From within the cabin, I stared absentmindedly out the back window. The captain and mate were very quiet. I supposed that my presence may have dampened any chitchat they might usually enjoy. The silence was uncomfortable, and I felt they were torn between wanting to ask questions and respecting my privacy. Or they could simply be shy, or not give a damn about me or how my day unfolded to end with a dead body. I wasn’t looking at anything in particular until the lettering on the custom boat tarp came into focus. The Kohls’ boat’s name was somewhat obscured by the various folds, and now read, BLISTURS. That is the definition of macabre, I thought as I turned my attention to the forward cabin, and hoped nobody else would notice the sick, yet appropriate coincidence. The captain steered the boat while his mate stood beside him and watched the electronics. It appeared that they were making efforts to keep all eyes forward, lest they might catch a glimpse of what stretched across the seat in the stern, conjuring up all sorts of unsavory images. Even the best imagination couldn’t do the truth justice, I thought. Grim.
When I thought we were about halfway back to South Haven, I checked my phone and was delighted to see nearly full service. I hustled out of the cabin and dialed Mr. Dubois at the Marine Insurance Consultants Company. He answered on the first ring, and asked where I was. He had already gotten word that Mr. Kohl was aware of his wife’s death, which answered my question about whether the Proctors had been able to reach him. Mr. Kohl had also been in touch with the sheriff’s department, insisting on a full investigation to negate any suspicion that would naturally arise when dealing with substantial life insurance policies. I told my boss that I had been very thorough, and did not find anything suspicious about the fire or the death. But I certainly understood Mr. Kohl’s inclination to want to protect himself. I confirmed that I would arrive at the dock in South Haven in twenty minutes or so, and was assured that the county coroner would be there to receive the remains. I planned to be in the office the following morning to download all pictures and fill out all required paperwork so that Mr. Dubois could get together with the underwriters to work toward finalizing the claim, which was unfortunately a total loss. I also understood how insurance fraud would be a most welcome finding to certain parties. But the evidence wasn’t there to substantiate foul play.
I hung up knowing that there would always be much ado about nothing when money was involved. Nobody would buy the relatively humdrum story of accidental death caused by smoke inhalation and unsuspicious fire until every other scenario had been ruled out. Somehow I had a hard time imagining Mr. Kohl grieving the death of his wife before mourning the loss of the house. In my experience, it’s always about the money. That’s just the way things are, I thought as I reentered the cabin and made myself comfortable again now that I was out of the biting cold.
The mate apologetically interrupted my musings. “Ma’am? I hate to ask, but I need to collect your boat fare,” he said politely. “One way or round-trip?”
“One way, please. What do I owe you?”
“One way nonresident is twelve fifty. Round-trip you save a buck—twenty-four dollars,” he said optimistically. I could tell that he had been programmed to take in as many round-trip tickets as possible. And the discounted fare for a round-trip ticket that I might never use hit the core of my Scottish dilemma. Save a buck now? Or waste twelve dollars in the event that I never return?
I found my wallet and handed the mate a credit card that I use for all insurance business–related expenses. “Round-trip, please.”
“No plastic. Cash or check.”
I handed him a twenty and said, “One way. And a receipt.” He went forward and dug through a plastic money bag, and returned with my change and a handwritten receipt. I thanked him. He sat across from me on the engine box that doubled as seating and smiled. He was young, early twenties. With fifteen minutes remaining in the trip, now was a safe time to strike up a conversation. “Is the captain your father?” I asked, intentionally steering any dialogue away from questions pertaining to myself or the bundle in the stern.
“No, he’s my uncle. People ask that all the time. I guess we share a family resemblance.”
“Both good-lookin’!” The captain chimed in, never taking his attention away from in front of the boat. We all laughed, and this was enough to break the ice.
“Mrs. Proctor said you found Mrs. Kohl. Is that true?” asked the mate. I confirmed that I had indeed discovered the remains while documenting the damage to the house for the Kohls’ insurance company.
