“Whereas you’re probably ready to throw a rock through that window in sheer frustration. Let me guess—you’ve barely dared step outside, let alone swim or sunbathe, since you got here?”
“That about sums it up, and I’m sick to death of being cooped up, not to mention being damned tired of feeling scared all the time.” Angie turned on a lamp and sat on the sofa, gesturing for Liss to sit beside her.
“You’ll be safe once Martin Eldridge is in jail. With any luck, he already is.”
“How did you find out about him?” Angie asked.
“And what does he have to do with you being in hiding?” Boxer asked from the love seat where he and Beth had settled. “He’s a guest at the hotel, right? The one with the cane?”
Liss had forgotten that she hadn’t brought Boxer up to speed. When all the bits and pieces of information began to come together, her cousin had been elsewhere, preoccupied with his friend’s injuries and with trying to comfort Kent’s girlfriend.
“I’m betting it was Martin Eldridge who was responsible for everything that’s happened.” She turned back to Angie. “Did he come to Moosetookalook looking for you?”
Angie’s bleak expression confirmed her guess even before she spoke. “He’s been after me for twelve years, ever since I killed his daughter. She ran out into traffic, right in front of my car. She was roaring drunk at the time, but her father blamed me. After the police told him no charges would be filed against me, he threatened to kill my daughter in revenge for his. A few days later, Beth was almost run down in the street in front of our house.”
“Eldridge?”
Angie nodded. “The police couldn’t prove he was the one driving. In fact, he came up with an alibi for the time of the incident. He has money. It wouldn’t have been hard for him to find somebody to lie for him.” She sighed. “There was nothing more anyone could do until he tried again. I couldn’t take the chance he’d succeed on a second attempt. I took Beth and left town, even though Bradley was due any day.”
“You changed your name,” Liss said.
“Yes. My real name is Anne. Anne Howard.”
“What about your husband?”
“We’d just been divorced. I was granted full custody of Beth and our unborn child. I found out later that he remarried. He has no idea what happened to me or his kids. He doesn’t much care, either.”
“So there was a visit from a sister-in-law.”
Angie looked even sadder. “Yes. She was the only one who knew where I was. She died two years ago. Cancer.”
Was that how Arbuthnot had traced Anne Howard? Liss suspected it was, especially if Angie’s ex had inherited his sister’s effects.
“Beth was just a little bit of a thing when we settled in Moosetookalook, but she was old enough to know her real last name wasn’t Hogencamp. I’ve never hidden the truth from her, but I didn’t tell Bradley until this past week.”
Liss spared a glance for the boy, who was still busily killing space aliens.
“You probably wonder how I was able to create a new identity,” Angie said. “Let’s just say that my ex-husband isn’t the squeaky-clean businessman he pretended to be. I’d met a few of his associates, and I knew one of them could help me become someone else . . . for a price. Thanks to the divorce settlement, I was able to get hold of a healthy amount of cash.” Her lips twisted into a rueful grimace. “I meant to invest it in college funds for the kids, but it wouldn’t have helped them much if they weren’t alive to enjoy it.”
“Oh, Angie!” Liss’s heart broke for her.
Angie waved off the expression of sympathy. “Water under the bridge, and the bridge burned down long ago.” She heaved a sigh that told Liss, more clearly than words, that she was thinking of another, more recent fire. “I’d do anything to protect my kids. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t prove it was Martin Eldridge in that car. I knew it was him. When he threatened Beth, he meant it. I heard it in his voice. I didn’t dare take the risk that he’d try again and succeed.”
“So you disappeared.” It seemed an extreme solution to Liss, but she’d never been in Angie’s situation. Afraid for her child’s life. No husband. Pregnant. Liss could see how she might have felt she had no alternative.
“So I disappeared,” Angie agreed. “I picked a name out of a phonebook—opened the page to the Hs, closed my eyes, and jabbed it with my finger. After I had the necessary papers, identifying me as Angela Hogencamp and Beth as Elizabeth Hogencamp, and had given birth to Bradley in a hospital in upstate New York, I got hold of a map of the United States and used the same method to decide where to go next.”
