A Face at the Window (12 page)

"Tourists're one thing, newcomers something else again," Bob agreed, gazing out across the water.

The tourists being as numerous and indistinguishable from one another as blackflies, especially late in the season, while actual newcomers, ones who intended to live here, were rare, fascinating, and subject to endless discussion among locals: Who? From where? And most of all, They paid
how
much for that house?

"Ozzie Campbell probably wouldn't stay in Eastport anyway, though, in the motel or a B-and-B," she told Bob. "He's sly, he'd know better than to—"

Bob's face remained skeptical. "Look, I know it's him," she finished stubbornly. "Helen and Lee didn't drown—"

Please let it be true.
"—and no boyfriend of Helen's took them. Either Campbell did it, or he had it done, to get at me."

Although for what reason she still couldn't say, because she didn't know. "Look, Bob, I'm not asking you to take it on faith. Just don't rule it out is all I'm really saying to you."

He nodded slowly. "Okay. Believe me, I'm not discounting it. But right now it's a missing-persons situation and that's all it is. I know," he added hastily before she could interrupt. "A missing kid. Two, actually. Urgent as hell, sure, and that's the way it's getting handled."

He squinted at the Deer Island ferry pulling away from the
dock at the Chowder House restaurant. "But we still don't know. It still could be that Helen herself took Lee somewhere."

She started to object, but he held a hand up. "No, let me finish, Jake, you need to know this. Because if we're calling it kidnapping, that's federal. Next thing, it's out of our hands. And I'll call them in, you know I will, but if I do then it's a whole new ball game. They get here, they're more'n apt to get somebody scared. I mean, if somebody's really got them."

Correct,
she realized bleakly. Because for a kidnapper the best way to get un-scared was to kill the victim and hide the body someplace where nobody would find it. And around here there were a lot of places like that.

More than anyone could ever search completely. "And then we might never know what happened?" Though she meant it as agreement it came out a tentative whisper.

Bob rubbed his pink forehead, glancing around the interior of the squad car as if surprised and not particularly pleased to find himself in it. "Yup," he said quietly, massaging the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. "That is what I'm worried about. One of those open-ended things."

He went on as if to himself. "Bad enough when you do know, sometimes, if the outcome's poor. When you don't, though, it's just permanent hell for all concerned."

But then he rallied, put his hands on the steering wheel. "Anyway, what Clarissa wanted to know was would you check on Hoke Sturdevant today. She'd do it, but she's tied up in depositions all afternoon and she can't get out of them."

"Oh, Bob," Jake began reluctantly, "I'm not sure I—"

Hoke was one of the grand old men of town, well into his nineties; now that his wife was gone, someone went to his house out on the Harris Point road to visit with him nearly every day.

Jake liked Hoke. But she wasn't sure she had the patience for him today. "Bob," she began again, meaning to refuse, but when she looked up from the dripping cloth doll she still held, he was watching her carefully.

"I talked to Tom Godley," he said, surprising her. "And I went up and down Water Street, went into all the shops and storefronts. Two young guys, I said, asking questions. Told ‘em what little else Tom remembered of ‘em."

"And?" But she already knew the answer. The two fellows who had been inquiring about her in the hardware store sounded as if they'd looked unusual enough—gold chains and leather jackets not being at all the standard tourist garb in Eastport—that they might've stuck in people's minds.

But if there'd been other sightings, Bob would have said so already. "No one else remembers anyone like that," he confirmed, and started the car. "But I wanted you to know I didn't brush ‘em off, like maybe you thought."

She squeezed water out of the doll's sodden body. Its red-painted muslin cheeks were beginning to smear as if with tears from its button eyes. "So," he went on after a moment, "what do you want me to tell Clarissa?"

She took a deep breath of the brisk salt air blowing in off the bay. Sunlight from the west was already beginning to turn Campobello Island into a long gold bar, sandwiched between blue water and blue sky. But behind the island loomed high, massively mounding clouds full of rain.

"Tell her I'll go." It was too late to mix concrete today; those clouds promised more water than she could keep off the repair with a tarp. Besides, checking in on Hoke would be better than sitting at home, going crazy.

And on the way out to his house and back, she could keep her eyes peeled.

