Notoriously Neat (20 page)

It was the guy with the denim jacket and purple hoodie. Somehow, he’d just about caught up to me. There were two or three yards between us, maybe less, and that already way-too-small gap was shrinking fast.

I should also mention that he still had a gun in his hand.

I didn’t panic. Panic wasn’t invited to the show. Instead I remembered my hours of torture at the Get Thinner gym all winter and made like I was on a treadmill, picking up speed, my legs working rhythmically, my heart banging against my rib cage. I was trying to focus solely on the dock ahead, keep my mind on my goal and not the guy chasing after me.

The problem was that he seemed pretty aerobicized too. As fast as I was running, I hadn’t put any ground between us and could still practically feel his breath on the back of my neck.

I drew in another huge mouthful of air and pushed myself ahead, cranking the imaginary treadmill underfoot to high-cal burn. The guy shouted at me, calling me a choice part of the female anatomy in vulgar Spanish. I mentally returned the insult and kept moving, moving, tramping over the grass. A few more feet and I’d reach the dock and—

And then what? How would I find a way to get into one of the motorboats before he caught me? I also very definitely hadn’t forgotten about his gun. Even if I managed to outrace him, I’d be an easy target until I got the boat launched. Assuming I was even able to launch it.

I suddenly felt that unwanted and uninvited panic crashing the party again—and this time I couldn’t slam the door on it. In fact, it was filling the entrance to my heart. I didn’t know what to think. Didn’t know what to do except run, hanging onto my desperate forward motion and a bag of bouncing, jouncing Rottweiler pups.

And so I ran. And ran some more. And had just about run onto the wooden pier when I heard a startlingly shrill cry behind me.

I chanced a second look around. I couldn’t resist, having recognized the source of the cry at once.

I wasn’t sure what prompted Mickey to come scrambling down the hill. Maybe he’d understood my predicament and was trying to help. Or maybe he thought the chase was some kind of fun game. I don’t pretend to know how to read monkey minds, and I’ll never be able to do more than guess. But whatever his reason, he’d caught up to the cholo, gotten between his legs, tripped him to the ground, and then gone bounding off somewhere to leave the guy sprawled in the grass at the shore’s edge.

It was the opening I needed.

I bolted onto the dock, slung the bag into one of the boats, and hopped in after it.
Okay, what now
? I looked around. The mooring line, I thought. First things first—I needed to untie the knot.

I hastily did that, then eyed the control panel behind the boat’s windscreen. There were gauges and dials, but I didn’t see any kind of ignition switch. I had to figure out how to start the motor.

My eyes landed on the throttle—and the bright red button on top of the handgrip. Pushing it seemed a reasonable guess for getting the boat going.

I grabbed the lever and thumbed the button. Nothing. I pressed harder. More nothing. Okay, fine, I thought. I’d pushed hard enough. Hitting your appliances didn’t make them work. I had to be doing something wrong.

My mind raced. You throttled up to go faster, throttled down to go slower. Basic throttling theory, right? And while you did all that, you steered with the wheel. Never mind that the wheel wasn’t round, but shaped like a butterfly . . .

But the butterfly wheel wasn’t where the red button was located. The throttle was. And that button had to have a purpose, which I was still guessing was starting the boat. So maybe the clue was in the throttling
up
part . . .

I grabbed the wheel tightly with one hand, gripped the throttle lever with my other, and pushed while simultaneously pressing the button.

The motorboat shot forward into the water with a jerk that nearly knocked me flat on my back, whipping away from shore in a flash, sheets of spray splashing over its windscreen.

I steadied myself on my feet, got both hands around the wheel. Next step for dedicated aquatic self-learners: steering. I’d steered a car. I’d steered an SUV. I’d steered a crossover vehicle. How different could it be to steer a boat? Really?

I spun the wheel toward the right and went into a wild swerving turn that made me stumble sideways, hanging on for dear life while the bag of puppies went sliding across the deck. I jerked the wheel the other way without thinking and veered sharply again, this time sending the gym bag back to the opposite side of the deck.

