Paul Doiron - Massacre Pond

“Let’s go talk with your employer,” I said. “It sounds like it might be better if she hears what happened from me.”

“It won’t help,” Billy said.

I had a feeling he might be right.

Elizabeth Morse’s mansion was like nothing I’d seen before. The descriptions I’d heard around town didn’t do it justice.

It had been built in the form of a compound, with a four-story residence overlooking the lake and a cluster of smaller guest cottages, boathouses, and work spaces built around the edges. The main building looked like the sort of grand hotel you might expect to find on the shores of Lake Tahoe. Its foundation was of great gray fieldstones carefully chosen so that all the heavy slabs fitted perfectly together without needing cement. The logs, as long as telephone poles, glowed like new copper in the morning sunlight. Two enormous stone chimneys rose from the steeply pitched roofline, and long balconies perched along the higher floors. There were windows everywhere, tall panels of glass to soak up the sunlight. The mansion had been constructed at the tip of a natural point of land, and it wouldn’t have surprised me to learn that nearly every room had a view of Sixth Machias Lake.

We had parked at the top of the bluff in an area reserved for maintenance vehicles. Two identical forest green Toyota Tacomas seemed to be waiting patiently, like unused toys. Down the hill, closer to the front door, sat a hybrid Toyota Highlander SUV, also forest green, and a shiny new Prius painted a color that made me think of metallic sand in an atomic desert. The odd vehicle out was a cherry-red BMW Z4 roadster parked at a careless angle in front of one of the guest cottages.

Billy brushed his shirt as if to remove nonexistent crumbs. “I should have called ahead,” he said. “Ms. Morse doesn’t like surprises.”

He gestured toward the entrance. A hand-carved sign hung over the double doors, bearing the inscription MOOSEHORN LODGE.

“Does Mr. Toad live here, too?”

“Lay off, Mike.” He pushed the buzzer beside the intercom. “Hello?” he said, bending over the gray box. “Anyone at home? It’s Billy.”

After a minute or so, the double doors swung open and a smiling gray-bearded man looked out. He had deep laugh lines around his eyes and a ponytail that must have gotten progressively harder to maintain as his hairline had receded over the years. He was wearing an off-white hemp shirt with a groovy tie-dyed necktie, jeans that showed dirt on the knees, and leather sandals.

“Hey, Billy? What’s the good word?”

“Not good, Leaf. This is Warden Bowditch. He’s here to see Ms. Morse.”

I’d pegged the guy as an aging hippie from his outfit and the surfer-dude inflections in his voice. But even I was unprepared when he held out a strong calloused hand and introduced himself as Leaf Woodwind.

“What’s going on, man?” he asked. I detected the herbal odor of a certain smokable plant on his clothes.

“A crime was committed on Ms. Morse’s property last night,” I said.

His bushy eyebrows fell. “Did someone fuck with the gates again?”

“Worse than that,” said Billy.

“Dude, you’ve got to tell me. You know Betty hates surprises.”

“I think it would be better if I told her myself,” I said.

“Hang on, then. I’ll see if I can find her.”

He stepped suddenly back into the room and shut the door in our faces.

“Leaf Woodwind,” I said, repeating the name for my own pleasure. “What’s he-the gardener?”

“He’s Ms. Morse’s personal assistant. Been with her forever. They used to be partners in her business when she was starting out in Cherryfield. Seems like it must be kind of weird for him, watching her get so rich. But he seems pretty mellow about everything.”

“Yeah, I smelled his mellowness.”

Minutes passed. Billy had grown quiet and inward again. I had the sense he was already checking the help-wanted ads in his head. I found myself gazing through the screen of pine boughs at the brilliant blue lake. I could hear a boat knocking against a dock somewhere, a rhythmic, relaxing sound.

My momentary sense of calm was disturbed by my cell phone, which gave off a sudden electronic chime that sent a pulse of adrenaline shooting into my bloodstream. The previous winter, I’d been stalked by an extremely dangerous man who called himself “George Magoon,” after a legendary Down East poacher, and who seemed to delight in tormenting me. He still sent me taunting messages from across the border in Canada, where he’d fled to escape a murder rap. Every time I heard my phone beep, I expected to find another untraceable threat.

This e-mail was from my mother:

“When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.”

— Helen Keller

Lately, my mom had begun sending me inspirational quotes from famous people without any explanation. We hadn’t been close in a very long time-since before the bad business with my father-and I had no idea what she was trying to communicate with these vague aphorisms. My mother spent the warm months in Maine and then moved with my stepfather to a golf-course condo in Naples, Florida, every fall. Beyond that, I knew very little of her whereabouts. She was as elusive as George Magoon in that regard.

The door opened again, and Leaf Woodwind stepped out, shoulders sagging noticeably. “Betty and Briar are out back. I’ll take you around.”

So we were not going to be given the grand tour after all. Too bad. I was curious to see what half a billion dollars bought you these days. I put away my cell phone and followed.

Woodwind led us along a flagstone path, past raised flower beds set within rock retaining walls. The rhododendrons had flowered and gone by months ago, but someone had brightened things up with an assortment of orange, yellow, and pink mums. Out of the sunlight, you could smell the autumnal odor of rotting vegetation, and the chill brought goose bumps to my exposed arms.

We emerged from the shadows onto an enormous stone patio, roughly the size of a baseball diamond. In the center, two Adirondack chairs flanked a fire pit in which no fire was burning. Two women were sitting in them, looking down the length of the lake. We seemed to have caught them in the middle of morning tea.

The younger one remained seated, her head turned away, but I had that impression you sometimes get, when you glimpse a stranger for a split second, of youthful attractiveness. I saw bare brown legs, thick dark hair, and a heart-shaped face hidden behind enormous sunglasses.

As we approached, the older of the two arose. Elizabeth Morse didn’t remotely resemble an ex-hippie. Instead, she projected an air of aristocratic confidence, as if she’d just stepped off a yacht. She had sun-streaked blond hair, cut and curled to accentuate an attractive face that reminded me, somehow, of a cat’s. She wore no makeup that I could see and minimal jewelry, just a simple gold locket and bangles at the wrist. She wasn’t particularly tall or heavy, but she looked solid. Underneath her expensive outfit-sepia-tinted sunglasses, cream linen shirt, shiny brown slacks, open-toed sandals-she still had the physique of someone who rose at dawn to till the earth.

“Good morning, Billy.” Her voice was firm, with a faint Brahmin inflection, as if the muscles in her jaw were clenched.

Billy inclined his head. “Hello, Ms. Morse.”

“Leaf says we had another incident but that you’re being very mysterious about it.”

“This is Warden Bowditch. He’s with the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. He can explain it better than me.”