by B. D. Smith
“Thanks for taking time from your busy day Dr. Lamen. We certainly appreciate your help in this manner. Good luck with your self-realization efforts. We will probably be back in touch with more questions later.”
7.
Rosemary Tremblay’s condominium was only a short fifteen-minute drive from Lamen’s office, and Doug and Tom talked over the morning’s interviews as they drove across town. Tom outlined his take on Rose and her situation.
“I think we can conclude that Rosemary and Lee Lamen are not the clever killer couple we suspected was a possibility,” Tom surmised as Doug stopped for a light. “Our dentist, Dr. Lamen, is basically a convenient doofus - a safe harbor for the bored wife while she transitions to a new life. But it’s a short-term solution, even though she may not fully realize it yet. Her husband’s unexpected death has now shortened the timeline for her departure out of the safe harbor offered by her dentist mentor and the enlightenment quest. She may already be viewing the dentist as excess baggage to be cut loose and left bobbing in her wake.”
Doug smiled at the nautical metaphors and continued the theme.
“I see the departing craft now Tom, as it sails out of the safe but boring harbor into the turbulent and exciting open sea, toward the romantic setting sun. And who’s that I see at the helm, wearing a puffy shirt and an eye patch, with Rose gazing up at him with admiration and lust, and a little trepidation? Could it be Tom who rescues Rose from a boring humdrum harbor life?”
“Go ahead Doug, mock my theory. But look at what we just heard from Lamen. Rosemary won’t commit to tithing, and I would guess she is dragging her feet on the enlightenment thing. And Lamen and his group don’t appear to be much of an improvement over a husband she considered boring and lacking in initiative. Lamen’s a dentist, Doug. By definition he’s guaranteed to be brutally boring. Las Vegas conventions and a few nights of blackjack is as good as it’s gonna get with him.”
Doug nodded in agreement as Tom continued.
“And did you notice Rosemary’s cackle when she told us about the beneficiary change in her husband’s life insurance policy? She didn’t show any anger or interest in the money. Just underneath her professional veneer, Rosemary is a woman desperate for a life – some excitement, some drama, some fun.”
Tom’s smile grew larger and he started humming a tune to himself as they entered Rosemary’s condominium. Three cardboard boxes full of files and a few computer peripherals were on the floor right inside the front door, next to a scattering of mail that had been pushed through the mail slot. A few minutes after they arrived a knock at the door announced the arrival of the evidence response team, who quickly photographed and sealed the boxes of files and computer equipment and carted them off to the crime lab in Augusta. After they dropped off the condo key back at Rosemary’s office, Doug and Tom drove back across town to where Tom had dropped his car that morning. As Tom got out of the car, he paused to offer another prediction.
“Don’t be surprised if Rosemary decides to make some real changes in her life in the next week or so. That decision, I predict, will occur just before we start in on our crème brule at the Petite Jacqueline bistro tomorrow night.”
Tom shut the car door before Doug could summon up a response and walked off toward his car with a spring in his step.
It took Doug a little over two hours to drive from Portland back to Dover-Foxcroft. As he pulled in the driveway of Anne’s cabin on the south shore of Sebec Lake he could see Anne sitting on the end of the dock, with the Chinook that had befriended them the previous night stretched out at her feet, soaking up the sun. Anne turned and waved, and the dog jumped up and trotted toward Doug – head down and tail wagging. Doug was surprised, but the dog clearly remembered him, and demanded a serious ear snoozle before allowing Doug to join Anne on the dock.
Anne had grown to love her camp, which she had bought and renovated soon after she arrived in town, and as yet showed no interest in giving it up to move to Doug’s place on the north shore. Sitting down beside Anne and accepting a glass of wine, Doug continued petting the dog, whose head was now firmly on his lap, and asked what the vet had to say.
“Well, it’s all good news. He was neutered at some point in the past. They didn’t find an ID chip, and there’s no clue what his history is. Looks like he’s been living on the street for a while. They treated him for fleas and ticks, started him on monthly heartworm pills, and gave him a rabies vaccination. Other than being malnourished they say he’s in pretty good shape. I picked up a dog bed, water and food bowls, and some high-quality dog food at Bob’s in town. He needs an ID tag, and most of all, a name. What are we going to call him?”
“I was thinking we might name him ‘Jack.’ Every time I see this pup I think of Melinda Blood’s late great chinook named Jack. He was a wonderful dog. What do you think?”
“Jack it is,” replied Anne, reaching over to ruffle the dog’s fur. “That’s a great name.”
After a leisurely dinner – a curried scallop dish Anne had seen in the NY Times, they walked back out to the dock to enjoy the sunset. Doug filled her in on the Portland interviews, Tom’s assessment of the not exactly grieving widow, and his upcoming dinner date with Rosemary Tremblay.
“Sounds like another dead end,” Anne replied when Doug had finished, and then filled him in on her limited progress in the case.
