“See what I mean?” Claude gasped. “People hunt rats with shotguns up here.”
“Have you seen any around?” Sam asked Sarah.
“This is my ex-husband,” she croaked. “He’s just leaving.”
“Well, I won’t stop you then.” Sam positioned himself at the end of the counter, between Sarah and Claude. “Is that your little red car parked on the old tote road?”
Claude nodded.
“I hope it’s all right,” Sam said, looking earnest, and much dimmer than he really was. “Moose use that road, and red riles them up something terrific.”
Claude blanched and fled.
Chapter 6
Sarah was pleasantly surprised to see that Claude hadn’t tampered with the letters. One had a return address of “C. Jamison Kincaid, Attorney,” and was postmarked February 18. The other was postmarked January 2, a few days before Myra died. The smiley-faced return address label said, “Cathy Leduc.”
Claude probably took them from the mailbox out of spite, or maybe because of the Maine postmarks.
Claude had disapproved of Owl from the moment the boat arrived on their doorstep in late October. The boat had been dirty, decrepit, and smelled like a Maine barn—a blight on the their back yard, in his opinion. Not even storing it in the garage had stopped the complaints. One more bone of contention in their disintegrating marriage.
She opened Cathy’s letter first. Inside was a sticky-slip note attached to another envelope.
“Hi,” the note said, “Myra wanted you to have this if she died before you got here. Anyhow, it’s real important for me or Myra to talk to you when you get to Maine. I know you’re someone I can trust. Take care, Cathy.”
Would Cathy write a note like this if she was about to run away? It seemed unlikely. Why hadn’t she tried to make contact? What had happened to her?
The inner envelope bore the words “Sarah Cassidy” in a painstakingly written script. Sarah opened it and found three snapshots of her and Marlee Sue from their camping days, and a note.
She glanced at the photos hastily and then turned her attention to the note:
“Sarah Cassidy,
I know how much you loved being at the camp and the water so I am giving you my boat. I hope you will like it and think better of me for having it.
I may never see you again and that is for the best, but please believe what happened to Evan wasn’t your fault. It was drink that did him in.
Some things cant be undone and we just have to put them behind us. You did nothing to be sorry over. We must forgive and forget. ‘Judgment is mine says the Lord.’
I hope your life turns out good,
Myra Huggard”
Sarah reread the note, thinking about the reference to Myra’s dead husband, Evan. She had seen him in the late afternoon of the day Migawoc closed for the season, and he had died that night in a drunken accident. Was she saying there was a connection?
Myra’s words knotted her stomach and set her heart to pounding. What did Myra mean? The crotchety old woman would often say something with a hidden meaning, and then accuse the kids of stupidity when they didn’t understand. Was this was another example of Myra’s perverseness?
She glanced briefly at the pictures again. Maybe they were one of Myra’s riddles too.
Myra Huggard herself was a riddle that Sarah had never solved. The thought was humbling and disturbing. Did she really understand anybody? Her choice of a husband certainly hadn’t worked out.
Though Sarah hadn’t seen or heard from Myra in years, the note reminded her that the Huggards, both of them, had been lurking somewhere in the back of her mind all this time, and they were part of what had led her here.
Putting the photos aside for later, she opened Jamison Kincaid’s envelope. It was a brief letter informing her that he was executor of Myra Huggard’s estate, and Sarah had received a “minor inheritance.” Would she please get in touch with him at her earliest convenience?
Owl must be the “minor inheritance,” which she already knew about, thanks to the Merlews. And no thanks to Claude for having sat on Kincaid’s letter.
* * *
“Do moose really hate red?” Sarah asked.
Sam shrugged. “Who knows what a moose hates?”
Sarah sat at the Merlew’s kitchen table sipping a mug of coffee. “And do you really hunt rats with a shotgun?”
“God no. I use rat poison, or maybe a .22 if I see one in the barn. It’s just that you two were getting kind of loud, so we thought it might be a good idea to drop by.”
