Murder on High

by Stefanie Matteson

  Tracey swiveled his chair around to look at the calendar on the wall behind his desk. “The third quarter is July seventh, which means we have roughly two more weeks to catch this guy.” He turned back to face Haverty. “Is it possible to clear the Chimney Pond Campground?”

  Haverty nodded. “Yep. We can relocate the campers to other campgrounds. They won’t be happy about it, but those are the breaks.”

  “Good. Then we can fill the lean-tos with our own people. Nab this guy in the act. How many lean-tos are there?”

  “Nine,” Haverty said. “Each accommodates four people. But we don’t usually have four in every one. I’d say we average between two and three.”

  Tracey nodded. “That means we need, say, twenty people for the lean-tos, and another half a dozen or so posted around the campsite.”

  “Sounds about right to me,” said Haverty. “When are we going to do this?”

  “As soon as possible.”

  6

  After the meeting, Charlotte and Tracey set out on the task that Tracey had assigned to himself: finding out about Iris’ personal life. They decided to start by going back to talk with the person who had known her best, Jeanne Ouellette. Charlotte had offered to kill time until they headed back to Bridge Harbor by taking a walk, but Tracey insisted that she come along. He wanted her help. After the Bridge Harbor murder eight years before, Charlotte had assumed the role of unofficial investigator in the perennially short-staffed Bridge Harbor Police Department, a role that was primarily confined to dropping in when she was in town and getting the scoop on local crimes before they appeared in the “Police Beat” column of the Bridge Harbor Light. Though there were occasionally problems to be solved, with stolen bicycles and unreturned video rentals heading the list, the vast majority of crimes fitted roughly in the driving-while-intoxicated category, the many variations of which included car crashes, joy rides, speeding, and collisions with deer, and required no investigative abilities, it being quite obvious who the drunken party was.

  Since joining the state police, Tracey had had no real need for Charlotte’s help, but she supposed he’d gotten used to having her around. “Won’t Gaudette mind my interference?” she had asked, referring to Tracey’s superior. “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Tracey had replied. “And with so many law enforcement agencies already on the case, who’s going to notice?” Then he had ticked off the agencies involved on his fingers:

  “The state police, the Baxter State Park authorities, and the Piscataquis County Sheriff’s Department for starters, with the probable addition of the Old Town police and the Penobscot Indian police. With five in the picture, what’s one more? Besides, you’re the only one who knew the victim when she was Iris O’Connor.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to matter,” Charlotte had said.

  “Who knows? Maybe she was killed by someone from her past who came back to redress a festering grievance,” said Tracey.

  “Wearing moose antlers from the costume department?”

  On their second visit to Hilltop Farm, Charlotte had a better chance to notice how beautiful the property was. It was beautiful in the way she liked beautiful, with a kind of aged grace. Not falling down the way many old Maine farms were, and not overly shipshape—just a serene, understated beauty. Part of its appeal lay in its setting: it sat back from the road instead of being snuggled right up to it as most old New England farmhouses were, and it was set off by a backdrop of tall pines. But not all of the effect had to do with the setting. Had she not had the chance to compare it with the farms she had seen on the ride over, she probably wouldn’t have noticed that its beauty was like that of a face that is beautiful in old age because it’s been molded by a quiet intelligence. This time around she noticed details like the roof, which was shingled with wooden shakes weathered to the color of old pewter instead of the usual gray asphalt; and the long gravel driveway, laid out in such a way that its gentle curves most pleased the eye. Nor did she fail to notice this time that the apple trees, whose flower-laden limbs seemed to cascade so naturally to the ground, had been carefully pruned to achieve this effect. Even the stone fences, a cardinal feature of the Maine farmhouse, seemed different: they weren’t just heaps of rocks, but had been carefully pieced together by a master stonemason. Most impressive of all were the fields of wildflowers in which the sheep grazed, fields that appeared to be natural, but in their profusion of bloom were unlike any Charlotte had seen that morning.

