Dead Down East (3 page)

I shivered just a bit as the brisk morning air hit me
in the face. It might be early June, but that doesn’t mean it’s
warm in central Maine. I zipped my thermal lined sweatshirt all the
way to the top, pulled the hood over my head, and tightened the
cord under my chin until my ears were warm and snug inside. It
would be a ten-minute ride across the lake to our camp. I leaned
forward into the wind.

Michael cut back on the throttle and we glided slowly
through the shallow water to our dock. I stepped out and reached
back to steady the boat as Michael hit the kill button and released
the pin that locks the motor in place along the transom. He tipped
the outboard forward, lifted the shaft and propeller out of the
water and locked it there.

Michael then gathered our rods, tackle boxes,
net and seat cushions and handed them to me one by one. I set them
on the dock and took Michael’s hand to help him out of the boat.
Taking some of our things with him, Michael made his way to the
cabin, while I secured the boat to the mooring post.

I grabbed the rest of our gear from the dock,
looked toward the cabin and saw Kathleen on the porch, smiling and
waving to me. Kathleen has a warm, natural smile. She’s spirited
and sharp as a tack. Her hair was trimmed very short all around,
naturally dark and slightly graying on the sides. She has a
smattering of freckles under her eyes that make her look younger
than her years. Her face is rare, like a gem. I walked onto the
porch, put down the fishing gear, and gave her a big hug.

Whenever I hug Kathleen, she hugs back with
abandon. She’s not the least bit shy of taking me to her bosom. I’m
always the first to let go. It’s as if I know instinctively that
I’m entitled to just so much of the mojo, but I’m more than content
to let her charge my batteries.

“How was the fishing?” she asked.

“Well, Michael got the best fish, but I
managed to catch a few. It was a fine morning. Fog covered the
water until the sun rose, and the lake was smooth as glass. Perfect
for fishing and spending time with Michael.”

“Hungry?” she asked.

“You bet!”

“All right then, let’s go to breakfast,” she
said.

“I need to wash up first,” I replied. “You
can start walking without me. I’ll catch up.”

Michael and Kathleen’s younger son, Tyler,
now twenty-four years old, arrived from Boston the night before. He
came out of the cabin and said, “Hi, Jesse. You guys got an early
start.”

“I love it when it’s quiet.”

“I do better when the sun’s going down,”
Tyler said. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m really a Wyeth.”

“I’m sure you are, Tyler,” I said, “You’re
probably just a late bloomer.”

“I’m not an early one, that’s for sure,” he
replied, as he shuffled down the steps and onto the path.

I washed my hands quickly and hurried out of
the cabin. I jogged a bit and came along side of Kathleen, who was
bringing up the rear. We walked together along the lake in front of
a few cabins and then crossed through a parking space onto the dirt
road that leads to the dining hall.

“You know what I like best about staying
here?” Kathleen asked.

“No cooking or cleaning?” I suggested.

“Well, yes, that is nice. But what I like
best is that we totally lose contact with the outside world.”

“Me too,” I said.

In the cabin there is no TV, no WiFi, not
even a radio to feed our hunger for information. The outside world
can do whatever it pleases. Inevitably, like a top wound up 14.7
billion years ago, it just keeps on spinning a path of its own. But
in the cabin or on Great Pond, time stands still. I had joined
Michael, Kathleen and Tyler only the evening before, but in less
than twelve hours, my tether to the world was already losing its
grip.

As we approached Jamaica Point Road that
passes in front of the main house, we could see quite a number of
cars parked on both sides of the road. The camp was nearly full.
Michael and Tyler were about twenty feet ahead of us as we crossed
the road. We followed them up the steps to the long, enclosed porch
in front of the dining room.

Through the open doorway we could hear the
dining hall humming with chatter, perhaps a bit louder and more
animated than usual, although morning and breakfast is always a
boisterous affair. Phil Brookings and his wife Darlene were sitting
on the porch. Phil and Darlene live in Portland and have been
coming here for decades. They usually arrive in mid-May and stay
for about a month. Several of the other faces seemed familiar, but
I wasn’t sure of their names. Phil seemed downcast. He stared at us
with a bewildered look, and then said with considerable
consternation, “Can you
believe
it?”

“Believe what?” Michael asked.

“You haven’t
heard
?” he said, as if he
couldn’t believe that either.

“Not a thing,” said Michael. “Since supper
last evening, we’ve been completely isolated at the lake. What
happened?”

“William Lavoilette was
murdered
last
night!”

Michael froze like an ice statue. We all did.
When this news had fully sunken in, Michael muttered, “
Oh, my
God!
” The words tumbled out of his mouth and fell to the
floor.

Tyler, Kathleen and I just stood there,
stunned by what had happened. We sat down around Phil and began
plying him for details.

Phil took a deep breath and continued, “So
far, there has been very little information available from the
media. Apparently he was shot to death at about 10:30 last night,
just south of Brunswick on Sebascodegan Island, a few minutes drive
from his summer cottage. He was found lying on the side of the road
about 20 feet in front of his car. There are no suspects in
custody. In fact, there are no suspects at all. But the police and
the FBI are not about to give out details that might compromise
their investigation.”

The sadness on Kathleen’s face was palpable.
She turned to her husband and whispered, “Oh, Michael, the governor
is dead!”

We wandered through the maze of guests in the
dining hall and sat down at our usual table by the windows in the
back.

Michael and Kathleen are much more committed
to politics than I am. They are true activists. They emerged from
the ‘60’s without doubting their course, and never looked back. In
quiet ways, I admire their tenacity and their persistent drive for
fairness and right action. That drive has mellowed and matured for
them both over the years, but the fire is still there, and the
water in the cauldron boils up and spills over the pot now and
again. Almost certainly that will be happening over this event,
once the shockwaves subside. But for now, they just looked
dumbstruck.

