“Ah.” The doctor smiled. “I take it we’re talking about young Mr. Ellis?”
“You know Derek?”
“Not well. I know his father. Doctors of pathology are doctors, too, you know.”
“Right,” I said. She and Dr. Ellis were colleagues. Of course. They probably had meetings or luncheons or Christmas parties they attended together.
While all this had been going on, Irina had been quiet, and now we all turned to her. She was standing next to me, her hands folded in front of her and her face impassive.
“Miss Rozhdestvensky?” Dr. Lawrence said gently from the other side of the gurney. “Do you know her?”
Irina’s lips thinned before they parted. “No.” She shook her head for emphasis.
“You’re sure?”
Irina looked up, from Wayne to me to the doctor. “I have never seen her before. If I did know who she was, I would tell you. She’s someone’s daughter, or sister, or wife. Not my sister, not my parents’ daughter, but someone’s. I’m sorry I can’t help you.”
“That’s all right,” Wayne said. “It was worth a try. I don’t suppose you have any idea how she ended up with your name and address in her pocket, either, then?”
Irina shook her head, her lips tightly pressed together now. “I have never seen her before. She didn’t contact me. No one else has contacted me, either.”
Wayne nodded. “I understand. If anyone does or you think of anything that might help, please let me know.” He handed her his card.
Irina took it and put it in the pocket of her suit. She looked from Wayne to Dr. Lawrence. “May I go now?”
“Of course. And thanks for coming in.”
Irina hesitated. “You’re welcome” didn’t quite suit the occasion, and “my pleasure” was even worse. Eventually, she settled for, “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to help.”
“Even negative information is information,” Dr. Lawrence said with a nod. “Thank you for coming.”
Irina headed for the door, and I excused myself to follow her, leaving Wayne and Dr. Lawrence together in the visiting room. We rode the elevator back upstairs in silence; it wasn’t until we were outside, and could breathe fresh air again, that Irina opened her mouth. “Thank you for coming with me, Avery.”
“My pleasure,” I said. “I mean . . . I was happy to do it. It isn’t easy being all alone in a new place, is it? Have you made any friends while you’ve been here?”
I hadn’t done too badly in that department myself, in the months I’d been here, but I’d probably gotten lucky. If I hadn’t met Kate, I wouldn’t have met Derek, and if I hadn’t met Derek, I wouldn’t have met Dr. Ben and Cora and Beatrice, and then there were Shannon and Josh . . . If it hadn’t been for Derek, I wouldn’t have met Irina, for that matter. She, on the other hand, always seemed to be alone.
Irina made a face I took to mean, no, not really. “I have been busy. Real estate is a competitive business. But I have a partner I work with. We spend most days together. Her name is Ruth. She is waiting for me at the office so we can drive to South Portland to a house there that the owners want to sell.”
“You use Ruth’s car?” Irina didn’t have one; that’s why she took the bus to Portland every morning.
She nodded. “I meet her at the office every day. She lives in Kennebunk.”
The other direction from Portland than Waterfield, then. I guess it made sense that she didn’t want to drive all the way up the coast to pick up Irina.
“I’m sorry you had to come here first today. And for nothing, too. Although I guess it’s good that the girl wasn’t anyone you knew.”
Irina nodded. “I almost wish she was. Somewhere, someone is looking for her.”
If someone were, they were keeping quiet about it. By now, there ought to have been all-points bulletins all over down east Maine, TV and radio spots, front-page newspaper stories, or at least a missing-person report filed with a police department somewhere nearby. But even the Internet was quiet. I’d stopped by the down east Maine listserv last night to see if anyone was talking about anything related, and it had been quiet as the grave. Pun intended.
“I’m glad she’s not your sister, anyway. Did you try to call Svetlana?”
I would have, just to make sure. Even if I knew it wasn’t my sister—a sister I don’t have; I’m an only child—I think I would have called anyway, just to hear her voice.
A shadow passed over Irina’s face. It could just have been from one of the clouds in the sky. “I tried. She didn’t answer.”
