Fisherman's Bend Page 18

  So Willard was basically telling me that I was wasting my time putting any effort into an attempt to find out what had happened to Jorge. Nice. The stern man was on the bow with a long gaff. I watched him hook the mooring and place the loop over the bit on the bow. He walked back to the cockpit, towing the skiff along like a stubborn leashed dog. The captain shut the boat down for the night. He appeared to be quite frazzled, and I imagined he was questioning his aptitude and stomach for this new job. We all climbed into the skiff; the stern man then started the outboard motor with one easy pull and ferried us ashore to a small dock at the west end of town and far side of the working harbor. Willard offered me a hand out of the skiff, which I accepted. He pulled me onto the dock like I weighed nothing, aggravating the pain in my ribs that had, until then, subsided to a dull ache.

  I gladly accepted a ride from Willard, knowing that Cal would disapprove of my traveling with another “creep.” But I was a long way from the apartment and beginning to feel the hour that it must be. I directed Willard along Main Street, up the hill, and into the Vickersons’ small parking lot, which was conspicuously empty in the absence of the Vickersons’ Caddy and my Duster. I would need to get a ride tomorrow from Cal so I could go retrieve my trusty vehicle from the dock at Bucksport. “Where’s your partner tonight?” Willard asked before I had a chance to thank him and escape.

  “Cal’s in bed, I hope.”

  “Keeping the bed warm for you, is he?”

  Jesus, I thought, this guy is repulsive. I would have allowed him to think that Cal and I shared a bed if Cal had not been happily married, but I knew how rumors flew in a small town. “No. He’s at his house with his wife. Thanks for the ride. See you around.” I opened the door and winced in pain.

  “Gawd. You really are hurting aren’t you? Heeeere, take this.” Willard pulled a bottle of Johnnie Walker from his bag. “It’s great pain medicine.” I took the bottle to avoid any further discussion and thanked him again. Just before I could slam the door closed, he asked, “Would you like a little company?”

  “No thank you,” I said firmly, as I walked away from the car and into the gift shop, feeling better after I was inside and out of Willard’s sight. His headlights remained shining on the building until I was safely in my apartment with the door locked behind me. I pulled down the shades and received a quick honk from the horn as Willard left the parking lot. I suspected he would find some company with the woman his wife had mistaken me for. For a second, the hungry feeling in my stomach masked the hurt that plagued my torso. Although I would not divulge to Audrey the fact that I had been propositioned tonight, I felt as though I had just proved that I wasn’t nearly as desperate as she made me out to be. In fact, I was not desperate at all. I just happened to be alone. It’s not a bad thing. I liked being alone. If I repeated that over and over, it might come true, I thought.

  If I ever felt I needed booze to ease pain, physical or other kinds, I would quit drinking forever, I vowed, as I put the scotch in a cupboard to enjoy another time. And that was a vow I would keep. Sometime when I had someone to share it with, I’d have a real treat. Maybe I could share it with Henry and Alice when they returned on Friday. The thought was quite depressing. I like being alone, I repeated. I was surprised to find a bag of coffee beans in my tote. I stowed them in the cupboard, along with the bag Lillian had given me. Strange that the crew would have wanted me to have a gift and then try to kill me. Obviously, not every member of the crew was involved, I reasoned. Might just be a couple of bad apples. Or perhaps Willard Kelley had been the target. The answering machine said that I had two messages—two more reasons to believe that I was not really alone; two people had been thinking of me. The first was from Lillian Alley. She sounded upset and said she hoped I could be at her place at ten in the morning. Unless I called and made other arrangements, she would assume I was coming. The clock on the microwave oven showed that it was now one A.M. and certainly too late to call Lillian. The other message was from Cal. He said that he would be at the café for coffee at seven A.M. If I needed him to work tomorrow I could find him there. As easy as that, my day was planned. I emptied my pockets in preparation for getting undressed, cleaned up, and into bed. To add to my mood was Parker Alley’s suicide note. The guy really was a workaholic, I thought. Who else would scribble their final words on the back of a FedEx shipping receipt? Carl Bagley of Lynn, Massachusetts, had quite a feast coming to him—ten pounds of lobster. I couldn’t afford the local lobsters. You had to be a pretty big sport to pay to have ten pounds of them FedExed right to you. I threw my dirty clothes in a heap on the floor.

