BLOOD FOAM
A LEWIS COLE MYSTERY
BRENDAN DUBOIS
To the memory of Jeremiah Healy III
BLOOD FOAM
CHAPTER ONE
On a Sunday in the third week of November outside my half-burnt home on Tyler Beach, N.H., while attempting to nail a heavy blue tarp on a gaping hole above the shuttered front door, I learned quite the important lesson: the bright decal on folding stepladders that warns you not to step on the very top is there for a reason. I was reaching up to nail a flapping corner, hammer in hand, feeling the stepladder shaking under my right foot, and I just wanted to get the damn thing fastened, when the ladder disappeared from under my feet.
So I was airborne.
Damn.
I didn’t have time to think of much as I fell, only knowing that it was going to hurt like hell when it was over and done.
True.
I hit the ground flat on my back, and the pain just exploded from the top of my spine to the base. Being that it was my house, there was no shrubbery or lawn or anything soft to land on, just rocky soil with a few tufts of grass here and there.
As I was trying to determine quickly just how much I had hurt myself, something heavy slammed into my forehead and bounced off, which led to a set of muttered curses.
My flying hammer, which decided to land where it would have the most impact.
Not my best of days.
I decided not to move and let the pain dull and sort itself out. My previously injured right leg throbbed some as well, just to make sure it wasn’t feeling left out. My point of view was the cold gray November sky, the stone steps leading into my house, and the burnt wreckage of my home, which had first been built in the mid-1800s as a lifeboat station for the U.S. Lifesaving Service. The station was reconstructed, expanded, and when the Coast Artillery Station nearby on Samson Point was activated, it became officer’s quarters. After the station closed, the building was transferred to the Department of the Interior, and after the government—which nearly killed me a number of years ago—pulled some strings, the title became mine.
After moving in some years back, I filled my new home with antiques, books, and old Oriental rugs, and made it a refuge from whatever passed as the world out there, as I sorted out bad dreams and memories of my time as a research analyst in the Department of Defense. Eventually my life had settled into a pleasant routine of reading, writing, spending time with a few friends, and being a part of Tyler Beach and getting involved in a few interesting matters.
A couple of weeks ago, however, the routine had been disrupted—which is like saying the Civil War was a bar brawl that got out of hand—when I tried to track down the man who had nearly killed my best friend some days earlier. While I was trying to find out who he was and where he was, he and his friends had tried to discourage me by burning down my house.
I took a deep breath. The pain in my back was starting to ease, but the thump from the hammer still hurt like hell, and my right leg was still making its wounded presence known.
There was a crunch of gravel as somebody came down the rutted wide trail that served as a driveway for what was left of my home. I took another deep breath, tried to move, winced.
More footsteps. It had been just over a week since I had gotten back home and thought that things were settling down, but maybe other people with long and hard memories had other thoughts. My 9mm Beretta was secure in my rental Honda Pilot, parked up at the other end of the driveway, and the only other weapon I could think of was my vengeful hammer. I moved my arm, winced again, and the footsteps stopped, replaced by the familiar voice of a woman.
“Lewis, are you all right?”
I shifted my head, smiled up at Paula Quinn, assistant editor of the Tyler Chronicle, one-time lover and dear friend. She had on a tan trench coat, belt tied tight around her slim waist. She wore thin black leather gloves and her blond hair was cut short and styled, but still her prominent ears stuck out, highlighting her pug nose. A black leather purse was over her left shoulder.
“I’ve been better.”
“What are you doing down there?”
“Conducting an experiment in gravity,” I replied. “Trying to see if I can still do outside work with a ladder flying away from underneath my feet.”
She squatted down, smiling. “Looks like the experiment failed.”
I sat up, grimacing. “Nope, it was a success. I learned outside work does in fact require a steady ladder.”
“Help you up?”
“Please.”
She grabbed my right arm and helped me up, my right leg still aching some, and she said “Your forehead . . . hell of a mark there.”
“Craftsman hammers. What can I say?”
“Hold on.” She unsnapped her purse, reached in, and took out a blue slip of tissue. She moistened it with her tongue and gently pressed it against my forehead. It hurt some, but I didn’t mind. She pressed it two more times and then rolled it into a ball and stuffed it in a coat pocket.
“There. I think you’ll live.”
“Glad to hear it, Florence,” I said and got a smile in return.
I led her over to the stone steps and we both sat down. I stretched out my right leg. It had been weeks since the arson at my house, yet there was still the sooty smell of wood and other items burnt and then wetted down. Paula gently pushed her body against mine, and then withdrew.
“Oh, Lewis. Your poor house.”
The wind had come up and the top right corner of the blue tarp was flapping hard, like it was the banner of some abandoned ship. The two-story house was now basically one story and a bit. Most of the roof had collapsed, crushing my bedroom and upstairs study. The kitchen was also a mess, but the Tyler firefighters had managed to get the fire under control before it took out the downstairs living room and the rest of the house. Near the house was a small outbuilding that had served as equipment storage during my home’s life-saving days and, until recently, had been my garage.
