Sing It to Her Bones

16

I slouched in the passenger seat of Connie’s car, uncomfortably strapped in, with the seat belt webbing chafing my neck. As we passed Ellie’s Country Store, I checked the porch, but there was no sign of Bill. I was glad. He’d have recognized the car at once and would have known exactly where we were going. I didn’t want him to think I’d paid the least bit of attention to all that garbage he’d told me about Hal.

Where High Street dead-ends at Ferry Point Road, Connie turned left. She pointed out the condo where Frank Chase lived, an attractively landscaped end unit, but his car wasn’t in the drive. I assumed he was still at his office, struggling to manage the workload alone. In spite of the lies he had told me, I felt a little bit sorry for the guy.

Five hundred yards ahead I could see the entrance to the marina which was marked by a sign, CALVERT MARINA AND BOATYARD, painted in bold blue letters on a white background. A pair of stout brick pillars flanked the entrance, from which a well-established boxwood hedge fanned out to form a fence, separating the marina grounds from the village of Pearson’s Corner. An anchor the size of a wheelbarrow, painted white, rested against one of the pillars.

Skirting the marina to our right, the road followed the water, snaking past the boat slips off docks A, B, and C and ending at a small parking lot. A large grassy area extended well beyond the edge of the parking lot, where boats of all types and sizes were stored, propped up by triangular wooden braces and paint-spattered metal tripods. To my surprise, Connie steered straight through the lot and onto the grass and began to weave cautiously between the boats.

“Where on earth are you going, Connie?”

“To park.”

“Excuse me, but wasn’t the parking lot back there?”

“When your boat’s out of the water and you’re working on it, it’s much more convenient to drive up and park right next to it.”

As we snaked through the land-locked fleet, I gazed out my window at a confusion of masts and rigging; some boats had been placed so close together that the bow pulpit of one vessel extended practically into the rigging of another. Beyond the boats, nearer the water, I thought I recognized the shed that Hal had pointed out to us when we went sailing, where he said Pegasus had been hauled.

Connie parked between a small blue cabin cruiser from Wilmington, Delaware, named My Mink and a large, nameless wooden vessel being painted dark green. When we climbed out of the car, seagulls were circling the area. One of them settled near an empty paint can and pecked halfheartedly at a discarded sandwich wrapper. I thought Connie’d feel right at home here among the boats and the birds, the fresh, sharp odor of paint and new varnish. From somewhere nearby the familiar whine of a power sander momentarily drowned out the cries of two angry gulls fighting over the remains of a hamburger bun.

“Hal mentioned he’d been experiencing chronic blistering problems on Pegasus,” Connie said as we wound our way on foot through the maze of boats toward the shed. “He’s had to repair her several times.” The shed loomed before us, an enormous white Conestoga wagon top, open at both ends.

Inside, the heat intensified. I expected the air to be heavy with moisture, like a greenhouse, but way overhead plantation-style fans nudged any stagnant air gently downward, to be swept away by the cool breezes that passed through the open ends of the shed.

Pegasus was a large boat, longer than Sea Song, I suspected, and it nearly filled the space, although there was room to work around her on all sides. I stood with my back resting against the vinyl-coated canvas wall of the shed and admired Hal’s boat. From the varnished teakwood trim to the six-inch-wide blue stripe that circled her bright white hull, she was a perfectly proportioned beauty.

“Nice racing stripe,” I commented.

“It’s called a boot top,” she snapped. Connie was still mad at me.

“Why?”

Connie stood at the stern, considering the rudder. “I don’t have the foggiest.”

“What kind of boat is it, Connie?”

“A Cal 40. Lovely old thing. They don’t make them anymore.” She took the rudder in both hands and wiggled it from side to side. “They’re great cruising and racing boats. Hal loves to race.”

I strolled around Pegasus, examining the hull. Like the other boats I’d seen, Pegasus stood upright, cradled between metal jack stands, curious V-shaped contraptions padded with carpet remnants. Below the white hull, the keel, painted brick red, extended down like an inverted shark fin, touching the ground.

Connie circled the boat twice, hands clasped behind her back, while I stood to one side, wondering what she was looking for. She started tapping on the hull with her knuckles.

“Why are you doing that?” I asked.

