Shadows on a Maine Christmas (Antique Print Mystery Series Book 7) (20 page)

The kids were trying to get away. Jon backed up his truck and turned it toward the road, his tires spinning in the snow as he accelerated. Owen ran toward them and fired another shot, but the truck kept going down the drive, sideswiping the Waymouth town ambulance that was turning in, pushing it into the snow so it blocked the entrance to the driveway.

Jon’s truck spun out, but he kept it on the road and gunned it. Owen ran toward the ambulance as the truck disappeared down the road.

Doreen opened the door from the ell connecting the house to the barn. “How’s Nick?” she said to Maggie, who was kneeling next to him.

“He’s lost a lot of blood. But if they can get that ambulance out of the snowbank and take him to the hospital, I think he’ll be all right.”

Nick was still lying on the ground, moaning.

Doreen went over to him. “What in the hell happened out here?”

“That idiot Jon Snow shot me. I was trying to have a civilized talk with him and he grabbed that rifle from his truck and followed me in here. I didn’t have time to get to my gun. The one time I wasn’t carrying it.”

“Zelda went with Jon?” Doreen asked Maggie.

Maggie nodded. “They took off. Owen could have shot him, but didn’t.”

“That’s something,” said Doreen. She bent down to check the improvised tourniquet and nodded. “Not a bad job, Maggie. Not what I would’ve expected from an antiques dealer from New Jersey. That should hold him until the ambulance crew gets in here. There’s not much else you or I can do.”

Doreen was a nurse. But although she’d checked out the makeshift tourniquet Maggie had created, she didn’t do anything else to help Nick.

Owen ran up to them, followed by two men and a woman who must have been in the ambulance. Two carried a stretcher. “How’s Nick?”

“Nick’s mad as hell,” said Nick. “Where’s that damn ambulance?”

“Stuck in a snowbank,” said one of the EMTs as he knelt to see what Maggie had done. “We’ve called for a second ambulance and a tow. In the meantime, are you allergic to any medications?”

“How the hell should I know,” said Nick. “Just get this knee of mine fixed up so I can go after those dumb kids.”

“He’s not allergic to anything,” said Doreen.

A trim woman wearing a faded blue L.L. Bean barn coat deftly cut his pants away from the bullet site. “Nice job with stopping part of the blood loss.” She reached up to one of her partners, who handed her a hypodermic needle. “This should help with the pain while we get you on the stretcher and wait for the other ambulance.” She shot the medication into his hip.

Nick groaned at the needle. “Why didn’t you shoot him, Owen? He assaulted an officer.”

“He’s a kid. We’ll find them both. I’ve already called in his truck description to the department. I doubt they’ll get far.”

“He could have killed me.”

“But he didn’t,” said Owen calmly. “You relax and let these people take care of you.”

“Why haven’t you gone after my daughter? That kid is armed and he has her with him. He’s kidnapped her.”

“She went of her own accord. And I didn’t go after them because my car is blocked in by the ambulance they hit. I’m stuck here until the tow truck arrives and pulls the ambulance out of the snowbank.”

“Shit.”

Nick’s voice was getting quieter. Had there been something besides a painkiller in that injection? While they were talking the three EMT folks had managed to lift Nick onto the stretcher, fasten him down, and get an IV started.

“Owen, I’ve got hot coffee in the kitchen,” said Doreen. “Can I offer you a cup while you’re waiting?”

“Seems to me you just did,” said Owen. “I’ve got several questions, and coffee sounds good.” He looked down at Nick. “You’re in good hands.”

“Maggie, you come, too,” said Doreen.

This wasn’t the time to say she didn’t drink coffee. With a last glance at Nick on the stretcher she followed Owen and Doreen into the house.

December.
1888 lithograph by Maud Humphrey (1865–1940), one of foremost American illustrators of babies and children in late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She’s also remembered because she was the mother of actor Humphrey Bogart. This is one of a series of illustrations she did for Frederick Stokes and Company called
Babes of the Year
, illustrating each month with a picture of a toddler. The
December
girl is dressed in a white fur-trimmed coat and white feather hat, and is standing before a spray of holly. 7 x 9 inches. Price: $70.

“Doreen, you’ve
had more experience with injuries like this than I have. Is Nick really going to be all right?” Owen said as Nick’s mother poured three pottery mugs of coffee.

“I’m a nurse, not a doctor,” said Doreen calmly. “Jon got him in the knee. He’ll probably need surgery, and then a lot of physical therapy. He’s going to be off the job for a while. He may walk with a limp when this is all over. But he’ll live.” She offered milk and Owen nodded.

“Thank the Lord,” said Owen. He paused. “I couldn’t shoot Jon. Maybe I should have.”

“I’m glad you didn’t. We don’t need two people in the hospital. Or worse.” Doreen stirred two teaspoons of sugar into her mug. “Jon has a temper, and he was defending Zelda. Nick was lighting into her again, and this time he had his belt. If Jon hadn’t happened to drop in, Zelda would have been in bad shape by now.”

