by Paul Doiron
So much for the schoolteacher’s being incapacitated by Lyme disease. “Isn’t that dangerous under the circumstances?”
The shopkeeper seemed confused.
“It’s deer hunting season,” I explained, “and one woman has already been killed.”
“Sure, sure, but that was accidental.”
“Besides, lightning doesn’t strike twice,” said a man at a picnic table behind me.
“Point of fact, it does, Alf,” said Graffam. “I’ve seen pictures of the Empire State Building being struck three times at once.”
“But it ain’t the exact place.”
“I’m telling you it is.”
I paid for my coffee and left before I got drawn into a debate over the physics behind electrical storms.
There was no doubt in my mind now that Beryl McCloud was trying to avoid being questioned. I could have driven to the Spruce Point trailhead and followed her path in the woods. But I couldn’t afford wasting that much time.
Instead I decided to return to Gull Cottage to check on Ariel.
* * *
Joy Juno must have spotted my truck because I found her examining the damage done to the hood and windshield of the Datsun. An insurance adjuster wouldn’t have looked any happier.
“I hit a deer,” I said.
“Oh, really? Gee, I never would have guessed.”
“I’m fine in case you were worried. Sam just told me that you gave Beryl a lift to the east side of the island. She seems to have made a quick recovery from her recent bout with Lyme disease.”
Joy could hear the frustration in my voice. “Don’t be mad with her. She’s absolutely miserable, and I can’t blame her. Coming here was the worst mistake she ever made, and she may carry those damn spirochetes in her bloodstream for the rest of her life. Give her time and she’ll open up.”
Time was the one thing I didn’t have. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Would you mind if I ask you a few questions?”
“You mean like a police-type interview?”
“Not really.”
She pointed at the Ram pickup with the MAQUOIT TRUCKING sign. “Step into my office.”
Once again I took note of the empty rifle rack mounted behind the bench seat. Her name was on Harmon’s list. And she’d mentioned something about having hunted in her “tomboyhood” in Wisconsin.
I had thought we’d sit there and talk, but Joy seemed to be worried about being seen with me. As soon as I’d closed the door, she started the engine and shifted into drive. She took the first turn and pulled behind a big barn. I noticed a newly painted sign above the entrance:
MAQUOIT ISLAND V.F.D.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You’re the town fire chief.”
She gave me a sideways look. “Now you’ve got me worried. How did you know that? Have you been checking up on me?”
“I just had a hunch.”
“I used to be the chief, but I got tired of the politics. You think Washington is dysfunctional? Try living on a Maine island where we all hate each other.” She reached for a tin of throat lozenges on the dashboard and offered me one, which I declined. “So what do you want to know?”
As soon as I got out my iPhone, she put a big hand on my wrist. “This has to be off the record or no deal.”
I returned the cell to my pocket. “I didn’t realize you hunted deer.”
“That’s what you wanted to talk with me about?”
“Partly.”
“Yeah, I hunt some years. Haven’t so far this season. What else do you want to know? I’m not exactly an international woman of mystery.”
“That puts you in the minority, then. Most everyone I’ve met so far on Maquoit seems to have a cellar full of secrets.”
“That’s because we’re all misfits. It’s why we live on an island. Who have you found to be especially secretive?”
“Nat Pillsbury.”
“Nat!” She laughed. “I wouldn’t exactly describe him as enigmatic. But maybe you have a different definition.”
“What was he like as constable?”
“He was great. He knew when to crack heads and he knew when to look the other way.”
“Would you describe him as violent?”
“No more than most men. Tough is the word I’d use. Self-confident. He could take care of shit. I don’t remember him ever feeling like he needed to call in the sheriff for backup.”
“As opposed to Radcliffe?”
She grinned, showing off a gap between her front teeth. “Andy called for a deputy to come out his first week on the job. Kids were taking golf carts for joyrides, and he treated it like the crime of the century. Harmon threw a fit when the cop stepped off the ferry. It was the last time Andy brought in an outsider.”
