Westfarrow Island

by Paul A. Barra

  “But he can’t just leave his business here. He’s bound to show up again.”

  Tagliabue nodded to her as the waitress arrived with their bowls of she-crab soup. She poured small carafes of sherry in them and left.

  “He might. I don’t think you or I are ever going to hear from him again. His law office is probably worthless now that his name has been besmirched by the state police and the sheriff’s office . . .”

  “Besmirched?”

  He ducked his head and colored a little. “It seems to me, Jack got in over his head, wanting to be a mob lawyer and make piles of dirty money. He found out how dangerous that life can be. I doubt he wants any more of it.”

  “Did he also find out how dangerous you can be, Tony?”

  He smiled at her.

  “I thought you liked having a dangerous man around.”

  “Oh, I do. I’m not complaining. I know you’ll have to go off now and then, even though you’re retired. I just wanted you to know.”

  She spooned some of her bisque as she looked at her husband, as if her view was through a mist somehow. He looked back and ate quietly. After lunch she asked him how he came to be in possession of such an expensive boat.

  “In my last conversation with her, Giselle intimated—”

  “Intimated?”

  “Suggested. She led me to believe that her agency was going to grant me a bonus, for my years of service. The Hatteras was it, I guess.”

  “She might be mysterious, but she’s generous.”

  “Amen to that.”

  “What will you do with her, the boat, I mean?”

  He laughed, shaking his head. He knew what she meant, still fighting off some latent jealousy over Giselle, who had taken up so much of his time and energy in years past.

  “I’ll clean her and get her shipshape and then sell it when the season starts back in.”

  “Maybe we should buy another cargo boat, for hauling hay. We’re going to need some every year.”

  “Good idea. Maybe I can teach you to be my mate aboard ship.”

  “I’d like that,” she said.

  He put on Joshua’s old Red Sox cap and they left together to make arrangements to berth the Hatteras at the marina until he could prepare their dock to keep her over the winter. On the way back to the horse farm, Agnes Ann noted darkening clouds west of the tree line and the bite of the wind through the pickup’s windows.

  “You might be a rich yachtsman, sonny boy, but you’ll have to start feeding hay to the horses once the fields frost over.”

  “I’m ready for that,” he said and powered up the windows.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  A week later the first frost arrived. Tagliabue went out to feed the animals before dawn. Along with the four horses—two geldings for riding and two brood mares—Agnes Ann kept two scrub goats who lived in the stalls with the horses at night and went out to the pastures with them every day. The goats picked their own stalls for the night and spent their days grazing. They were companion animals only and she thought they calmed the horses’ nervous dispositions. They ate whatever the bigger beasts ate. All six were moving around, stomping and shaking their heads, the goats bleating. The horses put their heads out over the half-door and watched as Tagliabue hauled a bale of hay off the nearest stack and cut the baling twine with his pocket knife. They nickered at him, hungry, since the fall grass was no longer adequate and they wanted hay.

  The bale sprang open. He took a slice for each horse and shook it out in his or her manger, looking for dust or any suspicious-looking growth. He let the goats out in the barn and fed them on the floor. When everyone was munching contentedly, Tagliabue picked up the half-bale remaining to put it back on the stack, piled off the floor by Jesse on a platform just tall enough to keep the goats from reaching it. Jesse always stacked the hay as it came in, newest to the back, so it occurred to Tagliabue that the day’s feed he had just given the animals was from the shipment brought over on Maven the day she had been holed by the Magpie. When he set the half-bale on the platform, something foreign pushed out from what had been the center of the intact bale. He pulled the hay away to see what it was: a baggie full of yellow capsules. Each was stamped with the legend: “IG322 300mg.” Tearing the bale open, he found ten quart-sized bags hiding inside; all were filled to bursting with pills.

  Tagliabue felt his stomach clench and he looked around him quickly, suddenly filled with anxiety. He had closed the barn door behind him when he entered, in case one of the horses got out of his stall. The lights he had left on low. Now he switched them on high and pulled his knife from his jeans. He opened hay bales at random. There were bags of pills hidden in every one he opened.

