A Crabby Killer (3 page)

C
laire tried not gawk
at the twine dangling from the medical examiner’s hand. She arranged her face in a benign composure, as if she was looking at any other clue that had no significant meaning to her.

Except the twine did have significant meaning to her. It looked exactly like the twine Mae had showed them yesterday. The twine she used for her jam jars. The same jam jars that she'd dropped on the dock when she'd run into the tall, lanky—now deceased—guy.

Judging by the way Dom was looking at her, he recognized the twine, too. She snuck a look at Mae whose pale face stared in the direction of the medical examiner.

That proved to Claire that Mae didn’t kill him—she looked stunned to see the man dead. Not that Claire needed proof. She already knew Mae couldn’t have killed him. Claire was sure the look of shock was due to Mae’s surprise at seeing the man dead and not to her surprise that there was still some evidence of the twine that had strangled him around his neck.

But why didn’t Mae say she recognized him? Maybe she didn’t know his name or anything about him. But Claire knew by the way they had been fighting that Mae must know something about the man. Maybe she was too shocked to speak up.

“Anyone recognize our deceased?” Zambuco blurted out.

A murmur ran through the crowd.

Claire looked at Mae.

Mae shut her mouth.

“I think I seen him down on the docks yesterday,” Larry Gorham said.

Zambuco whirled on him. “Really? With who?”

Larry screwed up his mouth. “I’m not sure. He was down near the boat tours.”

Zambuco squinted toward the longer docks on the far left where Crabby Tours and Barnacle Bob’s parked their boats. The two businesses ran sightseeing and fishing boat trips for tourists and had a harsh rivalry going, each trying to win the bulk of the season's tourist business. It was a little awkward that they parked their boats near each other, but that was one of the longest docks and the shorter ones were reserved for individual fishing boats.

Claire wondered what the dead man had to do with them and if that had anything to do with his argument with Mae.

“That’s a good enough place to start.” Zambuco watched them wheel the body away.

Indeed it was, Claire thought, surprising herself at how readily her mind took on the task of investigating the case. If she was honest, though, she was already coming up with a plan of action in her head because she was sure she wasn’t the only one who had seen Mae argue with the man. She also knew that the twine around his neck would lead right to Mae as soon as anyone saw one of her newly designed jars of jam.

Zambuco wasn’t from the island and he wouldn’t protect Mae like she would, so she’d
have
to investigate.

She could practically hear Dom’s brain humming beside her. She knew he would want to investigate, too. But Dom was a newcomer to the island and not loyal to Mae like she was, and there was no telling where his investigation would lead. She already knew he suspected something and he’d been in
Chowders
when Mae had shown them the twine.

And Dom was good. He could really throw a wrench into the works and that could be a problem if he suspected Mae. There was only one way to prevent that. As much as it pained her, she was going to have to team up with Dom to investigate the case. She just had to come up with some way to persuade him that it was his idea.

T
heir planned breakfast
at
Chowders
had been ruined by the discovery of the body, so after Zambuco had done his round of questioning, Dom had gone home to his condo at the top of Israel Head Hill to indulge in one of his favorite breakfasts of Italian pastry.

He set a cannoli into the exact middle of a gold-rimmed, china dessert plate and cut it into five equal pieces, taking care not to crack the baked pastry shell. Setting his knife down one-quarter inch from the plate and at a perfect, ninety-degree angle to the edge of the table, he put one of the slices of cannoli on his fork and lifted it to his mouth, his tastebuds watering as he anticipated the contrast of the sweet center and crunchy outer shell.

As he chewed the creamy confection, he thought about the morning’s events. He wondered who the mysterious man was.

Should he ask Sarah?

When he had asked before, she had brushed it off, claiming he was just a customer looking for pizza. But judging by the way they were arguing, Dom could tell that wasn’t true. If he asked her again, though, it would seem like he was meddling in her personal business and he had the feeling Sarah was not going to confide in him.

And that was her right. It was, after all, none of his business, but the discovery of the body and the twine that had killed him didn’t look good for Sarah. Dom didn’t think she had killed the man, but it might be smart to find out where she was at the time of death and maybe even if she still had the ball of twine at
Chowders
so he could advise her on how to handle the police if they came sniffing around.

Dom had to admit, the prospect of entering into an investigation was exciting. But it was even more urgent that he clear Sarah because he had seen the way Claire was looking at that twine. He didn’t know what else Claire knew about it, but he knew her well enough to know that she was going to start digging.

What if she discovered something that made Sarah look guilty? Would she tell her nephew?

Dom knew that Claire liked Sarah, but he also knew that she liked justice above all and if she thought Sarah had killed the strange man, she would have no qualms about stating her suspicions to the police, or even trying to prove them herself.

