Paula’s eyes teared up again. “You said you’re going to do your best, and I know you will.”
Outside, it was chilly and I could spot the bright sparkling dot of light that was Venus in the western sky, just over the flat marshes of Tyler Beach. I walked Paula back to her car—a cute little Volkswagen Beetle that was light blue—and she kissed me on the cheek after opening the door.
“Lewis . . . thanks so much. I feel a hundred percent better than I did when I came here.”
“Must be the fine cocoa.”
“Doubtful.” She looked past me, down the rugged path that led to my dark house. It didn’t look like a house: it looked like a cardboard model that some child had stepped on. “Your poor house,” she repeated. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to hope that tropical depression doesn’t become a storm, and hope the insurance company puts away their persecution complex about me and cuts a hefty check in my name. In the meanwhile, I’ve paid for some old lumber from the 1800s and, with the original blueprints from the Tyler Historical Society, hope to be able to move back in before December. I got a local contractor raring to start work, as soon as I can give him a hefty down payment.”
“So, where have you been spending your nights?”
“As a guest of the Lafayette House, where else.”
That got me a laugh and another kiss on the cheek, and I stood still in the hotel’s parking lot until I saw her Volkswagen start up, leave the parking lot, and drive down Atlantic Avenue.
Then I turned around and trudged down to my home.
When I got back to my earlier work area, I unlocked the front door and shoved it open by slamming my hip into it three times. With most of the second floor resting on the first floor, frames and such had shifted. With the door open, I was greeted by a blast of cold air and the stench again of burnt wood and wet items. I put the ladder and tools away, tried not to look too hard at what remained of my living room and the kitchen beyond it. At least the dark covered most of the depressing details.
I grabbed a rucksack and flashlight, and it only took two attempts to slam the door shut. I went back up the driveway, switching on the flashlight. It was getting dark pretty quick. At my rented Honda Pilot, I opened up the rear hatch. My Explorer was back under what was left of my garage, and since my homeowner’s policy was with the same carrier that provided me with car insurance, I was still waiting for a settlement from that end of the insurance universe as well.
With the Pilot’s hatchback open, I tossed my rucksack in and then followed it in, crawling over a foam mattress pad and open sleeping bag. The windows in this part of the Pilot were covered by taped-up newspaper, and after putting on a headlamp, I pulled the rear hatch down, it thumping satisfactorily in place.
“Home, sweet home,” I muttered, “once again.”
There were some clothes dumped in the front passenger’s seat and, with the rear seats folded down, I had a reasonable amount of space. I stretched out, winced at the pain in my right leg, and opened up a small cooler. Dinner tonight was a steak-and-cheese sub, about four hours old, still fairly warm having been double-wrapped in foil, accompanied by a take-out salad and a bottle of Sprite. I ate quickly and then cleaned up, and then went back outside, to a row of boulders that marked the farthest end of the parking lot. There, I did some personal business, brushed my teeth, washed my face and hands with cold water, and then went back to the Pilot.
Across the street, the bright and warm lights of the Lafayette House were beckoning to me. It was easy to imagine a warm room, hot shower, and gourmet meal, and then snuggling up in a wide soft bed. And after the fire and after I had come home, I had indeed spent a few nights there, but realized that spending more than a week as their guest—with no income stream from my previous job as a columnist for Shoreline magazine—meant I’d be in debt up to my tired eyeballs in no time.
So in the language of the time, I downsized. I understand from the New York Times’ editorial pages that it’s been quite the fad lately.
I wormed my way back into the rear of the Pilot, stretched out, and draped the sleeping bag over myself. With the headlamp still on, I picked up a thick volume of Rick Atkinson’s majestic three-book history of the United States Army in Africa and Europe during World War II and opened up the pages.
As I read, I was nagged by two little things. One was that I sort of had stretched the truth when I told Paula I was a guest of the Lafayette House. All right, to be specific, I wasn’t a guest of the Lafayette House building, but I was indeed a guest of their parking lot.
