Steamed Open

by Barbara Ross

  I went into Spencer Cottage and found a glass, filling it from the tap over the old soapstone sink and then went back out to the deck. “Here.” I held out the glass. Vera took it.

  After she’d taken a long, slow drink, I asked about the day of the murder. “You did get inside Herrickson House that day, didn’t you?”

  She put the glass down on the little table. “When I got there, the front door was closed. I knocked a few times and rang the bell, then when no one came, I tried the door. It was unlocked. I was certain Frick was inside. You’d just talked to him.”

  “Did you hear the murder? Did you see the killer?”

  “Do you think I’d be alive, talking to you if I did?”

  “I guess not.” It was a miracle either one of us was still here.

  “The house was quiet. Too quiet, I realized later. I went through the rooms, calling for Frick. I found him on the breakfast room floor. The place was a horrendous mess, things flung everywhere.”

  “I saw it.”

  She looked at me, surprised. “That day? He was dead on the floor and you didn’t warn me?”

  “No. When I was there again later. Not the body, the mess.” She raised an eyebrow in speculation. “I’ll tell you about it when you finish,” I assured her.

  “I knew immediately I was in terrible danger,” she continued.

  “From the killer?”

  “That didn’t even occur to me. The house felt so . . . empty. All I could think was the heir was dead, and I, the disinherited daughter, was in his house. I hightailed it out of there and didn’t stop until I got back here.”

  “But you called 911.” Her voice had sounded like a man’s to the dispatcher.

  “I couldn’t leave him there for the housekeeper to find.”

  “She’d quit.”

  “So I understand, but I didn’t know it at the time.”

  “And then later you told the police you hadn’t been in the house.”

  “They seemed to believe me. I’ve never felt so relieved. But then I got to worrying about the letters.” She lit another cigarette, her third since we’d been talking. “I didn’t know if the letters still existed, but they had never been returned. I couldn’t take the chance.”

  “How did you get back in? The police would have checked all the entries for signs of a break-in.”

  “They did. I tried them all, too. When I got to one of the cellar doors, I noticed a big stone next to the stoop. I moved it, on a chance, and sure enough, there was a key underneath it. I unlocked the door and entered a cellar room with a stairway. The door at the top was locked, but had a skeleton key in it. One turn and I was in the kitchen.”

  “You propped the outside door open with the stone. Your habit of leaving escape routes. Why did you leave it there?” I asked her.

  “After I had the letters, well, the truth is, I’ve been going into Herrickson House every day. I haven’t taken anything, don’t worry. I’ve enjoyed spending time there, all the time I wasn’t with my mother, seeing her things and trying to understand her life after she cut me out of it. The open door was my escape route if anyone ever showed up. I started leaving it like that.”

  “It’s never the crime, it’s the cover-up,” I joked, and immediately regretted it when I saw the look on her face.

  Vera snubbed out the cigarette in the crowded ashtray. “I didn’t kill Bartholomew Frick. You have to believe me. I never wanted Herrickson House or my mother’s money. All I wanted was my mother.”

  “I believe you. But you need to go to the state police,” I told her. “Tell Lieutenant Binder and Sergeant Flynn your story. Get it over with.”

  She nodded, huddled in the chaise lounge. “I will.”

  “And give them back that key,” I added, as I headed down the front steps.

  CHAPTER 27

  I exited the gate at Spencer Cottage into the glaring sunlight of Rosehill Road. Vera had given me a lot to think about.

  If she was telling the truth, and I thought she was, Bart Frick had been murdered in the time between when I had left Herrickson House and she had arrived. How long could it have been? Five minutes for me to walk to the pedestrian gate, five minutes to chat with Vera, and five minutes for her to walk back. Maybe seven, because she was older and a smoker, but not long.

  If Frick really was dead when she got there, it would have taken time for him to bleed out, even from a punctured artery. The conclusion was inescapable. The killer, or killers, had been in the house with me, as I’d feared. Frick had been attacked immediately after I left. I had been spared.

