Boiled Over (A Maine Clambake Mystery) (17 page)

“Cabe, where are you? Things have gotten really complicated here.” I watched Chris walk away. I wasn’t talking only about Cabe. “You need to come back.”

“I can’t.”

“Then why call me?” I hadn’t asked for this.

“I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Of course I’m okay. But you’re not. You’re in real trouble, Cabe, and you’re only making it worse by staying away.”

He didn’t respond, but he didn’t hang up. I tried a different tack. “Cabe, why did you come to Busman’s Harbor in the first place?”

“I was looking for something.”

“Your birth parents.” Emily Draper at Moore House had told me this.

“Yes.”

“Did you find them?”

He let out a long sigh. “One of them. I always knew I was adopted. When I moved to Moore House, I decided to figure out who I was. I’d seen so many kids in the institution, and even in Moore House, who had such terrible families, but I still wanted one. I thought maybe I had a second chance to have parents. When I turned eighteen, I applied for my birth certificate from the state. I kept the birth certificate in a little box in my room at the boarding house. In the box was a photo of me with my parents, the Stones, and their wedding rings. That box was the only thing I’d been able to hold on to through all the moves, the foster families, and the group home. While I was at the boarding house, someone went through it. I could tell because they refolded the birth certificate and left the photo upside down in the box. That’s why I moved to the playhouse on Morrow Island.”

The idea of Cabe, clinging to a tiny box holding a photo of his parents and their rings, stabbed me in the chest. I thought about Page, who’s every significant moment since birth had been recorded, and then about Cabe, who had so little.

“I was born in Busman’s Harbor Hospital,” he continued. “I looked at pictures of the town on the Web and imagined my mom living there in a cottage by the ocean. When I finally got to the harbor this June, it was as beautiful as I’d imagined. I instantly felt like I’d come home.

“The father’s name on my birth certificate was Telford Vincent Noyes. There were tons of articles on the Web about the stock swindle and the trial. I was desperate to find the man, but he’d changed his name after he left prison. It took me a long time working in libraries and Internet cafes to figure out Stevie Noyes of Camp Glooscap in Busman’s Harbor was actually T.V. Noyes. I thought it meant something he’d come back to Busman’s Harbor after prison. Like maybe he hoped I’d find him.”

My mind struggled to keep up. Cabe was T.V. Noyes’s son, but he wasn’t Aaron Crane. Cabe had been given up for adoption as an infant. “How did Stevie react when you told him you were his son?”

“I hadn’t yet. As far as I knew he was a con man and a criminal. I wanted to get to know him, the way he was today before I decided whether to tell him who I am.” Cabe’s voice faltered. “Now I’ll never get the chance.”

We didn’t talk for a moment while he collected himself. I was afraid he would hang up. “Is that why you took all the photos of Stevie?” I asked.

“What photos?”

“Cabe, you didn’t take about a hundred photos of Stevie and leave them in an expensive camera on a shelf in the chimney of the playhouse on Morrow Island?”

“I don’t even own a camera.”

My throat closed a little. I’d just turned over the camera to Binder and Flynn, along with the information that Cabe had lived in the playhouse. “Then how did you get to know Stevie?”

“One day, just after I got to Busman’s Harbor, I saw him coming out of the post office. I’d looked at so many photos from the time of his arrest, I was sure it was him. So I spied on him. It was easy. It turned out he had a fairly regular routine. He’d come in every weekday morning about eleven, go to the post office, the hardware store, do whatever he needed to do, and then have lunch at Gus’s.”

“That’s when you started hanging around there.”

“Gus gave me a job, but it was obvious he really didn’t need the help. So he introduced me to you. I was grateful for the job on Morrow Island.”

Maybe not so grateful now. “But you never talked to Stevie?”

“Oh, I talked to him. Casual stuff about the harbor and the campground. I liked him. I was almost ready to tell him who I was. But when I took the job at the clambake, I wasn’t hanging around in the mornings anymore, and once I moved to Morrow Island . . .” His voice trailed off. “I thought there’d be plenty of time in the fall. When the clambake was closed for the season.”

He thought there’d be plenty of time.
The poor kid. Even with all his losses, he still had that human belief there’d be more time.

“If you didn’t leave the camera in the playhouse, who do you think did?”

“That’s just it, Julia. A few days before Founder’s Weekend, somebody went through my things at the playhouse. They took the box with the rings, the photo, and my birth certificate in it. It freaked me out so much, I planned to move again.”

“That’s why you emptied out the playhouse and brought all your stuff to Busman’s Harbor that evening.”

“I thought about trying to move back to the boarding house, but once I stayed one night, I knew I couldn’t do it. It was like the group home only without Emily there to kick butt.”

“Cabe, Stevie was your father. Who did your birth certificate say your mother was?”

“I never got far in looking for her. I only know her name.”

When he told me the name, I didn’t recognize it, though it didn’t really matter. I was sure I knew who she was.

“Julia, I can’t thank you enough for trying to help me. I know how bad my situation looks.”

