Clammed Up (6 page)

The police station was part of Busman’s Harbor’s relatively new fire department-town offices-police complex. The huge bays for the fire department rigs—one each for ladder truck, pumper, and ambulance—dominated the front of the building. Etienne and I cut around the side to the police department entrance. Normally, it was a sleepy little place. The two full-time officers on duty on each shift were always off on patrol, and if you were lucky you might catch the chief at his desk doing paperwork. Today, the place hummed with activity. State cops, local cops, and cops from the county sheriff’s office were all crammed into the small room, working two and even three to a desk.

I waited while Etienne gave his name and was led off into a small warren of cubicles by a policeman in plainclothes.

“Good luck!” I called after him, then wondered if that was the wrong thing to say. Did it imply he needed luck?

I gave my name to the harried-looking female civilian employee behind the desk and asked to see Lieutenant Binder.

“Sorry, he’s in a meeting. Can’t be disturbed.”

“Even if I know who killed Ray Wilson?”

The woman looked up sharply. “Do you?”

“No,” I admitted. “But I really need to talk to him.”

The woman got up and went through the door behind her into the giant multipurpose room where our town meetings were held. I caught a quick glimpse as the door opened and closed behind her. Chris was still there, sitting across the table from Binder. I had only a partial view of his back, but I recognized him instantly—the curve of the face in profile and the clothes. It was definitely him. How long had he been there? He’d left Gus’s more than two hours before.

The woman reappeared. “Sorry, Lieutenant Binder can’t be interrupted.”

I turned and left the police station discouraged, heading toward home.

As I passed the Snuggles Inn, a B&B across from my parents’ house, Michaela’s maid of honor Lynn stomped out onto the porch, struggling with a rolling suitcase, a garment bag, and a tote. She looked frazzled, to put it mildly. Her hair was in the same up-do she’d had yesterday for the wedding. She’d obviously slept in it. She was wearing yoga pants and a pink T-shirt and her pink-painted toes were shoved into flip-flops.

“Let me give you a hand.” I took the garment bag and tote so she could concentrate on pulling the suitcase along the inn’s uphill front walk. She needed the help, but I also thought it might be my only chance to talk to her. Gus’s challenge from this morning still rung in my ears. I had to solve my own problems.

“That’s my car.” Lynn nodded toward a mid-sized convertible with its top down parked in front. She put the suitcase on the backseat, turned toward the front door of the Snuggles, and screeched, “Beanie, get your butt out here! I am leaving in five minutes.”

Lynn grabbed the garment bag from me and tossed it in with the suitcase. “There’s five hundred bucks I’ll never see again. What do you think it would get on eBay? ‘Murder gown for sale?’ Too tacky? Beanie! I mean it!”

I didn’t know where to start or what to ask. It was easy for Gus to tell me to solve a murder, but it was much harder for me to do it. Lynn and I stood awkwardly on the sidewalk waiting for the unseen Beanie, who I knew was one of the bridesmaids. Michaela had thought it would be fun to put them all up together at the Snuggles, like a pajama party. She’d stayed there with her attendants the night before the wedding.

“Headed back to the city?” I assumed Lynn lived in New York, but it seemed best to be sure.

“Yes, thank God. The cops finally told us we could go. Beanie!”

“I just came from seeing Michaela and Tony. The cops told them the same thing.” Lynn had to be a close friend of Michaela’s. She was the maid of honor, after all. That probably meant she also knew Tony pretty well. But what about Ray? “Was Ray Wilson a friend of yours?” I asked.

Lynn stomped a flip-flopped foot in disgust. “Freakin’ Ray. Freakin’, freakin’ Ray,” she said, echoing Tony’s words, but in a very different tone. “Immature. Irresponsible. Still acting like a frat boy. Always ruins everything. Always. I certainly wasn’t his friend. I don’t see how Tony could stand him. And Michaela. I warned her a hundred times that man would bring her nothing but grief.
Beanie
!”

Though everything Lynn said was consistent with the feelings she’d expressed about Ray the day before, it was a little shocking to have her speak so badly about someone who’d just been murdered.

“Michaela’s taking it pretty hard,” I pointed out, thinking regardless of her feelings about the deceased, it was the job of someone close enough to be her maid of honor to support Michaela, not to go badmouthing her choice of friends to relative strangers.

“I bet she is,” Lynn smirked. “Tell me, you say you just saw them. Who was taking it harder, Michaela or Tony?”

I hesitated for a moment. People show grief differently. True, Tony had been calm and businesslike, the much less affected of the two. When he’d talked of Ray, it was with fondness, not sadness—which might have been a little odd, considering he and Ray were best friends and grew up together. But maybe Tony had some macho inhibition about showing his emotions, especially to someone he barely knew. Who was I to judge? And what was this woman saying? That Michaela cared about Ray too much? More than she cared about Tony? It seemed absurd.

Lynn, however, took my silence as agreement. “My point exactly.”

Beanie, also looking like she’d slept in her clothes, appeared at the front door of the Snuggles carrying an overnight case and a garment bag identical to Lynn’s. She jogged to the passenger side, threw her bags in the back, and jumped into her seat.

