Sharyn McCrumb - Sick Of Shadows

Orders from Dr. Chandler and Captain Grandfather for the rest of the family to remain in the house were ignored. Indeed, Amanda led the group, while the others trailed at a respectful distance, murmuring among themselves.

Charles was talking in quiet, worried tones to his father. “I don’t know . I can’t find her,” Elizabeth heard him say. “But I’m pretty sure something is wrong.”

Elizabeth relaxed. False alarm, she thought. Another Chandler dramatization. Eileen will come wandering out of the woods with a handful of daisies and profess to wonder what all the fuss is about. And everyone will make a fuss over her, and call it “wedding nerves.” It was becoming very annoying.

When they reached the lake, there was still no sign of Eileen.

As if echoing Elizabeth’s thoughts, Geoffrey walked into the woods, calling for Eileen to come out. Amanda strode purposefully toward the easel, which was set up a few feet from the water’s edge. There was no canvas on it.

“Robert!” she called. “The painting is gone!”

“Maybe she took it to show to someone,” Elizabeth suggested.

Amanda ignored her.

If the painting is gone, Eileen must be all right, Elizabeth decided. She knew we’d come looking for her, and she wanted to make sure that we didn’t see it.

Captain Grandfather caught Charles by the arm and pointed to the lake. “What’s that doing out there?”

In the middle of the lake, barely afloat, was a half-rotted rowboat. Abandoned years ago, it had stayed pushed up into the reeds at the edge of the lake. A blue fiberglass speedboat had taken its place at the old boathouse on the western shore of the lake; but now the old punt had left its mooring in the marsh and had somehow managed to stay afloat long enough to reach mid-lake.

“We’ll get the other boat,” said Robert Chandler quietly.

He and Charles walked toward the boathouse, ignoring Amanda’s demands to know the meaning of all this and the murmured offers of assistance from Shepherd and Satisky.

“But if she’s in the boat, she’s all right,” Elizabeth said aloud. “You can’t drown in a boat.”

“Why are they wasting their time?” Satisky demanded. “You can see that there’s nobody in it.”

Dr. Shepherd gave a slight cough. “Nobody in it-sitting up.”

The implications of this remark left them all speechless. They watched in silence as Dr. Chandler and Charles untied the speedboat, and pulled the rope to start the motor. Minutes later they had maneuvered their craft within reach of the old rowboat. They pulled the derelict alongside their own boat, and Dr. Chandler leaned over to look inside.

“They’ve found her,” said Captain Grandfather.

They began to walk slowly toward the boathouse, arriving at the small pier at the same time the boats did. Dr. Chandler waved them away as if he were warding off a blow, but they had only to look down into the sodden rowboat to see what had been found.

“Shall I get your medical bag, sir?” asked Shepherd.

Chandler hesitated, and then nodded. He had nearly said that it was useless, but the formality must be upheld, as it was in every case. Shepherd ran for the house.

Geoffrey had come out of the woods when the speedboat motor had started up, and he joined them on the pier, elbowing his way past Elizabeth and Satisky to look into the boat.

Eileen Chandler lay sprawled at the bottom of the boat as if she had fallen on her back, with her legs apart and one arm flung back over her head. An inch of water in the bottom of the boat lapped at the edges of her painting smock and turned her hair into limp dark weeds floating gently around her shoulders. Her face was calm. Except for the pallor and the plastic look of her skin, she might have been asleep. Her eyes were closed, and her lips slightly parted, as if she might at any moment yawn and stretch. But she was very still-too still to be breathing.

No one had spoken. Amanda Chandler was clinging to Captain Grandfather as though she were afraid of falling into the water. Dr. Chandler and Charles had turned away and were securing the boats, tying one to each of the end pilings. Without wanting to, Elizabeth turned to look at Michael Satisky. He was staring open-mouthed at the lifeless form below them, oblivious to the others beside him. Finally he knelt jerkily on the pier, and leaning toward Eileen’s still body, he croaked: “She has a lovely face; God in his mercy lend her grace.”

And Geoffrey started to laugh.

Wesley Rountree swung his white Datsun around the curve, and glared at the two houses just coming into view.

“That’s a doozy, isn’t it?” he remarked with a snort.

Clay Taylor grunted without glancing up from his well-worn copy of Anatomy of a Revolution . The castle was a familiar sight to everyone in the county by now; hardly worth getting upset over anymore. Even in a khaki uniform Clay managed to look counter-establishment. His brown curly hair was a briar patch, and his face, behind small wire-rimmed glasses, wore a perpetually mild expression. His friends, who ran pottery shops or worked in social services programs with low-income people, always expressed surprise upon learning Taylor’s occupation. He himself considered it just another way of working with the poor, and he did what he could to keep peace all the way around. When he spent his own money to buy groceries for migrant workers between jobs, he always said that he was “preventing shoplifting,” and he joked that he was really trying to save himself some work. He had little sympathy for speeding tourists or middle-class teenage vandals, but the crimes of the real poor always struck him as symptoms of an even larger crime, of which they were only victims. He wouldn’t knowingly permit an offender to get away, but he did his best in “preventive measures,” such as keeping in close touch with the migrant workers or arranging for his friends in social services to help the needy before they became truly desperate. Apparently, his efforts to deter crime were appreciated by those who had been determined to commit them: in the last two years the county burglary rate had decreased by 5 percent, while that of the neighboring county had risen accordingly. He considered it a tribute, of sorts; although if anyone had asked, he would have insisted that it was pure coincidence, which it might have been.

In theory, Deputy Taylor and Sheriff Rountree were ideological enemies, each one representing all the things the other held most in contempt; but actually, they got along well enough. Rountree still sneered at leftist demonstrators on the six o’clock news, but he allowed as how his deputy was all right. Couldn’t fault a man for being nice to people, he’d grumble. Taylor still saw the establishment personified by a fat and drawling old man in a white suit (though he had never seen one), but he generously classified his boss as a well-meaning but unenlightened tool of the system. He made efforts from time to time to make Rountree see the error of his ways-so far, without notable success.

“Bet that house cost quite a bit,” remarked Rountree with a hint of a smile.

Clay sighed. “And I’m supposed to say that it isn’t fair, one person having so much money, while the sharecroppers sleep five in a room.”

Rountree frowned at having his conversational bait so easily spotted. “Just making chitchat,” he said hastily. “Did you tell Doris to call the state boys?”

“Yeah, but you never did say why. We haven’t even seen the body yet, Wes. Might just be a drowning.”

“Well, we got to be sure, whatever happened. They said they found her in a boat. That sound like a drowning to you? Anyway, when the victim is the coroner’s own daughter, I don’t see what else we can do but go for outside help,” growled Rountree. “Not that I don’t trust the doctor, mind you. He’s a mighty fine man, but it’ll look better at the inquest to have somebody else stating the particulars.”