Dead Down East (28 page)

“Jesse, what’s seventeen and a half percent
of two thousand?”

“Three hundred fifty.”

“Those boxes don’t come cheap anymore,” Billy
noted resolutely. “And you’d need to hire someone to make the
pickup, in case the sender was staking out the post office.”

“Just bring me the envelope when it arrives,
and don’t open it. I’ll want to check it out for powdery
substances,” I said. I wanted Billy to sweat a bit for all the
money he was going to get.

“I’ll wear gloves…and a mask.”

“Good idea, Billy. Oh, I was wondering…will
you be around later today?”

“Probably.”

“There’s a chance I’ll need some new business
cards by tomorrow morning. I’ll know after I make a call or
two.”

“Your next set of cards will be
complimentary,” Billy offered.

“You’re a pal,” I said as I hung up.

“A few more phone calls, and that would be it
for the day,” I thought. As far as I was concerned, Sunday was the
seventh day. I was looking forward to dinner with the Wyeths. I
called Kathleen back and confirmed that I’d be there with Mom by
one o’clock. Angele wouldn’t be able to make it. She was preparing
for a special presentation at the law firm.

Richard Merrill’s spreadsheet included
Rebecca Lavoilette’s private phone number. She’d been a widow for a
week. I trusted that was an adequate amount of time to wait before
giving her a call.

“Hello. This is Rebecca.”

“Mrs. Lavoilette, to begin, please accept my
condolences. I am so sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you. Please tell me, who are you, and
how you got my private number?”

“Richard Merrill has hired me to investigate
the murder of your husband.”

“Oh. You must be Jesse Thorpe. Richard
mentioned your name. I suppose you’d like an interview. Right?”

“If it’s not too troubling for you.”

“I’d be happy to talk with you. I can make
time tomorrow if you like.”

“Tomorrow will be fine. Just tell me where
and when.”

“Let’s see. How about two in the afternoon at
the Blaine House? I’ll still be living here for another week. The
acting governor has been kind enough to give me a little extra time
to move out.”

“Two o’clock it is,” I said.

“I’ll leave word with Philip. He’ll let you
in,” she said.

“Thank you so much, Mrs. Lavoilette. And
again, I’m so sorry.”

“Good day, Mr. Thorpe.”

• • •

Lori Trumbull had been checked off on my list
of women in the governor’s life. I already had a sample of her DNA,
and she seemed an unlikely suspect. The name below hers was Susan
St. Claire.

I placed the call.

A man answered the phone, “Hello.”

“Hello, may I speak with Susan St. Claire
please?”

“Who are you?” came the terse response. His
tone had that, “Are you another f’ing telemarketer?” ring to
it.

“My name is Jesse Thorpe. I’m a private
investigator hired by Richard Merrill to investigate the murder of
Governor William Lavoilette.”

“What?” There was an edgy surprise in his
voice.

“I understand that Susan St. Claire knew the
governor, and I would like to speak with her if I may.”

“The FBI have already arrested Travis
Perkins, and his gun killed the governor,” he said in a somewhat
irritated tone.

“I am aware of those facts, but I have reason
to believe that others are involved. May I please speak with Ms.
St. Claire?”

I heard the voice of a woman in the
background ask, “Who is it, Aaron?” Then the sound over the phone
was muffled for several seconds. Finally…

“This is Susan St. Claire, may I help you?”
Her voice was firm and professional, but friendly.

“I hope so. My name is Jesse Thorpe. I’ve
been hired to investigate the Lavoilette murder. I understand that
you were a friend of William Lavoilette. Would it be possible for
us to talk?”

“I was not a
friend
of the governor. I
met him once or twice a couple of years back to discuss some policy
issues. I can’t provide anything useful in a murder
investigation.”

“Do you know Richard Merrill?” I asked.

“The name is vaguely familiar,” she said.

“He was a close associate of the governor. He
indicated to me that you knew the governor personally.”

“Mr. Thorpe, I met the governor a couple of
times. It was business. I was friendly, but we weren’t
friends
. I think you should press your investigation
elsewhere. Goodbye.”

And with that…she hung up.

Plan B: According to Richard’s spreadsheet,
Susan owned, or partially owned, Northland Natural Gas and Down
East Pipe and Fitting. I ran a Google search to see if I could get
more specific information on Susan and her businesses.

Both Northland and Down East had the same
three principal stockholders: Susan St. Claire - 55%, Mark Prichard
- 30%, and Aaron Miller - 15%. Northland Natural Gas had a parent
company in Pennsylvania called Keystone State Natural Gas and
Pipeline Company. From their website, it appeared that Mr. Prichard
ran the operations in Pennsylvania, and Susan ran them in Maine. A
search of corporations listed with the Maine Secretary of State
office indicated that Northland had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
protection two years before.

I also found an interesting tidbit on the
Down East Pipe and Fitting web page. They recently had acquired
another company, Moosehead Pipeline. The hair stood up on the back
of my neck.
Moosehead
.

Misty Starbird had seen a moose head at the
murder scene! My heart started racing. I took a few deep breaths
and told myself that there are plenty of moose heads in Maine. This
is a land of the moose. I talked myself down from the ledge, but
Misty’s premonition was sobering.

As I began formulating how I might arrange a
meeting with Susan St. Claire, a nagging thought worked its way
into the front of the line in my cerebral cortex. Dennis Jackson
had determined my true identity while sitting at his desk. How did
he do that? Then it hit me. Elementary! My picture is on my private
investigator’s home page. After he had asked me to move away from
his computer, he must have gone to my website and seen the serious
Mr. Thorpe, Private Investigator, looking back at him on the screen
and from across his desk. That’s why he looked at me, and then
looked at his screen again, just before pulling out his Colt
.45.