Dom took another bite of cannoli and chewed thoughtfully. His parakeets, Romeo and Juliet, tittered in the cage next to him.

“You don’t think Sarah did it, do you?” he asked the birds.

Romeo tilted his head and looked down at Dom with intelligent black eyes. “
Tweetstigate
.”

“Yes, I
am
going to investigate.” Dom smiled. He must really be getting lonely. The bird’s strange tweets were starting to sound like words.

He got up and looked in the drawer for a sprig of millet to clip to the side of the cage. Romeo, recognizing the drawer as the place where the millet treat was stored, paced back and forth on his perch, his green wings flapping. Juliet was more sedate. She never tweeted out words like Romeo did. In fact, she paid little attention to Dom. Right now, she was leaning against the side of the cage with her head tucked underneath her aqua and white wing, ignoring him.

Dom opened the cage door and clipped the millet spray onto the side. Romeo flew over, attacking the spray with his beak and sending seeds flying around the cage.

Juliet drew her head out from under her wing. Her shiny, black eyes darted from Dom to the millet spray.

“Go ahead. It’s for you, too,” he encouraged.

Juliet stretched her wings and sauntered over to the spray. Dom noticed that Romeo shuffled sideways to make room for her. What a gentleman.

Dom closed the door, leaving the two birds to eat their treat while he resumed eating his. Romeo flew to the side of the cage, his little pink claws grasping the bars as he hung upside down and looked at Dom quizzically.

“
Cheeplaire.
”

“Yes, Claire could be a problem, couldn’t she? But what can I do about it?”

“
Tweenup.
”

Dom raised his brows at the bird. “That might not be a bad idea.”

Claire was a good investigator, but Dom knew she could really throw a wrench into the works and that could be a problem if she suspected Sarah. There was only one way to prevent that. As much as it pained him, Dom was going to have to team up with Claire to investigate the case. He just had to come up with some way to persuade Claire that it was her idea.

C
laire looked
over the railing at the edge of her garden for the twentieth time that day. Finally, Dom was sitting on the bench that overlooked Long Sands Beach where he usually sat when he wanted to contemplate things. She got in her Fiat and hurried down the hill.

She pulled in the parking lot casually, as if she had just happened to see him sitting on the bench while she was driving by. The truth was she'd been looking over her railing most of the afternoon, trying to catch him at just the right time to put her plan into action.

Dom turned at the sound of her approaching footsteps.

“Oh, hi, Claire. What brings you here?” He gestured for her to sit beside him on the bench and she did. He tipped the pink-striped bag he held in his hand toward her, offering her a pistachio which she declined. Pistachios were not part of her health regimen unless they were raw, which these were not.

“So, that was some find at the festival, huh?” Claire asked.

“Indeed, it was.” Dom picked a pistachio out of the bag. “Do you have any idea who that guy was?”

Claire shook her head. “No idea at all.”

“What about Robby? Have you talked to him? Does he know who it was?”

“You know how close-mouthed he can be. He hardly ever gives me any clues anymore.”

“But we did get one clue at the crime scene,” Dom said.

“That’s right. The victim was seen down at the dock where the tour boats are.”

“Yes. I wonder what he’d be doing there?”

Claire shrugged. “Who knows? Do you think his death had something to do with the boat tours?”

Dom’s brows tugged together, forming a thick, gray line across his eyes. “I don’t know. But I guess the way he was killed suggests some sort of an emotional element, doesn’t it?” He glanced at Claire out of the corner of his eye.

Claire pressed her lips together. Investigating the emotional aspect of the cases was her forte, not Dom’s. She would have to appeal to his sense of logical clues to get him excited about teaming up on the case. “I’m not so sure about that. I think the fact that he was put in the kettle is the real clue. I bet if the police follow that
logically,
they’ll uncover the killer.”

“So, you think it was someone from the island?”

Claire shook her head. “I doubt it. I mean, why would someone from the island put him in the kettle? What would their motive be? I noticed the police were putting down a lot of those yellow cards. I bet there was some interesting physical evidence there.” Claire laughed. “But what am I telling you that for? You’re the expert in that area. I bet you noticed every little detail yourself.”

Dom straightened in the chair. A slight flush crept into his cheeks. He picked another pistachio out of the bag. “I might have noticed a few things. But someone must have been quite mad to strangle him. That’s the part that’s got me baffled. You know I’m not good at the human relationship aspect of investigations like you are.”

Claire fidgeted in her seat, a swell of pride warming her chest. “I wonder what he was doing down there in the first place. He must have been killed early in the morning. We found him around eight and the ME said he had been dead about six hours.”

Dom nodded slowly, then stared out to sea, timing his words so they would have the most impact on Claire. “I guess the police will question everyone as to their whereabouts and try to figure out a motive. You know Zambuco. He’ll want to get the case closed as soon as possible. Do you think he’ll try to nail someone from the island?”

