“Don’t tell me he was a known child molester and her predecessor covered it up.”
“Nothing was said about kids,” Emma said. “But in the Ellsworth office, O’Rourke had been sexually aggressive toward coworkers. A rookie female caseworker told Dorcas in rather graphic terms about O’Rourke coming on to her. They’d gone out for a drink one Friday after a stressful week. O’Rourke offered to drive her home, saying she seemed a bit tipsy. When he got her in his car he drove around for a while, telling her in explicit detail what sexual things he’d do if she’d come home with him.”
“Sounds kind of crude, but if hitting on a coworker after Friday night drinks is a sin, a lot of us should head straight to confession,” I said. “Including me.”
“I know, and I said the same thing to Dorcas, but she pointed out that O’Rourke was forty-six. The female caseworker was twenty-two.”
“Okay, so he hit on younger women, but that’s a long way from being a child molester, which is what scrapper64 is alleging.”
Emma got up and headed for the kitchen and turned the flame on under the kettle. “Want a refresh on the toddy?”
“Oh yeah.”
She retrieved both mugs. “You have anything new on your anonymous mailer’s claim?”
“Nothing. She hasn’t answered my follow-up note, and the phone she was calling from turned out to be a pay phone at a laundromat. My gut tells me it’s a dead end.” I considered booting up my computer to check email while Emma repeated the toddy-making ritual, but I was too tired to move.
“When Dorcas was telling me that Frank had been sexually aggressive toward a young caseworker, I thought about that woman’s story,” she said. “I know there’s no corroboration, but if he was a predator, talk about a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
She returned to our perch in front of the woodstove, a mug in each hand.
“Girls who’ve been abused are often mixed up about sexuality,” she said. “Frank would’ve known how to use that vulnerability against kids on his caseload. And his brother’s political power would have shielded him from scrutiny.”
“Whoa. We’re getting ahead of ourselves. We don’t know that O’Rourke was a predator. The person who says so offers news tips from a pay phone, which is suggestive of a crackpot.”
“I know it’s thin. But if it’s true, it would explain a lot.”
“About Corrine?”
“It might explain her reticence to talk.” She stretched out her long legs. “But watching her father stab O’Rourke to death also could have caused that.”
Or stabbing O’Rourke herself, I thought. “Where do we go from here?”
“Good question. Someone’s trying to shut you up and someone’s trying to maneuver me out of this case. We have to assume that these two forces are in league with one another, no?”
“Fair assumption.”
“My client wants me to stay on the case,” she said.
“I’m not about to let up.” I hoisted my mug. She clinked hers against mine.
“Drink up. After the day we’ve had, it’s time for bed. Tomorrow we’ve got work to do.”
“Thanks for bailing me out of trouble tonight. I still can’t believe you went back out into the storm to fetch me, and you’ve taken such good care of me since I stumbled in the door, with my pants frozen to my ass.”
“I wasn’t going to leave you on your own after you’d been in an accident—or a non-accident as it turns out—and I promised Christie I’d get you warmed up and tucked in.”
“Christie? From Riverside? When did you talk with her?”
“Oops! Sorry, it slipped my mind. Christie called when you were in the shower. Your cell phone fell out of your parka pocket. When it rang I saw it on the floor, picked it up and answered it.”
“What did she say?”
“She was worried about you, said you’d called her after the accident and left her a message. Your cell battery was dying, so I asked her for her number and called her back on my regular phone.” Emma gestured toward the wall, as if I didn’t know what she meant. “I told her you’d slid off the road but were okay. That your car was banged up. I said we’d find a way to get you home tomorrow. She was relieved to hear you weren’t hurt, and that you were thawing out in my shower.”
I groaned, imagining the razzing I’d face when I got home.
“She said to tell you she’ll be waiting for you, and she’s going to hold you to your promise to have supper at the Thai joint.”
I sat back in my chair, causing Mustang Sally to abandon her perch in that abrupt way cats do when their feline meditation is disturbed. “Did she want me to call her back?”
“Nope. She’d missed your call because she was across the street at a neighbor’s for a snowstorm potluck. She ran home for a bottle of wine and saw the light blinking on her answering machine, so she called you back and, bingo, got me instead.”
“Bingo,” I said.
“I’m sorry, was I stepping on your toes to answer your phone?”
“No, it’s fine. I might have tried to track her down if I’d known she called me back. No big deal. I’ll call her in the morning.”
“It’ll be here before we know it. Time to hit the sack.” She took two of the logs that were sitting on the hearth, fed them into the woodstove and damped it down. “I put an extra blanket on the bed in your room. Do you want to get up at any particular time, or are you going to sleep in?”
“I should get up around seven and evaluate the weather. But I can set the alarm on my watch.”
“I’ll be awake by then,” she said.
I stood and held my arms open to her. She stepped in for a hug. I kissed the top of her head. Stroked her back.
She pulled back and gave me a sideways grin. “Time to turn in, Joe. C’mon Sal, us girls are going to sleep upstairs.”
I was surprised by the message, but got it loud and clear.
