Firefly Beach Read online

  Something flipped.

  “Kenny!” Beth shouted as she bent down to examine it.

  Kenny negotiated his way to the place where Beth squatted. She turned something over in her hands, a flat rectangle with slightly curved edges. It was bent and covered with a thick layer of dirt. Beth used the side of her hand and then her fingernails to chip away at the encrusted mud. The paint had long since eroded away, but the raised letters and numbers clearly identified the object. It was a license plate.

  Beth looked up at Kenny. Her heart pounded so loudly in her ears, she could barely hear herself think. They both looked downhill from where the license plate had rested. Recently fallen trees, a cluster of saplings, and heaps of sticks and dead leaves partially obstructed a very large tree twenty feet away. Beth’s eyes began to water and her breathing grew shallow.

  “I’m scared, Kenny,” she whispered, almost inaudibly.

  Kenny gently lifted her to her feet, placed his hands on her shoulders, and firmly said, “I’ll go.”

  Beth bit her lip and nodded her head, unable to respond.

  Kenny approached the area and wrestled with the moss-covered deadwood and broken branches that concealed the old tree. Beth watched tentatively, willing her feet to move, but she remained frozen. Haunting questions plagued her. What really happened? Why would Katherine have driven this way in the first place? The suicide theory raised its ugly head. If Katherine had indeed died in a crash near the place where Beth stood, suicide was the most plausible explanation. Why else would she be in the middle of nowhere? In 1977, the location would have been barely populated for miles in any direction. Beth looked down. She was disappointed. Why Katherine? Why?

  She glanced up just as Kenny moved a pile of leaves, uncovering something near the tree. Finally her feet found the power to move. She ran toward him, almost tripping over a jagged rock. Kenny continued to clear the area. Beneath the branches and layers of sticks and leaves rested a few fragments of a car, its make and model long since indistinguishable under years of rust and decomposition. Large and small chunks of glass lay scattered on the ground. Several rusted pieces of metal were marginally identifiable as a door, a trunk, and a bumper. Saplings grew up through the thin sheet of rust that had once been an undercarriage. The rear window, nearly intact, lay askew adjacent to several large, rusted springs – presumably the rear seat. Most of the interior of the car had essentially decomposed, having been pecked and chewed by birds and burrowing animals or simply disintegrated.

  Uneasy, Beth watched while Kenny rummaged near the tree, gently lifting what appeared to be the driver’s side door. She gasped and closed her eyes. Underneath the door rested a pile of bones, the top half of a skull, and the remnants of a steering wheel. There were not enough bones to comprise an entire skeleton. Beth turned her head away from them, her body shaking.

  If her suppositions were correct, the bones were all that remained of Katherine, a vibrant and passionate young lady who had dominated Beth’s world for nearly two weeks. The Katherine of the diary had passed away thirty-five years ago, lying in the center of an uninhabited forest. Remembering the picture she found in the letter, Beth shook her head. A young mother in the prime of her life. It seemed so unjust. It made Beth angry. Did you do this Katherine? she thought in disdain. How could you do this? Kenny reverently covered the bones and walked around to the other side of the wreckage. When he lifted an unidentifiable slab of metal, Beth could scarcely believe what she saw. Lying on the ground, its original color dulled by dirt and years of neglect, one of the few non-biodegradable objects for miles, was a set of rubber ducks – one large, three small – tied together with fishing line.

  “The tackle shop ducks,” she said joyfully, running to pick them up. A thousand thoughts inundated her brain. She tried to sort out the information, and as she did, a logical conclusion arose.

  “It was an accident,” she whispered.

  “Yeah,” Kenny said matter-of-factly. “I thought that was what we were looking for.”

  Beth began to ramble, dozens of facts spilling out and overlapping. “Yes, I know but…remember the suicide theory…you know, she was out here in the middle of nowhere, right? It could have been deliberate. You know what I mean? And remember I worried that she might have killed herself? And I was so angry that she might have left her daughter behind in such a selfish way. It would have been so wrong…I was disappointed. I was almost ashamed, really…but I couldn’t put it all together, and I didn’t understand why she took this road. I still don’t understand why she took this road.” Beth paused for a moment to catch her breath, and she slowed her speech. “But I know now, without a doubt, that this was an accident,” she declared confidently.

