Death by Chocolate Raspberry Scone, page 24
“Not you,” I told Ellie, who was exhausted from battling the waves with nothing but a wooden paddle. I turned to Glenna.
“You come and help me, though, will you, please?”
Once she’d gotten into the raft safely, the white-haired old witch hadn’t seemed to care much about anything, and why should she? She’d been this close to meeting a terrible end, not to mention whatever else that fake friend, Julio, had put her through.
But now she stirred grudgingly, shifting sideways across the raft’s rubbery bottom. It was only a couple of feet—the raft wasn’t huge—but she made it seem like a heroic task.
“Give me your hand,” I said as she reached me, then steadied myself with it and stepped yet again up onto the raft’s plump, bobbling rim.
I’d have sat on the raft’s edge and slid in feet-first but the thought of a shark latching onto one of my favorite toes stopped me; if any of my parts were going into the water, my fists had to be among them right off the bat.
A punch in the nose seemed a feeble defense against all those pearly-whites, but it was better than nothing; meanwhile, no shark fins poked up from the water at the moment, and the Bayliner hadn’t floated too far away . . . yet.
“Jake, don’t,” Ellie breathed in dismay when she saw what I was doing, but I was too busy ignoring my own fears to reply. We had one chance, but only right now, not after I’d thought about it for a while.
Besides, if I thought about it, I’d never do it, so once again I just jumped, steeling myself for the cold water and very aware of not wanting to get shark-nipped. Then, once I’d splashed and resurfaced uneaten, it hit me how much farther away the Bayliner appeared from the water than it had from the raft.
Swim, said the voice in my brain that’s in charge of making sure I don’t drown. Swim fast, it said as the big boat moved rapidly away and my brain went on showing me full-color images of bloody shark attacks.
Meanwhile, have I mentioned how poorly I did in that swim class? The Bayliner was farther away now than when I’d started, and the raft was somehow equally distant. Then a breeze kicked up, hurling salty waves at me.
My eyes burned. My lungs burned. My arms and legs burned, too, from more exercise than they’d had in a month, but there was no help for it; no one was coming to our rescue. So I kicked once, then again, and swam a little more, mostly just to see if I could.
And then the most amazing thing happened. Remember that anchor, the one I said was sailing like a kite-tail underwater, towed by its anchor-chain behind the drifting Bayliner?
Well, just then a large object surged up at me from below and in my fear and exhaustion, once I saw that it wasn’t the shark, I somehow believed that it might be a life ring and grabbed blindly for it.
And caught it, managing not to let it take out my appendix and not to let go, even though it was moving along very swiftly. It was the Bayliner’s anchor; the current’s force must’ve pulled it loose very abruptly, and the taut, suddenly-released anchor-chain had recoiled forcefully, yanking the anchor toward the boat.
But not for long. The anchor slowed and began sinking again, now pulling the Bayliner nearer to me as it went down. Once I reached it, I seized the chain desperately and hauled myself up it as quick as a little monkey, a feat I managed only because I knew sharks liked eating monkeys.
But I only got halfway up before I realized that I’d never make it; a natural vine-swinger I ain’t. Instead I needed the swim ladder at the Bayliner’s stern. So I had to swim again, then climb the ladder and heave myself over the transom.
And then, not quite believing it myself, I was aboard; half-drowned, falling-down exhausted, and sharing the deck with a shark’s corpse. Not until I’d stumbled to the helm and found the key in the ignition, though, did I remember:
That anchor. It had to come up, and you raised it with a crank, and the crank was on the bow. To get there I’d have to get out onto the bow, inching my way along a narrow walkway with a sharp drop to the water on one side, and nothing to hang on to on the other.
Or that’s how I’d done it before, but now the hell with it; I strode halfway out there, froze in panic, then gave myself a good hard kick in the mental backside and went the rest of the way. The anchor was heavy and so was the chain, but the crank worked smoothly; trembling with exhaustion, I guided the chain into its locker and secured the anchor with the bungee cords I found looped around the capstan.
