Blood Foam: A Lewis Cole Mystery (Lewis Cole series) (2 page)

“His co-workers know anything?”

“Not a damn thing. Besides the work he does for the town, he belongs to a small firm in town, Adams & Lessard. The office manager, the two partners . . . I’ve talked to them all. Nothing. He left work three days ago, and that was that. In fact, they’re pissed at him for leaving without saying anything, because there’s a bunch of work they’re trying to get done before Thanksgiving.”

“You check out his home?”

Another nod. “Sure. I went over yesterday, thinking he was sick. Nobody was there, none of his neighbors saw him after he left for work on Thursday.”

“Is there a favorite B&B or hotel in the area he might go to if he’s feeling stressed or something?”

“None that I can think of.”

I made a circle at the top of my cocoa cup with my finger. “I need to ask you something.”

“Go ahead.”

I paused. Some time ago, Paula and I had had a brief yet intense relationship, soon after I had moved here to Tyler Beach. We had been close friends ever since, with a few sparks flying here and there. But a number of weeks ago, she had nearly been killed while covering an anti-nuclear demonstration in Falconer, and during that moment of crisis she had expressed her undying love to me. And then she had a change of heart, or snapped out of it, or something, and the moment had gone, until I saw her a few weeks ago, wearing a diamond engagement ring following a vacation trip out west with the lucky counselor.

Enough of the pause. “You guys doing all right? Any fights or spats lately that got out of hand?”

She shook her head. “No. Nothing like that.”

“Either of you having cold feet about getting married?”

Another shake of the head.

I said “All right. Had to ask. Is his car still at the condo lot?”

“No, it’s not.”

“Family?”

“He has no family, either here or in Vermont, where he’s from. His parents died when he was young; and in the time I’ve known him, no mention of any brothers, sisters, or cousins.”

Outside, the sky was darkening. It was late afternoon, and by five it would be pitch-black out there. Part of the charm of living this far north.

“Paula, have you gone to the police yet?”

She sighed, ran a hand through her hair. “I’ve talked to Captain Kate Nickerson. She’s been assigned detective duties since Diane Woods got injured at the anti-nuke demonstration. She was polite, but she admitted right up front that there wasn’t much she could do. I’m not a spouse or relative. There’s no evidence of foul play. She took a missing-persons report, but I could tell her heart wasn’t really in it. He’s of legal age . . . and as she said, it’s not against the law to decide to take a few days off.”

“Hell of an answer. He is the town counsel, after all.”

“Sure, Lewis, but this is still small-town New Hampshire. We like the live-and-let-live attitude; and if Mark is out on a bender with a flight attendant or a lonely housewife, why should anyone care?”

I had met Mark Spencer a few times in my dealings with Paula and other members of the town over the past year or so. Based on his professional attitude and approach, I would guess the only bender he had ever experienced was dislodging a stubborn spoon from his dishwasher.

“You care,” I said. “That should be enough. All right, I’ll give you a hand, see what I can do to find him. I’ll give it my best shot, Paula.”

She sniffled once, her eyes wide with shock. “Just like that?”

“Yeah, just like that. What, you think I was going to haggle with you, or tell you not to worry, or anything like that?” I glanced at my watch. “It’s
getting late. I have an appointment tomorrow morning . . . any chance you and I could get together, say at eleven
A.M.
?”

“That’s my morning deadline, but I’ll break it.”

I finished off my cocoa. It tasted pretty damn good. “Glad to hear it. I want you to bring me a copy of the missing-persons report, his date of birth and Social Security number if you have it. Give me a spare key to his condo so I can check things out. I’ll talk to his neighbors, the town manager, and his law-firm folks, see if I can get a lead on something. I’ll even meet up with Captain Nickerson. In the meantime, relax . . . take a deep breath . . . maybe take a hot bath. And then I want you to think back on anything odd or unusual that might have happened to Mark within the last few days.”

“Like what?”

“Unexpected absences before he went missing. Hang-up phone calls. Anything that might show he was being harassed, or got someone’s attention. Any strange remarks that seemed off the cuff but might mean something later. Okay?”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

The waiter came by, dropped off the bill for our two cocoas. Damn. At six bucks each, no wonder it had tasted so fine. I took out my wallet and carefully laid down a ten and a five.