  “How?”

  Beth held up the dingy ducks triumphantly, shaking them in Kenny’s face. “Because she wouldn’t buy a toy for her child and then deliberately drive off the road ten minutes later, never to be seen again.”

  “Ten minutes?”

  “They sold these ducks at the tackle shop just down the road.”

  Kenny crinkled his brow. “I suppose it makes sense.”

  “It makes a whole world of sense,” Beth said. But as she spoke her voice cracked. Her throat constricted and her stomach turned. “It makes sense,” she whispered, tears falling down her face freely. She grimaced, trying to hold them back. “It was an accident.”

  Beth turned and walked away from the wreckage. She took several steps before the tears overcame her. She held the ducks against her chest. Then, the woman who’d barely allowed herself a tear at her mother’s funeral began to sob uncontrollably. She shrank to the ground, clutching the ducks, cuddling them as if they were a teddy bear. The tears flowed endlessly, interspersed with gasps and almost unintelligible declarations.

  “It was an…accident,” she cried. “It’s oh…kay, Ka-Katherine…It’s all right, D-Dad. I’m…so sorry…that…I…I was angry, Daddy. I know you…didn’t…mean it. I know…it wasn’t…wasn’t your fault…” Years of grief came tumbling out, spilling all over an anonymous place in the middle of the forest. Beth sat amidst the dead leaves and broken branches and succumbed to a cleansing that was decades overdue.

  Kenny bit his lip and cautiously sat down on the ground next to her. Beth continued to cry. She mourned the loss of her father and the unexpected death of her mother. She grieved for her failed marriage and the disintegration of a relationship that once held joy and promise. She denounced the unceremonious way she lost her innocence, and she longed for all the human experiences in which she declined to participate out of fear. She wept for the child she might have known as her own who never came to be. She yearned for the life of a passionate young girl named Katherine who had suffered a horrible fate, snatched from the world when she had so much to give. And she cried for the baby girl who looked out the window one afternoon and her mother never came home. Then the cycle started all over again.

  For nearly an hour they sat there. Beth’s gasps and sobs grew softer as time progressed. Kenny’s body was steady and reassuring. He said not a word, not a single solitary word. Yet he provided all the warmth and comfort a human presence could offer that words could not.

  In a moment entirely uncharacteristic of him, he bent over and kissed her hair. A single tear rolled down his face. Beth sat up and dried her tears with her hand. Her face was red, swollen and hardly recognizable. But she smiled at Kenny, the kind of smile that comes when all the anger has been washed away.

  He helped her to her feet. She made a move to return the ducks to the place where she found them. Kenny stopped her, pushing the hand in which she held the toy toward her chest.

  “But isn’t this sort of a crime scene?” Beth asked innocently.

  Kenny gazed at her with a mixture of tenderness and amusement. Then he shrugged and looked around, pointing to the incomplete shards that indicated years of decay. “Moving the ducks will hardly make a difference now,” he said.

  Beth laughed, slightly embarrassed. Sh
e clutched the ducks and took his hand. Then the two began the tedious trek back to Kenny’s car.

  * * * *

  Cindy jumped in surprise when Beth and Kenny walked into the shop carrying the tattered toy.

  “My father’s ducks! Where did you find them?”

  Beth looked at Kenny. “They were at the scene of an accident—”

  “Oh my God. Are the police there?” Cindy asked, picking up her phone.

  Beth reached toward Cindy. “Don’t call 911. The accident occurred thirty-five years ago. We should notify the sheriff, however. Do you know their non-emergency number?”

  Cindy pulled a phone book out from under the desk and fumbled through the blue pages. She wrote the phone number down and handed it to Beth. Beth started to dial. Then she stopped and looked at Cindy.

  “Do you remember…was your store open on Sundays when your dad was here?”

