Last to Know: A Novel(64)
He waited a few minutes then added, “Mom, why does that mountain man keep rowing around the lake near us? I mean, like, I see him over at the Havnel place but sometimes he’s right here.”
Rose was pouring a glass of red wine. She looked up, alarmed. “Who are you talking about?”
“Len Doutzer. He keeps rowing too close to our house. I mean, he’s trying to look like he’s fishing but there’s no good fish to be caught right here. Dad took me where the fish are.”
Rose was concerned. These days she did not like to hear of anyone lurking around the place. Still it was probably nothing. She took a sip of the wine then went and got a bowl of small green olives from the sideboard. “They have pits,” she warned, popping one into her mouth.
Diz said, “You should get the other kind, the black ones.”
“I like these more. So, how do you know Len?”
Diz shrugged. “I’ve seen him around in the store or coming out of Red Sails, or Tweedies coffee shop. Anyhow I remember thinking he looked like a mountain man, kind of grizzly long iron-gray hair, scruffy, like he lived in a cave or somethin’.”
“Something,” Rose corrected his speech and Diz groaned.
“Not the point.” He finished off his burger in one gigantic bite, making Rose groan about his manners. “Look, Mom,” he said, still chewing, “I have to protect you. I’m all you’ve got so I’m keeping my eye out.”
“As usual,” Rose said. “And anyhow, Len is the local character. He’s lived here as long as anyone can remember, up the hill across the lake. He carves benches and tables for people like us, with houses here. I’ve never heard he caused any trouble.”
Diz took in what his mother said but his gut feeling was telling him otherwise. Later in the afternoon, he was lying on his bed, playing a video game and feeling pretty lonesome without his dad and the rest of the family.
The house seemed to have settled into silence. It wasn’t the kind of silence Diz had noticed before; this was a deeper kind of quiet, where, he thought, recalling some old poem from his younger days, “never a mouse stirred.” It was so quiet Diz’s scalp crawled and he wished the mice would stir. Then the barn owl that lived a half mile downstream hooty-tooted mournfully and life returned to normal.
Diz went to look out the window. Clouds had slung in, darkening the sky, and the lake slid like gray silk under the breeze. He heard the ripple of oars and quickly climbed out onto his branch to take a look.
Bea Havnel was rowing, expertly as always, toward the island. Diz couldn’t quite make it out, he wasn’t sure, but he thought someone was there, waiting for her. He got down from the branch and walked as quietly as he could through the trees toward the lake.
Though he watched for over an hour, he did not see her row back again. He was telling himself he must have been wrong about her, he’d been so tired he’d missed her return, when he heard a noise. He turned to look, just as Bea swung the oar at his head.
49
Diz played right into my hands. I’d noticed him, creeping along the shore road, binoculars focused on me, watching as always. I saw my opportunity and I took it. The single blow felled him and I got him into my small lightweight boat that I liked especially because of its ability to cut soundlessly through the water, sleek as a water moccasin only without the deadly fangs. I, of course, had those.
How to do it though? That was the question and as I pulled to the shore and sat in my little craft, I pondered the answer. I was a sincere believer in the old saying “curiosity killed the cat”; after all, remember Jemima? I’d wondered exactly how long it would take an eleven-year-old spy to try to find out exactly what I was up to.
I know the meaning of the word “compulsion” only too well; there have been times when I have had to resist it, others when unfortunately I succumbed. I say “unfortunate” because those times—two in fact—turned out to be dangerous for me. The first was in Florida where Lacey—I could never call her “Mom” though in fact she was my mother—botched up a drug deal. She got greedy, took the goods and did not pay, which, being a drug deal meant immediate death. Of course we went on the run, changing identities, or looks, and I took care of the would-be “exterminator” in my own way, not because I wanted to save Lacey from the consequences of her actions, but because at the time I was only thirteen, she was all I had and I needed her.
The second mistake was killing Jemima. I knew she had seen me with Wally, that she suspected the drug situation, knew she was friends with the famous, or perhaps “notorious” is a better word, member of the police, Detective Jordan, who by the way, if he were not so smart and full of himself, I might easily have seduced. Even I can recognize “danger” when it stands in front of me in jeans and a leather jacket, concern in his grave blue eyes as he looks at poor little me in my oversized hospital robe, saved from death only hours before. What man could resist? I gave him a small flirt, just to ensure he was on my side, but nothing more. I needed Harry Jordan, just as I needed Rose.
Rose is my ultimate target. You can have no idea how long, from my so-called “home” across Evening Lake, I have watched that family coming and going. Several months at least. Of course my first target was Lacey. I needed to get my hands on that cartel money before the cartel took it back, which they would since even I knew Lacey was cheating on them. She was a big-enough dealer to count, money-wise, and I must admit, clever at it. Lacey had found her métier, you might say, after years of scrambling and poverty and selling anything she could, including herself, though never, I repeat never, me.