“What are you doing to keep busy?” he asked.
“Working on Owl,” Sarah said. “I’m hoping to get her in the water next weekend.”
“You working over at Pearly’s yard?”
“Oliver Wendell’s place.”
“Ah.” Brian was silent for a while. “I sold him that property when he moved here ten years ago. Nice view land.”
“It seems isolated.”
Brian nodded. “It’s about a mile to his nearest neighbor, but I guess he likes it that way after what happened.”
“Oh?”
“He won’t talk much about his past, but I do know his wife and daughter were killed in an automobile accident down in Massachusetts about twelve years ago.”
They came to a decorative concrete wall. “The Duvals,” Brian said. “He made a fortune in real estate.”
“A competitor?”
Brian’s laugh was as infectious as his smile. “No, he builds shopping centers down in New York.” They passed a driveway paved with cobblestones. “That’s the Copellos. A big-shot corporate lawyer. They come up for a month or two in the summer.”
He drove at a crawl, ignoring the cars that impatiently swung out to pass. “Most of these are summer houses, except the Vincents and a few others.”
“It seems like a waste to build these big places for just a few weeks in the summer,” Sarah said.
“It pays my bills, so it can’t be all bad,” Brian said. “I sold most of the land and Roy built some of the houses.”
“Do any local people own waterfront along here?”
He gave her a perplexed look. “Depends on what you mean by local—a lot of people from away have lived here for years. If you mean people who were born here, then no, not along this stretch, except for Myra, and she’s gone. Plenty of locals own land away from the water, and some of the tidal frontage, too.”
He gave her another high-wattage smile. “The way I see it, none of us are local if you go back far enough.”
They paused at the huge new house going in between the Vincent’s and Myra’s place. “The Borofskys,” Brian told her. “He’s a chemist. Figured a way to take the smell out of overripe fish, or something like that. Made a fortune.”
Brian looked at Sarah as though trying to gauge her reaction. “Doesn’t look much like the old camp, does it?”
“No,” she said wistfully.
“Too bad, but times change, and we have to make the best of it.”
A good, pragmatic Maine attitude, Sarah thought. She suspected that Brian was one to make the best of anything that came along.
“I worked at the camp back in the days when you were there,” Brian said. “Sam hired a bunch of us kids every spring to help open the cabins and tidy up the grounds. Then we’d come back in the fall and put everything away. Of course you wouldn’t remember me because we’d be done by the time you all arrived.”
“In the sixties?”
Brian nodded. “Started when I was about fourteen and kept on right through high school. Sam paid well and he didn’t work us too hard. Money was scarce in those days, but I saved up and got a boat and some traps, like most of the kids around here.”
They came to Myra’s scruffy driveway. “That was one of the oldest houses in town,” Brian said. “Built by one of the Burndts in the early 1800's, back when they owned most of Squirrel Point, before the Huggards began settling here.”
“And you’ll be selling the place?”
“Yes.” Brian smiled. It was certainly one of his better features. Sarah suspected that grin sold a lot of real estate. “It’ll sell for well into six figures, especially with houses like the Vincents and Borofskys next door. I’m hoping we can sub-divide the property. We’ll get a lot more if we sell it in two lots.”
“I suppose there are restrictions,” Sarah said.
“We don’t have zoning laws here, like you do in Massachusetts, but we do have restrictions on lot size and so on. For instance, Burnt Cove requires a minimum of 200 feet of water frontage for a new lot, and Myra has just a little short of 400. I think we can get a waiver from the planning board for two lots, though. I’ll file an application once the estate is settled.”
“Did Myra know how much it was worth?”
“She didn’t care. She was just determined to stay there. I talked to her a few times, trying to get her to sell. She could have gotten rid of the place and lived like a queen somewhere else, but a million bucks didn’t mean any more to her than a thousand.” He seemed baffled by Myra’s attitude towards money.
“She must have been very attached to the place.”