  I hugged myself in spite of the warm sun. Now that I’d seen the room where Frick had died and understood the frenzy of the attack, I felt certain the killer wasn’t a discarded heir or a mistreated housekeeper. It was someone who had been thwarted, denied something they desperately wanted or needed, someone who had planned the act, since they were in the house, but who, once there, had boiled over in a murderous rage.

  The Barnards’ RV was still parked by the lighthouse. I walked down Rosehill Road and through the long beach parking lot to toward the big vehicle. Most of the clammers were packing up for the day, but I recognized Will Orsolini down at the tide line, hard at work.

  The RV was empty, as I’d expected. After fruitlessly knocking at the door, I climbed the steps to the base of the Herrickson Point Light.

  Glen met me at the door. “Hullo, Julia. What brings you here this fine morning?”

  “I was about to ask you the same question.”

  Glen stepped back and raised his hands in mock surprise. “I would think it would be obvious.”

  “It looks to me like you’ve broken into the lighthouse.” I pointed toward the keeper’s cottage screen door and the formerly bolted wooden door open behind it. “And the cottage. I’m amazed no one has reported you to the police.”

  “The police have better things to do in your little town it seems, and the locals aren’t anxious to give them a reason to come back down to the beach.”

  “Where’s Anne?” I asked

  He gestured toward the water. “Taking a walk on the beach. She’s always emotional once we complete an area and check it off our list. Nobody’s building new lighthouses. The number is finite and at some point, we’ll be done.”

  He seemed down as well. I would have thought getting inside Herrickson Point Light would have made him feel triumphant. “You have some beautiful lights ahead of you, Portland Head, Nubble,” I told him.

  He nodded absently. As we talked, we walked toward the keeper’s cottage. He opened the screen door and we went inside. An electric light hung from the center of the kitchen ceiling, but it was easy to imagine the keeper’s wife and children, in the time before electricity, sitting at the central table, working on their schooling or fixing a meal. There were two light blue suitcases by the door along with a clear garbage bag containing sheets and towels. The Barnards had spent the night.

  “Do you mind if I ask why you do it?” I said. “Why was it so important to stay in town until you could spend the night at this lighthouse? Why would you break the law to get in?”

  “In fact, the door was unlocked when we got here, but you’re right. We clearly understood we weren’t to enter, much less sleep here.” He shifted in his seat. “I told you before. The goal is to see them all.”

  “I understand. But why is that so important?”

  Glen sat in a kitchen chair and gestured for me to do the same. “Our son was a policeman, in Tucson where we live. He was killed in the line of duty twelve years ago.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you. We knew he had a dangerous job, but neither of us had imagined a world without him in it. He was our only child, twenty-seven when he died. Never got a chance to start a family of his own.”

  The Barnards’ affection for Jamie and his attitude toward them suddenly made more sense.

  “After Brian died, I was sad, but Anne was devastated. She felt she had no reason to go on. And
then, one of our friends, hoping to cheer her up, gave her a snow globe with a lighthouse in it. Anne was fascinated by it. When she held it, it gave her peace. She became obsessed with finding the real lighthouse, the one the snow globe was modeled after. She looked at thousands of images online and couldn’t find it. Finally, she said she wanted to find that lighthouse. She mapped out a trip to the lights nearest us, the ones along the southern coast of California. I didn’t point out that none of them were likely to be the one. Why would you put a lighthouse from there in a snow globe? It never snows. I was so happy to see her planning something, desiring something, I didn’t ask any questions.

  “We went on that first trip. We traveled by car and stayed in motels. We were out of the house, we were learning new things, seeing beautiful sights. It was the first time either of us had experienced any emotion other than sadness since our son’s death. When we got home, we immediately began planning the next trip.

  “I know we’re never going to find the lighthouse in the snow globe. Deep down, Anne knows it, too. But our lives go on. We have a reason to get up every morning. So if we get a little fanatical about our quest, so be it.”