All four of us liked our governor, William
Lavoilette. Elected three and a half years earlier, he was a breath
of fresh air in Maine politics. He was young, maybe 45 years old,
personable, and governed in an independent way. He was not the
pride of the powerful corporate sector, and some extreme religious
groups ridiculed him, but a majority of Mainers liked him well
enough. He was favored to win reelection in the fall, unless
something unexpected happened. Now it had.

William Lavoilette was affable and handsome,
even dashing by the conservative standards of Maine. There was
considerable money in his parents’ family, but he had also managed
to do well in his own business ventures. He loved the sea and
developed a small fleet of whale watching and sport fishing boats
along Maine’s rugged coast.

Although the rest of the dining room was
buzzing loudly, we sat quietly for quite a while, which is totally
out of character for us. We spoke briefly with our waitress to
place our orders, and nibbled on the muffins that were already on
the table when we sat down. We were lost in contemplation,
oblivious to our immediate surroundings. Collectively, our thoughts
began to form into a single question, “Who could have done
this?”

Michael spoke first, “Politically, William
Lavoilette had a few enemies, of course, but nothing out of the
ordinary. No one comes to mind who would possibly resort to
murder.”

Michael paused and then went on, “The
‘titans’ of industry found him to be a little too pro environment,
but he was not an extremist. He recognized that Maine’s natural
beauty is important for tourism. The ocean, the lakes, and the
clean rural countryside puts the bread—and potatoes—on the
table.”

It was a stroke of luck that William
Lavoilette had been elected governor in the first place. The
sitting governor, Clayton Andrews, had been running for reelection.
I guess you might say that he was, and still is, a typical,
professional politician. He governed from the middle as best he
could. He allowed both the winds of public opinion and the tides of
corporate money to steer his ship of state. For decades that
strategy had worked well, not just in Maine, but throughout the
country. Now, that status quo doesn’t seem to apply anymore.
Extreme views and cranky contenders have wormed their way into
politics across America, even Down East.

Governor Andrews was outflanked on his right
by John David Fickett. Fickett barely lost to Andrews in the June
state primary. Miffed at his loss, he ran as an Independent,
thereby splitting the popular vote into three shares. William
Lavoilette prevailed with 38% of the vote.

The Maine Constitution does not provide for a
runoff in the event that no candidate receives a clear majority of
the votes cast for governor. A plurality will do. This opens the
door on both sides of the aisle when a popular independent throws
his hat into the ring. Those are, I suppose, the risks and the
possible rewards on today’s political landscape. This is not an age
of civility and common ground in politics, assuming there ever was
such an age.

By the time our waitress arrived with our
meals, silence had once again descended upon our table. She checked
with us to see if everything was all right. We nodded in unison and
thanked her, and then the quiet resumed, broken only by the
occasional clinking of silverware on plates and coffee cups on
saucers.

As if thinking aloud, Kathleen muttered,
“Cherchez la femme.”

“That’s always a possibility when it comes to
crimes of passion,” Michael said.

Each of us shared what little we knew about
William’s wife, Rebecca Lyndon Lavoilette, who, to our knowledge,
was the only woman intimate with the governor. William and Rebecca
appeared to be happily married. He met her while they were at
Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. He majored in Earth and
Oceanic Science, and she majored in Environmental Studies. They
were married shortly after they graduated and continued to live
near Brunswick for the next ten years, where he began to build his
boating business.

As the First Lady, Rebecca had been a little
stiff and formal, especially when compared to her husband’s amiable
style, but I imagined this to be a normal reaction of an otherwise
shy person in the limelight. As William became more and more
successful, she became increasingly philanthropic, donating much of
her time and energies to a number of charities across the
state.

The Lavoilettes had no children. Rebecca
miscarried twice in the early years of their marriage. After the
second, her doctors told her she could not safely carry a child to
full term. If this put any strain on their marriage, it was not
apparent to the public.

We finished breakfast without pointing a
finger at any plausible suspect. We discussed the possibility that
a political rival might have gotten desperate, but we quickly
dismissed that as highly unlikely.

We left the table and made our way outside. I
decided it was time to call Angele Boucher, the “first lady” in my
life.

I walked across the lawn in front of the
dining hall and sat down on a bench…then turned on my cell phone
and checked for messages. There were several, along with nearly
thirty missed calls. I scanned the list quickly and saw that almost
all of them were made from the same number, a private caller I
didn’t recognize. The first one came in at eleven the previous
night, and the last one was placed only minutes before. “He or she
is rather persistent,” I thought. But I figured whoever it was
could wait a few more minutes while I talked with Angele. Pleasure
before business works fine for me.

Angele picked up right away and asked
excitedly, “Jesse, have you heard?”

“About the governor?”

“Yes,” she replied.

“I just found out this morning at breakfast.
It’s a real shame.”

“It’s more than a shame. It’s horrible,”
Angele shot back.

Among other things, Angele Boucher is a
social activist. She’s a fiery one. That, by the way, is what
attracted me to her in the first place—not her political fire, just
her
heat
. She can turn a winter blizzard into a sauna with a
single look. That particular metaphor morphed into a physical
reality last fall behind my house when I brought together a stove
and chimney, a water tank, some planks of redwood, and other
assorted building materials and created the “Thorpe Relaxation
& Recreation Arena.” I call it an “arena,” not so much because
of its size—it’s only 8’x12’—but because of the events that
transpire there on frosty evenings. Many were the nights last
winter when a snowy chill dissolved in a hot tub of pre-marital
bliss.