“Tell me about Nat’s wife, Jenny.”
“That’s kind of an open-ended question.”
“Give me your impression.”
Her face flushed. “I don’t know if I’m comfortable—”
“Just the facts, then.”
“She’s a Washburn. Her dad was Eli and Rudyard’s little brother. Shot himself in the head when Jenny was a girl. Some say it was an accident, others it was suicide. She went to school here back when there more kids on the island. Went off-island to high school in Bar Harbor like all the kids do—except for boys like Kenneth Crowley who go right into fishing. Then she got a teaching degree at the University of Maine. She came back to be the teacher, and because she was determined to marry Nat Pillsbury.”
“You make it sound like she didn’t give him any choice.”
“Nat does what he wants, as I’m sure you have learned already. But Jenny is the secretive one in the family. Maybe it’s the Washburn genes. She can be pretty wily.” Joy caught herself. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
I let a silence grow between us.
“Have any cops talked to Jenny yet about what happened at Gull Cottage?” she said.
“Why do you ask?”
“She’s the wife of the man who was having an affair with the dead woman.”
“All I know is that she has a solid alibi.”
“Right,” Joy said almost too quickly. “That’s true.”
“How long was she the teacher here?”
“Until a couple of years ago when she got pregnant. That was when Beryl was hired. I’d rather not talk about Jenny Pillsbury anymore.”
Why, I wondered. “What about Heath Reed?”
“He’s dead.”
“I know he is. I saw his gravestone. I’m wondering how he died.”
Joy had seemed antsy before, but now she seemed fearful. “I don’t understand. What does that have to do with whoever shot Miranda Evans? Unless you’re saying a ghost did it.”
“Probably nothing, but I’m trying to connect some things. I noticed that Heath’s tombstone is noticeably smaller than the monument Harmon built for his father. The inscription said he died at sea. When I asked Hiram about it, he laughed. I also found it odd that there were no pictures of Heath in his parents’ house. I have a suspicion about what happened to him, and I’d like you to confirm it.”
“What’s your suspicion?”
“Did Heath Reed die of a drug overdose on his boat?”
“Now you’re really scaring me. How in the world did you know that?”
“There are a couple of other tombstones up in the Olde Island Burying Ground of young people who died around the time Heath did. That suggested drug overdoses to me. I interpreted ‘lost at sea’ as a not very artful euphemism. If he’d really drowned, he would have a more significant memorial.”
She crunched down on her throat lozenge. “Heroin used to be a big problem out here. Epidemic, even. It’s that way wherever there are fishermen. These guys get paid in cash. They’re in boats where they can smuggle stuff and make deals with no one watching. None of this is news to you, I assume?”
“No.”
“Say what yo
u want about Harmon Reed, but after Heath died, the old man laid down the law. He said he’d punish anyone he caught selling heroin on Maquoit. He’d sink their boats and set fire to their houses. He’d already been tried once for attempted murder for shooting Eli and had gotten away with it, so people took him at his word. More than a few folks left rather than take the chance.”
“What about Hiram?”
“What about him?”
“He’s had a problem with drugs, hasn’t he?”
She seemed genuinely afraid of me now as if I’d revealed myself to be some sort of dangerous soothsayer. “You know what? I think we’re going to leave things there for now. You need to remember that I live here. These are my neighbors. When all this is over, you get to go home, but I am here for the duration. Do you understand what I mean when I say that?”
I opened the door. “I appreciate your candor, Joy. And none of what you’ve told me is going to come back to bite you.”
“Says you.”
I started to walk away, but she rolled down her window. “I was sketching yesterday morning, by the way. I was out near Westerly. That’s the big estate owned by the Brewsters. Come by my studio and I’ll show you my studies.”
I pondered the significance of her last words on my way to the Datsun. I hadn’t asked Joy Juno about her whereabouts when Miranda was killed or even hinted that I suspected her. It was interesting that she’d volunteered an alibi.
