Borderline: A Jack McMorrow Mystery, page 5
A wind had come up off the river, and the water came down from the branches in little showers. I looked at Angelina’s mossy stone, then up at the trees. I looked behind me, past the truck and into the woods. I looked up into the trees again.
It was silent, but it wasn’t. I listened. Heard the tree sound. The rain. I felt like there was something just beyond my hearing. I felt a chill. I felt like being there was some sort of sacrilege.
I turned slowly and walked back to the wall. Eased my way over and got back into the truck. Looked around the dark woods once more, and backed the truck all the way out.
This place would not be mentioned in Historic Touring.
The road followed the Kennebec south, the river always a presence. Above the shipbuilding city of Bath, it was to my right; below Bath, to my left. Talking into the tape recorder as I drove, I described the pale green wild-rice shores of Swan Island, where the Abenaki Indians watched Arnold’s ships pass, and the spread of Merrymeeting Bay. I noted a narrow sluiceway called The Chops, and Day’s Ferry, another colonial village. Then I crossed the metal bridge into Bath, where moored boats were all turned downriver into the incoming tide. I described the steeples and cranes, the towers on the frigates in the shipyard, the Maine Maritime Museum.
It wasn’t Arnold, but, hey, they were on vacation.
From Bath, I followed Route 209 down the Phippsburg peninsula. The shore of the river was all rock here, with channels cut between little spruce-topped islands. The tide was running now, and you could see the power of it as it moved up the reaches and around the heads. It was entrancing, and I had to force myself to notice the colonial houses, the bed-and-breakfasts.
I frowned and pictured the paycheck.
And then there was the ocean, or at least signs of it. Campgrounds with pickups and campers. Painted lobster pot buoys hanging on signposts. Cars with kids who wanted to be at the beach. And the beach itself.
The lot at Popham Beach was mostly empty in the rain. I parked close to the outhouses, and used one, which was smelly inside. Then I walked down the path through the asters and bayberries and scrub oaks and pines and there was the ocean, the point Arnold had found with his little flotilla. Now it was marked with a lighthouse, on Seguin Island, three miles offshore. I stood on the gray-sand beach and watched the tide rips, the waves cresting a sandbar from both directions. I walked with the rest of the beachcombers, and plovers and sandpipers scuttled away from me. I could have stayed for hours, watching the ocean, but the business called.
The check.
Fort Popham was around the point, an empty stone shell built for the Civil War. The sign said there was a British emplacement here in 1775 but the British burned it. I read the sign and then made room for a family in yellow slickers and black rubber boots. They gave up quickly, though, and I was left to watch the tide and the lobster boats, and a big sailboat with rich people on it.
And then I talked into the tape recorder some more and went back to the truck. I turned the key. The motor ticked. The phone rang.
“Hey,” I said.
“Where are you?” Roxanne said.
“Fort Popham.”
“How is it?”
“Damp and sort of dreary,” I said, as a lobsterman in a truck gave me and the phone the eye. “How are you?”
“Okay. Better,” Roxanne said.
“How is she today?”
“Okay. We had breakfast. She knew me, but she keeps saying she wants to go home.”
“Oh, boy.”
“Yeah. But we’ll get through it. I’m better than yesterday. I wouldn’t have called, because I know these calls are expensive. But I wanted to make sure you knew that.”
“I did, but I’m still glad you called.”
“You lonesome?” Roxanne asked.
“I don’t know. A little. I’m not sure I’m doing this right. You think I’m supposed to be checking the sheets in bed-and-breakfasts?”
“Not without me.”
“Okay, I’ll tell the editor that. I have to bring my sheet checker.”
I paused.
“You okay?” Roxanne asked.
“I’m supposed to be asking that. But yeah, I’m fine. It’s just—do you ever have that feeling that you don’t quite know what you’re doing? I saw some interesting places today. The house where the guy lived who had Arnold’s boats built. The bateaux. It’s a museum, but it was closed.”
“Huh.”
“I don’t know. I guess my mind’s not a hundred percent on this. Part of me’s somewhere else.”
The lobsterman, small but hard, with a drinker’s flush, started loading traps into his truck.
“I’d like to be somewhere else,” Roxanne said.
“We could both be somewhere else together.”
“Soon.”
“Yup.”
“I’ve got to go,” Roxanne said. “Where are you off to from there?”
“I don’t know,” I said, but in the back of my mind, I knew that wasn’t true.
6
It took me two hours to get to Scanesett, twenty minutes to spot Robie.
I saw him as I pulled out of McDonald’s, where I’d bought a cup of tea. He was in the right lane on the main drag, off to the side, and cars and trucks were swerving around him. Probably the story of his life.
He was pedaling hard, up a long grade, and his big legs were whirling. Behind his bike, he was towing some sort of homemade cart. The cart had red lights, but they were painted on. So was the license plate, which said “Maine” above what appeared to be randomly selected numbers. It was raining, not hard but a heavy drizzle, and the spray from his back tire had made a dark, wet splotch running up the back of his shirt.