The shore blurred by. The boat angled precariously. I suddenly realized that I didn’t know where I was relative to where I’d started out, and had no clue where I was going besides. Plus the puppies were getting banged all over the place.

I tried to look around to see if I could spot the Bayside. Or the dock. Or anything familiar that would help me find my bearings. But all that I accomplished was tipping the boat so far to one side that two of the puppies spilled out of the bag, the smallest rolling up against the inner hull of the boat like a furry bowling ball.

Clinging to the wheel with one hand, I tried to reach for him and fell over sideways into the cold water sloshing over the deck. It soaked my clothes through and through, making them stick clammily to my skin. By now all the dogs were out of the bag, their fur so wet they resembled baby seals.

Easy,
I thought, picking myself up.
Easy does it.

I regained my hold on the wheel, took a deep breath, and this time gave it the slightest of turns to the right. The boat stabilized and went smoothly in that direction. Then I gave the wheel another slight leftward nudge. And again went pretty much where I’d intended to go without almost capsizing.

Better. Much better. I’d learned how to start a boat. Now I thought I had a clue about how to maneuver.

But I was still lost at sea. Or on the bay, as it were.

And then I heard the commotion carrying over the water from what I at least
thought
was behind me. I nudged the butterfly wheel around very slowly and gingerly, hoping the boat would go where I intended.

It did. An instant later, I saw the
tres amigos
from hell starting to pile over the gunwales of the second boat, felt a surge of panic . . . and then exhaled as that awful fear turned to pure, utter relief.

They’d been surrounded by a group of men in blue uniforms and were standing on the dock with their hands raised in the air.

I was speeding along, holding the wheel steady as I could, when I heard my cell phone Coldplay me.

I reached into my coat pocket for it.

“Sky?”

“Alex?

“We’ve got them,” he said. “Gail and Natalie’s killers.”

“Look behind you, Sky. At the shore.”

I turned, looked, and saw him waving at me from the wooden dock.

Briefly pulling the cell phone from my ear, I waved back at him with the hand that held it, then lowered it again so I could hear him talk to me.

“Everything’s okay,” Vega said. “Those men are in custody and nobody’s been hurt. You can turn around now.”

I started to tell him I’d do just that, caught myself. “I’d love to, Alex,” I said. “Only problem’s it might take me a while to figure exactly how to get this thing back to shore.”

That was no great disaster, though. I didn’t have to hurry.

I knew Chief Alex would wait for me, however long it took.

“A GPS tracker, dudette,” Bry was saying. “Be kinda cool if it wasn’t so uncool.”

I nodded, sneezed, blew my nose. The scary thing was that I knew what he meant.

We were in my Airstream about two hours after he’d given me a lift over from the police station, where Chief Vega and his men had locked up the dogfighting crew and taken my statement. My Versa, meanwhile, was somewhere in an Essex County impound lot, where the forensic people who’d picked it over had found the global positioning unit under the dash.

“The
tres creepos
must have stuck the transmitter under my dash while were at Gail’s,” I said. “I’m guessing that’s what you heard out front.”

“That car door opening and shutting.”

I nodded again. And
ah-chooed
.

“They used a tissue to clean up the smudges they left putting it in . . . Guess they used some kind of adhesive.”

“And you kept the tissue.”

“Tossed it in that litter bag I keep in the Versa,” I said.

Bry looked down at the Rottweiler on his lap. The pup taken from Natalie Oswald’s studio, it had been found in a tied laundry bag in the Cherokee that the
tres creepos
had been driving.

“So,” I said. “You think of a name for our new guard dog yet?”

“I dunno.” Bry shrugged. “How about Mars?”

I looked at him. “Mars?”

“Yeah. Like the planet.” He scratched under her neck and she stared placidly up at him. “She seems kinda out there, y’dig?”

That one I wasn’t so sure about. But since the rotty was technically his dog, I figured I would take his word.

