Final Settlement

Copyright Information

Final Settlement
© 2013 Vicki Doudera

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

First e-book edition © 2013

E-book ISBN: 978-0-7387-3438-5

Book design by Donna Burch

Cover design by Lisa Novak

Cover illustration by Dominick Finelle/The July Group

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DEDICATION

For Matthew, Nathan, and Alexandra,
with warm memories of Maine winters.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I’m thankful for the assistance of many who helped with
Final Settlement
.

First, a big thank you to my faithful manuscript readers Lynda Chilton and Ed Doudera, whose comments and careful edits are so appreciated, and to Jane LaFleur and Jane Babbitt for proofreading.

Thank you to Nick Kava and Toby Wincklhofer for their advice on lobster fishing, as well as the Lobster Institute at the University of Maine at Orono.

I’m grateful for the support of the real Alison Dyer, a Darby Fan and Habitat Volunteer Extraordinaire, as well as all the volunteers who work to keep the Rockland Breakwater safe and beautiful.

Thank you to the Professor and Chair of the University of Maine’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, David Batuski, for his assistance.

Once again, the experience of Aikido expert Sensei Gordon Muller of the New Jersey Police Academy has been very helpful, as has the assistance of the Public Affairs Office at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Much appreciation to my fellow real estate agents around the country and in Maine, above all, Scott Horty and the team at Camden Real Estate Company, including the trio always willing to lend a hand: Christopher Brown, Jeanne Fullilove, and Brenda Stearns.

Thank you to my literary agent, Tris Coburn, and to all the good people at Midnight Ink, including editors Terri Bischoff and Connie Hill; publicists Marissa Pederson and Courtney Colton; and book designers Donna Burch and Lisa Novak. Thanks to illustrator Dominick Finelle for a chillingly beautiful cover.

Finally, nothing I do would be possible without the support of my husband, Ed. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

PROLOGUE

L
ORRAINE
D
ELVECCHIO SMELLED THE
carcass before she saw it.

The dusky stench of decaying marine life, mingled with seaweed, rotting mussels, and kelp—there was no mistaking the odor of death on the beach. She scanned the sand, quickly spotting the source: a seal the size of a toddler, with mottled brown fur and black, staring eyes. The dead mammal’s whiskers stood stiffly at attention, coated in ice like pine boughs after a bout of freezing rain.

Lorraine gave the poor thing wide berth. This was the fifth seal washed up on the little beach, along with an assortment of lifeless gulls, flaccid fish, and once, a rare thresher shark. She never knew what she’d find when she made her daily walk to the Manatuck lighthouse and back, but so far, nothing, no matter how gruesome, had been enough to stop her.

Lorraine fumbled in her thick gloves, turning up her parka’s collar against the cold north wind. She crossed the pebbly beach and approached the rough granite blocks of the Manatuck Breakwater, a man-made promontory jutting into the wide mouth of Manatuck Harbor. The blocks were covered in a thin sheen of ice, but even that could not deter the determined walker. Her fur-lined hiking boots with their Italian-made soles would grip the slick surface perfectly, and without hesitation she hoisted herself onto the glistening blocks and began her brisk pace toward the lighthouse.

A weak sun struggled against scudding gray clouds, its rays powerless against the single-digit temperatures, but Lorraine was prepared for the bone-chilling cold. A thick fleece scarf wound around her neck and up over her nostrils, and her fur cap, purchased on a Christmas visit to Montreal, fit snugly over her head and ears. Swaddled in her fleeces and a long down parka, she was as comfortable as possible on a bleak February day on the coast of Maine.

A few gulls circled overhead, eyeing the solitary figure before winging off to more promising parts of the harbor. Lorraine watched the birds, white as alabaster against the dull pewter sky, hearing their shrieks over the crashing waves. She shivered as a brutal blast of wind hit her full on, chilling her lungs as she struggled to breathe. Lorraine coughed into the fleece scarf. Cold did not begin to describe the temperatures. Grimly she began pumping her arms in a swinging motion, determined to warm her muscles with her own exertion.

Last year, on this same day, it had been snowing. She recalled a thick, relentless snowfall that began at 11:15 that morning and did not let up until the middle of the night. The year before had been sunny and mild—a January thaw that had hit the coast in February. Lorraine gave a quick grin underneath her fleece. There certainly was neither rhyme nor reason to the weather patterns for February 11ths, although if she went back far enough, she doubtless could make some sort of correlation.

She glanced back down the Breakwater, toward the parking lot and her car. Not a soul in sight. Lorraine felt a pang of excitement. How many times had she taken this walk and been completely alone? Her mind sifted through the data. Sixty-two times. Sixty-two times in three years of walking.

By now, Lorraine was feeling warm enough to peel her scarf down from her nose. Her heart was pumping, her feet moving briskly over the granite blocks, and her mind slowly clearing of the endless data that cluttered it like knicknacks on a table. She took a deep breath, savoring the tang of the sea air, and smiled.
Dr. Hotchkiss would approve.
Her former employer, an elderly physician who’d practiced for years on the nearby island of Hurricane Harbor, was fond of prescribing a good, brisk walk for just about any ailment. Lorraine stooped to pick up a mussel shell that had washed onto the rocks. She held it up with a gloved hand, admiring the iridescent purple of the shiny interior, and stuffed it in her coat pocket. Perhaps the old man had been right.

A small cairn on her left indicated the midway point of the Breakwater. Lorraine herself had constructed it, both to give herself a reference and to provide one for the tourists, many of whom stopped her to inquire whether they were nearly finished. Lorraine always found this puzzling since the Breakwater stretched off without an obstacle, and they could easily see where they were headed, but she’d learned to reply cheerfully that the stone cairn (sometimes she had to explain what a cairn was) marked the midway, or half a mile.

There were rarely any tourists in January or February, unless it was a sparkling, sunny day with higher than normal temperatures. Before she could stop herself, Lorraine computed the number of January and February days when she’d encountered people whom she’d judged to be tourists. Twenty-five. She paused. And the number of them who’d asked her a question? Seventeen.

She shook her head and tried to make her thoughts clear once more. It was a challenge, taming this monster that was her mind, but she found it necessary to try to disconnect once a day if she was going to keep what she called the screaming jeebies away. She’d sampled meditation and yoga, but found what worked best was walking the mile-long Breakwater, every day, rain or shine, at exactly the same time. The predictability of it was soothing, and the pace seemed to make it easier to relax. Was there a connection between the daily exercise and her sanity? She didn’t know, but she knew the discipline worked.
It makes me more human
, she thought.

She had a sudden memory of a time before she’d started her ritual walks. She was lying on her living room couch, curled in a fetal position, with
Wheel of Fortune
playing on the television. She remembered the contestant, a chunky car salesman from St. Louis, winning one hundred thousand dollars, only to land on bankrupt with his next spin. His wife, sitting in the audience, gasped and covered her face with her hands.

Lorraine saw herself, a motionless figure on the couch, wearing a ripped flannel shirt and stretched-out exercise pants, the kind they used to call a track suit. There was a blister on her right thumb. The date was March 23, 2003.

She licked her lips, tasting salt water from the spray. Her mind flipped back to the twenty-third of every month before that, presenting image after image in excruciating detail, filling her head with memory after memory, until she stopped, dead in her tracks.

Enough!
She picked up a small rock and tossed it into the waves, watching the splash. She imagined taking all of the disjointed millions of memories, and heaving them into the water, just as she had the stone.
Please God, enough
…