Blood Foam: A Lewis Cole Mystery (Lewis Cole series) (8 page)

“Mister Lessard? Could I have a moment?”

He didn’t look up, just concentrated on putting his paperwork back into folders, and then carefully putting all the folders into a soft brown leather briefcase that had one of its two handles repaired with black electrician’s tape.

“Mister Lessard?”

He looked up this time, blinked, and said, “I suppose so. A moment or two.”

I dragged a chair over as the five members of the zoning board packed up their own belongings, grabbed their coats and jackets, and bustled their way out the meeting-room door. They looked like prisoners finally getting a long-promised parole. The chairwoman, a plump woman with short blond hair, called out, “Carl? Will you lock up and shut off the lights?”

Lessard waved and said to me, “Would you like to make an appointment for tomorrow?”

“This won’t take long, I promise,” I said. “It’s about Mark Spencer.”

“Oh.” He seemed to peer at me closer and said, “You’re the guy who was in our office this morning, right? The one who camped out in our reception area?”

“That’s me,” I said.

“But I thought you talked to Hannah.”

“I did. But I want to talk to you.”

He had a deep, rattling cough, took out a handkerchief, and wiped at his lips. “Then talk away.”

“Mark,” I said. “He’s been missing now for about five days. Aren’t you concerned?”

“Concerned? About his safety? His well-being? His future with the firm?”

I leaned forward. “How about a straight answer for once? You and your partner . . . you seem happy to dance around and duel with words, and all I’m looking for are some answers. Your fellow attorney is missing. Yet nobody seems concerned about that.”

“Are you a friend?”

“No,” I said. “An acquaintance, doing a favor for a friend.”

He carefully put his handkerchief away in his pants pocket. “Ah, that would be a female friend, correct? Paula Quinn?”

A bit of a surprise. “Yes, Paula Quinn. How did you know?”

“Please . . . I keep my eyes and ears open. Paula is a sweet girl. All right, then, I guess the reason I’m not concerned, or Hannah, is that Mark is fine.”

A bigger bit of a surprise. “How do you know that?”

Some sort of emotion played across his face that I couldn’t decipher. “Why, because he informed me so today, that’s why.”

T
he uptown fire station for Tyler is right next door to the town hall, and I was positive that if every piece of their equipment were to leave right then, sirens and horns blaring, I would not move an inch.

I stared into the pale eyes of Carl Lessard. “Say again? You talked to Mark Spencer today?”

“He informed me he was safe. Like the day before, and the day before that.”

I tried to process what I was hearing, as he zippered his leather bag shut and started to get up. I stood up with him and held out my hand.

“Please, just one more moment,” I said. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you know he’s safe.”

“I do.”

“But . . . why did he leave? And why hasn’t he contacted Paula, or the town manager? Why just you?”

“I’m afraid I can’t answer that.”

He started walking out and I stepped in front of him.

“Please . . . this is important to me. Why can’t you say any more?”

His watery eyes blinked. “You want me to say more?”

“Please.”

He shifted his leather bag from one hand to the other. “Mister Cole, I’m exactly one year, one month, and three days away from retiring, with a healthy retirement plan that will keep me going quite well for at least three decades. During the next one year, one month, and three days, I intend to be the perfect, quiet, and hard-working attorney, even though I work for a woman whose ancestry, I believe, could be traced to the Borgias of Renaissance Italy.”

“But—”

Lessard stepped closer, and I caught the smell of mothballs and pencil shavings. He said, “I represent a town made up mostly of quiet citizens, going about their lives day in and day out, but I have to endure and work with a number of liars, fools, and grifters seeking their own gain against the interest of Tyler. So be it.”

I said nothing, letting him go on, and go on he did. “I’ve done one favor for Mark Spencer, and seeing you suffer through tonight’s zoning board meeting in order to speak to me, that encouraged me to do another favor. But the favor bank is now empty. I’m leaving now, and based on who you are and what I know about you, I know you’re not going to do anything physical to prevent my departure. Excuse me, then.”

