She tipped her head forward and clocked him over the ridge of her sunglasses.
Mike shrugged. “Yeah, I know – they like to be the ones policing the casino.” He turned over his hands. “I have no issue with that; state police have been letting them handle that area for years. I just want to confirm an alibi, maybe find a murder weapon. You want to get lunch?”
She just looked at him then pushed her glasses up with a finger.
“I’m buying,” he said. “Crispin was eating and made me hungry. We can continue arguing over burritos at Chipotle.”
“I’m not arguing. And I don’t eat burritos.” She started toward her car.
“Yes, you do.”
She stopped, looked over her shoulder at him. “What – did you pull my file?”
“Your burrito-eating skills are legendary.”
“Fine.” She reached her car, opened the door, stopped. “How about we take a drive instead?”
“Okay. Let’s take a drive.”
“Corina Lavoie went missing in Watertown. Her sister still lives in the house they shared. Let’s ride out, talk to her, talk to Detective Corrow. That’ll keep us busy while everyone does their work and we don’t have to get into a jurisdictional issue.”
“Hey, like I said, there’s no issue.”
“Mike?” Her eyebrows went up.
He asked, “We taking your car?”
“Get in.”
“Getting in, ma’am.”
Thirteen
The road dipped down and the city of Watertown spread out, dominated by fast-food restaurants, big box stores, and car dealerships, everything hazy and shimmering in the midday heat.
“I need a record check for a Jameson Rentz,” Mike said on the phone. “I tried calling him twice already today, left messages; he’s not returning calls.”
“Alright, you got it.” Stephanie was a researcher at BCI, and a good one.
“Thanks, Steph.”
Mike rang off and asked Overton, “Who do we have as known associates for Gavin Fuller?”
“I checked, and there’s no one. Fuller’s arrest was fairly small potatoes, just him and his wife. He was selling Suboxone. We charged them with third-degree criminal possession with intent to distribute. Arraigned, remanded to county in lieu of five and ten. The whole thing came out of an overdose case about a month before; a guy was found dead at his apartment up near Glenwood Road, so we talked to the neighbors, they’d seen Fuller coming around. He never confessed to selling to the guy, but we nailed him on the possession anyway.” As Overton spoke, she pulled up to the curb in front of a nice little Colonial-style home with a white picket fence, black shutters, fat bushes flanking the doorway. They’d called ahead to Lavoie’s sister, Maybelle Spruce, who’d agreed to leave work for an hour that afternoon to let them in.
Mike glanced over at Overton. “Alright,” he said about the Fuller thing. Then, “Ready?”
“Yep.”
They headed up a walkway dividing two sections of neatly manicured lawn. The front door opened before Mike could ring the bell.
Maybelle Spruce was a thin woman with shining skin, graying hair pulled back in a tight bun. Her nursing uniform was a peach V-neck shirt and white pants, and she wore white, comfortable-looking sneakers on her feet. “Come on in.”
She led them down a long, creaky hallway. In the kitchen, she offered drinks, which they both politely declined, and sat them down at a thick farm table. “When my husband died,” she said after some small talk, “Corey moved in with me. That’s what I call Corina – ‘Corey.’ My husband had a construction accident, but he was freelance, so there was no insurance. We’d been married just coming up on five years, had this place for three, and there was the mortgage, taxes, all the bills. Corey helped me with all that.”
The sisters were from Watertown, born and raised, Maybelle said. “Our papa worked in a hotel, The Woodruff in the Public Square, was the maintenance man there for forty-five years until he died in ’99. Our mother worked at the school.”
To hear of it, Mike imagined that the Lavoies had been one of few African-American families in Watertown during the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. The demographic had grown but still only hovered somewhere around six percent. Maybelle traced their lineage to Canada.
“Corey was very nice to move in with me,” Maybelle said. “You know, but that was Corey. Her whole life was about doing things for other people. Casework was just part of it; she never really thought of herself.”
Mike asked, “May we see her room?”
“Certainly.”
Maybelle took them out of the kitchen, back down the hallway, and through the foyer where they’d come in. Mike saw several clocks in the next room, all of them clicking, including a handsome grandfather clock with a swinging pendulum. Beside it hung a picture of Jesus framed in gold; the Sacred Heart hovered in front of him, his hand up, two fingers extended. Next to all the clocks, it seemed to send a message: Your time is limited.
Mike turned and followed Maybelle up narrow stairs, the risers white and the treads natural wood. The clocks and picture left his sight.
“Book of Job talks about suffering,” Maybelle said. “I always look at the Book of Job. People ask why God allows suffering, but if you look at Job, you see it there. Because first Papa died in ’99, and he was only sixty-nine, but his heart had trouble, and then my husband Randy in 2008, and Corey moved in. And then Mama finally passed in 2016, and then Corey disappeared the year after.”
She led them down a hallway, back toward the front of the house. Overton, following, turned to glance at Mike, who was bringing up the rear. Overton’s face said it all: This woman had lost everyone in her life over two decades, and here she was, talking about the Book of Job.
“This is it.” Maybelle swung her arm then clasped her hands together again in front of her, began kneading her knuckles. “Corey’s room.”
Overton stepped in, walked around. Mike hung in the doorway next to Maybelle. Simply decorated, with a single bed, a small desk in the corner, a bureau with some pictures standing on top, a crucifix mounted on the wall above. There were a couple of file boxes beside the bed, two stacked on each other, lidded.
Overton asked the questions. “Did Corey ever talk about her work?”
“Oh, no,” Maybelle said. “She wasn’t supposed to say anything about the people she worked with.”
“Just in a general way, then? Did she ever say anything, like she was having a tough time, something like that?”
Maybelle looked into some mental distance. “Oh, you know, sometimes she would come home and she’d just seem tired. But she was… Corey was usually a very upbeat person. You know? Quick to laugh. She’d come home most nights and if I was off, we’d have tea – we’d even stay up and watch Jay Leno on Friday nights.”
“And you’re a nurse?”
“Yes. At Watertown General.”
“So both of you are in the business of helping people,” Mike said, smiling.
Maybelle seemed bashful, tried to find somewhere to look. Mike had all types of friends, ranging the political and religious spectrums, and there was no set temperament that seemed to accompany any belief system. But over the years, he did seem to find a pattern with the devout, people like Maybelle – they were humble. But they weren’t unsuspecting or na?ve.
“And you said your sister never married,” Overton resumed, still slowly touring the room, looking but not touching.
“No…” Maybelle seemed to give it some thought. “She was always content being alone. Some people are like that. She had a few boyfriends in school. I think she had a boyfriend in college. But she never… She was…”
“She was choosy,” Overton offered.
“Yes.” Maybelle seemed relieved.
Mike thought the real word she’d been hunting for was chaste. He asked, “So no man in her life around the time of her disappearance?”
She frowned and shook her head. “Oh no. The other… That’s what they asked, too. They thought maybe she’d been in a relationship with somebody, maybe he took her somewhere. But I never thought that. Not for a minute.”