Wicked Fix (17 page)

"He's a place to start," Ellie replied as the road

surface roughened, heaved by freeze and thaw and the

attentions of winter snowplows. She swerved for a pothole,

hit another. My teeth only loosened a little bit.

When I got control of them again, I told her more

about my trip with Paddy and Terence.

She listened without comment. As I finished, we

were nearing the end of the Cove Road. To our left lay

the quiet inlet, calm as a wading pool. Straight ahead:

Cobscook Bay and a sharp, two-foot chop, whiffs of

sea foam blowing off the whitecaps.

"If they were having a fight, Paddy might give him

the cold shoulder. To show him," Ellie went on, "what

it would be like if they really separated."

"But when Terence collapsed in pain, Paddy

dropped the act and showed his real feelings."

"Something like that, I'll bet. Paddy adores Terence,"

she said. "As who wouldn't? Terence is a

sweetie. I hope there isn't anything serious wrong with

him. Or between them, either." She swung the Jeep off

the pavement, to the grassy side of the road.

A chill, bracing wind blew steadily across the water.

In the distance, little boats hustled back and forth

from the shore to the salmon pens: feeding, medicating,

and tending the thousands of fish being raised in net

enclosures under the water.

I got out. "Where's the house?"

She pointed. "Up there."

I followed her gesture past an old Ford Escort

nosed into the grass, saw a hill the approximate size of

Mount Everest plus plenty of burdock. It was an especially

prickly species of the weedy vegetation, too: the

kind that, defying common sense and all the descriptions

in the botany books, can leap six inches to get its

hooks into you.

Fortunately there was a path, but halfway up it the

score was already me nothing, burdocks a million.

Eventually I called a halt to pull some of the clinging,

maddeningly prickly spheres of dark brown plant matter

out of my socks.

"Who is this guy?" I gasped. "And why does he

live behind the vegetable-kingdom equivalent of a

moat?"

"He wants to discourage casual visits, that much is

clear."

Which didn't quite explain it. This uphill trip on a

narrow burdock-lined path, by turns stony, slippery

with damp grass, and infested with red ants, would

have discouraged the Mongol hordes.

"And," Ellie went on, climbing another twenty

yards with the ease of a mountain goat, then turning to

smile encouragingly down at me, "Mike is an unusual

person."

"Yeah. He's got wings. He doesn't walk up, he just

flies up. Like a vampire bat." I already had a mental

picture of Mike, based on his having had any sort of

relationship with Reuben Tate.

Hard, cold, and an incurable fan of heavy metal

music, the louder the better. Plenty of marijuana ...

probably he had tattoos. But as I scrambled the last

few yards up that damned mountain, I began hearing

...

Wind chimes. The bamboo ones that sound like a

small stream peacefully gurgling. And chickens: a

bright-eyed head poked out of the underbrush at us,

clucking inquisitively.

Then I smelled smoked fish mingled with the perfume

of slow-burning applewood. Someone was smoking

salmon, which in Eastport is sweet, pink fleshed,

and tender, straight out of the icy-cold waters of Pas

samaquoddy Bay and directly--whenever I can arrange

it--onto my bagel. With cream cheese, preferably, and

coffee.

Suddenly the hill didn't quite seem so steep anymore.

My ant bites weren't stinging like the devil, either.

One of his lesser minions, maybe; Eastport ants

are fierce. But as I pushed through a screen of old lilacs

toward the picture-book cottage that stood before me

in the suddenly open clearing, I didn't care.

Whoever he was, and whatever he'd done in the

past, Mike Carpentier had made himself a paradise.

The view from the hilltop was sweepingly of blue bay

and sky, Campobello spreading low in the middle distance.

Beyond loomed the island of Grand Manan, its

pale cliffs vaulting improbably, miragelike, on the horizon.

"Wow," I managed inadequately. The breeze

shifted, smelling of open ocean tinged with chamomile.

Beyond a split-rail fence, a dappled pony placidly

munched clover; a couple of goats grazed on the hillside,

and there was a rabbit hutch.

No wonder the place was so far uphill, I realized. It

had to be, to be this close to heaven.

Then I heard the child sobbing.

She was nine or so, with long golden curls and

huge violet eyes streaming tears, crouched over--

Good heavens. A dead cat. She'd dug a small grave

for it and was in the act of laying it in there when she

caught sight of me and jumped guiltily.

"Hello," I said. "I'm sorry about your cat. Are you

having a funeral for it?"

I took a step, stopped short as her eyes flashed

hostility, and then, unmistakably, fear.