“How bad was it?” Although I knew the young man was asking about the condition of the corpse, I answered that the house was a total loss, adding that the island’s volunteer fire department hadn’t stood a chance. This did nothing to satisfy his curiosity. But he seemed reluctant to be brazen enough to come right out and ask what Mrs. Kohl looked like. “Do you think the coroner will unwrap her aboard the boat?”
“No, I am sure that the corpse will remain wrapped until it arrives at the morgue,” I answered, not knowing whether this was a relief or disappointment to him.
“Oh. Uncle Skip here has transported a few dead bodies. Not me, though. This is my first unless you count ashes. Yup, I have been aboard for a couple of ceremonies when ashes are spread around the bay. But not counting ashes, this is my first time with an actual dead person.”
I was tempted to tell him that Mrs. Kohl wasn’t far from cremation, but thought better of it. I had always been tight-lipped about details of any investigation, no matter how benign. That practice had kept me off the media’s list of detectives who like to see themselves on the nightly news, which was fine by me. The mate seemed like a nice kid. Naïve to the world beyond Down East Maine, like many of the residents, young or old, that I had encountered. The mate, whose name I learned was Percy, seemed comfortable in this naïveté, with the exception of his curiosity about what lay across the stern in the tarp. And his curiosity kept nagging at him. He fidgeted and made small talk until his uncle asked him to switch the dock lines from port to starboard as South Haven came into view.
I stood and looked over the bow, and was surprised to see flashing lights, both blue and red, in the distance. “Looks like Mrs. Kohl gets the royal treatment,” said the captain. Recalling the converted bread delivery van that served as Green Haven’s official vehicle, I asked if an ambulance and police escort was typical of South Haven’s response to situations such as this. “No. The EMTs have an old hearse they rigged for use as an ambulance. Doesn’t instill much confidence in the patients,” he replied. “The blue lights must be Hancock County Sheriff’s Department. That’s you, right?” I confirmed that I was indeed an assistant deputy sheriff, and that I left the dock this morning as an insurance adjuster, and was returning wearing my other hat.
As the captain maneuvered to the float and the mate secured lines, I watched several onlookers strolling on the dock above and thought how my landlords would be upset to be missing the action. There would be no shortage of dinner conversation tonight, I thought. I assumed that the presence of the sheriff and a real, official ambulance from Bangor had stirred the locals up. A similar scene in Miami wouldn’t get a second look. I had seen people step over a dead body on a busy sidewalk, never breaking stride or gaze, which I had never found remarkable until moving to Maine where everyone and anyone dropped everything to chase flashing lights. Quite a crowd had gathered at the top of the ramp, and the sheriff had to ask for room for the ambulance attendants to squeeze through with a stretcher. The sheriff was close behind on the ramp. I spotted the WBAM van that broadcast live every afternoon, and I silently prayed that no one would notice the cruel, coincidental lettering on the tarp. Too late for the duct tape now, I thought.
“Wow. Quite a commotion, isn’t it?” I asked as the sheriff shook my hand, and then held it while I climbed from the boat to the float. We’d had one face-to-face when I was deputized in August, and had spoken on the phone on the rare occasions when he had needed me to respond to a call in Green Haven
, saving him the trip down the peninsula from Ellsworth. I had gotten the impression that the sheriff was putting time in until retirement, and was not necessarily gung-ho about the job. He was a handsome guy, and looked like law enforcement—straitlaced. He had been in the position for years, and so had all the contacts and ability to pull strings when needed. I never felt that he was anything but honest and by the book, and I appreciated working under him. I sensed that he appreciated having me to do whatever needed to be done. He had been quick to ask for my opinions, and was considerate about taking advice that he knew would benefit the department, or put a feather in his cap. My record of recent drug busts spoke for itself. Although my experience in criminal investigations far exceeded his, I was a good foot soldier and needed no accolades.
