Fishermen's Court

by Andrew Wolfendon

  The photo hits me like a slap in the face: a squared decanter with a heavy glass cork-stopper and a shockingly familiar black-and-gold embossed label.

  “That’s it,” I say. Unnecessarily. “That’s the bottle.”

  Miles nods, almost hypnotically. “Look how thick that glass is,” he says. “If this bottle hit a car windshield, I can see how it would have left pieces big enough to identify.”

  Wow, a mere twenty minutes into our stupid-ass little “investigation,” and we may have already found a key to a pivotal piece of the puzzle. We stare dumbly at the screen.

  “So how would someone trace it back to me?” I ask, even as my mind is already supplying possible answers.

  “Two ways I can think of,” says Miles. “Fingerprints, for one. Either of our prints, or both, could have been on any part of the bottle.” He blows out a shaky breath as he weighs the import of that. “Have you ever been fingerprinted?”

  “Not that I recall,” I say, “though I came close once.” I cast him a meaningful glance. There was an incident during our sophomore year of college that we both look back upon with shame—I because I permitted it to happen, Miles because of how he behaved.

  Miles and I had been at our friend Doc’s apartment, watching Green Bay kick New England’s ass on Monday Night Football. We’d had a few beers. Miles was driving me home in his van when we spotted blue lights behind us. He panicked, to put it mildly. “Oh my God, Finn,” he shrieked, “what are we going to do?” He started hyperventilating and blubbering like a schoolkid, “I’m screwed, I’m screwed, I’m so fucking screwed.”

  I was appalled. This was the first time I’d ever seen Miles without the social mask, the first time I realized that behind his polished exterior there lived a terrified child.

  “My life will be over if I get charged with DUI,” he said. “Over! My father will kill me. I’ll never go to law school. My grandparents will freak. ...You’ve got to switch seats with me.” He stopped the van and, without awaiting my answer, dove to the floor and climbed toward the passenger seat, as I, like an idiot, scrambled into the driver’s seat. We actually pulled off the switcheroo—thanks to the van’s lack of rear windows—but I was taken to the police station, where I had to submit to a blood test. I was finally released, no fingerprints taken, but it was a close call. Not one of our proudest moments.

  “You?” I ask. “Ever fingerprinted?”

  “I don’t think so. No.”

  “The only other way to connect the bottle to me, then—if they could piece enough of it together to identify the brand—would be to trace the purchase data somehow, right?”

  “Right. Ordinarily, that would be almost impossible, but this was no Johnny Walker Red. This was sixteen-year Glenmalloch, numbered label. Do you remember where you bought it?”

  I think back for a moment but oddly have absolutely no memory of purchasing the bottle. I shake my head no. Maybe it’ll come to me later.

  “There were only a couple of liquor stores in the Bridgefield area that would have carried a product like this,” says Miles. “The Brown Bag sure the hell wouldn’t have sold it.”

  “Right. There was Bridgefield Package Shop”—a snooty place in Bridgefield center that offered a high-end wine and booze inventory—“and maybe that huge place out on route 125.”

  “Academy Liquors, right. That bottle probably sold for close to a hundred dollars.”

  “It did, believe me,” I say. “I wanted it to be memorable.”

  Yay, score one for me on that note.

  “How many bottles like this do you suppose were sold in our area within a week or two before the incident?”

  The answer is plain. It can’t have been many. A handful at best.

  Maybe only one.

  Chapter 15

  We’re still staring at the little web photo of the old Glenmalloch bottle when a massive crack of thunder splits the air above us. The lamp in the room loses power, and we go dark. In the absence of electricity, I realize how black the morning sky has grown. We’ve lost the Internet signal again too. And I can’t get online with my phone.

  We’re instantly back in the 1920s again.

  Miles’ phone rings. “I’m on my way,” he answers. “Beth,” he explains to me. “She doesn’t know how to use the generator. I’d better head out.” There’s not much more “detective” work we can do at the moment anyway.

  Miles slaps his thighs and rises. He gives me a light goodbye hug, but I catch his eyes probing mine like a doctor evaluating a wide receiver after a helmet-to-helmet collision. He tells me to call him later and vamooses. A minute later, I look out the window and see him driving off in the golf cart he uses to get around the island.

  I’m left alone in my newly rented room.

  My tiny, isolated, powerless rented room.

  I wonder how long we’ll be without juice. Minutes? Hours? Days? Even though it’s late morning, it’s surprisingly dark in the old inn without lamplight and under this dense cloud cover.

  With no Internet to focus on, my mind hurtles back to the danger I’m in. I have no idea who my stalkers are, where they’re staying, what they want, what they know, or how insane they are. I don’t know whether they’re watching me ‘round the clock or not. The idea that I’m going to somehow figure these things out by digging up facts on an ancient scotch bottle suddenly seems like magical thinking of the looniest order.

  To complicate matters, my mind, ridiculously and unproductively, keeps gravitating to Jeannie. Does she really have a kid? Is she still with that asshole who—

  Stop!