And then I went back, started the engine, put it in gear, and . . . nothing. The engine ran fine but the boat just sat where it was, emphasis on the word sat. We were stuck on something, I strongly suspected, probably on another one of those granite ledges that Ellie had picked our way through so carefully, earlier.
“No, no, no . . .” Angrily I slammed the shift lever forward; nothing. Back: nothing again. The Bayliner shivered and tried to move each time I revved the engine, but . . .
“Oh!” The word burst from me as, with a great deal of loud grinding and crunching, the boat lurched. A few times more of backing-and-forthing and—
The Bayliner slid backwards off the keel-trapping ledge into deeper water, bobbing freely until I hit the throttle again and promptly ran into yet another chunk of underwater granite.
Chastened, I backed off, then consulted the GPS. Glowing green numerals showed a way through the ledges, but before I tried, I thought I’d better get out the life rings.
I’d be throwing them to Hudson and Lizzie in a few minutes, I reasoned; they’d better be handy. So after putting the boat in neutral I stepped over the dead shark’s body to get to them.
That’s when the shark either came back to life or had never really been dead at all. Suddenly the sweetly marine-scented air was full of teeth, gnashing and slashing; startled, I hardly knew whether to jump overboard or out of my skin.
In the end I just leapt back toward the bow, and the animal quieted. Reflex, I told myself, that primitive brain is just having a last spasm. But as I thought this, the long, fishy body sort of sproinged itself into the air again, its jaws snapping.
Unfortunately, it didn’t sproing itself right off the boat. So I did the only thing I could think of; I grabbed the life rings and vaulted over the shark’s body while he made another fast grab for me.
And missed. Pushing the throttle, I began picking my way through more of the underwater granite ledges. Every cell in my body screamed hurry: The shark on the deck was getting his wind back, and the one still in the water could be attacking someone right this minute.
At last the numbers on the depth finder climbed, indicating deeper water; I was safely past the ledges. But as I hit the gas to charge toward the raft, I spotted another boat approaching.
Sure, now you show up, I thought. Then as it drew alongside I saw who it was: Peter Waldron, on the deck of the Consuelo.
And he was pointing a gun at me.
Meanwhile, now only a few yards from the Bayliner, Lizzie smacked the wooden paddle’s flat side down hard onto the water. Nearby, Hudson swam one-handed, clutching a sobbing Ephraim in his other arm and struggling to reach the raft.
Waldron’s bullhorn-amplified voice rang out. “All aboard,” it said, and for emphasis he fired his weapon.
The bullet hit the silvery propeller atop the wind-gauge on the Bayliner and sent it whizzing around. Consuelo moved stern-first toward where Lizzie was looking up at it in surprise.
When the boat’s rear deck ladder neared her, she grabbed for it and hoisted herself up. Next, Waldron angled the boat around so Ellie could grab the ladder, too; she helped Glenna onto it, then climbed it herself.
Finally Hudson went up, still carrying Ephraim. And since I wasn’t going anywhere without him, and besides, Waldron would shoot me if I tried, I dropped anchor again, and climbed up onto the Consuelo with the rest of them.
Once we were all on the Consuelo, we got relieved of our phones, which didn’t work anyway. Waldron aimed his own weapon at Ephraim while Lizzie and Dylan slid their weapons across the deck to him. The guns probably didn’t work, either, after their bath in salt water, but I still hated to see them go.
Then we were shepherded together in the same comfortably appointed room that Hudson and I had seen: rattan carpets, upholstered furnishings, big windows, and a very large TV screen that hadn’t been there before, mounted on the aft bulkhead.
The man liked his luxuries. A rare coin would buy a lot of them, I guessed. I didn’t know if Julio’s death would change his plans, but I did know that we were all prisoners here on his big research vessel, where he still held a gun on us.
“The hell,” Hudson uttered in disgust. Still dripping salt water, he squidged across the rattan to the room’s well-stocked wet bar, grabbed a bottle of brandy, and swigged.
Then he passed the bottle around while Waldron just stood there and watched us, weapon at the ready. I took my swallow, shuddered and took another, then turned to Waldron.
