Mortar and Murder (25 page)

By the time we got back to Boothbay Harbor and the truck, it was dinnertime.

“Where are you going?” I asked Derek when he turned the truck away from the harbor and the road to Waterfield, in the direction of Burns Salvage and the neighborhoods north of town.

He glanced at me. “Angie is Ukrainian, right? I want to ask her to translate the words on the paper.”

“Are you sure we shouldn’t just get it to Wayne as soon as possible? And let him deal with it?”

“Twenty minutes isn’t gonna make a difference,” Derek said.

“Ian closed the business, though. Remember? When we left?”

“I know where he lives,” Derek said, and stepped on the gas. The words had a vaguely threatening sound to them, I thought.

Ian turned out to live in a saltbox—a big one—a mile or two outside Boothbay Harbor. He had a couple of acres of mostly woods around him, and we had to spend several minutes bumping over a rutted track full of tree roots and big rocks to get there. Only to be met by a sign that read “Trespassers Will Be Shot on Sight.”

“Surely not?” I said.

Derek glanced at it. “Probably. Maybe I should call and warn him we’re here. Wouldn’t want him to shoot first and ask questions later.” He pulled out his phone.

I could tell from Derek’s half of the conversation that Ian was doing everything in his power to say no, he didn’t want to see us, but when Derek reiterated—for the fifth or sixth time—that we were right outside and it would only take a minute or two, Ian relented and came to the door. I stood listening as one, then two, then three locks were unlocked, a chain was unhooked, and a deadbolt was slid aside. Either Ian was seriously paranoid or someone was out to get him.

“I swear this is only gonna take a minute,” Derek said again when Ian stood in the doorway, outlined by light from behind. It made him look even bigger and more menacing, his beard bristling.

I snuck a peek past him into the house—I’m a renovator; I like looking at other people’s houses—and saw old wood floors, painted, paneled walls, a set of antlers hanging above what must be the basement door, and what looked like a rifle leaning up against the wall beside the door. I gulped.

Derek was still trying to talk his way inside. “One minute, I promise. We just want to ask Angie about a few words on a piece of paper. That’s all.”

Ian didn’t answer.

“How
is
Angie?” I asked. “Is she feeling better?”

He looked down on me. Way down. “She’s all right. I don’t want her upset any more today.”

“I don’t think this’ll upset her,” I said. “We just need someone to translate six or seven words on a piece of paper we found. Here.” I pulled it out of my pocket and showed it to him. “See? Right there, along the edge? It won’t even take a minute. Can you at least ask her?”

Ian hesitated, considering before saying, “Wait here. I’ll ask.” He took the piece of paper with him and disappeared, closing the door in our faces.

I turned to Derek. “What now? Will he bring it back?”

“I’m sure he will. He didn’t lock the door.” But the look he shot at it was troubled. “I told you, he’s a little socially backward. I’m surprised he’s letting Angie inside.”

“Did you see the gun?”

He shook his head. “But I’m not surprised. Ian likes to hunt.”

“This looked like a rifle. With a little thingamajiggy that you look through. A scope. And it was sitting right inside the door. Does he like to hunt from the privacy of his own front porch?”

“I can’t imagine he does,” Derek admitted, “but maybe he has a problem with skunks or coons or something. Getting in the garbage. That happens sometimes around here. Could be just bird shot.”

I nodded. Could be.

Ian opened the door again after a few more seconds. Now there were two pieces of paper in his giant hands: the newspaper we’d found in the house on the island and a piece of paper towel with a few words scribbled on it in blue pen. “Here.”

He thrust them both into my hands.

“This is the translation?”

He nodded. “Now please go. And leave Angie alone. She’s delicate.”

“Of course.”

“I’ll be in touch,” Derek added, trying to inject some normalcy into the situation, I guess. “Next time I need something for a project.”

Ian nodded. Before we were even off the bottom step, the symphony of locks, chains, and bolts had started up again behind us as Ian made his home secure from intruders.

“What does it say?” Derek asked when we were back in the truck. It had gotten dark enough now that I had to turn the ceiling light on in the cab to read the scribbled words on the paper towel. My eyes popped.

“What?” Derek repeated.

I swallowed. “Assuming Angie is right, they’re names. Three of them. Katya Pushkar, Olga Kovalenko, and . . . um . . . Svetlana Rozhdestvensky.”

Derek glanced at me. “So you were right.”

“About what?”

“About what you thought was Irina’s last name.”

“Except it doesn’t refer to Irina.”

He shook his head.

We rode in silence down the road toward Waterfield, both probably pondering the same question. What do you get when you put three Ukrainian girl names together with a dead woman with no identification wearing Russian jeans, and a dead ICE agent?

“Smuggling,” Derek said.

I blinked at him. I hadn’t realized I’d said it out loud.

He continued, “These girls are paying someone to bring them into the U.S. illegally. Somehow they must have made it to Canada, and from there, someone brought them by boat to Rowanberry Island. That someone stored them in our house, in our secret room, and then when we started working on it, he or she moved them somewhere else.”

“Where?”

“Who knows,” Derek said. “You didn’t go through Irina’s house when you and Wayne were there last week, did you? What do you want to bet they were there? In the other rooms? The two of them that are still alive, that is. I wonder whether Katya or Olga is the dead one?”

