Twenty-One

Saturday at 5:30 p.m., Peyton climbed out of her Jeep Wrangler and walked with Tommy toward her mother’s home, toting a bottle of merlot.

The sun was still high overhead. Summer was a reprieve for those living in a region where winters began in October and ended in mid-April, and darkness during winter months often fell before 4 p.m. For those who loved the outdoors, Aroostook County summers—when the sun rose before 4 a.m. and temps rarely cracked eighty-five—made the winters worth it.

She paused at the front door and exhaled.

“What’s wrong, Mom?” Tommy said. “Don’t you want to see Gram?”

“Of course, sweetie.” But her mind was elsewhere, and she wished she were as well: she hadn’t heard from Pete Dye since the previous night’s dinner date, she was tired from the events of the week, and a night at home would’ve been nice. But sometimes you do things for family.

She didn’t knock. She turned the doorknob, and they entered.

Seated at the kitchen table, smiling at something Lois had just said, was the detective she’d seen for the first time in the conference room at Garrett Station during the meeting between Sherry St. Pierre-Duvall and Stephanie DuBois.

Peyton kissed her mother’s cheek and handed her the bottle of wine.

“You didn’t have to bring this,” Lois said.

“I know,” Peyton said.

Tommy hugged his grandmother. “Can I go to the playroom, Gram?”

“May I?”

“May I go to the playroom?”

“Certainly. There might even be a new soccer ball in there for you.”

“You spoil him, Mom,” Peyton said.

“A grandmother’s prerogative.” Lois took her daughter’s thin L.L.Bean jacket and grandson’s hat. “Come with me,” she said, and Peyton followed her mother to the small office off the kitchen.

“Can you believe that woman?” Lois whispered, setting the jacket on the desk chair. “I mean, really. I told Rhonda not to bring anything, that I was preparing everything. Well, what did she do? She brought maple syrup pie. Is she trying to say my dessert—brownies—wasn’t enough?”

“Mother, I’m sure she wasn’t trying to insult you. Just trying to be nice.”

“Well, go out there and throw the brownies away. I’m making pudding au chômeur.”

“Mother, you don’t have time. Besides, this isn’t a contest.”

“Who said anything about a contest? This is much more important than a silly game, Peyton. And, as a woman, you need to learn that. Don’t you want to find a husband? Go throw the brownies away. We’ll see whose dessert gets eaten.”

Peyton shook her head and went back to the kitchen, her mother on her heels. Peyton looked at the brownies, uncut, still in the baking pan, and left them there.

“You must be Peyton,” the detective said. “Your mother has been telling me all about you.”

Her mother looked at the brownies, saw Peyton had done nothing with them, and shot her a look.

Peyton ignored her.

“Oh, no. The brownies are burnt,” Lois said. “I’ll make pudding au chômeur.”

“They don’t look burnt,” the detective said. “I’m sure they’re—”

“Leave it to a man to try to tell a woman how to run her kitchen,” Lois said. “Just sit there, cutie.”

The chair Peyton pulled from the kitchen table squealed against the linoleum floor when she sat across from him. “You’ll have to excuse my mother,” she whispered. “She’s a bizarre cross between a 1940s housewife and a raging sexist.”

“Was I just objectified?” he asked, grinning.

Peyton laughed. “Oh, yes. Cutie is code for something much worse. And don’t believe a thing she says about me.”

He had a nice smile. Maybe six-one, he wasn’t thin, but whatever he weighed, he carried it well. He had dark eyes and was clean-shaven. His hair was neatly trimmed and the color of wet tar.

“I’ll remember that,” he said.

Lois was taking items from the fridge, lining them up on the counter, but paused to point at the detective behind his back, and mouthed, What do you think?

Rhonda Gibson entered the room.

“Your grandson just met me in the hallway, Lois. You’re so lucky to have a grandchild. I wish one of my children would get married and have kids.”

“Oh, boy,” the detective said. “Let it go, Mom. I think I’ll have that beer you offered me, Lois.”

Everyone laughed.

He extended a hand to Peyton. “Stone Gibson. I understand you’re a Border Patrol agent. I think we have something in common.”

Peyton shook his hand. “The Simon Pink situation. Not so sure that’s a good thing to share—a corpse.”

