The Bone Orchard: A Novel

“Is that your all-purpose excuse?”

“For what?”

“For everything that’s gone wrong in your life.”

The smile vanished in an instant. If this had been a fencing match, I would have said that I’d scored a touch against him. He brought his fingers to his chin and ran the back sides of them along the stubbled hair beneath his jawline. The noise was loud and rasping, like sandpaper on a block of wood. “You’re ex-military, right?”

“What makes you say that?”

“You have anger issues.” The smile returned, more condescending than ever, and he pointed a finger at me. “And that is why you are no longer a warden. Am I right? Because of your anger-management problems?”

“I have reasons to be angry,” I said.

I stood up from the table with the two greasy plates and carried them to the soapstone sink. I squirted some dishwashing liquid on them and ran the water until it was scalding hot. Then I brushed the plates with a sponge until my hands were red. I cleaned the cast-iron griddle pan with a paper towel.

Kurt Eklund watched me with the patience of a cat. He’d managed to get under my skin with an ease that I found embarrassing. I was mad at him and mad at myself at being so easily provoked. I felt an urge to take his car for the day and leave him stranded here with his self-pity and his pantryful of booze.

As I was drying the inside of my coffee mug with a rag, I glanced out the window. The clouds had drifted to the eastern horizon, blotting out the newly risen sun. It was visible as a pale disk in the sky, shedding little in the way of heat or light. Below the blueberry barrens were a patchwork of hay fields with a river running through them and a distant pond that reflected the sun like a mirror.

A figure dressed in full camouflage was striding through the barrens less than a hundred feet from the house. He had a mesh bag filled with turkey decoys slung over his shoulder and was carrying a pump shotgun tucked under his arm. He was wearing a sheer green mask over his face, but when he looked up at the lighted window and saw me watching him from the house, I could have sworn that he gave me a smile.

“What the hell?” I said.





22



“Do you know who that is?” I asked Kurt.

He pushed himself up from the oval table, causing it to groan and tilt again beneath the weight of his outstretched arms. He peered over my shoulder, through the window.

“Son of a bitch!”

Before I could ask another question, he’d taken off through the mudroom, pushing the back door open with such force, I thought it might fly off its hinges. Despite his sixty-something years and ill health, Eklund was a strong guy with muscles hardened from a lifetime of physical labor. Through the cracked window, I saw him striding in his stocking feet across the dooryard in pursuit of the turkey hunter.

“Hey! Hey!” he shouted.

I followed him out of the kitchen and down the back steps.

The morning was gloomy, but drier than it had been for a long time, and a wave of warblers was moving through the treetops, singing as they flitted from branch to branch. I heard a whistle of wing beats and looked up to see a pair of wood ducks rocketing against the overcast sky.

The hunter paused and lifted the barrel of his shotgun slightly, not enough to be threatening but definitely as if he was preparing himself for trouble. “Ahoy, matey! If it isn’t Captain Kidd.”

“What do you think you’re doing, Littlefield?” Kurt said.

“Using my right of way.”

“Kathy told you to stay off her land.”

“She should post it, then.” The man, Littlefield, was dressed from cap to boots in camouflage, making it impossible to see anything except his rheumy eyes, which were visible above the leaf-patterned veil that covered the bottom of his face. He was a big guy under all those hunting clothes, but he had the cracked, high-pitched voice of a very old man.

“What’s going on here?” My tone was the same one I used to use as a warden to establish my command presence.

“Who are you supposed to be?” he asked. “Another of the lady warden’s brothers?”

“My name is Mike Bowditch. And I’d like to know what you’re doing here.”

“His name is Littlefield,” said Kurt. “He owns the farm on the other side of that stone wall.”

“And I own the right-of-way through these fields, too.”

“The hell you do,” said Eklund.

“I got the deed that says so!”

I was already steaming at the “lady warden” comment, but I tried to keep the emotion out of my voice. “Do you mind removing your hunting mask, Mr. Littlefield, so we can have a polite conversation?”

