“I bet you could,” she agreed.
After leaving Bickmore Manor, Charlotte hopped back into her rental car and headed down to South Water Street, which was only a stone’s throw away. She followed the same route she and Tracey had taken to Mack’s trailer, down Sawyer Street to the river. At the foot of Sawyer Street, she turned right. A dozen or so houses lined the road between the railroad yard at one end and the municipal sewage treatment plant at the other. Across the road, a locomotive stood on one of the tracks, its engine throbbing. As Mack had pointed out, it was hardly the city’s most prestigious address, and she could readily see why Jeanne had been willing to suffer Iris’ tyranny for the privilege of living at Hilltop Farm. She pulled over next to the tracks and parked. As she got out, her sense of smell was assailed by the noxious odor of rotten eggs. It was so bad that it made her nose twitch, though not as bad as it used to be, Tracey had assured her on their earlier visit. There had been a time when the air pollution from the mill would peel the paint off the houses.
Charlotte didn’t know if it was air pollution or lack of money that was responsible, but most of the houses on the street looked as if they could use a coat of paint. Number 322 was one of the better-maintained of the lot: a tiny matchbox of a house with a tiny front porch and a tiny front yard planted with flower seedlings. The one-car garage in which Ouellette had had his wood shop was visible at the back of the house.
The door was answered by a short, plump, red-cheeked woman with gray hair.
“I’m looking for Doris Ouellette,” Charlotte said.
“Haven’t been a Ouellette for forty-three years, but I guess you’ve got the right person,” she said, opening the door.
“I’m sorry,” Charlotte said. “It was your father who referred me to you, and he didn’t mention your married name.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “I’m a widow now, anyway.”
“You must look like your mother,” Charlotte said.
“Spittin’ image. I look just like my mother, my sister looks just like my father, and the other five are a combination.”
Charlotte found it hard to imagine nine people living in this tiny house.
“People couldn’t believe me and my sister were related. They still can’t: one’s short and fat, and the other’s tall and skinny.” She laughed. “C’mon in,” she said, opening the door wider. “What can I do for you?”
“Thank you,” said Charlotte. She entered a small, spotless living room with a painting of Jesus hanging over the sofa, and a row of African violets on the sill of the window overlooking the tracks.
“Would you like a cup of coffee?” the woman asked.
“No, thank you,” said Charlotte. She decided she might as well be up front about the reason for her visit. “I’m helping the police with the investigation into Iris Richards’ death,” she said. She didn’t bother introducing herself. She didn’t want to get into that.
“Please,” Doris said. “Sit down.” She took a seat herself and waited, a worried expression on her face. Did she think her sister was about to be arrested?
“As you may know, the weapon was a pistol crossbow,” Charlotte began, taking a seat in a cushioned rocking chair by the window.
“I saw the picture of it in the newspaper,” Doris said.
“With the medical examiner?” Charlotte asked.
She nodded.
“That picture was printed before the actual weapon was found,” Charlotte explained. “The weapon that was used in the murder was quite different. It was old, and the body had been handmade of wood. It was painted in a green and gray camouflage design.”
Doris’ face showed no signs of recognition.
“Your father said that he used to make pistol crossbows like that in his wood shop. He told me he thought there might have been one or two among the things you sold in the garage sale.”
Doris’ eyes widened as she realized what Charlotte was talking about. “I remember that old thing now! I didn’t know what it was. It was in an old cardboard drum with a bunch of other stuff. Do you think the murderer used it to kill Iris Richards?”
“We don’t know for sure,” said Charlotte, “but it appears likely. Do you remember who bought it?”
Doris’ thick gray brows knitted in concentration. “That was one of those things I didn’t put a price on because I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know what half that stuff was. I just let people rummage around, and if they wanted something, make me an offer. I don’t remember anybody buying it.”
“What happened to it, then?”