Help him? I’d just turned over a damning piece of evidence to the state police. “Of course, I want to help you, Cabe. I know you didn’t kill Stevie. Besides, you saved my life.”

“No, Julia. I didn’t. I put your life in danger. That car was aimed at me.”

“Cabe, what are you saying?”

But he was gone.

I walked home, but didn’t go directly to bed. I was too restless and roiled and sad. The look on Chris’s face after he’d kissed me on the forehead haunted me. Why hadn’t I grabbed his hand so he couldn’t walk away?

The abrupt end of my conversation with Cabe frustrated me to the point where I wanted to scream in the night. What had he meant, the vehicle that had almost run me down was aimed at him? Did Cabe honestly believe he was in danger?

If he did, it explained a lot. Why he’d moved out to Morrow Island. Why he’d been too afraid to sleep out in the open on the town pier with the Claminator the night of Stevie’s murder. Why the guy at the boarding house said he was paranoid. And why he’d cleared out his things on Morrow Island, intending to move again or even leave town.

Who would want to intimidate Cabe, a poor young man with no connections to the town? Was Stevie’s entire murder a setup intended to hurt Cabe?

It made no sense. Stevie, a liar who’d swindled thousands of people, was a much more obvious target than Cabe.

I climbed the stairs to the second floor. My mother’s door was closed, her room dark. But a thin line of light showed out from under Richelle’s door.

I knocked and pushed the door open slowly. Richelle sat up in bed, a book propped on her knees, though she didn’t seem to be reading. She stared off into space.

“Richelle?” I spoke softly, hoping not to startle her. When she turned toward me, I saw her face was streaked with tears. I said, “I think it’s time you told me the truth.”

She gave into the tears. “Oh Julia, I’ve made such a mess of things.”

I sat on the bed and handed her tissues from a box on the nightstand. She was ten years older than me, and ten inches taller, but, with her child-colored, corn silk hair, she looked young and vulnerable in the pink princess bed decorated for a nine-year-old.

“Would it be easier if I say it?” I asked.

She nodded, wiping her tears.

“Cabe Stone is your son. Your son with Stevie Noyes. The reason it was so traumatic for you to testify against Stevie wasn’t just because he was your beloved boss. He was your lover, and you were pregnant with his child.”

“He was married. It was wrong. I regret it every day.”

“You and his wife were pregnant at the same time?”

“Her son was born six months before mine. When T.V. was arrested and their whole lives came crashing down, she threw him out. She sat behind him every day of the trial, but their marriage was over. When he was out on bail, he lived with me. That’s when I conceived Cabe.” She stopped, too overcome with emotion to go on.

I waited. It was her story to tell.

“One day, early in my pregnancy, federal agents arrested me as I left our apartment. They offered me a deal. They’d drop the charges if I testified against T.V. I hadn’t even told T.V. I was pregnant. That night I did, and we agreed that I should take the deal. We both cried. In the morning, he moved out. Sitting in the witness stand testifying against my lover, my friend, the father of my unborn child, was the second hardest thing I’d ever done. The hardest was giving our baby up for adoption.”

“You came to Busman’s Harbor to stay with your great-aunt during your pregnancy.” I’d assumed, when Richelle said she’d spent one summer here, it had been when she was a child. But Gus had recognized her, which meant she was probably older. And Cabe had been born at Busman’s Harbor Hospital.

“I thought I was giving my baby a good life,” she wept. “I was young, jobless, penniless, disgraced. I didn’t know if I’d ever work again. His father was in prison.”

“You did give your baby a good life,” I said. “At least at first. Cabe had a happy childhood. The Stones were good parents. Even later, after all the awful things that happened to him, Cabe had a reservoir of resilience left from his early years. By the time he got to the group home, he’d focused on what he’d had, not what he’d lost.”

Richelle nodded and even managed a tiny smile, like she wanted to believe me.

“Did you know Stevie was in Busman’s Harbor? Is that why you came here so often?”

“Not for years. I’d moved on with my life put my affair, the trial, and Cabe’s birth behind me. I’d moved to Portland, became a tour guide. I came to Busman’s Harbor, believe or it or not, because those months when I lived here with Aunt Georgette, waiting for my baby to come, were my happiest in that whole period. The trial was over, T.V. was in federal prison for ten years. I know it sounds crazy, but by then, I could only look forward. I didn’t look for Stevie, as you call him, at all, anywhere, ever.”

“But then you saw him.”

“Early this spring. I was on a research trip, investigating new places to take our tours. Through the window of a shop on Main Street, I saw him walk by. I would have known him anywhere.”

“Did you approach him?”

“No, but I began to consider the possibility. All those years I wasn’t with him, and didn’t even know where he was, it didn’t bother me. I had a happy life. But once the possibility of T.V. existed again, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. He was the great love of my life. I wasn’t sure how he would react to me. I did some research and found out he’d never married again, was completely unattached, just like me. I began to fantasize about our reunion.”

