Murder on High (11 page)

“What’s so odd?” asked Tracey.

“In Emerson’s eulogy for Thoreau, he compared him to the Tyrolean youths who risked their lives to gather edelweiss from the alpine cliffs. He described how they were sometimes found dead at the foot, with the flowers in their hands. Not that Thoreau actually died like that.…” Her voice drifted off.

“It was a metaphor,” prompted Charlotte.

Jeanne nodded, and continued. “For the pursuit of noble purity, which is what edelweiss means in German. I was just thinking how odd it was that Iris should have died at the foot of a cliff in pursuit of a rare wildflower that grows on our most inaccessible summits.”

“Did you draw the same metaphor at Iris’ funeral?” asked Charlotte.

“There was no funeral,” Jeanne said. “She considered public ceremonies a waste of time and money. Religious ceremonies most of all.”

“Getting back to your movements …” Tracey said. He consulted his notes. “Mrs. Richards continued over the ridge to Thoreau Spring to see this rare wildflower that grows there,
Diapensia lapponica
.”

Jeanne had regained her composure. “Yes,” she said. “She took the Baxter Peak Cutoff Trail, which begins about a half mile south of the head of the Saddle Slide. From there, it’s a mile to the Spring.”

“And you?”

“I took the Northwest Basin Trail, which goes in the opposite direction. It links up with the Hamlin Ridge Trail, which leads to Hamlin Peak. It’s the long, gradual way: it follows the rim of the basin all the way back around to Chimney Pond. I have bad knees,” she explained. “The steep descents bother me.”

Tracey nodded in sympathy. “I have that problem myself.”

“That’s another reason we split up: I wasn’t up to the Knife Edge.”

“Did you see anyone else on the trail?”

She shook her head. “As I said, we left pretty early. The only other hikers on the trail at that hour would have been other campers from Chimney Pond, most of whom are young people who take the Cathedral Trail or the Dudley Trail, either of which is more interesting than the Saddle Trail.”

“What about day hikers?” asked Tracey.

“They have to start out at Roaring Brook Campground at the foot of the mountain. It takes two and a half hours to get from there to Chimney Pond, so they don’t start hitting the upper trails until about ten. Oh, I just remembered. There was one person: a man in an orange windbreaker.”

“But you didn’t talk to him.”

“No. He was just ahead of us on the Saddle Slide for a while. You’re apt to notice someone who’s ahead of you on the Saddle Slide because of the chance that they’ll dislodge a rock that could come bouncing down on your head, which in fact he did several times. You have to be careful to stay back.”

“Any other description of this man?”

“Middle-aged. Gray hair, I think. Medium height, a bit burly. I did notice that he either had new boots, or old boots with new Vibram soles. They left sharp imprints in the mud around the brook at the foot of the slide. Not that something like that would matter …”

Tracey made a notation. “You never know,” he said.

“You could see the inset in the arch with
Vibram
spelled out. I noticed because I had just had my own boots resoled with Vibram soles.”

“When did you get back to Chimney Pond?”

“About six. I took my time, stopped for lunch. Looked at the
Diapensia
and the Lapland rosebay. The exact time would be in the hikers’ register. I signed in when I got back. I was surprised that Iris hadn’t returned yet; I had expected her to be back long before me.”

“Did you see anyone after you separated?”

“From a distance. Nobody up close. It was still pretty early in the season. There weren’t that many hikers out. Which is another reason we went at that time. Later on, it can get pretty congested up there. Also, the Hamlin Ridge Trail is kind of off the beaten track.”

“I would imagine that most hikers would want to climb Baxter and go across the Knife Edge to Pamola,” said Tracey.

Jeanne nodded. “Or vice versa,” she said.

Tracey paused, and then looked directly at her. “Of course, you realize why we’re asking you these questions,” he said. “I’m sorry to have to do it, but it’s part of the procedure. Now let me ask you this: Is there anyone you know of who might have wanted to kill Mrs. Richards?”

“I’ve been thinking about little else ever since I heard the news on the radio,” she said. “She had angered a lot of people in town for one reason or another. She could be difficult at times.”

“For example?”

“Oh. Well, like last winter when she raised a ruckus with the public works department about the salt they were using on the roads. She said it killed the sugar maples. But it was institutions more than individuals that she had it in for. I do have one idea, though …”

“I’m listening,” said Tracey.