And the other thing . . . well.
I turned another page.
I had promised Paula that I would locate her fiancé, the town counsel, Mark Spencer.
But I didn’t promise that I’d bring him back to her.
For I was fairly certain he was dead.
CHAPTER TWO
The next morning I drove about a half hour up the coast, to the Porter Rehab and Extended Care Center, where I had my appointment in Room 209. The room was wide and well lit, and it had a nice view of the neighboring McIntosh Air Force Base. Inside, my best friend, Detective Sergeant Diane Woods, was sitting up and sipping a glass of orange juice through a straw. Her hair had been freshly washed, and the IV tubes and other wires had been removed. Two weeks earlier, she had been in a coma; a week and six days ago, she had woken up.
She had on blue pajama pants, slippers, and a flowered top, and she smiled widely as I came in, her voice still hoarse from having a breathing tube stuck down her throat for weeks. “Hey, you bad man, how are you?”
“Doing fine. And you?”
She put the orange-juice glass down on a nearby rolling table. “Still look horrible, don’t I.”
Which, unfortunately, was true. While most of the abrasions had healed, her eyes were still swollen, like she had gone twelve rounds with an Olympic-class boxer while sitting down in a reclining chair. The skin around her eyes was a ghastly shade of black, blue, and green.
I went to her, kissed her forehead. “Beauty’s only skin-deep, haven’t you heard?”
She patted my hand. Hers was covered with needle marks and sticky adhesive-tape remains. “Yeah, but as you know, ugly goes right to the bone.”
“Which means you have nothing to worry about. C’mon, we’re wasting time.”
Diane frowned. “You’re a mean man. I’ve already got a full day of PT and OT ahead of me. And did I tell you . . . you’re a mean man.”
I pulled her table away, took a hand. “I’m indeed a mean man, who also remembers your doc saying that any extra PT on your part will help. So let’s shake a leg, get up for a stroll.”
A few minutes later, I got her up and out of bed and, using a walker, we got out into the wide hallway of the second floor. We bore to the right, and Diane made good progress, holding on tightly to the two handles of her walker. It had two large wheels up forward and two smaller ones at the rear, and had a square center that served as a seat.
The place was quiet, with large single rooms on either side of the hallway and a nurse’s station in the center. Besides the resident rooms, there were larger rooms designed for physical therapy, where therapists put patients through their paces by lifting weights, stretching, or using exercise gear. There was also a mock-up of a car and an apartment for occupational therapy, where patients could re-learn how to get along back at home with either an injured limb or an injured brain.
She looked firmly ahead and said “You look to be moving well.”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because a little birdie told me that you’d been shot in your right leg.”
“Some little birdie.”
“True, though, isn’t it?”
“Well . . . yes.”
Diane said, “You don’t seem too upset about it.”
I shrugged. “Not much to complain about. It was the proverbial flesh wound. Plus, I shot him first.”
She slowly moved her head in my direc
tion. “I’d like to remind you, Mister Cole, that even though I’m moving as slow as a three-legged turtle, I’m still a sworn police officer for the State of New Hampshire.”
“It was way out of your jurisdiction.”
“But your home is in Tyler Beach.”
“Still is,” I said. “It’s not moving any time soon.”
“But you’re okay?”
“Fit as a fiddle that’s missing a string or two, and that’s been dropped on the ground a couple of times.”
She kept quiet, and the hallway emerged in a spacious sunroom. There were large windows overlooking a grove of evergreens, with comfortable chairs and couches and two bookcases. She went to the near chair and locked the front wheels of her walker, and I took an arm and helped her down. I sat next to her and squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back.
“What’s going on with your house?”
“A bit of good luck last week,” I said. “Got my building permit from the town. With the old lumber I’ve bought, I’m two thirds of the way there. Unfortunately, the last third involves labor and money, of which I have none. The money’s not there, and the labor’s not moving until the money comes in.”
“Insurance companies suck, don’t they.”
