Bernadine Fagan - Nora Lassiter 02 - Murder in the Maine Woods

by Bernadine Fagan

  “There are times when I think I should stay away from you,” he said. ”But what fun would that be?”

  “Ditto, me.”

  “I guess I’m just weak,” he said, looking serious, his focus back on me, “where you’re concerned. ”

  If hearts were capable of flipping without being physically damaged, I guess you could say mine did some major flipping. But I’m a New York woman and somewhere along the way caution seeped deep into my soul. It kept me silent in the face of this emotional onslaught. I wanted to say so much, but I remained silent.

  Nick is nothing if not a quick study when it comes to people so when the music drifting from the hall of the Community Center became loud and bouncy, he shifted the mood. “Want to dance?”

  “Thought you’d never ask.”

  Taking my hand, he headed into the hall. “We’re good, then?”

  “We are.”

  My smile widened when I recognized the opening strains of “Elvira.”

  “Can’t dance yet. I have to run,” I said, turning toward the door. “I’m filming the senior citizen’s dance. Come watch them.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Camcorder in hand and the heavy Canon with the special lens dangling around my neck, I settled on the best angle as the seniors lined up on the dance floor. Other folks gathered too, but Hannah waved them away as the band leader, a guitarist, announced, “The Silver Stream Senior Citizens will now present their interpretation of the electric slide.”

  A few eyebrows shot up and one woman who obviously wanted to dance began to protest and was led off by a friend. I captured it all with my camcorder.

  Aunt Agnes jockeyed for position in the front row, then began her warm-up exercises which consisted of shuffling her feet, flailing her arms and bending a bit from the waist.

  The lead guitarist watched her with interest and nodded to the band when she wound down. Then the music began in earnest.

  Elvira, Elvira.

  Step and tap, shuffle and slide. They were off and doing well. Ida was a big surprise, really into it, tossing her shoulders in time with the music. Petite Hannah was a star, in perfect sync, light on her feet, every step precise, displaying the form that won dance contests. Agnes … well, Agnes enjoyed herself immensely, stepping and clapping, turning and tapping, sometimes with the rest of the group, sometimes not so much. But it didn’t seem to matter, except when she bumped into Ida or Hannah, who simply moved farther away to accommodate.

  I left my chosen spot and captured the scene from different angles, walking around the hall to include all the participants in the movie. When the last notes sounded, the room went wild. Well, sort of wild. Some clapping and yahooing occurred.

  The Silver Stream Senior Citizens were a hit.

  The dancers were pleased as can be—Ida grinning and flushed as she walked off the floor, Hannah brandishing her scarf in that theatrical way of hers, and Agnes bowing to the audience.

  I joined them, gave each a hug and went back to filming, catching every poignant moment from every angle so they could watch and savor later.

  The band switched to a slow number with their female singer taking the lead on a romantic song made famous by Shania Twain, “From This Moment On.” I saw Nick heading in my direction, and I smiled. I’d anticipated dancing with him since I first heard about the Harvest Dance, and it was finally going to happen.

  Then my peripheral vision picked up a danger signal, a woman with a long, gray braid and full length faded denim skirt hurrying over.

  Mary Fran joined the Lassiter clan and spotted Mama Bear, too.

  “Incoming. Incoming,” she said in my ear. “Hostile forces at your 2:00 o’clock.”

  “I see.”

  “I’ve gotta watch this,” she said.

  Arianna’s attempt to head her son off at the pass was not as successful as she probably intended. They both arrived a few feet from me at the same time.

  “Nicky, darling.”

  She paused when she saw me, as if she hadn’t noticed me before this very second. “Hello, Nora. How are you this evening?”

  “Hello, Arianna. Good to see you again,” I lied.

  Am I polite or what? I even smiled.

  Arianna smiled back, graciously, and greeted Mary Fran. To Nick, she said, “Crystal’s father wants to talk to you, something about a business problem. He’s worried. He said he started to talk to you about it earlier and was interrupted. Can you come over for a few minutes? He has to leave soon, and I told him you’d see him now.”