That building was a flattened mess, burnt timber, shingles, and broken wood, all tumbled upon a hunk of metal and melted rubber that had once been my Ford Explorer.
“Yeah,” I said. “My poor house.”
She craned her head to watch the tarp flap away. “I’m sorry to ask this, but I don’t understand why you’re doing this all by yourself. Shouldn’t you have gotten a settlement or some sort of payment from your insurance company?”
“Well . . . the insurance company is conducting due diligence. They don’t like the amazing coincidence that someone burned my house down and then, a few days later, I was arrested at the scene of another arson up in the lakes region. Too many questions on their part, not enough answers or funds on my part.”
“I thought those charges had been dropped.”
“They were.”
“For lack of evidence, right?”
Which was true, if one didn’t look too closely at the fact that someone had broken into the secure State Police crime lab and spirited away everything connected to me and that arson prior to trial. The State Police detective in charge of the case thought it was my doing, which was hard for them to prove, since I’d been handcuffed to a hospital bed at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center at the time.
Justice sure does move in mysterious ways.
“You got it. No evidence. But still lots of questions, and the insurance company is dragging its clumsy feet. So in the meantime, I’m trying to tighten up the ol’ girl before we get heavy rains.”
“What’s the prediction?”
“Locally, everything’s fine for the next day or two. It’s what’s coming up
the coast later that’s bothering me.”
“And what’s that?”
“A tropical depression off the Florida coast,” I explained. “Might turn into a tropical storm . . . might even turn into the last hurricane of the season.”
“I see.” She looked up again at the flapping corner of the blue tarp. “Then it might come up the coast and soak everything in sight.”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
She nudged me with her elbow. “Then let’s finish the job. I’ll hold the ladder if you’d like.”
“That’d be great.”
We both got up and I grabbed the stepladder, put it back where it had been, and then recovered my wayward hammer. “No hard feelings, eh?” I asked, as I slipped it through a belt loop. Paula stood near the ladder, holding it tight, and I scrambled up. I got to the top, retrieved the hammer and a couple of nails from my jacket, stretched up again, and in a few minutes the job was done.
I slowly took my time climbing back down, and when it was safe Paula removed her gloved hands from the ladder and slowly clapped. “Well done, friend, well done.”
“Thanks. Up for something warm to drink? Coffee? Tea? Cocoa?”
She glanced at my house. “Really? Your kitchen still up and running?”
“My kitchen is a hazardous waste site, Paula. I was thinking about across the street.”
A smile, and she slipped her arm through mine. “That’d be great.” She paused and said “Quick question, though. I thought you were going back to work at Shoreline, as their editor. What happened?”
“I changed my mind.”
“Oh. How did they handle that?”
“They told me they weren’t happy, and if I didn’t take the job they’d ruin my life.”
We started walking. “What then?”
I glanced back at my house. “I told them they were too late.”
About ten minutes later we were across the street at the Lafayette House Inn, one of the few remaining grand hotels in New Hampshire. It’s nearly two hundred years old and was so named because the Marquis de Lafayette, during his famed tour of the young United States back in 1824, stopped at the place for a drink or three. It’s changed a lot since then and has managed to stay alive during recessions, depressions, and the death of tourist excursion trains and the rise of the automobile.
Paula and I took a seat in the lounge, where we had a great view of the Atlantic Ocean, the small lawn in front of the hotel, and the parking lot across the street that stored the vehicles of its guests and my own rented Pilot. There was a splotch of blue that marked where I’d once lived, and I saw a Tyler police cruiser slowly roll into the parking lot; then two officers came out, chatting, looking down at my crumpled home.
There were only a few boats out in the ocean, fishing vessels it looked like, and the rocky lumps that marked the Isles of Shoals. The cops got back into their cruiser and left. We both went with cups of hot cocoa, and it was nice and relaxing to be with Paula, after all that had gone on during the past couple of weeks. We talked some about local politics and the recent presidential election.
Then she looked at me and tried a smile, and started weeping. Not a bawling or a loud wail, but eyes welling and filling up and tears rolling down her cheeks.
I put down my cocoa, reached over, touched her wrist. “Hey, what’s going on?”
“Oh . . . Lewis . . . I need your help.”
I squeezed her wrist. “You just helped me nail a piece of tarp to the roof of my house. I owe you one.”
Paula sniffled, attempted a smile, failed. She lowered her head, took out a few more pieces of tissue, tried to clean up some. “Lewis . . . it would take me a year of working at your house to even out what I’m going to ask you to do.”
Another squeeze of her wrist. “Let me decide that. What do you need?”
She crumpled up her tissues, tossed them on the white tablecloth. “It’s Mark.”
Mark Spencer. Lawyer, town counsel for Tyler, N.H., and Paula’s fiancé . . . if that term is still being used.
“What about Mark? What’s up?”
“I don’t know where he is. He’s missing.”
“Missing? As in gone?”
A quick nod. “Oh, God. It’s been three days. . . .”
“Paula . . . how? I mean . . . he works for the town. Did he take an unplanned vacation?”
