Blood Foam: A Lewis Cole Mystery (Lewis Cole series) (7 page)

I went to her to kiss her good-bye, and she surprised me by grabbing my hand and squeezing it tight. “I was thinking about you when I woke up this morning,” she said, her voice serious.

“Not sure if I should be sad or glad about that.”

The squeeze of her hand increased. “I woke up and realized I hadn’t had a single nightmare during the night. I slept well . . . and that happened only after you told me what you did about Curt Chesak.”

That brought back a quick memory from a few weeks ago. Up in the small town of Osgood, in a big house, a fresh bullet wound in my thigh, an armed and angry Curt Chesak coming my way, moments from shooting me, until an unexpected ally arrived and severed his lower spine with one quick flash of a Gurkha knife.

I kissed the top of her head. “Glad I could help.”

She released my hand. “Promise me someday you’ll tell me about it.”

I strolled out of the room, gave her a wave and a smile.

“Sorry,” I said. “That’ll never happen.”

I
needed to make a phone call, and I sat in the Pilot and retrieved my cell phone, but the smell of old clothes, old meals, and a damp sleeping bag drove me outside. I leaned against the cold fender, saw the air traffic over the nearby McIntosh Air Force Base, and went to work. I dialed a number from memory, went through the usual menu, and after about ten or so minutes—half of it on hold, listening to “The Girl from Ipanema”—I got through to the insurance agent allegedly handling my claim.

“Adrian Zimmerman,” came the young man’s voice. “How can I help you?”

“Hello, Adrian,” I said. “It’s Lewis Cole, your faithful Tyler Beach correspondent. Anything new on my claim status?”

Even though I was outside, I was pretty sure I could hear his sigh. “No, there’s nothing new to report. That’s what I said yesterday, last Friday, and the day before that. And like I said, I will call you the moment I hear any news.”

“Gee, Adrian, what’s the matter, you don’t like hearing my voice? We’re not friends anymore?”

“Mister Cole. . . .”

“Look, ever since my place burned down, you said that my claim for my house and car are under review, because it was arson. It’s been weeks now. How much longer?”

“You’re forgetting the other arson. The one for which you were arrested.”

Right, I thought. The arson that charred the remains of Curt Chesak and two others.

“Come, now, Adrian, the charges were dropped.”

“They were, but the charges were certainly made. That all has to be taken into consideration.”

“Well, consider this,” I said. “You ever watch the Weather Channel?”

His voice grew cautious. “No, not really. . . .”

“You should,” I said. “There’s a hurricane forming off the coast of Florida, and it’s heading this way over the next several days. I can’t wait anymore. I need to get my contractor in there, make temporary repairs, at least, before the storm destroys whatever’s left.”

“I’ll make sure the hurricane is taken into consideration, Mister Cole.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning . . . I’ll make sure it’s taken into consideration. Is there anything else?”

I was now standing up straight, my legs quivering, like a hunting dog eager to sink its teeth into something. “There sure is. I won’t be happy if, through your feet-dragging, my property is destroyed and swept away.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, making me wonder if he had quietly hung up on me, and then he spoke up. “That might be just for the best, don’t you think?”

“How? How the hell can my house being destroyed be for the best?”

Adrian’s voice quickened. “You recall when we first met, when I did a survey of the property? I said that I was going to recommend that the house and the garage be declared a total loss, to be completely razed. If the hurricane helps that process along, so much the better.”

“But it’s a historical house! More than a hundred and fifty years old!”

I swear I could sense the smile on his face as he spoke next. “Is your home listed in the National Registry of Historical Places? Is it in a designated historical zone for the town of Tyler? Does it have any certification whatsoever that it’s historical?”

No, no, and no, I thought. But then again, a fair chunk of homes in Tyler and the surrounding towns had been built in the 1700s and 1800s, and none of them bore any historical certification, because . . . well, that’s just the way things were in this part of the world. Every town had old homes. They were just part of the landscape.

“I think you already know the answer,” I said.

“Then as far as we’re concerned, your home isn’t historical. Have a good day, now, Mister Cole.”