  She threw her hands out in a helpless gesture. “Please forgive me for being presumptuous, but I thought you’d want to talk to him before he left.”

  “He can wait. I promised this dance to Nora.”

  My heart soared. The Shania impersonator put her heart into the song, feeling the words and the music.

  Right beside you …

  Arianna turned to me, an imploring look on her face. I could see the lie before it spilled from her lips. I wondered if Nick saw what I saw. He must.

  “Nora, be a sweetheart and forgo a dance this one time. Please. Nick will be right back, I promise.” The supplicant touched my arm lightly.

  I was about the say, “Fine” when Nick put his arm around me and said to his mother, “If it’s that important, he’ll stick around a few minutes.”

  Next thing I knew we were on the dance floor and I was in his arms.

  I wanted to sing along, but decided not to. I wanted to talk, but sensed he did not. I wanted to hold him, and knew beyond a doubt that was what we both needed right now. So we held each other and made the rhythm of the music our rhythm. For a few precious moments we blocked out the people around us and lived in our own private world, like we had at the lake.

  Life grants people few perfect moments. I will always count this dance as one of mine, regardless of the twists and turns our relationship takes.

  I felt at ease in Nick’s embrace, hands joined, bodies touching, mind at peace. As a gift to myself, I accepted the moment without analyzing, without questioning. I simply let it be.

  Reality stepped in on the last turn as I glimpsed Crystal looking our way. Her face mirrored her thoughts. I knew, as clearly as if it were painted on a forty-foot billboard in Times Square, that she wanted him back. I suspected she regretted her move. I didn’t know how any of this would work out. But I understood one thing.

  It was Nick’s call.

  I would not stand in the way or try to influence him.

  Stan left his date sitting alone at the table and went out the front door for a cigarette. I saw him take the pack out of his breast pocket as he was walking. What was odd, was that the smokers seemed to congregate around the back of the building. Maybe Stan wanted to be alone. I didn’t really believe that, but what did I know.

  Next thing, the two guys who came with Lenny got up and went out the front door, too.

  Sometimes when I know I shouldn’t do something, I’m so pulled in that direction I almost can’t stop myself from acting. I try to resist. It doesn’t help. I try some more. It’s no use. I take a step, then another and another and the internal struggle becomes a memory.

  When Lenny went to the bar for another beer and his back was turned, I headed for the front door. Since the ladies’ room was that way, no one thought much of it. I paused in front of the door with the symbol of a woman on it. After a quick look around to make sure no one was watching, at least that I noticed, I continued out the front door and slipped to the side of the building, keeping in the shadows.

  Down a ways from the Community Center I spotted three figures beneath the weeping arms of the beech tree that grew near the church. I couldn’t hear, so I crept closer. And closer still. Snatches of conversation drifted out.

  “ … tire … smashed that sucker.”

  Low laughter.

  “ … driveway … no trace.”

  I wondered what had been destroyed. I strained to hear more. It didn’t take an ace investigator to figure
these guys were up to no good. Whether it was murder or not, remained to be seen.

  I heard branches colliding and leaves rustling. Meeting adjourned. That was quick. They were on the move, coming my way.

  I turned to run, caught the toe of my boot on an exposed root, and stumbled. An unexpected yaagaaa escaped my locked lips. With superhuman effort I managed the momentum, preventing a catastrophic ass over teakettle somersault which would have drawn kudos from my high school phys-ed teacher, but would have left me in a vulnerable heap on the ground. I ended up on my right knee with my left hand splayed in the gravel alongside the root.

  At times like this my imagination tends to run amok. They were going to find me. Snatch me up, throw me in some dingy van and ferry me away. They would either shoot me or force me to drink foxglove-digitalis juice, and leave my body in the woods for the animals to feast on. A vegetarian moose might trample me, just out of spite.

