Paul. He was here in my room. I couldn't understand what he was saying to Ford, but from Ford's long silence, he must have been saying quite a lot. He and Ford moved away from me and I couldn't even hear Ford speaking anymore. I wanted more than anything for Paul to leave, but he didn't. What was he saying to Ford? I wanted my brother back. He was my only connection to what was real, what was out there beyond myself.
After a while I gave up and went to sleep. Before I slept I prayed that Ford wouldn't leave me here alone, that he would come back to me. I felt great sorrow for my Porsche, lying there at the bottom of the ocean, fish swimming through it.
I pulled the Ford into one of the six empty parking spaces in front of the Buttercup Bed and Breakfast, a whimsical name for the ugly, gothic Victorian house that was hanging nearly off the edge of the cliff. There couldn't have been more than twenty feet between the house and a thick stone wall that you could jump off of directly down to a narrow strip of rocky beach a good forty feet below.
Just as whimsical was the name of the main street in Edgerton-Fifth Avenue. The one time I'd been here before, I'd laughed my head off. Fifth Avenue, with four parallel streets running on either side of it, dead-ending at the cliffs, bisecting streets running north and south a good distance each way.
Nothing much had changed as far as I could see.
There were small cottages dating from the 1920s lined up like pastel boxes along Fifth Avenue.
Ranch-style homes from the sixties sprawled, with larger plots of land, along the back streets. Wood and glass contemporary homes, the immigrant style from California, perched on higher ground lining the cliffs, while others dotted the shallow valleys that dipped away from the water. There were still a few odd shacks and cottages tucked in among the thick stands of spruce, cedar, and western hemlock.
I went into the Buttercup B&B and was told by a thin woman who sported a line of black hair above her upper lip that they had no vacancies. I thought about all the empty parking spaces out front, saw absolutely no one at all in the house, and said to the woman who was standing behind a stretch of shiny mahogany, looking wary and stubborn, "Busy time of year, hmm?"
"There's a convention in town," she said, turned pink, and studied the wall behind my left shoulder, papered with huge Victorian cabbage roses.
"A convention in Edgerton? Maybe they moved the Rose Bowl up here?"
"Oh, no, these aren't florists, they're, well, most of them are dentists, orthodontists, I believe, from all over the country. Sorry, sir."
I wondered what was considered the low season in Edgerton as I walked back to my car. Why hadn't the woman wanted me to stay there? Had it gotten around already that an FBI guy was in town?
Nobody wanted a cop hanging around? It seemed to me that I was the safest customer to have sleeping in your house.
I turned left off Fifth Avenue and drove north up Liverpool Street, a steep winding road that ran parallel to 101 for a good ten miles before swerving eastward to join up once again with the highway. There were new houses along this stretch, spread far apart, most tucked discreetly out of sight from the chance runner or driver. At a particularly lovely spot, I saw a small hill that rose up some fifty yards back from the cliff. The hill was covered with spruce and cedar. At its base there sat a large dark red brick house.
Except for a narrow driveway, the house was surrounded by dozens of trees, the outer perimeter trees partially stunted, leaning inward, battered by storms off the sea.
It was 12 Liverpool, Paul and Jilly's house. It couldn't have been built more than three or four years before. If I hadn't been looking for it I wouldn't have seen it.
I was surprised how much it looked like their home back in Philadelphia. It was then I saw a police car parked across the street from the house.
I pulled into the empty driveway, wondering how much longer Paul would be at the hospital. I walked to the cop car, a white four-door Chrysler with green lettering on the side: SHERIFF.
I stuck my head in the open passenger window. "What's up? You here to see Paul?"
She was a woman in her early thirties, wearing a beautifully pressed tan uniform, a wide black leather belt at her waist, a 9mm SIG Sauer Model 220, a sweet automatic pistol I knew very well, bolstered to the belt. She said, "Yes. And just who might you be?"
"I'm Ford MacDougal, Jilly's brother, from Washington, D.C. I'm here to see her, and find out what happened to her."
"You're the FBI agent?"
There was deep suspicion in her voice. "Word gets around fast," I said. I stuck my hand through the open window. "Just call me Mac."
She was wearing black leather driving gloves that felt very cool and soft to the touch when she clasped my hand. "I'm Maggie Sheffield, sheriff here in Edgerton. I want to find out what happened to Jilly as well. Did you just come from the hospital?" At my nod, she said, "No change?"
"No. I left Paul there with her. He's pretty upset." "No wonder. It's got to be hell for him. It's not every day that a man's wife drives off a cliff, ends up in the hospital rather than the morgue, and leaves her Porsche twenty feet underwater."
She sounded like she wanted to cry. About Jilly or about the Porsche?
"You've driven Jilly's car?"
"Yeah, once. Funny thing is that I never speed unless I have to, which isn't often. But I got behind the wheel, looked out the windshield, and my foot just hit the gas pedal. I was doing eighty before I even realized it. I was grateful there were no cops around." She smiled and looked away from me for a moment. "Jilly was so excited about that car. She'd drive it down Fifth Avenue, hooting and shouting and honking the horn. She'd swerve it from one side of the street to the other. People would come out of the grocery store, their houses, laughing, betting with her that she'd wreck the car with her shenanigans." "She did."
"Yes, but it wasn't because of her having fun like a crazy teenager. It was something else entirely." Her voice had lightened up just a bit, but now it was low and suspicious again. To my surprise, she suddenly smacked the steering wheel with her gloved fist. "It's just plain nuts. Rob Morrison, the state cop who pulled her out, said she speeded up as she went toward the cliff. It's a pretty sharp incline at that particular spot, so that means she had to push down on the gas, like she wanted to go over. But that doesn't make any sense at all. Jilly wouldn't have tried to kill herself." She paused a moment, frowning over the steering wheel into the forest across the street. "I don't suppose you've got any ideas about this?"
I should have just said no, because I didn't want this sheriff to think I was crazy, but what came out of my mouth was "Yes, I do. It's just that I don't understand my ideas either."
She laughed. It was an honest laugh that filled the car. "I think you'll need to explain that. Listen, you're a Fed when all's said and done. Sure you're Jilly's brother, but you're a Fed first. What's going on here?"
"All that's true, but I'm on leave from the FBI. I'm here as Jilly's brother, nothing more. I'm not going to throw my weight around, Sheriff." My stomach growled. "Tell you what. Paul's still at the hospital.
Actually I'm going to stay here with him since the Buttercup B and B is filled up with the orthodontist convention. It's time for lunch and I'm starving."
"Orthodontist convention, huh? That's how Arlene got rid of you? The woman's got no imagination."
"She tried. I think I frightened her. Is it because I'm an outsider? A Fed?"
"Oh, yes. Arlene Hicks doesn't want you anywhere around her fine establishment. She's weird that way about cops."
"Word got around really fast."
"Yeah. Paul told Benny Pickle down at the gun shop that you were coming. That's all it took. Benny's got the biggest mouth west of the Cascades."