“It’s Andy Bynum’s house,” I said. “The man that was killed Sunday? Somebody’s sneaking around his house.”
“Hey, wait a minute!” he rasped as I slid open the door. “Where do you think you’re—”
“It’s okay,” I assure him, jingling my car keys. “I’ve got a gun in my trunk, remember?”
He grabbed my arm before I stepped off the porch into the rain and held me while he crammed his feet in his own shoes. “Now listen up, Ms. Judge—no guns. You stay here and I’ll go—”
I yanked my arm free with a low snarl. “I’ve got a better idea, Officer Chapin. You stay here and call Marvin Willitt and I’ll go.”
“Or,” he amended, “we can go together, only no gun, okay?”
I nodded and we set off through the bushes. Between the security light near Mark’s house and the lights up at the store, we didn’t need a flashlight to see where we were going, but we were keeping to the shadows as much as possible ourselves and there was a certain amount of stumbling so that we wound up running across the rain-slick road hand in hand, then melted into the bushes beneath the front windows of Andy Bynum’s house.
Unlike Sue and Carl’s little yellow clapboard vacation cottage, this was a year-round brick home, solid and comfortable, with blinds and drapes at all the windows. Yet the window of the front door was uncurtained and we could see the glow of a moving flashlight inside.
“Stay here,” said Kidd as he moved onto the porch. “Please?”
As I may have said before, I don’t mind letting men do my dirty work if it makes them feel good, but that doesn’t include using one as a body shield. On the other hand, this one seemed to have picked up a short piece of pipe on our way over and I certainly didn’t need to be in the middle if he started swinging it.
The front door was unlatched, but when Kidd pushed, it swung inward with a horrendous squeak and the light immediately vanished. As he stepped inside, I remembered that there was a side door I could be usefully watching, but for the moment, I blanked on which side. By the time I’d circled all the way around the house, the door was standing wide open and I saw a dark shape fleeing for the water. From the angle he was taking, I had a feeling he’d tied up at Mahlon’s landing, so I cut through the Lewis’s yard, trying not to skid on the wet grass, and sprinted down the narrow footpath the boys had worn through that overgrown vacant field, down to the shoreline. I bet I’d have made it in time to get a good look at the intruder, too, only just before I was to break through the bank, the toe of my sneaker caught in one of Mahlon’s discarded stop nets and I went sprawling into a yucca plant.
A stiff needled blade jabbed my cheek, another raked my forehead, and more impaled themselves in my head and hands. I disentangled myself as quickly as I could, but already I could hear the boat motor; and when I finally made it to the shore, all I saw were the running lights as it headed out to the channel and back toward Beaufort. Without moon or stars, I couldn’t even say if it had a cabin or an open cockpit, for it was just a gray blur against the dark water.
Discouraged, thoroughly wet and hurting like hell, I started to cross Mahlon’s rickety dock and stumbled against a bucket. It went banging against the piling and, as I set it upright, a light snapped on. Mahlon’s grizzled head appeared at the open window and he squinted out to see into the darkness.
“Who’s that out there?”
“It’s just me, Mahlon,” I called, edging away from the light. “I couldn’t sleep and was taking a walk and I kicked a bucket. Sorry. G’night.”
He was still muttering about dingbatters without enough sense to come in out of the rain as I walked hastily back to the cottage.
Kidd Chapin was there before me and as soon as I stepped inside, he drew the shades and turned on the lights. His wet hair clung flat to his head, but mine was hanging in strings.
“Sweet Jesus in the morning! Look at you. What happened?”
I touched my damp face and my torn hands came away with more blood. “I fell into a damn yucca.”
“Spanish bayonets,” he said, calling its colloquial name.
“They weren’t kidding. The way it hurts, I’m lucky I didn’t get one in the eye. I don’t suppose you got a look at him either?”
“No, by the time I got to the open side door, you were both gone and I didn’t have a clue which way. I was on my way to the water when the light came on over there and I could see you by yourself, so I decided to sneak on back in here while you were creating a diversion. Come on, shug, let’s get you cleaned up.”
I was drained into docility and obediently sat at the kitchen table while he washed the blood off my face and hands with a hot soapy washcloth, then dabbed at the cuts and punctures with peroxide.
“Hope you got a light calendar tomorrow,” he said. “You’re going to look like hell a couple of days, but I’d leave the Band-Aids off, let the air heal it.”
“Take two aspirin and call you tomorrow?” I said groggily.
“Wouldn’t hurt.”
“Which?”
“Both.”
I swallowed the aspirin he brought me, shucked off the wet sweatshirt and warm-up pants, and crawled into bed.
• • •
My head felt as if it’d barely touched the pillow when Kidd’s hand touched my bare shoulder. At first I thought it was still that hazy cusp between night and sunrise, but according to the clock it was nearly seven-thirty and I realized that the gray light was due to the gray day. The rain had stopped, though clouds still lingered. If more clouds didn’t blow in, it would probably be sunny by noon. I tried to sit up and every muscle in my body started screaming that this was really a bad idea and maybe we could all come back and try it again tomorrow.
