Sing It to Her Bones (11 page)

I didn’t know what to say to such an earnest declaration, so I changed the subject, picking my words carefully, particularly since the wine was beginning to make significant inroads caused by my sending it down into a stomach empty of all but a large Kalamata olive and a few pitiful bits of fruit and cheese. “I was talking to Angie at her mother’s the other day, and she told me that you and Katie used to date.”

“That’s true. We’d been going out since that summer. I used to stop by the Royal Farms, where she worked, for a cold Coke after practice. I’ll tell you the truth, I was sweet on Katie. She was a fun kid, but she was interested in a more serious relationship. I started dating Katie when David here broke up with her.” David, an inch or two taller than Chip, looked like an ex-marine with his hair worn in a short, closely cropped crew cut that a midshipman would have described as “high and tight.”

David shifted his weight from one foot to the other, fists firmly stuffed into the pockets of his trousers. “Katie dated most of us at one time or another, but the only one she was serious about was Chip.”

“Katie was an atheist,” Chip said, as if that explained everything. Seeing my look of confusion, he added, “I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior when I turned sixteen, Mrs. Ives. It never would have
worked out with Katie and me.” He ran long, slim fingers through his hair.

“Chip didn’t have anything to do with her death. None of us did.” Up until then Bill had been so quiet that I had almost forgotten about him. His mouth opened to elaborate, or so I thought, but nothing came out. I noticed he was looking over my left shoulder, a curious expression on his face. I turned and attempted to follow his gaze but could see only Connie and Dennis and Hal’s broad back as he strode over to greet them, a wineglass in each hand. I wondered if it was the unexpected presence of a police officer that had made Bill clam up.

“No, I don’t suppose you did.” A door had slammed shut. I could see it in the rigid set of his jaw. I tried to come up with a graceful exit line. I glanced at my watch. “Well, I’d better go pay my respects to the Dunbars. Sorry to be meeting you all under such circumstances.” As I walked away, I kicked myself for such stunning originality.

“Mrs. Ives?”

I halted in mid-stride and turned to see Chip leaving his friends, hurrying to catch up with me. David Wilson stared after Chip, his face set in a scowl, his eyes almost supernaturally blue in contrast with his white eyebrows. He gave me the creeps. It was a relief when Chip’s handsome face blocked my view of David.

Chip hadn’t changed much since that homecoming picture was taken. His broad brow, prominent nose, and high cheekbones were a photographer’s dream, evidence
of German blood somewhere in his family tree. I wanted to trust him but was wary. Emily’s boyfriends had never been particularly trustworthy, despite their well-brushed hair and clean-scrubbed faces.

I smiled. “Yes, Chip?”

“I really mean what I said back there. The thank-you, that is.”

“You’re welcome,” I said, although it seemed singularly inappropriate under the circumstances.

“I hope I didn’t give you the wrong impression, is all. Katie and I were still going together the night she disappeared. But it was kind of an up-and-down thing with Katie and me. Three weeks before the dance she was barely speaking to me. When I called, Liz said she’d gone away for the weekend. To tell you the truth, I suspected she was seeing somebody else. A college guy, maybe.”

I couldn’t imagine any girl dumping a hunk like Chip. “So what happened to get you back together?”

“It’s a mystery to me. The week before the dance she was all lovey-dovey again.” He shrugged. “Women! Begging your pardon, ma’am, but today they’d probably chalk it all up to PMS.”

When I finally rejoined the group surrounding Connie, puzzling over Katie’s odd behavior in the months before her death, Hal handed me a fresh glass of wine.

Dennis raised his wineglass in my direction, as if offering a toast. “Hello, Hannah.” His smile was dazzling, like a light turned on in a dark room. “Even though it’s officially my day off, I’ve got to stick around
here for an hour or two, check out the guests, but after that, Connie and Hal have cooked up a sail for us. Connie tells us you’ve had a rough week and could use a break.”

I glared at Connie and didn’t care if anyone noticed. “I don’t really feel much like sailing, Dennis.”

“What else is there to do? Sit around the house? Watch TV? Or”—he smiled at Connie—“I understand you’ve been helping Connie with her books.” Dennis was being exasperatingly reasonable.

I looked down at my open-toed shoes. Before Memorial Day. Mother would have had a fit. “I’m not exactly dressed for sailing, either.”