  I glanced at the beech tree, a dark flowing silhouette against a fat moon, a harvest moon I think it’s called. The idea that I might never know what it was called caught me by surprise. What, exactly, was a harvest moon? I wanted to know with a desperation that was bewildering. Harvest moon, hunter’s moon, full moon. Life was full of mysteries about the moon.

  The aunts saw Buster and Rhonda in a lovers’ embrace under this very tree. Their love may have set everything in motion and ultimately caused Buster’s death. Or maybe it began many years before with a teenage nephew or two, or even years before that with the conception of a son.

  “Yeah, I heard it,” one of the guys said.

  I swallowed hard. This would never do. This was like giving up, and I never did that. Since staying on my knees and waiting to be accosted was not an option, I reached into the front compartment of my pocketbook—I always keep my keys there—and yanked out Ce-Ce’s chain. A small flat flashlight the size of my thumb dangled from the chain. Pointing it down, I pressed the pressure switch and a super bright LED flashed.

  I held it up and pointed in the direction of the boot sounds. “Who’s there?” I called in a brash voice that signaled I might be an annoyed woman possessing ninja skills.

  “What’re you doing down there?” one of Stan’s buddies asked.

  I stood up, keeping my scraped, possibly bleeding, knee in shadow. “I was planning to have a cigarette and I didn’t want anyone to see me. I’m a reformed smoker. And if you tell a soul, I’ll come after you.” I flashed the light from one face to the other. “You’ll regret it.”

  All three stepped closer. That’s when I caught a whiff of that atrocious aftershave or cologne that I’d smelled on the cloth in the woods and on the dirty clothes in the bedrooms. Stan and Lenny must share the jug.

  “I know her,” Stan said, angling his head and squinting in the bright light I flashed in his direction. “She’s that foreigner. The Lassiter foreigner who keeps showing up. Like at my house with Walter and on my bus.”

  “You are correct. I am from New York, an alien territory if ever there was one.”

  “Aren’t you a de—“

  “I’ve decided not to have that cigarette,” I interrupted before the word detective hit the air waves. Sometimes it’s good to be a detective, sometimes not. “You men smell of smoke and I don’t like it.” I skipped the part about the cheap cologne.

  With that I strode off, shining my little light on the ground to prevent further tripping, and holding my breath, hoping I wouldn’t be grabbed from behind.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The episode on the bus steps had been a clear indicator that I needed a ready supply of band aids. Since the Country Store carried such a plain selection, I’d gone on the internet and ordered clear strips for maximum discretion. I selected ones that sported air channels for wound breathability. Time to test out that claim.

  I headed straight for the ladies’ room to attend to my knee which was definitely bloody.

  Two things hit me as soon as I opened the door. First, the strong smell of pine disinfectant, and second, the sight of Crystal with the long beautiful hair leaning so close to the mirror that I wondered whether she had an eye problem. Probably not. She was in the process of applying the reddest lipstick in the state of Maine. The right side of the lip bow was filled in, the left side was a blank canvas. She paused when she saw me. I remained by the door.

  Like a sculpture chiseled in stone, we stood where we were, her with her half red lip, me with my bloody red knee.

  I extended my hand. “Hi, I’m Nora Lassiter, in town since September, visiting family.”

  She switched the tube to her left hand and shook hands with me. “Crystal Bruderinski, Nick Renzo’s former fiancée. I hear you’re up from New York City.” She glanced at my injured knee.

  “Yes. That’s my home.”

  She was an attractive woman with a smooth complexion. I did notice a small previously squeezed pimple on her chin. She’d covered it nicely. Her eyes were dark, her lips full and half lipsticked.

  “How long will you be in Silver Stream?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  I loved the jeans she wore. The fit was perfect.

  Just looking at her, I realized I was jealous, plain and simple, of her former relationship with Nick and of the fact that Arianna liked her and not me. I hated feeling this way.

  Such petty thoughts.

  Get over it, Nora. Grow up. You’re not in high school any more.

  I decided to like Crystal. Period. She was probably a very nice person. At one time, Nick saw good qualities in her. I would too.

