Dead Down East (29 page)

He does his best to console us. For several
minutes he holds Mom tightly in his arms while she screams, then
sobs, and eventually retreats into silent grief. Landon then slumps
into the chair beside me, puts his arm around my shoulder, and we
both weep.

Nothing had prepared me for this.

For the next few weeks, life is a series of
hollow movements. It seems as if the real me is about two feet
behind and just above the physical me. I am no longer inside
myself. My voice sounds as though it circles back to my ears
through an echo chamber. When I take a walk or ride my bike, it
feels as though I am traveling through a tunnel. When I arrive, I’m
still not quite there. Destinations remain just out of reach;
friends seem distant. The days take forever to finish.

For Mom it was worse. In some way, she has
never completely recovered. Before Dad was murdered, she almost
never drank alcohol. She might have a little wine with Tom when
they went out for dinner. At most she’d have a single glass of
champagne at weddings or on New Year’s Eve. But now she turned to
drinking, hoping against hope, I suppose, that she might eventually
forget, or at least get numb enough to get by. After a month or so,
she was pretty much numb all the time.

It didn’t help when winter came early in ‘93
and spring came late in ‘94. At least it seemed that way to us. The
snow and the cold forced us inside our memories, holding us in
grief. During that winter, I wondered if “reality” would ever come
back to me.

Knowing how and why my father was murdered
didn’t make it any easier. His death was sudden and senseless. The
night Dad drove to the grocery store, he parked his car in the lot,
got out and began walking toward the front door. He was about
halfway there when he heard a young couple yelling at each other
from the row of cars to his left. When the woman screamed, he did
what any self-respecting man would do—he ran to help her. Jason
Savage and Melissa Simpson were twenty-two and twenty-one years
old, and high on cocaine. When Dad got within a car’s length of the
couple, he saw Jason slap Melissa across the face, and she fell to
the asphalt. According to the testimony at the trial, when Dad
stepped between the two of them, face to face with Jason, he put up
his hands and told him to stop. After they shoved each other back
and forth a couple of times, Jason drew a gun from his coat pocket
and pulled the trigger.

It was one o’clock when we turned onto Violette
Avenue and stopped in front of the Wyeth’s home. I hadn’t been here
since I remodeled their bathroom two years before. The house and
yard had changed very little in thirty years. The trees were
taller, except for one large hemlock in front, which appeared to be
dying.

Kathleen rushed out to greet us before we reached the
porch.

“It’s wonderful to see you again, Sarah. How have you
been?” she asked.

“OK, I guess, but I’ve been feeling tired for several
months. I had the flu in February, and I have not fully recovered.
I should be fine once the weather warms up. It’s been a cold
spring. But most of all, I’m worried about Jesse. Do you know about
his latest case?”

“Not really,” Kathleen said, with an inquisitive
look. “He left Bear Spring unexpectedly on Sunday morning. Michael
and I figured he has a new client. We found out only last weekend
that he is a private investigator.”

“He’s investigating the Lavoilette murder,” Mom
replied.

Kathleen stare at me in disbelief, but didn’t say a
word.

“If it’s all right, let’s go inside first,” I said
while looking around to see if anyone was within earshot. “I’ll
explain privately what I’ve been doing. It’s not for public
consumption.”

Michael hugged my mom as we stepped inside and said,
“Nice to see you Sarah. It’s been too long.”

“Good to see you, Michael,” she replied.

“What’s all this about the Lavoilette murder? Jesse,
are you involved?” he asked.

“Just today my client, Cynthia Dumais, told me I
could discuss this with you—but we can’t have any of this going
public. Her safety is at risk. I asked her specifically for
permission to talk with you because I would like your feedback.
After you hear what’s been happening, you’ll understand her
concerns,” I said. “But let’s talk about this after dinner, if
that’s OK?”

“Sure, Jesse,” Kathleen said.

“Looks as if the hemlock is dying out front, Michael.
What’s the problem?” I asked.

“Hemlocks from Maine to Georgia have been infected by
a pest known as the hemlock woolly adelgid, which feasts on the sap
of hemlock and spruce trees. The one out front has been getting
steadily worse for two years. Unfortunately, we’ll have to take it
down.”

“There was a feature about that recently on NPR,” Mom
said. “It’s like the Dutch elm disease all over again, but now it’s
the evergreens. Time just won’t stand still.”

Michael chuckled and added, “Maine is probably the
one state in the union most resistant to change, but it has a way
of getting here all the same. What are you gonna do?”

“We could emigrate to New Brunswick, or even
Newfoundland,” I offered jokingly. “That would take us back a
generation or so.”

“Kathleen and I visited Newfoundland last summer.
It’s not as backward as you might think. St. Johns is still quaint,
to be sure, but it’s also a modern city. We were struck by how
spectacular it is. Most of the older homes are very well kept. We
have some pictures you will enjoy. Mainers could learn a lot from
them, especially how to choose house paint. It’s ironic…we live on
Violette Avenue, but almost every home here is white or beige. In
St. Johns, street after street is lined with homes freshly painted
in a wide variety of beautiful, even stunning, colors—purples,
oranges, reds and golds—shades we would never think to use. They’ve
turned their city into a gallery of architecture. It’s
inspirational. Waterville is utterly drab by comparison. Where’s
the imagination?” Michael asked with a touch of melancholy.

Kathleen excused herself to finish with the dinner
preparations. Michael and Mom sat down in the living room and
continued chatting. I followed Kathleen to the kitchen; I wanted to
have a word with her privately.

“Do you need any help, Kathleen?” I asked.

“No. I’m fine. But stay with me while I get the meal
ready.”