Before I could ask anything else, Lynn slid behind the wheel. “No offense, but I hope I never see you or this godforsaken place again,” she said just before they zoomed off, leaving me standing on the sidewalk.

I looked across the street at my mother’s house where Sonny, good as his word, was taking down my mother’s porch windows. It was a terrible job. Twenty huge, wooden windows ran the length of the porch. They were ungainly and ungodly heavy, as I knew well, because it had always been Livvie’s and my job to carry them to the garage once Dad had them off the house. The porch was high, so you had to stand on a ladder when you took the windows off, carrying them down one at a time. If that wasn’t bad enough, the windows were old, a little warped, and covered in layers of paint, so removing them always involved a lot of shoving and swearing, which is exactly what Sonny was doing as I came up the walk.

“Hey!” I called softly, hoping not to startle him.

“Hey, yourself.” Sonny paused on the ladder before starting on another window. He was red in the face and his dark green T-shirt was soaked with perspiration. “Man, I hate this job.”

“Dad hated it, too.”

When you think about men who’ve hauled lobster traps, chopped wood for towering bonfires, and disposed of the lobster shells, corn cobs, and clamshells left by four hundred people a day, it says a lot about the rottenness of the window job.

“Times like this, I really miss him.”

I nodded, thinking about how few the years had really been, between when Dad had accepted Sonny as a permanent fixture in Livvie’s life, and when he’d died. For those few years, Dad had help with the windows.

“I checked the Internet reservations,” Sonny said. “We’re almost full up for tomorrow.”

“Really?” I’d turned the reservation system off for today, but I’d left it on for tomorrow in the hope that we’d be cleared to open. Mondays were usually decent days in the clambake biz. Lots of people came to Maine for three-day weekends. But full, in June? “Ghouls,” I said.

“Julia, you don’t know that. Maybe it’s people who wanted to go today, but couldn’t. That’s why we’re full.”

“I doubt it.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter why they’re coming. The position we’re in, we have to take their money.”

And who put us in that position, Sonny?
“We don’t even know yet if we can run.”

“I heard the cops have Chris Durand back for a second round of questioning today. He’s been there at least a couple hours.”

Why did I bristle at that? Was Sonny implying if the police were questioning Chris, they’d end up arresting him and our troubles would soon be over? If that was what he meant, he probably would have just said it. Sonny was not a subtle guy. I wasn’t surprised he knew Chris was at the police station. In Busman’s Harbor, at times it felt like everybody knew everything.

“I think Chris is being interviewed because he was the last person in Busman’s Harbor to see Ray Wilson alive,” I said. “Turns out, Ray and Tony grew up in Bath.”

“Really?” Sonny clearly understood what that meant. Maybe nobody from the harbor was involved.

“Yup. Tony told me himself this morning.”

Sonny climbed down off the ladder with the heavy window in his hands. “Still doesn’t answer the question why the body was left like that.”

“I know. That bothers me, too.” Neither of us had the answer, so I said, “Let me go upstairs to my office and check the reservation system. Then I’ll come back and help carry these windows into the garage.”

“Jul-ya!”

I was still in my office, going through tomorrow’s reservations, adding up the money we’d flush down the drain if the cops didn’t let us open. I’d called Jamie at the station house on the hope he was back from Morrow Island. The woman at the desk told me he wasn’t around.

“Jul-ya, state cops are here for you!” Sonny was still out on the front lawn and evidently felt no hesitation about announcing it to the whole harbor.

“I’ll be right down.”

Lieutenant Binder and Detective Flynn stood on my mother’s front porch. Sonny had finished taking the windows down and was humping them to the garage.

I led Binder and Flynn to a corner of the porch and sat them on the wicker furniture. Binder looked more tired than yesterday. The creases around his deep-set brown eyes were more pronounced, and he sat down heavily on the settee. Flynn, though considerably younger, didn’t look much better. He was slightly stooped as though it was tough to carry his bodybuilder muscles. Both were dressed in dark slacks, white shirts, sports jackets, and boring ties. They had on ugly cop shoes, and I could tell just by looking that Detective Flynn had been out on Morrow Island while Binder had stayed in town. Flynn had a tiny patch of wet sand clinging to the top of the rubber sole of his right shoe where it met the leather upper.

“I thought you’d call me down to the station when you were ready for me.”

“We needed the walk,” Binder said.

“Coffee?”

“No thanks.” He hesitated. “Unless you want some.” I didn’t, but they looked like they could use an afternoon pick-me-up, so I went to the kitchen and brewed a pot. My mother always had some store-bought cookies around “for Page,” as she said, as if the nine-year-old in our lives was the only one who ate them. I put a plate of cookies next to the coffee mugs on a tray.

“Thanks,” Binder said when I returned to the porch.

“No problem. What else can I do for you?”

“You can take us through yesterday. Again,” Flynn answered.

So I did.

Their questions were more specific. They’d obviously gathered a lot of information since our interview the day before. Did the bride seem hungover or maybe even still drunk? The groom? Any of the attendants?

I answered honestly. “No.”

