Dead to the World

by B. D. Smith

  The widow looked stunned and her sister gasped in reaction to Doug’s pronouncement.

  “Murdered? Why would someone kill him?” Elizabeth asked.

  “We’re not sure. Do you have any idea who might have wanted him dead, or why?” Anne asked.

  “No. I can’t believe it. Are you sure it wasn’t an accident? John didn’t have any enemies, at least not since he retired and left behind all his fights with contractors and zoning people and local politicians. He was a different man the last few years. John had lots of interests and friends in the community here.”

  “When did he get interested in patio boats?” Anne asked.

  “Oh, almost a year ago - early in the summer, right after they had that race for local pontoon boats. Someone he knew had a boat entered and he got to ride along. After that he decided he had to have one. He even got involved in the planning for this year’s race.”

  “Was he looking forward to competing in the race?”

  “Oh yes. He was eager to get his boat in the water and start getting ready for the competition. He and Nigel Underwood were constantly trash talking about who had the better boat.”

  “Your husband knew Nigel Underwood?” Anne responded.

  “He did. John and Nigel were good friends. They were both active in the planning committee for the race, and Nigel often came for dinner after their meetings. A nice man - rather arrogant and a bit pompous, but nice.”

  “How about Don Robertson. Was he also a friend of your husband’s?” asked Doug.

  “Mr. Robertson. Yes, he was another friend of John’s, and was also close to Nigel. I met Don a few times when he and his friend Ximena came to dinner along with Nigel. I think Don may have had a partial stake in the fancy patio boat Nigel has entered in the race, and Ximena was trying pretty hard to interest Nigel in buying a place here on the lake.”

  “Was your husband involved in any business dealings with either Underwood or Robertson? Did he have any investments with Robertson, do you know?” asked Anne.

  “No. Not that I know of. But I never was much involved in John’s business activities. He was always very circumspect when it came to his business interests, even with me. But you’re welcome to take a look at his office. You might find something there. He would spend hours out there. It’s the second floor of the boathouse. The key is hidden on top of the light next to the door. And take any computers and files you find that might be relevant. Just let me know what you take.”

  “Thanks Mrs. Eastman,” Anne replied. “We’ll head over there as soon as we finish up here. We have just a few more questions.”

  “Have you noticed anything suspicious lately?” Doug asked. “Anyone hanging around your place? Any incidents you thought unusual?”

  “No. Nothing comes to mind. It’s pretty quiet up at this end of the lake. One guy shows up early just about every morning through the summer in a bass boat and drops lines over toward Wilson Stream – but he’s been doing that for years.”

  “Has your husband seemed distracted or concerned about anything recently – anything at all?”

  “Well, not really, other than the boat race. But he has always been very focused, very invested, in whatever bright shiny object happens to have attracted his fancy. It used to be creating boutique hotels. Lately it’s been patio boats.”

  Doug glanced at Anne to see if she had anything further to cover. She shook her head and Doug thanked Mrs. Eastman for answering their questions. As they stood to leave Doug gave the widow his card in case she thought of anything else, and said they would likely have more questions for her as the investigation developed.

  Continuing east on the North Gilford road out of Monson, Doug angled left onto the Willimantic Road, and estimated it would take them a half hour or so to make it over to the Eastman house at the west end of Sebec Lake. He was eager to take a look at John Eastman’s office above the boathouse.

  Soon after the turn onto Willimantic Road, Doug’s phone pinged, indicating an incoming text message.

  “Yikes,” Doug blurted out as he pulled over and opened the text alert from the Bowerbank Volunteer Fire Department.

  “Structure fire at west end of Sebec Lake. Fire Boat dispatched. Can you respond? Map location below. What’s your ETA?”

  Doug texted a response: “ETA 30,” and handed the phone to Anne as he pulled back on the road and floored the Cherokee, turning on the flashers. Looking at the GPS map image on the phone, Anne turned to Doug with concern.