“And you knew that?” Maggie couldn’t help saying. “And you didn’t do anything to stop it?”

Doreen flinched. “I’ve done everything I could too often. This time Nick was angrier than I’d seen him, and I didn’t know what to do. Call the police?”

“You could have called me. You did this afternoon,” Owen pointed out.

“I called you when I saw Jon take that gun out of his truck. If I’d called to say Nick was upset with Zelda again and I thought he was going to beat her, would you have come as quickly?”

Owen winced a little. “I see your point. I’m a local deputy, but with Nick’s being a state trooper there would have been questions. Not just from me. But from his superiors.”

“Exactly. Which is why my goal was to keep them apart as much as possible, especially when Nick was on one of his tears, and then to help Zelda get away from Waymouth as soon as possible.” She paused. “Nick wasn’t always like this, you know. Oh, he spanked her when she was little and all. But it’s only been the last six months or so, since she began going out with Jon Snow, that he’s gone over the top.”

“He’s the one who gave Zelda that black eye last week,” Maggie pointed out.

“She’d come in late a couple of nights in a row and he let her have it. I’ll admit, she hasn’t made this easier. It seems like she’s asking for a confrontation with him. The more he tries physical force to discipline her, the more she resists. But I never thought he’d really beat her until this afternoon.”

Owen put down his mug. “Doreen, Maggie told me you’d been one of those to receive blackmail letters from Carrie Folk.”

“True,” she answered, looking over at Maggie.

Maggie nodded her encouragement.

“Did she tell you that letter disappeared?” Doreen asked.

“She did. And that there’s been no one in the house that you know of besides you and Nick and Zelda.”

“And Jon, sometimes,” Doreen added. “Although he hasn’t been inside much recently. He usually waits for Zelda outside, or they meet somewhere else. To stay clear of Nick, of course.” She hesitated. “I don’t think he’s been in the house since about a week before Christmas. Which was before the letter arrived.”

“What was in the letter?” Owen asked.

Doreen glanced at Maggie. “I guess I have to tell you now. Carrie was threatening to disclose information about the abortion service my mother and a few other women in Waymouth ran from the late 1950s until 1973. I helped out there.”

Owen’s eyes widened. He pulled out his notebook. “I don’t know anything about that. Did Nick know what you used to do?

Doreen shook her head. “I never told him. It all happened years ago. Those of us involved then swore not to mention it to anyone. That was the ‘rule number-one’ Betty was talking about at Nettie’s party. Rule number-one was never to tell anyone about what we were doing unless we absolutely had to. And, even then, to insist on speaking with a woman, not a man. We thought a woman would understand. I can’t imagine how Nick would have known anything about what we were doing. He certainly didn’t hear it from me.”

“It’s quite possible, though, that he found that letter. He didn’t say anything to you about it?”

“No. And I didn’t mention it either. I’ll admit, part of me was glad the letter disappeared. I kept thinking if the letter had disappeared, then the problem had. I wouldn’t have to do anything about it.”

Owen paused. “You know Nick was fixated on that cold case. That unknown girl whose body was found in the hidden garden in 1972.”

“I haven’t thought about that in years. As a boy he collected all the articles about the case, and used to say, when he grew up he’d find out who the girl was. And who killed her. He’s still interested in that case?”

“He’s practically memorized the case file. When I came on the job seven years ago that was the first thing he talked to me about. Since I was working in Waymouth, he made me read the file and promise to share any information, any leads or hints at all, that I might hear about it. He kept saying that someone in town knew more than they were telling, and someday he’d bring them to justice.”

Doreen hesitated. “So you read the file.”

“I did. And there’s information there that wasn’t released to the public.” Owen looked at her. “That girl bled to death after having an abortion.”

“On The Beach.”
Winslow Homer wood engraving illustrating a story in
Harper’s Weekly
, March 10, 1860. Pair of young eloping lovers run down the beach together, pursued by a tall man in a dark coat and high hat. 4.5 x 3.5 inches. Price: $125.

For a few
moments no one in the kitchen said anything. Then Owen spoke again. “Maybe I should have connected the dots earlier. Nick’s mentioned that cold case several times in the past few months. The girl who was found was about seventeen or eighteen, and that’s the age Zelda is now. She’s not much younger than Nick’s wife was when she got pregnant, too.”

Doreen nodded, slowly. “I thought of the connection with Emily, Zelda’s mother. Nick’s blamed her for a lot of things over the years. He loves Zelda, but his life would have been very different if Emily hadn’t gotten pregnant, and he hadn’t married so young and had to be responsible for a child. And of course, the current problems aren’t all his fault. Zelda has been difficult.”

“Emily didn’t get pregnant on her own,” Maggie put in. “And Zelda’s a teenager. She’s focused on her life. Not on her effect on others’.”