  “You drove down to the beach the morning Frick was killed and stood at the chain link gate calling to him. Did you see anything? Hear anything at all?”

  “We saw an older woman walk up on the porch and go inside.”

  “And while she was in there, no one ran out, maybe from the back of the house?”

  He shook his head. “Not while we were there.”

  “Did you tell the police the whole story about the woman?”

  “Twice. First to young Officer Dawes, and then to Lieutenant Binder and Sergeant Flynn.”

  So the police had known Vera was inside the house the day of the murder. I remembered how doubtful Lieutenant Binder had sounded when he’d told me her story. I’d put it down to normal police skepticism. She thought they’d believed her.

  Glen leaned back in his chair and smiled. “I believe it was Officer Dawes who left the door here unlocked.”

  That would be like Jamie. The lighthouse and the keeper’s cottage weren’t crime scenes, and the story of parents who had lost a son would have touched him.

  “Did you see the ghost of the Unknown Mermaid?” I asked.

  “No, we didn’t. But Anne keeps hoping that one of these days, at one of these lights, we will see a ghost. It would prove our son is still with us.”

  “He’s still with you,” I said.

  Glen nodded. “That he is.”

  “Thank you for telling me.” I stood up.

  Glen stood as well, reaching out to shake my hand. “Thank you for listening. And for the tour of the harbor and your marvelous clambake. We’ll never forget it.”

  “You’re welcome. Come back if you wish, before you get too far down the coast. On the house.”

  “That’s nice, but our plan is to keep moving. We’ve already spent more time in Busman’s Harbor than we intended.” He looked out the screen door. “Here comes Anne. We’ll pack up our things and move on. Let’s not speak of our conversation. She’s still fragile and the murder here has set her back some.”

  “Of course not,” I agreed. “I’ll be going.”

  CHAPTER 28

  As I walked back across the parking lot toward Rosehill Road, Will fell in step with me. He had a clam rake over his shoulder and a full bucket of steamers in his other hand.

  “Hey, Julia.”

  “Hey, Will.”

  “Walk with me.” I stayed with him as we walked toward his truck. “You were at the lighthouse talking with those Barnards? Interesting people.” He said it casually, an observation, not an accusation.

  “Yes, really interesting,” I answered.

  “Did they tell you why they’re hanging around?”

  Glen had, but I didn’t feel like theirs was my story to tell. “I think they’ll head out now that they’ve been inside the lighthouse and the keeper’s cottage.” I looked over at the RV as I said it. Anne and Glen were carrying their bags from the keeper’s cottage, preparing to leave.

  We reached Will’s pickup. It was the only vehicle left in the lot aside from the RV. It was the quiet time when the clammers were gone and the swimmers and sunbathers hadn’t yet arrived. He put his clam rake and pail in the bed of the truck.

  “You went in to talk to the cops right after I did last night,” Will said. “You’re tight with them. Did they tell you anything?”

  “I haven’t been so much in the loop this time.” I hadn’t been in the loop with the police, but I had been busy. I’d found the missing heir and the missing daughter. I’d pursued the housekeeper and the lighthouse lovers. Everyone had told me their stories.

  I believed Betty Reynolds hadn’t known she would inherit Herrickson House, or that she had any connection to the Herricksons. She probably couldn’t have found Herrickson Point on a map, and had no motive for murder.

  Ida Fischer had loved Lou, of that I was sure. And was grateful to her for the second chance. I’d wondered why Lou hadn’t told her she knew Ida had been her late husband’s lover, the mother of his only child. But telling her that could also have given Ida the sense that Lou had hired her out of obligation, to pay the debt for what was done to her. That sense of obligation could have become a burden to both of them.

  But not having told Ida she knew about her pregnancy meant Lou also couldn’t tell her she’d found the daughter Ida had given away. Did Lou want to? Was she tempted? Ultimately, it had worked to both Ida and Betty’s benefit that she hadn’t—at least as far as this murder investigation was concerned—even if they hadn’t benefited from knowing each other in life, at least so far.

