Bunker 01 - Slipknot (26 page)

The thought that perhaps my only unconditional emotional attachment was directed toward an automobile was disturbing and mildly depressing. As I dug in my bag for the s l i p k n o t

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keys, I absentmindedly began humming Simon & Garfunkel’s

“I Am a Rock.” Positioning myself behind the steering wheel, I was surprised to find a note taped over the horn: “Miss Bunker, I took it upon myself to have your window replaced before the storm struck. Hope that’s OK. Lee (my nephew) at Sunrise Glass has a bill for you to sign and send to your insurance company. Cal.” With all that had happened since, I had forgotten about the broken window. How thoughtful of Cal!

Maybe my feelings of friendlessness and disconnection in Green Haven were false or the product of fatigue and the af-termath of trauma. I wiped a single tear from my eyelashes before it escaped down my cheek. Some island I am, I thought.

Glad to have no witnesses to my emotional weakness, I stomped the accelerator to the floor three times and turned the ignition switch. The engine refused to start. The recollection of running out of gas sent a fresh flood of tears. God, I was so tired.

I wondered when was the last time I’d cried. Before I could figure that out, I was hiking up the hill toward home.

Feeling my way through the gift shop and up the stairs, I didn’t turn on a light until I was safely inside the apartment.

Another note, this one from Alice and Henry, was mostly lighthearted teasing about the schedule I had been keeping and an invitation to dinner on Thursday. Unless I had missed an entire day along the line, Thursday was the following night, so I vowed to accept the invitation and found myself actually looking forward to seeing the landlords. As for the rest of this evening, I needed food, a hot shower, and sleep.

Strawberries did the trick for my hunger, and fifteen minutes under a steaming showerhead washed away salt, grease, and

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the chill. Somewhat revived, I was now considering things other than my bed.

As much as I squirmed to dance around the spending side of one of my Scottish dilemmas, I caved in and plugged my cell phone charger into a socket behind the table. Wondering how many messages I had missed from my employer, I turned on my laptop and ran the phone line over to the bottom of the wall-mounted unit that Henry had so expertly repaired after the popcorn disaster. As long as I was splurging on high-end electricity, I might as well go for a little long-distance dial-up, too. While waiting for my somewhat antiquated computer to come to life, I casually drew the window shade. Then I locked my apartment door with the deadbolt, took a deep breath, and willed myself to relax. I’m alone, I told myself. I’m safe.

Lunging for my soggy messenger bag, I opened its Velcro closure with such exuberance that my ribs sang a painful reminder. My patience had been stretched to a tautness that had until now been unknown. Fear of either discovery or disappointment fed a palpitation in my chest that surged the length of my arms and dead-ended in my trembling hands.

The package was meticulously wrapped in plastic and taped to a fare-thee-well. As I began picking tape from a corner, I suspected I held in my hands evidence to convict. This was the sought-after item that had sent Green Haven residents combing the shoreline, and also the catalyst for someone to visit Dow’s house. Anything worth hiding must be worth finding, I hoped as I ripped a length of tape, exposing the package’s contents.

s l i p k n o t

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Dow’s black book was, in actuality, dark green and just the right size to tuck into a back pocket. The vinyl cover was worn and shaped in a way that indicated the book had spent a great deal of time being sat upon. Inside the front cover was an envelope containing cash, mostly tens and twenties, that added up to just three hundred dollars. Not exactly high stakes, I thought. I pulled a loose sheet of paper, folded letter-style, from between pages in the middle of the notebook. It was a rather formal letter addressed to Lincoln Aldridge from the dean of the admissions office at Boston University, politely denying Alex Aldridge any financial aid in the way of athletic scholarship and encouraging Mr.

Aldridge to apply for need-based aid, which would make Alex eligible for a campus job. A surreal image of Little Lord Fauntleroy serving up scoops of pasty mashed potatoes vanished with the growing mystery. Why, I wondered, would this letter be in Nick Dow’s possession?

