by Lea Wait
Dave was working in his poison garden. “Preparing for winter?” I called out.
“It’s that time,” he said, limping as he came toward me. “Covering some of the more delicate plants, the ones not native to Maine.” He was wearing a Save the Cormorants baseball cap. An increasing number of stores were carrying them. That campaign was one of the differences the Mainely Needlepointers were making: reminding people that nesting grounds for endangered and threatened seabirds should be preserved. Shops couldn’t get enough of the needlepoint signs and pillows we were stitching with the slogan and a spread-winged cormorant.
“Thank you for coming to the hospital last night.”
“Not a problem. Of course, I don’t know for sure Red Tide was the reason Ted Lawrence died. But the clues, as you might put it, headed in that direction. I just reminded the doctors of that.” He paused. “Plus, it was an excuse to see Karen Mercer. She was calm in the face of all the craziness after I was shot last month. Special lady.”
“Married?” I asked. I’d never heard Dave mention a woman in that tone of voice.
“Not wearing a ring.” He grinned. “But no matchmaking right now, thank you. I have enough problems getting this leg of mine to heal.”
He closed the gate to the garden in back of him and sat down heavily in one of his Adirondack chairs. “Glad you interrupted me. I can’t do as much gardening at one time as I could before. . . .” He glanced at his leg.
“By next spring you should be fine.”
“Next spring seems a long time from now,” he said.
“I’ve been thinking about how Ted died,” I started.
“Of course you have. No one in Haven Harbor dies without your questioning how and why, Angie.”
“Not true!” Dave was joking, but there was some truth to what he was saying. I’d been back in town since May. Since then I’d gotten involved with one murder after another. “I don’t think Ted was murdered.”
“Good.”
“But Friday night he told his family and close friends that he was going to change his will.”
“Let me guess. Not everyone was thrilled.”
I shook my head. “They weren’t. I can’t imagine anyone poisoning their own father . . . but it seems strange that we were all eating clams, and only Ted—the man so many people were upset at—got the toxic one.”
“It could happen, Angie. Not everyone is murdered. Sometimes things happen by chance.”
“The Marine Resources people were out early this morning, collecting what was left of the clams from the lobster bake. They were going to post all the flats the clams came from, and start testing.”
“Absolutely the right thing for them to do.”
“I was wondering if there were any other poisons that would have the same initial effect as Red Tide.”
Dave sat back. “Probably. The ME will do an autopsy and find out. But could be. You were there. How did Ted act?”
“He couldn’t talk; he kept pointing at his mouth, and his neck. Then he started shaking. Twitching, almost. His cheeks, and his shoulders, and then one of his hands. And he had trouble breathing. I don’t remember exactly what order that happened in; it was all so fast. We got him from the beach up the hill to the drive, where the ambulance picked him up. By then he couldn’t stand on his own.” I thought for a moment. “When the EMTs got him to the hospital he was unconscious. Three hours after that he was dead.”
Dave frowned. “Still sounds like Red Tide to me. Red Tide doesn’t always cause reactions that quickly, but Ted Lawrence was old.”
“He was celebrating his seventy-fifth birthday this weekend.”
“And you said he had cancer.”
“Lung cancer. Stage four.”
“That would explain how fast the toxins hit him, and his problems breathing. But yes, other poisons can act the same way.” He paused.
“Like what?”
“Right off the top of my head . . . botulism. Some mushrooms. Arsenic.”
“But where would those other poisons have come from?” I pushed Dave a little. I could almost hear his brain clicking through all he knew about poisons.
“Ted’s daughter and her husband were farmers, right?”
“In Caribou.”
“They might have had access to poisons in pesticides.”
“They’re organic farmers. They said that several times.”
“I’ll bet the daughter cans and freezes food, though.”
Abbie had said she was putting food away for the winter. “Sure. But what . . .”
“If she didn’t heat the vegetables enough, or something else went wrong in the preparation, there could be botulism. Did she bring any homemade goodies for her father? Maybe corn or green bean pickles?”
“Bread-and-butter pickles,” I remembered. “I’m pretty sure someone had opened them. But I don’t know if it was Ted.”
“Pickles would be a possibility,” said Dave. “Or someone could have put poison in something else Ted ate.”
“I can’t imagine how anyone could put poison in the sort of food we were eating. Lobster? Potatoes and corn steamed in seaweed? Clams? Mussels? Corn?”
“What was he drinking?” asked Dave.
“Wine, I’m pretty sure. But he didn’t drink much. And most of us drank wine that came from the same bottle. Then we had champagne.”
“Can’t imagine what it was. Let me know if you hear the results of the autopsy. Now I’m curious, too. And don’t be paranoid, Angie. The man could just have been unlucky and eaten the one bad clam. That’s why I tell my students always to check with Marine Resources the day they go clamming. Or, better yet, buy their clams from a reputable dealer. Any dealers that aren’t reputable go out of business fast. Really fast.”
I nodded.
“Relax, Angie. Not everyone who dies is murdered. Ted Lawrence wasn’t a young man, and he already had a fatal illness. Screening his blood and the autopsy should be able to tell if he died for some other reason than Red Tide.”