“I didn’t like him sneaking in here like that,” Kate said.
“Do you have 911?” Sarah asked.
“Yes, but it might take a while for the police to get here.” Sam looked at her worriedly. “We can keep an eye out, but you’d better be careful ’til he stops coming around.”
Considering how upset they seemed to be over Claude’s visit, Sarah decided not to mention her near-death experience with the red pickup truck. Instead, she told them about Kincaid’s letter, hoping to move to a happier topic. If anything, the elderly couple looked even more upset.
“Kincaid handled all her legal affairs,” Sam said, a sour look on his face.
“Like suing the town?” Sarah asked. “Why did Myra raise such a stink over the Oak Hill development?”
“She grew up in one of the earliest houses in town, beside the Baptist church,” Sam replied. “The place used to be right next to where the development’s access road goes in, and Myra claimed they were desecrating the old Burndt homestead.”
“That was one of her crazy lawsuits,” Kate said. “Myra claimed the homestead was an historic landmark, and the town had no right to let the road go through.”
“No matter that the house burned down sixty years ago,” Sam added. “There’s a plaque where it used to be.”
“There was another lawsuit too?” Sarah said.
“Myra claimed there was an old Indian burial ground on top of the hill,” Sam replied, “in the middle of the development. She wanted to stop construction and do an archaeological dig. It took months to sort that one out.”
“Was there an old burial ground up there?”
Sam snorted. “In Myra’s imagination, maybe.”
“Is Myra buried in the cemetery?” Sarah asked.
Sam looked at her for a moment and said, “Way in back, up the slope by the stone wall where the new graves are.”
“There’s no stone,” Kate said disapprovingly. “Just one of those little markers the funeral home put in.”
“Speaking of churches,” Sam said, “we were talking about you making some friends around here, maybe visit a church.”
“I don’t know if the Baptist church would be much like the Catholic,” Kate said, “but there’s an Episcopal church out on the Goose—,” Kate caught herself and turned to Sam. “What’s that road called now?”
“Turner Plains road,” he replied. “Take the Cross Point road and turn right. It’s a big, shingled turn-of-the-century building. Can’t miss it.”
* * *
Kate and Sam sat wordlessly at the kitchen table for a while after Sarah had left.
“I feel like a pimp,” Kate said at last.
“The church is a good idea, though.”
“I don’t trust him.” Kate ran her finger over the tabletop where a patch of sunlight had warmed the surface.
“She’s old enough to take care of herself.”
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it. Do you think she saw Brian leaving?”
“He was long-gone by the time she got back,” Sam said.
“He was asking a lot of questions about her. He looked nervous. Maybe she does know something.”
“She’s never given any sign of it, except maybe yesterday.”
“I don’t mean about then,” Kate said, irritated. “I mean now. She hasn’t even seen Myra’s will yet. Who knows what trouble may come out of that.”
“The will is pro
bably just about Owl,” Sam said.
“I don’t suppose you had any luck?”
“I didn’t get a chance, and I probably won’t get one at this rate,” Sam replied.
“I’ll bet Brian thinks Myra told Sarah something that would make trouble with the planning board, maybe block final approval of Oak Hill.”
“I can’t imagine what Myra would have known that she hadn’t tried already,” Sam replied.
Kate sighed. “I hate driving by the old camp and seeing those monstrosities. I hate seeing that Oak Hill sign in the middle of town. We shouldn’t have invited her up here.”
“We’ve been through all that.”
“Well it’s not working out the way the way we’d planned.”
* * *
The morning had turned sunny and warm, hinting at summer, but a light southerly breeze was stirring, and fog would likely bring disillusionment by afternoon.
The fine May weather was wasted on Oliver and Pearly as they stood on Pearly’s float and stared like a pair of mourners at a newly built boat, glistening in the sunshine and redolent of fresh paint.
“A fine mess you’ve got us into this time, Ollie,” Pearly said in his finest Laurel and Hardy imitation. Oliver hated the nickname, and Pearly knew it.