And he hung up on me.

I drove into the Lafayette House parking lot on Tyler Beach, spotting a green-and-white Tyler police cruiser amble out. The parking lot looked pretty quiet, and I then had a warm thought: that Diane Woods had spread the word to the shift sergeants, to make sure that what was left of my house got a look-see from the regular beach patrols during the day.

I backed my Pilot into its usual space and then walked down to my house. The wind was blowing in a different direction, so there wasn’t that sad smell of burnt things as I got there. There was the usual flapping noise of the blue tarpaulins echoing with the sound of the crashing waves, and, clenched hands in my coat pockets, I wandered around the house, at the rear deck, the unscorched wood, the broken windows, the collapsed roof. The air was cold and the wind was sharp.

I stood still for a moment, saw a spot where the tarpaulin had torn free, near the doorway, and I unlocked the door, again thumped my shoulder against the door to pry it open. I retrieved a handful of nails and the Craftsman hammer that had brained me the other day, and went to work. I hammered in the nails and stood back to admire my work.

Not much to admire. The blue tarp looked primed to tear again, and this was from the normal gusts of wind coming off the Atlantic. I imagined a hurricane coming up here, and even if it stayed at a Category One and missed Tyler Beach and only grazed it, there could be winds of up to seventy or eighty miles an hour. That said, this tarpaulin would fly off in an instant and end up in Newfoundland, and the interior of the house would be soaked. The high winds would probably also shift some of the timbers, causing more destruction; and if I was having a particularly bad
day, a bigger-than-usual high tide would sweep up here and scour the place down to bedrock.

I turned and snapped and tossed the Craftsman hammer at a nearby rock, where it bounced up and disappeared.

What was the point?

Damn it, what was the point?

My breathing quickened and I closed my eyes, thought back through some of the happy memories of this special place, the meals, the small get-togethers, the women who had spent some sweet times here. And above all, the day-after-day healing solitude of being in a piece of warm and safe history, while all the storms out there passed me by.

I let my breath out, opened my eyes. I went over to the rocks and after a few minutes found and retrieved my hammer. It had a few new scratches on it, and I juggled it in the air a few times.

“Sorry,” I said. “Not your fault.”

I put the hammer back in the house, pulled a few times to close the door, locked it, and then walked back up to the parking lot.

Dinner was quick and got the job done, meaning I sat in the small dining room of the Tyler McDonald’s, on Route 1 heading up to North Tyler. There have been times when I’ve been very hungry and traveling, and any fast-food menu was something to be savored. But now I wasn’t very hungry, and I wasn’t going anyplace far, and so the Le Beef Royale and Coke were serving as fuel and not much else.

With some time to kill, I went through a few newspapers and carefully read all the stories concerning Hurricane Toni. With each newspaper, there was a different prediction as to its course, but all agreed that this was probably going to be the last hurricane of the season and would drench this part of New England with heavy rains and winds on or around Thanksgiving. Happy Turkey Day.

After I was through with my disappointing dinner—though, to be truthful, to any European peasant alive from 1000
A.D.
to 1500
A.D.
that meal would have been considered a feast fit for any ruler alive—I made a short drive across the street to the Tyler Blue Ribbon cleaners. I gathered up all of my clothes and my sleeping bag, and trundled into the place. It
was hot, steamy, with the smell of detergent, wet clothes, and disappointments from the men and women mechanically doing their laundry without looking at each other.

It took a while to get everything sorted, to make change and get fistfuls of quarters, but I got things rolling and then went to the Pilot, drove another few yards to a service station, and used up more of my quarters to buy time on a vacuum machine.

With that job done, I drove back in time to see that my loads were finished, and into the dryer they went. Outside, I opened up every door to the Pilot and the hatchback as well, retrieved my Rick Atkinson book, and went inside to wait out the dryers, sitting on a scuffed orange plastic chair.

At least four times during the drying cycle, somebody came up to me and asked me if that was my Honda out there, and was I aware everything was open. I said yes, thanks for the heads-up, explaining that I was just airing the place out.