He smiled. “I hadn’t thought of it like that.”

Rhonda and Lois were at the kitchen counter. Lois had set out her pudding au chômeur ingredients but was mashing potatoes and adding garlic; Rhonda was cutting her pie.

“I was at the discovery session,” Peyton said, “or whatever they’re calling that meeting between attorneys.”

“I’ve been doing this for almost twenty years,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like that. Not even sure why we were all there.” He leaned closer, whispering, “My mother and little sister tell me you interviewed them. Most excitement they’ve had in years.”

Peyton smiled. She figured his sister, Sara Gibson, had more excitement than that perhaps nightly, but she said nothing.

“Did you grow up here?”

“Until I was eight or so. Then I moved with my father downstate.” His eyes ran to his mother, checking to be sure she wouldn’t hear. “My parents’ divorce was a real mess. Long story.” He wore jeans and a dark T-shirt under a pull-over fleece. He folded his arms across his chest.

She motioned to their mothers standing side by side at the kitchen counter. Now there were dinner rolls preparing to enter the oven and a salad being tossed. Lois had started her second dessert.

“If they keep trying to outdo one another,” Peyton whispered, “we won’t eat until midnight. You’ve got plenty of time.”

“My father took off when I was six.” Stone Gibson was seated across the living room from Peyton, who sat alone on the sofa. Lois and Rhonda were still in the kitchen.

“Did you grow up in the house next to the St. Pierre farm?”

They were both drinking beer from the bottle. Peyton had brought wine, but she liked Geary’s Pale Ale, and Stone Gibson had brought a six-pack of Sam Adams Summer Ale.

“Yeah,” he said. “Until I was eight. My father took off, went to Old Orchard Beach. When the divorce was final, I went to live with him. Ever been there?”

“Sure. It’s like the Fort Lauderdale of New England.”

He sipped some beer, nodded. “A party town, especially in the eighties. My father was a contractor. He was into some other stuff—prescription-drug dealing mostly—and went to Warren for a while when I was in my twenties. I’d made it through the Academy by then, but his record hasn’t helped my cause.”

“Professionally?”

He nodded. “Always a lot of questions to answer when you’re the son of a convict and you want to be a state police detective.”

“College?” she asked.

“Me? No way. No how. I joined the OOB Police part time when I was eighteen. I was working as a carpenter—the one good thing my old man taught me. I kept my nose clean, or”—he looked away, the way she’d often found people did when they had something to hide—“clean enough, and then I got on full time. Two years there, then at twenty, I went to the Portland Police Department, and by twenty-three, I was a statey.”

“A lifer,” she said. “I like that. You always knew? Never wanted anything else?”

“Like what? I’m not the smartest guy in the world. Wasn’t going to be a brain surgeon. And I couldn’t afford college. Besides, I like figuring things out and putting things together—probably why I like carpentry—and I understand people well enough to ask good questions and know when I’m being bullshitted.”

It made her smile. She could’ve made the same statement about reading people.

“What?” he asked.

They had some things in common, but she didn’t answer. Instead, she raised her beer bottle. “To the job.”

He raised his beer. “The job.”

Her cell phone chirped in the kitchen.

“Peyton,” her mother called.

“I know,” she said. “I know.”

She left the room and grabbed her phone. “Peyton Cote here.”

“Agent Peyton Cote?”

“Who is this?”

“Tom Dickinson, but that’s not important. A young woman left your card on the bar at Tip of the Hat and told me something I think I need to pass on to you.”

“What is this about?”

“I don’t want to say over the phone.”

Who had she given her business card to recently? She looked past the kitchen table at Stone Gibson, thinking of his sister.

She turned to face the cupboard. “Do you know the young woman’s name?”

“Yeah, sure.”

She’d given her card to Marie St. Pierre and Sara Gibson. Only one of them was still alive.

“Please tell me the name.”

“I’m no rat. But this seems kind of big, if it’s true. And I need to get out in front of this thing.”

“I need to know what you’re talking about,” she said.

“I’ll give you what I have, but then I go back to my life. I don’t want to be involved. Can’t be involved.”

“I’ll meet you at Gary’s Diner for coffee in an hour.”

“It’s Saturday night. I have plans.”