I waited a few moments and then posed a question,
“Tell me, Kathleen, have you ever had a prophetic dream?”

She turned to me with a quizzical and somewhat
serious look on her face and said, “Why do you ask?”

“Just curious,” I replied, but I’m sure she sensed
that my interest was not just small talk.

“My father has often appeared to me in dreams,” she
said. “Most of them have been rather ordinary, of course, but a few
have been striking. I guess you could call them ‘prophetic.’
‘Lucid’ might be a more accurate word though. He often comes to
reassure me that things will turn out fine. It’s not always
important what he says or does in each dream; it’s enough that he
remains close, but occasionally he describes something that is
about to happen.

“When he passed away, his doctor told me that my
father died of a sudden, unexpected heart attack. But it was not
really like that. A week before his death, he appeared to me in a
vivid dream. He stood on a high ledge overlooking a dark valley,
holding a fiery torch in his hand. He beckoned me to join him.

“At first I was afraid, and I called out to him to
come down. He just smiled and said, ‘It will be fine. Come on.’ I
grew bolder with each step until I was standing next to him. Then
he handed me the torch and said, ‘I’m moving on. Enjoy life,
Kathleen; transform your work into play!’”

“How nice,” I said warmly. “Have you had any lucid
dreams lately?”

“As a matter of fact, I had one last Sunday on our
porch at the cabin. The news of the governor’s death put a damper
on our activities in the morning, and it rained in the afternoon.
The three of us sat around and didn’t do much all day. The rain
stopped around seven o’clock, so Michael and Tyler went fishing.
When they left, I lay down in the hammock and dozed off.

“I don’t know how long I had been sleeping, but at
some point I found myself flying above the clouds searching for
William Lavoilette. Whenever I sensed he was near, I looked
intently through the sky, but all I could see were women’s faces,
one right after the other, people I’d never seen before. It was
strange and absorbing. I kept feeling
his
presence, but
seeing women. One by one the faces appeared and then evaporated. I
was never able to find him.

“Everything about the dream was crystal clear. I can
see it all right now in my mind’s eye.”

Dinner was ready. I didn’t want to hold things up by
comparing her dream with mine. But I was definitely excited to hear
that we had had our dreams on the same day, and quite possibly at
the same time. We’d have a chance to talk later.

Kathleen had anticipated that Angele might be coming
for dinner, so she had prepared a vegan enchilada casserole
including pasta made with no dairy products. Kathleen is a marvel
of kindness and adaptability. For the rest of us, she broiled
salmon. We started with a Cabernet Sauvignon Rosé, followed by a
salad.

The wine got my mother talking. Once she relaxed, it
was like old times. I’d almost forgotten how wonderful she can be
when she stops fretting and lets her hair down. She’s an avid
reader. When she’s happy, she talks about novels.

“I don’t know how I missed it when it first came out
in the mid nineties,” Mom said, “but
Snow Falling on Cedars
is an extraordinary book. It’s so sensitive and genuine. David
Guterson paints such a vivid picture of the San Juan Islands that I
felt as if I were there. He mingles providence and justice in just
the right proportions. It’s inspiring and sorrowful at the same
time.”

Michael was quick to agree. “I’ve used that novel in
my creative writing classes for years. I never tire of it. It has
many dazzling paragraphs to inspire young writers.”

“I wish I had read that book before seeing the
movie,” I said. “The movie was ho-hum for me. When I read the book,
I had a hard time extracting the film from the writing.”

Over the next half-hour, I couldn’t get a word in
edgewise, but it didn’t matter. Kathleen and I sat back and let
Michael and Mom evaluate literature until dinner was done. It was a
pleasure watching my mother’s spirit come to life. The two of them
poured a second glass of wine and retired to the living room. As
they disappeared around the corner, I heard Michael say, “English
is an amazing language. It’s more significant to us than our
DNA.”

“Why did you ask me about my dreams, Jesse?” Kathleen
asked.

“Because I had one too. A lucid one.”

“Really? Tell me about it.”

“It happened last Sunday a little before dusk, the
same time as yours.”

“That’s interesting,” Kathleen said.

“You were in it,” I said. “I didn’t actually see you,
but I heard your voice distinctly. You said, ‘Cherchez la femme’ in
the dream, just as you had earlier in the day at breakfast, when we
were considering possible suspects for the murder.”

“Hmmm,” she said. “What do you make of it?”

“What do
you
make of it?” I echoed.

“Well, I don’t remember saying that in my dream. But
there were a lot of women’s faces. This is mysterious, but not
altogether baffling. I’ve often thought that our dreams are more
than just our own personal mind games, at least the ones with
extraordinary energy or significance attached to them. Perhaps they
are out-of-body experiences. I really don’t know. I’m not sure if
we
can
, or even need, to know. But this is the first time I
have ever had any kind of—what should I call it?—
validation
from another person.”

“It’s especially interesting from another
perspective, Kathleen. William Lavoilette was having an affair. He
had many affairs over the past five years.”

“My goodness. How did he keep them quiet?” Kathleen
asked.

“He had a close friend who made arrangements for him.
His friend, Richard Merrill, is one of my three clients. The others
are Cynthia Dumais, the governor’s most recent mistress, and Travis
Perkins, the Maine State Trooper whose gun was used to kill the
governor.”

“Whew! You are right in the middle of things,” she
said. “No wonder your mother is so worried. How is it proceeding?
The FBI hasn’t released any significant information, other than the
arrest of Trooper Perkins and finding his gun.”

Michael and Mom must have heard us talking about the
case, because they came back into the dining room with inquisitive
looks on their faces.