Boiled Over (A Maine Clambake Mystery) (16 page)

I was the last one to board the
Jacquie II.
The crowd was light, perhaps a hundred people. Despite the lower revenue, I was glad for the smaller group. It was going to be a busy evening. Normally, we had the quiet time on the island between lunch and dinner to get ready for the next boatload of tourists. Now, most of the staff members were aboard the
Jacquie II
with me. The moment we disembarked, we’d have to run to get set up.

On the boat ride over, the murder was still a topic of conversation, but not the only one. The locals were all talked out, and as last week’s tourists left and people who hadn’t been in town for the grisly events took their place, the chatter became more distant and speculative, lacking the “where were you when they discovered the body?” immediacy.

When we reached the island, I ran to the kitchen to check in with Livvie.

She saw me approach and came into the dining pavilion to greet me. “How are you feeling?”

“What?” I’d forgotten about the lie I’d told just the day before. “Better,” I said, recovering. “Twenty-four hour bug. Same thing you had.”

Livvie’s worried features softened into a smile. “Julia, I wasn’t sick. I’m pregnant.”

It took me a moment to understand what she’d said. “What?” I shouted so loud several of the waitstaff, busy setting the tables, turned to stare. In a lowered voice I stammered, “I never thought . . . I just assumed . . . but Page will be ten!”

Livvie laughed. “It’s not
that
crazy. We were so young when Page was born. So we waited, and then Dad got sick, and then he died, then the business was failing. Close your mouth.” She placed her index finger on my chin and closed it for me.

“How do you feel? When are you due?”

“March. Pretty okay. Some queasiness, as you saw.”

“I’m so happy for you. Does Mom know? Does Page know?”

“You’re the first. And don’t tell either of them, please. Mom will hover and tell me to move off the island—despite the fact she was pregnant here herself—twice. And as for Page, seven months is an impossibly long time to wait when you’re nine. We’ll tell them both soon.”

Great, just what I needed. More secrets.

Sonny, emerging from the kitchen, came up behind Livvie, and put his arms around her. “You told her.”

“Congratulations,” I choked out.

“Should I congratulate you, too? You said you had the same thing as Livvie. Does slippery Chris know he finally got caught?”

I let that one go by.

Sonny kissed Livvie’s neck. “The best thing I ever did was marry your sister and have Page. I’m so happy. I think I’ll have a kid every decade!”

Livvie rolled her eyes. “We’ll see.”

It wasn’t out of the question. She’d only be thirty-eight in ten years.

Sonny went on his way and Livvie and I walked back toward the kitchen. “So where were you really yesterday?” Livvie asked.

“Trying to help Cabe.”

“Any progress?”

I sighed. “Not really. Stevie’s not Stevie, which means there might be plenty of people who’d like to kill him. But Cabe’s been suspected of killing someone before.” I told her what I’d learned.

She listened, head bowed, brow creased. “Can you help Cabe?” she asked when I finished.

“I think so. At least I hope so. I’m certain he’s innocent.”

“Of course he is. Take whatever time you need. Sonny and I can handle the clambake. Really.”

As she turned to enter the kitchen, I put my hand on her shoulder. “Wait, there’s one more thing I need to tell you.” We’d only spent one day apart, our first separation of the summer. Was it possible so much had happened? She turned back toward me, a little impatient. There was still a ton of work to do.

“Chris said he loves me.”

“That’s wonderful!” Livvie threw her arms around me. “Isn’t that what you’ve been wanting? You’ve loved him half your life. What did you say to him?”

“I pretended I didn’t hear.”

“Julia!”

“What kind of future could we possibly have? Besides, you all hate him.”

Livvie laughed. “Did you like Sonny when I first brought him around? Or for that matter when we got married? You thought I was too young. You thought he was a lobsterman’s son.”

“How can you say that? I’m a lobsterman’s granddaughter.”

“And a college professor’s granddaughter. And a captain of industry’s great-granddaughter. And let’s face it, you’ve always been more their descendant than the lobsterman’s.”

