Murder On the Rocks (19 page)

“Any word?” Charlene asked anxiously. I could read the answer in the downcast faces gazing at the rough wooden floor.

“Nothing yet,” Eleazer replied. “Murph Hoyle just went out looking for them, though. His nephew, Jake, is Adam’s sternman.”

“Clyde White went out too,” piped up a tall, thin man with a shiny, bald head.

“Are you sure Gwen was with Adam?” I asked.

“Ayuh,” a grizzled man with wild gray hair and orange waders growled. I recognized Eddie O’Leary, Marge’s other half. “I allus told him, bad luck to have a woman aboard, but them college boys are too smart for us old-timers.”

“Now, now, Eddie. It’s too late to worry about that.” Tom Lockhart’s voice was calm and controlled. I hadn’t noticed him before, but when he spoke, he radiated strength and calm, and I was surprised I had missed him. “What we’ve got to do now is find him, and Jake, and Nat’s niece.” His blue eyes swept the room with cool confidence, and I could see why he had been president of the Cranberry Island Lobster Co-op and Chair of the Board of Selectmen for six years running. “I know he had traps down near Sutton Island and East Bunker Ledge. Anybody seen them anywhere else?”

“Well, he ain’t been hauling too many lately, if you know what I mean.” A few men chuckled. “But I did see a couple of his over by Shag Rock”

“Anywhere else?”

“I saw a few out north, by the Flats,” said another man.

Tom picked up the radio and relayed the information to the searchers, then asked for a status report.

“Nothing at Shag Rock or the Flats,” a crackly voice replied. “I checked over by Sutton, and I’m headed out northward now. I just saw the coast guard liner-it’s cruising toward open water.”

“Thanks, Murph. Keep us posted,” Tom said. “And be careful. We don’t want to send search parties out after the search party.”

The crackling of the radio subsided, and the lobstermen lapsed into grim silence. Charlene tugged at my arm. “I’m taking this lady over to the store for some tea,” she announced to the solemn crowd. “I’ve got fresh cookies, too. You’re welcome to join us there.”

A few men grunted and shook their heads; they would finish their vigil together, in the dim light of the co-op.

The wind tore at my jacket as we sprinted back to the truck. Both Charlene and I were quiet as we bumped along the road to the store. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the cold, dark sea.

I collapsed into one of the armchairs at the front of the store as Charlene flipped the radio on and busied herself filling the teakettle. “How often does this happen?” I asked.

“What? That someone doesn’t come back?”

“Yeah” My mouth felt dry as paper.

Charlene turned the gas on and lit a burner. “Once or twice a year, I’d say. They almost always turn up, though, of course.”

Almost always. “How inexperienced is Adam?”

Charlene turned and looked at me. “He’s experienced enough to have his own boat and a native islander as his sternman,” she said levelly. “So don’t you worry about that.” She popped the container of cookies open and piled them onto a plate. “Here,” she said, sliding them onto the table in front of me. “Tea will be ready shortly. Get your jaws working on these. Then you can’t ask any more silly questions.”

She disappeared into the back of the store, and the only sounds were the drumming of the rain and the lonely howl of the wind through the eaves, punctuated by sharp cracks of thunder. The radio crackled whenever lightning flooded the sky, as if translating the forked fingers of light into some strange language. I picked up a cookie and turned it around in my hand, but my stomach was too queasy to eat. I set it back on the plate and shifted on the couch, tensing every time the radio crackled.

A few minutes later, Charlene bustled over with a teapot, two cups, and cream and sugar. She busied herself fixing us both cups of tea, and settled herself into the flowery cushions of the couch across from me, grabbing a cookie from the overloaded plate. “Try not to worry about Gwen,” she said. “They know where to look now. Adam was laying his traps not too far offshore. They’ll find them.”

I blew air through my lips and closed my eyes. Every time there was a change in the hiss of the radio, I sat up straight. Beneath the static, I thought I could make out the threads of whispery voices across the airwaves, like ghosts from the sea.

“Marge sure was in fine form today, wasn’t she?” Charlene said, pulling me back from the lonely sea to the couch in the front of her store.

“I don’t know how those women can stand her.”

Charlene shrugged. “She overpowers them”

“Thanks for backing me up today. You could have lost a lot of business over that.”

Charlene waved a hand at me. “Nah. I’m the only store on the island.”