  I nearly scalded myself in the shower, and it felt good. Tension rose from my muscles with the steam and frustration spilled down the drain at my feet. I forced all thoughts, formulas, theories, speculations, and fears from my head as I tucked myself into bed. I had only five hours before I would have to be up, and five hours of sound sleep would refresh me enough to have a clear mind with which to begin again. The Guatemalan crew tried to sneak into my consciousness just before I drifted off, but I locked them out to be dealt with tomorrow. Lillian must have been upset by something Evan came up with, I thought. Maybe Parker had a secret mistress. That was my last thought before the alarm sounded.

  I reached to silence the ringer and was reminded of my ribs. Ouch! Jesus, I thought, I must have really done a number on myself. My standard ten minutes from bed to door was increased to fifteen this morning as I found dressing and brushing my teeth left-handed a bit awkward. Nonetheless, I was in the café before Cal had finished his first cup of tea. “Good morning, everyone,” I said to Cal, Marilyn, Marlena, and Audrey. They all smiled friendly greetings as I took the stool between Cal and Marlena.

  “What did you do last night?” Audrey asked with a playful grin. “You look awful!”

  “Thanks,” I said, delighted to hear my first voice of the morning, even if it was just Audrey reminding me that I looked like hell. I guess I was pretty lonely. “Coffee, please.”

  “Ha! It’s gonna take more than coffee this morning! Do you even own a mirror?” The Old Maids seemed to be enjoying this, as I figured my appearance had taken the heat off them. Cal looked a little embarrassed and squeezed his tea bag relentlessly. “Seriously, just between the”—Audrey looked to my right and then to my left—“five of us. You need a little”—she puckered her lips and I dreaded hearing her opinion of my needs—“TLC.”

  “Audrey,” I said with a smile, “I need caffeine. Please?”

  Audrey flipped a mug into the air, caught it by its handle, and poured it full. She then placed it in front of me with gusto as she looked me square in the eye and said, “No. You need more than caffeine. You need the service that only Juan Valdez himself can supply.” I started to laugh and immediately grabbed my ribs in pain.

  “Are you all right?” Cal asked.

  “Yes, I’m fine. I’ll be fine. I just slept wrong.”

  “Slept wrong? You mean like a stiff neck?” Audrey blurted out. “You look like you—” The door of the café opened, sparing me Audrey’s next shot. “Clyde Leeman! Get out!” Audrey said sternly. “I banished you for a week. Now go. Out, out, out!” I had never been so happy to see Clydie, I thought as Audrey marched from behind the counter to show Clyde the door.

  “But it’s been a week,” Clyde protested.

  “Has not.”

  “Has too.”

  “Has not.” Clyde took a step closer to an empty stool, then hesitated. Audrey took a step toward Clyde and said, “Look at the calendar, Clyde.” She pointed at the large month of October on the wall behind the counter. “You see the big ‘C L’ in the middle of the red circle with the slash through it on last Tuesday?”

  “Yes.”

  “The ‘C L’ stands for Clyde Leeman. That’s you. You’re banished until Tuesday according to my records,” Audrey stated with some authority.

  “Can I get a coffee to go?”

  “Sure. Pull around to our drive-thru window.
”

  “Okay, thanks.” And Clyde left, looking somewhat triumphant. We all sat and stared at one another.

  When we heard the door of his truck open and close, and the engine start, Audrey looked scared. She ran for the door. “Oh my God. Someone has to stop him! There’s no telling where he’ll end up! Wait, Clyde! There’s no drive-thru!” When Audrey didn’t come back right away I pictured her chasing Clyde’s truck down Main Street.

  After a few healthy slugs of coffee, I told Cal I thought we should get going. We left a couple of bucks on the counter, wished the ladies a nice day, and left. Audrey stood on the sidewalk chatting up a very nice-looking young man. She pretended not to know us, turning her back slightly. Here was the perfect opportunity to embarrass Audrey! What could I say … I made a move in her general direction and Cal caught my arm. “You’ll be sorry,” he whispered. He was right. I changed course and headed for the dock with Cal.