“Okay. Thanks for hearing me out,” I said, standing. “Now I’m going home to work on my yard.”
“You’re gardening?” Dave grinned. “Last time I saw your garden, all you had were a lot of zucchinis and weeds.”
“That’s about right. But I lost a tree in last week’s storm—that big maple in the backyard. Got it pretty well cut up, at least as a start, but it knocked down part of the old stone wall between my place and the Smarts’.”
“Not surprised. Heavy tree, old stone wall. Probably chipmunks had secret passages in the wall that made it more vulnerable.”
“Maybe,” I agreed. “I decided to rebuild it myself. I haven’t found any chipmunks. The only thing I’ve found that’s a little strange is a bone.”
Dave’s head went up. “What kind of bone?”
“I don’t know. About seven, eight inches long.”
“Interesting. What’d you do with it?”
“Washed it. It’s in my dish drainer right now, unless Trixi moved it.”
“Was there just the one bone? Did you dig around it and under it to see if there were more?”
“No—one bone was enough. And I had to get over to the Lawrences to help with the lobster bake.”
“Mind if I follow you home? You know me—biology’s my thing. I’m curious about your bone.”
“I figured it was from a dog, or cat, or something that died maybe two hundred years ago and somehow got buried underneath the wall.”
“Could be. But amuse me. Let me look at it.”
“Com’on over, then,” I said. “I’ll even throw in a toasted cheese sandwich. I’m about ready for lunch.”
“You’ve got a deal.”
I hadn’t thought about that bone since yesterday. It hadn’t seemed important. Gram had said to forget it. But if Dave wanted to take a look, what could be the harm? That bone had been in the ground a long time. We weren’t exactly looking at a crime scene.
Chapter Twenty-eight
“The Time will Come when We Must Give
Account to God How We on Earth Did Live.”
—Hannah Gore of Boston, Massachusetts, was nine years old when she completed her sampler in 1784. It includes a scene of a lady (adorned with embroidered human hair) holding a parasol and an elegant gentleman with a walking stick going to a church. A cow and two birds, one in a tree, are also in the picture. Hannah married a baker in 1794 and they had four children. After she was widowed she married again and had two sons. She died in 1851.
“I’ll make our sandwiches,” I said to Dave as we entered my house. Trixi met us at the door, reminding us that her food dish could use replenishing.
Dave picked her up. “She’s grown so much!” he said. He was the one who’d rescued her and her brother and sister. Her sister, Bette, was now living with Patrick, while their brother, Snowy, was, after a few weeks of visiting Gram, now back with Dave.
“Is she an inside cat?” he asked.
I nodded. “I live too close to the street. And fishers come into town sometimes. So far she hasn’t complained.”
“I’m keeping Snowy inside, too. Don’t want him nibbling on anything in my poison garden.” He put Trixi down. “I wonder if she remembers her brother and sister?”
“Maybe sometime we should schedule a reunion,” I grinned. “I’m glad you got a chance to meet Patrick last night, however briefly.”
“Seems like a nice guy.”
“He is.”
“While you’re scrounging up some lunch, why don’t I have a look at that bone you found?”
“Follow me.”
It was where I’d left it, in my dish drainer.
Dave picked it up carefully (more carefully than I had) and looked at it critically. It wasn’t white; it was stained with brown and a little green. Then he put it down. “Show me where you found it,” he said.
I finished adding dry food to Trixi’s dish and led Dave to the backyard, ducking through some of the downed branches I hadn’t cut up yet. “Right here,” I showed him. “I used a crowbar to pry up several rocks on the bottom of the wall, and saw part of it. I was curious, so I dug around it.”
“Mind if I dig a little more?”
“No. If you find any good rocks for the wall, feel free to dig them out,” I said. “I’ll call you when our sandwiches are done.”
Inside, I decided to heat some canned tomato soup, adding diced tomatoes and a little cream, and began toasting bread and slicing cheese, a process Trixi found fascinating. Once or twice I glanced out the window. Despite his sore leg, Dave was kneeling on the ground, using a small trowel I’d left next to the wall.
It didn’t take long to fill two mugs with hot soup and two plates with grilled cheese sandwiches. “Dave!” I called out the back door. “Lunch is ready.”
He held up his hand. “Be there in a minute.”
I hadn’t realized my discovery was that interesting. Then he called, “Come out here! You have to see this.”
The soup and sandwiches would get cold. But he sounded insistent.
“I dug a little deeper and wider than you did,” he said, standing and pointing down for me to see.
I saw. He’d uncovered a small skull and more bones. “They’re human bones, aren’t they?”
“An infant’s,” he confirmed. “An expert in forensic anthropology should take a look. I don’t know enough to guess how old the child was, or how long the bones have been here. But yes. The bones are definitely human.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
“Youth is the time for progress in all arts.”
—Sampler stitched on linsey-woolsey in Middletown, Connecticut, in 1810 by twelve-year-old Charlotte Porter. The verse is beneath a landscape scene including a large house shaded by a tree, a woman with a parasol, a shepherd and his sheep, a church, a windmill, and a mountain. The scene is surrounded by yellow flowers.
