Clammed Up (8 page)

I tossed the lines to one of our employees on the dock, then stood quietly while Captain George made the second safety announcement of the day, the island version. Morrow was a relatively safe place, or it had been until Saturday, and George hadn’t yet worked, “Please don’t get yourself hung from our staircase,” into his spiel. We did have some rules—watch your children, stick to the paths, and, of course, stay out of Windsholme. Looking up the great lawn from the dock, I was relieved to see the mansion’s front porch wasn’t hung with yellow crime scene tape. Whatever the state police had used to secure the big front doors was much subtler.

Windsholme stood at the highest point on Morrow Island, facing the open ocean. Below it was a wide plateau of land that was once the formal gardens. It held the badminton net, bocce court, horseshoe pit, and croquet field with picnic tables scattered around the periphery.

Also on the plateau was the pavilion that contained the bulk of seating for our guests. It had a roof and clear plastic curtains that rolled down, so we could run the clambake even on cool or rainy days. Sunny days were better, but many people thought there was nothing like a bowl of creamy clam chowder and a lobster to ease the pain if bad weather happened to interrupt their Maine vacation.

Attached to our pavilion was the commercial kitchen where Gabrielle reigned. She and her small staff prepared everything that wasn’t cooked on the fire. Also attached to the pavilion were the bar, the little gift shop where my mother had worked during her clambake years, and the public restrooms. Our water and electricity came over from the mainland in big conduits. The town of Busman’s Harbor turned them on in mid-April and off just after Columbus Day.

Behind the pavilion was Gabrielle’s glorious vegetable garden, which produced some of the best food I’d ever eaten. With no deer or rabbits on the island, and not even many land-based birds, the garden thrived.

The guests exited the
Jacquie II
and scattered. Some took the footpath across the island to the little beach, others headed for the playing fields. Some lingered at the picnic tables with a beer, soda, or glass of wine.

As always, the bonfire drew a crowd. The fire was in a little cove a ways from the dock. It meant the kitchen staff had to carry the trays of uncooked food a fair distance, but we had to keep the fire away from everything else. A fire on an island wasn’t funny. It wasn’t like you would get the trucks from the local department rolling down the street.

As he supervised the clambake, Etienne wiped the sweat from his brow with the blue bandanna he always kept in his back pocket. Then he carefully explained to the customers what he was doing. Early this morning, on a concrete slab, Etienne had placed kindling and oak logs in layers alternating with rocks that had to be the exact type and size so they heated through but didn’t explode. When most of the wood had burned away, he and his crew stepped in to rake out the charcoal and debris and then repiled the rocks that would actually cook the meal. Some bake masters don’t actively participate in this hot, dangerous job, preferring to supervise from the sidelines. But Etienne wasn’t that type of man or boss. Sonny worked silently next to him, his face glistening with sweat.

As soon as the rocks were piled up, the kitchen crew came running with the trays of clams, lobsters, sweet corn on the cob, Maine potatoes, onions, and eggs. Once all the food was on the pile, the men covered it with rockweed, a North Atlantic seaweed, and then with canvas tarps.

“You see the eggs?” Etienne held one up to the crowd while his crew hosed down the tarps. “They are magic eggs!” He played to the children in the crowd. “How are they magic? As your food cooks, I reach into the pile and pick out one egg, open it and eat it. If the egg is perfectly hard-boiled, your meal is ready. Time to eat.”

I gave Etienne and his crew a wave and turned away. While I had the chance, I wanted to take a quick tour around the island to see if there were any visible signs the crime scene techs had been there. I started toward Windsholme.

The big double front doors were secured with something that looked to me like a garbage bag tie. I didn’t test it. I was sure it was stronger than I was. Same with the French doors to the dining room along the side porch. I walked around to the back of the house. Though it looked from the front like Windsholme was three stories tall, in the back the land sloped away and you could see that it was really four. The ground floor housed the great furnace, storerooms, and laundry as well as the first level of Windsholme’s two-story kitchen. While I was at the back of the mansion, I tried peering through the windows, but I couldn’t see anything and didn’t want anyone to catch me.

From Windsholme, I started down the path toward the beach, but then thought better of it and took a branching path to the playhouse.

When it was constructed in 1890, the playhouse stood on the edge of the great lawn, but that part of the side yard had long since reverted to deep woods. A perfect, tiny imitation of Windsholme, the little house had two rooms, a parlor complete with a fireplace and a bunkroom for sleepovers. As I approached it through the trees, I thought of my mother’s mother playing there in the 1930s, in a place bigger than the cottages where many harbor families lived.

