Fogged Inn (A Maine Clambake Mystery Book 4) (17 page)

“Which is what makes it so scary that someone else knows. Right, Barry?” I asked.

Barry studied a crack in the table, tracing it with his finger.

“Tell her,” Fran said. “She’s already guessed.”

“When Phil came into the store that first time, Quinn was here. He recognized her resemblance to Michael instantly. He’s a portraitist, after all.” Barry sighed at the inevitability of this collision. “The second time, when Phil and I went to lunch together, he asked me flat out if Michael knew. I said neither Fran nor I had heard from Michael in decades.”

“I had heard some people named Smith bought the Fogged Inn,” Fran added. “But it’s such a common name. I didn’t think anything of it.”

“Phil felt strongly that Michael should know,” Barry continued. “That’s when he told me that Michael had married Sheila and they were here in the harbor. They’d been unable to have children. Phil swore he hadn’t seen Michael in years, but he seemed to know an awful lot about how Michael and Sheila’s lives had gone. It struck me as curious at the time. As if he’d been keeping tabs on them all these years.”

“Since that day, that lunch, Barry and I have been worried that Phil would go to Michael. I’ve lost so many nights’ sleep, I can’t tell you,” Fran said. “But if Phil did tell him, Michael’s given no indication. Sheila doesn’t know. I’m certain of that. She never could have hidden it that night in your restaurant. I almost died when she and Michael walked in right behind us. But after that man was murdered, my worries seemed petty.”

“Do either of you have any idea who started the fire at the Lowes’?” I asked.

Fran looked at the floor. “No one knows,” she said. “But all these years, I’ve feared it was me.”

“Why you?”

“I sat on that sofa most of the evening. They weren’t nearly so strict about smoking during pregnancy then. I’d cut way back on the drinking. I think I only had a glass of wine at dinner and sipped a little champagne for the toast. But I was so livid at Michael and Sheila, I was smoking furiously all evening, especially as it got later and their shenanigans escalated.”

Barry got up from his stool and put his arm around Fran. “Oh, girl, I’ve told you so many times, you can’t worry about that. No one knows who it was.”

“So everyone fears,” Fran said. “And everyone feels guilty. I’ve thought of that poor, injured little boy so often.”

It was my turn to look down at the tabletop. I couldn’t bear to tell them that Austin Lowe’s body had gone from the walk-in at Gus’s to a refrigerated box at the medical examiner’s office. Unless, one of them, or both of them, already knew that. I put out the bait. “When I was in Connecticut yesterday, I met with the Lowes’ insurance agent. He gave me his copy of the insurance examiner’s report. He told me it does draw a conclusion about who left the cigarette smoldering in the couch.”

Fran looked up sharply. “Who was it?”

“I don’t know. I brought it back in a sealed envelope. I’ll turn it over to Lieutenant Binder when he’s back in town tomorrow. I don’t want there to be any question about the integrity of the evidence.”

We said our good-byes, though they were both obviously preoccupied with what I’d said. The bell over the door jingled as I let myself out. I still had two stops to make.

I left the Caprice parked in front of the frame shop and walked the few blocks to the Fogged Inn. I climbed onto the porch and glanced again at the list of “no’s.” Greeting guests with a long list of prohibited acts made more sense now that I knew Sheila hated being an innkeeper. I pressed the bell.

Footsteps clattered down the staircase, and then Michael Smith opened the front door. “Ms. Snowden. Lieutenant Binder was supposed to speak to you about bothering us at home.”

“He did. In fact, he spoke to me in my restaurant right after he met you outside. Why were you hanging around anyway?”

Michael glanced to either side of the porch, as if to make sure no one had observed us. “I think you had better come in.”

“Where’s Sheila?” I asked.

“Garden Club meeting.”

Our local garden club put on a fund-raiser at the Coast Guard station every year where they decorated fifty or so Christmas trees and auctioned them off for charity. As the calendar rolled over into advent, the preparations would be intense. I guessed that just like me, Sheila was trying to find a way to fit into her new community.

Michael didn’t ask me to sit or take off my coat, and I didn’t really expect him to. We stood face-to-face in the front hall.

“I’m only going to say this once, because I want you out of here before Sheila gets home. Leave us alone. Don’t come around here with that photo. Don’t ask upsetting questions about friends we left behind more than forty years ago. Just stop.”

“I can’t come around with the photo because someone stole it from me and stole the one at the yacht club. Any idea why
someone
would do that?”

“If you’re accusing me, you’re barking up the wrong tree. But in the interests of getting you to leave, I can think of several reasons. The photo is old and upsetting. Three of the people in it are no longer alive. Others were at the dance that night with partners they didn’t ultimately end up with. I imagine most of us want to forget that time. I certainly do.”

“You’re Quinn Walker’s father.” The effect on Michael was stunning. He recoiled as if the words were a physical slap. “That’s why you didn’t want me showing that photo around. She’s a dead ringer for you when you were younger. Phil Bennett told you about her, didn’t he?”

