Twisted Threads (19 page)

Monday morning I headed back to Brunswick. It had only been five days since I’d been there looking for Lattimore, but it seemed a long time. A lot had happened since then.

Dropping off the cartons at Goodwill made me feel I’d taken a major step toward putting the past to rest.

And buying a laptop turned out to be simpler than I’d thought. I even found the accounting software I wanted, and the store personnel loaded everything for me. Now I had no excuses for not starting to input Mainely Needlepoint’s account information.

By the time I got to Bath for lunch, I felt as though I’d accomplished enough for a day. Time for a beer and barbeque.

Clem had gotten there first and saved us a table.

She was wearing three-inch heels and a sea blue silk dress, which wrapped her in all the right places. She could have stepped out of a
Business Week
article about the youngest woman named CEO of a major banking chain.

“Wow,” I said. “You look great. Do you look this elegant every day at work?”

“‘Dress for the job you want, not the job you have,’” she answered. “That’s my mantra. Plus, clothes are my downfall. I’ve got charges at most of the Freeport outlets.”

Investigating new boyfriends and adulterous wives hadn’t required an elegant wardrobe. I might have to do some shopping if I was going to be “the face of Mainely Needlepoint,” as Gram had put it. I’d already bought a laptop. I’d have to get Wi-Fi for Gram’s house, so I could use her printer. And I had to invest in my wardrobe, too? This business would definitely have to make money.

“If I decide to upgrade my style, I’ll know who to call,” I said.

“I can’t believe you’re both here!” While Clem had honed her image from the one she’d had in high school, Cindy, as I’d seen on Saturday, had put on weight. Today she was wearing mom jeans and a Pats sweatshirt. Someone had spit up on her shoulder. They’d made very different choices for their lives, but they both seemed comfortable. I wondered if I’d ever feel as content with mine.

We all hugged and sat down, picked up the menus, and ordered the same lunch: pulled pork on a bun, with a side of roasted sweet potatoes. Exactly what we’d always ordered.

I turned to Cindy. “I met your three children yesterday, and you mentioned your husband. Now catch me up. Where did you meet him?”

She blushed. “Clive’s a dear. I met him through a friend of a friend when I was going to massage school. I needed to practice on people, and he volunteered!”

“So that’s what they call a happy ending.” I grinned. They both groaned. “I’m guessing you’ve heard that before?”

“Only a few million times,” she answered, nodding. “But you have an exciting job! Mom told me you’re a private investigator in Arizona. No blizzards, and hot guys in shorts!”

“Not exactly,” I answered. “Hot temperatures, for sure. Sizzling. But, believe me, not all hot guys. And I’m not officially a private investigator. I worked for one. But for the moment, that’s in the past. I’m going to stay around awhile and get Mainely Needlepoint, Gram’s business, back on track.”

Cindy’s mother had told her about our business problems; we filled Clem in.

“Mainely Needlepoint sounds like a cool niche business. Once you get it back up and running, maybe I could pitch a story about it to one of my bosses at Channel 7,” Clem suggested. “This summer we’re planning to run a series on unique small businesses in Maine.”

“That would be great! But first we have to settle the little question of whether one of the needlepointers murdered the guy I’m replacing,” I explained.

“What?” Turned out neither of them knew about Lattimore’s death or the investigation. I didn’t want to say much. After all, Cindy’s mother had been at our house when Lattimore was poisoned. She was on the suspect list. Their friend Lauren had been there, too.

“How is Lauren?” Cindy asked. “Is she still having problems with Caleb?”

I wasn’t exactly surprised at that question. He’d seemed crazy enough to be dangerous when he’d stopped in earlier in the week. I wanted to know more about him. “I’ve only seen Lauren a few times. She came to the funeral, and I saw her at the needlepoint meeting and once at Harbor Haunts. We didn’t talk much. She told me she was back waitressing full-time because of the mess with Mainely Needlepoint. She didn’t mention her husband.”

“Well,” Cindy said, lowering her voice, “Caleb had a pretty nasty reputation before they got married. Drank too much. Had friends who ended up with records. Considered trouble. But Lauren couldn’t see that. Maybe she thought she’d reform him. Or maybe love was blind. I will say when I went to her wedding, they looked great. They’d put a down payment on a lobster boat, and Caleb was real excited about that. But making a living from lobstering’s been rough the past couple of years.”

