"Oh," I said. "One more thing. You said you met Jon through a mutual acquaintance. Who was that?"
Mark said, "Not really a mutual acquaintance of ours, but an acquaintance of my parents. You see, I called down to dad and asked him who I should go to get the Indian stuff checked out. You know, I just wanted to see what it was all about. Dad wasn't too sure, but he told me, and I called him, and that guy said I should give Jon a call."
Although I knew the answer, I had to hear it from them.
"Brian," Mark said. "Brian Mulligan. He used to run the Tyler Town Museum. I gave him a call and he said we should call Jon Ericson. So we did."
Jan said in a helpful tone, "He lives in North Conway."
I smiled at them both. "Yes, I know."
I was back home and started working the phones. It took a while but I got a hold of the cable company that had the franchise for North Conway and found out that, indeed, they had a community affairs program called Valley Vision. After being bounced around a bit, I talked to a young and enthusiastic man named Charlie.
Charlie said, "Okay, could you repeat that again, please?"
Sure," I said. "I write a column for a magazine called
Shoreline
. I'm doing a piece on what goes on at local planning board meetings, about the type of items that get discussed. I want to contrast what goes on in the seacoast with what goes on up in the White Mountains. I thought I could purchase a copy of a tape you have of a North Conway planning board meeting."
"Heck, that'll be a first, to have someone out of town buy a tape copy of those folks," he said, chuckling. "Which meeting would you like?"
"The most recent one," I said. "From last Wednesday."
Charlie's voice changed. "Ah, sorry, can't do that. Can do about any month before that, up to last year. But not last Wednesday's."
I turned around in my office chair, looked out at the bleak landscape of rocks and dirt and scrub grass. "Really? Why's that? Wasn't there a meeting last Wednesday?"
"Sure was," he said, "but we don't have a tape of it."
"You mean, it wasn't recorded?"
"Oh, it was recorded," Charlie explained. "But the damnedest thing, somebody came in when I wasn't around and erased the tape. The whole damn thing. Can you believe that?"
Brian Mulligan, who said his presence in North Conway was backed up by that tape.
"Sorry to say," I said. "I sure can."
Chapter
Nineteen
After getting off the phone with the cable television guy from up north, I forced myself to sit in my office and think for a while. Everything that had gone wrong these past several days had come from my assuming a lot and forcing my way into situations before getting the facts straight, before getting all the questions answered. So far, that had led to some awkward encounters and an arrest record, for the first time in my life.
But not tonight. I was going to do it right. I was going to have my facts and information nailed tight before I proceeded, before I charged anybody with doing anything, and that meant the artifacts.
They were missing, but something the Russells had told me had given me another place to go, another place to think about.
But I wanted to make sure. I needed to make sure.
So I made another phone call, lucked out, and with appointment firmly in hand, I left my house and got in my Ford Explorer and gave one of the Duffy cousins a thankful wave as I went out toward Atlantic Avenue, thinking that if I was lucky, the Duffy cousins would be back at their home this time tomorrow, ready to do something else for their patron, Felix.
I spent the next twenty minutes driving to Exonia, a small town next to Tyler in the west that boasts a number of authors in residence, along with the famous Phillips Exonia Academy, a prep school to the rich and famous years ago, and now prep school to the rich, famous, and smart who are fortunate enough to get loans or scholarships. The house I was looking for was in a rural part of town, down a narrow one-lane country road, but the directions I had been provided were excellent. I made a left at a mailbox designed to look like a lighthouse and went up the dirt driveway, parked behind a light blue Subaru station wagon. The house was a simple two-story colonial, painted light red with black shutters, and I got out of the Explorer and walked to the front door. The lawn was free of dead leaves, and there were rhododendron and lilac bushes around the front of the house.
The door was answered at the first ring, opening to reveal the smiling face of Professor Olivia Hendricks, and then a flash of white and black between my feet, racing out the door.
"Oreo!" Hendricks called out, almost laughing. "You get back in here!"
"Hold on, I'll get him," I said, turning around and going back to the lawn. The cat looked at me with a look of disgust --- like a prisoner escaping to find a guard on his back --- but he let me pick him up and bring him back inside. Hendricks was in the living room, right off to the left, sitting down on a couch. I came in with the cat squirming in my hands and Hendricks laughed and said, "You can put that bum down wherever you want, Lewis. I just don't like him going out by himself. There are dogs out there, foxes, and, at night, coyotes. I don't want him going out and not coming back. I'd miss the poor fella too much, and I think a lot of students would as well."
I gently let him down on the Oriental rug and sat down on a couch on the other side of the room. It was a cozy place, filled with books and warmed by a fireplace that was actually burning a few chunks of wood. Between us was a thick coffee table with books and magazines on top ---
Newsweek, Time, The Nation
--- and books also overflowed from bookshelves along three walls. Classical music from the local NPR station played from speakers in the corner. A window overlooked the front lawn and our vehicles, and I settled into the couch as Hendricks looked over at me. She had on jeans and a UNH sweatshirt, and she said, "All right, I must admit, your call was intriguing. Tell me again what's going on?"
I said, "I think I might have a lead on where those Viking artifacts are located."
She nodded. "The ones supposedly discovered by your friend Jon Ericson. Okay. Go on. I'm listening."
"And I think I also know who might have murdered Jon. But I want to be sure about the artifacts before I go to the police."
Hendricks clasped her hands together. "How can I help?"
