by B. D. Smith
“OK Sherlock, lay it out for me.”
Relieved, and eager to see what Doug thought, Anne outlined her still half-formed suspicions as she drove back toward town.
“Elizabeth Eastman is no meek little housewife who tolerated her husband’s abuse and womanizing. I think she had planned this from way back. Her sister Mary is also involved, I would bet, and Mary’s partner Bob Lutz. When Liz’s loving husband dropped that outboard motor on her foot, ensuring she would need a cane for the rest of her life, I think Liz decided to have a cane custom made – a clunky thick cane that one day she could use to cave his head in. And the cane, with its loon-head handle and beaver-stick shaft, also served as a symbolic instrument of revenge for the hideous transformation that Eastman, Underwood, and Robertson were planning for Sebec Lake.”
Anne slowed to let a logging truck pull out from a side road and then continued.
“Liz must have somehow found out that her husband had managed to transfer the dark money from Robertson’s Deutsche Bank accounts into his own account, and that she and her sister’s dream of saving the north shore from development was now within reach. With her husband gone, the money would be Elizabeth’s to manage. So she followed him when he walked out to work on his boat that night and buried the loon-head handled cane in the back of his skull.”
“How did she get him into the garage?” Doug asked. “There were no footprints or marks on the floor.”
“Mary likely helped her carry him, or maybe Lutz.” Anne responded. “Once they had him positioned under the patio boat, they propped it up with the sturdy loon cane. Then they removed the original stand supporting the boat, and when they kicked the cane out, the pontoon dropped on his head. If we measure it, I bet the cane is in the thirty-seven to forty-inch length range that Peter Martell estimated.”
Anne paused briefly before continuing.
“And I bet that Mary and Liz learned that we knew Eastman had been murdered within hours of us figuring it out. While we were driving over to Monson to interview them, someone, my money is on Ted Height, had already been contacted and was on his way to burn Eastman’s boathouse and destroy any evidence that might implicate them.”
“But they would have had to set up the Eastman Foundation almost overnight in order to head off the Borestone Club plans.” Doug responded.
“Not necessarily. I bet if we check we will find that the foundation was set up years ago. Probably at Elizabeth’s urging. Liz and Mary could have been hoping to change Eastman’s mind at some point and talk him around to donating the land to the state rather than developing it.”
“You have motive and opportunity, Anne, now all you need is proof. Where’s your evidence? We didn’t find anything at the crime scene, and Eastman’s skull was turned into a pancake by that patio boat – we won’t find a nice loon shaped hole in the back of his head. I doubt the cane would have any remaining blood or bits of brain remaining on it, and if it’s in the length range you mentioned, so what? Unless some of the others who may have been involved decide to spill their guts to us, or Elizabeth decides to confess, we have nothing to work with.”
Anne frowned in agreement.
“Yeah, I know. We got nothin.”
“How about this.” Doug replied. “I’ll meet with my boss, Stan Shetler, along with someone from the criminal division of the attorney general’s office. I’ll run all this by them. Let’s see what they think.”
“We both know what they’ll say Doug. If we tell them we think the director of a major foundation here in Maine, who has just spent tens of millions of dollars of her foundation’s money in donating a huge chunk of prime real estate to the public trust, has also committed a murder, they’re gonna want to see some pretty convincing hard evidence to back up our suspicions.”
“Which we don’t have.” Replied Doug. “We might be able to make a case if we push hard on the investigation, but I don’t think we’ll get far. And any ongoing investigation could definitely throw a monkey wrench into the deal between the Eastman Foundation and the state. And if course there’s also the town to keep in mind. Elizabeth Eastman is close to beatification status now – she saved Sebec Lake from the forces of evil. If we go after her, the community will support her and turn against us in an instant.”
“That’s for sure.” Anne replied. “And what about the environmental groups and the politicians. I doubt the attorney general’s office would be keen on pressing the case, even if we did come up with strong evidence.”
They drove in silence for quite a while until Doug summed things up.
“I’ll set up an appointment with Shetler for tomorrow and talk to him face to face. No phone calls, no emails or texts on this – strictly face to face. My prediction – he’s going to shit his pants and tell me to immediately and forever cease any unfounded rumors about one of our most outstanding citizens being a murderer. Period. End of discussion.”
