Boiled Over (A Maine Clambake Mystery)

by Barbara Ross

  At nineteen, he was younger than the other guys, all long-term clambake employees, who worked the fire. He was average height, about five foot ten, but skinny.

  Sonny was our bakemaster, in charge of the fire pit. He resisted at first, worried Cabe’s lanky frame meant he wouldn’t be strong enough for the hot, heavy work. But he soon came around. Cabe was strong, reliable, and hardworking. He had an optimistic, we-can-figure-this-out attitude that made him a perfect partner on the Claminator project.

  I’d taken a risk, but it had worked out.

  “Sonny, I’m sorry.” What else could I say? “You know he’s not responsible for whatever was in the fire.”

  “Yeah,” Sonny admitted. “I know it.”

  “Enough,” Livvie said. “It’s done.”

  Sonny was gracious. “He’s a good kid, Julia. A really good kid. This will turn out to have nothing to do with him. I’m sure of it.”

  Chapter 5

  I got up off the love seat and went to the kitchen.

  Mom and Page were packing a cooler with picnic goodies for tonight’s concert in the park. The food was spread out on our big kitchen island, and the moment I saw it, my mouth began to water. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. There were plastic containers of Livvie’s fabulous lobster salad and potato salad. Page was cutting blueberry lemon squares into two-bite chunks, while Mom put her delicious lobster-filled deviled eggs into a specially designed container.

  My mother was a terrible cook. Brought up by a father who saw no value in food beyond sustenance, she’d never developed the knack. But the one thing she could prepare brilliantly was lobster deviled eggs. So she did. She took them to every party, potluck, picnic, or other powwow our family was invited to. Despite that, I never got tired of her eggs. They were that good. The smooth texture and pure taste of the egg white, such a handy container for finger food, contrasted with the sweetness of the lobster and the zesty, full-flavored yolk. Her secret ingredient was horseradish. Mom’s deviled eggs were as close to perfect as any food gets.

  Mom closed the cooler with a thwamp and slung it to the floor. She was small and blond and deceptively strong, like me. Those were the only ways we were alike.

  “Get a sweater,” she advised. “We’re leaving in ten minutes so we’ll be sure to get a prime spot.”

  Waterfront Park was high on a grassy point across the footbridge on the other side of the inner harbor. My mother, who loved nothing more than a good pyrotechnic display, wanted to make sure the family had a great view of the fireworks.

  “I’m not going,” I said. Firmly.

  “Not going? Don’t be ridiculous. You’re on the committee.”

  “I’m exhausted. It’s been a long day. Besides the best place in the harbor to watch fireworks is right here on our front porch.”

  “I bet her boyfriend’s coming over!” Page sang. She was tall for her nine years and had Livvie’s swimmer’s body and Sonny’s flaming red hair. She was one of my favorite people in the world, and at that moment, I could have cheerfully strangled her.

  “Oh,” Mom said. It was just one syllable, a sound more than a word, yet my mother could pack it with an astounding level of disapproval.

  My entire family had a capital B, capital A, Bad Attitude about my relationship—which annoyed me to no end. First of all, Chris had done nothing over the course of our brief time together to earn their disrespect. Second, since I’d lived in New York City for the past nine years, it was the only relationship of mine, aside from one very ill-advised boyfriend visit during college, that they’d even been aware of, much less been in a position to have an opinion about. So I thought they should cut me some slack.

  My mother’s attitude annoyed me most of all. It was so hypocritical. She was the one who’d defied her family to marry the penniless boy who delivered groceries in his skiff to their private island. She, more than anyone, knew what it was like to have disapproval rain down on one’s romance. Yet she persisted in throwing cold water on mine.

  When they were at the front door, Sonny with the heavy cooler on his shoulder and Livvie carrying an old wool blanket, Mom hesitated. “You’re sure you won’t come?”

  I thought about the delicious food in that cooler and almost changed my mind, but I shook my head.

  “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon.” Page danced on the sidewalk. She’d been living on Morrow Island for six weeks. I knew she loved it there, just as Livvie and I had when we were girls, but I could tell Page was excited at the prospect of seeing her school friends at the concert.

  “Have a great time,” I called.

  “You, too,” Page responded. No one else said a word.

  After they left, I locked the screen door behind them. People in the harbor had a funny attitude about locks. They didn’t believe in them. “I never lock my house.” “I wouldn’t think to lock my car.” “I don’t even own keys to my home.”

