Chapter Fourteen
Kit blinked, hoping what she’d seen had been some sort of macabre hallucination. But there it was, the tiny skull with its tufts of still-dark hair, and its thin, twiglike arms, the rest of it hidden beneath the faded cotton wrap.
Both women were frozen in place.
“Oh, dear Lord in heaven,” Greta exclaimed, her breath ragged, both hands to her heart. “What in the actual hell.”
“It’s—” A horrified Kit reached to touch the quilt and Greta pulled her hand away.
“Don’t touch it.” Greta was on the verge of hyperventilating. “Oh my God.”
It took more than a few deep breaths for Kit to calm herself.
“Kit, are you sure . . . maybe it really is like a Halloween thing.” Greta still had yet to look away.
Kit’s heart pounded wildly. “It’s no Halloween gag. That’s the remains of a child. A very tiny child. Possibly even a newborn or maybe a preemie, but it’s definitely a human child.”
“Oh my God. What should we do?”
“We call the police.” Kit pulled her phone from her pocket, her eyes never leaving the bundle in the blanket chest. “I guess just 911.”
Greta grabbed the phone from Kit’s hand and punched in a number. “Hal, it’s Greta. I need you out to the Meadows camp now. Come to the house. Upstairs. ASAP.” She ended the call and handed the phone back to Kit.
“He’ll be here in less than fifteen minutes.” Greta took a very deep breath. It appeared to help a bit, as her words were slightly less rushed. “Hal used to be with the FBI. He’ll know what to do.”
The two women remained where they stood, trying to make sense of what they were seeing, trying to regain and hold on to their wits and their emotions.
At last, Greta said, “Kit, I feel like I’m going to faint.”
“I’m feeling a little unstable myself right now. We should go sit. I guess we don’t need to stand here like we’re guarding this—these remains.” Kit took Greta’s arm and steered her to the chairs near the front windows.
“Her last year on this earth, Maxine and I used to sit in these chairs and look out at the lake and talk about the old times. Like, the really old times, when we were kids.” Greta lowered herself slowly into a chair.
“She never gave any clue there was anything in that chest except quilts.” She banged a hand on the arm of the chair.
“How could she go to sleep every night knowing that . . . thing was right there, so close to her bed?”
“Maybe she didn’t think of it as a thing,” Kit said, to which Greta grunted. “Or maybe she didn’t know.”
“How could she not have known? She lived here,” Greta snapped.
A few minutes later they heard a voice calling from the front hall. “Greta?”
“Up here, Hal,” Greta called back. “First open door on the right.”
The man who walked into the room was tall and broad and looked every bit like he belonged in a rustic camp in Maine, with or without the badge.
Corduroy pants and a flannel shirt and tan leather boots, a bit of graying facial scruff and gray at the temples, all he lacked was an axe over his shoulder and he’d have passed as a lumberjack.
Before he could ask her why he’d been called out, Greta pointed to the open blanket chest. “It’s in there. In the chest.”
He crossed the room to the blanket chest, his expression puzzled until he looked down.
“What in the name of—” He bent down to get a closer look without touching anything. “Is that what I think it is?”
Greta nodded.
“Any idea whose, or where it came from?” he asked.
“Not where it came from, but it must have been Maxine’s,” Greta volunteered. “This was her room all her life.”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Kit cautioned. “We don’t know for certain it was hers.”
“Who else’s could it have been?” Greta reasoned. “It has to have been hers. She’s the only person who’s lived here and slept in this room for the past eighty years.”
The policeman turned to Kit. “Are you Ms. Porterfield?”
“Yes, but it’s Kit,” she said.
“She’s Maxine’s niece and she owns this place now, as the gossip express has probably already told you.” To Kit, Greta said, “Hal Anderson is our chief of police and most of our police department. Hal is Liam’s dad.”
Kit extended her hand, and he took it. “Liam’s been helping me out this week. He’s a great kid.”
“I heard he’d been out here. And thanks. He has his moments.” Hal let go of her hand, then stood with his back to the chest. “Did either of you touch the remains?”
Both women shook their heads. “No.”
Kit added, “Just the quilt.”
“Walk me through what happened here.”
Before Kit could respond, Greta launched into the story of how Kit had asked her if she wanted anything from the house and she’d remembered the quilts and said she’d like to have one.
