Dead Down East

by Carl Schmidt

  “I won’t be able to call you with anything,” Brock said.

  “Just call me. I’ll work out a way to see you privately,” I said.

  “OK. But this is my job, Jesse. You’ve got to be completely discreet.”

  “You can count on me, Brock.”

  We left the alley and parted ways.

  The ride back home in the van was a lively affair. Amanda received high fives from everyone. Billy chided me for using my bass guitar as a weapon. I guess he thought I shouldn’t have risked any further damage to the band equipment. I explained that my hands are my livelihood. He wasn’t buying it.

  23

  Moosehead

  God rested on the seventh day. I wasn’t going to break with that tradition in any significant way. I figured She knew what She was doing.

  “Jesse, it’s Kathleen. Michael and I would love to have you over for Sunday dinner. We are sorry you had to leave us so abruptly last week at Bear Spring. Bring Angele if she’s in town. She’s the sweetest! We’ve already called your mom, and she wants to come as well.”

  There were two messages on my phone machine. That was the second one. I played the first one again, to revisit the ambiance.

  “Mr. Thorpe, this is Dennis Jackson. Please accept my sincere apology. I’ve been under a lot of stress. Just last month our son, Scottie, was diagnosed as autistic. Our family life has been turned upside down.”

  There was a pause at this point, but I could hear Michelle in the background imploring Dennis to keep talking.

  “Michelle and I want to send you a check for two thousand dollars. We hope that will adequately compensate you for the unpleasantness and for the damage to your car. If you will let me know your mailing address, I’ll send the check off tomorrow. Again, I’m really sorry for everything.”

  His contrition seemed genuine enough, and hearing Michelle in the background was reassuring, but there was no way I would be giving Dennis Jackson my home address. It was eight in the morning. I’d allow Billy a little more time in the sack and then tickle his money bone with a proposition.

  A couple hours later…

  “Hello, Jesse?”

  “Yeah. It’s me.”

  “Some night, eh?”

  “It was interesting. Is your KORG playable?”

  “I tested it out as soon as I got home. It has a scratch, but it plays fine. By the way, if your music career doesn’t pan out, you could always take up golf.”

  “Golf?”

  “The way you swung that bass, Tiger’s got nothin’ on you.”

  “I think I hooked that shot just a bit, Billy. Listen, how would you like to earn a finder’s fee?”

  “What do I have to find?” he asked.

  “A check for two thousand dollars in your mail box.”

  “What’s my fee?”

  “Ten percent.”

  “Why would I find a check in my mailbox?”

  “Because I don’t want Dennis Jackson to know where I live.”

  “Who’s Dennis Jackson?”

  “Do you want the two hundred dollars or not?” I asked.

  “Dude, what’s this all about?”

  “It’s complicated. Let’s just say it’s life imitating fiction…you know, a lotta ins, lotta outs, lotta what-have-yous.”

  “I get it. The Big Lebowski. This sounds dangerous. Will there be a severed toe in the envelope?”

  “Probably not,” I said.

  “We’d better make it twenty percent, Jesse.”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Eighteen.”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Seventeen and a half.”

  “Deal,” I said. “But I could rent a post office box for a lot less than that.”

  “Jesse, what’s seventeen and a half percent of two thousand?”

  “Three hundred fifty.”

  “Those boxes don’t come cheap anymore,” Billy noted resolutely. “And you’d need to hire someone to make the pickup, in case the sender was staking out the post office.”

  “Just bring me the envelope when it arrives, and don’t open it. I’ll want to check it out for powdery substances,” I said. I wanted Billy to sweat a bit for all the money he was going to get.

  “I’ll wear gloves…and a mask.”

  “Good idea, Billy. Oh, I was wondering…will you be around later today?”

  “Probably.”

  “There’s a chance I’ll need some new business cards by tomorrow morning. I’ll know after I make a call or two.”

  “Your next set of cards will be complimentary,” Billy offered.

