I threw it right in without warning. “You’re the mother of his son.”
“Yes,” she said, without hesitation, apparently not surprised that I knew. “His father—”
“Eloise told me how that summer ended. She didn’t mention a child.”
“She was just being delicate.”
“Has a police investigator contacted you?”
“No, but a woman from around here called Dixie, and he called me. He thought you might have told her to call.”
“No.”
She studied my expression. A vulnerability that I hadn’t seen before lingered in her eyes. “I just don’t know who to trust.” Her heart was right out there, unprotected, watching me with the innocent expectation of a frightened mother.
“What did this woman tell him?”
“She told him he’d be in serious trouble if he didn’t keep his mouth shut.”
“About what?”
“He didn’t explain. He assumed I would know. That’s why I called you. He knew what the woman meant. How would he know that unless he was involved in something?”
“So he’s hiding something. And he warned you about me?”
“He told me not to tell you anything — not about him, not about our son, not anything. I don’t know what’s going on!” Tears broke into her eyes. “I don’t want anything to happen to my son.”
After blowing her nose and apologizing for having lost her composure, Nora told me the story of her child. His name, she said, is Avery. He was born five months after her mother suffered her stroke. She was unable to care for him because she had to return to work and look after her mother who had become almost helpless. Dixie’s father wanted to adopt the boy. Nora refused to give up her parental rights, but she permitted Dixie to take the boy to Florida.
“It broke my heart, but I had no choice.” For an instant, a search for approval appeared in her eyes, then abruptly vanished. She was riding on a lot of guilt.
We heard her mother cough in the other room. “If she calls I’ll have to help her into her chair and make tea. We can go outside.”
I went into the yard and found a flat rock to sit on at the steps near the street, wondering whether any moment of Nora’s life was free of guilt.
When she came out I asked for the name of the woman who had phoned Dixie. She had written it on a piece of paper.
“She’s not in the book,” Nora said.
“I’ll find her.”
A fragrance of cheese hit me when I opened the door of Altieri’s Market on Fore Street. A woman behind the counter looked up — late thirties, a bit hefty, not bad looking, streaks of gray in dark hair pulled back to a bun.
“I’m looking for Gina Spalitro.”
“And what do you want with her?” she said, looking me over, half testily, half amused.
“Are you Gina?”
A door opened behind her. A bald man in his sixties looked out, eyes on me.
“It’s okay, Papa,” the woman said.
The man retreated.
I said, “It’s about Dixie Hardaway.”
The woman’s face turned to stone. “Who?” stumbled out of her mouth.
“If you’re Gina Spalitro, you made a phone call to him in Florida. You made it from here.”
That flustered her. “Oh, yeah,” she said. “I called a friend down there, but I don’t know any... What’d you say his name was?”
“I’m not a cop, Gina.”
“I don’t care what you are.” No hint of friendliness in her now.
“You could be mixed up in a murder investigation.”
Fear stirred in her eyes. “What murder? What’re you talking about?”
“You told Dixie Hardaway to keep his mouth shut.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Get out of here,” flailing both hands, waving me toward the door.
“This isn’t going away.”
“You are! Get the hell out of here!” She reached under the counter, maybe for a gun. I didn’t wait to find out. If she had a gun, she was tough enough to use it.
I took all of this straight to Mike. He was off duty, just up from the weight room in a sweatshirt and old police pants. I persuaded him to stop at Amato’s and split an Italian sandwich with me. We enjoyed it with cold beers in my Jeep in the parking lot. I told him about Nora’s latest call.
“That’s what makes it interesting,” I said. “When Porky got to the high school, he waited in the corridor outside her classroom. Hadn’t called, hadn’t made an appointment, but he knew she had the next hour off.”
“And he didn’t ask her anything about Cape Porpoise or that weekend?”
“Or whether Dixie had gone to Florida. He didn’t seem to care about that. All he wanted to know was whether Dixie had any ‘bad habits,’ is how he said it.”
“Didn’t mention drugs?”
“No. And didn’t ask about Dixie’s alibi. He just wanted to know what kind of person Dixie was. And I guess the main reason she called me — he wanted to know whether she’d ever been to Brackett Shores.”
“And how do you read that?”
“For one thing, I never mentioned Brackett Shores to her, but nothing she said made me think she knew the significance of Porky’s question. I think it troubled her because it was off the mark. She’s a pretty bright woman. If nothing more, his questions told her that Dixie was mixed up in something. It’s the welfare of her son she’s worried about. She wants this cleared up. She offered to hire me—”
Mike lowered his bottle. “No. Stay out of it. You’re involved too much as it is.” He took a bite of sandwich, sipped from the bottle, staring thoughtfully at me. “You remember the woman who ran that house?”
“Calysta Frye.”
“At her trial she never gave up the names of any of her customers. I can’t question her. After what she went through, she’d call it harassment. A civilian, on the other hand... Oh, and by the way, Gina Spalitro was one of Calysta’s girls. She was a witness against Calysta at her trial.”
“Calysta’s out of prison?”
“Bought a bed and breakfast on Sebago Lake in Raymond.”
“It have a name?”
“Lakeside B & B. It’s right on 302.”
As I was getting up to leave, he said, “Remember, nothing about your father’s case was allowed at her trial. She was tried strictly as a madam. We didn’t have enough to try her for selling drugs. Nobody admitted anything.”
“And nobody heard the shots... yeah, I know.”
“That could be legit. It was a windy night. Waves crashing, all that. Maybe you can get something out of her. Don’t bother with the drug stuff, it’s statuted out.”
I had a lot to think about as I drove up country roads to a lake that’s the pride of southwestern Maine, the source of drinking water for the entire region, and home to trout and landlocked salmon. My father often took me fishing there when I was little. I had no trouble finding the Lakeside B & B, a large, white Victorian mansion behind a lawn and a flagpole.
I nodded at an old man sitting in a wicker chair on the wide veranda, went inside, and tapped the desk bell. A young woman in jeans emerged from down a long hall and walked toward me, all smiles. She was pretty and had brown hair drawn back to a ponytail.
“I’m looking for Calysta Frye,” I said.
She picked a headset off a wall bracket and spoke into it. Listened a while. “She wants to know who you are,” she said, laughing. “Are you selling something?”
“No.” I gave her my name.
She talked a while with her back to me, finally turned. “What’s it about?”
“A property she once owned on Brackett Shores.”
The name evidently meant nothing to the girl, but it got me what I wanted. Within a few minutes a short, plump woman in jeans and a white blouse marched up the corridor bristling with hostility. She dismissed the girl and turned on me.