How they’d come upstairs and opened the chest—because that’s where they had always been kept, though years ago it had been in Maxine’s parents’ room—and how they’d moved around this quilt and that one and saw one was sort of bundled up.
She came up for air only long enough to take a deep breath before continuing.
“I started to pull on the bundle and the end of the quilt fell away and there was that . . .” She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue she’d taken from her sweater pocket.
Hal turned to Kit and asked, “Ms. Porterfield, how long have you been here?”
“Just for the past week,” Kit told him. “In the house, on and off for the past week. I haven’t been staying here at night, though. I’ve had a room at the inn in town.”
“How many times had you been here before this week?”
“This is my first time,” she replied.
If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. “What was your purpose in coming now?”
“My aunt passed away and I inherited the camp. I wanted to see what she’d left me. What was here. My mother grew up here.”
“When was the last time you saw your aunt?” he asked.
“We’d never met,” she replied.
He raised an eyebrow. “You never met your aunt, yet she left you”—he gestured with his left hand—“all this? Her house? The camp?”
Kit nodded. “Yes.”
“We’re going to need to talk,” he said pointedly. “But right now let’s get some people up here and get an investigation started.”
He took his phone from his pocket and walked into the hall. Kit could hear his murmured tone but not what he was saying.
“You don’t think he thinks I had anything to do with that child, do you?” Kit whispered to Greta.
“Oh, of course not. But you do own the property, and you are next of kin to the person who lived—and may I remind you, died—here. So he’s going to have a lot of questions.” Greta patted Kit on the knee. “But his interrogation will not be the worst thing that happened today.”
Kit nodded. Opening the chest had been.
Hal came back into the room and announced, “I’ve got a call into the Maine State Police.
They’re going to send over a trooper and a forensics expert but can’t get anyone here until later this afternoon, so I’m going to have to ask you both not to leave.
In the meantime, I’ve asked Dr. Steele to come out.
” He turned to Kit. “He’s our local doc but also this area’s state deputy medical examiner, and he’ll handle the remains and see if it can be determined if the child died of natural causes or whether we’re looking at a homicide. ”
Of all the things that could have caused the baby’s death, murder had not crossed Kit’s mind. The very thought of it caused the hair on the back of her neck to stand up.
“How long before the doctor gets here?” Kit asked. It was already almost three o’clock. Her flight from Augusta was at six.
“Doc Steele moves at his own speed,” Greta said before Hal could respond. “And he has two. Slow and slower.”
Kit looked at Hal for confirmation. He shrugged. “He’ll get here when he gets here. Although since he spent a lot of time out here as a boy, he might be inclined to speed things up a bit. His curiosity might get the best of him.”
“We could hope,” Greta grumbled.
Kit could feel her anxiety grow. She’d never make it to the airport by the required two hours before her flight. “Maybe we could go downstairs. I could use a cup of tea.”
“I could use a few shots of bourbon, but if that’s not an option, tea would be fine.” Greta stood, wobbling a bit. “Gotta get my sea legs,” she muttered.
“Did anyone else stay in here?” Hal asked as Greta and Kit moved toward the door.
Greta started into the hall. “No. I told you. This was Maxine’s room all her life. I used to stay over when we were kids, but that was a long time ago.” She paused in the doorway to add, “And no, that baby wasn’t mine.”
The police chief stood at the window, watching, no doubt, for the medical examiner and the state troopers to arrive. “Wasn’t going to ask, Greta.”
Kit dreaded making the call to Russ and telling him she wouldn’t be arriving that evening. She was in the process of searching on her phone for a flight to Philadelphia the next day when there was a loud knock on the front door.
“That would be Doc Steele.” Greta rose from the kitchen table, where she and Kit had been drinking tea, both of them still disquieted after their earlier find. “You sit. I’ll let him in.”
Kit was grateful for a few moments to herself. She called Russ’s office number, and when he failed to pick up, she called his cell phone and left a voicemail.
“Russ, something’s come up. Something serious. I’m not going to make my flight tonight. I’m looking for another airline or possibly another airport, but right now I’m trying my best to get home for your retirement party tomorrow night. Please call me when you get this so I can explain. Thanks.”
She disconnected the call, then thought of calling Abby, just in case Russ didn’t hear her message, but the chief walked into the kitchen.
“Could I make you a cup of tea?” she asked. “The only coffee is ancient instant, and while I haven’t tried it myself, I’m sure it’s horrible.”
“Actually, a cup of tea would be much appreciated.”