“Remember when Hal said his hull was delaminated? I’m checking for that. You know how you tap the wall to find a stud when you’re going to hang a picture? Same thing, except I’m listening for the hollow sound you get when the layers of wood that form the hull separate and get all mooshy.” Connie tapped her way all around the boat with one of her car keys, too, making sharp, bright cracking sounds. Nothing sounded hollow to me.

Then the tapping stopped. “Hmm, that’s odd.”

“What?”

“Come here, Hannah. Walk around the boat and tell me what you see.”

I circled Pegasus, looking at the hull and the keel, feeling like a total dummy. “What the hell am I looking for?”

“Did you notice that one side of the keel has barnacles on it? On the other side the bottom paint is fresh.” I could see what she was talking about. The side of the keel nearest me was pockmarked by circular shells the size of my thumbnail. The other side was smooth as a baby’s cheek.

“But Hal said it needed repair.”

“I know, but you’d expect to see blistering on both sides of the keel, not just one. And another strange thing… see that scum line?” She pointed to a brownish green ring that circled the boat several inches below the boot top, like the ring around the inside of a bathtub.

“What’s so odd about that?”

“Cal ’40s are heavy cruising boats. She ought to be riding lower in the water. This boat’s riding high.”

“Does that mean she’s lighter than she should be?”

“Exactly! Hand me that rag, will you?” Connie indicated a tattered, paint-stained undershirt that had been draped over a nearby sawhorse. I snatched it up with two fingers and tossed it to her. Connie began to rub vigorously on the freshly painted keel until the rag was red with paint particles. After a bit she stopped rubbing and bent over, her face close to the surface of the keel, then stepped back and surveyed the spot from several angles. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

“What?”

“There’s fresh fiberglass here, right in the middle of what should be a solid lead keel.” I looked where she pointed and saw the hint of a rectangle, just a shadow about the size of a suitcase beneath the brick red bottom paint. “See, it’s duller than the rest of the keel. I suspect someone was in a hurry, and it wasn’t primed first.”

Connie looked at me with wide, startled eyes. “Shit, Hannah. Bill was right. Somebody’s taken a chunk out of the keel and then tried to cover it over. Someone could be stashing drugs in there.”

Somebody. Someone. Why were we pussyfooting around the issue? Who else could it be but Hal? I didn’t want to believe it. “But why go to all that trouble, Connie? Couldn’t you just hide drugs somewhere inside the boat? You could build a false bottom in one of the hatches. Hell, you could hide tons of illegal substances in the bilge.”

Connie shook her head. “The coast guard is trained to look for things like that. Lockers shorter than they should be. Fake water tanks. But this compartment would be under the water and almost impossible to detect.”

“Maybe Hal doesn’t know about it.” I recalled his gentle manner, his smile, the touch of his hand.

“Not a chance. He does all the work on Pegasus himself.”

Perhaps it was a reaction to breathing the chemicals in the bottom paint, but I doubted it. I hadn’t felt so sick to my stomach since my last chemotherapy session. It nauseated me that I’d actually entertained the idea, however briefly, of cheating on my husband with a man who could well turn out to be a drug lord.

Leaving Connie on her own with Pegasus, I ran from the shed, my stomach churning. Gulping air, I located a grassy spot under a tree and knelt down, resting my forehead against the smooth bark. When I judged that the danger of throwing up was past, I raised my head and looked around. Dozens of masts cast long shadows across the boatyard, and I watched a whole row of shadows disappear, one by one, as the sun dipped behind a patch of woods that bordered the boat yard.

A few minutes later Connie joined me. “C’mon, Hannah.” She wrapped her arm around my shoulder and gave me a sympathetic squeeze. “Let’s go find a telephone.”

I climbed wearily into the car, and as Connie backed around My Mink and headed toward the parking lot, I slumped in my seat, repeating, “I don’t believe it.”

She shifted into drive and the car lurched forward. “You can’t believe it! How about me? I’ve been working with Hal for years. If what we suspect is true, he’s been dealing drugs for at least eight of those years, with no one the wiser.”

Connie nosed into one of three parking spaces directly in front of the Ships Store, a neat wooden structure painted gray with white trim to match its neighbors. A sign in the window was flipped from Open to Closed. I was almost relieved.

“Never mind,” Connie told me. “The phones are outside anyway, around back, on the side facing the river.”