  “You’re a pal,” I said as I hung up.

  “A few more phone calls, and that would be it for the day,” I thought. As far as I was concerned, Sunday was the seventh day. I was looking forward to dinner with the Wyeths. I called Kathleen back and confirmed that I’d be there with Mom by one o’clock. Angele wouldn’t be able to make it. She was preparing for a special presentation at the law firm.

  Richard Merrill’s spreadsheet included Rebecca Lavoilette’s private phone number. She’d been a widow for a week. I trusted that was an adequate amount of time to wait before giving her a call.

  “Hello. This is Rebecca.”

  “Mrs. Lavoilette, to begin, please accept my condolences. I am so sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you. Please tell me, who are you, and how you got my private number?”

  “Richard Merrill has hired me to investigate the murder of your husband.”

  “Oh. You must be Jesse Thorpe. Richard mentioned your name. I suppose you’d like an interview. Right?”

  “If it’s not too troubling for you.”

  “I’d be happy to talk with you. I can make time tomorrow if you like.”

  “Tomorrow will be fine. Just tell me where and when.”

  “Let’s see. How about two in the afternoon at the Blaine House? I’ll still be living here for another week. The acting governor has been kind enough to give me a little extra time to move out.”

  “Two o’clock it is,” I said.

  “I’ll leave word with Philip. He’ll let you in,” she said.

  “Thank you so much, Mrs. Lavoilette. And again, I’m so sorry.”

  “Good day, Mr. Thorpe.”

  • • •

  Lori Trumbull had been checked off on my list of women in the governor’s life. I already had a sample of her DNA, and she seemed an unlikely suspect. The name below hers was Susan St. Claire.

  I placed the call.

  A man answered the phone, “Hello.”

  “Hello, may I speak with Susan St. Claire please?”

  “Who are you?” came the terse response. His tone had that, “Are you another f’ing telemarketer?” ring to it.

  “My name is Jesse Thorpe. I’m a private investigator hired by Richard Merrill to investigate the murder of Governor William Lavoilette.”

  “What?” There was an edgy surprise in his voice.

  “I understand that Susan St. Claire knew the governor, and I would like to speak with her if I may.”

  “The FBI have already arrested Travis Perkins, and his gun killed the governor,” he said in a somewhat irritated tone.

  “I am aware of those facts, but I have reason to believe that others are involved. May I please speak with Ms. St. Claire?”

  I heard the voice of a woman in the background ask, “Who is it, Aaron?” Then the sound over the phone was muffled for several seconds. Finally…

  “This is Susan St. Claire, may I help you?” Her voice was firm and professional, but friendly.

  “I hope so. My name is Jesse Thorpe. I’ve been hired to investigate the Lavoilette murder. I understand that you were a friend of William Lavoilette. Would it be possible for us to talk?”

  “I was not a friend of the governor. I met him once or twice a couple of years back to discuss some policy issues. I can’t provide anything useful in a murder investigation.”

  “Do you know Richard Merrill?” I a
sked.

  “The name is vaguely familiar,” she said.

  “He was a close associate of the governor. He indicated to me that you knew the governor personally.”

  “Mr. Thorpe, I met the governor a couple of times. It was business. I was friendly, but we weren’t friends. I think you should press your investigation elsewhere. Goodbye.”

  And with that…she hung up.

  Plan B: According to Richard’s spreadsheet, Susan owned, or partially owned, Northland Natural Gas and Down East Pipe and Fitting. I ran a Google search to see if I could get more specific information on Susan and her businesses.

  Both Northland and Down East had the same three principal stockholders: Susan St. Claire - 55%, Mark Prichard - 30%, and Aaron Miller - 15%. Northland Natural Gas had a parent company in Pennsylvania called Keystone State Natural Gas and Pipeline Company. From their website, it appeared that Mr. Prichard ran the operations in Pennsylvania, and Susan ran them in Maine. A search of corporations listed with the Maine Secretary of State office indicated that Northland had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection two years before.

