Chapter Sixteen
“Ms. Porterfield?”
A gentle hand on her shoulder coaxed her into waking. She opened her eyes slowly until she focused on a pair of brown eyes that stared directly into hers.
She struggled to sit up. “Oh my gosh. Chief Anderson. Did you find something else?”
“No, no. I just wanted you to know that the evidence team has left and Dr. Steele has taken the remains back to the hospital for some testing.”
“Why are you whispering?” she asked.
He pointed into the living room, where Greta was still out cold. She nodded in acknowledgment.
A glance out the nearest window told her it was light already.
She frowned. “It’s daytime again?”
He smiled and nodded. “Yup. It’s Thursday morning, but very early. Sorry to wake you, but I didn’t want to leave without letting you know that the state has completed their work upstairs, so you can feel free to do whatever you were doing or going to do up there.”
“Thanks, but I’m not in any hurry to go back up there.” The image of those twiglike arms and that tiny skull wrapped in the cotton quilt would haunt her. “So you’re all leaving now?”
“Everyone except Trooper Collins. He wants to look at the cabins, so I’ll be accompanying him.”
“Right now?” she asked.
The chief nodded.
“May I come along? I’ve been meaning to go down there but I haven’t gotten to it yet.”
“I don’t see why not. I’ll give you a few minutes to get ready and meet you out on the front porch.”
“Thank you. I won’t be long, I promise.”
Kit used the powder room under the front stairs and pulled on the boots she’d rescued from Maxine’s closet.
The boxes of Maxine’s clothes that were intended for the thrift shop were still in the front hallway.
There was evidence they’d been gone through, and not too neatly.
She’d have to refold everything before she sent them to the thrift shop.
She grabbed her puffer coat and slipped into it, wrote a hasty note to Greta, then went through the front door.
The chief and the state trooper were in conversation at the foot of the porch steps.
“Ms. Porterfield, this is Maine State Trooper Adam Collins,” the chief said, introducing his companion.
“We met earlier.” Kit nodded.
“I hear you want to check out the cabins,” the trooper said.
“I do, thank you. I haven’t been in any of them. Actually, I don’t even know what they look like.”
“Wait. Where are you all going?” Greta demanded from the open front door.
“To the cabins,” Kit replied.
“Without me?”
“You’re welcome to come,” the chief told her.
For a moment, Greta seemed to consider the offer. “Nah, it’s too far to walk this early in the morning and the ground’s all muddy. I bet that path is a mess. I’ll hang here.”
“What a piece of work,” the chief muttered once Greta closed the door.
Kit laughed. “You know her well.”
Trooper Collins started walking toward the path that wound around the lake and down to the cabins. Kit and the chief fell in step.
“Greta has a heart of gold, don’t get me wrong, but she’s in everyone’s business all day, all the time.” The chief laughed. “She’s like a one-person party line.”
“She is that, but I have to say, she’s been very helpful to me. She knew my aunt as well as anyone, and probably better than most, and that’s been great for me since I didn’t know her at all.”
Kit slipped a little on the muddy path and the chief grabbed her arm to keep her from falling.
“Thanks,” she said. “A fall into all this mud would have been messy.”
“So you were never curious enough to come up here to see the camp?” Trooper Collins fell back a step or two to walk alongside Kit.
“My sister and I didn’t even know about the camp. Just like neither of us knew about Maxine. Mom mentioned she’d grown up at a camp in Maine, but she always made it sound like the place was sold after her parents died. I still find it hard to believe she kept all this from us.”
“What are you going to do with the place, now that you’ve seen it?” the chief asked.
“I’ve only seen the house, and the lake but only from the dock. I’m told there’s a tennis court out here, and there must be a boathouse or something, because Greta said they used to take out the boats and the kayaks.”
“The boathouse is down by the lake, close to the cabins, but you can’t see it from the house because of the trees. It’s up around the next bend in the path.” He slowed his pace. “But you haven’t answered the question. Not that you have to,” he hastened to add.
“The easy answer is I don’t know. My primary objective in coming here was to find out whatever I could about the feud between my mother and my aunt but also to gather any things that should be kept in the family—photos, family mementos, things like that—after which time I planned on selling it all.
