“You’re sure: He told you nothing about where he’d be?” I asked Endora.
“Only that he’d be safe. He was angrier than I’d ever seen him. Angry, and frightened at the same time.”
We went over it all again, but Endora could offer nothing more. Leo had kept everything to himself.
Theodea heated canned stew on a tiny propane stove. When it was done, she and Endora and I ate it with pieces from a thin wheel of Swedish cracker bread suspended on a string from the ceiling, safe from mice. It was rustic. Through it all, Ma sat silent in the corner, seemingly unaware of anything. Again I wondered if she were in shock.
By now, every shutter was beating on the tiny cottage. We tried to talk above the clatter but finally gave up. Our ears wanted only to listen for sounds beneath the storm, of a man who shouldn’t have been able to get to Eustace. We sat silent, Endora and her mother drinking whiskey, me drinking coffee, afraid of what Arnie Pine might bring, if the money was right and he drank dinner the way he drank lunch.
Several times, Theodea got up to open the front door. There was nothing to see except rain.
Then, an hour later, when the candles were low and the whiskey was gone, something crashed on the rocks below.
Theodea jumped up and hurried to put on her slicker. “Probably flotsam hitting the rocks,” she said, in an unnaturally high voice. She grabbed the big spotlight and opened the door.
Sounds of men yelling came in with the rain.
“What the hell?” she shouted down, above the drum of the storm.
I pulled on my sodden coats and followed her out. Down below, two high-powered flashlight beams were being aimed at the frothing water at the shore. Two men, one the elderly person who’d slammed the door on me, the other much younger, perhaps a seasonal worker, were standing on the rocks.
Arnie Pine’s Rabbit lay at the edge of their pools of light, crashed up on the rocks. A huge hole had been torn in its hull.
“Get back inside,” I shouted to Theodea. “Lock the door, keep your gun in your hand. If someone tries to get in, and it’s not me, shoot through the wood.”
She hurried back toward her cottage. She’d seen what was lying directly in the centers of the searchlight beams.
I worked my way down to the dock and stopped. I could see well enough, even from a distance.
Arnie Pine lay sprawled facedown on the rocks. His hat was gone; his light gray hair was matted back. The rain and the splash from the roiling lake hadn’t completely washed away the spot of glistening red at the back of his head.
“Anyone in the boat?” I called to the two men.
The younger man shook his head.
“Got a radio?”
“An old ship-to-shore,” the old man shouted back. “Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”
“Pray it works. Call the cops.”
He gave a contorted laugh, his face shiny with sleet. “You think they’ll come out in this,” he yelled, “especially for a damned drunk fool?”
He was right. It would be hours before anyone could come and see it was a bullet, and not bad boating, that had dropped Arnie Pine. Pine had taken on a passenger who’d waved enough big bills to get him to go back out in the storm, a man who’d become menacing enough for Pine to run his boat aground to try to get away. A man who’d shot him in the head, to keep him from raising an alarm.
That shooter was now on Eustace Island.
Thirteen
Lightning flashed as I got up to the row of cottages. I turned and looked around. Only the two men stood in the sleet, staring at Pine. The bulky man I was looking for had already made it to the shadows.
I ducked behind the first cottage in the row and waited for lightning. When it came, I edged out to watch the path. No one was coming up.
The sky went dark. I ran to Theodea’s cottage and pounded on her door. “It’s me,” I said, trying to keep my voice low. She opened the door, and I ducked in.
Theodea had kept her slicker on, its vinyl still dripping rain. Her gun was in her hand. “Arnie Pine?”
“Anybody got a big boat on this island?” I asked.
“He’s come?” Endora asked. “The man by the ticket shack?”
“It can only be him,” I said.
“McNulty has a boat,” Theodea said, her face drawn with fear. “He fishes,” she added, like that mattered.
“We need to get away now.”
No one demanded another word; they could read everything on my face.
“No bullshit,” Theodea said. “Everyone follow me.” She started toward the candles burning on the blank table.
“Leave them,” I said. “He needs to think we’re still inside.”
“They might burn the place down.”
“Worse things will happen if he sees the line of light below the door go dark and thinks to search for us outside.”
“Of course,” she said, moving to bundle Ma in the old wool coat she’d worn since Leo and I were in high school.
We followed Theodea out the back door and up the slope, away from the cottages and the men below. With luck, the man who’d come to Eustace Island had started searching for Leo or me at the old hotel, several hundred yards away.
The fierce sleet had iced the rocky path, and we had to move slowly. Even with Endora on one side of her and me on the other, Ma’s steps were tentative, unsure on the slippery granite.
Worse, jagged bolts of lighting cut through the sky every few seconds, lighting us up to be seen with every slow step. I had no idea where the bulky man might be, but I was afraid he was inside the hotel, on the top floor. One look out the window, he’d see us trudging along the path.
After what seemed like an hour, we started down the backside of the island. Lightning struck five times in succession, lighting up a cottage not much bigger than a maintenance shed down below.
Theodea beat on the door. An enormous bearded man in jeans and a red flannel shirt opened it. We huddled in close, under the overhang.
“Theodea.” His voice boomed, big like him. “Please, all of you come in.” One lone candle burned behind him.
“No time. We need to get to Mackinaw City,” she said.
“We’ll go at dawn,” he said without hesitation. “Storm will be done by then.”
“We can’t wait,” Theodea said.
He looked at her for the briefest of seconds before he picked up the largest black oilcloth slicker I’d ever seen from the back of a chair. It looked like it weighed twenty pounds. “All right, then,” he said.
“McNulty?” Theodea said.
“Yes?”
“You’ve got a gun?”
“Two, actually. One for the hand, one for the arm.”
“Bring both.”
He walked to a closet across the room. He put a revolver in his pocket, took out a rifle in a vinyl case, and came back. “We’re off, then,” he said.
We followed a gravel path to a solid-looking pier resting between thick metal posts. Tied to the pier was a stubby fishing boat, twice the size of Arnie Pine’s Rabbit. A dozen plastic coolers were lashed to the open deck behind the wheelhouse. We climbed aboard.
There was barely room in the wheelhouse for Ma to stand next to McNulty. Theodea, Endora, and I hunched behind it, out in the rain.
His engine roared to life. “Best keep the lights off?” McNulty shouted back to Theodea.
“That would be appropriate,” she called up.
“No problem. No one else will be out.”
The water was rougher than when I’d crossed with Pine, but McNulty’s boat, or maybe it was McNulty himself, handled the chop more smoothly. I kept my eyes on Ma. She stood upright, barely swaying at the boat’s incessant shifting, rolling from side to side.
“I didn’t know you were on the island, Theodea,” McNulty shouted.
“I’ve had guests.”
“Fine time of year for entertaining,” he said.