  And now that quiet intelligence was dead. What would happen to Hilltop Farm? she wondered. She imagined that would be among the first of the questions that Tracey would want answered.

  Having failed to get an answer to his knock, Tracey let out a loud “Hello!” His shout produced a reply from the direction of a long, low shed in a grove of pines to the left of the house. Following a path through an opening in the stone fence, they emerged at a grassy roadway that ran between the shed they had seen and another, similar shed before curving around toward the back of the house. A fork led off into the woods. Charlotte concluded that the sheds must once have been carriage houses, and the fork a carriage path.

  Jeanne Ouellette was standing in front of one of the sheds among a collection of pots that sat in flats on the grass. Each pot held a trillium, which, with the exception of the pink lady’s-slipper, was perhaps the country’s most beloved wildflower. She was in the process of writing the names of the varieties and the prices on wooden tongue depressors, and then sticking them into the pots.

  “Hello again,” she said as they approached. She gestured at the pots at her feet. “I was just getting this shipment ready to send out.” She brushed a stray lock of gray hair out of her face and pushed her glasses up her nose. Her sallow face was filled with pain and hurt and confusion. “I figured you’d be back. I just heard the news on the radio.”

  “We’re back,” said Tracey. “This is Miss Charlotte Graham,” he said, introducing Charlotte, as he’d failed to do on their first visit. He didn’t elaborate, obviously not wanting at this stage to get into the issue of Iris’ other life.

  Jeanne rubbed a muddy palm on the front of her soiled khakis. “Excuse my hands,” she said as she reached over to shake hands with Charlotte. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Miss Graham.”

  The fact that she didn’t say anything more suggested to Charlotte that she must have known about her connection with Iris’ past life. Otherwise, she surely would have commented on the movie star’s having shown up in her backyard.

  Charlotte had stooped down for a closer look at the flowers. Many of them were in bloom—June was trillium season—and Charlotte was captivated by the star-shaped flowers. The only trilliums she was familiar with were white, but these came in pink, purple, red, yellow, green.

  “They’re beautiful,” she said, gazing out at the plants.

  She was thinking about buying a pink one for her townhouse garden in New York until she noticed the price, which was sixty dollars, from which she concluded that the wildflower business was probably more remunerative than one would have thought.

  Tracey, who had also been looking at the price tags, had come to the same conclusion. “Pretty pricey, aren’t they?” he said to Jeanne.

  It was typical of Tracey, and of Mainers in general, to put off mentioning whatever business was at hand for as long as possible, as if coming directly to the point would be a breach of good manners.

  It was a style that drove Charlotte crazy. Her approach would have been to plunge right in with the questions, such as “Where were you when Iris was killed?” and “Who stands to inherit this farm?” but she recognized that Tracey’s aimless fishing expeditions often netted the bigger catch.

  “For a reason,” Jeanne replied. “It takes six to eight years for a trillium seed to come to flower, and we grow them from seed. We don’t dig them from the wild.” Holding a plant out at arm’s length, she leaned back to study it. Then she rearranged the blossoms, fluffed the leaves, and set it back down.<
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  Seeing how she fussed, Charlotte couldn’t help comparing her to her own secretary, Vivian Smith, who served a similar function in her life. Vivian’s style was to bully. Of the two, Charlotte preferred bullying. This constant fussing would have driven her crazy.

  The thought of Vivian reminded her of what she was supposed to be doing. Vivian had been calling daily to nag her about her autobiography. Putting her guilty thoughts out of her mind, she addressed Jeanne. “I had no idea that trilliums came in so many colors. Have you developed your own hybrids?”

  “No,” Jeanne replied. “These are the natural color variations. Iris didn’t believe in improving on Mother Nature.” Bending down, she picked up one of the flats and turned toward the shed. “I’ll get you a couple of our brochures.”

  Charlotte was impressed at her strength. The flat probably held twenty good-sized pots and must have weighed a hundred pounds or more.

  She emerged a couple of moments later with two copies of a color brochure that read “Hilltop Farm: Wholesale Nursery-Propagated Perennial Wildflowers. Specialists in Trilliums,” which she gave to them.

