“You think Cathy told somebody else about the pictures?” Oliver said, a knot tightening in his stomach.
“What else could it be? As I said, I don’t think Cathy knew what they were, just ‘blackmail stuff,’ Myra had used against us.”
Kate leaned forward earnestly, putting her hand on Oliver’s arm. “We should have seen it coming. First, she blackmailed us for money, then she tried to influence Sam’s vote on the planning board. That’s when we shut her down.
“Knowing Myra, we should have realized right away that there was something fishy about her giving Owl to Sarah, and done something about it. It’s our fault all these things are happening to the poor girl.”
He had been a fool, Oliver thought. The burglar in his yard had been trying to steal Owl, not Cathy’s boat.
“But why did Myra dump all this on Sarah?”
“I suppose she didn’t trust us, because of the planning board. And Cathy was just a kid.”
“Still, why Sarah?
“Partly because Myra knew she could keep a secret, like she had with Evan, but it was more than that.”
Kate leaned back in her chair with a sigh. “You have to understand how it is. God, we’ve lived her fifty-two years, and I still struggle with it.”
She looked at him sadly. “I suppose prejudice is part of human nature, the need to have someone else, someone different, to look down on. The Migawoc kids were good children, but most of them were from well-to-do families. They thought of Myra as a backwoods hick, who didn’t even have running water, and kept her chickens in the living room during the winter. They made fun of Myra and her ways, and naturally she resented that.”
“And Sarah respected Myra.” Oliver said.
Kate nodded. “She was the only girl who tried to understand Myra and not make fun of her.”
“And so Myra respected Sarah.”
“It works both ways, doesn’t it? To Myra, Sarah was someone she could trust who knew the bigger world that Myra didn’t.”
“Someone who would know how to carry on Myra’s crusade, whatever it was,” Oliver said.
Kate nodded, and her voice turned brisk. “When we learned about Sarah being run off the road, we began to worry that someone was out to get her because of the pictures. By then, we just wanted her out of here, out of harm’s way, regardless of the pictures. Two people had been killed already, and someone was obviously after her.”
* * *
The Honda’s engine had noisy tappets, and they ticked like a chorus of impatient clocks as Oliver sat at the end of Kate’s driveway and tried to make sense out of what he’d heard. Oliver figured it was a safe bet that Owl’s flotation tank held photographs implicating Sam in Evan’s murder, which was probably what Cathy had wanted to talk to Sarah about.
But how incriminating could the photographs be? Shots of Sam rowing, with Evan propped up in the bow? “Smile for Mother Huggard while I get a nice picture of you and dear old Evan?” No, Sam wouldn’t have posed while Myra flashed away with her camera. He would have tried to hide his face, and Evan’s body, from the lens.
And what did the pictures, assuming they hadn’t rotted away, have to do with anything now? Oliver could see Kate and Sam paying Myra to keep the whiff of scandal from destroying Migawoc, regardless of what the photos actually showed. But as Kate said, the camp was closed now and Myra was dead, so the pictures weren’t a threat any more. They couldn’t force Sam to do anything, like alter his vote on the planning board, so why did someone still want them?
On the other hand, in the world of secrets that Myra had created, it wasn’t what you knew, but what you thought you knew, that was dangerous. And somebody could easily think the “blackmail stuff” in Owl had enough leverage to influence Sam’s vote, and therefore was important enough to try stealing the boat, and take a gun along in the process.
It was also possible that Myra had hidden something more dangerous than photos of Sam and Evan in Owl, something that involved Sarah and put her life in danger. There was no telling what else might be stashed away in Owl’s flotation tank.
If there was something else, and the Merlews weren’t involved, then who was? Who else knew that something incriminating was hidden in Owl? Who else might Cathy confide in besides the Merlews? He couldn’t think of anyone except Eldon, who was notoriously bad at keeping secrets, or Ziggy, who had been away for the winter.
There was still the question of why anyone who wanted to get their hands on something hidden in Owl would arrange to run Sarah off the road and possibly kill her.