  I also found an interesting tidbit on the Down East Pipe and Fitting web page. They recently had acquired another company, Moosehead Pipeline. The hair stood up on the back of my neck. Moosehead.

  Misty Starbird had seen a moose head at the murder scene! My heart started racing. I took a few deep breaths and told myself that there are plenty of moose heads in Maine. This is a land of the moose. I talked myself down from the ledge, but Misty’s premonition was sobering.

  As I began formulating how I might arrange a meeting with Susan St. Claire, a nagging thought worked its way into the front of the line in my cerebral cortex. Dennis Jackson had determined my true identity while sitting at his desk. How did he do that? Then it hit me. Elementary! My picture is on my private investigator’s home page. After he had asked me to move away from his computer, he must have gone to my website and seen the serious Mr. Thorpe, Private Investigator, looking back at him on the screen and from across his desk. That’s why he looked at me, and then looked at his screen again, just before pulling out his Colt .45.

  Albert Einstein once penned the definition of insanity: “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

  I’d reconnect with Susan St. Claire, but only after I made one important alteration.

  I initiated FTP-Pro and logged on to my web server. I scrolled through the .JPEG files and found, “Jesse-Thorpe-Photo.” I highlighted the file and hit “Delete.”

  I then pulled up my home page to verify that my picture was no longer there. It was gone. In its place was the icon for a missing link.

  A better solution would be to delete all references to the picture. A curious and devious mind might read subterfuge into a missing photograph at the top of my homepage. So I opened Dreamweaver, made a few changes to my index page, and saved the file. Then I uploaded the file and checked my home page once again.

  Better.

  Now if Susan St. Claire got nosey, she’d have more trouble figuring out what Jesse Thorpe looked like. I’d allow twenty-four hours for my voice to fade from her memory bank, and I’d use the same twenty-four hours to round out Plan B with a new identity and a fresh approach.

  OK, one more call.

  “Jesse, what do you want now?” Billy asked.

  “A dozen new business cards. The former Senate President, James Frye, became the acting governor this past week. I need to become one of his aides. Give me a new name, and I have a new cell phone number. Have the card indicate that I deal directly with lobbyists and corporations. Make it look official, and put the Maine State Seal on the card.”

  “You are a real dreamer, Jesse. Aren’t you worried about falsely representing yourself?”

  “I have more important things to worry about, Billy.”

  “What’s your new name?” he asked.

  “I’m Lloyd Williams,” I said. “That’s two L’s at the beginning.”

  “And two L’s in the middle,” Billie countered. “When do you need them?”

  I gave Billy my new phone number and said, “I’ll pick them up tomorrow.”

  “OK. That will be twenty bucks,” Billy said.

  “I thought you said my next cards would be complimentary.”

  “You’re not paying for the cards; you’re paying for the rush. Besides, this is Sunday.”

  “See you tomorrow,” I said.

  “Bye, Jesse.”

  I was taking the rest of the day off.

  24

  Death in the Family

  “Jesse, I’ve been worried about you. When you called and asked if Cynthia Dumais could stay at my house, it sounded as if the two of you might be in real danger,” Mom said, as we pulled out of her driveway.

  It’s a half-hour drive from Augusta to Waterville. There was plenty of time to fill her in on some of the details of the Lavoilette murder case. I didn’t tell her about the Dennis Jackson episode, of course; there was enough to hold her interest without setting off any extreme motherly alarms. I tried to minimize her concerns, but I didn’t manage that very well.

  “Why don’t you just let the FBI handle this, Jesse? They know what they are doing, and they have access to so much more information. This is what they do all the time for goodness sake,” she said.

  “I’m a private investigator, Mom. For six years I’ve been investigating criminal activity and protecting people who have been threatened. This is really not all that different. Yes, it is a high profile case, but the basic issues and concerns are pretty much the same.”

  “This is murder, Jesse.”

