“I live here. Moved up seven years ago. God, what a coincidence bumping into you like this. I can hardly believe it.”
Marlee Sue pointed out Kincaid’s office and they arranged to meet for lunch after Sarah’s appointment.
* * *
“Thanks for fitting me in this morning,” Sarah said.
Kincaid looked to be in his forties, tall, with a luxuriant head of wavy brown hair done in a style that reminded her of JFK. “It was a pleasant surprise to discover that you were right here in Maine,” he said. “We had your Sudbury address, but that’s where we hit a dead end. Cathy Leduc might have known you were going to be up this way, but she’s disappeared, and I never thought to check with the Merlews.”
“I’m afraid your letter got delayed in the forwarding.”
“Well, it all worked out in the end,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. His expression turned formal. “You understand the original will was prepared years ago, not long after Evan Huggard died. In it, she left her husband’s lobsterboat and a dinghy in addition to the Herreshoff to you. Apparently, the Herreshoff is the only boat that survived.”
Kincaid shuffled the paperwork. “As I said when you called, your inhritance is minimal, other than the boat. I gather that Myra never mentioned any of this to you?”
“No. It was a complete surprise until the Merlews wrote to me.”
He nodded. “She didn’t want anyone to know the terms of her will, except for telling the Merlews about her boats going to you.”
“Probably because Owl was stored in their barn,” Sarah said.
Kincaid looked mildly disapproving. “Yes. Well, no harm done.”
He leaned back in his chair. “I did some pro bono work for Myra, actions against the town, and found her to be a very opinionated old lady.” He paused. “At any rate, the bulk of the estate, the house and land, was left to her sister.”
“She had a sister?”
“Cara Turbot. I’m told she moved away after graduating from high school. She lives in a nursing home outside Cincinnati. Pleasant, but a little vague.” Looking as though he regretted the indiscretion, Kincaid shuffled some papers.
“I wonder what she’ll do with Myra’s place,” Sarah said.
“No secret there. She’s planning to sell it once the will is settled and she gets the title. Brian Curtis will have the listing. He’s a Realtor in Burnt Cove.”
Kincaid handed Sarah a copy of Myra’s will. “As you can see, the will was changed last winter to add Cathy Leduc as an heir. She inherits Myra’s Ford, which Myra gave her in advance, and the contents of the house, which were lost in the fire. Unfortunately for Cathy, the old woman didn’t believe in banks, so any cash and other valuables must have burned. I tried to persuade Myra to get a safe deposit box, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Fortunately, we held a copy.” He shook his head sadly.
“Anyway, as for the rest of your inheritance—” Kincaid smiled apologetically and referred to his copy of the will. “Cutting through the legal jargon, you inherit her Herreshoff sailboat, which you already have, her Studebaker and the contents of the outbuildings: a lawnmower, assorted hand tools, hoe, shovels, rake, and so forth. I stopped by the place after she died, but I haven’t done an inventory. Perhaps a lawn sale would be in order.”
Kincaid handed her an official looking document.
“Myra left you this as well. It’s an old deed to her property, from when Evan Huggard’s grandfather bought the place back in the 1800's. It’s worthless, really.”
Sarah looked over the handwritten pages and imagined a secretary painstakingly inking in the legalese. Why would Myra want her to have an old deed?
“It’s worthless?” she said.
He smiled indulgently. “Pretty much, except as a souvenir. It simply shows that Evan Huggard’s grandfather owned the property, and the deed is on file with the registry of deeds. I gather she never mentioned it to you and it doesn’t ring any bells?”
“It’s all news to me,” Sarah replied.
Surrendering to another fit of candor, Kincaid said, “Sometimes people that age can get fixated on an idea that only makes sense to them, and often it’s best just to go along with their whims.”
