Deep Waters

  “Damn it,” someone muttered from inside the truck. “I told you to be careful. You want someone to hear us?”

  “The guy in the pick-up just left.” There was a muffled giggle from the interior of the vehicle. “Speaking of careful, I hope you remembered the rubber. Because if you didn’t, I swear to God, Kevin, you can go fly a kite tonight.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ve got it here, somewhere. Hang on.”

  Charity turned quickly back to Elias and cleared her throat. “Let’s see if we can find Newlin.” She grabbed his arm and started to lead him back the way they had come.

  There was enough light reflecting off the fog to see Elias’s amused expression, but he did not resist the forceful tug on his arm.

  Charity pulled him toward the group that had gathered at the rail.

  An eerie, startling hush descended on the group down on the beach. The flute and drum fell silent. The chants of the Voyagers ceased.

  “Midnight,” Elias said softly.

  “Hey there, Charity. Winters.” Yappy hailed them as they went past the tailgate refreshment stand. “We’re gettin’ ready to close up here. Want some hot coffee?”

  “No, thanks,” Elias called. “We’re looking for Newlin.”

  “Saw him about an hour ago. Took some coffee over to his truck. Haven’t seen him since.”

  “Everyone’s gone to the fence to see the grand finale,” Bea said as she packed a stack of unused paper cups back into a box. “Check over there. Sure hope Arlene comes to her senses tonight. If she doesn’t, I don’t know what poor Newlin’s going to do with himself.”

  Charity turned toward the large crowd that was hovering over the fence, watching the scene on the beach. “Elias, I’m worried. I don’t see Newlin anywhere.”

  He wrapped his hand around hers. “We’ll find him.”

  That was going to be easier said than done, Charity thought. An air of confusion was building swiftly. Between the fog and the throng of excited, curious onlookers, things were becoming chaotic. Derisive shouts went up from the beer drinkers. The teenagers hooted as some of the Voyagers began to climb back up the beach path.

  Charity and Elias moved through the clustered townsfolk, searching for Newlin. There was no sign of him anywhere.

  “Hey,” one of the beer drinkers yelled to the returning Voyagers, “Maybe the aliens meant Eastern Daylight Savings Time, not Pacific Daylight Savings Time.”

  The dispirited cult members filed past without acknowledging the taunts.

  A high, shrill scream ripped through the darkness just as Charity was about to suggest that they start looking for Arlene among the returning Voyagers.

  The piercing shriek had the same impact on the crowd as a sky full of alien spaceships. Everyone, Voyagers and onlookers alike, froze.

  Charity glanced around wildly, searching for the screamer. “One of the disappointed Voyagers, do you think?”

  “I don’t know. But it didn’t come from the beach.” Elias’s hand tightened on hers. “It came from over there near the far end of the campground.” He started forward.

  A second cry reverberated through the night.

  “What’s going on?” Someone yelled. “Who’s screaming?”

  For the second time that night Charity allowed Elias to draw her into the maze of campers, motor homes, and trailers that littered the old campground. The screams were replaced by shouts for help.

  “Someone call an ambulance,” a man yelled. “For God’s sake, hurry.”

  Charity and Elias emerged from between a row of camper trucks and saw that a handful of Voyagers who must have been among the first to return from the beach had gathered at the entrance to a large blue and white RV.

  “That’s Gwendolyn Pitt’s motor home,” someone said.

  As she and Elias drew closer, Charity saw that light blazed from the open door of the vehicle.

  Elias forged a path through the small crowd.

  “It was because the ships didn’t come,” a woman dressed in Voyager’s garb moaned. “She did it because the ships didn’t come.”

  Charity saw Newlin and Arlene standing arm-in-arm at the edge of the small cluster of people gathered outside the motor home. “Newlin.”

  He glanced at her. There was a peculiar expression of stunned shock on his face. “Charity. Mr. Winters. You aren’t gonna believe what’s happened.”

  Arlene buried her face against Newlin’s shoulder. “It wasn’t her fault the ships didn’t come.”

