Death in the Pines

by Thom Hartmann

  “I think you’d be the first to know.”

  “It’s warm in here.” She unzipped her coat and pulled it open. She was wearing a pale brown cashmere sweater, eloquent of money and sex appeal.

  “Why do you think your husband may be in trouble?” I asked.

  She sipped her wine. “He often is. It’s not as bad lately, but he has a temper, and he’s such a big hulk of a man.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “I haven’t seen him for two days.” She gave me a kind of hurt look, as though I were responsible. “He had a meeting in town, and then he went off surveying some of his land. He’s done this before, taken off and not let me know where he’s going. His secretary can get in touch with him, but I can’t.”

  She said it with such bitterness that I asked, “Something going on between them?”

  “One could assume that. She may be in line for my job.” She drank more wine. “Wife, I mean. Tell me what’s going on. Caleb’s been acting odd for nearly two years. What has he done?”

  “I don’t know.” I raised my glass and from behind it, watching her closely, I said, “It may have something to do with Jerry Smith.”

  She snorted an unladylike burst of laughter. “Jerry Smith is a total nerd.”

  “But he’s involved somehow. And a man named Frank Lauser.”

  “I don’t know him,” she said too quickly.

  “Yes, you do. Your company hired Lauser twice in the last year as a consultant.”

  She sprang up from her chair. “How did you find that out?”

  “It’s publicly available information. What did your company hire Lauser to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come on. You’re an officer of the corporation.”

  “You don’t know much about how a business works. I have the title of VP, but absolutely zero responsibilities or powers.”

  “You’re also secretary-treasurer. You must have signed Lauser’s paychecks.”

  She shook her head. “I sign whatever our CPA hands me. Did your informant tell you I have no stock ownership? That means no input.”

  “Yet you were paid a salary of two hundred and thirty thousand last year.”

  “Why are you doing this?” She collected herself and sat down again. “Look, you’re acting like we’ve broken the law. We haven’t. Our company is trying to improve the environment. We’re planting new trees where loggers once were clear-cutting. We’re the good guys. What are you trying to do to us?”

  “I’m just trying to find out who killed Jeremiah Smith.”

  “That was a hit-and-run accident. I didn’t have anything to do with it, and Caleb didn’t either.”

  “And Caleb doesn’t have any problem with the Abenakis.”

  “Look, that’s completely different. If those people get tribal status, a lot of landowners are going to be burned, not just Caleb. Those people want us to hand Vermont over to them.”

  “It used to be theirs.”

  “Not anymore. Do you know your history? The Abenaki fought the American settlers in the French and Indian War. They lost, and we won. Isn’t there something about victors and spoils?”

  “Yet they were here first.”

  “That’s—”

  A loud banging on the door cut her off. She went pale. I jumped up and peeked through the door.

  Wanda stood there, wearing a frayed red wool coat over a sweater and blue jeans. She said, “Oakley, I have to tell you about Darryl—”

  She broke off, seeing Eva inside. “That’s her car, then,” she said. “What the hell is she doing here?”

  “I was trying to find out.”

  “I know you,” Eva said to Wanda. “The little girl from Northfield who shacked up with my husband when you were working at Santos’ Bar in Montpelier.”

  Wanda pushed past me. “Listen, you, that’s a lie! I told him I wasn’t for sale or for rent. Something you wouldn’t have thought to tell him.”

  Eva stared at her stone-faced. “He took you to a hotel.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Wanda leaned on the table. “I was married and working my way through college. I delivered a two-hundred-dollar bottle of champagne to your husband’s hotel room. I was there for maybe one full minute.”

  Eva began, “That’s bullshit—”

  Something thudded heavily against the back wall of the cabin, making the whole place vibrate for a second, as though a bolt of lightning had hit nearby.

  I blew out the kerosene lamp just as the side window gave a sharp crack and I heard the dull chunk of a slug embedding itself in one of the beams on the other side of the room. I grabbed my jacket, found the pistol, and ordered, “Down on the floor, and lie flat.”

