“Brian Curtis? I’d rather not ask him about that.”
“You don’t trust him?”
“I don’t know who to trust, after talking with you. Besides, I thought you could find out about the developer’s finances too.”
Marlee Sue gave her a stare. “That might be a little harder.” She thought a moment. “But doable. What are you looking for?”
“I wish I knew,” Sarah replied.
Marlee Sue, ever practical, looked worried and mildly disapproving. The concern on her friend’s face made Sarah realize how alone and isolated she had been the past week.
Suddenly, she missed Muffy, and her friends in Sudbury. She was even beginning, heaven help her, to miss Claude. Fighting back the tears, she decided, for better or worse, that she would call him tonight.
* * *
A well-manicured lawn sloped from the Vincent’s terrace to granite ledges at the water’s edge. The late afternoon sun left the terrace in shade while striking sparks on the wave-tops of the sound.
“Can I freshen up your drink?” George Vincent asked.
“Oh, no thanks,” Sarah said.
George turned to his other guests. “Anton? Sasha?”
Sarah guessed that Anton Borofsky was in his late forties, with dark hair showing a touch of grey at the temples. His round face was deeply creased with smile lines. Sasha looked younger, a slight, blond woman with huge brown eyes.
The couple declined, and George turned back to Sarah.
“I suppose the area has changed a lot since you were here last,” he said.
“Sarah went to the Migawoc Camp when she was young,” Debbie explained.
Anton looked at her curiously. “You did? I’ve wondered about the idea of a children’s camp on the ocean. Wouldn’t a lake be more suitable?” He spoke with a slight accent.
“Lake water is warmer,” Sarah conceded, “but we still did some swimming and a lot of sailing, nature hikes, tennis, archery, crafts, and other camp stuff.”
Resenting the fact that his question made her feel defensive, Sarah changed the subject. “Are you here for the summer?” she asked.
“Not until the house is finished,” Sasha said. “We’re staying at the Samoset Hotel and driving back to New York tomorrow.”
“Checking on the progress,” Anton added. “One has to watch these contractors like a hawk or they’ll rob you blind.”
“It will be wonderful to have you here with our little group of Squirrel Pointers,” Debbie said enthusiastically.
“It’s beautiful, and I love the sea air,” Sasha replied.
“We have to make sure it doesn’t get spoiled by inappropriate development,” Anton said, “otherwise it will be ruined. We ought to have some kind of protective building covenant for Squirrel Point, especially now the Huggard place is gone, but I don’t know how to go about it.”
“Young Curtis might have some ideas,” George said. “He’s very capable.”
“I’ll talk to a lawyer friend of mine in the City,” Anton decided, nodding his head.
“You ought to buy the Huggard place,” Debbie said to Sarah. A note of artificial enthusiasm seemed to peek through the words.
“It may be a while before it comes on the market,” George said. “They’re hoping to sell Myra’s woodlot first to raise some cash before they settle the estate. She didn’t have any liquid assets.”
Anton scowled at this, and Debbie turned to Sarah, saying hastily, “You could buy Myra’s woodlot. It’s a nice place for a house, even if it isn’t on the water.”
Sarah looked across the lawn to the water and thought about living near the Vincents again, like Sudbury.
Sarah recalled the Maine of her youth: the long summer days spent sailing, playing, and exploring along the water’s edge. They were gone now, as she could see by a glance around her. It proved the old saying that one can’t go back—not to Maine, and maybe not even to Sudbury.
Thinking about the last few days, Sarah decided it was more than not being able to recapture the past, she couldn’t entirely escape the past either.
The Vincents had cut the trees along the shoreline, opening up a spectacular view across Kwiguigam Sound. They had also built a new pier, to the disgust of local lobstermen who found their fishing grounds preempted by the structure.
“I don’t have any plans beyond the summer,” Sarah said.
“That’s wise. Take your time,” Anton advised.