  I wander downstairs to the lobby to borrow a candle lantern. JJ always keeps plenty of them on hand. The L.L.Bean family is sitting around a low table by the fireplace, playing a board game by firelight. The daughter gives me a little finger-wave and a crooked smile. Damn, she’s more than cute. Under different circumstances, I might...

  Enough. Stick to the task at hand.

  Which is what?

  . . . . .

  Back in my candlelit room, I’m peering out the window at the village below, trying to calculate my next move. I spot a man in a dark raincoat—hard to tell its exact color—standing in the shadowy area to the right of the post office/donut shop. He seems to be staring up at my window. I reflexively draw back. A moment later I look again, and the figure is gone.

  A woman bustles by the post office, carrying a big, floppy handbag that reminds me of one my sister Angie owns. Angie. Call Angie! Of course! Why didn’t I think of that before? Angie works at the city clerk’s office in Wentworth, and she can find out anything about anyone. Luckily, my phone is working as a telephone, if not as an Internet portal. I give Angie’s work number a try and manage to catch her at her desk.

  “Hey Ange, it’s me.”

  “Oh, Finn. Hi. Listen, I’m sorry I haven’t been up to see you yet, but I—”

  Up to see me? Oh crap. She thinks I’m still in the hospital. “Um, I’m not at Saint D’s anymore.”

  Short pause. “What? What do you mean?”

  “I discharged myself.”

  Another pause. “Do you think that was wise?”

  “I’m on Musqasset right now, Ange. It’s a long story, and I might lose phone service any second. Listen, I was hoping you could help me with something.” I take her silence as encouragement to go on. “I need some information on a couple of people in the Wentworth area. I’ll explain it when we both have more time.”

  “Okay...” she says, not exactly blasting me off my feet with her enthusiasm.

  I describe the newspaper account of the accident in some detail and tell her the kind of inf
o I’m looking for—who the Abelsens were, their friends and relatives, who Goslin is/was, what became of him, any follow-up stories on the accident, and so on.

  Angie is quiet for several long seconds. “What goaded you into digging for this information, Finn?” What goaded me? Sort of an oddly phrased question.

  “I’ll explain later,” I reply. “I’m afraid of losing my signal in this storm, and I’ve got more calls to make. Can you do me this favor? Ange?”

  “I’ll... see what I can find out,” she finally offers. “If you think that’s a good idea. But you will need to tell me what you’re up to. I’m worried about you, Finn.”

  I thank her, asking her to email me and Miles whatever results she finds, and hang up.

  Why the worry? I wonder. Why the suspicious attitude?

  Because Ange is nuts, that’s why.

  I’ll let her do some digging into Goslin and the Abelsens, though. Meanwhile, I’ll try to focus on the scotch bottle—that rare and highly traceable scotch bottle that seems to be the sole thread tying me to the accident—with my phone as my only investigative tool. If only I could remember where I bought the damn bottle, there’s a chance the owner of the store, or an employee, might recall someone asking questions about it all those years ago.

  But I can’t remember. And it was almost twenty years ago. The store that sold it probably doesn’t even exist anymore, and if it does, what are my odds of reaching someone who worked there in 1999? Still, it’s something, I guess. I have to try. I should have asked Angie for the phone numbers of all the well-established liquor stores in the Wentworth/Bridgefield area. Now that’s information she would have had at her fingertips. But I don’t want to call her back, the skittish way she’s acting. Where else might I get that information?

  I actually have to think for a moment to remember how phone numbers were disseminated in the pre-smartphone era. Books, oh yeah. Do phone books still exist? Yes, they do, because once or twice a year I dutifully transfer one from my front porch to the recycling bin. I recall that the Musqasset library houses a large collection of them—yellow and white pages—from all around New England.

  Island Avenue is half underwater as I trudge the two hundred muddy yards to the library, getting peppered by the wind-blown rain. Every few steps, I check behind me for followers. I have a strong sense of being watched; every window looks like an eye. The instant I step inside the one-room building and stomp the rain off my shoes, Lester Hughes, the octogenarian librarian, chimes, “So the rumor mill was right.”

  Fabulous—the town librarian already knows I’m on the island. Hooray for keeping my presence on the down-low.

  Lester shows me, with a wistful shake of his head, the corner of the room once reserved for phone books. It has been converted into The Story Nook, as the hideous fairytale mural attests. “So what do people do if they need a phone number and the Internet is down?” I ask him.

  Lester shrugs and offers me a toothless grin. “Call 411 and invest a buck.”

  I’m back in the rain, my eyes scanning every shadow for movement. I’m trying to probe my brain for memories of that ill-fated booze bottle, but my thoughts insist on flowing to one topic only: Jeannie. Let’s face it, I need to talk to her at least one more time. Just to learn the facts and be done with it. Is she in a relationship? Married? Happy? A mom, as rumor has it? I never got the chance to ask her last night.

  Maybe I should resolve this distraction once and for all, since I can’t do any online work at the moment. I’d love to see Jean face to face, but I can’t just show up at her door asking questions. I don’t have that privilege. Especially if she’s living with AssFace von TurdClown.

  If I had a legitimate excuse to visit her, however...

  The Internet.