Michael’s bluster deflated. He motioned for me to follow him into the kitchen. He gestured me toward a seat at the table. I unzipped my jacket but didn’t take it off. I might have to leave quickly.

“Is it so obvious?” he asked.

I considered. “I made the connection because I saw the photo of you when you were twenty-one. I knew Quinn when she was that age.”

“So I was right to be worried about you showing that photo to everybody.”

“Is that why you stole it?”

He leaned forward on the table, bringing his face closer to mine. “I didn’t steal it. But I’m not sorry it’s gone.”

“Have you told Sheila about Quinn?”

“No, and I don’t intend to. Our childlessness has been an enduring wound for her. I don’t want to reopen it now. But I have no doubt Fran’s daughter is mine. One day I stood outside the window of the art supplies shop and watched her work. You may think she looks like me, but she’s really the spitting image of my mother. It makes me sad they never got to meet.” He fooled with a saltshaker, turning it over in his hands, scattering white grains on the maple tabletop. “I didn’t know Fran was pregnant when we split.”

“When you left her for Sheila, you mean.”

“Yes. My parents objected to Fran. Vehemently. They always had, but as my law school graduation got closer, they really put the pressure on. When I saw Sheila again the night of Howell and Madeleine’s party, she was available and interested. She and I were both in Connecticut. Fran was here in Maine. The long-distance thing was killing us. Once Sheila was back in the picture, my parents found ways to throw us together. Sheila and I took the path of least resistance. She wanted to show Phil she was desirable to someone, even if she no longer was to him. And she wanted to be married. The path for a single woman wasn’t nearly so clear in those days. I was tired of fighting my parents. I caved. I didn’t fight nearly hard enough for Fran. Or for myself.”

“But then something changed.”

“The world changed. It felt like overnight. My generation came to the foreground, and my parents and their stifling rules and restrictions faded to the back. I woke up married to a woman I didn’t love. I vowed never to let my parents push me into anything again. I never joined my father’s law firm. I became a public defender. I was radically transformed by the lives of the people I defended. I’d always known, of course, in the abstract, that many people lacked my advantages. But confronting it head on was an eye-opener. I grew my hair. I made some questionable friends. But more than anything, I believed. I believed in the rightness of what I was doing.

“My parents assumed I’d grow out of it. Sheila did too. Truth be told, she’d gotten nothing of what she signed up for when she married me. She wanted to be the county club wife of a rising associate at a prestigious law firm. Instead we ate soup from a can and macaroni and cheese from a box. She hated it.”

“But you stayed together.”

“My job wasn’t the worst of it. Then came the real blow. Sheila was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, late onset. At the time, the popular advice was against having children. So now she had a serious disease that had to be managed and no prospect of children. In the beginning, we stayed together because she was sick. She was afraid, and I didn’t want to be the jackhole who left his seriously ill wife.”

Type 1 diabetes
. So Sheila and Michael Smith presumably had access to insulin. Did Binder and Flynn know this? Probably not. Proof they were closing the investigation too soon. “Then what happened?” I asked Michael.

“Then things changed. I give all of the credit to Sheila. She was the first of the two of us to grow up. She accepted her situation. She had a chronic illness, she was advised not to have children, and she was married to a guy who was never going to make much money. She went to law school, made law review, and joined my father’s firm. It wasn’t easy for her in that boys’ club, but she was ten times the lawyer I would ever be. She became the son my father never had. Seventeen years ago, she was appointed to the federal bench.

“Our marriage started as a disaster. One person on the rebound and the other knuckling under to his domineering parents. But we found a path to happiness.”

“Why did you come back to Busman’s Harbor?”

“I left the public defender’s office when I was in my forties and joined a small law firm. I did criminal defense work for the few people who could pay, and some family law. When my billings could no longer cover the rent for my office, my partners forced me out.

“I’d always dreamed of running a B&B, so when I retired I looked around for one. I found the Fogged Inn and talked Sheila into it. As to why this town—because we’d always loved it. We felt like it was destiny.” He paused. “When Phil told me about Fran’s daughter, I nearly fell apart. I can’t bear to think of what it might do to Sheila.” He used a finger to trace a path through the salt on the tabletop. “I think we’ll leave town soon anyway. Sheila hates the inn.”

So he knows that too
.

We heard the sound of a car going up the drive. A door slammed, and footsteps came across the deck. The back door opened, and Sheila came into the kitchen, shedding her coat as she did.

“Well, hullo,” she said when she saw me.

“Julia dropped by for coffee.” Michael told one of the least convincing lies I’ve ever heard.

“Then maybe you should offer her some?” Sheila seemed more amused than suspicious. “Would you like coffee?” she asked me.

“No. I have to get going. I had a long day yesterday. Drove all the way down to Guilford, Connecticut.”

She turned from fussing with the coffeemaker to face me.

“I know how the Lowes died,” I said.

Sheila sat down heavily in a kitchen chair. “I can still barely think about it.”

“Hon—” Michael started.