The majority of my duties until very recently on behalf of Hancock County were intervening in small disputes between rowdy fishermen when the Maine Marine Patrol could not or would not respond, or looking for a wandering Alzheimer’s patient. There had been two actual murders in Green Haven in the past nine months, something that shocked the locals, but made me think that people had gotten away with murder a lot, due to the lack of investigative work in the decades before I moved up here. There seemed to be an inordinate number of hunting accidents, boating mishaps, and unexplained deaths by natural causes in Green Haven and the outer islands that comprised my territory. If anyone had murder in mind, Down East Maine had been a good place to get away with it … until I showed up. I had asked the sheriff about cold cases, but he discouraged my curiosity, explaining that he wouldn’t even know where to start.
As the tarp was placed in a body bag and loaded carefully onto the stretcher, the sheriff explained that Mr. Kohl had demanded a full investigation into the fire and his wife’s death.
“Although I am not an expert in fire forensics, I do have extensive training from when my investigations overlapped with the fire crime scene teams in Florida. I didn’t see anything on Acadia that suggested the need for an investigation,” I said. “There was a broken gas line caused by a frost heave, and the fire looked to have ignited at the house’s hot water heater. It appeared that the victim chose to fight the fire rather than escape, and the smoke likely put her down quickly.”
“Well, you are probably right. But Mr. Kohl wants no stone unturned—probably just covering his own ass. I imagine there’s a pretty hefty insurance benefit for both the house and the wife,” the sheriff said as we watched the stretcher go up the ramp and into the waiting ambulance, a WBAM camera rolling at close range. “And he wants everything expedited. He will pay personally for the crime lab and pathologist in Augusta. Her remains will be there in two hours,” he added, looking at his watch. “Did you happen to collect any evidence from the scene at all that might be helpful? Anything at all to show that we are being thorough?” I suspected the sheriff had been ready to rubber-stamp the fire and death as accidental before Mr. Kohl called.
Remembering the blood sample and the piece of brittle plastic that had been fused around the victim’s left wrist, I rummaged through my camera bag and pulled out both items. The bloody snow was all liquid now and fairly well diluted in the bottom of the baggie. The sheriff shrugged and handed me an evidence bag into which I dropped the plastic after shaking a small bit of lint off of it. “Purely going through the motions. So contamination won’t be an issue,” I said sheepishly.
“I’ll run these to the lab myself and have them do a quick and dirty. I told Mr. Kohl that I would have preliminary findings as early as tomorrow.” He mentioned how fortunate the timing was regarding my trip to Acadia for Mr. Dubois, and said that he would call me if and when any follow-up was needed. The camera crew swung their focus toward us as the ambulance door was shut in their faces. The sheriff was wise, I thought, to have “no comment” to the broad questions indicating that the media knew nothing other than what they had just seen. The sheriff and I said our goodbyes, and I watched him pull out of the parking lot behind the ambulance.
The crowd began to disperse. I was amazed that this number of people would brave the cold to see a tarp loaded into an ambulance. But I imagined that speculation was excitement and much needed to feed the usual rumor and gossip that was such a large part of the social fabric of a tiny community. Trucks and cars rolled out of the parking area slowly, seemingly reluctant to release contemplations and suppositions of what had transpired to result in the rolled tarp. And now the viewers watching WBAM from home could join in the conjecture, too.
I hustled over to my Duster, which now stood alone. While being alone was not new to me, I wondered what it would be like to have been greeted by someone on this end who wanted to see me for personal reasons. Or better yet, no reason at all. And I wondered while I drove what it would feel like to be returning home to someone (other than the octogenarians) anxiously and excitedly waiting to hear about my day, and whatever adventure I had experienced. These thoughts had been creeping into my consciousness more and more recently. I figured that these—do I dare call them yearnings?—well, I figured they were part and parcel of reaching middle age having never been married. I had come close on a couple of occasions, and that always made me feel better about my present status of no prospects. I wasn’t sad. And I easily shrugged off my fascination with a traditional family unit by reminding myself that there was no longer any such thing. And it certainly wasn’t something that I had ever had.