But now—” She shrugged. “I just don’t know.
I’ve already learned so much. I hadn’t a clue that Miles Easton and my aunt had planned on marrying.
I read some of his books when I was in college and thought him brilliant.
And here I come to find out we were almost related.
That’s pretty heady stuff for a former librarian. ”
Kit slipped again and decided that walking too quickly to try to keep up with the trooper wasn’t a good idea. She fell back, and the chief followed her lead. The trooper went up ahead, and moments later the first of the cabins came into view.
“I’m heading in,” he called back to Kit and the chief.
They caught up and went into the cabin, which looked like every log cabin Kit had ever seen in photos, only darker because there was no electricity: a porch that ran across the front of the structure, one window on either side of the front door, a pitched roof.
She went inside and looked around at the dark interior.
“I’m almost afraid to ask. What did you find?”
The trooper held a large flashlight in his right hand, then shined it on different spots in the main room. “Just some mouse droppings and a few nests, a squirrel’s nest, some old bedsheets, someone’s forgotten underwear.”
“Ugh.” Kit frowned. “Toss them.”
“That would be your job.” He grinned. “I’m just here to look for something that might give us a clue about the remains you found.”
“Maybe those sheets you mentioned,” she suggested.
Collins shined the light on the pile of fabric that lay in a heap in a corner. “It’s got Minions all over it. I’m pretty sure those remains pre-date the movie. But nice try.”
She wished she’d brought a flashlight of her own. They stood inside one large room that had a wood-burning stove, a sofa, two chairs, and a dining area with a table and six armless chairs.
Kit asked, “Could I use the flashlight for a moment?”
“Sure.” He handed it over and she moved the light around the room.
At the far end was a kitchen that had older appliances—a small stove and an even smaller refrigerator. There was limited counter space, and not much else.
She flashed the light to the opposite side of the room and saw a flight of stairs. She climbed them tentatively and found a loft area that had several mattresses on the floor and the bare bones of bunk beds against one wall. There were cobwebs everywhere.
“Not much to see here,” said Collins, who’d followed her up the stairs.
Back downstairs she handed the flashlight to the trooper.
“Thanks. What else is down here?”
“There’s a short hall over here on the left of the kitchen,” the chief told her, his own flashlight in his hand. “There’s a small bathroom with a sink, a toilet, and a small shower but no tub, and across the hall there are two bedrooms.”
He waited until she caught up with him, then handed her his flashlight.
She stepped into the doorway of the first room.
In the light she saw a double bed and a nightstand and what she thought would have been a small closet with the door hanging off the hinges, and more cobwebs.
The room next to it had a set of bunk beds on one wall, and a single bed on the other.
Kit viewed both rooms silently.
“It’s definitely the no-frills model,” she said when they went back to the main front room.
“I’m guessing they’re all pretty much the same basic rustic cabins,” Chief Anderson said. “I think that’s why people come to places like this. To get away from all the trappings of modern life.”
“It could be a little more hospitable,” Kit observed. Not only was the cabin drab, it was poorly lit and uninviting.
“Did the cabins come equipped with bed linens, blankets, that sort of thing?” the chief asked. “Or did the campers bring their own?”
Kit shook her head. “I don’t know. I think the campers might have had to bring their own.” She thought for a moment. “But I bet Greta would know. She said she helped Maxine clean the cabins after the guests left every year.”
“Have you found anything at all that might tie into the remains that were found in the house?” the chief asked.
“I don’t know if we’d realize its relevance even if we found something. How many campers do you think have come through these cabins in the past thirty, forty, fifty years, however old those remains were?”
Kit grimaced. “Probably hundreds. But we don’t know that the child was ever in one of these cabins, if so, when, and if so, what could have been left behind that would have survived all the years between.”
“Yeah, short of a note that says, ‘My name is Jane Doe and my baby choked to death on a penny and I gave it to the lady who runs the camp.’” Collins looked around.
“This is a waste of time. I’m going to poke into the other cabins and check out the boathouse down by the lake, but after that, I’m out of here. ”
“I don’t blame you,” Chief Anderson told the young trooper. “Maybe once we have the report from the forensic team, we’ll have something to go on.”