Unless she and Owl were both threats. If that was true, the killer might be trying to eliminate whatever was hidden in the boat’s flotation tank, as well as the recesses of Sarah’s mind.
What about the headstone? If it fit into the puzzle somewhere, Oliver suspected that Sarah had some ideas that she hadn’t shared. He headed north to Route 1, and Pearly’s establishment, trying not to think about the fact that somewhere out there, Sarah and Owl were alone. Two targets together at last.
Chapter 26
Gentle, sandy beaches are scarce along this part of the Maine coast, where a grain of sand can be the size of a dump truck, and sailors live in dread of the crispy-crunch of granite against their tender keels.
But Maine is a place of contrasts in many things, and the northern end of Long Island offered a small beach tucked in among the ledges. Sarah admired the yellow sand as Owl glided by just offshore. She remembered when the Migawoc girls had picnicked here. Sarah would take a bunch of campers in Owl, while Sam ferried the rest in the Boston Whaler, a scow-like craft that was said to be unsinkable.
The Whaler, with its big Evinrude engine, was fast even when loaded down with screaming kids. As a result, Sam would wait until Owl was at least half way across Kwiguigam Sound before he started out with his group, soon passing Sarah’s crew amid traded catcalls and insults.
A young couple had pulled their outboard onto the beach and were unloading picnic supplies. They waved as she glided by.
Sarah had brought a picnic lunch and she toyed with the idea of anchoring off the beach and swimming ashore. A hand in the icy water quickly put an end to that plan. Oliver had mentioned loaning her a Puffin to use. She had no idea what a Puffin was, other than an odd looking bird that nested on some of the offshore islands. She hoped that Oliver’s version would be small enough to tow behind Owl.
She looked across the sound to where the Vincent’s house and the Borofsky’s nearly completed mansion covered Migawoc’s old playing fields. A new pier jutted out from the shore in front of the Borofsky’s house. An unbroken procession of houses ran from Burnt Cove all the way to Myra’s land.
Sarah had read that the Maine coastline was some 3500 miles long, counting its myriad coves and inlets. Forty years ago, she wouldn’t have thought it possible for all that shoreline to be cut up into house lots, but that seemed to be just what was happening.
The thought reminded her of high school biology class experiments with Petri dishes. One placed a minute speck of bacteria onto the pristine medium and watched it grow, spreading faster and faster, an avalanche of grayish-green that didn’t stop until the dish was covered.
The northwest wind that had brought Sarah this far turned fickle as it faded away, and soon Owl was completely becalmed, rolling listlessly in the swell.
Sarah unzipped her soft-sided picnic cooler and extracted lunch, a container of yogurt, carton of iced tea, a small bag of potato chips, and a bunch of grapes.
The yogurt was a concession to the bathroom scales. It hadn’t occurred to her that she might have two eligible men squiring her around, though she suspected that Oliver was more interested in Owl than in her. At any rate, she hadn’t thought such attention was something that happened to fifties-something women.
While she ate, Sarah pulled her purse from the bottom of the canvas carryall and looked again at Myra’s worn snapshots
The William Tell picture was on top.
Myra had probab
ly heard them laughing and came out to investigate just as Marlee Sue posed herself against the big oak tree near the water’s edge and held the stray arrow to her stomach, pretending to be skewered.
One of Marlee Sue’s more delightful gifts in those days was the ability to roll one eyeball upward and the other one down while wiggling her eyebrows like Groucho Marks, and she performed this feat for the camera, draping her tongue out of the corner of her mouth in a hideous grimace. Myra captured the tableau with her Brownie camera, called them bloodthirsty brats, and stalked off. The photo didn’t do credit to Marlee Sue’s facial gymnastics.
Why did Myra send her these pictures? She must have had a reason. Myra had a reason for everything she did, though she usually expected you to figure out what it was. Sarah suspected this photo was saved because it showed the disputed oak tree on the Borofsky’s property line. She still didn’t understand why the old woman wanted her to have the photo, or the apparently worthless deed, for that matter. Why would Sarah need to know where Myra’s property lines were? Cathy probably could have answered Sarah’s questions if she hadn’t died first. Is that what had gotten the girl killed? Sarah wondered if she was Myra’s backup, in case something happened to Cathy. It was not a comforting thought.