  It was another beautiful day. We would be in Cobble Harbor by nine thirty, allowing me a full thirty minutes to walk to Lillian’s house, and I knew that I would need them, as I wasn’t moving as quickly as usual. Once we were under way, Cal lit a cigarette. I wanted to tell him where I had been last night and what had happened, but really felt that he would prefer to be left in the dark. “So, what happened to your ribs?” he asked. I wondered if he was curious, or was just being thoughtful.

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.” So I told Cal the whole story—all but the knife part. And I left out the scene where Willard was hitting on me and asking whether Cal and I were an item. I didn’t mention the fact that I had accepted a bottle of scotch either. Come to think of it, I wasn’t all that forthcoming. However, I did answer his question honestly by explaining exactly how I had smashed my ribs, and I did mention that I needed Cal’s help in rescuing my car from the lot in Bucksport. Cal finished his cigarette. I finished my story. And we were at the dock in Cobble Harbor.

  “Same time, same station?” I asked Cal, suggesting we again meet back at the Sea Pigeon at three.

  “Good” was all he said as he watched me walk away toward the rows of parked pickups. I couldn’t resist searching the lot for Parker Alley’s truck, the one that George Paul had borrowed some time after it had been orphaned. When I found the truck, I also found the Passamaquoddy’s tribal chief sitting proudly behind the wheel. I smiled and nodded. George Paul waved. What the hell, I might as well go right up to the truck and say hello. There was no sense having him waste fuel following me when I could just tell him where I was going. Maybe he would finally tell me why he was so interested in my investigation.

  I approached his open window and said, “Hi.” He put the book he was reading on the dashboard and complimented the weather. I couldn’t help but notice the cover of the book. It was Unfinished Voyages, the same book that Dane Stevens had been reading aboard Quest. It was clearly a popular volume. I vowed to check it out of the library in Green Haven, if it was still on the shelves and not already circulating.

  “Are you heading to Lillian’s again today?” he asked.

  “Yes. Are you going to follow me again today?”

  “No. I can’t. I’m waiting for my ship to come in,” George Paul said quite seriously, and stared out at the horizon.

  “Okay. Well, I guess I’ll see you later.” I backed away from the window and headed toward the road. Maybe everyone was right about this guy. Maybe he was a nut and kind of creepy. I expected to see George Paul’s name on the enemy list that I hoped Evan had delivered to Lillian. I wondered if George Paul had made the top ten. It was likely, I thought, that the list would be quite lengthy. When there are no immediate suspects or archenemies, this kind of list usually becomes so voluminous that anyone who ever looked at the victim sideways finds him-or herself on it. Enemy lists rarely produce successful results, but often lead to clues that do. I hoped this would be the case today. Otherwise, I would have to throw in the towel on the murder and the disappearance until more evidence surfaced—which could be never. In the past, I had a track record to brag about. Cases I was assigned didn’t hang around long enough to get cold. This thought bolstered my flagging confidence.

  Lillian stood behind the screen door. But something was different today. She flung open the screen and jerked her head toward the interior, commanding me to follow her without speaking. She walked with a heavy step and had lost that ethereal grace that had so impressed me before. Rather than caressing Oscar, the marble seal, she smacked him solidly on the back and kept right on walking. I entered the kitchen behind her and saw that the counters and table were buried in paper. There were folders, notebooks, reports, and hundreds of loose pages. Lillian placed her hands on her hips and said, “It’s gone. All of our money is gone. Whoever killed my husband has robbed us blind.”

  It was quite a stunning reversal. And I’ve almost never seen a human being so changed in a day. She looked older, sadder, and defeated. “Okay,” I said, hoping that my calm manner would in some way reassure her. “Let’s go over everything. This is going to take a while. Maybe you should put on a pot of coffee.” I rolled up my sleeves and got started on the piles of paper in front of me, checking all the recent activity against previous statements. First I organized everything into categories. Then I began going through the stacks with a calculator. Numbers are not my thing, so I had to do a lot of rechecking and recalculating. It seemed that I had been there forever and had barely peeled the first layer. I suggested that Lillian call her accountant or financial adviser to help, and she said she had done that. But she begged me to see if there was anything I could learn about the crime. And I knew that I might get some clues or helpful information from the statements and that she would be more likely to be forthcoming if I had her alone. “So, did Evan ever come up with that list?”

