On Thin Ice (6 page)

“Maybe this is an old e-mail address. You don’t have a street address?”

She shook her head. “This is all that I have. I asked Bryan once where she lived, but he never answered me. That’s what I mean about him.”

Alec sighed. How many times had Alec done this? Pulled strings when it came to his own brother? First there was the lie, but it didn’t end there. It never did. He had loaned his brother money. Had Bryan ever paid him back? Maybe once or twice in ten years. And then there was his work. More than once, Alec had intervened for his brother by phoning Bryan’s employer in New Mexico, or he’d flown down there and talked with his landlord, and then reminded Bryan that he had to write out a check on the first of every month.

Yet when Alec went to church with Bryan, people seemed to know him, to accept him, and he was never without a lot of Sunday lunch invitations. “I’m trying,
bro,” Bryan would say. “With Jesus’s help I’m going to make it.”

When Alec would urge him to move closer to home, Bryan would vehemently shake his head. “Can’t, bro. Too many people know me there. I’m making a new start here.”

“Okay, Mother,” he told her now. “I’ll take care of it.”

After she left, he sat at the little boy’s school desk in the corner of his old bedroom and put his head in his hands. Sure, he wanted Megan back in his life, but would his brother, his family, always have to come first?

The next day Alec and Megan arrived at the home of Madeline Magill, Paul’s wife. It was the day before Paul’s funeral. Megan had never met Madeleine since the woman was someone Paul had met at college.

They were met at the door by a small, round woman who introduced herself as being from Paul and Madeline’s church.

She opened the door for them. “Are you Alec?” she asked.

When Alec said he was, she said, “Madeline is in the kitchen. The children are down in the family room with some of the kids from church.”

Alec guided Megan through the house. “The kitchen’s back here,” he said.

“You’ve been here before.”

“A few times. Paul and Madeline invited me to
their home a couple of times. We tried to keep up the friendship, but they have kids and were involved in different things than me. After a while we had nothing in common. And then I moved to Whisper Lake Crossing.”

They went into the kitchen where a woman about Megan’s age was sitting at the table, back straight, hands in her lap, staring straight ahead. Several people bustled about and behind her, washing up dishes, clearing up food, setting more food out. Her eyes appeared red-rimmed, but she smiled when she saw it was Alec who had entered the room.

“Alec,” she said. “I’m so glad you came. All the way from Whisper Lake. It’s been so long. I don’t think I’ve ever been up there. I’ve heard it’s nice. Paul and I always meant to go…”

“Madeline.” He went to her. She rose and he hugged her lightly and gave her a peck on one cheek. “I am so sorry,” he said. Then her grasp on him became tighter. He held her firmly while her shoulders heaved.

When Megan was introduced and conveyed her condolences, Madeline said, “You mean
the
Megan? Paul told me about everything that happened with your wedding. I’m glad that you and Alec ended up together in the end. At least one of us is lucky.” Her eyes filled with tears and Megan didn’t have the heart to correct her. Neither did Alec.

“Why don’t you sit down? As you can see, I’ve got
plenty of food. It just keeps coming. The church is keeping me well supplied. And someone’s always making fresh coffee. Help yourself,” Madeline said.

Alec did so, and poured three cups of coffee.

Megan said, “I knew Paul from a long time ago. He was a good friend of ours.”

“His death came so soon after Jennifer’s,” Madeline interjected. “It’s funny how you can live in the same town even, and lose track of people….” She looked up at Alec. “Remember those times together? You and Paul and Jennifer and her husband Sam and me? You called them reunion parties…”

“Another girl who was to be in the wedding party also died,” Alec said. “Do you remember Paul talking about a girl named Sophia?”

Madeline nodded.

When Alec told her that Sophia had died the same way as Paul and Jennifer she expressed shock, and raised one eyebrow in her expressive face. The woman washing dishes behind her suddenly stopped, as if she were listening.

