by Sarah Graves
In my driveway, the red truck was back from the garage, showing not even a scratch after its mishap of the night before.
Those garage guys were fast. “Who,” I finished, slowing to turn into the driveway, myself. “But he doesn’t want to dig around in it. It’d be stepping on toes, as he puts it.”
“And that’s why he hasn’t told us not to. Dig around in it, that is,” Ellie added thoughtfully.
Next to my dad’s truck sat Sam and Mika’s little Honda sedan, and behind them Wade’s pickup, parked at a hasty angle; it was the way he did it when he was only here to grab lunch.
Bella was home, too, of course; that’s how those windows had gotten so glittery, and the curtains washed white as snow. All of them were here except for Mika, who was at the Moose; I drove on past the driveway entrance.
Ellie looked questioningly at me; she’d have liked lunch, too, probably, and despite the biscotti I was also famished. But: “There’s not a single person in there who won’t start yammering at me about something the minute I walk in,” I said.
So I kept on driving, out Key Street between neat, small houses with their yards all freshly mowed and picket-fenced, to County Road, past the ball field, the youth center, and the fire station, then around the long curve between the gas station and the big new Baptist church, headed out of town.
“Lately it seems like anything I do with, for, or about any of them only ends up making things worse,” I said.
We shot past the airport, the old gas-fired power plant, and the garage where the town plow trucks and roadwork equipment were kept.
“Well, not including Wade, of course,” I amended, “but still.” On the causeway, we slowed for the speed limit sign in Pleasant Point.
“So,” I said, “first we’re going to get some food. Real food, I mean, not just cookies and cake.”
Because right then what I needed was the solid nutrition of a battered fish sandwich on a soft white sandwich roll with plenty of tartar sauce, fries dipped in a little bowl of blue cheese dressing, and a paper cup full of cole slaw so well dosed with celery seed that a single bite could change your whole idea of cabbage.
Plus a Coke, cherry if they had it. Which was why, five minutes later, we pulled into the parking lot of the New Friendly Restaurant on Route 1 overlooking a tidal marsh, where green-headed mallards paddled and dove. Just five miles from Eastport, it was nevertheless a world away in the not-dealing-with-my-family-right-now department.
And that, too, was precisely what I needed.
“And after lunch,” I began as we got out of the car.
Mika had told me she could stay in the shop all day. She was trying out a new babysitter, a young teenaged girl from across the street, and from her tone I got the sense that a little break from her daily home-and-baby routine might be right up her alley, as well.
“After lunch,” I said, “do you remember what Marienbad said about Toby Moran’s last girlfriend? Who it was, I mean, before Sharon?”
Ellie nodded. “Yes, Carrie Allen. I went to school with her and she’s a veterinary technician now; I saw her at our reunion. Before you ask, though, I don’t think she even knows Norm McHale.”
The disgraced veterinarian . . . a short laugh escaped me. “Yeah, that would’ve been too much to hope for, wouldn’t it?”
We crossed the gravel parking lot toward the low-roofed, red-painted eatery with the big plate-glass front door.
“But I know her, too, actually,” I said, pulling the door open. “We’ve taken Max to the clinic she works at.”
The big old German shepherd had needed a thorn removed from one of his paws. “Right up the road from here, on Route 1, and I think she lives near here somewhere, too,” I said.
The smell of French-frying hit me as we entered the restaurant. “Sam bought some old washing machine parts from her, once, and had to come out here to pick them up,” I added.
What he’d been doing with the washing machine parts was another story, but he could fix anything, that kid.
“And after we eat we’re going to find her and talk to her,” I said.
Inside, we found seats at the counter while behind us the busy waitresses zipped between tables and booths.
“Okay,” said Ellie, “but I want to get home before Lee does, so no goose chases.”
Turning, I scanned the room where flannel-shirted men, ladies lunching with friends, and tables full of mothers and children munched happily on noontime feasts. But that wasn’t all I saw.
“What?” said Ellie distractedly. She sipped some of her water while checking out the specials on the whiteboard by the kitchen door.