Claire looked at him curiously. He sounded apprehensive, almost as if he took offense in Zambuco trying to pin it on an islander. Maybe he was becoming an islander himself … and that would be a great way to get him to team up. “Probably. That’s what he did last time … but last time, we didn’t let him get away with it.
We
found the real killer.”

“That’s right. We did good, but I’m afraid on this one, the emotional element would trip me up.”

Claire frowned at him. “Oh, no, there’s a much bigger problem with the physical clues .. This case needs your unique skills of logical deduction.”

Dom nodded and they both let a few seconds pass before cautiously peering at each other out of the corner of their eyes.

“Our skills are complementary. That worked well on the last case. I suppose it could work on this one, too,” Claire ventured, keeping her voice light as if it didn’t make much of a difference to her whether they teamed up or not.

Dom twisted his lips and looked thoughtful, as if he hadn’t considered the idea of them teaming up. “I suppose so. We did solve a lot of cases by putting our heads together down in Boston, and the last case on the island
was
kind of fun.”

“It was,” Claire said truthfully. She still hadn’t forgotten the rush of capturing the killer and how it had made her feel useful and alive. “We do need to protect our own islanders from Zambuco and it seems we can best do that by working together.”

“That’s true.” Dom cracked open a pistachio. “I suppose it can’t hurt to team up. I was kind of looking for something to do anyway.”

“It’s settled, then. Where do we start?” Claire shifted in her seat to look at Dom. She’d purposely appealed to Dom’s ego by asking him where he thought they should start. She already knew where
she
would start, but she didn’t have a huge ego like he did and she figured that acting like she needed his input would insure his cooperation. She congratulated herself at how skillfully she’d maneuvered him into agreeing to work with her and even thinking it was his idea.

Dom chewed his pistachio. “Well, we need to find out the identity of the victim and what he was doing down at the pier early this morning.”

“Didn’t Larry say he had seen him down near the boat tours?” Claire’s memory tingled. “I think I saw him talking to Donovan Hicks yesterday afternoon.” She left out the part about him talking to Mae.

Dom looked at Claire sharply. “So you saw the victim yesterday? Did you mention it to Zambuco?”

Oops, she probably shouldn’t have said that. “Well, yes. I mean, I think it was him. I was at the hairdresser and happened to be looking out at the dock. To tell you the truth, I didn’t even really think about telling Zambuco. I mean, it’s not like I know who he is or anything.”

“But you did see him. What was he doing?”

Claire avoided eye contact. “Nothing. I just saw him talking to Donovan and then he walked off. They did seem like they were arguing, though.”

Dom pressed his lips together and gazed out at the ocean. Donovan Hicks ran Crabby Cove Charters which had a fleet of tour boats and fishing boats. And fishing boats use twine. “Sounds like we need to go have a little talk with Donovan Hicks.”

D
onovan Hicks was
on the
SeaStar
, one of Crabby Tours' sightseeing boats that took tourists on a round-trip excursion to the lighthouse at the end of the island and back. He was cleaning the boat out after its mid-afternoon trip. Claire and Dom weaved their way through the crowd of tourists disembarking from the boat, as they made their way down the dock toward it.

Donovan turned from his task of picking up the empty plastic cups left scattered on the wooden benches on the boat. “Hey, Claire.” He nodded his chin at them. “Dom.”

“Hi, Donovan. How you doing?” Claire stopped on the dock next to the boat and shaded her eyes from the sun to look up at him.

Beneath them, the water lapped at the thick pylons that held the dock in place. Dom watched a pair of ducks paddle leisurely under the dock, his eyes drifting to the other side, waiting for them to appear while he mentally congratulated himself on how skillfully he’d maneuvered Claire into agreeing to work with him. It seemed like she even thought it was her idea, which was perfect since that would make her more agreeable to work with.

Donovan came to the boat's railing, the brim of his captain’s hat casting a shadow on his face as he looked down at them, his questioning eyes switching from Claire to Dom and back again. “Good. You guys fixin’ to take a cruise?”

“Not today,” Dom said, watching the ducks emerge on the other side. “We were wondering what you knew about the trouble this morning.”

Donovan’s eyes drifted to the grassy area at the end of the pier. “I heard ‘bout that. Doesn’t seem to have hurt the festival none, though.”

Dom looked back at the long pier. It was crowded with tourists in colorful outfits, strolling along as if oblivious to the fact that someone had died there. Many of them probably were oblivious, since they’d likely only taken the ferry to the island for the day and weren’t up on island news. But bad news traveled fast so many of them would have heard about it, as evidenced by the crowd around the yellow crime scene tape at the end of the pier.

“Did you know who he was?” Dom asked.

