Knockdown: A Home Repair Is Homicide Mystery (24 page)

Probably at the jail the poor sap he’d paid to say
he
was Steven Garner—complete with a halfway decent resemblance and all the required ID to make such a claim believable—was having a bad night.

But it was what he’d promised to do in return for the money, so he could hardly complain. Of course, there might be a little more to it than he’d expected.…

Half on agreement, half later … Steven felt a smile curl his lips as he patted the other five hundred still in his pocket. Fat chance the guy would ever collect it; by the time he got free and came looking for it, Steven would be long gone.

He shoved his way past the broken door into the old house. Inside, the air smelled of mice and damp.

He pushed the door shut and leaned against it. The sirens in the distance had stopped, but the quiet out there was deceptive; by now they knew he wasn’t in custody, that he was still at large and pursuing his plans.…

That’s me
, he thought, unable to supress a chuckle at the memory of how he’d escaped the plump cop simply by doubling back and waiting until the cop had gone.
At large and in charge
.

Now that they knew, though, he was going to have to be even more careful. Because first they would search the empty houses again,
and all the campgrounds and tenting areas on the island, in case he was in any of them.

They’d be visiting fields, beaches, and wooded areas, too, just in case. Now that he’d invaded her home and put his hands on her, anywhere he might be hiding would get a thorough inspection.

But he had anticipated this stage of the operation long ago when he was planning it, so he was ready.

M
ORNING DAWNED COOL AND CLEAR, THE FOG DRAWING
back like a thick blanket they all crawled out from under, blinking in the sunshine.

“Mom, are you sure you want to do this?” Sam leaned against the front porch rail, coffee cup in hand.

The fireworks had been postponed for twenty-four hours. She thought about what would happen after that: no more festivities, no more crowds of strangers thronging the sidewalks.

Which meant Garner would come after her tonight. Or perhaps sooner.

“Absolutely. I should’ve gotten out in front of this when I first realized who he was.”

She knelt on the porch deck, wiping pools of the overnight’s puddled drizzle with a towel. “Hand me that hair dryer, please.”

She’d plugged it into an extension cord so she could get it all the way out here and down to the bottom step. Sam bent and handed it to her. “Okay, but make sure you—”

“Yes, yes, don’t stand in a wet spot, I know.” Actually, the running of any indoor electrical appliance while outdoors was not exactly a recommended procedure.

But she was too wired up herself to care. Also ticked off, frazzled, bone-tired, and flat-out mad as hell. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to be holding it at all, most of the time.”

The hair dryer was the pistol-grip kind, with a flat base that you could set the handle into so the dryer would stand up by itself. She arranged this, then aimed the nozzle at the largest wet spot—the steps’ surfaces were cupped with age, so water collected in them—and turned it on.

“I don’t see why wiping it’s not enough,” Sam said over its whine. “Seems to me you’re going overboard on the prep work.”

He wasn’t talking about the fire; no one was. They were all so shocked to the bone by it, they didn’t want to.

Or didn’t dare to, as if fright over what Steven Garner might do next was the cat that had got all their tongues.

She began toweling the next step. Gently, though; the fresh primer she’d brushed on the day before was set firmly enough to wipe, but not to scrub at.

“The whole definition of doing enough prep work is going overboard on it,” she added, this being one of the first and the most difficult lessons she’d learned working on the old house.

“Take paint scraping, for instance,” she went on, angling her head sideways at the old dwelling’s white clapboards. “To scrape correctly, first you take off everything that’s loose.”

Knowing where this was going, Sam made as if to back up into the house. “No, no,” she told him, “stay where you are.”

“Mom, I’ve already got a job, you know. At the Boat School.”

She wiped the next step. “Then, after you get all the loose stuff off, you do what’s not loose. Say, maybe ten percent more of the old paint.”

Which was the hard part. Because first of all, as this very porch had demonstrated, even what looked loose really wasn’t. Paint chips that appeared ready to fall off by themselves clung on like barnacles if you waved a paint scraper near them.

“Sam, you could save me a lot of money.”

If she hired him to help scrape the part of the house that she still intended to paint sometime this summer (
if I survive tonight
, her mind insisted on adding snarkily), she would pay him a fair rate, of course.

But it wouldn’t cost what she’d end up paying professional painters in Eastport in the summer, when demand for them would be so high that they could charge the really premium prices.

And that, as she’d also learned from experience, was another part of fixing up an old house in Maine: buying stuff when no one else wanted it, whenever possible.

“And maybe it would be … Well … Maybe I would enjoy working with you on something,” she added.

Before you finally leave home for good
, she didn’t say, in part because she didn’t like thinking about it. But Sam would go off to live on his own sooner or later; his long adolescence was nearly done.

No drugs, no booze, not for a long time now, and he’d put on weight through the chest and shoulders. He still had the long eyelashes, lantern jaw, and fast grin, plus the quick, agile body that made him a natural on boats.

But he was a man, and in a thousand small ways he had begun acting like one. Like now, for instance: “Yeah. Maybe, huh?”

He eyed the hair dryer’s progress, crouched and moved it to the next wet spot. “Okay,” he agreed. “You’re right, that might be fun.”

He straightened. “Let me know when you want to start.”

And just like that, it was decided. Jake stopped wiping at the porch
and looked around at the fresh, clear morning, with the sunshine’s warmth drawing gauzy puffs of condensation up off the wet street.

Out on the green lawn, a couple of robins each tugged at the ends of a single earthworm. A black-and-white cat crept toward them, her stealth spoiled at the last minute by having to stop and shake her paw in disgust at the wet grass.

But then: “I wish you wouldn’t do this thing tonight,” Sam said.

