Boiled Over (A Maine Clambake Mystery) (21 page)

I wanted to be sure Reggie was safely on his way the other direction, back up the peninsula toward Camp Glooscap before I left. But he and Bunnie chatted away, completely oblivious to my hanging around. Bunnie’s side of the conversation appeared downright flirty. The image she’d seen on my monitor must have been too dark for her to recognize Reggie’s truck. Finally, I gave up waiting. Reggie was so rapt; it seemed the perfect time for me to make a break for it. I pulled past them from my parking spot.

As I waited for an opening in the traffic, Bunnie turned, pointed at me and shouted. She ran around and jumped into the passenger seat beside Reggie as he fired up his truck.

I screeched out of the parking lot, causing a station wagon with a full bike rack attached to slam on its brakes. Were they coming after me? I reached out, angled the side view mirror, and saw the nose of Reggie’s truck bulling itself forward, impatient for a break in traffic. He let three cars go by, then rocketed onto the road.

Bunnie must have understood what she’d seen on my monitor and told Reggie!
I floored it, using so much body force pain shot up my leg from my throbbing left ankle. In my tote bag was the only piece of evidence that would exonerate Cabe.

I kept the pedal to the metal, but Mom’s car barely responded on the uphill grade. Three cars were between us, spread out on the hill, but Reggie was moving fast. The road into Busman’s Harbor was a two-lane highway and passing was permitted. Reggie easily overtook the car in front of him. Only two cars between us, and I didn’t have the power to pass a go-cart.

Bunnie and Reggie were in it together. Of course, they were. Both hated Stevie. He had stolen all Bunnie’s money and caused her husband’s suicide. He had given the campsite Reggie felt was his to the Parkers. Reggie loved Bunnie and would do anything for her.

Reggie’s truck pulled out to pass again, but was forced back by oncoming traffic. Another coin dropped. Reggie and Bunnie had been together at the clambake. That must have been when they’d planted the camera in the playhouse.

On his next try, Reggie passed the second car. He was speeding, tailgating the remaining car.

I tore my eyes from my side mirror. A turnoff or side road wouldn’t help me. I’d be trapped. I beat on my steering wheel, “Go, go, go you lousy piece of crap!” At last, I crested the hill. Not much farther to the harbor and all downhill.

A horn blasted so loud I jerked the wheel. Reggie was coming up right beside me. Headlights flashing, his massive chrome grill loomed in my side view mirror like a monster’s maw. Too close! He was going to run me off the road.

Reggie nudged ever closer, honking madly. Bunnie leaned out her window and yelled, gesticulating crazily toward the backseat of my car.
What the hell?

Something closed around my throat, stifling my scream.

It took me a moment to realize what was happening. Someone in the backseat was trying to strangle me! I scratched wildly at the strong fingers with my right hand as I careened into the oncoming lane, forcing Reggie’s truck onto the far shoulder.

The hands squeezed tighter. I clawed behind me, trying to free myself, craning to see who it was, light-headed and desperate for air. Red bolts flashed behind my eyes. I stomped both feet on the brake and the Buick skidded sideways, veering back into the right lane. Reggie pulled beside me again. Through blurring eyes, I saw Bunnie aim a shotgun out her window.

The hands squeezed tighter and tighter. Reggie’s truck banged the side of my car, pushing it onto the shoulder. Trying to fight off my attacker with one hand, I jerked my wheel back with the other. But I was no match for Reggie’s beast of a vehicle. He slammed me again, harder. The Buick fishtailed wildly, tires shrieking, taking out both the Rotary Club and Kiwanis signs welcoming me to Busman’s Harbor. The car was airborne for a second before nose-diving into a culvert with the heavy crunch of metal and a brutal jolt. My door flew open. My body lurched to the left, but I didn’t fall out. The hands were still clamped around my throat like a vise. I hit out feebly, desperately trying to hang on to consciousness.

The loudest noise I’ve ever heard exploded next to me.

“Let her go or my next round won’t be in the air.” Bunnie aimed the shotgun over my head.