Madeline said, “Maybe that’s why that police officer was questioning me so thoroughly. He asked if Paul had any enemies. Had anything strange been happening that day or two before he died? Had I seen anyone lurking about? Paul had just taken the car in to have the oil changed. So I would’ve assumed the mechanic would check the brakes, wouldn’t you? That’s
what I told the police. I assume they went and talked with the mechanic, but I haven’t heard anything. But that’s what it was, wasn’t it, brakes that failed? How can that be?”

“I’m here as your friend,” Alec said, “but I’m also here to try to find out what happened to Paul, because we think the same thing happened to Sophia and Jennifer.”

“You think…” Madeline said. “You think Paul may have been…killed? Intentionally?”

Alec leaned toward her, his elbows on the table. “This is very important, Madeline. Have you seen anyone around? Anyone lurking at all? Any stranger at the door? Even one person?”

She shook her head. “The police asked me that. I said no. I can’t remember anything unusual. I never saw anything—”

“I did.” All three faces looked up to the doorway. Standing there was a big woman in a denim jumper with salt-and-pepper hair pulled tightly back from her face. She stood uncertainly in the doorway.

“You did?” Alec asked

“Yes. I live across the street.” She entered the kitchen. “My name is Polly. The police never asked me any questions. I thought Paul’s death was an accident. But I remember seeing someone.”

“Please,” he said. “Sit down, Polly.”

Nervously she sat down across from Madeleine.
Polly reached out and touched Madeline’s wrist. “I’m so sorry, Maddie.” Then to Alec, she said, “We’ve been neighbors for twelve years. Our kids played together. If I had any idea…”

“Please,” he said writing in his notebook. “You said you saw someone? Or something?”

“I saw someone. It could have been nothing, I don’t know. But I heard you talking and I remembered. A couple of weeks ago, it was the middle of the night and I couldn’t sleep so I got up and made tea.”

“What did you see?” Madeline asked. “Did you see someone in our garage?”

She looked from Madeline to Alec. “I took my tea to the living room window….”

Alec put his hand up. “Can you tell me what day this was?”

She told him. He wrote it down.

“Do you know what time it was?” he asked.

“It was three thirty-three. I remember it exactly. I looked at the time on the DVD player and thought that it was funny that I was up and sitting in my living room chair at exactly three thirty-three.”

Alec urged her to continue.

“I took my tea to the window and looked at the streetlight.” She paused.

“And you saw someone? Someone saw you?” This came from Madeline.

Polly shook her head. “No. Nothing like that. I saw
a movement under the streetlight. It frightened me because you don’t often see people walking around in the middle of the night in this neighborhood. I saw a man and he was walking slowly. He kept going down the street until he disappeared.”

“Did you get a look at him?” Alec asked.

“I watched him,” she said. “My lights were off. He couldn’t see me, so I watched him. I would say he was medium build.” She looked at Alec. “About your size. Thin. Tall. He wore a long dark coat. No hat. And, I remember his hair.”

“Hair?” Madeline asked. “What about his hair?”

“It was thick and very dark. I would say black. Either that or dark, dark brown.”

Megan glanced up at Alec sharply. The man who had delivered the invitation to her at the Schooner Café had black hair, so dark and so thick that Marlene had mentioned it specifically.

Alec was writing rapidly.

“Polly,” Alec said, looking up at her. “Do you think we could go over to your house and you could show me exactly where you saw this person?”

Polly nodded.

“I’ll come,” Megan said.

“I’ll come, too,” Madeline said.

The four of them tromped through the snow across the street to where Polly lived. When they got to her living room, the precise window she’d been sitting at,
Alec took command and asked questions that put her at ease, yet got the information he needed. Megan’s admiration for this man was growing.

Polly pointed out exactly where the man had walked to and from. No, she hadn’t seen a car, she said. The man walked slowly and seemed to pause at each driveway, ever so slightly before moving on to the next one.

She said, “I thought at first he had a dog from the way he kept stopping and starting. But he didn’t. Oh, Maddie, I should have remembered this. I had no idea Paul’s car had been tampered with. If I’d had any idea…oh, this is simply terrible.”

Alec took down more of Polly’s information and told her that someone from the local police department would be contacting her. He gave her his card, told her to contact him if she remembered anything more, and they made their way back to Madeline’s house. Alec hugged Madeline once more and then they left.