“Nothing promising turned up here either. The unofficial analysis of the tarp and bungee cord we recovered from Wes Fuller’s place indicated that they were similar in composition to the tarp and cord we pulled out of the Sebec River. But the paint spatter pattern on the tarp we recovered from the river is missing in the trap fragments recovered at Fuller’s. And it turns out that both the tarp and the bungee are made in China and sold widely across the Northeast under a variety of different brand names. You could buy matching tarp and bungee items at both the Tru-Value and Ace hardware stores here in town. So the case for Fuller being the killer hasn’t gotten any stronger.”
“What about Ximena Lapointe?” Doug asked, “Anything new on her story?”
“Actually, yes,” Anne replied. “I tracked her down at work and asked her straight out about where the money came from for her new truck. She had no hesitation in telling me she had been the beneficiary of Don Robertson’s half-million-dollar life insurance policy. When I asked her why she hadn’t mentioned it to us before she looked genuinely puzzled and told me it was personal, didn’t seem relevant, and that she didn’t want people in town to know.”
Doug nodded and replied.
“I can understand her reticence, but the windfall payout does add a pretty sizable motive for killing her boyfriend to her column. We need to take a much closer look at her movements that night and the next morning.”
“I was thinking about that,” Anne replied, “and wondered if the long wire that was attached to the tarp has any significance. Why a wire rather than a length of rope?”
Puzzled, Doug turned to look at Anne.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, maybe the wire was dangled down the inside of the chimney and was used because a rope might catch fire from the heat generated by the space heater. Ximena could have set the chimney cover up the day before and dangled the wire down the inside. Then when she arrived back at the cabin the next morning, after Robertson was dead, she could have reached up the chimney, grabbed the wire, and pulled the tarp down into the cabin. A quick trip to the river to dispose of the tarp, and then she could have returned and called you, knowing that the undisturbed overnight snowfall surrounding the cabin would point toward an accidental death.”
“What else did you get out of Ximena?”
“Oh, we talked a lot about her high school days. She told me about her various boyfriends. She talked a
bout being sexually harassed by the Geometry teacher, getting mono, all kinds of things. I told her about growing up with two older brothers who were basketball stars, and about getting a scholarship to play basketball at UofM, how I got into law enforcement and the romantic breakup that lead me to apply for the job here in Dover.”
Looking directly at Doug, Anne continued.
“We sort of girl-bonded, and then she mentioned that you were captain of the wrestling team, she was a cheerleader, and how the two of you had a hush-hush ‘friends with benefits’ sort of relationship for a while – that you were going steady with your future wife Beth, but that you and Ximena were hooking up pretty regularly, maybe once or twice a week for several months during your senior year. She seemed to enjoy telling me about your lack of faithfulness to your steady girl at the time, and how she seduced you.”
Doug looked sheepish and nodded his head.
“Anne, I’ve wanted to tell you about Ximena ever since I avoided the topic at our meeting with Jack Walker and the sheriff a while back. It was high school. I was a horny teenager and Beth was still in her virgin purity phase. Ximena made it clear she was interested, and I can’t say I resisted very hard. But that was a long time ago, and I’m a different person now.”
Anne looked at Doug with a confident grin and reached over to grab his hand. She stood up from her chair and pulling gently, began to lead him back toward the cabin.
“Don’t be so disappointed in yourself Doug – file it away as a youthful indiscretion. I know you, and I’m not that worried about you showing an interest in Ximena, or any other woman in town for that matter. I certainly don’t take you for granted, but I think I can hold your attention pretty well.”
Doug was about to reply when Anne let go of his hand and reaching up, unbuttoned the top button on her blouse. Turning toward the cabin, she looked back over her shoulder as she continued walking.
“Doug, I really think we need to be naked before continuing this conversation.”
Doug quickly agreed, and Anne’s suggestion proved to be brilliant. Their subsequent conversation in bed concluded on a very positive note after they had at length explored and rejected any possibility of Doug being distracted by Ximena or some other woman.
Just after midnight a heavy thunderstorm moved through the area. It failed to rouse either Anne or Doug from a deep sleep but did convince their dog Jack to once again jump up on their bed to seek shelter. He was still there, stretched out and snoring, when Jack Walker called at 3AM. Anne reached over Doug to retrieve her phone from the bedside table, eliciting a sleepy sigh of contentment as her breast brushed across his chest.
“Hey Jack, What’s up?”
“Sorry to call you guys in the middle of the night, but we’ve got a suspicious death up by Willimantic. I’m on my way out to John Eastman’s place – you know – the big place, near Earley Landing Falls, at the west end of the lake. We were up there last summer when they had some vandalism of their boats and boathouse.”
“I remember. Who’s the deceased?”
“It’s John Eastman. His wife called a few minutes ago. She just found him crushed under his pontoon boat out in his boathouse.”
“OK Jack – Doug and I are on our way – it should take a half hour or so once we get on the road. Keep everyone away from the garage – I’ll call the evidence response team down in Augusta and try to get them up here this morning, if possible.”
Anne had not met the dead man – John Eastman, when she and Jack Walker had responded to the Eastman’s vandalism report the previous summer. He was away on business and his wife Elizabeth had made the report. Anne remembered Elizabeth as a quiet, serious person who had been quite upset – Anne thought unusually so, given the relatively minor nature of the damage to the boathouse and boats. She suspected that Elizabeth Eastman’s anxiety was due not to the damage itself – several spray-painted obscenities, but rather to the reaction she expected from her husband on his return.