* * *
Sarah and Marlee Sue had a leisurely lunch at Darby’s Restaurant in downtown Belfast. Marlee Sue had recommended the place as they walked down High Street, describing it as “kind of like an Irish pub.” Sarah’s straight-laced upbringing hadn’t exposed her to many such establishments, but the food was good, and the old-fashioned bar, embossed metal ceiling, and intimate tables provided a comfortable atmosphere for them to catch up on the past. Marlee Sue had moved to Maine after her parents died, and now she worked as an investment advisor at NGTS Bank and Trust, which employed many of Belfast’s residents. In turn, Sarah told of her career as a nurse before marrying Claude, and their recent divorce.
“I’m going to spend the summer living in the Merlew’s granny flat and sailing around Burnt Cove,” Sarah concluded.
“Sailing? In what?”
“Remember Owl?”
“The old camp boat the Merlews had?”
“Owl was Myra’s boat,” Sarah said. “She left it to me in her will.”
Marlee Sue’s jaw sagged. “Myra’s boat?”
“It turns out Myra bought it for the camp to use.”
“I thought she hated the camp. I thought she hated the kids, too.” Marlee Sue shook her head in amazement. “And she bought a boat for them to sail?” She shook her head again. “There was more to the old bat than I thought. But isn’t Owl a wreck by now?”
“I’m still working on it, but it’s almost ready to go.”
“You’re doing the work yourself?”
“Mostly. I’ve got some help.” Sarah told about Oliver.
“You sure are a glutton for punishment. I’ve got a boat of my own. A real boat. A power boat.”
“You never did like sailing, as I remember.”
“Darn right. Why sit around all day waiting for the wind to blow when you can go wherever you want in no time?” Marlee Sue leaned her elbows on the table and regarded Sarah. “So you’re going to be a middled-aged beach bum for the summer, but then what? Any plans for after that?”
“You always were disgustingly practical,” Sarah groused.
“Somebody has to be. Are you going to look for a job? I’ve got some pull at NGTS, and it’s a great place to work, good benefits, health insurance, nice atmosphere, even travel. I got to spend three months at their branch in San Francisco last fall.”
“But I trained as a nurse,” Sarah protested.
“That’s okay. They support a bunch of community projects too. Come to think of it, they’re helping to fund a place for troubled teens called The Spruce Cone Camp. You know, problem kids, drug abuse, and all that. It’s just starting up, and you’d be a natural with your experience as a counselor at Migawoc.”
“I’ll probably go back to Massachusetts in the fall.”
“What for? Why not make a fresh start here?”
“Don’t rush me. I’ll think about all that later,” Sarah said, remembering how pushy Marlee Sue could be. Myra’s letter was in her purse, and she pulled out the photographs.
“Remember this?” Sarah said, handing her the first photo.
Sarah’s companion squinted at the picture. “I’d forgotten about Myra and her damn camera,” she said. “She always seemed to have it in her pocket. Too bad she was such a lousy photographer.”
The photo showed Sarah wrapped vampishly around an upright granite stone. Her companion lay on the ground nearby, her eyes shut and her tongue hanging out of the side of her mouth. Marlee Sue laughed. “It’s the ‘Heathen Brats’ picture.”
Sarah laughed with her. “I’d forgotten she called us that when she took it.”
Sarah handed over another photo.
It was near the end of the summer, and they had come across a stray arrow in the underbrush, an escapee from th
e archery field. The snapshot showed Marlee Sue standing against a big oak tree at the edge of the field, holding the arrow against her stomach and grimacing. Sarah was standing beside her, munching on an apple, desert from their lunch. Sarah didn’t remember why Myra was there.
Marlee Sue dissolved in gales of laughter. “I remember that. It’s the William Tell picture! God, the times we had.”
The third picture had been taken in August of Sarah’s last summer at Migawoc, and it showed Sarah kneeling in the vegetable garden. The Studebaker was visible behind her, with a small, chipped enamel saucepan full of baby potatoes sitting on its hood. Marlee Sue glanced at the picture and laughed again.
“We should call it the ‘Missing Ring’ picture,” Marlee Sue said. “I remember her telling you that she’d lost her wedding ring in there. She conned you into digging up half her potatoes looking for it. I bet the ring was in her pocket the whole time.”