I was inclined to wait in the car, but Connie insisted I come with her. We circled the store to the spot where a wooden pier began, extended across the length of the building, and stretched off in the direction of the gas dock about one hundred feet away. Dock D, where Sea Song floated quietly in her slip, was just beyond.

Bell Atlantic had installed the public telephone on a wall directly between the rest rooms, one labeled “Buoys” and the other “Gulls.” I thought Connie was perfectly capable of handling the call on her own, so I headed for the “Gulls.”

Minutes later, in the privacy of the bathroom, I sat on a wooden bench in a shower stall, closed my eyes, and rested my head against the cool tiles. I hated to admit it, but it looked as if Bill were right. Hal must be dealing drugs. Is that what Liz and Frank Chase were so intent on covering up? Maybe there was something other than a pregnancy recorded in all that mumbo jumbo on Katie’s chart, something about her habit. I cursed my bad luck. Unless Dr. Chase still had Katie’s chart or was willing to talk about it, we’d never know for sure. I concentrated, trying to recall what else Dr. Chase’s father had written down about Katie, wishing I had one of those photographic memories, but it was no good. The important thing, I decided, was to pass on what I did remember to Dennis before I ended up having another inconvenient accident.

I rotated my shoulders, trying to relieve myself of the stiffness along my spine, then spider-walked my arm up the tiles until I felt the familiar tug of damaged muscles still recovering from surgery. I chastised myself for forgetting to do my daily exercises, yet in spite of my neglect, I was pleased to note that progress had been made: I could almost raise my arm overhead. Perhaps taking headers over lifelines and swimming out of ponds counted as physical therapy these days. For a few minutes I stood in front of the mirror and massaged my temples, which had begun to throb. Gawd, I needed a bath, my usual therapy, but figured I would have to settle for running a damp paper towel over my face and neck. I combed through my wig with my fingers but succeeded only in tipping it sideways over one ear.

When I emerged from the bathroom, I found Connie rummaging through her purse. “Dennis isn’t at the station. They say he’s gone home.”

A quarter fell out of her wallet, and I caught up with it before it rolled away between the wooden planks and dropped into the water below. “Here.” I handed it to her. “What do we do now?”

“Call him at home, I guess.” She picked up the receiver. “Damn! It’s thirty-five cents. Do you have a dime?”

I patted my empty pockets and shrugged. Connie let the receiver dangle from its short cord while she rooted through her purse, found a dime, and slotted it into the telephone after the quarter. She punched in a number without looking it up. Abruptly she passed the receiver to me. “Ask for Dennis.”

I frowned and listened to the phone ring three times. I was going to get even with Connie for this. On the fourth ring a female voice chirped, “Rutherford’s.”

“Ms. Rutherford?” Coward, I mouthed in Connie’s direction. She began pacing up and down the dock. “Ms. Rutherford, this is Hannah Ives. I wonder if your father is at home?”

“Sorry, he’s not, Mrs. Ives. He went off duty at six. He may have dropped in at the nursing home to visit my grandfather, though. He often does that in the evening.”

“Thanks. I’ll try to catch him there. If he comes home in the next few minutes, please tell him I called. It’s important. Let me give you the number.”

“Oh, I know the number, Mrs. Ives.” She hung up without saying good-bye, adding fuel to the fire of my suspicion that something intriguing was going on between Connie and Dennis.

I held the receiver to my ear until the dial tone kicked in, then handed it over to Connie. “Do you think she’ll deliver the message?”

“I don’t know,” Connie said. “Fifty-fifty.” In the light from the overhead lightbulb, her face looked flushed.

“She said he might be at the nursing home. Let’s go. We can catch up with him there.”

Connie didn’t move. She was staring out into the Truxton, where the sky had gathered up the blues and grays from the water and lights were just beginning to twinkle on in the waterfront homes on the other side of the river. “I feel numb,” she said. “I would have trusted Hal with my life.”

I thought about Frank Chase and Liz Dunbar, an odd couple if there ever was one, and wondered what dark secrets they shared. I thought about the glances that passed between Connie and Dennis when they thought I wasn’t looking. “I’m finding that nothing in Pearson’s Corner is what it seems,” I told her.