“There was a car that was hanging around here about a month ago. I used to see it parked on the other side of Stillwater Avenue. It even drove in here a couple of times.” She nodded at the road that ran between the sheds. “Once I noticed the driver looking at the house through field glasses.”

“Any idea who it might have been?”

“We get all kinds coming here to see Iris. People had a reverence for her. Treated her as if she was Thoreau himself. I thought it might be a Thoreauvian who was too shy to visit. But now I wonder.”

“Any other description of the driver?”

She shook her head. “No. I never got a good look at him.”

“How about the car?”

“I did get a good look at that. It was a Ford Bronco. Ordinarily, I don’t notice models. But I remember the picture of the bucking bronco on the cover of the spare tire that was mounted on the back. It was black, with Colorado plates. They have a mountain on them.”

“Colorado plates,” said Tracey. “That’s interesting.”

“How did she respond to these admirers?” asked Charlotte.

“You never knew. Friendly one minute, unfriendly the next. Once, I remember …” She smiled to herself at the memory.

“Yes?” said Tracey.

Jeanne continued. “She opened the door to a young man who asked to see Iris Richards. She patted her belly and said, ‘Front side.’ Then she turned around, arse-to, and said, ‘Back side.’ Then she turned back around again and slammed the door in his face.”

“Were any of these Thoreauvians regular visitors?”

“Oh, yes. A number of them. There was a young couple from a town over by Farmington—Temple, I think it was—who’d built themselves a replica of Thoreau’s house at Walden Pond and were trying to live as he did.”

“Must’ve been pretty cramped,” said Charlotte.

“That’s what I thought, but they didn’t seem to mind. Then there was a man from Massachusetts who was writing a book about Thoreau’s time in Maine. He’d come by every couple of months, and Iris would feed him information. She was the one who should’ve been writing that book.”

“Names?” asked Tracey.

Jeanne gave him the names, and he wrote them down in his notebook.

“Then, of course, there was Mack,” she went on once Tracey had finished taking notes.

“Who’s Mack?”

“Mack Scott. He was a—” She groped for the right word. “I guess you’d say he was a disciple of Iris’. He was on the mountain that day, too.”

“On the day she was murdered!”

“Or he was supposed to be. He was going to take the route that Thoreau had followed—that’s the Abol Trail; it comes up from the south—and meet Iris at Thoreau Spring. I don’t know if he actually did. He said he’d climbed the mountain enough times from the north, and wanted to try it from the other way.”

“We should talk to him,” said Tracey. “Where does he live?”

She paused for a moment, and then said, “He doesn’t have a formal address. He lives in a trailer down by the railroad tracks. On South Water Street. You go down South Main and turn left on Sawyer. It’s at the foot of Sawyer Street, on your left. Gray with maroon stripes. You can’t miss it.”

Tracey wrote down the directions, and then asked, “Can you tell us anything more about him?”

“He’s about forty, I’d say. Blond and stocky, with a beard. The beard is red. If you’re going to meet him, I’d better leave it at that. He’s … he’s a hard person to describe, kind of an eccentric.”

“I have a question,” interjected Charlotte. “You said that Iris didn’t have a funeral because she didn’t believe in them.”

Jeanne nodded. “She was cremated. She didn’t want a fuss made over her.” She cast a glance at the gabled farmhouse. “I have her ashes inside. I’m planning to scatter them in the woods sometime. That’s what she would have wanted.”

“If she
had
had a funeral, who would have come?” Charlotte asked.

“Her favorite people, you mean?”

Charlotte nodded.

Jeanne thought for a moment, then said, “Her lawyer, Ellsworth Partridge. He handled all of her affairs. She was very fond of him.”

“I know Ellsworth,” said Tracey.

“Everybody knows Ellsworth,” she replied. “He was president of the state Senate. Another would be Dave Stadtler, the publisher of the local newspaper,
The Penobscot Times
. That’s where she got
The Pumpkin Paper
printed. Also, various people from the New England chapter of the Thoreau Association.”

“What about this guy Mack Scott?” asked Tracey.

“Mack, of course. There were only two people whom she would regularly walk with, and he was one of them. She walked with me too, of course, but only sometimes. I wasn’t a regular the way they were.”