As I slid to the ground, the last thing I saw was Zach from the RV park, raising his hands in the air.

I woke up in the hospital. My mother slept on the guest chair in my room. The sun was out.

“What time is it?” I croaked, though in truth I wasn’t sure what day it was. I hadn’t been completely unconscious the whole time. I vaguely remembered Jamie had been the first officer on the scene, and as soon as I recognized him, I knew I’d be all right. I’d tried so hard to find words to tell him what I knew, but couldn’t get them out.

My mother opened her deeply circled eyes and looked at the delicate watch on her wrist. “9:00
AM
Friday.”

So I hadn’t lost a day. Everything had happened the previous evening. Mom leaped from the chair and arrived at my bedside in two steps. She kissed my forehead.

It was only then, looking at the love and concern in my mother’s eyes, I thought to wiggle my toes. I saw them moving under the lightweight hospital blanket—which meant my eyesight was fine, too. My fingers and arms also moved to my brain’s command. My head wagged from side to side. It was only after I did all these things that I began to feel the ache. My neck hurt. Swallowing made my throat feel like it was embedded with razor blades. My chest hurt, too. And my ankle. Slowly the neurons connected and I remembered my ankle had hurt before the crash.

“Lieutenant Binder?” My voice was a hoarse whisper.

“He’s been here, last night and early this morning. You’ll need to talk to him, but there’ll be time when you feel stronger.” She paused. “Christopher was here all night. I sent him back to the
Dark Lady
about an hour ago to get some sleep. He wouldn’t leave until he knew you were okay.”

Chris.
I thought I’d dreamed his face, such a mask of worry and hurt. It brought tears to my eyes that I could cause him so much pain. I’d tried to tell him I was okay, but my voice didn’t work.

“Christopher,” I repeated. “Why do you call him that?”

“Is that not his name?”

She had me there. “Why don’t you like him, Mom? Why do I feel the weight of your judgment whenever his name is mentioned?”

Now I had her. I was her child, lying in a hospital bed, neck still ringed by the damage left by a man who’d tried to kill me. She would have to answer.

But instead she said, “Why do you care what I think?”

The question shocked me. She was my mother. Of course I cared.

She continued. “Do you think when I fell in love with your father, my family, such as it was, supported me?”

Her family, at that point, had been her father. Her mother was long dead and Hugh, the cousin who’d been brought up with her had disappeared. I’d always assumed my grandfather had objected to her romance with and marriage to my dad, though neither of my parents had ever said so to me directly. My father was a high school-educated son of a lobsterman and my mother was the college-educated descendent of a once-wealthy summer family.

“Did you ever regret it?” I asked. “Everything you gave up to marry Dad?”

My mother blinked. “Julia, whatever do you think I gave up?”

I wasn’t sure. Life in Boston or New York? A husband who provided a good living without coming to bed smelling, even slightly, of wood smoke and shellfish? My mother loved my father. She loved Livvie and me, and those things added together meant she loved her life. So what did I think she’d given up?

She’d given up belonging—anywhere. That’s what I’d always believed in my gut. She wasn’t a summer person or a townie. She’d lived two thirds of her life in Busman’s Harbor, yet would always be From Away. If she’d married the stockbroker or college professor or physician her father had no doubt imagined, would she have lived a life where she fit in?

I said it to her haltingly, having difficulty finding the words, and not just because of the pain in my throat. I didn’t want to offend or hurt her. But I had to know.

“Is that what you think?” she asked. “Do you think that’s why I’ve led a life without friends?”

I nodded to save my throat. And because I didn’t trust myself to speak.

“Your father was my best friend,” she said.

I already knew that.

