A Song of Shadows (2 page)

Soames left Bay Street behind and turned on to Burgess Road. He paused outside the Sailmaker. The doors were closed, and he could see no signs of life. He had already made his pitch to the Tabors to act as Realtor for the property, and Frank had promised to call him later that day. Soames would miss the Sailmaker. It had boasted a pretty good bar, and he enjoyed shooting the breeze with Donna Burton, who bartended there on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and weekends. She was the kind of flirtatious divorcée who kept customers returning, or male customers anyway, female customers being less susceptible to her charms, and also strangely reluctant to let their unaccompanied husbands or boyfriends spend significant amounts of time in her presence.

Soames didn’t know what Donna would do now that the Sailmaker was closing. She lived down in Pirna, where she worked as a secretary, and her part-time summer hours at the Sailmaker had made the difference between a comfortable winter and one in which the thermostat was kept a couple of degrees lower than ideal. Maybe Fred Amsel at the Blackbird Bar & Grill would give her a few hours, if his wife Erika allowed him. Donna would bring her Sailmaker customers with her, and Fred would be competing with the Brickhouse for their business. Maybe Soames would have a word with Fred about it, and Fred could then broach the subject with Erika. Mrs Amsel might have looked like someone who had repeatedly had a door slammed shut on her face, with the temperament to match, but she was no fool when it came to money.

Who knows, thought Soames, but when Donna heard about his efforts on her behalf, she might even be willing to reward him with some carnal delights. Soames had given a great deal of thought to just how carnally delightful a night with Donna Burton might be. Those fantasies had sustained him through the dying years of his marriage. Now that he was single again, he had laid siege to her over two summers with a stubbornness that would have shamed the Greek army at Troy. He hadn’t yet managed to breach her defenses, but Fred Amsel might just be the man to boost him over the parapet. If that didn’t work, Soames would have to figure out how to hide himself inside a wooden horse and pay someone to leave him on her doorstep.

Soames drove on until the houses started to thin out, and the line began to blur between Boreas’s town limits and those of tiny, neighboring Gratton to the north. The two towns shared resources, including a police force, mainly because Gratton made Boreas look like Vegas, so any lines on a map were for informational purposes only. The Boreas PD also had contracts for Pirna to the south, and Hamble and Tuniss to the west, the latter two being townships that consisted of little more than scattered houses and dilapidated barns. Most everyone from the surrounding area went to Boreas or Pirna to do business, and the five towns had come together to form a single council, on which Soames sat. The bimonthly meetings, held every first and third Wednesday, tended to be fractious affairs: property taxes were higher in Boreas than elsewhere, and those in the town who resented seeing their dollars going to service sewers in Hamble, or road maintenance in Tuniss, whispered darkly of socialism.

Soames turned right off Burgess Road on to Toland’s Lane, which wound its way down to Green Heron Bay, the most obscure of the inlets on the peninsula. It was long and sheltered by high dunes, and something about its orientation made it particularly susceptible to winds from the sea, so that facing into even a comparatively mild breeze made a house along the shore feel like the prow of a ship during a storm. It was always a couple of degrees cooler in its environs that elsewhere around Boreas, as though winter had chosen this place to leave a reminder of its eventual return. Tourists generally didn’t bother using it, the occasional bird-watchers excepted, and they were usually disappointed by the absence of any herons, green or otherwise.

Only two houses stood on the bay, both of which were former summer homes, one bought in haste and repented at leisure, and the other a family bequest that had remained unloved and unused following the reading of the will. In truth, Soames had despaired of ever selling, or even renting, either of them, and it had come as a surprise and a relief when both attracted occupants within weeks of each other, even if the pleasure in finally securing some income for his clients – and a monthly percentage for himself – was tempered slightly by the identity of one of the renters.

Soames had read about the private detective named Charlie Parker, of course, even before the shooting and convalescence that had brought him at last to Boreas. Soames had some friends and former clients in both the Bangor PD and the Maine State Police, and was privy to barroom details of the man’s life that had never made it into any newspaper. If Parker wasn’t quite trouble, he was closely related to it.

