Chapter Five
FIVE
Tim
The Bean-In was crowded for a Thursday morning, and Tim Wellington wondered, not for the first time, how this moment kept sneaking up on him.
May flicked summer on like a switch, the easy solitude of winter capsized by hordes of tourists, yet Tim was eternally caught unawares.
One minute Alexandria Bay was a sleepy riverfront village, nearly every face familiar, every voice that of a neighbor or friend.
The next, he was waiting a full ten minutes for two medium drips and a cruller.
“Whew,” he said when he got back to the car, handing Valerie the coffees and pastry so he could buckle in. “I swear I wasn’t reading the paper back to front in there. That line was killer.”
“If you ask me,” Valerie said as she blew across the slot in the lid of her takeout cup, “the long weekend can’t come soon enough. Some actual human activity would be a welcome departure from eight months of deafening, soul-sucking silence.”
For his part, Tim would choose the silence every time, but Valerie Ott craved action.
With her slicked-back hair, crisp collared shirts, and unapologetic tenacity, Tim often wondered if she’d missed her calling as a special agent with the FBI.
Instead, she’d left her state police special investigator job in Oneida, moved her teenage daughter to A-Bay, and made the place their home.
Valerie had only seen two summers on the river, though, and whether she realized it or not, living with the seasonal residents and tourists was an adjustment—this year in particular.
Their one-off burglary with no evidence of burglars had turned into a freaking crime spree.
They were on their way to another Cape Vincent home, the third suspected break-in of the week.
Tim and Jeremy Solomon had spent the previous afternoon in a place on Millen Bay, where the longtime owner of a sprawling Craftsman had found evidence of a fire in a hearth that hadn’t been used in years.
Upon searching the house, he’d discovered that someone had taken the purple fleece he used for boating.
His call to the village police had been transferred to the barracks, where Tim’s investigation was already underway.
The woman they were set to interview today claimed someone had raided her pantry.
“I know what I left in there when I closed up,” she’d told Tim over the phone.
“There are certain things I always have on hand.” The list had included unopened jars of peanut butter and jam, ingredients for s’mores, and several bottles of pinot grigio.
“That’s how I know I’m not wrong,” she’d explained.
“I bought a whole case not long before we closed up for the season. There are only two bottles left.”
Tim had asked all the logical questions: who routinely spent time in the house? Did anyone else have a key? The woman lived alone with her husband, both long-since retired, their grandkids far too young to nick the wine. No one else had easy access to the property.
The story was eerily familiar.
As he and Valerie drove west on James Street, Tim caught her up on recent events.
“So what you’re saying is that someone’s on a shopping spree in other people’s houses.
” When Valerie stretched out her legs, she had room to spare, and Tim was struck by the disparity between his two colleagues.
Born in French Polynesia and raised in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, what Valerie lacked in physical stature she made up for in vigor and grit.
Tim said, “Pretty much. The stuff that’s being taken is totally random, especially at the house we saw earlier this week.
We called the husband to make sure he wasn’t hiding something that would explain the missing clothes, but he had no idea what I was talking about.
He confirmed the summer house was the last place he’d seen them, just like his wife.
We were ready to dismiss the whole thing until the second call came in. And now this.”
“All three houses are in and around Cape Vincent,” Valerie said with a head tilt. “Could it just be some local kids playing a prank?”
“That’s a possibility.” Tim had been a local kid himself once, and knew how dull things could get in the off-season.
He’d seen the youth of Jefferson County do stranger things than this.
“Trouble is, we’ve failed to find indisputable evidence of a break-in, at least at the first two spots.
If we’re dealing with kids, how’d they get in and out without a trace? ”
“Too soon to consider a ghost?” Valerie winked as she brought the takeout coffee to her lips, pursing them to clear the steam once more.
“Let’s hope it’s not,” Tim said, slipping his own to-go cup into the holder. “I never did like Scooby-Doo.”
The house was nothing like the Greene family home, or even the Craftsman on Millen Bay.
It wasn’t modern, nor was it painted a stylish coastal gray or oyster white.
The yellow clapboard farmhouse looked cobbled together, a crooked widow’s walk and decades of jaunty additions making it worthy of a Tim Burton movie set.
What the houses had in common was that they were large, and as Tim stood in the driveway of this one, his gaze traveled up three stories to the darkened oval window that stared out over the vast property like a knowing eye.
“Thanks for coming. It’s the strangest thing,” Mrs. Palmer said when Tim and Valerie rang the bell.
“I honestly thought I was losing my mind.” In her sixties, with graying hair pulled into a knobby bun, she took them through to the kitchen.
“I know what was here when we left,” she insisted.
“I even have a picture of it. Makes things easier when we’re preparing to come back. ”
At the open door to the walk-in pantry, she stopped and took out her phone. “Before”—she handed Tim the device—“and after. You see what I mean?”
Eyes flicking from the shelves to the photo on the screen, Tim said, “I do.” He considered himself a tidy person.
Clutter stressed him out, so he did what he could to keep things orderly.
His pantry shelves at home were arranged by food type, but the homeowner had done him one better.
Her walk-in looked like a gourmet grocery store.
“The peanut butter was this all-natural stuff I have to bring up from the city, and the wine is special-order. You can’t get wine like that around here. I didn’t touch anything,” Mrs. Palmer added, “in case you need to dust for fingerprints.”
To her credit, Valerie’s lips didn’t so much as twitch. She was getting better at keeping her gut reactions in check. Tim said, “OK for us to take a look around?”
“Of course. My husband’s in the TV room, but just do what you need to do. He won’t get in your way.”
“What does he think of all this?” Valerie asked.
“Ross?” She rolled her eyes. “He’ll tell you I ate the peanut butter in my sleep, but that’s because he knows I’m on WeightWatchers. Ross fancies himself a comedian. Let’s see what he says when he realizes the intruder could have taken his flat-screen TV.”
Suppressing a smile, Tim thanked the woman and began to explore the house, checking every exterior door and window for signs of damage.
Just as with the previous two homes, there was no indication of forced entry at all.
What was happening here? Another homeowner claiming to be missing random items. Three reports of theft in two days, and the people were still coming, unlocking their doors and sweeping out the cobwebs for the approaching summer.
There was a pattern emerging that couldn’t be ignored.
“Ghosts, huh?” Tim whispered to his fellow investigator, his eyebrows raised to their limit.
Smiling at him, Valerie said, “Watch out for Slimer. That green stuff’s murder on your shoes.”