Mortar and Murder

by Jennie Bentley

  I smiled and waved across the counter. “Hi, Angie. It’s nice to meet you.” If she didn’t want to shake hands, I certainly wasn’t going to force her. Maybe she was worried about catching cold or something. Pregnant women can be weird sometimes. Or so I hear.

  “Nice to meet you, too,” Angie murmured. She had an accent much like Irina’s.

  “Are you from the Ukraine?” I asked impulsively.

  She jerked, like I had slapped her. Her cheeks flushed and her eyes widened, and I don’t think I imagined the panic with which she looked up—way up—at her husband.

  “Why do you ask?” Ian said.

  I looked from one to the other of them. Huh. “No reason. We have a friend in Waterfield who’s Ukrainian. You sound like her.”

  Angie bit her lip. At this rate, she’d gnaw a hole in herself.

  “Her name is Irina Rozhdestvensky,” Derek added, doing a credible job with the sneezy syllables that made up Irina’s surname. “Maybe you know her?”

  Angie shook her head.

  “Angie doesn’t get out much,” Ian said. “Difficult pregnancy.”

  Right. That’s why she was bouncing around here, her cheeks rosy, the very picture of health.

  We stood in awkward silence for another few seconds, and then Derek broke it. “Have you had a chance to look for anything Colonial for me? Doorknobs? Latches?”

  “Sure.” Ian dropped his arm from around his wife’s shoulders with a murmured assurance. “Through here.” He disappeared into the back of the building, where Angie had come from, waving Derek to follow.

  “Be right back,” Derek said, letting me go.

  I nodded. “I’ll be right here.”

  The two of them disappeared. Angie and I were left alone. She looked uncomfortable and seemed to wish she were somewhere else. Anywhere else. I smiled. “When are you due?”

  “Pardon?”

  “The baby? When is the baby coming?”

  “Oh.” She put a hand on her stomach. “End of May.”

  “Congratulations. Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?”

  Usually women who are expecting are happy and excited to talk about their pregnancies and soon-to-be offspring and their delivery dates and all the rest of it. Not Angie. She shook her head without a word.

  “Want to be surprised?” I offered. That’s the usual reason why people don’t find out the sex of the baby ahead of time, isn’t it? Personally, I’ve always thought it would be useful to know—for decorating purposes, you know—but then I’ve never been pregnant, so maybe I just don’t understand the whole suspense thing.

  Something about the question must have bothered Angie, anyway, because she turned a shade paler before she nodded.

  It was obvious that talking about the baby wasn’t the way to her heart. “So how long have you lived in Maine?” I tried instead.

  Angie had been in Maine just over a year.

  “Why did you decide to come to Boothbay Harbor? Are there a lot of Ukrainians around here?”

  Angie shook her head, her enormous eyes darting from side to side.

  “Where did you and Ian meet?” Of course, I was jumping to the immediate conclusion that perhaps it was through one of the Russian-bride websites.

  At this question, Angie turned pale all the way to the tips of her lips and put a hand on her belly. I watched, worried, as she sank down on the chair behind the counter that Ian had vacated earlier.

  Of course, he chose this exact moment to come back into the office, and when he saw his wife’s expression, he fell to his knees next to her chair with a worried bellow. She smiled shakily and patted his shoulder.

  “What happened?” He turned to me, scowling. If he’d been intimidating when he was happy to see us, he was doubly intimidating now, even kneeling. I took a step back, straight into Derek, who had swung around the counter to come up behind me. He tucked his arm around my waist.

  “Nothing happened,” I said. “We were just talking. About the baby and how long Angie has been in Boothbay Harbor and where the two of you met.”

  Ian didn’t answer. “I think Angie needs to lie down,” he said, gently helping her up from the chair. “I’ll be right back to ring up the doorknobs.”

  Derek nodded. We watched Ian half support, half carry his tiny wife out the door in the back wall.

  “Is it me,” I said softly, tilting my head back to look up into Derek’s face, “or is something weird going on?”