Was my sister calling me a snob? I’d spent most of my life having an unrequited crush on Chris, thinking
I
was the one who wasn’t good enough for
him
.

“That’s not fair. Besides, there’s no future in it. I’m going back to New York in the fall. Chris will never leave this harbor.”

“You won’t even consider staying? I would love it. Mom would, too. Even Sonny. It would mean so much to me if you were close by for Page.” She put a hand on her flat stomach. “And for this little one, too.”

“Livvie, you know I can’t stay in the harbor. I’d never be happy. I’ve never fit in.”

Livvie didn’t say anything for a moment. “What does that mean, you don’t fit in?” she asked softly.

I struggled to find the words. It was a feeling I’d had all my life. That my parents’ marriage, a summer person and a local boy, doomed me never to have a place. It was like I was on the outside looking in. Phil Johnson had said at the blueberry camp, “I don’t want to be an observer. I want to be part of it.” I wanted to be part of it.

“I don’t have any friends here,” I finally said, though it was so much less than I meant.

“What are you saying? That Gus isn’t your friend? That Fee and Vee Snuggs aren’t your friends?”

“Great, I have three friends over seventy.”

Livvie had the grace to laugh. “What about the clambake? The gang at Crowley’s? The Founder’s Weekend committee? You talk about them all the time.”

“Here, I’m the boss. At Crowley’s, they’re Chris’s friends.”

“Did you ever think, Julia, that if you weren’t so standoffish, they could be your friends, too? You have to give a little of yourself.” She paused again and I thought the conversation was over, but it wasn’t.

“Julia, You need to ask yourself, is it the town that’s holding you back from telling Chris you love him, or is there some other reason?”

“Livvie,” I answered, ignoring her last point and the troubling questions it raised. “I’ve tried to fit in here. I’m not a local. I’m not a summer person. We’ve been caught in between our whole lives.”

“I haven’t,” Livvie said. “I made a choice. Maybe now it’s time for you to make one, too. What kind of life do you want, Julia?”

I waited impatiently as the dinner service ended and most of the guests drifted off to the island’s westernmost point to watch the spectacular sunset, amplified tonight by the last, lingering clouds of the storm. Before I left the island, I was determined to search the playhouse again. The approach Sonny, Chris, and I used the last time, seemed, in retrospect, more like the Three Stooges than any forensics team. I hoped that we’d missed something, anything that would help me figure out where Cabe had run.

I walked up the path and let myself into the little house. I waited a moment while my eyes adjusted to the gloom inside. A quick look around confirmed our impression from two days before—there was nothing obvious in the playhouse. All four bunks were stripped bare. I lifted the mattresses, searching for something Cabe had left behind. Nothing.

The sitting room was equally barren. There was nothing in the cushions of the rustic settee or in the sideboard that served as a kitchen cupboard. I opened a lower door of the sideboard and stuck my hand into the darkness. Why hadn’t I brought a flashlight? The cupboard was cool and damp. And empty.

I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. Cabe had cleared everything out. My only thought was, when he’d lived here, Cabe might have hidden something in the little house he wouldn’t want Sonny, or some lost stranger, to walk in and find, and then forgotten when he left.

I knelt in front of the fireplace. Though the nights could be cool in Maine, even in August, I doubted Cabe would have made a fire. He would have returned, late in the evening, exhausted from working at the clambake. By that point, he’d have been standing by a fire all day. I didn’t think he’d want one at night.

I stuck my hand up the chimney and felt around. When I was a child, the bakemaster and his family had lived in the playhouse in the summer. But Livvie and I had played there in the spring and the fall, and I remembered a small shelf in the chimney where we’d hidden messages as a part of our games. Sure enough, the shelf was there and something was on it. Not a note, but a metallic object the size of a wallet.

I knew before my hand even came out of the fireplace the object was a camera. When I saw it, I realized that despite its small size, it was expensive, with a powerful zoom function. How would a young man, too broke to have a cell phone or a laptop, own something like that? I wondered if someone else put it there. I wondered, but then felt terrible about wondering, whether Cabe had stolen the camera from one of our guests. I was supposed to be on his side.

