Chosen for Death (28 page)

"What do you think?" Andre said. "See you, Tiny." He followed me out.

I was still steaming. "I can't believe you went along with that asshole," I said. "He's a dirty cheater and a sexist pig. How can you stand him?"

"Does a good job fixing cars, though," Andre said. "Look at this baby." He patted the hood. "Of course you didn't see it before, but it was a mess. And he is allowed to charge for expedited repairs, even if it does seem outrageous, if your father approved the transaction."

"And what was all that bullshit about the colonel's daughter, and the weeping waitresses?" I was getting angrier by the minute. Shorty had gotten out of the car and stood watching us, a moronic expression on his face. I swung around and pointed at him. "Get back to work," I said. "This is a private conversation, not a sideshow." He ducked his head and walked sheepishly away. "And you," I said to Andre, "how can you call that cretin a friend?"

"I didn't say he was my friend," Andre said mildly.

"You sure acted like it," I said.

"Look, Thea, you have to understand the way it is. A trooper doesn't really have friends, except other troopers. It's kind of a closed society. So he's not a friend, though maybe he wants to think he is. He was just being a guy." He sighed, exasperated with me. "Maybe we should forget about it, OK? Maybe it's something you just can't understand."

"Because I'm not a member of the club, you mean? Not a cop? So I can't understand. Cops only sleep with cops and marry cops? Must be a pretty lonely life, with so few women."

He made a face. "You're a hard woman, Thea." He set my suitcase down beside the Saab. "Going to your sister's place?" I nodded. "Maybe I'll see you later," he said. "I've got some work to do now, if, to quote a woman I met recently, I can get my mind back above my belt."

I thought I knew who that woman was. And appreciated that it was wise of him to give me time to cool off. I opened the trunk and put my suitcase in. It hurt a little, but I didn't want him to think I was a wimp. I put my briefcase on the seat and climbed in. The engine roared to life with its comforting throb. The seat felt right. I adjusted the mirrors. Everything was fine again, but I couldn't help finding it all slightly shopworn after the fancy red number I'd been driving. Maybe it was time for a new car.

Andre tapped on the window. "I'll be over around eight to help you move boxes," he said. "Maybe you could feed me?"

I gave him a mock salute. "To hear is to obey."

"Get out of here," he growled. I left before his good humor deserted him, and stopped at a market in Camden to get supplies. Baking potatoes. Bluefish and mustard. Bacon and eggs and bread. Salad stuff. Sauerkraut and sausage and sour cream. The ingredients for Thea Kozak's earthshaking raspberry-chocolate mousse. Visions of sugarplums, or at least hot food, danced in my head as I drove up Main Street, turned on Mountain, and parked in front of Carrie's door. Good old reliable Mrs. Bolduc watched from behind her curtain as I unloaded the groceries and carried in my suitcase. I gave her my best smile and waved. The curtain twitched and she disappeared.

I put the food away, made myself a cup of tea, and sat down at the table with Carrie's notes, my notes, and the search guide Carol Anderson had given me. I had a vital piece of information now, her birth mother's name. There were several ways I might be able to find her. I could look in the phone book for Omar Norwood if he was still alive. I could search the marriage records at Hallowell Town Hall to see if anyone named Elizabeth Norwood had been married in Hallowell, to learn her married name. I could look through phone books and see if I could find a listing for Elizabeth or E. Norwood. The first two seemed most promising.

Carrie's phone was still working, so I called directory assistance. They had no listing for an Omar Norwood in Hallowell. I called the state library and asked if they kept phone books for the whole state. They did. Tomorrow I would go to Augusta and read phone books.

Chapter 22

My map said Hallowell was just below Augusta on the Kennebec River. Bright and early the next morning I was washed and shined, dressed in my success clothes, and tooling along Route 17, the road leading from the coast over to the capital city. The first part of the road was wide and smooth, swooping along past rugged hills and placid lakes, up steep inclines and through tiny villages. It was pretty country. Fat, fluffy clouds hovered along the ridge tops, while down in the valleys, the ground fog was slowly burning off, revealing fields of pumpkins, squash, and golden corn, and the blazing orange and red beauty of maple trees.

I was enjoying the best part of the day, while Andre was still sound asleep back in Camden in Carrie's bed. Mrs. Bolduc was probably having a coronary. Not only did her latest tenant have a male guest, the guest was a state trooper.

After I passed through Union, a "road narrows" sign appeared. "Road disintegrates" would have been a fairer description. I shuddered and bumped along for about ten miles, past a number of chronic yard sales, until I swept up a bumpy hill and encountered good road again. I passed a curious group of large wooden statues standing by the road, followed closely by a display of birch reindeer planters with little red noses, a flock of woolly wooden sheep, and a house under attack by a horde of wooden butterflies. On this road there were only a few bent-over ladies. Their popularity must have been waning. Now I knew how people in Maine kept busy during the long cold winters. They didn't knit, like Agnes. They went in for woodworking in a big way.

I felt Carrie's presence very strongly today, wondering how she had felt, making this same drive, knowing that at the end of it she might find what she'd been searching for. I had a such a clear picture of her. She would have been driving too fast, because she always did, the music turned up too loud, the ramshackle little Chevette banging and clattering. She would have had the windows down, because it was still warm, her curly hair blowing in the wind. Like me, she would not have eaten breakfast. Carrie could never eat when she was nervous. And she would have had her notebook, because even though she was moody and impulsive, she was also a fanatic about order.

