Murder on High (30 page)

Charlotte smiled. She liked the “young lady” part. “Your daughter Jeanne sent me over,” she said. “I’m here to talk with you about archery. Jeanne said you were the one who encouraged her as a girl.”

“Yup. Started a trend here in Old Town, too.”

“I heard. How did you get interested in archery?” she asked, just to get the conversation rolling.

“During the war in Europe I was a commando, see. We used crossbows because they were silent, and easy to lug around. You could shoot a German sentry and nobody would know the difference.”

“I’m interested in crossbows myself,” she said.

For the first time, he took a good look at her, as if to say, “What would a woman like you be interested in crossbows for?”

“Not for myself,” she added by way of explanation.

That was enough to satisfy him. “I guess I know a bit about crossbows. I was president of the Maine Crossbow Association. What do you want to know?”

Charlotte improvised; she was good at that. “I bought an old crossbow at a yard sale here in town for my nephew. He’s interested in archery. It looks as if it was made by hand. The body is made out of wood, and it’s painted in a green and brown camouflage design.”

He looked over at her, his interest piqued.

“I’d like to be able to tell him a little bit about it,” she went on. “Do you have any idea how old it might be, or where it might have come from?”

“Guess I do,” he said laconically.

She wanted to grab his arm, and shout “WHAT?” but she had enough experience with Mainers to know that she just had to wait.

“I used to make crossbows like that myself,” he said. “As far as I know, I’m the only one who ever made ’em. I used to make a lot of stuff. I had a shop in my garage: birdhouses, gliders, wooden toys. Can’t do it anymore, on account of my arthritis.” He pronounced it arth
ur
itis.

Charlotte held her breath. She was getting very close now.

“I stopped making crossbows when they made ’em illegal for huntin’ and fishin’. You could still use ’em for target practice, but that wasn’t enough of a market.” He looked over at her again. “Was it a pistol crossbow?”

She nodded. “It had a little beaded bag with a claw in it hanging from the trigger guard,” she said.

“That was mine, all right. An old Penobscot gave me that charm for good luck. You hung it from the trigger guard to help you shoot straight. Guess you got it at my daughter Doris’ yard sale. She lives in the house now. She told me she was going to sell all that stuff in the garage.”

“Where does she live?”

“Three twenty-two South Water Street,” he said. “Down by the railroad tracks. Is that where you got it?”

She nodded.

“Where does your nephew live?”

“Ontario,” she replied. It was the first place to pop in to her head.

“Good,” he said. “That’s one of the few places where crossbow huntin’ is legal. Those pistol crossbows are good for fishin’, too. I used to rig some of ’em up with a line so you could reel the fish right in.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” Charlotte said.

“Damn right it was. I used to pull some mighty nice salmon out of the river. That was before the pollution from the paper mills killed ’em all off. Course, they’ve been comin’ back in recent years. I read in the paper that last year’s run was four thousand.”

He paused for a moment to look up at the frond-like branches of the mountain ash trees that lined the walk, which waved in the breeze against a sky of cerulean blue. They were a lovely sight.

“The crossbow I bought from your daughter had a coil of line for fishing,” Charlotte said. “I also bought the bolts, which had cartridge tips.”

He nodded. “I used to use those bolts for rough fish. The summer isn’t a game animal season, but you can keep in practice by goin’ after rough fish, see. If I was goin’ after salmon or bass, I’d use a harpoon-type arrow with a barb, so I could haul ’em in.”

Another mystery explained, she thought.

“I used to keep a rowboat on the river bank. There was a nice salmon pool over on the Milford side. It was by the mouth of a stream; they liked to lay off in the cool water, see. When they was runnin’, I’d row over and shoot me a salmon for dinner. It was like shootin’ fish in a barrel.”

It sounded like the same salmon pool that Mack had talked about.

“I bet you could shoot some mighty nice fish in that pool today,” Ouellette said. “Now that they’ve come back.”

“I bet you could,” she agreed.