I chuckled aloud as I wondered what Mr. and Mrs. V would be serving for dinner. Research and experimentation for their planned “All Mussel Cookbook” mandated the key ingredient, and I had consumed mussels prepared by every known method (steamed, boiled, roasted, grilled, sautéed, fried, raw, baked, stewed, and broiled) and in every conceivable combination. There had been a couple of flops—who knew that mussels with fresh mint would not cut it? For the most part, the social meals generously shared at the Vickersons’ table were satisfying on all levels. And as I had not yet eaten lunch (muffins and now an unwrapped biscuit remained at the bottom of the camera bag), I was starving. And even if the experimental entrée didn’t quite work, Mrs. V (who is most attentive to her digestive track) always serves whole-grain bread and green salad (to keep herself “regular”). My stomach was growling as I steered the Duster within the snowbanks demarking the parking space that I had cleared this morning, and Mr. V had kindly cleaned up with the snow blower.
As I scurried to get inside and once again out of the frigid air, I glanced up to see two faces in the Vickersons’ kitchen window. Mrs. V smiled and beckoned me to come in. She seemed excited and impatient as she waved her hand vigorously. I motioned that I would be a few minutes as I wanted to toss my bag into my apartment and freshen up before dinner. As I entered the shop, I was greeted by the briny smell of hot mussels that had escaped the landlord’s kitchen and added more hustle to my step as I bounded up the stairs.
The hot water pounded the back of my neck, and trickled the length of my body that had been chilled to its core. I turned the valve, increasing the temperature until I had filled the bathroom with steam. The worst part about the Maine winter was having to get out of a hot shower. The trick for me was to stay in long enough to get warmed up and at the peak of the hot water. When I lingered too long, the water turned lukewarm and spoiled the effect of the near scald that I enjoyed. Turning the water off, I braced myself for the brisk opening of the curtain and quickly wrapped myself up in a towel. Condensation on the mirror grew heavy enough to form droplets that rolled down and expired on the edge of the sink. I pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweater, towel-dried my hair, brushed my teeth, and declared my appearance “good enough.”
“You just missed yourself on the news!” cried out Mrs. V as I let myself into their home. She turned the television off and dropped the remote into a reclining chair.
“I was on the news?”
“Well, sort of,” Mr. V answered. “In the background. They should have interviewed you. All that lousy sheriff had to say was ‘no comment.’ We
didn’t vote for the damned liberal, did we?”
“No, and we never will, dear,” Mrs. V replied gently. “The fool never has any comment. What does he do? How can he NEVER have anything to say? Luckily, we have you!” She smiled and took my hand, leading me to my usual seat at the table. “And we want the whole scoop.”
“Not that I would defend the damned liberal,” I said jokingly. “But there isn’t much to comment on. As you know, I went to Acadia to inspect and document damage that occurred in a house fire on behalf of Mr. Dubois. Thank you, by the way, for delivering the Duster.” I paused while Mr. V placed a partially filled highball glass in front of me and handed me a cocktail napkin with a bright red lobster printed on it. “In the course of walking through what remained of the dwelling, a total loss by the way, I found that one of the owners had perished in the fire.” I held my Scotch up in a mini toast minus the clinking and took a sip, savoring the warmth it provided as well as the moment of relaxation. They both stared at me skeptically. Not that they didn’t believe what I had reported, but they couldn’t imagine there wasn’t more to the story. “Unsuspicious fire and accidental death, period.”
“How boring,” scowled Mrs. V.
“I’ll drink to that,” said Mr. V as he lifted his glass.
“What? A house burns to the ground and a woman is practically incinerated, and that’s boring? Tough crowd.” I helped myself to what appeared to be a smoked mussel on a cracker. I popped it into my mouth and thought that Mrs. V had hit a home run with the mustard sauce, and was amazed how nicely the single malt enhanced the briny taste.
Shiver Hitch Page 6