  “It’s not good Doug. It looks to be the Eastman place, or close to it – what are the odds somebody decided to torch the boathouse and office before we could get to it?”

  They could smell the smoke from the fire as they turned off for the Eastman’s north shore camp and as they pulled up they could see orange flames reaching twenty feet above the boathouse and office structure’s roof. It was clear that the structure was a total loss and that the priority now should be keeping the fire from spreading to the nearby garage or to adjacent vegetation.

  The Bowerbank fire boat, a recently refurbished patio boat with fire hoses and pump installed, was already on the scene, and had maneuvered as close to the boathouse as was possible. It was obvious that there was no hope of saving the boathouse, and the steady stream of water from the fireboat was mostly directed at the surrounding trees and bushes. The nearby garage was beyond the reach of the patio pumper’s hose, and as he saw Doug arrive, one of the firemen on the boat waved to him and yelled.

  “Get their garden hose on the garage.”

  Doug ran back toward the house, looking for the garden hose outlet. Finding it by the vegetable garden that was located between the house and the garage, he directed a steady stream onto the garage roof and walls, slowly circling the structure and alternating his spraying between the garage and the smoldering underbrush between it and the boathouse.

  While Doug manned the garden hose to water down the garage, Anne ran to the water’s edge with the binoculars from the back seat of Doug’s Cherokee. Standing upwind from the boathouse and the fire’s dense cloud of black smoke that roiled east along the lakeshore, she quickly scanned the tree line both ways along the north shore. Seeing nothing, Anne then shifted her search to the west end of the lake on either side of the shoreline landmark locally called “The Castle.” Built by a lawyer in the 1880s for his new bride, The Castle was a bright, white, three-story wooden confection with crenellated battlements. It had been a prominent landmark on the lake for more than a century.

  Anne suspected that there was a good likelihood that the arsonist had approached from the water rather than either coming down the only road leading to the Eastman’s isolated camp or emerging out of the miles of undeveloped forest that stretched east along the north shore. Her scan of the lakeshore didn’t reveal any likely arsonists, just a number of curious locals watching the fire from their docks.

  Switching her search from the shoreline to the open waters of the lake, Anne scanned for any boats that might be likely suspects. A half dozen watercraft had by now gathered just beyond the fireboat and their occupants were busy gawking and taking pictures of the blaze with their iPhones. Anne checked each of the gawker boats and took photos for later inspection, but nobody looked suspicious. It didn’t appear that the arsonists had stuck around to watch the fire.

  Anne then looked out beyond them for any boats at a greater distance, particularly if they were moving away from the fire, which would have represented an obvious attraction for anyone who noticed it. A few other boats were visible in the distance, but all but one of those looked to be heading toward the fire, and the single boat not heading toward the Eastman’s camp was stationary, with its solitary angler occupant apparently dozing in the afternoon sun. Follow-up int
erviews of the spectators in the close-in boats and on the docks along the lake shore would be done in case anyone had seen anything, but it looked like the arsonist who had started the blaze had gotten clean away.

  It didn’t take long for the boathouse fire to burn itself out. Its charred remnants collapsed into the lake in a crescendo of sparks and smoke. The spectator boats started leaving soon after, with the Bowerbank fireboat continuing to soak the area for another half hour or so before departing.

  Walking back from the burned-out boathouse toward their vehicle, Anne noticed a tree-mounted, high-end CCTV camera that had a clear unobstructed view of the boathouse. It might provide them with footage of the arsonist. Doug called Elizabeth Eastman to inform her of the fire and to ask about the camera. The widow uttered a few slurred swear words and then handed the phone to her sister Mary. Doug repeated his question about the camera and after a muffled exchange at the other end, learned that it had been installed after the vandalism the year before and was connected to a hard drive in the house.