After leaving Bickmore Manor, Charlotte hopped back into her rental car and headed down to South Water Street, which was only a stone’s throw away. She followed the same route she and Tracey had taken to Mack’s trailer, down Sawyer Street to the river. At the foot of Sawyer Street, she turned right. A dozen or so houses lined the road between the railroad yard at one end and the municipal sewage treatment plant at the other. Across the road, a locomotive stood on one of the tracks, its engine throbbing. As Mack had pointed out, it was hardly the city’s most prestigious address, and she could readily see why Jeanne had been willing to suffer Iris’ tyranny for the privilege of living at Hilltop Farm. She pulled over next to the tracks and parked. As she got out, her sense of smell was assailed by the noxious odor of rotten eggs. It was so bad that it made her nose twitch, though not as bad as it used to be, Tracey had assured her on their earlier visit. There had been a time when the air pollution from the mill would peel the paint off the houses.

Charlotte didn’t know if it was air pollution or lack of money that was responsible, but most of the houses on the street looked as if they could use a coat of paint. Number 322 was one of the better-maintained of the lot: a tiny matchbox of a house with a tiny front porch and a tiny front yard planted with flower seedlings. The one-car garage in which Ouellette had had his wood shop was visible at the back of the house.

The door was answered by a short, plump, red-cheeked woman with gray hair.

“I’m looking for Doris Ouellette,” Charlotte said.

“Haven’t been a Ouellette for forty-three years, but I guess you’ve got the right person,” she said, opening the door.

“I’m sorry,” Charlotte said. “It was your father who referred me to you, and he didn’t mention your married name.”

“That’s okay,” she said. “I’m a widow now, anyway.”

“You must look like your mother,” Charlotte said.

“Spittin’ image. I look just like my mother, my sister looks just like my father, and the other five are a combination.”

Charlotte found it hard to imagine nine people living in this tiny house.

“People couldn’t believe me and my sister were related. They still can’t: one’s short and fat, and the other’s tall and skinny.” She laughed. “C’mon in,” she said, opening the door wider. “What can I do for you?”

“Thank you,” said Charlotte. She entered a small, spotless living room with a painting of Jesus hanging over the sofa, and a row of African violets on the sill of the window overlooking the tracks.

“Would you like a cup of coffee?” the woman asked.

“No, thank you,” said Charlotte. She decided she might as well be up front about the reason for her visit. “I’m helping the police with the investigation into Iris Richards’ death,” she said. She didn’t bother introducing herself. She didn’t want to get into that.

“Please,” Doris said. “Sit down.” She took a seat herself and waited, a worried expression on her face. Did she think her sister was about to be arrested?

“As you may know, the weapon was a pistol crossbow,” Charlotte began, taking a seat in a cushioned rocking chair by the window.

“I saw the picture of it in the newspaper,” Doris said.

“With the medical examiner?” Charlotte asked.

She nodded.

“That picture was printed before the actual weapon was found,” Charlotte explained. “The weapon that was used in the murder was quite different. It was old, and the body had been handmade of wood. It was painted in a green and gray camouflage design.”

Doris’ face showed no signs of recognition.

“Your father said that he used to make pistol crossbows like that in his wood shop. He told me he thought there might have been one or two among the things you sold in the garage sale.”

Doris’ eyes widened as she realized what Charlotte was talking about. “I remember that old thing now! I didn’t know what it was. It was in an old cardboard drum with a bunch of other stuff. Do you think the murderer used it to kill Iris Richards?”

“We don’t know for sure,” said Charlotte, “but it appears likely. Do you remember who bought it?”

Doris’ thick gray brows knitted in concentration. “That was one of those things I didn’t put a price on because I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know what half that stuff was. I just let people rummage around, and if they wanted something, make me an offer. I don’t remember anybody buying it.”

“What happened to it, then?”

“I think it was in the stuff that I put out at the curb for the garbage collection after the sale. I threw away most of the stuff I didn’t sell. I wanted to get rid of it all because I needed the garage for my car. Most of it was junk anyway; Dad is a pack rat.”

“So somebody could have picked it up off the street?”

“Could, and did. Most of that stuff was gone by the time the garbage truck came around a couple of days later. I like to put stuff like that out early in hopes that someone can find some use for it. I don’t like to see things goin’ to waste. Know what I mean?”

