Murder On the Rocks (13 page)

The barn that housed Eleazer’s boat-building shop was set back a bit behind the house. Both buildings were painted white with aquamarine trim, but while the house’s paint was fresh and clean and the porch neatly swept, the barn was starting to peel in places, and the yard next to it was cluttered with boats in various stages of decomposition. As I looked at the rotting hulls, I decided to ask Eleazer if he could find me a cheap skiff; it would be much easier than relying on the mail boat.

The wooden steps creaked beneath me as I climbed to the front porch. I knocked on the aquamarine door with trepidation; I didn’t know how to broach the subject of blackmail, and was more than a little afraid of what Claudette’s reaction would be.

The aroma of browning beef and onions wafted over me as Claudette opened the door, dressed in a long floral housedress and a white apron spattered with cooking oil. Her hair was pulled back into a tight gray bun, accentuating her heavy jaw, and her cool gray eyes registered surprise.

“Smells great in there,” I said. Despite the peanut butter and jelly, my mouth had begun to water.

“I’m making stew for dinner” Claudette wiped her hands on her white apron. “Come in.”

I followed her through the small entryway and into the cramped kitchen. The floor was covered in brown linoleum, and the small kitchen table was draped with a red-and-white checked cloth. An assortment of pots and pans with the dull shine of many scrubbings hung from a pot-rack over the porcelain sink, and a line of antique canisters stood next to a thirty-year-old gas stove. An oldfashioned wood-burning stove appeared to be the source of heat for the kitchen; although a teakettle rested on one of its black burners, I was guessing it wouldn’t be lit again until September. A basket full of wool with an assortment of knitting needles sticking out of it sat next to the back door.

I slid into one of the two kitchen chairs as Claudette stood at the stove and stirred the onions and beef in a pan. Something about her looked different. My eyes strayed to the basket of wool, and I realized that it was one of the few times I’d seen her without a pair of knitting needles.

“So, what brings you here?” Claudette asked. “Any news on the preserve?” Her raspy voice was guarded, and reminded me of why I had come.

“Nothing yet. The evaluators should be out there any day now. I assume nothing’s changed with Premier Resorts, though.”

Claudette grimaced. “I thought not. It’s too bad Bernard Katz didn’t die a day earlier. Could have saved us all a lot of trouble.” She added salt to the pan with a sharp jerk of her wrist. “I hear he was murdered”

“That’s what they’re saying. The police came out to look at Katz’s room today.” Claudette replaced the saltshaker on the ledge behind the stove. I leaned forward in my chair. “Have the police been out to talk to you yet?” Claudette’s gray eyes darted from the pan to me for a moment. She thrust out her jaw.

“No. Why would they?”

“Well, they’ve been all over me,” I said lightly. “You’d think I was the only one on the island who didn’t like Bernard Katz.”

Claudette took a deep breath and then launched into the beginning of one of her trademark tirades. “He’s just like the rest of the greedmongers, wanting to take nature and pervert it to their own uses.” She thrust the spoon into the pan. “There’s no room for nature anymore. It’s all plastic cartons, plastic wrappers, trash everywhere. No one is interested in the natural rhythm of things, in conservation.”

If I didn’t head her off now, it would be hours before I got a word in edgewise. She paused for a breath and I jumped into the gap. “I agree with you, Claudette, and I’d love to discuss it sometime, but I came by this afternoon because I have a question for you.” She fell silent. Her gray eyes flicked to me, then returned to the pan in front of her. “I ran across something the other day that made me think Bernard Katz was trying to blackmail some folks here on the island”

Claudette’s jaw jutted out even farther, and the intensity of her stirring increased. She fixed her eyes on the contents of the pan.

“I was wondering if he’d ever approached you,” I said. “Tried to convince you to back off Save Our Terns.”

Claudette’s knuckles whitened as she gripped the wooden spoon. She spoke through clenched teeth. “What exactly did you find that would make you ask me that, Natalie?”

I shifted in the hard chair. “He sicced a private investigator on you, didn’t he?” I asked gently. “Tried to blackmail you into backing down by threatening to tell everyone about the child you had to give up.” Claudette stopped stirring. “But you didn’t give in, did you?”