I was too shocked by what he’d said to even begin to speculate. “Irina? You think Irina is behind this?”

“Who else?” Derek said with a glance at me. “She was familiar with our house and knew it was empty. The girl—let’s call her Katya; it’s simpler, and she looked like a Katya to me—Katya had Irina’s contact info in her pocket. Just in case they got separated, I guess, so she’d know where to go. And when she fell overboard on the trip from Rowanberry Island to the mainland, and they looked and couldn’t find her, and she never showed up at the house, it wasn’t like they could report her missing. She was illegal and they were breaking the law. If they said anything, they’d all get caught. And probably deported.”

I didn’t answer. I wanted to tell him he was wrong, that Irina couldn’t have—wouldn’t have—done this, but I couldn’t find the words. His scenario made a horrible sort of sense, and I had no proof, nothing to show why it couldn’t have happened this way; just my feelings of liking Irina too much to want to believe this of her. Her worry when she hadn’t been able to get in touch with her sister in Kiev had seemed genuine, and her reaction to the girl’s—Katya’s—body in the morgue had seemed sincere.

“And don’t forget that it was Irina that Agent Trent was looking for the day she was killed,” Derek added, speeding down the road. “We spun a nice scenario about Ian and Angie, but it’s pretty obvious, Avery. Irina killed Lori Trent to keep her from finding the other two girls. Or from finding out about the smuggling. Somehow she got Svetlana and Olga out of her house, and now she’s gone to join them. And they’re all loose somewhere in Maine. Or New England. Or anywhere in the country by now.” He looked disgusted.

“I have a hard time believing this,” I told him.

He looked at me as the scenery beside the road went by in a blur. “Why? It makes perfect sense.”

“On paper. But I like Irina.”

Derek rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to the road. “I like her, too. But that has nothing to do with it.”

“You’re accusing her of murder!”

“Manslaughter,” Derek said. “Unpremeditated and in a panic to cover up what was going on. But if it makes you feel better, maybe Irina didn’t do it. Maybe Svetlana or Olga did. Or Katya, if Olga is the dead one. And then Irina helped them get rid of the body. By dumping it in the harbor.”

I didn’t answer. Just bit my lip and tried to think of a reason—a good reason, a reason I could use to convince him he was wrong—that it couldn’t have happened that way. Surely there was another explanation....

After a few minutes’ silence, he turned back to me.

“You OK, Avery?”

“Not really,” I admitted.

“I’m sorry. It makes sense, though. Even Angie’s reaction. She seemed almost nervous when we mentioned Irina’s name earlier today, didn’t she?”

“Maybe.”

“She must have come over last year. Maybe they smuggle in a batch of women every winter. Irina herself came over three years ago—isn’t that what she said?—maybe on a tourist visa that ran out or something. . . .”

“I doubt that.” I knew that such is the most common way for illegal aliens to make it into the United States. They enter on a tourist visa and just never go home. But Ukraine wasn’t one of the countries from which such entry was possible. From what I’d understood from my research the other night, only people from well-to-do countries in Western Europe—countries with a standard of living similar to that of the United States—are awarded tourist visas. People from developing countries, or war-torn countries, or communist countries, can whistle after any kind of visa, unless they can get entry as refugees. Ukraine was one of those places that people probably couldn’t wait to leave, and so tourist visas from there were few and far between. It’s a way for the ICE to keep down on illegal immigration.

“Whatever,” Derek said. “She got here somehow. You can’t argue with that. And once she was here, then she started working on getting other women over. Angie last year; there may have been a few other women at the same time. And then Svetlana, Olga, and Katya this year.”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to believe it, but in spite of myself, I was starting to. It made sense. At least enough sense that I couldn’t ignore it.

“We’re gonna have to tell Wayne this, aren’t we?”

Derek looked at me. He didn’t say, “Well, duh!”—but his expression did. “I’m afraid so, Avery. I know you like Irina—I like her, too—but we can’t let her get away with something like this.”

“Right.” My hand tightened around the piece of paper towel, and I had to concentrate on straightening it out.

“Interesting,” Wayne said thirty minutes later, after we’d managed to track him down at home.

Home for Wayne these days is the newly renovated carriage house behind the Waterfield Inn. It’s a place where Wayne can get away from the rigors of crime fighting, and Kate can get away from the relentless pace of smiling and being available to her guests, and where they can both kick back and relax and remember their honeymoon in Paris, courtesy of my Parisian-inspired decor.

Wayne was definitely kicked back when he opened the door: He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, with his feet bare and his hair messy.

“Oops,” Derek said with a grin, “we’re not interrupting anything, are we?”

“Dinner. I’m cooking.” He turned back into the house, leaving the door open. I stepped through and Derek followed. Wayne wandered back toward the compact kitchen, where something was sizzling on the stove.

“Kate’s across the way.” He nodded toward the main house, stirring whatever was in the wok on the stovetop. It gave off an aroma of garlic and other vegetably things that made my mouth water. It was a long time since lunch, with a lot of exercise in between. “What’s going on?”

“We found a secret room in our house on the island,” Derek said. “It was probably old John’s storage room for the stuff he smuggled in two hundred years ago.”