I found the power button and the camera whirred to life. The battery was still good. It took a bit of monkeying around to figure out how to view the stored images. I accidentally took a photo of my own work boot-shod foot. But finally, I got it.

My heart beat faster. Surely, the camera could contain some hints about where Cabe might have gone. Photos of friends or places. The first image I saw was my foot. I clicked back. The next one was of Stevie Noyes. And the one before that, and the one before that. And the one before that. I clicked for what seemed like hours, but was only minutes. Every single photo was of Stevie. Stevie in town, Stevie in the office at the RV park, Stevie at his trailer, Stevie going into Gus’s restaurant. There was even a picture of Stevie coming out of the Tourism Bureau office after one of our committee meetings. I caught a glimpse of my hair in the background of the shot.

My hands shook when I finally turned off the camera.
Cabe, why were you stalking Stevie? And why on earth would you pack up your worn jeans and ratty T-shirts and leave this behind?

I felt miserable on the boat ride back to the harbor. The clambake guests held lively conversations, and normally I loved overhearing raves about the food and the beauty of Morrow Island. But I couldn’t enjoy them because I knew as soon as I got to shore I had to give the camera to Lieutenant Binder.

I hadn’t told Sonny or Livvie about what I’d found. I knew Sonny would try to talk me out of turning it over. “It could have been
anyone’s
,” he’d insist.

I hadn’t told the cops Cabe had called me. He hadn’t said anything about where he was. I hadn’t told them I’d found Phil Johnson, either. All he’d given me was a photograph of Bud’s dog and the hairy guy from the RV park. I was able to convince myself neither were worth mentioning.

But I couldn’t keep quiet about the camera.

And I couldn’t stop turning my mind over the question Livvie had asked. Could I not tell Chris I loved him because I didn’t see a future for myself in the harbor? Or was there some other, much deeper, much less circumstantial reason? I hadn’t told Livvie about Chris’s disappearing act the day before. We hadn’t had time for one thing. Dinner service was upon us. But I also hadn’t told her because I knew what she would say. And I didn’t want to hear it.

As we pulled into the harbor, there was Chris on the dock, obviously waiting for me. I should have been delighted to see him, but my stomach clenched.
What now?

“I didn’t expect to see you,” I said when I disembarked. “Aren’t you supposed to be at Crowley’s?”
You weren’t there last night, either.

“Slow night. We had two guys on and I wasn’t really needed. So I thought we should take this opportunity to discuss the elephants in the room.”

“Two elephants?” I asked, all innocence, though I dreaded where this was going.

“One elephant where I told you I loved you. And the other elephant where you took off like a shot right after I said it.”

Oh, those elephants. As I feared.
And what about the third elephant, the one where you disappeared?
“We should definitely talk. But I need to do something first.” I told Chris about the camera.

“I’ll walk you there.” As we walked, he accommodated his long-legged stride to my own. He had wanted to talk right away. I’d insisted we go to the police station first. And still he supported me, even without words. I leaned in close to show my appreciation.

He said he had no need to see Lieutenant Binder and waited outside the station. I marched in.

I wasn’t surprised to see Binder and Flynn still at work. Flynn sat in a pool of light at the end of the conference table, reading documents. Binder was on his cell phone. He motioned for me to come in. Flynn continued to examine the papers in front of him. There were new stacks of boxes on the other side of the room, unopened. I assumed they were from the civil litigation against T.V. Noyes.

“Did you go into the ocean today?” Binder spoke into his phone, obviously talking to a child. “Uh-huh. That sounds like fun.” He listened some more, then said, “You go to bed now. Let me talk to your mom.” There was some more muttered conversation. Binder said, “I hope to be there by the weekend,” followed by, “Love you, too.” He clicked off the phone and turned his attention to me.

“You have kids.” I realized we’d never had a personal conversation.

