by Lea Wait
The back door of the house was ajar. It was Waymouth, and that just meant Aunt Nettie was at home.
“Aunt Nettie? We’re back!” Will called out as they hung their rain gear on hooks near the back door and walked through to the kitchen.
The kitchen light was on, and an empty teacup waited on the counter. The brass kettle was on the electric stove, and the burner below it glowed red hot.
Maggie picked up the kettle. It was empty; the bottom burned. The water had boiled away.
She turned off the burner and looked questioningly at Will. “A little longer and the heat could have eaten all the way through the kettle. The house could have caught fire.”
“Aunt Nettie?” he called again, quickly looking through the other rooms on the first floor. Living room. Dining room. No sign of his aunt.
“Her car was in the driveway,” Maggie pointed out, as she checked the downstairs bathroom. “Would she have gone for a walk and forgotten to turn off the burner?”
“A walk in the pouring rain? I doubt it. And so far as I can tell she’s never done anything like leaving the stove on before,” said Will as he took the stairs two at a time, heading toward the second floor.
Maggie followed.
The door to Aunt Nettie’s room was closed and blocked by a small marble-topped oak bureau that normally stood in the hallway to hold towels, soaps, and other toiletries. It wasn’t large, but Aunt Nettie was ninety-one. She wouldn’t have been able to open a door it was covering.
It took Will only seconds to push it aside and open the door to her bedroom.
Aunt Nettie was lying on the floor of her room, not moving. Every drawer in her bureau and dressing table had been dumped, and the contents scattered. Her wrists were duct-taped together in back of her, and her ankles were also taped. A third piece of the silver tape was across her mouth. A dish towel from the kitchen was tied around her head, covering her eyes, and the odor in the room said she’d wet herself. How long had she been like this?
Will bent to her and untied the dish towel. Her eyes flickered slightly. “I’ll get this tape off, Aunt Nettie,” he said, rising to look for scissors or a knife. “Maggie, call the police.”
She backed out of the room, glancing at the other two rooms on the second floor as she did. It wasn’t only Aunt Nettie’s room that had been savaged. Every drawer in both Will’s and her bedrooms had been overturned onto the floor. Pillows, sheets, and blankets had been pulled up, as though someone had been looking underneath the mattresses. Closets had been emptied, their contents dumped. Every box had been opened. Christmas ornaments stored for the summer were now on the floor, mixed with jars of buttons and sewing notions. Winter sweaters had been thrown from the pine trunks where they were normally kept and strewn throughout the rooms.
Had anything been taken? She didn’t have time to look now.
Maggie dialed 911 and asked to be connected to the Waymouth Police Department.
If only Aunt Nettie was all right. What could anyone have been looking for? What if this wasn’t a simple robbery? What if someone was looking for the journal she’d tucked in her bag and taken with her, even to the show? Was she somehow responsible for Aunt Nettie’s being hurt?
Within a few minutes both an ambulance and Nick Strait were on their way.
Upstairs, Will had found Aunt Nettie’s manicure scissors and was gently cutting the tape that held her ankles. He’d already freed her wrists, and Maggie started massaging them. Aunt Nettie’s skin was pale and slightly blue.
Will had propped his aunt up against the bed, but she still seemed unresponsive. “Aren’t you going to take the tape off her mouth?” Maggie asked.
“I started to,” he answered, “but it tore her skin.” He pointed at her cheek.
Aunt Nettie’s thin, dry skin was no match for the heavy duct tape. “I’m hoping the medical folks will have something better that won’t hurt her. She doesn’t look as though she can talk now, anyway,” he added.
“Fingernail polish remover might help,” Maggie said, but then immediately realized that Aunt Nettie wouldn’t have worn nail polish, and she hadn’t brought any with her to Maine. “I’m worried about her breathing.”
The screeching of sirens interrupted her thought, and she ran downstairs to greet whichever responders had arrived first.
Within five minutes local paramedics had carefully lifted Aunt Nettie onto a stretcher and carried her down the narrow stairway of her home.
