Bitch Creek (23 page)

“I'd love it,” said Calhoun. “Tide's just right. Get out there five-thirty or six, we'll catch the last three hours of the outgoing, first three of the incoming. Should be good after this weather we're having.”

Kate smiled. “It's a date, then.” She touched his arm. “I hope you can bear with me for a while here. Things aren't easy. I know I've been taking it out on you. I've got nobody else.”

He shrugged. “It's okay, honey. It's what friends are for. I've got stuff on my mind, too.”

She nodded. “I know you do, Stoney.”

He wanted to tell her about finding that foot sticking out of the ground in the woods near where Lyle died. But then he'd have to explain about going back and not finding it, and then wondering if he'd actually seen it in the first place. So he just said, “We'll work it out,” and then three men in slickers came stomping into the shop.

Toward the middle of the afternoon, Sheriff Dickman showed up. He chatted with Kate for a minute, then caught Calhoun's eye.

They went out onto the porch.

“Nasty day,” said Dickman.

“Good day for fishing,” said Calhoun.

The sheriff nodded. “Got a little news.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. We found the motel Mr. Green was staying at. Little place on Route 1 up in Craigville called The Lobster Pot.”

“He's not staying there now, is he?” said Calhoun.

“He checked in Sunday night a week ago, checked out on Tuesday morning. That was the day he showed up here. His room had already been cleaned and rented out again, so there was nothing to be learned from it. He paid with that same stolen credit card. It's peculiar, Stoney.”

“What is?”

“The forensics boys went over that rented Taurus and Lyle's Power Wagon. Not a damn thing in either of them. No suitcase, no briefcase, no airplane ticket, nothing. Not even a useful fingerprint. Nothing in the motel room. There isn't a trace of the man anywhere.” The sheriff shook his head. “I want to find him.”

“What'd the motel keeper have to say?”

“Not much. One of the Lincoln County deputies talked to the woman who was at the desk. She checked Mr. Green in and out, said only that he was an old fella with a southern accent who stiffed them with someone else's credit card.” Dickman shook his head. “Got the feelin' that it wasn't a very thorough interrogation. Like to go on up there, talk to her myself. But Lincoln County's out of my jurisdiction.”

“Do it anyway,” said Calhoun. “The hell with jurisdiction.”

“Can't,” said the sheriff. “I got to get along with those fellas. We're all pretty protective of our territory. I don't care for it when someone from another county starts hornin' into ours. I mentioned it to Bellotti, that state cop who was with us last night. Got the feeling that he's kinda soured on our case here.” Dickman shrugged. “Somebody ought to talk to that woman.”

“Last night I had the feeling you were a little soured on me,” said Calhoun. “So I want to be sure I'm understanding you.”

Dickman smiled. “I'm just thinking, a fella like you doesn't need to concern himself about jurisdictions. If you had a mind to wander up towards Craigville, happened to drop in on The Lobster Pot Motel and found that woman at the desk—Mrs. Sousa's her name—well, it wouldn't bother anybody, I don't think.”

“I can do that,” said Calhoun.

“You feel like taking another walk in the woods?” said Dickman.

“If you don't mind getting wet.”

The sheriff shrugged. “Get wet every time I take a shower. It hasn't killed me yet. Bring Ralph.”

Calhoun went back inside. Kate was sitting behind the front counter with her chin in her hands, staring into the distance. She turned and smiled at him. “I know,” she said. “You and the sheriff have got to do some investigating.”

He nodded. “Probably be gone the rest of the afternoon.”

“I can handle it. You go ahead. Appreciate your opening up today.”

“Kate—?”

“See you tomorrow,” she said. “We got a date. Gonna do some fishing.”

R
AINWATER DRIPPED
from the pines, and except for a quarrel between a pair of blue jays, the woods were silent under the wet gray sky. Ralph snuffled around in the bushes, apparently finding all kinds of interesting scent. As they trudged down the old cart path to the millpond, Calhoun thought about ways to get it off his chest.

Finally, he decided to just blurt it out. “I've got to ask you something straight out,” he said to the sheriff. “Do you think I killed Lyle?”