“Your finger landed on Moosetookalook?” Boxer sounded skeptical.
Liss’s lips quirked. “Uh, Angie, I hate to tell you this, but Moosetookalook is way too small to show up on a map of the whole country. Heck, even Carrabassett County is too small for that.”
Angie shrugged. “I came to this general area and drove around, exploring. When I got to Moosetookalook, I spotted a building on the town square that was for sale. The price was right, so I bought it and opened up the bookstore. It seemed like a good idea at the time.” She shook her head. “No, it was a good decision. All the years I’ve lived here, I was never afraid of being found. Maybe I should have been.”
“When did Martin Eldridge turn up?”
“It was the day before the fire.” Angie stared off into space, seeing nothing. “I recognized him the moment I saw him. That face is burned in my memory. He was sitting on a bench in the town square, looking straight at the bookstore. He saw me clearly when I stepped out to get a breath of fresh air. Even at that distance, I saw the look in his eyes. The hatred. The rage. It was as if the last twelve years never happened. I was filled with the worst kind of panic. For a minute, I thought I might be having a heart attack.”
Liss squeezed her hand, silently offering her understanding and support.
“Well, I wasn’t. Obviously. But I was so afraid of what Eldridge might be planning to do that I told the kids to pack up what was most important to them and did the same myself. I went around the back way to Patsy’s to ask if we could hide out at her camp. It was the only place I could think of off the top of my head.”
“Did she already know your story?”
Angie shook her head. “Not then. I’ve told her most of it since, but that day I just said that someone from my past was after me and I needed to get out of sight. She was the one who suggested using the camp next door instead of hers. She took care of stocking it with groceries.”
That was the part Alex Permutter had overheard, Liss thought. A pity he hadn’t caught more of the conversation. He’d never have let anything slip to a stranger, but he might have told Sherri what he knew. Then they’d have been able to find Angie and her kids sooner and get them proper protection.
“We left as soon as it got dark,” Angie continued. “It’s a good thing we did. A few hours later, Eldridge torched the building.”
The sound of Beth’s quiet weeping reached Liss when Angie, overcome by emotion, abruptly stopped speaking. Hearing her story had quite a different effect on Liss—it engendered a slow-burning anger against the man with the cane. He’d hurt her friends. He, or the PI he’d hired, had killed an innocent bystander and nearly killed a second. There were no words adequate to describe what she thought of him.
Beside her, Angie stared out at the lake. Moonbeams played across the surface, but Liss doubted her friend noticed.
“After the fire proved I was right to be scared,” Angie continued in a low voice, “I was too frightened to talk to anyone, let alone make any accusations. Only Patsy knew where we were, and she agreed it made sense to stay put until we were sure Eldridge had left town. At first I thought I’d be able to return—maybe pretend I’d gone away for a few days and hadn’t heard about the fire—but the longer he stayed, the less chance there was that my fake identity would hold up.”
“It’s not illegal to call yourself by any name you like,�
�� Liss said. “I read that somewhere.”
“True. And I’ve paid income taxes under my own name, but I’m pretty sure I’ve broken a few laws along the way.”
“There were extenuating circumstances,” Liss insisted. “Even if you end up being charged with something, I bet you’ll only get probation, or maybe community service.”
“That’s so unfair,” Beth said.
Boxer, who had more than one relative who’d served time, stayed silent.
“No matter the consequences, Angie, you have to go to the police.”
“I can’t trust them. I had no proof Martin Eldridge tried to run Beth down all those years ago, and I have no proof now that he burned down my bookstore.”
“Maybe not, but that’s not all he’s done.”
“He tried to kill Kent Humphrey, Mom.” Beth’s voice was anguished. “Just because Kent might have seen him right after he killed Jason Graye.”
Angie looked to Liss for confirmation.
