swept his feet out from under him and flipped him onto his stomach, grabbing his arm and twisting it straight out behind him, her hand on the back of his elbow.
“Stop!” He arched his back upward. “Stop! Please!”
Casey knelt over him until he let his head drop forward onto the ground, and his body relaxed. She let go of his arm, but stayed there, squatting beside him, one knee on his back, in case he tried to run again.
He turned his head to the side. “Can I get up?”
“No.”
“I won’t run.”
“Uh-uh.”
He closed his eyes. “Fine. What did you want to know?”
“You remember. What was the man asking about? What is ‘it?’”
“Plans.”
“Plans? What do you mean? Plans for what?”
“Can I get up?”
“No.”
“Can I call my wife?”
“When we’re done.”
“Cyrus was a woodworker, right? He was really good at it, designed things, built them.”
“I know, he had his own business, ran it into the ground. You told us all that already.”
“Right, then he went to work for a houseboat business down in Whitley. Rich folks wanted boats as comfortable and luxurious as their houses. Maybe more. He was the go-to guy. But he got laid off, not sure why, and he couldn’t find anything else.”
“Why couldn’t he? The early nineties weren’t like now. There were jobs all over.”
“Not that suited him, I guess. Elizabeth always said he was picky about where he would work. Wanted to be his own boss, pretty much, even though it didn’t turn out so well when he was. Can you take your knee out of my back now?”
Casey eased off. “So what were these plans you were talking about?”
“I don’t know for sure, but from what Liz heard it sounded like plans for a special houseboat.”
“Wait, this was while he worked for the houseboat company?” Bells were ringing in Casey’s head.
“I guess, but afterward, too, when they were living in the car. Those men, the ones in the picture, they came to him and he spent all this time designing something. I got to the park one time, and he had his stuff spread all over the picnic table. He had a big sheet of plywood he would use as his drafting table, and he had blueprint paper spread out on it. I walked up and surprised him. He got all mad and told me to go away. Liz wasn’t there, so I didn’t want to stay, anyway, but it was weird.”
“What was on the blueprints?”
“What I told you. A houseboat. Or stuff he was designing for one, anyway.”
“And you think those blueprints are what they’re looking for?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I guess they could incriminate somebody somehow, or else whoever commissioned the boat is still after these men to get it done.”
“That’s unlikely. There’s got to be somebody else who could design something. And after all this time they probably wouldn’t need it anymore.”
“Can I get up now?” Casey let him sit up, and he rubbed the elbow she’d overextended. “Liz swore me to secrecy about what I saw, because she didn’t know what kind of trouble her dad could get in for whatever he was doing, and after he was killed and she disappeared, I didn’t think it mattered anymore.”
“You never thought it might have something to do with his death?”
“A houseboat? No. I never thought a houseboat was worth killing over.” She watched him until he said, “What?”
“How long have you told yourself that?”
He ran a hand over his face and replied quietly. “Ever since that night.”
“You never told anyone about them? Not the police?”
“I knew they didn’t find any blueprints when they searched the car, so I figured they were long gone and out of the picture. That maybe the job was even done. So I thought it would just make Cyrus look bad if I talked about how he’d reacted when I’d seen them. I know, I know, it was dumb. I was a teenager who’d just lost his best friend. His girlfriend.”
“But even now, as an adult, you never thought you should tell?”
“What good would it do? Cyrus is long dead, and until yesterday I thought Liz was gone, too. Not dead, necessarily, but just…gone.”
Casey hauled him to his feet. “It’s going to do some good now.”
“Now? In the middle of the night?”
Would it really help anything to tell him about the blueprints she’d found in Betsy’s box? Was it worth it to wake them all up and look? Casey wanted to do it. She wanted to wake up the whole town.