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For Bill, my favorite sailor
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to the Cozy Mystery Crew. They came through with dozens of wonderful suggestions when I needed just the right name for a very unusual character. I’ll be using some of the names in the future, but for now, many thanks to Meg Gustafson and Traci Lowder for the perfect name.
Chapter 1
“Allie, what on earth is going on out there?”
Excited chatter, laughter, and then a shrill scream flowed in the screen door of my aunt’s Lazy Mermaid lobster shack. I joined the customers who stood to look out the windows toward the river. A group from Bertha Betancourt’s Learn to Lobster tour streamed from her boat, Queenie, and surged up the dock toward the shack.
Aunt Gully set a steaming bowl of creamy clam chowder in front of a man in a Red Sox shirt. He rubbed his hands and dug in, ignoring all the excitement outside.
“Let’s go see.” Aunt Gully and I hurried out the front door behind several customers. Our cook, Hector Viera, all six feet four of him, followed. Gold and brown leaves swirled around us in a cool breeze off the Micasset River as the screen door banged shut. I shaded my eyes. It was two days before Halloween and the sky was that deep shade of late October blue that’s so bright it almost hurts to look at it.
When I saw all the kids surrounding Bertha, I remembered that her Learn to Lobster tour became the Local History Field Trip once a month for school groups. The crowd bubbled with excitement, with kids jumping up and down to see what was being carried in a large plastic tub by several teachers and Bertha.
A very tanned and skinny ten-year-old boy with an armful of knotwork friendship bracelets loped up to us with surfer-dude grace and pulled me into the crowd. Bit Markey lived across Pearl Street from the Mermaid in a prerenovation 1840s house with a pink and purple color scheme and a marijuana-leaf flag in the window. After years of begging, Bit’s parents had finally relented and let him go to the public school. “You’ve got to see the giant lobster Bertha hauled in!”
I greeted the teachers and Bertha as they struggled to carry the plastic tub. One of them had been my science teacher almost twenty years ago at Mystic Bay Elementary. They parted so we could see the prize catch. The tub was barely big enough to hold a huge lobster, its tail and lower body set in water, its upper body and claws curved against the side of the tub.
“God bless America!” Aunt Gully peered over her rose-rimmed glasses. “That’s one of the biggest lobsters I’ve ever seen.”
“He’s impressive,” I said.
The crustacean, mottled brown and black, was easily over three feet long, the same size as a little girl who gazed at him with adoration. “He’s so ugly but I love him. Can I take him home? Please, please, please?” She leaned closer.
I pulled her away. Much of the lobster’s weight was in his claws, which he suddenly thrashed, opening and closing them with menace. Several people screamed.
“Whoa!” Bit said.
The little girl’s mother hurriedly picked her up.
“We have to get him banded,” I said. Lobsters’ claws are closed with thick rubber bands to keep them from attacking other lobsters or those who are trying to cook them.
“I didn’t have any bands big enough for this bruiser,” Bertha said, her ruddy, weather-beaten hands gripping the tub. “I called Fred Nickerson at Graystone.” Professor Nickerson ran nearby Graystone College’s marine biology program. “He’ll bring some. Don’t get too close, folks. Those claws will snap your hand off!”
One little boy wailed, “It’s scary!”
The crowd murmured assent.
“He can’t stay out of the water long. Let’s put him in one of the saltwater tanks in the shed,” Aunt Gully said.
“After we clear one out for him.” I turned toward Hector. “Hector, what do you think? How about a private tank for this guy? Otherwise, he’ll tear the other lobsters to shreds with those claws.”
“I’m on it.” Hector dashed to the buoy-covered shed where we stored our live lobsters.
“He’s a monster!” Bit’s green eyes gleamed with admiration. He and a friend had slipped closer through the crowd and now helped carry the tub, not minding the water dripping onto their sneakers.
“Like Godzilla,” his friend said.
“Relax, Lobzilla, we’ll get you a nice home,” Bit said.