“But, Paula . . . just to be very clear on this, I don’t have a private investigator’s license. I don’t have a job with
Shoreline
anymore, meaning I can’t snoop around pretending I’m doing a column. It’s just . . . me.”

She opened her purse, took out her car keys, and her face firmed up. “You’ll be plenty. I’ve seen what you’ve done here in Tyler over the years. You’ve always been much more than a magazine columnist, Lewis, and lately—much to my surprise—you’ve been open about your previous work at the Pentagon. So I know you’re skilled in a lot of things. But most of all . . . I trust you.”

Paula’s eyes teared up again. “You said you’re going to do your best, and I know you will.”

Outside, it was chilly and I could spot the bright sparkling dot of light that was Venus in the western sky, just over the flat marshes of Tyler
Beach. I walked Paula back to her car—a cute little Volkswagen Beetle that was light blue—and she kissed me on the cheek after opening the door.

“Lewis . . . thanks so much. I feel a hundred percent better than I did when I came here.”

“Must be the fine cocoa.”

“Doubtful.” She looked past me, down the rugged path that led to my dark house. It didn’t look like a house: it looked like a cardboard model that some child had stepped on. “Your poor house,” she repeated. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to hope that tropical depression doesn’t become a storm, and hope the insurance company puts away their persecution complex about me and cuts a hefty check in my name. In the meanwhile, I’ve paid for some old lumber from the 1800s and, with the original blueprints from the Tyler Historical Society, hope to be able to move back in before December. I got a local contractor raring to start work, as soon as I can give him a hefty down payment.”

“So, where have you been spending your nights?”

“As a guest of the Lafayette House, where else.”

That got me a laugh and another kiss on the cheek, and I stood still in the hotel’s parking lot until I saw her Volkswagen start up, leave the parking lot, and drive down Atlantic Avenue.

Then I turned around and trudged down to my home.

When I got back to my earlier work area, I unlocked the front door and shoved it open by slamming my hip into it three times. With most of the second floor resting on the first floor, frames and such had shifted. With the door open, I was greeted by a blast of cold air and the stench again of burnt wood and wet items. I put the ladder and tools away, tried not to look too hard at what remained of my living room and the kitchen beyond it. At least the dark covered most of the depressing details.

I grabbed a rucksack and flashlight, and it only took two attempts to slam the door shut. I went back up the driveway, switching on the flashlight. It was getting dark pretty quick. At my rented Honda Pilot, I opened up the rear hatch. My Explorer was back under what was left of my garage,
and since my homeowner’s policy was with the same carrier that provided me with car insurance, I was still waiting for a settlement from that end of the insurance universe as well.

With the Pilot’s hatchback open, I tossed my rucksack in and then followed it in, crawling over a foam mattress pad and open sleeping bag. The windows in this part of the Pilot were covered by taped-up newspaper, and after putting on a headlamp, I pulled the rear hatch down, it thumping satisfactorily in place.

“Home, sweet home,” I muttered, “once again.”

There were some clothes dumped in the front passenger’s seat and, with the rear seats folded down, I had a reasonable amount of space. I stretched out, winced at the pain in my right leg, and opened up a small cooler. Dinner tonight was a steak-and-cheese sub, about four hours old, still fairly warm having been double-wrapped in foil, accompanied by a take-out salad and a bottle of Sprite. I ate quickly and then cleaned up, and then went back outside, to a row of boulders that marked the farthest end of the parking lot. There, I did some personal business, brushed my teeth, washed my face and hands with cold water, and then went back to the Pilot.

Across the street, the bright and warm lights of the Lafayette House were beckoning to me. It was easy to imagine a warm room, hot shower, and gourmet meal, and then snuggling up in a wide soft bed. And after the fire and after I had come home, I had indeed spent a few nights there, but realized that spending more than a week as their guest—with no income stream from my previous job as a columnist for
Shoreline
magazine—meant I’d be in debt up to my tired eyeballs in no time.

