Chapter 18
While I was on a roll, I shrugged off Binder’s warning and drove back into town to the Fogged Inn. Caroline and Deborah had confirmed the identities of the people in the photo. There seemed to be no doubt as to who they were. But hearing recollections about the past might help me put the pieces together.
When I rang the bell, the door flew open so quickly, I was sure Sheila must have seen me approaching.
“It’s you,” she said.
“Can I come in?”
She shrugged. “Suit yourself. I assume you’re here about the blasted photo.” So Caroline had called her too.
She led me through a swinging door into an old-fashioned kitchen. The inn’s extensive renovations didn’t extend to this room that guests would never visit. The cabinets were metal painted a dull beige color, the countertops faded Formica. The wallpaper was covered in garish brown roses. Sheila sat at the dinged-up maple kitchen table and gestured for me to join her. “Michael’s in Portland for the day.”
I pulled the copy of the photo out of my tote bag.
“Ah, there it is.” Sheila didn’t sound sad or nostalgic. Her voice was tinged with anger.
“You’re with Phil Bennett in this picture.”
“We were dating back then. He was my first and only boyfriend. After college we were married for three years. We had a huge reception at the Inn & Resort at Westclaw Point.” She paused, reading my face. “I see nobody told you that. Deborah and Phil always pretended it never happened, like it could be wiped away with a giant eraser. Life doesn’t work that way. At least, my life doesn’t.”
I was dying to know what had happened. I could imagine a number of reasons a woman’s husband would wind up married to one of her childhood friends, but all of them would be painful. I couldn’t think of a way to ask.
“That night at the restaurant, you acted as if you didn’t know Phil,” I said. It was one thing not to recognize the others, who had all aged. Or Deborah after her face was rebuilt. But not to recognize a former husband? I couldn’t believe it.
“I didn’t know what to do,” Sheila said. “I didn’t even know he lived in the area. Last I heard, they were in Connecticut. I truly didn’t recognize Deborah. I was halfway into the dining room before I saw Phil. Michael saw him at the same moment, spun me around, and marched me to the opposite corner. The meal was endless. And then to be stuck there by the accident. It was torture. All I wanted was to go home to my bed.”
I pointed to the photo. “Your husband Michael is with Fran Walker.”
“That ran its course. He was in law school in Connecticut. She stayed in Maine. The truth is, all the boys had crushes on her at one time or another, but it wasn’t going to last. She was a high school graduate. We were all from professional families.”
My parents had made it work. My father had waited out the years my mother was in college. But perhaps that was part of what made their relationship so extraordinary. “Why did you and Michael tell me, and tell the police, that you didn’t know the others?”
“We don’t know them. Not anymore.” Almost exactly what Caroline had said but even less believable. As a former federal judge, surely Sheila would know the consequences of lying to the police. She must have had a strong motivation for shading the truth. I wanted to know what it was.
“Do you know the man who was murdered in my restaurant?”
“Absolutely not. I’m certain I’d never seen him before that night.”
I wondered if that was true. After all, the last time I’d seen her she’d denied knowing people she’d grown up with. “Why did you move back to Busman’s Harbor?”
“I didn’t want to, but the last few years of my husband’s professional life were disappointing. He fell out of love with the law. He talked more and more about coming back here to Maine, owning a B&B. I thought it was a fantasy. But then his firm forced him to retire and he started making trips up here, looking in earnest. This place came on the market. I begged him to find an inn in another town, one without so much history for us. But he’d fallen in love with this house. I was eligible to retire too. I put in my notice. I wasn’t ready, but Michael had supported my career and me over the years. It was my turn to support him.” So she wasn’t older than Michael, as I’d suspected. They must be close in age. Yet he looked younger, more vital. She looked dried up.
“But you hate it here,” I said. She’d never tried hard to disguise it.
“I do. I came down to breakfast every morning this summer to find my dining room full of hungry strangers. That’s a special kind of hell, let me tell you. No privacy. No part of the house that’s entirely my own. I couldn’t wait for the season to end. But now that the horrid summer is over, this town is so tiny, I don’t know what to do with myself.” She plucked a paper napkin from a holder on the table and shredded it as she talked. “I just want to go home. But this is Michael’s dream. And we’ve sunk all our money into this place. I no longer have another home to go to. I am well and truly stuck.”
