by Leslie Meier
Sure enough, I spotted Clarice Kemp across the big room, diligently pricing donated items for the church’s main fundraiser, an auction that was nine months in the future. Clarice was the biggest gossip in Busman’s Harbor. She’d recently retired from her job at the front desk of the Lighthouse Inn, a job that had put her at the nexus of town gossip, with sources ranging from the tourists staying in the rooms, to the locals eating in the dining room, to the yachters pulling up their boats outside. Now that Clarice had moved on from her life at the crossroads, I had heard she was spending her time at the Star of the Sea, another gossip hotbed, though it did confine her mostly to firsthand information about the town’s Catholics.
There were a few other people in the room. Mike Parker—the “pipe charmer,” as my family called him, since he somehow was able to keep the ancient plumbing at my mother’s house up and running—and his wife, Doreen, were also pricing items. The half a dozen or so other people looked familiar, but I didn’t know their names. I gave a wave and a smile to all and headed for Clarice.
“Julia, would you say this is mid-century modern?” She held out an enormous table lamp with a bulbous, oversized base inlaid with teal disks that might have been ceramic or plastic. The rest of the lamp was an unconvincing gold, except for the teal shade that spiraled from a wide bottom to a curlicued top.
“It sure is—” I groped for words.
“Ugly?” Clarice suggested.
“I was going to say grotesque.”
“But is it so grotesque that it’s somehow trendy or beautiful? I don’t want some hipster from Brooklyn sweeping in here and thinking he’s putting something over on us.”
I laughed. “I haven’t lived in New York City for going on four years. I’m afraid I can’t tell you what the hipsters will go for.”
Clarice put the lamp back on the table. “I’ll have Bev from Bev’s Antiques take a look at it before I price it. What brings you here today?” Like a reporter, she moved us straight to the heart of the matter.
“I heard that Mrs. Zelisko was a parishioner here.”
“Oooh,” Clarice said. Her dreams of an original source had been realized. “I heard you were there when Pete Howland discovered the body.”
The others in the room moved in closer. Needless to say, Mrs. Zelisko’s murder was the number-one topic of conversation around town.
“Only tangentially,” I assured her. “I happened to be at the Davies’ house picking up my niece and her friend at the time.”
“I heard there was a wild party,” a woman said. “My friend lives on the street. Lots of college kids in revealing costumes having sex on the lawn and”—she lowered her voice—“doing drugs.”
“I don’t think it was as wild as all that,” I protested. It didn’t discourage them. The group closed in tighter. “The state police Major Crimes Unit is having trouble finding Mrs. Zelisko’s next of kin,” I continued, revealing my insider knowledge, which might or might not be a mistake in this situation. “And I thought maybe she had a close friend or friends here who might be able to help.”
I let the suggestion sit while they looked at one another.
True to her role as a leader, Clarice spoke first. “Mrs. Zelisko was an absolute stalwart of the church. She was a professional bookkeeper, as you may know, and she gave generously of her time and talents. For example, she managed the books for this auction. At the end of the day, we sell over three thousand items—the big stuff in the main tent, the silent auction items, and the items we sell outright; sometimes we combine them into pretty baskets or boxes. It’s a lot to keep track of, and I’m always so proud when we present the check with the proceeds to Father every year.”
“Very admirable,” I said. “But what I’m after is, did Mrs. Zelisko have any particular friends? Someone she may have confided in? The police need information about her family.”
Clarice looked around the group and shook her head. “I never heard of any family. I had the impression she came to this country on her own.”
“Then she’d have family back in her old country,” I pointed out. “Or maybe even her husband’s family. Someone who should be told about her death.”
“She wasn’t a person who made friends,” a white-haired woman said. “She didn’t have a car, and I offered to drive her to Hannaford several times. She never accepted.”
That jibed with a memory I had of Mrs. Zelisko, climbing the harbor hill, string bags of groceries swinging at her sides.
