Calamity (Captain Grande Angil Mysteries)

by Robert G. Bernstein

“Oh, the other visitor was a man, came four years ago, in and out many times during a two week period. Aaron Bowers. He’s the son.”

  “Yes, I know,” I said. “So, just the two visitors then?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Any address on this Davis character?”

  “He put down an address and phone number here but it’s crossed out. That’s probably because we tried to track it down and it turned out to be false. I wasn’t employed here then but, like I said, it happens.”

  “So, obviously, you wouldn’t know what he looked like.”

  “No, sir. I wasn’t here then.”

  “Gotcha,” I said. “Well, send the boxes along. By the way, what’s your name?”

  “Sarah Maylee. M-A-Y-L-E-E. I’m the receptionist and head files clerk.”

  “Well, Sarah Maylee. I truly appreciate the way you helped me. I won’t forget your courteous and professional manner and plan to let your supervisors know what a fantastic person they have working for them.”

  “Thank you, sir. You don’t—”

  “It’s my pleasure. Have a nice day, Sarah.”

  I hung-up with Sarah Maylee and called the ex-wives and kids. We touched on all the usual solicitudes and made tentative arrangements for the Christmas holiday. I still hadn’t bought gifts and stocking stuffers and I had four days left in which to maintain my super-dad status. It wasn’t looking good.

  Next, I called Warren Post’s friend, the retired air traffic controller.

  “Hi, yes, Grande Angil,” he said on the phone. “I’m glad you got back to me. We’re heading to Florida for the holidays and I wanted to get you this info before we left.”

  “What did you find out?” I said.

  “Strange things, strange things indeed,” he said. “Turns out there was an unregistered flight got itself picked up by Bangor radar and BNAS radar at about the same time, roughly zero-three-hundred on August thirteen, nineteen sixty-nine. It was flying low, East to West, coming in over the ocean. One guy, the one from Bangor, says it came in over Blue Hill Bay. Other guy, Navy man from Brunswick, says it came in over Penobscot Bay. Pilot wouldn’t give the Boston controllers a flight plan, not right away. The Navy guy at Brunswick threatened to sortie two F-4 Phantoms if the pilot didn’t cough up some details. I guess finally the pilot admitted he was headed for Sullivan County Airport in New York. It’s a small general aviation airfield outside of Bethel. Pilot said he was a government charter flight. Cargo. It’s suspicious, right? I mean, it’s nineteen sixty-nine and he says he’s going to Bethel. Come on. Gives his ident as a C-46 Commando. Big cargo plane going to Bethel. Suspicious as hell, if you ask me. Then five minutes later, boom, nothin’, no radar image. Portland, Bangor and Brunswick all put out maydays, possible aircraft down in the water. But get this. All search and rescue gets called off by Boston Air Traffic Control and a half-hour later a Navy salvage team takes off from Pease in a Sikorsky Skycrane. A second air crane is sortied out of Westover.”

  “I know what you’re thinking,” I said. “Bethel. Cargo Plane. Middle of August nineteen sixty-nine.”

  “Of course,” Post’s friend said.

  “You’re thinking a planeload of pot for the festival,” I said.

  “Woodstock. Sure, what else?”

  “Except for two things,” I said. “Why was it coming from the East? And who the hell is this drug dealer who gets help from a Navy salvage team and two U.S. Military Skycranes?”

  “It’s got to be marijuana,” Post’s friend said. “And it’s got to be the government selling it. Who the hell knows why? All I can tell you is I worked for the government for forty years and, Mister Man, I’ve seen Uncle Sam do a lot of stupid shit in my day.”

  29

  “You’ve known her for less than a week. See, this is why you have three ex-wives.”

  George shook his head. He had been staring at the radar, easing Scara through a smoky, white fog.

  I settled into the port side bench-seat and pulled my coat tight. “I didn’t say I was in love with her, George. I just said she’s a remarkable woman with great qualities. I’m not asking her to marry me.”

  “Yet,” George said.

  “Can we talk about something more important?” I said.

  “What’s more important than me protecting you from yourself?”