If Svetlana wasn’t the girl in the morgue, then surely that didn’t matter. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to talk to her. But at least that’s not her, in there.” I nodded to the building.
Irina shook her head and muttered something in Russian. I assumed it to be the equivalent of “Thank God!”
“How far is the real estate office from here? Do you want a ride?”
She shook her head, the tight bun at the nape of her neck bobbing. “I’d like to walk. Smell the fresh air.” Get the smell of death out of her nose.
“You won’t be cold?” She was just wearing the business suit with the blouse underneath, and high-heeled pumps.
Irina shook her head. “Ukraine is cool, too. And the jacket is wool. Nice and warm.”
I nodded. “Well, walk carefully, then. And good luck on your appointment.”
Irina returned the good wishes as far as Derek’s and my renovations went and set off down the sidewalk in the direction of her office, her high heels clicking a rhythm against the pavement. I watched her round the nearest corner, and then I headed back inside the building.
Dr. Lawrence had walked Wayne upstairs, and I found them both standing in the lobby, still discussing the deceased.
“. . . for toxicology,” Dr. Lawrence was saying as I walked up. “Tomorrow, maybe longer. I’ll ask the lab to put a rush on it.”
Wayne nodded. “I’d appreciate that. What about food?”
“It’s all in there.” Dr. Lawrence nodded to the sheaf of papers Wayne was holding in his hand. “Dinner approximately nine hours before she died, a little chicken and rice with water to drink. Not much of either; maybe she was dieting.”
“She didn’t look like she needed to diet,” Wayne remarked.
I shook my head; the young woman hadn’t struck me as being overweight, either.
“Her clothes were slightly too big,” Dr. Lawrence said. “I’d say she had perhaps lost five or ten pounds since she bought them. The tags were cut out, by the way.”
“The tags in the clothes?”
Dr. Lawrence nodded.
“Interesting,” Wayne said.
I cut in. “She was wearing Gloria Jeans. They’re a Russian brand. You can get them in New York, though.”
Wayne’s eyebrows gyrated, and he turned back to Dr. Lawrence. “What about the shirt? Is that American made or foreign?”
“Isn’t American made the same as foreign these days?” Dr. Lawrence didn’t wait for an answer. “I’ll go get her clothes and you can have a look. Both of you.” Her eyes glanced off mine for a second.
“Textile designer,” I said. “Fabric is kind of my thing.”
“That explains it. Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
She headed down the hallway to the elevator, her rubber shoes squeaking against the polished tile floor.
“You didn’t tell me that,” Wayne said, reproach in his voice.
“What? About the jeans? I didn’t think about it. That was before you told me about the scrap of paper in the pocket. And it’s not like they couldn’t have been bought here, you know. Like I said, they’re available in New York.”
“But more readily available in Russia? Or the Ukraine?”
“Oh, sure. They’re Russia’s equivalent of Levi’s. As a matter of fact, I think Levi Strauss invested in Gloria a year or two ago.”
“So she’s probably Russian. I mean, that plus the note she was carrying with Russian letters.”<
br />
“Could be. An exchange student, maybe. Someone spending a semester at Barnham. Or even someone getting her whole education at Barnham. There are a couple of foreign students there. I had one of them in my Fabric through the Ages class last month.”
“Anyone Russian?” Wayne wanted to know.
I shook my head. “Did you go down there yesterday?”
Wayne shook his head. “We found the scrap of paper in her pocket and focused on that. I was hoping that Irina could help us identify her. Now that it turns out she can’t, I’ll try other routes.”
I nodded. “Do corpses still have fingerprints after they’ve been submerged in salt water?”
“Once she dried out, we were able to get them. Brandon was working on trying to identify her yesterday. I don’t think he’s had any luck. He would have called.”
Brandon Thomas is Wayne’s youngest and most gung ho deputy, a twenty-three-year-old Waterfield native who would really prefer focusing on crime scene investigation and evidence gathering, but who goes on patrol with a good attitude when he has to. In a small police department like Waterfield’s, everyone goes on patrol, even the chief.