During the summers, when our family lived in the house by the dock where Etienne and Gabrielle lived now, they stayed with Jean-Jacques in the playhouse. It didn’t have a bath or a true kitchen. They used the commercial kitchen and the public restrooms back at the pavilion. My father had tried to talk them out of staying there, but Windsholme itself was uninhabitable, and thrifty Etienne wouldn’t consider giving up the money they made renting out their house on the mainland for the summer. Besides, he pointed out, he needed to be on the island early and late for the clambake. My mother, who’d grown up playing in the tiny house, thought it was a great place to live. In truth, at times I envied Jean-Jacques.

In recent years, when there’d been so little money, none of it had been spent on maintenance of the playhouse. It was overgrown with vines, its screens broken and porch sagging. Sonny worried it was an “attractive nuisance” and muttered from time to time about bulldozing it, but there was no money for that, either. The last time I’d been in the playhouse, it had been full of dead leaves and spiderwebs. I gave the front door a shove.

The inside was astonishing—swept clean, furniture neatly arranged and a fire lay in the hearth. I tiptoed into the front room, half expecting to see three bowls of porridge on the dining table. Looking around, I noticed the glass in the windows had been repaired. I shivered in the gloom of the little house. The dense woods let little light in through the windows.
Who could have done this?

The state of the playhouse freaked me out a little, but I had to explore the other room. The bunkroom was as tidy as the parlor. There was a mattress on one of the bottom bunks with an old wool blanket folded at the end of it. The original mattresses had moldered away years ago and we’d never replaced them. One thing you didn’t want to do when you employed as many high school and college kids as we did was supply places that invited people to party and have sex.

My mind was still whirling, wondering who could have done this, when my eye caught three letters carved into the wooden side of a top bunk. CJD.

CJD. Christopher John Durand.
I knew those initials as well as I knew my own because I’d written them over and over in my junior high notebooks. CJD loves JMS. Christopher John Durand loves Julia Morrow Snowden. Mrs. Christopher John Durand. Julia Snowden Durand. And so on, ad infinitum. Ad nauseam. I ran my hand over the initials. The wood was still raw. The carving was new.

I breathed easier, my pulse dropping. That explained it. Chris must have cleaned the playhouse this spring when he was working on the island with Etienne and Sonny—not a stranger. Chris.

But why had he never mentioned it? And what had the police made of the neat dwelling—and the initials?

From the pavilion, a gong sounded, signaling lunch. I left the playhouse, closing the door carefully behind me. Time to get to work.

Our guests gathered at the picnic tables for the first course, Gabrielle’s New England clam chowder. For my money, it was the absolute best chowder on earth. Some chowder was so thick with cream and potatoes, a spoon would stand up in it, while some was so thin, it couldn’t possibly satisfy the working fisherman it was invented for. Ours was the perfect consistency, hearty, yet creamy, flavored with onions, bacon, and thyme. And absolutely no tomatoes. Locals still talked about how in 1939, a bill to make tomatoes in clam chowder illegal was introduced in the Maine legislature. It didn’t pass.

Chowder was always served with small, hexagonal oyster crackers. The Snowden family upheld this tradition, though I wasn’t a fan myself. The crackers were tasteless and added nothing to the soup. They were sealed in little cellophane packets that made them as difficult to open and eat as the lobster.

As the guests finished up, the servers cleared away the paper bowls. Then the whole staff, including Etienne’s team from the bonfire, the kitchen crew, the waitstaff, even Captain George pitched in to deliver the main course while it was hot.

Every customer got a plastic tray containing two bright red, pound-and-a-quarter lobsters, a string bag full of steamed clams, an ear of corn, a potato, an onion, and an egg. All the accoutrements—the bib, the nutcrackers for opening the claws, a pick for getting the meat out of small places, a dish of melted butter, and a cup of clam broth—were also piled on the heavy tray. Once the food was delivered, a temporary hush fell over the crowd as everyone got down to work. Though I’d seen it all my life, I still found it funny to see nearly two hundred adults wearing bibs.

I circulated among the customers looking for people who needed help, playing the host as I’d watched my father do for most of my life. I’d learned over the years it was best not to make assumptions. People speaking foreign languages might be expert lobster eaters, while people dressed head to toe in L.L. Bean—the uniform of Maine—might have no idea what they were doing.