  When Anthony Tagliabue went around the acreage of his wife’s horse farm, caring for the animals, fixing, feeding, and cleaning, he carried his big Glock in a holster on the left side of his belt, the butt facing forward. There was a bullet in the pipe and the magazine was stacked full with more of them. He and Agnes Ann argued to each other that the gun was for varmints or maybe even to euthanize a badly injured farm animal, but they both were on edge because Jack Brunson was unaccounted for. Brunson was a dangerous loose end that was flapping around and distracting them from their happiness. Once Tagliabue realized the stacks of hay concealed some kind of drugs, he jacked a round into the handgun’s chamber. He let the animals out to pasture and walked to the house.

  Agnes Ann had a pot of coffee perking and was pan-frying a few herring fillets she had smoked the day before. She snapped a look at Tagliabue as soon as he walked through the door.

  “What’s the matter, Tony?”

  “How do you know anything’s the matter?” he asked as he reached for the landline telephone on the table.

  “You’ve finally learned to pace yourself and now you’re back to moving like you’re fighting a gale. What’s up?”

  “I figured out why Joshua was killed and the Maven holed.”

  Constable Ian Fletcher arrived within the hour. He accepted a mug of coffee and agreed to stand guard in the barn until Detective Coleman arrived from the mainland. Agnes Ann took him out a plate of fried herring and cornbread for breakfast. It was lunchtime before Coleman arrived with two lab people and a satchel of equipment. The pills were gabapentin; there were four hundred sacks of them in the hay.

  “They’re prescription narcotics?” Agnes Ann asked a female tech named Debra, a short, stout redhead with a friendly smile.

  “Actually, no. Gabapentin is a drug for nerve pain, but junkies say it increases the high when you take it with an opioid.”

  “How much are they worth?”

  Debra looked at Coleman, who raised his eyebrows at her. She went on.

  “I’d say, on this island in the summer, when it’s wall-to-wall tourists, maybe a buck or two each capsule.”

  “So, somewhere between $1,500 and $3,000 per bag, and there are four hundred bags, right?”

  Debra smiled and nodded.

  Agnes Ann rubbed her temples with her fingertips. “How much is that, Tony?”

  While Tagliabue was working the arithmetic in his head, Coleman spoke, “Between $600,000 and $1.2 million, street value.” He held up his phone with a shy grin. “Calculator.”

  “Jesus God. You think Jack would shoot someone and try to sink a boat for another million dollars? That’s obscene,” Agnes Ann said.

  “That’s also a lot of money,” Tagliabue said.

  “Well, ma’am,” Coleman replied. “We don’t think he meant to do either thing. Now that we know he owned that fast sport-fisherman, we think he meant to move the drugs out of Bath on the Maven . . .”

  “Why would he do that, if he’s got his own boat?” Agnes Ann asked.

  “Well, we’re speculating here, but maybe his boat couldn’t carry all the hay. Maybe an expensive new boat would have been too noticeable in town. Maybe he didn’t want to be seen tearing apart all the hay to get to the stuff. Maybe it was just a crappy plan. We don’t know.
We do think the idea was to disable Maven and rescue Anthony at sea on the Hatteras, then come back to retrieve his drugs before she sank. The plot was foiled when Anthony didn’t radio for help. Maybe the drugs weren’t even destined to end up on Westfarrow Island; maybe Brunson was going to run them up to the Canadian Maritimes or down to Boston. That there boat . . .” He pointed behind him. “Your husband’s new vessel, can go a long ways in a hurry.

  “The victim, Mr. White, was what we call collateral damage. We’re pretty sure Marv Harris messed up when he let White find him on Anthony’s boat.”

  She shook her head slowly at his reasoning but said nothing else. Agnes Ann and Tagliabue agreed to vacate the house while Coleman set up a surveillance. Bill Hammet would come to feed and water the animals once each day at noon. The horses would remain out in the fields.

  “We’ll try it for a week and see how that works out. If you hear anything from Brunson call my cell right away.”