Doug met with his boss Stan Shetler and a representative from the attorney general’s office later in the week, and his prediction was borne out. Doug was given clear instructions to waste no more time or effort on actively pursuing the Eastman murder. There were other more pressing matters. If new evidence fell into his lap, or if Elizabeth Eastman or an accomplice confessed, then he could move forward. Otherwise, leave it alone.
. . .
Things pretty much got back to normal on Sebec Lake after the patio boat racers departed. In late July Bob Lutz announced that the Sebec Lake Association and the Kiwanis Club had reached agreement with ESPN on holding the fourth annual Sebec Patio Boat Challenge the following summer. Several open meetings had been held to solicit public comment, and the final plans involved moving the race entirely to the big lake – west of the narrows. The boat traffic and number of lakeshore cabins was much lower on the big lake, and by keeping the racecourse restricted to the center of the west basin there would be much less impact on the local community.
Next year the staging area for the race would be shifted from Merrill’s Marina at Greeley’s Landing over to Peaks-Kenny State Park. The fifty- six camp sites at the park would be reserved for race participants on race weekend. That wouldn’t accommodate all of the patio boat racers of course, and camp sites would be allotted on a first come, first served basis. Two hundred entries would be allowed again, with the overflow RVs and campers going to the Piscataquis Valley Fair Grounds. There would be only two classes of boat entries –those over twenty-two feet in length, and those twenty-two feet or less. Horsepower limits would stay the same. There would be no unlimited category of entries, no fat cat racers from away. There would be no powder puff class, and Alice Delaney was looking forward to defending her title in the unisex under twenty-two-feet class.
The race would also have a new logo – a Luna moth, which would appear on all the announcements and advertisements, and underscored the expectation of an absence of Water Rat pranks targeting race entrants. As for the Water Rats – through the summer the nature and number of their pranks returned to what they had been pre-race, with a single notable exception.
At about two in the morning on a Saturday night in mid-August, at the peak of vacation season, Doug and Anne woke when their dog Jack started barking from the foot of the bed. He had been disturbed by a light coming in the lakeside windows of Doug’s place on the north shore. When they looked out their bedroom window a bright light in the middle of the lake, a fire, was oddly moving slowly past their dock, illuminating Doug’s vintage Chris Craft as it past. Doug ran down to the dock and tried to start his boat, with no success. The next day he would find the distributor cap for his boat sitting on the dashboard of his jeep, where he would be sure to find it.
Looking out at the passing blaze, Doug realized it was a burning boat, like a Viking funeral ship, being slowly pulled on a
long line by a second small boat. The tow boat was almost silent and was only visible as a slightly darker shape leading the pyre boat off into the darkness. Doug couldn’t tell whose boat had been set on fire and was being towed for the late-night entertainment and edification of the lakeshore audience. It wouldn’t be until the next day that the burned hull of Wesley Fuller’s go-fast boat, widely reviled on the lake, would be found on the bottom near the narrows. The person who towed Fuller’s go-fast boat on its last late-night run was never identified. But when Anne ran into the fledgling at Will’s Shop ‘n Save a few weeks later, the teen proudly showed off her Luna moth tattoo.
About the Author
B.D. Smith is the award-winning author of a number of fiction and non-fiction books, including the highly-praised Doug Bateman Mystery series. He and his wife live outside of Santa Fe New Mexico in the winter, and in Bowerbank Maine in the summer.
Note from the Author
Word-of-mouth is crucial for any author to succeed. If you enjoyed Dead to the World, please leave a review online—anywhere you are able. Even if it’s just a sentence or two. It would make all the difference and would be very much appreciated.
Thanks!
B.D. Smith
We hope you enjoyed reading this title from:
www.blackrosewriting.com
Subscribe to our mailing list – The Rosevine – and receive FREE eBooks, daily deals, and stay current with news about upcoming releases and our hottest authors. Click below to sign up.
SUBSCRIBE HERE
Already a subscriber? Please accept a sincere thank you for being a fan of Black Rose Writing authors.
