Threads of Evidence (20 page)

Chapter 43

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see
    
Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be.

 

—Stitched by Abigail Currier, age nineteen, Newbury, Massachusetts, 1830, taken from Alexander Pope's (1688–1744)
An Essay on Criticism, Part II.
(Abigail's hands were deformed. She pulled every stitch through the linen with her teeth.)

 

 

 

By the time I got to the hospital half the media outlets in Maine had trucks outside. I went in the emergency room door and tried to explain who I was to the guard posted there.

“I'm a friend of the West family! I was with them last night. I just left their home. Please let me in to see Patrick. Or at least to wait with Skye.”

I got nowhere. But when I was walking back to my car through the now-dispersing media, I heard Patrick had been airlifted to the burn center at Mass General.

So he was alive. But, I assumed, not in good shape. Skye would have gone with him.

Gram was sitting at the kitchen table waiting for me when I got home about six-thirty. She took one look at my smoke-marked clothes and hair and sniffed. “You were at that fire. Angel. I've been up all night listening to reports. They said someone was hurt in the blaze. I thought . . .” Her face crumpled with relief.

“Oh, Gram,” I said, putting my arms around her. “I'm so sorry. I should have called. Really. I'm fine. Just exhausted and dirty. Skye's son, Patrick, was the one hurt. At the hospital people are saying he was taken to Boston.”

She nodded against my chest. How could I have forgotten to call her? I hadn't even told her I was having dinner with Patrick. She'd probably waited dinner for me, too. How could I have done that to her? Yes, I was used to living on my own. But I knew very well I was now home, and Gram kept track of me.

She sat back up. “I called Sarah. I thought you might be with her. Now she's worried, too. You'd better call her.”

I nodded. “I will. I should never have disappeared.” (That word we seldom used at home.) “I should have let you know where I was.”

“Thank goodness you're all right.” Gram dried her eyes. “We both need to get some sleep. Mustn't spend all our time blubbering. I should have known you could take care of yourself.”

She left the kitchen and walked slowly upstairs, leaving me feeling guilty, as well as exhausted. How could I have forgotten to call home? Such a simple thing.

Now I'd have to call Sarah. It wouldn't be a secret I'd spent the evening with Patrick. Nothing more, heaven knew. But Sarah wouldn't be pleased.

And today? Skye had made appointments for us to see Sam Gould and Linda Zaharee. Should I cancel them?

I put my head down on the kitchen table.

Why couldn't I do anything right? I'd upset Gram, and no doubt Sarah, too. The two people closest to me in Haven Harbor.

Maybe I should give up and go back to Arizona. There I'd had a job, and my own apartment, and no one cared where I was or when or with whom.

Some days I'd been lonely.

I wanted people to care about me. I did. But sometimes that wasn't easy.

I picked up my phone and dialed Skye West's number. She didn't pick up. I hadn't thought she would. “Skye, this is Angie. When you get a chance, please let me know how Patrick is doing. And how you are. I'm going to go ahead and talk to Sam and Linda today. I'll keep in touch. And, please, know I'm praying for you and Patrick.”

Praying. I hadn't done that in a very long time. This seemed the right time to start again.

Chapter 44

 

—Sampler stitched by Sarah Fabens, age fourteen, Salem, Massachusetts, 1807

 

 

 

I called Sarah. She didn't pick up, so I left a message. Yes, I was all right. I'd been with the Wests. Skye and Patrick were both now in Boston. (I assumed.)

Then I went to bed. I didn't even stop to shower. I needed the escape, and rest, of a couple of hours of sleep. I set my alarm for nine. As I'd promised Skye, I was going to keep our appointment with Sam Gould at ten-thirty.

His office was in a big brick building outside Gould's Shipbuilders and Marine Services, on Camden Harbor. The sky was blue, and a flotilla of sailboats was in the harbor, along with two three-master ships, several lobster boats, and dozens of recreational vessels.

Gould's specialized in building small yachts. Not the Aristotle Onassis– or Bill Gates–sized vessels (if Gates had one), but the size that said,
“I'm important even if you've never heard of me.”
The kind bought or chartered by people who moved in circles far above Haven Harbor.