  “Yes, I believe we’ve always been open on Sundays, but only from one to five.”

  Beth crinkled her brow. “What about Sunday morning fishermen?”

  Cindy shrugged. “Dad went to church with us. Then we had a nice brunch together. After that, he came here. He was very serviceable to his customers, but Sunday morning was family time.”

  Beth meandered through her thoughts. It made sense that Katherine had stopped on her way home. The tackle shop was south of the scene of the accident. Did Katherine make it to Virginia Point? That would mean she had visited her father, or at least tried to visit him. But then, wouldn’t someone have seen her? Abigail said she was never seen again. Maybe Katherine wanted to be invisible. Or perhaps she chickened out and never drove all the way to Virginia Point. But then, what did she do with all that time? And what was she doing on Highway 46?

  “Would you like me to call them?” Kenny asked gently.

  “Who?”

  “The sheriff’s office.”

  “Oh, yes. Certainly.” She handed her cell phone to Kenny. He ushered her to the table by the window and Cindy poured her a cup of coffee.

  When the detectives from the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office arrived at the tackle shop, Beth was on her second cup. Kenny sat next to her, staring out the window. The older detective was slightly balding with a moustache and a modestly plump waistline. The younger detective had bright orange-red hair and freckles. He was tall and thin.

  “You wish to report an accident?” the older detective asked.

  Kenny stood up. “Yes, we can take you to the location. It is a very old accident, sir.”

  “How old?”

  “We’re guessing thirty-five years or so.”

  “November, 1977,” Beth chimed in.

  The detective raised an eyebrow. “Do you have a specific incident in mind, ma’am?”

  Beth blushed and looked at Kenny. How could she explain? She took a deep breath and let it out slowly before launching into the story. “I’ve been looking for Katherine Thompson who disappeared on November thirteenth of that year. I know she was in this area, so I talked my friend, Kenny here, into helping me scout around. We were lucky. She must have known we were coming and led the way.” Beth thought of the firefly and shuddered.

  The detective frowned and eyed her suspiciously. Clearly Beth’s “led the way” explanation was meeting skepticism. He can’t possibly suspect us, Beth thought. I mean, he has to realize Kenny and I would have been children in 1977. She grimaced, hoping they wouldn’t become victims of a long-term investigation.

  Beth looked at Kenny. He gave her a significant warning glare, which Beth interpreted meant something to the effect of do not talk about the dreams or the firefly. She nodded, almost imperceptibly, in response.

  “Can you describe the accident scene?”

  Beth turned her head away, trying not to remember the gruesome sight and what remained of a girl whose secret thoughts and dreams Beth had uncovered in a diary. A young lady permanently silenced by an enemy Beth knew only too well – death.

  Kenny turned to the detectives, and, forming a circle that left Beth separated from the three of them, described the scene to the best of his ability. He left out the toy ducks, which were lying on the floor behind Beth’s purse, out of view.

  The detectives wrote out a lengthy report including as much information as possible about Beth, Kenny, and the suggested victim. They also took down contact information for Rod Thompson. When the younger detective asked about dental records, Beth sat up quickly.

  “Oh, the Bennings!” she exclaimed. Then she leaned in to explain. “Katherine used to work for a dentist in Bangor. I’m sure he has her dental records, but…”

  “Yes?”

  Beth almost told the detectives about the Bennings being godparents to Katherine’s baby. But then she realized that such information might start a whole new investigation into the whereabouts of Susan Thompson. For some reason, Beth felt that such an investigation was inappropriate. It was not really her decision to make, and it would probably all come out in the open in the long run, but she felt obligated to protect Susan from the pain such an inquiry might unleash.

  “They were very close to Katherine. I want to tell them first. If I give you their number, could you wait until tomorrow afternoon to call them?”

  The younger detective looked at the older one. The older detective shrugged. “I don’t see why not. We have a lot of paperwork to process. And besides, we don’t even have a body yet, presuming what you are telling me is true and we actually find a wreck.”

  “Oh, it’s true, sir. I wouldn’t waste your time.”

