Chapter 22
This wasn’t their usual day of the month for potluck and martinis, but with so many new developments in the investigation, they’d called an emergency meeting at Ben Diamond’s house, on the edge of Purity village. Maggie had spent the afternoon getting Callie settled into her guest bedroom, so she’d brought no dish for tonight’s potluck. Instead, she’d come with the most valuable contribution of all: information.
Her four friends were already there, standing in Ben’s walled garden with drinks in hand.
Beyond those brick walls was a protective acre of woods, all part of Ben’s property, so they had little fear of their conversation being overheard. The garden had been designed and planted by Ben’s late wife, Evelyn, who’d passed away only a year after she and Ben moved to Maine, and it remained a living memorial to her horticultural talents. Evelyn had been a civilian, never part of the intelligence community, so Maggie had not known her well, but judging by the lushness of these plantings, Evelyn had possessed something Maggie would never have: a green thumb.
“Here you go, Mags,” said Declan, handing her a chilled martini. “Belvedere, extra dry, lemon twist.”
Maggie took a sip and sighed with satisfaction. “Why are you still single?”
“Because you keep turning me down.”
“Have I heard a proposal?”
“Enough flirting, you two,” growled Ben. “Maggie, you said you have new intel?”
Maggie set down the deliciously smooth martini on Ben’s wrought iron garden table. “It took some delicacy. Callie’s only fourteen, and she’s still shy about bodily functions. But I believe we’re on the right track about why that blood was in Luther’s truck. Now we just have to wait for the police to catch up.”
“Do they need a helpful push?” asked Ben.
Maggie shook her head. “Jo’s a proud woman. Let’s not make her feel inadequate. I’m pretty sure she got my hint, and I expect she’ll have confirmation from the crime lab by the time she gets here.” Maggie looked at Ingrid. “Your turn. What did you learn about that missing woman, Vivian Stillwater?”
Ingrid sighed, and that was not a good sign. Instead of her usual triumphant smile, Ingrid shook her head, which for her was an admission of abject defeat. “Vivian Stillwater,” she said, “is an enigma.”
“Now this is getting interesting,” said Ben.
“And it’s made her very frustrated,” said Lloyd, dropping ice cubes into the cocktail shaker. He didn’t bother measuring the gin but simply poured in a generous slug straight from the bottle. “She’s usually on top of things. And when she isn’t on top of things, well, that’s not pleasant to live with.”
“I can imagine.” Ben laughed. “Her being Ingrid and all.”
“No, this really is worrying,” said Ingrid. “Aside from that lone article in the Purity Weekly archives, I can’t find any other reference to the woman’s disappearance. There was no follow-up article, no mention of the woman in any other regional newspapers.”
“Did you locate the reporter who wrote it?” Declan asked.
“Deceased. This article was written fifty-three years ago, after all.”
“Could Vivian Stillwater be dead, as well?”
“I searched for her death certificate. Couldn’t find one,” said Ingrid. “In fact, I couldn’t find anything about the woman after 1972. It’s as if she sailed off and disappeared into the sunset. It shouldn’t be this hard to find people. And that’s what bothers me the most. There should be a paper trail. There should be records .”
“What do we know about Vivian Stillwater?” Ben asked.
“Not much more than what was written in that Purity Weekly article. It said Vivian was living on Maiden Pond, that she’d planned to drive down to Boston for the weekend to visit her sister, Catherine Stillwater. When Vivian didn’t show up as scheduled, the sister called the Purity police and reported her missing.”
“So a woman vanishes from Maiden Pond in 1972,” said Ben. “Fifty-three years later, a woman’s skeleton gets pulled out of that same pond.” He looked around at his friends. “Shouldn’t the police have made the connection? Assuming her missing persons file is still open?”
“It has been half a century,” Maggie pointed out. “Files can get lost.”
“Maybe. But I’ll tell you what really puzzles me,” said Ingrid. “Why can’t I find any documents related to Vivian after 1972? There’s the mystery. She goes missing, and so does any official record of her fate. All we have is that one article, in our piddly little town newspaper. And then, complete silence.” Ingrid paused. “ That gets my juices flowing.”
“Oh boy,” said Lloyd, taking a gulp of martini. “Here we go.”
Indeed, it got the juices flowing in all of them. Careless misplacement of information was one thing; a mysterious lack of information was something entirely different. Now they were thinking about the possibility of deliberate redaction, which made Vivian Stillwater far more interesting.
“What about that sister in Boston?” Declan asked. “Have you tracked her down?”
“I’m trying to track her down, too, but without much luck so far. Again, it’s been fifty-three years. She may have changed her name. She may have passed on. Once I put it all together, I’ll hand it to Jo, wrapped up in a pretty ribbon.”
Ben’s doorbell chimed. “Speak of the devil,” he said.
As Ben went to answer the door, Lloyd filled the cocktail shaker with more ice and gin and was happily rattling the cubes when Jo walked onto the patio with Ben. The poor girl looked like she could use a stiff drink, and she cast a hungry look at the tray of antipasti on the wrought iron table—or what was left of it, now that the five of them had ravaged the array of cheeses and cured meats. “Another meeting of the Martini Club?”
“Of which you are now an honorary member,” said Lloyd. He emptied the contents of the cocktail shaker into a perfectly chilled martini glass and handed her the drink.
She grimaced. “I’m on duty. And I don’t much care for these.”
“Maybe because you’ve never had a decent one. Everyone has their preferred concoction, and that’s mine. Boodles gin, just a whisper of vermouth. A lemon twist, freshly peeled.”