“So do I,” she said. “I’m canceling mine. One hour.” She hung up and turned to her mother.

“Don’t you dare say it, Peyton.”

“Mom,” she said, “I need to be somewhere in an hour. Can Tommy stay here with you?”

“Good God. All you do is work.”

“If this could wait,” she said, “or if I could send someone else, I would. Believe me.”

Stone Gibson had come from the living room. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” she said, not willing to put him in a conflict-of-
interest position yet, not until she first heard what his sister had done and said.

“Peyton,” Lois said, looking straight at Stone Gibson, “I forbid you to leave this house.”

“Mother, please.”

“Mrs. Cote,” Stone said, “I’ve been in her position. Sometimes things come up that can’t be helped. I’m not offended. I promise you.”

Lois turned to her pudding au chômeur, muttering.

“I’ll pick Tommy up by eight thirty,” Peyton said.

“He like the Red Sox?” Stone asked.

“Does he ever,” Lois said.

“I know Stan Roberts, the backup outfielder. I’ll tell him about going into the clubhouse last summer.”

“He’ll love that,” Peyton said, appreciating his help, no matter how ironic it was, given who she was leaving to talk about.

“Thanks for coming,” she said when Tom Dickinson squeezed his large frame into the booth to sit across from her.

“Did I have a choice?”

“Everyone has choices.”

“Not me,” he said.

Up close, he looked vaguely familiar. He had raven hair worn like an eighties rocker and continually tucked it behind his ears. The dark hue went well with his brown eyes. A cross was tattooed on his right wrist, but that wasn’t the tattoo she recognized. He also wore a diamond stud in his ear that was larger than her engagement ring and a Rolex that looked real. (She’d seen enough knock-offs in El Paso to know the difference.)

They ordered coffee, then she said, “I think I’ve seen you at Tip of the Hat.”

“I don’t live around here, but when I’m in the area I go there once in a while. And I like talking to Jerry, the bartender.”

“Jerry Leon. He was my neighbor when I was a kid,” she said.

“I thought he was ex-military.”

She nodded. “He’s in his seventies now, but he was stationed at Loring Air Force Base back when it was open during the Cold War. He came back to Aroostook County when he retired. That was twenty years ago.”

“Always wondered how old that guy was,” Dickinson muttered.

Their coffees arrived. She was in a hurry but wouldn’t rush. He had something to say. He’d get to it.

“I made a phone call before I called you,” he said. “You’ll be hearing from someone in Boston.”

“Boston?” She looked at him. “Why?”

“Look, lady”—his demeanor changed, and this was no longer a casual conversation; now he was the ex-con she knew him to be—“I’m not much of a do-gooder. But since that ditz told me stuff, and she was drunk and talking loud, and about ten people saw me talking to her, I need to get out in front of this thing before she winds up in court. I can’t go to court.”

“Sara Gibson?”

He nodded. He wore a leather New York Yankees jacket and snake-skin boots she’d seen in Texas for $500.

“You’ve got a New York accent,” she said. “I saw that same neck tattoo on a federal inmate once.”

“It was a bad idea to get the tattoo,” he said. “I’m working on the accent.”

“Trying to lose it?”

“Yeah. Trying to sound more Midwestern, more nondescript.”

Something clicked into place. She leaned back in the booth, folded her arms, and said, “I’ll be damned. That’s how you got my unlisted number.”

“So you know why Boston is calling you?” he said.

“I’ve heard about people in witness protection being up here.”

“Keep your voice down,” he said. “I don’t live here, but I like to fish up here. So you know why I can’t go to court, right?”

“I’ll be damned,” she said again. “You want to fit in, lose the Yankees jacket.”

“I’m not wearing a goddamned Red Sox jacket.”

That made her smile.

“It’s not an easy life,” he said.

“What did you do, Tom?”

“White-collar shit. I was an accountant, if you believe that. But it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m paying for it, believe me. I had a life in New York, a daughter who’s seven now. I move around a lot. Haven’t seen her in two years. When I do, it’s for fifteen minutes at an interstate rest area.”

She didn’t know what to say, because she didn’t know how to feel—he could have done a lot or a little.

She was wondering about it all when her unlisted cell phone rang for the second time in an hour. This time the area code was 617: Boston, as promised.