From the porch steps, she could see all the way to the bay. Far out on the watery horizon, the fog bank lay diminishing like a thin, dark gray pencil line.

“I’ll be fine.” She picked up the towel again. “You know why the hair dryer’s not too much prep work, right?”

He shot her a look. “Yes, Mom,” he replied patiently. “It’s because if it’s even a little bit wet, the paint won’t stick to it. I’ve worked on enough wet boats to know. And don’t change the subject,” he added.

She shrugged. “I’m not. There’s nothing to discuss. This guy isn’t going to give up, he’ll just keep after us and after us, and I don’t think the cops will find him, either.”

Using teams of local volunteers, they were already combing the parks and beaches, and checking on every visitor in every motel, bed-and-breakfast, and boardinghouse for miles around.

“Or not in time, anyway,” she added.

“You still think he’s killed people?” Sam crouched on his haunches, coffee cup in both hands.

She hesitated. Worrying him hadn’t been part of her plan.

But maybe he should be worried. “They both died, I know that much. The girl who’s supposed to have fallen, down on Sea Street. And the guy with the stab wound …”

“Billy Wadman,” Sam supplied the name; she hadn’t known it before.

“He was kind of a schmuck,” Sam said. “But he wasn’t such a bad kid. He just hung around with the wrong …” Sam looked up, getting it suddenly. “Really? You think that your guy was the one who—”

“Killed him, yes. Bob Arnold said there was some kind of a scuffle among the boys just before it all happened. No one says they saw Steven Garner there. But …”

Suddenly the sheer fright of the night before hit her again. She turned away so Sam wouldn’t see it in her eyes, the horror of being surprised in her own home. And then the fire …

She hadn’t faced it yet, but soon she meant to go back into Wade’s workshop and clean it all up. It would be good to have a job to do when she went up there again.

It was good having one now. “But last night, Garner had a stocking pulled over his face,” she finished.

Sam didn’t reply, just crouched there listening with both hands wrapped around his cup. She took a breath and went on.

“For a disguise, I mean.” Though it hadn’t been very much of one. Partly she imagined it was so that, worst case, she wouldn’t be able to testify with true certainty that it had been him.

But mostly, she knew, it had been for the shock value. To up the whole fear-factor portion of his program.

And it had worked. “So I’m thinking, if he used a disguise once, then maybe …”

“Yeah. Why not, huh? Maybe he was disguised when he stabbed Billy Wadman, too, and that’s why nobody remembers seeing him.”

Sam stood up. “Makes me like your plan even less, though. I don’t see why you have to be the one who …”

Lures him. Stands out there like a goat tethered to a post, waiting for the predator
.

“Because I’m the one he wants.” She laid the towel aside. Now just a few hours of dry morning air and the porch would be ready for the first coat of paint.

“You are, huh?” He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his back jeans pocket, opened it.

It was the photograph of him, with the target on it. “How’d you find …?”

She’d stuck it under the phone books, to hide it from him.

“I was trying to look up the phone number of the Motel East, so I could find that girl I met and break our date for tonight.”

A smile of complicity made him look for an instant just like his father at that age. “Plans with my mom,” he explained.

She faced him. “I don’t get it. I thought you’d be spending all day trying to talk me out of it.”

Sam laughed, shaking his curly head. “I am,” he admitted ruefully. “But I know better than to think it’ll do any good.”

Then his face changed. “And listen, there’s one other thing I wanted to say. Two, actually.”

His hands moved awkwardly on the cup. “I’m, uh, really glad the guy didn’t hurt you.”

She felt ridiculously touched. “Thanks, Sam.”

Tears brimmed her eyes, but if she let them spill over, he might never say such a thing again, so she didn’t.

“That’s very nice to hear. And what was the other thing?”

“The other thing is, you don’t have to do it. I mean”—Sam’s face wrinkled with unaccustomed emotion—“you don’t have to do it for me.”

He sipped from his cold cup, grimaced, and flung the rest of the liquid onto the grass. “Because the thing is this. I know you think …”

He broke off, began again. “I know you think you were a not-so-good mother. Back then.”

She waited. It was exactly what she thought. But she hadn’t realized he knew it.

“You probably think it’s why I started using and drinking,” he continued. “Like, when I was so young. Because of things you did. Or didn’t do. You and Dad, but mostly you, probably.”

No kidding
, she thought. “Sam,” she said, “if I’d had your life back then, I’d have tried to find some kind of painkiller for it, too.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Yeah, well, you could also say I had three squares and a pretty fancy roof over my head.”

His look now was startlingly adult. “Which I get is not your point. I mean, especially the whole Dad thing and all,” Sam added.

The whole Dad thing
 … She had to laugh. He did, too; they had reconciled, both of them, with Sam’s dad before he died.

“He was a piece of work, though, wasn’t he?” she said.

Sam nodded emphatically. “Hey, maybe it’s
his
fault I turned into a drunk.”

He went on, “But see, the thing is, nobody knows. What they might have done if some things were different and which things it would have to be.”

He took a breath. “So don’t feel bad about it, is what I’m trying to say here.”

A tear escaped; she brushed hastily at it. “Yeah, well. If you’re okay now, then I’m happy.”

“But I still think this thing tonight is crazy,” Sam emphasized. “Unless …”

She seized on the word. “Unless what?”

“I want to be in on it.” She’d already said no way, that his role tonight was to stay with Bella and handle the phone, in case calls that were crucial came in from her or anyone else.

She’d also told him what an important job it was, being the information manager on such a dicey project. That staying up-to-the-moment and keeping everyone else that way, too, could be the make-or-break on the whole thing.

But he wasn’t buying it. “I’m coming along, I’m sticking by your side,” he declared now. “And—”