Initially, though, the approach about renting the house came from a lawyer named Aimee Price down in South Freeport, who told Soames that she had a client who needed privacy and quiet, in order to recover from a recent trauma. She came up to Boreas to view the house, decided that it met her client’s needs, and signed a lease, all in the space of a single morning. Yet negotiations over the rent made the meetings of the town council seem somnolent by comparison, and Soames had come out of the whole business bruised, battered, and checking to make sure that Price hadn’t stolen his watch as well. Only when the lease agreement was signed did Price mention the name of her client: Charlie Parker.

‘The private detective?’ said Soames, as he watched the ink dry on the lease. ‘The one who got shot up?’

‘Yes. Is that a problem?’

Soames thought about the question. It would only be a problem if the people who had tried to kill Parker came back for another attempt. The house had been hard enough to rent as things stood. The owners would be better off burning it to the ground if it became the scene of a massacre. It would also be likely to cost him his seat on the council. He wouldn’t be popular if his lax standards led to Boreas becoming famous for something other than Forrest’s Ice Cream Parlor and the shrimp étouffée at Crawley’s Cajun Citchen. (‘The Best Cajun Food in Northern Maine,’ which, all things considered, wasn’t a slogan to set the heart alight, even if Crawley’s did serve damned fine food, although that cutesy misspelling of ‘kitchen’ caused Soames to twitch involuntarily every time he saw it in print.)

He decided that honesty might be the best policy.

‘Look, a man like that has enemies,’ he said, ‘and nobody has ever been shot in Boreas. I mean,
ever
.’

‘Maybe you could put it on your sign,’ said Price. ‘You know: “Boreas: 75,000 days without a shooting”, like building sites do for workplace accidents.’

Soames tried to figure out if she was being facetious, and decided that she probably was. It had seemed like a good idea, too, if only for a moment.

‘Unhelpful suggestions about signage aside,’ said Soames, ‘his reputation might be a matter of concern.’

‘There’s no risk of a repeat of the incident that led to his injuries.’

‘You seem very certain of that.’

‘I am.’

She stared at him, as if inviting him to ask the question that danced on his lips and tongue. Soames swallowed. His office suddenly felt very warm. He thought about the rental income.

‘Given the unusual circumstances, perhaps we could—’

‘No.’

‘—look again at—’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘—the amount to be—’

‘You’re wasting your breath.’

‘Right.’

‘That house hasn’t had a tenant in almost two years.’

‘We’ve had offers.’

‘No, you haven’t.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Okay.’

‘Any further questions?’

‘Will he be armed?’

‘I don’t know. You can ask him when you see him, if you like.’

Soames thought about what he knew of the detective.

‘I guess he’ll be armed,’ he said, as much to himself as to Price. ‘If he isn’t, he probably should be.’

‘That’s the spirit,’ said Price. ‘And the fewer people who know about this for now, the better. Even when he gets here, it’ll be up to him how he deals with folks. Some may recognize his name or face, some may not.’

‘We mind our own business in Boreas,’ said Soames. ‘As far as I’m concerned, you’re the one renting the house, and if I’m asked who’s going to be living in it, I’ll just say that I have no idea.’

Price stood and extended her hand. Soames shook it.

‘It’s been a pleasure,’ she said.

‘Uh, likewise. I think.’

He walked her to her car.

‘One last thing,’ she said, and Soames felt his heart sink slightly. He hated ‘one last things.’

‘Some men from New York will be coming to look at the house. They’re, well, kind of security consultants. They may want to make some slight alterations, just to ensure that the house is up and running in every way. They won’t damage it. In fact, I imagine that any changes they make will only enhance its value.’

The promise of enhanced value made Soames feel better about everything.

‘I don’t think that will be a problem.’

‘Good. They don’t like problems.’

Something in her tone made him want to reach for a stiff drink, which, when she was gone, was exactly what he did. His secretary saw him sipping from the glass.

‘Are you celebrating?’ she asked.

‘You know,’ he replied, ‘I’m really not sure.’

