by Sarah Graves
From the way he had his hand flat against her back I couldn’t tell if he was about to embrace Anna Benoit or give her a shove. Two things were clear, though: she was very pregnant and, to judge by the look on her face, very unhappy.
“We lived in town then. In Eastport, all in the same house, me and Phyllis—that was Anna’s mother—and our other sister. Oh, I wish we’d moved out sooner, then maybe she’d have never met him.”
No grief was in her face, just an icy stillness, as if something in her had frozen when the girl died and had never thawed out.
“But how,” she asked, meeting my gaze, “did you know she was murdered? Because I said so at the time, I insisted to the police and everyone else that she must have been, but—”
“I didn’t know it,” I admitted. “I guessed. So you’d let us in.”
And so you wouldn’t shoot us. But to me it was already the only thing that made sense. Jumped off the ferry, my great-aunt Fanny.
Karen said nothing, digesting what I’d said while pouring the coffee with a steady hand. From its rich, faintly chocolate-tinged aroma I knew that while she might be off the grid in most ways, her coffee-making skills weren’t primitive.
“Anna had been married before, had a child already, but then . . .” I was guessing about this, too, from other hints in the old photo—the older child, mostly. I let my voice trail off into a question.
“Yes.” Karen sat in the chair by the dog’s bed, then reached down and patted him. “Her first husband—they’d married very young—died in a fishing accident. Not that he was any prize, either. They were living in their own little house by then, of course.”
She shook her head. “Drowned off the boat he was working on, a loose line snagged his ankle and . . . well. Afterward, Anna and little Abby were alone.”
Sipping coffee, she gathered herself. Then: “That was her first child’s name,” Karen added. “Not that Anna acted like she knew that poor little girl even existed once he came along.”
Hadlyme, she meant. “He swept her off her feet, did he?” I asked gently, and Karen eyed me scathingly in reply.
“Off her feet and onto her back,” she said meanly, but then she sighed. “Anna was lonely. And he was . . . he could be charming when he wanted to be. When,” she added, “there was something in it for him.”
Karen bit her lip and shoved an escaped hank of her wiry gray hair back from her face, then went on. “She was wild about him, Anna was. Thought the sun shone out of his behind, and that’s the truth.”
Her voice hardened. “He thought so, too, of course. Came here from Bangor with his parents, but they died in an accident soon after they arrived.”
She shook her head, remembering. “Went off the road in their car one icy winter’s day, and that was that. He survived, of course.”
I drank some coffee. It was delicious. Everything about this place, in fact, said Karen Carrolton had built herself a good life here, even if it wouldn’t suit everyone.
It made me feel guilty about wondering if she’d killed Hadlyme to avenge her dead niece, and if she had, about hoping I could prove it and get her arrested. But better her than me, I told myself.
“So he’d been on his own for a little while,” Karen went on. “Eighteen, he was, maybe.”
That surprised me. I’d been thinking of him as older.
“We were as good to him as we could be, at first,” said Karen. “Not liking him by any means, but if Anna was happy, then . . .” She paused, remembering. “But we weren’t good enough for him, he made that clear right away. She was like a pretty toy to him, but he still had to get out of here as quick as he could.”
She sipped coffee thoughtfully. After all her bluster over our arrival, she seemed glad for the chance to talk.
“Without her,” Karen added flatly.
And there, of course, was the rub. “But he did stick around for a while?” Ellie asked, and Karen nodded.
“Saving up, I guess. Worked around here in restaurants, married Anna when we all started looking sideways at him, wondering when he’d do the right thing. It wasn’t like nowadays when a girl can just move in with a fellow.”
I understood; even as recently as twenty years ago, things were a little different here in Eastport than they were out in the big world. You could move in with a guy, sure, but it wouldn’t help your social standing any, and even now the awful idea of “making an honest woman of her” hadn’t evaporated entirely.
“So she did move in with him, though? Once they were married?”
I finished my coffee; Karen poured more. “No. He kept promising but never delivered. Stayed with us sometimes, and sometimes he slept wherever he was working, in the back room or whatnot.”
“Didn’t want to spend money on somewhere decent enough to put a baby and toddler in,” Ellie guessed, and Karen glanced appreciatively at her.
“Correct. He never spent a dime on Anna or the baby, or the older child, either. Not one red cent. And then he ran off to the city first chance he got and made a name for himself there, got to be a fancy chef and then he started up a TV career. Just the way he always said he would.”
Karen’s dark eyes glittered at the memory; a short laugh escaped her. “Much good that name’s doing him now, though, hey?”
It wasn’t a question, and in that moment I could totally see her running Henry Hadlyme through the heart with a stolen cutlass.
The silence in the room lengthened, so complete I could hear my ears ringing, and my headache was killing me.
“Karen, did you kill him?” Ellie asked finally, and at the sudden look on the older woman’s weathered face I glanced around for the shotgun, not wanting to be at the business end of it again.
“No,” she snarled, “somebody else had the pleasure of that. He killed her, though, I can tell you that much. Had to’ve been him.”
She set her cup down on the coffee table between a stack of old newspaper clippings and a pile of insurance papers.