“They were just baby potatoes,” Sarah said, “and digging them was kind of like a treasure hunt. I think she wanted a handful for supper, and to teach me where potatoes come from.”
“We were stupid little twits, doing all that work while she stood around insulting us.”
“It was her way of teaching us something about life.”
“Her life, maybe. But who wants to live like that?”
Chapter 8
Route 1 runs through the town of Lincolnville, whose beach of fine grey sand was squeezed in between the Lobster Shack Restaurant and the Islesboro ferry terminal. From there the road wended its way through Camden, where stately nineteenth-century mansions lined the streets, and the downtown was filled with upscale shops. Sarah scarcely noticed these sights as she thought about her morning.
It was exciting to find Marlee Sue right here in Maine, but her old friend’s efforts to plan the rest of Sarah’s life had been irritating. One of the reasons she had come to Maine was to do just that, but surely it wouldn’t hurt to start off with a week or two of down time before thinking about her future. For all his faults, Claude was a successful tax attorney, and he’d agreed to a generous divorce settlement that would keep her from starvation, so there was no financial crisis. Sarah supposed it was just a part of her friend’s nature to be a little-miss-fix-it.
Absorbed in all this, Sarah headed down Squirrel Point road towards Myra’s place as though drawn there by a magnet.
This time she pulled into the driveway.
Sarah’s shiny black Explorer looked like it had come from another planet compared to her newly acquired Studebaker. Beyond it and the decaying chicken coop was a small tool shed whose door was propped shut with a stick. The ramshackle structure was home to Myra’s lawn mower as well as the gardening tools Sarah had come to know in her youth. And all these treasures were now hers, Sarah thought with a smile.
The smile died when she opened the shed door and peered at the assortment of worn out gardening tools. These odds-and-ends had been treasures to Myra, probably more important to her than Owl. Why on earth had the old woman left all this to her? Sarah knew that Myra had influenced her life, for better or for worse, but it hadn’t occurred to her that she might have influenced Myra’s life in return. The hard-faced woman had seemed like Maine granite: tough, independent, unchanging and unchangeable—certainly beyond being influenced by a teenage girl. Had she really been so important to Myra as to deserve all this? The idea was unsettling.
Sarah turned away from the tool shed, noticed that the outhouse was gone, and felt oddly comforted by the idea that Myra must have finally gotten indoor plumbing.
She walked slowly past the foundation, trying not to look at the spot where the front door had been, where Myra had died. The big, cast iron cookstove that started the fire lay on its side at the bottom of the cellar hole, rusty and half-buried by pieces of burned wood, but otherwise little the worse for wear.
She crossed the overgrown lawn, passing through the screen of trees, to the ledges along the water. A gull’s cry echoed over the water, clashing with the whine of a saw from the vast mansion that was taking shape on the camp’s former archery field. To her right as she reached the shore were the collapsed remains of Evan Huggard’s lobster shack, where he had kept his traps and fishing gear. There was nothing left of the building now but a few rotting boards and part of the roof, gradually sinking into the brush.
It was half-tide, exposing the granite, wet and slick, where it sloped to the water. Sarah stared out over the sound, where she had learned to sail and later taught others as well. She could almost hear the youngsters’ excited shrieks as Owl heeled to a gust of wind.
She shivered, not so much from the cool breeze as from the sudden feeling that the ghosts of her past were standing here, invisible, watching, and somehow evil. Sarah looked around uneasily, and scolded herself for letting the place get to her.
Most of the frontage was deep water, but a cleft in the rocks held a small area of mud that exposed itself at low tide. Myra used to dig clams there when she wasn’t too sore from arthritis and other vague ailments. She had persuaded the girls to dig clams for her one day when she was feeling “punk,” and Marlee Sue had wallowed bare-foot up to her knees in the mud, to Myra’s disgust. Sarah had worn her sneakers, without the socks, and never could get them completely clean afterwards.
The air suddenly felt thick with malice as she stood alone, and her heart raced with the sense of being watched.