Chapter Seventeen
Friday, January 9, 2015
The scuff of Emma’s slippers was audible in the kitchen. A glance under the shade showed it was still snowing, light but steady. I put on my clothes from the night before and finger combed my hair, a simpler proposition than it used to be.
Emma wore a purple fleece robe over what looked to be a T-shirt and sweat pants, which might not be every guy’s idea of sexy sleepwear, but I found it quite attractive. She was rekindling the fire, so I put the kettle on to boil and asked if I could cook breakfast.
“Do you have a specialty?”
“Two,” I said. “Pancakes and pancakes.”
“Option number one,” she said. “They’re my favorite.”
It turned out she had some wild Maine blueberries in her freezer and some maple syrup in the fridge, so we were in business. She headed for the shower while I mixed the batter. As the cast iron skillet was heating up I ventured again into the freezer and found some link sausages, the perfect complement to a stack of blueberry pancakes.
By the time Emma returned to the kitchen in faded jeans and a bright blue pullover, coffee was poured, sausage was popping in the frying pan, and a platter of pancakes was in the middle of the kitchen table, warm under a tent of aluminum foil.
“Well, aren’t you the sweetheart of the rodeo.” She picked up one of the coffee mugs and added a bit of milk. “It’s a real treat to have someone make my breakfast.”
“Christie usually makes mine.” As soon as the words left my mouth I wanted them back. “Christie’s not a girlfriend, by the way. I haven’t had one of those since last summer, when the woman I’d been seeing moved to Africa to set up a women’s health program. Christie’s just a friend, a longtime friend. She owns this great little diner in Riverside called the Rambler. It’s where I eat breakfast most mornings.”
“Tell me about C
hristie.” Emma forked several pancakes onto each plate.
“She’s a single parent, raising her son Theo by herself. His father was her college boyfriend, who took off as soon as she told him she was pregnant, never to be seen or heard from again. Theo’s sixteen now and suddenly in that ‘leave me the hell alone’ stage that teenage boys hit. It’s freaking her out.”
I ate a couple of bites of pancake.
“So she lives with her son, and runs a diner,” Emma said.
“Yeah, but that doesn’t capture her. She’s funny and smart, and always has time for her friends. Oh and for Arn, her boyfriend.” I flattened my voice into a monotone. “Arn the Accountant.”
Emma raised her eyebrows, sipped her coffee.
“She studied music at USM, and plays a bunch of instruments, fiddle and bass and piano. You’ll like her. Once we figure out what the hell is going on with this crazy case, we’ll have to make a date for you to come to Riverside.”
Emma laughed.
“Deal.” She extended her hand across the table. “But our first order of business is to figure out what your ‘accident’—” she waggled her fingers in the air “—and my firing mean.”
“We need to know what the O’Rourkes are hiding, why they’re messing with us.” I walked to the stove for another cup of coffee. “When I get to Portland, I’ll connect with some of my sources and see what shakes out of the trees.”
“Speaking of Portland, we need to figure out how to get you there. Any chance your car will be drivable today?”
“Doubtful, even if I could get it to start. The only obvious damage was a flat tire, but running my Subaru into a deep ditch couldn’t have done its undercarriage any good. I won’t be surprised if I banged up the exhaust system, or bent an axle.”
“Do you want to take my car? I’d be happy to stay tucked in for the weekend.”
“I can’t leave you without a car, not way out here. If I can get to Bangor, I could take a bus to Portland. I’ll rent a car to get myself back to Machias.”
Emma drained her coffee cup. “If you don’t want to take my car to Portland, I’m up for a little field trip to Bangor. The storm’s winding down. Let me call to see if buses are running.”
Ten minutes later we had a plan. A bus was scheduled to leave for Portland at ten thirty.
While repacking I took the opportunity to call Christie on my recharged cell phone. I knew right where to find her—the diner crowd shrugs off bad weather like a duck in the rain.
“Rambler—good morning!”
“C’est moi. Still among the living and looking forward to seeing you.”
“I was wondering if you’d thaw out enough to call me.”
“It took a few hours to morph back from Abominable Snowman to Joe Gale, Crack Reporter, but I’m fine now, and ready to head home.”
“That’s a relief,” Christie said. “I was worried I’d have to live without you this weekend, and Lou was, too. It finally stopped snowing here about dawn. The roads are decent, but not great.”
“My car’s in Ellsworth, where it’ll need a thorough going-over before I can drive it again. Emma’s going to drive me to Bangor so I can catch the ten thirty bus to Portland.”
“So you’ll get in about, what, one?”
“That’s what the schedule says, but the roads could be dicey. If I text you with my ETA when we get to Brunswick, any chance you can pick me up?”
“Sure. There’s plenty of staff to handle the lunch rush.”
“Looking forward to seeing you.”
“And here I was, worried you were going to leave me in the lurch this snowy weekend,” Christie said. “Late last night me and Lou had a heart-to-heart, wondering if we’d been thrown over for another girl.”
I laughed. “No way. I’m jonesing for green curry and pad thai. We have a lot to talk about.”
“That we do,” Christie said. “So we’ll order ourselves some cold Thai beer and tell ’em spice every dish three stars.”
“On my end, the hotness of the news will match the food.”