“Almost right up until the moment she died, Anna had everything she wanted, or thought she did: a husband; a father for her older child, Abby; and then the baby boy . . .”
“Wallace?” Ellie put in. The name on the birth certificate.
Karen nodded again. But something about what she’d said still didn’t sound right.
“I don’t get it, you mean he came back? Changed his mind and decided to stay in Eastport?”
Because why would he forget all his ambitions, just settle down here in this remote island town and—
“Oh, no.” Karen rolled her dark eyes. “He’d said they’d all go, the four of them. Make their way in the big world together.”
The dog whimpered in his sleep; she reached down absently to pat him. In the silence the clock on the mantel behind the woodstove ticked hollowly; without at all wanting to, I imagined what it sounded like at night with nobody else around.
“And she believed him,” she finished. “The poor little fool.”
Ellie got up. “Excuse me, but may I use the facilities?”
She gestured toward the window, through which we could see the corner of a small cedar-shingled building with a half moon cut in the door, out at the far edge of the yard where goldenrod grew in tall yellow clumps.
Karen shrugged. “Suit yourself. Watch out for the bees. They ain’t in a good mood after all the ruckus you two made out there.”
If they don’t start a ruckus, there won’t be a ruckus, was my opinion about upsets involving any stinging insects, but never mind; Ellie agreed and went outside.
When she was gone I got up too, and wandered over to the window. As I suspected, she wasn’t heading toward the building with the half moon cut in the door. I turned back to Karen.
“How do you think he did it, though? Killed Anna, I mean, since I assume he wasn’t on the ferry with her.”
If he had been, the whole town would’ve known about it and been sure he’d killed her, and even after all this time his return would have gotte
n the local rumor mill spinning like an airplane propeller.
But it hadn’t. “I don’t know,” Karen said. “Paid someone to push her, maybe. Or he could’ve blackmailed someone into it. He always did know the worst things about people.”
That didn’t surprise me. She glanced up defiantly at me, her expression fierce.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’d have killed him myself if I could, and to whoever did finish him, they have my gratitude and I wish them the very best.” Pausing, she took in a breath. “I hope he suffered,” she exhaled fervently.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her he probably hadn’t, that no signs of struggle had been visible down there in the Moose’s cellar. Instead I kept moving around the room, glancing casually at things: a jigsaw puzzle laid out on a card table with an oil lamp beside it, a wicker basket full of stove kindling mingled with newspaper spills all rolled up and ready for fire-starting.
Old gold-framed photographs lined the fireplace mantel: a young woman in a prom dress—Anna, maybe. A tiny dog in a wooden apple crate, just barely managing to hold a large apple in its small teeth.
There were no photographs of children. “So what happened to the little girl and the baby?” I asked Karen. “After their mom died?”
“His father took Wallace and put him in care, and I did the same for Abby.” She blurted it defensively as if ready to be reproached for this. I noticed too that she didn’t want to say Hadlyme’s name.
“He was the baby’s dad, after all, so he could,” she went on. “But that’s all I know. I never saw them again.”
Her face twisted with pain. “I couldn’t take care of them, and neither could my sister, and Anna’s mother was already dead. Anna’s death killed her.” She stopped, biting her lip. “And anyway, they say a clean break is best,” she finished harshly.
Just then Ellie came back in, saw Karen’s expression, and wisely remained silent.
“Once I got over the shock of the whole thing, I agreed it was their chance for a better life than I could give them,” Karen added.
But if you asked me, she’d never gotten over it. Not that her living like this, with no modern conveniences and nobody around, was so odd; it wasn’t, especially here in downeast Maine, where quirkiness was in the air, it seemed like, and everybody had their share.
No, it was the look in her eye that held me: past caring about the law or what anyone thought of her. Like there really wasn’t much you could threaten her with anymore.
“It was for the best,” she finished simply. “The children got parents who could give them a future, Henry got out of here so I didn’t have to look at him every day, and I got peace to grieve in.”
If she hadn’t been a tough old bird, she might’ve sobbed, I thought. But she was and she didn’t.
Barely. “Jake,” Ellie interrupted quietly, “we should go.”
I took the cue; I picked up my mug and carried it to the kitchen, where the kettle clucked faintly, simmering on the woodstove.
“I didn’t see a car anywhere around out there,” Ellie was saying conversationally to Karen, back in the living area. “However do you manage way out here without one?”
“Don’t need much,” Karen answered shortly. Our little talk had taken the goodness off the day for her, I imagined, and I felt bad about it.
But what’s done was done, as she probably would’ve put it, and anyway I didn’t have much other choice, any more than she’d had all those years ago.
“And when I do need to go somewhere, I walk out to the main road and stick my thumb out,” she finished.
Which wasn’t as outlandish as it sounded, either. People did still pick up hitchhikers around here. For one thing, everybody knew everybody, and for another, you might need a ride yourself someday.
Rinsing my mug at the old soapstone sink in Karen’s kitchen, I admired a dozen geranium clippings putting out roots in half-pint jelly glasses full of water.
“Grr.” I looked down; the brown dog stood there.
“Oh, yeah? You and whose army?” I retorted.