•••

The Harris Point
road wound out to the end of a peninsula jutting into the bay, past cottages and summer homes clinging to the ridge under massive white pines. In Hoke Sturdevant's dirt driveway she parked between the battered, paint-peeling garage and a rusty Dumpster overflowing with broken drywall sheets.

Before his wife died, he'd been remodeling the house. Since then, though, he seemed to have lost heart for the project. The car door slammed loudly in the silence. "Hoke?"

She climbed the steps onto the pressure-treated deck running around three sides of the small ranch-style dwelling. Beyond it lay a yard full of raised garden beds edged by railroad ties, laid out at right angles to one another.

A few tomato plants still straggled in one of them. The rest were clotted with weeds overwhelming the few surviving flowers. She was about to call out again when Hoke came to the glass door leading out onto the deck, slid it open.

"Afternoon," he greeted her amiably. From inside came the smell of sausages frying. "Come on in."

He was a tall, gangly man with a wizened, winter-apple face and a shock of thick white hair hanging unkempt over his creased forehead, wearing old khaki pants and a white dress shirt open at the collar. He held a barbecue fork in one hand and a beer can in the other.

"Well, what a pleasant surprise," he said. "To what do I owe the honor?"

It was part of his charm that he accepted being checked on like this, greeting each visitor as if he didn't know they'd come to make sure he hadn't dropped dead since the last time anyone saw him. The sausages on the stove spat energetically.

"Care for a beer?" he offered, raising the can.

Be-ah:
the Maine way of saying it. "No, thanks, Hoke. I was out this way and just thought I'd stop by and say hello."

His sideways look at her was cloudy with cataracts but full of knowing humor. "Good sausages. Don Jespersen puts up some fine venison, don't y'know."

Sassages.
The ketchup bottle stood on the counter. "Hear you had a bit of excitement," he said mildly, forking the sausages onto a paper plate.

She glanced up, surprised that he knew already.

"Girl gone. Jody Pierce's girl, Helen, it was, correct?"

"Uh-huh," she confirmed. He bit off the end of a sausage, chased it with beer. "But how did you know about that?"

He waved at the kitchen counter where a small black box with a digital readout stood. As she followed his gesture it sputtered a burst of static, and a few garbled words came out of it.

"Scanner," he said. "Ain't supposed to, but I got it wired so it monitors police, fire, and emergency calls. Keep up on all the local doings that way."

He fished a slice of Wonder Bread out of the wrapper, folded it in half and took a big bite. "My great-granddaughter," he said when he'd finished chewing and swallowing, "was friends with that missing girl."

His daughter and son-in-law had moved away years ago; now the family came back for a month each summer. "Really? When? And did she ever say anything about her?" It hadn't occurred to Jake that Hoke Sturdevant might know anything about any of this.

He shook his head. A dot of adhesive tape on the side of his jaw showed where he'd nicked himself shaving. "Not about the girl. ‘Bout the boyfriend, though. Piece o’ work, he was. Saw it myself. He had himself some ideas."

Hoke put a wry twist on the final word; clearly he didn't agree with the ideas. "He was the type, if'n a girl wants a bit o’ time with her friends he's gotta come around checkin’ on her. Make sure she's where she said she'd be."

"And if she wasn't?"

Hoke nodded sagely. "Aye, that's when the trouble begins. I saw it here. Tiffany—that's my great-granddaughter—had a few friends out on the deck visiting."

Off Hoke's small, bright kitchen, a door led to his living room, which was furnished with an old black woodstove, a re-cliner with a red-and-black wool blanket thrown over it, and a dog bed containing a very old white springer spaniel, now sound asleep.

The other door leading from the kitchen was closed. He saw her looking at it, ducked his head a little embarrassedly

"Old man's housekeeping," he said with a rueful grin. "Shut the door on the mess, clean it up another day. That way, at least my guests don't have to look at it."

He drank some beer. "Anyway, the girls'd play music, fool around in the boat a little. Jody's girl was with ‘em that day."

She followed his gesture out the kitchen window. Below his yard was a stony, downward-slanting trail with a wooden railing, leading to the cove; he still kept a small dory down there.