I didn’t know what to say. I’d spent plenty of time agonizing about whether to stay in Busman’s Harbor or leave. This woman didn’t need platitudes from me.
We stumbled through the rest of the conversation. I put the copy of the photo back in the tote bag and she saw me out. I was amazed at the intimacy of her confession of unhappiness to me, a relative stranger. I didn’t feel warm and fuzzy toward her, but I could tell she was surely lacking for friends. I wondered if this was me in the future, friendless and bitter in a small town.
* * *
In a luxury of the off-season, I parked right in front of Walker’s Art Supplies and Frame Shop. Through the smudged front windows, I saw Barry’s head with its wild Bozo hair bent over the worktable. His daughter, Quinn, was on the other side of the shop, organizing shelves. I pushed open the door, listening for the jingle of the bell.
“Hi, Julia!” In her early forties, Quinn still had a bouncy, youthful energy. She was attractive, and now that I’d seen the photo of the young Fran, I could see a little bit of her mother around her mouth. But Fran was dark, and Quinn quite fair, a Nordic warrior princess, which normally disguised any resemblance.
“Hi, Quinn. Are you working in the shop again?” Quinn had been a fixture in the store when I was young.
“Doing some inventory for Dad. Can we help you?”
I wanted to talk to Barry about the past, and I doubted he’d do that with Quinn present. I couldn’t figure a way to ask her to leave, so I bought some pens and a six-pack of lined paper pads for the clambake office.
“Thanks, Julia!” Quinn said. “Great to see you.”
* * *
I was thankful to see Fran’s beat-up sedan in the Walker driveway when I pulled up in front of their house. When Fran came to the door, she was dressed in two layers of sweaters, a cardigan over a pullover. She waved me over the threshold, and I stepped into the front hall. The inside of the house wasn’t much warmer than the outside.
Unlike Sheila Smith and Deborah Bennett, Fran gave no sign that she’d been expecting me. I wondered why Caroline would have called Deborah and Sheila, but not Fran.
She led me into the dark living room and offered me a seat on their threadbare couch.
“I saw Quinn,” I said. “She looks great.”
“Looks better now that her awful husband’s out of the picture.”
What do I say to that?
I pulled the photocopy out of the tote. “I came to ask you about this.”
She picked a pair of reading glasses up off a side table and put them on. “Well, look at that. There we all are.”
“The Rabble Point set.”
“The Rabble Point set and the cleaning lady’s daughter,” she corrected. “Look at me, all dressed up, thinking I was all that.”
“You’re with Michael Smith in this photo.”
“Barry came along much later. Michael and I were hot and heavy back when this picture was taken. Look at him. That hair. My word.”
“He still has it.”
“Not quite like he did in his glory days, but yes, he still has the hair. I about died when I saw him the other night.”
“So you recognized him?”
“Right away.” She continued to look at the old photograph. Her feelings about the past were harder to read than Caroline’s nostalgia, Deborah’s sadness, or Sheila’s anger. I couldn’t tell what Fran felt. Clearly, I was dealing with a real Mainer, not one of those emotional types From Away.
“What happened with you and Michael?” I asked.
“Distance, I guess. I stayed in Maine while he went to law school. But perhaps it was never meant to be.”
“Yesterday, Barry told me he didn’t know anyone in the restaurant that night, except Phil Bennett, who had come into the store a couple of times.”
She looked up sharply. “Barry told you Phil Bennett came into the store?”
“Yes. But what I want to understand is why you and Barry both lied to the police about knowing these people.”
Fran’s lined face relaxed. “We didn’t want to be involved. Barry’s a little paranoid. He likes to smoke a doobie from time to time, and you know how the cops around here are about that.”
My eyebrows shot up.
“Don’t be so shocked,” Fran responded. “We’re old. We’re not dead.” I laughed and she did, too, patting my hand as she did. “Poor Julia. So easy to get a reaction.”
By then, I was thoroughly confused. Was she having me on? That would be so like her sense of humor. Or was she serious? Did she and Barry still sit around smoking joints in their living room?
Fran took the reading classes off, making a further mess of her always untidy bun. When she laughed, the wrinkles in her brow turned to laugh lines and the years fell away. For the first time, I glimpsed the smart, funny woman from the photo.
“Fran, are you okay? Because the last couple of times I’ve seen you, you’ve looked exhausted.”
