Boiled Over (A Maine Clambake Mystery) (10 page)

My mother’s car wasn’t in her garage. She and Richelle must be at the doctor’s. I went upstairs to my office to radio Morrow Island.

I didn’t know what I was going to say. I was the head of the company. Surely, “I won’t be on the boat. Something’s come up,” should suffice. I hoped Livvie would answer.

Sonny.
Damn.
“Hi Sonny. I’m not going to make it to the island today. I’m really sick.”
Coward.
Sonny paused, giving me ample time to feel ridiculous about calling in fake-sick to a company I ran.

“You seemed fine yesterday.” He sounded suspicious, like he thought I was lying.

I resented his tone. It was the second time today someone had accused me of lying. It was also the second time I was actually lying. Only difference, this time I knew it.

“Came on suddenly. I think it’s the same thing Pammie and Livvie had. I really don’t think I can come to the island.” I dug myself in deeper. “I’m sorry. I know it’s a lot more work.”

Sonny relented. “Of course, don’t come. We’ll manage.” There was some warmth in his voice.

“Thanks,” I said, and meant it. Partly because he was being nice, and partly because I could see an end to the conversation. “I’m sure I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Maybe not,” he answered. “Check the weather forecast.”

Bad weather? How could I not know? I always knew what the marine forecast was. It was my job, especially if there was any chance we’d have to shut down the clambake. After I finished with Sonny, I called Pammie and told her I wouldn’t be going out with the
Jacquie II
.

She gave me a chipper, “No problem.”

I fired up my computer. If there was one thing I’d learned in my venture capital job, it was how to do research on the Web. Before our firm put any money into a company, we vetted it thoroughly. Sure, we asked the management for all the information they could give us. But we almost always found the most valuable information independently—a competitor who’d recently made a significant advance, or even information about a management team member he or she would have preferred we didn’t discover.

I waved my fingers, warming up like a piano virtuoso preparing for a concert. There were answers inside the magic screen across from me, I was certain of it. I typed T.V. Noyes into a search engine. Why did Stevie’s real name sound fake and his fake name sound real? Floods of information came back. Penny stock swindlers didn’t achieve the household-name status of a Milken or a Madoff, but in its time, Telford Vincent Noyes’s arrest and conviction had been big news.

He’d run a boiler room operation. A stock scam. They were always with us, but I knew from business school they were particularly prevalent in the early nineties, mostly with unregulated penny stocks, companies too small to be traded on the major exchanges.

Early 1990s stock scams worked in a variety of ways. Since the companies they focused on were so small, the stock was easily manipulated. The scammers would talk up a stock, putting out positive rumors about a company. When the stock was high, the scammers would take money from the gullible people on the end of the phone, but not actually use it to buy the stock. Once the scammers had the money in hand, they spread negative stories about the company and the stock would drop like a stone. The con men pocketed the money and the investor was none the wiser, thinking he’d lost it on the stock.

Noyes had run an operation that did that over and over again. He had a unique variation, too. He’d mail 10,000 people one of two newsletters. Half the newsletters would predict a certain, well-known stock was going up, and half would predict it was going down. If the stock went down, he’d mail a second newsletter to the 5000 people who’d received his first, correct prediction. Half would predict another well-known stock would go up, half down. Then he’d send a follow up to just those who’d received the correct prediction. By the time he was down to 625 people, they’d received five correct stock predictions from him in a row. When his boiler room operators called to say he had a huge winner, his audience was more credulous than any normal sampling of people. They invested with him, and they invested big. Huge sums. People lost fortunes. Some lost everything they had.

Eventually, the Feds swept in. Accompanying one of the articles was a photo of Noyes with a raincoat over his head, being perp-walked out of his elegant Upper East Side apartment building. I couldn’t see his face, but I recognized his little body. In the background of the photo, standing under the building’s awning, was a beautiful young woman, dark-haired, petite—and obviously pregnant. The caption said she was T.V.’s wife.

I continued clicking on articles about Noyes. There weren’t many additional mentions until seven months later when he’d been tried on the criminal charges. Several of his employees had been given immunity to testify against him. His wife sat stalwartly behind him every day of the trial.

The employees’ testimonies, along with the rest of the government’s case, must have been devastating. Noyes was sentenced to ten years, a long time for a white-collar crime in those days. But when you added in the mail fraud . . . Plus, one of his early victims had killed himself rather spectacularly, diving off the Empire State Building. I didn’t even know that could be done.

I sat back in my desk chair and rubbed my eyes. There wasn’t much news about Noyes after his sentencing. A short article when he reported to prison included the information that he and his wife had divorced. The civil suit had petered out. Noyes was broke and therefore judgment-proof. There was no point in pursuing the lawsuit.

