Read Online Escape Route (Murder Off-Screen Book 1) by GA VanDruff - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: GA VanDruff
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were the GPS and an OnStar button on the rearview. After the radio incident, I wasn’t going anywhere near that button. Who knew what I might call down on this drab automobile?
I pulled away from the curb without incident and drove down a side street that took me past a health food store gone bust. Everybody tried to tell them ... and a boarded up “rooming house.” Sheriff Nilly held no truck with “rooming houses,” so there went the town’s only scandalous landmark. Except for the Tyrell mansion, where Edwin Tyrell, Sr., his wife and two of his three children were shot and dismembered over a decade ago.
So that’s our claim to fame. The Oakley Beach Butcher. Sheriff Nilly dubbed him that, and always believed the “him” was Edwin, Jr., the surviving son. There wasn’t enough evidence, so the case went cold and the Tyrells slipped into a box of cold cases, and the pages of one very bad book.
I’d thought of trying it as a screenplay, and talked it over with Jeep, but my heart wasn’t in it. I felt sorry for Edwin, the richest, loneliest boy in town, and just didn’t feel right trying to earn a living on the gruesome deaths of his family.
Avery and Costello’s GPS hadn’t moved since I pulled away from the curb—a tech glitch I wouldn’t be able to figure out, so I pulled over and set my phone. Start Here, Go There. I hit the voice direction option so the rude woman in the phone could give me an inferiority complex when I made a wrong turn. “Turn right in six hundred feet.” I selected satellite view and the coordinates turned into street names.
“I know this road.”
I zoomed in to the upside down, red, teardrop marker speared on the end point of the journey.
“Not a clue where that is, though.”
My phone dinged. A text from Gertie. Beatty on the way here! Emphasized by a yellow face with blue sweat popping out of its forehead.
This was good news. With the sheriff gone, Deputy Beatty would fill out every form he could get his hands on, and fill them out by hand.
Doofus and I had just bought more time.
~~^~~
Mercers Neck Road was a mirrored image of Mercers Landing Bar Road and a duplicate of Mercers Bar Neck Road. Two generations back, the Mercers used to be a big deal on the Eastern Shore.
A “foreigner” could drive forever on these back roads and never spot a landmark to find their way around Mercers share of the good life.
Completely flat. A field here. A field there. Trees blocked the views to the water and the mansions that sat fat and happy along the shoreline.
But I knew where I was going.
Past the Cuthbarts.
Past fields and tree lines and marsh grass and deadfalls.
Seventeen miles from Peep’s.
Turn right one-half mile , my phone lady said. Moron was implied.
One-half mile was one-half mile in the middle of nowhere. “That makes sense. Foul deed territory.”
Turn right. Your destination is on the right . She wasn’t nearly as nervous as I was.
The right turn was a turn to nowhere but a gritty, soggy half-circle of sandy soil about the size of a basketball court curved on one side to accommodate the tide from the Chesapeake. Its main body of water was a mile offshore from this secluded cove. Perfect place to shoot a dog and bury it.
That had not happened here. No fresh tire tracks, no mound of a telltale grave. The ground was pristine. Not even a sign of teenage l’amour in such a secluded place.
I was here. I had to check it out. My phone rang as I stepped out of the vehicle.
“Hi, Uncle Frank. I’m late, I know.”
“Jaqie, I’m only going to say this once. If you don’t get it in gear and get yourself down to this marina, you will be a widow in an hour or less.”
The area around the car was untouched, but I started stepping the first of three paths heading east for thirty yards. I would grid them with three more headed north, trisecting the original three. “You’re right, Uncle Frank, I’m late. Listen, killing Ed won’t make me a widow. Killing
I pulled away from the curb without incident and drove down a side street that took me past a health food store gone bust. Everybody tried to tell them ... and a boarded up “rooming house.” Sheriff Nilly held no truck with “rooming houses,” so there went the town’s only scandalous landmark. Except for the Tyrell mansion, where Edwin Tyrell, Sr., his wife and two of his three children were shot and dismembered over a decade ago.
So that’s our claim to fame. The Oakley Beach Butcher. Sheriff Nilly dubbed him that, and always believed the “him” was Edwin, Jr., the surviving son. There wasn’t enough evidence, so the case went cold and the Tyrells slipped into a box of cold cases, and the pages of one very bad book.
I’d thought of trying it as a screenplay, and talked it over with Jeep, but my heart wasn’t in it. I felt sorry for Edwin, the richest, loneliest boy in town, and just didn’t feel right trying to earn a living on the gruesome deaths of his family.
Avery and Costello’s GPS hadn’t moved since I pulled away from the curb—a tech glitch I wouldn’t be able to figure out, so I pulled over and set my phone. Start Here, Go There. I hit the voice direction option so the rude woman in the phone could give me an inferiority complex when I made a wrong turn. “Turn right in six hundred feet.” I selected satellite view and the coordinates turned into street names.
“I know this road.”
I zoomed in to the upside down, red, teardrop marker speared on the end point of the journey.
“Not a clue where that is, though.”
My phone dinged. A text from Gertie. Beatty on the way here! Emphasized by a yellow face with blue sweat popping out of its forehead.
This was good news. With the sheriff gone, Deputy Beatty would fill out every form he could get his hands on, and fill them out by hand.
Doofus and I had just bought more time.
~~^~~
Mercers Neck Road was a mirrored image of Mercers Landing Bar Road and a duplicate of Mercers Bar Neck Road. Two generations back, the Mercers used to be a big deal on the Eastern Shore.
A “foreigner” could drive forever on these back roads and never spot a landmark to find their way around Mercers share of the good life.
Completely flat. A field here. A field there. Trees blocked the views to the water and the mansions that sat fat and happy along the shoreline.
But I knew where I was going.
Past the Cuthbarts.
Past fields and tree lines and marsh grass and deadfalls.
Seventeen miles from Peep’s.
Turn right one-half mile , my phone lady said. Moron was implied.
One-half mile was one-half mile in the middle of nowhere. “That makes sense. Foul deed territory.”
Turn right. Your destination is on the right . She wasn’t nearly as nervous as I was.
The right turn was a turn to nowhere but a gritty, soggy half-circle of sandy soil about the size of a basketball court curved on one side to accommodate the tide from the Chesapeake. Its main body of water was a mile offshore from this secluded cove. Perfect place to shoot a dog and bury it.
That had not happened here. No fresh tire tracks, no mound of a telltale grave. The ground was pristine. Not even a sign of teenage l’amour in such a secluded place.
I was here. I had to check it out. My phone rang as I stepped out of the vehicle.
“Hi, Uncle Frank. I’m late, I know.”
“Jaqie, I’m only going to say this once. If you don’t get it in gear and get yourself down to this marina, you will be a widow in an hour or less.”
The area around the car was untouched, but I started stepping the first of three paths heading east for thirty yards. I would grid them with three more headed north, trisecting the original three. “You’re right, Uncle Frank, I’m late. Listen, killing Ed won’t make me a widow. Killing
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