“I don’t think Myra had the get-up-and-go to move. At her age, she was too scared of any kind of change to try something new, even if it would be better. Besides, she didn’t need the money all that much anyway.”
“She didn’t?”
“Myra lived pretty cheap. She got Social Security, and Evan used to make good money lobstering, even if he did go on a bender every weekend. On top of that, the Merlews paid top dollar when they bought the three lots from Evan in the fifties and early sixties. Myra kept the purse strings, and she never spent a dime without wringing its neck first, so I’ll bet she still had some of that money stashed under her mattress.”
Sarah suspected that Brian was being overly optimistic about Myra’s finances. “I suppose her place will sell pretty quickly,” she said.
Brian gave a far more predatory grin than his usual smile. “Oh, yeah. People are already stopping in to ask about it.”
“Didn’t Myra drag down land values?”
“Probably, but what with her health, everybody knew she wouldn’t be there much longer.”
It occurred to Sarah that someone might not have wanted to wait that long for Myra to die.
“As a matter of fact, Myra owned a parcel right across the road from her house,” Brian added, pointing to the strips of orange flagging. “It’s on the market now. They’re selling it to raise cash to settle the estate, taxes and so on.”
“It’s not on the water. Is it worth much?”
“Oh, nothing like waterfront, of course. Still, this is a good neighborhood and it’s a nice piece of land, good house site. We’ve had a nibble or two.”
They drove on past Myra’s driveway. “Speaking of investment, see the flagging?” Brian said, pointing to the tape. “The lot beyond Myra was surveyed last fall. Prime frontage.”
“Will you be selling that too?”
“I hope so. It belongs to a guy in Boston, Jim Grinshnell. He bought it about seven years ago as an investment. A lot of people do that, of course. I talked to him when he was up last month.”
Brian sped up. “I thought we’d have lunch at the Squirrel Point Hotel. Then we can take a drive if you like and I’ll give you my Realtor’s Special guided tour.”
“Do you think I’m dressed up enough for the Hotel?”
“You’re fine,” he assured her. “It’s a lot more casual than it used to be. What did you make of St. Agnes, by the way?”
“It looks awfully big.”
“It fills up in the summer. Those rich summer people with the big estates down by the Hotel had big ideas back then. The mansions may have burnt down, but St. Agnes lives on. You picked a good Sunday to visit. Much nicer than a Low Sunday.”
“Low Sunday? Is that a different kind of service?”
He laughed again. “You could say that. It’s the tide. Those millionaires got cheap when it came to land for their church and they bought tidal frontage. For some reason those mud flats really stink at low tide, hydrogen sulphide gas or something. It gets pretty rugged if the wind is wrong. Attendance can be thin on a Low Sunday.”
He grinned at Sarah. “A little bit of St. Agnes tradition: check the tide before you go to church.”
“I suppose the town has been laughing at those idiots who built a church next to Gooseshit Flats ever since.”
The grin faded. “I imagine some people have,” he said.
* * *
Henry Wilson, president of the Burnt Cove historical society, was in his eighties, bald, and with the look of a retired college professor, which in fact he was.
“Nobody knows where Gerhard Burndt is buried.” Henry spoke with a mid-western accent. “The fact is, he was more famous in death than he was in life. The town wasn’t even named Burndt Cove until 1857, long after he passed on. We may think of him as the founding father, but in his day, he was just a farmer who happened to build the first house in the area, raised a big family, and died. Beyond that, he was an enigma.”
“So nobody paid much attention to where he was buried?” Oliver inquired, putting the delicate, bone-china teacup in the saucer beside his chair.
“Nobody paid much attention to him at all. It wasn’t until the area began to be settled that the Burndt family decided to put their mark on the place by naming the town after him.”
The wood stove in Henry Wilson’s study was cranking out an impressive amount of heat. Between that and the scalding tea, Oliver was starting to sweat. “But surely there must be some town records,” he said.