  “Would you like to sit down?” Jeanne asked after they had looked at the brochures. She nodded at a weathered picnic table in the tall grass at one end of the shed. “We can sit there, or we can go inside.”

  “This will do fine,” said Tracey. “It’s a nice day for being outdoors.”

  Once they were seated, Tracey finally asked his question. Remembering his impatience with Haverty, Charlotte observed that it was only other people’s failure to get to the point that annoyed Tracey, never his own. “Now,” he said, “why don’t you tell us about that day?”

  “Where do you want me to start?” Jeanne asked. She had a way of cocking her head forward attentively, as if she were waiting for directions.

  “Anywhere you like,” he said as he took out a notebook.

  “We set out about eight on the Saddle Trail. Iris liked to get an early start. It’s supposed to take two and a half hours to get to the rim, but for a couple of old ladies like us”—she attempted a smile—“it always took longer. We got to the rim a little after eleven. That’s where we split up.”

  “Why did you split up?” asked Tracey.

  “Two reasons. The first was that Iris didn’t like walking with other people, generally speaking. She used to quote Thoreau, who said he had no walks to throw away on company. That was especially true of her annual pilgrimage to Katahdin; it was a sacred ritual for her.”

  “And the second?”

  “The second was the Diapensia lapponica. It’s an unusual alpine wildflower that grows on the Tableland. She always climbed the mountain during the second week in June so she could see it in bloom. It’s especially thick around Thoreau Spring, which she liked to visit anyway. Again, it was part of her solitary ritual.”

  “How do you spell that?” asked Tracey.

  Jeanne spelled it for him. As she stared out at the woods, her gray eyes started tearing up. “It’s so odd, really.”

  “What’s so odd?” asked Tracey.

  “In Emerson’s eulogy for Thoreau, he compared him to the Tyrolean youths who risked their lives to gather edelweiss from the alpine cliffs. He described how they were sometimes found dead at the foot, with the flowers in their hands. Not that Thoreau actually died like that.…” Her voice drifted off.

  “It was a metaphor,” prompted Charlotte.

  Jeanne nodded, and continued. “For the pursuit of noble purity, which is what edelweiss means in German. I was just thinking how odd it was that Iris should have died at the foot of a cliff in pursuit of a rare wildflower that grows on our most inaccessible summits.”

  “Did you draw the same metaphor at Iris’ funeral?” asked Charlotte.

  “There was no funeral,” Jeanne said. “She considered public ceremonies a waste of time and money. Religious ceremonies most of all.”

  “Getting back to your movements …” Tracey said. He consulted his notes. “Mrs. Richards continued over the ridge to Thoreau Spring to see this rare wildflower that grows there, Diapensia lapponica.”

  Jeanne had regained her composure. “Yes,” she said. “She took the Baxter Peak Cutoff Trail, which begins about a half mile south of the head of the Saddle Slide. From there, it’s a mile to the Spring.”

  “And you?”

  “I took the Northwest Basin Trail, which goes in the opposite direction. It links up with the Hamlin Ridge Trail, which leads to Hamlin Peak. It’s the long, gradual way: it follows the rim of the basin all the way back around to Chimney Pond. I have bad knees,” she explained. “The steep descents bother me.”

  Tracey nodded in sympathy. “I have that problem myself.”

  “That’s another reason we split up: I wasn’t up to the Knife Edge.”

  “Did you see anyone else on the trail?”

  She shook her head. “As I said, we left pretty early. The only other hikers on the trail at that hour would have been other campers from Chimney Pond, most of whom are young people who take the Cathedral Trail or the Dudley Trail, either of which is more interesting than the Saddle Trail.”

  “What about day hikers?” asked Tracey.

  “They have to start out at Roaring Brook Campground at the foot of the mountain. It takes two and a half hours to get from there to Chimney Pond, so they don’t start hitting the upper trails until about ten. Oh, I just remembered. There was one person: a man in an orange windbreaker.”