“She was a little deaf,” Doreen added. “I thought that might be why she avoided conversations.”
Clarice nodded. “It took me a long time to catch on to that. She read lips quite well, but I’m sure it was tiring for her.”
“I would say the people she was closest to were her clients,” Mike the plumber said. “She kept the books for a lot of parishioners here.”
“She approached us about her services,” his wife added. “But I’ve always kept the books for the business.”
“Who were her clients specifically?” I asked.
“Gleason’s Hardware was one of the biggest,” someone said, “and the most recent.”
“Walker’s Art Supplies,” added another. “Barry Walker has been with her for a long time. I think he was one of her first clients.”
“Gordon’s Jewelry, for sure,” Mike said.
“All owned by church members,” Clarice said.
“Okay. I’ll talk to them.” A thought occurred to me. “Do any of you know her first name?”
“Uhm, Ellen?” Doreen ventured, though she didn’t sound sure. “She didn’t really use it.”
“Helen?” Clarice suggested. “She always said it very quickly. And there was the accent.”
“Or Eileen,” someone else said.
“Irene,” Mike put in. “It was definitely Irene.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Doreen objected. “It definitely wasn’t.”
Chapter Eight
I said goodbye and thank you to the assembled group and made my way back downtown from the church, crossing over the footbridge.
There was no escaping the conclusion that Mrs. Zelisko valued her privacy. But why? Was it a natural reticence, perhaps caused by her hearing loss, or did something about her past make her reluctant to share personal information? Something about her past that was dangerous enough to get her killed.
It was very much the Maine way to let people keep themselves to themselves. Even Clarice Kemp, who would pass along any personal tidbit that came her way, wouldn’t pry to get it, at least not with her subject directly. Our peninsula was, in a literal sense, the end of the road. It wasn’t all that unusual for people to roll into town hoping to leave the past behind.
The footbridge left me off on the town pier right by the Snowden Family Clambake ticket kiosk. The little building always looked forlorn during the off-season, sitting alone on the concrete pier. I looked through the window to make sure no mail had been mistakenly put through the slot, but the tiny space was exactly as we’d left it when we’d cleaned up one last time and locked the door after Columbus Day.
From the pier, I walked a block to the corner of Main and Main, where Main Street crosses over itself after circling the harbor hill. On the first weekend in November, with Halloween over and the holiday season not yet begun, the street was deserted. The stoplight at the corner, the only one in town, was set to blinking yellow. Gordon’s Jewelry was on the left-hand corner and Walker’s Art Supplies and Frame Shop on the right. Unlike many of the shops on Main Street, both were open year-round. I went up the steps and opened the door of the jewelry shop.
Mr. Gordon, chubby and white-haired, was at his desk, bent over a velvet tray, a jeweler’s loupe in his eye. The sound of the door opening caused him to sit up and turn in my direction.
“Julia, my dear. What brings you in on this chilly day?”
“Hi, Mr. Gordon. I’ve come to talk to you about your bookkeeper, Mrs. Zelisko. I’m sure you’ve heard.”
; He took the loupe off and replaced it with a thick pair of glasses. He gestured for me to sit on the wooden chair across from him. “I have indeed. Terrible tragedy. She was a fine woman.” He looked genuinely saddened by the death.
I sat down. “Do you know much about her?”
“She’s a member of Star of the Sea.” He offered the one piece of information everyone seemed to have.
“I mean personally.”
He hesitated. “Not really. When she came here, she was all business, no chitchat. I thought maybe she struggled with the language and that’s why she avoided small talk. Then I realized she understood and spoke perfectly; she just didn’t want to chatter. I didn’t want to pry.”
“How did you come to hire her?”
“When she first arrived in town, she joined the church. During a church auction committee meeting soon after she arrived, she introduced herself, said she was looking for clients.” He took off his glasses and cleaned them rigorously with a soft cloth. “Alicia did the books for the business back then, but when it became too much for her, I remembered Mrs. Zelisko.”