“The little boy is sick,” I said. Limp in Ellie’s arms, Ephraim coughed alarmingly as if to confirm this. “I need warm water, blankets . . . do you have any Tylenol?”
He’d probably have ignored me, but I was standing two feet from him, staring into his tanned, boyish face. He was the one with the weapon, but he blinked first, I saw with satisfaction.
Yeah, screw your gun, I thought, and screw you, too.
“Oh, come on.” I got right up in his face and snarled at him, “I know you’ve probably got a whole sick bay on this tub, just let me into it.”
Thinking scalpels, needles . . . anything sharp and/or weapon-like. . . But Waldron was no dummy, unfortunately.
“Yeah, no. I’ll get you the pills.” He waved toward a door at one end of the room we were in.
“Bath, kitchenette, full laundry, towels, blankets.”
So it was to be a luxurious imprisonment. He turned and left us, and the door that he pulled closed behind him locked audibly.
“Well,” said Glenna, who was already on her fourth swig of brandy, “this is a fine kettle of fish.”
Hudson turned to her. “Listen, we need to think, so how about if you don’t have anything to contribute, you shut up?”
Then he turned away, heading for the bath area; she stuck her tongue out at him as he went.
“Dylan’s right, though,” Lizzie said quietly. “We need to figure out something.”
But then he came back. “It’s okay in there, good towels and all. Better take the boy and get him warmed up.”
You could’ve knocked me over with a feather; I’d been sure he’d meant to grab first dibs on getting warm and dry.
But he hadn’t. Lizzie’s gaze turned slowly to me, her dark eyes communicative: See?
Yeah. He was a prince, all right, even if a bit of a mixed blessing, in the day-to-day. But could he leap tall buildings or stop locomotives?
Because a comic-book superhero was exactly what we needed now, as Ellie agreed while we sat a listless Ephraim in the bathtub’s warm water, sponging him down before wrapping him in warm towels.
“What I don’t understand is how he’s managed it all,” said Ellie, meaning Waldron. “So much has happened, he couldn’t have done it all himself, and what’s Julio got to do with it, anyway?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Waldron did threaten his family?” I said, remembering Julio’s soulful dark eyes and spaniel face.
“Or maybe he just said that to try getting himself off the hook,” I added. “To me, none of this is making sense.”
The distant whap-whapping of a helicopter’s blades came from outside. “They’re out looking for us,” I said. “George and Wade.”
Of course they were, we’d been out all night; by now, Wade would’ve enlisted the port authority’s helicopter. Soon they’d find Ellie’s boat and the raft, and probably the wooden paddle, too, still floating around out there.
“They’re probably fit to be tied,” said Ellie, and that was an understatement. But there was nothing we could do about it now, and while we were drying Ephraim’s hair—his eyes stared glassily, his cheeks pink with fever, and Waldron still hadn’t returned—Lizzie came in.
“I found some honey in the kitchenette, along with some Tylenol.” She held out a pill bottle and a jar with a spoon in it. “The honey might make giving the Tylenol easier.”
I didn’t kiss her feet but it was close. Crushed into the honey, the Tylenol went down okay, Ephraim took a few sips of some ginger ale we found, and when we put him down on a couch in the lounge area and covered him, he slept.
“You’re right, though, Waldron must’ve had help,” I went on to Ellie half an hour later when we’d had hot showers. A closet held clothing in various sizes, perhaps left by previous guests.
Luckily, I didn’t mind the luxury brand-names, although I do know I’ll never fit again into what high-end designers think is a size eight. When we were dressed, we went back out into the common area for coffee.
“Who else? Sally Coates?” I recalled the small, crowded house and her story. “I don’t care how much she tries to defend her missing man, she couldn’t have been that sorry to be done with getting yelled at and clobbered.”
I got up and poured more coffee at the credenza near the door. The fancy contraption that brewed it looked complicated enough to refine uranium in.
“So maybe Sally and the shark scientist meet cute while he’s got her husband working for him?” Ellie theorized when I returned. “And what, cook something up together?”
