Fisherman's Bend Page 13

  If this was what the local kids did for excitement, I wanted no more of it. I wasn’t terrified; I had been menaced by cars before. But I knew I was in particular danger due to my unfamiliarity with the road. And in the past when I had been in the process of being run off the road, I was in a high-performance vehicle that could shake anything, not a dilapidated old dog like the Duster. It did appear now that the pickup truck meant business. A couple of nudges on the next two corners were hairy—keeping the Duster on the road in the tight turns was becoming a struggle. The second hit sounded as if it took out a taillight. I decided to slow down well below the speed limit and hope the driver would tire of this game and go find someone else to play with. I slowed to twenty-five miles per hour, assuming the truck would shoot past me at the next opportunity, and the occupants would flip me the bird and disappear into the night. Instead, the truck peeled off to the right, down what looked like a private dirt road. I could see dust fly in the lights before they vanished behind a thickly wooded lot.

  Loosening my grip on the wheel, I took a deep breath and felt my heart rate ease back to normal. So I almost certainly had been watched while I was aboard the Eva B. As for what had just happened—it felt more like a warning than a full-fledged attack. Maybe I was close to uncovering something after all. Maybe when the Spartacus had attacked the boat I was on with Dane and Quasar, the assault had been intended for me and had nothing to do with aquaculture. And if so, the occupants of the truck were aware that I was armed and willing to do more than just bear that constitutional right.

  Reminding myself that the dirt road the truck had taken could loop back onto the road on which I drove, I couldn’t let my guard down yet. For the next few miles, I drove slowly, taking time to peer down all roads to my right, looking for headlights. I realized that the driver of the truck had been smart enough not to allow me to see a license plate. I wasn’t completely comfortable until I reached the causeway that led directly into Green Haven. The man-made causeway was a series of S curves lined on either side by granite blocks I supposed were meant to keep cars on the road and out of the water that lapped the edges at high tide. I relaxed when I hit the south end of the causeway, knowing that I had only three miles to go before I’d be pulling into the lot outside my apartment. I imagined the Vickersons were enjoying their first cocktails by now and would invite me to join them. I wondered what mussel dish they had concocted for tonight’s dinner and knew that whatever it was, I would eat it. My stomach growled.

  A large shadow appeared in the fringe of my headlights’ beam. The shadow moved into the middle of the road and became something quite substantial. I slammed on the brakes and jerked the steering wheel to the right, managing to avoid contact with the deer that jumped in a single, effortless bound back into the woods. The Duster came to a full stop perpendicular to the road and straddled both lanes. The headlights lit up the stand of straggly spruce trees into which I had seen the white underside of the doe’s tail vanish. The clump of trees was surrounded by what looked like thoroughly cleared land. I waited and watched for the deer to spring out into the opening on either side of the trees. When nothing moved, I thought of the “deer in the headlights” phenomenon. It was a rather tiny patch of woods. Why couldn’t I see the deer’s eyes shining brightly in the Duster’s lights? I pulled off the road and onto a narrow gravel shoulder, keeping my attention on the trees for motion. How could an animal of that size vanish with one leap? The doe had certainly not vanished. The deer must be close, but I just couldn’t see her. As nervous as I was about being pursued, and now riled up by the near miss with a deer, I decided to take a few seconds to get my wits about me before getting back on the road.

  The doe’s heart must be pounding as hard as mine. After all, she was the one who could have been killed. This brought to mind Parker Alley. Fear is the best motivation for successful and creative disappearing acts, I thought—fear and greed. The same goes for murder—fear and greed are in the top three motives. Was Parker Alley dead, or had he simply disappeared? Had I been as close to him as I now was to the deer and simply not seen him? Until he surfaced, dead or alive, there would be much speculation and intrigue in Cobble Harbor. His disappearance would never get the attention that came when Amelia Earhart or Jimmy Hoffa went missing, of course. Parker Alley was just a fisherman. He would never have a cultlike following like D. B. Cooper, who disappeared in 1971 after hijacking an airplane, collecting $200,000 ransom, and parachuting into the Washington State wilderness, never to be seen again. And yet, if folks here started to think of him as more missing than dead, it would certainly be the cause of a lot of chatter.