“I think it was in the stuff that I put out at the curb for the garbage collection after the sale. I threw away most of the stuff I didn’t sell. I wanted to get rid of it all because I needed the garage for my car. Most of it was junk anyway; Dad is a pack rat.”
“So somebody could have picked it up off the street?”
“Could, and did. Most of that stuff was gone by the time the garbage truck came around a couple of days later. I like to put stuff like that out early in hopes that someone can find some use for it. I don’t like to see things goin’ to waste. Know what I mean?”
Charlotte did. “Did you see who picked it up?”
“Naw. I work down to the pie plate. I’m not usually home during the day. I took the day off today because of a doctor’s appointment.”
“What’s the pie plate?”
Doris stared at her in astonishment. “You must be from away.”
“I am,” Charlotte said.
“It’s a mill up on North Main,” she explained. “We make pie plates.” Seeing Charlotte’s puzzled expression, she went on to explain. “They’re those cardboard discs that they put under the cakes you buy at the bakery.”
Charlotte nodded in recognition. Of course! Doris worked down to the pie plate. Just like her father had worked down to the gall cure.
Charlotte thanked her for her help, and left.
15
She was sure of it, she thought as she got back into the car. It was Mack who had picked the pistol crossbow out of the cardboard drum full of junk on the curb. Not only was picking garbage his career, he lived just a hundred yards down the street. Maybe he had intended to use it at first for fishing. Maybe he even had used it for fishing. He too had bragged about the salmon that he’d pulled out of the river. The fact that crossbow fishing was illegal wouldn’t have deterred him; as a follower of Thoreau, he would have believed that laws oppressed the individual. Besides, he would have thought that poaching was okay because he was fishing for sustenance, not for sport. It was probably only later, as he was considering how to murder Iris, that the virtues of the pistol crossbow as a murder weapon became apparent, particularly when used with a bolt with a cartridge tip: it was quiet, it was accurate, and the bolt could be withdrawn, making it appear as if Iris had died from the fall. He had no doubt assumed that the entry wound would be overlooked, which might have been a valid assumption in other rural states, but not in Maine. Henry Clough might have been the chief medical examiner in a state in which there were fewer homicides in a year than in New York City in a week, but that didn’t mean it was easy to pull the wool over his eyes.
There was only the final section of the trail left now, she thought as she sat there, staring out at the giant mill: the section that ran between Katahdin’s summit and Lorne Coley’s camp at Klondike Pond. How would Mack have known about the camp? The obvious answer was that he had heard about it from Coley himself, or from some other Penobscot. No sooner had she posed the question in her mind than the image of the twin pyramids of bottles stacked against the end wall of the camp came to mind. Bottles! That was it. If Coley had done his share of emptying them, he had probably done his share of returning them as well. In the currency of recycling, whiskey bottles represented the highest denomination. In all probability, Mack and Coley had met at “work,” which is how Mack had referred to the railroad station that now served as the municipal redemption center.
Eager to confirm her theory, she got out of the car and headed back down South Water Street to the redemption center.
The ramshackle old railroad station was well-matched to the derelicts who not only earned some extra money by collecting bottles for recycling, but provided their own raw materials as well. The sagging ridgepole looked as if it was about to snap, and the windows at one end were boarded up, but the overall air of dereliction was brightened somewhat by a red, white, and blue flag, which proclaimed that the center was “Open.” Another sign said “True Count.” Below that was written “Recycling Can Work When We All Pitch In—Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Please separate glass, plastic bottles, and metal cans.”
Opening the door, Charlotte found herself on the threshold of a large room with a low, tin-paneled ceiling and stained fiberboard walls. It was filled with long tables on which stood dozens of boxes, each labeled according to their contents: Coke, Pepsi, Miller, Bud, and so on. The room smelled like a fraternity house rec room after a party weekend. A clean-cut young man who looked like a college student stood behind the counter next to a sign publicizing a bottle drive on behalf of the Old Town High School band’s proposed trip to Washington. A radio on a shelf blared out rock music.
