by Jen Blood
“Even if it turns out my old man was a card-carrying psycho who used to party with Charlie Manson himself?” I asked.
He smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “Even then.”
Part II: Black Falls
Chapter Six
We hit the requisite stops on the way through the Midcoast: coffee and scones in the vault at the Thomaston Highlands, the best ice cream in the state at Dorman’s for dessert, and a quick stop at Rockland’s Loyal Biscuit so Einstein could rub elbows with Chuck, sniff out the latest cats up for adoption, and pick out some choice treats for the trip. Once we were well down the road on Route 1, I got out my cell phone and dialed Max Richards’ number. Max himself answered on the second ring.
“Ms. Solomon,” he said smoothly. “Sorry I missed you last night. Did you find everything you needed?”
Not by a long shot, but I kept that to myself. “Actually, I was calling about your…” I wasn’t sure what to call her. Housekeeper seemed wildly off the mark, but guest didn’t seem right, either. “Bonnie. I need to speak with her.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line, during which the cockatiel let out a couple of ear-piercing shrieks. Between the bird and the prison alarm, it wasn’t a good day for eardrums.
“She’s not here, I’m afraid,” he said.
“Do you know when she’ll be back?”
“I don’t, sorry. I woke up this morning and she was gone—took the dogs and everything. No note. Nothing. She does that sometimes. Eventually she’ll be back.”
“Do you have a number where I could reach her?”
He chuckled. “Bonnie isn’t really the cell phone type. You might consider sending a message out to the universe… She’ll find you if it’s important.”
I asked him a couple of questions about the Gendreau case and Ashley’s death, not really paying attention to his answers. Bonnie Saucier was missing. I thought of what she’d said to me: It’s G. you need to watch for. He’ll be looking for you.
Who the hell was G?
◊◊◊◊◊
We traveled Route 1 up to 1A, past farm stands and pickup trucks selling fresh lobster and crab on the side of the road, past bookstores and bars and all the picture-postcard scenes that continue to make Maine one of my favorite destinations. I shed my shoes and rode with my bare feet on the dash while Springsteen blared from Diggs’ formidable car stereo and memories of a hundred drives much like this ran through my head. The sun was shining and the Atlantic was a pure, deep blue that we traveled alongside for as long as possible before I convinced Diggs there was no way in hell we were adding three hours to the journey so he could avoid the highway in favor of a summer jaunt along Route 1.
“You were a lot more fun when you were younger, you know,” he said.
“You just think that because you were always high back then,” I said. “I’ve never actually been that much fun.”
He didn’t argue with that.
I fell asleep sometime after the sixth moose crossing sign on I-95. When I woke up, it was just after two o’clock and Diggs was leaving 95 for Route 1 up in Houlton. We stopped at a scale model of Saturn so Einstein could pee, then ate a late lunch on the hood of Diggs’ Jeep while summer traffic whizzed by and birds chirped and bees buzzed. Diggs got his old Gazetteer and half a dozen other faded maps from the glove compartment and hopped up beside me again.
“I didn’t think they actually made those anymore,” I said.
“Don’t mock. These things have gotten me a lot of places over the years.” He opened the Gazetteer to Maine and handed a topographic map to me. Most of Aroostook County was covered with an old coffee stain, and a deep burgundy streak obliterated much of Piscataquis.
“I’m getting you a GPS for your next birthday. What happened to this thing?”
“Roadside mishap.” He looked downright nostalgic. “Have I taught you nothing, Sol? GPS is for people who don’t appreciate that travel’s all about the journey. Logging roads, caves, fire towers, the American dream… Try to find that with GPS.”
“That’s because most of those logging roads and fire towers don’t exist anymore. And I’m pretty sure even Hunter S. gave up looking for the American dream a while ago.”
He heaved a weary sigh. “You disappoint me. The day they invent a GPS that can evoke the same feelings a moldering map can, I’ll be first in line to get one. Now—Where the hell are we going? On a need-to-know basis, I feel like I should be in the loop at this point.”