We headed back to the car, not speaking. Connie had already climbed into the driver’s seat and I had a hand on the door handle on the passenger side when I noticed a familiar car in the parking lot, Liz’s black Lexus. I wrenched open my door and leaned in. “Connie! Liz Dunbar is here. I didn’t know she sailed.”

“She doesn’t.” Connie turned her head and peered through the rear window.

“What’s she doing here then?”

“I don’t know.” Connie slid out of her seat and joined me. She leaned back against the trunk of her car and surveyed the parking lot. “And Frank’s here, too.”

I had missed it. Frank Chase’s blue Ford was parked farther away, next to the icehouse adjacent to the marina office. “This could not be a coincidence,” I said. “If Hal is running drugs, as we suspect, do you suppose those two are involved in the business, too?” Pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fall into place. Katie’s habit. Liz’s source of money for college. The volatile relationship between Liz and Frank. But I still couldn’t figure out what Katie’s pregnancy had to do with any of it.

My attention turned from Frank’s car to the marina office. From where we stood, it looked deserted. The side facing us was a blank wall of board and batten siding, painted gray like the store. The only opening, a single door, was closed and dark. “Doesn’t look like anybody’s home.”

“You can’t tell from here,” Connie said. “The main entrance is on the water side.”

I had an idea. “Connie, you’re a boat owner. We have legitimate business here. Hal doesn’t know about…” I jerked my head in the direction of the shed where a Pegasus lighter than manufacturer’s specifications lay. “Let’s pay them a call. You can say you’re looking for…” I cast around in my mind for the name of some nautical part, some little marine gizmo that would probably cost five cents at Ace Hardware or $10.95 if you bought it at the Ships Store. “Say you’re desperate for a cotter pin and the store is closed.”

“Why do I get this feeling you’re about to drag me into more trouble?”

“I just want to see what they’re up to in there. Maybe it’ll turn out to be nothing. Maybe they’re just eating pizza or something.”

“I don’t like it.”

Nevertheless, Connie went along with my plan, claiming that Paul would never forgive her if something happened to me on her watch.

We skirted the Dumpster that occupied two parking spaces at the far end of the parking lot. Beyond the Dumpster a squat hedge shielded several recycling cans from view. It was my intention to march into the office, bold as a brass band on a Sunday afternoon, but as we drew even with the hedge, we could hear voices raised in anger.

“That’s it, I tell you. I’m out of it.” Frank Chase’s voice carried even over the noise of an air conditioner running in the Ships Store behind us. I put a hand on Connie’s back and pushed, forcing her closer to the edge of the hedgerow, where we made ourselves small behind a flowering shrub. From there we had a nearly unobstructed view inside the marina office through the uncurtained window.

“I don’t think it’s about pizza,” I whispered to Connie.

Liz responded to something, waving her arms, but I couldn’t hear what she said.

“You can’t lay that responsibility on me, Liz. You’re the one who wouldn’t let me take her to the hospital.” Dr. Chase had been sitting in a chair but rose to face her. Mercifully the air conditioner chose that moment to cycle off.

“Fat lot of good that would have done after you shot her, Frankie.”

“I shot her? That’s a crock. You were the one holding the gun, Liz, not me. Ranting on about Harvard and how would you ever live down the scandal!”

I grabbed Connie’s hand and squeezed. “Holy shit!” she said.

“Where’s Hal?” I whispered back.

I was feeling smug and somewhat relieved that he wasn’t there, so when he appeared, my heart sank to my toes. At first I thought he was going to intervene, like a referee, throw a bucket of cold water on the dueling cats, maybe, but he merely observed the escalating argument, standing quietly near his desk where a green-shaded lamp cast a circle of light over stacks of papers and catalogs piled there.

My knees began to ache from being locked in a crouch for so long, but I wouldn’t have moved from that spot for a million dollars. Hal finally spoke. “Come off it, you two. You’re both responsible.”

Liz’s head swivelled around. “You’re a good one to talk about responsibility. You gave her the money for the abortion, don’t forget.”

“At least she trusted me, Liz,” Hal said.

“And what was that worth? If you’d cared about her at all, you’d have seen to it that she didn’t fall into the hands of a quack.”

“A quack? How the hell was I supposed to know how she spent the money or where she went? She made it abundantly clear that she didn’t want me involved.” As he talked, Hal had been pacing in front of his desk, but suddenly he moved away, out of my view.