This was ridiculous. Next thing, she’d start imagining Myra crawling out of the cellar hole, her nightgown still smoldering. Sarah spun around again, saw a flash of movement through the trees as if someone had darted behind the Explorer as she turned. Cut it out for heaven’s sake, she scolded herself, it was probably just a squirrel. The place is called Squirrel Point, after all.
She turned back to face the water. She was spending far too much time thinking about Myra and the past, and it was beginning to get to her. It was high time to start occupying her mind with other—
“Good Lord, it’s Sarah Johnson!”
The voice at her elbow nearly catapulted Sarah off the rocks. She spun around to see a vaguely familiar face. Who was it? Oh yes, Debbie Vincent. The Vincents, Debbie and George, had lived near them in Sudbury for a while before moving away. Sarah remembered him being in banking of some kind, and retired.
Sarah struggled to catch her breath, willing her heart to slow.
“Debbie,” she said, “what a surprise. I didn’t know you were around here.”
“Our house is next door, beyond the Borofsky’s new place. The driveway with the iron gates.” Debbie looked at Sarah worriedly. “You look pale. I’m sorry if I gave you a start. What brings you up to Maine?”
“I’m spending the summer here,” Sarah replied.
“That’s wonderful. There’s a regular little colony of ‘Squirrel Pointers’ here; at least that’s what we call ourselves. We’ll have to get together for cocktails. You and Claude will fit right in. It will be just like old times to have the Johnsons back in the neighborhood.”
“It’s Cassidy now. Claude and I are divorced.”
“Oh, well,” Debbie said, “that’s too bad, though I always thought you two had a lot of differences to overcome. And Claude? Is he still in Sudbury?”
“An apartment in Boston.”
“Well, it is nice to catch a glimpse of you anyway,” Debbie said briskly. “I saw the car pull in and thought you might be a Realtor, or someone looking to buy the place.”
“I used to know Myra,” Sarah said, suddenly wanting to needle Debbie.
“You did?” Debbie stepped back a pace. “How?”
“I went to camp here and met Myra then.”
“What a coincidence,” Debbie said distractedly. “I hardly laid eyes on her myself, though George dropped in to visit her once.” She shuddered discretely. “It’s terrible to think she died right here. The house had almost completely burned down before somebody drove by and saw it. There isn’t much traffic here at night during the
winter.”
Debbie’s eyes flicked towards the charred stones. “I can’t imagine what people were thinking of, to let a crazy old woman live alone like that. I’m surprised the police didn’t take her away. And the Ocean View nursing home is nearby too.” She shook her head sadly. “Maine is still awfully backward. The welfare people in Massachusetts would have moved her out of there years ago.”
* * *
Sarah pulled into Oliver’s driveway early the next morning and parked beside Owl. A collection of timbers were braced against the boat’s damaged side, held in place by a web of ropes that enveloped both Owl and the trailer she sat on. Pushing the hull back into shape, Sarah supposed. She was greeted by Wes, who barked and wagged at the Explorer’s door. She could hear the whine of a saw from inside the shop.
Sarah got out and patted Wes tentatively on the head. “Good doggie,” she said, much to his delight. Emboldened, she patted him some more and was rewarded with a look of joyful adoration and a busily wagging tail. The creature didn’t seem to be fussy about who patted him, so long as he got attention.
An elderly riding mower, its seat replaced by a box-like frame filled with motors and electronics, sat inside the shop’s door.
“What’s that?” she asked, indicating the contraption as Oliver shut off the saw.
“Lawnzilla. It’s a robotic lawnmower.”
“You built it?”
“It’s a work in progress,” he said vaguely. “I hate mowing lawns.”
“And it works all by itself?”
“It will when I get the bugs out,” he replied defensively.
“Anyhow, you’re just in time,” he added, giving her a handful of strips. They were the length of her forearm, the width of the old frames, and about the thickness of cardboard. “Your new frames.”
“They are? They don’t look long enough.”
“You only need to replace a couple of feet around the breaks.”
“And how do I do that?”
Gravely Dead: A Midcoast Maine Mystery Page 6