Albert Einstein once penned the definition of
insanity
: “Doing the same thing over and over again and
expecting different results.”

I’d reconnect with Susan St. Claire, but only after I
made one important alteration.

I initiated FTP-Pro and logged on to my web
server. I scrolled through the .JPEG files and found,
“Jesse-Thorpe-Photo.” I highlighted the file and hit “Delete.”

I then pulled up my home page to verify that
my picture was no longer there. It was gone. In its place was the
icon for a missing link.

A better solution would be to delete all
references to the picture. A curious and devious mind might read
subterfuge into a missing photograph at the top of my homepage. So
I opened Dreamweaver, made a few changes to my index page, and
saved the file. Then I uploaded the file and checked my home page
once again.

Better.

Now if Susan St. Claire got nosey, she’d have
more trouble figuring out what Jesse Thorpe looked like. I’d allow
twenty-four hours for my voice to fade from her memory bank, and
I’d use the same twenty-four hours to round out Plan B with a new
identity and a fresh approach.

OK, one more call.

“Jesse, what do you want now?” Billy
asked.

“A dozen new business cards. The former
Senate President, James Frye, became the acting governor this past
week. I need to become one of his aides. Give me a new name, and I
have a new cell phone number. Have the card indicate that I deal
directly with lobbyists and corporations. Make it look official,
and put the Maine State Seal on the card.”

“You are a real dreamer, Jesse. Aren’t you
worried about falsely representing yourself?”

“I have more important things to worry about,
Billy.”

“What’s your new name?” he asked.

“I’m Lloyd Williams,” I said. “That’s two L’s
at the beginning.”

“And two L’s in the middle,” Billie
countered. “When do you need them?”

I gave Billy my new phone number and said,
“I’ll pick them up tomorrow.”

“OK. That will be twenty bucks,” Billy
said.

“I thought you said my next cards would be
complimentary.”

“You’re not paying for the cards; you’re
paying for the rush. Besides, this is Sunday.”

“See you tomorrow,” I said.

“Bye, Jesse.”

I was taking the rest of the day off.

“Jesse, I’ve been worried about you. When you called
and asked if Cynthia Dumais could stay at my house, it sounded as
if the two of you might be in real danger,” Mom said, as we pulled
out of her driveway.

It’s a half-hour drive from Augusta to Waterville.
There was plenty of time to fill her in on some of the details of
the Lavoilette murder case. I didn’t tell her about the Dennis
Jackson episode, of course; there was enough to hold her interest
without setting off any extreme motherly alarms. I tried to
minimize her concerns, but I didn’t manage that very well.

“Why don’t you just let the FBI handle this, Jesse?
They know what they are doing, and they have access to so much more
information. This is what they do all the time for goodness sake,”
she said.

“I’m a private investigator, Mom. For six years I’ve
been investigating criminal activity and protecting people who have
been threatened. This is really not all that different. Yes, it is
a high profile case, but the basic issues and concerns are pretty
much the same.”

“This is murder, Jesse.”

“Cynthia’s life is in danger, Mom,” I said
defensively. “What should I do? Turn her away and put her in
further jeopardy?”

I briefly glanced over to see how she was doing. Mom
had a blank expression on her face. It was clear that she was
locked in worried mode.

“Our band is doing well. We’re planning to release
our first album in August,” I said, trying to change the subject
and cheer her up.

“I hope it doesn’t come out posthumously,” she
sighed.

Before I could say another word, she followed that up
with, “You’re going to end up just like Tom.”

I had hoped she wouldn’t bring that up, but, of
course, it was more or less inevitable. For the rest of the drive,
the family ghost would be with us in the backseat. The murder of
the governor had happened without a hint of warning. The same exact
thing happened to my father, Thomas Christopher Thorpe, when he was
41 years old.

• • •

I was fourteen when we got the call from
Maine General Medical Center, Thayer Campus, in Waterville. Dad had
been shot, and was in critical condition. My mother, Sarah Gale
Thorpe, held the phone and froze like a statue, wide-eyed, in
shock, disbelieving.
How can this be?

Twenty minutes earlier Dad had been sitting
with us at the table. It was practically etched in stone that
supper at the Thorpe’s begins at six-thirty on the dot. By seven
o’clock that evening, we were just finishing our meal when Dad
stood up and announced that we needed some pumpkin pie for
dessert.

Mom implored him, “It’s too much trouble,
Tom. Don’t bother.”

But Dad insisted, “It’s no trouble, dear. The
grocery store at the plaza is only a few minutes away. I’ll be back
before you clear the table.” And away he went. Forever.

The scene reels before my eyes at warp speed,
as if I were having a lucid dream. It’s October 12
^th
,
1993, 7:20 in the evening. Mom, just 38 years old, a tall,
beautiful women with a round face, brown eyes, curly auburn hair
and, at any other time, a sweet endearing smile, is now wearing a
pair of brown crop pants with her favorite flannel shirt, loafers
and a frantic look I have never seen before. Despite the chill in
the air, she doesn’t take the time to put on a jacket. We dash out
of the house together, into our 1990 green Volvo station wagon and
drive east away from our home on Barrett Avenue. It’s a race to
every turn, left on Cool Street, right on Western Avenue and across
Messalonskee Stream Reservoir. We careen right from North Street
toward the hospital at the emergency entrance of Thayer. We cover
the two miles in about three minutes. Mom doesn’t bother to pull
into a parking space. She just stops at the emergency door, throws
the transmission into park, and out we run, through the main door,
down two hallways, green on one side, white on the other, our feet
barely touch the beige tile floor. In less than 30 seconds, we see
our family physician and long time friend standing outside a
surgery room waiting for us. Dr. Turner stops us before we can go
through that door and says, in a very sorrowful but firm tone, “Tom
is gone.”