The Marble Mask (15 page)

“Meaning that if you believe Bossard,” Paul said, “someone was watching and waiting the whole time—maybe even inside the apartment.”

“Or out on the balcony,” I suggested. “Bossard said he tossed the place looking for loot. Do the crime scene photos show the door leading out there?”

Rick Labatt still had them with him in a manila envelope. He poured them out onto a nearby table and began pawing through them. “Yes—here.”

We all leaned in to study what he’d found. Not only was the balcony door deadbolt snapped open, but there appeared to be a damp spot on the rug before it, like a faint, slushy footprint.

Lacombe straightened first. “It has possibilities. But the best murderer looks like Christophe Bossard.”

“And that’ll be what’s told to the press?” I asked.

Lacombe looked faintly apologetic. “I have bosses, also, and they like to show the people we are hard at work.”

It wasn’t my place to argue. Not only did I have no viable alternatives, but my political position was exactly the same.

SAMMIE MARTENS WAS WAITING FOR ME IN THE LOBBY
of the Commodore Inn when I arrived from Sherbrooke the next day. It had been snowing the whole way down—not much wind, but fat, heavy flakes that turned the view beyond the windshield into a constant mesmerizing vortex of white static. I was tired, and my eyes felt like they’d been turned inside out.

“Joe,” she said, poorly suppressing her excitement. “Thanks for coming down. You won’t be disappointed.”

“That’s good. I’m not up for that right now.”

I walked stiffly down the hallway, groping for my key. “You said on the phone you’d struck gold. Mind telling me about it now?”

I could tell I’d dampened her spirits slightly. “I guess that was a little childish.”

“Not if it’s true.” I turned the lock and opened the door.

Her enthusiasm returned unabated. “I got a hit on one of those names you gave us. Gaston Picard got a parking ticket in Stowe three days before the Popsicle man turned up.”

I stopped halfway across the threshold. “No shit.”

She smiled broadly. “And that ain’t all. Willy hit a homer, too. Remember that autopsy finding—the venison/coon/bear meat combo? On a hunch, Willy started interviewing some of the old-timers in town—checking out the retirement homes, the barber shop, the historical society, the library. You name it. He found out that back in the forties, there was a restaurant named Mickey’s Best that had a weekly ‘Game Night’—kind of a funky rural pitch to tourists and locals both. It was a big hit while it lasted.”

“And Willy found the owner?”

“No. He’s long dead, but it puts Jean Deschamps here, right? Makes Stowe not just a dumping ground, but maybe the place he got whacked.”

I dropped my overnight case onto the bed. “I hope so. Where’s Willy now?”

She checked her watch. “He should be in the bar. I told him you’d like to see him.”

I’d really wanted to see the inside of my eyelids for a while, but I couldn’t deny that Sammie’s information had revived me. As pleasant and cooperative as my Canadian hosts were, and as interestingly as things were evolving up there—for them—I had been empathizing with Gary’s concern about our case being left at the back of the pack. Sam’s and Willy’s discoveries had the potential of putting us more on an even footing with Lacombe and company, and of making our ancient homicide a worthy and unique first outing for the Bureau.

We found Willy slouched over a bar stool, cupping a ginger ale in his hand, staring dreamily at the multicolored rows of bottles lining the wall opposite him.

“Reminiscing?” I asked as Sam and I sat on either side of him.

He didn’t bristle, as I expected, but smiled instead. “I guess so. When I was drinking, I used to love to just sit here, watch the colors, listen to the buzz in the air…” He blinked a couple of times, as if clearing his head. “Not ‘here’ here, of course,” he added, sounding more familiar, “all this shipshape, yachting crap would’ve made me throw up. There was a bar in Bratt—closed now—had it down perfect.”

“Yeah, right,” Sammie said, “closed ’cause of health code violations—couldn’t tell the customers from the rodents.”

He turned toward her. “How would you know? I never saw you there.”

“You never saw anything when you were there.”

I was about to intervene, but he surprised me again by just laughing.

“I hear you’ve been hanging out with the Geritol crowd,” I said instead.

“Yeah—met a lot of guys that look just like you. God, what a bunch of talkers. Some of them don’t even know what century they’re in.”

“But one of them told you about Mickey’s Best?” I prodded him.

