Crawlspace Read online

  Not that she would use it, but if he didn’t bring it, she would send him back for it. And as he traipsed after her, he saw what had attracted her: a block away, the red neon window sign of a bar.

  By the time he got there, she’d already gone in. He followed, resigning himself to an hour of witless barstool conversation, the smell of stale beer, and maybe football on TV way out here in the middle of nowhere. But inside, he got a surprise.

  In a room overlooking the long, L-shaped concrete breakwater he’d seen earlier, a dozen or so young hipster types drank Amstel Lights and played darts to the sound of Coldplay’s most recent release, being played on a good if not exactly spectacular sound system. Apparently, driving a truck up and down the main street wasn’t all there was to do in this town.

  He looked around, his discontent banished for the moment by the varnished plank floor, the mahogany bar with a polished brass rail, and the eight-foot mirror on the wall behind it. There was even a jar of pickled eggs by the cash register.

  The glass lamp shades weren’t Tiffany, he felt sure, but they weren’t junk, either. Chip decided an Amstel of his own wouldn’t hurt him.

  “On the house,” said the bartender to Carolyn, who’d already named her poison. “Welcome to Eastport.” She’d asked for another straight scotch—a double, Chip saw with an unsurprised sinking feeling.

  The bartender was a fortyish, sandy-haired guy in jeans and a white polo shirt. His smile didn’t reach his eyes as he slid a glass of amber liquid across the bar at Carolyn.

  But then again, why should it? The guy wasn’t here for the laughs. Chip nodded at the draft spigots.

  The bartender drew Chip a cold one and returned to the cash register, where he’d been balancing the till, laying fives, tens, and twenties in neat piles. Despite this clear signal that it was nearly closing time, Carolyn knocked her shot back efficiently, then put money on the bar’s gleaming surface.

  At this rate, he’d be pouring her into the car, Chip thought. On the other hand, it would cut down on conversation, and after what had happened in the restaurant earlier, maybe that was just as well.

  Ignoring her, he took his beer and sat alone at a table while she got her fresh drink and started bragging about who she was, what she’d written, how successful she was getting.

  Chip glanced around, embarrassed for her. Luckily, the only other person within earshot was a silent, slump-shouldered guy in a pulled-down Red Sox cap, staring into a beer mug.

  Morosely, the guy dug a peanut out of a half-empty packet and ate it, washing it down with the remaining suds in the mug. Chip wondered what a guy like that did the rest of the time, then forgot about him.

  Carolyn gabbed on while the twentysomethings in the darts game laughed and chatted among themselves and the Coldplay tune on the sound system changed to something that Chip hadn’t heard before.

  The Tough Alliance, maybe? Tin Can Logic? Whatever, it was good. Someone in here knew their indie music. Behind the darts area was a small stage, too, with the amplifier, mixer, and speakers plus microphone and video screen of an elaborate karaoke system, for patrons who wanted more than just a passive music experience.

  “So, what do you know about the Dodd case?” Carolyn asked the bartender. “Those two sisters who were killed? One of them only about six weeks ago? You must hear plenty in here,” she prodded.

  The bartender’s smile stiffened. Chip waited for his reply, wondering if maybe his partner and pal, Carolyn, had pushed it a little too hard. But just then somebody in the darts game got a bull’s-eye and fresh laughter erupted from the group.

  “Can’t help you there,” the bar man was telling Carolyn when Chip could hear again. Another indie fave, BC Camplight, filled the room with their most recent release: synths, brass, and piano melodies, topped by a self-assured vocal.

  Chip’s estimation of whoever chose the music for this place went up another notch. Neither Camplight nor the previous tune was exactly blaring out of the average commercial radio station; even in the city, if you wanted that stuff you had to go looking for it.

  The guy down the bar rose without speaking, left money and his empty peanut bag, and limped out, dragging one foot a little.

  The bartender ignored the guy as the front door swung open and fell closed again. “I don’t know any more than anyone else around here,” he told Carolyn. “Which is basically nothing.”