“It looks as if Eldridge, or the defrocked private investigator he hired, did a lot more than burn down your building.”
She listed all the crimes she suspected one or the other of them had committed, ending with the stabbing of Beth and Boxer’s friend Kent. By the time she was done, Angie’s face, already pale, had lost every vestige of color.
“He was looking for us. That’s why all the rest happened. Maybe if we hadn’t gone into hiding—”
“If you hadn’t hidden, you’d be dead.”
Liss’s blunt words snapped Angie out of her guilt trip. More than that, they finally convinced her that she had to talk to the police.
* * *
Edgar Arbuthnot, aka Eliot Underhill, was not impressed by the charges thrown at him by a rural chief of police. He held onto his cocky attitude even when faced with a state police detective. With a laugh, he waived his right to have an attorney present during questioning.
“An innocent man doesn’t need a lawyer,” he insisted.
Stupid, Sherri thought. He had to know Gordon Tandy was investigating a homicide. She felt certain that the prisoner was not as innocent as he claimed, but if he could be persuaded to give evidence against the man who’d employed him, both Eldridge and Arbuthnot would get what they deserved.
She kept her thoughts to herself. She was also careful to stay out of Gordon Tandy’s line of sight. He could order her out of the interview room at the county jail if he chose. She did not intend to give him any reason to do so.
“You were hired by one Martin Eldridge?” Gordon asked.
“That’s right. He wanted me to find a woman named Anne Howard. I traced her to Moosetookalook.” He didn’t say how. Sherri doubted his methods had been entirely within the law.
“I’m surprised you accompanied Eldridge here. Wasn’t your job done when you found her?”
“I came at my client’s request. Hey—free vacation at a luxury resort hotel. Who’s going to pass that up?”
“Where’s Eldridge now?”
“No idea. My job for him was finished, and I was on my way home when I was unfortunate enough to be in a traffic accident.”
“You attacked Officer Jennings.”
“Just defending myself.”
Gordon shuffled some papers on the table between them and glanced at a report. “It appears that your registration as a private investigator was revoked some time ago. In fact, you are currently facing prosecution for falsifying information on that registration and the business license that went with it.” Gordon waited a beat, long enough for Arbuthnot’s overconfidence to start to slip. “Even if you had been legally licensed in Virginia, there is no reciprocity with the state of Maine.”
Arbuthnot/Underhill answered this with a defiant stare.
“So,” Gordon said, “who set the fire at the bookstore in Moosetookalook? You or Eldridge?”
“Hey, I’m no firebug.”
“Eldridge, then?”
“I didn’t see him do it, but yeah. Who else would want to torch the place?”
“And yet you stayed on after that incident.”
“Look, here’s the thing. I was supposed to be done with the job when I located the woman and her two kids. Eldridge insisted I come with him until he could verify their identities. He wouldn’t pay me otherwise. Then, when they turned up missing after the fire, he said he wouldn’t shell out the cash unless I found out where they were hiding.”
“I’ll bet he was fit to be tied when he heard there were no fatalities.”
Arbuthnot clammed up, too smart to admit that he knew Eldridge had intended for Angie and her children to die in the fire. Confessing to that knowledge would definitely have made his subsequent search for them the act of an accomplice rather than an “innocent” employee.
“Who broke into the post office?” Gordon asked.
“Eldridge.” This time his answer was prompt, if not necessarily truthful.
“Why?”
The prisoner shrugged. “It was because of something I overheard at the coffee house. The Howard woman was in the habit of mailing anniversary cards to this friend of hers. These two women were talking, making it sound like the card was probably already in the mail. It was a long shot, but I . . . that is, Eldridge figured that if there was a card, there might also be a return address or postmark. Turned out to be a waste of time to go looking for it. Letters. Bills. Catalogs. Flyers. Not a single envelope the size of a greeting card in the whole damned post office.”
Liss had been right, Sherri thought. Sometimes her guesses were uncannily accurate.
“But you weren’t the one who broke in?” Gordon sounded skeptical, as well he should.