“Two boys. Six and eight. We have a cottage in York for these two weeks. My wife’s having trouble getting them settled down enough to sleep.”

“I’m sorry about your vacation.”

He shrugged. “It happens. What brings you here at this time of night?”

I pulled the camera out of my tote bag and set it on the table. That got Flynn’s attention and he came and stood next to Binder.

“Why is this important?” Binder asked.

I explained where I’d found the camera—which meant I had to explain Cabe had been living in the playhouse. A little spot began to pulse on Detective Flynn’s neck as I talked. I stepped back from the table in case he blew. Then I told them what I’d seen on the camera.

“You looked at it?” Flynn was furious.

“I hoped it would help us find Cabe . . .” My voice trailed off. I had no excuse.

“Us?” Flynn said. “There is no ‘us.’ There’s you, apparently doing whatever you want. And there’s us, the state police.”

Binder put on gloves and turned the camera on, examining its display. “What’s this?”

“My foot.” I’d thought about deleting the photo, but figured I was in deep enough already. If they had a professional look at the camera and he told them I’d deleted an image, I’d be in even bigger trouble.

Silently, Binder scrolled through the rest of the photos with Flynn peering around his shoulder, so close they could have been embracing. There had to be more than a hundred pictures. When they were finished, Binder put the camera down on the table.

“Thanks for bringing this in, Ms. Snowden. Come in tomorrow and we’ll take a formal statement as to where you found it and fingerprint you so we can eliminate your prints and see what’s left. That way, when we bring your young friend in, and believe me, we will, soon, we can match the prints on this camera to his. We’ll take it from here.”

I was dismissed.

Chris and I walked from the police station across the town common. He listened sympathetically as I told him what had happened at the station. He knew how hard it was for me to turn in evidence that looked bad for Cabe.

We sat down on a wooden bench halfway across the common. There were people around, strolling along with ice cream cones from Small’s, but the bench felt private. The feel of Chris next to me was intoxicating—his power, his rock steadiness, his certainty about who he was, who I was. I breathed it in, savoring our closeness in the moment before the conversation to come.

“About those elephants,” I joked. “Where did you go last night?”

“I took my boat out. I had to clear my head. Figure out what I wanted to say to you.”

If what he said was true, then I had hurt him, just as I’d feared. But somewhere in my gut, I didn’t believe him. He wasn’t telling the truth, or at least he wasn’t telling all of it.

He sensed my doubt. “Julia. I went for a sail. You trust me, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I answered. “Of course I do.”
But did I?

“My turn,” Chris said. “I love you.”

Even the ten seconds I hesitated was too long. It felt like a million years, a million miles.

“What can come of it?” I asked.

“What do you mean? We’ll be together. Maybe, someday, we’ll move in together. That’s what people do.” His tone was matter-of-fact, like what he was proposing was the most logical thing in the world. Not in the least bit angry. Not needy. Chris was never needy.

“I never envisioned a future that didn’t involve going back to New York.” When I finally got the words out, my voice was so quiet I was afraid he would ask me to repeat myself, which I didn’t think I could do. I felt like a creature was inside, tearing my guts up. This was the man I had wanted half my life.

“Okay, Julia. I understand. I’m not asking you to commit your life or even think about the future. But in this moment, I need to know. Do you love me?”

I hesitated again. I thought about the look of pure joy on Livvie’s face that afternoon when she told me she was pregnant. I thought about Vee Snuggs telling me to go after passion, not to be an observer of the life that could have been. Then I thought about my mother. She had her one great love, but ended up living a life where she was always viewed as an outsider. I thought about Chris and how I didn’t know where he’d been yesterday, and didn’t believe what he’d told me about it.

I hesitated too long.

My cell phone rang. I looked at it. A blocked number. “Chris, I think this is Cabe.”

“Take it.” He smiled to show he wasn’t angry. I almost wished he were.

I answered the phone. “Cabe, wait one second.”

Chris stood up from the bench and bent to kiss me on the forehead. “I’m sorry things turned out this way,” he said and walked off into the night.