She's Gone

She’s Gone

A Duff Kerrigan novel

Jim Ingraham

Copyright © 2012 by James P. Ingraham

Smashwords Edition

ISBN 9781301989447

No character in this novel is based on a real person

Cover design by S. R. Walker Designs

Cover photo by Peenzo

This book is for Slim, Pete, and Stefanie

Chapter One

Around eleven that morning in the small Maine fishing village of Wesley I was standing on a cliff across the street from Heidi’s Lunch Box, gripping spear points of an iron fence that enclosed an obelisk, looking down at cottages and fishing shacks on the embracing arm of a cove. Up here, the town hall and white steepled church and a few stores shared Main Street with some handsome old mansions. Down below was where the fishing folk lived.

I had come here to meet the State Police resident trooper Claudia Dupuis, but she had been delayed, so I hailed a boy on a bicycle and asked which house belonged to Beatrice Lord.

He pointed. Just past the church down there, and rode off.

I strolled down the sidewalk to a lawn that fronted a large white garrison colonial. I had just come up the driveway when a woman in jeans and gray shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, stepped from behind a screen of rhododendrons carrying a bucket—a lean woman no more than thirty-five, hair wrapped in a blue bandana.

Mrs. Lord?

She stopped and regarded me inquisitively. I’m Beatrice Pleasance, she said, apparently not pleased by what I had called her.

Sorry. My mistake. I apparently had misread the police report.

Well you didn’t get it wrong. I used to be ‘Mrs. Lord.’ What can I do for you? She didn’t move, waiting for a reply.

Name’s Duff Kerrigan—

Oh! banging a hand on her forehead. I forgot. Forgive me. I’m having a bad day. Come in…no, wait here, and she strode to her front door and went inside the house.

For about ten minutes I stood on asphalt admiring fair weather clouds coming in off the horizon and fishing boats on moorings all aimed the same way, like they’d been placed there by design.

Come on in, Beatrice called from the porch. She was dressed the same, hadn’t removed the bandana or put on makeup. She had come inside probably to straighten up the room, a room that stretched to the back of the house—braided rag rugs and old-fashioned, stuffed furniture, a fireplace, a seven-foot Steinway with the lid up, everything in order and comfortable-looking.

I asked, You play?

My daughter, she said. Right now she’s in Waterville at a music camp.

The police report hadn’t mentioned a daughter, only a husband who did a lot of traveling, now apparently an ex-husband, named Fyodor after the great Russian novelist. They called him Buddy.

I sat near the fireplace studying a painting of a girl on a beach strolling toward a distant lighthouse.

Netti was kind of a loner, Beatrice said, coming in from the kitchen. She poured coffee from a glass carafe into a white mug, reached the mug to me across a low table.

That little island was her place for writing?

Spent every weekend there if the weather was good. It’s more’n a few miles out, pouring milk from a jelly tumbler into her cup, handing the tumbler to me. Nothing on it but an old world war two gun emplacement and a lot of trees. She liked getting off by herself—one of those ‘far away’ people. Never sure she was listening when you talked to her, day-dreaming. You ever read her stories?

No, I said, waving aside the sugar jar she pointed at, noticing a scar on her cheek close to her ear, an inch or so of discolored skin. She hadn’t done anything to hide it.

Well, I suppose you wouldn’t’ve. They were self-published and she didn’t try hard to sell them. There’s two, last time I looked, at the drugstore. The very first story in the collection tells about the woman who lived out there a hundred years ago. Died in a fire only a week after her daughter drowned. Netti liked to believe the woman set the fire and died in it out of grief although there’s no evidence of such a thing. Netti said she learned that from the ghosts, giving that a nervous giggle, raising the cup to her mouth.

I’m told you were good friends.

We are.

Then you don’t think she was swept out to sea? using language from the Coast Guard report.

Her face stiffened as though I had hit a nerve. She frowned and looked down at her hands. Well, I suppose it could happen. Two other times it happened, lobstermen knocked overboard, their bodies never found.

When was that?

A time ago. The Coast Guard looked, just like they looked for Netti, and never found them.