"These artifacts. The people who owned them, they thought they were Native American. They met with Jon the day before his death. Jon obviously thought they belonged to his Viking friends. And in your position, I was hoping, well, I was thinking that... "
She nodded crisply. "You'd like me to evaluate them, correct? Ensure their authenticity?"
"That's right," I said. "I don't want to go to the police and have wrong information. I want to make sure I'm right."
"Who doesn't?" Hendricks said. "Look. I have a pot of water on, I was making myself a late afternoon cup of tea. Care to join me? And then you can tell me more about the artifacts and what they supposedly represent."
I really wanted to get a move on, but I also wanted to be polite.
"Sure. Tea would be fine."
She got up off the couch, just as something sharp bit at my ankle. I looked down and snapped my leg away, and I heard Hendricks say as she went by me, "That damn Oreo. Sometimes he's just not friendly to strangers. Just push him away and he'll be fine."
I kept my eyes down on the cat, who looked up at me with the scorn that only a cat can display, when you're disrupting their routine or their territory or their life. I said in a low voice, so the good professor wouldn't hear me, "Tell you what, pal. You go your way, I'll go mine, and nobody gets hurt."
He seemed to ponder that for a moment, licked a paw and rubbed his face, and then wandered over to the fireplace, where he plopped himself down and rolled over on his side. From the kitchen I could make out the sounds of dishes rattling and silverware clattering, as Hendricks hummed a little tune to herself. My hands felt twitchy, like they needed to have something in them, and I leaned over a bit to the coffee table, looking at some of the magazines, and the books they were covering.
Three of the books were identical, and they had a cheap paper cover and block lettering. I recognized them as bound galleys, one of the last stages of publishing a book. Just before a book gets published, a hundred or so quick copies are printed up --- without the last typos and corrections being taken care of --- with a cheap cover slapped on it. The books are sent to chain store buyers and independent bookstores and reviewers, and the one I now held in my hand bore the title They Lived by the Shore: New England's Original Peoples.
And the author was none other than Olivia Hendricks.
I caught her out of the corner of my eye as she came in, bearing a tray, which she put down on the table between us. The tray had two cups of tea and a plate of Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies. "Oh, I see you've noticed my latest opus."
"It looks interesting," I said. "What's it about?"
I looked up as she sat down on the far couch. "It's a book I've been working on for almost a decade. A real look at the Native Americans who resided on the coasts, and how their lives were disrupted when the Europeans first arrived. It took so much time because I wanted to tell the story from their point of view and not the Europeans'. We've all grown up with the tales of the Pilgrims and their first Thanksgiving. Well, my book tries to tell the tale from the Indians' perspective, about what it was like to have their lives so violently interrupted, and all because they lived by the shore. The shore that was their home, the shore that was the new home for the peoples leaving Europe."
I put the book back down on the table. "A lot of work."
"Yes, quite a lot of work, and my editor and I are very excited about it. It's going to have quite a respectable first printing for a historical work of its kind, and there's a good chance that it might have some major national reviews." The smile that came next didn't seem to bear much humor. "You know the phrase, publish or perish? That's so true in my field, and especially when you publish, your work disappears, and you still perish. But this one... ah, this one, this might secure my future. It might make everything right, finally, for all those years doing fieldwork and teaching."
"I look forward to reading it," I said.
She shrugged, got up from the couch. "You can have one of those galleys, if you'd like."
"That's very kind of you," I said, but I was no longer thinking of the cheap paperback book in front of me. I was watching Hendricks as she approached the coffee table and the tray, for she was limping.
She was limping.
At her office at school, she was always behind her desk.
And now, I had not seen her move, being distracted by that damn cat.
But she was limping.
I looked at the book again. A book that was going to make everything right, secure her future.
Hendricks picked up a cup of tea, put some milk in hers, and then limped back to the couch. She sat down and nibbled delicately on a cookie. "These artifacts. What can you tell me about them?"
The room was warm, was comfortable, and I felt like I could spend an evening here, just browsing through the bookshelves and enjoying the music and the warmth of the fire ---if I stayed out of the way of the neurotic cat on the floor nearby --- but I needed to get the hell out of here, and fast.
I tried a smile. I don't think I succeeded. "Look. I've imposed upon you already, professor. Why don't I leave and get the artifacts and bring them back to you?"
She said, “Why don't you take me to them? Are they in your car?"
"No, they're not," I said, my feet urging me to get the hell up and out. "Really, I shouldn't impose upon you. Why don't I ---"
And she smiled and leaned forward, putting her teacup down on the tray, and a hand went down and there was the noise of a drawer sliding open, and her hand came up holding a pistol, which was pointing right at me.
"All right," she said. "This is how it's going to be. Lean back, be quiet, and put your hands behind your head."
"Professor," I said, trying to put a shocked tone in my voice.
"What's this all about?"
Her eyes and gaze were now icy. "You can put away the shocked tone, Mr. Cole. I don't care to hear it. So listen to me. Lean back on the couch, put your hands behind your head."
"Is this some kind of joke?" I asked, seeing if I could possibly defuse the situation, get her comfortable, get her ---
"No, no joke," she said sharply. "And if you don't do as I say, I'll shoot you right here, just like I did your friend. Jon Ericson. Got it?"
Oh, yes, I thought, my feet and hands growing chilled. I certainly got it, for Professor Hendricks had just confessed to me that she had committed murder last week, but the confession didn't seem part of her seeking any kind of forgiveness. She certainly didn't seem to be in a mood to ask for forgiveness, no, sir. I leaned back as she told me, put my hands behind my head, elbows straight up. The cat looked over at me, looked bored, and went back to work, cleaning his face with his paw.