“There were, until the town hall burned down in 1871. We know he built the first house in town, but we can’t be sure he died in it.” Henry, in a cashmere sweater and wool jacket, seemed unaware that the room was hot enough to roast an ox. “Most people assume he’s in an unmarked grave in the Oak Hill cemetery, but for all we know, he may not even be buried in town.”
“Could Myra Huggard have known where he was buried?”
“It’s possible.” Henry sighed. “I would have loved to interview the old woman. That sort of oral history is priceless. Unfortunately, she saw me as an outsider and wouldn’t share her memories.”
“What about Cathy Leduc?”
Henry brightened. “She’s a member of the historical society, you know. Unusual for someone her age to be interested in the past. She gives me hope for the younger generation. Anyway, Myra did share some of her memories with Cathy, and she’s planning to write them down. I urged her to start as soon as possible, because memories do fade, even with the young. Want me to hot up your tea?”
“Oh, no thanks,” Oliver replied, fearing heat prostration. “Did she ever talk to you about her conversations with Myra?”
“Not as much as I would have liked. Myra talked to Cathy about Gerhard’s house in town. Having grown up there, Myra had some interesting anecdotes. Originally, all the land from behind the cemetery to the top of Oak Hill went with the house.”
“The land where the development is?”
“Yes. Myra could remember when it was still farmland. As a child, it used to be her job to herd the cows up to the pasture on top of Oak Hill every morning and round them up every afternoon. Myra must have had quite a life.”
* * *
It was mid-afternoon when Brian pulled into the Merlew’s driveway and lurched to a stop well short of Sarah’s door.
The front end of Eldon’s truck was visible beside the barn.
“I’ll let you out here,” he said hastily. Barely waiting for a response, Brian left her standing in the dust as he retreated.
Apparently, he and Eldon didn’t get along.
It had been a delightful afternoon. The Squirrel Point Hotel served a sumptuous meal in an atmosphere that recaptured the glory days of the Grand Hotel. Brian seemed to know everybody, stopping at several tables to greet people as they went into the restaurant.
Sarah wandered over to where Sam and Eldon were working on a corner of the barn. A large timber jutted from the back of Eldon’s truck, another stuck out from under the barn itself.
“Give it another tunk, Eldon,” Sam said.
Eldon, in worn jeans and a sweat-stained Grateful Dead tee-shirt, picked up a heavy sledge as though it was a tack hammer and swung it one-handed at the timber. The entire barn shook, rattling the windows. The timber slid further beneath the building.
“I saw you come in.”
Sarah turned to find Kate beside her. “You startled me. I didn’t see you there.”
“Why did you lie to us?” Kate demanded.
“Lie? About what?”
“About being run off the road. You said it was an accident. Pearly told us it wasn’t.”
“I didn’t say anything because I’m not sure it was intentional, and I didn’t want you to worry over nothing.”
“It was intentional,” Kate replied with surprising intensity. She was shivering. “I’m sorry we got you involved in this. If only—”
“Now, mother.” Sam interrupted. He had left Eldon to rattle the barn with his sledge. “Let’s all go inside and have some tea.”
Chapter 16
Sarah returned to her apartment after tea and traded her turtleneck and slacks for a sweatshirt and jeans. What had Kate meant about being sorry for getting her involved? Involved in what? Why had Sam hurried over to interrupt their conversation? In any event, Kate had recovered her composure by the time they got inside, and the couple were evasive on the subject in spite of Sarah’s prodding. What were they keeping from her?
The phone interrupted Sarah’s train of thought.
“Hello, mom.” Her son Jeffery’s voice sounded disconcertingly like Claude.
“Hi, Jeff,” she said. “I had hoped you got my message. I just wanted to say hello, and see how you were doing.”
“I’m doing fine, but you had me worried when I couldn’t get through on your cell,” he said.
“There are dead spots up here,” she replied evasively. In fact, Sarah had turned the phone off when she arrived, partly to keep Claude at bay, and partly as a self-imposed exile from her old life.