  I debated whether to tell her I wanted to find out who murdered Buster before I left. I settled for an honest, but vague reply that should set her mind at ease. “I’m not here permanently.”

  She smiled an obviously false smile that said very clearly that she didn’t believe me, and then her eyes narrowed the tiniest bit. “I hear you’ve been poking around in Nick’s murder investigation, causing problems.”

  Obviously, it was going to be hard to like her, but I was determined. The look on her face when Nick and I danced had been all-revealing.

  “Causing problems?” I asked.

  She waved her hand around as if the whole thing were inconsequential and meant little to her. “Something about you insisting on checking out a computer they took from the victim’s house. Or else you’d have a fit.”

  The Arianna Effect was evident. Discretion and my resolve to be her friend kept me from firing back. Instead of a direct answer, I shrugged my shoulders, smiled and made the mmmm sound.

  I followed the sound with, “I hear you lived in Boston. Great city. Amazing mix of past and present.”

  “Yes. Great place, but it’s good to have a backup plan, a place to go if things don’t work the way you planned.” She waved the lipstick tube around, a look of concentration on her face as if she were trying to find the right words for what she wanted to say next.

  A backup plan. Backup.

  The word rattled around in my head. Computers had backups. Sometimes they came in the form of external hard drives, other times they were as small as flash drives.

  Backup.

  It was like a veil had lifted. I’d been looking for the wrong thing. The laptop was gone, probably destroyed. Stan’s words under the beech tree resonated.

  “ … smashed that sucker … tire … driveway … no trace.”

  He might have been telling them about the laptop.

  So where was the backup? They must have made a backup. Why hadn’t I considered this before?

  “City life?” Crystal asked, breaking into my thoughts with a rhetorical question. “So many people pretending to be sophisticated. Most are a bunch of phonies.” She paused, her hand flying artfully to her mouth as if she’d said something she shouldn’t have. “Nothing personal. I don’t mean you, of course.”

  “Of course not,” I said, deciding a backup was a definite possibility, especially a flash drive. The thought swirled in my head, taking my focus away f
rom the lovely Crystal who was more interested in lobbing canon balls in my direction than in making a new friend.

  She gave me a quick up and down glance. “Your knee seems to be bleeding. Did you fall?”

  “Just a scratch,” I said as I wondered what I’d missed in my cursory search of Buster’s house. Sometimes people hide things in plain sight or in odd spots.

  “I hope you weren’t chasing another perp when the accident occurred.” She gave a little titter. Her way of making fun of me? Of laughing at me?

  “No, not tonight,” I said.

  I gave up on the idea of being friends with Crystal. That was not going to happen, ever. I wondered what Nick saw in her. It surprised me that he asked her to marry him. Then I caught myself. People are the sum of their experiences and I had no idea what experiences influenced him. If I understood one thing it was that I had no right to judge him because of his ex-fiancée. I certainly wouldn’t want anyone judging me based on Whatshisname.

  “Well, I’ve got to get back. I promised Nick a dance,” Crystal said.

  With that she popped the lipstick tube in her purse, closed the purse with a smart snap and headed for the door, her long dark hair flowing down her back like a prize collection of silken streamers. I stepped aside, thinking I should mention the unfinished upper lip. It looked funny.

  I stepped away from the door to let her pass. “It was nice to meet you, Crystal.”

  “Likewise,” she said.

  By the time I returned to the dance, Nick had left on a call. I danced with a few cousins, had dinner with the aunts and left early. Hannah asked me to drive her ’65 Pontiac GTO again and I didn’t mind. I was finally getting the hang of shifting.

  “Don’t strip the gears,” she cautioned. “And watch that brake. Jam your foot on it without hitting the clutch and we’ll stall.”

  I got Nick’s text as I pulled into Ida’s driveway: Very busy. Will call later.

  Later turned out to be several hours later. I was in bed with the covers up to my chin when Yo Yo Ma finally played the cello. The news was not good.