  “No idea. Look at this, though.” He grabbed my arm and pulled me after him, toward the door he’d passed through earlier. Just before he got there, he stopped in front of a bulletin board hanging on the wall. “Look at that.”

  I looked at where his finger had landed. “That” was a business card, identical to the one I’d seen three hours earlier in Arthur Mattson’s hand.

  “That’s interesting.”

  Derek nodded. “Wonder when Agent Trent was here?”

  I wondered, too. And not only about that. If Ian and Angie hadn’t met until this winter, who was the father of her baby?

  13

  “It was last month sometime,” Ian said when he came back into the office and Derek asked him about the business card. “March. Just after Angie and I tied the knot.”

  “Did she come to talk to Angie?”

  He shot me a look. “Yeah. Why?”

  I shrugged. “No reason. Just curious. Have you seen her since? Lori Trent?”

  “No,” Ian said. “That’ll be two hundred and three dollars.” He held out an oversized paw. Derek put his credit card in it.

  “Spoken to her?” I suggested.

  Ian shook his head, eyes on the credit card and on the old-fashioned machine he used to take an imprint of it.

  “You sure?” Derek pushed.

  Ian tossed the too-long hair out of his face. “Sure I’m sure. What’s with the third degree?”

  “Agent Trent is dead,” Derek said.

  For a second, Ian looked like he was reeling; a mighty redwood in a storm. I inched back, just in case he fell. Then he bit down on the shock. “That’s too bad.”

  “It happened last night. We found her in Waterfield harbor this morning.”

  “Drowned?” Ian handed the credit card and sales slip back to Derek.

  Derek shook his head. “Bashed over the head with something.”

  “What?” It wasn’t an exclamation, but a question.

  “Could have been anything. A boom. A baseball bat.” One was leaned up against the wall in the corner behind the counter. Ian didn’t glance toward it, but I did. “A Ukrainian Easter egg paperweight.”

  Derek finished signing the credit card slip and pushed it back across the counter at Ian. The latter picked it up and shoved it in the cash drawer.

  “What?” he said, bushy brows wrinkling.

  “I saw one yesterday,” I explained. “Polished stone, painted to look like a Ukrainian Easter egg. A pysanka. It had ears of corn and deer and birds on it, and it weighed a ton.”

  Ian looked blank. Maybe Angie hadn’t told him about that particular Ukrainian custom.

  “I guess you guys don’t have any,” I added. “Pysanky, I mean.”

  He shook his head. “Never heard of them.”

  “What did Lori Trent want? Back in March, when she was here?”

  “It was just after we got married,” Ian said. “She was doing an at-home visit. They do that when Americans marry foreign nationals. Especially when one of ’em looks like Angie and the other one looks like me.”

  “Agent Trent thought yours was a marriage of convenience? Pro forma?”

  This was something else I’d read up on the other night, the sometimes horrendously difficult process a foreign spouse has to go through to get legal residency in the United States. Not that I’m saying it should be easy, just that I’d come across some real horror stories about wives and husbands being torn out of their spouses’ arms and sent back to their native countries because they couldn’t prove that they�
��d married for the right reasons. On the other hand, it’s no good when bad people get onto American soil and do bad things. Although if Angie Burns was a spy, I’d eat that fricking paperweight.

  Ian nodded. He looked from me to Derek and back. “If you’ll excuse me, I should go check on my wife. Make sure she’s feeling all right.”

  Derek nodded. “I’ll give you a call next time I need something.”

  He bent and hoisted the cardboard box. It contained a jumble of old doorknobs, plates, latches, and the like, in black, hammered iron.

  “And let us know when the baby comes,” I added.

  Ian said he would, and we walked out of there. Derek put the box into the back of the truck and me into the front seat before he loped around the hood and opened the driver’s side door. I waited until he was inside with the door closed and the engine running before I opened my mouth.

  “Did that sound a little cagey to you?”

  “About Lori Trent?” He put the car into gear and backed out of the parking space and onto the road. “Maybe a little.”

  I glanced back at the office, just in time to see Ian turn the sign in the window from Open to Closed.