“Hell, no. I think Fred Green did.”

“Well, good.”

“But understand, that doesn't mean I think you didn't. There's a difference, you know.”

“Why would I kill Lyle? Next to Kate, he was my best friend.”

“Hell, if I could think of a reason, I might suspect you actually did it. I've got to admit, for a while there I had some doubts. I wondered—and you've got to excuse me here, it's just how a cynical old cop thinks—I wondered if maybe Lyle and Kate had something going, or maybe he was horning in on your business arrangement, or he owed you money. Or maybe you were fooling around with his girlfriend.” He waved his hand. “It's the motive in this thing that's got me.”

“His housemates, Danny and Julia, they told me that Lyle left a long trail of broken female hearts in his wake. Including Julia's. Probably some pissed-off boyfriends and husbands as well. Maybe Mr. Green . . .”

The sheriff nodded. “Okay, sure. Like that. Lyle might've been fooling around with Green's young wife, or maybe his daughter. Got her pregnant or something.” He shrugged. “However you want to look at it, though, Stoney, we're still looking for Mr. Fred Green. And if he did it, that means you didn't.”

The path through the woods had become as familiar to him as his own driveway. It seemed as if he'd walked in and out of here a hundred times, and every time he did it, it seemed to take less time to get there.

They descended the slope, crossed the pond at the dam, climbed the hill to the cellar hole, and went down the other side. Calhoun led them directly to the place where Ralph had dug up the foot and where Calhoun himself had dug all over again.

Ralph sniffed around, then wandered off into the woods.

Calhoun called him back, but Ralph showed no particular interest.

“This was the place,” said Calhoun. “I was hoping it would look different in the daylight. But it doesn't. It was right here.”

“Stoney, listen,” said Dickman. “There is no body buried here. You were mistaken. If you saw a foot sticking up out of the ground, it was somewhere else. Now, I came here to look around, check it out. I got my doubts, but I don't mind doing it. But you've got to help me, here. Okay, you thought this was the place. But it isn't. You can see that.”

Calhoun shook his head. “I guess it isn't. It's just so damn clear in my mind,” he said. “Let's look around.”

They moved in ever-widening circles, beginning at the dug-up area, Calhoun and the sheriff walking side by side, until they'd covered the entire area at the foot of the hill.

He didn't expect they'd find anything, and they didn't. Ralph sniffed around but showed no particular interest in anything, not even the place where he'd dug up the foot yesterday. The rain had washed away whatever scent might've been there, Calhoun guessed. There wasn't even any sign that a gang of men had been tromping around there last night. Calhoun was pretty good at picking up signs in the woods—freshly broken twigs and leaves, bent-over branches and saplings, depressions in the moss, crushed grass. But the rain had erased everything.

Finally, Calhoun said, “That's enough, Sheriff. I give up.”

Dickman put a hand on his shoulder. “I'm sorry, Stoney. It must be scary.”

“What?”

“Thinking you saw something and thinking you didn't, all at the same time.”

Calhoun nodded. He didn't know what to think anymore.

They headed back up the hill to the old cellar hole.

“Lyle loved these old artifacts,” Calhoun said.

“Lots of stories in these woods, all right,” said the sheriff. “A hundred years ago, this whole part of Maine was settled. Covered with farms. It was all cleared fields and pastures, and every stone on every wall that runs through the woods today was lifted up and set there by somebody. Now it's woods again.”

Calhoun was wandering among the rubble of the fallen-down chimney, thinking about Mr. Potter, how he died, wondering if his ghost haunted the place.

A ghoul, more likely. A body-snatcher.

It looked like some of the chimney fieldstones had been moved recently, leaving bare depressions in the ground. He started to call to the sheriff, who was squatting on the other side of the cellar hole catching his breath, when he noticed that an area about two feet in diameter appeared to have been dug up recently. It was right at the northwest corner of the cellar hole. Whoever did it had filled it in again and tamped down the earth and placed a fieldstone on top of it. But the stone didn't fit the bare patch of dirt, and when Calhoun poked at it with his finger, the ground was softer than it would have been if that stone had been resting there for fifty years.