Dow’s book was pretty much what I’d imagined it would be, given all that I had heard about his activity as the local low-level bookie. Entries were dated and clearly printed. No names were used; numbers represented gamblers and buyers into various pools. As far as I could tell, there was no meth-odology in the numbering system. Some players were represented by single digits, others up to five digits, as if they had chosen their own codes to be easily remembered.

Nowhere in the book did I find a key that matched names with the secret gambling codes. I was not surprised. This could be Dow’s assurance to his flock of gamers that if the authorities ever leaned on him, nobody but Dow would be in

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any legal trouble. Speeding through the entries page after page, I couldn’t imagine what all the fuss had been, with so many folks discussing the book and the wad of cash they’d surmised would accompany it. Most bets were in the ten-to-twenty-dollar range.

Then, two-thirds of my way through the book, I noticed a large increase in the individual bets placed by gambler 34.

The first sizable bet was listed on a page headed with “MLB

American League East”: 34 had bet $2,000 on the New York Yankees and had lost. Following that loss, 34 had wagered increasingly large amounts, apparently drowning in the typical gaming spiral: circling the drain and hoping that a huge win against all odds would pull him or her out. But luck was not on his or her side. IOUs were taped to many of the pages and signed with 34. By the time I reached the page where the last bets had been placed, a rough calculation showed that 34 was in debt to Nick Dow for over $50,000. This was not petty cash. People have killed for less.

Several unused pages led to the back of the book. The very last page had some notes scribbled on it, including what looked like a toll-free telephone number and a series of digits and letters that I associated with an order or shipping confirmation. Curiosity got the best of me. My cell phone now had enough charge to place a call while remaining plugged in. I let my fingers do the walking. “Thank you for calling Saltwater Exotics. All associates are busy with other customers. Please stay on the line for the next available associate. Your call is important to us.” Interesting, I thought. But not incriminating.

Dow had a hobby and had placed an order for his aquarium.

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This I already knew. Before I could hang up, a pleasant man thanked me for holding and asked how he could assist me.

“Oh, hi. I’d like to check on an order, please.”

“Do you have your order number?”

“Yes. GN337DC.”

“Okay, let’s see.” A short pause was followed by: “
Hemigrapsus sanguineus,
ten male and ten female, right?”

“I’m sorry, but I didn’t place the order with the Latin name. What was ordered?” I asked.

“
Hemigrapsus sanguineus
is the Asian shore crab, or Japanese crab. And I show them delivered. Mrs. Hamilton, right?”

“Yes, Lucy Hamilton,” I lied. “I purchased them as a gift and never received a thank-you, so I wanted to see that they had actually been delivered. Some people have no manners!

Thanks for your trouble.”

“No trouble at all. Anything else I can do for you, Mrs.

Hamilton?”

“I would like to know more about these crabs. I know it’s strange that I purchased them without knowing exactly what I was buying, but like I said, they were a gift. How do you spell the Latin name? Maybe I can research them on the Internet.”

“You should have received a fact sheet with your invoice.

We always send a fact sheet.”

“I’m not sure I remember seeing the invoice, but I suppose it could be here somewhere,” I stalled, hoping for something more that might help.

“The envelopes we use stand out. They have a red border along the left edge.”

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“Oh, yes. That sounds familiar. Where did I see that envelope?” My mind immediately flashed to the envelope Lucy Hamilton had grabbed from the urn wreckage. “My memory isn’t what it used to be. Have I placed any other orders with you?”

A long sigh indicated that the salesman was getting annoyed with me. “Let’s have a look here. No. My computer indicates this was your first and only order.”

I thanked him again and hung up. If Dow hadn’t been bringing home crabs from sea, then how could the travel buckets and aeration pumps be explained? To what extent was Lucy Hamilton involved? And for what purpose? Lucy had gone to such lengths to conceal the evidence of her crab purchase that I knew she and Dow must have had evil intentions. But what? So far Dow’s book had done nothing but add to my confusion.

Launching my Internet browser, I waited impatiently through the clicks and electronic sounds that accompanied the dial-up service. When I finally connected, I Googled

“Asian crab.” Pages listing websites and articles on or including
Hemigrapsus sanguineus
appeared on the screen. Select-ing the site topping the list, I scrolled down through the information, then skipped around and through a number of articles, mostly excerpts from science publications, and learned more than the average person would care to know about Asian shore crabs. The physical description of the Asian crab was identical to what I remembered seeing in Dow’s overflowing aquarium. I cursed the Old Maids’ cat for eating what could have confirmed the match.

