Chapter 98
T. K. Norton watched me photograph the T-shirt with my cell phone. I then restored it to where I’d found it, photographing it again once it was in place. Only when I was finished did he ask why.
“Do you and your wife garden?” I asked.
“Not seriously,” he replied. “I can mow a lawn and prune a bush, and Anita grows herbs for the kitchen, but we have a company that does the donkeywork in summer, plus any planting. I’m too busy, and if I’m honest, too lazy to do it myself.
I like sitting in the shade with a beer, but beyond that, I’m an indoors guy. ”
“Is the yard company local?”
“They’re halfway between here and Madison.”
“Do you know where they source their supplies?”
“It’s never come up. I can ask.”
“I’ll do it. Give me the name.”
“Ken ’n Beck Landscape Solutions.”
I looked up from my phone.
“Really, like Kennebec?”
“Ken and Becky Zarin. They were both born here, too. They didn’t move up special just so they could name a business.”
I found the company website. It was a bare-bones homepage, but offered both landline and cell phone contact numbers.
I tried one, got a message, tried another, and got Becky Zarin.
I gave her my name, told her I was with T.
K. Norton, put him on speaker to confirm, and asked her where she sourced bedding plants, seed, compost, and whatever else she used.
“We have our own beds, greenhouses, and growing systems,” she said. “If we bring in stuff from outside, we try to keep it as local as possible. We use a couple of suppliers in Bangor and Portland, but that’s still in-state.”
“Anyone in Orono?”
“No.”
I thanked her, hung up, then leaned against the bedroom wall to compose an email.
“Do you have a printer?” I asked T. K. Norton.
“Yes, but—”
“Give me your email address,” I said. “I’m going to send you a letter, which I want you to print out. Then you and I will sign it.”
He told me the address and I added it to the message.
“Do I get to read the letter first,” he asked, “or should I just close my eyes and make my mark?”
I was warming to T. K. Norton, but did my best to suppress it. If Sabine was right, and my fears were correct, it would make everything harder later.
“It won’t say much, beyond detailing the circumstances under which that T-shirt was discovered. I’ll send you the pictures I took as well. You can print two copies of everything, if you’d like to hold on to one of them.”
“I was going to do that anyway,” he said, “but I can be open about it now.”
I sent the email. T. K. Norton checked his phone, confirmed that the email and attachments had arrived, and went to print them.
From where I stood, I could see the Smiling Seed T-shirt, the rounded edges of the letters visible, like massed threads fed through the holes in a tapestry.
Those threads now connected Roger Teal and Edward Kenney to each other, Teal and Kenney to Spero, and Mallory Norton to Scott Theriault, because I was certain that if the T-shirt was analyzed, it would be rich with his DNA.
It might even bear traces of the sauce used to baste Colburn’s barbecue.
Mallory Norton was the girl Scott Theriault was seeing covertly before he died, but she had disappeared before he went missing.
When Scott went north instead of south after fleeing the Spero, was he looking for her?
They might have agreed to run away together.
Mallory could have located a cabin or camp, abandoned or unoccupied, where they’d rendezvous prior to moving on—or, in the short term, where they could hook up for a few hours before Scott went back to Spero and Mallory returned home.
But wouldn’t it have been simpler for them to use her car, and why was that car then found abandoned by Lake Parlin?
No, it didn’t fit, and not because I was missing something, but because I didn’t have all the information I needed.
Now, though, I was closer to finding it.
T. K. Norton came back with the pages and together we signed the two copies.
The document wouldn’t have the force of an affidavit, and wouldn’t stand up in court, but it might be important as a link in a chain of evidence, if only to prove that I hadn’t planted the T-shirt in the room to implicate Spero.
I folded my copy and stored it in my jacket pocket.
“How about telling me what’s so important about that T-shirt,” said T. K.
“Can you give me twenty-four hours? Will you trust me for that long?”
“Trust you? I don’t even know you. And if it involves my daughter, then no, I can’t give you twenty-four hours. I won’t give you twenty-four minutes.”
He was right, of course. I was like a dog with a bone, and I’d let it overwhelm my better instincts.
“Did your daughter have a nickname,” I asked, “or a pet name at home?”
“Just Mal.”
“Not Smiles?”
“No, never.”
“I think Scott Theriault may have given that Smiling Seeds T-shirt to your daughter,” I said. “He was the boy she was seeing.”
“Did he hurt her?” he asked. “Is that why he ran away?”
Because that, of course, was another possibility: a besotted young woman murdered by a troubled young man.
“It’s the car,” I said. “If your daughter and Scott Theriault were out there together by Lake Parlin, and something happened between them, like an argument that ended badly, how did Scott get back to the school?”
“He could have walked.”
“More than twenty miles, in the dark?”
“That’s six hours or so, if you’re fit.”
“And not traumatized,” I said, “which he would have been in that scenario. But they wouldn’t have wanted to drive so far from Bingham or The Plains to be alone.
Time was precious. He would have been worried about being missed, and she needed to be home before you and your wife started fretting.
Without trying, they could have found somewhere quiet halfway between Bingham and Spero. ”
“You don’t want this to be Theriault’s doing because you’re working for his father,” said T. K.
“I have no personal stake in it,” I replied.
“But if you choose to go down that path, you’re accepting that your daughter is gone, and the only person who can confirm what happened to her is dead.
You can tell the police about the T-shirt, and they’ll come to me and ask why I think it belonged to Scott Theriault.
I’ll give them my reasons, they may decide to send the shirt to be tested, and Ward Vose or Scott’s mother will be invited to give a DNA sample for comparison.
I don’t know how long all that will take, but it could be weeks.
And by the end of it, a new narrative will have emerged, and that narrative will concretize: Scott Theriault killed Mallory Norton, and his own death followed.
That may be the truth or it may not, but regardless, you and your family will have to live with the uncertainty.
And let me tell you, Mr Norton, it’s the not knowing that destroys us. ”
T. K. Norton sat on his daughter’s bed. Had I not been present, he might have lain on it and breathed in what was left of his child.
“And the alternative?” he asked.
“Leave me to do my job. Say nothing to anyone about that shirt, and give me a day or so to see what I can find out. After that, I’ll go to the police myself.”
It was time for me to leave.
“I told my wife that I was scared Mallory wasn’t ever coming back,” he said. “She slapped my face.”
“Because she’s scared too,” I told him. “I’m staying at the Motor Inn, if the police need to talk to me. Otherwise, I’ll be in touch.”