My mind kept drifting back to Stevie’s wife. The look on her face in the arrest photo haunted me—shock, fear, hurt. What was it like to have your whole life come crashing down around you?

The other thing I fixated on in the photo was her great, pregnant belly. I did some fast subtraction. Her child with Stevie would be nineteen years old. Cabe was nineteen years old. No one knew where he came from. He seemed to have no family. Did Binder and Flynn believe Cabe was Stevie’s son? Was this the deeper connection Binder had hinted at? The reason the cops were more and not less interested in Cabe?

My mouth felt suddenly dry. I hated to even think about it.

I stood, stretched, then went back to the keyboard. T.V.’s pregnant wife was Carole Noyes. Prior to his arrest, she’d been quite visible in New York—attending charity events and serving on boards. Afterwards, she’d disappeared completely. Or maybe she’d gone back to her maiden name?

I tracked backward and found a 1988 marriage announcement for Telford Vincent Noyes and Carole Marsh. Moving forward in time got me another marriage announcement, for Carole Marsh and Donald Crane, in December 1993, only six months after T.V. Noyes reported to prison. The marriage had occurred in New Jersey.

There were a hundred Donald Cranes in New Jersey and thirty-seven Carole Cranes. I was grateful for that
e
. Taking a chance, I searched on “Donald and Carole Crane,” and got nothing. But without the quotes, there it was. An obituary for Carole Crane, four years ago in Summit, New Jersey. Survived by her husband, Dr. Donald, and her son, Aaron Crane, still living at home.

I looked at the photo accompanying the obituary. No question it was the same woman from the photo of T.V.’s arrest. Dead at age forty-eight, “suddenly.”

Was I looking at a photo of Cabe’s mother? Her sudden death might explain the vulnerability we all saw in him.

There was only one Dr. Donald Crane in Summit, New Jersey. I picked up my cell phone and dialed.

“Dr. Donald Crane.”

I was momentarily tongue-tied. I’d expected a receptionist or a machine. “This is Julia Snowden in Busman’s Harbor, Maine.”

“The state police have already called,” he said matter-of-factly, not hostile. Letting me know.

“Yes. I’m following up. About your son Aaron.”

“As I already told you people, he’s not here. I don’t know where he is.”

He seemed to assume I was with the police. I hadn’t said I was, but I didn’t correct his misunderstanding. He didn’t say more, but I waited silently. Binder’s trick. I didn’t think it would work, but then Crane spoke.

“This has to do with T.V.’s death, I assume. If I’d known where the bastard was, I’d have killed him myself. I didn’t. T.V. Noyes ruined my wife’s life. And my family. I should know. I was Carole’s psychiatrist. When she came to me after his arrest, but well before he went to prison, she was broken. Can you imagine, thinking you were wealthy and married to a prominent man, the father of your unborn child, and it all disappears in one day? T.V. spent the cash from the boiler room operation as fast as he made it. When he was arrested, they were destitute.”

I couldn’t imagine the depths of the deception. That poor woman.

“I wanted to rescue her. As soon as I realized my feelings for her, I resigned as her doctor. But I couldn’t forget her. Later, after Aaron was born, and T.V. went to prison, we married and I adopted Aaron.

“But Carole couldn’t forgive or forget. No matter how I tried to make her happy, her bitterness and anger overwhelmed all the good in her. Four years ago, she closed herself in our garage and turned on her car. Aaron found her.

“I did my best for him, but he couldn’t be rescued, either. He barely attended school. We had truant officers and social workers here. The best child grief psychologist I could find. I hired tutors to catch him up, but he wouldn’t or couldn’t cooperate.

“All that time, we never heard a word from T.V. Not even when he got out of prison. He never asked about his son. Initially, I was glad. I thought Carole, Aaron, and I could be a coherent, bonded family. But when Carole killed herself, I couldn’t forgive T.V. for not even asking about his son. He’d destroyed his family a second time.”

Dr. Crane paused, and I thought about T.V. Noyes, criminal and destroyer of his wife and son. It was hard to reconcile with the happy-go-lucky man I’d known. No wonder he never talked about his past.

“As I told the other officer, Aaron left home on his seventeenth birthday. I haven’t seen or heard from him in two and a half years.” Crane’s voice cracked. “I’m afraid he’s dead, but I push back the fear. His car is still in the driveway. His clothes are still in his bureau. I’ve hired private detectives. Nothing. And since he turned eighteen, the police have had no interest in finding him. Until T.V. died.”

Was Cabe, Aaron Crane? For sure, parts of the story fit. If he was, he had plenty of reasons to kill Stevie.