I heard that Willie Marshfield went out to rescue her.

Oh, I don’t think so. Don’t sound like Willie Marshfield. Gone out to rescue her? Not unless he sprouted feelings I never knew about. Willie Marshfield’s a user, a taker. He’s not a giver. And she said that with biblical certainty, pressing her lips tightly.

You don’t like him?

Nobody likes him, not around here anyway. Especially if they’ve got a daughter…or a son, for that matter…from what I’ve heard.

He hit on her?

More than once. It’s how I got this, and she put her finger on the scar.

He hit you?

Sicced a pit bull on me. Never even came out the door, just opened it and let the beast out. Two hounds came after it. I was on the ground when his father saw it.

He got the dog off you?

Took it out back and stuck it in a cage.

What’d Willie do?

Nothing. Just went back into the house.

Never apologized to you?

If he did, I never heard it.

You take him to court?

His father brought me to the hospital and waited there and paid the bill, looking down at a fingernail, raising it to her mouth, nibbling on it.

Where’s the dog now?

Guarding his junkyard, I suppose. That’s where he took it.

Why’d you go to his house?

To tell him to stay away from Ginny. She was only fifteen, for godsakes!

The police report says Netti left some writing with you.

Well, yes, she did, hesitantly.

May I see it?

It ain’t much. Only a few pages.

I waited, curious that she seemed reluctant to show the pages to me. I watched her leave the room and come back with a schoolgirl’s spiral notebook. You probably know I told those detectives she was afraid Willie was looking for this, handing it to me. The last thing she wrote, I believe. One of those detectives kind of fingered through it and gave it back, not interested.

I saw the word ESCAPE in large letters on the cover. Inside were three pages of neatly written script, the remaining pages not written on.

Why didn’t she want Willie Marshfield to see it?

I don’t know. She was always writing things and interviewing people, looking for what she called atmosphere."

Were she and Willie close?

Nothing in that man to get close to. He’s all flash and no fire.

You said ‘afraid’….

She thought about that, forefinger and thumb rubbing her chin. I did, didn’t I. Yes, I guess I did.

What was she afraid of?

Can’t say. I never saw anything in Willie Marshfield to be afraid of, but maybe she did.

You see much of him?

Well, after he and my husband became friends, he came over once in a while, but not after I lit into him for the way he was looking at Ginny.

She stopped talking, got up to answer her phone, came back to the kitchen doorway and told me she had an errand to run. Something I have to do.

***

I tried and failed to reach Claudia Dupuis on my cell. I had hoped she’d introduce me to Netti’s mother-in-law, Hannah Sloane. I didn’t feel like waiting, so I drove down the hill and found Mrs. Sloane with a clothespin in her mouth hanging sheets on a line that was stretched between two oak trees, a short woman in her seventies with pale eyes and pale skin.

I heard you was coming, she said when I introduced myself.

I’m looking for Netti Quill.

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. Ain’t you from the insurance company?

Had Bea Pleasance called her?

I work for them, yes, I said.

Then you know what happened.

I know what they say happened. You mind talking about her?

Not if it’s in her favor.

I handed her my card. She examined both sides, handed it back. I guess it’s true what the paper says you people ain’t satisfied she’s dead.

We’re looking—

Well, if it’ll keep Hart Marshfield from gaining that money, I’ll tell you anything I know, which ain’t much.

Anything will help.

Is that money supposed to make up for revenue he’d lose if she died? It’s what I heard.

Yes. It’s called a key-man policy.

And it’s his insurance company you work for?

Yes.

Well, you got took. She wasn’t that important to him.

Later on her porch in rocking chairs, each of us sipping iced tea, she told me Netti was little more than a bookkeeper. Her absence wouldn’t cost him a dime.

I guess he’s involved in a lot of things, I said. They all need managing.

She was no manager, I can tell you that. I don’t know what title she held, but she was a bookkeeper. Did a good job of it, I’m sure. But he’s in charge, no question. She told me once if she made a change without his permission, he’d likely fire her. Now does that sound like indispensable to you? Not to me, not by a damnsight. And she waited for my agreement or at least acknowledgment which I had no reason to provide. I just smiled.