  He made a last round of drinks for the darts group, then returned. “You’re going to write a book about it, though? Mind if I ask how you’re going to do that when nobody knows what happened or who’s guilty?”

  “Oh, well,” Carolyn replied, her voice full of the too-loud confidence of one who could not walk a straight line, much less blow a Breathalyzer test successfully. “I’m not worried. When I’m finished, everyone’ll know. Just like last time.”

  She swiveled on her barstool, reached clumsily for the satchel that Chip had placed near her, and drew out a garishly jacketed copy of Young Savages. The cover art featured yellow crime-scene tape, a glistening red blood drop, and cash so real-looking, you could almost try to spend it.

  The cash represented the money the teenaged killer’s rich parents had spent trying to get him off. The parents’ prominent friends and well-respected fellow country-club members had all testified to the youth’s stellar character, too, though many had privately already known or suspected otherwise, Chip and Carolyn had discovered.

  The result had been a scandal so juicy, Vanity Fair ran two long features on it: one an insiderish piece by Dominick Dunne, and the other by Carolyn herself. In place of the usual glowing blurbs from other authors, the book’s dust jacket capitalized on this by featuring outraged quotes from residents of the exclusive enclave whose reputation had been shredded within.

  The bartender eyed the book warily. “So that’s what you want to do?” he asked. “Rip our little town up one side and down the other, like you did in that one there? I can’t really say I look forward to that.”

  Alert as always to the merest hint of someone getting in her way, or threatening to, Carolyn backpedaled expertly.

  “Oh, no,” she reassured him in a voice like warm oil. “Nothing like that. It was another kind of situation entirely. Those people—”

  She waved at the book’s garish cover. “They were a bunch of rich snobs, just trying to get some poor innocent guy blamed.”

  Which wasn’t at all what had happened; there’d been no other suspect, only the son of a prominent entertainment attorney who’d been brutalizing his other girlfriends for years.

  There had never been any question about what he’d done, in the community where he’d lived. But Carolyn was on a roll now. She might get too loaded to see straight once in a while, but she never lost sight of her own interests.

  “That won’t be the story this time,” she reassured the bar man. “I can already tell this isn’t some snooty place where all anyone cares about is money. I think that here the bad guy’ll be somebody from away.”

  That wasn’t true, either. Just the opposite, in fact, if the hints they’d already gotten from tomorrow’s mysterious interview subject were any indication. But the bartender relaxed, or seemed to.

  Good old Carolyn, Chip thought. Barely an hour on the island and she’d already figured out the question that really mattered: Born here?

  Or—and this was what put you behind the eight ball most definitively in a place like this—not?

  “So you’re going to find out who.” The bartender smiled. All but his eyes, which remained curiously stony. “Bring the bad guy to justice even if the cops couldn’t.” His tone sounded skeptical.

  “That’s the plan,” she replied brashly, which was when Chip stopped listening. He’d heard it before.

  From his table by the front window, he could see all the way down the dark street. The lights in the restaurant where they’d had dinner blinked out, and the last car was pulling away out front.

  Behind him the music changed once more
: to Amy Winehouse, her voice as heartbreaking for what happened to her later as for its beauty now. Listening, he drank what was left of his beer and signaled for another.

  He would get through tonight okay, at least. Carolyn had been furious with him for daring to talk to Siobhan Walters about his book plans, but it seemed she had already forgotten about that.

  She’d put her foot down and that was the end of it, or so she probably believed. It was the way things had always gone between them. Tomorrow, though, he would finally summon the nerve to tell her that he was quitting. Then her attitude would be different.

  He wanted to write a novel; he’d come up with the perfect plot, and now was the time. Or at least he doubted there would be any better. So he intended to take his swing at it.

  Carolyn would pitch a world-class fit when she heard what he had to say, and she would have plenty to say in reply, too, he knew from experience. And all at top volume … but as soon as they got back to the city, she was still going to be on her own, he resolved very firmly.