“It’s nothing, dear. I haven’t been sleeping well. One of the many indignities of old age, you’ll discover.”
It was an unlikely explanation, but I didn’t argue. I took her through the same conversation I’d had with the others. Her answers were unilluminating. She had no idea who the stranger who’d died in the walk-in might be.
I heard the whoosh of air brakes, and through the front window I caught sight of a yellow school bus. The sound of children’s chatter filled the air outside.
“Quinn’s children,” Fran said, pointing to a boy and a girl who’d split off from the rest of the group. “I’d rather not discuss this when they get to the house.” There were footsteps on the porch, and then the children tumbled inside. They were healthy-looking blondes like their mother. At their grandmother’s command, they each shook my hand and asked me politely how I was. The boy’s voice broke, moving from high-pitched to honk in a single sentence. “Fruit and milk in the kitchen,” Fran said. They didn’t have to be told twice.
I thanked her and put my hand out for the photocopy. I glanced at it as I tucked it into the bag. Something about it was bugging me, but I couldn’t figure out what. Then I realized that if the kids were home from school, I was overdue at Gus’s. I ran down the porch steps to my car.
Chapter 19
As I drove back downtown, I thought about what I’d learned. Deborah had lived through two traumatic events, the loss of Dan Johnson in Vietnam and the destruction of her face in a car accident. I had to agree with her assertion that she wasn’t a fragile flower. She seemed like a strong woman who knew who she was, and who’d overcome her challenges to build a fulfilling life.
Deborah had had a catastrophic automobile accident, and Caroline had said Madeleine and Howell Lowe died in an accident. It seemed like more than a fair share of tragedy to be visited on a small group of friends. I wondered if the accidents were connected, or even one event. Had Deborah been driving the car when the Lowes died?
I left the Caprice in my mother’s garage and walked toward the restaurant. Chris was probably already doing prep work for this evening. As I came over the rise just before Gus’s parking lot, my heart skipped a beat. The medical examiner’s van was back in Gus’s parking lot, along with a fire truck and an ambulance.
What is this about?
I ran the rest of the way down the hill. When I got closer, it was obvious the activity wasn’t inside the restaurant but in the water. I waited impatiently, shifting from foot to foot, while Jamie conferred with the medical examiner, heads close together.
The harbormaster and three firemen brought up something on a stretcher from the rocky wall of the harbor. It was already encased in a plastic bag, but I could tell from its size and shape it was a body. I guessed that Jamie had found his missing driver. The body bag was loaded into the ME’s van. She said something to Jamie, and then she and a driver got in the van and pulled out of the parking lot.
Jamie spotted me and came over.
“Your accident victim, I assume.”
“Looks like it. She must have been disoriented after the accident. Taken a header into the water.”
“We’re a ways from the corner of Main and Main.”
“The amount of time she’s been in the water, she could have floated from anywhere. People smarter than me will figure out the currents and the tides and where she likely went in.”
“Did you find out who she was?”
“No pocketbook or anything, though it could be in the harbor too. And her coat is somewhere. Ben Kramer described it as green on the night he saw her leave the accident, but it’s come off her. Now that we know where she was, we’ll bring in divers.” He pulled out his phone. “Meanwhile, I’ve sent a general description to the Connecticut State Police and to the Hoopers, the couple in Costa Rica, to maybe jog their memories about someone like her who would have access to their car.”
“Who spotted the body?”
“Kids, walking home from the school bus. It was an early release day at Busman’s Elementary. The tide was low and she’d fetched up on the rocks.”
I shivered. “How old were these kids?”
“Pair of boys, age ten,” Jamie answered, mouth set.
“Not something you and I ever saw walking home.”
He relaxed. “We would have thought it was a grand adventure.”
“We would not have.” I looked at my old friend. We had so much shared history. Walking to and from the school bus every day, the summers he spent working with my family at the clambake, the holidays he’d spent at our house. Aside from Chris and Livvie, he was the easiest person for me to talk to in town. If he was looking for a soul mate in Busman’s Harbor, he was fishing in a small pond. I couldn’t be that person, but I wished him only the best.
“We should hang out more,” I said.
If he thought my remark was out of the blue, he didn’t show it. “I’d like that.” He smiled. “There’s more news. Binder and Flynn finally got the full autopsy results on their victim today. Cause of death, insulin overdose.”
