by W B Garalt
Mahlah was pronounced dead at the scene. Her body had been extracted from the airplane wreckage and was being transported to the state morgue.
Chip Chaplain was arrested by the State Police Senior Officer on the scene and transported to the medical center for further medical attention.
The two patched-up and handcuffed bodyguards, both Native Canadian Indians that had escorted Mahlah from across the border in New Brunswick, were taken into custody to be transferred to the immigration authority office in Augusta.
After turning over the three handguns taken from the robbers and answering questions, Max, Maggie, Don and Maurice walked back to the relative warmth of the library to collect their thoughts and their belongings.
The escort transport had come and gone with Chace’s ‘friend’.
Chapter 43
Thanksgiving morning, when Max and Maggie left Hargrove House Apartments, on the way to pick up Maggie’s mother they had detoured to spend an hour with Max’s mother at the nursing home where she had lived for several years. Mrs. Hargrove’s cognizance wafted in and out these days, as she struggled with the onslaught of Alzheimer’s disease. They never knew for sure if she realized exactly who they were.
The couple enjoyed the remainder of the holiday with Maggie’s mother, and aunts. The younger sisters of her mother, had arranged for a meal including her and Max. The gathering took place at a condo apartment located in White Plains, a suburban neighborhood in New York, near the Connecticut line.
Following the assemblage, Maggie’s mother rode back with Max and Maggie to her assisted living apartment in Fairlawn, Connecticut. It was the first time Max and Maggie had joined her family’s Thanksgiving meal as a couple.
Almost three weeks had passed since the show-down in Fort Fairfield.
One week following the confrontation at the border crossing, Don Chace called Max with an inquiry as to Maggie’s health, and expressed his gratitude for her and Max’s participation in the operation. He suggested that, if they were free they could meet up with him and he could give them an update as to the result.
“Maggie is fine, Don. I’ll tell her you asked,” Max answered. “She is away on a two-day finance seminar, but I know she’d really like to hear about it.”
“Well, I can give you what I know,” Don quipped, “and if I leave anything out, tell her to call me.”
“Okay, wise guy,” Max retorted with a chuckle, “Fill me in.”
Chip Chaplain had been charged by the RCMP with second degree murder of Ernest Bickford, Chace told Max. Chip was accused of aiding and abetting the now-deceased Mahlah Bickford in the murder of her husband, withholding information as to the killing, and tampering with evidence at the crime scene. Chace indicated that the information came from Chip Chaplain’s confession. He was being held by the Maine State Police for robbery, firing a weapon at police officers and civilians, assault and battery, and illegal flight through international air space boundaries without authorization. The RCMP had requested his extradition to stand trial in Canada and the request is under consideration.
“Chip had been having an on-going affair with Mahlah,” he said. “Ernest became aware of it.”
“Chip was directing assignments for the USAP operatives and must have set up meetings with Mahlah to coincide with the away-assignments for her husband,” Max supposed.
Chase agreed and went on to describe an occasion, taken from the transcript of Chip’s confession, whereas the three of them were at the family bungalow in Halifax. An argument flared up and, having threatened to have Mahlah removed from his will, Ernest was going to fly alone back to Ithaca. At stake for her was his sizable family inheritance.
“That must have been an interesting scene,” Max inserted.
“I’ll say,” Chase agreed. “According to him, Mahlah was screaming obscenities at Ernest and followed him into the boathouse. He was casting off the mooring lines securing the floatplane and, as he crossed in front of the idling airplane to push-off and jump onto the pontoon, Mahlah pushed him into the spinning propeller.”
“Christ!” Max exclaimed, “That must have kicked up quite a mess!”
“I would think so,” Chase responded. “According to the forensic examination of the planes operating system, the turbine engine stalled and the un-moored floatplane drifted back against the unopened boathouse door, held inside only by the door latch. Chip said that Mahlah had been spattered with some of Ernest’s pureed body parts and had to take a shower.
“That’s ugly! Man, nobody knows what that intensity of anger can produce,” Max responded.
Inspector Chase went on to relate how the couple delayed calling the authorities for a day. They left the bungalow and took a drive into the New Brunswick Mountains. A stay at an Inn there provided them with an alibi.
“It was reported on the following day that they had gone back to the bungalow unaware of Ernest being there, and had discovered the gruesome scene,” Chace continued. “The inspection by the medical examiner, as expected, indicated that the death had occurred the previous day.”
Chace suggested that, since Mahlah had influence with the Halifax Police Chief, possibly through the laboratory-based drug trafficking, the incident was downplayed and listed as an accidental death with no further questions.
“And this went on undetected until the insurance investigation started?” Max asked.
“That’s right,” Chace responded. “Mahlah’s filing for the double indemnity, out of greed, lit the fuse. But there’s more. The accountant at the Bickford Laboratory was arrested and charged with falsifying government reporting records, aiding and abetting illicit drug trafficking, and forgery.”
Chace went on to tell Max that the entire staff of workers at the laboratory was charged with aiding and abetting illegal drug trafficking and turned over to the Provincial Native Canadian Conservatory, headed by the newly-elected Chief of the New Brunswick Reservation, Lamar “Dark-Horse” Brooks. Lamar had accepted the position as a way of memorializing the death of his brother Jonathan.