She vigorously rubbed a knuckle over her eye, then, muttering a curse, went inside the cottage. For the next five minutes I was entertained by a kitten on a patch of grass out front batting a tennis ball, getting its claws stuck in the fuzz, shaking it off fitfully.

Feels like something’s in there, a cinder or something, but it’s just dry eye. Hurts like the dickens, she said, letting the screen door slam behind her, sitting down, the one eye squinting at me.

I guess it’s not unusual for people to exaggerate their needs when they buy insurance, I said.

Oh there’s more to it than that.

Like what?

You ever meet him?

Not yet.

There’s a meanness in him. Why did he buy that policy on her? And for all that money?

A precaution. Maybe she was more important—

No.

If you’re suggesting—

I ain’t suggesting anything, she said. I just think it’s peculiar.

That Hart Marshfield might somehow have deliberately caused Netti’s disappearance to collect insurance sounded like the ranting of an unhappy woman. I gave it no credence. The Octo Assurance Company held no such suspicion.

Would Netti have run off without letting anyone know?

The question brought a sadness I hadn’t expected. Tears filmed her eyes. I didn’t push for an answer. She had become uncomfortable and I decided I had troubled her enough.

That stuff she wrote, Hannah said. Just daydreams of a lonely woman far as I could tell. Never finished a whole story. She let me read some of it. Love stuff. Romance. Just bits and pieces. I don’t know what Willie Marshfield thought he’d find, but he went through every inch of her room and even wanted to look in my room, practically calling me a liar when I said everything she wrote was in her laptop or on pages in a notebook she carried with her. He was like a crazy man, high strung like his father.

Do you think she’s alive?

She frowned at her hands—blue veins like wandering rivers under discolored skin. She looked up. She wasn’t happy. I suppose she could’ve run off.

But not without telling you.

That produced a wounded stare.

Were Nettie and your son married?

They slept together but not in this house. I wouldn’t have it.

The report said they were separated but that Netti stayed on with you.

Took the bedroom upstairs, said it was too cold in that trailer. I knew she had better reasons than that. Zack stayed in the trailer until spring. Moved out. Sold the trailer and got himself an apartment in Brackett Shores, and I wouldn’t’ve known that if someone hadn’t told me. Did his lobstering down there. I thought it was to get away from her, except that he came sniffing around a lot. Didn’t want anyone else to have her, I think. People said it was because his father died up in Carlyle. I don’t think so. He and his father never got along.

You have any idea what happened to her laptop? I understand the police weren’t able to find it.

No idea except she probably took it to the island. I never poked into her private things. All I know is it wasn’t in her room when the police came looking.

When she and Zack were together—?

The trailer was parked right down there, pointing at a patch of gravel the side of her lot.

You said she was unhappy.

After leaving Zack, she didn’t have a man in her life and wanted one. Wanted someone to cuddle up to nights is what she said.

Willie Marshfield?

She dismissed that with a Pfft!

Made me laugh but brought no change to her face.

And there were no other men, someone who might have helped her get away?

Not that I know of. She stayed out late nights wandering the beach, but it wasn’t sex she was looking for. I don’t know what it was, companionship, maybe. People think she had sex with Willie Marshfield; my son Zack was sure of it; but I think he was wrong. I can’t picture her sleeping with a man she didn’t like. She wasn’t that kind of woman.

She became tired of talking. Body language told me I should leave. A detective from Augusta had suggested that Mrs. Sloane had become lonely after her husband had died and, with her son and Netti gone, she felt no longer useful to anyone. Maybe at her age she had outlived a lot of friends. It became painful talking with her.

While I was making excuses to get away, my cell phone buzzed. I walked down the porch and learned that the resident trooper would be delayed in Augusta for at least two days and would contact me when she became available. Before driving up the hill, I sat a few minutes in my Jeep reading the few pages in Netti’s notebook.

But the tenderness in his eyes had penetrated too deeply, awakening parts of her that refused to sink back into the dark obscurities of loneliness. As shameful as it was to think of him, she couldn’t summon up the will to destroy the gentle fantasy of descending into his strong arms and joining her lips to his sweet mouth.

