Murder, She Wrote

by Jessica Fletcher

  “Almost,” I said.

  Newt guffawed and slapped his thigh. “‘Almost,’ she says. Heah that, Pete? That’s what you been known to catch. ‘Almost.’”

  “Very funny, Newt.”

  “Gentlemen, please. If you see my friend Maureen, would you please help her find her way back? We’re staying in Mayor Shevlin’s cabin on Moon Lake.”

  “The one with the dock or the one with the float?”

  “The dock,” I said, relieved that Pete knew the cabins on the lake.

  “Ayuh. We’ll keep a lookout for her.”

  “Thank you so much.” I turned my bike around and rode back to the dirt road. It was comforting to know there were now three of us looking for Maureen.

  Hopefully, there would be more.

  Chapter Ten

  Two hours later I rode back to our cabin, eager to see if Maureen had found her way home. On my way I debated whether I should chastise her for making me worry or just welcome her safe return. But there was no choice to make. The cabin was just as I’d left it—empty with no indication of where she might have gone.

  She hadn’t been at Mayor Shevlin’s second cabin, either. After a careful hunt, I’d finally found the rutted track through the woods that led up from the dirt road. The mayor would have to clear some brush if he planned to drive his SUV there any time soon. The log house was shuttered, its only door locked. I tried to open the door and knocked when it wouldn’t budge, but there was no response. I looked around outside; it was pretty clear that no car had been up there recently. The long grass was untrampled except for a narrow path where deer or a moose might have wandered by. I’d walked down to the shore and managed to hail a fisherman in a canoe on the lake. He hadn’t seen Maureen but promised to pass along a description of her should he come across other anglers or a game warden. I considered taking a shortcut back to our cabin by following the narrow path along the lake, but I couldn’t ride my bike on the rough ground and decided instead to retrace my route on the dirt road in case I came across anyone else who could provide assistance.

  Hank, the guide from this morning, would be back soon. I could hitch a ride with him to the Maine guide headquarters, and we could alert the state game wardens of our missing person. But first, I had a call to make, one that I had been dreading ever since I suspected that Maureen had lost her way.

  I walked out on the porch, where I hoped a direct connection with the sky would make the cellular service clearer, and dialed Mort’s number.

  “Hey there, Mrs. F. How’s the fishing going? Maureen says she caught a big rainbow.”

  “Yes! She did. When did you speak with her?”

  “This morning. She called after you left. Told me about the sunburn. Too bad, but she sounded okay.”

  “I’m so glad, but Mort—”

  “I’m really looking forward to having her back home, I can tell you. We’ve been running our tails off down here with the manhunt. Haven’t had a decent meal in two days. Had to call my deputies back in from the derby when the state troopers shifted their focus to the coast looking for the escaped prisoner.”

  “Mort, I—”

  “You ought to consider cutting your vacation short, too. Might not be safe being up there all by yourself. Listen, I gotta go. I don’t have a lot of time to waste. Tell Maureen to be packed and ready by four.”

  “I can’t.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t?”

  “She’s not here.”

  “Well, then tell her when she gets back.”

  “That’s just it, Mort. I’m not sure when she’s getting back.”

  He laughed. “Don’t tell me you lost her.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

  “What? Say that again.”

  “Maureen wasn’t here when I got back from fishing this morning. I’ve spent the last two hours looking for her.”

  “Hang on a second.”

  I heard him give orders to someone to bring around the patrol car before he came back on the line. “Okay, Mrs. F. Let’s start from the beginning.”

  I explained finding the cabin empty and Maureen gone. I noted that she’d taken a book with her and her sunscreen, and probably some food, but that she’d forgotten to take her cell phone and hadn’t left me a note as to where she was going or when she’d be back. I reviewed my efforts to find her, as limited as they were, and concluded with, “I’m so sorry, Mort. I’m sure she’s fine. It’s just that she’s not here. I thought maybe she got engrossed in the book and lost track of time. But she certainly must realize that I’d be waiting for her by now, so I can’t understand why she hasn’t returned, unless she got disoriented walking in the woods and took the wrong path.”