So in the language of the time, I downsized. I understand from the
New York Times
’ editorial pages that it’s been quite the fad lately.

I wormed my way back into the rear of the Pilot, stretched out, and draped the sleeping bag over myself. With the headlamp still on, I picked up a thick volume of Rick Atkinson’s majestic three-book history of the United States Army in Africa and Europe during World War II and opened up the pages.

As I read, I was nagged by two little things. One was that I sort of had stretched the truth when I told Paula I was a guest of the Lafayette House.
All right, to be specific, I wasn’t a guest of the Lafayette House building, but I was indeed a guest of their parking lot.

And the other thing . . . well.

I turned another page.

I had promised Paula that I would locate her fiancé, the town counsel, Mark Spencer.

But I didn’t promise that I’d bring him back to her.

For I was fairly certain he was dead.

T
he next morning I drove about a half hour up the coast, to the Porter Rehab and Extended Care Center, where I had my appointment in Room 209. The room was wide and well lit, and it had a nice view of the neighboring McIntosh Air Force Base. Inside, my best friend, Detective Sergeant Diane Woods, was sitting up and sipping a glass of orange juice through a straw. Her hair had been freshly washed, and the IV tubes and other wires had been removed. Two weeks earlier, she had been in a coma; a week and six days ago, she had woken up.

She had on blue pajama pants, slippers, and a flowered top, and she smiled widely as I came in, her voice still hoarse from having a breathing tube stuck down her throat for weeks. “Hey, you bad man, how are you?”

“Doing fine. And you?”

She put the orange-juice glass down on a nearby rolling table. “Still look horrible, don’t I.”

Which, unfortunately, was true. While most of the abrasions had healed, her eyes were still swollen, like she had gone twelve rounds with an Olympic-class boxer while sitting down in a reclining chair. The skin around her eyes was a ghastly shade of black, blue, and green.

I went to her, kissed her forehead. “Beauty’s only skin-deep, haven’t you heard?”

She patted my hand. Hers was covered with needle marks and sticky adhesive-tape remains. “Yeah, but as you know, ugly goes right to the bone.”

“Which means you have nothing to worry about. C’mon, we’re wasting time.”

Diane frowned. “You’re a mean man. I’ve already got a full day of PT and OT ahead of me. And did I tell you . . . you’re a mean man.”

I pulled her table away, took a hand. “I’m indeed a mean man, who also remembers your doc saying that any extra PT on your part will help. So let’s shake a leg, get up for a stroll.”

A few minutes later, I got her up and out of bed and, using a walker, we got out into the wide hallway of the second floor. We bore to the right, and Diane made good progress, holding on tightly to the two handles of her walker. It had two large wheels up forward and two smaller ones at the rear, and had a square center that served as a seat.

The place was quiet, with large single rooms on either side of the hallway and a nurse’s station in the center. Besides the resident rooms, there were larger rooms designed for physical therapy, where therapists put patients through their paces by lifting weights, stretching, or using exercise gear. There was also a mock-up of a car and an apartment for occupational therapy, where patients could re-learn how to get along back at home with either an injured limb or an injured brain.

She looked firmly ahead and said “You look to be moving well.”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“Because a little birdie told me that you’d been shot in your right leg.”

“Some little birdie.”

“True, though, isn’t it?”

“Well . . . yes.”

Diane said, “You don’t seem too upset about it.”

I shrugged. “Not much to complain about. It was the proverbial flesh wound. Plus, I shot him first.”

She slowly moved her head in my direction. “I’d like to remind you, Mister Cole, that even though I’m moving as slow as a three-legged turtle, I’m still a sworn police officer for the State of New Hampshire.”

“It was way out of your jurisdiction.”

“But your home is in Tyler Beach.”

“Still is,” I said. “It’s not moving any time soon.”

“But you’re okay?”

“Fit as a fiddle that’s missing a string or two, and that’s been dropped on the ground a couple of times.”

She kept quiet, and the hallway emerged in a spacious sunroom. There were large windows overlooking a grove of evergreens, with comfortable chairs and couches and two bookcases. She went to the near chair and locked the front wheels of her walker, and I took an arm and helped her down. I sat next to her and squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back.