Storm Cell

by Brendan DuBois

  I slowly walked out into the center of the offices. All the desks were empty. I brought up my right hand and slipped to the side, going into Russ Gilman’s office.

  Nobody was home. Nobody was around. I guess it made sense to re-holster my Beretta, but it was a comfort to hold it out into the open. Something wasn’t right; something was amiss. There were no bodies and no blood spatter on the floor or the walls, but something was telling me that not all was well here at the Port Harbor Realty Association. Maybe it was the way the furniture was arranged, or the lighting, but something was off, like the concrete slab holding up this little strip mall had tilted some.

  I went back into Russ’s office. There were three sets of black filing cabinets to the left, and in the middle, a drawer was slightly open. With a handkerchief-covered finger, I drew it open. The drawer was stuffed with green file folders, but there was a gap about two-thirds back.

  Something had been taken away. I quickly scanned the other file folders, saw purchase and sales agreements, paperwork on home inspections, perk tests, and everything else that came with either purchasing or selling real estate. And whatever filing system was in place seemed to be unique. PINE TREE ESTATES was next to the gap, and after that, JUNIPER RIDGE DEVELOPMENT. Maybe if I dug further I could puzzle out a pattern. You see that all the time in television or movies, where the dogged hero manages to figure out in five minutes or less what the missing file was all about.

  I didn’t feel dogged at the moment.

  I looked closer at his office furniture. Russ’s chair was on the other side of the room, not in front of his desk. I gave it a closer look, and then looked at the wall behind it. A fresh dent in the wallboard, like the chair had been violently pushed to the rear.

  I stepped out, looked at Carol the receptionist’s desk.

  Something wasn’t right there as well.

  I took a few steps and saw it on the carpeted floor: her US Marine Corps coffee mug, shattered into thick ceramic pieces. I squatted down and took a quick glance. If the mug had just fallen off the desk, all right, I could see it breaking into a couple of pieces.

  But this?

  Somebody had broken it—hard—on purpose, like they were throwing it to the ground, making a point.

  As I slowly stood up, an office phone rang, nearly making me jump so high that my head would have bumped into the ceiling.

  The phone rang, and rang, and rang.

  Should I answer it?

  Beretta in one hand, handkerchief in the other, I picked up the phone, started to say hello, and then caught myself. “Port Harbor Realty Association.”

  A second passed. “Is Carol there?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t quite hear you.”

  “Carol Moynihan. Is she there?”

  “May I ask who’s calling?”

  Another second. “No.”

  A click as the phone was hung up on the other end.

  I did the same here.

  Through the windows I could see traffic going by, either heading to or coming from the traffic circle. A white GMC sedan pulled up in front of the bridal boutique, and a four-pack of laughing young ladies tumbled out and headed straight to the store.

  Could something have happened here, in this office, without anybody noticing?

  Perhaps.

  I slipped out of the office, back to the break room, opened up the door leading out to the rear. The area back here was narrow, the far end running into another access lane to the front parking lot.

  Could something have happened back here, without anybody noticing?

  Absolutely.

  And speaking of noticing, it was time to get out of here.

  I got into my Pilot, headed out to the state road that led to the traffic circle. Traffic was moving by at a fair clip, and I had to wait for a break to let me in. Next to me was an Irving gas station, with an ice dispensary, a bottled gas dispensary, and rarity of rarities, a payphone.

  Traffic broke. I got out and headed to the traffic circle. Maybe I should call it in, what I had seen at the real estate office.

  And what would that be?

  I got into the rotary, moved slowly because of the vehicles whizzing by.

  To say something bad had happened there, that’s what.

  And what’s that?

  I missed the exit that would have taken me south to Tyler.

  Who knows? Let the Porter police straighten it out.

  But suppose that nice comic guy remembers you, and what you were driving, and saw you at the real estate shop. Later today, instead of working to help Felix get off, you’d be in police custody, answering questions.

  I missed the exit again. I was beginning to get dizzy.

  All right, that Russ Gilman guy looked pretty slippery, but what about his receptionist, Carol? You going to let her be in harm’s way because you’re so focused on your Felix mission? Is that it? Is that who you are?

  I finally took an exit.

  Got back on the state road, and after a U-turn, I pulled into the Irving gas station.

  It took just a minute, most of which was spent trying to find a quarter, until I recalled that payphones don’t require payment for 911. I dialed the three digits, got quickly speaking to a dispatcher, and said, “Something’s wrong at the Port Harbor Realty Association office, just off the traffic circle.”

  Then I was rude, hanging up on the young male dispatcher, but that rudeness was outweighed by the knowledge that I had done the right thing.

  As I got into my Pilot, my cell phone rang, and my first thought was that doing the right thing just got me nailed by the Porter police. Maybe it was Detective Josephs or one of his fellow detectives, telling me that through some communications voodoo, I had just been caught as the one making the anonymous phone call.

  I looked at the phone’s display screen. A Tyler phone number, one I didn’t recognize.

  “Hello?”

  “Mr. Cole?”

  “Yes?”

  A sigh or sob, I couldn’t make it out. “Oh God, I’m so glad I called you. It’s Brianna Moore.”