  “Funny. Now keep an eye out for Jamie Doyle on the Miss Jane. He’s probably on a southerly heading from Spruce Head, going like a bat out of hell. Big boat. Big steel mast. It’ll show up as a good, strong return at two miles.”

  George peered into the radar to make sure he hadn’t missed it.

  “Nothing yet,” he said.

  “Maybe he’s sleeping one off,” I said.

  We steamed along without talking for about thirty minutes, each of us semi-tranquilized by the drone of Scara’s five-hundred horsepower diesel and the gentle motion of her hull slicing through the calm waters of Penobscot Bay. I thought about Jenny and wondered if my fondness for her was solely a consequence of her emotional and physical vulnerability. George, playing the psychologist, insisted I looked for hurt women. He claimed that once I had ‘fixed’ them, or made them whole again, I would want to move on to another. Maybe he was right.

  “You sure you know what you’re doing?” George said as we passed the TBI buoy.

  “About what?” I said. “My love life? The case. Our heading? What?”

  “Breaking into Tanner’s house.”

  “Oh, that,” I said. “Of course not. Of the three, the only thing I am sure of is our heading.”

  “What if he comes home while you’re in there?”

  “I’ll probably end up in jail and you’ll have to bail me out.”

  “That’s real good planning,” George said.

  “Maybe I can reason with him,” I said.

  “Another good plan,” George said. “From what you’ve told me about him, you’d have better luck reasoning with an oar lock.”

  “I can be very persuasive,” I said. “And charming.”

  “I don’t think Tanner does the charm thing.”

  “No, probably not.”

  “Are you armed?”

  “Always,” I said.

  “What happens if you have to shoot him in his own house?”

  “I’m sure wherever they put me they’ll let you bring me copies of the Maritime Reporter. I’d like a deli sandwich once in a while. Pastrami, Swiss, slaw, and mustard on rye. If you put mayo or ketchup on it I swear to God I’ll have you killed.”

  “Go ahead. Make jokes. This is serious.”

  “We’ll tie up at a friend’s wharf on the east side of the island. You stay with the boat. Keep slacking off the spring lines because we’ll be hanging there through a tide. I’ll walk in and stake out the place. Don’t worry. Nobody leaves his or her house on the island for just a short time, and Tanner has a long driveway. If I’m inside and he drives back while I’m there, I’ll just slip out the back. He’ll never know.”

  “What are you looking for, anyway?”

  “I’ll know it when I find it,” I said.

  “Great,” George said. “Have you heard back from that cop in Annapolis?”

  “Not yet, but I know what he’ll say. He’ll confirm that his buddy knew or was in some way associated with Allen Bowers.”

  “The plot thickens,” George said.

  “I don’t think we’re supposed to say things like that in the detective biz,” I said.

  “Too corny?” George said.

  “I prefer to exclaim Aha in a loud voice and point with my finger, thus.” I pointed straight up with my index finger and said “Aha!” as convincingly as I could muster.

  “Much better,” George said. “You sound like Colonel Klink from Hogan’s Heroes.”

  The Junken Ledge buoy appeared to port on the radar. I told George to come left ten degrees and shape a course for Hurricane Island Sound. It was an easy approach between the Whites and Little Hurricane if you knew where you
were going and not so easy if you didn’t. I let him hold the new course for a few minutes, then took the helm to save time and effort.

  We were tied up at my friend’s wharf by zero six thirty. I made some coffee and broke out the bag of Danish I had bought earlier from Dock City Café. We sat on deck, ate our Danish in the swirling fog and talked.

  “Let’s assume the package Tanner picked up in Annapolis had money in it,” I said. “What was he being paid for?”

  “Killing Aaron Bowers,” George said.

  “A year after the fact?” I said. “I don’t think so. Extortion is more like it. Black money. It’s like venereal disease. You think you cure it with one dose but then it keeps coming back.”

  “I wouldn’t know anything about that,” George said.

  I shrugged.

  “If these guys are who you think they are,” he said, “and they’ve done what you think they’ve done, why not just get rid of Tanner? If they killed Aaron Bowers and that cop’s friend in Maryland, why stop there?”