“I’m betting he wasn’t diabetic.”
“Nope. It looks like whoever did murder him gave him the diazepam to lower his resistance and then injected him with the insulin.”
“So the crime isn’t solved.”
“It isn’t. But this is a huge leap forward.”
The ambulance and fire truck pulled out of the lot. Chris stuck his head out of Gus’s kitchen door and waved. Jamie and I both had to get to work.
* * *
As I entered through the kitchen door, Gus was cleaning the hulking grill. “They gone?” he growled, using his shoulder to indicate the parking lot.
“Just finishing.”
“Took them long enough. Just what I need, another dead body.”
Chris came out of the walk-in, a stainless steel pan of root vegetables in his hands. “There you are.”
“Yes, sorry. Almost ready to work. I just need a minute.”
“You’ve got some time.” Chris glanced at the old man, clearly wishing he’d hurry along. I could imagine their conversation prior to my arrival. Chris offering to help Gus, with a secondary agenda of moving him out of the way. Gus refusing, stubbornly clinging to his routine, secure in the knowledge that he, and only he, knew how to truly clean his restaurant.
I took the tote bag upstairs and put it on the bed. Le Roi came running and rubbed his cheek against it. I hung up my coat and swapped my outdoor boots for sneakers. If I was lucky, I’d get time to run upstairs and change before dinner service.
I fed Le Roi and thought about where to put the photocopy. I was still bothered by the disappearance of the gift certificates. Lieutenant Binder was convinced I’d mislaid them, but I was sure I hadn’t. And even if I had, why hadn’t they turned up? After thinking about it for far too long, I put the tote bag, the photocopy still in it, on the top shelf in the closet alcove. The copy, after all, was less important than the gift certificates. The original still hung in the hallway of the yacht club.
“’Night now,” Gus called from below. “Take care of yourselves.”
“Bye!” I hurried down the stairs.
Chris heard the door close behind me at the bottom. “I didn’t get to put the lock in,” he told me as I came into the kitchen. “I took the old one to Gleason’s Hardware. They laughed when they saw it, it’s so old. The said the whole knob mechanism had to be replaced to get us a modern lock, which will mean putting a new hole in the door. It’s a big deal. I bought a dead bolt for the top of the door on the inside, but I didn’t want to install it while Gus was hanging around. I thought it would raise all sorts of questions. Then he got distracted by the fuss in the parking lot and didn’t leave. So we’ll have to go one more night without a lock.”
I kissed him on the cheek. “No worries. We’ll be extra careful to lock the restaurant doors.”
“Always am.” Chris pulled the vegetables out of the bin. “We’re under the gun here. You’re the sous chef. You up for it?”
“What does a sous chef do again?” I teased.
“Whatever the chef wants her to.” His usual response.
“And what does the chef want her to do?” I asked in what I imagined was my sultriest, sexiest voice.
“Right now? Peel and chop vegetables.”
Drat.
Though I did get a kiss that made my heart pound and my knees weak.
I heard a vehicle door slam in the parking lot, and my brother-in-law Sonny Ramsey entered through the kitchen door.
“What’s going on now?” He jerked his head toward Jamie’s cruiser, the only official vehicle still parked on the other side of the lot.
“They found a body,” Chris told him.
“The driver missing from the accident?”
“Who else?” Chris answered. “What do you have for me?”
I stepped out of the way, knowing what was coming.
“Lobsters,” Sonny said. “Just out of the water. Saved you half a dozen.”
“Thanks. How much?”
“Seven dollars a pound.”
“Seven dollars!” Chris yowled like a cat that had its tail stepped on.
Sonny shrugged. “It’s coming on winter. Prices are high. Bugs are hard to find and there aren’t many boats out. You’d pay fifty dollars a pound for lobster meat this time of year down in Boston.”
Chris grimaced. “And I’d be charging thirty bucks an entree if I was down in Boston. Let’s get real. What’s the lobster pound paying you?”
“Five,” Sonny admitted. It was easy enough for Chris to check the catch price.
“I’ll match it.”
Sonny drew himself up to his full height, six foot two of bull-necked, barrel-chested, redheaded man. “You should pay a premium for a small number, delivered direct, by an injured man.”
Chris put his hands on his hips and also stood tall, matching Sonny in height if not in weight. “You should give me a discount. You’re married to Julia’s sister.”
