Chapter 3
Jamie left the squad car at Gus’s, and we walked out of the back harbor and up the hill toward Snuggles Inn. The day was overcast, and a fierce wind cut through my coat. Jamie was a good deal taller than my paltry five-foot-two, and I had to push to keep up. Nothing was very far from anything else in Busman’s Harbor proper, and soon we were on the Snuggles’ front porch. Jamie rang the bell, and a deep bong echoed inside.
“Coming!” Viola Snugg, called Vee, opened the front door. At seventy-five years of age and slightly after 7
AM
, Vee cut an elegant figure. Her luxurious snow-white hair was swept up in a perfect coif, and she was wearing, as always, a tailored dress, hose, and high heels. As I’d predicted, her eyes took in Jamie in his uniform and she immediately stepped backward, clutching her hand to her ample bosom. “Oh my. How can I help you?”
“May we come in?” Jamie asked.
“Of course, Jamie, er, Officer Dawes. And Julia.” She threw me a quizzical look.
The Snuggles was, as always, tidy and inviting. Vee directed us to the front parlor. “You’re here about our guest,” she said to Jamie before we sat down.
“Why do you say that?” Jamie asked.
“He didn’t come back last night.” We all settled into our seats—Jamie and I on the Victorian settee the Snugg sisters had inherited from their grandparents, Vee in the straight-backed, upholstered chair opposite. I had the feeling Jamie sat down only because he didn’t want Vee to think she had to remain standing.
“How did you discover he didn’t return to his room?” Jamie asked.
“He arrived a little after five last evening. He had a reservation for two nights. Fee and I greeted him and suggested he might like to have his evening meal at Gus’s Too.” Not a hard recommendation to make, considering we were the only place open on weeknights during the off season, except for Hole in the Wall Pizza, about which the less said, the better.
“He went off about six o’clock. Fee and I watched a little TV. At ten, I went up to bed. Fee stayed up to let him in.”
Like most B&Bs in town, the Snuggles gave their guests keys to their rooms but not to the outside door. Since Vee got up early to make the guests the full English breakfasts for which the inn was renowned, it was her sister, Fiona, called Fee, who stayed up late to let in any stray guests.
“I found Fee sound asleep in her easy chair at six o’clock this morning,” Vee said. “I woke her up and sent her to bed. She said our guest never came home.”
“Which room is his?” Jamie asked.
“Four,” Vee said. “I’ll get you the key.” She disappeared through a swinging door and reappeared before it had stopped moving. I knew she’d grabbed the key off a board in the kitchen that held spares for all the rooms.
Jamie stood. “I’m going to look at his room. Alone.” He threw me a look that told me to stay put. “Miss Snugg, can you come upstairs with me and wake your sister? Tell her I need to speak with her as soon as I’m done.”
They bustled out of the room. Vee raised an eyebrow in my direction, forming a silent question, as she followed Jamie up the winding stairway.
I stayed in my seat and looked around the room. It was high Victorian and should have been heavy, dark, and uncomfortable, but it was one of my happiest places. I was suffering from a lack of sleep and normally the warm room would have made me woozy, but my nerves were wound up tight from the events of the morning.
Jamie must have finished searching at the same time Vee got the rousted Fee out of her room. All three trooped down the stairs. Fee was covered from head to toe in a high-necked, plaid flannel gown, a matching flannel robe, and slipper socks. Behind her thick glasses, she blinked at the interruption to her sleep.
“Now, Jamie Dawes, you tell us what this is about,” she demanded. I rose and met the three of them in the foyer.
Jamie glanced at me and inhaled deeply. “Your guest passed away last night. At Gus’s restaurant.”
Both sisters’ mouths dropped open. “How terrible,” Fee said. “Julia, were you there when it happened?”
I didn’t answer. I undoubtedly had been, if being behind the restaurant bar or upstairs in ignorant slumber counted. I noticed Jamie hadn’t given any of the details. Like that the body hadn’t been found until this morning. Or its location.
“We heard the sirens last night,” Fee added.
Again, Jamie didn’t contradict or clarify, so I stayed mum. The sirens had been about something else entirely.
