Nervous Water by William G. Tapply

athlete. She ran track, played basketball and Softball. Great singing voice. The boys drooled over her. She was always quite, um, mature for her age. The girls hated her. I never thought she deserved her reputation. It was all lies and envy. High-school stuff. Cassie was better than everybody else at just about everything.”
    â€œI didn’t know her at all then,” I said.
    â€œSo she and her father are estranged, huh?”
    â€œI guess you could say that. She’s the one who broke off communications.”
    â€œAnd you’re trying to, um, reconcile them?”
    I waved a hand. “I’m just trying to find Cassie, see if I can convince her to mend fences with Moze. Now, with him in the hospital, it feels way more important.”
    She cocked her head at me. “With him saying that she did it, it feels very important indeed.”
    â€œYou can’t take that seriously,” I said.
    â€œIt’s what we call a clue,” she said. “When a victim IDs the person who assaulted him, we take it seriously, yes.”
    â€œWell,” I said, “that’s just nuts.”
    â€œMaybe.” She looked at her watch. “You in a hurry to get back to Boston?”
    â€œNope.”
    â€œYou feel like giving a police officer a hand?”
    â€œSure. What can I do?”
    â€œYou were inside your uncle’s house last Saturday, you said, right?”
    I nodded.
    â€œI’ve got to check the crime scene, on the assumption that there was a crime, which the doctor believes there was. Come with me, tell me what you see. Will you do that?”
    â€œI’m glad to help if I can.”
    She flashed me a terrific smile. Charlene Staples had green eyes, I noticed, and the corners crinkled when she smiled, as if she spent a lot of time squinting into the sun. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she said.
    It was actually closer to fifteen minutes. I was getting pretty sick of that little hospital waiting room.
    â€œCome on,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”
    As we walked out of the hospital, she said, “I just talked to your uncle. He told me it was Cassie.”
    â€œYou asked him who hit him?”
    She nodded. “I said to him, I said, ‘Mr. Crandall, I’m a police officer and I need to know who did this to you.’ He was pretty out of it. I had to put my ear close to his mouth to hear him. But it was quite clear, what he said. He said, ‘It was Cassie.’ Like that.”
    I shrugged.
    â€œThat’s what he said to you, too, right?”
    â€œYes,” I said. “But—”
    â€œSo we’ve got an assault,” she said, “and Cassie’s our suspect. You tell me they’re estranged. That probably means she’s angry with him about something. That suggests a motive, doesn’t it?”
    â€œI suppose so.”
    â€œSo what’s her motive?” she said.
    â€œI don’t know.”
    We were in the parking lot. “Where are you parked?” she said.
    I pointed to my car in the visitors’ lot.
    She smiled. “From a long black Cadillac to a sleek green BMW, huh? So now you’re the big-shot Boston attorney.” She pointed to an area beside the emergency room entrance where a cruiser with Moulton PD painted on the door was parked. “Follow me.”
    â€œI’m not that big of a shot,” I said as she turned and headed for her cruiser.
    She looked back over her shoulder and smiled.
    Â 
    Sergeant Charlene Staples exited the turnpike in Ogunquit and led me over some hilly two-lane back roads through Berwick, and we pulled into Moze’s sandy driveway in Moulton a little less than an hour after we’d left the hospital in Portland.
    She parked her cruiser in the shade of one of the big maple trees beside the house. I pulled up beside her.
    As we walked up to the front door, she said, “Don’t touch anything inside.” She had