He glanced over at the sheriff and saw that Ralph was sitting beside him. The sheriff was scratching Ralph's ears and talking with him, gazing off into the distance where a hawk was cruising on the thermals. Ralph was staring up at the gray sky with his ears perked up, which meant that he saw the hawk, too, and was wishing he could fly so he could chase it.

Calhoun rolled the fieldstone away from the patch of bare earth and began scooping it out. Under the top layer of dirt were three softball-sized rocks. Calhoun guessed that whoever had dug it up and filled it in again had removed something and had used those rocks to occupy the space. He pulled out the rocks and dug some more.

Then he saw something glittering in the bottom of the hole. He reached in, picked it up, and blew the dirt off it.

If he didn't know better, he'd have sworn it was a gold nugget. It was squarish but irregular in shape and rounded off on the corners, about the size of a half-worn pencil eraser. Without his fly-tying glasses, he couldn't examine it too closely. But it certainly looked like gold.

“What've you got there, Stoney?”

He turned. The sheriff was standing behind him, frowning.

Calhoun held out his palm, showing him the little nub of gold. “I struck gold, I think.”

Dickman squatted down and looked at it. “Looks like gold, all right.” He picked it up, squinted at it, shrugged, and dropped it back into Calhoun's hand. “Well, I guess all kinds of things—maybe even gold jewelry—would fall to the ground when an old farmhouse burns down.”

Calhoun squinted at the little hunk of gold. “I bet it's been here since forty-seven. Looks like it melted in the fire.”

The sheriff shrugged.

Calhoun dropped the nugget into his pocket. “It looks like somebody was digging here,” he said. “The earth was freshly dug.”

“Where you just dug, you mean?” said the sheriff.

Calhoun nodded. “Sorry. I should've showed it to you first.”

“Yes, you should've.” The sheriff was staring down at the place where Calhoun had been digging. “Wonder if Fred Green came up here after he plugged Lyle.”

“I was wondering that myself,” said Calhoun.

“Well, we're not going to figure that out by standing here and talking about it.” The sheriff glanced at his watch. “We better head back, before you dig the whole place up.”

Calhoun pushed himself to his feet. “Damn sorry about this,” he said. “I swear I saw that foot. Don't know what to make of it, and that's the truth.”

“Don't worry about it, Stoney. I'd rather stroll through the woods on a rainy afternoon than push papers around my desk any day.”

When they got back to the Explorer, Dickman said, “Let's see if Anna and David saw anything last night.”

He drove up the Rosses' driveway. When they got out and slammed the doors, Anna came out the back door, wiping her hands on a towel.

She nodded at them. “Afternoon, boys.”

“Afternoon, Anna,” said the sheriff.

“You fellas've been busy across the street.”

“It's a crime scene, Anna,” said the sheriff. “You know how that works.”

“Just from TV.” She shrugged. “Do you usually visit crime scenes at midnight?”

“Sometimes we do. Did we disturb you?”

“Car doors slammin' and bangin' in the middle of the night when normal folks're trying to sleep? 'Course you disturbed us.”

“I stopped by earlier in the evening last night,” said Calhoun. “Needed your phone. The house was dark.”

She frowned. “What time might that've been?”

“Oh, nine, nine-thirty.”

“David and I went to a movie.”

“What time did you get home?” said the sheriff.

She cocked her head and narrowed her eyes at him. “Why are you asking?”

“I was just wondering if any vehicles might've stopped across the street before our cavalcade arrived last night.”

“Well, we got back around eleven, and we didn't see nothin' then. What's goin' on, Sheriff?”

“Oh, nothing, really. David's not around?”

“Nope. Said he'd be back for supper. You boys want some coffee?”

The sheriff smiled. “Thanks, but no, Anna. Got to get back to the office.” He turned to Calhoun. “You ready to hit the road?”

Calhoun nodded.

“Sorry to bother you, Anna,” said the sheriff. “Anything you see going on down here, I sure do want to know about it.”

“You can count on it,” she said.

Calhoun and Dickman got back into the Explorer. They went down the Rosses' driveway and headed back toward Dublin.