  I pulled my emergency flashlight from beside the bed. “Stay away from the door,” I said. “Wanda, did you see or hear anyone when you walked up here?”

  “Deer on the edge of the forest.”

  “How many cars?”

  “Your Jeep, the Mercedes, mine.”

  “Stay put.” I crawled to the door and pushed it slightly ajar. Nothing. I eased it open, hearing a hinge creak. It sounded as loud as a high trumpet note from Louis Armstrong. I wormed out onto the narrow porch. A long way down the trail I saw a flicker of light, as if someone had turned on a flashlight to get his bearings.

  I jumped up and ran, following the edge of the forest. I could hear someone blundering through the increasingly slushy snow downhill. I didn’t know if there were two of them or only one. I heard a car door slam down at the bottom of the logging road, then the roar of the engine starting, but by the time I made it down, whoever it was had already gone.

  I slogged back to the cabin. Wanda was sitting on the floor; Eva had rolled over to my mattress on the floor. I closed the door and said, “I think it’s safe. He drove away.” As they got up, I lit the kerosene lantern again, but kept it low.

  “Who was it?” Wanda asked, standing up.

  “I don’t know. Whoever it was must have come right behind you. You sure you weren’t followed?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t expecting anyone to follow me.”

  Eva was visibly upset. “I’m leaving.” She pushed herself up from the bed.

  “But Wanda will have to back her car out for you to get past.”

  Wanda had a small flashlight in the pocket of her coat. The two women followed its feeble beam downhill while I took a look at the roof beam where the bullet was lodged, and tried to judge where the shooter might have been. Then I made my way around back. Snow had piled high at the left corner of the house. I saw tracks and bent down to study them.

  Wanda came around the corner, nearly making me draw my pistol before I realized it was her. “What is it?”

  I shone the light on the deep footprints.

  She said, “Damn, that’s a bear.” She pointed to a dark hank of hair caught in one of the rough-hewn boards. “There’s where he bumped the cabin. Must have been a poacher after him, took a wild shot.”

  “No,” I said. “The guy parked at the bottom of the road. He came up the hill. He wouldn’t have seen anything behind the cabin, not even something big as a bear.”

  We went back inside, and hung blankets over the front and side windows. Wanda said she didn’t feel safe sitting in a chair, so we sat cross-legged on the floor, leaning against the north and east corner walls. Her eyes glittered in the faint lamplight. “Relax,” I said. “Nobody could aim at us without coming in through the door.”

  “You think it was Darryl, don’t you?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “No. He would have seen my car. I really don’t think he would have shot, knowing I was inside. It had to be somebody after the bear, or you. Or that Benson bitch. Was she trying to bed you?”

  “She didn’t give me the come hither treatment. I think she wanted just what she told me—to find out why I’m asking about her husband.” I studied Wanda’s face. “Did Caleb Benson try to put a move on you?”

  “Oh, boy.
Maybe three hundred times.”

  “Did you see much of him?”

  “Enough. He came into the bar once or twice a week when he was in town. I knew a girl who said yes to him once. She left town soon after.”

  “So why did you come, Wanda? You said it was about Darryl.”

  “Just to tell you to lay off. He’s OK. He may be a lazy shit, but he’s harmless. He tries to do the right thing.”

  “But he used to beat you up.”

  “No! What gave you that idea?”

  “The night you went bowling, you said it was tough on a woman when a man slapped her around.”

  She exhaled. “Oh, hell, I wasn’t talking about Darryl. That was Marie’s dad, a boy named Phil Newton. He was insecure and jealous because we were both in college at the same time and I had higher grades, believe it or not. He slapped me around once, and I warned him. The second time I took Marie and left.”

  “So Darryl was an improvement.”

  “He tried to treat me well. But Darryl couldn’t hold a job. Smoked a lot of dope, that kind of thing. Not exactly a good father figure.”

  “And not a good husband for you.”