  “But you didn’t talk to him.”

  “No. He was just ahead of us on the Saddle Slide for a while. You’re apt to notice someone who’s ahead of you on the Saddle Slide because of the chance that they’ll dislodge a rock that could come bouncing down on your head, which in fact he did several times. You have to be careful to stay back.”

  “Any other description of this man?”

  “Middle-aged. Gray hair, I think. Medium height, a bit burly. I did notice that he either had new boots, or old boots with new Vibram soles. They left sharp imprints in the mud around the brook at the foot of the slide. Not that something like that would matter …”

  Tracey made a notation. “You never know,” he said.

  “You could see the inset in the arch with Vibram spelled out. I noticed because I had just had my own boots resoled with Vibram soles.”

  “When did you get back to Chimney Pond?”

  “About six. I took my time, stopped for lunch. Looked at the Diapensia and the Lapland rosebay. The exact time would be in the hikers’ register. I signed in when I got back. I was surprised that Iris hadn’t returned yet; I had expected her to be back long before me.”

  “Did you see anyone after you separated?”

  “From a distance. Nobody up close. It was still pretty early in the season. There weren’t that many hikers out. Which is another reason we went at that time. Later on, it can get pretty congested up there. Also, the Hamlin Ridge Trail is kind of off the beaten track.”

  “I would imagine that most hikers would want to climb Baxter and go across the Knife Edge to Pamola,” said Tracey.

  Jeanne nodded. “Or vice versa,” she said.

  Tracey paused, and then looked directly at her. “Of course, you realize why we’re asking you these questions,” he said. “I’m sorry to have to do it, but it’s part of the procedure. Now let me ask you this: Is there anyone you know of who might have wanted to kill Mrs. Richards?”

  “I’ve been thinking about little else ever since I heard the news on the radio,” she said. “She had angered a lot of people in town for one reason or another. She could be difficult at times.”

  “For example?”

  “Oh. Well, like last winter when she raised a ruckus with the public works department about the salt they were using on the roads. She said it killed the sugar maples. But it was institutions more than individuals that she had it in for. I do have one idea, though …”

  “I’m listening,” said Tracey.

  “There was a car tha
t was hanging around here about a month ago. I used to see it parked on the other side of Stillwater Avenue. It even drove in here a couple of times.” She nodded at the road that ran between the sheds. “Once I noticed the driver looking at the house through field glasses.”

  “Any idea who it might have been?”

  “We get all kinds coming here to see Iris. People had a reverence for her. Treated her as if she was Thoreau himself. I thought it might be a Thoreauvian who was too shy to visit. But now I wonder.”

  “Any other description of the driver?”

  She shook her head. “No. I never got a good look at him.”

  “How about the car?”

  “I did get a good look at that. It was a Ford Bronco. Ordinarily, I don’t notice models. But I remember the picture of the bucking bronco on the cover of the spare tire that was mounted on the back. It was black, with Colorado plates. They have a mountain on them.”

  “Colorado plates,” said Tracey. “That’s interesting.”

  “How did she respond to these admirers?” asked Charlotte.

  “You never knew. Friendly one minute, unfriendly the next. Once, I remember …” She smiled to herself at the memory.

  “Yes?” said Tracey.

  Jeanne continued. “She opened the door to a young man who asked to see Iris Richards. She patted her belly and said, ‘Front side.’ Then she turned around, arse-to, and said, ‘Back side.’ Then she turned back around again and slammed the door in his face.”

  “Were any of these Thoreauvians regular visitors?”

  “Oh, yes. A number of them. There was a young couple from a town over by Farmington—Temple, I think it was—who’d built themselves a replica of Thoreau’s house at Walden Pond and were trying to live as he did.”

  “Must’ve been pretty cramped,” said Charlotte.

  “That’s what I thought, but they didn’t seem to mind. Then there was a man from Massachusetts who was writing a book about Thoreau’s time in Maine. He’d come by every couple of months, and Iris would feed him information. She was the one who should’ve been writing that book.”