“Black hair,” Megan said as Alec drove away from the neighborhood. “The guy who dropped the invitation to me had black hair.”

“I know.”

The school yearbook and guest list were on the backseat and Megan brought them to her lap. “Who do we know from the old days who had black hair?” She thumbed through the book, paying special attention to the three people who had police records.

Of the three people, Jeff’s hair was fair and Daniel’s head was shaved. Only Anna had black hair.

But both Marlene and Polly had seen a man. They were probably back at square one.

T
he sighting of the black-haired man was new information, and Detective Brantley Peterson of the Augusta Police Department listened with interest as Alec told him again about the invitations, the wedding that never happened, and why. Alec laid it all out, finally. Some of the story had been held back in his previous conversation with the detective who handled Jennifer’s accident, but it was time that the police knew about his connection to what was going on.

It was just the three of them in Peterson’s office. Megan didn’t say anything. They were sitting side by side in chairs, so Alec couldn’t see the particular expression on her face, and he could only guess what she was thinking. He didn’t look at her as he told Peterson about the death of Megan’s grandmother.

Detective Peterson took down the particulars and wanted to know more about Megan’s grandmother’s
death. He was going to look up the files and reports about that case, he said.

Megan asked, “Do you think these deaths are somehow connected to my grandmother?”

“We don’t know,” he said. “There might or might not be a connection. We won’t know until we go down that road for a while.” To Alec he said, “And your brother, he has maintained his innocence to this day?”

Alec said he had.

“So maybe we’re looking at something else,” Detective Peterson suggested.

Megan said, “I think so, because if the person who killed my grandmother got away with it—presuming they did—why stir all this up now? Twenty years after the fact?”

Detective Peterson shrugged and Alec shook his head.

“We’re dealing with a serial killer,” Detective Peterson said.

Alec jerked his head in the detective’s direction.

“Three deaths. Same MO. It might be time to call in the FBI.”

Alec swallowed slowly. If the FBI became involved, his perjury would certainly be made known. There would be no way around that. As well, the FBI surely would question Bryan. He didn’t know if he was ready to come forward with everything just yet.

Detective Peterson wrote down Bryan’s telephone number and address. He also made a copy of the
wedding guest list and all the information Megan and Alec had gathered so far. He promised Alec he would keep in touch. He shook their hands and they said goodbye.

On the way to Bath, Maine, Megan said, “It might be Saul Kluffas.”

Lost in his own thoughts, Alec was momentarily baffled by her comment. “Who is Saul Kluffas?”

“He has black hair. I sort of remember him.”

“I don’t.”

“He worked on the high school yearbook with me. I think he liked me. A friend told me he had a crush on me.”

“Everyone had a crush on you at one time or another.” If everyone who ever liked Megan was a suspect, their list would be long indeed.

The back of her neck reddened. “You give me too much credit. I think most people just felt sorry for me because my parents died and I was an only child who grew up with my grandmother.”

Just before the turnoff to Bath, Alec surprised himself by saying, “Do you think…do you think there might be a chance for us? For the two of us? Now? I’d love it if we could explore that a bit. Just to see where it leads.”

Why had he just asked her that? Was it because last night, when he had said good-night, he had briefly touched her hand? Was it because, despite what had come between him, he could sense that she felt the same way about him?

She shook her head and looked away. “I don’t know. Maybe too much time has passed. The one thing I’ve learned is that a person can never go back and change the past.”

He sighed. What about going forward? He wanted to know. But maybe she was right. You can never go back, yet these murders were forcing them to do just that.

“I’m just not the girl you remember,” she said.

“But you are,” he said, after some thought. “You are the girl I fell in love with.” Later, he said, “I wish I could go back and undo things.”

“Like I said, you can never go back.” After a moment she asked, “Do you still go to church? Do you mind me asking?”

“I don’t mind at all. My relationship with God is important to me. It’s a journey. I’ve not yet arrived.”

She said, “I’ve not arrived, either. I’m not even out the gate. Sometimes I have this idea that God is still punishing me, that he punished me by taking my parents and then my grandmother and next my baby. That’s an idea I can’t get out of my head. The girl you remember then had her life all figured out and planned ahead of her. The woman I am now doesn’t know a thing.”