"Who are you?" She pushed some dirt over the

animal's body, but not before Ellie stepped up and got

a pretty good look at it.

"My name's Jacobia. This is my friend Ellie."

"I know her," the child said, pushing blond hair

out of her tear-streaked face. She wore a red flannel

shirt, dungarees, and old sneakers. On her wrist was a

thin beaded friendship bracelet.

No other children were in sight. A fast guess: This

little girl had made the beaded friendship bracelet for

herself. Before I could follow the thought, a man appeared

at the cottage door.

"Molly?" he called sharply, then spotted us.

The child turned and ran for the house without a

backward look. We followed under the man's unsmiling

gaze. A small cloud pulled over the sun and I shivered,

suddenly uncertain.

"Mike Carpentier," Ellie said under her breath as

we made our way toward the dwelling, "in the flesh."

"So I gathered." Hollyhocks and black-eyed susans

bloomed in the dooryard, mingled with clumps of

herbs. A woodpile out back featured an old-fashioned

bucksaw, a mallet, and a hand ax. There was a well

house with a bucket fixed to a pulley, near a stone

birdbath. A vegetable garden spread on the hillside to

the west, as high as possible to catch every last fleeting

ray of sun.

No satellite dish. No power pole. No phone line,

even. Mike wasn't what I had expected, either: big

boned and plain faced, wearing thick horn-rims, bib

overalls, sandals with socks. His graying hair was

chopped short in an uneven hack job he'd probably

done himself.

Also, he wasn't friendly. Not for the first time I

was glad that Ellie was around to introduce me. But he

asked us into the house and it was wonderful in there,

the fragrance of gingerbread wafting deliciously from

the woodstove hulking at the center of the kitchen.

Around it a bewildering variety of craft items lay in

various stages of completion:

Stenciled birdhouses. Punched-tin lanterns. Doilies

knitted, crocheted, and woven in a rainbow of bright

colors. Tea steeped in a stoneware pot set on a cast

iron trivet. There were bentwood chairs with plump

homemade cushions, and bright braided rugs on the

wide-plank, neatly swept wooden floor.

"I know your husband," Mike said to me. His

handshake was firm, his look not as suspicious after

Ellie's introduction. "I took Molly," he nodded at the

girl, "in to see him a week ago. Headaches. Took her to

the clinic, they said it was nothing. But I wanted to be

sure."

Victor hadn't officially been seeing any patients.

But when word of his presence got around town, people

took notice, not paying much attention to his actual

specialty. And he didn't like to turn them down if they

came and asked for his help; he could practice basic

medicine, and it was touching how much he wanted to

be accepted.

"Nothing serious, I hope?" The little girl looked

healthy if a bit listless and red-eyed, hanging back now

behind her father.

"No," Mike said. "Guess the clinic doctor was

right. Maybe nerves, your husband said. His place was

so clean, and so was he. It gave me a lot of confidence

in what he said. What he really thought, he told me,

was that the headaches were nothing and would probably

go away by themselves. And mostly, they have."

At this the two of us smiled in the time-honored

way that a couple of experienced parents will when the

children have turned out not to be sick, and the ice was

broken.

"I suppose now you want to talk about Reuben,"

he went on resignedly. "He'd turned into such a booze

hound, I'm surprised he didn't die sooner. But that was

Reuben, make as much trouble as he could, even dying.

And now you want to hash it over."

"Well, yes," I admitted. "I've heard he was your

friend, and I'm sorry for your loss, but--"

His harsh burst of laughter cut me off. "Loss?" He

waved us to chairs, set out mugs. "Oh, that's rich."

The tea was strong and welcome after the climb.

"When Reuben left town the last time I went to church

and lit a candle," Mike said tiredly. "But nobody believes

it. That's the trouble with a small town, you can

never escape your past." He set gingerbread on a plate.

"My husband--my ex-husband," I clarified, and

he glanced comprehendingly at me--"is in some trouble

over Reuben's death."

On a sideboard stood a framed photograph of a

happy family group: Mike, Molly, and the woman I'd

run into outside Paddy Farrell's studio. So that, I realized,

was Molly's mother. I hadn't mentioned the collision

to Ellie, had in fact almost forgotten about it.

Until now. "But how did you know we would

want to talk about Reuben?" I finished.

He shrugged. "Bob Arnold," he replied in a tone

that let me know he was no fan of Eastport's police

chief.

Or of any official persons, I guessed; Mike was off

the grid in more ways than just no power or telephone.