“I ain’t interested in having a conversation with either of you needle dicks. Stand aside and let me use my right-of-way.”

“You know the woman who owns this property was shot the other night,” I said.

“Of course I know. Cops trampled all over my place looking for clues.”

“She was shot by someone with a turkey gun.”

“You accusing me of something?”

“You don’t think it’s disrespectful to be hunting on her land under the circumstances?”

“I doubt she cares much one way or the other at the present time.”

Eklund stooped down and grabbed an apple-size rock from the weeds. “F*ck you!”

Littlefield lifted the barrel of his shotgun. “Easy there, Cyclops!”

My right hand went around my side and found the grip of Davies’s revolver where I’d tucked it into the back of my pants. “I suggest you move on, Mr. Littlefield.”

“That’s what I was doing before you clowns accosted me.”

“Don’t think I won’t throw this!” Kurt said.

“And don’t think I won’t defend myself if you do.”

“Go home, Mr. Littlefield,” I said.

“I don’t take orders from you, sonny. I do what I want on my land.”

Kurt shook his arm, the one holding the stone. “It’s not your f*cking land!”

Littlefield chuckled. “Have another drink, alkie.”

He hoisted the bag of turkey decoys over his shoulder and set off across the barrens to the south, in the direction of the stone wall that marked the edge of Kathy’s property. Robert Frost had evidently been wrong about good fences making good neighbors.

Kurt and I watched him go, the camouflaged hunter becoming harder and harder to see as he receded across the green field.

“Can you tell me what the hell just happened?” I said.

Eklund smacked his lips again, as if to gather the saliva to form a string of sentences. “He claims the deed to his property gives him the right to ride his ATV and snowmobile across Kathy’s land. She’d told him to knock it off, but the bastard keeps doing it because he likes to provoke her. Kathy went to see a lawyer in Augusta about it, and there are problems with the title that should have come out when she bought the place. She’d probably win in court—although it would cost her a few grand, the lawyer said. Meanwhile, old Littlefield took out a lien on Kathy’s property just to be an even bigger dick than he already was.”

I should tell Soctomah about the territorial dispute, I decided. It sounded as if he’d already spoken with Littlefield, but this morning’s stunt with the turkey gun deserved to be reported. And at the very least, the detective would want to interview Kurt about his recent whereabouts, too. I wondered how the lieutenant would feel about my spontaneous decision to become the man’s bunk mate.

“I need a drink,” Kurt muttered, and headed back toward the house.

I had no idea what to do with the guy. His utter disinterest in seeing his sister continued to baffle me. Was he that afraid the doctors would take one whiff of his eighty-proof breath and lock him up in the detox ward? I wished Kathy had confided in me more about her troubled brother; I felt hobbled by a lack of insight.

At the very least, I wanted to visit her again at the hospital. I wandered over to my vintage Bronco, wincing as I ran my fingers over the punctures in the hood and side panel. The right front tire was flat. I tried the door and found it unlocked. The entire dashboard and front seat appeared blue from powdered windshield glass. The glove compartment was still open from when I’d grabbed my Walther.

Davies’s .38 Special packed more of a punch, but I missed my James Bond gun. The pistol had been my eighteenth-birthday present to myself. It had even saved my life once. Maybe if I asked Soctomah nicely, he’d have the technicians expedite their ballistics tests.

It was obvious I would not be taking my Bronco onto the roads of midcoast Maine this week, this month, or maybe ever again. I had doubts the damage could even be repaired, let alone quickly, or at a cost I could afford. In other words, I was effectively stranded up here on Appleton Ridge.

Kurt Eklund’s ash-gray Cutlass was parked in the shade of one of the big sugar maples. The car seemed even more battered than its owner. It was hard to find a place on it that Kurt hadn’t scratched, dented, or chipped. I popped the driver’s door and rummaged around beneath the seat, finding in the process an empty fifth of Five O’Clock vodka and three crushed cans of Milwaukee’s Best. The keys were there, too, just as Kurt had said. Weighing them in my hand, I felt reassured that he’d told me one truthful thing.