  Ida and Betty were out as Bart’s killer.

  I was surprised to realize how sure I was that Vera French hadn’t murdered Bart Frick, either. At first, she’d seemed likely. She was incensed about the fence across the beach road and was always hanging around. And she could have been jealous of Bart Frick, even if she didn’t stand to inherit if he died. To have her mother cut her out so easily had been unspeakably painful.

  But Vera French hadn’t seemed angry to me, she had seemed broken-hearted. She didn’t want her mother’s things. She had plenty of money and stuff. She had wanted a relationship.

  I also didn’t believe Anne and Glen Barnard had anything to do with the murder. At first, they had seemed so over the top angry about losing access to the lighthouse, I’d considered them. They had appeared to be so irrational. But the story Glen had told me explained their urgency—and it had the ring of truth.

  I glanced into the bed of Will’s truck. His clam rake lay there, metal shiny, tines perfectly aligned. It was not the rake he’d raised in the air when he’d led the mob at the gate. I was sure of it. He took a step toward me. I took a step back.

  “Will, on the day Frick died, why was your truck parked at the end of Rosehill Road?” I asked him.

  “I told you. I went after quahogs from my boat.”

  “But why would you park at the dead end? That’s a terrible place to launch a boat.” He shrugged, an elaborate display of nonchalance. I didn’t buy it. “I didn’t see you when I left Herrickson House that morning,” I added.

  “Like Duffy said, I was around the point.”

  My mind flashed on Nikki and his kids. They were adorable, a perfect family. They needed Will. No one had needed Bart Frick. No one mourned him.

  I didn’t want it to be Will. Everything in me rebelled against the idea. But that was an emotional response not a logical one.

  The idea that had nagged at me at the police station the previous evening came suddenly into focus. “Didn’t Duffy date Nikki’s mom for a long time when she was young?” I asked.

  “You’re saying he’s a liar?” Will growled.

  “I’m saying he might lie if she asked him.”

  With an arching swoop of his arm, Will reached into the truck bed and grabbed the clam rake. I turned and fled as fast as I
could.

  Straight ahead lay the sand, then the water. If I went that way, I’d be trapped. I could run to the end of the parking lot and out onto Rosehill Road, but it was too far. Will was taller, stronger, and no doubt faster than I was. He would catch me for sure.

  I could hear Will’s footsteps on the sand-covered asphalt of the parking lot behind me. Despite the lead my jackrabbit head start had given me, he was gaining. I did the only thing I could think of, I headed straight toward the Barnards’ RV, yelling at the top of my lungs.

  As I got closer, I could see Anne was by the open side door, still stowing their gear, but Glen was in the driver’s seat. I shouted at him and waved my arms. He didn’t look up. From that distance, I must have sounded like a noisy gull over the crashing waves.

  I felt a whoosh of air behind me, then the clang of metal on asphalt, followed by a full-throated curse. Will had aimed the clam rake at me, but had missed probably by inches. He was closing in.

  I ran for the RV. Glen looked up and saw me coming. He turned the key and stepped on the gas. Anne yelped and jumped out of the way.

  Glen headed right for me. Could he cut Will off before he closed in? The pounding footsteps behind me said no. I dug in, propelling myself across the open space as fast as I could run.

  “Whamp—whamp.” Glen blasted the RV’s horn. He was almost to us, almost on top of us.

  “Move!” I heard Glen’s voice through the glass of the windshield. The horn blasted again as I veered off around the side of the big vehicle and kept running. The RV thundered past. The noise and wind felt like I was standing beside a busy highway. I kept running, not daring to look back, trying to hear the swish-swish of footsteps in the sandy layer on the parking lot over the sound of my yammering heart. My calves were on fire and every step got harder, and slower. I could hear Anne yelling something off to my right, but I didn’t understand and couldn’t take time to look. The rocks the lighthouse stood on were thirty yards ahead. Soon I would come to the end of the point. I’d have nowhere to go.