Charlotte did. “Did you see who picked it up?”

“Naw. I work down to the pie plate. I’m not usually home during the day. I took the day off today because of a doctor’s appointment.”

“What’s the pie plate?”

Doris stared at her in astonishment. “You must be from away.”

“I am,” Charlotte said.

“It’s a mill up on North Main,” she explained. “We make pie plates.” Seeing Charlotte’s puzzled expression, she went on to explain. “They’re those cardboard discs that they put under the cakes you buy at the bakery.”

Charlotte nodded in recognition. Of course! Doris worked down to the pie plate. Just like her father had worked down to the gall cure.

Charlotte thanked her for her help, and left.

15

She was sure of it, she thought as she got back into the car. It was Mack who had picked the pistol crossbow out of the cardboard drum full of junk on the curb. Not only was picking garbage his career, he lived just a hundred yards down the street. Maybe he had intended to use it at first for fishing. Maybe he even
had
used it for fishing. He too had bragged about the salmon that he’d pulled out of the river. The fact that crossbow fishing was illegal wouldn’t have deterred him; as a follower of Thoreau, he would have believed that laws oppressed the individual. Besides, he would have thought that poaching was okay because he was fishing for sustenance, not for sport. It was probably only later, as he was considering how to murder Iris, that the virtues of the pistol crossbow as a murder weapon became apparent, particularly when used with a bolt with a cartridge tip: it was quiet, it was accurate, and the bolt could be withdrawn, making it appear as if Iris had died from the fall. He had no doubt assumed that the entry wound would be overlooked, which might have been a valid assumption in other rural states, but not in Maine. Henry Clough might have been the chief medical examiner in a state in which there were fewer homicides in a year than in New York City in a week, but that didn’t mean it was easy to pull the wool over his eyes.

There was only the final section of the trail left now, she thought as she sat there, staring out at the giant mill: the section that ran between Katahdin’s summit and Lorne Coley’s camp at Klondike Pond. How would Mack have known about the camp? The obvious answer was that he had heard about it from Coley himself, or from some other Penobscot. No sooner had she posed the question in her mind than the image of the twin pyramids of bottles stacked against the end wall of the camp came to mind. Bottles! That was it. If Coley had done his share of emptying them, he had probably done his share of returning them as well. In the currency of recycling, whiskey bottles represented the highest denomination. In all probability, Mack and Coley had met at “work,” which is how Mack had referred to the railroad station that now served as the municipal redemption center.

Eager to confirm her theory, she got out of the car and headed back down South Water Street to the redemption center.

The ramshackle old railroad station was well-matched to the derelicts who not only earned some extra money by collecting bottles for recycling, but provided their own raw materials as well. The sagging ridgepole looked as if it was about to snap, and the windows at one end were boarded up, but the overall air of dereliction was brightened somewhat by a red, white, and blue flag, which proclaimed that the center was “Open.” Another sign said “True Count.” Below that was written “Recycling Can Work When We All Pitch In—Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Please separate glass, plastic bottles, and metal cans.”

Opening the door, Charlotte found herself on the threshold of a large room with a low, tin-paneled ceiling and stained fiberboard walls. It was filled with long tables on which stood dozens of boxes, each labeled according to their contents: Coke, Pepsi, Miller, Bud, and so on. The room smelled like a fraternity house rec room after a party weekend. A clean-cut young man who looked like a college student stood behind the counter next to a sign publicizing a bottle drive on behalf of the Old Town High School band’s proposed trip to Washington. A radio on a shelf blared out rock music.

As Charlotte stepped up to the counter, the clerk went over to the radio and turned down the volume.

“Thanks,” Charlotte said. “Is your name Richie?” she asked, remembering that Mack had mentioned his “boss’s” name in their previous conversation.

“That’s me,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m here to inquire about someone who may have been one of your customers. His name is Lome Coley. He’s a Penobscot Indian: about forty-five, medium height and build; long black hair, worn loose; usually wears a beaded medicine bag around his neck.”