She held it at arm’s length, as if it contained strychnine, and gingerly set it down, untasted. This evening Jo seemed subdued, even deferential, and she looked at the group as if she was seeing them—really seeing them—for the first time. She turned to Maggie. “You already guessed it, didn’t you?”
“About the blood in Luther’s truck?” Maggie nodded. “I had a hunch. And after I spoke to Callie this afternoon, I knew I was on the right track.”
“So the PMB test came back?” said Ingrid.
Jo turned to her. “What do you know about the test?”
“It detects D-dimer proteins. Distinguishes between menstrual and peripheral blood. I assume the lab confirmed the blood was menstrual? It probably seeped through Zoe’s underwear, and Luther’s truck is so filthy, he didn’t even notice the stain on the seat.”
Maggie said, “And she was having cramps.”
“How do you know that?” said Jo.
“Callie told me. I asked her.”
Jo looked skyward and groaned. “You people just love being smarter than me, don’t you?”
“But you do always manage to catch up, Chief Thibodeau,” said Lloyd. He raised his drink to her. “We knew you’d do it this time, as well. So let’s drink a toast to you!”
“Is there anything you people won’t toast?”
“Life is short. We celebrate while we can.”
Jo looked at the martini that she’d just set down on the table. She picked it up, took a sip, and winced. Put it right back down again. “I should have realized,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s so obvious now, why she did it.”
“Did what?” asked Maggie.
“Put her dress in the washing machine.” Jo had missed an important clue, and she was now kicking herself for it. “At the time, I didn’t realize the significance of that detail. Then this morning, when you mentioned feminine hygiene products, it suddenly hit me why she washed the dress. Why there was blood on the truck seat. She got back to Moonview, discovered that her dress and underwear were stained, and she put them straight into the machine. But getting her period didn’t stop her from diving back in the pond.”
“You did reach the right conclusion,” said Maggie.
“But first I let myself get talked into jumping the gun and arresting Luther. Alfond insisted the blood was enough.”
“I’m not faulting you, Jo. Yes, it seemed perfectly logical at the time, with Zoe’s blood in the truck. Just learn from it and move on. And have something to eat.” She pushed the antipasti tray toward Jo.
Unable to resist the temptation, Jo snatched up a slice of mortadella and devoured it in a few quick bites. No delicate nibbling for her; the girl really must have been starved.
“Now that your case against Luther Yount looks shaky, perhaps it’s time to consider an alternate suspect: Reuben Tarkin.”
“Susan Conover’s already asked me about him,” Jo mumbled around a mouthful of salami. “The man’s had a long-standing grudge against the Conover family.”
“Do you know the nature of that grudge?” asked Ingrid.
“No idea.” Jo bit into a slice of Parmesan. “Wow, this is really good.”
“I’ll make you a doggie bag later,” said Lloyd, who loved nothing more than feeding people. “I brought way too much food tonight.”
“You always do, dear,” said Ingrid, and she smiled at the others. “Lloyd’s biggest fear is that people will go hungry.”
“About Reuben Tarkin,” said Maggie. “I assume Susan showed you these articles from the Purity Weekly ?” She handed Jo a stack of photocopied pages. “The Tarkin family has a troubled history.”
Jo glanced at the headline: Massacre on Main Street . “1972?”
“I hadn’t heard about this incident before. But you must know about it.”
“Yeah, sure. My dad remembers it pretty well. But this was over fifty years ago. It’s ancient news.”
“Fifty years is ancient?” said Ingrid, and she looked at her husband. “What does that make us?”
“When his father killed those people, Reuben was only twelve years old,” said Maggie. “What kind of family did he have? Was he ever in trouble?”
“Reuben got into some minor scrapes,” said Jo. “Trespassing, vandalism.”
“Directed at the Conovers?”
“And a few of their neighbors.”
“Which neighbors?”
“Arthur Fox. And the Greenes, when they were still alive.”
“You should take a closer look at this man.”
Jo sighed. “Yeah. Okay.”
“And here’s another person you should look into. A woman named Vivian Stillwater. In 1972, she was twenty-seven years old and living on Maiden Pond.”
“Why is she of interest?”
“Because a few weeks after Sam Tarkin went berserk on Main Street, Vivian vanished. There’s an article about her, also in the Purity Weekly .” Maggie pointed to the photocopies in Jo’s hand.
“What?” Jo flipped through the pages to the story about Vivian Stillwater.
“You didn’t know about her?” Ben asked.
“No.”
“The skeleton from the pond still hasn’t been identified. Didn’t Vivian’s name come up as a possibility?”
“I combed through all our open missing persons files. There’s no unsolved case with her name.” Jo looked up. “Which means she must have been found.”
“Are you absolutely certain of that, Jo?” Maggie asked quietly.
The tenor of the question seemed to make Jo hesitate. By now, she should know that Maggie and her friends would demand confirmation, and there was always the possibility she’d overlooked something. She looked around at the five people watching her. Dissecting her. They couldn’t help it; they’d spent their careers scrutinizing people, and old habits died hard.
Jo’s cell phone rang. She looked almost relieved for the excuse to break away from the conversation and answer the call.
“Hey, Mike,” she said. Her head suddenly jerked up. Her neck muscles snapped taut. “Stay right there. Don’t do a thing!” she ordered. “I’m on my way.”
“What is it?” asked Maggie. “What’s happened?”
Jo hung up and turned to her. “Zoe Conover’s cell phone was just turned on.”