Claudette stood motionless at the stove. Her gray eyes shone, and as I watched, a tiny drop trickled down her thick cheek. She was silent for a long moment, and the hard lines of her face seemed to soften. “I was young,” she whispered. “He was a fisherman from the mainland, promised me he’d marry me.” She made a strange sobbing noise. “When I told him I was pregnant, he signed on with a ship. Left port the next day.” She sniffled and wiped her eyes. I got up from my chair and retrieved the tissue box next to the sink. She took it from my hand without looking at me.

“What a terrible thing to do to a young girl,” I said softly.

She pulled a tissue from the box and dabbed at her eyes, then stood silent for a long moment. “I went to stay with an aunt in Bangor,” she continued in a voice so low it was almost a whisper. “My mother insisted, said no one could know. Told everyone I was taking a course in etiquette.” She gazed out the window. “I never saw my baby. I never even saw him.”

I sat silent as she wiped her eyes with the tissue. “And then later,” she continued, “with Eleazer, when we wanted children.. she trailed off. Her thick body convulsed. I rose and patted her soft back. “I couldn’t have another child. That’s why I have Muffin, and Gretel, and Pudge.” For a moment I was confused. Then I realized she was talking about her goats.

“What an awful experience,” I murmured. “I can’t imagine what it must have been like for you. Does Eleazer know?”

“No” Her voice was venomous. “But Bernard Katz was threatening to tell him about it.”

“You know, you and Eleazer might be able to adopt.”

She sighed. “It’s too late for that. Look at me. I’m fifty-eight, and Eleazer’s almost seventy. Who would give a child to us?” The smell of singed onion began to fill the room, recalling Claudette’s attention to the stove; she turned the gas down and stirred wildly, scattering bits of meat and blackened onion across the clean white surface.

“Bernard Katz came and threatened to tell Eleazer. And the whole island.” Her voice was edged with bitterness. “I told him he could shout it from Cadillac Mountain if he wanted to. It doesn’t make a whit of difference to me now.”

“Do you know where your son is now?”

“They gave him to a family in Bangor. He’s grown now, has a family of his own. A girl and a boy. I’ve never met him-I didn’t want to upset his life-but I keep tabs on what he’s doing. And his kids-my grandkids, really,” she said wistfully.

“Maybe you should try to get in touch with him. You’d make a wonderful grandmother. And I’m sure he’d understand-you were so young, and things were very different then.”

“Maybe. I just have to get through this thing with the police first.”

“What thing?”

She gave me a curious look. “Everyone on the island saw how angry I was at Bernard Katz the night he died. I just about threatened to kill him myself, didn’t I? I’m surprised they haven’t been beating down the door already.”

“But surely Eleazer could vouch for you. I mean, you went home right after the meeting, didn’t you?”

Claudette’s eyes flicked out the window, to where Muffin and her friends were tearing up part of the backyard. “Yes,” she said, “of course.

The sky was just starting to spit fat drops of rain as I pulled up beside the inn, stowed my bike in the shed, and dashed to the kitchen door. The lacy white kitchen curtains billowed in the wind as the door slammed shut behind me, and I rushed to close the windows before the rain turned into a downpour. My eyes swept the room, looking for more cigarette butt-laden saucers. To my relief, although the acrid smell of smoke still lingered in the air, it looked as if Grimes had taken any further cigarettes outside. I peeked at the bread dough, which had started to puff up beneath its blue and white towel, and headed to the front desk to check for messages.

The red light was blinking again. I hit the play button.

“Hello, Natalie? This is Gertrude Pickens of the Daily Mail again. If you could give me a call, I would appreciate it.” Her saccharine voice made my head begin to ache again. My finger jabbed at the erase button halfway through the phone number; I wasn’t about to provide her with more ammunition for tomorrow’s edition.

A clunk from upstairs reminded me that the police were still at the inn. Although I was tempted to go upstairs and ask questions, the safer course would probably be to stay busy in the kitchen. I glanced at my watch; there was enough time to start getting things ready for breakfast tomorrow before Charlene arrived. Then again, I was short on groceries until she showed up. Still, maybe there would be something I could start working on.

As I headed into the kitchen to take inventory, thunder boomed. I froze. Had the police been out to the rose trellis yet? If not, all the evidence would be washed away.