  Case closed, as Chip’s dad—better known to all and sundry as the Old Bastard—used to say. After he delivered the bad news, Chip could relax, maybe even enjoy dropping in on his old friends here in Eastport.

  “Chipper.” Carolyn’s sharp voice pierced his thoughts. She’d left the bar area without his noticing and was standing over him impatiently.

  “What?” he snapped, too tired even to bother moderating his tone.

  She didn’t mince words. “There’s one other thing. I should have told you before. From now on, if anyone needs to call Siobhan Walters, I’ll do it.”

  He nearly spit beer in outraged surprise. “What?”

  Who did she think she was, anyway, to be revoking his phone privileges as if he were a naughty child? Putting his mug down carefully, wiping up a spilled drop with his napkin, he tried summoning some composure, but without success.

  Carolyn dragged a chair out and sat facing him, her limpid blue eyes full of what he used to think was sincerity, before he got to know her better.

  Now he knew it was just personnel management.

  “Division of labor, sweetie. Don’t take it personally.” She patted his arm. “Siobhan and I talked about it. She’s busy, too, you know. She doesn’t have time for hand-holding.”

  He stared at her, speechless with anger.

  “Trust me, honey,” she said. “I know what I’m talking about. You should stick to what you’re good at.”

  She preened unconsciously, throwing her glossy hair back over her shoulder. It was another gesture he’d gotten used to, a part of her off-the-charts regard for herself.

  “It’s a jungle out there, and honestly, you know I’ve got your best interests at heart, don’t you? Believe me, Chip, you’re better off behind the scenes,” she went on persuasively.

  Then she dropped the bombshell. “And while we were talking, Siobhan and I also decided that after this—”

  Behind them the darts game ended. The music stopped; in the sudden silence, people paid their bar tabs and went out in clusters of two and three.

  “—we think, Siobhan and I, that I should write a novel. A thriller about a famous true-crime writer who accidentally finds out about a secret online society of serial killers. And one of them targets her.”

  Stunned, he shoved his chair back and got to his feet. Carolyn was a bitch; he’d never kidded himself otherwise. But this …

  In the mirror behind the bar, he saw himself with sudden, unwelcome clarity: a pale, plump man, pushing thirty and already paunchy and balding, whose limp shirt collar hung open and whose pudgy fingers kept on making slow, deliberate hand-washing motions.

  You wouldn’t know how strong they were, those fingers. But there was all the typing he did, plus the exercises to ward off repetitive stress syndrome. He even had spring-loaded grips that he squeezed for a few minutes every day, because a hand injury could be career-crippling.

  Such as it was: his great career. He stifled a bitter laugh at the thought.

  “But that was my idea,” he said, already knowing it was useless. “That’s exactly the idea that I told Siobhan Walters I wanted to …”

  Carolyn got up, too, and without any shame at all met his wounded gaze in the glass.

  “You can’t just take my idea,” he told her reflection. But the cool, dismissive pity in her blue eyes gave him his answer, as if he’d needed one, even before she spoke in tones of strained patience now: she already had.

  “Chipper, don’t be a child. You’d never get anywhere with it. You’re nobody,” she pronounced with her usual blithe cruelty.

  Glancing back at her own beautifully groomed image in the glass, she went on: “I’m the one who sells books. My name, my face. That’s always been the deal, and that’s the way it’ll stay. Especially after this baby gets written.”

  She patted the satchel fondly. The laptop inside held the e-mails they had gotten from the man—Chip assumed it was a man—whom they were to meet tomorrow.

  The messages had begun arriving shortly after Chip started doing online research on the Eastport case, the murders of the two Dodd women. Those anonymous e-mails, more than anything else, were why they were here.

  Those, and the research he’d done on account of them. As he thought about all the hours he’d put in, he had to stop himself from snatching the satchel up and cradling it.

  What was in there was his work, hardly any of Carolyn’s. Not just doing all the research and answering all the fan mail, but also ferreting out that one additional, just-too-weird-to-be-a-coincidence detail … .