Laughter rippled through the crowd. “Lobzilla!” Kids pressed close, forcing a stop. Tourists gathered around, taking selfies with the crustacean.
“There is something prehistoric about him, isn’t there?” I said.
Someone in the crowd murmured, “That bad boy would make one big lobster roll.”
A white sedan with a Mystic Bay Mariner logo stenciled on the driver’s door pulled into the parking lot. A man whose flowing gray hair, parted in the middle, was at odds with his khakis and button-down shirt jumped out and ran over as he steadied a digital camera against his chest. “Bertha, that’s one heck of a lobster! Thanks for texting me.” Johnny Sabino, longtime reporter for our local paper, started shooting photos.
“Hi, Johnny.” Bertha’s broad smile brightened her round, sun-reddened face.
Hector ran out from the shed. “The Presidential Suite’s ready for you, big fella.”
The crowd followed Bertha, a denim-clad Pied Piper with a giant lobster. The customer Aunt Gully had served just before running outside now lounged against the shack’s cedar shingles with his bowl of chowder, eating as he watched the parade pass.
After a few minutes, Bertha emerged from the lobster shed, where we stored live lobsters in several bathtub-sized saltwater tanks. Bertha’s Bruce Springsteen T-shirt was spattered with salt water but she was smiling, no, more than that. She was star struck.
Johnny turned to Aunt Gully and me, flipped open a notebook, and took a pen from behind his ear. “Let me get your names right.”
“Oh, Johnny, you’ve known me since kindergarten at Mystic Bay Elementary!” Aunt Gully said.
“Gotta spell things right. Otherwise folks get mad.” He nodded toward me. “You’re one of the Larkin girls.”
“Allie Larkin.” My older sister’s Lorelei, who prefers to go by the more professional-sounding Lorel.
“That’s right, you’re the ballerina who fell down the stairs and broke an ankle then came home to help at the shack. I remember the story we did on you in the spring. ‘Pirouettes to Pier.’”
“That’s me.” Not much longer on the pier, I hoped. While I loved helping Aunt Gully at the Lazy Mermaid, I couldn’t wait until the doctor cleared me to return to my job dancing with the New England Ballet Theater. “Allie’s short for Allegra.”
“A-L-L-E-G-R-A,” Johnny spelled.
I steeled myself as I waited for him to ask me about some of the other incidents—murder and mysteries—that had gotten me in the paper over the summer, some of which I’d rather forget.
To
my surprise he flipped his notebook closed and called to Bertha, who was posing for a photo with some students. “Hey, Bertha, can you answer some more questions?” Johnny jogged over to her. I exhaled.
Bertha straightened her black paisley neckerchief and smoothed her pewter plaits. “Don’t mind if I do.”
Aunt Gully and I headed into the kitchen.
“You know, Aunt Gully, it’s kind of nice to be ignored by the press.”
Aunt Gully patted my arm. “Nice to be back to normal, isn’t it?”
* * *
A half hour later, a rusted blue Volvo station wagon sped into the parking lot, scattering gravel as it jerked to a stop by the front window. As I wiped down the counter, two men got out of the car. The first was a tall guy swinging a black backpack onto his shoulders, a Graystone College T-shirt taut across his broad torso, his sandy-blond hair cut long on top and close to his head on the sides.
The other man was older, slight and stooped, wearing a wrinkled T-shirt and baggy jeans cinched at his waist with a worn leather belt. He had bushy gray hair and oversized glasses swung on a lanyard around his neck. Johnny Sabino and Bertha ran up to them. Excited conversation ensued, with Bertha spreading her arms in a “this big” gesture. They headed toward the lobster shed.
I recognized the older man. My dad had taken Professor Fred Nickerson out several times on his lobster boat, Miranda, and Fred was a regular at the Mermaid, too.
“Aunt Gully, Fred Nickerson’s here.”
