My Sister's Keeper

Chapter 22

I thanked him and—on a hunch—went back to the house for the newspaper with Ashleigh's photo in it. After dropping the videotape off at Scott's office and filling him in on the house at the beach, I drove to that bridge on Oleander and turned down the dirt drive that led to the old shed.

The scene was like a picture on a jigsaw puzzle and probably hadn't changed much in the last half-century. There was a run-down bait house sitting next to the water's edge surrounded by abandoned crab pots and nets. At least fifty boats of various sizes from work skiffs to sleek schooners and banged-up trawlers were moored to dry-rotting docks built decades ago and now strewn with bits of netting, crab pots, and empty oil bottles.

I rolled into the dirt parking lot, cut the engine, and got out. The place smelled of gasoline and fish, and the greasy water along the shoreline had a coating of yellow pollen. The creek widened here and the banks were checkered with boathouses, docks, and marshes with patches of towering cattails and dying cypress trees. From the water's edge I could see a half-mile up and downstream.

I strolled to the bait house, pushed in the door, and stepped inside. It smelled of dead fish, insects, and smoke from an antique pot-bellied wood heater standing in the center. The single room shack was lined with cages of live crickets, two bubbling 20-gallon aquariums of minnows, and shelves with cardboard containers of worms and a few cans of pork 'n beans. An old rusty freezer marked "ICE" tilted where the floor sagged on the left side and a glass-top horizontal Pepsi box hummed behind the door. The place had never seen a broom.

A white-haired, leather-skinned old-timer sat on a cut-off tree stump mending fishing net and didn't look up. "Morning," he said, his coastal drawl making it sound more like 'marning.' "Somethin' I kin do for ya?"

"Good morning, sir." I pulled the newspaper from my back pocket and opened it. "I'm looking for a girl. Blond hair, early twenties. Was wondering if you've seen her around here recently."

He didn't say anything, just kept working a wooden tool attached to a heavy cord over and through the net repeatedly with the speed and accuracy of a mechanical weaver. I held the paper in front of him and continued, "I think she could be in a lot of danger. I'd like to find her."

He still didn't look up. "You her papa?"

"No. A friend."

Without a word, he continued with his work, his tongue sliding back and forth along his bottom lip. I pressed on. "I get the feeling you've seen her, but you don't know whether or not to tell me."

"Don't cha read them papers, Mister?"

"More this week than usual."

"Then ya ought-a know she's dead."

I watched his hands working in perfect harmony with each other making their way along a single cord like a machine. I sighed, "Everyone seems to think so."

"But you don't?"

A cold breeze whistled through a broken window in the shed. I zipped my jacket to my neck and backed up to the heater. "No, I don't. I think maybe she got herself into something she needed to get out of, concocted a plan to fake her own death, stole a bicycle, and ended up down here early Monday morning." He looked up at me on the word "bicycle," then back at his work without comment. "Where it goes from there," I said stepping back closer to the heater, "I was hoping you could help me fill in."

His tongue again worked back and forth along his bottom lip as if it was doing the thinking for him. "Why you int'rested in that girl?"

"The police think I'm the one who did it."

His eyes looked up and studied me while his hands kept going on their own. "Why they think that?"

"She planned it that way."

He tied off a knot and cut the cord with a small well-honed curved blade stationed on a weathered bench next to him. Then his hands walked along the net and started another repair. I dragged a log stump closer to the heater and sat down stuffing my hands into my jacket pockets. I waited quietly, but didn't have to wait long.

"She first come by Tuesday last week. Just hung 'round a spell...lookin' at the boats. Then, the next day, she come back and asked how much to rent one. Said she wanted to go 'xplorin.' Wanted to keep it fir a week, she said." His eyes stayed on his work. "Paid for it in cash and give me a extra two hundred."

"So, she got it Wednesday?"

"Well now, that's the strange part. I gassed it up and give her the key on Wednesday. Then she showed up T'ursday, and took it out most all day. Then brung it back, gassed it up again, and just left it. Ain't never come back."

The heat was too hot on my back. I stood up and moved around trying to get some of the warmth down into my legs. "Can I see that boat?"

"Well, that's another strange thing. Somebody stole it."

"When was that?" I asked.

"It were here Sunday when I left, and gone Monday morning when I come in at five. I figured she took it 'til I seen her picture in the paper and learnt what happened. That's when I called the law."

"What did it look like?"

"Just a old workboat. Had a 85 Merc'ry outboard on it. Run good. That's it in that yonder picture." He pointed his chin over his shoulder to a four by six color photograph thumbtacked to a wooden cabinet door. It was a picture of the old man standing in an open Boston Whaler holding a string of giant-sized trout. There was a cockpit in the center with a steering wheel and gauges, but no windshield.

"When was this taken?"

"Shoot. You don't find trout like that 'round here no more. Probably twelve or thirteen year ago."

"Where'd she say she went with it?" I asked.

"Didn't say."

"How long was she out on Thursday?"

"She come 'round 10 that morning. I seen her load a ice chest on it and then hightail it outta here like her hair's on fire. She didn't have no fear of it neither. Know'd what she was doing. Next I seen her was half past four."

"How far could she have gotten in that time?"

"Depends what way she went and what the wind was doin'."

"You got another one you can rent?"

"Well, ain't none here now. Folks got 'em all out. You want one in t'morning?"

"Yeah, I do. What time do you open?"

"Five every day. And I'm here 'til they all come back."

"Put me down for one. Richard Baimbridge. I'll be here when you open. Five o'clock."

"Baimbridge."

"Right."

"You got it."