I didn’t; check them, I mean. “Hey, Ellie? Looks like we’re not going to need a goose chase,” I said.
At the other end of the counter, a woman stood waiting for a refill on her fountain drink.
“Why?” Ellie wanted to know. “Have you changed your—?”
Thirty or so years old with a slim build and short, curly brown hair, the woman wore a pair of baggy green uniform pants, a beige smock top, and sneakers. There was a small plastic name tag pinned to her smock-top’s breast pocket.
On her lunch break, obviously. I couldn’t read the name tag. But I didn’t need to, because when she turned her head and I saw her whole face, I knew for sure who she must be.
At some time in the not-too-terribly-distant past, she’d had her nose broken, and now that the swelling had mostly gone down you could tell that it was never going to straighten out quite right.
And I was pretty sure I knew who’d broken it. Ellie looked up questioningly at me again.
“We won’t need any chase at all,” I told her as the woman with the nose Toby Moran had given her took her drink back to her table.
On the table in front of me, the day’s menu informed me that the fish sandwich I wanted was not only available, it was also on special.
“Because the woman sitting over there with the tossed green salad in front of her is Carrie Allen,” I said.
Six
“So how was Andy Devine supposed to have gotten the poison into Toby Moran’s milkshake, anyway?” Carrie Allen wanted to know.
The fish was wonderful, the cole slaw divine. I’d washed it all down with another Cherry Coke and a slice of the New Friendly’s famous chocolate-raspberry pie, which if the restaurant hadn’t already been making it, The Chocolate Moose would have done so, it was that good.
Then Carrie had walked over to our table and sat down without any invitation. I’d glanced over at her once or twice while we were eating—Ellie had a tuna melt plus half my French fries, and that worked out well since otherwise I wouldn’t have had room for pie—but not that often.
Still, I guessed she was touchy about being watched, and when she sat with us and ordered her own cup of coffee, we found out why.
“No idea,” I said in answer to her question. “We don’t know how the killer got the milkshake and cup from our shop at all, much less got the poison into it and got Toby Moran to drink it.”
“If someone did,” Ellie put in. “The autopsy report’s not out yet. So the truth is that we still don’t know what really happened.”
“Seems like Moran knew how to make trouble for a lot of people, though,” I said. “Was he like that with you?”
I knew he had been. At close range, her nose deformity was worse than I’d thought. But I wanted her to say it, and she did.
“Yeah, he stalked me.” Her voice hardened with rancor. “He called me, he followed me, he harassed me on social media. I basically had to give up being online completely, which was hard because until then I did the Facebook page for the veterinarian’s office I work at.”
She took a breath. “But that wasn’t all. He showed up wherever I was and told lies about me, hung around my place late at night and scared the crap out of me, and generally made my life hell.”
Another breath. “And that was all after he hauled off and slugged me, on account of he’d lost his temper and
wanted to punish me for the crime of breaking up with him in the first place,” she said.
She touched the crumpled place in the bridge of her nose with a careful fingertip.
“So I guess that’s the end of my modeling career. I still feel really self-conscious about it, in case you hadn’t noticed. Thanks a lot, Toby.”
“Oh, now,” Ellie jumped in consolingly. “You’ve always been gorgeous. Now you’re unusual looking and gorgeous,” she declared, “and that’s even better.”
Carrie looked pleased but unfooled. “That’s nice of you,” she allowed. “But even if it was true, it’s not what you wanted to talk about, is it? The fallout from my poor choice of romantic partners?”
Pretty and smart . . . I still didn’t understand how Moran reeled these excellent young women into his clutches. But I had a feeling Carrie was about to explain, or at least maybe give us enough more dots so that we could connect them ourselves.
Meanwhile, the lunch crowd was thinning out around us, only a few old codgers in buffalo-check caps left gabbing over their coffees at the counter, and a tableful of young women with toddlers still trying to get a bite to eat into their own mouths after satisfying the kids.