“You’re settling in all right then?” Jeff said.
“Everything’s great. The weather’s been good, the Merlews are wonderful, I’m meeting lots of new people, going to church, doing some shopping, and Owl is almost ready to go in the water—” Sarah caught herself babbling and stopped.
“Wow, sounds like you’ve been busy. Sorry I wasn’t around when you called. Dad and I have been worried about you up there all alone.”
“I’m not all alone, and it’s a nice break after everything. I really need some time away.”
“I can understand that, and I’m glad you’re having fun. You deserve it.”
Jeff went on, tentatively now. “You know, I haven’t taken sides in the divorce. It’s been hard enough for both of you as it is, but I hate to see either of you hurting—”
“I’m healing, not hurting,” she said, knowing the words sounded trite.
“I was thinking about dad. He’s been so upset and angry and depressed since you went to Maine. I’m scared he’ll do something foolish.”
Just like Claude to milk the whole family for sympathy, Sarah thought furiously. Aloud, she said, “I can’t do anything about Claude. He needs a good therapist to work through his problems.”
“It’s hard to make him see that. Getting rid of Lurlene would be a start. Then maybe you guys could—”
“I had to go to the doctor and get tested because of your father’s girlfriends!” she exploded. “Do you know how humiliating that was?”
There was a long pause.
“I’m sorry, mom. You’re right. I can’t know what you’ve been through, and I shouldn’t have stuck my nose into your business.”
“I’m sorry too, sweetheart. I know it’s been hard on you kids, but Claude will be all right. Really. He’s a lot stronger than he seems.” She hoped it was true.
* * *
Sarah switched on a few lights against the evening after Jeff hung up. They had moved on to safer topics, but she was still feeling shaky from her outburst, and she nearly went through the roof when a pounding shook the room. Eldon must have finished “tunking” the barn and was shifting his attention to her door. She ushered the young man inside, hoping he was as harmless as he seemed, and seated him on one of the dinette chairs.
Her guest drained the glass of lemonade she had handed him, and
sighed comfortably. “That sure hits the spot,” he said. The chair creaked in agony.
Sarah refilled his glass. “I hear you’ve been looking into what Cathy was doing before she disappeared.”
“Me and the cops. Figure I’d better do my own looking before they frame me with some crazy charge.”
“What have you found out?”
“Not much. Cath talked to the Merlews the morning after the fire, and they said she was upset, but she didn’t really tell them anything. People saw her driving around some after that, and she got gas up at the Irving station around the middle of the day. Nobody saw her after that, but her car ended up at Pearly’s shop, which didn’t look good since my prints were on the steering wheel. I told them I’d pushed it out of the way because it was parked in front of the door, but they don’t believe me.”
“That isn’t much to go on,” Sarah replied, wondering why Cathy would leave her car at Pearly’s yard. If she had left town, wouldn’t she have taken her car? Had she been killed there? No wonder the police suspected Eldon.
“I’m still asking around at stores and places,” he said, looking discouraged.
Sarah decided to try for a happier subject. “You two must have seen a lot of Myra.”
“We used to go over once or twice a week. Cath would tidy up the house, and I’d fix up stuff, or work outside. Myra had a little patch of vegetables, and I’d work on that.”
“What did Cathy and Myra talk about?”
Eldon fidgeted. “The usual stuff. Growing vegetables, cooking. And Cath loved to hear about the old days.”
Eldon fidgeted some more. “They were death on all the development going on around here. Myra would give me hell ’cause Roy is a builder—like I could tell him what to do. He has to make a living, doesn’t he? Myra went nuts when they started the Oak Hill development. Said somebody had to fight to keep the town from being ruined, teach those rich people a lesson.”
Eldon gave her a forlorn look. “Myra made so much trouble, I wonder if some of it rubbed off on Cathy. I keep asking, but nobody’s talking.”
Gravely Dead: A Midcoast Maine Mystery Page 11