Charley clapped me on the back. “Take ahold of that side of the chair, and we’ll tote this contraption up those stairs.”
Ora herself didn’t weigh much, but her automated wheelchair was cumbersome, and once again I was struck by Charley’s surprising strength.
Sarah had put on black jeans and a washed-denim top that brought out the blue in her eyes. She seemed nervous, fidgety. Something about the thought of meeting Charley and Ora intimidated her; I could see the anxiety behind her welcoming expression.
“This is Sarah Harris,” I said.
“Well, I certainly hope so,” said Charley. “Or else you got us down here on false pretenses.”
“We brought you this, dear.” Ora held out a pan wrapped in a napkin. “It’s an Indian pudding I baked this morning.”
“Thank you. Mike has raved about your cooking,” said Sarah. “I hope you won’t be disappointed in my fish chowder.”
“I was just saying it’s a night for chowder.” Charley winked at me. “Hasn’t it been a cold winter, though?”
“Can I get you something to drink? I’m having a whiskey.”
Charley waited for his wife to answer.
“I would have a whiskey and soda, please,” she said. The choice pleasantly surprised me.
“Black coffee,” added the old pilot. It was all he ever drank.
After I fetched the drinks, we all sat down in the living room. I’d cranked up the woodstove, knowing that Ora tended to feel chills deeply. It wasn’t long before I felt my face growing ruddy from the heat and alcohol. We made some small talk about the long drive from their winter home in Maine’s western foothills to Sennebec and about the tidy little motel they were staying at behind the Square Deal Diner.
“You have a lovely house,” Ora told Sarah.
“It wasn’t so lovely when I was living here by myself,” I said.
“Men are such foolish creatures,” said Ora. “When I first met Charley, he used to do his laundry by tying his clothes to a rope and towing them around the lake behind his canoe.”
“Good old-fashioned ingenuity,” said her husband.
After a few minutes of chitchat, I spotted my chance to turn the conversation in a different direction. “So what’s going on in Flagstaff?” I asked. “The last I’d heard, Wendigo was going to exercise its option on all the leases around the lake. Are they really forcing you out of there?”
The Stevenses had owned their waterfront cabin for three decades, but under a vagary of Maine law, timber companies had always held title to the land beneath the house. The latest owner, Wendigo Timberlands, LLC, was a Canadian corporation with a history of clear-cutting forestlands and then selling off the denuded lakefronts as real estate holdings. Last year, they’d announced their plan to “sell” the leased lots in Flagstaff to their current occupants at outrageous prices.
“We can’t afford to stay,” admitted Ora.
“I’d say the Wendigo directors took the murder of their spokesman last year somewhat in stride,” said Charley with a sour smirk I’d never seen from him before.
“So they’re just taking over the whole town and forcing everyone out?” said Sarah with genuine horror. “How can they do that?”
“It’s their land,” I explained.
“They’ve got the deed, that’s for sure, but I’ll bet that CEO couldn’t find Flagstaff, Maine, on a map.” Charley took a deep breath to calm himself. “I suppose we shouldn’t abandon all hope just yet.”
“That’s been my advice all along,” said Ora. “Desperate times call for hopeful measures.”
“I’ve fought for many a lost cause before and seen it come through,” her husband agreed, but there was the timbre of defeat in his voice.
“Will you buy another cabin somewhere?” I asked.
“We still have Ora’s mother’s house in Farmington, but I can’t live in town without going stir-crazy,” said Charley. “Civilization has lost its appeal for this old bird.”
“It never appealed to you,” said his wife. “You just endured it for the sake of the girls.”
They exchanged uncharacteristically disapproving glances, as if Ora’s remark concealed some veiled meaning. It made me wonder about their two daughters. They were estranged from their younger girl, Stacey, who still blamed her father for the plane accident that had crippled her mom.
Sarah leaned her elbows on her knees. “Where will you go if you leave Flagstaff?”
“A fellow I know has offered us some good land over toward Machias,” said Charley. “I was posted in eastern Maine when I was a young warden and have always liked the people. Once you get past Bar Harbor, the Down East coast is more like the whole state used to be back at the dawn of time.”
“You told me not to live in the past,” I said. “You said I’d miss out on the present if I did.”
Charley flexed the arm my father had shot as if it were giving him trouble. “I guess you could say that recent events have spoiled me on the present tense.”
“Let’s talk about happier subjects,” suggested Ora.
But her husband’s expression remained grim.
8
We’d just about finished dinner-Ora’s Indian pudding was as delicious as advertised-and Sarah was talking about the kids in her fourth-grade class. Two glasses of Pinot Grigio had made her a little tipsy, and now her complexion was glowing. “You never know what they’re going to say,” she was telling us. “And you don’t know if anything you say will have repercussions in their life. Everything is formative with them. And yet they can be so resilient, too.”
“Those children are lucky to have you for a teacher,” said Charley.
“There are days when I feel more like a social worker. I had to go buy a winter coat for one little girl who came in during a blizzard wearing just a sweater-and then her mother sent it back! She said she didn’t want charity.”
“That sounds like my mom,” I said. “When I was a kid, she never wanted to admit how poor we were.”
A phone rang in the next room. I’d left my cell in its holder, still attached to my gun belt. The sound carried from the bedroom closet: a worrying, faraway cry of alarm.
I set down my beer bottle.
Sarah put both hands on the table. “You’re not on duty tonight, Mike.”
The phone rang again. Everyone was staring at me, waiting for me to react.
“Please, let it go,” Sarah said.
I was positive the call concerned Ashley Kim. Was she phoning me back finally? Or had Hutchins managed to track her down? Maybe it was MaryBeth Fickett, calling from the town office. I found myself turning to Charley for backup. “I’m expecting a call about a deer/car collision I’m investigating,” I explained.
The phone rang for the third time.
“I don’t see any harm in him taking it,” the old pilot said to his wife.
I nearly kicked over my chair, I rose so quickly. “Excuse me for just a minute.”
“Please, Mike,” Sarah said, her voice rising.
But I was already gone.
The caller was MaryBeth Fickett. In the darkened bedroom, I glanced at the luminous green numbers on the alarm clock.
“I hope you’re not still working at this hour,” I said.
“If I am, it’s your own fault.” The Seal Cove town clerk was a very large woman who had the helium-pitched voice of a little girl. “Did you honestly expect to leave that message and not pique my curiosity? The answer to your question is, I don’t have a record for anyone named Kim owning property on the point. But you said this woman lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, didn’t you?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, there’s a Hans Westergaard from Cambridge who has a summer place out on the point. It’s that big new house at the end of Schooner Lane. I know because Bill was the stonemason on the project. He says Mr. Westergaard is a professor at the Harvard Business School.”
“It can’t be a coincidence.”
“No, I wouldn’t think so,” said MaryBeth. “I have his home phone number in Massachusetts. His wife gave it to Bill because she kept changing her mind about the design of the fieldstone chimney. Mrs. Westergaard is a… perfectionist.”