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Asian crabs, I read, were highly reproductive, with a breeding season twice the length of native crabs. Females were capable of producing fifty thousand eggs per clutch, and they produced three or four clutches per breeding season.

This would account for a shipment of twenty crabs growing quickly to tens of thousands, I reasoned. More interesting to me was the fact that Asian crabs were touted to be versatile and able to thrive in a range of habitats. They were “opportunistic omnivores,” feeding on larvae and juvenile fish. Pro-lific reproduction, broad diet, and hardiness gave these crabs the potential to disrupt food chains and devastate indigenous populations of crabs and fish.

Nearly every article I read listed Asian crabs as highly invasive, bringing to my mind a Miami media blitz following a lawsuit that eventually convicted a man for the illegal importation of the highly invasive koi fish. The man had been selling koi to owners of Chinese restaurants for display in tanks.

I clearly remembered the man’s reaction to mandatory jail time and the outrageous fine; he stressed that he had absolutely no intention of releasing the koi to the wild, which would have been a serious threat to native species. I couldn’t imagine it was legal to sell these crabs except for scientific research. Who knew what kind of story Lucy Hamilton had manufactured to have her order filled?

Dow never had to worry about being chased down by the dogs of journalism in Green Haven for the illegal release of Asian crabs. But had he had intentions other than the entertainment and wonderment of watching them multiply? What if his intentions had been to release the invasive crabs to

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hasten the total devastation of the cod stocks, as predicted in his letter to
National Fisherman
? I saw how this would also benefit Lucy Hamilton. Wind farmers could better justify their desire for a piece of ocean floor if there were no cod there. Things were falling into place. But who had killed Dow? And why?

Exiting Google, I clicked on my e-mail icon. Deleting the myriad of electronic sales pitches ranging from low-interest loans (which overestimated my interest in them) to wrinkle creams, I opened the single e-mail sent from my boss. After reprimanding me for not being attentive to incoming calls, the note quickly outlined serious business. “First,” he wrote,

“I must make my priority the completion of the survey of Blaine Hamilton’s sailboat,
Fairways
.” It seemed Hamilton was in the process of “mortgaging his eyeteeth” to purchase shore property for his proposed wind-generated power plant.

Hamilton’s willingness to have everything riding on a wind farm that had yet to win Green Haven’s public approval was surprising to me. The implication that the Hamiltons didn’t have enough cash to purchase the entire state of Maine, as I had been led to believe, indicated desperation more than willingness.

My employer’s other immediate concern was what had been reported as the “total loss of the
Sea Hunter
” by Alan Quinby. Quin was apparently entitled to the entire insurance settlement, as his partners, Lincoln and George Aldridge, had been lost at sea with the vessel. The insurance company was anxious to know whether I had surveyed the
Sea Hunter
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minimizing cash outlay. My, it hadn’t taken Quin long to start the wheels of financial benefit after leaving four of us, including his best friend, for dead. But as anything other than a condemnation of Quin’s character, all of this was irrelevant, since the vessel had not gone down. I would straighten this out with my boss in the morning. I wondered what the rami-fications of attempted insurance fraud were.

Next I checked my cell phone’s voice mail and found that my boss had not left any messages. The phone’s call log indicated three missed calls, all from the agency and all prior to the boss’s resorting to e-mail six hours ago. The call log also listed outgoing activity, and I wondered who had placed calls before the battery had died. There were five calls, all to the same number—367-5009, a Green Haven exchange. None of the calls appeared to have connected, as the longest was twelve seconds. I guessed that Alex had used my phone to call a girlfriend. I knew that teenagers were apt to dial anyone’s phone at any time, without regard to permission from its owner. I wondered whose number had been dialed so per-sistently and so late at night. Well, it was my phone, I reasoned. I felt justified in attempting the number myself, even at this late hour.