It was late afternoon and already dark, distinctly off hours even for Rein’s, so I managed to avoid its long lines. I ordered a Reuben, and the first delicious bite transported me back to my New York City life. You can’t find a Reuben in Maine. You might find something on a menu called a Reuben, but it will not be the same.
I went to the washroom, then got in the cab and pointed it north and east toward home. If you’d asked me a year ago if I would ever call Busman’s Harbor home again, I would have said no, emphatically. But at that moment, I couldn’t think of a single other place I wanted to be.
I got off the highway in Worcester and made my way back to the Dunkin Donuts where I’d stopped on the way down. I noticed several people waving at me frantically and wondered what could be up, until I remembered I was driving a cab.
I obsessed about the case as I drove. The murderer and the accident victim, all tied up with a bow. The solution was too neat, and at the same time it left too many loose ends. I was sure, from his supportive words on Austin Lowe’s porch, Jamie agreed with me. But he was a local cop, and a junior one at that. I had no assurance they’d listen to him. I didn’t even know if he’d speak up.
Enid Sparks had written that she’d do “whatever it took” to stop her nephew, but she hadn’t said outright she planned to kill him. And yes, as a nurse, she probably had access to insulin, but so did several of the others. Henry Caswell was a doctor. Fran Walker worked at a convalescent home. Phil Bennett was a former pharmaceutical executive, though that seemed farther fetched. It’s not like they’d have free samples sitting out in the employee lounge.
Which one had the strongest motive? If they had been working, Phil Bennett the executive, Henry the doctor, Michael the attorney and Sheila the federal judge would have had the most to lose. But now that they were retired, the revelation that one of them negligently caused two deaths forty years earlier would be hurtful and humiliating but wouldn’t have the same consequences as it would have had they public reputations to protect.
I was certain, though, that the living members of the Rabble Point set were involved and one of them was a murderer. I had been right from the beginning. The state cops had ignored me again and again, but I was still right.
The green sign on the Piscataqua Bridge that said STATE LINE-MAINE-VACATIONLAND was the symbol for every traveling Mainer that they were home. I was edgy and due for a break, but I pressed on to the Kennebunk rest stop.
I got back to the restaurant when dinner service was all but over. A few couples finished their dessert as Chris cleaned the grill and Sam shut down the bar. There was a mound of dishes by the dishwasher. No way had they been able to keep up.
I gave Chris a quick hug and ran upstairs. I washed my hands and face, then went down and started on the dishes. Later, after Sam went home, Chris and I lingered over beers at one of the restaurant tables and I outlined the events of the day. He was shocked by the story of the fire, Austin Lowe’s plot, and Enid Sparks’s desperate act.
He walked the garbage out to the Dumpster and locked the kitchen door when he returned. “Considering this case is all wound up, you don’t seem very happy,” he said.
“I’m not. If Enid’s been dead since the night it happened, who’s been breaking in here? And her note didn’t exactly say she planned to kill her nephew, just that she would do whatever it took to stop him.”
Chris gave me a hug. “You’ll figure it out.”
He had more confidence in me than I did.
*
It had been a long, tiring day, filled with discoveries, emotion, and a nearly six-hundred-mile round-trip drive. I should have fallen asleep instantly, but I didn’t. My mind moved relentlessly, turning every piece of the investigation over and over.
In the past six weeks, I’d gotten used to the nighttime sounds of the old warehouse—beams contracting as the weather grew colder, the rattle of ill-fitting windows, the whir of the ancient apartment refrigerator as it turned on. But that night, I startled at every sound, heart racing, blood pounding in my ears.
Chris had no such problems. I heard his rhythmic breathing beside me. He, too, had had a challenging day, in no small measure due to my absence.
Le Roi, sensing a restless soul, jumped onto the bed and settled at my side, distracting me from the old warehouse’s sounds with his purring. I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
I awoke instantly, not normal for me, without knowing why. My brain registered that it was pitch dark. Then I heard it. The creak of the door at the bottom of the stairs, followed by one quiet footfall on the first tread. The thief was back! My mind cataloged the available tools to defend myself. I wished for a brief second that, like my father, I slept with a baseball bat under my bed. He had never used it all the years I knew him, but it was there.