She spoke with some bitterness, obviously offended that Iris didn’t treasure her company enough to consider her worthy of walking with.

“Who was the other person?” Charlotte asked.

“Keith Samusit.”

She seemed almost to spit the name out, as if it pained her to voice the sounds. It was clear she didn’t like this fellow.

“The Penobscot Indian?” asked Tracey.

She nodded. “He manages Hamlin’s Woods. That’s the woods out back.” She nodded at a red pickup truck that was parked behind one of the sheds. “He happens to be here right now if you want to talk with him.”

“We would indeed,” said Tracey.

She nodded at the carriage path. “Just follow the path into the woods, and give a holler. It curves around in the shape of a W and comes out on the other side of the house, so you’re not likely to miss him.”

“Thanks,” said Tracey.

At the end of the string of sheds, the carriage path abruptly entered the woods, which were like few Charlotte had ever seen. They had a fairy-tale quality, as if elves and giants dwelt there. Also, an incredible tranquility. The clear, straight trunks of the old trees soared to the sky like the pillars of an ancient cathedral, and the forest floor, clear of underbrush, was padded with a thick russet carpet of old pine needles. The cool air had the invigorating smell of pine resin, and the feathery plumes of the green pine needles seemed to charge the air with an invisible current.

They found Samusit a short distance down the carriage path. He was limbing up the small pines that had sprung up under the old growth, using a hatchet to trim away the dead branches that encircled the trunks like the spokes of layer upon layer of wheels. As he struck them, the limbs fell away with a crack in a tangled web of silvery gray. A pruner attached to a long handle for reaching the higher branches lay on the ground at his feet, and several piles of the slash that had already been pruned away stood nearby, indicating that he had been at his work for some time.

Seeing Charlotte and Tracey, he stopped what he was doing, and waited.

Keith Samusit did not fit Charlotte’s idea of what an American Indian looked like. In fact, had she not known he was a Penobscot, she would have thought he was Japanese. He was a slight man, with thick black hair, and eyeglasses with narrow tortoise-shell frames. His eyes were slightly slanted, and his black eyebrows flared upwards. The color of his skin was not so much red as yellow. If evidence were ever needed that the Indians had crossed to the Americas via the Bering Strait, it could be found in the Asian features of Keith Samusit’s angled face.

He was dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt, over which he wore a blue denim jacket. The only hints of the Indian in his attire were his simple leather moccasins, and a heavy silver ring with a turquoise stone.

“I heard about Iris on the news,” Samusit said after Tracey had introduced himself and explained the purpose of his visit. (Tracey had also introduced Charlotte, but Samusit showed no signs of recognizing who she was.)

Tracey looked around. “Pretty nice stand of timber.” Then, flinching suddenly, he swatted at a black fly, the small biting insect that was Maine’s springtime scourge. “Jeezum,” he said, “the flies are wicked in here.”

Charlotte was swatting away as well. The flies suddenly seemed to be biting every inch of exposed flesh, and some that was unexposed as well, like that on her ankles. The viciousness of the attack made her want to cut and run. It was like walking into a hornets’ nest.

“They launch their attack the minute you stop moving,” said Samusit. Reaching into the pocket of his jacket, he pulled out a small container and offered it to Tracey. “Here’s some fly dope,” he said.

Taking the container, Tracey spread a coating of the liquid, which smelled like citronella, on his hands and neck and along his hairline, and then offered it to Charlotte.

She read the label aloud. “‘
BUG AMMO
. If you’ve got the bugs, we’ve got the ammo.’ Well,” she said, “we certainly have the bugs.”

“If you don’t get them, they’ll get you,” said Samusit. “It’s war.”

Charlotte followed Tracey’s example, and then handed the container back. “Thanks,” she said. The effect was almost instantaneous. Already, there were fewer of the awful flies.

Tracey was looking up into the tops of the trees. “I’ve heard that this is one of the few remaining stands of virgin forest in New England,” he said, choosing the indirect approach as usual.

“That’s what people say, but it’s not true,” Samusit replied. “There wasn’t much in this area that escaped being cut, and that would be especially true of a stand so close to the river. But I estimate this land hasn’t been logged since the eighteen twenties, which would still make it one of the oldest around.”