The object of their attention was an eighteen-foot open motorboat whose tan and white paint complemented the varnished mahogany trim. The hull was made of fiberglass, an anathema to Pearly Gaites, who normally built in the traditional way with wood. The boat’s existence was a concession to Eldon, who had built the wooden interior to Oliver’s design. The fiberglass hull was a stock design molded in quantity by a local firm.
A teak-planked deck covered the forward four feet, while a control console stood amidships. A big Honda outboard sat on the transom.
Eldon had finished off the hull with particular care, since it was meant to be Cathy Leduc’s boat.
Oliver kneeled down at the edge of the float and looked at the boat’s bow again. No matter how many times he checked, it was still bow-heavy by a good inch. Having designed the interior, the error was his responsibility.
“The fuel tank is full?” Oliver asked.
“Yeah.”
“I hate motorboats.”
“They don’t seem to like you much either,” Pearly replied. “I saw it when she hit the water, so I climbed in and sat on the transom to level her up. Eldon didn’t notice a thing.”
“Down by at least an inch,” Oliver said.
“How about I repaint the waterline?” Pearly suggested brightly. “Make it come out right.”
Oliver rolled his eyes.
“The forward bulkhead?” Pearly said, referring to the watertight panel that sealed off the rear end of the forward deck. “Eldon might have used thicker plywood than you said.”
Oliver stuck his head under the deck. “Can’t tell with it all fiberglassed over and painted. He’s not sure?”
“I can’t get a straight answer out of him on anything,” Pearly said, glancing towards the boat shed. “It’s like having a rabid elephant in there every time the cops come and question him.”
“The plywood wouldn’t be enough to explain it anyhow. Get in for a minute.”
“In the old days,” Pearly said nostalgically, “some builders would launch a boat, let her sit in the water for a while, haul her out, and paint to the scum line. Worked every time.”
“Are you going to get into the boat, or not?”
A boat is like a seesaw, with the weight of everything in it balanced on an imaginary pivot called the “Center of Buoyancy.” It’s the designer’s job to add up the weight and location of everything, including the hull itself, and make sure everything balances so the boat will float level. Somehow, Oliver had let something upset the seesaw.
Pearly clambered aboard.
“Start moving aft,” Oliver instructed as he watched the bow.
“Okay, stop there.”
Oliver straightened up, and studied where Pearly was standing.
“How much do you weigh?” he asked.
“Enough,” Pearly said. “I’ll just put some lead pigs in the stern locker to level her up. Not that it matters to anyone except Eldon, with Cathy gone.”
“I still want to know where I screwed up.” They both knew that errors like this happened more often than some would like to admit. Still, Pearly was bound to wonder if Oliver could make a mistake like this, why not a bigger one?
“I thought you used a computer,” Pearly said, as though reading Oliver’s mind.
“I could have entered one of the weights wrong.”
“Garbage in, garbage out,” Pearly intoned.
Oliver vowed to hunt down the error. “I’ve got to get back home before that woman you dumped on me comes over,” he said.
“Woman?”
“The one with the Herreshoff.”
“Oh, yeah,” Pearly said vaguely. He was poking around the stern storage compartment, apparently looking for a place to hide the lead blocks. “Boat looked like a sinker to me.”
“It’s not too bad.”
Pearly straightened up from his investigation. “You going to sister in some new frames, like a Christian, or use that sticky stuff of yours?”
“Sticky stuff. It’s better than starting to take the boat apart and not being able to find a place to stop.”
“She did a good job with that shear plank,” Pearly mused. “Must have been a hell of a thing to fit, with so much edge-set.”
“She knew Myra. Went to Migawoc as a kid.”
Pearly climbed out of the boat, groaning faintly as he stepped over the rail. “I wonder if she knew old Evan. There was a piece of work.”
“I never did hear how he died,” Oliver said.
