CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
When I left the Snuggles, Fee was across the street taking advantage of the beautiful spring day to spread mulch in the garden beds that lined my mother’s front walk. The daffodils had finally sprouted and the hyacinths were poking through.
Fee had taken care of my parents’ gardens as long as we’d lived in the house. When I was a kid, we’d stayed on Morrow Island all summer. Without Fee our house would have looked weedy and neglected. In return, my dad had plowed the sisters’ driveway, shoveled their walks, and raked their leaves in the autumn.
Now that she was bent with arthritis, I hated to see Fee working so hard. I always felt terribly guilty as she toiled away. But she absolutely insisted. Since my dad had died, Sonny had taken over the plowing, the shoveling, and the raking. The Snugg sisters did not take charity. Fee insisted on a quid pro quo.
“At least let me help.” I grabbed a shovel that was leaning against the front steps and distributed the mulch to the ends of the walk. Fee could spread it. She wouldn’t trust me with the detail work, but I could do the heavy lifting.
“Thanks,” she said.
We worked together for a few minutes. “Fee, do you know anything about lupines?” I asked.
“Lupinus polyphyllus,” she said. “Beautiful flowers, white, pink, purple, almost red, massed in the fields by the side of the road. They bloom in June as the solstice approaches, the symbol of a Maine summer begun.” Fee stopped raking the mulch and straightened up as much as she was able. “They’re not native, of course.”
I stopped shoveling. “You’re kidding. You just said they are the symbol of a Maine summer.”
Fee chuckled. “They’re invasive. They come from the West Coast. They’ve only been in Maine since the 1960s. They’ve pushed out our native lupines, lupinus perennis, which are extinct in Maine. And with lupinus perennis so went the Karner blue butterfly, now extirpated here, though I hear there are some in New Hampshire.”
“How did the West Coast lupines get to Maine?” I asked.
“You know how they got here.” Fee looked at me like she couldn’t believe her ears. “Miss Rumphius.”
“That’s a children’s book,” I protested.
“Based on a true story,” Fee responded. “Hilda Edwards of Christmas Cove. She dropped lupine seeds wherever she went.”
“I can’t believe lupines come From Away,” I said.
“And now they’re one of the most beloved sights in Maine. Something lost, something gained. Change is constant,” Fee said.
We had finished up the beds and were tidying up when the big black SUV pulled in front of the house. The window rolled down. “Did you get my second text?” Ben called. “When I said I was on my way to pick you up?”
I hadn’t looked. “You’re here now,” I shouted back. “Let’s do it.”
I started to introduce Fee but she waved me off. “You young people go along.”
* * *
Ben had already bought the tow chain and refused payment for it. As we drove up the highway toward Alice’s cottage, I spotted Oceanside Realty. “Ben, do you mind stopping here while I run in?”
He gave me a questioning look but pulled into the parking lot. “Are you looking for real estate?”
“Not exactly. I’ll only be a minute, I promise.”
Judi with the Pebbles Flintstone ponytail was behind the counter.
“Hi. I’m Julia Snowden. I came in the other day, do you remember?”
“Yes. You had questions about 587 Main Street.” She said it in a way that didn’t encourage further conversation. “Before you say anything, you should know the state police detectives have been here and I cooperated fully. I told them everything I know.”
But what did she know? “I’m not here about the murder, specifically,” I said, which was sort of true. “I’m wondering if you ever received any complaints from Phinney Hardison about Lupine Design.”
She sighed, impatient with the conversation. “As I told the detectives, after Zoey Butterfield rented her space, Phinney called numerous times. He didn’t like the renovation. She had approached him about paying for a security system, which ticked him off. She was too noisy, the store attracted too much foot traffic, and on and on.
“Like I told you before, we don’t have a management contract for the building. Nonetheless, we investigated every one of his complaints. We asked her to turn down the music in the studio, but that made Mr. Hardison madder, because then he could hear the machinery. We told him it was a permitted use. There was absolutely nothing that rose to the level where we would even recommend to the owner that Ms. Butterfield be evicted. Especially as she was renting three-quarters of the space, had paid for a massive renovation, and had a ten-year lease, while Mr. Hardison’s tenancy was month to month.”
“How did he take that?”
“About as well as you’d expect. He wouldn’t stop calling with complaints that got more and more deranged. Finally, to shut him up, we told him to put his demands in letter form and we’d forward them on to the owner’s law firm.”
“And did he?”
“He did. The letters have been arriving on the first of the month, along with his rent check, for a year.”
“Did you, or anyone in your office, ever read the letters?” I asked.
“Nope, nope, and nope. Thankfully, they came in sealed envelopes. We forwarded them to the owner’s lawyers, just like we said we would.”
“Do you know what the lawyers did with them?”
“Don’t know. Don’t want to know.” A phone began to ring. “I’ve got to go. Like I said, we told all this to the police. If you have any other questions, call them.”
I got back in the car and we went on our way. When I thanked him for making the stop, Ben gave me another curious look but didn’t ask questions.
I thought about what I’d learned. Phinney hated Zoey and wanted her evicted. Binder and Flynn knew that, too, from multiple sources. They’d tracked Phinney’s complaints as far as the real estate office. They had probably talked to the law firm and talked to Alice.
Ben pulled the heavy car up the private road to where my Subaru was still stuck in the car park. I got out and inspected the tires. The mud had closed around them like cement.