Sarah got out the Heathen Brats picture. It had been taken the summer before the William Tell photo. Myra must have followed the two girls as they worked their way along the wooded shoreline. In any case, she came upon them just as Sarah embraced a tall splinter of rock set into the ground a few yards back from the shore. It was almost as high as she was.
“You two ain’t got yourselves lost again, have you?” Myra never let them forget their first visit.
“We’re just exploring,” Marlee Sue replied defensively. Strictly speaking, they weren’t supposed to go away from camp unsupervised, and Myra knew it.
“Don’t mess with that monument,” Myra snapped. Sarah, still leaning against the stone pillar, decided this frowsty woman in the grimy cotton-print house dress didn’t know that much after all. Sarah had been to Bunker Hill in Boston many times, so she knew what a real monument looked like, and this little piece of rock wasn’t even close. She willfully wrapped her arms around the stone in a bear hug and tried to wiggle it, but the granite post was too firmly buried.
Taking her cue from Sarah, Marlee Sue flopped to the ground, nearby, her head lolling to one side while she did the famous Eyeball Roll. The camera angle made it look as though Sarah was about to topple the stone onto Marlee Sue.
Myra’s glare sobered them. “Get back to camp, you heathen brats,” she growled.
The two girls ran off through the woods laughing and yelling “heathen brats,” to each other, oblivious to Myra’s withering stare.
If the William Tell picture was meant to show Myra’s property line with the Borofskys, the Heathen Brats picture must show the line on the other side. Grinshnell was the name Brian had mentioned. There was still the Missing Ring photo of Sarah digging potatoes. She had no idea what it meant.
A light breeze from the south began to ripple the glassy water, and Owl’s sail slowly filled.
Sarah set a course across the sound towards the Borofsky’s pier.
* * *
Oliver found Pearly and Eldon seated in front of the boat shop on a pair of battered metal chairs liberated from the office. They had just finished lunch.
Eldon didn’t feel cooperative about answering more questions.
“I’ve been telling the cops all that stuff for days,” he grumbled. “Why should I go over it again for you?”
Oliver pulled up a sawhorse and sat on it, facing Eldon. “Because I think whoever killed Cathy is after Sarah too. Did you ever hear Myra and Cathy talk about any old photographs?”
“The cops never asked anything like that, but yeah, Myra had a big cardboard box full of snapshots. She took a helluva lot of pictures. She and Cath used to look through them.”
“What were they pictures of?”
“I don’t know—the usual stuff, I guess.” Eldon said, thinking. “She had a lot of shots of the place, the vegetable garden, a tree that blew down in some storm or other, a deer in the back yard, big snow storms, that kind of stuff. There were a bunch of pictures of Burnt Cove, and she had pictures of people too, but I don’t know who they were.”
The same south wind that was carrying Sarah to the far side of the sound caressed Oliver’s cheek as he sat and wondered what any of this meant.
“When was the last time she had them out?” he asked, groping for some clue that would make sense of it all.
“Who knows?” Eldon grumbled, then thought for a moment. “Wait. Last fall, just before Thanksgiving. I remember because it was colder than hell, and I was filling up Myra’s wood box. They had a bunch of pictures out on the kitchen table.”
“Did you look at any of them?”
“Not much. She had so many, they kind of blurred together after a while. Anyhow, they’re all burned up now.”
“Not all,” Oliver replied.
Eldon’s eyes widened as understanding dawned. “Jesus, you mean Myra was blackmailing someone with them?”
“Mmm,” Oliver said. Eldon was quick. Plus, he knew Myra altogether too well.
“And that’s why someone killed her?” Eldon went on, “And they burned her house to get rid of the evidence?”
“Maybe, but I think there’s more to it than that. I just don’t know what,” Oliver said.
Eldon scowled. “Why Cathy?”
“I’m not sure, except that Cathy knew where Myra had hidden some of the photos,” Oliver said carefully. He wondered just how much it was safe to say.
Pearly groaned. “In the Herreshoff?”