“I tried to buy Huggard’s place myself last fall,” George said. “It was such an eyesore. I told her she could name her price.”
“She threatened you with a shotgun,” Debbie said, outraged.
“It may have been my Cossack hat, because she yelled something about Russians.” George said, glancing at Anton.
“She was an awful woman.” Anton burst out, his friendly expression vanishing as his face flushed red.
“Now, Anton,” George replied, “I know she gave you a hard time over the boundary, but she was difficult with everyone.”
“She was a crook! She and her accomplice, that girl—”
“Cathy Leduc,” Debbie prompted.
“—Leduc,” Anton spat out the word. Sasha put a restraining hand on his arm. He shook her off. “She was the one who ran around doing the old woman’s dirty work. And as for that hovel—”
Anton caught himself and gave a rueful smile. “But there you are. I probably would have thought she was a fine old lady if she hadn’t extorted money from me over the property line. It was quicker and easier to pay her off than fight over that foolishness with the tree.”
“She probably needed money for the taxes,” Debbie said.
“If she couldn’t afford to live there, she should have sold the place to someone who could,” Sasha replied.
Irritated, Sarah wondered how often that tired bromide had been trotted out to justify someone’s greed.
* * *
Later, as Sarah was leaving the Vincent’s, she saw a familiar bicycle enter Myra’s driveway. Impulsively, she followed.
Ziggy had leaned his machine against Myra’s chicken coop and was standing in front of what had once been her front door.
Someone had mowed the lawn since Sarah’s last visit.
Ziggy turned with a start at Sarah’s arrival. “You’re the woman who lives in Myra’s ditch,” he said as she got out of the Explorer.
“Paying your respects?” Sarah inquired.
Ziggy peered into the blackened cellar hole, perhaps looking for an empty beer can for his collection. Or perhaps looking for something more.
“Myra and I had compatible neuroses,” he said. “We talked about survival and rebirth, things we had in common. She survived by enduring, fighting the odds. When Myra is reborn, it will be as Myra. I admire that.”
“How will you be reborn?”
“I already have been,” he replied, his voice flat.
Turning away from the desolation in his eyes, she nodded at the cellar hole. “Do you think someone killed her?”
“Nobody asks my opinion. Why should I give it to you?”
“Because I live in Myra’s ditch.”
He looked at her intently, a shock of unruly hair showing beneath his watch cap. His nose and cheeks were sunburned where the skin wasn’t covered by unkempt whiskers. Sarah decided that Oliver was right. The Can Man wasn’t as flaky as he appeared.
“If she was killed,” he said, “Mammon will possess her land, and darkness will have won, and she will be forgotten. And being forgotten is the worst fate of all.”
Ziggy’s beard bristled as his jaw muscles worked. “But your question is meaningless, rooted in a culture of materialism and defeat. She was able to live at home until she died. That was her fondest dream, and it came to pass. Nothing else matters.”
He turned away abruptly, to the blackness of the cellar hole.
After a moment, he said, “Time was Myra’s enemy.”
“You mean her strokes?”
“I me
an Time with a big T.”
“What if she was blackmailing someone? Could she have been poisoned with something to cause the strokes?”
Ziggy turned to look at her again, shrewd and appraising now. Oh yes, Sarah thought, there was definitely more to the Can Man than met the eye. Suddenly, she felt vulnerable.
“She wouldn’t have called it blackmail,” he said, evading her question.
“Did she mention a headstone? Or Gerhard Burndt?”
“If you mean the Oak Hill development, she hated it. If you mean his final resting place, he should be left in peace, wherever he is.”
Back in character, Ziggy gave her a solemn look. “Be careful in your ditch, or risk your own darkness.”
* * *
Marlee Sue called early that evening as Sarah was finishing supper. “You could be on the trail of something, Irish. It looks like Doctor Harold Caldwell is the one behind Oak Hill, and he’s in deep. He underestimated how much it would cost to develop that property, and if they don’t sell more lots soon, he’s headed down the tubes. Does that help?”
