Blood Foam: A Lewis Cole Mystery (Lewis Cole series) (3 page)

“What’s going on with your house?”

“A bit of good luck last week,” I said. “Got my building permit from the town. With the old lumber I’ve bought, I’m two thirds of the way there. Unfortunately, the last third involves labor and money, of which I have none. The money’s not there, and the labor’s not moving until the money comes in.”

“Insurance companies suck, don’t they.”

“Right now, no argument from me,” I said.

“And why are you still living in your car? You can still hang your hat at our place. Unless you think Kara will be overwhelmed by your masculinity and jump your bones.”

“I don’t think I’m whelming, either under or over. And I don’t want to be underfoot.”

“If you need some funds to rent at the hotel, we could—”

“No. Kind and gracious offers, both of them. But I’m doing fine. I also like being near my house in case somebody gets the urge late at night to break in and strip out the copper plumbing. But enough about me . . . how are you doing?”

She moved one leg and then another out away from her chair, moving slow, like she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to move them back again. “Progressing. The doc . . . he has a good flowchart of how to work my muscles, how to get back into shape. There’s a definite timetable, and I’m ahead of schedule. But the muscle between my ears . . . that’s proving more of a challenge. My mind . . . it gets fuzzy sometimes. I get up and walk to
the bathroom, and I forget about a second later why I got up. I read the newspaper, and the words seem to float right off the page. And I get scared sometimes . . . which is not like me. But hey, some good news, like you.
Miranda
’s out of the harbor. Last boat taken out for the winter.”

“Good for you. How’s Kara?”

“About that close to getting fired for spending so much time here. But she’s still doing fine.”

“Wedding still on for next June?”

“Even if I’m dragged in on a stretcher after a relapse, yeah, still on. And a little birdie also told me that Paula Quinn has been seen in your vicinity. What’s going on with that? I thought she was engaged to our illustrious town counsel.”

“I’m surprised your little birdie can fly, with ears so large,” I said. “She has been seen with me, she’s still engaged to Mister Spencer; but . . . has your little birdie told you the news about him?”

“Not a thing. What, is he getting disbarred for having a sense of humor?”

“Not quite,” I said. “He’s gone missing, and I don’t mean overdue getting back from picking up his dry cleaning. For three days, he hasn’t been seen at work or at his home, and he’s not answering his cell phone, e-mail, or texts. No threats, no bloody crime scene at his office or condo. And supposedly nothing unusual or odd happening in the last several days to raise questions for Paula.”

Diane gingerly moved her legs back closer. “Paula gone to the local cop shop?”

“She’s seen Captain Nickerson. But you can imagine the response.”

“Sure,” Diane said. “He’s an adult and it’s not against the law to disappear. The fact that he’s town counsel . . . well, Kate’s probably taken a report and that’s about it.”

“I understand that.”

“So. What did you promise Paula?”

“What makes you think I promised her anything?”

“I know you fairly well, my friend. When does your search begin?”

“Later this morning,” I said. “I’m going to ask Paula for a complete debrief, get a meeting with Captain Nickerson, talk to co-workers and neighbors. The usual.”

“Three days, eh?”

“Yep.”

“He’s probably dead, you know. Had a bit to drink, drove his car into a river or pond. Or parked his car at a store somewhere, hit-and-run driver takes him out, propels him into a wooded area. Or maybe some past client with a grudge and a lack of conscience decided to settle some obscure score.”

“Probably. But I’m still going to look for him.”

She brushed my hand with hers. “Of course you will. Good luck, then. . . . Tell you what: in between those torture sessions they call PT, I’ll reach out to Captain Nickerson, let her know you’ll be by in a bit. How does that sound?”

“Sounds great.”

“Fine,” she said, reaching up to grab her walker. “Now escort me back, before we encourage the gossips about all the time we’re spending together here alone.”

I helped her up, and she unlocked the wheels to her walker. Before we left, I said, “Diane . . . your dreams. Any of them have to do with Curt Chesak?”

