vase on the coffee table or kitchen counter.
“Didn’t you get a delivery at school?” I asked with all the casualness I could muster.
“No,” she said. “Why?”
“I sent you flowers.”
She narrowed her eyes in a playful way. “What trouble are you in now?”
“Nothing! I just thought it would be romantic.”
“Oh, honey.” She laughed. “That’s really sweet. I took off early. I’m sure they were delivered after I left. They’ll be in my classroom tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow is Saturday.”
“Maybe a janitor can let me in.”
“I paid extra for the delivery.”
“I appreciate the effort. You get a gold star.” At least she seemed in a good mood. She’d changed into blue jeans and one of my oversized Colby sweatshirts and was padding around in ridiculously fluffy slippers, which made her look like she had a pink rabbit glued to each foot. Given my own miserable childhood, I was never entirely certain what a happy home life was supposed to look like, but this scene seemed like a good approximation.
I wanted to tell her about Ora’s suspicion, but how do you ask your girlfriend if she’s pregnant without accusing her of misleading you? I had no idea how to broach the subject.
My cell phone rang. I removed it from my belt and held it to my ear. “Hello?”
“Michael Bowditch?” The woman’s accent was as thick as a Down East fog bank.
“Yes, this is Warden Bowditch. Who’s this?”
“My name is Lou Bates. I left you a message previously. It was about the unfortunate girl who got killed last night and a miscarriage of justice I need to bring to your attention.”
Christ, it was Erland Jefferts’s crazy aunt. Sarah was gazing at me expectantly, curious who it might be. I rolled my eyes to indicate it was just another crank.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said in my best cop voice. “I’m afraid I’m not permitted to speak about the matter.”
“I want to talk with you about a wrongfully persecuted individual named Erland Jefferts.”
“I can’t talk about him, either.”
She ignored my response but launched into what sounded like a well-practiced speech. “Warden Bowditch, Erland Jefferts’s supporters ask only for a new trial. Prosecutors at the attorney general’s office are fully aware that they could never win a trial where jurors hear all the evidence, not just what they are willing to disclose. They have done everything in their power to prevent an innocent man from ever having a chance at justice. He has been in prison for seven years, and unless the desperate desire of those prosecutors is overcome, he will remain there until he dies.”
“Mrs. Bates-”
“We, the J-Team, are currently petitioning the governor, the chief justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, and the attorney general of Maine, requesting a complete, fair, and independent investigation of the Erland Jefferts case. This travesty of justice must not be allowed to stand.”
It took me a few moments to realize that she had reached the end of her speech.
“Mrs. Bates,” I said. “I appreciate your commitment to your nephew’s cause, but I just can’t say anything at this time about any open investigations or pending legal matters. Please respect my position and don’t call me again.”
I switched off the phone and stuck it in my belt holster. I removed my gun belt and hung it in the bedroom closet, unbuttoned my uniform shirt and sniffed the underarms to see whether I could get away with wearing it again, decided not, and tossed it into the hamper. Then I went into the kitchen to pour myself a whiskey.
Sarah was stirring the chowder. “So who was on the phone?”
“A crazy lady who thinks I can somehow help get her nephew out of prison.”
“How would you do that?” she asked.
My supposition was that Sarah was unfamiliar with the Erland Jefferts case. The murder and trial occurred while she was still in high school in Connecticut, although the antics of the J-Team still got enough ink these days in the local newspaper.
“She says her nephew was wrongfully convicted seven years ago and believes the real killer murdered Ashley Kim last night. For some reason, she thinks I can help her.”
She put the spoon down next to the burner and started to sob.
“Sarah.” I stepped forward and put my arms around her.
A shiver rippled down her spine. “I’m sorry. I’ve been doing this all day. All the teachers were talking about the murder. That’s why I left school early. I kept breaking into tears and didn’t want the kids to see.” She reached for a dishrag to wipe her nose and eyes. “Go on. What were you saying?”
“It was nothing important.”
She shook her head, so that her blond hair swayed just like Jill Westergaard’s had that morning. “I want to hear what you found out from the detectives.”
I took my glass and sat down at the kitchen table and sipped my whiskey. “The state police are still looking for this Hans Westergaard, who owns the house. They think the killing was a rendezvous that somehow went really, really bad.”
“So this professor was the one who murdered her?”
“In these cases, it’s almost always the boyfriend,” I said, parroting Skip Morrison’s words.
“But the detectives don’t know for certain?”
“The probability is high.”
“But there’s a chance it was someone else? It could be some random psychopath who happened on the accident scene and offered to give her a ride.”
I gulped down the rest of my whiskey. “I don’t think there’s a random psychopath in Seal Cove.”
Sarah dished me a bowl of chowder and set it on the place mat. “The teachers were saying-” Her voice caught in her throat again, but this time she managed to recover herself and continue. “We were saying how scary it is for women to drive alone at night on some of these back roads. What happened to that woman, it could have happened to me.”
This conversation seemed poised to become another indictment of our living situation. Sarah had made it abundantly clear that she would have preferred renting an apartment up the road in swanky Camden. I dug into my dinner. “Well, it didn’t.”
“You think Ashley Kim was just unlucky.”
“Basically.”
“That’s how you and I are different.” Sarah had been raised as an Episcopalian and still considered her parents’ family priest a trusted friend. She was a person of faith, just as I was a person of doubt. On the question of happenstance, she saw destiny’s hand instead of random luck. “I don’t believe in accidents.”
At dinner, I kept waiting for Sarah to break the news to me, if there was news, but she ate quietly, lost in her own head.
Finally, as we were washing the dishes side by side at the sink and my inhibitions had been lowered by two more whiskeys, I just blurted out the question. “So how’s your stomach?”
She focused on what her hands were doing in the soapy water. “It’s still giving me trouble.”
I waited for her to say more, but that was the beginning and the end of the subject.
As I refolded the napkins, I sneaked a look at Sarah’s midsection. I wasn’t sure what I expected to see, but her abdomen was as flat as the tabletop. If we had a baby and it was a little boy, I realized I could teach him everything my father had failed to teach me. That possibility of having a second chance at childhood, if only vicariously, appealed to some deep emotion I couldn’t even name.
She must have picked up on one of my brain waves. “Was your father always like that?”
“Like what?”
“Self-destructive.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “My grandmother used to tell me he was different before he went to Vietnam.”
“Different how?”
“I’d rather not talk about my dad.”
