“Yeah, well, if I can help let me know, Stubblefield. Anything I can do, you know.” I thanked him and saw myself out. The receptionist flashed me a dazzling smile with all the sincerity of a campaign promise.
“You have a nice day now.”
“How well did you know Kessler?”
“Well, I’ve been here a little over three years, so that long.”
“He strike you as the kind of man who might have a secret life?”
“Mr. Kessler? No way.” She smiled at the suggestion.
“I get the impression the man was a saint. Didn’t he, say, ever make a pass at you?”
She did something you don’t see too much any more. She blushed.
“Go on! He never.”
“A perfect gentleman. Never even lost his temper, I’ll bet.”
“We-e-ll, I’ve seen him lose his temper a few times.”
“At the boss?”
“Oh no, never that. It was whenever there was an oil spill or something like that. He was savage over that big Exxon thing in Canada.”
“Alaska.”
“Yeah, Alaska. Whatever. And that business with the loggers and the little owl. That kind of thing made him very upset. He used to say that we had no right to do those things, that they were crimes against nature.”
I wished her a nice day and started for the door.
“Oh, Mr. Stubblefield, maybe you should know, being a policeman and all.”
“Private investigator.”
“Right, whatever. Anyway, Mr. Stoller, the man that owns the camp up in Maine where Mr. Kessler got — where he died — he called while you were with Mr. McIntyre. He wanted to know what to do about Mr. Kessler’s car. He seems to think it might be valuable.”
I walked out into the late afternoon sun. A plane was coming in for a landing, and the birds were scattering as if it were a huge hawk. It was a long drive, and it was grasping at straws, but the car was the last possible place I could think of to look for evidence bearing on Kessler’s murder.
Luther Kessler and I left the following morning and arrived at the Pine Lodge Cabins late that afternoon. The whole way Kessler provided a running commentary on what was wrong with America. His thesis seemed to be that our economic situation could only worsen. The reason for this decline, he said, was that the people who fought in World War II were the last generation of Americans who knew how to work, or even wanted to work. Now that they were all reaching retirement age the future of the Republic rested in the hands of hippies, dope fiends, welfare cheats, and other assorted wastrels. It was a long nine hours.
The cabins were all unoccupied. We decided to take one for the night and drive back the next day. Kessler checked out the cabin while Mrs. Stoller pointed out the car and gave me the keys.
I saw what Stoller meant by valuable. Kessler’s car was a 1939 Studebaker Commander in near mint condition. Not the most graceful automobile ever made, but compared to the anonymous little boxes on the road today, it was a thing of rare beauty.
I looked in the trunk, under the mats, behind the visors, and then, sinking into the plushly upholstered front seat, I went through the glove compartment. In a folder containing the owner’s manual was a sheaf of papers, mostly gasoline receipts and maintenance bills. I riffled through them and had started to put them back when one caught my attention. It was an accident report dated two months earlier. One vehicle belonged to a Kenneth Marduk of Sherman Mills, Maine, a town not far from the lake. The other was a truck registered to Four-Lane Trucking.
I looked through the rest of the papers more carefully. There were photocopies of a number of fuel receipts stretching back over a period of four months, all for Four-Lane Trucking, all from the same station in Island Falls, also nearby.
As bookkeeper, Earl Kessler had processed the company’s bills. But why had he kept copies of these? And what had brought him here for his vacation?
It was getting dark as I headed for the cabin. Kessler was just coming out.
“Wonderin’ where you were.”
I held the papers out to him. “I think we’ve got something. Have a look at these.” As he reached for them a shot rang out from the trees. Kessler whirled and fell.
“Godamighty! Godamighty!” he cried over and over. I hit the ground and rolled to the nearest cover, a pair of stumps used as chopping blocks. Two more shots kicked wood chips in my face as I ducked behind the stumps. Kessler was still down, holding his neck.
“Kessler, get out of there!” He had the presence of mind to scramble across to the cabin and under the porch. I pulled out my Browning and tried to see our assailant, but it was too dark to make anything out in the dense trees forty yards distant.
“What the hell’s going on here?” It was Stoller, coming around the cabin and into the lamplit zone of fire.
Before I could yell a warning, a bullet tore some wood off the cabin by Stoller’s head. He swore and ducked back around the corner.
This time I saw the muzzle flash. I fired at it and immediately bracketed it with four more rounds, rapid fire. Part of a tree detached itself and fell to the ground groaning. For a minute there was no other sound in the clearing. Then a voice.
“Okay, that’s it.” A pause. “I’m bleeding bad.”
“Throw the gun out here.” A rifle bounced and slid on the pine needles. I crawled forward, unwilling to stand until I was sure he had no more weapons.
McIntyre lay curled on the ground. I called to Stoller and told him to get a first aid kit and start with Kessler. One of my slugs had furrowed McIntyre’s thigh. A second had smashed his shoulder. I packed the wounds and waited for Stoller.
“The wife’s with your buddy. He’s got a crease in his neck, not serious. Who is this guy?”
McIntyre glared at me. “Lucky, Stubblefield. You’re one lucky bastard.” He grimaced in pain. “Hit me at that distance with a damn automatic.”
“Not lucky, McIntyre. I practice.”
“Lucky bastard.”
“Yeah. Well, like the man says: the more I practice the luckier I get.”
The lunch crowd at the Rudder was thinning out. Floyd was sitting with Kessler and me, taking a breather from his tiny kitchen.
“These people regulars, Floyd?”
“Most of them.”
“Amazing.”
“What’s amazing?”
“That they don’t all rise up in concert against you some afternoon to give vent to their gastric distress.”
“Charles, how long have you been eating here? Seven, eight years?”
“Something like that.”
“Why? If the offerings of my humble victualry don’t appeal to you, why don’t you eat somewhere else?”
“Food here’s good,” said Kessler, mopping up gravy with his bread.
“Compared to what?” I asked. Bob Gilliat joined us at the table.
“So, fill me in, Charles.”
“McIntyre spilled his guts when he realized he was facing a murder charge for Kessler, never mind the rest of it. He didn’t plant the bomb, though.”
“Who did?” said Kessler, wiping his chin. I shrugged.
“Some soldier from New Jersey. McIntyre was doing business with the mob. He was contacted by a firm that needed some hauling done. Discreetly.”
“Toxic waste,” said Gilliat.
“Right. They hired a number of small outfits that were already doing business in Jersey. Four-Lane was one of them. McIntyre’s trucks would haul legitimate cargo into the state, unload, then swing by another location and load up with barrels of God-knows-what. They were told to pick an isolated area in Maine and simply dump the stuff in the woods.”
“How did Kessler get onto it?”
“Fuel bills, a minor accident report, all from the same place in Maine. Four-Lane didn’t do any business in Maine, you see, so Kessler probably figured one of the drivers was skylarking, had a girlfriend up there, something. He must have brought it to McIntyre’s attention and was told to forget it.