“Gram mentioned that,” I said. “What is it? Global warming?” Lobsters needed deep, cold water to spawn.

“Partially. But mostly it’s competition from Canada. A lot of lobstermen here used to send their lobsters to Canadian canneries. Then a few years ago Canada decided to protect its own lobstermen by putting major tariffs on imported lobsters. A lot of our guys lost their contracts with Canadian firms,” Clem explained.

“Tourists, of course, have loved it,” Cindy added. “Lobsters have come down in price because now more of them are available for local markets.”

“But lobstermen aren’t making the livings they’re used to.” I caught on right away.

“Exactly,” Clem put in. “Some of them have even stopped lobstering. Lauren’s working her rear off, but I heard Caleb’s started hanging around with his old friends; guys who never bothered to stay in school long enough or get decent jobs. Some of them are dealing.”

“Drugs? You’re saying he’s involved with drugs?” If Lauren was coping with a husband doing that, no wonder she hadn’t checked out a locker key in Union more quickly. She had other issues to cope with.

“There’s a growing meth business in Maine,” Clem shared. “It’s an open secret in a lot of towns. Not so much on the coast as inland, where the shoe factories have gone out of business and the paper industry isn’t hiring as many anymore.”

Cindy shrugged. “I don’t know if he’s dealing. But the word around is that he’s using, for sure. And when Caleb was drinking, he’d get violent. On alcohol and drugs . . . it can’t be pretty. Or easy to deal with. And Lauren’s never been quite the same since her little girl died.”

“I heard she had a child. What happened?” I’d forgotten to ask Gram.

“Robin was only two. She drowned. Fell off the rocks near the lighthouse into the surf. Story was Lauren had only let go of her hand for a minute.”

Now I was definitely more sympathetic to Lauren.

“It was awful when Lauren found your mom’s body. She was all over the news.” Clem shook her head. “I tried to get in touch with her then. I thought maybe I’d help her at least get her hair done and give her a few tips on how to handle the press, but she never returned my calls.”

“Maybe she thought since you worked for a television station, you were going to interview her yourself. Or try to get an inside story,” suggested Cindy.

“Maybe. But at least that story’s not a lead anymore. I’m sorry about your mother, Angie.”

I nodded. “Now the town seems divided about whether Joe Greene killed her, or someone else was involved.”

“I thought all the evidence pointed to him.”

“It does. But many of his friends in town don’t want to believe he’s guilty.”

“Remember, Angie, when you and I and Lauren were in Brownies, with Mrs. Greene as our leader?” Cindy said. “Life was so simple then. And we had so much fun. Remember our first camping trip?”

I rolled my eyes. “I’ve tried to forget it.”

“You peed in your sleeping bag because you heard noises in the bushes!”

“That was your fault! You shouldn’t have been wandering around after we were all supposed to be asleep,” I said.

“I was trying to hide behind those bushes so I could pee!” Cindy laughed. “We were in, what? Third grade then?” She shook her head in disbelief. “My son’s in kindergarten already. It all seems impossible.”

“Like it or not, we’re the grown-ups now,” said Clem.

“That’s just a rumor,” I added.

“I wasn’t in Haven Harbor for Brownies, but what I loved best about Girl Scouts,” Clem admitted, “was that Mr. Greene sent all the second-day cookies and tarts and muffins over to our meetings for our refreshments.
Yum!
”

“I didn’t like Mr. Greene,” Cindy said quietly. “Mr. Greene was a pervert.”

The table was silent. A long-locked door had opened. “He tried to touch you, too?” I asked.

None of us spoke for a minute or two. We all concentrated on our barbeque. I took a long drink of beer.

Then Clem said, “What? He never tried anything with me.”

“You were lucky. I was scared to go into that shop of his. He was always finding an excuse for me to walk in back of the display case.” Cindy’s voice was steady.

“To choose your favorite cookie?” I said.

