Mystery: Family Ties: Mystery and Suspense (25 page)

I picked up the report from Donaldson and the good doctor, at least the parts they were allowed to give me, and told them I’d try to find out something. Talking with them both made me realize why I had left the PPD years ago.

My first stop after seeing them was with another person of influence I knew in Philly. We met at a coffee shop on South Street and I let him have a look at the report. My friend Gerald is a thief and a very good one. He’s not one of the smash-and-grab dudes who plague the malls, but a real professional who lifts diamonds from behind steel vaults before the owner knows they are missing. To my knowledge, Gerald has never done time or even been arrested. He knows what target to go after which won’t attract attention. It’s my contention most of Gerald’s clients are ripping off the insurance industry and are in on the jobs he pulls.

Gerald was wearing a pair of jeans and a work shirt while sipping a cappuccino. We met in a hipster place near the artsy part of Philadelphia. Like I mentioned, Gerald doesn’t like to draw attention to himself.

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The Golf Club (A Jim Ashford Mystery)

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Chapter 1.

The sun in the state of Maine rises the same as it does everywhere. It falls on the same moose that chews its cud in Canada as it does down below in the United States. But the moose will sometimes cross from Maine into Nova Scotia. A moose doesn’t carry a passport. It can be killed by a bullet from a hunter in Maine just as easy as it can be from the one fired in Canada.

The town of Castine in Maine was founded as a settlement in the seventeenth century by the French Empire. Because of its proximity to the other settlements, constant guerrilla war was waged by the British, French and Dutch colonists over who would control the town since it was at the entrance to an important bay in Maine. The American Indians were regulated to bit players in the colonial gamble over who was going to govern the area, although one of the French colonial governors, Jean-Vincent St. Castin, did marry into a local native family and bore ten children with his first wife and two more with his second (also a local girl). After the American Revolution, the town became part of the State of Maine and an important shipping and fishing center. Today the town is known as a picturesque little village sitting on the Penobscot Bay. It has been a popular vacation destination for three generations.

Jim Ashford liked his job. As a detective with the Maine State Troopers’ Major Crimes Unit (MCU), he’d seen his share of violence, but nothing like his colleagues had to endure to the South. His district covered the northern half of the Penobscot Bay and Hancock County which contained it. Maine is one of the least populated states in the union and is known for its vast forests. Ashford worked out of the “J” district which had its headquarters in Ellsworth.

Ashford loved his houseboat. He kept it anchored in the bay and seldom took it anywhere else. One of the reasons he seldom took it out of the bay was that it lacked a motor. The little house boat,
Annabelle Lee
, was built for residency and for nothing else. Ashford had the small skiff and row boat, only 16 feet in length, for traveling to and from his house, but the isolation was what made it special for him. A confirmed bachelor, it was a good place to relax after a week of traveling up and down the coast looking into whatever idiotic crime someone had decided to commit. He could invite the boys over and play cards, watch the game, or just barbecue. The house boat was as close to paradise as he would ever know.

Ashford had bounced around the state in his thirty years working for the state troopers. The state troopers were the only law enforcement in much of Maine. Once you got outside the big towns, they were the only cops which could be found in most areas. He’d started out as a trooper in the early days, but transferred to the MCU when he became bored of driving around all day on the back roads handing out speeding tickets. He’d grown up on army bases where his dad was a sergeant and was tired of traveling from one location to another. The house boat was the only concession to his growing years, and it never floated very far. At 55, he expected an easy day in the spring before the tourists started showing up with little active crimes to investigate.

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

It was only ten in the morning on a Monday when Giselle Godfrey was busy tending her garden in the lower part of the Witherle Woods Inn, the small hotel she owned with her husband James. The rhododendrons were going to look very nice and should match the penny royal. She’d managed to find a good source of moon flowers and had them arranged so they would bloom in the evening at the right time. She was careful to make sure her foxglove was it in the herbal section and labeled so a guest didn’t think they were the type of flower to make tea, like chamomile. She checked the dark purple leaves of another plant and continued working in the soil.

Giselle had always wanted to own a small hotel in the town of Castine. Castine didn’t occupy much space, it only took up twenty square miles, but it was on a hill overlooking the approach to the bay, which made it ideal for people from down South looking for a getaway weekend. And many of them needed a place to stay. When the hotel went up for sale ten years ago, she and her husband had invested everything they had to make it a first rate tourist attraction. It was finally starting to pay off.

The sound of the yell almost made her drop the pruning shears. Giselle was not an athletic woman, but she was still in good physical shape at the age of 54 and able to run to the sound of trouble. She put her shears in the gardening pail she’d brought along with her earlier in the day and raced up the walkway to the source of the noise. She had just enough time to check her appearance in the window glass as she ran into the back entrance of the hotel. She was absolutely certain the noise had originated from one of the rooms rented a few days ago. God forbid the guests have experience an accident or worse. It was too early in the year for the wasps to become a problem.

The room was rented to a young couple by the name of Kathleen and Damien. Kathleen was quite the dish, a beautiful lady who, at five foot ten inches tall, with a lithe body, turned the heads of just about every man in the hotel. She was supposed to be a former model and Giselle didn’t have any trouble believing it the way she expected everyone to help her. Damien, her boyfriend of the month, was constantly following in her shadow trying to clear things out of her way, buy whatever she wanted and take her wherever she needed to go. Giselle half expected him to follow her into the toilet.

Giselle walked up to the door and started to knock on it when she noticed it was already open part of the way. She put one hand on it to pull the door open when it swung open on its own. The door released to reveal the form of Kathleen in a light dress. She put one had on the door, effectively blocking Giselle and smiled. She was in the process of wiping something off her face when she saw the hotel owner.

“Are you alright?” Giselle asked her. “I thought I just heard someone yell.”