As Charlotte stepped up to the counter, the clerk went over to the radio and turned down the volume.
“Thanks,” Charlotte said. “Is your name Richie?” she asked, remembering that Mack had mentioned his “boss’s” name in their previous conversation.
“That’s me,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m here to inquire about someone who may have been one of your customers. His name is Lome Coley. He’s a Penobscot Indian: about forty-five, medium height and build; long black hair, worn loose; usually wears a beaded medicine bag around his neck.”
“I know the guy,” he said.
“Is he a customer?” she asked.
“He comes in sometimes. He used to come in three or four times a week. Now he only comes in once a month or so. He’s been off the sauce for a couple of years now, so he doesn’t come in as often.”
“I was wondering if he knew one of your other customers.”
“Who might that be?”
“Someone named Mack Scott.”
“Sure, he knows Mack. They used to pick together sometimes. Before he stopped drinking, Coley used to hang out on the river bank with the canned heaters. That’s what they call themselves. It’s a joke. They don’t really eat Sterno. They drink more classy stuff. Like Thunderbird.” He laughed.
“And Mack hung out with them too?” she asked.
“Mack doesn’t drink,” he said. “Do you know Mack?”
Charlotte nodded.
“Then you know that he’s an eccentric. He lives in an old horse trailer right down the street, across the tracks from where the canned heaters hang out. They’ve got a hobo camp down there.”
“Then he was socializing with the neighbors.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess you could call it that.” He looked at her more closely. “Why do you want to know, anyway?”
Charlotte was uncharacteristically slow in coming up with a reply.
“Well, I guess it’s none of my business,” he said cheerfully.
“Is there a pay phone around here?” she asked.
“At the Mobil station just up the street.”
She thanked him and left.
She was headed back to her car when she noticed a footpath on the other side of the tracks that appeared to lead down to a peninsula that jutted out into the river; she could see the tops of the trees sticking up above the tracks. Concluding that this was the site of the hobo camp, she crossed the six rows of tracks and followed the path down into the grove of trees. She wanted a close-up look at the magnificent river that was second in importance only to Katahdin in the eyes of the Penobscots. The path emerged at a circle of cast-off chairs surrounding an old oil drum, which was probably used for a fire when the weather got cold. There was also an old picnic table, which looked as if it had been carted away from a highway rest stop. One would have expected to find such a spot littered with whiskey bottles and beer cans, but there were only a few; the rest had probably been turned in at the redemption center.
It was a lovely spot that the canned heaters had picked for their camp, shaded as it was by the overhanging willows, which were now tinged with gold by the low-lying sun. Subject to flooding, though, Charlotte thought as she felt the squish of the muddy black earth beneath her feet, and not exactly quiet. She was just turning back when she noticed a turnoff leading through the trees to a clearing. And there, in the clearing, was an old straw archery target mounted on a metal stand. So this was where Mack had honed his archery, skills! It also appeared to be the point of disembarkation for his fishing trips: tied to a tree on the river bank was an old wooden rowboat.
She was headed back up the path when she ran into Mack himself. He was carrying a garbage bag full of bottles over his shoulder, and looked, with his bushy beard, like Old Saint Nick with a pack full of Christmas toys. A pang of fear shot through her at the sight of him, but it subsided the moment she had a chance to think. Mack had been a conceptual killer: his murder of Iris had been like a work of art, carefully planned for years in advance. He wasn’t a murderer who would act on impulse.
Or so she hoped. She remembered with some degree of apprehension his statement that the only reason Iris hadn’t dropped him too was that his behavior was so far beyond the pale that there was no point in even trying to hold him to civilized standards.
“Hello,” he said, pleasantly enough. “I was just going to rinse these bottles out in the river. Richie told me that you were inquiring about me.”
His eyes told her that he knew that she knew. Why else would she have been asking Richie about Mack’s connection with Coley?