  Their initial viewing of the footage from the boathouse surveillance camera, surprisingly, showed nothing – no boats or individuals could be seen approaching the boathouse in advance of the fire. The video showed calm water with a few ducks swimming by, and then a sudden small explosion followed by flames bursting out of the boathouse door and obscuring the transoms of the three vintage wooden boats stored inside.

  Later, on the larger computer monitor at the sheriff’s office in town, however, Jim Torben took a closer look and found the CCTV evidence they were looking for. It wasn’t much – just the momentary but distinctive surface bubbling up of expelled air from someone using a SCUBA breathing system to swim into the boathouse underwater a few minutes before the explosion, and then exiting just before the initial burst of flames.

  10.

  Following the first interview he and Doug Bateman had conducted of Don Robertson’s widow, Tom had been diligent in his continuing investigation of any potential role she might have played in her husband’s death. He was now confident that she was innocent of any wrongdoing.

  His in-depth investigation of Rose had begun with their dinner together at Petite Jacqueline, a small French bistro in Portland. Doug had objected to the idea, but Tom had justified the dinner invitation as giving Rose an opportunity to let her hair down in an informal setting and share her perspective on her late husband’s murder. Tom was a good listener and he assured Doug that his gently probing questions - purely professional, along with candlelight and wine, would help Rosemary to share things that could be germane to the investigation.

  Tom had not been particularly attracted to Rosemary during their initial interview. She was three or four inches shorter than he was, thin, with short black hair, brown eyes, and sharp features. And she was a lawyer – smart, highly educated, self-confident, with strong opinions and a sharp wit – not Tom’s type at all. Taking her to dinner was just part of the job.

  Soon after they were seated at a red leather banquette in a quiet corner of the bistro, however, Tom’s perception of Rose began to change. They had chatted about mundane things on the drive to the restaurant, continuing in the Québécois that Tom had tried out on Rose during their initial interview. Perhaps it was the lyrical nature and undertones of intimacy inherent in their casual conversation in French that affected Tom, or maybe the invisible influence of pheromones in the enclosed space of his car on the drive over, but by the time they had reached Petite Jacqueline, Tom’s indifference had vanished, replaced by a growing interest in this high-energy gamine.

  In contrast to the business attire Rosemary had worn when they first interviewed her, tonight she was wearing a heather green Meghan Markle sweater and a short black pleated skirt. As the maître d pulled the table back and Rose slid onto the banquette, Tom couldn’t help but notice her finely shaped legs. When he sat down next to her, he also couldn’t miss her amused, rather smug expression, and realized that she had seen him admiring her legs and was enjoying the attention.

  Tom had planned on getting right down to business with a series of questions about the murder of her late husband, her relationship with Lee Lamen, and her meditation group. But once they had agreed on steak frites paired with an inexpensive Merlot, and had started with flash fried calamari, he realized that they should first get to know each other better. He needed to loosen her up a bit.

  Curious about her tendency to toggle back and forth between Québécois and proper Parisian French as they sampled the squid, he learned that her parents were from Montreal and that she had grown up speaking Quebec French. She had layered standard French on top of the Québécois during her junior year at the Sorbonne. After law school in Boston she had joined the large law firm in Portland where she still worked.

  It was then Rosemary’s turn to ask Tom about his childhood, and he surprised himself by telling her things he had not talked about, or even thought about, for years: growing up poor in Fort Kent, just across the St. John’s River from Canada, his father abandoning the family when Tom was twelve, having to work long hours at the local market and other jobs after school to help with the bills, and going off to college at the University of Maine on a hockey scholarship. Tom even told Rose about the rape and murder of his ten-year old sister, and how the event shaped his decision to go into law enforcement.

  Rose wore little makeup – a subtle lip-gloss and some eyeliner, and Tom became fascinated by the light scatter of freckles across her face as she laughed and reached over to touch his arm, sipped her merlot, and encouraged him to open up about himself. Dinner was over far too quickly, Tom thought, when the waiter brought the dessert menu. As they pondered their choices, Rose gently raked the fingernails of her left hand along the inside of his thigh, and in a throaty French whisper suggested they skip desert and instead go back to her place to continue his investigation.