He walked by me and, knowing when I was defeated, I followed him. At the exit to the building, he shut off the lights to the hall and gestured me out, and I stepped outside into the early-morning darkness of the next day. A streetlight in the nearly empty parking lot gave everything a cold, harsh illumination.

Behind me he locked the door, and we stood together on the granite steps. He said: “I’m sorry if I’m brusque, Mister Cole. It’s just that in one year and three months, I intend to be on a secluded beach somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico, relaxing and never doing anything in the legal profession, ever again. And perhaps it’s the late hour or my exhaustion, I intend to get drunk and get laid every day, to make up for lost time.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“The way things have turned out, and it was no grand plan, I’ve come to this point in my life with no real friends, no family. And I intend to unplug my legal mind and enjoy what’s left to come.”

He walked over to his car, a salt-stained red Chrysler LeBaron, and I called out, “Can you pass a message along to Mark Spencer, then?”

Lessard paused, turned. Seemed to consider that for a moment.

“No,” he said, and he got into his car, started the engine, and drove off.

About sixty seconds later, I did the same.

Sleep didn’t come well to me, and I tossed and turned, even though my sleeping bag was recently washed and the inside of the Pilot smelled fairly reasonable. At some point I was awake and there was no going back to sleep, and I stretched and looked out the window.

Everything was wrong.

There was no Lafayette House parking lot, no stone wall, no breaking waves of the Atlantic Ocean.

Instead, there were some pine trees, a crowded parking lot, and the white buildings of Twelve Rockland Ridge.

Mark Spencer’s home.

I climbed out of my Pilot, stretched, and then washed up in a nearby grove of woods with some bottled water. I checked myself out in a sideview mirror, guessed I was reasonably presentable, and went to work, remembering what Diane Woods had said yesterday.

Hate to say it, but go back again
.

Which is what I was doing this early morning. In my previous canvass of Mark’s residence, I had managed to talk to every one of his neighbors save one. I stood by the front end of the Pilot, waiting. Mark Spencer’s condo was number 4, and the parking spot there was empty. The spot for number 3 was empty as well, and had been empty when I drove in here last night.

I waited. Watched as men and women, young and not so young, trundled out of their condo units, to head off to work, or to school, or some combination thereof. A handful of kids trooped out as well, to walk down to the small intersection of Rockland Ridge and High Street, and in a few minutes a bright yellow school bus came to a halt, picked up the students, and headed out for the day, leaving me alone in the parking lot.

Something hollow ached in my chest. All these couples, all these families, all having a place and a purpose to their lives and their loved ones, and here I was, standing alone, my own home shattered and—unless something
drastic and unexpected happened within the next day or two—was about to get hammered by a hurricane named Toni.

I waited.

About ten minutes after the school bus had left, a light yellow Toyota Corolla with a bad muffler rumbled up the road and pulled into the empty spot next to Mark Spencer’s equally empty spot. A tired-looking man got out, folded newspaper in hand, wearing black slacks, black shoes, and dark blue windbreaker. He unlocked the door to his unit, walked in, and closed the door behind him.

I waited, and then I went to join him.

I knocked on the door, and in a few seconds the man—Dave Chaplain—opened it up. With his coat off, I saw that he was wearing a blue uniform shirt with his name stitched on one side, and the name of a service station/mini-mart chain on the other. He appeared to be in his mid-forties, reddish-blond hair tied back in a small ponytail, and light green eyes. The scent of sugar and old coffee came through the open door.

And he looked exhausted. “Yeah?”

“Sorry to bother you, Mister Chaplain,” I said. “My name is Lewis Cole, I’m a freelance writer, used to be a columnist for
Shoreline
magazine.” I passed over my business card and pressed ahead. “I’m working on an article about the disappearance of your neighbor, Mark Spencer.”

He examined both sides of the card and said “A writer?”

“Yes.”

He grinned. “I’m a writer too. Come on in.”

His unit was identical to Mark’s, except he had more books in the living room overlooking the parking lot. Lots and lots of books. Enough books to set up a small-town library somewhere in a rural town in this state. He sat down at a small kitchen table, stretched out his legs, sighed. “I’d offer you a cup of coffee, but I don’t have the strength to make it, and even if I did, I need to go to sleep.”