She nodded. “Exactly. I’d go behind the counter with him, and sometimes he’d just touch my rear, like it was by accident. If I had a skirt on, it was worse. His hand would reach under it.... I tried to make up reasons why I wouldn’t go near him. But my mother thought it was cute that I was so shy. She’d push me toward him.”

“You never told her?”

She shook her head. “I was too embarrassed. My mother didn’t even want to talk about buying me a bra when my boobs were bouncing all over the kickball field. How about you?”

“The first time I thought it was an accident. That he was just being a little too friendly, you know? But every time it got worse. I was . . . developed . . . pretty early, and he used to grab my breasts. The counter would cover it all. No one would see. And he’d just keep talking about the price of doughnuts and sliced whole wheat bread to whoever was in the store.” I swallowed. I’d never talked about Mr. Greene before. He was still in my nightmares. “I was too embarrassed. I thought it was just me.” I’d thought he’d done it to me because Mama flirted with him and I’d been singled out. I hated to admit it, but Cindy’s admission was a relief. It hadn’t just been me. I hadn’t done anything to encourage him.

“Lauren used to ask me to spend the night at her house. I never would go,” Cindy continued.

“Me either! I came up with excuses every time.” I nodded.

“No wonder she got angry with us and said nasty things.”

Clem looked from one of us to the other. “I can’t believe that. How awful! Now I’m wondering why he didn’t do the same to me.”

“You were lucky,” said Cindy. “And you didn’t come to Haven Harbor until you were older.”

“I wonder how many other girls he touched?” I asked. “We can’t have been the only two.”

“He could have been doing it for years,” Clem said. “If no one ever told.”

“I once started to tell my mother what happened, but she said I must have misunderstood,” Cindy said. “She said that Mr. Greene was a nice man who just liked to tease little girls. That some men were like that. I should smile and move away.”

“Today they teach that ‘places not to touch’ stuff in school. Back then, nobody warned us.” Clem shook her head.

“I wonder if he ever did anything to Lauren,” I thought out loud.

“His own daughter?”

Clem and Cindy looked at each other.

“Do you think he would have?” Cindy asked. “That’s even more seriously creepy.”

“She never hinted that her father was a problem,” Clem said. “And she took care of her mom, and then her dad when they were sick. How could she have done that if . . .”

Lauren’s neighbor had said Lauren stopped coming to see her dad after her mom had died. Maybe she’d only taken care of her mom.

“I was so angry and depressed. I had trouble making friends. I never wanted to leave my house because I was afraid I’d see him. Finally I convinced my parents to send me away to private school, but the rest of you were in in town. You couldn’t avoid him all the time. That must have been nightmarish,” Cindy said.

“It was,” I agreed. “I dreaded when Mama sent me to the bakery on an errand. She thought I should love going there all by myself, because it showed how grown-up I was, and because Mr. Greene always gave me an extra cookie. She didn’t know how I was paying for those cookies.” I shook my head. “I hate sugar cookies. Every time I see one or smell one, I feel sick.”

“But it’s over. He’s gone. We survived. And, let me tell you, my kids are being taught to tell me if anyone tries that with them,” Cindy declared.

“Good. And I hope there’s no one like Mr. Greene in your neighborhood,” stated Clem, nodding.

The three of us finished our lunches and parted, with hugs and promises to stay in touch.

I drove back to Haven Harbor and set up my new laptop on the old desk in my bedroom.

First I ran a search on the telephone number Mama had written down.

Until a few years ago, that had been the number for Greene’s Bakery.

Why had Joe Greene’s telephone number been in Mama’s pocket?

And I hadn’t told Clem and Cindy everything. I hadn’t kept silent about Joe Greene. I’d told Mama about him.

I hadn’t planned it. But when she’d asked me why I was so happy and excited about flying up from being a Brownie to being a Junior Girl Scout, I’d told her it was because when I was a Junior, Mrs. Greene wouldn’t be my leader. I wouldn’t have to go to her house anymore, and I hated Mr. Greene. When she asked me why, I’d told her about the touching. Mama had hugged me and told me that I wouldn’t have to worry about that anymore. I’d thought she meant I wouldn’t have to worry because I wouldn’t be a Brownie much longer.

Maybe she’d meant something else.