“Time for me to go,” I said, turning off the phone in the middle of an instruction to stay away from Mr. Duvall.
Coasting through the trees, I eased down the slope toward the cottage. Toward the water. Closer in, I could see that the only lights on at the house were exterior ones, small shin-high lights that would undoubtedly lead me around to the dock.
A hundred yards away, I did a three-point turn and parked off the side of the driveway and behind a cluster of shrubs, putting the car’s front bumper in the heading-out direction, just in case we needed to make a fast exit.
I slipped out of the car, shutting the door so quietly I barely heard it myself. Soundlessly I made my way to the front door and peeked inside through the tall, narrow side windows. Nothing in there but darkness and vague furniture shapes. I tried to open the door, but it was locked.
My faint hopes of finding Eddie alone inside a closet or a bathroom, grabbing him under my arm, and running off to freedom faded almost before they’d had a chance to grow.
Now what, smarty-pants?
I slid my cell phone out of my pocket and checked the time. Nine o’clock straight up. My hour was over. I couldn’t wait any longer.
Pulling in a deep breath for courage, I walked around the side of the house. The horizon on the west side of Rock Lake was still pale with the sunset’s afterglow, and I could see the silhouette of a man sitting on a bench at the end of a long dock.
Cole Duvall.
Still moving quietly, I walked down the stone steps, keeping an eye on Duvall. Now that my eyes had adjusted to the darkness, I could see that he was sitting casually, one arm laid across the back of the bench, one ankle over the opposite knee. He was also lifting his other arm, every so often, in a motion that could only mean he was drinking something.
Around and about me, the spring flowers were blooming and the summer ones were starting to poke out of the ground, but it was still too early for the summer lawn games to be out and available. No sense in putting out a croquet set when there was still a chance of snow. I looked hard for a set of lawn darts, but since I’d never played that game as a kid, it was probably just as well that the Duvalls didn’t have any around. I’d be just as likely to stab myself in the leg as to do any real damage to my enemy.
Because Duvall was my enemy. I couldn’t let myself forget that. Getting Eddie back, safe and sound, was the priority of the night, but taking care of Duvall was a close second.
I made sure my cell phone was secure in my pocket and stepped onto the dock.
The moment my foot hit the wooden boards, Duvall turned. “You’re here,” he said. “Took you long enough.”
I told myself not to antagonize the man. What I wanted was my cat. That was what mattered right now. Sticking up for myself against a bully could wait another day. Not two, because that would grind in my stomach like bad beets, but I could stand twenty-four hours.
“Where’s Eddie?” I moved up the dock slowly. Duvall didn’t seem to have any weapons, but since he was more than a foot taller than I was, and, at a guess, more than a hundred pounds heavier, he didn’t really need anything more than his own bulk. The self-defense classes I’d taken last year had been useful, but they were designed to help me escape a man’s grip, not to walk right up into the mouth of the lion and demand things that would anger him.
“Right here.” Duvall’s foot bumped what I could now see was a cardboard box.
From inside I heard a “Mrr,” and that faint bleat pushed red into my thoughts and emotions and actions. I took one fast, hot step forward, then pulled back.
No. Rushing headlong into a physical confrontation with Duvall would not help anything. Keep calm, keep him talking, and keep thinking.
So instead of the classic “What do you want?” question that I so desperately wanted to ask, I said, “Nice spot you have here.”
Duvall stared at me. “What?”
I kept on with my slow walk toward the end of the dock and said, “How long have you had this place?”
“None of your business,” Duvall said.
So much for opening pleasantries. I tried to widen my focus to include the empty boat lift that was on my left and anything it might offer me. The bench where Duvall was sitting was on an assemblage of dock sections that made up an L-shaped area. I searched for a weapon—a boat hook, an anchor, a rope, anything—but the only things I saw were the bench, Duvall, and Eddie’s box.
“Mrr,” the box said, and scarlet rage fell down upon me like a net.
“What do you want?” I asked, my teeth tight together.
“I want you to undo what you did.” Duvall snorted an unattractive laugh.
An Undo button for life. Now, that would be useful. I stopped about fifteen feet away from Duvall, well out of his reach. “It would help if you told me what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t play dumb with me,” he snapped. “You know perfectly well.”
Well, no, I didn’t. Not for sure. But I could guess. “Larabeth came to her conclusions on her own,” I said. “All she wanted from me were confirmations.”
“And you did what, just handed them to her?”
He snorted again and I got the feeling that snorting was a habit of his. A few years of that and it would be no surprise that his wife wanted to divorce him. Though it wasn’t until I’d started poking around that Larabeth had started putting the pieces together, she was a smart woman and would have figured out on her own that Cole was cheating on her. Maybe I’d jump-started the process, but if it saved her from having to listen to that condescending snort even once, I couldn’t say I was sorry.
Of course, he still had my cat. And I still needed to know—desperately needed to know—if he’d killed Henry and tried to kill Adam.
Duvall turned on the bench and faced me full-on. “Make this go away,” he said, “and I’ll give you back your cat. Although why you’d want this thing is beyond me.” He gave the box a shove with his foot, pushing it a few inches closer to the edge of the dock and eliciting another “Mrr!” from inside. “All he does is whine, whine, whine.”
He’d taken on a tone close enough to Eddie’s voice that made me think that my cat had said more than usual on the trip out here. Which brought me to another question.
“How did you know that I had a cat?”
Duvall snorted. “Everybody knows about the bookmobile cat. You can’t talk about the bookmobile lady and not hear about her freaking cat. ‘Oh, he’s so cute,’” he said in a high-pitched voice that didn’t sound like any woman I’d ever heard in my life. “‘Eddie is just the nicest cat there is.’” He dropped the fake voice. “Even if there was such a thing as a nice cat, this one wouldn’t be it, not the way he complains about everything.”
No cat liked to be grabbed and stuck in a box, but if Duvall didn’t know that by now, there was no hope for him.
“How did you know where I lived?” I asked.
“Where do you think you live, Chicago? You live in Chilson, for crying out loud. All I had to do was walk downtown and ask about the bookmobile lady with the cat. Everybody I talked to was so happy to talk about you, about your houseboat and your aunt with the boardinghouse.” He snorted. “Only up here would there still be such a thing as a boardinghouse. Doesn’t she know they stopped existing fifty years ago?”
Again, I pushed away the anger threatening to take over my brain, pushing away worry about Aunt Frances, pushing away worry about Eddie and whatever might happen in the next few minutes.
“Why did you lie to me?” I asked. “Up by Henry’s sugar shack. You said Felix Stanton had tried to talk Henry into selling last fall.”
“Really?” Duvall asked, sarcasm oozing from every letter of the word. “You can’t even figure that out? It was obvious you were poking into things that were none of your business. It was dead easy to give you a shove in the wrong direction and get you off my back.”