by Paul Doiron
He eventually died after choking on a chicken bone.
I could never pass the Montpelier mansion without reflecting that the conflict between Maine’s well-to-do newcomers and people like the Barters had deeper roots than most people understood. Life really is like a tree that way: No one considers how much history is hidden underground.
Driving home through a flurry of snow showers, I thought again of my morning confrontation with the Driskos, men whose ancestors had probably been among Knox’s original rebels. I was positive that when the DNA results came back from the University of Maine laboratory, the blood I’d found at the crash scene would match the blood I’d found on their flatbed. Stealing game was a small-stakes offense, but it would justify a broader search of their property, and who knew what else we might find.
My encounter with Dave and Donnie reminded me of an event I’d witnessed as a teenager at Rum Pond; late one evening, Charley Stevens had confronted my father about a suspected poaching violation and had received an equally menacing response. The warden pilot had had the good sense to back down from the conflict. Was it a sign of personal growth that I’d managed to do the same with the Driskos?
I looked forward to sharing the mysteries of the past few days—my ATV vandals and missing deer—with Charley at dinner. I was certain the wise old owl would also have insight into the disappearance of Ashley Kim.
Without really intending to, I found myself detouring yet again to Parker Point. Why was this place pulling me like a magnet? This time, I bypassed the accident scene and drove to land’s end. There was a little turnaround at the tip with a spruce-obstructed view of the Mussel Shoals islands. I got a glimpse of gray waves and gulls wheeling close to the surf, but that was it by way of a scenic vista. All of the better views lay down the end of private drives.
I’d once read that the State of Maine’s coastline, measured in a line from Kittery to Eastport, is just a few hundred miles long. But if you were able to straighten out all the inlets and peninsulas—like pulling a tangled string straight—you’d have five thousand miles of shorefront. Parker Point was like dozens of exclusive necks north of Portland. From one main road, numerous private drives fanned out to the edge of the water. There you’d find mostly shuttered homes.
So where had Ashley Kim been going? I’d assumed she was visiting someone or had just taken a wrong turn. Was it possible that her family owned a house on the point? I doubted that Hutchins had followed this particular line of inquiry very far.
Who else might know the answer?
The town clerk, MaryBeth Fickett, had access to all the local property maps. And I knew her a little. She and her chubby hubby had shared a thermos of coffee with me while I was checking licenses out on Indian Pond. I dialed the number for the town office. After the seventh ring, I was transferred to voice mail. Maybe MaryBeth was out sick. Seal Cove was such a dinky little town that entire municipal departments could be immobilized by a bad case of the sniffles.
I left a message, saying a woman named Ashley Kim had hit a deer the night before. Her official residence was listed as Cambridge, Massachusetts, but I wondered if she owned a house in Seal Cove. I asked MaryBeth to call me back in the morning.
When I signed off, I saw that I’d gotten a text message from Sarah: “UR late 4 dinner.” This adolescent infatuation of hers with texting was not one I could imagine sharing. It was true that certain gadgets—my GPS and vehicle laptop—made aspects of my job easier, but in general the WiFi age could go to hell, as far as I was concerned. Why did we need to be in constant contact with each other all the time? Whatever happened to enjoying the privacy of one’s own thoughts?
I reversed course for home. The cigarette stench from the Driskos’ trailer had penetrated through my pores. Maybe if I bathed in tomato juice, the way you wash skunk spray off a dog, I might emerge cleansed.
* * *
I found Sarah rushing around the kitchen, trying to do five things at once in preparation for Charley and Ora’s visit. The house smelled pleasantly of the salt pork and onions she’d used to start her fish chowder.
“What kept you?”
“I got caught up in that deer/car thing from last night. I’m still trying to track down the driver. But I think I know who stole the deer.”
“Can we talk about it later?” She gave me a repulsed look. “You stink of cigarettes.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Get out of your uniform, for one thing. Maybe you should hang it outside. Then help me figure out how we’re going to get a woman in a wheelchair up the front stairs.”
Ora Stevens was paralyzed from the waist down, the result of a plane crash that had left her husband—a seasoned pilot, who’d been teaching her to fly at the time—largely uninjured. Though Ora had been at the controls, Charley blamed himself for her injury. On several occasions, I’d seen him watch his wife wheeling herself around, and there was no doubt in my mind that he was reliving that terrible day for the thousandth time. Even those glacier green eyes of his couldn’t hide his abiding guilt.
By the time I’d showered and changed, Sarah had moved from the kitchen to the bedroom. She was standing in her underwear in front of the open closet—filled from end to end with dresses, blouses, pants, sweaters, and shoes—and chewing on a cuticle. She’d been a competitive diver in high school and still had taut muscles in her shoulders and thighs. “What should I wear?” she asked.
“I’m happy with what you’ve got on.”
“Be serious, Mike.”
“It doesn’t matter. Charley and Ora aren’t exactly what you would call formal.”
She turned, giving me a peek at her flat stomach. “Sometimes I’m stunned about how little you know about women. Of course it matters.”