I pulled a wrinkled newspaper clipping from my pocket and handed it to him. He read it silently, then glanced at me.
“Where’d you get this?” he asked.
“It was in with the files I took from Max Richards’ place.”
“Why was Erin Lincoln’s obituary with Hank Gendreau’s files?”
“Good question, isn’t it? I looked up the cemetery they mention in there—where she and her family are buried. I’d like to start there.”
I could feel him looking at me, but I kept my gaze fixed on the coffee-stained County. Diggs slid back to the ground and held out his hand. I took it just long enough for my flip flops to hit the dirt before I pulled away.
“So, you don’t mind? I don’t know how much we’ll actually find out there.”
“I don’t mind,” he said. “It’s a good idea—a place to start, anyway.”
I doubted that, actually, but I didn’t say anything. We got back in the Jeep, and neither of us spoke while we drove the rest of the way up Route 1, toward an abandoned cemetery that held a family I’d never even known I had.
It turned out to be a good thing that Diggs had packed his Gazetteer, because there was no way in hell GPS ever would have found the Forest Grove Cemetery. We turned off Route 1 about ten miles south of Black Falls, onto a steep, overgrown dirt road that led up a forty-five degree incline into no man’s land. It was late afternoon, the sun still high in the sky, but minimal light made it through the canopy of thick forest. After about ten minutes creeping along a barely discernible dirt road, I spotted a lopsided, rough-hewn gravestone.
“Hang on—I think that’s it.”
I got out and made straight for the trees while Diggs was still trying to figure out where to pull over. The grave belonged to Jason Saucier, who’d died in 1922. That stone marked the beginning of a rough path littered with Bud cans and cigarette butts. I forged ahead without waiting for Einstein or Diggs, following the path to a cluster of lichen-covered headstones scattered seemingly haphazard in an overgrown field. Wildflowers grew in knots of color. Bees buzzed. A mosquito the size of my thumb set up camp just below my left ear until I had the presence of mind to swat it.
I kept walking.
Diggs and Einstein caught up to me somewhere along the line. Sweat trickled down the back of my neck and my t-shirt clung to the small of my back. The forest got thicker, as did the mosquitoes and blackflies. The trail of beer cans and butts dried up. I could hear water rushing somewhere nearby.
“You’re sure it’s out here?” Diggs asked.
“It should be,” I said.
When it was clear that Erin Lincoln’s grave wasn’t among the ones we’d found so far, I followed a path deeper into the woods. Einstein ran on ahead, while Diggs lingered behind. We’d gone about fifty yards beyond the first graveyard when the path opened up again. I came out of the woods to find myself at the edge of another overgrown field, this one on a hillside. A single crumbling headstone was planted halfway down the hill. Through a grove of spruce at the bottom, I could see and hear white water rushing past. I stopped and crouched to read the stone.
Wallace Lincoln
1925 – 1972
Jeff and Erin’s father. Erin Lincoln’s headstone wasn’t there, but I didn’t have to look far before I found it. At the bottom of the hill were two immaculate gravesites overlooking a waterfall that dropped into a clear, peaceful stretch of the Aroostook River. The cemetery plot had been mowed recently, and fresh wildflowers decorated both graves.
The headstones were made of marble. Both were elegant, oversized, and undoubtedly expensive.
The stone to the left belonged to Willa Lincoln—my grandmother, or so the theory went. According to Erin Lincoln’s obituary, Willa had died of pneumonia in ‘68. The inscription said simply, Taken too soon. The second stone belonged to Erin Rae Lincoln. Below her name, etched in an elegant script, were the words, A better world awaits.
Diggs came over and stood beside me silently.
“You okay?” he asked.
I didn’t trust my voice, so I just nodded. There was no evidence of Jeff Lincoln here—no sign that anyone mourned his passing, or missed him in his absence. No sign that he’d existed at all.
“Someone’s been taking care of it,” I noted when I could finally speak.
Diggs pointed into the woods to our left. It took me a second before I saw what he was pointing to: a cabin, just barely visible from our vantage. A quick look around revealed a path leading straight to it.