“So she’s not a criminal.”
Wayne shook his head. “She’s not showing up in the criminal database, no. Neither for the police, nor for the FBI or any other organizations we have access to. And she’s not military, either.”
“I didn’t really think she was,” I said.
“You never know,” Wayne answered.
I changed the subject. “Irina said she tried to call her sister Svetlana, in Kiev, but she couldn’t get hold of her. She seemed a little worried.”
“Really? But this—who we have downstairs—isn’t Svetlana, right?”
“She said it isn’t. And if it was, why would she be worried about not being able to talk to her sister?”
“Damned if I know,” Wayne said as the elevator doors opened down the hall and Dr. Lawrence came toward us, carrying a wrapped package. “But maybe I’ll contact the police in Kiev and see if I can get hold of her. Someone wrote that information on that piece of paper and gave it to our victim, and it’s possible it might have been Svetlana . . . um . . .”
“Rozhdestvensky,” Dr. Lawrence said, stopping next to him. “Here you go. Everything our girl was wearing. Jeans, shirt, panties, and bra. Not a tag among them.”
“Appreciate it.” Wayne tucked the package under his arm. “Let me know when you hear from toxicology, OK?”
“And you let me know when you find out who she is. Meanwhile, I’ll put her in storage. As Jane Doe.” Dr. Lawrence made a face.
We took our leave of the doctor and the morgue and walked back out into the crisp spring air. It felt good, and I breathed deeply.
“Irina gone to work?” Wayne asked.
I nodded. “She’ll be coming back home tonight.”
“I’d like her to look at the clothes. You, too. Maybe one of you will recognize the make or brand.”
“I’d be happy to,” I said, “but I really don’t think you’ll be doing Irina any favors if you show up at the real estate company to talk to her in full uniform. It’s not urgent, so why don’t you just wait until she comes back to Waterfield for the night. By then, maybe you can reassure her about her sister, as well.”
Wayne agreed that this made sense, and then I called Irina and agreed to meet her at the police station at six P.M. so we could look at the clothes together. That done, Wayne got in his police cruiser and I got in my Beetle, and we both left the morgue parking lot and hit the road.
6
I didn’t want to leave the Beetle in Portland, so even though I could catch the ferry to Rowanberry there, I still drove back to Waterfield and parked in the harbor parking lot. The ferry left at twelve fifteen sharp, and I made it to the dock just as the gangplank was hauled up. When the crew saw me coming, they held off long enough to let me skid across, and then they made tracks—or rather waves—out to sea. I dropped down on one of the dozen benches available and tried to catch my breath.
The ferry runs in a big circle from Waterfield to Moosehead Island to Rowanberry Island to Little Rock Island to Big Rock Island to Frog Island to Boothbay Harbor and back to Waterfield. The whole trip takes a couple of hours, and the ferry runs continually. Since Rowanberry Island was one of the first stops, I didn’t have too long to wait, and I was able to sit back and relax and enjoy the weather, which was back to being partly sunny and not rainy at all today.
I did keep an eye out, though, just in case something interesting should happen to float by, but nothing did. As we left Moosehead Island and started heading across the sound to Rowanberry, I got up and wandered over to the young man who was guarding the gate and letting the gangplank up and down every time we docked.
“This is Rowanberry Island coming up, right?”
He nodded. I placed him in his early twenties, with white blond hair and eyes of the same chlorinated blue as my own. He was chewing gum.
“First time?” he inquired between chews.
I shook my head. “My boyfriend and I are renovating a house on the other side of the island. But we have our own boat. I just couldn’t go out with him this morning, so I’m taking the ferry.”
The young man nodded. “I heard someone bought the old van Duren place. Is that what you’re working on? You guys planning to move in?”
“We’re just flipping it. Renovating and then selling.”
The houses on Rowanberry Island were coming closer by the second. “Did you hear about the body in the water?” I asked, keeping my voice light.