  “And she bragged to me about earning her adventurer patch,” Mort said. “Some Girl Scout! Can’t even find her way to the cabin she’s staying in. She probably made a trail of bread crumbs with the food she took.”

  “Mort, I don’t think the situation is funny.”

  “I’m not laughing, Mrs. F. I’m in the middle of a major manhunt for an escaped murderer, who’s already killed another man, and, I’ve got to drop everything to run up there to hunt for my wandering wife.”

  “Do you want to give her a little more time to see if she finds her way back?”

  “No, I don’t want to give her more time. I knew this derby business was a mistake. She goes off half-cocked on this idea of learning to fish so we’d have a hobby together. I tell you, Mrs. F., I do not have time for hobbies, and when I see Maureen, I plan to tell her, too. I’ll see you in an hour. Don’t leave!”

  If he’d been talking on an old-fashioned phone, he probably would have slammed down the receiver. As it was, he hung up before I had a chance to respond.

  I looked at my watch. Hank Thompson was due back in less than a half hour to take us out fishing, but now my plans had changed. Instead of accompanying him back to the nearest office of the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and reporting Maureen’s disappearance to the game wardens, I would have to stay put for Mort’s arrival.

  I sat at the end of the dock waiting for Hank, checking over my shoulder several times for any sign of Maureen. At three o’clock, I spotted the bow of Hank’s boat rounding a promontory and sighed in relief. I got to my feet and waved.

  “Well, I see you’re eager to go out again,” Hank said, as he used an oar to pull in closer, “but where’s your friend? Is she feeling okay?”

  “No. She’s not okay. She’s missing. And I’m waiting for her husband to get here.”

  “How long’s she been gone?” he asked as he tied the boat to a cleat on the dock and climbed up beside me.

  “She spoke with her husband after we took off this morning, but she wasn’t here when I came in from fishing.”

  “Have you tried looking for her?”

  I nodded and repeated the same tale I’d told Mort.

  “You talked to Newt and Pete, huh?” He shook his head. “Bet you dollars to donuts they don’t have a fishing license between the two of ’em.”

  “But they know which cabins on the lake belong to Mayor Shevlin, so they can guide Maureen if they happened to see her.”

  “She usually a responsible lady?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you think she would call out to someone if she wasn’t sure of the direction? You know, sometimes people don’t like to admit they’re lost. They think it’s embarrassing. I know the dangedest story about one guy—”

  “Maureen has a lot of self-confidence, it’s true,” I said, interrupting him, “but she’s not foolish. Yes, I think she would ask for help if she needed it.”

  “Seems to me it’s a little early to call in the dogs for a search, unless you disagree,” Hank said, watching for my reaction. “But the game wardens have an incident management team. We could g
o ahead and alert them.”

  “I can’t go ahead and do anything,” I said. “I want to be here if Maureen shows up. In any case, I promised her husband I’d wait for him to arrive.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be fine. There’s lots of people around the lake what with the derby on and it being summer, but just to be on the safe side and ease your mind, let me get the process started.” He unwound the rope he’d just looped around the cleat and climbed down into the boat, setting our two fishing rods on the dock. “I’ll tell the wardens to be on the lookout for her. Might be they can divert some of those helicopters and dogs looking for the escaped killer and put them to use finding your friend.” He chuckled and waved as he pushed off. “Nice meeting you.”

  I picked up the rods and walked back to the cabin to wait for Mort, irritated at Hank for not taking Maureen’s disappearance more seriously and curious as to why I found myself so frazzled by it. After all, it hadn’t been that many hours. Maureen was a grown-up, a former Girl Scout, a strong, competent woman as I’d repeatedly reassured her. Maybe she took her picnic up a mountain and fell asleep after lunch. Maybe she was lying on the grass finishing reading her novel. Maybe she was taking advantage of a beautiful day while I was fretting that she hadn’t bothered to keep me informed. Was I overreacting? Was I sounding an alarm too soon?