I followed him, pulling up close, then dropping back. But he was going too slow for the traffic and soon the cars and trucks were swerving to pass me, too. I sped up and went by him, but he didn’t seem to notice me, just stared straight ahead under his baseball hat. Watching him in the rearview mirror, I drove for a few hundred yards, then pulled off into the lot of an auto parts store. I waited, waited some more, and then there he was, flashing by in the mirror. After a five-count, I backed out and followed.
The next time I passed, he seemed to turn his head. I thought he’d glanced at me, and then, in the mirror, the bike and cart suddenly swerved left and crossed the road, slipping between the cars and down a side street.
“Whoops,” I said.
I turned around in the parking lot of an insurance office, then waited for traffic to break so I could pull back out. When I turned down the side street, Robie wasn’t in sight. It was a short dead-end street with small, closely set bungalows and an old factory building at the end. Coasting slowly, I looked in the yards and driveways for the bike, and got stares from a woman, a couple of kids. I drove on, into the dirt parking lot of the factory, which was half filled with cars and pickups. Made a loop. Saw a path through the brush.
It wasn’t a dead end, after all.
The path paralleled the main drag. I pulled back out and drove north, slowly in the left lane. Cars passed me on the right as I peered down the next two side streets, and then the road veered and there weren’t any more turnoffs until I came to a shopping center. I turned in.
It was called the Scanesett Mall, but it was really just a supermarket and a discount store linked by a row of shops, some dingy, some vacant. I drove to the supermarket end and turned on to an access road that led out back behind the building. When I got to the corner, I stopped the truck. Then pulled out.
There were Dumpsters, piles of broken pallets, unmarked metal doors leading to the shops. I eased the truck along, thinking that he could have stopped at a house. He could be in a garage. He could be out in the woods.
And there he was.
The bike was parked. Robie was picking through a pile of junk, his back to me. He turned with a piece of metal in his hand. Looked at me and froze. I stopped the truck. He leaped on his bike and went by me, cart and all.
“Robie,” I called out the window.
He stood up on the pedals.
I put the truck in gear and followed, and then he turned down a path through the sumac scrub. The cart bounced and he was gone.
“What’s his problem?” I said.
I drove back out to the front parking lot and out onto the road, back the way I had come. At the first side street, I slowed and looked. Nothing.
At the next street, I looked again. Still no sign of him. I drove on and then there he was, crossing the road five hundred yards behind me, and disappearing from sight.
I drove a couple of more blocks, then turned left. At the first cross street, I stopped and sat. Cracked open the plastic top on my tea and sipped. Sipped again. And there he was again, a block down. I followed.
Robie wound through the streets, slipped through a trailer park that had front and rear entrances. I didn’t pursue him, but drove in the general direction he seemed to be taking, which was back toward the center of downtown, back toward the river. Just when I thought I’d lost him, he would reappear, bent to his bike, legs churning.
I drove slowly on until I hit East Street, where the police station was. I drove past it, looking to my left, and then took a left, in the direction from which Robie would be coming. The sign said Covey Street, which turned out to be two rows of run-down houses, with the occasional big Victorian chopped into apartments. I looked left and right, up the driveways.
And saw the cart disappear.
It had gone around the corner of the building. I stopped the truck and backed up. Got out and looked the place over. Broken windows on the first floor. Rotting steps. There was some bamboo-looking stuff growing up along the foundation and, in the thicket, was a shopping cart.
I looked up. In the two third-floor windows on the front there were screens, the kind you prop under the sash. In the right window, somebody moved. I hesitated, but only for a moment, then started up the driveway.
The bike was there, parked just around the corner. The backyard was piled with bicycle parts, wheels, frames, chains, sprockets, all old and rusted, all neatly stacked. The back stairs ran up the outside of the building, with a little open porch at each back door. There were wooden railings with rungs, many of which were broken out. Some sections were patched with plywood, but not many. It was not a place for small children.
I went up the stairs to the first landing. Bicycle wheels—spokes and mags—hung on nails driven into the wall. There were cartons of empty bottles on the floor, most of them dirty, the kind scrounged from roadsides.
I considered the door. A broken window with cardboard instead of glass. A hasp that hung loose. I walked over and listened. There was nothing. No appliance hum. Nothing. I looked up the stairs, then started up.
The second-floor landing was more of the same. Bike parts. More bottles. Pizza boxes stacked like record albums. Names scribbled on the clapboards with crayon.
Nobody I knew.
The door was shut, with a sheet held tight over the window. There was another window to the right of the door and that was covered with a sheet, too. I leaned toward it, then decided it would be better to just knock. There are places where peeking in windows can get you shot. This felt like one.
I knocked three times on the wood, just below the glass. The door felt old and loose and made a rattling noise that resonated like a snare drum. I waited. Thought I heard something. Knocked again. This time I made it four.
“Hey, Robie,” I said.
I listened. I thought I heard a slip. A single shuffle.
“Hey, Robie. This is Jack McMorrow. I was with Sandy at the bus stop.”
I paused.
“Hey, man, I didn’t mean to sneak up on you like that out behind the store. I saw you riding by and I just wanted to ask you if you’d heard anything about the guy. The guy who got off the bus. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
The tip of a finger slipped around the far edge of the sheet on the window to the right of the door. The dark opening widened. I kept talking.
