The tires on the police cruiser ripped up gravel as we tore out of the Old Mill’s parking lot. Blood rushed in my ears as I clung to the sides of the passenger seat.
Chief Tedesco jerked the steering wheel to the left, and we swerved onto Lake Road. The lights overhead flashed, but she kept the sirens off.
“No need to warn Susan that we’re coming,” she said.
Anthony was taking Harry Casanova to the police station, while Chief Tedesco and I had teamed up to save Nat.
This day was full of surprises.
As the car flew over bumps in the road, Chief Tedesco filled me in on what had brought her to the Old Mill.
“Officer Ferrante and I were patrolling the street festival when I caught sight of a man I recognized. Harry Casanova. Obviously, seeing him set off alarm bells. There could only be one reason he’d come all the way from Los Angeles to Carmine.”
“Me.”
“That’s right. So we followed him. He drifted around town asking about you, claiming to be an old high school buddy. For a while, we lost sight of him. Emma said you’d taken her bike, and then Primo Leone, the taxi driver, told us he’d taken a guy matching Harry’s description to the Old Mill. As we were heading up Lake Road, we got a text message from Jerry about trouble at the bar. Anthony went in the back; I took the front. The rest, you know.”
“You saved my life.”
Tedesco gave a curt, acknowledging nod. “Now tell me about Susan.”
As quickly as I could, I filled her in on how Susan murdered Mark and Liz, and then explained what Nat and I had planned—our effort to draw out the killer by planting a story about a will.
“That plan of yours,” Tedesco said, eyeing me sternly, “was stupid.”
I stared straight ahead, pressing my lips together. Anger ran through my arms like electricity. I was furious that Tedesco would call our plan stupid. She’d pushed me into this.
As if she knew my thoughts, she said, “Look, I didn’t make things easy for you. Maybe I left you with nothing but stupid options.”
“You’re right, though,” I said with a sigh. Nat was at the boathouse, his life in danger, and my anger felt more like fear. What if Susan killed him? “It was a stupid plan.”
“Sometimes stupid works. It would’ve worked for Eve Silver. Besides, you figured out Susan did it, not the police. Not me.”
For a while, neither of us spoke. The car jumped over a pothole and Tedesco steadied it.
Then said, quietly, “By the way, you were great on Silver & Gold. Ever since I watched the show on TV, I wanted to be her, Eve Silver. I felt a special kinship with her—and I wondered what it would be like to kiss Adam Gold, the way she did. I mean, the way you did with Jay Casanova.”
Another long silence. She bit her lip, staring straight ahead. This confession, no doubt something she hadn’t shared with anyone else, visibly embarrassed her. Since her husband and her sister had left her, maybe she had no one left to talk to. Again, I felt a stab of sympathy for her.
“Like moldy cheese in an ashtray,” I said, breaking the silence.
Tedesco raised an eyebrow.
“Kissing Jay Casanova. It was like licking moldy cheese from an ashtray. Not even the tasty French kind. He has horrible halitosis, probably from too much acidic food and alcohol and coffee. And he smokes a pack a day. His breath is downright rotten. I always dreaded the kissing scenes. Every one of them. It was hell.”
There was another long silence.
Then Tedesco said, “Huh.”
* * *
“Stay here,” Chief Tedesco said. “Backup will arrive soon.”
She’d parked the car down the shoulder of the road a couple hundred yards from the boathouse, not wanting to roll into the gravel parking lot and alert Susan.
“I’m coming with you,” I said.
“You’re staying here,” she insisted. “That’s an order.”
As I watched her run down the street, gun drawn, I dug my fingers into my thighs, mumbling to myself, “You’ve done enough, Bernie. Stay here.”
Chief Tedesco had not just told me to stay. She’d given me an order, like she gave Anthony orders.
An order’s an order, he might say. But then he was a cop.
I wasn’t.
I opened the car door and slipped out.
Mimicking Tedesco’s crouch, I ran down the road, heading toward the boathouse. I moved along the grassy shoulder, with the road to my left and the trees to my right.
Through the trees, I caught glimpses of the lake. I slowed down as I came to the dirt drive that branched off from Lake Road and led to the boathouse.
Up ahead, Tedesco had climbed the steps to the boathouse, and she was inching her way toward the entrance, her back to the wooden wall, gun held high.
I held my breath as she rounded the corner, aiming her gun.
“Freeze,” she called out, and then, “Nat, is that you?”
She stepped into the darkness, out of sight.
I cursed and ran, following in her path to where wooden steps led up from the parking lot to the wide boathouse entrance.
Beyond the boathouse, the lake was still. Birds chirped in the trees. Not a leaf rustled. The peacefulness, normally so appealing, made my skin crawl.