“It would be a good team,” allowed Lizzie, sitting nearby. “Her on the home front, playing the poor widow, keeping Waldron informed of any important developments . . .”
“And Waldron doing the dirty work,” I finished for her. “My next question, though, would be why in the world Sally got Ellie and me involved? And what happened to the”—I broke off as a low vibration began humming in the floor as the Consuelo’s engines started—“gold coin?” I finished.
“That’s more than one question,” Waldron said from behind me; he’d slipped in silently.
“Hudson’s in the shower,” I said inanely. While we talked, the rest of us were taking advantage of the fruit and pastries on the buffet, except for Glenna, who’d found another bottle of brandy and was sipping steadily from it.
The booze didn’t keep her from watching Waldron alertly, I noted; from beneath her damp fringe of thick, still-damp white hair, her eyes remained fixed on him.
“I want you all to know that I’m really very sorry about this,” he began, pouring himself a glass of club soda at the bar and dropping a slice of lime into it.
The Consuelo lurched backwards suddenly, startling and then puzzling me. “Who the heck is driving?” I demanded.
He smiled condescendingly. “Jake, I know how you like to be in control of everything . . .”
Control this, I thought angrily at him.
“. . . but from here on, you don’t have to do a thing,” he went on. “Everything’s being handled.”
Hudson exited the bath area with damp hair, a fresh shave, and a stony expression, wearing a set of excessively fashionable men’s clothes that he must’ve pulled out of the castoffs closet.
“What’s going on?” He looked around at all of us, then at Waldron again. “And what the hell do you think you’re—”
Waldron stepped back, then turned quickly and fired his little handgun at one of the lounge windows, which exploded.
“Okay, so have I got your attention now?” he demanded.
But by then I was long past feeling menaced by a weapon; I’d been menaced by a sinking barge, Julio’s treachery, and more sharks than I could shake a stick at, all just that morning.
I was all menaced out. “I want,” I repeated, “to know who is driving this boat. We have a right to—”
Waldron fired the gun again, whereupon naturally I wondered how many rounds it held, and whether I could get him to fire the rest of them without hitting any of us.
But just then the boat’s motion halted; moments later the door Waldron had come through opened again and a man I’d never seen before came through it.
“Folks,” said Waldron, raising his hand like some jolly game-show host, “say hello to the not-even-murdered-a-little-bit Mister Paul Coates.”
I looked at Ellie and she looked at me: Of course. Coates was a big, bulky fellow with a broad, sun-leathered face, dark, untrimmed hair and whiskers, and a general air of being in way over his head.
His dull gaze meandered around the room. “Why do I think none of this was his idea?” I whispered to Lizzie.
“Because first he’d have to have ideas?” she responded venomously; investigating murder cases whose victims were only fake-dead was not her favorite activity.
Waldron was talking again. “If you all could’ve minded your own business, none of this would’ve—”
“Sally’s my friend,” Ellie cut in hotly. “People who aren’t monsters help friends, okay? So don’t try blaming this on—”
The calming motions Waldron made with his hands caused me to want mine wrapped tightly around his throat. Coates came back from the fridge with a beer and one of those frozen meat-pastry gadgets that you heat up in the microwave.
He took a large, unselfconscious bite of the unwarmed food item, chewed energetically, and washed it down with beer.
“Just tell me how it worked, will you?” Lizzie said quietly as Waldron prepared to go on with whatever goofy little lecture he thought he was delivering.
“Why?” he asked. “I mean, it’s not like you’ll ever be able to do anything about—”
He stopped, seeming to realize what he’d very nearly said: that we weren’t going to live long enough.
Ellie turned pointedly away and addressed Coates. “So you just left them? Sally and your kids, you took the coin and ran off and let them think you’re dead?”
Coates’s eyes closed tiredly as if he’d already read himself this particular riot act many times.
Poor baby, I thought meanly. But then another thought hit me. “So let me guess,” I said to the very-not-dead fisherman. “You told Waldron about the coin while you two were out shark hunting together? You running the Consuelo, him doing. . . whatever the hell it is he was doing?”