  “Oh yes. It’s useless. It’s right here somewhere. I’ll find it for you. He didn’t leave anybody out.” I told her that I figured that might happen and that I would still like to see the list. She searched a little longer and finally found it. There must have been fifty names on it. The next phase could take months, I thought. Lillian began crying. Not a soft, ladylike weeping as she had done yesterday, but a real heart-wrenching bawl. “Now I have no family and no money. How could someone do such a thing? I’ll have to sell this house. You’ll find the murderer, won’t you?”

  “Lillian, have you forgotten about the suicide note?” I tried to be as gentle as possible in reminding Lillian of this.

  “They could have forced him to write it. They might have threatened to kill me. Parker would lay down his life for me.” This sentiment brought on a fresh batch of tears. And then there was a knock on the door, followed by a man’s voice calling Lillian. She wiped the tears away and yelled to the man to come in. “That’s Evan. I asked him to come over. God, I need him to sell the Eva B. quickly.” Evan entered, shook my hand, and thanked me for helping Lillian. He said that he was willing to assist in any way that he could. I thought he would need to start by coming clean about the events surrounding his brother’s disappearance. I had a hunch, and pieces were falling into place. While Lillian informed her brother-in-law of the shocking news that all of Parker’s money had been stolen, and discussed what should be sold and when, I excused myself to make a phone call. I had a little research project for Sheila at the Sheriff’s Department.

  Sheila promised to call back in ten minutes with information. I returned to the kitchen, where Evan seemed to be processing all the recent developments. He tried to offer Lillian hope that the money could be recovered; he was sure that the banks and institutions must be partly to blame. “And what about Parker’s life insurance?” Evan asked. “When can Lillian collect that?”

  “With a suicide note and no body, it’s tough. Your brother had just doubled the payout of the policy. I wouldn’t count on anything from the insurance company,” I said.

  “We’ll have to sell everything,” Lillian cried. “Par
ker worked so hard to provide for us. This is so unfair. All of his time and effort, his entire life, for nothing.”

  My phone rang, interrupting Lillian. Sheila confirmed what I had suspected. I thanked her, and she again expressed her pleasure in helping and told me she was eager to assist in the future. Now, how best to relay what I had to tell Lillian? I decided that being fairly blunt probably was the best course. “Lillian, I know that you are very upset, which I fully understand, and that all you see in all of this paper are the zeros at the bottom of the columns. But if you look at the dates of the final transactions, everything was liquidated prior to Parker’s disappearance.” This news was met with blank stares from both Lillian and Evan. “And that call was from the Sheriff’s Department. Someone traveled by bus and airplane using tickets purchased for Jorge Aguilar—that’s the name of the body you were asked to ID.” Evan sat down, held his head in his hands, and closed his eyes. “I believe that your husband drained your accounts, staged his own death, and disappeared using the tickets and identity of Jorge Aguilar.”

  Lillian appeared to be stunned. I couldn’t tell whether she understood what I had said. Evan opened his eyes, took a deep breath, and said, “I’m so sorry. I guess it’s time for the truth. I have been struggling with this for days. I haven’t slept a wink, and neither has my son.” Finally, I thought, Evan is going to fill in some of the blanks. And he did. He confessed that his brother had come alongside, boat to boat, the morning of the disappearance. Parker had pleaded with Evan to take him ashore to an abandoned dock where no one would see them. Parker had said that he was in trouble and that he was afraid for his life, but didn’t say why. He said that he needed to go away while things cooled down, and planned eventually to call Lillian so she wouldn’t be distraught over his fake suicide. Evan claimed not to know anything more, and I believed him. “Lillian, I am sorry. I have to go find Little Ev and let him know that I’ve come forward with the truth. The lie has been killing him.” And then for me, he added, “He’s very fond of his aunt Lillian. Oh, and that’s why I was so adamant that no one look for him, why I said that I was sure he was dead when we met at sea that first day. I feel terrible for all the trouble I’ve caused.” With this, Evan left.