“But they come here for tea, too”

“Where else are they going to go? Marge’s house?” She shivered. “I think Ronald Reagan was in office the last time somebody lifted a mop in Marge’s kitchen.”

“Marge was complaining about off-islanders today. Do you think she might have thrown that rock through my window?”

Charlene considered this for a moment. “Were all the words spelled right?” Despite the pit in my stomach, I laughed. “Honestly, though,” she continued. “I can see the rock, but I’m not sure she’s smart enough to think of the brakes” She sighed. “It’s a good thing all the islanders aren’t like her, or I’d be out recruiting mainlanders to move here. She doesn’t know what to do about the group Murray Selfridge is trying to put together. If she joins it, she’s encouraging people to come over from the mainland, and if she doesn’t, she’s helping you”

“What group?”

“Oh, Murray’s got a lawyer to make sure the Shoreline Conservation Association can’t get the land even if the evaluators say the beach is critical nesting habitat. He’s been out drumming up supporters.”

“I didn’t realize it was that important to him.”

“He’s been buying up land for years, and I think he’s scared he won’t get a return on his investment.”

“I wonder why he didn’t organize the group when Katz was alive?”

Charlene shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he thought it was in the bag.”

The lights flickered, and thunder crashed almost directly overhead. We both flinched and glanced at the radio. It flared for a moment, then continued its eerie hiss.

I shifted on the couch. “I noticed Ingrid wasn’t around. Is she still making herself scarce?”

“Yup. She’s been back and forth to the mainland a lot, though. I don’t know what she’s been up to.” She munched on a cookie. “Or Barbara. How much research can you really do in the Somesville library?”

“If they have an Internet connection, probably more than you’d think,” I said. “So Barbara’s still back and forth too?”

“She’s on the ten AM mail boat, every day.”

Suddenly the radio crackled, and a rough voice spilled out of it. “I’m headed up to Shag Rock.”

“Murph Hoyle,” Charlene murmured.

“No sign yet, but I’m still looking,” the voice continued. “It’s pretty rough out here.”

“Aye,” another voice answered. “Just had a fifteen-footer. Almost flipped us.”

“Watch out there,” the rough voice answered. “Don’t want two boats lost.” Charlene and I stared at the radio, listening to the ghostly whine of radio silence. After a long moment, Charlene turned back to me.

“I forgot to tell you something earlier today. Now that you’ve got a boat, there’s something you might want to check out.” “

I thought you told me to leave the investigating to the police.”

“Well,” she said, “the problem is, the person who saw something was in a bit of a compromising position when he saw it”

“What are you talking about?”

Charlene pursed her lipsticked lips for a moment. “Natalie, did you notice how those red and green buoys disappeared the night of the storm?”

I hadn’t thought about it, but she was right. “Somebody was out cutting gear the night of the storm?”

Charlene eyed me sideways. “That’s one way to phrase it. I might put it a little differently if I were talking to the police.”

“What did they see?”

Lightning flashed again, and Charlene waited for the long roll of thunder to fade before she answered. “Somebody was in Smuggler’s Cove that night.”

“The night Katz died?”

Charlene nodded.

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

“What could you have done about it? You didn’t have a boat. Besides,” she said, “Gwen was going to tell you”

“Gwen?” I put two and two together. “You mean Adam was out there that night? I thought you said he had good judgment.”

Charlene turned pink under her Mary Kay pressed powder. “I stand by my statement. He’s a good seaman”

“But a risk-taker.” I stood up, furious. “And now he’s out there God-knows-where with my niece.” I glared at Charlene. “Don’t tell me she was out with him that night, too?”

“Oh, no” Charlene looked stricken. “Nat, I’m so sorry. No, she wasn’t with him that night. I should have told you about it earlier, though.” She swallowed hard. “I really did trust him on the water. Do trust him, I mean. He thinks so much of Gwen-I didn’t think he’d ever dream of putting her in harm’s way.”

“Well, she’s there now.” I buried my head in my hands. Charlene said nothing, and we sat in silence as the rain lashed the windows.

Finally, I looked up. “I never thought anything like this would happen, Nat,” she whispered. “I should have told you. I just never thought ..

