“Who? Me?"
"Yes, you. Or did Mister Anonymous ride again?"
"Yeah. That's nice. Mister Anonymous did ride again, and punched a big ol’ hole in their plans. You see, I had a niece working for the
Boston Herald
. She told me that a reporter was doing a story for the Sunday paper, about popular historical hoaxes in New England. I called him up and asked him if was planning to do anything about the Thorvald stone in Tyler. He hadn't been, but he was interested just the same. Two weeks later, boom. Nice story, with a photo, poking fun at the rubes in Tyler who had once tried to fool people to come into town. End of story. End of trying to redesign a new approach for the museum. Once that article appeared, the board of directors got cold feet."
"But their feet weren't cold enough to hire you back, right?"
A smile. "Since when does any board of directors like to admit its mistakes? Nope. Jon stayed there and I stayed alone in Tyler, at least for a while. Then I got out and ended up here."
"Why?"
“What do you mean, why?"
The waiter came by, picked up my credit card. I flipped to a blank sheet in my notebook. "You're a native of Tyler. You volunteer to help the town out. You seem to have a commitment to the place. And after one setback, you head out. That's why I asked why."
The smile faded, like moonlight being obscured by a passing cloud. "I burned some bridges, Mr. Cole. I... I took it quite personally, and I'm ashamed to admit that. It was like everything I had worked for, everything I had volunteered and given money to, was taken away by some guy with a nutty story. I mean... Look, Mr. Cole. You're a writer. Correct?"
"That's what I get paid for."
Not a full lie, but pretty close.
"All right. Let's say you do a column that gets national attention. Let's say you write a column about... oh, I don't know what. Let's say you have information about the pirate, Captain Kidd, burying treasure on one of the Isles of Shoals. You put your heart and soul into the story, you have the documentation, you get some attention... and boom, it's gone. Somebody else has taken your work and said, hey, that looks okay, but you know what? It wasn't Captain Kidd who buried that treasure. It was a group of lost Aztecs, sailing north from Central America. And no matter how loony that idea sounds, people grab onto that idea. And your work is ignored. See what I mean?"
"Yes, I do."
He nodded, like he was pleased by my response. "So I got angry. I got bitter. And I left Tyler a few years ago and headed up here, and I've never looked back. Oh, I miss the ocean, but the mountains and the lakes and skiing are a pretty good substitute. After a while, I began to stop brooding about what had happened. I started enjoying my new home. Not a bad place as places go, Mr. Cole."
The door to the restaurant opened and a group of people trooped in, including a man and woman, both wearing brightly colored handknit sweaters, with a Springer Spaniel on a leash between them. The man had a gray beard, the woman had a bright smile, and the dog was sniffing around the entrance like he owned the place. Outside traffic seemed to be backed up in both directions.
"But why here?"
"Excuse me?"
I said, "You said back in Tyler, that you hated tourists, hated backed-up traffic. Seems like you have plenty of that around here. So why North Conway?"
He took a swallow of water. "I still have money, still have drive. There's a lot of things wrong up here, with all the construction and sprawl and open space being gobbled up, but somebody like me can make a difference. I'm a Red Sox fan, so I'm a believer in lost causes. Which is why I'm here."
The waiter came back with my credit card and slip, which I signed and carefully kept the receipt. "And when did you last hear from Jon?"
"Last week. Right here, if you believe it. He called and said he was in the neighborhood, wanted to go over old times. What crap."
"I take it he wanted to talk about Vikings."
"Of course he did. What did you think he'd talk about, the weather, or apologizing for screwing me? Nope. Vikings. One more time."
"What did he want to know?"
"Pretty simple stuff. He wanted to know if I remembered anything unusual from the time when the museum was being put together."
"Unusual in what way?"
"Well, remember what I said earlier, about when the museum was starting up? We had people coming in from all parts of the town, offering us stuff from their basement and their attics. Usually it was junk, but sometimes there were a few bits of treasure. Some letters from the early 1800s. A Civil War uniform. Or a pilot's license from 1919, Signed by Orville Wright. But no, that wasn't good enough for Jon. He wanted to know if I had spotted anything that might have Viking origin. An axe head. A spindle wheel. A coin or piece of sculpture."
Brian looked at me, sighed, and drummed his fingers on the table. "If only he had come up here just to talk for a while, and then get into the Viking crap, maybe things would have been different. But no, he had to go right into it. So I listened for a while and got up and told him to stuff it, and walked on out. And that was it, until I saw the story in the
Union-Leader
about him being murdered, and his brother being a possible suspect."
"Did you know Ray?"
"Met him once, when I was running the museum. Wanted to know if he could leave his antique store's business cards at the front counter, to publicize his store. I said no."
"Did he make a fuss?"
"Nope. Just said something like, can't fault me for trying, and then left."
I closed my notebook and said, "And if things had gone differently when Jon came up to see you, what would you have said?"
"Hunh?"
"His original question, about artifacts from the residents. Did you remember anything, anything at all?"
Brian looked bemused. "This is beginning to sound more like an apology piece than a magazine article. You must have really been taken in by him."
"Maybe I was, maybe I wasn't. But still ... Did you have anything to tell him?"
He looked right at me. "Not a thing. And I'm sorry, I've got to get going."
I grabbed my coat and he his down vest, and we made our way outside. I felt warm and full and slightly blue. I had no illusion that Jon walked on water during his spare time, but still, I didn't like having his faults laid out so starkly by someone who knew him longer and better than I had.
Brian stood next to me on the crowded sidewalk, zipping up his vest. He looked at me and said, "Go ahead. Ask the question."
"What question is that?"
"The standard one. I knew the man who was murdered, he wasn't my best friend, could I account for my whereabouts on the day he got killed."
