My Sister's Keeper

Chapter 49

49

DETECTIVE SAM JONES and his partner Crabby Staten stepped from their car and were met by a pudgy fifty-year-old with a two-day beard and a jaw full of chewing tobacco.

"We jus' put this asphalt down Monday," the man slurred in a deep southern drawl. "And a piece of it caved in t'day when somebody drove over it. We figur'd we had us a water leak, but when we dug in, this is what we found."

The two detectives stepped to the edge of a hole that had been cut into the asphalt, looked down, and saw the crown of a man's head exposed in the bottom. A wisp of water misting behind it washed a trench around the body.

"Anybody missing on your crew?" Sam asked the man.

"Nope."

"Where's the cutoff to that water line?"

"Got no idea. We jus' do the paving."

Sam pulled the tail of his long coat up around his waist, stepped into the hole, slipped on the wet clay, and stumbled down to the body. Regaining his footing, he snatched a ball-point pen from his breast pocket, bent over the exposed head, and dug the dirt back from the man's face. Dark complexion. Thin mustache. Mexican?

Sam scaled back up the slope and—with the help of the foreman's beefy hand—climbed out. "Notice anything unusual around here the last few days?"

The man spit a stream of tobacco juice toward the curb and adjusted the wad in his cheek. "One of the guys said somebody'd messed with his backhoe over the weekend."

"Where is it?"

"That's it down yonder." He indicated a machine parked two blocks away.

"And the man that runs it?"

He pointed to a crewman propped nearby with his arms folded across his chest. He wore dark wraparound sunglasses under a Caterpillar baseball cap, and his hair was pulled back in a three-inch ponytail. "Thanks," Sam replied, stamping the mud off his shoes as he walked toward the backhoe operator. While Sam took a look at the machine, a public works superintendent showed up, studied a survey map, and backtracked to the nearest water turn-off valve. Shortly thereafter, the misty spray ceased and the forensic team arrived to begin the work of extracting the body.

WHEN SCOTT AND TIFFANY arrived at the docks, Steal Away, the sleek, black, fifty-five-foot Lenny Walker original, pulled anxiously at its mooring lines at the far end of the dock. Its two masts towered above all other sailboats in the marina reaching for the sky. The crowd in the bar had moved to the windows just to admire it and take bets on to whom it belonged. Scott could feel the jealousy in their eyes as he and Tiffany headed down the pier.

Although he'd learned to sail smaller boats, Scott was not capable of handling this one by himself. He'd assumed he'd have a few months to spend on the Intracoastal Waterway learning to sail it with Sydney's help before taking it out into the Atlantic. But now, with Tiffany handling the boat, they could be in Abacos—their first port of call—within a few days. He would be a multi-millionaire free to come and go as he pleased, to live life to its fullest, to explore the world the way man was intended—seeing, tasting, touching, and taking whatever and whomever he pleased. He'd slip away under the cover of darkness dumping his garbage at sea.

And, for now, he had Tiffany.

Like a panther lurking in the grass, he could taste her already as she ran ahead of him and stepped over the railing onto the wooden deck. She would do for now. She'd teach him to sail and he'd teach her how to please him. And when he grew tired of her, he'd pick up another.

As he climbed down to the galley below deck, Tiffany threw her arms around him bouncing up and down. "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. McGillikin. I can't believe this is really happening."

"Please, call me Scott."

She slid off him and saluted. "Aye, aye, sir. Mr.—Scott."

"Good. Now, we need to get a few things straight. Can you cook?"

She wrinkled her nose. "Some."

"Very well. Your job will be to keep the boat clean, afloat, and on course."

"No problem. I can do that."

"My job will be to plan the trips, pay the bills, and teach you to cook."

"Great. When do we sail?"

"Tonight."

"Seriously? I'll need to run home and get some things."

"No. If you go home, somebody's going to want to know why you're not at work." Scott opened his billfold and handed Tiffany five one-hundred dollar bills. "We'll shop in every port. There won't be room for it all. But today, just buy what you'll need to get underway and be back here by one o'clock."

"Yes! Wow! This is going to be so much fun!" She gave him a daughterly squeeze, then climbed out. When he was sure she was gone, he moved the passports and one-quarter of the money from the briefcase to a combination safe he'd had built-in, then hid the gun, the cartridges, and the rest of the money around the boat.

He tuned the satellite TV to the Weather Channel while checking the rest of the equipment to see that it was all working. VHF marine radio, GPS receiver, single sideband LORAN radio, depth finder, radar, and NOAA weather radio.

The forecast for the tropics called for no disturbances during the next seven days. He switched the TV to the local antenna and flipped through the Wilmington stations. Everything seemed to be working perfectly. Plan the work. Work the plan.

As he checked items off his list, the TV station interrupted its scheduled program with a news bulletin. "Twenty-three-year-old Ashleigh Matthews has been found alive and well." Scott's eyes shifted to the TV. "She was spotted this morning at Duke Medical Center in Durham where, according to eye-witnesses, she was seated in a hospital waiting room when photos of her were aired on television. Recognized by others in the waiting room, she fled the hospital." While the reporter interviewed an elderly woman who said that Ashleigh seemed alert and aware of what was going on around her, they showed still shots recorded by hospital security cameras of Ashleigh as she fled. "Anyone with any information as to the whereabouts of Ashleigh Matthews is asked to contact the Wilmington Police Department."

Spreading a nautical chart on a table, he used a pushpin to mark the location of a farm on the south side of the Cape Fear River and dropped a key on the pin. He then wrote a note telling Tiffany to take the boat to the location marked by the pin, to transfer the boxes she'd find in the barn to the boat, and that he'd meet her there after dark.