Chapter 14 Maggie
Chapter 14
Maggie
From their perch on a knoll above Maiden Pond, Maggie and her friends watched the Maine Warden Service dive boat as it motored back and forth across the water. They had brought a picnic lunch to sustain them for their surveillance: a platter of Turkish mezes, cucumber sandwiches, and Thai summer rolls, fragrant with herbs. A rather uncoordinated menu, but that was the nature of potlucks.
Lloyd had brought wine, of course. Two bottles of sparkling rosé, thoroughly chilled in a cooler packed with ice, the perfect beverage for a hot summer day. “If one must be on surveillance, one should make the best of it,” he said, pouring the wine into plastic cups. Not that Lloyd had ever engaged in surveillance, but he’d heard enough of their war stories to know that actually serving in the field would not have been his cup of tea. “And it’s such a fine day for this,” he said, handing Maggie a cup.
“I’ve had far worse assignments,” she said, setting down her binoculars to take a sip of rosé. Wine wasn’t the best choice of beverage for the situation, as her companions were already looking a bit lethargic in the heat. Ben was stretched out like a lizard on a rock, his Tilley hat pulled over his face. Declan was doing knee bends, trying to work out the stiffness in his joints. At the moment, Ingrid was the only one keeping an eagle eye on the activity below, her Swarovski binoculars trained on the warden service boat.
“Anything happening down there?” asked Lloyd.
“They’re just following the search grid,” she said. “It doesn’t look like they’ve picked up anything on sonar yet.”
“Oh look,” said Declan, pointing up at a tree. “There’s a pileated woodpecker.”
Ingrid’s binoculars whipped upward to focus on the magnificent bird hammering away on a dying oak. Lloyd raised his binoculars as well, and even Ben stirred from his heat-induced stupor to squint up at the bird. What was it about growing older that turned you into a bird-watcher and made you invest in expensive optical equipment? In their earlier lives, they’d trained their attention on dangerous members of their own species; now they focused on species with beaks and feathers, observing them with the same fierce concentration, and a great deal more pleasure.
“Oh, and here comes the mate!” said Lloyd.
Now all of them had their binoculars trained on the second woodpecker as it swooped in, its head a brilliant scarlet against the tree trunk. Their surveillance mission had been hijacked by a pair of birds.
Enough. Time to get back to business, thought Maggie, and she redirected her attention to the pond. If this were August, there would be kayaks and swimmers and a motorboat or two on the water, but today, the only boat she saw belonged to the Maine Warden Service, towing a side-scan sonar unit as if trolling for fish. The wardens had begun their grid search an hour ago, starting at the boat ramp, the downwind end of the pond, where an object in the water would be most likely to drift. Since then, the boat had slowly worked its way upwind, zigzagging back and forth as it scanned the bottom for anomalies. This was the first time Maggie had observed such an operation, and she’d already lost interest. All there was to see was a twenty-four-foot dive boat puttering back and forth across the surface. A good thing they had brought a picnic—they might be here for a while, but at least they would not go hungry.
The search had clearly lost its appeal to the general public as well. This morning, when the dive boat first put in to the water, people were standing along the shoreline on both sides of the pond, waiting for something exciting to happen. For the town of Purity, this was a real-life crime show, like the ones they watched on television, and it was playing out in their own backyard. But real life was not like television, and searches didn’t conclude with a jump cut to a dead body. This was painstaking work, and most of the spectators had drifted away, back to their cars. Susan and Ethan Conover, however, still remained at the water’s edge. Through binoculars, Maggie could see the couple, their arms around each other, their attention fixed on the dive boat. The rest of the Conover family was nowhere in sight.
The engine suddenly roared in reverse and throttled down.
Maggie whipped her binoculars across the water and focused on the dive boat, which had come to a stop a few dozen yards offshore, opposite Moonview.
“They’re dropping anchor,” said Ben.
Now all five of them had their binoculars focused on the pond, the pileated woodpeckers forgotten. Aboard the boat, the wardens huddled over their equipment. With their motor now silent, the only sound was the chirp of birds, the rapping of the woodpeckers against the oak tree. A drop of sweat slid down Maggie’s back, but she no longer felt the heat or the dulling effect of the wine she’d drunk. She was fully alert now, watching and waiting for what happened next.
Two of the wardens began donning scuba gear.
They’d found something.