“‘Game Night’—right. Talk about health code problems. Love to see ’em try that today. It lasted maybe ten years—give or take nine the way this guy was working—but he swears they dished up the exact same roadkill the ME found in the Popsicle.”

“But the owner’s long buried and the restaurant’s ancient history?”

“Yeah.” He took a long swig from his drink. “Dead end.”

But I knew Willy better than that—dead ends were unacceptable and pulling my chain a full-time recreation.

“So who did you find to lead you toward the light?”

He smiled and put his glass back down on the bar.

“Damn—maybe we been doin’ this too long. I haven’t actually found him. Only just heard about him. But there’s a guy who supposedly worked at the place. A teenager back then, so maybe in his late sixties, early seventies now. Named Arvin Brown. My old geezer said the kid was a real go-getter—knew the customers, worked the handshake like a water pump. Lives in Richford.”

Richford was about forty miles due north of Stowe, so close to the Canadian border some of its roads wobbled back and forth across it. Despite my fatigue of fifteen minutes ago, I suddenly felt the urge to go on a field trip.

“Where’s Tom Shanklin?”

“Waterbury,” Sammie answered. “He’s working the computer from down there, going after the names you gave me, plus anything else he can think of, like the Canadian Hell’s Angels and the Rock Machine.”

“You two want to go to Richford?” I asked.

· · ·

Richford is one of those towns you find in the middle of nowhere that initially defy all rhyme or reason. A glance at a map tells you nothing—there are no major roads running through it or prosperous neighbors next door to justify its existence. There’s a single railroad track that seems to wander off unattended. And yet, a drive through the middle of town, down a gentle slope toward the narrow Missisquoi River, tells of a place once teeming with culture and good fortune. On either side of the street, one jewel-like Victorian residence after another, dripping gingerbread and elaborate wrought iron, stands witness to when Richford was a lumber center to be reckoned with, filled with successful entrepreneurs and their many employees.

Now, of course, things are different. Rolling into downtown, we saw a largely secondhand community, still alive and viable but a shadow of its past, like the single survivor of a once large and bustling family. The heavy brick buildings on the river’s shore were empty and hollowed out, many of the homes, certainly on the north end, were begging for occupants, and the whole town had been left—despite its best efforts—looking vaguely abandoned.

I’d asked Sammie to drive—I’d had enough of onrushing snowflakes for a while—and she parked us facing a large-windowed café named Brenda’s Kitchen, its panes fogged over by the warmth and humidity within, backlit to make them glisten like ice. The three of us stepped out into the dreamlike silence and fading light of a heavy snowfall, our feet utterly silent on the crystalline white carpet, and we paused to take in the soft contours and generosity that only such weather can grant a hard-luck town.

Willy, always the poet, put the mood to rest, looking around and shaking his head. “Why would anyone live in a hole like this?”

Brenda’s was surprisingly full. It was five in the afternoon, a reasonable time for rural folk to dig into their suppers, but we were initially taken aback by the noise and activity in contrast to the empty street right outside.

It was an unusual place, tall-ceilinged and rambling, rough wooden floors and tables scattered about, and the kitchen in plain view beyond a long, curving counter. Brenda’s gave off the feeling of a familial social club, like a Bingo hall where the equipment had been pushed out of sight for a special meal.

A young woman approached us. “Would you like a table?”

I was about to simply ask if she knew Arvin Brown, when Willy spoke up from behind me, “Yeah—three.”

“Right this way.”

I glanced back at him, and he raised his eyebrows. “Smell the air, for Christ’s sake. Arvin Brown’s not going to die in the next twenty minutes.”

Our waitress laughed as she introduced us to our table at the back of the room. “Not unless he chokes on his chicken-fried steak,” she said. “You know him?”

“No,” I told her. “Actually, we came here to meet him.”

She pointed to a large man with a white beard sitting alone near the window. “You walked right by him.”

“I’ll be damned,” Willy said. “Best eating on the job we’ll ever do,” and he headed that way.

I turned to Sammie. “Guess we’re taking the direct approach.”

Brown looked up as we stopped by his table. “I help you?” he asked through a full mouth.

“You used to work at Mickey’s Best in Stowe in the forties?” Willy asked him.