Mr. Gordon’s wife, Alicia, had been very much his partner in life and in the jewelry business. She’d been a warm presence in the store, helping nervous boyfriends pick out engagement rings, sweethearts find something for their valentines, and happy tourists discover souvenirs that would remind them of their visit to the Maine mid-coast. But a couple of years earlier, her mind had started to wander, not a good thing in a business that traded in the careful display and tracking of expensive goods. When Alicia was unable to help at all, Mr. Gordon still brought her to the store every day, where he could watch her and she could interact with people. Since the summer, even that had not been possible, and he’d hired someone to watch her at home. Mrs. Zelisko’s interest in doing his bookkeeping must have seemed like a lifeline.
“It’s all become so complicated,” he was saying. “We used to keep our books in a paper ledger. But now it’s all Quick Books and this and that. We have to keep very close track of the sales tax, of course. We sell some high-end items here.”
Sales tax, I knew from my own experience with our little gift store at the Snowden Family Clambake, was money a retailer collected and kept in trust on behalf of the state of Maine. The money didn’t belong to the retailer and had to be passed on, along with a filing that accounted for it, in a timely manner. It was a simple process, but an important one.
“Mrs. Zelisko was wonderful,” Mr. Gordon continued. “She took care of everything. I never worried a day about that aspect of the business when she was on the job. Which reminds me,” he squinted over the top of his glasses. “I’ll need to get my records back. I wonder when that will be.”
“The police have Mrs. Zelisko’s laptop,” I told him. “They’re trying to find her next of kin. Plus solve her murder, of course. I’m sure they’ll make arrangements with her clients to get the information they need when they’re done with it. You don’t know, by any chance, who her next of kin might be?”
“No,” Mr. Gordon answered slowly. “Like I said, we never discussed anything personal.”
I stood up. “I figured. Do you know her first name? You paid her. I thought it might be on a check or a bank account.”
“She had me pay her in her little company’s name,” he said. “I don’t remember it. It’s all automated, so I haven’t looked at it since we set it up. Do you want me to look it up for you?”
“No, please don’t trouble yourself.” The police would have that information and more.
“As you please, “Mr. Gordon responded. But he had already drifted back to the gems on his desk, the jeweler’s loupe in his eye.
* * *
I crossed the street to Walker’s Art Supplies and Frame Shop. Empty parking spots lined Main Street. During the season, a single empty space could spark a fistfight.
Walker’s had been there as long as I could remember. Every June, when the school year was over and we prepared to move to Morrow Island, where our clambake was held, my mother brought Livvie and me to pick out colored pencils, pipe cleaners, tongue depressors, potholder loops, and clay for molding. Anything to keep us busy on rainy island days when the clambake didn’t operate. Our morning at Walker’s was like a second Christmas, even better because you got to pick out your own gifts. We loved it. None of the crafts took long-term with me, but Livvie spent her winters working at a pottery studio in town. She made the plates, lamps, and serving pieces the shop offered and painted them, too, with a delicate, controlled hand. It was a talent I envied.
I opened one of the double doors and entered Walker’s familiar space. It was as different from Gordon’s as possible. Gordon’s was a tidy jewelry box, each piece displayed individually, uncrowded and locked up tight. Walker’s was a double storefront. The long shelves that lined its walls were dusty and disheveled. Barry Walker claimed to know exactly where everything was, but he did not. Part of the fun of going to Walker’s was hunting for the stuff of your dreams and finding a few things you hadn’t thought about or even known existed but absolutely had to have the moment you discovered them.
Barry was on the right side of the big floor, the part of the store he used as his studio. In the off-season, he always painted like a frenzied squirrel. One canvas stood on his easel, while others, in various stages of completion, were scattered around that side of the shop, leaning against shelves and preventing patrons from getting near whatever goods were hidden behind them. Barry’s paintings were angry abstract slashes in vibrant colors, the last thing most tourists wanted to purchase as a reminder of their mid-coast vacation. He would have done better with lobsters and lighthouses, which he was more than capable of painting, but Barry’s only artistic interest was in pleasing himself.