The young man’s face closed up. “The Waterfield cops stopped by the ferry yesterday to show me a picture. They asked me if I knew her or if I’d noticed anyone looking like that on the ferry recently.”
“I guess you hadn’t?” Since Wayne probably would have let me know if he had any leads.
He shook his head. “Never seen her before in my life. Would have remembered if I had; she looked hot.” He paused a second, mulling the statement over, and then amended it. “Like she would have been, I mean. When she was alive. Not in the picture they showed me.”
“Right.” I’d figured that. “So do you ever see Gert Heyerdahl? The writer?”
“The guy in the other van Duren house? Nah. He has his own transportation. Doesn’t take the ferry.”
“Oh.”
He relented just a little. “He’s mostly here in the summers. Comes about June or so. The rest of the time he lives away. ’Scuse me.”
The ferry driver cut the motor and the boat drifted toward the dock on Rowanberry Island. My new acquaintance busied himself with another boat hook, before tying off on a convenient pylon. Then he slapped down the gangplank and offered me his hand. “Here you go. Looks like it’s just you getting off today.”
He touched a finger to his forehead and jumped back on the boat. “You have a good day, ma’am.” I grimaced. Ma’am? When did that happen?
The small ferry chugged away in the direction of Little Rock Island, and I looked around to get my bearings.
It wasn’t the first time I’d been in the small Rowanberry Island village. Derek had dragged me out here in November to look at the house; this was while he was hankering to buy it. We’d come back a couple of months ago, just before we actually bought it, to make sure we still wanted to, and maybe to make sure it was still standing and hadn’t deteriorated too much over the winter. The weather hadn’t been cooperating either time: In November, it had been foggy and clammy, and in January, it had been freezing, with a foot of snow blanketing everything. This was the first time I’d been here when the sun was shining and I could actually see everything.
It wasn’t a big place. Maybe a dozen houses along one main road, most of them private residences, but a few with commercial signs out front. There was a general store, which seemed to sell everything from bait to rubber boots to root beer and Moxie. It also served as the island’s post office.
A little farth
er up was a little house with a sign in the window that said “Rooms for Rent.” The sign was faded, and so were the curtains; I couldn’t imagine that there’d be much demand for guest rooms in a place like this.
There were no bars or restaurants, nothing in the way of nightlife; I guess if the residents of Rowanberry Island wanted to kick up their heels, they’d take the ferry to the mainland and party there. And then they’d hop the ferry back again, with no danger of drinking and driving.
That thought brought me back to the young woman in the water. Dr. Lawrence had said it’d be a day or two before toxicology lab reports were ready. At that point, we’d know if the girl had been drunk when she went in the water. It didn’t look like she’d been the victim of a crime—there were no injuries on the body save the scratches on the soles of her feet and the bruises the doctor had mentioned. No, she had died a natural death, if dying of exposure can be considered natural. But if she’d been drunk, that meant that someone had most likely been drinking with her that night, someone who hadn’t reported her missing. And didn’t being intoxicated make it more likely that she’d fallen off a boat? Was anyone out partying on a boat this time of year, though? Surely that’d happen in the summer, but in still-chilly April?
Could she have fallen off the ferry? Was it possible that my new acquaintance, the ferry conductor, had lied to me—and to the police—when he said he’d never seen her? If she’d been drunk, and he’d seen her come on board, and she had fallen out somewhere along the route without anyone noticing, might he lie to avoid trouble? To avoid a charge of being negligent?
He very well might, I decided. Although if she’d been on the ferry, unless she was the only person there, someone else would have seen her, too. The ferry had been practically empty just now, but even so, there had been three or four passengers on board, in addition to the captain and the conductor. As for the last ferry of the night, surely that’d be more populated, with stragglers trying to get home for the night?
Alas, speculation wasn’t really getting me anywhere as I left civilization behind and followed the rutted track across the island toward our house on the other end.
Mortar and Murder Page 7