  Elias released Charity’s hand. “Wait here.” He went up the steps to look inside the motor home. He came to a halt in the doorway, gazing intently at something inside.

  Charity followed him up the steps and glanced past him into the interior of the motor home.

  She took one look and immediately wished that she had followed Elias’s orders to wait outside.

  Gwendolyn Pitt was sprawled on the blue carpet. Her blue and white robes were drenched in blood. Rick Swinton was pressed back against the built-in desk, staring down at the body. He looked up and saw Elias and Charity.

  “We just found her like this,” he said in a shaken voice. “A few of us came back here to see why she hadn’t joined us down on the beach. And we found her like this. I sent someone to call an ambulance. Not that it will do any good.”

  Without a word, Elias crossed the short distance and crouched beside the body. He pressed his fingers against the side of Gwendolyn’s throat and shook his head.

  “You’re right,” Elias said quietly. “It’s too late.”

  “She must have killed herself because the spaceships didn’t come,” someone whispered.

  Elias met Charity’s eyes. “This wasn’t suicide.”

  9

  Blood in the water clouds the reflections on the surface, making it difficult to see the truth.

  —“On the Way of Water,” from the journal of Hayden Stone

  “Murdered.” Radiance leaned over Yappy’s shoulder to read the article on the front page of the Cove Herald. “But last night everyone was saying that it was suicide.”

  Bea gave Charity a meaningful look as she handed her a latte. “Not everyone.”

  Yappy frowned as he scanned the article. “It says those who reached the scene first assumed Gwendolyn Pitt took her own life because she was despondent over the failure of the ships to arrive at midnight. But Hank Tybern states that it was obvious to him from the start that it was murder.”

  “It was obvious to Elias, too.” Charity sipped her tea and glanced at the faces of the others who were gathered around the small table inside the Whispering Waters Café. “Besides, none of us really believed that Gwendolyn Pitt actually expected the ships to arrive. We all suspected the whole operation was a scam. So why would she kill herself because of despair and disappointment?”

  “Good point. Things went just the way she had planned.” Ted scratched his broad belly, which today was partially concealed behind a gray T-shirt decorated with the words What Goes Around, Comes Around. “She was into that cult thing for something besides a tour of the galaxy. Pretty clear she was murdered. But who would have killed her?”

  “Seems to me Chief Tybern has himself a whole slew of suspects,” Yappy said. “Starting with all those disappointed Voyagers who must have realized at about one minute after midnight last night that they’d been conned.”

  Charity and the others nodded solemnly in agreement and sipped their morning lattes.

  They had congregated inside Bea’s café because it was too chilly to be outdoors. The fog that had descended on the cove showed no signs of lifting. It cloaked the entire town and the shoreline for several miles.

  It was nine-thirty. The pier shops wouldn’t open until ten, but all of the shopkeepers had arrived early by unspoken consensus to rehash the previous night’s events.

  All but one, Charity thought. She glanced out the window. There was still no sign of Elias. She hadn’t seen him since he had left her at her door at two o’clock that morning. He had
n’t even kissed her good night. He had been back in his cryptic mode, distant, remote, self-contained.

  Of course, she hadn’t been in what anyone could call a cheerful mood herself last night. Her short stretches of restless sleep had been poisoned with instant replays of the horrifying scene inside Gwendolyn’s motor home. Every time she closed her eyes, she was forced to endure the image of Elias crouched beside the blood-soaked body.

  She was becoming increasingly uneasy by his failure to show up early at the pier. She wished she had followed her first impulse and stopped by his cottage on her way to work. The two of them needed to talk. They had to get their stories straight.

  They had both spoken to Hank Tybern, the town’s chief of police, last night, but the conversation had been necessarily brief. Hank had had his hands full securing the crime scene and warning the confused, anxious Voyagers not to leave town. There hadn’t been time to take complete statements. He had instructed Charity and Elias to come by the station later today so that they could give him the details of what they had seen.