He looked up when I stepped into the store. “Julia Snowden, as I live and breathe. What brings you here? Have a hankering to make your mom some new potholders?” He was a big, shambling man with long gray hair. He’d sported a day’s growth of whiskers long before that look became fashionable. On the street, he was often mistaken for a homeless person, which didn’t seem to bother him in the least.
I smiled at the tease. “That’s Page’s department now.” Though Page had probably outgrown the task as well. “I wanted to talk to you about Mrs. Zelisko.”
“Oh.” Barry rubbed his brush with a cloth and then popped it into a jar of smelly liquid. “Darn shame.”
“Yes, it is. I understand you were a client.”
“A happy one. She was a lifesaver. I tried to keep up with the paperwork after Fran went to work at the home, but then it got ahead of me. I couldn’t manage the quarterly filings with the IRS and the state. Five years ago, when Mrs. Zelisko joined our church and said she was available, I hired her on the spot. She started the next day. I’d gotten things in a terrible mess. It took her a while, but she untangled it.”
Like Gordon’s Jewelry, Walker’s had started off as a mom-and-pop operation. But, in their case, revenue had dwindled during the recession and never completely returned. Fran Walker had taken a full-time job as an aid at a rehabilitation facility up the peninsula. It didn’t surprise me that Barry had made a mess of their books.
“The police are looking for a next of kin. Did Mrs. Zelisko ever talk about her personal life?”
Barry shook his shaggy curls. “Never. Kept herself to herself, she did. I was always working when she was here, either tending to customers or painting. She respected my work and got down to hers. From time to time, she’d ask me about an expense or a particular sale we made, but that was it.”
“Do you know her first name?” I asked him.
“Mrs.,” he answered with a twinkle in his eye.
“Did you ever have any problem with the work she did? Anything at all?”
“In the beginning, it took us some time to get used to one another. I got a notice from the IRS that they hadn’t received a quarterly payment. I asked Mrs. Zelisko about it. She said my payment had crossed in
the mail with the notice and not to worry about it.”
A tiny pit of concerned opened in my belly. “And it never happened again?”
“Never,” Barry said. “She said I shouldn’t be bothered by those types of concerns, so after that, we used her address for any IRS correspondence. State of Maine, too.” He gestured toward the counter behind the cash register that functioned as his desk. It was piled high with mail, papers, catalogs, and art supplies. “It was better if the paperwork went to her anyway.”
I thanked Barry and went on my way, taking a last look at the rambling, shambling mess as I closed the door.
* * *
Gleason’s Hardware was a large store and a going concern, busy from early in the morning, when contractors arrived to pick up their materials, until late into the afternoon. It was an old-fashioned store where the employees knew the stock and were always happy to provide helpful advice on any project you might be tackling.
There was a big-box store in Brunswick, but it was forty minutes away, too far for a plumber, electrician, or carpenter working on the peninsula to travel in the morning before going to a job. Too far for a handy homeowner or an unhandy one who simply wanted a drain cover for the kitchen sink or new blinds for the bedroom. Almost everyone in town had an account at Gleason’s.
Gleason’s had been run by the same family for five generations, and the only difference from then to now was that some of the goods had changed and you could no longer tie up your horse and buggy outside. The current proprietor was Al Gleason, a man in his mid-sixties who made even the work apron he and his employees wore look dapper. His son and daughter worked alongside him. Whenever I interacted with either of them, I had the impression they were thrilled to be in a position to carry on the family legacy.
The store was busy by Busman’s Harbor off-season standards. I counted four employees and half a dozen customers wandering around in the big space. It took a while to find Al, but I kept asking. It turned out he was in his office at the back of the main floor.