“I’m not sure, except Cathy Leduc was Caldwell’s receptionist, and she helped Myra fight the development.”
Marlee Sue was silent for a moment. “Okay, but how are you going to prove that’s why Myra was killed? Besides, Myra and Cathy weren’t able to actually stop the development.”
“But they were delaying it, and time is money.” Sarah thought about the headstone and added, “And maybe they were cooking up some new trouble.”
There was another pause, and Marlee Sue said, “You’re right. It all boils down to money, and Sam Merlew is the key in my book. He’s chairman of the planning board, and he cast the deciding vote in favor of the first two lots on Oak Hill. The rest of the lots are coming up for a vote in a couple of weeks. If they aren’t approved—and there’s a lot of opposition in town, then Caldwell goes belly up. Sam’s vote is vital. Think payoff.”
“Why do you keep picking on the Merlews?”
“I’m just trying to make sure you keep an open mind. There are lots of possibilities out there.”
Chapter 18
Sarah arrived at Oliver’s place on Wednesday morning, and was greeted by Wes, who bounded out to say hello as he woofed and cavorted at her feet.
Oliver stood in the barn door and admired the Ford. “Dinged up grill, wrinkled fender, and now a green side. A little body rot, some mud, and you’ll look just like a native.”
“Very funny.”
“What happened?”
Oliver listened, his face grave, as she talked.
“Why in the world would anybody do that to your car?”
Sarah felt her face flush. She was sure Oliver must be wondering if the word had any significance.
“It may have just been random vandalism,” she said.
“Way out there? Did you call—” Anticipating her answer, Oliver groaned with irritation. “Doesn’t anybody around here ever call the cops?”
“What could I tell them? What could they do?”
“You could tell them someone is stalking you. You could tell them someone may be trying to kill you. That would be a good start. At least they’d know.”
“It’s my problem. I’ll deal with it.”
“Jesus Christ, you sound like that lunatic, Gaites.” Oliver glared at her. “It is possible the cops could help, you know, maybe even keep you from getting killed.”
He kicked at a pebble in the driveway, and sent it spinning onto the lawn. He glared some more at her stubborn expression, then shook his head in frustration.
“We might as well get to work,” he growled at last.
They started in on Owl. Sarah sanded the seat and frames for more coats of varnish and paint, while Oliver worked underneath, applying anti-fouling paint. Later, she would help him put more varnish on his boat.
While they worked, Sarah told him about her encounter with Eldon and her trip to Meadow road.
“You got more out of Eldon than the rest of us,” Oliver said.
“I’m probably a mother figure for him. According to Eldon, Myra had a thing about Russians.”
“As in Borofsky?”
“Or George Vincent. He wears a Cossack-style hat.”
“All that Russian stuff is probably just be Myra’s prejudice showing through.”
“Which gets us back to the headstone.”
“It does?” Oliver looked over the rail at Sarah. His latex gloves were speckled with green anti-fouling paint.
“Protecting her ancestor from the alien outsiders. Myra got the Borofskys to pay her off over the boundary line. Maybe she tried to do blackmail them with the headstone.”
“Do you think the grave is on Borofsky’s land?”
“It’s possible. There might have been a family plot in the strip of woods they cut down for their driveway.”
Oliver pulled off his gloves. “I can’t imagine killing someone over a misplaced grave.”
“I met Anton Borofsky, and he’s got a temper.”
“My guess is that Myra had Cathy dig up the headstone last fall, but the bottom half was frozen in too deep, and that’s why we don’t have it. Cathy probably thought Myra was going too far trying to blackmail someone with the stone, and that’s what they argued about. We know Cathy told Eldon that Myra wanted her to do something wrong without telling him what. Suppose she followed his suggestion about getting advice. Who would she talk to, besides the Merlews? Brian? Doc Caldwell?”