  The detail that had tipped the scales and brought them here tonight. “I don’t get it,” he said, still not quite able to believe Carolyn’s treachery. Or, for that matter, Siobhan’s.

  “Siobhan’s too classy a person,” he protested. “She wouldn’t go along with this.” But then he saw the faintly guilty look on Carolyn’s face and realized: she’d probably claimed he’d stolen the idea from her.

  And that was the last straw. “Fine,” he said. “I quit. Now. I’ll just write my own novel, and then I’ll …”

  “And then you’ll what?” she asked acidly. “Sell it? To who, Siobhan Walters? You think she wants you to compete with me? To give me an excuse to go elsewhere for more money, better terms?”

  Her laugh was like a slap in the face.

  “And the editors at other houses you could try,” she went on, “who’re all just dying to poach me off Siobhan’s list, you think they’ll antagonize me for you?”

  She dug in her purse, threw bills onto the table. “Oh, honey,” she sneered, “dream on.”

  He felt it sink in, what this meant and how disastrous it was. He’d been counting on an advance, on selling the book before he finished it, basically, so he’d have money to live on.

  It was an uncommon arrangement for a first-time author, but he’d worked with Siobhan Walters often enough so that he’d thought he could swing it. She knew he always showed up on time, in shape, with the stuff. That he was a professional. But if Carolyn stood in his way …

  “Chip.” Her eyes filled with tears. But this was just one more of her manipulative tricks, he felt sure. “I really can’t do it anymore, okay?”

  Yeah, right. She was just trying to rationalize her crappy behavior. Grimly, he examined his options. Taking money from his estranged father was a complete no-go; cash from the Old Bastard came with too many strings attached.

  He couldn’t go back to the community college, either, to the tedium of pounding basic grammar into corn-fed young numbskulls for starvation wages. Back there, the library shelved Dr. Phil’s hideous volumes in the philosophy section, for God’s sake.

  And even if he did that, wrote the novel in his spare time and put up with a life that was like thin gruel meanwhile, in the end there would be two competing manuscripts: his and Carolyn’s. So guess which one would end up in print? Unless …

  “I can’t stand thinking about them anymore,” Carolyn sa
id suddenly. Her face had gone somber, and her voice had the soft toneless-ness he recognized, which meant she was telling the truth.

  For once. “Dead girls,” she said. “Every time a royalty check comes in, or a … it’s like someone sent me a lock of their hair. Or a piece of bone.”

  She shivered faintly, as if shaking off memories. She had plenty of them, he’d give her that much. But then, so did he.

  “I’ve got to do something else. And I can’t just come up with ideas like you can,” she added plaintively. “I’m not … I’m just not creative that way. I told Siobhan I’d do the next one as true crime, but no more,” she finished.

  That doesn’t give you the right to take my ideas, he replied silently. Moisture glistened on her cheeks. Crocodile tears, he thought, as he produced a tissue and handed it to her.

  Well, maybe not all of them, he conceded. But he was still very angry.

  Sniffing, she twisted the tissue’s corner to a point and blotted expertly with it, not even smearing her mascara. When she passed the tissue back to him, her composure had returned.

  “So, anyway, that’s it,” she said, all traces of emotion gone with her tears. She was efficient about things like that.

  Tears. Gratitude. Whatever. “That’s the way it’s going to be. My way. We can go on together or not, your choice.”

  She dug in her bag for a compact mirror, checked her face in it. “But if you’re really quitting,” she added, “I wish you’d let me know right away, tomorrow. I’ll need to find someone else.”

  As she snapped the compact shut, the awful thought he’d had a moment earlier flitted across his mind once more. He lifted the satchel to haul it to the car for the final time that night.

  “Let’s go,” he said tiredly, then stepped out onto the dark sidewalk, where the wind, honed to an icy dagger, made his jacket into a joke.

  Like me, he thought bleakly, hunching his shoulders against the inclement weather. If only he wasn’t so linked to Carolyn, if only they didn’t—he had to admit this much—work so well together.

  If only her sudden success hadn’t given her such power, and if he wasn’t so dependent on it.