  I hung up our fishing rods on pegs, sat on the picnic table bench, and sighed, trying to let go of the tension that had built up. Something about this situation nagged at me. It was more than simply Maureen’s lack of consideration if, indeed, I could chalk it up to that. I took a deep breath and let it out. The eau de bear I’d detected earlier had dissipated. I unzipped the canvas bag I’d packed to take on my search and emptied its contents, debating whether to store the extra sandwich in the ice chest, which was no longer cool inside. It didn’t matter; the sandwich wouldn’t spoil. Funny that I’d had to use a spoon to spread the peanut butter and jelly. I gasped. That was it! The knife. Where was it? I’d hung it on the magnetic rack last night but it was not there now. Not on the shelf. Not in the sink, nor in the cabinet underneath.

  Feelings of unease washed over me again.

  Could Maureen have taken such a big knife with her?

  And if so, why?

  Chapter Eleven

  There was still some time before Mort was due, and I was impatient to do something, anything to speed along the search for Maureen. I knew that the longer you waited when someone was missing, the harder it was to find them, especially a novice hiker.

  Our local trails are identified with painted blazes on the trees, although in some cases the paint has flaked off over the years, or the trees have grown or been felled by a lightning strike. The blazes are not always easy to see even if you know where to look.

  I tried to remember what I knew of tracing someone who was lost in the woods. I should look for freshly broken branches, human tracks in the sand or where rainwater pooled before continuing downhill to the lake, compacted gravel where a heel dug in going uphill. If she’d climbed on a mossy log, there would be marks from her shoes where pressure had been put on the delicate greenery. What other signs would indicate a recent hiker?

  Of course the first place to look for footprints would be in the cabin. Maureen’s rubber clogs were not in our bunk room. She was probably wearing them. I sat on the picnic bench and looked down at the cabin floor to see if her shoes had left a mark. There were several prints I recognized as mine. I’d left them when I’d come up from the lake after fishing. My shoes had been wet from the water in the bottom of the boat, and they’d picked up some sand and dirt before I entered the cabin. There were other faint marks that could have come from Maureen’s clogs, and a larger heel print near the sink that didn’t belong to either of us.

  That’s odd.

  I thought back to Hank Thompson’s arrival that morning. He’d never come into the cabin. Careful not to alarm us since we didn’t know him, he’d simply called out a greeting, staying outside the screen door and holding up his identification for us to see. But I had invited Brian in the day before. Would his rubber-soled shoes have made a mark like that? I didn’t think so. Besides, he hadn’t been standing anywhere near the sink.

  Maureen had taken pictures with her cell phone the previous day. I pulled her phone from my pocket and looked for them. She’d been so excited about the bear prints on the shore of the lake that she’d photographed them to show to Mort. I tapped on one photo to enlarge it. There were shoe prints in the sand as well. I remembered Maureen saying she wanted to take a picture of the paw prints of the mama bear and her cub before people walked all over them. I enlarged the photo again. The bigger I made it, the blurrier it became, but I could make out a mark that resembled the heel print near the sink.

  I tried not to step on the prints on the floor as I left the cabin. It was unlikely the bears’ prints were still on the shore. The lapping lake water would have washed them away, and I’d probably tromped all over them that morning. But it was worth a look.

  New prints had covered the old ones. These were mine and those possibly Maureen’s, but none of them were as clear as the bear prints she’d photographed. I looked across the lake and sighed. Maureen had said she might go swimming. I hoped not. Sometimes the bottom of a lake drops off precipitously, surprising anyone swimming. Had she decided to don her waders and fish close to the shore? If so, I hoped that she’d worn a belt to prevent her waders from filling with water. But Maureen’s waders were still hanging in the bunk room; it was her clogs that were missing.

  I decided to use the few minutes before Mort’s expected arrival to examine the foot path to Jim Shevlin’s second cabin. If I didn’t go far I would be able to hear the engine of Mort’s cruiser coming up the dirt road. If he didn’t see me, he’d honk the horn or set off the siren. I’d certainly hear that.