  The short minute to stop and think had done the trick. My nerve endings had stopped jingling and I was breathing normally. Realizing that I was probably putting myself in danger by spending time parked at the side of the road looking for that one lucky deer, I decided to hightail it back to town.

  I soon found myself within Green Haven proper, where the occasional streetlamp illuminated dimly and fleetingly the interior of my car. Back in my own neighborhood, I allowed my mind to wander a bit as I drove up the hill toward home. A string of unsolved missing-persons cases that I had worked on in Florida had similarities to my new case. All of the people in question had been alone at sea—four cases in a row of people gone missing while sailing single-handedly. Their boats had all been found abandoned. The first was deemed an accidental falling overboard, the second was considered suicide, the third a copycat, and the fourth … well by the time the fourth boat was found unmanned, the investigation of the first had turned up some dirt on the missing sailor. Digging deeper, my investigative team learned that all four had reasons to disappear. Bank accounts, investments, properties—everything had been liquidated shortly after the people went missing and before anyone got suspicious. We believed that all of them had staged their own deaths until body number two was found and it was clear that the man had been tortured. When a second body floated in in the same condition, we knew we had a serial situation to deal with. Televised news of the second corpse and a leaky police department put an end to the killings at sea for a while. Months later, three boats were found in four days off North Carolina. The next, three months after that, were off Delaware, bringing the count to ten. No more bodies were found, but assets disappeared quicker than officials could secure them. The absence of corpses in the more recent cases was an indication, to those involved in seeking justice, that the perpetrators had perfected the art of body disposal. Maybe the murderous party had moved up the coast to fresh ground, I thought as I climbed the stairs to my apartment. It had been three months since the last strike.

  I flipped on all the lights. Just then, it dawned on me that I was stretching too far. I must certainly be overtired, and lack of nutrition had probably resulted in blood sugar low enough to cause my mind to run ridiculously amok. There was no reason for me to believe that there was any connection between the disappearance of Parker Alley and the other ten cases that were never solved. That’s the cop in me, I thought, always trying to close a case—even at the expense of the facts. There was no chance of pounding this square peg into that round hole, even with a bigger hammer. Parker Alley was not in the same financial strata as the others who had gone missing off boats. All ten of them had been independently wealthy and sailing expensive vessels, not lobster boats or anything like them. Born into wealth, none of the ten had ever worked a single day. None of them had ever gotten married or had children. That may have influenced the amount of energy we put into our investigations, something I’m loath to admit. When there’s no pressure from a family, it’s easier to drop the ball. Someone had done their homework on the victims, that’s for sure.

  It was then that I noticed a note had been left on my sofa.

  Dear Jane,

  I have taken the Mrs. on an epicurean expedition to Nova Scotia. We hear the mussels are fabulous there—and much less expensive than the local. We expect to be back by Friday with samples unless we get waylaid
. So until then, I guess you’re on your own kiddo!

  Mr. V

  My first thought was, Hooray! My second thought was, Who will feed me? And my final thought was, When have the Vickersons ever paid for mussels? Ravenous to the point of nausea, I had to eat right away. I practically ran down the stairs, through the gift shop, and out to the parking area. With the luck I’d had in the Duster so far today—between the game of chicken and the near collision with a full-grown Bambi—I thought it would be wise to walk to the café and see what Audrey had on special. I hustled right along, my pace quickened by hunger and anticipation of being entertained by Audrey’s antics. Five minutes later I was bursting through the door of the fully lit and totally empty restaurant. The clang of the cowbells swinging on the door brought Audrey from the kitchen to greet me, her only customer. She hadn’t spiked her hair up today, and aside from the glitter on her cheeks and her gigantic yin and yang earrings, she looked sort of normal.