* * *
I saw no deer on my trip south along the Beacon Road, but fresh deer-sign was everywhere I looked. Hoofprints in the mud. Piles of pellets the size and shape of chocolate almonds.
How long could Maquoiters live like this, watching their island become a wasteland and their family members fall sick with debilitating illnesses? Extermination was a brutal solution, but as far as I knew, the residents of Monhegan Island hadn’t suffered a single case of Lyme disease since they’d taken the radical step of hiring a sharpshooter to eliminate their deer population.
It occurred to me that I was overdue for a tick check.
Gull Cottage was dark and deserted looking when I arrived. No lights were in any of the windows. I wondered if the stress of the morning, combined with all the wine, had knocked Ariel cold.
The fog seemed even heavier and colder than when I’d set out that morning. It dampened my hair and clung like tiny pearls to my peacoat. It stung my cheeks and made the joints in my fingers ache. It was as if, instead of me passing through the mist, the mist was passing through me.
Only after I had crossed the lawn did I notice the bicycle track in the sodden grass. A single line led from the house to the road. Ariel had ridden off in the direction of Beacon Head and the Gut.
I’d told her she might find a cell signal there. But in my heart I knew where the intrepid reporter was headed: Stormalong.
She had decided to visit the hermit.
28
The southern end of the island had no boat launch, just a hard-packed beach of gritty gray sand, less than fifty feet wide. Specks of smashed sea glass—blue, green, and brown—glittered even in the absence of the sun. Fright wigs of seaweed lay in random clumps above the waterline.
Ariel’s borrowed bicycle leaned against a basalt outcropping.
Her boot prints showed where she’d pushed a skiff out of the spartina grass and down the strand into the water. It must have been the same rowboat Miranda had used to cross the Gut. I hadn’t noticed it the day before.
The channel before me was like a rushing saltwater river. It wasn’t wide—a hundred yards at most—but the current was strong and choppy. The surface was a slate gray except where greenish foam piled up along the crests of the waves. I doubted whether even the best long-distance swimmer in the world could make it from shore to shore without being swept out into the North Atlantic.
Stormalong was only half-visible in the pallid fog. I saw a steep cliff that was mostly rock with a few bushes blazing red in the mist, the hillside tumbling down to a rickety wharf that seemed likely to wash away when the next nor’easter hit. I grabbed my binoculars from my rucksack. Sure enough, a skiff was tied up to the wharf, bobbing fiercely beside the dory I’d spotted the day before.
I paced back and forth along the strand. Mermaid’s purses—the brittle black egg cases of skates—crunched under my boots. Bladderwrack popped like bubble wrap. Off in the mist, the mournful foghorn at Maquoit Island Light sounded at half-minute intervals.
Was Ariel in danger from the hermit? Not having interviewed Blake Markman, I was in no position to assess his mental state or emotional stability. For all I knew the recluse might have been the one who’d shot Miranda.
I needed to find a boat.
Maybe I could call Radcliffe and persuade him to throw a dinghy in the back of his truck and drive it down here for me to use.
Then I remembered the kayak chained to a tree outside Gull Cottage.
Five minutes later I was crouched beneath the massive fir studying the mooring chain securing the boat to the trunk, wondering how to free it. The chain was old and rusted and loosely wrapped twice around the base, but the padlock appeared to be brand-new. Behind the house was a toolshed where I expected the paddle might be stowed and perhaps also the key. I was certain that if I phoned Assistant Attorney General Danica Marshall, she would say that exigent circumstances didn’t apply and that I had no legal justification to break down the door and “borrow” the items I needed.
The solution to this problem was easy: I didn’t call AAG Marshall.
The shed door gave way with a single kick. The wood around the latch splintered. And I was inside the dim, dusty space.