  “I don’t know. I could have put up with him if was just the two of us, I guess. Maybe try to straighten him out. And he liked Marie. Used to carry her around on his shoulders. She liked him too, and she’d obey him when she wouldn’t obey me.” She had picked up a leaf that one of us must have tracked in. It was wet but brittle, and she crumbled it. “I just don’t want Darryl to go to jail, that’s all. He’s not a bad man.”

  “He shot out the taillights on my Jeep.”

  “And you shot his truck, I heard.”

  “Do you know where he was last night?”

  “No.”

  “I think he might have been standing guard in the woods with a rifle while another man tortured Jerry Smith with a stun gun.”

  “What?”

  “And this morning I caught him and Bill Grinder on my land, both of them armed.”

  “Darryl hunts,” she said.

  I plowed ahead: “Not long after that he drove to Jeremiah Smith’s trailer, entered it illegally, and went through it pretty thoroughly.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I have a good eyewitness.”

  “He must be in trouble, doing stuff like that.” She shook her head. “Damn. Look, will you help him? As a favor to me?”

  “Not if he helped kill Jeremiah.”

  “That was an accident.”

  “No.” I grinned without mirth. “It was no boating accident. And it wasn’t a shark. It was someone committing murder, and the weapon was a vehicle with out-of-state plates.”

  “Huh?”

  I said, “Pop culture references are lost on you. But what I said is true: someone killed Jeremiah. I thought so at the time, and now I’m positive. Caleb Benson’s in on it somehow, and Bill Grinder. And Darryl.”

  “Darryl’s scared,” Wanda said. “I called him after I heard about the shooting. He wouldn’t talk to me. He still tries to get me to take him back, but I can tell something’s bothering him, something big. Maybe Bill got him involved in something crooked, I don’t know. Darryl’s worked part-time for Bill off and on for years, but a part-time mechanic doesn’t get the kind of money Darryl’s been spending around town. He paid Bobby Dominey cash for that truck of his. He never had that kind of money in his life.”

  “He smokes pot. Does he deal it?”

  “I’d have heard, and he’d have had to get half the town stoned to make the kind of money he seems to have. I thought he might be smuggling something in or out of Canada, but I don’t know what.”

  “It would be a stupid racket for him to try.”

  “Yeah, well, he hasn’t won any Rhodes scholarships.” She got to her knees, then to her feet. “I’d better go. The neighbor lady is watching Marie. Walk me to my car?”

  I picked up the flashlight. On the way down I studied the snow, but the warming weather had reduced it to slush that wouldn’t hold a good footprint. As Wanda backed out to the road, I considered going into town and renting a motel room. But if someone sincerely wished me dead, I’d be no safer there.

  I turned off the flashlight and gave myself a moment for my eyes to adjust, then made my way back uphill. Outside the cabin, I paused. “Thank you, Grandfather,” I said loudly.

  The great night brooded silently.

  I went inside and closed the door. I was down to my last bottle of wine.

  As I opened it, I saw that the corner of the blanket on my bed had been thrown back. The files were missing.

  Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice had said. I would have to do something about this.

  But first I had to do something about that last bottle of wine.

  21

  The phone shrilled me out of sleep. Thinking it was still night, I fumbled for it, and then as I registered the leak of daylight around the blanket covering the front window I realized the sun was well up. “Tyler here.”

  “Mr. Tyler.” The voice was familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. It had the Vermont accent. Then it clicked.

  “Mr. Benson,” I said. “I tried to reach you at your office.”

  “I was checking some land,” he said.

  “See anyone tied to a tree?”

  He grunted. “I don’t want to talk on the phone. Can we meet this afternoon? Do you know Burlington?”

  “Just where it is.” It was an hour west of me, on the eastern shore of Lake Champlain.

  “There’s a place there called the Five Spice Café.” He gave me the street address. “You can Google it,” he added.

  “No, I can’t. No computer.”

  “Oh?” He sounded surprised. “Well, just stop and ask. You can find Church Street easily enough, and anybody along there will know where it is. Meet me there at one-thirty.”

  “I could just come to your place, or you could come here.”

  “No. People talk. I don’t want locals to see me with you.” He paused. “You’re wondering if I killed Jeremiah Smith. I didn’t.”

