Operation Wolfe Cub: A Chilling Historical Thriller (THE TIME TO TELL Book 1) (34 page)

After bailing out his car door, the Pribil overwhelmed him even more as he walked by. Awkwardly, he stumbled on the row of steps that led to the covered porch. Matters of business soon overcame him after that. Quickly, he turned around and started organizing his clipboard as he stepped up the stairs. With plenty of loud footsteps in his hard, cold boots, he paused before using his clipboard to tap on the front door.

Eddie had just finished adjusting his tie, while Chantain was readying herself with Doll when they heard someone knock. Both of them froze right where they were, looking at each other as their dog, Major, quickly did the talking for them. He growled and barked as Eddie whispered, “You expecting someone?”

Chantain backed away whispering, “No. Why would someone be out here? It’s Sunday.”

Eddie stepped back into the living room where he instantly spotted the strange car through the front windows.

Suddenly, a deep voice spoke from outside. “Constable Torrance Holt. Answer the door, please.”

Eddie stumbled. “Why did you call? I said
I
would.”

Chantain put Doll back into his crib then shrugged her shoulders as if she knew nothing about it.

Eddie continued, “Well, if you didn’t call, who did?”

Torrance Holt spoke up, “Open up, please, I can hear you. Please, it’s the law.”

Eddie quickly gathered himself before opening the front door very slowly, part way. “Excuse me, sorry it took so long. You know dogs. We were just leaving for church.” He then poked his head out. “Something wrong Mr. Constable?”

“Not quite yet, I hope.”

The constable glanced up and down at Eddie, with his nice necktie, dark blue jeans, shiny cowboy boots, and clean tan shirt. Then he glanced down at the old dog at his feet, wagging his tail. Whatever disposition Major had a minute ago, he had gotten over it quickly.

Torrance breathed normally at last. He let go of the gun on his holster, and relaxed his stance. As quickly as that, he even tipped his ranger’s hat. “Sorry for the intrusion this morning, but,
uh
, we received an unusual call. May I please come in?”

Eddie looked back to Chantain, then back to Torrance. “Why, sure…this won’t take much time, will it? We really do have to go. It’s a new church and we don’t want to
uh
, be late.”

“No I wouldn’t want that either. Just a routine visit is all.”

Eddie opened the door a little further and invited Torrance inside. Quickly, he offered the constable a cup of
coffee, which he graciously accepted. He showed him to a seat in the living room to sit down.

Right from the beginning, seat selection turned for the worse. The chair Eddie directed him to was the most uncomfortable-looking wooden chair and farthest from Doll’s crib. Incidentally, the crib was standing out like a beacon around the bigger, more inviting three-piece sofa set.

Torrance got comfortable, nevertheless, but he looked a little suspicious. As he took a couple notes on his clipboard, he noticed that Eddie was growing nervous about where he should sit in his own home. Finally, he settled on the sofa where he started tapping his cane.

Chantain wasn’t much better. Her feet had grown tree roots in the center of the floor, so Eddie tapped her with his cane. “Excuse me,
uh
, Chantain? The man said he wanted coffee. Can you get Mr.
uh
—what was your name?”

“That’s Holt…Torrance Holt. I don’t care how you serve it, ma’am. I’ll take it any way you give it.”

Eddie nodded back and forth to both of them. “That’s great. Thank you Mr. Holt…can you please get Mr. Holt whatever he wants? It’ll warm him up to what he’s thinking about—I think.”

Chantain strolled into the kitchen. “Oh sure, right away. It’s still hot from breakfast, I think…of course, it’s hot. What am I saying? Coffee, I like coffee…do you like coffee, Mr. Holt?”

Torrance took off his hat and placed it beside him. “Why, yes, I do.” He then turned toward Eddie and said, “Excuse me, but did you just buy that sofa?”

Eddie felt its material before answering, “No, it’s been around for a long time. Why do you ask?”

Torrance raised his eyebrows and tried rubbing the strain away from his eyes. “Oh, I see. You folks must have moved around your furniture. That’s why you couldn’t…oh, forget it.”

Just as the visit looked like it might smooth out, silence began to build throughout the room all too soon. Chantain still hadn’t come out from the kitchen, so the two men began looking around at anything but each other.

Then suddenly, from the dead quiet, Doll decided to break the silence with a puckering cry.