“No,” she told her, still blocking the door. “Wasn’t me. Are you sure it came from here. Do you have peacocks on the grounds?”

“Not the type with feathers,” she grumbled. “Sorry, I was certain I’d heard something from this room. I didn’t mean to bother you.”

“That is quite alright,” she said while closing the door.

Or interrupt you
, Giselle thought. Did she hear the sound of a man behind the door? Probably Damien on his knees saying: “Please Goddess, may I have another?” Damn these freaky people from down South, couldn’t they just keep their perversions at home? Were they so dumb to think she didn’t know why a yoga mat bag would jingle-jangle?

Giselle walked out of the hallway and into the lobby, making sure to check on the emergency lights as she did. They were up for another inspection this month and those lights better work when the inspector hit the switch. She tested one and then looked at the date on the sealed-lead acid battery which powered it. How long had the battery been in use? There it was, written on the side. Good for another six months and then time to replace it. Oh well, she would get the core charge deposit back. Giselle turned again and went out the main doors. She stopped and turned around to look at the hotel.

It had been built by one of the great “rusticator” families in the nineteenth century. The wealthy and prosperous of New York City, Philadelphia and Boston began building summer homes on the Maine coast at the end of that century to escape the crowded cities. The trend continued even unto the present day with the people who could afford to do so leaving the cities and heading north to the quiet of the Maine shore. They were still in search of sea and fresh lobster. Every summer they swarmed into the coastal towns in search of authentic America. The locals didn’t mind since they brought dollars and would leave when the weather turned cold.

The hotel was originally much smaller as it was built for a wealthy family at the time. When the family who’d built it lost everything in the Crash of 1929, they were forced to sell it to a local doctor who intended on using it as a clinic. His clinic never came about and it sat empty until a film director from Hollywood bought it in 1969 as a place to throw lavish summer parties. His career had ended with the transition to video for the type of films he made and he too was forced to sell the place.

The previous owner had done much renovation to the hotel to transform it into a bed and breakfast inn. He’d taken out the absurdly large swimming pool and replaced it with a small golf course. The party rooms downstairs were turned into storage and everything inside them, including the trapeze, was sold. The conversation pit remained, but Giselle had the feeling it was designed for non-vocal interactions. Twelve coats of paint had covered the psychedelic colors on the walls.

Dozens of visitors would visit the hotel every year after the developer finished his remodeling. The architecture could best be described as nineteenth century Federal and Georgian, but so much work had been done on the location that it securely resembled the original. She was able to keep the previous staff after purchasing it from the developer and continue the policy of meals five nights a week in the summer months. The rooms varied in size and height and as much of the original interior remained as possible. Fire extinguishers and other safety equipment were a necessity, but no one minded them interfering with the ambience.

Her husband David had made the bulk of his money in food retail. She’d been a legal assistant when they first put together the business plan to buy the hotel. Thank God she had a few relatives on the bank’s board of directors or the loan would never have floated. Giselle doubted if it would have if they’d waited till 2008 and the housing market crunch. They had bought the hotel just as soon as many families were starting to cut back on their vacation plans due to lack of work. There had been a turnaround over the last few years, but in the first five years the hotel had operated in the red. She was grateful that everything seemed to be running in the right direction. But it could all change and Giselle constantly had the fear of a complete collapse in the back of her mind. She had no intent of ever going back to the cut throat world of legal assistance. She would sell oysters on the shore before ever doing that kind of work again.

Her husband was supposed to be out of town on a buying trip. Things were constantly breaking down at the hotel and he tried to fix them on his own every time. The one thing he did bring to the management of the hotel was his background in food retail. After his years as a purchasing agent for a large chain of grocery stores in New England, he could spot the best deals for the least amount of money. Food retail was very different from any other kind. The regulations alone made it very difficult to earn a decent profit on any given item. Inventory had to be checked constantly and spoilage was a constant concern. A grocery store needed to keep enough items in stock for whenever their clients needed them, but not so much they’d be stuck with garbage at the end of the day. There was little long term storage in a grocery store. If an item wasn’t moved by its sell date it had to be disposed right away.

Giselle was happy to hear her husband’s truck pull up in the driveway of the hotel. He was back with more linens and appliance parts to keep the hotel running for another month. Another month providing something didn’t go wrong again, which was constantly happening. Because the hotel had been built out of the nineteenth century rusticator mansion, it had accumulated over a hundred and fifty years of problems. Problems which needed constant attention. Even the plumbing was added into the house as an afterthought. When they first purchased the place, Giselle had asked about the walkway that led to a hill on the back terrace. She was informed it was the location of the original privy, torn down many years hence.

James walked into the room with a shopping bag full of appliance parts and placed them down on the front registration desk. Because of the low-key atmosphere of their little bed and breakfast, The Woods, as they liked to call it, didn’t have the constant activity of a major hospitality suite. Giselle looked up at her husband from picking up a piece of paper from the floor. She was glad he was back.

“Did you just get in?” she asked. “I thought I heard your truck in the drive.”

“Pulled up five minutes ago,” he told her. “Anything wrong?”

“I thought I heard that woman named Kathleen, who’s in the back, yell when I was working in the garden,” she explained. “Did you hear anything when you pulled up?”

“No,” he replied, “Did you go check it out?”

“I went up there right away and knocked on the door,” she told him, “and she was already opening it when I came up. She told me it wasn’t her.”

“Maybe you thought it was her and it came from another room. It’s easy to assume things when you see a door open.”

She looked at him funny and continued. “I don’t like that damn woman or her creepy boyfriend. When they were going through their luggage trying to find their credit cards to pay for the room a dog collar fell out of one of the bags. I told them dogs weren’t allowed in the room and she told me they didn’t bring a dog, but bought it for the one they owned back home.”