  “Cynthia’s life is in danger, Mom,” I said defensively. “What should I do? Turn her away and put her in further jeopardy?”

  I briefly glanced over to see how she was doing. Mom had a blank expression on her face. It was clear that she was locked in worried mode.

  “Our band is doing well. We’re planning to release our first album in August,” I said, trying to change the subject and cheer her up.

  “I hope it doesn’t come out posthumously,” she sighed.

  Before I could say another word, she followed that up with, “You’re going to end up just like Tom.”

  I had hoped she wouldn’t bring that up, but, of course, it was more or less inevitable. For the rest of the drive, the family ghost would be with us in the backseat. The murder of the governor had happened without a hint of warning. The same exact thing happened to my father, Thomas Christopher Thorpe, when he was 41 years old.

  • • •

  I was fourteen when we got the call from Maine General Medical Center, Thayer Campus, in Waterville. Dad had been shot, and was in critical condition. My mother, Sarah Gale Thorpe, held the phone and froze like a statue, wide-eyed, in shock, disbelieving. How can this be?

  Twenty minutes earlier Dad had been sitting with us at the table. It was practically etched in stone that supper at the Thorpe’s begins at six-thirty on the dot. By seven o’clock that evening, we were just finishing our meal when Dad stood up and announced that we needed some pumpkin pie for dessert.

  Mom implored him, “It’s too much trouble, Tom. Don’t bother.”

  But Dad insisted, “It’s no trouble, dear. The grocery store at the plaza is only a few minutes away. I’ll be back before you clear the table.” And away he went. Forever.

  The scene reels before my eyes at warp speed, as if I were having a lucid dream. It’s October 12th, 1993, 7:20 in the evening. Mom, just 38 years old, a tall, beautiful women with a round face, brown eyes, curly auburn hair and, at any other time, a sweet endearing smile, is now wearing a pair of brown crop pants with her favorite flannel shirt, loafers and a frantic look I have never seen before. Despite the chill in the air, she doesn’t take the time to put on a jacket. We dash out of the house together, into our 1990 green Volvo station wagon and drive east away from our home on Barrett Avenue. It’s a race to every turn, left on Cool Stree
t, right on Western Avenue and across Messalonskee Stream Reservoir. We careen right from North Street toward the hospital at the emergency entrance of Thayer. We cover the two miles in about three minutes. Mom doesn’t bother to pull into a parking space. She just stops at the emergency door, throws the transmission into park, and out we run, through the main door, down two hallways, green on one side, white on the other, our feet barely touch the beige tile floor. In less than 30 seconds, we see our family physician and long time friend standing outside a surgery room waiting for us. Dr. Turner stops us before we can go through that door and says, in a very sorrowful but firm tone, “Tom is gone.”

  He does his best to console us. For several minutes he holds Mom tightly in his arms while she screams, then sobs, and eventually retreats into silent grief. Landon then slumps into the chair beside me, puts his arm around my shoulder, and we both weep.

  Nothing had prepared me for this.

  For the next few weeks, life is a series of hollow movements. It seems as if the real me is about two feet behind and just above the physical me. I am no longer inside myself. My voice sounds as though it circles back to my ears through an echo chamber. When I take a walk or ride my bike, it feels as though I am traveling through a tunnel. When I arrive, I’m still not quite there. Destinations remain just out of reach; friends seem distant. The days take forever to finish.

  For Mom it was worse. In some way, she has never completely recovered. Before Dad was murdered, she almost never drank alcohol. She might have a little wine with Tom when they went out for dinner. At most she’d have a single glass of champagne at weddings or on New Year’s Eve. But now she turned to drinking, hoping against hope, I suppose, that she might eventually forget, or at least get numb enough to get by. After a month or so, she was pretty much numb all the time.

  It didn’t help when winter came early in ‘93 and spring came late in ‘94. At least it seemed that way to us. The snow and the cold forced us inside our memories, holding us in grief. During that winter, I wondered if “reality” would ever come back to me.