Part 22 (1/2)

Wade waited outside, then drove her home. It was nine in the morning, and up and down the Eastport streets the daily routines were well under way: in and out of the post office, the hardware store, and the IGA, normal people and their ordinary ch.o.r.es.

All present and accounted for; all but Sam. At home, Jake's father was in the kitchen cooking oatmeal.

He wore denim coveralls, a plaid flannel s.h.i.+rt, and beat-up work boots. He'd been dressed since five that morning, when he'd woken to find Bella's side of the bed empty.

No stranger to disaster, he'd gotten up immediately to start making phone calls. But first he'd shaved and dressed, since at that point he still didn't know who he might end up talking to: a ransom demander?

Or maybe a coroner's deputy. All this she'd learned from Wade; her dad still wasn't talking much.

”He'll settle down,” Wade told Jake when they got inside, putting a gentle hand up to push her damp hair off her forehead.

”I hope so,” Jake replied guiltily. She still felt ashamed, as if she and Bella had chickened out instead of getting out of the water because it-or Randy-had been about to kill them.

An impulse seized her, to skip the shower she'd planned and instead crawl into Sam's bed and stay there. But: ”You can't try again if you're dead,” Wade said, pulling a set of fresh towels out of the linen closet for her.

And in the end it was this remark that got her through the shower, the rewrapping of her ankle, and the putting on of clean clothes, even the application of a little makeup.

When Sam came home, she would want to look decent. Back downstairs, she found her father still in the kitchen stirring steel-cut oats.

”Don't you dare blame her,” Bella said.

Jake's dad's gaze remained on the oatmeal.

”I made her take me,” Bella said. ”I was the one who decided to go.”

The oatmeal spoon stopped moving. ”You might have both said something to me.”

Bella got a coffee cup from the cabinet and filled it for Jake. ”Why, so you could make a fuss? Try talking me out of it? Forbid it?”

Before he could answer, she went on. ”I'm too far along in my life to start letting you tell me what to do, old man.” Her big green eyes flashed with anger. ”So if you were thinking that, you can stow it.” She pa.s.sed Jake the cream. ”We're sorry we worried you. But I married you, and I can unmarry you.”

His lips pursed. But there was no hiding the smile twitching at their corners. Seeing it, Jake knew why he'd married Bella.

Exactly why. ”Eat,” he said, putting two bowls of steaming mush on the table.

The women looked at the bowls, and at each other. Neither of them felt anything like eating.

”Unless,” he added, ”you both want to lie around all day on fainting couches, sighing and weeping. 'Cause that's what you'll both be doing if you don't get some food into you.”

So they dug in, mostly just to placate him. But it turned out that bowls of hot mush slathered with cream and maple sugar were just what the doctor ordered.

Jake was working on a second bowl and Bella was drinking another gla.s.s of orange juice when Bob Arnold came in and laid a hundred-dollar bill on the table.

”I just had a talk with Roger Dodd,” he said. ”Turns out he bought a lot of electronic equipment not long ago. Copier, and a scanner.”

Just then Wade came in with the dogs. Behind him came Ellie White and George Valentine. They'd all heard what the chief said.

”Why?” asked Ellie. ”I mean, why would he buy ...”

But Jake understood. ”He copied it, didn't he? The money, he faked it up.”

It was, she realized, the thing that had been bothering her all along. ”He faked Randy out with it.”

Bob turned to her. ”Somebody wants a million from you, and you don't want to give it, it stands to reason you might try and fool 'em.”

She got up. Cooked steel-cut oats, her father had once told her, put hair on your chest. She thought that if it ever came to a choice between the way she felt now and low-cut blouses, she'd take the oats.

Thank you, she mouthed at him, and he nodded in reply, not unkindly.

”Why?” said Ellie suddenly again.

She'd dressed in a white blouse, black wool slacks, and a red sweater, plus stockings and loafers. Even her hair was pinned up in a neat, reddish gold braid.

”I mean,” Ellie said, ”why would Roger try to pa.s.s phony cash off on his brother?”

No sequins, no glitter were anywhere on her. Wade and George were cleaned up, too: George in clean, pressed jeans and a blue chambray work s.h.i.+rt with pearl b.u.t.tons, Wade in corduroys, a good collar s.h.i.+rt, and a navy crew-neck sweater with the words Maine Fish & Game embroidered on it in crimson.

A thump of fright hit Jake as she realized why they looked so respectable, all of them: Like her dad, they didn't know who they might be talking to. A police detective, a reporter ...

An undertaker. ”He knew,” Bella said. ”He knew Randy killed both those women-his own wife, Cordelia, and Roger's wife, Anne. And he knew that Randy would be coming back for the money.”

Bob nodded in agreement. ”Turns out that two days after Anne died was when Roger went online and bought all that equipment.” He scowled communicatively. ”Hadn't even had Anne's funeral yet. So you're right, he knew the score. Or he was an awful good guesser. But he says it was all for menus and place mats, for the bar.”

A likely story, Bob's face said.

”Where is he now?” George Valentine wanted to know. ”I'll go ask him a couple of pointed questions of my own.”

Ellie looked warningly at him. Small and compact, with hard, work-toughened hands that clenched readily into fists, George was the type of fellow who, if he asked a guy a few questions and the guy didn't answer fast enough, would speed the responses pretty effectively.

”Okay, okay,” he relented. ”I just wanted to help.”

”He's in custody now, though, right?” Jake asked Bob. ”Roger is?”

But Bob shook his head. ”For what? Getting threatened and blackmailed by his brother, who by the way we also haven't proved anything against?”

His tone said that, left to his own devices, Bob would have locked Roger Dodd up permanently just on general principles. But: ”No. He's got a date with the state cops later today. And I guess someone'll be wanting to talk about that fake money with him.”

Bob moved toward the door. ”But as of now I've got nothing. I wouldn't have even known about the copying equipment if Roger hadn't been trying to fast-talk me about the cash. First he said he went to Bangor and got it, then that a courier delivered it... . I guess he never thought anyone would ask. So he had no story.”

He looked at Bella and Jake. ”That got me thinking, and the fancy copier and so on are right there in his office.”

With the result that, as usual, small-town cop Bob Arnold had put two and two together, then pulled a rabbit out of a hat. Jake felt a burst of grat.i.tude for him.

But it didn't last. ”Anyway, I just came up here to make sure you two were okay,” he went on, ”and tell you the Canadian Coasties're on the way to where you think you had a sighting.”

She stared in disbelief. ”We think?”

Wade stepped in front of her. ”Okay, Jake,” he said. ”Bob, has Roger said anything more about where he thinks Randy went?”

Bob frowned. ”No. I went back down to the Artful Dodger and asked him again just now. But since this morning he's hooked up with an attorney and now he says he won't be making any more comments about Randy or anything else.”