Second Glance: A Novel Read online

  He found Az Thompson on the banks of the Winooski at dawn, pulling up muskies. The old man's thin shoulders moved beneath the fabric of his shirt as he reeled and cast. "My grandfather caught a sturgeon in Lake Champlain," Eli said, coming up behind him.

  "They run in there," Az said.

  "You ever get one?"

  He shrugged.

  "My mother used to tell me how he had to tie it to his canoe and let it pull him around until it got tired out and he could get to the shallows and club it."

  "Patience is a hell of a lure," Az agreed.

  Eli watched him toss another fish into his pail. "I need your help. Turns out, Cecelia Pike was half-Abenaki."

  Poking over a small container of bait, Az hesitated for only a moment. "Abenaki," he repeated softly. "Do you think the dawn's just as beautiful to the people who aren't named for it?"

  Eli understood that the old man wasn't expecting an answer. "I know there should be some kind of--well, isn't there a ceremony? A place you can . . . move her and her daughter?"

  Az looked up. "What's going to happen to the property?"

  "I don't know," Eli admitted.

  The answer seemed to satisfy the old man. "I'll take care of them," he said.

  "Not those," Ross said to the clerk at the Gas & Grocery, a green-haired teen in overalls with so many piercings along her eyebrows and nostrils that he wondered if she took on water when she showered. "The Merits."

  He paid for the cigarettes, watching the girl make change. Ross tore open the package to light a smoke and inadvertently knocked his book of matches onto the floor. It landed near the shoe of the man waiting in line behind him, who bent down to pick it up. "Thanks," Ross said, and then the man straightened. "Curtis?"

  His former employer's lips thinned. "Ross."

  "What are you doing here?"

  "The same thing you are, I imagine. Looking for a ghost."

  Ross's knees went weak. Rod van Vleet had indeed found himself someone to get rid of a spirit . . . and Ross had been the one to give him the lead. "Curtis, listen--"

  "No, you listen, you son of a bitch. You signed a non-compete clause when you started working for us, and don't think I won't ride you all the way to court if you decide to show me up. You are an amateur, Ross. You have no idea how to run a show like this."

  The inside of Ross's mouth was as dry as dust. "This isn't a show."

  "It will be." Curtis jabbed a finger into Ross's chest. "I'm going to find that ghost, and I'm going to get rid of it, and the whole damn thing's going to win me my time slot." He shoved past Ross, thrust a dollar bill at the clerk, and took a stale bagel from a basket on the counter before slamming outside.

  "He's got issues, huh?" the clerk said, and she clicked her tongue ring against the ledge of her bottom teeth.

  "Yeah." Ross lit his cigarette, inhaled, and stepped onto the porch of the Gas & Grocery. It was so bright out he found himself squinting. From here, past the 1950s-style gas pumps and the antique Moxie sign, you could see the edge of the town green, with its requisite white church. You could just make out the hill that was the quarry and the valley that became Lake Champlain. This was the world Lia had known.

  He would need mirrors, and fishing line. Speakers, and batteries, and Shelby's laptop. If Curtis wanted to oust a ghost, he'd give him one.

  It just wouldn't be Lia.

  Duley Wiggs had been twenty years old and a policeman for eight days when Cecelia Pike was murdered. Now, he was in the early stages of Alzheimer's and living in the Northeast Kingdom with his daughter Geraldine. "Some days are better than others," she told Eli, standing at the sliding-glass door that opened out to the patio where Duley sat in a wheelchair. "And then some days he can't figure out what you do with a spoon."

  She looked, to Eli, like a teabag that had been used several times over, to the point where it had lost all flavor. "I appreciate your letting me talk to him."

  "You can talk as much as you want," Geraldine said, shrugging. "But he confuses everything. I'd take whatever he tells you with a grain of salt the size of Lot's pillar."

  Eli nodded and then followed her outside. "Daddy?" she said loudly, as if the old man was deaf too. "Daddy, there's a man here to see you. Detective Eli Rochert, from Comtosook. Remember when you used to live in Comtosook?"

  "You know, I used to live in Comtosook," Duley said. He smiled, his face cracking like porcelain. He shook Eli's hand.

  "Hey, Duley." Eli had worn his dress uniform, in the hopes of jogging the memories even more. "I have a few questions to ask you."

  "Miranda, why don't you leave us two men alone?" Duley said.

  "I'm Geraldine, Daddy." She sighed, and then retreated back to the house.

  Eli sat down. "I was wondering if you might remember any murder cases from your time on the job in Comtosook."

  "Murder? Oh, yeah, sure. We had a lot of murders. Well, no, it wasn't murders exactly. It was burglaries. Yes, I do recall those. A rash of them in the forties that turned out to be two teenagers, who fancied themselves to be Bonnie and Clyde."

  "But the murder cases . . ."

  "There was one," Duley said. "I don't suppose anyone could ever forget something like what happened to Cissy Pike. I knew her personally. We went to school together. She was younger than me by a couple of years. Pretty thing, and smart, too. Got it from her father. He was an astronaut."

  "He was a professor, Duley."

  "That's what I said!" The old man frowned, annoyed. "Listen, will you?"

  "Yes. Right. Sorry. So . . . you were talking about her murder . . ."

  "She was married to some bigwig at the university. Pike. Had a reputation around town for being a little holier-than-thou, if you get my meaning. But he treated Cissy like she was a queen. When we got there--to the house, after he called us--well, I'd never seen a grown man weeping like a baby." He shook his head. "And then to have him turn the gun on himself, right before our eyes . . ."

  "Duley," Eli said gently, "Spencer Pike didn't commit suicide."

  "Suicide? Oh, that's right, now. That was a hostage thing up at the post office in the late fifties." He rubbed his forehead. "Sometimes . . . sometimes it all just slides together up there."

  "I understand." Eli twirled his hat on his hand. Maybe this hadn't been such a great idea.

  "The medical examiner, he wanted to do an autopsy on the baby."

  At that, Eli's head snapped up. "He did?"

  "Yeah. And Olivette--he was the detective-lieutenant at the time--wouldn't let him dig up the grave. Said that you didn't cause a man like Spencer Pike any more grief if you didn't have to."

  "So the baby was already buried when you got there?"

  "Uh-huh. Off in the woods a ways. Fresh dirt and even some flowers. Pike told us that the baby came stillborn, and it sent his wife over the edge. Said he buried the baby just to give her some peace of mind."

  "Pike told me he buried his wife and his baby on the same day."

  "Nope, I know that for a fact. I was at Cissy Pike's funeral. Weren't many of us--me and Olivette, and her father, and Pike, just enough to lower the coffin. It was a pretty big scandal at the time--he wasn't up for the church ladies bringing casseroles, even though he could have used the help, with his girl gone. Buried Cissy right next to the grave where his baby already was."

  "Did he tell you what took so long? To call the cops?" Eli asked.

  "Oh, he didn't have to tell us. We could still smell the booze on him. Pretty much pickled himself the night before." Duley looked toward the house. "I got three girls, you know, and I can't even imagine what I'd have felt like if they'd been born dead. I figure Pike was trying to take the edge off. But he did such a good job of it he passed out . . . didn't hear anyone coming in to take his wife, or trashing his house. And by the time he woke up half the morning was gone. He called us just before lunchtime, which was a good thing, because I had less in my stomach to toss up when I saw Cissy."

  Cecelia's body had been cut down hours