Russo examined my badge and photo ID. His eyes remained as absent of human response as a doll’s.
With all the noise from the dining room, I hadn’t heard another person approach me from behind.
“That’s all right, Russo,” a man said. “We saw everything.”
The officer stood at attention. “Mr. Cabot.”
I turned and found myself face-to-face with the mustached member of the Night Watchmen.
The whites of Cabot’s eyes were more of a lemon chiffon color. His breath smelled strongly of beer. “My friends and I witnessed the whole incident. Warden Bowditch acted appropriately. He defused the situation before it could get out of hand.”
I had come to the conclusion that Russo must be some kind of deputized security guard. Perhaps Widowmaker had an arrangement with the sheriff that granted some of their people arrest powers. I had seen similar setups on certain offshore islands.
“That’s good enough for me, Mr. Cabot,” said Russo, as if he worked for the man.
The guard returned my badge to me. “Sorry for the inconvenience, Warden. Just trying to straighten some things out. You have a good day now.”
Meanwhile, the man with the gold-rimmed glasses extended his hand. “Name’s John Cabot. Like the explorer. I apologize for Russo. He’s a zealous officer, and usually that’s a good thing here. Widowmaker has always attracted a certain unsavory element.”
The odor of alcohol coming off Cabot was overpowering, and yet he spoke more coherently than almost anyone else I’d met that day. Clearly he was a person of some power, too, the way the officer had practically bowed to him.
“Thanks for backing me up,” I said.
“Those brats were out of line.” He gestured to his corner table. “Are you sure you won’t join us for a drink?”
I remained fixed in place. “How did you know my name, Mr. Cabot?”
“What’s that?”
“You said, ‘My friends and I saw the whole incident. Warden Bowditch acted appropriately. He defused the situation.’”
His sallow skin sagged around the mouth. “You have a remarkable memory, young man.”
“So I’ve been told.”
His teeth were as yellow as the rest of him. “I knew your father. He worked for my company years ago, although we never met at the time. I got to know him later at various watering holes. Jack was quite the character, needless to say. He made a sizable impression.”
“You own Cabot Lumber?”
“I did before I retired. I’m still the president of the board, but my sons run the business.”
It was one of the state of Maine’s larger independent building suppliers and had several sawmills, lumberyards, and dozens of retail stores. My father had felled trees for the company before being fired for some offense or another.
I crossed my arms. “But how did you know who I was?”
“You underestimate your own notoriety, Warden. At least in this part of the state.”
Looking over his shoulder, I saw the ruddy British-looking chap waving me enthusiastically toward the table.
I had come up to Widowmaker promising not to call undue attention to myself. Clearly, these Night Watchmen jokers had me at a disadvantage. The whole sequence of events since I’d returned to the restaurant—Amber’s unexplained disappearance, the grilling I’d received from Russo, being “rescued” by Cabot—left me feeling uneasy.
“Please come join us at least for a coffee.” Cabot extended his scarecrow arm toward the back table. It was a grand, welcoming gesture that made me think of the ticket taker at a haunted house.
What other choice did I have?
I followed him.
The ruddy man in tweed pulled out a chair for me as I approached. “Welcome! Welcome!” he said in a posh accent.
“This is Johnny Partridge, late of Fleet Street,” said Cabot. “And this taciturn fellow is Chief Petty Officer Lane Torgerson, U.S. Navy, retired. Gentlemen, we were correct in our deductions. This is indeed Warden Mike Bowditch, the son of the notorious Jack Bowditch, whom we were discussing earlier.”
Torgerson I didn’t know. But he looked like someone who had seen combat in a handful of theaters—from Vietnam to Iraq—and who could still hold his own against you in a bar fight and might even help you pick up your teeth afterward.
Partridge, however, I recognized.
He was a British-born reporter who had worked at several Maine newspapers over the years. I had no idea what had brought him from London to our little backwater state, but he’d had a long and controversial career. Everyone who worked in state government knew him by reputation and few were willing to take his phone calls. I remembered one particularly cruel column he had written attacking two friends of mine after they had been involved in a tragic suicide-by-cop shooting. Partridge had called wardens Danielle Tate and Kathy Frost “frantic female fish cops.”