  “Only one reason I can think of,” I said. “He has something they need.”

  “Like what?”

  “I have a theory about it but if I’m wrong I could end up hurting people.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I don’t want to say.”

  “Oh, you suck! Tell me.”

  “Later, I promise. After I get a look at Tanner’s house and Allen Bowers’ files.”

  I finished my coffee and Danish, grabbed my satchel and put on a full-length Grunden’s slicker with the hood cut off and the collar hiked-up around my ear lobes. I wore jeans, heavy hiking boots, a wool sweater over a pair of polyester long john tops and a Grunden’s hat. The fog on the island had thickened to its saturation point. Water leaked from the atmosphere as if the sky were an enormous wet towel.

  My friend’s property butted-up against the Sands Road and that led me to the Dog Town and Old Harbor Road. From there it was about a two-mile walk to Tanner’s house in the woods. I didn’t want to be seen, so I had to pay attention to the sounds of traffic. Every time I heard a car I ducked behind a tree or into a summer resident’s driveway. Wherever the road passed a hay field or someone’s lawn I detoured and bushwhacked my around until the forest filled back in and there were places I could use for cover. I needed to stay out of the public eye, avoid the island’s interminably curious as well as the occasional Good Samaritan who couldn’t pass a soggy traveler without offering a warm and dry ride.

  The house and surrounding property seemed to be in almost the same condition I saw it in when I last visited. Same broken and disused equipment in the yard, same derelict vehicles, lawn mowers and recreational toys. From my position in the woods near the end of the driveway, I could see some new clapboards on the house, and the front door knob and lock looked like it had been fixed. I saw no Escalade or pickup, no lights, no smoke coming out of the chimney. As luck would have it, the house appeared empty.

  I wound my way through the woods of the neighbor’s property and came at Tanner’s house from the adjoining lot. There was a back door, and typical of homes in Maine and particularly those on the island, it was unlocked. I unsnapped my slicker and used the tail of it to turn the doorknob.

  The back door opened into a furnace room that also housed a washer and dryer. I would have expected the strong smell of herring bait in this room but I didn’t really get it. The rubber boots and slickers were here, the piles of dirty clothes, two large garbage bags of empty beer cans, but the telltale aromas of a working lobsterman were noticeably absent. Tanner didn’t strike me as a paragon of good housekeeping, a fact that became more evident when I turned on the flashlight and worked my way deeper into the house.

  Piles of dishes in the sink, crusted plates and saucers on the counter, butt-filled ashtrays. Empty beer cans and liquor bottles. Cabinets with the doors unhinged. Drawers half off their slides. There was a hash pipe on the kitchen table; next to the pipe, a half-full coffee cup and a mirror spotted with the residue of a white powdery substance. I smelled the cup. The coffee was fresh.

  The living room contained a sofa and two chairs facing a fifty-two inch high definition rear projection television. Another hash pipe and mirror sat on a coffee table in front of the sofa. There were two bookshelves with photos and nick knacks.

  I walked to the bookshelves and looked at the photos. Tanner had pictures of an older man and woman, presumably his parents, pictures of his old boats and crews, some vacation shots of someplace like Mexico or Belize. I looked closely at his old boats and crews, at one picture in particular. It was a shot of Tanner and a twenty-something year old man on the deck of the Renegade. The young man wore what looked like brand new dive gear. The two were smiling, arms around each other. I took my digital camera out my satchel and got in close. I snapped copies of the photos of Tanner and Aaron and took shots of the vacation photos.

  A short hall between the front door and the stairs connected to a bedroom and downstairs bath. The bedroom had been emptied of furniture but I could still make out the impressions of a bed frame in the carpet. I could also make out the ghost image of a dresser about five feet tall and three feet wide, and where once stood a nightstand, headboard, and floor lamp. Maybe Aaron had slept here. I searched through two cardboard storage boxes filled with old clothes and moved on.