The clambake got its name from the steamers, the small, soft-shelled clams that opened as they cooked. Knowledgeable diners grabbed the clams by the neck, dredged them in broth to remove any remaining sand, dipped them in the butter, and swallowed them whole. Though the lobsters were the alleged stars of a Maine clambake, my heart belonged to the clams, which tasted salty and delicious, like you were eating the sea itself.

For some of our more experienced guests, the ritual of eating the lobster was as important as the food itself. Those customers had strong opinions about how lobster eating should be done and provided commentary on everyone else’s approach. “You’re putting lemon on that?
Blasphemy!
” Some people ate only the big front claws. Others ate almost everything but the brain and the shell, picking through the body and the small claws, determined to get every bite.

On the other hand, some of our first-time guests reminded me of the restaurant scene in
Splash!
where Darryl Hannah, playing the mermaid, picked up the lobster and bit directly into its shell. I approached a middle-aged couple and showed them how to use the nutcrackers to open the claws. Visibly relieved, they thanked me profusely.

“First time in Maine?”

Mouths full, they nodded enthusiastically.

“What do you think?”

The husband swallowed and dabbed melted butter from his chin, another lobster-eating ritual. “To tell you the truth, we’ve been trying to figure out all day how to move here.”

I nodded and smiled. It was a common reaction to a great vacation. But it wasn’t as easy as it looked on a lovely June afternoon.

As the servers cleared away the plastic trays with the lobster carcasses, clamshells, and corncobs, the guests sat back, groaning about how full they were. But somehow they still managed to eat dessert.

Gabrielle’s blueberry grunt was an intense concoction made from the tiny, low-bush berries for which Maine was famous. It was baked with a sweet, dumpling-like top. In June, the grunt was made from berries picked last summer and lovingly frozen by Gabrielle in single layers on cookie sheets then transferred to plastic bins.

Every Maine family had multiple recipes for blueberry desserts—duffs, grunts, slumps, crunches, crisps, pies, and coffee cakes. Throughout New England and the Maritime provinces of Canada, it was possible to get into quite a lively discussion about which was which, with some people insisting a slump was a grunt and vice versa. Whatever you called it, with vanilla ice cream melting over it, Gabrielle’s blueberry grunt tasted like heaven.

As the meal ended, the guests drifted back toward the dock with full tummies and the memory of a beautiful day spent with family or friends. At least that was our goal.

After a headcount, the
Jacquie II
took them back to Busman’s Harbor where it picked up the dinner crowd.

Like most of the staff, I stayed on the island between lunch and dinner. The truth was this lull between the meals was my favorite part of the workday. It reminded me of one of my best memories of growing up—Livvie’s birthday parties. Livvie was born on Patriot’s Day, a holiday in April celebrated only in Massachusetts and Maine, as a former part of Massachusetts—though bizarrely it was spelled Patriots’ Day in Massachusetts and Patriot’s Day in Maine. It was the last gasp holiday in coastal Maine when families could relax and celebrate together. After that, the lobster traps went in the water, shops brought in their summer inventory, and everything in town had to be painted, planted, or repaired to prepare for the tourist season. Livvie’s party always included Jamie and his parents, Etienne, Gabrielle and Jean-Jacques, the aunts, uncles, and cousins on my father’s side, and all Livvie’s little classmates at the elementary school.

When the official party was over and the classmates had been collected by their parents, my father would yell, “The OPK are gone!” Other People’s Kids. That was when the beer and wine came out, the steaks and burgers went on the grill, and the adults settled in for the real party. That was my favorite part of the day, too—wild games of tag with Jamie, Jean-Jacques, and the cousins. The adults, focused on their own fun, were much less occupied with our behavior than when the OPK were there.

I always felt the same way during the interlude between the first and second seatings on Morrow Island. The tourists were gone and it was just the staff working hard and then eating a meal together. It was our time to catch up on one another’s lives and the latest gossip.

Though I loved the clambake, it was a well-kept secret the very best meals on Morrow Island were the ones Gabrielle and her kitchen staff cooked for the help. If the dinner guests had any idea what we were enjoying while they motored to the island on the
Jacquie II
, they would be jealous. In honor of the first day of the season, Gabrielle always made
tourtières
, traditional French Canadian meat pies. You could have as many arguments about what made up a traditional tourtière as you could about blueberry slumps or grunts—probably more. Toutières always had ground or diced pork, except when they had beef, veal, game, or salmon. They always included diced potatoes, except when the potatoes were mashed. They were always spiced with some combination of cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, and allspice, except when they were spiced with a combination of rosemary, thyme, and sage. The arguments went on and on, but they didn’t matter to me. Gabrielle’s tourtière—diced pork, diced potato, cinnamon, and clove—was the best I’d ever eaten. And the best I would ever eat, I was sure.