I stood on the front steps, a useless spectator, while Ben took the rear mat out of his car and lay on it to fix the chain to the Subaru’s rear axle. “Let me do that,” I said, but he wouldn’t hear of it.
The big SUV had no trouble extricating the much smaller Subaru. Ben turned off his car and stood opposite me. “There you go.” He was pleased with himself. “We said we’d have dinner, but we didn’t set a date.”
“True,” I replied. “You’re the one who’s leaving. And has a great-aunt to look after. What works for you?”
“Tomorrow night?”
“Why not?” The thought of Crowley’s again, and the risk that Chris would be working the door, was more than I wanted to deal with. “Let’s go to Damariscotta. There’s a great place there. Several, in fact. No sense in taking two cars. I’ll pick you up. It’s my treat. I should drive.”
He smiled in amusement. “Okay, but maybe call me from the bottom of the road? Let’s not do this again.”
I laughed.
He glanced at the high-tech watch on his wrist. “Seven thirty?”
“Seven thirty it is.” I paused, thinking about how to word my request. “There’s one more thing. I’d like to speak to Alice.”
“I’m sure she’d be pleased to see you.” The skin pinched together over his nose; he didn’t understand what I was getting at.
“I’d like to talk to her alone,” I clarified.
Ben hesitated, then relaxed. “Let me go in and clean up and I’ll get out of your hair.” He tilted his head in the direction of the Subaru. “You’ve got your own ride home.”
* * *
After Ben’s SUV disappeared down the long drive, I took off my boots and padded into the cottage. The hallway was dark, but when I entered the living room the west-facing view was ablaze with the late afternoon sun, low in the western sky.
“Hello, dear.” Alice was in the green velvet recliner. “I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”
I sat across from her. “Have you talked to Lieutenant Binder and Sergeant Flynn since we spoke?”
“How funny you should ask. They did come around earlier this afternoon with new questions.”
“Questions about Phinney,” I said.
She rubbed one thin hand over the other and gave a slight dip of her head. “Yes.”
“They asked about the letters Phinney sent to your law firm.”
She hesitated for a moment, then nodded, her bright blue eyes trained on me. “Yes.”
“Did you tell them about your history with Phinney?”
“No.” Her voice was low and quivery, not at all the self-assured woman I’d talked to before. She took a deep breath. “It’s ancient history. Not anything that could matter now.”
She had lied, or at least omitted.
“Except, if the detectives knew you were once in love with Phinney, they would know you had a reason to lie about the letters,” I said. “They asked you about them, didn’t they? They asked if you had them.”
She was silent for so long I wasn’t sure she would ever answer. Or answer truthfully. “They did.” She hesitated. “I think of myself as a truthful person. Liar is a new label for me, one I don’t wear easily.”
“Lying to the police in an active murder investigation is never a good idea,” I responded. “It’s a crime.”
“I’m sure you’re right, dear.” She pulled her blanket around her. “Would you like to see the letters?”
I was surprised at the offer and jumped at the chance before she had time to change her mind. I could tell her lie weighed on her heavily. She needed someone else to know about the letters.
She directed me to the same desk where she’d told Ben to find the keys on the day of my first visit. The letters were there, not at all hidden, in the top side drawer in a plastic baggie. There were about a dozen letters in their envelopes, the name of Alice’s law firm scrawled across the front in heavily slanted but readable penmanship.
“Read them if you like,” she said.
I sat in the desk chair. “I don’t think I should touch them.”
“I’ve read them each dozens of times,” she said. “I don’t think you can hurt them.”
I pulled an envelope from the middle of the pile and slid a letter out, holding it by its edges. The letter was dated the previous August and written in the same slanted handwriting, in blue ballpoint pen, that appeared on the envelopes. To Whom It May Concern. Then came the same litany of complaints I’d heard about before. Loud music, too many people coming and going, delivery trucks blocking parking spaces, requests to invest money that the author protested he did not have and it wasn’t his duty as a tenant to spend anyway. It was signed, Your tenant, Phinney Hardison.
I read the next letter, and then the next, moving forward in time. The tone and complaints were the same, until I came to the three most recent.
Those letters contained threats. I can see you’ll do nothing. I will have to take matters into my own hands. If I don’t get satisfaction, I’ll have to perform a citizen’s eviction. I gathered Phinney thought that was like a citizen’s arrest. Throughout the last three letters, the names Phinney called Zoey were increasingly vile. Clearly, he had hated her. She had somehow become responsible for every bit of hurt and anger he felt in his life.
I put the last letter back in its envelope. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t you evict him?”
She turned her palms upward. “Because it was Phinney. I would have if I’d understood he was in danger.”
“You have to give these to the detectives,” I insisted. “You can truthfully say they came to you in your role as his landlord. You don’t need to disclose anything about your past.” I got up from the chair and handed her the plastic bag. “Call the detectives. Now. Or I will.”
Flynn’s card was on her side table. She picked up the phone in the flowered case and pressed the numbers, moving her eyes from the card to the phone, squinting all the while.
“Detective? Alice Rumsford. You were here today asking about some letters.”
Flynn said something and Alice listened.
“Yes. As it happens, I have them. I apologize for not telling you earlier. My young friend here has urged me to call.” Alice listened again. “Julia Snowden.”
Flynn’s voice grew louder.
Alice ended the call. “He’ll be right along. He says for you to wait.”