  Fletcher’s daughter, my breakfast date from this morning. “Brianna, what’s wrong?”

  “I . . . I came home a while ago, and I was going to do what you asked. I wanted to check out Dad’s office. I . . . I surprised someone, someone in the house. I ran away.”

  “Are you all right?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Where are you?”

  “At the neighbor’s, the Barnes’. Nobody’s home but I’m hiding behind their garage.”

  “Give me the address, I’ll be there, quick as I can.”

  She did that, and I sped out of the gas station parking lot, and when I got into the traffic circle, I did not hesitate and immediately headed south.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It should have taken twenty minutes but I think I did it in just under fifteen. The Moore house was in a sweeping development that was off Winnicut Road, one of three main roads leading from the town proper down to Tyler Beach. I slowly drove by a big two-story colonial, stained brown, with a granite-based lamppost and a mailbox with MOORE painted on the side. I drove past the house, went into a driveway whose mailbox said BARNES. This house was a colonial as well, a twin to its neighbor, but it was painted white with black shutters.

  Before I was able to put the Pilot into park, Brianna Moore ran out from behind the garage and threw herself into the front seat. “God,” she said, panting some. “You said you’d be quick, and you were.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Scared out of my wits, but yes, I’m all right.”

  “Did you call the Tyler police?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. It was like I knew you wanted something from Dad’s offices, and if something was going on, I wanted to tell you first.”

  “Did he see you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  I put the Pilot in park, shut off the
engine. “Could he still be inside?”

  “I . . . I suppose.”

  “Where’s your dad’s office?”

  “You go in the front door, it’s off to the right.”

  I undid my seatbelt.

  “You still have your cell phone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “If I’m not back in five minutes, call the Tyler police. Don’t wait.”

  “Okay.”

  I got out, and with my pistol in hand, I ran across the front lawns of both houses, up to the front door of the Moores’. There were wide granite steps leading up, and I took them in a single leap and then slowly pushed the door open. The door was thick and well maintained, with no squeaking noise to announce my presence. Before me was a hardwood floor entrance, to the left, an enormous kitchen, and beyond that, a very well-made-out living area. Off to the side was a curving staircase heading up, and I moved to the right, hugging the wall, going to Fletcher Moore’s office.

  The thick, carved wooden door was slid open. The office had a nice wooden desk, wooden filing cabinets and bookcases, and three windows, two looking out to the rear yard, the other looking past the attached garage and to bushes surrounding the Barnes residence.

  There was a guy with his back to me, examining paperwork on the desk. He had on black jeans, black sneakers, a black zippered jacket that seemed open, and a watch cap pulled tight over his head. The watch cap was navy blue. I guess the visitor didn’t want to be dull and wear the same color everywhere.

  I leaned against the doorjamb, raised my pistol in both hands, and quietly said, “Hey.”

  No hesitation on the visitor’s part.

  He pushed something against his chest, zippered up the jacket, and ran to the near window.

  “Hey!” I called out, and I quickly saw what I had missed: one of the windows overlooking the rear yard was open. The burglar or intruder or whatever the hell you wanted to call him gracefully dove through the window and was gone. I swore and moved to the window, and I saw a shadow disappear into the woods.

  Impressive.

  I didn’t like it one bit, but I had to admire the skill set.

  I holstered the Beretta and went back out to get Brianna.

  The two of us toured the house, and after seeing that nothing else seemed to be disturbed or taken, we ended up back in the office. I looked at the desk and saw that there were some advertising flyers for the YES ON 13! town warrant article, and nothing much else. Whatever the visitor was examining as I came in was now stuck under a black zippered coat.

  Brianna peered inside an open drawer of the near wooden filing cabinet and sat down in one of the captain’s chairs situated in front of Moore’s desk.

  “I suppose it’s too much to expect that you know what’s gone.”

  “Christ, no,” she said, folding her arms. “Don’t you remember me saying earlier that this was forbidden territory for me and my sister? Hell, ever since his death, I’ve been in here more times than all of the years before.”

  The office looked well used and laid out, a sort of man cave, if that’s what it could be called, except there was no widescreen television with the ability to see the facial pores of a Red Sox pitcher on the mound. “Once, maybe six or seven years ago,” Brianna went on, “there was some sort of cable TV movie on, the kind they run at Thanksgiving and Christmas. The one about families in crisis, coming together during the holidays to reestablish their love and faith in each other, blah blah blah. On this program, the dad was a stay-at-home businessman, caught up in his work, and one day his little girls burst into his office and fight over who gets to sit in his lap, and he hugs ’em both and sees the light.”

  She paused, squeezed herself tighter. “I turned and said to Dad—and maybe I was joking, but not totally—and I said, ‘Hey, is it all right if Justine and I come in tomorrow and do that?’ And he must have had too much wine because he snapped right back, ‘Me and that office and being alone keeps you two brats in clothes and dolls. So stay away.’ So I did.”

  Her face was red and her lips trembled, and I turned to give her a moment, and she said, “Did you know my dad, Mr. Cole?”

  “The name is Lewis, and no, not really.”

  “What do you mean, not really?”