Arbuthnot spread his hands wide and tried for a “who, me?” expression on his snub-nosed face. “I’m just telling you what Eldridge told me. He did all the dirty work himself. I just provided him with information.”
“Why did you register at the hotel under an assumed name?”
“Common practice.” His sudden interest in studying his own long, thin fingers gave away the lie in that claim.
“Whose idea was it to break into Jason Graye’s house?”
In the long silence that followed Gordon’s question, Sherri sat forward in her chair. Arbuthnot had started to sweat. His hair was cut so short that his scalp showed through. She could see the tiny beads of moisture there and on his neck.
“Were you there?” Gordon asked.
“No! Don’t go accusing me of murder. You’ve got no grounds.”
“Oh?”
“I didn’t know anything about it until it was all over. I swear it. Eldridge got this wild hair about empty houses in the area. He was sure the Howard woman had to be close by. I don’t know why he was so convinced of that. If I’d been her, I’d have been long gone.”
“So Eldridge broke into Graye’s house because he was a real estate agent?”
Arbuthnot nodded. “Right. Right. Broke in. Meant to go through the listings. I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t there.”
“You didn’t get rid of the gun?”
“I didn’t even know Eldridge had a gun.”
“What about a knife?”
“I don’t know anything about any weapon.”
“But you knew someone had been murdered. You just said so.”
At the least, he was an accessory after the fact, Sherri thought. Maybe before the fact, too.
Arbuthnot was well aware of how shaky his position was. Perspiration dotted his upper lip. “You can’t pin that guy’s death on me. Or what happened to that kid at the Highland Games, either. I had no idea what Eldridge was up to.”
“You weren’t the one who told him he might have been seen leaving the scene of the crime? You were deep in conversation about something at the games. You were seen.”
“He already . . . I mean I was just trying to get my pay. For finding the Howard woman in the first place.”
Gordon’s voice was so cold that it made Sherri shiver just to hear it. “Here’s
what I think happened, Mr. Arbuthnot. You knew your employer had killed Jason Graye. You knew he’d spotted someone who might have seen him that night. Maybe you tried to talk him out of a second murder. Maybe not.”
“I don’t know anything about that kid that got stabbed. I’d already checked out of the hotel.”
Gordon shook his head. “You’d paid for two more nights. You and Eldridge both cut your stays short. Nothing to say when you actually left the grounds, though.”
And how, Sherri wondered, had he known Kent was stabbed if he hadn’t been there?
The suspect lapsed into sullen silence. Sherri had a hard time containing her disgust for him. He hadn’t been bothered by Eldridge’s crimes, not even murder. Only now that he’d been caught and implicated was he attempting to distance himself from his client’s actions.
“Do you know where Martin Eldridge is now?” Gordon asked for the second time.
The shady PI from Virginia swallowed convulsively and used his sleeve to swipe at his sweaty face. “If I knew, I’d tell you.”
This time Sherri believed him.
Then he lawyered up.
* * *
It was full dark by the time Liss and Angie set out for the Moosetookalook police station. With the aid of flashlights, they followed the path through the trees to Patsy’s camp to retrieve Liss’s car. The plan was for Boxer to stay with Beth and Bradley while their mother met with Sherri Campbell.
“I don’t know about this, Liss,” Angie protested as she opened the passenger-side door. She looked spooked as she swiveled her head, peering into the shadows as if she expected an ax-wielding maniac to leap out at them. “Are you sure it’s safe?”
“You need to talk to Sherri in person. What you can tell her will add weight to the case against Eldridge and his flunky. It could mean the difference between keeping them in jail and letting them get out on bail.”
Bail was next to impossible in Maine if the charge was murder, but Liss wasn’t sure the police had enough evidence to make that one stick. If they didn’t, the crime of arson would have to be enough to keep Eldridge behind bars. Once he was safely locked up, Angie and her children would be out of danger.
Kilt at the Highland Games Page 22