“How about jeans and a nice sweater?”
She waved her hand at me and went back to studying the closet. “Get out of here. Go scrape the ice off the porch steps or something.”
* * *
Charley and Ora drove up in their van two minutes before six o’clock. Mainers of their generation are, I believe, the most punctual people on earth.
Although we’d spoken on the phone, the last time I’d seen them was on the day of Charley’s return from the hospital. He’d been wounded in the arm and leg, and his skin had been marbled with bruises from his ankles to his shoulders. Coming home for the first time since his accident, he’d shaken off all my offers of assistance and made his way on crutches up the ramp of their cabin with a look of iron determination on his face. “I’ve always been a bear for punishment,” he’d said.
Now, in the phantom light of my porch, I watched him hop out of the driver’s side of their Dodge Caravan. “Hello, there!” he called, a big smile cracking his weathered face. He looked hale enough, but he came at me with a new limp that couldn’t be disguised.
His grip, as we shook hands, was as strong as ever. “Good to see you, young man.”
“How’ve you been, Charley?”
“Fair to middling. I’m still doing the physical therapy, you know.”
“Well, you look great.”
One thing I’d noticed about Charley was that he seemed to own essentially a single outfit. Every piece of his wardrobe was some shade of green, as if he’d spent so many years in a warden’s uniform, he couldn’t imagine dressing in any other color. As always, his thick hair was barbered in such a way as to make me think of the brush they use on horses. And the knife-sharp intelligence in his eyes was a warning to anyone who might underestimate him. Charley Stevens would drop dead before he ever got senile.
The automatic door of the van slid open and the vehicle seemed to kneel as a ramp tilted out from the side.
“Pardon me while I help the Boss,” he said.
“Hello, Mike.” Ora waved from inside the van. Her wheelchair was held in place beside the driver’s seat by a system of ratcheting straps. It took Charley mere seconds to loosen them.
Who was it who said that you get the face
you deserve as you grow older? By that standard, Ora Stevens, had one of the most beautiful souls on the planet. It wasn’t just the snow-white hair and Nordic cheekbones. She had a way of listening to you with full attention and constant eye contact, making you feel simultaneously fascinating and foolish.
“It’s so good to see you,” she said.
“Thank you for coming all the way down here.”
“Don’t be silly.”
Charley clapped me on the back. “Take ahold of that side of the chair, and we’ll tote this contraption up those stairs.”
Ora herself didn’t weigh much, but her automated wheelchair was cumbersome, and once again I was struck by Charley’s surprising strength.
Sarah had put on black jeans and a washed-denim top that brought out the blue in her eyes. She seemed nervous, fidgety. Something about the thought of meeting Charley and Ora intimidated her; I could see the anxiety behind her welcoming expression.
“This is Sarah Harris,” I said.
“Well, I certainly hope so,” said Charley. “Or else you got us down here on false pretenses.”
“We brought you this, dear.” Ora held out a pan wrapped in a napkin. “It’s an Indian pudding I baked this morning.”
“Thank you. Mike has raved about your cooking,” said Sarah. “I hope you won’t be disappointed in my fish chowder.”
“I was just saying it’s a night for chowder.” Charley winked at me. “Hasn’t it been a cold winter, though?”
“Can I get you something to drink? I’m having a whiskey.”
Charley waited for his wife to answer.
“I would have a whiskey and soda, please,” she said. The choice pleasantly surprised me.
“Black coffee,” added the old pilot. It was all he ever drank.
After I fetched the drinks, we all sat down in the living room. I’d cranked up the woodstove, knowing that Ora tended to feel chills deeply. It wasn’t long before I felt my face growing ruddy from the heat and alcohol. We made some small talk about the long drive from their winter home in Maine’s western foothills to Sennebec and about the tidy little motel they were staying at behind the Square Deal Diner.
“You have a lovely house,” Ora told Sarah.
“It wasn’t so lovely when I was living here by myself,” I said.
“Men are such foolish creatures,” said Ora. “When I first met Charley, he used to do his laundry by tying his clothes to a rope and towing them around the lake behind his canoe.”
“Good old-fashioned ingenuity,” said her husband.
After a few minutes of chitchat, I spotted my chance to turn the conversation in a different direction. “So what’s going on in Flagstaff?” I asked. “The last I’d heard, Wendigo was going to exercise its option on all the leases around the lake. Are they really forcing you out of there?”
The Stevenses had owned their waterfront cabin for three decades, but under a vagary of Maine law, timber companies had always held title to the land beneath the house. The latest owner, Wendigo Timberlands, LLC, was a Canadian corporation with a history of clear-cutting forestlands and then selling off the denuded lakefronts as real estate holdings. Last year, they’d announced their plan to “sell” the leased lots in Flagstaff to their current occupants at outrageous prices.
“We can’t afford to stay,” admitted Ora.
“I’d say the Wendigo directors took the murder of their spokesman last year somewhat in stride,” said Charley with a sour smirk I’d never seen from him before.
“So they’re just taking over the whole town and forcing everyone out?” said Sarah with genuine horror. “How can they do that?”
