Paul kept the engine running, so that he could move away quickly if the wind pushed them in too close.

“We need to talk to you, Genevieve,” said Nina.

“You followed me out here to talk to me? Must be awfully important. What’s happened?”

“What’s the matter with Winston?” Paul said.

“Oh, man,” Genevieve said. “Winston. He’s drunk. God. He’s a maniac. He took it in mind to drive this dang boat all the way across the lake! I told him it was too late in the day, but he was beyond listening.”

“But you’re driving,” Nina said.

“Just for the past few minutes. He was so determined. Shouting at me. Jesus, I never saw him like this before,” she said. “He just now passed out.”

“What are you doing here with him?”

“After I finished up at work, I realized I had some time before I had to leave. You probably noticed Winston and I . . .” She flushed. “Well, we didn’t agree about how things ought to be between us. I wanted to keep seeing him . . . he thought we needed to make a clean break. So I wanted to talk to him. It seemed like a perfect, intimate little opportunity. I knew he was kayaking so I rented this boat, and surprised him on the island with a picnic I picked up at Cecil’s on the way out of town.

“We laid out a blanket on the island. We were celebrating with champagne, but I hardly drank anything. Turns out, he’s a mean drunk,” Genevieve said, and she started to dab at her face with her sleeve. Her light hair streamed out behind her in lank strips. “You can’t tell someone like that what to do. I guess he was drinking before I arrived. A little of the champagne and he was over the top. Then he practically forced me. We got on the boat. I wanted to go back, but he had this cockeyed idea . . . it was easier to give in. And then, just a minute ago, he finally passed out. I was just going to sit him up so he wouldn’t vomit and choke on it or something. Then I figured I’d head back.”

“Genevieve,” Paul said. “Would you toss the floats onto the side of your boat? You know, the ones you put down to protect the boat when you dock.”

“Why?”

“Did Winston say why he wanted to go out into the middle of the lake?” Nina asked. Winston was completely passed out, obviously not a danger at the moment.

“No,” said Genevieve. “He was way beyond reason, just pushing and demanding. I was afraid. . . .” She was half-shouting over the wind.

“Genevieve, listen,” Nina said. She explained as quickly as she could what they thought the microphone they had found in Winston’s office meant. “It’s just possible he wanted you out here where no one would find you. If there was an accident.” The
Andreadore
pitched, and Nina reached for the windshield to prevent herself from falling.

“That’s ridiculous!” Genevieve said. “You’ve lost your marbles! How can you think that of him?”

“There may be an explanation. But you have to look at the facts. If Winston eavesdropped on the jury, there’s also the possibility . . . the remote possibility he has something to do with the death of Clifford Wright.”

“I . . . I don’t know what to say. I’m just flabbergasted. After all he did for you! And he would never intentionally hurt me. He cares about me.”

“Nevertheless,” said Paul implacably. “Why don’t you ride back with Nina. I’ll take Winston.”

“No,” said Genevieve. “I’ll take him back. He’s out cold. Even if what you’ve said is true, and I think it’s the biggest hunk of wet cow dung I ever met, I’m in no danger now. Tell you what. I’ll head back to the dock. You two could help me by goin’ back for his kayak.”

“Forget the kayak!” Paul exploded.

They argued back and forth for a few minutes as the sky continued to lower until the clouds nearly touched Nina’s shoulders, and the fading afternoon was darkening by the minute.

Genevieve finally clinched it. “How are you going to feel when he wakes up, huh? He’ll have a perfectly reasonable explanation for everything, and then he’s going to want to snatch you bald-headed for leaving his kayak behind!” She was very upset, and had slipped into her most exaggerated Southern accent.

“Paul, the island is only a few minutes out of the way. We could get his kayak,” Nina said.

Paul quit haggling. Pulling the
Andreadore
swiftly up beside Genevieve’s speedboat, he motioned to Nina to take over the helm, perched on the edge of the boat, and leaped before Genevieve had time to react, arms akimbo and legs flailing over a five foot stretch of lake, landing with a curse inside the other boat. He stood up and took Genevieve’s arm. “You be a good girl and get the hell out of this boat,” he said, guiding her over to the edge. “Nina, come in closer.”