Carrie got up. “Anyway, what happened between me and Moran is no secret. So if you want to hear about it . . .”
Slinging her jacket over her shoulder, she headed for the door. “Why don’t you follow me to my place?” she called back to us.
“I’ve got a new batch coming out of the cooler and you can help me test it.”
* * *
“Batch of what?” Ellie wondered as we followed Carrie Allen’s old Econoline van uphill away from Route 1 onto the Shore Road.
Past the abandoned redbrick schoolhouse with its twin front doors, both now barred and padlocked, and its windows boarded over, we took a left and soon emerged from the dense green thickets lining the pavement, out onto an open ridge overlooking the bay.
“I don’t know what,” I replied, frowning; somehow the van had disappeared. “Where the heck did she . . . ?”
Spring-green fields bounded away from us downhill toward the water, with here and there an old barn or metal Quonset building set up to store the baled hay after it was cut.
But no Econoline . . . until a mailbox with ALLEN stenciled onto it beckoned from the end of a dirt driveway. Around it the forest closed in again even more thickly than before.
“Hmm,” Ellie said doubtfully, digging in her bag to make sure her phone was there, and that it worked. Because this driveway . . .
“Yeah, kind of . . .” Creepy-looking, I’d have finished if my voice hadn’t trailed off; suddenly I felt uncertain.
“Haunted,” Ellie finished for me, and she was right; hemmed in by old trees, the unpaved driveway stretched ahead, then vanished around a curve out of sight.
The undergrowth on both sides seemed to watch silently as we drove on, somewhat against my better judgment. Deeper and deeper into the woods hadn’t been my plan for this afternoon.
But here we were. “What’s she want us to help test, anyway?” I asked. Through the trees, the remains of an old cellar hole formed a depression that resembled a half-filled grave.
“I don’t know,” said Ellie, staring at something dangling from a tree branch; white and fabric-wrapped, surely it was not an old doll turning in the breeze.
Surely it wasn’t. “But I guess we’re about to find out,” she said; then we pulled up alongside the house.
Carrie Allen’s place didn’t look haunted, at any rate, I saw with relief. Just the opposite; it was a modern tan-shingled structure with a dog run on one side and a perennial garden, its dark-mulched, stone-bordered beds just now beginning to show a little green, on the other.
As I turned off the car, one of the dogs danced out from behind the house, sniffing and yipping; two more followed, one with a stubby flap where one ear used to be and the other galloping on three legs.
They all looked good, clean and happy and energetic. Then Carrie appeared, calling them all back with a shout, after which she guided us inside, too, past a clutter of leashes, collars, and fuzzy toys with their cotton guts ripped out.
The first dog, I saw now, was blind, with one eye heavily clouded and the other entirely closed. But it didn’t seem to bother him.
“Please do not tell anyone you saw them,” Carrie said hastily. “If anyone finds out I’m rescuing animals at all, much less any sick or crippled ones, I’ll be swamped with the tragically unwanted.”
She put enough of a twist on that last bit to let me know she’d been taking in dogs for a while, and dog-saving, I knew from sad experience, was not a job for the soft-hearted.
“Yup.” She caught my assessing look. “You work at saving strays, you get realistic real quick. Not,” she added, “that it helps me much with human beings, apparently.”
With Moran, she meant. I glanced around; from the driveway, all I’d been able to see was the garden and the dog run. But inside, the house was a serene marvel.
The downstairs was one open room with a kitchen, dining area, and the living space arranged on the kind of expensive faux hardwood that doesn’t scratch easily and needs no upkeep besides regular mopping.
Which it obviously got; it even smelled clean in here. “Nice place,” I remarked.
The windows, all uncurtained, looked out onto an unspoiled view: beach, waves, islands, sky. Ellie gazed out to where a bald eagle had nested in a dead treetop about fifty yards distant.
“I like it,” Carrie acknowledged my compliment. “Although it can get a little lonely.”
The nest, made of dead branches as thick as my arm, was about the size of a Volkswagen, with three little heads sticking up out of it.