Later, lying in the hotel bathtub, her naked body immersed in fragrant bubbles, sensuously enjoying the stimulation of warm hands massaging her belly and legs, she caught herself imagining Jon there with her. Pathetic as it was, she lost herself in the dreamy fantasy of surrendering to him.

I searched inside the spiral wires and found no evidence any pages had been torn out. I tossed the notebook onto the passenger seat and drove home.

Chapter Two

That evening I left the Bosun’s Café in Portland and walked in the rain to Rafferty’s Cellar a few blocks down Commercial Street. Miriam Trench was alone at a corner table rubbing condensation off the glass of a cherry-colored drink. When she saw me come in, she slid her hand over her handbag. Whether she knew me or was just instinctively cautious when seeing a stranger, I have no idea. We had never met.

The men at the bar checked me out, then resumed their conversation while I paid for a beer, lifted it and watched a man rise from a table to feed quarters to the juke box and stand with face lowered reading the little white tabs under the glass. When the music came on he patted the box and went back to his table. The song was country.

I stayed at the bar for a while, then carried my glass to the woman’s table.

Mind?

She raised a worried face. You looking for something? A forty-year-old with sadness in the eyes, gray at the roots of darkened hair.

I pulled out a chair, lowered myself into it. Duff Kerrigan, I said. I’m looking for a man.

Sorry, honey, I don’t deal in stuff like that.

While I was laughing, I watched her pull her handbag toward her and edge her chair back, her face cramped in a show of pain—physical or mental, maybe both.

That’s not what I mean. Please. He’s a friend of yours.

Whatever you’re looking for, mister, I don’t have it. She pulled her arm from my reaching grasp and started toward the door.

Zack Sloane.

That stopped her, made her look back with a frightened stare, glance anxiously past me across the room. I had been told on the docks that Zack was living with her and that she’d know where I might find him.

A heavy man with gut swelling into his sweatshirt moved along the bar toward me. Leave the woman alone, he said, coming at me with bloodshot eyes and broken capillaries on a swollen nose. He smelled of unwashed sweat.

Stay out of this, I said.

I caught the sound of rain when the woman opened the door just as two big hands hit my chest, driving me backward across a table, knocking the table over. I didn’t want a fight. I wanted only to chase down the woman, but the man grabbed my neck and slammed me into the wall.

Leave her alone! he yelled, sour breath blasting my face, a half-drunk lout spoiling for a fight.

I drove my knee into his belly and shoved him crashing into the table the woman had been sitting at. With arms flailing and face blistering red he slid onto the floor.

I heard legs of a stool scrape over the concrete. His two friends moved in, one holding a beer bottle by the neck. I pushed them off and, hoping to catch the woman, hurried to the door, opened it and met two policemen in wet slickers coming at me out of the rain.

Get back in there, one of them said, poking a night stick into my chest. Over by the bar. You, too, he said to the other men. Drop the bottle, Slick, or I’ll drop you.

I heard the bottle clunk on the cement floor. It didn’t break.

Just having a little argument, the man with the gut said. No harm. We’ll pay for the damage. Plenty of money.

I don’t want any trouble over this, the bartender said. They’re good for the damage. I know these guys. Not him, he said, meaning me. These other guys I know.

You called it in?

Caution crept into the barkeep’s eyes as he gave the cop an embarrassed nod.

While I was trying to figure out how to escape, Helmut Steiner came to the door—detective-second-grade, the police department middle-weight, blond and cocky. He pretended not to recognize me as he listened to an explanation of what had happened. I wanted to push him aside, go after the woman. But she was gone into the night.

Get their names, Steiner said. Make them show ID. I’ll take this guy. He grabbed my arm and led me outside into the dry space under the sheltering overhang, rain coming down strong all around us.

He closed the door. Don’t figure you paying for a woman. What you want with Miriam? He was laughing but still clutching my wet jacket.

You got here fast, I said. What’s going on?

I guess they were nearby when the call came in.

But you, I said, stepping back from his all too familiar smirk. "But …. Aw, to hell with it. What do