  I thought they were all crazy. Busman’s Harbor was a small town, but it was also in the real world. Theft was rare, but it did happen. People had small appliances and jewelry stolen from their houses, purses lifted from their cars. Besides, I’d lived in New York City for nine years. Locking doors was a reflex.

  I called the hospital to ask about Richelle Rose. Stable, they told me. Awake and resting, but they had to keep her overnight for observation because she had a head injury.

  As soon as I hung up from that call, my cell phone chirped.

  “Julia? Lieutenant Binder. I wanted to thank you for the tip on Stephen Noyes.”

  “Was it him?” I’d given the police Stevie’s name, but I hoped I was wrong.

  “Unconfirmed. His neighbors at the RV park tell us he hasn’t been seen since yesterday and no lights were on in his trailer last night. We’ve reached his dentist who’s bringing his records. We should be able to rule him in or out pretty soon. Potentially, you’ve saved us a lot of time. Thank you.”

  “Let me know if it’s definite.” I hung up, fearful I’d been right. Stevie hardly left Camp Glooscap during the season. He came to town once a day, like clockwork, got his mail, ran a few errands, ate lunch at Gus’s to catch the latest news, and headed back to the RV park. Like all of us, he had only a few months to make money, and a lot of work to do. He would never have wandered off at the height of the season.

  Pushing my worries about Stevie away, I made a turkey sandwich and ate it on the porch. The sounds of a rousing swing number floated faintly over the water. The summer days were still long. It wouldn’t be dark enough for fireworks for a couple hours.

  Chris and I had only been going out for a short time, but the truth was, I’d had a crush on him since I was in seventh grade and he was a junior in high school. Not in a psycho-stalker way. I’d gone to prep school in New Hampshire, college in Massachusetts, and business school in New York City. During most of that time, I hadn’t thought much about him. I’d had other relationships and Lord knows, he had, too. I was still discovering how many, through a series of awkward encounters with ex-girlfriends and their families around town.

  But the moment I’d come back to Busman’s Harbor, my crush returned with a vengeance. The surprise was discovering he felt the same way.

  I settled into the cushions of the love seat. Aside from the music carried on the breeze, the town was unnaturally still. Everyone was at the park. I wanted to check my phone for the time, but willed myself not to. Watching the clock would make the minutes tick by even more slowly. I went up to my room and grabbed a book from my nightstand.

  Back on the love seat, I was soon lost in my book. Before long, I was squinting at the words on the page. I reached up and turned on a lamp.

  The problem with starting a romance at the height of the season was there was no time to be together. I worked every single day at the clambake on Morrow Island. The business had four months to make money and there were no days off. Chris worked three jobs—landscaping, driving the cab he owned, and working as a bouncer at Crowley’s, Busman’s Harbor’s noisiest
bar. He’d called in a lot of favors at Crowley’s to get the night off, and as time ticked by, I wondered if something had gone wrong. It wouldn’t have been the first date he’d missed without calling.

  Then, just as I concluded I was being stood up, there was a knock on the screen. I unlocked the door and Chris came through it into my arms.

  We were at the early stages of our relationship when everything felt urgent. Not just the sex, though that did, too, but the need to connect in every way. I snuggled into his arms. He was tall and I was small. Sometimes, I’d seen tall women stare at us, with expressions that said, “What a waste of male height.” I didn’t care. Chris’s arms were the one place I fit perfectly.

  He was impossibly handsome. His light brown hair somehow always looked like it was just about ready for a cut, and his eyes were a green I swore I’d seen in no other human. And the dimple. Yes, a dimple in his chin, now covered with a light stubble. I thought it was part of what my mother didn’t like about him—that he was too handsome.

  Chris wasn’t a model. He didn’t get his body from the gym. His hands were calloused; his face had lines around the eyes from outdoor work. His body had taken abuse from landscaping, hours behind the wheel of his cab, and breaking up the occasional fistfight at Crowley’s. Being with Chris made me realize all the whiny stockbrokers, squinty lawyers, and braggart media-types I’d dated in New York were boys. Chris was a man.

  “How was your day?” he asked, the irony heavy in his tone. He knew how my day had been.

  I burst into tears.

  Someone—possibly . . . no, probably . . . Stevie Noyes—had been cooked in my family’s clambake stove. During the day, I’d pushed that reality off as often as I could. But safe in Chris’s arms, it hit me full force. I cried while Chris held me.

  When I pulled myself together, I said, “Binder seems focused on Cabe Stone.”

  “That kid who works at the fire pit? Not a surprise.”

  “Because he ran?”

  “No. Because he’s a kid and he’s alone. An easy target.” There was an angry edge to Chris’s voice.