Most of the surfaces were covered with mouse shit like chocolate sprinkles. The rodents, scurrying back and forth through their own droppings, had left brown streaks. I found a paddle and personal flotation device just as I had expected. What I didn’t find was a key to the padlock. Nor were there bolt cutters. I unearthed a dull-bladed ax from the clutter, but I knew that chopping with a blade through a steel chain is one of those tricks that only works in horror movies.
I was about to give up my search and call Radcliffe when I noticed the come-along in one cobwebbed corner.
I grabbed the portable winch and returned to the yard. I fastened one of the hooks to the rusted mooring chain and the other to a second link, and I started working the ratchet. The chain began to rub bark off the fir as it tightened. One of the links yawned open, and I quickened my pace. Half a minute later I had the kayak free.
The flimsy little boat was nine feet long and made of molded plastic. It had been designed for calm waters, where a person could sit atop it without worry of being capsized. In other words it was the worst imaginable watercraft I could have found to attempt the crossing of the Gut.
When I arrived back at the beach, the fog had closed in completely over Stormalong. Gazing out upon the corrugated waves, I couldn’t help but hesitate. But how would I be able to live with myself if something happened to Ariel? The woman had been half-drunk when I’d left her alone.
To have a better range of motion, I left my peacoat in the truck. I hoped the exertion would keep me warm enough to do what I needed to do before I succumbed to fog-induced hypothermia. Then I lifted the toy kayak from the pickup and carried it down to the water’s edge.
The rip current was moving from my right to my left. I watched a small pale bird, a guillemot, which is a cousin of the Atlantic puffin, float past at an impressive speed. No matter how hard I paddled, the Gut would push me to the south, toward the open ocean.
I sucked in a deep breath and walked the kayak out through the bone-chilling surf. The waves bubbled silver over my boots. Then, squatting and using the paddle to brace myself, I sat down against the plastic seat before my flimsy boat could slip away. For a moment I teetered uncertainly back and forth before I found my equilibrium. Already the riptide was turning the bow to the south. I started digging the paddle blades into the water, using every muscle in my upper body t
o fight the sea.
It took me a few minutes to find the right approach. I angled the bow into the current to keep from being swamped by a roller, paddled as hard as I could, paused long enough for the rushing water to swing me around. Then I turned again into the stream and began to dig hard. It wasn’t unlike tacking a sailboat, only much tougher on the abdominals and trapezius muscles.
Forty-degree seawater splashed me every time I lifted a blade from the water. My forearms were soon soaked, then the tops of my legs, then my seat, where a pool began to form around my butt cheeks.
For the longest time I seemed to make no headway. Then Stormalong loomed before me like an escarpment. I had been pushed well south of where I’d hoped to land, and the muscles in my back, stomach, and arms were burning.
Then the current eased mysteriously. When I glanced to my right, I realized that I must have passed a submerged ledge. Waves were breaking white over the drowned rocks. Now I had to make the most of this sheltered stretch of water.
I dug and dug until I was thirty feet from the island. Then twenty feet. Then ten feet. I made one last effort and ducked in behind a barnacle-crusted ledge that extended out from the basalt cliff. I grabbed hold of a clump of seaweed but found it impossible to grip the slimy stuff.
I decided my best shot of beaching the kayak was to ram the ledge head-on and hope that my momentum carried me up onto the barnacles. I swung the bow so that it was pointed at the rocks and did my best to build up a head of steam. With a hard crunch the front of the kayak caught and held fast.
But not for long, I could tell. I tossed the paddle up onto the ledge and crawled headfirst up the kayak until I had handholds on the rock. Unfortunately, my movements kicked the boat loose. Even as I clung to land, I felt the kayak slip out from under my legs until I was half-in and half-out of the icy water.
My pants were soaking from my stomach down, and my boots were full of seawater. But I had made it ashore. I watched the little red kayak be caught by the current and swept away into the stream. I would need to find another ride back from Stormalong.
* * *
I sat on the hermit’s crooked dock taking stock of my situation.