The slim young man seated outside Gould's office was dressed in tan slacks and a pale blue golf shirt. Or yachting shirt. I wasn't sure of the difference. “May I help you?” he asked in an accent that hadn't originated Down East.

“Skye West and I have an appointment with Sam Gould at ten-thirty. Ms. West is having some personal problems today. I'm Angela Curtis; I'm keeping her appointment for her.”

He arched his eyebrows at me. “I'll see if Mr. Gould is still interested in meeting with you.” He shook his finger at me as though I were a disobedient child. “You should have called ahead when Ms. West had a change of plans.”

My mind wanted to say something inappropriate, but I held my tongue. Being rude wouldn't help me keep the appointment.

How was Patrick? I hadn't heard from Skye. I didn't want to hear news about him from an entertainment reporter.

Then I realized . . . no wonder Skye hadn't called. She didn't have her telephone. She'd left it in the carriage house. That's why she'd gone to Ob Winslow's to call the fire department. She hadn't gotten my message.

Would I be able to reach her at Mass General? I suspected not.

I'd have to wait for her to think of contacting me. And I probably wasn't high on her priority list right now.

I'd always thought Hollywood people had personal assistants or secretaries, or both. Skye had never mentioned having either, but I suspected that, somewhere, she had people on call who could do her bidding. Today was a day she'd need them.

“Ms. Curtis? Mr. Gould will see you. Briefly.” The simpering young man was back, pointing at the room he'd just left.

If Jasmine Gardener had admired men of a certain type, you couldn't tell it by looking at Jed Fitch and Sam Gould forty-five years later. Jed was a big man, now given to fat, but (according to Skye) was muscular in his teens. In contrast, Sam Gould was small—not much taller than me. Although his face had the permanent tan of a man who spent many hours outdoors, probably at sea, I wouldn't have trusted him to have the strength to hoist a sail. He might weigh less than I did.

One thing he and Jed Fitch lacked in common was hair. Sam Gould was not only completely bald, but even his eyebrows were gone. Age? Chemo? I had no idea. But his smile was genuine.

“Ms. Curtis? Welcome. I heard on the news this morning about that horrible fire in Haven Harbor. Tell me, how is Ms. West? I didn't expect either of you to show up for your appointment this morning.”

“She's fine. She's with her son at Mass General,” I said. “I let her know I'd be coming this morning in her place.” Although, of course, she didn't get the message I had left.

“I'll be thinking of them both. What a horrible situation. You know, it brought back a lot of memories for me when she called yesterday and told me that she'd bought Aurora. I spent some time there when I was a young man.”

“You knew Jasmine Gardener.”

“Yes, I did.” He looked at me closely. “How did you know that?”

I decided to plunge right in. “Because that's what Skye wanted to talk to you about today.”

He started to speak, but I interrupted him. “I know, she said she wanted to talk about your building her a boat. And she may indeed want you to do that. I can't speak about that. But, you see, Skye knew you forty-five years ago.”

He frowned. “I'm sure I would have remembered her.”

“Her name wasn't Skye West then,” I said, brashly going on ahead. “She was Mary North.”

“Mary!”
The name rang a bell. “The Mary who was Jasmine's friend?”

I nodded. “So you do remember her.”

“Mary North. Skye West. Amazing.” Clearly he remembered Mary. “That certainly explains why she decided to buy Aurora. Mary loved that place. Maybe she loved it more than Jasmine did. Jasmine took it for granted.”

“Mary/Skye is trying to figure out what happened at Aurora that last day, the day Jasmine died. She wanted to ask you what you remembered.”

Sam Gould was quiet. “It's been a long time. I've tried not to think about Jasmine, and what happened that summer. But Mary deserves to know.”

“She said you and Jasmine had dated the previous winter, in New York.”

“Yes. A mutual friend introduced us. I was going to Columbia, and we met at a party and started talking about Maine. Her Maine, of course, was very different from mine. I grew up here in Camden, and was definitely a local, even if I was lucky enough to have a father with a prosperous business. She was a summer visitor. A ‘summer complaint,' we used to call them.”

