Read The Bone Orchard: A Novel (Mike Bowditch Mysteries) for Free Online Page A

said they weren’t giving out that information yet. It sounded like a real shit show, though. To use a term from the hood.”
    At that moment, Maddie returned. She sat down and fluffed out her napkin and laid it across her knees. “What did I miss?”
    *   *   *
    As the cute Latvian waitress cleared our dinner plates, Maddie began musing aloud about the possibility of buying a vacation home in Maine. I found myself unable to focus on the conversation.
    There was a decent chance that I knew one or both of the cops involved in the shooting, either from the Criminal Justice Academy or from having worked a search or a drug bust with them. And Mason’s mention of a “crazy vet” had left the back of my neck tingling, for some reason. I was eager to ask Jeff Jordan if I could borrow his computer to find out what had happened, but politeness kept me in my chair.
    Dessert was blueberry pie made with blueberries that Jeff’s kids had picked the previous summer.
    One of Washington County’s few claims to fame—aside from being the easternmost county in the United States—was that it was the wild blueberry capital of the world. Grand Lake Stream sat on the edge of the big woods, but south and west of us there were miles of open fields where migrant workers from Latin American countries came each year to rake berries. They’d set up their gypsy camps for a few months and then move south again in the fall. The sight of the barrens in autumn, blazing like a red carpet thrown over the hills, always made me think of my first district. There were blueberry fields along the Midcoast, too.
    I’d been living Down East for more than a year, but I still felt homesick for the fishing villages and hardscrabble farms where I’d learned to be a game warden. I’d done a lot of growing up since I first joined the service, but sometimes I experienced painful feelings of nostalgia when I remembered my youthful enthusiasm and naive desire to do good in the world. I missed that kid. Where the hell had he gone?
    Without meaning to, I found myself staring at the back of Stacey’s head. I wasn’t sure why. My gaze just locked onto her as if pulled there by a magnetic force.
    Her friend, the one with the nose ring, was watching me with a sour expression. She leaned across the table, nearly upsetting one of several beer bottles in front of her, and muttered something. Stacey half-turned her head in my direction, then thought better of it.
    Stacey worked as a field biologist for my former employer, the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. She was the only woman I’d ever met who loved the woods with the same intensity I did. Her parents, Charley and Ora Stevens, were among my best friends in the world. The rift between us was stupid and unnecessary, I decided, even if she was never going to reciprocate my feelings.
    I excused myself from the table.
    The friend with the nose ring gave me the evil eye when she saw me crossing the dining room. I stopped beside Stacey’s chair and said, “Good evening.”
    I had the sense from their forced smiles that they all knew who I was.
    “Sorry to interrupt your dinner,” I said. “Stacey, could I have a word with you?”
    She narrowed her eyes. “What is it, Mike?”
    “Maybe we could talk out on the porch.”
    I wasn’t sure she would agree, but she did. The chair made a screeching noise as it slid back across the pine floorboards. Out on the porch, an older couple was playing gin rummy. I glanced around for a private alcove, but the library was also occupied by guests. Stacey just pushed past me, going through the front door and out into the lightly falling rain. I followed her outside. Neither of us was wearing a jacket.
    Rain spun in the light above the lodge entrance. Stacey was dressed in a green zip-neck shirt that clung to her small breasts. She had on blue jeans tucked into rubber-soled Bogs boots.
    She crossed her arms and cocked her head. “What is it?”
    “Did your