She started moving out of the sunroom, and I wondered if she hadn’t heard me, when she said, quietly, “Same dream, most times. Curt Chesak is coming after me at the nuke plant demonstration. I can’t move. It’s like my feet have been buried in the ground . . . and he raises up that lead pipe. He hits me again and again . . . and in the dream, I don’t faint or lose consciousness. The lead pipe comes again and again. Covered with blood. My hair . . . my brain . . . I just stand there and take it and take it and take it. . . .” And in her last sentence, her voice rose higher and higher.

I took her near arm. “About Curt Chesak.”

“What about him?”

“You never have to worry about him, ever again.”

She slowed the walker down until it came to a stop. “I’m still a fully sworn police officer in the State of New Hampshire.”

“I’m sure you are,” I said. “And I’m still your fully sworn friend. Curt Chesak is gone. Period.”

Diane didn’t say anything more as we went back to her room, but as I helped her back into her hospital bed, she raised up her battered head and
kissed me firmly on the lips. Her lips were rough and chapped, and she had sour breath, and I didn’t care one bit.

A half hour later, I was at the offices of the
Tyler Chronicle
. It was located in an office building adjacent to the small Tyler town common, right in the center of town. I parked next to the building and strolled through the front door. Once upon a time, I would have been greeted by a receptionist who would take classified ads from walk-ins. But with the rise of the almighty Internet, classified advertising had collapsed, and the newspaper could no longer afford the expense of a receptionist.

I went around the empty counter, into the main office. There was the sound of rumba music and a rhythmic
thump-thump-thump
. Last year, in a desperate measure to keep the newspaper alive, the
Chronicle
’s owners had given up half their office space, and that new space had been turned into a dance studio.

Thump-thump-thump
.

A tired-looking Paula Quinn got up from her cluttered desk, manila folder in hand, and motioned me to follow her. The rest of the office was empty, save for one young man with a Vandyke beard and a stud below his lower lip, pounding away on a laptop. There were four other empty desks. At one time, near deadline, reporters and local town correspondents would have occupied the desks; but with the ability to file their stories from home, from inside a car or a town hall lobby, the
Chronicle
’s offices were mostly empty, day to day.

It was no doubt more efficient, but it was still depressing to look at.

Paula led me into a small conference room and shut the door. She had on khaki slacks and a black turtleneck sweater. There were coffee stains on her left leg and crumbs on her sweater. She sat down at a round table and I sat across from her, and she slid the folder over.

“Here you go,” she said, voice wavering. “A copy of the missing-persons report, his résumé, recent photo. I can’t think of anything else.”

I opened up the folder, flipped through it. Birthplace of Trenton, Vermont. Local schools. New England College of Law. A couple of law internships, then arriving in Tyler and joining the firm of Adams & Lessard. Date of birth showed he was two years older than Paula, and his Social
Security number was 520-54-1959. Hair black, eyes blue, five feet eleven inches tall, 170 pounds. No distinguishing scars or tattoos. The photo was a color headshot, taken in the summer, wearing a lime-green polo shirt, big smile, short black hair, and with a golf club over his shoulder.

“Where was this taken?” I asked.

“During the Tyler Beach Chamber of Commerce invitational last summer.”

“Nice.”

I closed the folder and she passed over a key. “His condo. The address is Twelve Rockland Ridge. Unit 4. I have some time this afternoon if you want to go over.”

I took the key, pocketed it. “No offense, Paula, but I’d rather go myself.”

“But I can explain and—”

“It’s better if I see things by myself, with a fresh eye. If I have any questions, I’ll get back to you. All right?”

She nodded quickly. “I understand.”

A knock on the door, and the bearded young man with the stud below his lower lip appeared. “Paula, my story’s filed. And I need to get out . . . can you give my story a look-see?”

“Sure, Jonah,” she said, standing up. “Lewis?”

I picked up the folder. “I’ll call you later.”

My next stop was at the famed Tyler Beach. It being November, most of the T-shirt shops, restaurants, motels, and hotels were closed. Some of the more pessimistic owners had nailed plywood over the windows, in the fear—which I shared—that things down south in Florida would go bad and that tropical depression would grow and start roaming this way, like some cheesy monster from a 1950s science-fiction film, looking to wreak havoc on any vacation spot that was in the way.