  The Tagliabues flew to Portsmouth and from there to Saint Croix. Four days later, while Agnes Ann was examining how the sun didn’t seem to tan her napping husband’s scar tissue, Coleman called, waking him.

  “We got him. You can come home.”

  Even with the poor reception, she could hear the excitement in the detective’s voice.

  “Good for you, Detective Coleman. Did he come to the farm?”

  “No, he bought a ticket to Westfarrow using his own credit card and driver’s license. The ticket agent had a BOLO and called my guy at the SO. We picked him up at the airport on the island.”

  She didn’t know what the acronyms meant, so she asked Tagliabue, who was by then sitting up on his deck chair rubbing his face.

  “BOLO is Be On the Look Out and SO is the sheriff’s office. I guess Jack decided to just brazen it out.”

  “He is a crafty lawyer. I hope he doesn’t get away with it.”

  “It’s probably going to be a long trial. They’re charging Jack with selling class-three narcotics without a license, conspiracy to commit murder, two counts of conspiracy to kidnap—that’s Alexis and me—and using a gun in the commission of a felony. I think they may even try to tie him in with Marv in the bombing of Maven and the killing of Joshua. There could be a federal connection, for all I know, since the Hatteras was at sea when they beat Carlos to death. It probably won’t even start for months. Nobody’s going to rush things.”

  “Agree,” she said. “No sense wasting the rest of this vacation by hurrying back, is there?”

  “No sense at all. I’m going to wake up in this pretty lagoon we’re staying in front of.”

  “Okay. I’m going inside to get bare and wait for you.”

  The next call from Detective Coleman advised Tagliabue that Brunson had been let out on bail, having pleaded not guilty and ignorant of all the crimes he was alleged to have committed. Coleman ruefully admitted he had been optimistic earlier about the evidence against Jack—but he was still enthusiastic.

  “We didn’t get any prints from the bags or the hay, so we’re going to have to rely on witnesses to place Brunson with the drugs.D’Annunzio was in the room when Brunson, Magpie, and Fowler were plotting to smuggle them to the island. Red claims he didn’t take part in the scheme, but he at least knows about it. And knows Brunson was involved.”

  “What are your prospects?”

  “Well, the solicitor is optimistic. We do have his prints on the Hatteras and in the vicinity of Solis’s body.”

  “But it was Jack’s boat. Of course his prints are on it. I doubt a jury is going to put much stock in that.”

  “Er, right. So it’s gonna be a process to tie it all together. We got work to do yet, but let me tell you that we are still investigating hard. We feel we’re gonna come up with something else. It’s too bad the magistrate let Brunson walk. That’s the biggest problem we got right this minute. I wanted you to know that Jack Brunson is on the loose. You probly should consider him armed and dangerous.”

  “I do appreciate that, Detective. I’ll keep an eye peeled.”

  Tagliabue decided not to warn Agnes Ann about her exhusband’s release until they returned home, for her temporary peace of mind. His own mind was whirling with the possibilities the news generated and with what action he should take. He and Agnes Ann were heading back to essentially the same predicament they faced before they left Westfarrow: Jack Brunson was still hidden from them and was still an existential threat to them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Winter settled in on Westfarrow Island. Ten inches of fresh snow kept most of the residents indoors and muffled the sounds of nature. Anthony Tagliabue stood on the porch of Agnes Ann’s farmhouse observing the land as the sun struggled over the trees to the east, scattering its watery light on the pastures and reaching for the barn. His boots had scoured out a rough trail to the barn when he had trudged over to feed the animals, but the snow was otherwise soft and pristine. A rabbit sat on the lawn and twitched its nose as it tried to detect predators in the new day. It bounded under a bush when Tagliabue turned to reenter the house.

  Two months had passed since Jack Brunson gained his freedom and they had heard nothing. Christmas was now on the horizon. Jack had not contacted them, and neither had Coleman or any other official in authority. Both Tagliabue and Agnes Ann went about armed when they left the house, and a loaded deer rifle lay in a sling over the front door. He didn’t think that was enough.

  “We need a dog.”