“I don’t know what you’re going to get from them, either. No fingerprints on the quilt or the bones, no obvious sign of injury. There’s just nothing to work with here. There’s not a whole lot to test.”
Kit and the chief followed Collins from one cabin to the next.
They were all built and furnished in the same fashion: two bedrooms with a bathroom across the hall; a great room with a kitchen, dining area, and living space; and a loft, where there were bunk beds.
There was nothing to set one apart from the others.
The last in the row showed signs of recent habitation: some discarded food wrappers, beer cans, and plastic water bottles.
“This must be the cabin where Liam found someone had broken in and stayed for a night or two,” Kit said. “He thought someone had come up to the camp to do a little ice fishing. Though it could have been the sap poacher.”
“Ice fishing up here isn’t new. Locals have been sneaking up to the lake to ice fish for years. No one at the camp seemed to mind,” the chief said. “I don’t remember ever getting a call from Maxine about the cabins. The sap, though, that’s a new one.”
There were still charred remains in the clearing next to cabin twelve, where eleven had stood. Kit walked over to stand where the front porch would have been. She closed her eyes, and for a moment, she could see Miles sitting on the steps, smiling at Maxine while she took his picture.
“Was there another cabin here?” the trooper asked when he noticed Kit staring at the vacant lot.
“Yes. I was told it burned down years ago,” Kit said.
He joined Kit at the clearing and walked where the interior would have been. He returned to where she stood, shaking his head. “Not a thing left. Must have been one hell of a blaze. Funny it didn’t reach the cabin next door. Or did it, and it was later rebuilt?”
“From what I’ve heard, the fire was in the winter,” the chief said as he wandered over after he’d closed up cabin ten.
“There’d been a snowstorm, and the cabins were all wet with some melting runoff from the day.
I think the fire didn’t have time to spread.
It burned quick, right down to the foundation, nothing left but the shell, which was taken down in the spring.
The fire crew did come out, but there wasn’t much left to do but wet down the ashes and water down the cabins on either side.
The snow had pretty much put the fire out. ”
“Cabin eleven was where Miles stayed when he was here,” Kit told them. “It burned down after he died.”
“Who’s Miles?” Collins asked.
“He was my aunt’s fiancé. He died in a plane crash.”
“Oh. That must have been tough on her.”
“I’m sure it was.” Kit wondered if she should mention that there were some who thought Maxine had deliberately burned it down, but the chief beat her to it.
“There was a rumor going around at one time that Maxine had torched the place, but it was never proven. There wasn’t anything left to look at, and no accelerant had been used, so there wasn’t any way of determining the cause of the fire.”
“There’s just a bunch of fallen leaves there now, and a few scraggly trees.
Looks like the plot’s been kept cleared,” Collins said.
“I’m going to check out the boathouse, though I doubt I’ll find anything there either after all this time.
Just want to be thorough, but I’m not expecting any eureka moments. ”
Kit watched him walk away. She wanted to see the boathouse as well but was drawn to the vacant lot.
Had Maxine kept the forest from taking over the place where Miles’s cabin had stood?
It appeared she had. Other than the volunteer maples and oaks, and a few thin trees she didn’t recognize in their infant state, the lot held only grass and some winter-weary weeds.
“You want to see the boathouse?” the chief asked her.
“I do. I’ll be down in a minute.”
His feet crunched over the hardened snow as he walked toward the lake, but after a moment, the only sound Kit heard was the light wind blowing through the trees.
The barely visible impression of the foundation was the only reminder that a cabin had once stood here, a cabin where her aunt and her lover had no doubt found peace and joy together.
It never failed to sadden Kit when she thought about the depth of Maxine’s loss.
When she’d heard of the plane crash, realized Miles was gone, had she run here to scream out her grief?
Had she locked herself in, slept in the bed they’d shared, clutching his pillow to her chest, seeking to weep away her broken heart?
It was all too much to bear, to love someone so deeply, only to lose them in the blink of an eye.
No goodbye, no promise to see them in the next life.
Just—nothing. Just—gone. Not even a service, a grave, an urn of ashes.
No place to go to remember—except to the cabin.
Kit surmised Maxine must have found great solace as well as sadness there.
It made no sense that she would destroy it.