Despite his efforts, he didn’t sound very threatening even when he fastened his choppers firmly into my pants leg and wouldn’t let go. I walked back out to the living area with the dog still dangling off me like some furry parasite, growling and kicking.
“Uh, help?” I said, trying not to laugh at the poor thing; he was so obviously embarrassed already. Ellie crouched to pry him loose, his stubby legs already making frantic little running motions even before he hit the floor and scampered away.
“Listen, about your sister, the one you mentioned earlier,” I said to Karen. “Do you think you could possibly let us have her phone num—”
Ellie stood, dusting her hands together, not looking nearly as amused about the funny little animal as I’d expected.
“Well,” she interrupted me firmly as the dog scrambled away to wherever he liked hiding, “it’s been just lovely chatting with you, Karen, and thanks for the coffee. But we’ve got to go now.”
She yanked my arm, smiling at me in a toothy not-happy way that made me think we’d really better skedaddle.
“Come on, Jake,” she urged.
I caught on and followed her.
“So long!” She called back over her shoulder as she pushed me out the door, then urged me off the porch and through the clearing toward the barely discernable break in the barberry bushes that led to the path.
“Ouch!” Also, the bees were there. And the thorns.
“Just keep going,” said Ellie from behind me. “And when you get out to the road, get into the car right away, no dillydallying.”
A bee dive-bombed me, then another. I stopped and tried to figure a way forward past the humming cloud of them hovering just ahead.
Purposefully hovering, it seemed to me. Menacingly . . .
“Walk slowly. Don’t swat at them,” said Ellie, who kept a few beehives of her own near the chicken coops in the garden behind her house. “Let them land on you if they want to.”
And then came the part that really unnerved me: “Keep your mouth shut, breathe through your nose, and whatever you do, don’t—”
A sudden rush of something, like a big invisible hand, slammed into the barberry bushes to my left. An instant later came the pow! of a shotgun being fired.
“—run!” Ellie finished, forcefully shoving me forward.
* * *
“Holy criminy, she shot at us,” I kept saying as we drove back to Eastport. “Was it what I said at the end there, about her sister?”
“Hmm. Maybe,” said Ellie. “But let’s just catch our breaths for a little while, okay? And celebrate being alive.”
“Fine.” I leaned my fortunately still-intact head back against the car seat. It still hurt like hell, but right now I was just happy to have any head at all.
Or any breath left to catch. A foot or so to the left and that shotgun would’ve cured whatever ailed me for good. But by the time we got into town I could at least talk without gasping.
“I guess we’d better check in at the shop.”
Ellie pulled over in front of The Chocolate Moose, its sign still dangling forlornly and its front windows still blown out. Most of Water Street was now cordoned off with sawhorses and yellow tape, from the fountain in front of the old bank building at one end all the way to the fish pier, at the other.
But our shop was still accessible, and the armored vehicle still hulked protectively out front. Once inside, we sent Mika home with our profuse thanks and a bag of chocolate frosted doughnut holes, which I knew were Bella’s favorite.
“For a pregnant lady, Mika sure does take care of business,” Ellie remarked, looking around the shop as my daughter-in-law drove off in her car. “She must be feeling better, to do all that baking.”
“Ellie, we still don’t know she’s—”
But Ellie just rolled her eyes at me in reply, and anyway, she was right; while we were gone, Mika had swept up the rest of the mess from the explosions,
put the front of the shop in order as best she could, considering that it didn’t have any windows left in it, and ordered new glass to be installed in the windows and door as soon as possible.
The work order details were noted on a pad on the counter by the cash register, in her clear, back-slanted handwriting. She’d also done a brisk business in doughnuts, cakes, and cookies, judging by the fact that there was barely anything left in the glass-fronted display case and a good deal more money in the cash drawer than there had been before.
“Yes, she does manage to get things done,” I agreed as I hurried out to the kitchen. If business was going to go on being this good, that display case needed refilling yet again, and fortunately our cooking gas was propane from a tank located in the alley out behind the building, and it hadn’t been damaged.
I’d just gotten started on making more doughnuts when a helicopter roared overhead again; then from down the block a voice boomed suddenly through a bullhorn: “COME OUT ON DECK WITH YOUR HANDS VISIBLE!”
“Right, that’s going to work,” I reacted scathingly, picking up the spoon I’d dropped; I hate being startled.
Ellie peered out, taking care not to cut herself on the daggers of glass still sticking out dangerously from the window frame. It had been about six hours since the Jenny had shot at anything.
“Probably the cops are just tired of standing around,” I said as I got out the mixing bowls, measuring cups, and other tools we needed for a serious session of baking.
“Still, I can’t imagine they want to provoke another barrage,” Ellie said, troubled. “They’ve pulled in more vehicles, though—cop cars and a few more of those big armored things like the one parked right out front here. And one guy with a megaphone.”
She joined me in the kitchen, where I’d set the doughnut batter to chill and begun the ingredients prep for perhaps the best cookies in the world: double-chocolate ginger wafers; they’re a great deal of trouble to make, but on the other hand I’d just had a no-kidding near-death experience, and felt entitled.