  The trail was too rough for a bike and too narrow for an all-terrain vehicle. There were tree roots bulging out of the soil and loose stones where the earth rose up before plunging back down into a gully. I knew that it was not uncommon to come across a fallen tree blocking the path. In that case, I’d have to climb over it or find an alternate way through the brush.

  I started on the trail with my eyes focused on the ground, looking for any indication Maureen had passed this way. Some thoughtless person had tossed a wrapper from a granola bar. Maureen never would have done that. I picked it up and stuffed it in my pocket. I pushed up a branch from a sapling that reached across the path and ducked under it. The sound of tires on gravel caught my attention. That must be Mort. I turned quickly and was slapped in the face by the low-hanging branch.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I said as I rubbed my cheek and held the branch out in front of me. There, caught on a twig, was a strand of red hair. Maureen! You did come this way. I pinched the curl and gently tugged on it till the strands sprang free from the stem.

  “Mort!” I called, hurrying back up the trail. I emerged from the woods to see our sheriff standing by his cruiser, fists on his hips, frown on his face.

  I waved. “Here I am. Look! Look, I found some hairs. I think they may be Maureen’s.”

  “Sheesh! You mean she hasn’t gotten back yet?”

  “No, but I think I know which way she went, at least when she first took off.”

  “Now you’re really making me nervous, Mrs. F. I hope when we find her she has a good explanation for this.”

  “If she’s lost, Mort, it’s not exactly something she did on purpose,” I said, coming up to where he stood. “She couldn’t help it.”

  “Maybe so, but it would help if you didn’t go zipping off to the countryside to throw a hook in the water while I’m trying to calm down the citizenry and keep them from marching on Town Hall because I haven’t found a convicted murderer who may be lurking somewhere, threatening who knows what mayhem. It’s worse than trying to corral the goats some bright do-gooder brought i
n to eat poison ivy in Central Park. You try catching goats on Fifth Avenue at rush hour. And it’s always rush hour on Fifth Avenue.”

  “I know you’re busy, Mort, but—”

  “Busy! Yes, I’m busy. I left a crew combing the outskirts of Cabot Cove for the escaped convict. The governor wants to know what we’re doing to find this punk. Troopers are stopping cars on every road out of town and making them open their trunks. I should be there. Instead, I’m up in the boondocks looking for a lost wife.”

  “I asked Hank Thompson to alert the game wardens that Maureen is missing.”

  “Who’s Hank Thompson?”

  “He was our fishing guide for this morning. Our guide from yesterday couldn’t make it today.” As I said it, Mort looked askance at me, and I had an uncomfortable feeling that he knew why Brian hadn’t shown up.

  “By any chance was Kinney your other guide?”

  I pulled my shoulders back, ready for an argument. “He was.”

  “He’s being detained.”

  “You arrested him? On what charge?”

  “I didn’t say I arrested him, Mrs. F. I said he’s being detained. I asked him not to leave his house.”

  “For what reason?”

  “He’s a material witness.”

  “To what? The prison break? He wasn’t anywhere near the prison when Jepson broke out. He’s been working as a guide all season.”

  “They may have been in contact. Jepson doesn’t have any family in Cabot Cove to my knowledge, but he does have friends—the boys who were in on the robbery at the mini-mart the day the grocer was killed. I don’t know for sure who the other guys were, but I know that Kinney was one of his buddies.”

  “Mort, Brian can account for his time during the robbery. He was with Alice, his girlfriend at the time. A fellow training to become a guide attested to that. Brian was exonerated and released from prison.”

  “I know the whole story, Mrs. F., but he knows more than he was willing to reveal, and that puts a black mark next to his name in my book. I told him that I was asking him to stay put for his own safety, and he said he understood.” He put his hand up to silence me when I started to say something. “I don’t want to talk about Jepson or Kinney right now. I want to find Maureen and make sure she’s safe. Now, where do you think she went, Mrs. F.?”