Chantain dropped a spoon in the kitchen and Eddie jumped straight up like he’d just sat on something extremely hot. The only one not bothered was Torrance, except he didn’t know who to look at first; Chantain darting in and out of the kitchen or Eddie rubbing his rear. When the both of them finally calmed down, Torrance immediately jotted down another note on his clipboard, then pushed his utensils aside on his lap and turned all business. “So you have a baby. What’s its name?”

Eddie quieted Doll down with a quick bottle of milk without answering him. Instead, he quickly sat down, just as Chantain came back out with Torrance’s belated cup of coffee. As she handed it over to him, she looked across the room as if Eddie was the one to blame. Not only did her glare say this, but it also said he’d better get them out of their situation too.

Eddie haphazardly read her face while he was stuck in a quandary of emotions. “Oh, h-his name is—well, Chantain named him. It’s Doll.”

Chantain glared harder before going back into the kitchen. By this time, Torrance’s eyes were wide open, shifting back and forth like ping-pong balls caught in a good rally. Somewhere within the last few feet of Chantain’s walk, he must have uncovered a mile of information. Nevertheless, he had to get on with the rest of the formalities to complete his investigation. His coffee was too hot to touch, so he carried on without a sip. “I’ve got to get on with this…we had an anonymous call that you found a baby at a shipwreck down at Port Rock Beach. Is that the baby, Mr. Coolidge?”

Eddie’s face looked about as still and fragile as a house of cards. “Yes…oh,
uh
, yes. That’s him. His voice slowly went hoarse as he coughed, “I can’t pretend to be the father. The baby’s fine, really he’s fine…not hurt…nothing like that.”

Just then, Chantain came out of the kitchen and leaned against the doorway to watch her husband flounder entirely on his own. Pity might have been appropriate, but not with Chantain. She looked as though she saw all of Eddie’s shortcomings right before her very eyes. Through her indignant expression, one could only guess about what she was thinking.

Eddie looked up to his wife, standing there with her arms crossed. He knew he was headed for a grueling argument sometime later, but oddly enough, he appeared as though he wanted some sort of time-out to talk with her. Somehow, he knew he was on his own. He withered as he faced off with yet another unsuspecting sight across the room, sitting there in the name of the law.

Chantain traced the mounting problems through the path of Eddie’s eyes quite easily. She walked back into the kitchen to let the two of them sort out the rest. As she walked over to the kitchen sink to think, she suddenly became intrigued. While she gazed out of her window, her eyes shifted back and forth, as if she was reaching for something to say. “Excuse me, Mr. Holt…you found out about it so quick!”

Torrance pulled out a different sheet of paper from beneath his clipboard. “Yes, I did…when it comes to Devil’s, news travels pretty fast.”

She lit a cigarette and then bit her lip, grinning. “So… how did you find out?”

Torrance didn’t look up as he continued filling out his paperwork. “Well, I can’t really say…all I can say is someone seen you folks and knew about the wrecked vessel too. You know somebody like that?”

Chantain whispered through the smoke of her breath, so quiet that only her kitchen window could hear, “
Ah
, Julie…a better bitch than I thought.”

Torrance seemed to do his job well. However, he was a little behind when it came to the mechanics of the warm, clean-looking home he was invited into. He had to stop to apprise himself. At that very moment, all he could see was the extreme sadness that he had somehow bestowed upon Eddie. He looked as though he could almost feel Eddie’s pain, but business was business. He gathered up his clipboard once again, and then tested his coffee before taking a sip. “This is the best I can do, Mr. Coolidge. Since you’ve given me no trouble…says here we had abandoned boat wreckage…
ahem
…says here too…
hmmm
, that there was no record of a crime or survivors at the site.”

His hand reached for his handcuffs to reposition them beneath his seat as he went on, “The thing I’m having trouble with here is that the two brothers, by the names of Jed and Buzz, who owned the boat, died in the storm miles out at sea…they had no baby. There was no mention of a baby.”

He paused to loosen his collar before continuing, “I checked with their nearest relatives even. So
uh
—where did the baby come from?”

Eddie looked down at the constable’s handcuffs and pistol and swallowed. As quick as the sweat came off his forehead, he must have thought he was as going to be arrested.

Torrance couldn’t take his eyes off Eddie, not even for a second. Softly, he said, “Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Coolidge. I believe you—but I gotta problem. Somehow, I believe this other person’s story too.”