“Right now, what we really need is your guest’s identity,” Jamie said. “I didn’t see anything in his room to help me. Just a clean shirt and underwear on the bed. No wallet or phone. Not even a suitcase.”
“He had a backpack when he arrived,” Vee said. “I’m sure of it. I noticed it particularly because it seemed too large for a couple of nights. I thought he might be on an extended visit along the coast.”
Jamie looked at me. “Did he have a backpack at the restaurant?”
“No. I’m certain.”
Jamie turned back to the Snugg sisters. “Do you remember if he had the backpack when he left for dinner?”
“We didn’t see him go out. We were back in our den watching the news on TV. I heard the door slam. That was it,” Fee answered.
“And it definitely was him leaving?”
Fee looked mystified. “Who else could it have been?”
“He’d have his wallet and probably his phone with him, wouldn’t he?” The remarkably smooth skin over Vee’s nose pinched in suspicion. “He’d have to pay for his dinner.”
“Do you know his name?” Jamie asked.
The sisters looked at one another. “I’ll fetch the guest register.” Vee took a few steps to the table in the center of the room.
“I’ll get the reservation book,” Fee said, shuffling toward the kitchen in her slipper socks.
Vee held out the guest register to Jamie and me. “Here we go.”
Jamie squinted at the opened page, taking the register from Vee and holding it closer. “What do you think that says?” he asked me, tipping the book one way and then another, hoping to read the scrawl of a signature.
“I think it begins with a Q,” I said. “Or maybe that’s a J?”
“Can you make out the last name?”
To me, the last name looked like
nnnnnnnnnn
. “I got nothing,” I told him. We stood together, turning the register from side to side as if it were a kaleidoscope that would suddenly reveal a discernible pattern. It was hopeless. The man’s signature was a cipher.
Fee bustled back with the reservation book—a simple calendar on which they wrote guest names with arrows going through the days they were staying. “What does this say?” she asked. Her handwriting was no better. The four of us stared at the calendar.
“Justin?” I suggested.
“Or Jason,” Vee said. “Maybe Jackson?”
“Or Jacob?” Fee said. “What did he say his name was?”
Jamie sighed. “I take it he didn’t pay with a credit card.”
“No,” Fee answered. “He paid in cash, up front for two nights.”
“In the high season we require a deposit in full on a credit card to hold the room,” Vee explained. “But in the off season . . .” She trailed off, gesturing around the silent house. Justin or Jason or Jackson had been their only guest.
“Did he have a vehicle?” Jamie asked.
“No,” Vee answered. “He told me he came on the bus. And there’s no car parked anywhere around.”
Jamie sighed again. “Maybe he paid for the bus with a credit card.” He straightened up. “I’ve got to go. Someone else will be around with more questions,” he told the ladies. “Julia, where will you be?”
“Mom’s, I guess.”
“Stay and have tea with us,” Vee urged.
I could tell they wanted to ask a lot of questions I either couldn’t or didn’t want to answer. “I’d love to, but maybe later.”
I kissed Vee’s powdery cheek and Fee’s unmade-up one, and I slipped out the door behind Jamie.
We stood on the Snuggles’ wide front porch, empty of furniture for the coming winter.
“Maybe the ME will roll him over and his wallet will be in his back pocket,” Jamie said.
“Maybe they’ll do an autopsy and find he had a heart attack,” I responded.
“Maybe,” Jamie said.
“Maybe.”
Neither of us spoke with any conviction.
* * *
Jamie walked off in the direction of the back harbor and Gus’s. I crossed the street to my mother’s house and let myself in the unlocked back door.
The kitchen of my childhood home was oddly comforting, even though the overcast day let in a gloomy glow and the room was chilly. My mom had recently taken a job at Linens and Pantries about a half an hour away in Topsham. On days when she was out of the house, she turned the heat down low. The job was a new thing for her, and in the beginning it had been a rough transition, but she’d stuck with it. She’d survived Black Friday and the rest of Thanksgiving weekend and was back at work today.
I sat at the kitchen table with my coat still on, pulled my phone out of my bag, and called Chris. “Where are you?”
“Parked outside Hannafords, waiting for Mrs. Deakins.” Instead of driving off and returning, he was saving gas by waiting for his fare in the supermarket parking lot. Also, that way he would be there to help her as soon as she came out of the building.