Sonny shot me a look like I was the root of all his troubles. “Five dollars a pound. Done.”
“Done.”
Honestly, why did they have to go through this routine every single time?
It had to be a guy thing.
Sonny left. Chris already had a big pot of water on to boil. “What are those going to be?” I asked.
“Your family’s recipe for corn and lobster chowder.”
“Yum.”
“Do we have any reservations for tonight?”
“Just two,” I answered. “I can’t figure out if the commotion out there today will attract a bigger crowd or drive people away.”
“Great. At least we know what to prepare for.”
At four o’clock there was a sharp rap on the kitchen door. Livvie arrived with the desserts.
“Thanks.” I helped her carry in three chocolate-frosted chocolate cakes and a pan of creamy rice pudding.
“Gotta run,” she said. “Picking up Page at swim team.”
I went upstairs and changed, then made sure I had both the salad station and the bar set up so I could easily serve. Before I unlocked the door to the dining room, Chris handed me a steaming bowl of chowder. “Eat while you have the chance. Have you eaten at all today?”
I thought back over the day. I’d been served endless drinks—coffee, tea, hot chocolate—but hadn’t eaten a thing. “Not since breakfast.”
He passed me a chunk of crusty bread and said again, “Eat.”
I dipped the spoon into the soup. It was Grandmother Snowden’s Depression-era recipe, meant to stretch plentiful and inexpensive lobster meat as far as it would go. Chris made it now as a hearty dish with big chunks of lobster. The lobster meat, corn, onions, and cream combined to create a sweet and savory delight.
“Wait,” Chris said, and garnished it with crunchy corn nuts.
“Man, this is good.”
Chris flashed his handsome, full-faced smile, proud of his work. “Push it tonight. We’ve got lots.”
It turned out we were flooded with customers. People sat at nearly every table and the bar was full. Even nights when we’d had plenty of time to prep, we weren’t staffed for this number of people. I ran my legs off, which in some ways was good, because I had a plausible excuse for not lingering when people asked questions about either the body in the walk-in or the body in the harbor, or both.
I was surprised to see both Deborah and Phil Bennett and Barry and Fran Walker. Though it seemed like weeks, they’d just been in the restaurant three nights before. I was grateful Chris changed the menu daily. Fran and Barry were on their first course when Deborah and Phil wandered in.
“I couldn’t face cooking tonight.” Deborah was friendly as always. Phil trailed behind her, wearing his usual look of mild annoyance at the inevitable shortcomings of others. They didn’t stop to say hello to the Walkers, whose own local friends stopped by their table all evening. Barry regaled them with the story of the stranger at our bar. “Didn’t talk to any of us. Didn’t say anything. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard he’d been murdered.”
Binder and Flynn came in and sat at the bar when we were at the peak of business. “You’re back.” I pushed bottles of Sam Adams over to them, along with a couple of menus.
“We came to show the world we weren’t afraid to eat here,” Binder said. “We thought you might have a problem due to the recent unpleasantness.” The corners of his mouth turned up. “Evidently not.”
“People are ghouls,” Flynn said.
“I don’t think so,” I responded. “They just need a place to digest the latest news.”
When I delivered their chowder, Binder leaned toward me. “Julia, we’ve been back in town less than an hour and we’ve had another complaint about you barging around asking uncomfortable questions.”
Phil Bennett.
I’d been so busy, I hadn’t seen him approach the detectives. “That wasn’t my fault,” I protested. “Deborah Bennett waylaid me out on their road.”
Binder looked genuinely confused. “Julia, what are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Phil Bennett, and I’m telling you I haven’t been bothering his wife.”
“It wasn’t Bennett who complained.”
Who then? Barry Walker?
“It was Michael Smith.”
“Michael Smith? He isn’t even in the restaurant.”
“We ran into him on the walk outside.” Binder paused so that could sink in. “And what were you doing out by the Bennetts’ house anyway?”
“I visited Rabble Point Road.” I leaned across the bar. “Wait ’til you see what I discovered this morning.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a diner waving frantically for his check. “I’m busy right now. Can you stick around until things quiet down?”
Binder dug into his soup. “We’re off duty. We’re in town tonight so we can get an early start tomorrow. Come by the station in the morning.”
Apparently even state cops understood the principle of not working eighteen hours a day during the off-season better than I did.