She shook her head. “No. Yesterday we had a date to go for a drive up north, check out a couple of ski condos that we might rent the week after Christmas. But two days earlier . . . nothing. Didn’t return my phone calls, to his house or his cell, and didn’t reply to my texts. My e-mails, too.”
“His co-workers know anything?”
“Not a damn thing. Besides the work he does for the town, he belongs to a small firm in town, Adams & Lessard. The office manager, the two partners . . . I’ve talked to them all. Nothing. He left work three days ago, and that was that. In fact, they’re pissed at him for leaving without saying anything, because there’s a bunch of work they’re trying to get done before Thanksgiving.”
“You check out his home?”
Another nod. “Sure. I went over yesterday, thinking he was sick. Nobody was there, none of his neighbors saw him after he left for work on Thursday.”
“Is there a favorite B&B or hotel in the area he might go to if he’s feeling stressed or something?”
“None that I can think of.”
I made a circle at the top of my cocoa cup with my finger. “I need to ask you something.”
“Go ahead.”
I paused. Some time ago, Paula and I had had a brief yet intense relationship, soon after I had moved here to Tyler Beach. We had been close friends ever since, with a few sparks flying here and there. But a number of weeks ago, she had nearly been killed while covering an anti-nuclear demonstration in Falconer, and during that moment of crisis she had expressed her undying love to me. And then she had a change of heart, or snapped out of it, or something, and the moment had gone, until I saw her a few weeks ago, wearing a diamond engagement ring following a vacation trip out west with the lucky counselor.
Enough of the pause. “You guys doing all right? Any fights or spats lately that got out of hand?”
She shook her head. “No. Nothing like that.”
“Either of you having cold feet about getting married?”
Another shake of the head.
I said “All right. Had to ask. Is his car still at the condo lot?”
“No, it’s not.”
“Family?”
“He has no family, either here or in Vermont, where he’s from. His parents died when he was young; and in the time I’ve known him, no mention of any brothers, sisters, or cousins.”
Outside, the sky was darkening. It was late afternoon, and by five it would be pitch-black out there. Part of the charm of living this far north.
“Paula, have you gone to the police yet?”
She sighed, ran a hand through her hair. “I’ve talked to Captain Kate Nickerson. She’s been assigned detective duties since Diane Woods got injured at the anti-nuke demonstration. She was polite, but she admitted right up front that there wasn’t much she could do. I’m not a spouse or relative. There’s no evidence of foul play. She took a missing-persons report, but I could tell her heart wasn’t really in it. He’s of legal age . . . and as she said, it’s not against the law to decide to take a few days off.”
“Hell of an answer. He is the town counsel, after all.”
“Sure, Lewis, but this is still small-town New Hampshire. We like the live-and-let-live attitude; and if Mark is out on a bender with a flight attendant or a lonely housewife, why should anyone care?”
I had met Mark Spencer a few times in my dealings with Paula and other members of the town over the past year or so. Based on his professional attitude and approach, I would guess the only bender he had ever experienced was dislodging a stubborn spoon from his dishwasher.
“You care,” I said. “T
hat should be enough. All right, I’ll give you a hand, see what I can do to find him. I’ll give it my best shot, Paula.”
She sniffled once, her eyes wide with shock. “Just like that?”
“Yeah, just like that. What, you think I was going to haggle with you, or tell you not to worry, or anything like that?” I glanced at my watch. “It’s getting late. I have an appointment tomorrow morning . . . any chance you and I could get together, say at eleven A.M.?”
“That’s my morning deadline, but I’ll break it.”
I finished off my cocoa. It tasted pretty damn good. “Glad to hear it. I want you to bring me a copy of the missing-persons report, his date of birth and Social Security number if you have it. Give me a spare key to his condo so I can check things out. I’ll talk to his neighbors, the town manager, and his law-firm folks, see if I can get a lead on something. I’ll even meet up with Captain Nickerson. In the meantime, relax . . . take a deep breath . . . maybe take a hot bath. And then I want you to think back on anything odd or unusual that might have happened to Mark within the last few days.”
“Like what?”
“Unexpected absences before he went missing. Hang-up phone calls. Anything that might show he was being harassed, or got someone’s attention. Any strange remarks that seemed off the cuff but might mean something later. Okay?”
“Yes, yes, of course.”
The waiter came by, dropped off the bill for our two cocoas. Damn. At six bucks each, no wonder it had tasted so fine. I took out my wallet and carefully laid down a ten and a five.
“But, Paula . . . just to be very clear on this, I don’t have a private investigator’s license. I don’t have a job with Shoreline anymore, meaning I can’t snoop around pretending I’m doing a column. It’s just . . . me.”
She opened her purse, took out her car keys, and her face firmed up. “You’ll be plenty. I’ve seen what you’ve done here in Tyler over the years. You’ve always been much more than a magazine columnist, Lewis, and lately—much to my surprise—you’ve been open about your previous work at the Pentagon. So I know you’re skilled in a lot of things. But most of all . . . I trust you.”
Blood Foam: A Lewis Cole Mystery (Lewis Cole series) Page 1