Brown’s eyes widened, and he swallowed hard, half rising to his feet and waving us to the other chairs gathered around the table. “Yeah. I never thought that would ever come back to haunt me.”

“Any reason it should?” Sammie asked with a big smile, sitting opposite him. “You have a skeleton in the closet?”

He wiped his mouth and shook his head. “Oh, God no—just that it was so long ago. Who are you, anyway?”

I made the formal introductions, which deepened his astonishment. “My Lord. The Vermont Bureau of Investigation. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of that. Is it part of the state police?”

Willy rolled his eyes, but I simply answered, “No—different agency.”

“But have I done something wrong?”

I tried putting him at ease by waving to the waitress. “No, no. We’re more on a fact-finding mission than anything. Do you mind if we join you for dinner? I notice you just started.”

He shook his head. “Be my guest.”

We placed our orders, Willy taking the most time. “Mr. Brown,” I began, “we heard Mickey’s Best had a special night when they served wild game.”

He laughed at that. “Yeah—well. It was advertised as wild, and when we could get it, it really was. Mickey would try anything to turn a buck, and back then there weren’t so many regulations that could trip you up. It was a harmless trick, really, and it wasn’t like he was cheating folks. The tourists were paying for the ethnic charm.” He said the last two words with a fake upper-class lilt. “And the locals didn’t seem to know the difference, bragging aside.”

“We heard it didn’t last long,” Willy commented.

“No. Mickey was ahead of his time. The tourist trade was a coming thing, but not even close to what it is now. The trains weren’t much, the interstate wasn’t there yet, and the roads were pretty bad. There was money around, but not in Stowe—not yet. Not like it would be.”

He paused to take a small bite, politely slowing down on his consumption until our meals arrived. “Plus Mickey was a restless man. Good at selling, not so good at following through. He got bored fast.”

“Rumor has it you were pretty good at selling yourself,” Sammie observed.

Arvin Brown ducked his head modestly. “I was just a kid on the make. I thought Mickey had the world by the tail—that he’d take me places. Wasn’t till after the restaurant closed that I realized his limitations. I didn’t dislike him for it, though. He was a dreamer, and we all need those. But we parted ways.”

“What did you end up doing?” I asked.

He smiled. “Selling—no surprise there. I sold darn near everything—appliances, machinery, bulk goods, lumber, property—anything that would take me out on the road. I like people and I liked to travel till I finally got too old for it. Ended up here ’cause it’s peaceful, small, and the people are nice, and,” he added with a laugh, “it’s too far off the beaten path to attract any salesmen.”

The waitress arrived with our food, and Brown watched us settle in, especially Willy with his one-handed dexterity. “I don’t see why any of that would interest you,” he finally admitted. “Did Mickey finally get himself in a jam?”

I decided to stay shy of the real issue for the moment. “We heard he was long dead. But it’s an interesting question. Ahead of his time or not, wasn’t it a weird place for a hustler to ply his trade?”

Brown finished chewing. “Stowe? Maybe. He wasn’t alone, though, and even the ski bums eventually became businessmen. Like I said, it didn’t get really big till about the seventies, but the roots went down when I was there. I mean, hell, look at the biggest name of them all. The Singing von Trapp Family, or whatever they called themselves. They weren’t hustlers, but they had to hustle to make a go of it, and made a tidy profit, too, and bought up a hell of a lot of real estate. That mood was in the air. Mickey’s main problem was that he thought too small.”

“Was there any criminal activity back then?”

That froze his fork halfway to his mouth. “Criminal activity? My God, there weren’t enough people, not if you mean what I think you do. There wasn’t even a police department. I was talking about people looking to make money. Not mobsters.”

I waved my hand dismissively. “Sure. I know. I was just curious. There’s so much money there now—makes you wonder. Was Mickey’s Best pretty popular?”

“It depended on the time of year, of course, but when it was hot, the place really jumped—big ski weekends, fall foliage, hunting season—times like that. And Mickey tried to keep it interesting, like with Game Night. How’d you hear about that, anyway?”

I reached into my pocket for the old photograph of Jean Deschamps wearing a fedora and smoking a cigarette. “Do you ever remember seeing this man at the restaurant? I know it’s a long shot—so many years ago—but we heard you were really attentive to the customers.”