I stood up and moved to my left to get a better look. Connie grabbed my pants leg and jerked me down so hard that I thought my wig would fly off. “They’ll see you, you idiot!” Her voice was a husky whisper.

“No, they won’t,” I whispered back. “It’s nearly dark out here. That office is lit up brighter than Camden Yards when the Orioles are in town. But if it will make you happy…” I scrunched down next to Connie again.

“I can’t go on like this!” Dr. Chase sounded miserable.

“Do you think you’ll ever practice medicine again if this comes out? Besides, it’s not your decision, Frank. There are other people involved.”

“It’ll come out anyway. Hannah Ives has been asking a lot of questions. It’s only a matter of time before she goes to Rutherford and he puts two and two together. If I can’t convince you to tell the truth, I’ll just have to do it myself.”

Good gawd. What a fool. Didn’t he ever go to the movies? Watch television? Rule No. 3b. Never threaten to go to the cops, particularly if you’re planning to.

But Liz seemed not to have heard. “I thought you’d help her, you jerk. Instead, you said you’d take her to the hospital. Anybody could have taken her to the hospital, for Christ’s sake. You’re totally useless. You could have stopped the bleeding, but you didn’t even turn a hand.”

“I didn’t have the right equipment, Liz. Katie was hemorrhaging. She was in shock. She needed an ambulance and IVs, probably surgery, not aspirin and a Band-Aid from an inexperienced medical student. I did what I could to help her until you started waving that gun around.”

“Gun?” She said it dreamily, as if it were a new word and she had just heard it for the first time. In a deceptively quick move Liz was behind Hal’s desk. She wrenched open the top left-hand drawer and pulled out a small handgun, holding it as if she knew what she was doing. “A gun like this, Frankie?” She aimed the barrel at him and held the gun steady, a malicious smile spreading across her face. Hal hurried forward but once again did not intervene.

Liz patted the open drawer with her free hand. “Hal, Hal. What a creature of habit you are!”

“Don’t do it, Liz. This time there’s no way it can be passed off as an accident. This time it’ll be cold-blooded murder.”

“And it wasn’t murder before? I was just pointing the gun at this witless wonder here. I didn’t intend to shoot anybody. If he hadn’t jumped me, the gun would never have gone off. Katie would still be alive.” The gun under discussion was now pointed squarely at the doctor’s chest.

Dr. Chase began desperate bargaining. “It’s simple. We do what we should have done in the first place. Explain to the police that Katie’s death was accidental.”

“Ha!” Liz snorted. “You wish.” Her derisive laugh was too big for the room. It rolled through the open window and drifted over the water. She held the gun on both men now, swinging it back and forth in the space between them.

Suddenly Connie was no longer beside me. “I’m calling nine-one-one,” she whispered, and disappeared into the darkness behind the Dumpster. I willed her to hurry. I willed Liz to come to her senses. For several long minutes it seemed as if nobody moved inside the marina office. I prayed they would stay that way, but it was inevitable. Somebody would blink.

“This is bullshit!” Dr. Chase did an about-face and headed in my direction, toward the door. He wore the same clothes I had seen him wearing earlier that day, although he appeared to have shrunk within them so that his jacket hung loosely from his shoulders.

I was noticing how much the man had aged in the past twenty-four hours when his eyes suddenly widened in surprise and his glasses flew off. I heard a pop! Liz’s hand jerked upward, and I couldn’t see Frank Chase anymore.

“Shit!” I sprang up and dashed after Connie but bumbled into the recycling cans, knocking one sideways. The lid slid off, and I dived for it but missed. I watched helplessly as it clattered to the ground, shattering the night air like the cymbals at the end of the 1812 Overture. There was no chance Liz hadn’t heard. A rectangle of light blazed across the dock as someone threw open the office door. I struggled to my feet and scampered into the dark.

I found Connie on the other side of the Ships Store, just reaching for the phone. “They’ve shot Frank!”

Connie took a step toward the dock, then reversed direction. “The car!” she shouted. We raced for the parking lot, but as we rounded the corner of the building, I saw Liz thundering in our direction, waving the gun.

“The boat, Hannah. Head for the boat!” We turned around and ran like frightened rabbits toward the safety of Sea Song, with the dock bucking and heaving beneath our feet.