Connie looked at Dennis. “We’ll have to go home and change first.”

I was half listening, still wondering what was eating Bill and David and their close-mouthed Wildcat pals. “I think those guys know more about Chip and Katie than they’re saying, don’t you, Dennis?”

Dennis ignored this remark and turned his persuasive moss-green eyes on me. “Meet you at the marina around two?”

I couldn’t think of a single good reason to refuse so, with the hope of coaxing more information out of him, I caved in. “Okay, around two.”

Connie and I eventually found the Dunbars receiving condolences in the kitchen. I suspect Mrs. Dunbar had wandered in there to escape the crowd, only to become trapped in a corner next to the stove by a chain of sympathizers. When we finally worked our
way to the front of the line, Mrs. Dunbar still wore the haunted look I had seen on her face at the Nichols farm, as if nobody were home behind the eyes.

“We thank you so much for coming.” Mrs. Dunbar had said exactly the same thing to the last twelve people. Mr. Dunbar simply shook our hands and said nothing. I was relieved that they didn’t recognize my name.

We had nearly escaped out the front door when Liz, appearing suddenly from the dining room, chirped, “Don’t forget to sign the book!” She scooped up a guest book from where it lay on the table in the hallway and thrust it and a ballpoint pen into Connie’s hands. Connie signed for both of us while I stood there tongue-tied, smiling stiffly at Katie’s older sister. Liz was acting more like a funeral consultant than a grieving sister, I thought.

As we walked back to Connie’s car, I noticed the 1990 championship Wildcats heading off together in the opposite direction, sauntering up High Street toward the high school. Maybe they were planning to shoot a few baskets. As I watched, a car sped by close to the shoulder, and to avoid it, one of the men was forced to step sideways out of the friendly huddle. Suddenly I could see they were not alone. Angie was in front, between Chip and David, almost running in her struggle to keep up with her long-legged companions. I saw Angie grab Chip by the arm, as if to attract his full attention. He shook loose from her grip and kept walking. She followed, clearly angry. I could see
her mouth working overtime. Not basketball then. Something very different must be on their agenda, and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Angie and find out what.

chapter

8

It was twenty minutes past two and Dennis’s
Taurus was already parked in the shade next to the icehouse when Connie and I finally made it to the marina. It was my fault we were late. I spent ages looking for my jeans, the ones I had come close to ruining the day I discovered Katie’s body, until I remembered they were still in the dryer. Connie had dressed in a bathing suit and had thrown on over it the white shorts and striped top that made her look disgustingly like a twenty-year-old model for a mail-order catalog. Me? I pulled a Dive BVI T-shirt over my jeans. I wasn’t ready for swimsuits yet, even if the Chesapeake Bay had been warm enough for swimming in May, which since I was not a polar bear, in my opinion it wasn’t. I had nightmares of diving overboard and resurfacing only to discover that the little latex foam pad I used
for a breast had come bobbing up to the surface like a discarded shoulder pad.

Sea Song
lay in slip number thirty-two at the end of a long wooden pier hinged every five feet or so and floating comfortably on sturdy pontoons. It undulated slightly as we walked, and with or without the wine I’d consumed, I reeled down it like a drunk. We found Dennis waiting in the cockpit, feet propped up on a small ice chest. He was dressed in a navy blue T-shirt tucked into khaki shorts and wore Dock-Siders with no socks. He removed his sunglasses and smiled at us, and I saw once more what Connie might have found so attractive about the man. One could easily be mesmerized by those Mel Gibson eyes! Dennis unlatched a section of the lifeline and helped me aboard while Connie fussed with something on the dock.

Hal’s head popped out of the main hatch. “Hello, ladies.” He pointed to the cooler. “The drinks are on ice, and I picked up a half dozen submarine sandwiches at Ellie’s.”

“Sounds good, Hal.” I was starving. Despite the elegant catering, I had got hardly anything to eat at the Dunbars’. Hal moved aside in the companion way, so I could step below and stow my jacket. While I wolfed down half a chicken sandwich, I noticed someone had opened up the hatches so that a fresh breeze flowed through the boat, chasing out the musty, mildewed odor of its having been shut up for weeks.

I felt
Sea Song
tip slightly as Connie hopped aboard. “I see you’ve opened her up. Thanks, Hal.”

“No problem.” He pointed to his head, where a maroon
cap with the Calvert Marina logo embroidered on it in white was mashed down over his wiry hair. “That’s what you pay me for.”