“You still have that soft center, Megan, that concern for people. You were so good with my mother all through the dinner yesterday.”

“I felt sorry for her. She seemed so lost. So thin and
jittery. I guess we all carry things that at times feel too heavy for us.”

“I guess we do.”

He looked at her sadly. She was so out of reach. He wanted to offer her comfort, give her some great words of wisdom, but how could he when he couldn’t share with her the one thing that was uppermost on his mind. They were getting near the residential streets of her old house in Bath, Maine. “You’ll have to direct me here,” he said, looking at the road signs. “What was the address?”

She told him.

Together they navigated toward town using the map he’d downloaded from the Internet.

“My mother’s been like that for a while, anxious. I told you that she worries about Bryan. She’s also worried about my dad. She carries a lot, or feels she has to carry a lot.”

“I guess that would be difficult,” Megan said. “Losing a child.” Her voice was a whisper. “Losing a child is always difficult. No matter what the circumstances.”

He reached over and laid a hand on top of her clenched fists. He expected her to stiffen, but she didn’t. She seemed to soften. He kept his hand there. He could sense her trembling as they began to drive down the road to the house Megan had lived in for the first five years of her life. He stopped when he came to it, but kept the car engine running for warmth.

From her purse she extracted the picture that had
been e-mailed to her. This was the same place. They both could see it. Except for the snow it was exactly like the picture. He turned off the engine.

“What should we do?” She looked at him expectantly.

“We’ll go and talk to the people who live there now. Maybe they know who took the picture.”

“What if the black-haired man lives there?” She shuddered.

“Then we’ll find out, won’t we?” But he wasn’t as confident as he made himself sound. What if the black-haired man did live there? Should he have called for some kind of backup?

“Okay, then. Let’s go.” She opened her door and hopped out.

Picture in hand, they walked up the plowed driveway. Alec pressed the doorbell. People had been here. Lots of people. There was an abundance of footprints and tire prints. No one seemed to be here now, though. No one came to the door.

There was no movement from inside the house. He rang the doorbell again, but there was no answer. As they were making their way back to the car, a woman from next door came racing out toward them, waving her arms and calling. She wore a long purple house-coat, pink sponge curlers and, despite the snow encrusted banks, her thick calloused feet were stuffed into a pair of floppy mules.

“Yoo-hoo!” she called and waved. “Are you here
about the house? They put me in charge of it. They’re in Florida for the winter.”

Alec unfolded the picture. “Actually, we’re looking for the person who took this picture. Have you seen someone around taking pictures of the house?”

“He might’ve had black hair,” Megan added. Alec silenced her with a look. The one thing you didn’t do in police work was put ideas in people’s heads.

“Black hair?”

The woman pulled her glasses up onto her nose and peered down at the picture.

“That picture? I don’t know anything about black hair, but maybe Claudia took it. Or Maxine. Could’ve been Bill. I’ve met all of them in the past week. Wait a minute,” she said raising her forefinger. “I think it was Marcus who took this one. You should see Marcus. Very handsome guy.”

All of this was making Alec’s head spin. “Who exactly are those people?” Alec asked.

The woman looked at him with surprise in her eyes. “The real estate people. I’ve met them all in the past week. But, if I can be honest, I think they’re asking way too much for the house in today’s economy.” She shook her head from side to side. “Too much. But don’t tell anyone I said that. I’m only saying that because you two seem like a nice young couple. The neighborhood could sure use some nice young people like you two.”

Megan said, “This is a real estate picture?”

“Right. It’s on the Internet too, and it’s been in the paper. Especially when they had that open house last Saturday. Tons of people came to look at it.”

“The house is for sale,” Alec said thoughtfully. “How come there’s no sign?” he asked.

The woman waved her hand. “That’s the Randolsons for you. They don’t want people knowing they’re away and their house is for sale. Don’t ask me why.”

“How long have you lived here?” Alec asked.

“Coming on fifteen years. I bought the place right after my husband Roger died. I’ve been living here ever since. If you want the place, you’d better hurry. I heard there’s an offer on it.”