Chace suggested that the tribe members were apparently regarded as hard-working, honorable people except for the few ‘rotten apples’, which included the elder’s council and their group of enforcers. He felt that the tribe would be in good hands with Lamar in charge.
“We’ve been wondering what happened to Lamar,” Max said, disguising his dissention over the dismissive attitude Lamar showed that day on the mountain. “When he went along with the elders who were going to flush Mario, me, and Maggie, down their mountain toilet, I guess he had no choice under the circumstances.”
Chace didn’t know all of the details of the abduction, but he gave Max the benefit of the doubt on that segment of the saga. He continued on relating that the undersea exploratory vehicle belonging to the Bickford Laboratory was confiscated by the RCMP and held as evidence in an illegal drug trade investigation. As suspected by Inspector Marcel Leblanc, the two-man submarine was used by the corrupted reservation elders to conduct transfers of illegal drugs from South America in off-shore international waters. It was also found to be utilized by the reservation elders to control the tribe, mostly the older, more superstitious members. The old tales circulating among the conglomeration of indigenous tribes concerning the mountain sacrifices to the ‘god of righteousness’ told of offenders among the tribe being punished by ‘sacrificing’ them on the ‘mountain-side disposal’ machine. The machine was actually an air-circulation mechanism. It was developed by 18th century explorers to vent the shafts of mining expeditions dug into the mountains along the Forty Five River. An apparatus was built into the underground system which was energized by the enormous energy created by the force of trapped air which gathered below the mining tunnels as the river tide rose.
The abnormally fast rising tides along the deep ravines of the ‘Bay of Fundy’ as that region of ocean came to be called, created strong and swift currents. The Forty Five River currents, which changed direction twice each day, were parti
ally deflected to provide the power to drive the ventilation system. With its conglomeration of gates and gears it resulted in a version of the modern day garbage disposal. The ventilator mechanism ground anything entering its vertical venting shaft, located on the side of the mountain, into dust. Thus, the automatic, un-tended system remained jam-free and would function under all conditions.
The tribal Elders would place an ‘offender of the rules’ on the upper grate and open the grate to drop them into the mechanism at the time of high tide. The ground-up perpetrator would then be flushed into the river through an underground conduit. The river water would turn red as a result, enforcing the effect for all who watched the ceremonial process. This was the control method enforced by the corrupt council of elders for years.
The process did not live up to the epic tales spun by the elders as the younger, more educated and more sophisticated generation developed. Unrest among the younger members was presenting a problem to the controlling elders so, in order to reinforce their control method, mannequins were occasionally swished through the system at high-tide tribal ceremonies and a highly concentrated dye was simultaneously released up-river. A derivative of shark repellent initially developed by the Bickford Laboratory under a Canadian Military Contract, was the marker-dye which was altered to be colored a deep red. The ceremonies were pre-arranged to be held according to the tidal charts. At the exact time of the peak high tide, the dye was dispersed into the out-going tidal currents of the river by using the Bickford undersea exploratory vehicle. The result was that, as depicted by the elders’ old tales, the river ran red.
Those demonstrations had been difficult for the rebellious younger generation to discount, but change was in the wind since the arrival of Lamar Brooks.
Chace had to cut off the conversation at that point. Max thanked him for the update and they agreed to a meeting for lunch for the three of them as more fall-out transpired.
Max’s conveyance of this information to Maggie would have to wait but, during their call later that evening he passed along the part about the red dye in the river. That tidbit resulted in an “Ahh!” from Maggie. He knew that she would be eager to hear the rest.
Chapter 44
Max had been spending two or three days a week in Lakeside taking care of the essentials of his CFO responsibilities at USAP. Without the luxury of having the availability of a ski-plane, he and Brad contracted for a snow-clearance crew to keep the USAP runway clear.
Brad didn’t seem affected by Chip’s absence. He told Max that, back on the day before he briefed Max on the Cessna ski apparatus Chip had ordered that the Cessna Skyhawk be readied with the ski conversion, although there had been no snowfall in the Ithaca region. Because there were no specifics behind the abrupt order, as would be expected between two equal Partners, Brad was glad to get an inquiry about a ski plane from Max, another USAP Partner. He was more than willing to promote the use of the Cessna to Max. Two days later, when Chip came in to request the plane, he was furious to find out it that it had been assigned to Max.
Nevertheless, Brad was in sort of an engineer’s state of mourning. The mangled and bloodstained Cessna Skyhawk fuselage and wings had been shipped back to USAP and now sat in a back corner of the hangar awaiting Brad’s TLC attention.
During Brad’s initial inspection of the crashed retro-fitted Cessna upon its arrival at headquarters, he discovered the hybrid automatic weapon which Ezra had assigned to Max, still stowed in a secret section of the luggage compartment.
Max was surprised when Brad pointed out, with an air of resignation to fate and with no outward sign of remorse, that the metal shaft which had punched through the co-pilot’s floor of the Cessna and pierced the chest of Mahlah during the crash, was the titanium radial brace for the right-side ski on the landing gear conversion. Max knew Brad to be the serious type, but the manner in which that information was relayed seemed beyond factual. It seemed cold.
A consensus had developed during the past few weeks among Max and the other USAP Partners that it was time for a meeting to discuss the future of their organization following the resignation of its founder, Senior Partner Harold Lee “Chip” Chaplain.