“Yes. How did you know I was here?” Now that she knew who he was, she could see some resemblance to his mother. But he also had his father’s long, straight nose, and pale skin, which, like his father’s, was weather-beaten and sprinkled with freckles.
“Richie said he saw you come down here.”
Standing aside to let him pass, Charlotte said, “I didn’t tell you my name when I met you last week. I’m Charlotte Graham, the actress. I knew you when you were a little boy.”
He stared at her. “Lottie,” he said, using the name that he had used for her as a child. “You used to bring us gummy worms. ‘For your little chicks,’ you used to say.” He paused. “You haven’t changed much.”
“You have,” she said.
He looked at her appraisingly. “So you know,” he said.
She nodded.
“Lieutenant Tracey called me in when he found the photographs of me in the locked room at Iris’. I’ve been on your trail for over a week now. I just figured out the last piece: how you knew about Coley’s camp.”
“I’ve got to put this bag down,” Mack said. Continuing on down the path, he set the bag down in the middle of the clearing, next to the oil drum. Then he took a seat in a rusted folding chair.
Charlotte followed him, reassured by the fact that Tracey was on his way. If Richie had told Mack where she had gone, he would tell Tracey too. She sat down in another chair. Two chairs for friendship, she thought with irony.
For a moment, Mack stared out at the river, the pale eyes under the brim of his engineer’s cap unreadable. “Have you reported me?” he asked.
“No,” she lied.
“I could kill you now too,” he said, echoing her thoughts. “Toss your body in the river. No one would ever know.”
She quoted from Walden: “‘Life is sweetest closest to the bone,’” she said flippantly, as if they were having a normal conversation. In reality, she was poised to up and run.
He smiled. “Touché. I know you reported me,” he said. “Richie told me you made a phone call from the Mobil station.”
“Why don’t you tell me about Iris?” she said.
“Okay
,” he replied, and proceeded to tell his tale. “Brent and I had the best father in the world,” he said. “He was the one who raised us.” He looked over at her. “As you well know. Then she got sole custody. That was in 1952, after his HUAC testimony.” He spoke bitterly. “Never mind that the committee never proved he was a subversive, never mind that it wouldn’t have mattered to us if he’d been Stalin himself. It was the ammunition my mother needed to keep him from seeing us. Not that she really cared about us. She just wanted to get back at him. That’s how screwed up she was. She’d take off to God-knows-where and leave us to fend for ourselves. We subsisted on TV dinners, if we were lucky. Sometimes she didn’t even leave us anything to eat. Then she married Scott in 1955. He’d get drunk and rough us up. We would run away, but they would always catch us. Once we tried to hitchhike to the ranch. It was our dream to be reunited with Dad, a dream that was kept alive by our infrequent visits with him. But as time went on, we realized that that wasn’t ever going to happen. Nor was it the same when we were with him; he was a broken man.” He paused for a moment, and then said, “Then came that day.”
“April twenty-sixth, 1957,” said Charlotte.
He nodded. “We were at the Chateau Marmont. He had a meeting with Harold Ames to talk about a project. We were waiting in Ames’s suite for him to arrive. Dad had just finished filming Red Rocks, which was his first film in—I don’t know—three or four years.”
“Four years,” said Charlotte.
“He hadn’t been feeling well—he said he thought he was coming down with the flu—but he was in a great mood nevertheless. Ames’ interest had confirmed his feeling that Red Rocks was going to be his comeback picture. We were having a wonderful time. He ordered up banana splits from room service.”
“I remember those banana splits they used to make for you at the Marmont,” said Charlotte. “They were enormous.”
“Then she arrived. I didn’t know who she was, then. All I knew was that they had an argument. Dad sent us into the bedroom to watch television. I even remember the show: it was Kate Smith; she was singing ‘When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain.’ I guess he didn’t want us to hear what they were saying.”
Murder on High Page 24