  Rosemary’s idea of what Tom’s continuing investigation should focus on became clear soon after they walked through the front door of her condo. She shyly took his hand in hers and led him back to the bedroom.

  They had made love, dozed off, and briefly emerged from the bedroom to forage in her fridge before returning to bed and sleeping soundly until mid-morning. Rose’s exploring hand woke Tom out of an intense dream, but he was instantly awake as she whispered endearments in French in his ear and slowly eased on top of him. When Rose got up a little later to forage again in the kitchen, Tom Richard lifted his head from the pillow slowly and stretched. He began to hum a tune from his childhood and realized that he had not felt this relaxed and content for years. He also acknowledged with a low whistle that during dinner and through the night, he had not asked Rosemary a single question directly pertaining to the murder investigation.

  Any concerns Tom might have had about his lack of progress in pursuing the case evaporated as a naked Rosemary returned to bed and handed him a cup of coffee before shyly pulling the sheet up to cover her breasts. They had not spoken more than a dozen words of English since he had picked her up for dinner the night before, and neither one of them seemed inclined to stop communicating in French. The continuing use of the language created an intimacy that both relished, and neither wanted to break the spell.

  By the time they got up, a little before noon, Tom had agreed with Rosemary’s suggestion that what they needed was a long car ride, during which Rose could answer all of Tom’s questions about the case in as much detail as he required. The question of where they would go was easily agreed upon. It would take them a little over five hours to drive from Portland up to Quebec City. They could be there in time for dinner. Perfect. And returning the same night to Portland really made no sense – much better to stay over for a night or two before heading back. Tom called in and took several days of annual leave as Rosemary started packing an overnight bag. Tom always kept several changes of clothes and a
dopp kit in his car for cases that kept him overnight somewhere across the extensive territory covered by the MCU North unit stationed in Bangor.

  Once they got on the road the first half hour was devoted to a discussion of where to have dinner when they arrived in Quebec City. When that was decided – they agreed to try Arvi – a new restaurant with solid reviews, Tom put on his detective hat and began asking questions. Rosemary, it turned out, had a far different take on the breakup of her marriage than the version Don Robertson had recounted to Jack Walker during karaoke night at the Bear’s Den. She had met Don soon after she moved to Portland for her new job. At the time, he was bursting with confidence and riding high on a remarkable recent record of investment picks for a rapidly growing group of investors. Rosemary was impressed with this brash young man from the boonies who had little formal education but a seemingly unerring ability to pick investments that yielded impressive returns. After dating for six months or so they got engaged, and a few months later were married in a simple ceremony at city hall in Portland.

  Rosemary was reasonably content early in the marriage. She was doing well at work and all the signs were favorable that she was on track to become a partner in the firm. Don’s investment company continued to flourish, at least according to what he was telling her. But he had always been somewhat secretive about his business, keeping all his finances in separate accounts from hers and filing his tax returns separately. They also kept separate checking, credit card, and savings accounts.

  She didn’t really mind the secretive side of Don’s business dealings all that much. After all, she made a very good living, owned her condo outright, and could maintain a high standard of living on her own. Don always picked up the bill when they went out and he was invariably generous with gifts at Christmas and her birthday.

  But several years ago, Rosemary started hearing intimations from her co-workers at the law firm that all was not well with her husband’s investment portfolios. Several indicated that they had shifted their holdings to other firms due to Don’s increasingly poor investment choices. Don laughed it off when she asked about these defections, writing his critics off as weak-willed, sunny day investors without the vision and commitment to stay the course. But Don started smoking weed more frequently and occasionally would light up a fatty first thing in the morning. He called it “wake and bake” and claimed it helped him to focus on his investment research.