“So anyways,” Bry said, “what I want to know is why those Lowell guys didn’t catch up to you at the Bayside toot sweet. I mean, if they had that GPS thing . . .”

“It got damaged when I was run into that tree near Ruth Ginken’s farmhouse,” I said.

“By Skip and the La Dee Das.”

I nodded, thinking that sounded like the name of a second-rate sixties pop group. “Vega figures the transmitter kept turning itself off and on after the accident. Good thing too. Since that made those guys late getting there . . .”

“You mean Skull Jacket and his boys.”

“Right,” I said, thinking
that
sounded like a fifth-rate eighties punk-rock group. Being how we were suddenly on a naming kick. “And while it delayed them, it gave Vega and
his
boys time to catch up.”

“Cavalry arrives,” Bry said.

Which wasn’t a good name for anything in my opinion, but you couldn’t always expect to strike gold.

I dropped my used tissue in the wastebasket, reached for another, and sneezed into it.

“Want a ride home?” Bry said. “Looks to me you could use a stretch in the tub.”

I nodded. We’d just stopped by to get the rotty there so it could get acclimated. “I’ll get my coat and—”

My cell phone played its music and I picked it up from where I’d set it on the desk.

“Sky?”

I frowned, wishing caller ID blocking could be outlawed.

“Bill?”

“Billy to you,” Drecksel said. “I was wonderin ’—”

“No,” I said.

“No?”

“No,” I said. “I’m staying put. Right here. In my trailer.”

He grunted. “You positive?”

“A hundred percent,” I said, glancing at Mars. “Even have a little something to guard against bear attacks.”

“What’s that?”

“You’ll see,” I said. “Later.”

Bill sighed.

“Well, you ever change your mind, let me know,” he said. “If there’s gotta be a tin can in my backyard, I suppose I oughtta be glad it’s a neat one.”

“Right, Bill.” I grinned. “Notoriously neat.”

That struck me as a pretty decent phrase, and I instantly slipped it into the mental file drawer where I save all my better ones.

As a professional writer and cleanup person, I had a hunch I’d find a perfect use for it someday.

 

I’m stuffy and sniffling worse than ever tonight thanks to a cold weather motorboat ride I
really
don’t want to talk about right now, so I’ll be word-efficient and then climb into the sack for a good night’s sleep. Of course, efficiency’s this blog entry’s whole point. Call it unwanted and unnecessary symmetry.

—Sky

1. Cut down on your hot water usage. Use cold or warm water for household cleaning and washing. Only white clothes need hot water washing.

2. Keep vents, heating units and light bulbs well dusted for max output. If you have pets, keeping fur from clogging up air conditioner and furnace filters is a must.

3. When you’re clearing the lunch or dinner dishes, take the partially full glasses of water and pour into your house plants.

4. Save electricity and clothes-dryer time with those plastic balls you see everywhere. We don’t use them exclusively, but for they’re ideal for heavy loads like towels. As they bounce around, they create air pockets that speed up the drying process. Fabric softener tends to reduce the absorbency of towels and washcloths, and leaves an artificial perfumey scent that allergy sufferers can live without.

5. Usually take out the trash in the evening? Hang a battery operated light on the door of your shed or under the porch where you keep the trash cans. You’ll lose an excuse to skip cleaning out those wastebaskets at the end of the day, but you’ll be glad to have one less chore before heading to work in the morning.

 

It’s morning and I’m feeling lots better than yesterday. Nothing tackles a cold better than a hot bath and burrowing in under my toastiest blankets for the night. Plus the local forecast says temps in the Cove should actually scratch seventy today. Spring at last!
Zowie!

With warm weather around the corner, and barbecues and patio parties coming to mind, here are some tips for the cleaning we have to do outdoors.

Having to clean your gas grill just as you’re about to plop on the patties can be a real hassle. It’s also a gross-out when you open it to discover some freakish bug family’s turned it into a country cabin. So get your cleaning done before the creepy crawlies move in.