“Of course not. And this isn’t the first time I’ve seen a father wanting to protect his daughter from boys; from the way he remembered himself acting at their age.” Doreen got up and walked over to the window, looking out toward the barn. “And now Jon’s shot him, and it’s going to mess up both their lives. Possibly permanently.”

“Let’s go back a bit. We need to talk about that letter you got from Carrie Folk. I’m very concerned about the possibility that Nick found it.” Owen’s voice was steady. “Doreen, you’re sure he knew nothing about the abortion activities you were involved with before this?”

She shook her head and returned to the table. “I told you. I can’t imagine how. Mother and I never talked about it. We’d helped a lot of women, young and not-so-young. But it was in the past. And we took the privacy of those who’d come to us very seriously.”

Maggie put her hand out and covered Doreen’s. “But you can see that when Nick found you and your mother were connected to abortions, he’d immediately think of that young women he’s been obsessed with all these years.”

“Of course. Now I see that.” Doreen looked from Maggie to Owen and back. “He must have assumed we’d killed her! That’s probably what both of you are thinking, too. But I don’t know anything about that girl. I’m telling you the truth. I wasn’t there every Thursday. But the last couple of years we were open I was there most of the time. Once I remember a woman bleeding too much. It wasn’t a young girl; it was a married woman who already had seven children. Mother and I drove her to Rocky Shores as quickly as we could. It was scary at the time. Thank goodness, she didn’t die.”

“But you weren’t there for every abortion.”

“No. But even if one of our patients had died, we never would have taken her clothing. That girl they found was naked, wasn’t she? And her body was left outside.” Doreen pushed her chair back slightly. “We could never have been so callous.”

“Not even if having it known would have closed your operation, and possibly sent all of you to prison?” Owen wasn’t smiling.

“What happened to that girl doesn’t make sense. And I have no proof, other than my word. Besides, that girl was never identified. Believe me; we knew who all our clients were. They came to us by personal referrals. We weren’t like one of those butcheries in the cities where you could give a false name and as long as you had the cash, they’d operate.”

“Like the place Nettie Brewer went,” said Maggie.

“That happened before my time, of course, but Mother told me about it when she first explained what was happening in the Westons’ house.” Doreen took a deep breath. “We did it to help women, not hurt them. If that poor girl died of an abortion, it wasn’t one she had from us. I swear.” Her eyes filled. “What Nick must have thought when he saw that letter! He’s been looking for that girl’s killer all these years, and here he thought it was his own mother or grandmother.” She shook her head. “No wonder he’s been especially on edge the past week.”

Owen paused. “It was all a long time ago. For now I’ll take your word that you had nothing to do with that girl’s death. Although now that I know about your organization it certainly raises questions I’m going to have to find answers to. But let’s put that aside for a moment. I need to ask you something else. When I got the call from Carrie Folk’s neighbor about her murder and called Nick Christmas morning, he hadn’t been home long, had he?”

“No. He went to that party at the Westons’ house,” Doreen said. “Then he went to the midnight service at the church, to hear Zelda sing. I drove her home, and he went on duty.”

Maggie looked at Owen. “And he’s been the one investigating Carrie’s murder.”

“Oh, no.” Doreen suddenly realized what they were thinking. “You think my Nick could have killed Carrie?”

“It would have been a way of keeping you from having this exact conversation. Of protecting you, if he thought you killed that girl in the sunken garden,” Owen pointed out. “And we didn’t find any fingerprints or other evidence in the Folks’ home. Whoever killed Carrie Folk knew what they were doing.”

Doreen picked up her napkin and wiped tears from her eyes. “Why didn’t he come and talk with me about it? I could have told him I wasn’t involved. I could have explained.”

Owen shook his head. “I have to tell you, Mrs. Strait. I don’t know for sure what Nick did. But I can understand how he felt. Not, you understand, that he should have killed Carrie Folk. But that he wanted to. Especially given his reaction to Zelda this fall.”

The scream of an ambulance siren interrupted them. Doreen went to the window. “A second ambulance is here, and the tow truck almost has the first one out.” She turned to the two at the table. “We’ve talked enough. Too much. My son is going in the hospital and I have to go to him.”

Owen nodded. “Can I trust you not to say anything to him about our conversation this afternoon? I suspect he’ll be in the hospital for at least a day or two. Right now I need to find Jon and Zelda. Running isn’t going to help Jon, and Jon didn’t force her into that truck with him. She chose to stay with the man who’d shot her father rather than stay with Nick. She’s an accessory to assault of an officer. Or attempted murder.”

“Please. You need to find them before any other law enforcement people do,” said Doreen, realizing what that meant. “Talk to them. Convince them to turn themselves in.”

Owen got up. “I’m going to try.”

“May I come with you? Zelda knows me, at least a little,” said Maggie.

Owen hesitated, but only a moment. “C’mon then. Just keep quiet and stay out of the line of fire. Jon has a rifle. And he’s already used it once today.”