Connie laughed. “Enough of your BS, Hal! Just hand me the clipboard, will you?”

Although Connie’s bookkeeping is a mess, her seafaring life is governed by checklists. This is the part I hate: when she grabs that damned clipboard of hers with the laminated checklist and a black grease pencil tied to it with a string, looks around at the crew, makes some sort of quick assessment, and assigns everyone a job. I’d much rather be pulling on lines and cranking things, but Connie must have decided it’d be too strenuous in my convalescent condition, so she asked me to turn on the water cocks. “And don’t forget that one there, Hannah. It’s for the water supply that cools the engine.”

I lifted the floorboards near the companionway ladder. “Really, Connie!” I complained, my knuckles scraping on the fiberglass as I reached into the bilge and twisted the various levers until they were parallel with their respective hoses. “I don’t know why you bother. Craig never did. It’s not like the boat is going to sink or anything if you don’t turn them off each time you bring
Sea Song
in.”

“Hoses can develop leaks, floors can be ruined, so humor me,” she said, then handed me the handle for the bilge pump.

While I sat in the cockpit and worked my arm up and down as I listened to what little water there was in the bilge gurgle out a hole in the back of the boat,
Hal and Dennis removed the lines that secured the stern to the dock and the spring lines at each side that kept the boat from crashing into the pilings when the tide in the Chesapeake rose and fell. The lines attached to the bow were still firmly tied. At a signal from Connie, Dennis untied the two remaining lines and flung them to Hal on the dock, who, in a matter of seconds, draped them neatly over the pilings before leaping nimbly back aboard. Connie flipped a few switches, turned the key, and started the engine, shifting smoothly into reverse. She backed
Sea Song
neatly out of the slip, then pointed her toward the mouth of the Truxton River.

Hal took the opportunity to reach inside the cooler, root around in the frigid water, select and discard several brands of beer until he retrieved a Samuel Adams golden pilsner. He shook the water from his hand, then reached into his pocket for a bottle opener. He popped the cap, flipped it overboard, and took a long drink. “I sure appreciate this chance to get out on the water. My boat’s out of commission. Hull delaminations.”

Dennis’s head swiveled in Hal’s direction, and a look I couldn’t read passed over his face. Whatever message he meant to convey was lost on Hal as he settled back against the seat cushions, picked absentmindedly at the label on the beer bottle with his thumbnail, and turned his full attention on me. “First noticed it after I got back from Puerto Rico.”

Connie spun the steering wheel expertly to the left, straightened it, then eased the lever that controlled the accelerator slightly forward.
Sea Song
’s speedometer
inched upward to three knots. “Hal practically lives on that boat, Hannah. You wouldn’t believe the places he’s sailed on her.”

“Paul keeps promising to take me to the Virgin Islands.” Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes as I thought about how easily lifelong dreams could be shattered. I turned my head away and looked out over the water.

We were motoring past the point of land where the business end of Calvert Marina lay: Hal’s office, the ship’s store, a gas dock, a couple of sheds. Connie pointed to a huge, tentlike structure with something like streetcar rails leading into it from the water. “
Pegasus
is in there. He’s cut a hole in her to remove a large section of wet fiberglass. They’re shining heat lamps on her and letting her dry out for a few days before beginning the real work.”

“When do you think she’ll be back in the water, Hal?” I asked.

“About a month. Certainly in time for the Memorial Day regatta. Maybe you’d like to crew for me?”

“Not if you’ve got your heart set on winning.”

A smile exaggerated the creases in his suntanned cheeks, shaving years off his age. Something that I hoped was hunger fluttered in my stomach.

At the No. 2 flashing green buoy that marks the entrance into the bay from the Truxton River, Connie nosed
Sea Song
toward Holly Point. “Hoist the main!” she shouted.

Hal grabbed my hand and pulled me to the cabin top after him. We released the sail ties and raised the
mainsail. He cranked the winch handle while I held the tail end of the line where it wound off the winch as the big sail rose slowly to the top of the mast. When the mainsail was fully raised, Hal took the line from me, wrapped it in a figure eight around a cleat, made a reverse loop, and pulled it tight. Connie adjusted the main sheet and pointed
Sea Song
into the bay. Meanwhile, Dennis cranked in the line that unfurled the jib sail.