  “Then who did?”

  “That’s what we can talk about. At one-thirty.”

  “What time is it now?”

  He sounded irritable. “God’s sake, you don’t have a computer, don’t you even have a watch? A clock?”

  “No.”

  “Seven thirty-seven AM,” he said, and hung up just as I remembered my phone would tell me the time.

  I climbed out of bed and took the blankets off the windows. The slug had left a spider-webbed round hole in one pane. Outside, the sky was making the change from rosy pink to china blue. High cirrus clouds brushstroked it like a delicate painting. Through the window I saw rivulets of water running. The eaves wore beards of dripping icicles.

  The cabin was cold enough to make me hurry to get the fire going. A quart of lukewarm water remained in the cast-iron snowmelt pot atop the stove. I used it for a sponge bath. Then I dressed and went back to the spot where the bullet had buried itself in a two-by-six roof joist. I pulled my sturdy table over and stood on it, eyes level with the hole in the wood, and sighted through the hole in the window. The shooter had been near the edge of the clearing east of the cabin, unless he’d been hiding sniper-fashion in the treetops farther downslope.

  When I stepped out the air was crisp, not freezing, and it smelled fresh with pine sap. A lot of snow will melt today, I thought. The temperature probably was right around forty and might climb into the fifties with full sun. I couldn’t make anything of the tracks, not even in daylight. Too much slush.

  I walked as far as the rock outcrop, half expecting to see Sylvia, but only an outspoken chipmunk waited there, chittering at me from a cleft in the rocks to go away and leave him alone. I wondered if she’d be up Route 12 near the tree I was supposed to visit this morning.

  I drove out there in the Jeep, through a fair amount of traffic. A guy tailgating me slammed on his brakes when I slowed to make the turn onto the
abandoned logging trail. This time no deer were there to direct me, and maybe my turn was a little abrupt. I found the spot where the Subaru had parked. From the ruts in the muddy slush, it looked like someone had driven in and out several times in the last few days. I found the spot where I had first seen Jerry tied to the tree, then in the daylight saw I had missed an easy descent that I could have taken in the darkness.

  As Sylvia had instructed me, I stood at the tree, facing east, and raised my right arm out to my side. I took off on foot, following the rolling terrain. Far ahead one dead tree towered above the rest of the forest. I caught occasional glimpses of it. My path was taking me more or less straight toward it. It served as an aid to navigation. I hit the overgrown old logging trail again and saw more fresh tracks. Hard to tell, but it looked like two different vehicles, the deeper tracks from a tire tread with a diamond pattern.

  And then I emerged in a churned-up clearing. The vehicles, or at least one of them, had been in and out of here repeatedly and had turned around many times. Along the margin were boot tracks and drag marks. The boot tracks looked about size nine. I thought of Darryl and his truck and wondered about the tires he ran on it.

  Brown twigs with brittle pine needles littered the pathway. I followed it along deeper into the forest. Then I came out in a much larger clearing, an acre or more, and found an expanse of small pine-sapling trunks, all cut off about six inches from the ground. From the sawdust, it looked as though the trees had been trimmed off by a handsaw, not a chainsaw, which mostly only leaves chunks. Most of the stubs were between an inch and two inches in diameter, the same size as the brush Darryl had been burning.

  I scouted around the clearing. On the far side I sighted back toward the trail I’d followed coming in, then across the forest in the opposite direction, more or less south. I came across some weathered boot tracks in the snow, not the same size as the ones I’d followed in. They seemed to belong to someone doing the same thing I was, scoping out the clearing. I made a complete circuit.

  I saw another, smaller clearing below and walked down to it. More small pine stumps, but these were gray and weathered, not fresh. They bordered a small wash that in wet weather was probably a brook. I followed the gully for a hundred feet or so and found a few more stumps. Then fifty more feet brought me to a stand of small pines among the hardwood. There were only three, none more than three feet tall, and all were dead, needles a rusty brown, like the saplings I had seen in Darryl’s pickup. I flexed a small branch on one and it snapped in my hand, with no give at all.