  “I met him once. Last year.”

  A year ago there was a town function honoring two public works guys and a Tyler cop who had worked together to rescue an elderly woman driver who had gotten confused and turned over her Toyota Camry in a ditch just off of Landing Road, said ditch being in a salt marsh, with the tide coming in.

  The public works guys were first on the scene, followed by the Tyler cop, and wading in the stench and the mud, they managed to lift up the overturned car some—to this day there’s still folks in Tyler amazed they were able to do it—and pull the woman to dry land before the tide came in. Funny story that didn’t make it into the papers is that while she was on the dirt and grass embankment, getting checked over by the cop while waiting for the EMTs from the Tyler Fire Department to arrive, she had seen the tide start to carry off her car and said, “Hey! You sons of bitches! Get down there and save my fucking car!”

  The story was known but not printed, and I knew that because I was at the celebration with Paula Quinn. Her boyfriend was out of town and she asked me to keep her company, which I was glad to do. The event was held at the junior high gym and there were drinks and trays of snacks prepared by the Ladies Auxiliary of the American Legion, along with some churchwomen, and there were speeches and applause, and then Fletcher Moore gave one more speech, and maybe he was slightly drunk or had the gift of speech greatly polished that night, but he talked about his ancestor Jedidiah Moore, one of the first settlers to Tyler back in 1638, and how the Moores had done their part to make Tyler a welcoming and better place for people on this stretch of the New Hampshire seacoast.

  He talked about the Moore who gave land to the town for a new church, the three Moores who left and the one who came back during the Civil War, the Moore who fought in World War I and whose wife—a nurse—helped patients in town during the influenza pandemic of 1919. Then Fletcher’s dad and uncle served in World War II and then Korea, and at all times, they were always active in the politics and events of Tyler.

  While this had been going on, the idle chatter and conversation in the gym started to fade away, as more and more of the folks realized Fletcher was saying something special. I was standing at the rear of the gym, and Paula was next to the police chief on the other side, and as Fletcher continued his talk, I had noted a bleep-bleep noise.

  Standing behind me, leaning up against the cinder-block wall, was a young man, late teens perhaps, who was playing some sort of computer game on his phone. With the rest of the crowd growing quiet, the bleeping and blooping were a distraction. I leaned back to him and said, “Show some respect. Put it away.”

  He looked up, frowned. “For real?”

  I grabbed it out of his hands, surprising him, and shoved it in my coat. The bleeping and blooping were muffled. “Very much for real.”

  Up on stage, Fletcher’s hands were tightly gripping the edges of the lectern, and he finally said, “We’ve lived on this stretch of seacoast for more than three hundred years. Our past has been sometimes noble, sometimes tragic—especially when it came to how we treated the natives who lived here before our ancestors came from Europe—but Tyler and its beach. There’s nothing like it in the world. And its people . . .”

  Now tears came to his eyes. “The people. Not just the ones who work for us, who we pay with our taxes, who are often heroes when duty calls. No, it’s the volunteers. The ones who support the library. Coach the youth baseball in the summer. Run the town museum. Who do more than just live here. Who make this place a place we can all be proud of. Thank you, thank all of you.”

  Applause and a few cheers were let loose, and I returned the phone to the still-frowning young man, and in the bustle and movement, and when I was trying to find Paula Quinn, I found myself in fro
nt of Fletcher Moore.

  I held out my hand. “Grand speech, Fletcher.”

  He eyed me and said, “Lewis. Shoreline writer, correct?” He shook my hand, gave me a hearty smile. “Getting a compliment about my words from a writer, well, that just made my night. Thank you very much.”

  I said he was welcome, but by then, he had turned and was shaking somebody else’s hand.

  Now I said to Brianna, “Do you want to call the police?”

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “It might give you peace of mind, if nothing else. At least there’ll be a report, and maybe an investigation.”

  “But this wasn’t a random break-in.”

  “No,” I said. “But the burglar might come back, if he thinks he hasn’t gotten what he needed. He probably thought that with the trial going on, the house would be empty.”

  She nodded. “All right. I’ll do that.” She looked around the room and said, “You know, you think I’d be nervous, or feel like my house has been violated, but this room, it was always off-limits. Guy who came here could have taken everything and I wouldn’t have minded one bit.”

  When Brianna said she’d be fine talking to Tyler’s finest by herself, I got into the Pilot and went to the Tyler Post Office, once again disappointed at not receiving one of those pleasant-looking envelopes with a clear window and typed name and address that meant a check was enclosed. With that constant disappointment behind me, I headed home and then pulled over on Atlantic Avenue, about two minutes away from my house. I left the engine running, looked out at the never-ending and never-forgetting Atlantic Ocean.

  It had been a busy day, starting with that shot through two of my windows back home, having an informative luncheon with Paula Quinn, going up to Porter to see the Port Harbor Realty Association emptied out, and then zipping back to Tyler to find someone ransacking Fletcher Moore’s office.

  But why now?

  It seemed a lot of things were in movement, were being pushed and pulled out there by a person or people unknown. I wasn’t sure what they were up to, but I had a pretty good idea why it had started.