“Cathy said she wanted to talk to me in the note she sent along with Myra’s pictures,” Sarah said. “But why would she want to talk to me about the headstone?”
Oliver shrugged. “No way of knowing. I still think Oak Hill is the most likely place for the stone to turn up, though. The access road runs along the edge of the cemetery grounds, about where Gerhard’s house was.”
“And I was run off the road right after I left there.”
“True, but let’s not be too quick on the trigger. There’s the Vincent’s new tennis court. They cleared a lot of woods and brush for that. Then there’s the land on the other side of Myra that was surveyed last fall.” He reached over the rail and scraped a stray blob of paint off the varnish.
“You’re using a Boy Scout knife on my boat?”
“It’s a Swiss Army pen knife,” he informed her.
He held it out for her inspection. “You should get one yourself. It comes in handy for all kinds of things.”
“How about self-defense?”
“Doubtful. Too small.”
“Doc Caldwell is behind the Oak Hill development,” she said.
“How did you find that out? Brian? Sam?”
Sarah told him about Marlee Sue.
“He probably didn’t want people to know he owns it to avoid stirring up hard feelings among his patients,” he said.
“I think we should look into Caldwell.”
“Say what?”
“He keeps turning up. If Cathy learned that Caldwell had disturbed Gerhard’s grave, she might have confronted him. Do you go to Caldwell?”
“I’m not sick; I don’t go to anybody.”
“Then it’s high time you got a checkup.”
“And the purpose of this would be?”
“To pump him for information.”
“Then why don’t you get a checkup?” he demanded.
“Because I don’t live here. Don’t you care what happened to Myra and Cathy?”
“Darn right I care, and I pay a ton of taxes so the cops can find out what happened to Myra and Cathy. That’s their job, and I’m going to let them do it.” He stalked off.
* * *
Finished with her painting, Sarah found Oliver a half-hour later, poring over a pile of drawings jumbled on the workbench.
The top drawing showed a small sloop. “It’s beautiful. Are you going to build it?”
“I’ll start next week.”
“Did you design it?”
“My father did.”
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“That must be nice for both of you.”
“Mmm.”
“Do you build boats for him often?”
“No.”
Sarah figured the monosyllables meant that either he was still sulking or she was hitting close to home with Oliver’s father.
“Why not?” she asked.
“Because he designs traditional, plank-on-frame boats, like Owl, like Pearly builds. I specialize in strip-plank and cold-molded boats.”
“What’s this, then?”
“Cold-molded. It’s his first one,” Oliver said.
What does cold-molded mean?”
“You build a temporary form, what some people call a plug, of the hull and put on several layers of really thin planks, called veneers, over it cris-cross, glueing them together. When you’re done, you take it off the plug and you have what’s basically a boat-shaped piece of plywood, all in one piece. It makes a very light, strong hull.”
“It’s exciting that you’re building it for him. It will be something new for both of you.”
“He put in too much framing and made the planking thicker.than he needed.”
“Have you told him that?”
“Look at the number on the drawing.”
“Design number 327?”
“That’s a lot of boats,” Oliver said. “Would you tell Moses that he had misspelled Jehovah?”
“But he isn’t Moses, and I’m sure he’d want your opinion.”
“Maybe.”
“Will he be coming up to visit?”
“Maybe.”
“It would be fun to meet him,” she replied sweetly.
Oliver frowned at her. “If you really want to give Caldwell the third-degree, I can pick you up around five and we’ll go down to the Rockland marina. He’ll probably be there working on his boat, and he won’t think twice about me turning up. Just don’t expect to get anything out of him.”
Chapter 19
Pearly’s Mazda pickup was a good deal smaller than Eldon’s oversized GMC, but then Pearly himself was a good deal smaller than Eldon, and he looked smaller still as he stepped out of the Mazda in front of Oliver’s shop later that afternoon.
Gravely Dead: A Midcoast Maine Mystery Page 13