My anger ebbed, and I moved to sit next to her on the flowery couch. This was my friend, my friend who had put her business at risk defending me that very afternoon. “Listen,” I said, “I’m sorry. I overreacted. Even if you had told me, what could I have done about it? It’s not your fault. Gwen is old enough to make her own decisions, good or bad.” Charlene bowed her head and made a snuffling noise. I patted the soft green cashmere stretched across her back. “Besides,” I said, “They could turn up at any moment now.” An image of Gwen floating among the waves, long hair streaming through the water like seaweed, came to my mind unbidden. I banished it with a shudder.

As Charlene hunched beside me, wiping her eyes, my stomach clenched. Seeing Charlene so upset made me realize how grave the situation was. We sat together for a long time, listening to the rain and the thunder and the hiss of the radio.

As the night progressed, the searchers continued to comb the dark waters and come up empty-handed. We would sit up straight, craning our ears at every explosion of sound from the radio, only to sink back into the cushions in disappointment, struggling to hold onto the fraying edges of hope.

Finally, just before 2:00, a voice crackled out of the radio. “We got something!”

Charlene and I leapt from the couch as another boat responded. “What is it?”

“There’s a light buoy out by Flower’s Island. Hang on a minute.” The silence stretched out into what seemed like hours before the radio crackled back to life. “We got it! We found the Carpe Diem!” My body tingled with relief, and I sank back into the cushions.

“Anyone on it?”

“They’re not on the boat,” he said. My throat seized up. They were gone, lost at sea. Then the voice crackled out of the radio again. “They’re all on the island.” On the island?

“Everyone okay?”

“Looks like it. We’ll bring ‘em on in.” Charlene and I let out a huge whoop and hugged each other.

As we dashed through the rain to Charlene’s truck, I couldn’t help but laugh. The Carpe Diem? You can take the boy out of college, but you can’t take the college out of the boy. I had a hunch Adam’s was the only lobster boat on the entire Maine coast with a Latin name.

It was a bedraggled threesome that staggered through the doors of the co-op a half hour later, accompanied by Murph Hoyle and Clyde White. Gwen’s hair looked like limp seaweed, and her face was waxen.

“Gwen!” I rushed over and gave my niece a huge hug. She was still shivering despite the layers of blankets wrapped around her.

Gwen’s voice was faint. “Hi, Aunt Nat.”

I turned to the young man standing close behind her. He was pale under his mop of brown hair, and his young face looked haggard. I opened my mouth to tell him what I thought of him, but before I had a chance, he reached out and hugged Gwen fiercely, as if he were afraid to let go of her. “You’re not coming out with me anymore, Gwen. Not after tonight.” Well, at least we agreed on that point.

“You must be Adam,” I said. He released Gwen and held out his hand; it was ice cold, and trembled as I shook it. “I’m so glad you made it back in okay,” I said. “What happened? We’ve been worried to death.”

“We were out hauling traps, and the radio wasn’t working. I thought we’d just pull a few more up, then head back in, but the storm came up too quickly. Then I was having trouble with the motor, so I anchored in the lee of Flower’s Island.” He glanced at Gwen, who carried on from there.

“To make a long story short, Aunt Nat, we dragged anchor and ran aground on Flower’s Island. We couldn’t radio for help, so Adam put out a distress buoy and we waited it out on the island. We figured they’d come out looking when Adam didn’t show up at the co-op.” Adam had stayed out at sea with a broken radio, and he didn’t know how to fix the engine when the storm came up? So much for being a stellar seaman. I glanced at Charlene. She was studying her nails.

I turned to Murph. “Thank you so much for finding them, and bringing them back in. I don’t know how I can repay you.,,

Murph’s dark eyes twinkled. “Well, first get these kids into some hot water.” He eyed Adam. “The bath kind, I mean, not the clinging to a rock kind.” Adam’s lips twitched into an embarrassed smile, and Gwen laughed. “But I wouldn’t say no to a pan of your brownies,” Murph continued. “And maybe the recipe, if you don’t mind.”

“I’ll make a pan of brownies for you every day of the week if you like!”

“Don’t start offering-I might just have to take you up on it!” he replied.

I laughed and hugged Gwen again. “Well,” Murph continued, “all’s well, that ends well. I guess we’ll be headed home.”

I felt I could float through the rusted roof of the truck as Charlene and I jounced back down the road to the inn, my shivering niece wedged between us. Gwen didn’t say much, and I didn’t either; I was just happy she was back. We could talk about Adam tomorrow.