The feeling only grew stronger as I neared the entrance to the boathouse. I shivered. Again, I remembered that time in Silver & Gold—Episode 9 of Season 6 (“Drowning Man”)—when Eve Silver faced the killer in a boathouse. Both the fictional boathouse and this very real one were painted red. Both had wide, gaping mouths leading into cool, damp darkness.
I pressed my back to the wooden wall the way Tedesco had. Unlike her, though, I had no gun. Pausing briefly at the edge of the entrance, I took a deep breath and peered around the corner.
Chief Tedesco stood in the middle of the boathouse. Bright light filled the opening to the dock beyond. Tedesco, a dark outline, moved toward the glare. Shadowy boats surrounded her—overturned on racks or hanging from ropes strung to the ceiling.
Near the entrance, a couple of yards from me, lay a stack of oars. Further along stood a pile of boxes. An old fishing net hung from a wall. Below, two fishing coolers gaped open, drying out.
As Tedesco took another step toward the sunbathed dock, I squinted to see better.
Out on the dock stood a lone figure.
My heart skipped a beat.
Nat stood as still as a statue. His hands were bound. His mouth covered with packing tape.
But where was Susan?
“Nat.” Tedesco looked to the left and to the right, and then straight ahead again. “Where’s Susan?”
Nat didn’t move. Even from a distance, I could see the wide-eyed fear on his face. His bangs covered one eye, but the other darted back and forth. What did he want to say? What warning was he hoping to convey?
My heart pounded in my chest.
Susan’s here. Somewhere.
Movement in the gloomy boathouse caught my eye. To the left of Tedesco, a shadow moved under a boat. It slid toward her. An object caught a ray of light, flashing as it emerged from the blackness.
A knife.
Tedesco whipped around, as if she’d heard a sound. She turned to her right, aiming her gun at the shadows. But Susan pounced from the left.
The oars. I remembered how Eve Silver, before the script rewrite, had saved Adam Gold from the killer.
I rushed toward the stack of oars nearby and grabbed one. Raising it over my shoulder like a javelin, I flung it at Susan’s legs.
Susan lunged at Chief Tedesco, bringing down the knife to bury it in her back, just as the oar caught her between the shins.
She let out a scream.
Tedesco spun around. And fired her gun.
The bullet struck the rack of kayaks, and the tower teetered. Then collapsed. The clatter was ear deafening.
When the falling kayaks had settled, I saw Chief Tedesco standing over Susan, gun aimed at her.
Susan’s legs had gotten tangled in the oar and she lay on her back, unarmed.
She stared wide-eyed at Chief Tedesco. “My God, you almost shot me,” she said, her amazement replaced with an indignant glare. “You could have injured me. Do you have any idea what that could have done to my acting career?”
* * *
I pulled off the tape covering Nat’s mouth.
“Ouch!” he said.
“Good thing you don’t have a mustache,” I said.
Once I got the rope off his wrists, I threw my arms around him and we hugged each other tight.
“I thought—”
“Yeah, I also thought—”
“But you’re—?”
“I’m fine,” Nat said. “A little rattled, that’s all.”
Sirens wailed in the distance. Looking across the lake, I saw flashes of police cruisers flitting through the trees, and a moment later, their tires churned up the gravel in the parking lot.
Nat and I joined Chief Tedesco in the boathouse.
“I thought I told you to stay in the car,” she told me.
But she couldn’t hide her smile. It was a bright smile, lighting up her face.
“I’m so glad you ignored me, Bernie.”
Chief Tedesco and one of her officers led Susan off to a patrol car. By then, I realized I’d lost sight of Nat. He wasn’t outside with the cops. He wasn’t on the dock. Where had he gone?
“Nat?”
“Check this out.”
I gazed into the shadows, blinking.
Nat was crouched down by the heap of kayaks that had fallen when Tedesco’s bullet had hit the rack. He pushed aside the fallen kayaks, obviously searching for something.
“I stalled Susan by telling her Mark’s will was hidden in the boathouse,” Nat said. “She insisted on seeing it, of course, and I knew I’d run out of time. I pretended to search Mark’s kayak. When I couldn’t produce a will, she’d know it was all a ruse, and then get rid of me. Imagine my surprise, then, when I found this…”
He rummaged around in a kayak.
“When Susan saw it, she went nuts—thankfully, she heard a car approaching in the distance and got busy tying me up.”
He threw a helmet over his shoulder. Then a life vest. Finally, he straightened up and held out an object.
It was an old, dog-eared paperback. Part of the front cover was missing, but the title was still clear: A Moron’s Step-by-Step Guide to Living with Less.
“Mark’s book,” I said, recognizing it. “So, this is where he put it.”
“And this was his bookmark.”
Nat removed the piece of paper I’d seen Mark use as his bookmark, a sheet from a yellow legal pad.
“This is no ordinary bookmark.”
He handed it to me, and I unfolded it.
At the top, it said, “Last Will & Testament of Mark Lewis.”