I cut a generous slice of the meat pie and helped myself to a salad made from soft Boston lettuce, fresh peas, and leeks from Gabrielle’s garden then carried my plate to a picnic table where Sarah Halsey sat alone.

I took a fork full of tourtière and brought it to my mouth, anticipating the taste of one of my favorite foods. I chewed.

Something was terribly wrong. The meat pie was absolutely delicious, but it wasn’t Gabrielle’s. The taste of Gabrielle’s tourtière was so distinct to me, so bathed in nostalgia I sensed the fraud instantly. I was certain Gabrielle had not made this tourtière.

I swallowed my disappointment along with the meat pie and turned to Sarah. We talked about her son Tyler, and her mother Marie, and about Livvie and Page. Other people came along and joined in the conversation.

In some ways, the staff at the clambake was quite hierarchical. At the top were Etienne’s men who ran the fire pit, the women who worked with Gabrielle in the kitchen, Captain George and the boat crew, the bartender, and, it must be said, the family. Then came the college kids who made up the bulk of the waitstaff, anchored by a few long-term employees like Sarah. Finally, at the bottom of the pecking order were the high school kids, the jacks-of-all-trades or JOATs as we called them, whose job was to run, run, run—answering the calls of “More butter!” “More chowder!” “More iced tea! ”—and to get those items to the table while they were still hot or cold, whichever it was supposed to be. But at staff dinner, we all sat together with no distinctions between us.

Eventually, the conversation at our table turned to the murder. It was like we couldn’t help ourselves. It was the biggest thing that had happened in Busman’s Harbor in ages and the clambake was involved.

“I hear you were in Crowley’s Friday night when the wedding party came in,” I said to Sarah.

Her pale face turned an instant scarlet and she stammered, “I–I . . .”

“Really?” someone farther down the long the table called out. “Tell us
everything
.”

Sarah was still tongue-tied. I hadn’t meant to embarrass her. As Chris had said, she was a grown woman entitled to a night out. Did she think we were somehow judging her?

“Nothing much to tell,” she finally managed, and the conversation moved on.

I was sure that wasn’t the end of it. She’d be getting questions all night, maybe longer. I was sorry for my part—that I’d been the one to let people know she’d been there. But really, what did Sarah find so embarrassing? Had she overindulged? Was she there with someone she shouldn’t have been? A married man? Crowley’s wasn’t a bad place to hide in plain sight, with its tourist trade and high prices that kept the locals away.

Marie Halsey arrived at the table and sat in the only open seat, right next to her daughter. If she noticed Sarah’s discomfort, she gave no sign of it.

“Did you like the tourtière?” Marie asked me. “I made it. My own recipe.”

“You made it? Not Gabrielle?”

“She wasn’t up to it. Opening day. You know.”
Wasn’t up to it?
Gabrielle had been there for twenty-seven opening days. Had some crisis occurred in the kitchen? From where I’d stood among the guests, our first day had seemed remarkably glitch-free. Sure there were some hiccups. At one point, I’d witnessed a JOAT literally running in circles while customers shouted orders at him. For the most part, though, I thought our training sessions, plus a high percentage of returning employees, had kept things pretty calm.

But there’d also been a murder and police all over the island. Normally, making a traditional dish like tourtière was an activity that soothed Gabrielle. Something she would turn to in times of stress. If she couldn’t even manage to cook, she must be deeply unsettled by the events on the island. I couldn’t blame her. There’d been a vicious murder a few hundred yards from where she’d been sleeping.

I cleared my place and worked alongside the rest of the staff, setting the tables for our dinner guests. Etienne loomed beside me. I glanced down at the fire, which was burning well.

“Do you think Sonny can handle the bake tomorrow at lunchtime?” he asked. “The police want to interview me in the morning.”

“Again? Etienne, it will be your third time.”

He shrugged. “I know. They believe I must have heard something that night, but I did not.”

I called Sonny over and he agreed to help out right away. “I already checked in with Livvie. Reservations tomorrow are strong for a Tuesday—but it’s still a Tuesday. I can handle it.” Tuesdays were always the slowest day of the week.

We talked some more about logistics, getting Sonny out to the island early. As our conversation ended, we saw the
Jacquie II
maneuvering toward the dock with the dinner crowd aboard.

“Back to the salt mines,” Sonny said.