I shivered. “You’re sure it’s a baby?”
“Or small toddler. I’m no expert.”
“The wall’s been here for years.”
“Would Charlotte know just how long?”
“I don’t know. But I can ask. She might even have some old pictures that would show it.”
“When was the house built?”
“More than two hundred years ago.”
We stood quietly. Reverently.
“Let’s have lunch and think about what you want to do about it,” said Dave.
“Shouldn’t we cover the bones? Or something?”
“Do you have any tarps in the barn?”
“Sure.” I ran to get one. I wanted those bones covered as soon as possible. Whose bones were they? How long had they been under my stone wall? I assumed my family had built the wall. Did the bones belong to someone I was related to? I shivered.
Dave and I covered the bones and put stones around the edges of the tarp to hold it down, just as I’d helped do at the lobster bake the day before.
By the time we went inside and washed up, the food was, of course, cold. I reheated the soup and stuck the sandwiches in the oven to warm them a little.
“Don’t worry about warming everything,” said Dave. I heated it all anyway. I didn’t want anything cold right now.
“I want to talk with Gram before I do anything about the bones,” I said, finally. “She lived here before me. She might know more.”
“I suspect those bones considerably predate Charlotte,” said Dave.
“Do you know a forensic anthropologist?” I asked.
“Not offhand. But the University of Maine might. Or Maine’s medical examiner.”
The medical examiner in Augusta. Where Ted Lawrence’s body was now.
“I’d guess to go through channels you’d notify our local police, and have them call the medical examiner’s office to find out what they wanted to do.”
“Or. . .” I said.
“Or?” asked Dave.
“We could just bury the bones again and not tell anyone.”
He looked at me. “Is that what you want to do? Bury whatever happened again?”
“That child probably lived and died generations ago. There’s nothing we can do about it now.”
“Aren’t you curious?”
Curious to find out about a child who’d been lying, buried, close to where I’d played as a little girl, and I lived now?
“I don’t know. People used to have home burials, didn’t they?”
“Sure. Still do. Maine has hundreds—maybe thousands—of family burying grounds. Most aren’t in villages, though. I’d guess most people who died in Haven Harbor in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were buried in the graveyards near one of the churches. About eighteen-forty, some of those early graveyards got too crowded, and towns started creating cemeteries near the towns, but outside the city limits as it were.”
“You’re also an expert on burying grounds?”
“Always found them fascinating.”
I shuddered. “Not something I’d put on my list of top ten interests.”
“You don’t have a poison garden, either,” he pointed out.
“I’m going to talk to Gram. So for the moment—don’t mention what we found to anyone, okay?”
“They’re your bones,” said Dave, throwing up his hands.
“Right now I don’t want to think about death,” I said.
“Then don’t. Those bones have been there for a while. They’re not going anywhere you don’t want them to go.”
We finished our lunch, and Dave left.
I didn’t call Gram. The rectory was only two blocks away. If she wasn’t home, then at least I’d get some fresh air.
True, I’d been outside a lot in the past twenty-four hours. But today I needed the emotional relaxation of breathing sea air. And a little quiet time.
Right now two blocks would have to do.
Ted Lawrence’s death was horrible enough. Not only because he’d collapsed in the middle of what should have been a celebratory party,
but because of what his absence meant to Sarah.
She hadn’t had long to think about how inheriting millions of dollars of paintings would change her life, and she’d been given two Robert Lawrence paintings I suspected she’d never think of selling, for sentimental reasons. But she’d wanted so much to have ties to a family. And although Ted had accepted her, his children hadn’t. At least not so far.
And now Ted was gone.
I knocked lightly on Gram’s door and walked in.
I heard voices. That’s when I remembered it was Sunday. I hadn’t gone to church. Gram and Reverend Tom probably were hosting some church meeting.
Luckily Gram was only having tea with Ruth Hopkins and Katie Titicomb, two of the Mainely Needlepointers, and Anna Winslow, whose husband, Captain Ob, was also a needlepointer. Sort of a family gathering without Dave and Sarah and me.
“I’ll get another cup,” Gram said as soon as she saw me, and gestured that I should join the other women. I loved that Katie had brought her needlepoint, and was working on one of the Save the Cormorants pillows. Gram gave me a quick hug. “So glad you stopped in, Angel.”
“How are you all?” I asked. I’d seen Ruth and Anna relatively recently, but Katie had spent most of the summer in Blue Hill with her daughter Cindy’s family. Cindy and I had been high school classmates, but now we only saw each other when she visited her parents in Haven Harbor. “How are Cindy and her kids?’
“All well, and the kids sprouting like witch grass,” Katie said. “But they’re back in school and day care now, and my husband was about to file for desertion if I stayed Down East any longer. Ruth and Charlotte told me about the cormorant situation, and I’m all in. Until you give me any more needlepoint assignments, I’m stitching cormorants.”
“Love that,” I said, accepting the cup of tea Gram handed me.
“How did the weekend go?” Gram asked. “I hope you don’t mind, but I told everyone about Sarah. And Ted.”