  At the top of the stairs were two rooms, the master bedroom and a room Tanner apparently used as a small office. I checked under the bed and in the backs of the closets. I searched through bank statements, receipts and between the pages of magazines and books. I looked through the files of an old laptop computer that – judging by the control panel — hadn’t been opened in over six months. There were no stashes of money, no telltale deposits or withdrawals, no threatening notes or letters, no smoking barrels and absolutely no hot clues. It seemed I had wasted time, fuel and Jenny Bowers money until I left the house and went into the small shed out back.

  When you live and work on the coast of Maine and you have friends in the lobster fishing business, you get to spend many hours smoking cigarettes and drinking beer and sipping coffee and talking trash in backyard workshops just like this one. I had been in a dozen or more such shops in the many years I’d lived in Maine and the first thing that struck me about Tanner’ shop was that it hadn’t been used in a very long time. The wood stove had a pile of moldy ash in it. The buoys hanging from the rafters were layered in crusted paint and dust. The wire-bender complained and shed rust when I pulled the handle. When I flipped the switch for the air compressor, the belt squealed like Ned Beaty in the movie Deliverance.

  I shined my light at the wood floor and noticed a number of boot and scuff prints in the layers of dirt and dust. The shop may have been unused but it wasn’t exactly ignored. I glanced over my shoulder, checked outside to make sure nobody was nearby, then found a light switch and flipped it on. One of the four, bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling lighted. Just enough for me to see but not enough to draw attention from the road or the neighbors.

  There was an old RCA television on a two-by-four shelf not far from the wire bender. Stuck into the two-by-fours by some pushpins were two faded and worn photos. I walked over and looked at the top one very carefully. It was a picture of Aaron Bowers and Pete Tanner standing on a granite outcrop, the Atlantic ocean behind them. It could have been taken on the mainland but my gut told me it was on an island. If I had to guess, I’d say it was the high cliff on Matinicus-Seal Island. The angle and field of view led me to believe the camera had been propped up on a rock, facing slightly upwards. The second photo showed Aaron walking with his back to the camera. The jagged rocks and boulders in the photo were dark brown, the color of decomposing seaweed and kelp. A different island.

  The only place left to check was in the corner under a pile of rotting rope and debris covered in mouse and rat droppings. A pitchfork or spade would have made the job less troublesome but nothing in the shed even came close. I had no choice but to dig at the pile
with my hands and boots. It took a good five minutes to shift the pile from one place to another, but as I suspected, the rope had been thrown haphazardly on top of other things, an old generator, cracked fish trays, used and broken hydraulic pump and hauler components, and a rusted toolbox. These could have been all that remained of Tanner’s boat, the Renegade.

  I pried open the toolbox with a big screwdriver. The tools in the tray were corroded beyond repair. It looked like the whole box had been underwater. Maybe it was just because they had been covered in wet rope and left that way. I lifted out the tray and checked underneath. There were several items: a small mallet, a spanner wrench and a photo envelope from a local developer on Main Street in Rockland. I opened the envelope and peeled the photos apart. They were in bad shape. Of the dozen pictures, I could only make out four. Two of those were worth the proverbial thousand words.

  The first photo had Aaron Bowers wearing his dry suit and sitting in a rock cave. He had a big smile on his face. Of all the photos I’d seen of the kid – the ones next to the TV and the photos of him and Tanner on vacation and on the boat – this was the only one in which he was smiling.

  The second photo, partially obscured by water stains and matted paper, showed Aaron Bowers sitting in a chair in Tanner’s kitchen. He had the Rockland Herald in his hands and a stern expression on his face. The front page was pointed toward the camera. I couldn’t make out the paper’s date or its headlines but the pose was all too familiar.

  It was the type of photo kidnappers send.

  30

  “Aaron Bowers is alive?” George said as he quickly coiled the stern line and secured it.

  “I’m saying he was alive. I wouldn’t want to get anybody’s hopes up.” I nosed Scara’s bow into the wharf and nudged ahead, then spun the helm to port and backed into the wind. A westerly was kicking up, and a line of gray looked like it covered the sky from Boothbay to Bangor. There wasn’t supposed to be a westerly, or for that matter any amount of wind. But, as the saying goes, “If you don’t like the weather in Maine, wait a minute.”