Oliver nodded reluctantly.
“You mean we’re going to have to cut open another goddam flotation tank?”
“Flotation tank?” Eldon glared at them. “I don’t like it when you guys go off like this.”
“Cathy may have gotten into trouble over the headstone,” Oliver said hurriedly.
“She had nothing to do with the headstone,” Eldon said, leaning forward in his chair and looking stubborn. “Cath would never have dug up a gravestone. That’s desecration.”
“Eldon, Eldon,” Pearly scolded, “we found it sealed up in Cathy’s boat.”
“So? Maybe I hid it in there.”
Oliver turned on the young man. “For chrissake, if you really want to find out who killed Cathy, you’ve got to start telling the truth!”
“What about you? You guys have been lying to me and the cops right and left, leaving that stone lying around the shop.”
“I was trying to keep you out of trouble,” Pearly said. “Not that it did any good.”
Sounding like an enraged bull, Eldon exhaled a great blast of air that stirred the dust at his feet. “Well I sure as hell didn’t put the thing in Cathy’s boat, and I don’t know who did. I didn’t even know there was a headstone until the cops started asking about it.”
“Cathy never mentioned it?” Oliver said.
“I just said so, didn’t I? What’s so hard about all this, anyway? Find the other half of the stone and you’ll find the killer.”
“I don’t know why that makes sense,” Oliver said, “but I’m afraid you’re right.”
Chapter 27
Pearly’s office was a small room, attached like an afterthought to the side of the boat shed. A computer and oversized printer took up most of the desk that filled one wall, while a torn Naugahyde sofa dominated the opposite wall. Oliver slouched in Pearly’s gray metal swivel chair and pecked at the phone.
Brian didn’t answer. Perhaps he was with a customer and had turned off his cell phone. Perhaps he was out in his boat, beyond range of his cell phone. Perhaps Sam was out shopping. Perhaps they were both innocent of murdering Myra and Cathy.
Or perhaps not. After all, Sam had killed Evan. Though, when Oliver thought about it, Kate hadn’t actually said that in so many words.
H
e was getting nowhere. Even the photographs, the “blackmail stuff,” was a dead end. What had he missed?
The chair creaked as Oliver turned to stare out the window. What made Myra tick, anyway? He had thought of her as a survivor, the last of her kind, a dying old woman clinging with ruthless stubbornness to a dying way of life. He had seen something noble in Myra’s struggle, in spite of her curmudgeonly, even illicit, ways. Yes, she had extorted money from people in her effort to hang on, but that was a matter of survival.
Myra had extorted money from the Borofskys and the Merlews, and probably others for all he knew. Apparently, she persuaded Cathy to dig up a headstone. Had Myra gone too far with the headstone, and gotten herself killed?
What fatal mistake had she made in the last few weeks of her life? Despite her failing mind, Myra was still hard-headed enough to know the end was near, and she appeared to have been putting her affairs in order. Updating her will and getting rid of her car seemed to indicate that, even if there was an ulterior motive to her Yuletide generosity. What might she have done that turned out to be fatal?
Sarah had shown him another side of Myra, an unexpected altruism. Owl had been a generous gift to Migawoc’s girls—an anonymous gift to a bunch of kids who treated her with scorn. Myra may have hated the wealth the camp represented, but she must have cared about the individual girls, a few of them at least. How had she resolved those conflicting emotions?
A flash of movement caught Oliver’s eye as a red Porsche wheeled into Pearly’s yard. A figure emerged from the vehicle. From Sarah’s description, this must be her ex-husband. What was his name? Clyde? Whatever he was called, the leisure-suited individual sauntering towards Pearly’s shop looked too flashy and pleased with himself for Oliver’s taste.
His mind drifted back to Sarah’s conversation with Pearly that morning. He jerked himself upright in the chair, realizing what he’d missed before. Myra did have a weapon at her disposal, one that would appeal to her idiosyncratic view of justice. But what had gone wrong? Had she put her trust in the wrong person, a mistake that had cost her and Cathy their lives?
Gravely Dead: A Midcoast Maine Mystery Page 18