  When she hadn’t been dreaming about blood during the night, Charity had lain awake fretting over what to tell Hank this afternoon. She had never been involved in a police investigation. She had no idea how much information she and Elias would be expected to provide concerning their activities before the murder. With luck, not much. After all, they hadn’t even been the ones to discover the body. Rick Swinton and a small group of Voyagers had done that.

  Nevertheless, she had seen enough crime shows on television to guess that Tybern would want to know something about what had been happening in and around the campground prior to Gwendolyn’s death. And there was no getting around the fact that she and Elias had been engaged in a highly questionable activity shortly before the murder. Namely, a spot of B and E. How did one put a respectable gloss on that kind of thing, she wondered.

  “Does the article say when Gwendolyn was killed?” Ted asked.

  Yappy read through the remainder of the lengthy piece. “The chief is waiting for the official results of the autopsy, but the reporter says that it appears she was shot between eleven-thirty, which is when she was last seen alive, and midnight. Swinton and a few of the Voyagers found her body a few minutes after twelve.”

  “That’s when the screaming started,” Bea said.

  “I’ll bet the county medical examiner won’t be able to nail down the time of death any closer than that,” Ted said, with the ghoulish authority of a devoted aficionado of the mystery genre. “Who was the last one to see her alive?”

  “I think it was that Rick Swinton character.” Yappy ran his forefinger along the column and paused midway. “Yeah. Rick Swinton and a couple of Voyagers. They all saw Gwendolyn go into her motor home at eleven-thirty. She told them she needed privacy in order to focus her mind channel for the aliens. Apparently she was supposed to act as their radar control for the landing.”

  “Well, if you ask me,” Bea said, “I’ll put my money on one of those Voyagers as the murderer. A lot of those poor, misguided souls lost their entire life savings to Gwendolyn Pitt.”

  “At least a few of them must have been furious last night when the ships didn’t show,” Radiance said.

  “Yeah.” Yappy put down the paper and picked up his latte cup. “And just about any one of ’em could have killed her.”

  Ted scowled. “If it was a Voyager, he or she would have had to work fast. They were all down there on the beach until the stroke of midnight. The kids hanging around the fence saw the first ones return.”

  “Don’t forget, there are two beach access paths,” Yappy reminded him. “The old one’s been blocked off for years because it’s unsafe, but it’s still there.”

  “That’s right.” Ted brightened. “And there was a lot of fog last night. One of those Voyagers could have climbed up the old beach path, gone straight to Gwendolyn’s motor home, shot her, and then rejoined the crowd on the beach. No one would have noticed because of the fog. The killer could have returned to the campground with the main group shortly after midnight.”

  “This is beginning to sound complicated,” Bea muttered. “When you think about it, any one of those Voyagers could have done it that way. Couldn’t tell them apart in the fog what with those blue and white hooded robes they all wear.”

  “I sure don’t envy Chief Tybern,” Ted said sagely. “Hell of a job sorting out this mess.”

  “Especially given his lack of experience,” Radiance murmured dryly. “We haven’t had a murder in Whispering Waters Cove in over ten years. And the last one was easy to solve, remember?”

  Ted nodded. “Right. That was the time Tom Frazier’s wife finally got fed up with old Tom beatin’ up on her. She conked him on the head with a tire iron. Jury called it self-defense.”

  “Which it most certainly was,” Bea added. “That Tom was a real sonofabitch.”

  The door of the café slammed open. The crash riveted everyone’s attention. Charity and the others turned to see Arlene Fenton, breathless, disheveled, and obviously on the thin edge of rising panic. She flew into the café and then came to a quivering halt. Her wide-eyed gaze went straight to Charity.

  “Ms. Truitt, thank God,” she breathed in a shaky voice. “I went to your house, but you weren’t there. And you weren’t at your shop. I finally realized you must be in here.”

  “Arlene.” Charity put down her latte and got to her feet. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “You have to save him. You have to save Newlin.”

  “Newlin? Calm down, Arlene.” Charity started toward her. “Tell me what happened.”

  “Chief Tybern arrested Newlin a few minutes ago.”