Detective Nick Strait arrived just as she was being put into the ambulance.
“Whoa...did anyone take pictures of her?” he asked as he saw her, swaddled in blankets with an IV in her arm but with duct tape still firmly in place over her lips.
“Nick, she’s my aunt. I got help. The paramedics got here first, and they’re taking her to the hospital. I’m going with them. Maggie, stay and tell Nick what happened. Do you remember how to get to Rocky Shores Hospital?”
“Yes.” Maggie remembered all too well, from last summer when her friend Amy’s husband had been hurt in a mysterious car crash.
“Meet me there?”
She nodded. “I will.” She looked at Nick, who had already gotten his notebook out and was jotting something down. “As soon as I can.”
Will climbed into the back of the ambulance and the doors clanged shut after him. Maggie and Nick both watched as the ambulance maneuvered through the deep puddles on the narrow street, its siren sounding once more.
“How bad is she?” asked Nick.
Maggie shook her head. “I don’t know. She wasn’t responding.”
“She’s a tough old lady. I have to ask you: Had she been sexually attacked, could you tell?”
Maggie couldn’t even think about that possibility. “She was fully dressed.”
“Good,” said Nick. “But I’ll have one of the women on the force meet them at the hospital to take pictures and check for any DNA or other evidence on her body. I know you felt you had to get medical help for her, but...” He gave Maggie a long “if we lose evidence this is all your fault” look, as he called his office.
Maggie walked back into the house and sat down at the kitchen table. She could have used a little of that cognac she and Will had joked about on their drive home. Clearly this was not the time to pour any.
Nick joined her a few minutes later, notebook at the ready. “So. Talk. What happened this time?”
Maggie unclenched her fists and tried very hard to smile sweetly.
“Will and I left at about four-thirty this morning to do an antiques show.”
“Was Nettie all right then?”
“So far as I know. We didn’t see her. I assumed she was asleep. Her door was closed.”
“Did you lock the house door when you left?”
Maggie hesitated. “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Will.”
“I’ll do that.” Nick made several flourished notes on his pad and turned the page. “Did you hear from Nettie during the day?”
“No. She didn’t call, and we didn’t call her. She expected us home by seven this evening, but the show closed early because of the weather, and we got home before four.” Maggie paused a moment. Nick was clearly not an expert at shorthand, and was taking down her comments verbatim. Maybe she should donate her tape recorder to the Waymouth Police Department when this was all over? She immediately felt guilty for even thinking such a thing when she should have been focusing on Aunt Nettie.
“Was the door open then?”
Maggie was careful. “We came in the back way. Nettie’s car was in the driveway. I think the back door was ajar. Will didn’t seem to think that was unusual.”
“Did you think that was unusual?”
“I come from New Jersey. We lock our doors there.”
“I haven’t forgotten where you come from.” Nick cleared his throat a bit. “Believe me. Every time I see you I think about it. I know New Jersey is not Maine. I watched The Sopranos. Now, what did you see when you came in?”
Maggie swallowed a deep desire to tell him her cousin Guido was expected to arrive at any moment.
“The light was on in the kitchen, and the stove was on. The kettle on the stove had burned dry.” Maggie pointed at the cup on the counter. “Aunt Nettie’s favorite teacup was just where you see it. I turned off the burner on the stove and put the kettle on another burner.”
“Did everything else downstairs look normal?”
“So far as I could tell. I don’t know the house as well as Will does. We looked for Aunt Nettie. Will called her, and no one answered, so we went upstairs. Would you like to see the upstairs now?”
“Please.” Nick followed Maggie up the stairs.
“We haven’t touched anything except in Nettie’s bedroom, to help her,” Maggie explained.
“You stand in the hallway by the stairs,” Nick directed. He took a small digital camera out of his pocket and started snapping pictures of the hallway and each bedroom.
“The oak bureau. That’s the one you said was in front of her bedroom door?”
“Right. Will shoved it aside so he could open the door. Her room was a shambles, just as it is now.”
