“ He was coming at you with a big knife.” Singh put the weapon back on the shelf under the register.
“ Yes, he was.” Rick dusted off as the store came to life.
Everyone crowded around Gundry. Sam Storm bent to take his pulse. “Dead,” he said.
“ Somebody better go for the police,” the man that had been reading Field and Stream said.
“ Sheriff Sturgees is across the street,” Ann said. Then added, “I’ll go.” But light flashed through the store before she had a chance to move. Then the lights went out.
In the excitement no one saw Sam Storm pick up the Bowie knife. They didn’t see the dead Gundry’s hand close on Storm’s arm, They didn’t see him jump away and they didn’t suspect a thing when he eased himself out of the store.
He tossed the knife on the passenger’s side of his old, brown Ford Granada, started the car and drove. Something was happening. He felt light headed. He reached and scratched the itching sensation on the back of his neck. Something wasn’t right.
He made the first left without thinking, then the next left, then the next, and he found himself driving past the convenience store. Something was drawing him back. He continued on and found himself driving around the block for a second time. This time he parked across the street and down the block from the store.
He lit a cigarette and thought about Gordon.
He would sit tight and see what developed. He’d been after Rick Gordon for years, not that he could do much unless he caught him with a smoking gun, but he was convinced that he hadn’t retired. Once they taste the easy money they never quit.
It had taken him over twenty years to put it all together, but he’d done it. From that first scratchy record in the plain white cover, to the current rash of bootleg CDs, he had been on the case, and behind most of it was Rick Gordon. He was sure of it.
“ So the electricity goes out in a great white flash and the knife disappears,” the sheriff said through a frown of disbelief.
“ Yes, sir. That’s about it,” Jaspinder Singh said.
“ I’ll ask it again. Where’s the knife?” the sheriff said.
“ Not here.” Ann was the first to speak.
“ There was a knife,” J.P. said. “I saw it.”
“ Me, too,” his mother said.
“ That enough for you, Sheriff?” Rick said. For a short moment he thought he was in trouble, the kind of trouble he didn’t need.
“ No, it’s not. What I’d like to see is the knife.” He bent to see if it might have slipped under one of the food counters. “Not here.”
“ There was a knife,” Judy said.
“ It’s not here now.”
“ Somebody took it, that’s for sure,” Jaspinder Singh said. “It was right there, bigger than life.”
“ Well, if there was a knife, then one of you took it.”
“ No, sheriff, there were two others here. A man reading the magazines, who is now gone and a private detective. They are not here now.”
“ That’s right,” Ann said.
“ Private detective?” The sheriff turned to Singh. “What did he want?”
“ He was asking if I saw a certain person in town,” Jaspinder Singh said.
“ What person? Who?”
“ I am not remembering.”
“ How could you forget?” the sheriff asked with the edge of anger creeping into his voice.
“ I would remember if it was somebody I was knowing, but a name I have never heard is a thing easy to forget, especially after what has happened this morning.”
The sheriff turned toward Rick.
“ You know I’m going to have to hold you for this.”
“ No, I don’t know that. I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“ Two men are dead because of you.”
“ That’s absolutely not true. That bum on the beach was going to kill Judy, and that bum there,” he pointed to Gundry’s body, “came at me with a knife. There’s a world of witnesses to both events.”
“ You used deadly force.”
“ Come on, Sheriff. I hit a man who was trying to kill me with a bottle of wine. It’s not like I used a gun.”
“ Sheriff, it is without a doubt that the dead Mr. Gundry was going mad. He was going to kill Mr. Gordon,” Jaspinder Singh said.
“ Without doubt,” Rick added.
“ Even if I agree, I’m going to need you to come in and make a statement.”
“ And I’ll be glad to do it,” Rick said.
“ J.P., get away from there,” Judy scolded. Her son was bent over the corpse, the second dead body he’d seen that morning.
“ There’s blood,” the boy said.
“ He was hit hard, J.P.” Rick pulled the boy away from the body. “Why don’t you wait outside.”
“ Blood on the back of the neck,” J.P. whispered under his breath, “like the man on the beach.” But nobody was listening.
Chapter Four
Ann clenched her fists, then fumbled in her purse for her keys. The day hadn’t even started yet and already she was fighting the pain. She found the keys, then took J.P. by the hand, looked both ways, threw a quick glance behind and caught Rick looking, as she knew she would.
“ He always watches when you walk, doesn’t he?” J.P. tugged on her hand.
“ Yeah, he does,” she said. The group had decided she would take J.P. home, while Rick and his mother answered more of the sheriff’s questions.
“ Why?” J.P. pulled her into the street, toward the Jeep parked on the other side.
“ He likes the way I walk.” She opened her door, but J.P. climbed over.
She heard the distant blast of a fog horn.
“ Can we go?” he asked. “You’ve never been, Mom and Rick take me all the time and they like it. I bet you would too.”
The single blast of the foghorn told the town that it was 9:00 and that the Seawolf was docking at the pier, like she did every morning, rain or snow. Holiday anglers didn’t like going out too early and they didn’t like coming in too late.
J.P. loved the Seawolf and Captain Wolfe Stewart. He’d been out so many times that the bearded captain thought of J.P. as his lucky charm. Lately the boy had been having breakfast three or four times a week in the ship’s galley. If his mother didn’t want to go, Rick did.
The ship’s cook, under captain’s orders, had bacon sizzling every morning when they docked, just in case J.P. showed up for breakfast. He had become the ship’s unofficial mascot, and both crew and boy enjoyed the arrangement.
Ann waved to Rick, bit back the pain, let out the clutch and sped away. Soon she wouldn’t be able to conceal it anymore, but every minute of happiness she could give him, before the awful truth surfaced, was a minute worth fighting for, and she was a fighter.
“ Of course, the Seawolf,” she said. “I should have known.” She knew he loved the bacon and egg burgers and told herself she probably would, too. A few weeks ago she would have shuddered at the thought of so much