It was a big boathouse, with three mooring bays and Eastman’s office above. There was nothing else like it on the lake, and Eastman had bought the three-acre property with its rundown Victorian cottage and collapsed boathouse expressly for the boathouse. New construction of shoreline structures of any kind, including boathouses, were not permitted under current shoreline zoning regulations. This one, however, had been built back around 1900, and had been grandfathered in as an exception. After his purchase, Eastman had torn down the Victorian cottage and replaced it with a new architect-designed summer residence. A new boathouse was also constructed on the footprint of the original structure, but with substantial upgrades, including a second story office and motorized lifts for Eastman’s Chris Craft, Hacker Craft, and Gar Wood runabouts- classic wooden boats dating to the 1940s and 1950s.
Doug filled Anne in on what he knew about the dead man – John Eastman, during their drive west from her cabin over to Guilford, and then north to Willimantic. Their dog Jack, who objected to staying behind, slept soundly in the back seat.
“John built his summer place over by Earley Landing maybe five years ago. He and his wife come up here every summer. He was a real estate developer – hotels and strip malls. Made a huge amount of money and retired early. They spend their winters in California, I think – somewhere up north of San Francisco. He was a feisty sort of guy – short and stocky - a real fireplug of a man, but with boundless energy and enthusiasm. It didn’t take him long to become involved in community affairs and local politics here in Dover, making big donations at the local and state level, and supporting a number of charities and good causes. He was used to getting his way, and could be pushy, but also generous with his contributions. He was generally liked around town.”
Pulling Doug’s Cherokee in next to Jack Walker’s SUV, Anne and Doug were welcomed by the incessant pre-dawn calls of a Phoebe that had nested in the eaves of the Eastman’s house. Walker met them at the front door to the Eastman’s house, clearly concerned.
“I’m glad you’re here. Just to be on the safe side, I think we need to get Mrs. Eastman down to the hospital in town. She’s pretty much shut down – almost catatonic, which isn’t that surprising after discovering her husband’s body – it’s not a pretty sight.”
Anne nodded as she replied.
“Good idea Jack. See if you can contact a family member or close friend to be with her.”
“I’ve already contacted her sister, who lives over by Monson. She’s on her way.”
8.
Peter Martell and the ERT arrived at the Eastman’s place about ten that morning. A few minutes later the Lary Funeral Home vehicle out of Dover pulled up – it would transport Eastman’s body down to Augusta for autopsy after Martell’s team had finished processing the scene. Deciding not to enter the garage until the ERT arrived, Doug and Anne had searched the surrounding area for footprints or other evidence that might still be intact after the heavy rain the night before, with no success.
Martell and his team spent almost an hour in the garage before Doug and Anne were invited in to view the body of John Eastman. A bank of florescent ceiling lights harshly illuminated the interior of the garage. The floor was highly polished, perfectly clean concrete. Storage cabinets and workbenches covered with a variety of power tools lined the walls, and a massive pontoon boat dominated the center of the room. Four sturdy metal tripod stands had supported the boat, but it had somehow slipped off of one of them and pinned John Eastman beneath it.
He lay outstretched on his back, arms and legs akimbo, a wrench clasped in his right hand. His mandible was still intact, jutting upward at an angle, but most of the rest of his head was crushed flat and mostly hidden beneath one of the pontoon boat’s massive hulls. Blood and brain matter formed a coagulating pool that had oozed out from underneath
the hull.
Removing his crime scene coveralls, Peter Martell joined Anne and Doug next to the body and led them through what he suspected had taken place in the garage the preceding evening.
“First off – this was no accident, but it was staged to look like one. The killing was planned beforehand. It was premeditated but pretty poorly executed. We will have to check with his wife to find out what time he came out to the garage to work on the boat, but judging from the mud packed into the treads of his shoes, it was after it started raining last night. But that raises a question. If Eastman entered the garage with muddy shoes, why aren’t there any muddy shoe prints on the floor? The floor is spotlessly clean – no prints for either Eastman or his killer. It’s reasonable to conclude, I would say, that his killer waited for him outside, knocked him unconscious, and then carried him into the garage and positioned him on the floor where he is now. Removing their own shoes to avoid leaving prints that we could trace back to them, the killer made their first big mistake – forgetting about the missing footprints of their victim.”
Pointing to the pontoon that had crushed Eastman’s skull, Martell continued.
“The killer made their second mistake when they staged the crushing of Eastman’s head by the boat’s pontoon. It needed to be a direct hit, crushing the skull, in order to obliterate the evidence of the blow to the head they had delivered earlier, outside the garage. In spite of their efforts, and the crushed skull, I think there is a good chance the initial blow to the head will still be identifiable if the medical examiner knows what to look for. We’ll make sure to preserve Eastman’s crushed skull intact when they transport his body down to Augusta for the post-mortem.”
Walking over to the boat stand that lay on the floor right next to the victim and pointing to it, Peter picked up the narrative.