“The drawers in the hall bureau weren’t dumped,” Nick commented, as he continued to snap his way through the upstairs.
“True,” said Maggie, peeking over his shoulder to see him focusing on her new black lace nightgown, an adventurous splurge bought with a possible night away from Aunt Nettie’s in mind. It now lay crumpled on the floor next to the front window in her room.
“Can you tell if anything’s missing?”
“I could look through my things, if you’re through in this bedroom,” Maggie said. “I don’t know what was in the other bedrooms, or even what Aunt Nettie stored in the closet.”
Nick moved on to the bedroom at the other end of the hall. “Will was using this bedroom?”
“Yes.”
“You weren’t sharing a bedroom?” he asked.
“Why, Detective Strait,” Maggie replied, “you know Will Brewer and I aren’t married! I’m surprised at you, asking such a personal question!”
Nick just shook his head slightly. “Ms. Summer, you’re from New Jersey; you’re not Scarlett O’Hara. Don’t patronize me.” He moved on to Nettie’s bedroom and looked at the mess there. “You and Will, and Nettie, if she’s able, will have to come up with a list of any missing items. I’ll need that as soon as possible.”
“I understand,” said Maggie.
“You’re going to the hospital now?”
“Yes.”
“Give my best to both Will and Nettie.” Nick paused. “I don’t know why it is that every time I see you there seem to be problems, Maggie Summer. Nick is an old friend of mine, and Nettie’s a special lady. A lot of people in Waymouth will be upset when they find she’s been injured.” He hesitated again. “Or worse.”
“No one is more upset than I am,” Maggie assured him. “Are you going to dust for fingerprints? Or check for DNA?”
“Why don’t you go to the hospital and see how Nettie is. Will needs you. For the moment, don’t go into Nettie’s room, even to look for missing items. In fact,” Nick looked as though he were making a decision, “for tonight I’m going to make the entire house a crime scene. Tell Will you need to find somewhere else to stay tonight. Check with me tomorrow.”
Chapter 23
A Gloucester, Massachusetts Fishing Schooner Discharging at Commercial Wharf, Boston. Wood engraving on cover of Ballou’s Pictorial, a Boston weekly newspaper, March 12, 1859. Includes article on Gloucester fishing smacks, or boats (“305 schooners, averaging 70 tons, employed in the industry,”) and other facets of the fishing business. Drawing by Alfred Waud, who later worked with Winslow Homer and Thomas Nast as an illustrator for Harper’s Weekly in New York City. 10.5 x 14.5 inches. Price: $95.
Maggie pulled into the driveway of Rocky Shores Hospital, turned left, and parked near the emergency room. That’s where the ambulance would have taken Aunt Nettie.
Why was it that she always seemed to know where the police stations and hospitals were in places she visited? A thought she didn’t want to meditate on for the moment.
Will was sitting on an orange plastic chair in the emergency room waiting area, his head back against the wall, his eyes unfocused. Maggie sat down next to him. “How is she?”
“I’m glad you’re here,” he said, reaching for her hand. “The doctor said she’s in shock. But they were able to get that awful tape off her face without tearing too much of her skin, and that’s helped her breathing. A woman from the Waymouth Police Department is in there now taking pictures. They asked me to leave.”
“Is she talking yet?”
“Just a few words. The doctor wants to run some tests to see if she had a minor stroke. The IV is already making a difference. She was dehydrated.”
“I wonder how long she lay there?” Maggie wondered.
“I don’t know. We left so early in the morning. Maybe someone saw us leave, and knew she was alone. But she’d gotten up and dressed, and she usually does that about six-thirty, so I’m guessing it was about seven in the morning.”
“She hadn’t had her morning tea,” Maggie mused. “And there were no dishes out for any other food for breakfast. She might not have had time to get anything out if someone came in first thing. Nick didn’t ask me any questions about her normal routine. He’ll probably ask you those. ”
“Did Nick give you a hard time?”