“The crazy fool got drunk one evening, took his lobsterboat out, and ran up on Brill’s Ledge. Old Winn Tupper found his body and some wreckage the next day. Wasn’t much left of him after pounding on the rocks all night.
“My old man managed to raise the boat and bring it in,” Pearly went on, “but she was too far gone to fix up. Bow all stove in, back broken. Must’ve been going a ton when he hit the rocks.”
Pearly shook his head. “I ever tell you about Evan and the wasp?”
“Evan and the wasp?”
Pearly settled himself on the boat’s rail. “My old man used to go over to Evan’s place and play poker with a couple of his pals—this was in the late forties—and sometimes the old man would take me along for luck. I think he did it to get my mother ugly. I was pretty young then.
“Anyhow, one fall during wasp season—you know, when they come inside to stay warm—one of the buggers started buzzing around the table in that sickly way they do in the fall. We batted at it, and the thing finally landed on the door frame going into the kitchen. I’ll be damned if Evan didn’t grab his deer rifle and bet us two-bits he could shoot the wasp from across the room. He was boiled as an owl, as usual, so we hit the floor when he swung the gun up.”
Pearly paused theatrically. “Drunk as he was, Evan nailed that wasp, left a neat little hole in the molding. Of course, his .30 ‘06 blew the back side of the door frame to hell, splinters all over the kitchen. Myra came boiling out of there and lit into him something wicked. We got out fast. Evan was some crazy when he hit the bottle.”
Pearly stared out over the cove for a moment. “Things were different back then,” he said.
They climbed the ramp from the float to the pier. It was high tide so the going was easy, but Pearly took his time even so. “Too bad you didn’t put your old man on the computer, have him check the numbers. I wouldn’t need those pigs.”
“He doesn’t use a computer.”
“He doesn’t need a computer.” Pearly adjusted his Red Sox cap. “I built a nice little sloop he designed about twenty years ago. You should get him up here for a visit, have him straighten you out.”
Pearly stopped at the end of the pier as though reluctant to return to the boat shed. “How
is John doing?”
“Not bad for eighty-seven. I went down over Christmas.”
The whine of an overloaded Skil saw echoed from the boat shed like a dying banshee. Pearly grimaced.
“Eighty-seven? You should see him more often.”
Chapter 7
The city of Belfast sits on a hillside, where its brick store fronts slope down to Penobscot Bay, one of the largest inlets that slice into Maine’s coastline.
Sarah stood on the sidewalk at what was probably the center of town, where five streets converged into a broad expanse of pavement, without benefit of a stop light. The intersection, and its orderly flow of traffic, had always fascinated her. In Massachusetts a place like this would be piled high with twisted metal, severed limbs, and dead bodies in a matter of minutes.
Perhaps the intersection said something about the enduring character of Belfast’s residents. Founded on shipbuilding and fishing, it had fallen into decay with the demise of wooden ships, was reborn in the shoe and chicken processing booms, only to crash when the shoe industry fled the country and the chickens headed south for warmer climes. The city’s latest savior was the credit card business, whose vast telephone service center had replaced the huge corrugated metal chicken barns. Sarah wondered about the chickens of old and the denizens of today’s cubicles, and put the parallel firmly out of her mind. At any rate, Belfast was riding a wave of prosperity.
Sarah turned from her musings, and headed up Church Street in search of Jamison Kincaid’s office.
“IRISH!” A shout echoed off the store fronts and froze pedestrians in mid-stride.
Her honey blond hair was streaked with gray and her freckled face was older, but the approaching figure was unmistakably Sarah’s childhood friend.
“Marlee Sue?” Sarah said.
After an enthusiastic embrace, they stepped back.
“You haven’t changed a bit,” Marlee Sue said, examining Sarah. “What brings you to Maine?”
“I’m spending the summer with the Merlews, but right now I’m looking for Jamison Kincaid’s office. How about you?”
Gravely Dead: A Midcoast Maine Mystery Page 5