  “You’re not bringing that snarly little critter on our property, soldier. Ol’ Mr. Hammet would probably think it was vermin if he ever saw it running around, and then all the neighbors would think we had an infestation. Besides, that dog probably wouldn’t like Auntie Maybelle.”

  “No kidding? I was thinking Polly’s kind of small for a guard dog, but if he wouldn’t like Maybelle . . . Hmm. Maybe I should reevaluate the little guy.”

  “Very funny.”

  He took the mug of steaming coffee she handed him, smiling at her.

  “What would you say about a real guard dog?”

  “I’d like to have a dog. Can a guard dog be a pet too?”

  “I don’t see why not. Let me look into it.”

  Tagliabue called for an appointment at Island Kennels and Guardians. The business was located out of town and inland from the sea, a private home on a large lot fenced in cyclone wire. The owner was a trim man with a firm handshake.

  “This island is such a peaceful place, we don’t sell many animals to local residents,” Brad Gentry said. Tagliabue refrained from commenting. “Most of our sales are to the mainland. We breed and train the dogs here.”

  “People have to fly over here to see the dogs?”

  “Some do, when they’ve come to the island for vacation. Mostly they order them by phone or e-mail and they don’t see their new guardian until we bring it to them.”

  Tagliabue pondered that, so Gentry continued. “There’s a four-day indoctrination period before we transfer a dog to a new owner, so that’s usually taken care of at their home on the mainland.”

  “So, how long does it take after a dog is ordered?”

  “We usually have a few dogs about ready to go to a home. It’s all we do. We don’t prepare dogs for show or for businesses. We only train dogs for personal protection. Even a house protector needs to be out of the puppy stage, however, so our Schnauzers are about two before they’re ready to go to work.”

  “Schnauzers? Aren’t they a little, uh, small for protection?”

  “These are giants. They look like regular schnauzers but they have dane in their blood and are as big as shepherds.”

  Tagliabue was so intrigued by the idea of giant schnauzer guards that he ended up spending an hour with Gentry learning about the dogs. When he returned to Agnes Ann and the horse farm, he filled her in.

  “I’m so sure you’ll love this female they have that I tentatively bought her. We have to go to the kennels for three hours a day, four days in a row, so the beast
will get to know us. And so that Gentry can train us.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. She’s a push-button dog. Comes when you call her, walks next to you when you tell her. Attacks on command . . .”

  “Housebroken too, I suppose?”

  “Oh, yeah. She just needs to transfer her allegiance over to us.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Ethyl. It means noble.”

  Ethyl the giant schnauzer was soon part of the Tagliabue family. She substituted for Jesse in the food consumption department and was an engine of energy. She toured the farm with her new owners, playing with the goats while Tagliabue and Aggie did their chores. She ran alongside Aggie when she exercised her horses and slept on a blanket outside their bedroom door. No one could come on the Seaside Stables property without Ethyl growling low in her throat and coming to attention.

  Jack Brunson wasn’t interested in getting on the Tagliabue property, however. He had a more sinister plan in mind.

  When Case #2319 of Sagadahoc County Superior Court convened in Ol’ Woody, the famed knotty-pined courtroom in Bath, the county seat, on February 15th, the big question fueling interest among the curious attendees—dozens of them having whetted their appetites for drama on the stories circulating about Big Anthony’s exploits and Jack Brunson esquire’s chicanery in the matter of drugs and murder and the sinking of the well-known cargo vessel Maven—was whether or not Brunson would show up for his own trial. Opinions were divided among those who thought he had long ago debunked for warmer climes and those who thought he now swam with the flounder and haddock in the cold deep of the Atlantic Ocean off the Maine coast. None of the opinions was educated in the least way, but that fact had no bearing on their durability. After all, validation was everywhere in the courtroom on opening day of the trial: bailiffs looking open-mouthed at the defendant’s door, thumbs hooked under their gaseous bellies within range of their police specials; three lawyers in fitted suits and layered haircuts whispering frenetically among themselves at the defense table; Anthony Tagliabue and his luscious bride chatting with their heads together.