“Right now, no argument from me,” I said.
“And why are you still living in your car? You can still hang your hat at our place. Unless you think Kara will be overwhelmed by your masculinity and jump your bones.”
“I don’t think I’m whelming, either under or over. And I don’t want to be underfoot.”
“If you need some funds to rent at the hotel, we could—”
“No. Kind and gracious offers, both of them. But I’m doing fine. I also like being near my house in case somebody gets the urge late at night to break in and strip out the copper plumbing. But enough about me . . . how are you doing?”
She moved one leg and then another out away from her chair, moving slow, like she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to move them back again. “Progressing. The doc . . . he has a good flowchart of how to work my muscles, how to get back into shape. There’s a definite timetable, and I’m ahead of schedule. But the muscle between my ears . . . that’s proving more of a challenge. My mind . . . it gets fuzzy sometimes. I get up and walk to the bathroom, and I forget about a second later why I got up. I read the newspaper, and the words seem to float right off the page. And I get scared sometimes . . . which is not like me. But hey, some good news, like you. Miranda’s out of the harbor. Last boat taken out for the winter.”
“Good for you. How’s Kara?”
“About that close to getting fired for spending so much time here. But she’s still doing fine.”
“Wedding still on for next June?”
“Even if I’m dragged in on a stretcher after a relapse, yeah, still on. And a little birdie also told me that Paula Quinn has been seen in your vicinity. What’s going on with that? I thought she was engaged to our illustrious town counsel.”
“I’m surprised your little birdie can fly, with ears so large,” I said. “She has been seen with me, she’s still engaged to Mister Spencer; but . . . has your little birdie told you the news about him?”
“Not a thing. What, is he getting disbarred for having a sense of humor?”
“Not quite,” I said. “He’s gone missing, and I don’t mean overdue getting back from picking up his dry cleaning. For three days, he hasn’t been seen at work or at his home, and he’s not answering his cell phone, e-mail, or texts. No threats, no bloody crime scene at his office or condo. And supposedly nothing unusual or odd happening in the last several days to raise questions for Paula.”
Diane gingerly moved her legs back closer. “Paula gone to the local cop shop?”
“She’s seen Captain Nickerson. But you can imagine the response.”
“Sure,” Diane said. “He’s an adult and it’s not against the law to disappear. The fact that he’s town counsel . . . well, Kate’s probably taken a report and that’s about it.”
“I understand that.”
“So. What did you promise Paula?”
“What makes you think I promised her anything?”
“I know you fairly well, my friend. When does your search begin?”
“Later this morning,” I said. “I’m going to ask Paula for a complete debrief, get a meeting with Captain Nickerson, talk to co-workers and neighbors. The usual.”
“Three days, eh?”
“Yep.”
“He’s probably dead, you know. Had a bit to drink, drove his car into a river or pond. Or parked his car at a store somewhere, hit-and-run driver takes him out, propels him into a wooded area. Or maybe some past client with a grudge and a lack of conscience decided to settle some obscure score.”
“Probably. But I’m still going to look for him.”
She brushed my hand with hers. “Of course you will. Good luck, then. . . . Tell you what: in between those torture sessions they call PT, I’ll reach out to Captain Nickerson, let her know you’ll be by in a bit. How does that sound?”
“Sounds great.”
“Fine,” she said, reaching up to grab her walker. “Now escort me back, before we encourage the gossips about all the time we’re spending together here alone.”
I helped her up, and she unlocked the wheels to her walker. Before we left, I said, “Diane . . . your dreams. Any of them have to do with Curt Chesak?”
She started moving out of the sunroom, and I wondered if she hadn’t heard me, when she said, quietly, “Same dream, most times. Curt Chesak is coming after me at the nuke plant demonstration. I can’t move. It’s like my feet have been buried in the ground . . . and he raises up that lead pipe. He hits me again and again . . . and in the dream, I don’t faint or lose consciousness. The lead pipe comes again and again. Covered with blood. My hair . . . my brain . . . I just stand there and take it and take it and take it. . . .” And in her last sentence, her voice rose higher and higher.
