“Hello! I’m wondering if you can help me.”
She was a short wisp of a woman with rosy cheeks and a long gray braid. I doubt if she weighed ninety pounds. She wore a purple smock, linen pants, Birkenstocks, and reading glasses propped atop her head. A wedding ring hung on a chain around her neck. “Are you lost, then?”
“Not exactly. I’m trying to find a young woman who lives on this street. Mrs.…?”
“And what would her name be?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know.”
“Maybe you should put an ad in the newspaper, under Missed Connections.”
She had the accent I had come to associate with natives of northern Maine: flat vowels and hard r’s.
First-time visitors to Aroostook County often remark on how midwestern it feels. They don’t just mean the enormous blue skies and rolling farmland. They’re also taken aback by pronunciations, which don’t remotely resemble the Down East stereotype. The Aroostook accent sounds like something you might hear in a Milwaukee beerhouse or at a Nebraska Grange hall.
I produced my badge and identification card. She took her time bringing her reading glasses into position to read them. After a thorough review, she lifted the glasses off her nose and stared into my eyes with fierce intention.
“If she’s a poacher, you’re looking in the wrong neighborhood.”
“Actually, I think she’s a student at one of the colleges, living with a couple of other girls. They had a yard sale not too long ago. The girl I need to talk to has dark hair and is, um, buxom.”
Her eyes twinkled. “Buxom! Haven’t heard that expression since Jane Russell was on TV selling brassieres. That would be Angie Bouchard.”
“Can you point me to her house?”
“Only if you tell me why you need to talk to her.”
“Ms. Bouchard sold something at her yard sale. I’d like to ask where she got it.”
“Was it that badge?”
“You saw it?”
“Course I did. I was there with the other early birds before she opened up. Is she in trouble for selling that thing?”
“No.”
“Yah, well. Wouldn’t surprise me if she were. She and her friends threw the kinds of parties that attract men on motorcycles. I can’t say I’m sad she’s moving out. Blue house, white trim. Number eighty-four.”
“Thank you, Mrs.—”
“That badge of yours is real, I hope. You’re not one of those police impersonators.”
“The badge is real.”
I found a dog-eared business card in my wallet and handed it to her. She took it without a word. When I restarted my truck, she was standing on the front steps, trying to get a clear view down the street of what was about to happen.
There were no motorcycles parked outside the blue house, but there was a muddy pickup pulled up to the curb, someone’s old beater. More notable was the flashy Volkswagen Golf GTI in the open garage. The white hatchback still had the temporary cardboard plate the dealer gives you before you drive off the lot.
The new car might mean something or it might mean nothing. It might not even belong to Angie Bouchard.
I rang the bell, positioned the badge on my belt so that it was in plain sight, and stepped back from the door so I could be viewed from head to foot through the peephole.
The young woman who answered the door had hazel eyes and a rat’s nest of brownish-black hair. She was as voluptuous as Smith had claimed. She wore a T-shirt with the EarthMother logo, jeans with holes in the knees, and a fringe of loose threads at her bare ankles. I judged her to be older than most college students, midtwenties. She held an unlighted, hand-rolled cigarette pinched between two fingers.
“Angie Bouchard?”
“Yeah?”
I produced my badge for her. “I’m Mike Bowditch. I’m a warden investigator for the State of Maine.”
Her untrimmed eyebrows tightened. “What’s that?”
She had an entirely different accent from her busybody neighbor. The inflection was faint but undeniably French. What’s tat?
“I’m a detective who works for the Maine Warden Service, but still a police officer. Can I come in?”
“Fuck no. I don’t let strange men in my house. Cops included.”
“You had a yard sale here last month?”
“Yeah?”
She kept her voice neutral and face free of surprise, but she knew exactly why I had appeared at her door. The effect of my words was immediate. She stepped out onto the concrete stoop and closed the door behind her.
“Did you sell a badge like mine at your sale? It would have been smaller, older?”
“No.”
“A man in the county jail swears he bought a vintage game warden badge at a yard sale at this address.”
She produced a Bic lighter from her pocket and brought the cigarette up to her full lips. “My roommate had stuff for sale, too. Could have belonged to her.”
“Is she home?”
Angie Bouchard exhaled smoke from the corner of her mouth. Only then did I realize the cigarette was an expertly rolled joint. I made a coughing noise that brought an amused light into her eyes.
“Meg’s spending the summer back home in Connecticut.”
“Would you mind putting that thing out until we’re done?”
“It’s legal, and it’s my house,” she said. “If you don’t approve, you can leave.”
Her attitude told me she had dealt with cops before. People who seldom come into contact with the police are rarely so defiant.
Was she a bad girl? Or was she just pretending to be one?
I brought out my notebook. “What’s Meg’s full name?”
She told me. I pretended to write it down.
“What brought her all the way to Presque Isle?”
“Her family is from here originally. They moved to Connecticut after the base closed at Limestone. Went to work for one of the defense firms. Lots of people did. Meg wouldn’t have known it was illegal to sell a police badge.”
“It isn’t illegal. Unless it was stolen property. What about you, Angie? Where are you from?”
“Madawaska.”
It was an industrial town two hours north of Presque Isle in the St. John Valley. Madawaska was noteworthy for having a paper mill with a