“I was always shy. Always self-sufficient. I spent every summer of my life on an island, after all.” She smiled. “I had my books, my life, my wild Maine coast. Honestly, until your dad came along, I didn’t think I needed anyone else. I was wrong, of course. I didn’t know it, but I’d been waiting for him—and for you and Livvie.” She sat on the bed and took my hand. “Julia, I haven’t been isolated because I didn’t fit in Busman’s Harbor. I love this town. I love the Snugg sisters and Gus and the Smalls and all the employees at the clambake. The town has been supportive of me, always, but never more than when your father was ill. Livvie and Sonny did a lot, but they couldn’t do it all and run the business, too. People I barely recognized brought us food and took your dad for his treatments. I couldn’t have survived without them.” She let go of my hand and wiped her eye with a knuckle. “You may think I’ve been alone in my life, but that hasn’t come from the town. That comes from me. It’s who I am. Your father was gregarious enough for two people—or for ten. I would hate for you to think I’ve been lonely. It just hasn’t been so.”

I thought about the two of us on my first day of kindergarten. Her standing outside the circle of gossiping mothers. Me, standing next to her, staring at the running, screaming children. There was a lot of her in me. She’d found that one person she’d let in. Had I?

“Mom, how did you know Dad was the one?”

“Your dad loved me just as I was. Solitary. Self-sufficient. But he also made me want to be the best person I could be. His love made me reach into myself and find the parts of me that could be generous, caring, thoughtful and bring those forward. Go to those places first. I was certain of his love, but we also craved each other’s respect, and worked to earn it every day—or as often as we could.”

“Love,” I croaked. “Acceptance. Respect.”

“Yes,” Mom said. “And one more thing. Trust. I trusted your father completely. And it’s a good thing I could, because I put my whole life in his hands. Yours and Livvie’s, too. I knew everything he did, he did for us. I knew he would never, ever hurt us. Have you found a man you can trust, Julia?”

When I woke up the next time, the sun was low in the sky. I heard murmuring outside my door. One voice, the one asking questions, was indisputably masculine. My hopes rose.
Chris
.

And fell when Lieutenant Binder walked into the room. As he sat in the guest chair, he held up his hand, palm forward. “This isn’t an official interview. I come in peace. When you feel better, we’ll need you to make a statement about everything that happened last evening. For now, I just want to see how you are.”

“I’m fine. A little raspy, as you can hear. No solid food yet. But nothing’s broken. They’re observing me. Thank-you for asking.”

“Glad to hear it.”

A silence settled over us. The kind of pregnant pause that comes when both parties to a conversation have a lot to say, but are unsure how to start.

Though I’d seen Binder play the silence game like a master, he spoke first. “You could have been killed.”

I was astonished at the anger in his voice.

“You kept information from the police. I could charge you.”

“You kept information from me!” I was amazed at how angry I still was. “You never told me Cabe had been accused of murder before, and that’s why you locked in on him as a suspect. You didn’t tell me Richelle had been Stevie’s secretary and had testified against him, even though she was staying in my house.
I
endangered me?
You
endangered me.”

“Was Ms. Rose a danger to you? Do you think I would have left her in your house if I thought she was?” Binder paused to catch his breath. “We aren’t partners. I don’t owe you any explanations. But you shouldn’t have kept things from me. Aaron Crane was a danger to you. When did you figure out Zach was Aaron?”

“Not until the moment I looked into his eyes when I was passing out. I should have realized earlier. When he shaved off his beard, he looked so familiar. I thought it was because I’d seen him before, but that wasn’t it. He was like a darker version of Cabe. Shorter, but with the same thin build. I also should have figured out he was in the habit of taking Reggie’s truck. I think he tried to run me down once. Or he tried to run Cabe down and I was in the way.”

“Something else you never told me.”

“It happened weeks before all this. Honestly, I thought it was an accident. I didn’t make the connection. Cabe made it for me.”

“Then there’s the matter of the photos you collected from Phillip Johnson. You didn’t tell me about those, either. What do you say to that?”

I had nothing to say to that.

“It’s a good thing Crane confessed, despite the presence of an expensive lawyer his stepfather sent who all but ordered him not to talk,” Binder said.

“Did he say why he did it?”