2

S
oames participated in two further meetings before Parker’s arrival in Boreas. The first involved a Maine State Police detective named Gordon Walsh, who appeared in Soames’s office with Cory Bloom, Boreas’s chief of police, in tow. Bloom was a good-looking woman in her late thirties, and had she not been happily married, Soames might have considered putting the moves on her. Of course, the small matter of Bloom’s friendship with his ex-wife also had to be taken into account, which meant that Cory Bloom would be more likely to date a piece of gum that she’d peeled off the sole of her shoe than Bobby Soames, but a man could dream. So far, nobody had figured out a way to police fantasies.

Walsh hadn’t exactly set Soames’s fears to rest. He’d made it clear that Parker remained vulnerable, and stressed, like Aimee Price before him, how important it was that the detective’s presence in Boreas remained as unpublicized as possible. But Bloom assured Walsh that one of the advantages of Boreas – at least until tourist season began in earnest, which wouldn’t be for another month to six weeks – was the virtual impossibility of anyone being able to stop in town for longer than five minutes without being noticed. If strangers demonstrated unusual curiosity about any of its residents, someone would pick up on it. Bobby Soames could have confirmed the perspicacity of the town’s residents from personal experience, had he chosen to do so, given that his marriage had come to an end precisely because Eve Moorer from the florist’s shop had spotted him coming out of a motel on Route 1, accompanied by a woman twenty years his junior, a gamine who might even have been mistaken for his daughter, if he had had a daughter. But Walsh didn’t need to know that story, and Cory Bloom already did.

Bloom suggested that, while it might seem counterintuitive to do so, it would be best if a handful of the town’s more prominent and sensible citizens were quietly informed of the detective’s impending residence. She named a number of bar owners; the town’s Lutheran pastor, Axel Werner; and Kris Beck, who owned Boreas’s only gas station, along with a few others. Walsh didn’t object, and left it in her hands. A couple of other minor details were batted around, but otherwise Walsh’s visit to Boreas boiled down to the kind of warnings dotted around train stations and airports: if you see something, say something.

‘What I don’t understand,’ said Soames at last, ‘is why he picked here.’ It had been bothering him ever since Aimee Price signed the lease on the detective’s behalf.

‘You know the Brook House Clinic?’ said Walsh.

Soames did. It was an upscale private medical center about ten miles west of town, and more like a resort than a hospital. A couple of Hollywood actors, and at least one ex-president, had been treated there, although their presence at Brook House had never made it into the newspapers.

‘Well, he spent time there as part of his rehabilitation, and they’ll be taking care of his physiotherapy.’

‘He must have money, but he won’t have much of it left once that place is done wringing him out,’ said Soames. He wasn’t sure that he could even afford to have his temperature taken at Brook House.

‘My understanding is that they struck a rate,’ said Walsh.

‘Brook House? I heard they billed you just for breathing the air.’

‘You, maybe. Not him. You mind if we take a look at the house?’

Soames didn’t mind at all. Bloom drove them out in her Explorer, and Soames found himself instinctively dropping into Realtor mode, pointing out interesting features of the landscape, and the proximity of stores and bars, until Walsh informed him that he was only here for an hour, and wasn’t actually planning on relocating, which caused Soames to clam up and sulk the rest of the way to Green Heron Bay. Walsh made a single slow circuit around the house before entering. He then examined the interior thoroughly, opening and closing doors and windows, and testing locks and bolts.

‘What about the other house?’ he asked Soames, as all three of them stood on the porch, watching the waves break and the sands spiral.

‘It’s empty,’ said Soames. ‘Has been for a while, just like this place.’

‘Anyone makes any inquiries about it, you let the chief here know, okay?’

‘Absolutely.’

Walsh took in the dunes and the ocean, his hands on his hips, like he’d just conquered the bay and was considering where to plant his flag.

Soames coughed. He always coughed when he was nervous or uncertain about something. It was his only flaw as a Realtor, like a gambler’s ‘tell.’

‘Um, the lawyer, Ms Price, mentioned that some security consultants from New York would be coming by.’

Walsh’s mustache lifted on one side in what was almost a smile.