She began to cry. “It was me. I left the lit cigarette in the couch. I was so drunk that night. I thought I was prepared to see Phil with Deborah, but I was wrong. Everyone else there was coupled up. Barry and Enid announced their engagement. It was crushing. I made a pass at Michael in front of Fran.”

Michael leaned across the table and laced his fingers through hers. “It all turned out okay. We’re happy. Fran’s happy. She is, isn’t she?” he asked me.

Before I could answer, Sheila said, “It didn’t turn out okay for Madeleine and Howell, or for their little boy.” She took a napkin from the holder and wiped her tears. Then she gestured around the dreary old kitchen. “You call this happy?” She sobbed into the napkin.

Michael looked so discouraged, I almost couldn’t go through with it, but I had to. “While I was in Connecticut, I talked to the Lowes’ insurance agent and picked up the insurance report on the fire.”

“Does it say who left the cigarette?” Sheila’s voice quavered.

“I haven’t opened it. I’m saving it to give to Lieutenant Binder tomorrow. It’s still in the manila envelope, in the tote bag, in my apartment.”

They didn’t respond to that, so I rose and said my good-byes. Neither of them walked me out. When the kitchen door swung shut behind me, I heard the murmur of their voices as I walked down the hall.

One more visit to make.

* * *

The Bennetts’ luxury SUV was parked in front of their massive garage addition. Deborah answered the door.

“Julia. How lovely to see you.”

“Is Phil around?”

“In his studio. Do you need to talk to him? You look very serious.”

I consciously unfurrowed my brow. “Yes, but I’d like to speak to you first.” I needed Deborah’s take on some things, and I wasn’t sure how many questions Phil would let me ask her.

She stole a glance up the stairs toward the studio. Had Phil heard the Caprice in the driveway, I wondered. Would he come down?

“Phil usually paints with headphones on,” Deborah told me. “He listens to classical music. I think we have some time before he realizes someone is here.” She led me to the kitchen, and we sat at the island.

“I know Phil was married to Sheila before he married you,” I said.

Deborah looked me straight in the eyes. Now that I knew her, I was able to return her gaze without being distracted by her face. “I know what they say about me, said about me back then,” she responded. “Phil was on a fast track in his family’s business and needed a more glamorous wife, but none of that was true. None of us is all one thing. Phil may have been a genius at corporate life, but he was also an artist in his soul. During the summers at Rabble Point, he used to go off painting with Barry and his father. Barry’s dad thought Phil had something really special.

“That side of Phil held no attraction for Sheila. It’s ironic that I was viewed as the corporate wife when I had no interest in entertaining or making appearances at functions to support his career. It was Sheila who loved those things. Phil got satisfaction from his job, as one does when one is good at something, but it was so stressful. He needed a home life that nurtured his other side, the artist. That was the part of him I loved. Had always loved, all those summers, though I kept it to myself.”

Sheila had gone on to success in her own career. Perhaps her ambitions for Phil masked thwarted desires of her own. “For what it’s worth,” I said, “Sheila and Michael seem happy. Sheila was a federal judge until she retired last year. She’s had a good life, though I think she’s feeling isolated and lonely since they moved here, trying to adjust to retirement and find friends in a new town.” I paused. “Perhaps you understand some of what she feels.”

Deborah’s face didn’t move, but I thought I saw recognition in her eyes. “I made peace with our situation years ago, but Phil has always felt terrible guilt about what we did to Sheila. He knows they had no chance for happiness. He never should have married her. He knew it was wrong from the start.”

“Phil may know how Sheila’s doing,” I said. “He’s seen Michael Smith since they’ve been in town.”

“I’ve what?” Phil stood in the kitchen doorway, shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, paint flecks on his skinny forearms.

“I was telling Deborah that you’ve visited Michael Smith since you’ve been in town.”

“Phil, why didn’t you tell me?” Deborah asked. “I thought we’d agreed to let the past stay in the past.”

Phil rolled his shoulders and looked pointedly at me. I wasn’t going to say anything about Quinn. Let her parents, real and biological, figure it out. I wondered if Phil would tell Deborah after I left. Now that I had them both in the room, I did what I’d come to do. “I was in Connecticut yesterday. I know about the fire that killed the Lowes.”

Deborah’s mouth opened in surprise. Phil, the former executive, was better at hiding his reaction.

“When Caroline Caswell told me the Lowes died in an accident, I assumed she meant car accident,” I continued. “I wondered for a while, Deborah, if your automobile accident was connected to their deaths.”

“It was,” she answered. “Though not in the way you’re thinking. For years I pretended that terrible night had never happened. I blocked it completely, avoided any place or person that would remind me. But when my boys were little, I don’t know. With the stress of the responsibilities of motherhood, being alone with them. Phil was traveling all the time. I started to drink. Heavily.”

“You don’t have to tell her this,” Phil said from across the room. But he didn’t go to her.

“My two little boys were in the backseat when I was thrown through the windshield. Child car seats were not as good then as they are now, but they were good enough. Neither boy was seriously hurt.” She wiped tears away with the back of her hand. “Julia, I had been drinking. Alone, at home, before I went off to the nursery school to pick them up.”