  “He just closed up shop.”

  “It is Saturday,” Derek said.

  “I know, but it’s also only twenty minutes after two in the afternoon.”

  “So maybe he’s worried about his wife.”

  We rolled down the road, picking up speed, leaving the salvage yard behind. I gnawed on my lower lip, pensively.

  “She did look like she was about to faint, didn’t she? And all I did was ask her where they’d met.”

  Derek glanced at me. “Where did they?”

  “No idea. She just looked like she was about to pass out. I was wondering if maybe it was one of those Russian-bride websites.”

  Derek nodded. “Would have explained a lot if so. It’s just the sort of thing Ian would do. Try to find a wife online. He’s not good with people.”

  He’d seemed to deal with Angie just fine. If Agent Trent really had stopped by for an impromptu at-home visit, surely five minutes with the two of them would have convinced her that their marriage was legit. The girl was practically bursting at the seams with fertility, while Ian was hovering just as anxiously as any dad-to-be.

  Unless Agent Trent had also figured out the time issue inherent in the pregnancy, of course, and then she might have had questions.

  “How long have you known him?” I wanted to know.

  Derek shrugged. “Five or six years now. Since just after I started doing renovations. I was looking for something—some prisms to complete a crystal chandelier, I think it was—and he had ’em. We’ve never been close friends, though. Never hung out or anything. Ian’s a bit of a loner.”

  I nodded. “Makes you wonder how he managed to snag a girl like Angie, doesn’t it? I mean, I’m sure he’s a nice guy and all, but she’s gorgeous. And much younger than him.”

  “He is a nice guy,” Derek said, “and maybe that’s what she was looking for.”

  “Maybe.”

  We drove in silence for a few minutes as the outskirts of Boothbay Harbor flashed by outside the window.

  “Do you think he told the truth?” I ventured. “About Agent Trent? That they hadn’t spoken to her since March?”

  “No idea. Why would he lie?”

  “Because he killed her? You did see the baseball bat, didn’t you?”

  “A lot of shop owners keep weapons behind the counter, Avery,” Derek said.

  “Yeah, but . . . Ian looks like he could take a robber apart with his bare hands. I mean, who would be stupid enough to try to rob him?”

  And why would anyone bother? It wasn’t like a salvage store on the outer edge of the back-beyond would be taking in a ton of money. There were easier targets elsewhere, for someone who wanted a quick buck. A liquor store, a video game store, a convenience market with a teenage girl behind the counter . . . No one in their right minds would take on Ian Burns if they didn’t have to.

  Derek shrugged, conceding the point. “He’s not stupid, though, Tink. If he’d used that baseball bat to kill someone, he wouldn’t put it back behind the counter. He’d get rid of it.”

  “Where?”

  “In the water, when he got rid of Agent Trent’s body? Or in a Dumpster somewhere in Boothbay Harbor? It’s not like anyone would be looking for it there.”

  He was probably right about that, since no one would have realized that there was a connection between ICE agent Lori Trent and Ian and Angela Burns. Until now, that is.

  “We’re gonna have to sic Wayne on him, aren’t we?”

  Derek’s face was reluctant. “I guess we’ll have to. Mention the business card, at least.” He grimaced. “Man, I hate to tattle on people.”

  “If he didn’t do anything wrong, he shouldn’t have anything to worry about.”

  “I know.” But he didn’t look happy. He hesitated for a moment before he added, reluctantly, “Maybe she came here yesterday to talk to Angie. After Arthur Mattson saw her in the afternoon. She knew Angie from when she was here in March. Maybe she thought Angie might know who the dead girl was.”

  “Huh.” That was a scenario I hadn’t thought of. “Why would Ian kill her, though?”

  “Maybe Agent Trent wanted to take her in for questioning.”

  “Maybe.” That seemed far-fetched, though. I know people kill for a variety of stupid reasons, from pairs of sneakers to imaginary insults, but would Ian really resort to murder just because an ICE agent wanted to interview his wife?

  “Do you have a better idea?” Derek inquired.