“So that was crazy this morning,” I said.
“I have a feeling it’s going to get a lot crazier when the medical examiner and the state police get here.”
I grunted, acknowledging that was probably true.
“So what did happen?” Chris asked. “What time did he arrive last night, do you remember?”
“A little after seven thirty, I think.” That was what I remembered, but it didn’t jibe with what Fee had said about the stranger leaving the Snuggles at six. Gus’s was a five-minute walk from the inn. What had the man done from six to seven thirty? In nicer weather, he might have taken a stroll around the village, but last night had been dark, cold, foggy, and icy.
“Who was in the dining room by then?” Chris did the cooking, and even though the food preparation area was open to the front room, his focus would be on the meals. Mine was supposed to be on the guests. So I wasn’t surprised he was relying on me to remember which customers had arrived when.
“The Caswells were already there,” I answered. “They were the first ones. And the Bennetts were definitely there.”
“The Bennetts. Which ones are they?”
“You know, the Bennetts, Phil and Deborah.”
“Sure.” He didn’t sound sure.
I clarified. “He’s tall, full head of white hair, skinny arms and legs, but he has a gut. Acts kind of full of himself.”
“You mean like he was something in the real world.” Living in a resort town, Chris had plenty of experience with entitled retirees.
“Yes, like that,” I confirmed. “She’s the blonde with the . . .” Here I floundered a bit.
Chris chuckled. “You’re making that face, aren’t you?”
“What face?” I asked innocently.
“The one where you pull the skin on your face back to your ears and breathe like a fish.” He was laughing now, and so was I.
“You got me,” I admitted. “She’s the one with all the plastic surgery.” I cleared my throat. “It’s not nice to laugh at our guests.”
“I’m not laughing at our guests. I’m laughing at you.”
“It does feel a little mean,” I said. “Why do women do that to themselves?”
“Whoops, here comes Mrs. Deakins. I gotta help her with her grocery bags. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
And he was gone.
The Bennetts had arrived after the Caswells, and before the man who was now dead in Gus’s walk-in. I was certain of it. I’d just brought the Caswells their wine when the Bennetts entered the restaurant.
“Quiet tonight,” Phil Bennett remarked when I had taken his coat.
“It’s the weather,” Deborah had said. “Terrible out.”
“Your walkway could use more sand. I nearly lost my footing.” Phil’s clipped tone made it sound as if he were speaking to an incompetent staff member.
“Of course. I’ll get right on it.”
As I had moved away to hang up their coats, the Bennetts noticed the Caswells. I wasn’t surprised the two couples knew each other, or at least had a nodding acquaintance. All four of them appeared to be around the same age and had probably met at some town meeting, volunteer opportunity, or social event. But that wouldn’t make them best buddies necessarily, so when I returned with the menus to find the Bennetts sitting in the opposite corner of the dining room, I wasn’t surprised by that either. If you’re having dinner with your spouse in a practically empty restaurant, there’s no point in listening to the conversation of the only other guests, or in having them overhear you.
“Can I get you something to drink? Wine, beer, or a cocktail?” I asked the Bennetts.
“Alcohol. That’s something new,” Phil had responded.
It was. We’d just gotten our liquor license on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Gus had never had one for his breakfast and lunch place, and it had seemed to take forever for ours to come through, though I was assured by the town employees I dealt with it had been at record speed. Before that, working on a temporary license, the restaurant had been strictly BYOB, which had further shaved our razor-thin profit margins. We’d had just enough time and cash before the Thanksgiving holiday to stock the bar.
“I’d like a perfect Rob Roy,” Phil said.
“And you?” I had trouble, as always, looking Deborah in the eye. She’d had so much work done, her face was like a mask. Her cheekbones were prominent, her nose perfect, her eyes wide open, but the total effect was somehow frightening.
“Ginger ale.”
We didn’t have a real bartender, but Chris had worked as a bouncer for years and stepped behind the bar at Crowley’s in emergencies. My experience level was about the same, filling in for sick or otherwise absent bartenders at the Snowden Family Clambake. We figured we could fake our way through, but just in case, I’d stowed a little book of cocktail recipes behind the bar.