  Wonder if she still has that shitty old dial-up Internet connection. Dial-up is a travesty, of course, but sometimes it’s more reliable than anything else on the island. Can I borrow your Internet? That would be a pretty lame excuse for showing up at her door.

  But it’s legit. Sort of. It would let me kill two birds with one stone: grab myself some Internet access and see Jeannie again.

  Nah, too thin. Too awkward. Too intrusive. Too risky.

  . . . . .

  Seeing my old home on Fishermen’s Court brings up a knot of mixed feelings I can’t begin to disentangle. I’m assuming Jeannie still owns the place—a tiny blue-gray cape with a small fenced-in yard and an English garden (i.e., mass of untamed growth with a few tall tiger lilies sticking out). Out back sits an oversized storage shed I insulated and turned into a small painting studio. The location of the house, fittingly enough, is just a jig’s cast away from Studio Row, where the “legit” artists live. So near and yet so far. Story of my life.

  One glance at the old shed/studio unleashes a torrent of memories—light-filled images of painting at my easel for hours, then catching a fish off the pier in the late afternoon and cooking it for Jeannie over a bottle of wine. Seems like there were hundreds such vintage days, but maybe there were only a handful.

  Dare I approach the door? My brain says no, but my feet don’t get the memo.

  Standing on Jeannie’s front stoop in the rain, I feel as if the eyes of the world are upon me. I don’t want to bring any danger down on her. And what if ClownAss von TurdFace answers the door? I should have brought a bag of dog shit along to light on fire.

  Ignore that last remark.

  Okay, if I’m going to do this, I’d better do it fast—before I attract attention. I lightly tap the cat gargoyle knocker I gave Jean for Christmas six years ago (not that I’m counting). Secretly relieved at the non-response, I knock a bit more bravely. Nothing. The house feels unoccupied.

  I should just duck and run while the ducking’s good, but I can’t resist the urge to take a quick peek around. A plastic play castle in the overgrown yard tells me the child rumors are true. I look for signs of a live-in male but don’t see anything obvious. No wheeling tool chests, no golf clubs, no recycling-bags bulging with Bud empties.

  Oh well, time to make my absence felt. I start down the road to the village and freeze mid-step. Standing in the middle of the road about three houses down, legs splayed, facing straight toward me, is a man in a Davy’s grey rain slicker. His face is shadowed by a large hood, but I can see a salt-and-pepper beard climbing high onto his cheekbones.

  I’m paralyzed into inaction. I stare at the man. His unseen eyes stare back. Malevolence streams toward me like an electric beam. Or so it feels.

  “Finnian Carroll,” a man’s voice shouts from behind me. Crap, boxed in!

  I turn to see Andy Rusch, an old painting buddy, plodding toward me, smiling, in waders and a fireman’s jacket. I take an awkward moment to greet him before whipping my body around to face Davy Grey again. He’s gone.

  “I heard you were on the island,” says Andy as he draws up beside me. (Is there a Sherpa on a Himalayan mountaintop somewhere who doesn’t know I’m here?)

  We shoot the breeze for a minute, but the rain and wind—and my anxiety level—put a damper on real conversation. Andy tells me he thinks Jeannie is working today, and then asks, with almost comical earnestness, “Is everything okay, Finn?”

  “Any reason it shouldn’t be?”

  “‘Course not,” he says, but I don’t love the fact that he waits half a beat before saying it, or that he turns back to me after walking down the road a bit and repeats himself. “‘Course not.”

  The walk to Pete’s Lagoon takes around eight minutes, and I find myself looking over my shoulder every few strides. Halfway there, I hear a TV set pop on in a nearby house. The power must be back, at least for now.

  As I step through the door of Pete’s and shake off th
e rain, I experience one of the strongest déjà vu moments of my life, one that instantly purges my mind of Davy Grey. Jeannie is behind the bar cutting lemon wedges, her back to the house, and she turns to see who has entered. It’s almost an exact replay of the moment I walked into Pete’s about nine years ago. On that day of yore, she turned and looked at me from that same spot. I hadn’t seen her since college but had thought about her plenty. I’d come to the island for a week with a painter friend who insisted I couldn’t call myself a New England artist until I had painted Musqasset Island. Jeannie was about the last person in the galaxy I expected to find tending bar thirteen miles off the coast of Maine, but the instant I saw the twinkle in her eyes, I was hooked like a swordfish. I knew in that moment she and I had more history to write together. Maybe lots of it.

  Today the twinkle isn’t quite there, but it isn’t totally absent either.

  Unless I’m misreading. Which I am known to do on rare occasion.

  “I was wondering when you’d wash up on the rocks again,” she says, in that dry-as-sandpaper tone of hers. “What can I get you?”

  “Dazzle me,” I say, claiming a stool at the underpopulated bar.

  She lifts an eyebrow, then turns and lets her hand flitter along the top shelf of the back bar, feeling out the choices. I feel anything but surprise when she reaches for—was there really any other possibility?—the Glenmalloch. It’s odd that a bar like this would even stock such an obscure brand of whiskey, odder still that she reaches for it as if it were magnetized to her hand. And yet I’d have fallen off my barstool, literally, if she had chosen anything else.