When the dryers slowly rolled to a stop, more time was spent sorting and folding, and rolling up my sleeping bag. Out into the snap-cold November air I went, and bustled everything back into the Pilot, closed the doors and hatchback, and drove away, now seeking some entertainment.

Such was the life of the nomad, the homeless.

I didn’t like it.

Some time ago, the four-screen movie theater for downtown Tyler had closed and was replaced by—surprise, surprise—yet another drug store for this crowded stretch of Route 1. With no available entertainment, I did the next best thing and drove to the Tyler Town Hall. There was plenty of parking and I checked my watch, saw it was seven
P.M.
, and went into the selectmen’s meeting room.

There was no selectmen’s meeting tonight, but there was a session of the town’s zoning board of adjustment, and I had noted the time and agenda when I had been at the town library earlier today. Inside the narrow room were rows of folding wooden chairs set on a light green carpet, and at the far end of the room was a long table, covered with an equally long tablecloth. On the walls were plaques and photos honoring past town officials and the history of Tyler.

At the table sat five residents of the town—three women and two men—who were serving as zoning board members. This was a volunteer position—like most of the government work in Tyler and other New Hampshire towns—and gave new meaning to the phrase “thankless job.”

Basically, any new construction or renovation project in town or at the beach needed an affirmative vote from the town’s planning board, to make sure zoning laws were followed and fat-rendering plants weren’t built next to a kindergarten, that sort of thing. But if the planning board turned down a project, the builder or owner’s last best hope before taking the town to court was to argue their case before five fellow citizens. They could plead special circumstances, or point out quirky loopholes in the regulations, or throw themselves on the mercy of the board. Sometimes the board said yes, sometimes it said no, and more often than not it ended up with lots of bruised feelings, which could make later school functions or church meetings with neighbors interesting.

Tonight the room was about a quarter full, and up at the front left row was Jason, the young studded lad from the
Tyler Chronicle
, frantically tapping away on his laptop as the meeting droned on. It was nice to see a member of the Fourth Estate keeping view on the action, but I was also pleased to see an older man, sitting just a few feet away from the zoning board members, legal pad and pen in his hands. He had on a light gray suit, the ends of the sleeves shiny with use, and a white shirt and black necktie. His face was splotched with red, like some of his blood vessels had given up the ghost years ago, and his pale eyes blinked slowly behind brown-rimmed glasses.

Carl Lessard, no doubt, of the firm of Adams & Lessard, representing the good people of Tyler this evening.

The meeting went on, went on, went on. There were eight items on the agenda, and it took nearly forty minutes to dispose of the first item, concerning a developer who wanted to build four condo units on a narrow road bordering the marshlands at the beach. The planned buildings were too close to an exclusion line prohibiting construction next to the vulnerable marshlands, and the developer and his lawyer were trying to arrange a deal where they could build a berm and swap out other land to the town so there wouldn’t be a net loss of marshland.

There was a lot of give and take, a few residents in the audience expressing either support or opposition, and then the board took the vote, which went three to two against the developer.

His lawyer rolled up some blueprints of the proposed buildings and development, whispered something in the developer’s ear, but whatever he said didn’t take, because the man’s face got very red. He stood up from the front row, pointed his finger at them, and loudly said: “You had your chance! I’ll see you all in court next month . . . you jerks!”

He stomped out, face flushed, muttering curses and threats, his reading glasses bouncing off his round chest, his fists clenched.

The chairwoman of the board took it all in stride, looked down at her paperwork, and asked, “Mister Mullen, are you ready?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Mullen said, stepping forward in front of the five board members.

Carl Lessard made notes. Jason
tap-tapped
on the keyboard, and I folded my arms and waited and tried to stay awake.

When the meeting adjourned at 12:34
A.M.
, I was the only person sitting in the audience. In ones and twos, the others had drifted out, and even the young reporter gave up at 11
P.M.
When the chairwoman rapped her little brown gavel and said “And we’re adjourned” and another board member whispered “Thank God,” I walked up to Carl Lessard.