“Your aunt’s on the phone.” Hilda Viera took a plate with an overflowing lobster roll from the pass-through, her black hair sleek despite the warm air of the kitchen. Hilda, along with her husband, Hector, helped Aunt Gully run the shack. “Why don’t you and Hector go check it out. He’s dying to get further acquainted with Lobzilla.”
I guess the name’s going to stick. Hector and I hurried to the shed and crowded in.
The shed was small, with a row of tanks on one wall. Hoses pumped fresh seawater into the tanks, so we all had to raise our voices to be heard over the sound of gushing water.
Fred looked at me over his half-moon glasses, raised his bushy eyebrows, and smiled, a crooked grin like one of the Halloween pumpkins by the front door of the shack. “The Lazy Mermaid herself,” Fred shouted over the rushing water.
“Hi, Professor.”
“This is Max Hempstead.” The guy smiled and shook hands firmly, his smile wide and brilliantly white. His name fit. He was handsome and ingratiating to the max.
“Max is a student at Graystone. What are you, Max, a sophomore?”
Max opened his mouth to speak, but Fred continued. “We were chatting when I got your call and he offered to come help.”
Max nodded as he took measurements on Lobzilla. I was relieved to see they’d banded the lobster’s huge claws.
“Glad you had bands to fit him.”
“One of the biggest I’ve ever seen! A lobster of this size is very unusual, especially for our area. The biggest lobster ever found was three and a half feet.”
Max showed Fred the measurement on his metal ruler. We all held our breath.
“Just an inch shy of the record.” Fred shrugged. “Well, well, so this fella’s not the largest, but he’s still magnificent!” Fred laughed and his glasses slid off his nose—his lanyard just barely kept them from hitting the water. Fred settled them on his head.
Bertha and Johnny shouldered in. With Hector, well over six feet, Fred, Max, and me in there, it was a tight fit. I was mashed up against Max’s backpack, and I angled myself to avoid getting poked by the Swiss army knife, keys, and marlinspike that hung off his key chain along with an orange foam key fob. He must be a sailor—marlinspikes were a tool used to untie knots and sailors used foam key fobs so if they dropped their keys in the water, they’d float.
It was funny that Max left his backpack on. Maybe he was nerdier and more excited about the lobster than I’d assumed from his model good looks.
“Oh, you do go on.” Bertha gave Fred a friendly punch on the arm.
He winced and rubbed his arm, but beamed at her. “Isn’t he wonderful? Just wonderful?”
“Yes, indeed.” Bertha’s eyes shone. She was looking at Lobzilla the way she looked at her beloved cats, Big Man and the Boss, named in honor of her Bruce Springsteen infatuation.
I looked at Lobzilla and saw an angry brown and black mottled crustacean with claws so big he could snap off a careless finger. “Question is, what to do with him?”
“I’ll take him back to my lab as soon as I can,” Fred said. “This guy’s going to need special care.”
“A feather in your cap,” Bertha said.
“Sure is, Bertha, and yours,” Fred murmured. “Highlight of my career.”
The reporter’s phone buzzed and he stepped into the relative quiet of the doorway to answer. “Yeah.” He listened. “Where? Rabb’s Point. I’m on it.”
“What’s happening on Rabb’s Point?” I squirmed past Max’s backpack toward the door. Rabb’s Point wasn’t far from the Mermaid, a peninsula where some of the oldest and most expensive homes in Mystic Bay and the exclusive Yacht Club were located.
Johnny hung up. “Burglary at the big house there, the Parish place. Gotta run. Fred, I’ll call with follow-up questions.”
Max dropped the gauge he’d used on Lobzilla into the tank. “Sorry, Professor Nickerson.”
Fred swooped it up. “No worries, Max. Oh, this one is a keeper.”
“Professor Nickerson, don’t you have a class this afternoon?” Max said.
“Oh, my, you’re right!” Fred’s glasses slipped again.
“He’ll be safe in our tank until you can get back,” I said. “We can lock the door.”
“I’ll arrange a pickup tomorrow. Is that okay? I’ll call to let you know when I’m coming.” Fred and Max gathered equipment.