I tore up the staircase and pounded on Katz’s door. Grimes opened it and eyed me quizzically. The room was still a shambles, only now it was a shambles dusted with powder. Fingerprint powder, I presumed.

“Did you check the bottom of the rose trellis?” I gasped. “It’s starting to rain.”

The two men behind Grimes looked up. “Rose trellis?” asked the smaller of the two, a thin dark man with round wire glasses.

“Somebody broke into the room last night. I think they climbed up the rose trellis and came in through the window.” He gave me a blank look from behind his glasses. The other man, a plump redhead, raised his eyebrows at Grimes.

“You didn’t tell us that.”

Grimes shifted from foot to foot. “That’s what she says happened. Looks to me like she was coming up with an excuse for having her prints all over the room. Probably whacked herself in the head getting out of the shower or something, and thought it would be a good cover story.” He smirked at me. “By the way, we’ll need a full set of prints from you before we leave for the day.”

“Does this mean you’re not going to look at the ground beneath the trellis?”

The short dark-haired man looked outside at the now pouring rain and grimaced. “Any evidence out there has probably washed away by now. We’ll go out and take a look, but…” He shot Grimes a hard look. “I’m sorry we didn’t know about this earlier.” Grimes ran a finger around his collar and cleared his throat.

“I think that will be all, Miss Barnes. We’ll come find you if we need anything further” He started to close the door on me.

I stuck my foot between the door and the frame. “One more thing.”

“What?”

I pushed the door open far enough to address the two men. “Would you mind not using crime scene tape? I’m afraid it will frighten away my guests.”

The dark-haired man’s eyes crinkled into a smile. “Of course not. That won’t be necessary at all. In fact, I think we’re almost finished up here, don’t you?” His red-haired partner nodded.

I withdrew my foot, and the door shut with a bang. As I made my way down the stairs, I heard voices coming down the hall. At least they’d look at it. I cursed myself for not thinking to point it out to them earlier. Clearly Grimes thought he had an open-andshut case, and was not interested in gumming up the works with information that might lead to the real killer. For a moment, I regretted taking the letter out of Katz’s room last night; maybe the investigators could have made something out of that. That was water under the bridge, though. I couldn’t exactly go up and give it back to them.

The sound of the front door slamming shut reverberated through the house as I dug through the freezer, sorting through bags of frozen pork chops and chicken until I found a bag of raspberries. The rain was sheeting down the windows as I tossed the bag onto the counter; I hoped the policemen had brought raincoats. I opened the fridge to see what I could find. There was no sour cream and only a quarter of a pound of butter, but a container of dehydrated buttermilk lurked in the corner of the fridge. I pulled it out and leafed through my cookbooks until I found a recipe for raspberry coffee cake that involved minimal butter and called for buttermilk instead of sour cream. I’d make the batter this evening and keep it in the fridge; in the morning, I’d add a streusel topping and pop the cake into the oven.

I was just washing up the bowl when Charlene’s truck clattered down the road. I threw on my rain slicker and raced out to help her unload the groceries.

“What are those guys doing on the side of your house?” she yelled as we ran in through the kitchen door, our arms filled with wet plastic bags.

“Looking for clues,” I called back as I headed out for another load of groceries. “I’ll tell you all about it when we get this stuff inside.” Within ten minutes, the kitchen counters were covered with dripping white bags and we were soaked. “I’m glad you used plastic instead of paper,” I said.

“It didn’t help me much,” she said, peeling off her bright yellow rain slicker. Charlene’s silky magenta blouse clung to her skin, and the hem of her denim skirt was splattered with mud. Her usually immaculate hair stuck to her face, and mascara oozed down her cheeks. I put on a teakettle and tossed her a clean towel from a stack in the laundry room. She dabbed at her face and hair with it as I put the groceries away and told her about my day.

“Someone broke into Katz’s room and hit you over the head?” she asked, raccoon eyes wide.

“Yeah, but Grimes didn’t tell the forensic guys about it. When it started to rain, I went up and asked if they’d had a chance to look outside yet. Grimes hadn’t even told them about it.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What a jerk. Can’t you call and have someone else put on the investigation?”

“That would look good. The primary suspect calling to complain because she doesn’t like the investigating officer.” The teakettle began to whistle. I threw a tea bag into the teapot and poured hot water over it, then turned the oven to 400 degrees for the bread.