But maybe there was another explanation. Aaron was a runaway who didn’t want to be found. If he glimpsed the body in the fire, and realized there’d be a police investigation, he might have taken off in order to conceal his identity. Cabe might be Aaron, and yet still be innocent. I felt a little hope rise.

“Dr. Crane, can you describe Aaron?”

“I e-mailed photos to the state police yesterday.” For the first time, he sounded guarded. “Who did you say you were?”

I told the truth. “I’m Julia Snowden. I think I may be a friend of your son.”

Dr. Crane’s breath caught, and I immediately regretted what I’d said. I had no right to give him hope on so little evidence.

“Tell him I love him,” Crane said. “Tell him to come home.”

I could tell he was weeping as he hung up the phone.

I heard Mom’s car in the driveway. She and Richelle came bursting through the back door, talking away. I didn’t want to scare them, so I went to the top of the backstairs called down to the kitchen.

“Julia, what are you doing here?” Mom was instantly concerned, her happy chatter with Richelle forgotten.

I came downstairs. “I called in sick this morning.” Better to give Mom the same story I’d given Sonny. Mom and Livvie talked at least once a day.

“You don’t look sick.”

What is this, grade school? Do I have to prove I had a temperature?
“I’m much better now. It’s a fast-moving stomach virus that’s going around. Livvie had it yesterday. I may take the boat out to the island with the dinner crowd.”

“Livvie was sick?” My mother used her why-wasn’tI-told tone of voice.

“She’s fine. I’m fine. It’s nothing.”

Reassured, Mom busied herself making tea. I turned to Richelle. “How’d it go at the doctor’s?”

“I’m still not allowed to travel. He wasn’t happy about my shopping trip. But really, what was I to do? When I left Portland four days ago, I packed for one overnight, and in all the confusion my bus driver took off with that tiny bag. I had nothing.”

For the first time, I wondered about Richelle’s life in Portland. I was used to seeing her with her cell phone glued to her hand, checking in with her agency, calling about reservations for places up ahead. Yet her phone hadn’t rung once at our house that I was aware of. Didn’t she have a friend who could bring her some clothes from Portland? It was only an hour and half away.

“So you’ll be staying a few more days,” I said.

“I hope it’s all right with you. Your mom said it was okay. We’ve been giggling here like girlfriends.”

Like girlfriends?
Completely ridiculous. I had never, in thirty years, heard my mother giggle.

While I pondered the subject of my giggling mother, Richelle changed the subject. “Are the police still looking for your friend? The boy who worked for you?”

Mom, too, turned from the tea making to hear the answer.

“They’re still looking for him, but other evidence has come in.” I filled them in on Stevie’s former life as a stock swindler and federal prisoner.

Richelle listened intently, leaning toward me. I wasn’t sure why she was so interested in our harbor drama. Was it because she’d witnessed the crime, or at least its aftermath, the foot in the fire? “So now they think the boy didn’t do it?”

“The opposite. They seem more fixated on him.”

Richelle stood up straight and looked at me steadily. “But you don’t think he did it.” It was a statement, not a question.

“I don’t,” I confirmed.

She didn’t ask me to explain. “I hope your friend’s okay. And I hope he turns up soon.”

I accepted a cup of tea from my mother, but declined to sit and drink with them. I went back to my office. I’d taken the day off to help Cabe, but what, really, was I going to do? Even if Cabe was Aaron, how could my knowing that help him? Despite my belief in his innocence, I did think the best thing Cabe could do was return to Busman’s Harbor and tell Binder and Flynn what he’d seen. Therefore, my best bet was still to find Cabe. But how?

I pulled Cabe’s employment application out of my bag and unfolded it. There was so little information on it. Just the name of a school, which gave me a city, Rockland, and the name of a person, Mr. Burford. Had Aaron, with his disrupted education, returned to high school using the name Cabe Stone? The kid I knew wasn’t the emotional wreck Donald Crane had described. Perhaps Cabe had gotten his life together.

The way the name was written on the application was the way a student would refer to a teacher. I searched the Web and quickly found an Adam Burford who taught English at Rockland Regional High School. A few more keystrokes and I had his address.

I doubted Burford would tell a stranger much about a former student over the phone. I didn’t know if the police had contacted him, but certainly the body in the clambake fire, and Cabe’s name as a missing witness, had been all over the Maine media. If I wanted Mr. Burford to open up, I had talk to him in person.

I needed to ask my mother to borrow her car, which meant making up a whole new lie. I told her I had a meeting with a produce supplier and might be gone the rest of the day. She didn’t question me, but I knew she’d talk to Livvie tonight and my story would be blown. I just hoped I’d have something to show for it.