  “Hi, Jane! Come in and have a seat. Where’ve you been? We missed you this morning. The Old Maids and I debated the cultural importance of rap music.” Audrey rolled her eyes and smiled as she pointed to a seat at the counter, where I assumed she wanted me to sit. Before I could answer her question as to my recent whereabouts, she put her hands on her hips and gave me a serious once-over. Shaking her head, she said, “If you ever want your status to change, you really need to be more careful about how you come out in public.”

  “Status?” I asked. I looked down at the clothes I had worn for the last two days. They had been soaked wet and then slept in and looked it. I wondered how bad my hair was.

  “Yup, status. You know, single and available, bordering on desperate.”

  “I’m too hungry to refute the desperate part,” I said with a grin and then quickly pulled my lips down over my teeth before Audrey commented on my oral hygiene. “What’s the special?”

  “Well, if you came in here more often at night instead of mooching off your landlords, you’d know that Wednesday is Chinese night. That’s why we have no customers—it’s awful.”

  “Well, that explains the earrings. I thought Wednesday was Prince Spaghetti day.”

  “Italian night is Friday, not Wednesday. Don’t ask. This is the chef’s way of going out on a culinary limb, being bold enough to serve fried rice on the traditional pasta day.” Audrey slapped a sheet of paper on the counter in front of me; it was the menu. “You like my earrings? Taijitu—commoners say yin and yang. These symbolize the foundation of the entire universe. Harmony in nature, balance in life; it’s all about the unity of opposites. Would you like to borrow them? Anytime but Wednesday.”

  “If you think they’d help improve my status,” I said as I read the menu. “I’m starving. I’ll start with an appetizer. What would you recommend—the egg roll or the soup?”

  “That’s asking me to choose the lesser of two evils. They’re equally bad.”

  “I’ll take one of each.”

  “Perfect.” Audrey whisked the menu from my hand and disappeared through the swinging doors to the kitchen.

  “I’ll take an order of fried rice, too,” I yelled after her. Her response was muffled, but the tone was somewhere in between a condolence and a “You’ll be sorry.” It was indeed unusual to be the only patron. I was glad to learn that Audrey was her usual wisecracking self—even when she had an audience of just one. Usually, she had the Old Maids and Clyde Leeman as her targets, and a large and appreciative crowd. I was happy to have my own turn to be the butt of her jokes and teasing. Though only nineteen, Audrey is precociously self-assured and comfortable in her own tattooed and pierced skin. Most people her age who go to such lengths to alter themselves physically are either hiding something or simply trying to fit in with their peers. But our Audrey was the real deal—fully authentic. From the moment I met her, I felt that Audrey was destined for greatness. I, like everyone else in town, wanted her to like me, and was glad that she did.

  With appetizers in hand, and representation of the entire universe dangling from her earlobes, Audrey pushed back through the saloon-style doors. “So, Marilyn comes in this morning with an iPod dangling from her hairy ears. I almost threw up. Seeing someone that old listening to music with anything more modern than a box with a hand crank is disgusting. It’s like realizing that your parents had sex,” she said as she set the food at my place setting.

  That must have been what led to the rap discussion. I stirred the cup of soup with my teaspoon. The liquid was gray, and there were no chunks of anything in it. I slurped a spoonful. “This tastes like dishwater,” I said, pushing the cup away and pulling the egg roll closer.

  “Great! Is it hot enough?”

  “Just right.”

  “That’s what we like to hear. Your fried rice is up. Can I get you some mustard for the egg roll?”

  Assuming her next question would be whether I preferred French’s or Grey Poupon, I shook my head and nibbled the edge of the egg roll, testing before inhaling. The egg roll wasn’t half bad. I ate it in three bites and looked forward to the rice. When the plate of what was advertised as fried rice was set in front of me, I couldn’t help looking at Audrey with a questioning raised eyebrow. She cocked her head to one side and forced the cheesiest grin I had ever seen. “Bon appétit,” she whispered and continued to stare as I picked up my fork and gingerly sampled the dish.

  “Are you sure you didn’t mix my order up with someone else’s? This isn’t fried rice.”