Maws gaping, wickedly hooked beak tips already visible . . . the long driveway’s bleak, haunted feeling washed over me again, reminding me that I would not want to be alone and in trouble out here.
“Over here,” she called, waving us to the dining area, where a row of miniature beer mugs had already been arranged.
When we got there, Carrie popped the stopper from a brown pottery jug and poured, and we spent the next few minutes tasting the kind of beer I’d only read about in gourmet publications, previously.
“Fruity,” Ellie pronounced of one, smacking her lips.
“Nutty,” I said of the next glass I tasted. And, “Like honey,” I remarked of the next. But then came the pièce de résistance.
“Oh!” Ellie looked up, beaming. “It’s chocolate! It’s—”
“Not beer,” Carrie said, clearly pleased. “It’s a kind of ale. I wondered if you guys would be able to tell.”
I took a sip. The cocoa bean flavor, dark and luxurious, filled my head. “You make this stuff? It’s like a chocolate brain infusion.”
She looked pleased. “It’s a hobby of mine. I have the brewing equipment in the basement. It had sat down there for a while unused, but I spent a lot of time alone out here after my . . .”
She stopped, touching her crooked nose self-consciously again. “Anyway, I needed something to do,” she finished. “You really like it? Because honestly, I thought I’d enter some competitions with it if . . .”
“It’s lovely,” I assured her, setting my glass aside. “But much more of it and I won’t remember why we came here,” I added warningly.
Ellie had put her glass down already, as well. “Right,” she said, blinking. “What we came for.”
She gathered her thoughts while I searched for a way to phrase what we needed to ask; that beer was potent. Then: “What we want to know,” she said simply, “is what a person like you was doing with that terrible little blot on humanity, Toby Moran?”
I let a breath out. She’d said it perfectly; she generally did.
“Yeah,” I echoed. It wasn’t all we wanted to know, especially now that I’d found out what a capable person Carrie was.
But it would do for a start. She seated herself on the beige-upholstered couch in the living
area. On the blond maple end table beside her, a small gold clock chimed the quarter hour.
“Interesting question,” Carrie allowed, smiling ruefully.
It was a quarter past one. Ellie would need to leave, soon, to be home when her daughter got there. Carrie frowned faintly, perhaps thinking of what she was about to say.
That was when I noticed what the room was missing: there were no mirrors anywhere. Not that people always had mirrors hanging, but when I excused myself—the Coke, the beer—I found none in the bathroom, either.
Not even on the medicine cabinet. Which was when I really began to wonder about it. “What I ever saw in Toby Moran,” Carrie was saying when I returned. “Good question.”
I’d left her alone with Ellie deliberately. People like talking to her; they confide in her, and she can spot a lie a mile away.
But Carrie had taken a while formulating her reply, as if maybe she hadn’t yet quite come to terms with the answer, herself.
“Okay, so here’s the thing,” she said at last. “Toby was fun.”
Her sigh was reminiscent. “I mean,” she added, “you know how when you were younger, you maybe wanted to be . . . oh, I don’t know. Cool, I guess? And with a cool boyfriend, somebody a little dangerous, maybe.”
Ellie’s eyes softened. “Yes,” she smiled. “Ninth grade, Jeffrey Bingham. He played bass guitar, but, of course, I got over all of that when . . . oh,” she stopped suddenly, spying Carrie’s expression.
“Right,” said Carrie. “I didn’t. Get over it, I mean. I had to work, go to school, and then at home . . . well, I never had time for a boyfriend.”
Another sigh. “And Toby was adorable at first. I mean, really. Romantic, attentive . . .”
I guessed I could imagine it, if it was all just an act on his part. “But later?”
By now we were getting ready to go, Ellie glancing at her watch and the dogs jostling excitedly around us.
“Later he was a son of a bitch,” said Carrie. “So bad, I nearly even lost my job over it.”
We were at the door; she waved out past us. Who knew how many wooded acres lay between her and the next neighbor, or the road.