Nina obeyed, moving gingerly in. Ignoring her noisy protests, Paul lifted Genevieve neatly into the
Andreadore.

“I’ll go back for the kayak. We’ll meet you two at Richardson’s landing in twenty minutes. You two start back. Meanwhile, Genevieve, got any rope on this rig?”

Genevieve stood next to Nina, watching Paul and Winston recede as Nina steered Matt’s boat away. “You’re going to tie him up?” she said.

“Just maintaining the peace,” said Paul. “You said he was upset.”

“I don’t believe this.”

“Tell me,” Paul said sternly, “where the goddamned rope is.”

Looking unhappy or uncertain or both, Genevieve finally said, “I think there’s some inside that hatch Win’s lying on.”

“Paul, be careful,” said Nina, waving and steering the
Andreadore
to the southwest. She waited until they were far enough away not to cause a wake and swamp the other boat before accelerating away.

She could see that he was trying to move Winston’s dead weight to one side, but the big man flopped around, ungainly as a marlin.

Nina and Genevieve covered a couple of miles in blessed silence, Nina just delighted to be going home and feeling tremendously relieved. They had Winston. Now he could explain. He could dispel this cloud of doubt about her case. They were about halfway to the resort before Genevieve said, “Oh, damn. Damn, damn, damn!”

“What is it?”

“I forgot to tell him to pick up the picnic basket,” she said.

“That’s no problem,” Nina said. “I promise I’ll get my brother to rescue it for you tomorrow.”

“You don’t understand!” she cried. “I took off my rings and put them in it. My mother’s wedding ring is in there. I can’t leave it. Someone might get there first!”

What the heck. She would rather be near Paul anyway. Paul had Winston, so they had nothing to worry about on that front. The island wasn’t far off their route.

“Calm down,” said Nina. “Let’s go get it.” She turned the
Andreadore
north and aimed for the narrow sliver of green lake in the distance that heralded the opening to Emerald Bay.

Rising about a hundred and fifty feet above the lake’s surface, Fannette Island sat in the middle of Emerald Bay like the important central jewel in an exquisite pendant. On the first visible piece of it, on the northeastern end, heaps of granite boulders were topped by the stone teahouse. The descending clouds had leached the color out of the pines. The landscape, always rugged but usually softened by sparkling waters and sunlight, held a different beauty in the blues and grays of late afternoon, brooding in its solitude out there in the middle of the swirling waters.

Nina had decided to relax into the event, let things take their course. They had nothing to fear except perhaps Matt’s unreliable boat, which had behaved admirably so far, and the unpredictable weather, which threatened, but did not deliver, rain. The island must be magnetic, she thought, because even out here, in this disquieting atmosphere, she could feel its tug. She wanted very much to hop right out of the boat and climb to the top of the little hill, to sit in the teahouse and take in the view from the top. However, the cold lake below, deep with melted snow, frightened her a little. She would come back on a sunny day later in the season when the lake had heated up, with Matt and Andrea and the kids. Bob would love finding the way up the ridge to the teahouse.

“We have to go around to the other side,” Genevieve said. “To the cove. Here, why don’t you let me steer? I know the way better.”

“No, thanks,” Nina said. She felt responsible for Matt’s boat, and she knew pulling in close to the rocks in the cove in this kind of wind might be nasty.

Rocking and rolling against the stiff waves of an unruly lake, the
Andreadore
was taking a beating. Genevieve would not shut up, and kept up a nonstop stream of chatter that had the effect of making Nina very nervous.

Within a minute, they caught sight of the tiny cove that offered the only safe harbor for a boat.

“We can’t get in, Genevieve,” Nina said. “See that?” She pointed to the twisted tree that marked the island’s most southern point. “I’m sure there are rocks jutting under the water there. The wind’s up too much. It’s just gotten too choppy.”

“Just get in a little closer, Nina,” Genevieve said, practically hopping with impatience. “I’ll jump in and swim. I did it once already, you know.”