Donovan’s eyes shot back to Dom’s face. He hitched the left leg of his perfectly pressed navy blue Dockers up, put his foot on a bench and leaned his left elbow on his thigh. Dom wondered how he kept his clothes so clean—he always looked sharp and Dom expected tending to a cruise boat could get messy. He must have a big dry cleaning bill.

“Not really," Donovan said. "He was some developer guy come to the island to build some condos or something.”

Claire’s brows shot up. “Really? I didn’t hear anything about any developer.”

Donovan shrugged. “Not many people knew. I guess it was some sort of secret.”

“So what was your business with him?” Dom asked.

“Business? I didn’t have any business with him,” Donovan answered.

“I thought I saw you arguing with him.” Claire watched Donovan like a hawk. Probably studying his body language, Dom thought. She was good at figuring out if people had something to hide just by looking at the way they stood and the gestures they made.

Dom thought it was all hooey, but he had to admit she
did
have a way of exposing people’s motives and intentions through their behavior. But those little intuitions and feelings didn’t hold up in court. Dom preferred hard evidence. His gaze slid to the boat docked next to the
SeaStar
, the
Crabby Ellen.
It was a fishing boat and in the back of it, he could see a fishing net made out of twine that was very similar to that found on the victim.

Donovan said, “We didn’t argue. I think you must be mistaken.”

Dom looked back at Donovan, who was now frowning at Claire.

Claire narrowed her eyes. “I thought it looked like you had words.”

Donovan chuckled. “Oh, well, you might have thought that. We were talking about baseball and it got a little heated. Can you believe he’s a Yankees fan?”

Claire snorted. Everyone knew Donovan was a rabid Red Sox fan. He’d gotten into many arguments defending them, but as far as Dom knew, none of those had ended in murder.

Dom pointed to the back of the
Crabby Ellen
. “Do you use that fishing twine on all your fishing boats?”

Donovan glanced over. “Yeah. We always use the biodegradable.”

“Different colors?” Dom asked.

“What? Oh, no we always use the blue. It matches with our boats.” Donovan leaned over and tapped the side of the freshly painted
SeaStar
to illustrate. It was, indeed, blue. Dom remembered how proud Donovan had been at the beginning of the season when he'd gotten new paint jobs for the fleet of boats, and shirts for the crew to match.

Dom glanced at Claire to see if she picked up on why he was asking. He hated to call attention to the importance of the twine, but Claire wasn’t stupid and she’d seen the twine around the victim’s neck. She didn’t seem overly interested in his line of questioning, though, so he continued. “You don’t use the brown on any of your boats?”

Donovan’s eyes flicked across the dock to Barnacle Bob’s fleet of boats. Dom followed his gaze. Barnacle Bob had fishing boats, too, and Dom would wager they had twine nets in them.

“Nope. I always use the blue.” Donovan removed his foot from the bench and bent over to pick up another plastic cup.

Dom noticed one of the kids from the island, Bradley Sears, washing down Barnacle Bob’s fishing boat, the
Last Catch,
on the other side of the dock. Bradley was one of the island kids who Dom sometimes entertained with stories of his past cases.

“Okay, well, nice talking to you,” Dom said to Donovan, who had already gone back to his clean-up task.

Dom looked at Claire and jerked his head toward the
Last Catch
. She nodded and they walked across the wide dock.

“Hey, Bradley,” Dom called out to the teen.

Bradley turned, his face cracking into a smile when he saw Dom. He turned off the hose and came over to the railing of the boat.

“Hey, Mr. Benedetti. That's something about the murder, huh?” Bradley’s voice raised an octave with excitement. Or maybe it was puberty. Either way, Dom could tell Bradley thought the murder was interesting. “This place is getting to be a real homicide magnet. I think you guys will catch the killer, right?”

Bradley’s innocent, wide eyes ping-ponged back and forth between Claire and Dom, who exchanged an uneasy glance. Apparently, the last case had given them a reputation for solving the island’s crimes and Dom wasn’t sure if that would help them or hinder them with this one. He wasn’t sure if he wanted the whole island knowing they were investigating it. He certainly didn’t want it to get back to Zambuco, who seemed to take a dim view of civilians butting in.

“Maybe,” Dom said. “We were wondering if Bob is around.”

Bradley’s brows shot up. “You think he’s mixed up in this?”

Dom laughed. “No, of course not. We just heard the victim was down on the dock here and wanted to know if Bob had seen him.”

Bradley’s face fell. “Oh. Well, Mr. Cleary hasn’t shown up for work yet today.”

That piqued Dom’s interest. “Really? Is that unusual?”

“Yeah. He’s usually here bright and early.”

Claire had moved down the dock and was looking in the back of the boat. She tilted her head slightly and Dom walked over. A fishing net lay in the back of the boat … and it was made out of brown twine.