Maggie shrugged. ”A few comments about my being not only from away, but from New Jersey. I felt a little sorry for the guy. It’s true that every time I see him there’s another crime.”
“Maggie, that’s his job. I’m sorry I didn’t call him up to have a beer before you arrived, but I’ve been so busy with Aunt Nettie, and painting the house....”
“He asked me if you locked the door when we left in the morning.”
Will shook his head. “I don’t remember. Maybe not. Most of the time people in Waymouth don’t worry about locking the doors, although I know Aunt Nettie locks them before she goes to bed at night. A couple of times she’s asked me to check that everything is closed up before I go upstairs.”
“Mr. Brewer?” A pleasant-looking woman wearing a white coat, her gray hair pulled into a ponytail, had walked into the waiting room. “I’m Dr. Simpson.”
Will stood up immediately.
“The police are finished with your aunt for the moment. She’s still drifting in and out of consciousness, and is confused about where she is. She doesn’t have any bruises except those made by her struggling against the tape on her wrists and ankles. The good news is that she doesn’t appear to have been assaulted in any way other than to have been constrained for a prolonged period of time. But for a woman of her age, that alone could cause a heart attack or stroke.”
“Do you think—?” Will started.
“I don’t think anything right now, except that we need to admit her and run a whole series of tests. I’ve called her regular doctor, but it’s Saturday and I haven’t heard from him yet. His records are computerized, though, and linked in to the hospital, and I can’t see anything on her record that would be unusual for her age. Normally her blood pressure is slightly high, but right now it’s low, which could be a concern. That’s one of the things we’re monitoring.”
“I’d like to stay with her. If she wakes up I’d like her to be with someone she knows well.”
“Your aunt will be having tests for the next several hours. Then we’ll put her in a critical care unit near the nursing station on the second floor so we can keep an eye on her and monitor her for any changes. You’re welcome to stay in the small waiting room on that floor, but I have to tell you, there are just a couple of chairs and a small couch there. It’s not very comfortable.”
Will looked exhausted. And Maggie hadn’t told him yet they couldn’t go back to Aunt Nettie’s home that night. “Dr. Simpson, is there a motel close to the hospital?” she ask
ed.
“There’s one about a half mile south of here,” Dr. Simpson said. “I’ll be sure to call you myself, or have whoever is on duty do so, should Miss Brewer’s condition change, or should she need you for any reason.”
Will looked at Maggie questioningly.
“I think we should go to the motel,” Maggie said, firmly. “It’s close by, and you need rest, or you’ll be no good to Aunt Nettie, or to yourself. Give Dr. Simpson your cell phone number, and we’ll check back with her later.”
Will dutifully wrote down his number, and Maggie steered him to the door of the emergency room.
“What was all that about?” he asked when they’d reached the outside. “Why a motel? Why can’t we just go home?”
“Because it’s a crime scene, and we’re banned from the place tonight,” she explained. “I hadn’t had a chance to tell you. Besides,” she continued, taking his arm and heading him toward her van, “the motel is closer to the hospital. Let’s check in, and then get a decent meal and some sleep. We’ve been up since before dawn, our clothes and shoes are damp and muddy, and we’re too exhausted to make any major decisions just now.”
Will nodded. “You’re right. I want to have my thoughts together before either of us talks with Nick, or the doctor, or Aunt Nettie again.”
Luckily, the motel had one room free; on an August night in midcoast Maine, an open room was not a given. As Maggie tried to rinse the mud off her sneakers she longed for her clean clothes back at the now yellow-taped house.
But after they’d each showered they felt better, even having to put the same damp and dirty clothes back on.
“Is there some place we can go that just has simple food, and maybe a glass of wine? We had fried clams this afternoon, and I don’t think I want anything else fried.”
“I know just the place,” said Will, pointing north on Route 1.
The restaurant he found for them was perfect: a view of the Madoc River, fresh homemade breads and chowders, and sandwiches of all sorts as well as the ubiquitous lobster rolls and crab cakes that were de rigueur in August Maine. Plus a bar featuring local beers, ales, and wines.