Emma was finishing up the breakfast dishes when I returned to the big open room and set my packed duffel and computer bag on a bench next to the door.
“Now that I’m full o’ carbs and coffee, let me at those snowdrifts,” I said. “I’ll go dig the car out.”
She walked to the window. “It’s going to be a two-person job.” I moved over to stand next to her. Outside, shapes were indistinct and boundaries between things invisible.
“Maybe we ought to rope ourselves together, like mountain climbers do,” she said. “That way if I fall off the porch into a drift, you’ll find me.”
“Yeah, but if I’m the one who falls off the porch, I’ll take you with me.” I put my arm around her shoulders.
“Git yer boots on, pardner.” She elbowed me in the ribs. “We’ve got some serious shoveling to do.”
Multiple passes. Still no reaction. I hadn’t come on to a woman since Megan waltzed out of my life, but it’s not the sort of thing you forget how to do. I smiled at Emma, laughed at myself. You make your living with words, I thought. Stop with the junior high moves and ask if she’s single. In the car, on the way to Bangor.
Despite the porch being covered by a roof, the section in front of the door held a wind-packed foot and a half of snow. We forced the storm door open enough to wedge our bodies through and waded through the drifted snow to where a pair of shovels leaned against the wall. Then we set to work, carving dense blocks of snow and tossing them over the railing into the yard. When we finished the area in front of the door, we jumped down into the yard, where there was no protection from the wind. Emma tackled the steps while I cleared a path to the car, then excavated the Honda itself. Using gentle strokes, I scraped away snow with the shovel and Emma went after the next layer with a full-sized broom. When she was able to open the hatch, she pulled out a long-handled windshield brush, which allowed me to clean up the glass while the motor hummed and the defroster did its magic.
“My plow guy seems to be among the missing.” Emma frowned at the forty yards of unplowed driveway that lay between the car and the road. The silence was broken by the whine of a big engine, which turned out to be the town plow churning along. We watched it drive by, its big blade leaving a dense pile of snow at the mouth of the driveway.
“Different day, same situation,” Emma said. “Every time I want to leave, he drives by and blocks me in.”
“The all-wheel drive will take us through this uncompacted stuff. We only need to shovel the end of the driveway in order to break loose. I’ll go tackle that.”
The wall of plowed-up snow at the end was more than three feet high and as heavy as beach sand after the tide recedes. I scaled the snowbank and attacked it from the road side like I was competing for a gold medal, digging out a section wide enough for the car to drive through. I thrust the shovel into the berm over and over again, hurling great blocks of snow out onto the roadway. It was a whole-body workout, and after a few minutes my back was soaked beneath my parka.
I was leaning on my shovel, trying to catch my breath, when I heard the rumble of a diesel engine. A black Ford F-250 was swinging around a bend fifty yards away like an unwelcome apparition. I took a couple of steps into the road, then turned to face the truck. The windows were tinted. Through the veil of snow I could make out two figures inside, but couldn’t see their faces. The big Ford didn’t swerve toward me, but as it passed its driver blared the horn, a long nasty blast that I guessed wasn’t a salute to my shoveling prowess. Blood was pounding in my ears. I told myself it couldn’t be the same truck that had chased me down the Black Woods Road, that it was coincidence that a day after being run into a ditch, the first truck I saw was a goddamn big black Ford.
Emma was in the driveway, loading my stuff into the car, obliviou
s to the roadside drama. I slogged through the snow to where she stood, frustrated that I hadn’t looked to see if there was any damage to the front bumper, or even caught the license plate number.
“Did you see those guys?” I was still panting from my shoveling feat.
Emma looked over my shoulder. “What’d they do, plow us back in?”
“Big black Ford with two guys inside. The windows were dark, so I couldn’t see their faces. But it looked like the asshole who rammed me last night.”
Emma swung the rear hatch closed. “Take a deep breath, Joe. There are an awful lot of big black Ford trucks around here. You can’t suspect every one you see.”
“It sure seemed odd to see one right now.”
“Let it go,” she said. “You’ll make yourself nuts.”
Emma blasted her CR-V through the half-shoveled snowbank like a woman on a mission. We slipped and slid a little but made it safely to the main road, which had been plowed. Light snow still was falling, forcing her to keep an easy foot on the gas pedal. Emma said it was less than twenty miles to Bangor, but it felt longer. Irritated and a little embarrassed by my reaction to the assholes in the truck, I forgot to bring up the subject of her relationship status.
* * *
Most Bangor businesses were shuttered against the storm, but the bus station was lit up and its parking lot was plowed out. The soft-spoken guy behind the counter told me the bus to Portland was running on time, and moments later it pulled into Bay Number One, belching exhaust. Emma offered to wait with me for the few minutes before departure, but I sent her on her way after extracting a promise that she’d stay alert for big black Ford trucks.
“On the off chance that the guy on your road this morning was the guy who followed me last night, you don’t want to take any chances.”
“I find it difficult to believe anyone would have been capable of tracking you to my house last night. But don’t worry, I’ll pay attention to who’s around me, and if anything weird happens, I’ll holler for the cops.”
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