I was aware of Sonny down on the lawn. I couldn’t see him, but caught glimpses of the tops of window frames gliding past as he went back and forth to the garage. I was sure he was eavesdropping, though he, like the cops, had heard it all before.

“I know this is difficult, Ms. Snowden. But before you opened the door to Windsholme did anyone, anyone at all, give you the slightest indication they knew what was behind it?”

I replayed the horrible discovery in my mind. “No one.”

“Well, you let us know if you remember anything else.” Binder switched subjects. “I understand Christopher Durand worked on the island this spring.” I nodded and he continued. “What did he do for you there?”

“I wasn’t on the island everyday. Etienne Martineau or my brother-in-law Sonny Ramsey can be more specific, but generally . . .” I went through the litany of opening-up chores—clearing brush, raking the beach, repairing winter damage to the buildings and dock, bringing out the picnic tables and other furniture. It was three weeks worth of hard work for three men. “He also painted a couple rooms for me in Windsholme because I was getting ready for this wedding.”

“Did anyone else work on the island this spring? Or maybe last fall?”

“The electricians.” I’d forgotten all about them. “I changed the service and had two rooms at Windsholme rewired in May.” I gave the names of the father and son who did the work. Flynn wrote down the information. “Do you think they could have something to do with Ray’s murder?” I couldn’t imagine what. They lived two towns up the coast, in the opposite direction of Ray’s hometown.

“Just covering our bases,” Flynn answered.

“Can I ask, did you find anything on the island today?”

The corners of Binder’s mouth turned up in amusement. “That’s a pretty broad question.”

“Like a boat? Did you figure out how Ray Wilson got to my island?” Now that I knew Ray was from somewhere nearby and could have gotten himself to the island, I wanted to know how he’d done it.

Binder’s smile faded. “We didn’t find a boat. But I don’t think that’s meaningful. Wilson could’ve arrived on the island with his killer, who then left with the boat. Or Wilson and his killer could have come to the island in separate boats and Wilson’s was carried out by the tide later. We won’t know with certainty whether Wilson was even alive when he arrived on the island until we get the medical examiner’s full report tomorrow.”

I tried to picture a killer carrying Ray’s body up the long, steep path from the beach to Windsholme. It seemed impossible. It would require two killers. Maybe three. Gangs of marauding murders on Morrow Island? It was too terrible to think about. “You should check Westclaw Point for the boat. There’s a little inlet almost directly across from the island.” That’s where the inflatable balls, tubes, and rafts Livvie and I lost off our little beach when we were children always ended up. Eventually. “Did anyone report a boat stolen?”

“No, but it’s early in the season. Lots of people aren’t here yet. We’re checking as best we can, but it will take time. The killer could have gone to the island in his own boat.” Binder shifted forward in his seat and put his hands on his knees. “We do have some news. The crime scene team is done on your island. You can open tomorrow.”

I practically jumped out of my seat. “Why didn’t you tell me right away?” My mind raced forward. I had to let the staff know, buy the food, check the boat.

“Because we knew the moment we told you, you wouldn’t be able to pay attention to anything else.” He smiled his crinkly-eyed smile. “You can use the island for your clambakes, but please, keep everybody out of the mansion. We have it secured. Windsholme is still an active crime scene.”

“Of course. Don’t worry. I’m just so relieved. So you think the murder happening on the island was just random? Why was his body left there?”

“Think about it,” Lieutenant Binder said. “Seeing that body had a powerful effect on more than just you.”

Michaela.
Of course. How could I have been so self-absorbed? She was the most hurt by seeing Ray hanging at Windsholme on her wedding day. And the maid of honor had dropped those not so subtle hints that Michaela and Ray were close. Too close. That could explain why Ray’s body was left for Michaela to find.

“Thank you, Lieutenant for telling me this. It’s a huge relief.” It all made so much more sense. Tony and Ray were from Bath. Ray’s body was hung up at Windsholme to send a message to Michaela on her wedding day. It was an unspeakably awful thing to do and I couldn’t imagine why anyone had done it. But it had nothing to do with us.

“Thank you, so so much. You don’t know what this means.”

Binder grinned. “Oh, I think we do. Your friend, young Officer Dawes made sure we did.”

Sonny and I stood on the porch and watched the retreating backs of Binder and Flynn as they walked down the hill.

“Did you hear all that?”

“Most of it. Seems like they’re looking at Ray Wilson’s life.”

“And Michaela’s.” My eyes fell on a thick newspaper, neatly folded, sitting on a side table. “What’s that?”

“I forgot to tell you. Quentin Tupper III dropped it off for you. Said he was driving back to New York tonight and didn’t want to ‘schlep’ it. He said he thought you’d appreciate it.”

Quentin Tupper from Gus’s this morning?
It seemed like an odd thing to do. He didn’t know where I lived. I hadn’t even told him my last name. Of course, he could have asked pretty much anyone in town. Lots of people knew who I was and everybody knew the Snowden house.

Nothing sounded better than curling up on the porch swing with the Sunday
New York Times
. But I had a lot of work to get done if we were putting on a clambake tomorrow.