Out in the early dusk his eyes took on a strange shine. I took the bait. "All right, where were you, on the day in question?"
"Here. In town. During an afternoon planning board meeting, attended by a couple of dozen people. And if that doesn't cut it, the local cable access channel here --- Valley Vision --- actually tapes the program and you can see me sitting in the audience. Good enough for you?"
"Very good," I said.
He laughed, slapped my shoulder. "Say it like you meant it. Mr. Cole, the dinner and the conversation were delightful. Good luck in your article, or whatever it is that you're doing."
We shook hands and then he headed down the sidewalk, where the moving mass of people quickly swallowed him up.
Chapter Nine
With the full meal and some wine in me, and with the darkening sky before me, I didn't feel like driving the two-plus hours back to Tyler Beach. Having not thought forward enough to pack anything, I needed to get a few essentials if I was going to spend the night. I drove south a few score yards until I reached White Birch Books, a bookstore built in an old Victorian house. I browsed there for a while and left with a copy of John Keegan's latest and then made a short walk to a combo gas station-convenience store, where I bought a toothbrush, toothpaste, and razor. Thus prepared, I drove south again to the outskirts of North Conway, to the Moose Point Lodge, a two-story motel with a swimming pool out front that was covered with a blue tarp and decorated with fallen leaves.
And within a half hour of seeing Brian Mulligan, teeth nicely brushed, I crawled into a strange bed and pulled the blankets up, and started reading once again about our last, best war. I read for a long time, until my fingers found the book too heavy to hold, and my eyelids found themselves too heavy to stay open.
Lights off, trying to get to sleep, listening to the drone of traffic nearby, going by on Route 16, after a while I decided that I should have gone to a drugstore as well, to pick up some earplugs, for no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't convince my mind that the traffic sounds were in fact the soft roar of the ocean.
I stretched out on my back, replayed the conversation again that I had just had with Brian Mulligan. There was an old saying that the truth hurt, and that was certainly the case tonight. Again, I had no illusions that Jon had been a perfect man. Far from it. But I had liked the way he talked, his passion for history, and his drive to prove his age-old dream, that Norsemen from his ancestral land had gotten to his neighborhood about a thousand years before he did. A nice little picture of someone, a picture that didn't include letting his passion become an obsession, an obsession that had led to a feud with another old-timer, one with a similar passion for history, but a passion that was grounded in reality.
I rolled over, the traffic sounds still haunting me. Reality.
Jon had taken over Brian's dream, had run roughshod over it, had taken Brian's singular accomplishment of setting up the Tyler Town Museum, and for what? To try to prove something that was unprovable. That's what. And in the process, had also exiled Brian about a hundred miles north from the seacoast.
Did he tell you, Brian had said. Did he tell you how he had screwed me over?
No, he hadn't, I thought.
And what else hadn't he mentioned, in all the conversations that had been shared, at his house or my house, or even in the cellar, digging for ---
I stopped listening to the traffic. Started listening to something else.
The doorknob to my room, moving back and forth.
I sat up, reached for the light, instantly thought better of it. No need to advertise that I was awake. Back and forth, back and forth, the doorknob moved, making a slight clicking noise. I got up and padded across the carpeting, my heart now thumping right along, and automatically, my hand brushed against the old, still tender bruise on my chest. I stood there in my underwear, listening to a murmur of voices. Two, then. Not just one. I leaned in, not letting my body get in front of the door, trying to get closer.
A male voice: "...not much time..."
"...don't worry, we'll do it..."
I stepped back, went to the nightstand, where my Beretta lay, snug in its leather holster. I slipped the 9mm pistol free and went back to the door and slowly undid the chain, letting it dangle free without touching anything. The voices on the other side of the door were still quiet but were more insistent, like they were on a deadline or were screwing up, or that they had to hurry up before they lost their nerve.
All right, I thought, nerve it is.
One hand with the pistol, I grabbed the doorknob with the other, spun it open and slammed the door open, bringing it in. I brought the pistol up to the first young guy I saw, aimed it right at his forehead, maybe two inches away from the skin, and said in a voice that was calm, even for me: "Help you gentlemen with something?"
There was a thud, as one of three guys in front of my room dropped a case of beer on the hallway floor. The guy who had the pistol at his forehead said, "Oh, shit," and then his face reddened, as I heard a trickling noise and he wet himself. The third guy was standing a bit off to one side, a couple of brown grocery bags in his arms, and there was a crunching noise, as he squeezed the bags tight, like he was trying to mold them into a bulletproof vest. My eyes flicked around to all three of them, smelled them and their breath, and saw the baggy jeans, sweatshirts, ill-groomed facial hair, and decided that, in all probability, they weren't assassins prowling in the October night to eliminate one inquisitive Lewis Cole.
I lowered the pistol, took a breath. "You guys lost?"
The guy with the grocery bags nodded real quick, like an eager student in class, wanting to show the teacher how smart he was. "You bet, mister. We're looking for Sammy Sinclair, he's in room Twelve-fourteen. Supposed to be waiting for us, start a party."
"Right room number, wrong person," I said. "I'm not Sammy, and I don't know where he is."
The guy who had wet himself swallowed. "Sorry. Didn't mean to bother you."
I shook my head. "My apologies, guys. You startled me. Let's call it a night, okay?"
Lots of happy nods all around, and I got back into the room, closed the door, and walked back into the darkness to put my pistol away. Great. Just great. Talk about passion sliding into obsession. Hear a noise out there and you don't think it's a bunch of college kids, looking for a party. Nope. It's the trained killer, the one who whacked your chest and who sabotaged your Explorer, all the way up to the White Mountains to finish the job.