“I’m sure.”

He put his hands behind his head, stretched again. “All those hours, on your goddamn feet, and you really can’t take a serious break, ’cause the
whole store is under video surveillance, and if you’re caught slacking off . . . that’s all she wrote.”

“Where do you work?”

A shrug. “Up on Lafayette Road, at the mini-mart. Eleven
P.M.
to seven
A.M.
shift, Wednesday through Sunday. Hell of a career choice, isn’t it. But like I said, I’m a writer too.”

I kept an engaging smile on my face, having heard this story plenty of times before in my previous job at
Shoreline
. Everybody thinks they can write, and once they find out that you make a living putting words to paper, they’re eager to share their dreams, their aspirations, and their ideas with you.

Especially if you agree to hear their ideas, agree to write what they want, and split the money, “fifty-fifty.”

But I was quickly and ashamedly put back to earth when Dave said, “I have an outline for a nice history of post-Revolutionary New Hampshire, if I ever get the time, and I’ve sold two articles over the years to
American Heritage
magazine.” He pointed to the mini-mart’s logo on his shirt. “See what a doctorate in history gets you?”

“Excuse me?”

“Sure, Lewis,” he said. He plucked at his shirt again. “What, you think this was my career choice? Really? Nope, worked and studied and struggled to get a doctorate in American history, had a plan to get a nice college gig, write articles and then books. . . .”

“Then reality struck.”

“Hah, yeah, a good way of putting it. Oh, I taught here and there, strictly as an adjunct professor, working year to year, never getting a permanent position, never getting on a tenure track. If I had been born ten or fifteen years earlier, boy, would I have had it made. . . .”

“Colleges have changed a lot, haven’t they.”

“Certainly have. Since medieval times, universities and colleges were designed to be a little oasis of knowledge, where students get a good grounding in education, humanities and philosophy. Now it’s all career-and-employment track, setting up ‘partnerships’ with corporations, so our little conveyor belt of knowledge can pop out ready-made technocrats or consumers after four or six years of schooling.”

“You sure don’t sound bitter.”

He laughed. “Good one. You’d think the so-called higher institutions of learning would help us future professors along, but nope. Those who had tenure stayed at the top of their ivory tower, after pulling the ladder up, and the college administrators . . . as long as they got their new buildings, and new layers of deans and assistant deans and junior assistant deans. . . .”

“They didn’t particularly care.”

“Nope,” Dave said. “But hey, enough of my troubles. Mark Spencer. Missing, for real?”

“For five days. Car gone, laptop gone. No word left with his law firm, the town, or his fiancée. Have you seen him at all during the last week?”

“No, can’t say that I have,” he said, lowering his arms and folding them across his chest. “My work schedule doesn’t really permit a lot of interaction with the neighbors . . . not to mention the fair sex. But he seemed like an okay guy. Dressed all right, kept quiet, no banging around or loud music or television. Kept pretty much to himself.”

So much for starting over again, I thought.

“Anything unusual? Late-night visitors? Loud arguments with someone?”

“Nothing at all.”

“Late-night phone calls you might have heard?”

“The walls here are thin, but not that thin.”

“His mood seem different in any way?”

“Mood? His mood was like he couldn’t wait to get out of here in the morning to get to work . . . he gave me a quick wave now and then, usual neighbor stuff. Once gave me a hand when the goddamn ravens poked holes in my trash bag, but that’s about it.”

“Anything else about him you can think of, that might help?”

“No, not really,” Dave said, and then he smiled. “Got to say, though, that I’m envious. I mean, if he’s left and nothing bad’s happened to him. Don’t you ever think of packing everything in and heading out? Just abandoning it all, chucking it away? Like Huck Finn lighting out for another territory?”

“Once upon a time, I did,” I said, getting up from his kitchen table. “But I’m sort of a stay-at-home kind of guy.”

“Good for you,” he said. “Well, hope you and the cops find him.”

“Not likely, since the cops aren’t looking for him.”

He looked surprised. “Of course they are.”