  There was a collective gasp of shock from the small group gathered in the café.

  “Oh, my God,” Charity whispered. “Not Newlin.”

  Arlene rushed toward Charity with a stricken expression. “Ms. Truitt, what are we going to do? Everyone in town knows how much Newlin hated Gwendolyn Pitt. He was always saying that someone should do something about her.”

  Charity put her arms around her and looked at the other shopkeepers.

  No one said a word. Arlene was right. Everyone in town knew that Newlin had been enraged by Gwendolyn Pitt’s scam.

  “He didn’t do it,” Arlene wailed. “I know he didn’t. Newlin’s no murderer. But he’s got no one to help him.”

  “I’ll go down to the station and talk to Chief Tybern,” Charity said quietly.

  Not that she had any notion of what to say to the chief, Charity thought, as she walked up the steps of the small Whispering Waters Cove Police Station twenty minutes later. Newlin was her employee and her friend. She felt she had to help.

  Mentally, she started to tick off an action item list. The first thing to do, obviously, was see about getting Newlin out on bail. She had no idea how that process worked, but Hank Tybern could explain it to her. The second thing on the agenda was to get a lawyer for Newlin. A good one. The only lawyer in town was Phyllis Dartmoor. She handled estates and wills, not criminal cases. That meant contacting someone in Seattle.

  Charity was concentrating so hard on the logistics of freeing Newlin that she didn’t see him standing in the shadowed doorway of the police station until she nearly blundered straight into him.

  “Charity.” Newlin stared at her in astonishment. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to rescue you.” Charity glanced around the empty interior of the small station. “Arlene said you were under arrest.”

  “Nah.” Newlin grimaced. “At least, not yet. The Chief just asked me to come in for questioning. I guess Arlene leaped to a few conclusions.”

  “She was very worried about you, Newlin.”

  Newlin looked considerably cheered by that news. “Yeah?”

  A sturdy, bald-headed man ambled out of the small office behind the station’s unattended front desk. “Mornin’, Charity. Bit early to be rushin’ around like this, isn’t it?”

  Charity
turned and smiled politely. She had met Hank Tybern several times during the past few months. He was middle-aged with the weather-beaten features of a man who had spent his early years on commercial fishing boats.

  Tybern was the old-fashioned sort, solid family man, steady and calm in his ways. A bit of a plodder, perhaps, but thorough. Charity suspected that the slow, easygoing facade masked a savvy intelligence. Hank had lived in Whispering Waters Cove most of his life, and he enjoyed the respect of the townsfolk.

  “Good morning, Hank. I heard you had arrested Newlin, but it looks like the rumors were wrong.”

  The lines around Hank’s eyes creased slightly as he eyed Newlin. “Just wanted to talk to him. Going to have to talk to a lot of people today. Thought I’d start with young Newlin, here.”

  Newlin’s mouth tightened. “Chief Tybern says it would sure help if I could find someone who saw me in my truck between eleven-thirty and a few minutes before midnight.”

  “My God.” Charity glanced uneasily at Hank. “You need an alibi?”

  Hank settled his bulk against the front desk. “No call to get excited, Charity. Just be helpful if we could find someone who noticed him in that truck during the half hour before twelve.”

  Charity thought quickly. “Elias Winters and I went to talk to him right around midnight.” She broke off abruptly and gazed helplessly at Hank.

  “And?” Hank prompted gently.

  “I wasn’t in the truck,” Newlin muttered. “I told you, a couple of minutes before midnight I got out of the truck and went to join the crowd waiting at the top of the beach path. I wanted to find Arlene. And I did. She was on her way to confront Gwendolyn Pitt. I went with her. By the time we got to the motor home, Rick Swinton and a couple of the other Voyagers had already found Pitt’s body.”

  “Unfortunately, that still leaves plenty of time unaccounted for,” Hank said softly. “Like the half hour before midnight, during which time someone went into Gwendolyn’s trailer and shot her.”

  “Wait a minute.” Charity spun back to Newlin. “You said you waited inside the truck until a couple of minutes before midnight?”