  “I don’t know about better. But what if Agent Trent didn’t believe Ian and Angie when they said that Ian’s the father of the baby—I mean, how could he be, if they only met this winter?—and she was trying to deport Angie? Any idiot can see that Ian’s crazy about her. If Agent Trent threatened to send her back to the Ukraine, he might have snapped. And if the baseball bat was right there . . .”

  Derek nodded. “That’s a possibility. It seems like quite the coincidence, though, Avery. That Agent Trent is killed on the same day that Wayne calls her to look into the body in the water, but she’s killed for a different reason.”

  True.

  “So maybe it’s all related. Agent Trent came up here to talk to Angie about the body, and she discovered that there was a connection between them. Maybe Angie wrote Irina’s name and address on that piece of paper, or maybe they were together the other day, when the girl fell in the water, and Angie didn’t report it. Maybe Agent Trent tried to arrest Angie, and then Ian snapped and whacked her with the baseball bat.”

  “That would do it.”

  We drove in silence for a minute before I told Derek to change direction.

  “Why?” He did it, though, without waiting for me to explain.

  “That kid from Barnham, the one who overheard someone talking about Russian women? He said it was on the ferry dock in Boothbay Harbor. We’re here, so why don’t we stop and see if there’s anyone there who remembers?”

  Derek headed for the ferry dock, although he still felt he had to issue a warning. “You probably won’t find anyone, Avery. It’s a long time ago, and there are no guarantees that anyone who’s there now was there then. Or that they’ll remember.”

  I realized that. “I’m hoping that there’s a ticket taker or something, someone who works there, who might be able to give us a description of the two men.”

  “Maybe one of them was Ian,” Derek suggested, “and he was telling a friend about Angie.”

  “That’s possible. You’d think Calvin would have been able to describe Ian, though. He’s almost seven feet tall.”

  Derek nodded and cut the engine.

  Down at the end of the dock, the ferry was waiting for passengers. The young blond conductor I’d met before was hanging out on the dock, manipulating the buttons on an iPhone. He squinted at me as I came closer, sort of like he thought he ought to
know who I was, but he couldn’t quite place me. I smiled.

  “Hi. We met earlier this week. On the ferry. I was going to Rowanberry Island.”

  Those bright blue eyes cleared. “Yeah. Sure. I remember you. The van Duren house, right?”

  I nodded. “This is my boyfriend, Derek.”

  Derek and the young man shook hands. His name turned out to be Ned Schachenger. “You riding?” He nodded toward the ferry. “Going back to the island?”

  I glanced at Derek. “We weren’t planning to.”

  “What are you doing here, then?”

  “I just had a question. Another question.”

  “About that dead girl?” Ned said.

  I hesitated. “Yes and no. I wondered if you’d ever heard anyone talking about Russian women on the ferry or on the ferry dock?”

  “People talk about lots of stuff,” Ned said.

  “This would have been sometime this winter. January, maybe. Two men.”

  “How do you know that they were here? And talked about Russian women?”

  “A guy named Calvin told me,” I said. “He’s a student at Barnham College. He said he’d overheard them.”

  “Calvin Harris? Guy with big ears, big nose, big feet, who looks like some kind of bird?”

  “That’s him.”

  “I know Calvin. We went to high school together.”

  “Here?” I looked around Boothbay Harbor, at the quaint houses, the narrow streets, the little marina with the boats.

  Ned nodded. “Boothbay Harbor High School has kids from some of the islands, too. Calvin came in on the ferry every morning.”

  I nodded. “Which island is Calvin from?”

  “Rowanberry,” Ned said.

  “That’s quite a coincidence.” Although it did explain what he was doing on the ferry dock. “Does he live in the village?”

  “I imagine he does. I’ve never been to his house, though. We’re not tight. But most of the other houses are for the summer people. Closed off in the winter.”

  I nodded.

  “I never heard anyone talk about Russian women,” Ned added, “but I remember Calvin asking me about a couple of people once. It could have been January, but I think it was more recent. Everyone was wearing rain gear. It’s usually too cold for rain in January.”