“You know, to all outward appearances, he had an easy life. His mother remarried when he was two. His stepfather adopted him. He grew up in an affluent suburb. But his mother never recovered from Stevie Noyes’ deception and fall. She filled him full of stories about how wealthy he would have been. When she killed herself, Aaron looked for his birth father and eventually found him. But he also saw Cabe skulking around Noyes and got curious. He went through Cabe’s things in his boarding house and found Cabe’s birth certificate. Cabe was the son of the mistress who’d been part of ruining his mother’s life, the mistress who’d testified against Stevie. He decided to kill their father and frame Cabe.”

“He planted the camera in the playhouse.”

“It was easy enough to do. That’s why he shaved his beard and had his hair cut. He didn’t want to attract attention to himself. He paid his sixty bucks and went to the clambake.” Binder paused. “Of course, he’d been on the island before. He ‘borrowed’ boats left on the RV park’s waterfront and landed on your beach. That’s how he stole Cabe’s birth certificate. He had it on him when he was arrested.”

“And Cabe’s parents’ wedding rings and the photo of Cabe with them?”

“In Aaron’s pop-up camper. They’ll be returned to Cabe in due course.”

“I’m glad.”

“Aaron was with Reggie Swinburne when Bunnie Getts called to ask Reggie to come to the Tourism Bureau office,” Binder continued. “Reggie hung up and told ‘Zach’ you’d found a big clue about the murderer. Zach snuck over to the Tourism Bureau in the back of Reggie’s truck. He was sure you had the clue with you when you left. Of course, you did.”

“He hid in the backseat of my car.” I’d finally acclimated to being back in Busman’s Harbor. I’d left the car doors unlocked.

“He planned to steal the storage device from you, by force if necessary, before you reached the station house parking lot. Once you’d entered the crowded streets of the harbor, there were red lights and stop signs where he might have confronted you. But when he realized when you were still out on the highway and that Bunnie and Reggie had seen him, he struck. He didn’t care if killing you meant he would also die. He imagined you, him, and the evidence going up in a blaze of glory, which would still leave Cabe on the hook for Stevie’s murder.”

“What I don’t get is why he hung around after he murdered Stevie. He’d already disappeared once in his life. He was skilled at it.”

“The killing wasn’t over with Noyes. Part of the reason he stayed was to make sure Cabe got the blame. If you hadn’t discovered the camera, I’m sure he would have found a way to call it to our attention. But the other reason was your friend Richelle. Aaron had figured out who she really was and knew she was staying at your house. He planned to kill her next.”

I shuddered, remembering the shadowy figure I’d seen in front of the house on the first night Richelle stayed with us. The person I’d thought was Cabe.

“Aaron suffered such terrible losses,” I said. “The absence of his father, the suicide of his mother. I’m shocked by what he did, but I’m not surprised he was so angry. To me, Cabe is the remarkable one. His life was such a struggle, yet he remained so optimistic.”

“That’s one thing you learn for sure in this job,” Binder said. “There is absolutely no accounting for human nature.”

Bunnie and Reggie came in later in the evening.

“You saved my life,” I croaked. “Thank you.”

“When you pulled out of your parking space, I was up on Reggie’s running board. I could see into your backseat. I wouldn’t have noticed Zach, except that he moved and I recognized his usual way of dressing exactly like Reggie. When I told Reggie what I’d seen, he put two and two together.”

“When Bunnie told me he was hiding in the backseat of your car, the only thing I could think was that he wanted to hurt you. I’m sorry, Julia. I did my best for that boy, but he was a lost soul.”

“How could you have known? I’m sorry, too. I thought it was you in the photos. I should have realized Zach was in the habit of borrowing your truck. He tried to run Cabe and me down with it, weeks ago.”

“I sleep with earplugs in because of the Parkers, and I always leave my keys in my truck. Everybody in Camp Glooscap does. I can’t blame you for thinking I was the killer when you saw my truck in the photos. I’m just glad you’re alive.”

“Thanks to you and Bunnie.”

“She’s something, isn’t she?”

On their way out, Bunnie came over to the bed and took my hand. “Come visit when you’re up and around?”

I promised I would.