  “I hope not,” he grumbled.

  The redheaded detective smiled playfully at Beth with a nod and an expression that said he’s having a bad day.

  Beth pursed her lips and suppressed a grin.

  “Kenny, would you mind going to the Bennings’ house after we finish up here? I really need to talk to them, and I would rather it be in person.”

  Kenny sighed.

  Beth sensed he was exhausted. “Please?”

  “No problem,” he said with a slight edge in his voice.

  The detectives completed the necessary reports and Beth and Kenny led them to the Look Out For Loons sign.

  “It’s down there, at about a twenty degree angle from where we stand,” Kenny said, gesturing to the left. “A large old tree in a sea of saplings. It will be obvious when you get down there. The site is mostly uncovered now.”

  “Why didn’t you get police assistance in the first place?” the older detective asked.

  “We were looking for a needle in a haystack we were not even sure existed. The lady just had a hunch,” he said, shrugging. “I didn’t want to let her down. We were not positive we would find anything at all.”

  “Okay. We’ll take it from here.” He turned to his assistant. “Is this Dedham or Bucksport?”

  The young detective looked up the road. “Uh…I believe it’s Bucksport.”

  “Figure out who the hell has jurisdiction and get them on the radio.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  * * * *

  Beth and Kenny arrived at the Bennings a little after 3:30 p.m. Linda Benning opened the door. She was surprised to see Beth standing on the porch with a gentleman.

  “Linda, this is Kenny McLeary. Kenny, Linda Benning.”

  They shook hands and Linda invited them in. Kenny followed Beth and Linda to the sitting room.

  Wyatt peeked his head in from the hallway. “Back so soon?” he said. “Do you have news for us?”

  Beth and Kenny exchanged a somber glance. Linda stumbled as she made her way to a chair in the far corner of the room.

  “What is it, Beth?” Linda asked cautiously.

  Beth hesitated before she said, “We’ve found the remains of a car wreck.”

  “Oh my God,” Linda shouted, filling in a dozen blanks in her mind in an instant.

  “Wait,” Beth said. “Please hear me out. We don’t even know if it is Katherine yet. It’s hard to explain. I…I…I just had a…a
feeling. And, well, we found a very old accident. But it was on highway 46, just south of Dedham. I don’t know what Katherine would have been doing there.”

  “Dedham?” Linda exclaimed.

  “Yes, is that—”

  “Oh my God. Oh my God,” Linda said softly, shaking her head.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s my fault. It’s my fault,” she said slowly, visibly stunned. “My grandparents lived in Dedham. We used to visit when I was a child. I grew up in Connecticut, but I cherished summers in Maine with my grandparents – fishing with Grandpa, making blueberry jam with Gran. I told Katherine that was why I moved to Maine after I finished college. Dedham is where I fell in love with Maine, I told her. She must have wanted to visit. What else could it be?”

  “Uh…that must be it,” Beth responded absentmindedly, oblivious to Linda’s anguish and misplaced guilt. Beth was too intrigued by the details to be cognizant of the woman’s need for reassurance. The pieces started to fall into place. Katherine did take Highway 46 intentionally Sunday afternoon, maybe even around sunset. Twilight would have made the road harder to negotiate, Beth reasoned. It may have been an unpaved road at that time. Finally, she had the fragments of a theory that made some sense.

  Linda started to cry.

  “You can’t blame yourself,” Kenny said. “And nothing is official yet. They will need to do some investigating and examine dental records.”

  Wyatt remained steady. “Of course. I’ll pull my files,” he said calmly.

  “It’s my fault,” Linda continued to say. “I can’t bear to imagine it. Poor Katherine. Poor little Susie. They must have been so scared. I hope they died on impact and didn’t languish there in—”

  “Linda,” Beth interrupted. “Susan wasn’t in the car.”

  Linda looked up, completely bewildered.

  “Katherine didn’t take her along.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Mrs. Sharpe was supposed to be watching her.”

  “What?” she yelled. “Where the hell is she then?”