“An offer?” Alec raised his eyebrows.

“That’s what the neighbors are saying.”

“Can you tell me, Mrs….?”

“Woolenstook. Marva Woolenstook.” She extended her hand.

“I’m Alec Black, Mrs. Woolenstook, and this is Megan Brooks. You wouldn’t happen to know who made this offer, would you?”

She shook her head so vigorously that one of her pink curlers fell out onto the snowbank. She bent way over to pick it up. When she had risen to full height, she said, “Couldn’t tell you. I’m not even sure if what I have is accurate information. I heard it from Flo Fisher across the street, but that woman is a gossip, so I don’t know if it’s true or not.”

“Can you tell us which real estate firm the house is listed with?”

She told him and gave him directions to get there.

They thanked her and left.

Later in the car Megan said, “How much you want to bet that the black-haired man is the one who made the offer.”

“Well,” said Alec as they made their way downtown, “we’re about to find out.”

When Alec and Megan arrived at the real estate office and expressed interest in the property, the woman named Maxine ushered them into her office while extolling the virtues of the property.

“We understood,” Alec said, “that there’s been an offer made on that place.”

She looked up at them. “Where did you hear that?”

Megan said, “From a neighbor.”

“Marva?” The woman made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “You can’t believe a word she says. That woman likes to gossip. No, there is no offer currently pending on that property. I could show the house to you today, if you like. The owners are away.”

“Was there an offer on it at one time?” he asked.

“We had someone interested in the property but they ended up not coming up with the financing.”

He regarded her. “They? Or him?”

Maxine leaned back in her chair and said, “Excuse me?”

“Who was it?” Megan asked.

She shook her head. “I’m really not at liberty to say.”

It was time to stop the charade. “We’re not looking for a house,” Alec said. “I’m a police officer.” He got out his badge and ID and showed them to her. “We’re looking for someone.” He described the man that both Marlene and Polly had seen and asked Maxine if anyone with this description had been through the house.

She looked from one to the other. “Well, I don’t know, Officer. Lots of people have been shown the house.” Was it his imagination or was she becoming cagey and cautious?

“Black hair,” Megan said. “He would have had noticeable thick, black hair.”

“As I said, there have been a lot of people who’ve gone through that house. I would imagine that quite a few of them had thick, black hair.”

“This would be a single man, someone alone,” Alec added.

“This is really important,” Megan said. “Have you had some open houses? Sometimes there are guest books at those.”

Alec wondered if this conversation was hopeless. If the black-haired man had been clever enough to kill three people, then he would not be so stupid as to sign a guest book with his real name.

“We’ve had lots of open houses. And yes, I have guest books,” Maxine said.

“Would you mind showing them to us?” Alec asked.

After a short pause, where she appeared to be weighing his question, she said, “Yes, I would mind. Do you have a warrant for this sort of thing?”

When Alec realized there was no more to be gained here without a warrant, he cut the conversation short, thanked Maxine and said goodbye. “And if you change your mind about the guest book, please give me a call.” He laid a business card on her desk and he and Megan left.

“So,” Megan said later in the car. “Whoever sent me the picture just copied it off the Internet? I really don’t think he made an offer at all.”

“You could be right. Then again, he could be the person who couldn’t get financing.”

The sky was still light when they pulled into a fast-food restaurant in Bangor. They both ordered cheeseburgers. He remembered she loved cheeseburgers. Over their quick meal they reviewed the case, the yearbook, the guest list and what they thought they had accomplished. Maybe not a lot. Maybe more than they knew.

He wanted to ask her again if she thought there was a chance for them. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. Right now it was enough to be with her.

“In answer to your question about whether there’s a chance for us—maybe,” Megan said as they walked back to the car together.

He felt his heart soar.

Later as they neared the exit that led to a large rest area and campground, Alec drove that way on a whim.

“Where we going?” she asked.

“Time to stretch my legs. Long legs and a short car make for a long trip,” he said.

He took the road that led down to the campsite and rest area. Everything was closed, of course, but he knew that from this place they could see Mount Katahdin. He pointed it out to Megan.