  “Right. It’s leftover white rice from last night’s chicken special with some soy sauce on it. Waste not, want not,” she quoted. “Or in this case, perhaps just the latter.” Although she didn’t let on, I could tell that Audrey was amazed that I was able to eat the rice. It really didn’t have any taste at all, but it satisfied my hunger and I was fairly confident that it was the safest main course on the menu that night. “Listen, I can hear Marlena calling their cats,” Audrey said, cupping an ear with her hand. “They get a little nervous on Wednesdays, living so close to the Chinese kitchen.”

  Now I laughed. The rice had kept my hunger at bay, and I was ready for pie and coffee. Audrey promptly cleaned and reset my place and served what looked like half an apple pie to me. It was delicious. The only things I could always count on at the café were coffee and pie. As bad as the meal was, it was nice to eat something other than mussels for dinner. Audrey left me to enjoy dessert while she breezed around the room, setting up tables for the breakfast crowd. When she returned, she poured me another cup of coffee and said, “So where have you been? When you left here yesterday, you were headed to Cobble Harbor to make a drug bust. How’d that go?”

  So much had transpired in the last thirty-six hours. This was an opportunity to hash all of it over with a good listener and possibly catch something I had missed. I told Audrey everything, leaving out no detail. I described the scene in the parking lot where I met George Paul and told her about Quest, Spartacus, and the dead body. She listened politely as I went through my experience in Southwest Harbor and the surprise I had when I learned that the corpse was not Parker Alley. I told her about the truck that rammed me, then disappeared. I even told her about the deer. I went through my mental list of follow-up tasks for the next day, realizing for the first time how ambitious the list was. “Wow” was Audrey’s response when I finally looked for one. I admitted that I was pretty anxious about talking to Lillian.

  Recalling that Audrey had said that Jason was a friend of hers, I saw an opportunity to ask a few questions that I couldn’t put to Lillian, who had made it crystal clear that the topic of her son was strictly off-limits. “Did Jason work for his father in the stern of his boat?”

  “Are you kidding? Jason absolutely despised his father. Absolutely despised him.”

  11

  THE COWBELLS JANGLED against the door as two young couples entered the café, stealing my chance to ask Audrey if she knew why Jason hated his father so much. My romantic ideal of the Maine father and son being an inse
parable team was shattered like the Duster’s taillight. Disenchanted and full of apple pie, I stared absently at the paper placemat while Audrey directed the foursome to a nice table by the window, where she suggested they “keep an eye out for a cat if you have a hankering for anything other than the tofu or the vegetable lo mein.” The group laughed. They apparently hadn’t eaten here before.

  Every business in Green Haven advertised on the toffee-colored placemats here at the café. Even the Old Maids, whose shop across the street had a gas pump outside and carried everything from hardware to panty hose—a true Maine variety store—made sure their store was featured on the mat in the same brown, boxy typography that everyone used, but with a small picture of one of the ladies’ prized Scottish Fold cats. The cats had nothing to do with their business, as they certainly didn’t breed them or sell them; but you could always count on seeing one or two curled up at the cash register or wandering the aisles. And a cat certainly made for a prettier ad than a picture of a gas pump would have, and might attract some strangers looking for pet supplies, which, mysteriously, the Old Maids didn’t stock. Once a customer was in the store, Marilyn and Marlena could sell that person a myriad of useless un-pet-related goods, and shame them into tossing pocket change into a jar to raise funds for some unfortunate local or to support Green Haven’s Little Leaguers. A coffee stain circled the space marked YOUR AD HERE, leading me to believe there was room for another business in town. Maybe I should start my own private-investigating service. I had always wanted to be self-employed, but could never quite reconcile myself to giving up a sure thing, like a paycheck twice a month. Besides, I didn’t imagine there was much need for a private eye in a place where people sweep things under rugs and forget about them. I had read every ad twice by the time Audrey had served Cokes to the two couples and taken their food orders. Finally, she returned to refill my mug with a little more coffee.