Foursome by Jeremiah Healy Read Free Book Online

this end of the pond was owned by Judson Lumber. They put in this dirt part so’s they could haul out logs when they cut. Only houses on it are your client, Ma Judson, and Dag Gates.”
    While I’d been waiting for Willis, I’d read the sheriff’s office and state police reports in Lacouture’s file. “That’s Melba Judson and Donald Gates?”
    “That’s right, only I’m not sure anybody’d know either of them by their formal names anymore. Ma, she was the first to get to your client. Dag come up just after her in his canoe.”
    “I’d like to talk to each of them.”
    Willis slowed down, then slewed onto a gravel track toward the lake. “First things first.”
    The gravel snaked its way around a couple of huge trees to a broad clearing. At the back or west end of the clearing, a chipmunk scooted up a path that quickly disappeared into the woods at the base of the mountain. The gravel seemed pretty well raked and distributed to create a parking lot for at least ten cars, though it was empty as Willis killed the engine on the Blazer.
    She said, “The villa de Shea.”
    The house, at the east end of the gravel clearing, was monstrous. Some kind of wildly concocted contemporary, it was as though a giant’s spiteful kid had dumped a set of blocks on the site. The windows were all shapes and sizes, with a wide deck beginning at the back door on the west or road side of the house, continuing to the north side and apparently getting even wider at the east or lake side of the house.
    I got out of the truck, nearly falling because I’d forgotten how high the chassis was off the ground. Willis landed nimbly on her side and met me at the headlights, the gravel crunching under our feet.
    I said, “What’s it like from the front?”
    “Worse. Don’t quite see why folks like your client bother coming to Maine.”
    We walked around the north side of the house on manicured lawn and little flagstone inserts. The structure itself must have been ninety feet wide, and there were no trees whatsoever left between it and the water. Just lawn and what appeared to be an erosion gully with three ornamental footbridges over it, like something from an expensive suburban development. We stopped by the steps that climbed to the deck at the northeast corner of the house, the wind chimes above the doors to the house tinkling merrily in the breeze.
    Willis said, “When Shea and his wife built here three year ago, you were allowed to clear-cut thirty foot of width for every hundred foot of frontage. That’s not permitted anymore, but … what’s done is done.”
    “The bridges are an especially nice touch.”
    She looked to me, confirming my sarcasm. “Carpentry is fine. Owen Briss, he did most of the finish work here, and he knows what he’s doing. But …” Willis moved her hand at the bridges like a baseball manager finishing an argument with an umpire.
    I pointed to a stone structure at the water’s edge partially hidden by brush and trees. “That a boathouse?”
    “It is. Tom Judson had an old-timey camp like his sister’s on this site before he sold to your client. That boathouse was already there, so it got grandfathered against the new zoning laws.”
    “Can you orient me on where we are?”
    “Sure can. Let’s go down by the water.”
    We walked down the gentle slope. Paralleling the gully, you could see a lot of sand and silt lying in it.
    I said, “The erosion from the clear-cutting?”
    “Some. The rest is because of runoff from the roof and driveway. There used to be a whole … ‘buffer’ is what the environmental people call it. You can ask Dag about those things, he’s up on them. I do know that once you cut and build as much as your client did, you got basically a big sluiceway for the water and not much holding her back from the pond.”
    At the water’s edge, Willis began to point. “Northward now, to our left, the shoreline runs about two point five mile to the village. Bit longer by car, as I