“It doesn’t seem vaguely creepy that there’s a house out here in the middle of nowhere, and the only neighbors for twenty miles are…”
“Dead?” Diggs finished for me. “It’s a hell of a lot more than vaguely creepy, but I don’t see a lot of choices here. If you want to talk to the crypt keeper, this looks like the best bet.”
I hated it when he was logical. “Right. Absolutely right.”
I whistled for Einstein, who came galloping toward us a few seconds later, delirious at his newly-earned freedom after almost eight hours on the road. I started down the path to the house. When I realized I was alone, I glanced over my shoulder.
“Are you coming?”
Diggs grimaced. “I don’t know how I keep ending up in situations like this with you.”
“Suck it up,” I said. “Do you know how long I tagged after you on your undercover stories from hell? How many creepy freaks I distracted with my feminine wiles while you got your scoops?”
“Ahh. The good old days.” He nodded, resolute, and hurried to catch up. “You’re right. Let’s do this thing.”
The cabin had a garden out back and flowers out front and three goats and a lame donkey in a fenced area off to the side. Deep-throated barking came from within the second my feet touched the doorstep. Diggs put Einstein’s leash back on and held him a few steps back while I knocked.
A tall, sturdy man who could have been thirty or could have been sixty answered. His eyes were dark and his beard freshly trimmed. When he saw me, he took a step back and just stared, an unmistakable simplicity in his eyes. He wore a meticulously pressed, peach-colored dress shirt beneath a pair of equally well-pressed overalls. He remained in the doorway staring at us with his mouth open before he suddenly turned his head and shouted over his shoulder.
“Sarah!”
I looked at Diggs, who just shrugged. A huge, shaggy white dog peered out at us from behind the man’s left hip. Einstein whined behind me. The man shouted the same name again—twice—without ever making a move to let us in. Or shut us out, for that matter. The shaggy dog pushed past him and padded out to meet us with tail wagging. Einstein took one look at her and his dogged heart was a goner. While we waited for this mysterious Sarah to appear, the two dogs did a quick sniff test before Diggs unhooked Stein and they took off for the wild blue.
Eventually, a woman as tall and twice as broad as the man at the door appeared from the back, spitting what was either pig Latin or pissed-off French.
She stopped the second she saw me, blinked once or twice, then pulled the man away from the door and took his place, her hands on her wide hips.
“What you want here?” She had the voice of a lifetime smoker, an impressive growth of crisp black hairs sprouting from her fleshy chin, and a much thicker version of the same Acadian accent I’d heard from Bonnie.
“We were just up at the cemetery there,” I said, pointing over my shoulder. “We saw the path leading here. I thought you might be able to answer some questions.”
“Non,” she said briefly. The man was standing behind her with his arms crossed over his chest, still staring at me. “We have work, oui? No time for tourists.” She started to close the door.
I stuck my foot in the door without a moment’s hesitation. “I’m here about Erin Lincoln—she was my aunt. Or she would have been, anyway. You knew her, didn’t you?” I addressed the man directly. “That’s why you’re looking at me that way. You see the resemblance?”
“We don’t have nothing to say about it,” the woman insisted.
“Jeff was ton pere?” the man asked. He took a step toward me.
“He didn’t use the name Jeff when he had me, but I think so, yes. I came here to find out more about him. About what happened here.”
“We don’t know about what happened,” Sarah said. “And we have work.”
The man touched her shoulder and said something in rapid-fire French, his eyes on me the whole time. I didn’t need to speak the language to know he was pleading my case.
“Please,” I said. “I won’t take that much of your time.”
She looked like she’d rather have lunch with a rabid mountain lion, but she finally opened the door again and stepped aside.
We were in.
I’d been expecting slasher-movie chic when Diggs first pointed out the cabin, but what we found inside was anything but: a mud room that opened into a sunny, spacious great room with oversized windows and plants on every surface. Matted black-and-white photos—a few landscapes, but most of wildlife—hung on the walls. Diggs looked around in wonder.