"And while they were here, this kid shows up, him and some others in his truck, all put out an’ wantin’ to know how come
he
wasn't invited. Raisin’ a ruckus, the whole bunch of ‘em."

With a nod at the scanner he added, "They've picked up his pals, by the way. Few minutes ago, a deputy on Shore Road in Perry found ‘em tryin’ to break into a summer camp."

Against expectations, Hoke was turning out to be quite the useful little fountain of information. Out on the deck, a trio of chickadees found his bird feeder full of thistle seed.

"Put his hand on her, the kid did," said Hoke. "Tried to get her to go in the truck with him."

"And?" The top step of Hoke's deck was beginning to rot. A plank and a claw hammer lay by a box of nails on the deck.

From the rust stain spreading under the hammer, though, it seemed they'd been there for at least as long as the mess hiding behind his closed hallway door. Sighing, the spaniel stretched, turned, and lay down again.

Hoke put his paper plate in the trash bin, drained his beer and dropped the can into a turquoise plastic box marked
Eastport Recycles.
"I went out, told ‘em if I didn't see their south ends goin’ north in about two seconds, I'd be right pleased to drop-kick all their asses off'n the dock," he recalled.

His eyes brightened at the memory. "One at a time or all of ‘em together, I told ‘em. They chose skedaddlin’ away."

"So you think this Tim Barnard kid could've gotten mad about something this morning, and decided to do something about it?"

Lying in the hospital, mulling over the beating he'd gotten from Helen's stepfather…that could make him angry enough.

"He could've told his friends," she went on, "they showed up and took her somewhere, maybe the child she was baby-sitting, too? To get back at Helen? Teach her a lesson?"

Her heart lifted briefly. Because if that was true maybe all her worry really was just—

"Nope," Hoke said flatly. "Bunch of babies, they were, an’ Timmy Barnard the worst o’ the crew. That big mouth o’ his, and sure, he'll slap a girl around if he gets the chance. But in the real world, he's all net and no herring."

Hoke had been a fisherman before he retired. "Oh," she said disappointedly, wondering whether Bob Arnold had reached
Ellie and George yet, if they were rushing home in a panic right now.

Not that they could do anything when they got here, any more than anyone else could. Hoke regarded Jake kindly.

"No," he repeated, "I'm afeared that girl o’ Jody's might be in worse trouble'n Tim Barnard could cook up," he said as he put his fork into the sink.

As she went out, he stopped her. "Listen, before you go I wonder if you could do an old man a favor?"

She paused unwillingly. "I got the tools out," he went on, "an’ the prep work's all done. But my eyesight ain't what it used to be."
That deck,
she thought,
he's going to ask me to fix the step on the…

But instead he waved at the far end of his yard where an old green canoe rested under the cedar trees, rails-down across two more of the railroad ties. Going back inside briefly he returned with two glass jars, one full of black, gooey stuff, the other containing clear fluid.

"I wonder if you could maybe mix this up for me, slap it on there," he asked, gesturing out at the canoe.

The tarry stuff was patching compound, the liquid the curing agent, to make the compound harden. "Hoke, I really need to—"

He regarded her gravely. She'd tried to be calm and polite to him but her fear hadn't escaped his notice, she realized.

He was way too wise an old bird for that. "You look like a levelheaded young woman," he said. "Don't need no advice on how to do things from me. But here it is anyway, for what it's worth: When trouble comes, keep your hands full and your mind on practical matters."

He waved a freckled hand at the device clipped to her belt. "I
see you've got a cell phone." It hadn't rung in a while, and she couldn't decide whether that was a good or a bad thing.

"Anyone needs to call you," Hoke went on, "they can. Here or anywhere. I have," he added, "a fair amount of experience in the keep-busy department."

The dead wife, the silent house, the long, solitary decline of old age and its related maladies, the chores getting to be too much…

"Sure, Hoke, I'll do it," she gave in, stepping off the deck into the yard.

Minutes later, she finished mixing the black, tarry goo and the clear fluid together, using a paper plate for a palette and the wooden spatula that had come in the patching kit to stir the stuff with. Over the edge of the cliff, slanted afternoon light turned the water in the cove pale blue, so clear she could see straight down through it to the submerged rocks and weeds growing up from them, long dark green fronds waving in the current.