I took her near arm. “About Curt Chesak.”
“What about him?”
“You never have to worry about him, ever again.”
She slowed the walker down until it came to a stop. “I’m still a fully sworn police officer in the State of New Hampshire.”
“I’m sure you are,” I said. “And I’m still your fully sworn friend. Curt Chesak is gone. Period.”
Diane didn’t say anything more as we went back to her room, but as I helped her back into her hospital bed, she raised up her battered head and kissed me firmly on the lips. Her lips were rough and chapped, and she had sour breath, and I didn’t care one bit.
A half hour later, I was at the offices of the Tyler Chronicle. It was located in an office building adjacent to the small Tyler town common, right in the center of town. I parked next to the building and strolled through the front door. Once upon a time, I would have been greeted by a receptionist who would take classified ads from walk-ins. But with the rise of the almighty Internet, classified advertising had collapsed, and the newspaper could no longer afford the expense of a receptionist.
I went around the empty counter, into the main office. There was the sound of rumba music and a rhythmic thump-thump-thump. Last year, in a desperate measure to keep the newspaper alive, the Chronicle’s owners had given up half their office space, and that new space had been turned into a dance studio.
Thump-thump-thump.
A tired-looking Paula Quinn got up from her cluttered desk, manila folder in hand, and motioned me to follow her. The rest of the office was empty, save for one young man with a Vandyke beard and a stud below his lower lip, pounding away on a laptop. There were four other empty desks. At one time, near deadline, reporters and local town correspondents would have occupied the desks; but with the ability to file their stories from home, from inside a car or a town hall lobby, the Chronicle’s offices were mostly empty, day to day.
It was no doubt more efficient, but it was still depressing to look at.
/> Paula led me into a small conference room and shut the door. She had on khaki slacks and a black turtleneck sweater. There were coffee stains on her left leg and crumbs on her sweater. She sat down at a round table and I sat across from her, and she slid the folder over.
“Here you go,” she said, voice wavering. “A copy of the missing-persons report, his résumé, recent photo. I can’t think of anything else.”
I opened up the folder, flipped through it. Birthplace of Trenton, Vermont. Local schools. New England College of Law. A couple of law internships, then arriving in Tyler and joining the firm of Adams & Lessard. Date of birth showed he was two years older than Paula, and his Social Security number was 520-54-1959. Hair black, eyes blue, five feet eleven inches tall, 170 pounds. No distinguishing scars or tattoos. The photo was a color headshot, taken in the summer, wearing a lime-green polo shirt, big smile, short black hair, and with a golf club over his shoulder.
“Where was this taken?” I asked.
“During the Tyler Beach Chamber of Commerce invitational last summer.”
“Nice.”
I closed the folder and she passed over a key. “His condo. The address is Twelve Rockland Ridge. Unit 4. I have some time this afternoon if you want to go over.”
I took the key, pocketed it. “No offense, Paula, but I’d rather go myself.”
“But I can explain and—”
“It’s better if I see things by myself, with a fresh eye. If I have any questions, I’ll get back to you. All right?”
She nodded quickly. “I understand.”
A knock on the door, and the bearded young man with the stud below his lower lip appeared. “Paula, my story’s filed. And I need to get out . . . can you give my story a look-see?”
“Sure, Jonah,” she said, standing up. “Lewis?”
I picked up the folder. “I’ll call you later.”
My next stop was at the famed Tyler Beach. It being November, most of the T-shirt shops, restaurants, motels, and hotels were closed. Some of the more pessimistic owners had nailed plywood over the windows, in the fear—which I shared—that things down south in Florida would go bad and that tropical depression would grow and start roaming this way, like some cheesy monster from a 1950s science-fiction film, looking to wreak havoc on any vacation spot that was in the way.
Blood Foam: A Lewis Cole Mystery (Lewis Cole series) Page 2