I smiled. I hadn't heard that phrase recently, but I certainly recognized it.

“We started going places together. You could call it dating. We usually were with girls she knew, and some students I knew. Girls in the prep schools were always looking for ‘presentable college men,' as Jasmine once put it.” He smiled, remembering.

“And you were presentable.”

Sam shrugged. “She must have thought so. Jasmine and I did a lot together that winter. It was a turbulent time, even though it was two years after Columbia students had gone on strike, protesting the Vietnam War and Columbia's taking over a park the students wanted to keep part of Harlem. That all happened before I was there. I was a sophomore when I met Jasmine. Everyone was against the war, but I didn't want to get as involved as some of my friends did. I didn't protest or march. My father would have had a fit if I'd been arrested, even for a good cause.” He pushed his square glasses back on his nose. “Thinking back, I was kind of a wimp when it came to taking social risks. Jasmine was like me. She just wanted to have fun. If someone was burning a draft card and that meant a party, she was for it. If it meant a demonstration, she'd rather stay home.” He stopped. “We had more in common than I like to admit.”

I decided to be blunt. “When she died, Jasmine was pregnant. Were you her child's father?”

Sam Gould shifted backward in his chair. “However did you know? . . . Oh. Of course. Mary would have known.”

“And?”

“About a week before she died, Jasmine told me she was pregnant. At first, I didn't believe her. Then I accused her of sleeping with a Haven Harbor guy she'd been seeing while I was working in Camden. I'll admit I didn't take the news well.”

“Jed Fitch?”

“I don't remember his name. I was angry, and felt betrayed, when she told me about the baby. And I panicked. I told her I'd help to pay for an abortion, so she wouldn't have to tell her parents.”

“What was her reaction? What did she want to do?”

“I don't know. She said she could take care of herself— that she didn't need me. I remember where we were. It was a bright day, and we were down at that little beach in Haven Harbor.”

“Pocket Cove Beach.”

“Right. And she walked off. She said she didn't even need a ride back to Aurora. She'd get there, and anywhere else she wanted to go, without me. Truthfully, I was relieved.”

“Did you see her at the party Labor Day weekend?”

“No. I'd been invited, before she'd confronted me about the baby. At first, I decided it would be best if I didn't go. Then I changed my mind and drove to Haven Harbor. I got a drink and looked for Jasmine.” His eyes darkened. “She was with another guy, probably that Jed. So I turned around and left.” He sighed. “When I heard she'd drowned, my first thought was that she'd killed herself. Because of the pregnancy, you know. But no one ever said that. I kept wondering if she would have lived if I'd talked to her at the party, despite our problems. Instead, I went to her funeral.”

“Thank you for taking the time to talk to me,” I said, standing up. “I'll tell Skye—Mary—what you said.”

“Tell her I hope her son is all right. And that I'd love to see her when she's back in Maine. See her as a friend, even if she isn't a customer.”

“I'll tell her,” I said.

I turned on my telephone again when I got into my car. I had four messages. Sarah was glad I was all right, and wanted to know about Patrick. She didn't ask what I'd been doing with the Wests last night.

Skye said Patrick had burns on his arms and hands, which were concerning because of his art. Although he'd be in the hospital for a while, his lungs looked all right, and he would recover.

I felt as though someone had given me a full-body hug. Relief. He'd be all right.

The next call was from Dave Percy. “Angie, I stayed up late last night, but I figured it out. Those hairs Sarah found in the needlepoint? They're from a moose. And, Angie, I'll admit I was curious. The hair didn't seem normal to me. So I tested it. If I didn't have such a background in poisons, I might have missed it. That hair was soaked in arsenic.”

Arsenic!
The same poison the hummingbird had died drinking.

And one more call.

“Angie, Sergeant Pete Lambert. We've got the state fire marshal's people out here at Aurora with a black Lab named Amy. I'm assured she can sniff out gasoline or kerosene or any other substance that shouldn't have been in the carriage house. No conclusions yet, but indications are that there were accelerants here in several places. That would indicate a strong probability that last night's fire was set. You were here, with the Wests. They're in Boston and not available. I'd like to talk with you as soon as possible.”