“It’s their land,” I explained.
“They’ve got the deed, that’s for sure, but I’ll bet that CEO couldn’t find Flagstaff, Maine, on a map.” Charley took a deep breath to calm himself. “I suppose we shouldn’t abandon all hope just yet.”
“That’s been my advice all along,” said Ora. “Desperate times call for hopeful measures.”
“I’ve fought for many a lost cause before and seen it come through,” her husband agreed, but there was the timbre of defeat in his voice.
“Will you buy another cabin somewhere?” I asked.
“We still have Ora’s mother’s house in Farmington, but I can’t live in town without going stir-crazy,” said Charley. “Civilization has lost its appeal for this old bird.”
“It never appealed to you,” said his wife. “You just endured it for the sake of the girls.”
They exchanged uncharacteristically disapproving glances, as if Ora’s remark concealed some veiled meaning. It made me wonder about their two daughters. They were estranged from their younger girl, Stacey, who still blamed her father for the plane accident that had crippled her mom.
Sarah leaned her elbows on her knees. “Where will you go if you leave Flagstaff?”
“A fellow I know has offered us some good land over toward Machias,” said Charley. “I was posted in eastern Maine when I was a young warden and have always liked the people. Once you get past Bar Harbor, the Down East coast is more like the whole state used to be back at the dawn of time.”
“You told me not to live in the past,” I said. “You said I’d miss out on the present if I did.”
Charley flexed the arm my father had shot as if it were giving him trouble. “I guess you could say that recent events have spoiled me on the present tense.”
“Let’s talk about happier subjects,” suggested Ora.
But her husband’s expression remained grim.
8
We’d just about finished dinner—Ora’s Indian pudding was as delicious as advertised—and Sarah was talking about the kids in her fourth-grade class. Two glasses of Pinot Grigio had made her a little tipsy, and now her complexion was glowing. “You never know what they’re going to say,” she was telling us. “And you don’t know if anything you say will have repercussions in their life. Everything is formative with them. And yet they can be so resilient, too.”
“Those children are lucky to have you for a teacher,” said Charley.
“There are days when I feel more like a social worker. I had to go buy a winter coat for one little girl who came in during a blizzard wearing just a sweater—and then her mother sent it back! She said she didn’t want charity.”
“That sounds like my mom,” I said. “When I was a kid, she never wanted to admit how poor we were.”
A phone rang in the next room. I’d left my cell in its holder, still attached to my gun belt. The sound carried from the bedroom closet: a worrying, faraway cry of alarm.
I set down my beer bottle.
Sarah put both hands on the table. “You’re not on duty tonight, Mike.”
The phone rang again. Everyone was staring at me, waiting for me to react.
“Please, let it go,” Sarah said.
I was positive the call concerned Ashley Kim. Was she phoning me back finally? Or had Hutchins managed to track her down? Maybe it was MaryBeth Fickett, calling from the town office. I found myself turning to Charley for backup. “I’m expecting a call about a deer/car collision I’m investigating,” I explained.
The phone rang for the third time.
“I don’t see any harm in him taking it,” the old pilot said to his wife.
I nearly kicked over my chair, I rose so quickly. “Excuse me for just a minute.”
“Please, Mike,” Sarah said, her voice rising.
But I was already gone.
* * *
The caller was MaryBeth Fickett. In the darkened bedroom, I glanced at the luminous green numbers on the alarm clock.
“I hope you’re not still working at this hour,” I said.
“If I am, it’s your own fault.” The Seal Cove town clerk was a very large woman who had the helium-pitched voice of a little girl. “Did you honestly expect to leave that message and not pique my curiosity? The answer to your question is, I don’t have a record for anyone named Kim owning property
on the point. But you said this woman lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, didn’t you?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, there’s a Hans Westergaard from Cambridge who has a summer place out on the point. It’s that big new house at the end of Schooner Lane. I know because Bill was the stonemason on the project. He says Mr. Westergaard is a professor at the Harvard Business School.”
“It can’t be a coincidence.”
“No, I wouldn’t think so,” said MaryBeth. “I have his home phone number in Massachusetts. His wife gave it to Bill because she kept changing her mind about the design of the fieldstone chimney. Mrs. Westergaard is a … perfectionist.”
“I thought you were going to use another word.”
She tittered in that girlish voice of hers. “I was.”
The overhead light snapped on. Sarah stepped through the doorway of the bedroom and closed the door behind her.
“What did you say his telephone number was again?” I reached for the notepad beside the bed and scribbled the number down on a piece of paper.
“You’d better let me know what you find out!” said MaryBeth.
“I will,” I promised.
Sarah waited until I’d hung up before she spoke. Then it all came out in a torrent. “I can’t believe you just got up from the table like that. I don’t mind you working. I’ve come to terms with your job. But when you’re off duty, I expect you to make an effort at being emotionally present.”
“The call was about that missing woman from last night. I think I know where she is.”
“But you already said it was a state police matter. You swore you’d stop this cowboy shit if I moved back here, remember?”