“Did you build this?” he asked Sarah.
She pointed at the man. “My brother did everything. Furniture, art, et la maison.”
The man nodded, his face shining with pride. He dug his hands into his pockets. “Sarah showed me, and then I built it. We worked together.”
Diggs ran his hand reverently along the pale, wooded walls. “I built a place a couple of years ago,” he said. “It’s good work—peaceful. A good way to get your head together. Mine didn’t come out anything like this, though,” he added.
I looked at him in surprise. Diggs had returned to Maine after his third marriage failed a little over three years before, resolutely sober and uncharacteristically celibate, but that was about all I knew—he’d never shared any details beyond that. Sarah softened at his words, maybe seeing a glimpse of the vulnerability I’d somehow missed up to that point.
“Luke has a gift for it,” she said, nodding toward her brother. “Et c’est vrai—anything you can do with your hands that gets you out of your head c’est tres bien.” She waved toward a handmade table with matching chairs in the kitchen. “Sit if you like. I’ll put on coffee.”
I glanced back out the window. Einstein and his new girl were chasing each other through a field of goldenrod. Sarah followed my gaze.
“They’ll be fine, chere. She was raised to be maman to everything in these woods—she looks out for everybody. She can keep him from trouble.”
Despite her reassurance, I took a seat facing the window—just in case Stein decided to make a break for it, or his woolly sweetheart decided she’d had enough.
Luke made himself some tea, moving carefully around the kitchen—like he’d broken one too many things over the years, and was afraid of repeating past mistakes. Sarah set two mugs of steaming coffee in front of us, and sat down with tea for herself.
“She was très jolie, you know? Pretty,” she said as soon as she sat down. I looked at her in surprise. “We might as well get to it, non? The reason you’re here.”
A woman after my own heart. “What do you remember about her?” I asked.
“Oh, I remember everything. She was a good girl. But very…” She paused, like she was trying to find the English for what she wanted to say. “Fiery, non? Always fighting for something. Helping people, all the time. It’s why Luke took to her.”
Luke nodded. He sat at the edge of his chair, which he’d pushed as close to me as pos
sible without actually landing in my lap.
“You look like her,” he said. “But not so much as I thought when Bonnie said you was coming, oui? You have her hair. Et la bouche, non?” He tapped his own lips. “But not the same smile. She smiled with all her teeth.” He demonstrated. “She was sad, sometimes. Mais tu est plus triste.”
I looked at Diggs, whose francais was far superior to mine. “He says you are more sad,” he said.
“Oh.” The heat rose in my cheeks while I tried to think of a graceful way out of that one. “Wait—Max Richards’ Bonnie? Hank Gendreau’s sister? You know her?”
“Oui,” Sarah said. “She married our brother—he est gone now. Mais we are all Sauciers.”
“She told us about la rêve,” Luke said. Whatever la rêve was, based on the wild look in his eye, it had freaked the hell out of him. “What she saw. She says it’s pas bien, you coming here. Not safe.”
Diggs looked at me, baffled. “What are they talking about?”
“Bonnie is un taweille,” Sarah said. “Same as her mémère. She has the Sight. We learned many years ago not to ignore that.”
“She said something about G,” I said before Diggs could get in on the act, hoping to get us back on track. “How she saw someone named G, or being able to see…into them,” I finished, feeling like an idiot.
“Il est mal to talk about what Bonnie sees,” Sarah said, glancing at Luke. Based on the rocking and the clenched fists, he wasn’t handling the conversation well. I understood how he felt.
“What about her brother, then—Jeff. Can you tell me anything about him?”
“He was un monstre,” Luke said, his fists clenched on the table. The rocking sped up, his breathing along with it. I’ve been accused before of lacking empathy, but even I could tell this was a bad sign. Sarah touched her brother’s hand; he stopped almost instantly.
“Jeff was one of the more popular kids in Black Falls,” Sarah said. “On the basketball team, always in the paper for something. But he…” She hesitated.