Torrance adjusted his gear in his chair once more. He then looked past Eddie as he pulled a toothpick from his shirt pocket to place in his mouth. He accidentally bit down on it too hard when he asked, “This is much stranger than what I just saw here in your living room…so help me out, for
the sake of the child. The boat was lost way out at sea…what happened when you arrived at the scene?”

Eddie suddenly opened his eyes wide. “
Ah
, I’ll do anything to help him. Me and Major, my dog…we were walking when we saw this boat wrecked beyond recognizable—below the cliffs—in the rocks.”

“Go on.”

“Okay…we went down to see if we could identify the boat—but we couldn’t. All I could make out was the letter
B
on the stern. We made it down close to see more. That’s when we found the baby. Really, that’s my story.”

Torrance leaned to the edge of his chair, studying Eddie’s every move. “Did you find either of Buzz’s or Jed’s bodies? They were described with dark or black hair, one fat and one real skinny. They were brothers in their late fifties and early sixties.”

Eddie suddenly looked puzzled. “
Hmmm
I-I
um
…I just
uh
.
Hmmm
.”

Torrance leaned closer. “Well? Please, Mr. Coolidge… you’re taking too much time here. How can I believe in this if you don’t—”

“Yes! There was a dead man there, but he looked—so much younger.”

“Very well, we’ll get back to that…continue.”

“No, don’t take me wrong, Mr. Holt. It was awful.”

“Awful you say?”

“Yes, awful…well, the boat kept breaking up. Me and Major—well we pulled the man out of the water, but high tides came in too fast and took him out to sea. We had to save ourselves because the beach was getting flooded out, really. All I could think about was the baby…that’s all I ever thought about. I know it sounds strange, but it was the baby I wanted to save. I needed to bring him back here—to my home.”

Torrance relaxed a little. “This dead man. Did he match the description of one of the two men I just described?”

“I-I don’t know…he was so-so torn up from rocks, and-and bloated too. All I can see in my head is the solid whites of his eyes…that’s all. He was dead.”

Torrance rocked back and took a few more notes. “
Hmmm
, so you don’t know their eye color either…their eyes were brown, both of them. Cases like these…salt water can destroy a human body quick. This much I know. What about the hair?”

Eddie swallowed hard. “The hair? His hair was—I don’t know. You said it was darker?”

“Yes, but not necessarily. Sometimes the sea just pulls people’s hair completely off…so if any of it was left, what color was it?”

“Gone! The hair was
gone
…I’m sorry I can’t be of much help. I was so caught up saving the baby that—”

“Wait a sec…slow down. You mentioned the boat. Maybe we have another boat. What color was the boat?”

“Oh, it was blue and white, I think.”

Torrance took a double take through his notes. “Well you’re not sure about anything, but you’re making good now. The boat was indeed, blue and white.” He then looked at the name of the vessel in his notes. “The letter
B
you saw, stood for the name of the boat.”

Eddie sat up straight. “So you know the name? I tried to guess what it was. All that came to my mind was ‘Battle, Beyond, Begone.”

Torrance chuckled, “It certainly wasn’t any of those, I can tell you that. She was called the
Blessit
. Wasn’t blessed this time, I guess. Her owners, Buzz and Jed Newman; they were out of New Hampshire. It’s a crying shame.”

Eddie looked shocked. Without thinking, he murmured, “That’s funny. They were Americans.”

The constable put another toothpick in his mouth. “Excuse me, Mr. Coolidge?”

“What? Oh, America…that’s funny they drifted so far away from shore—from America I guess.”

“America? You didn’t think they’d be from somewhere else did you?”

“No, guess not…sorry I said that. I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I’m nervous right now, I guess. Where else would they come from, right?”

Torrance then grabbed his coffee and drank down his last drop. He looked at his notes again before finally putting himself at ease entirely.

But just when Eddie thought Torrance was done questioning, Torrance put his coffee cup on the little stand next to him and began to look around at their home.

Curiously, Eddie looked all around him, as if he was trying to figure out what it was that intrigued the constable so. In all truthfulness, the home, with its contents, was very safe-looking, clean, and pleasant. It looked well suited for children too, with the crib in the warmest spot next to the fireplace. More contributions included the baby bottle, clean diapers, selections of toys, and a married couple working together to keep it all up. Their dog even communicated a pleasant message as being nothing but a wagging bluff.