Hector nodded. “I promise not to cook him.”
“That lobster wouldn’t go down without a fight,” I said.
“He’s old, but feisty.” Bertha sighed.
“Lobzilla wouldn’t be the best eating,” Aunt Gully said. “An old lobster is a tough lobster.”
A little girl with tumbling brown curls knocked on the door of the shed. “Is this where the Lobzilla lives?”
We parted so she could peek into the tank. She squealed with glee and ran back to the door. “Mom, come quick!”
I stepped outside. A line had formed outside the shed and cars poured into the parking lot.
“News travels fast,” I said.
“Oh, my!” Aunt Gully pulled her cell from her pocket. “I’ll call some of my gals to keep an eye on Lobzilla while he has visitors.” Aunt Gully had an inexhaustible supply of friends who liked to help at the shack. They referred to themselves as Gully’s Gals.
Fred threw a longing look back at Lobzilla as he stepped from the shed. “Maybe we should move him this afternoon.”
“Your class, Professor.” Max’s words were gentle.
“We’ll take care of him for as long as you need,” I said.
“I’m going to make some arrangements at the lab,” Fred said. “I’ll get back as soon as I can.”
As Max herded Professor Nickerson out the door, he gave me a broad smile. “Nice meeting you.”
My phone buzzed with a call from my sister, Lorel. She’d probably already heard about Bertha’s find. I suspected that Lorel, who was in Boston working at a social media marketing firm, would milk Lobzilla for all he was worth. I debated answering. This guy was old and had survived many years on the sea floor. He deserved a nice, quiet retirement. I hoped Fred would get him settled in his new home before Lorel got him on a TV show.
I answered the phone as I went into the kitchen.
“I heard about the giant lobster. Why didn’t this happen during the summer?” Lorel said. “Imagine the crowds!”
I put her on speaker as Aunt Gully, Hector, Hilda, and I prepped lobster rolls for the hungry hordes crowding into the shack w
hile they waited to see Lobzilla. Hilda and I shared a look. “We could barely handle the crowds we had this summer.” Which Lorel wouldn’t know since she was in Boston, not sweating in the kitchen at the shack every day. “We’ll talk later.” I hung up.
I, for one, was grateful that fall had brought slightly smaller crowds to the Mermaid.
The summer tourist hordes were gone, replaced by visitors who weren’t quite so, well, touristy. The crowds at the Lazy Mermaid and walking the uneven brick sidewalks of historic Mystic Bay had changed: more bed-and-breakfast and less T-shirt and clam roll. Schools were back in session, so our visitors were more likely to be couples looking for a quiet weekend getaway. With the leaves changing into their fall colors, leaf peepers were taking to New England’s back roads.
But with one of the biggest lobsters ever caught in New England in our saltwater tanks, the Mermaid was hopping like the Fourth of July weekend.
Chapter 2
The next morning Lobzilla made the front page of the Mystic Bay Mariner. A photo of Bertha hefting the giant crustacean, a beatific smile on her face, ran under the headline LOCAL WOMAN SNARES MONSTER LOBSTER.
“He has a certain je ne sais quoi,” I said as I wiped down the pink Formica kitchen counters in Gull’s Nest, Aunt Gully’s cozy Cape. “Ugly, but in a swaggering, ‘I don’t care what you think of me’ way.”
Aunt Gully smoothed her thick silver hair, then packed fresh aprons in a lobster-print canvas tote bag. “I thought for sure Fred would come back for him last night, but he called to say he needed a special tank from the research institute at Woods Hole. He’ll come this morning. And burglars did break into Royal Parish’s house on Rabb’s Point!” She tapped the newspaper that lay on the kitchen table. “The police think the thieves got in through an unlocked window.”
Unlocked doors and windows were a point of pride in Mystic Bay. People bragged that they didn’t lock their doors. Just asking to be robbed, I thought, but I’d lived in Boston and experience had shown me what an unusual little town this was.
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