“So Robie, have you heard anything? I’m just curious. I thought I’d write something for the newspaper about the guy. That’s what I do. I’m a newspaper reporter. I thought it might make—”
The doorknob, a brown ceramic-looking knob, began to turn.
“—a good story. Maybe not, but I figured I’d at least look into—”
There was a click and the door began to open.
“—it and see what it was all about.”
The door opened. It was a woman. Young and heavy.
“He ain’t here,” she said.
“Oh, I saw his bike. I thought—”
“He’s got lots of bikes. He took another one.”
Her face was plain and round, just a face. No makeup or earrings. The sleeve of something that looked like a white T-shirt. A haircut that could have been Robie’s. Her eyes, which were small and brown, showed fright bordering on panic.
“I didn’t mean to scare him,” I said. I smiled gently.
“You didn’t scare him.”
“Good, because the way he took off—I just wanted to talk to him. I just thought I’d scared him or something.”
“He just was late.”
“For dinner?”
“No. For … he was just late. Late for something.”
I moved closer, so I was almost between the door and the jamb.
“I hope I didn’t make him late. I didn’t want to bother him. But Sandy said he was asking about me. She said he had some questions. Maybe I could answer them myself.”
She looked like she might fall backward. Her sneakered foot appeared. They were old sneakers. But white. Beyond her, the apartment was dark but I could smell something cooking. Something like bacon. Or sausage.
“I’m Jack McMorrow. Are you Robie’s sister?”
“Hi. I mean, yeah. But you can’t come in. I’m busy.”
“I’m sure. I didn’t mean to barge in on you. I was just wondering if Robie had heard anything about the guy on the bus. You know, the guy they were looking for. Me and Robie were right there when the bus driver came running out. He was all upset. It was kinda funny. Did he tell you about—”
“No,” she said. “I mean, they don’t know. He left.”
“Who?” I said.
“Who?”
“Who left? Robie?”
“The man on the bus.”
“Robie didn’t leave?”
“No. I mean, he, uh, had to go.”
“Because he was late?”
“Yeah.”
I smiled.
“So did Robie hear anything since we left the parking lot yesterday? I guess he hears a lot of things, being out and about the way he is.”
“No, he doesn’t hear anything.”
I smiled again.
“Well, gee, I’m sorry I missed him. And I’m sorry if I scared him. What’s your name?”
“My name?”
She looked at me as if it were a nonsensical question.
“Yeah,” I said.
I waited.
Her eyes went left and right, as though she were looking for help.
“Um, my name’s Rob-ann.”
“Huh,” I said. “That’s a nice name. Is your father named Robert or something, and that’s how you got to be Rob-ann and Robie?”
“No,” Rob-ann said. “He’s dead.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
Her eyes were darting more now, mostly to her left. I figured Robie was against the wall beside the door. I was beginning to get the feeling that he didn’t want to talk to me.
“Listen, Rob-ann,” I said. “When Robie gets back, could you give him my card?”
I fished one from my pants pocket. It was bent but legible. She peered at it, turned it over and turned it back, then peered at it some more. Then she looked up at me.
“He can call collect. Or he can call me in my truck. Let me write that number down for you.”
I reached for the card and she flinched, pulling back. Then she understood and held the card out for me. I took it and wrote the number, holding the card to my leg. I handed it back. She reached for it and I heard something from inside the door.
A sniff.
Rob-ann’s eyes went wide.
I looked at her and smiled.
“It’s okay,” I said. “He doesn’t have to talk to me if he doesn’t want to. I just thought the two of us kind of came in on this thing together. And I heard he had questions. I was passing through, that’s all. I’ll catch him next time.”
“Um, well, I don’t—”
“Tell him to call me if he changes his mind. Or I’ll stop by again. I live in Prosperity. Waldo County. I’ve lived there for years. I’m harmless. It’s no big deal, either way.”
But Rob-ann’s eyes, unblinking, riveted to mine, told me it was. For some reason, it was.
I figured Hope Bell would work Saturdays and her chief would stay home. I was right.
It took a half-hour but I finally spotted the Scanesett police cruiser on East Street, just beyond the downtown. It was coming toward me and I flashed my lights. Bell turned in a driveway and came after me. I pulled into a little park with wrought-iron gates and lawns that, like everything else around here, overlooked the river. Bell followed and we both got out and stood in the rain, which had subsided to a drizzle. I leaned against the cruiser fender. Some cops didn’t like it when you did that. If Bell minded, she didn’t say anything.
“I just wanted to ask you, did you talk to Robie?”
“No,” Bell said. “I’ve been busy. And he wasn’t on the top of my list.”
“I just tried to and he bolted like a rabbit. Then I stopped at his apartment and his sister barely opened the door. She was petrified. She tried to tell me he wasn’t there, but he was. He was hiding.”
“Well, Mr. McMorrow, you know they aren’t the most polished people around. And you’re a stranger.”
“He didn’t seem to mind when we were in the parking lot. He was right in the middle of it. Sandy Chamber of Commerce had to chase him off. And he’s always riding around town. It’s not like he’s some kind of recluse.”