Richelle sighed and looked down, picking at the bedspread. “I built it up so much in my mind, made it so romantic and idealized, I kept chickening out. I knew reality would never come close to the scene in my head. But whenever I came to Busman’s Harbor with a tour, when my groups had free time, I would be on the lookout for him” She looked up from the bedspread. “I discovered he had quite a reliable routine.”

The same thing Cabe had said. “You realized you weren’t the only person watching him.”

“Once, in the spring, when I brought a group to town, I saw a young man following T.V. I wish I could say I recognized him, that there was some instant, magical connection with my son, but there wasn’t. I saw him again, the next time I came. I followed T.V. to Gus’s and lingered in a shop across the street, pretending I was interested in marine fittings.” She laughed at herself. “T.V. came out Gus’s front door and seconds later, a young man wearing a white apron came out the kitchen door and watched T.V. walk away. That’s when it clicked. I asked around about the young man, looked into his history.”

“You went to the place where he lived.”

“He was the right age and from Maine. His housemates said he’d told them his parents were dead. I figured it had to be him. I thought he looked a little like us.”

I hadn’t thought of Cabe as the physical combination of Richelle and Stevie. He didn’t look like either of them, but he had Stevie’s slight frame combined with most, if not all of Richelle’s height. And his light blue eyes somehow mirrored Richelle’s darker ones.

“You didn’t tell either of them what you knew?” I was skeptical. How could she hold it inside?

“If I wasn’t sure how T.V. would greet me, I was even more worried about Cabe. T.V. and I had agreed about everything I’d done, even my testifying against him. But Cabe hadn’t asked for any of it. That’s the reason I asked you about Cabe when we were standing on the pier at the Founders Weekend celebration. I wanted you to introduce us.”

“It’s also why you fainted.”

“I heard you talking to that lady about Stevie Noyes not turning up for the ceremonies and how odd that was. I could tell you were concerned about his absence. When I saw Cabe running away, I thought he must have hurt T.V. because he was so angry about what we’d done to him. I didn’t really see the body in the fire. I knew T.V. was missing; there was a big kerfuffle around the clambake fire. Then I saw Cabe run away. I put the ideas together and panicked.”

Richelle took a clean tissue and dabbed at her eyes. “When you said you didn’t think Cabe was guilty, you gave me such hope. Please help him, Julia. Please help my baby.”

I moved quietly across the hallway to my office and sat at my computer. I was too keyed up to go to bed. I had to do anything I could think of to help Cabe. And it was easier than thinking about Chris.

Reggie had told me Bunnie’s husband jumped off the Empire State Building. One of Noyes’s victims had also. Could they be the same person? I looked for articles about Empire State Building suicides. I knew from my years in New York, taking visiting family and friends on tours, it wasn’t easy to jump from the 102nd floor. There were high barriers and guards on duty. The 86th floor observatory appeared to be the place for suicides, though others had bought tickets to the observatory and then jumped from open windows they found throughout the building.

Incredibly, not all the jumpers were successful. One woman jumped from the 86th floor, only to be blown back by a strong gust of wind through the windows on the 85th, safe with only a bone broken. I wondered what had happened to the woman, but this wasn’t the time to use my mad skills to find out. It had been an emotionally exhausting day and I was going to crash soon. I had to keep moving.

I concentrated on the computer screen, trying unsuccessfully to push all other thoughts out. Chris had said “I’m sorry things turned out this way.” Did that mean it was over between us? The loss seared me, starting at the place on my forehead where he’d kissed me and traveling throughout my body, leaving an empty ache in its wake. My eyes teared up, blurring the images on the monitor. I pushed the thoughts away, refocused on the task at hand and moved on.

I zeroed in on suicides in the late eighties and early nineties, when Stevie’s boiler room had been active. I added the surname
Getts
to the criteria and up it came. The story of Bunnie’s husband’s suicide. It happened well before Stevie’s arrest. Walter Armbruster Getts jumped to his death on December 23, 1989. He left behind a widow Minerva, a mother, and a circle of grieving friends. The cause was unknown. He left no note, though one article did refer to “recent financial reverses.”

Was Walter one of T.V. Noyes’s victims? If he was, did Bunnie, who had let her husband manage their money, know it? And, did Bunnie know T.V. was Stevie?

I thought back to that first day when the Founders Weekend committee met. Bunnie hadn’t seemed to know Stevie, but then she had also pretended not to know Bud, her closest neighbor. And who had recruited Stevie for the committee anyway? Had he received one of those won’t-take-no-for-an-answer calls from Bunnie, like I had?

I looked to see if the documents from the civil suit against Stevie were available online. If Bunnie had been a plaintiff, it would prove a connection between her and Stevie. But the case was too long ago to be on the Web. Binder and Flynn had the civil suit documents, but I wasn’t about to ask them. When I’d seen them the previous night, the boxes had appeared unopened. Binder and Flynn were still reading the documents from the criminal trial. It might take them days to get to the civil case. I didn’t think I had that kind of time. Binder had said they were close to finding Cabe.

The last thing I did before falling into bed at 4:00
AM
was print the photo Phil Johnson had given me and tuck it into my tote bag. I set my alarm for 7:30.