I had an advantage because I had her notes, but I was still nervous. I didn't know what I was going to do if l found her birth mother. I couldn't exactly call up and ask the woman if she'd met and murdered Carrie. I needed some reasonable explanation of why I was seeking her out. I stopped admiring the handicrafts dotting the landscape, put my driving on automatic, and tried to think of a plan. By the time I crossed the Kennebec River and approached the traffic circle near the statehouse, I'd given up. I'd just have to wait and see what I learned.

Because the state library came first, I stopped there. The librarian told me where I could find Maine phone books. They were so different from the ones I was used to, more like the size of magazines than like Massachusetts phone books. But even with little phone books, the job wasn't easy. Norwood turned out to be an awfully common name, not just in the Augusta-Hallowell area but all over the state. I found a Perry, a Percy, and a Paul; an Otto, an Oliver, and an Oscar; an Alcide, an Elmer, and a Crispin, as well as an A., E., I., Y., and U. Norwood, but no O. or Omar and thirteen Elizabeths. By the time I'd finished the whole state, my knees ached from crouching so long on the floor, and my eyes blurred from scanning so much small print.

It was time to stimulate my dulled faculties with coffee and then move on to Hallowell. I could have gone to the phone, instead, and tried the thirteen Elizabeths, but I was following Carrie, and Carrie had been to Hallowell. Besides, it was awkward enough to make one blind call to one Elizabeth, trying to determine if she'd given a baby girl up for adoption twenty-one years ago. The prospect of doing it thirteen times was too awful to contemplate. OK, so I'd do it if I had to. No one had ever suggested this search would be pleasant, and it was no one's idea but my own, but I'd try the easier alternative first. I asked the librarian where I could get coffee, and she said there was a small stand in the basement of the statehouse across the parking lot. "Just past the moose," she said. "You can't miss it."

The moose in the diorama were majestic. The liquid I was sold was not. The best that could be said was that it was brown. I consoled myself with a chocolate doughnut and an instant lottery ticket to test my luck. I won five dollars and got the front of my jacket covered with sugar and crumbs. I left unsure whether I was lucky or not.

The strip between Augusta and Hallowell ran along the Kennebec River, but you couldn't see the river. You could see almost any make or model of automobile you might be inclined to buy. It reminded me of how pleasant it had been driving the fancy rental Saab. As soon as I got the rest of the world in order, I was going to go car shopping.

I was halfway down the main street before I realized I was in Hallowell. The car dealers had given way to two-and three-story buildings, some brick, some wood, crowding the sidewalks. They all seemed to be antique shops. Behind the row of stores on my left was the river. On my right, the land rose sharply uphill. Suddenly the rows of shops ended and the land opened up into a little park along the river. I pulled in and parked, and walked back to the shops to ask directions. In the first shop I found a helpful, motherly woman dusting a shelf of beautiful old bottles. I asked her how to find the town hall.

"You can't miss it, dear," she said. "Just go back down Water Street until you come to the blinking light and turn left up the hill. It's one block up on your right."

"Thank you," I said. "Are those bottles old?"

"Older than I am," she said. "My husband digs 'em up. That man's idea of a good time is to spend the afternoon digging up the yard around an old cellar hole." She chuckled. "He probably knows more about old New England trash than anyone. Last week he found this, down near St. George." She pulled out a small, eight-sided bottle in deep amethyst glass. "Can you imagine anyone throwing this away? It's very old."

I took the bottle and held it up to the light. She was right. It was beautiful. "Is it for sale?" I asked.

"It sure is. If I kept everything I thought was pretty, I'd need a mansion," she said. "But it's a fine bottle. A real collector's item. Can't imagine anyone throwing it out." She shook her head. "You want to buy it? It would be real pretty on a windowsill with the sun shining through it."

We agreed on a price. She wrapped it carefully in many layers of newspaper and put it in a bag. I carried my treasure to the car, turned around, and headed back down the street. I hadn't even noticed a blinking light before but now it seemed very obvious. I turned left, went up one block, and parked in front of the town hall. The road climbed steeply up for another five or six blocks and disappeared over the top. I wouldn't want to try it in the winter. Lovely houses decked the hills rising up from the river. Across the street a patchwork Victorian was practically buried under a mass of staging. I climbed the steps and went inside. Carrie's notes had been in a Hallowell envelope. I hoped that meant she'd found something here, that this wasn't going to be a dead end.

I approached the counter labeled town clerk, and explained my request to a tall, dark-haired woman who asked if she could help. "I'm interested in the marriage records beginning in 1969," I said.

"For a specific person?" she asked.

"Elizabeth Norwood," I said.

She pulled a fat ledger off a shelf and laid it on the counter. "This book has the names of the bride and groom, the date, and where they were married. If you find the party you're looking for, we can look up the license application and the license. It's five dollars for a copy of either of those." She pointed to a table and chairs in a corner by the window. "You can take it over there if you want. Just don't take the book out of the building." I picked up the book and carried it to the corner. It weighed a ton. "Good luck," she called after me. "There are a lot of Norwoods in that book."

She wasn't kidding. I started in 1968, the year before Carrie was born. That year there were three grooms and two brides named Norwood. In 1969, there were two of each. In 1970, only two Norwoods got married. In 1971, only one, and in 1972, a record seven Norwoods went to the altar. I reached 1980 without finding a single Elizabeth Norwood, and there were none between 1980 and 1990. I closed the book with a thump and slumped in the chair, massaging my aching neck. Maybe Elizabeth Norwood's family had moved out of town while she was away curing her disgraceful condition. Maybe she'd never married.

My head was beginning to throb and my stomach was openly growling. The doughnut hadn't helped at all. Someday I would have to break this bad habit of not eating breakfast. I always ended up paying the price. I needed to take a break, get some lunch and figure out what to do next. Discouraged, I lugged the book back to the counter.