could react. Fire it right into the driver, maybe, pull the trigger as soon as she got her hand on the thing. But first—
First things first,
she could hear Jody saying to her as she regarded her bound wrists.
First, she had to get out of these ropes.
T his look familiar?" Bob Arnold asked Jacobia, handing over the sodden object.
Jake nodded dumbly, staring down into the painted, button-eyed face of a Raggedy Ann doll with yarn hair, a stuffed muslin body and head, and a red-checked gingham dress with a white apron tied around the doll's middle.
Black cloth shoes covered the doll's feet. "It's Lee's," she managed. "Who…who found it?"
They stood on the weed-strewn beach at the foot of Jefferson Street, with the old sardine cannery building to their right and a granite cliff shouldering out into the water on their left. It was almost high tide, waves lapping up over the stones nearly to where the lush patches of sea lavender and saw grass began.
"Tourists," Bob said. "Looking for beach glass."
A cloud bank sat motionless on the horizon, high and solid as if somebody had piled it there with an ice cream scoop. She looked down. There'd been a bonfire here last night, driftwood and charred chunks of old railroad ties beginning to float. Kids at the end of summer, she thought; school started next week.
The sand-polished pieces of antique bottles in aqua, green, and red littered some of the sandy stretches around Moose Island, along with bits of antique china and clay pipe stems. But not here; the tourists had come to the wrong place. By some trick of the current, only light stuff washed up on this stretch of the shore; buoys, Styrofoam pieces, driftwood. And cloth dolls…
"I guess even they'd heard about Lee being missing," Bob went on. "So when they spotted this…"
"Uh-huh," she said, still barely able to speak. Until now she'd been able to keep thinking that maybe against all odds she had it wrong. That Lee and Helen would reappear.
That it had been a misunderstanding. But no more. "Did Helen Nevelson ever bring Lee down here?" Bob wanted to know. "Trip to the beach, play in the sand…"
"There's no sand here," Jake pointed out. At high tide, there barely was a beach at all, and when the water was low the space between it and the shoreline was covered with rockweed,the kind you had to pick your way gingerly across to avoid slipping.
"Anyway, the answer is no," she said. "As far as I know, she never brought Lee here. Or any of the kids she took care of."
They walked through the waving, sharp-edged grasses growing between scattered heaps of old red brick rubble at the edge of the water. Once, workers summoned by a whistle had come here to start their shift in the cannery building, a long, low wooden structure built out over the water on a massive wharf.
Cutting the fish and packing them, sealing the cans, sticking the labels on…
"There is one other possibility," Bob said reluctantly.
Nowadays what fish processing there was got done in Canada, and the old cannery building was being remodeled for condos. Blue tarps covered the roof, their edges flapping, and pallets of new lumber loomed by the front entrance, covered with more tarps. A Realtor's sign tacked to a post advertised
Ocean! Views!
Jake wondered why, when you lived on an island, you needed an ocean view, or in winter the gale-driven leaks and constant, howling winds that went along with it. People around here paid good money to get away from those things, and for the heavy-duty sheets of plastic that substituted so poorly for vacations in Florida.
"Anything that goes in the water up by the causeway ends up here," Bob said unhappily.
She looked up at him. "But that would mean…"
"Yeah. They got that far, they're not on the island, now."
She absorbed this in silence. It meant they could be headed anywhere. By now, Lee and Helen could be hundreds of miles away. Or their bodies could be in the water just as the doll hadbeen. It meant that one or
First things first,
she could hear Jody saying to her as she regarded her bound wrists.
First, she had to get out of these ropes.
T his look familiar?" Bob Arnold asked Jacobia, handing over the sodden object.
Jake nodded dumbly, staring down into the painted, button-eyed face of a Raggedy Ann doll with yarn hair, a stuffed muslin body and head, and a red-checked gingham dress with a white apron tied around the doll's middle.
Black cloth shoes covered the doll's feet. "It's Lee's," she managed. "Who…who found it?"
They stood on the weed-strewn beach at the foot of Jefferson Street, with the old sardine cannery building to their right and a granite cliff shouldering out into the water on their left. It was almost high tide, waves lapping up over the stones nearly to where the lush patches of sea lavender and saw grass began.
"Tourists," Bob said. "Looking for beach glass."
A cloud bank sat motionless on the horizon, high and solid as if somebody had piled it there with an ice cream scoop. She looked down. There'd been a bonfire here last night, driftwood and charred chunks of old railroad ties beginning to float. Kids at the end of summer, she thought; school started next week.
The sand-polished pieces of antique bottles in aqua, green, and red littered some of the sandy stretches around Moose Island, along with bits of antique china and clay pipe stems. But not here; the tourists had come to the wrong place. By some trick of the current, only light stuff washed up on this stretch of the shore; buoys, Styrofoam pieces, driftwood. And cloth dolls…
"I guess even they'd heard about Lee being missing," Bob went on. "So when they spotted this…"
"Uh-huh," she said, still barely able to speak. Until now she'd been able to keep thinking that maybe against all odds she had it wrong. That Lee and Helen would reappear.
That it had been a misunderstanding. But no more. "Did Helen Nevelson ever bring Lee down here?" Bob wanted to know. "Trip to the beach, play in the sand…"
"There's no sand here," Jake pointed out. At high tide, there barely was a beach at all, and when the water was low the space between it and the shoreline was covered with rockweed,the kind you had to pick your way gingerly across to avoid slipping.
"Anyway, the answer is no," she said. "As far as I know, she never brought Lee here. Or any of the kids she took care of."
They walked through the waving, sharp-edged grasses growing between scattered heaps of old red brick rubble at the edge of the water. Once, workers summoned by a whistle had come here to start their shift in the cannery building, a long, low wooden structure built out over the water on a massive wharf.
Cutting the fish and packing them, sealing the cans, sticking the labels on…
"There is one other possibility," Bob said reluctantly.
Nowadays what fish processing there was got done in Canada, and the old cannery building was being remodeled for condos. Blue tarps covered the roof, their edges flapping, and pallets of new lumber loomed by the front entrance, covered with more tarps. A Realtor's sign tacked to a post advertised
Ocean! Views!
Jake wondered why, when you lived on an island, you needed an ocean view, or in winter the gale-driven leaks and constant, howling winds that went along with it. People around here paid good money to get away from those things, and for the heavy-duty sheets of plastic that substituted so poorly for vacations in Florida.
"Anything that goes in the water up by the causeway ends up here," Bob said unhappily.
She looked up at him. "But that would mean…"
"Yeah. They got that far, they're not on the island, now."
She absorbed this in silence. It meant they could be headed anywhere. By now, Lee and Helen could be hundreds of miles away. Or their bodies could be in the water just as the doll hadbeen. It meant that one or
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