There were just a few cars motoring around, and with the November winds, sand was beginning to drift over the streets. Along the beach, the state had erected long, orange plastic fences along the sidewalks to keep most of the sand in place.

The Tyler police station is a bunker-like concrete building, right next to the Tyler fire department, and I parked in a visitor spot; and after a brief
conversation with a dispatcher behind thick bulletproof glass, the door leading in was buzzed open and I met with Captain Kate Nickerson.

She was friendly but slightly wary, and had on a dark green Tyler police uniform with heavy-looking black boots. Her blond hair was short and she had simple gold earrings in each ear, and her office was small, its one desk being shared with two other captains who worked other shifts. But on one corner of the desk was a photo of a man I assumed was her husband, along with a young boy and girl, all three laughing and sitting on a park bench. Black filing cabinets and a bulletin board were about the only other features in the office.

I took a chair across from her, and she said “Detective Woods called a while ago, saying you’d stop by for a visit.”

“Thanks for taking the time,” I said.

She folded her hands in front of her. “Sorry to say, even with Diane’s phone call, I don’t have much to offer you. Paula Quinn came in, I talked to her, took down some information . . . and that’s it.”

“I know,” I said. “Being an adult and leaving without telling anybody isn’t a crime.”

“That’s right. But Paula being with the newspaper, and Mark being the town counsel, I made some phone calls, checked to see if anybody was injured at the local hospitals with no ID . . . even checked the county morgues. Nothing. And that’s about that.”

“How about putting an alert on his credit cards? In case they get used?”

She pursed her lips. “That needs a warrant from a judge, and what can I say to a judge to request a warrant? No sign of a crime, no threats, no ransom notes, nothing . . . and for all you and I know, he might have just decided to toss away his law career and take a Greyhound to Key West.”

“Or he might be dead.”

“Or he might be dead,” she agreed. “And if he is . . . well, don’t tell Paula this, please, but there’s a good chance he’ll be found in a week or two. When our citizen militia goes out on drills.”

She was smiling, and I think she was teasing me. So I took the bait. “What militia?”

“Deer hunters,” she said. “Bow hunters, muzzle-loaders, regular hunters. They start tramping through the woods and the meadows. That’s when we
find bones, that’s when we find missing persons. So that’s when and where I think we’ll find Mark Spencer.”

The town hall for Tyler is back up at the center of the town, next to the uptown fire station. It’s in a white building that looks like a particularly large Cape Cod house—complete with black shutters—and even without an appointment, I got a meeting with Glen Torrance, the town manager. In most towns in New Hampshire, the government hasn’t changed much in the past 375 years—an elected board of selectmen, sometimes three members, sometimes five. And those with five selectmen usually hire a town manager to run the day-to-day operations for the town, since selectmen most often have other jobs and get paid the magnificent sum of five hundred dollars a year.

But the real fun part is the makeup of the five selectmen. If you get a mix of rabid left-wingers and right-wingers, it can make the town manager’s job miserable, trying to answer to five different masters, meaning you have towns that go through town managers like tires on NASCAR racing cars.

But Glen had been here for four years—nearly an eternity in small-town politics—and I was happy he’d see me on such short notice. His office was on the second floor, with a great view of the parking lot behind the town hall, and I took a chair across from his clean and ordered desk. Glen was tall, about six foot six, but with not much fat or muscle. His face was lean and angular and sort of melancholy, like he had a hard time ducking problems and low-hanging ceilings. His hair was a mix of gray-brown, and it was parted to the side. He had on a blue Oxford shirt with button collar, no necktie, and dark gray slacks.

“Hey, I’m glad to see Ray issued you the building permit for your place, Lewis.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Hope I can get some work done before any heavy weather gets up here.”

He grimaced. “Yeah. That depression off Florida. Hope it holds.”

“Or at least gets some Prozac into it,” I said, making his grimace disappear. He put his long hands behind his head, leaned back into his chair. “So. What can the town of Tyler do for you today?”

“Tell me where you think your town counsel is.”

The grimace returned. “Pretty strange, isn’t it. I was supposed to meet with him last Friday, over some worker-compensation paperwork, but he never showed up. Called him at home, at his office, even tried his cell. Nothing.”