  I personally thought Lieutenant Binder was a better detective than that, but he and Chris had their own bitter history. Binder had arrested Chris for a crime he didn’t commit. So I kept quiet.

  I made Chris a sandwich and got us beers. I’d just sat back down on the porch when the first firework crested in front of us. It was one of the warm-up types, opening lazily and spilling pink sparkles into the air. The crowd across the harbor oohed appreciatively.

  The fireworks kept coming, increasing in size and intensity—green, silver, gold, red. I loved fireworks. Because the manufacturers kept improving how they were made, unlike other childhood memories, fireworks didn’t seem smaller or duller than when I was a child.

  “C’mon!” I grabbed Chris’s hand and we headed toward our front staircase.

  By the time we got to the second floor, the booming was so loud it shook the house. We ran up the attic steps and then up the spiral staircase into the cupola on the roof. It had been my favorite place when I was a child, though I hadn’t gone there once since I’d been home. The grown-up me didn’t have time to spend hours reading on the window seat and gazing out to the harbor.

  We made it just as the finale began, lighting up the sky so bright we could see all of Busman’s Harbor in front of us—the footbridge, the harbor islands, the boats at their moorings. As the last bang echoed away, Chris kissed me hard and the urgent feeling returned.

  We continued in that vein for a while, then Chris said, “I’ve got to go.”

  “What?” Is he kidding?

  “Your family will be back soon.”

  “Chris, I’m thirty. They can’t tell me who to date.”

  “It’s for the best. I’ve got an early fare to the Portland Jetport. I’ve got to be up in four hours.”

  We were just coming down the stairs hand-in-hand when we heard an impatient knock-knock-knock from the porch.

  “Who locked this?” my mother asked, even though she knew I’d done it. When I unlocked the screen door, Mom and a very tired-looking Page trooped inside.

  “Christopher.”

  “Jacqueline.” Chris mirrored her formality. “Nice to see you.”

  My mother handed me the empty cooler. “Sonny and Livvie decided to go out with some friends.”

  “Bye.” Chris gave me a peck on the cheek.

  “Wait!” I called after him, but he’d already melted into the throngs of tourists on the sidewalk, returning from the fireworks to their hotels and B&Bs.

  Chapter 6

  I was up and out early the next morning, despite a restless night. Images of Stevie, the fire, and the foot had tumbled through my dreams.

  As part of my Founder’s Weekend committee duties, I’d volunteered to help with the Rotary pancake breakfast. At the Snowden Family Clambake, we served meals to four hundred people a day, two hundred each at lunch and dinner, so feeding a crowd was something I understood.

  The Rotary was serving up plain and blueberry pancakes with real maple syrup under a big white tent that occupied the only portion of the town common not already devoted to the art show. Despite the early hour, the Rotary stalwarts were already setting up long tables and folding chairs and prepping the food. In a resort town, all the organizations did their fundraising when there were plenty of tourists and part-time residents to contribute to their coffers. Some summer weekends felt like traffic jams as nonprofits vied for time and attention. The Founder’s Weekend committee had to choose carefully who would be honored with plum spots like this one.

  Viola Snuggs, my neighbor and fellow committee member, was firmly in charge and already mixing up the pancake batter. She was quite a sight, with her masses of snow white hair piled on her head, wearing, as always, a tailored dress, and most improbably, despite the August heat and grassy cooking area, hose and high heels. A white, starched, bib-front apron was her only concession to the daunting task ahead of her. Usually at the Snuggles Inn, the B&B she owned with her sister, Vee cooked full English breakfasts. Somehow over the years she’d also mastered the art of making perfectly round, light, fluffy and delicious pancakes for a huge crowd. How she did this was beyond me, but she’d helmed the Rotary fundraising breakfasts for as long as I could remember, and I had complete faith in her.

  By 7:15 there was a line of hungry tourists stretching down the common and it kept up like that for another two hours. I served pancakes, ladled syrup, poured coffee, and cleaned tables, whatever was needed in the moment. It was another beautiful day. The tent sides were tied back and soft ocean breezes cooled us as we worked. It felt great to be busy, and I could almost forget the events of the previous day, except that news of the murder seemed to have finally, thoroughly reached the tourists. I couldn’t help overhearing people’s conversations as I cleared their tables.

  “He was burned alive.”

  I shuddered. I didn’t believe it. Why wouldn’t he have cried out? Unless he was drugged or otherwise incapacitated.

  “It was a local bum.”

  I didn’t think so. Resort towns did attract homeless people, especially in warm weather, but Binder and Flynn would have asked the Busman’s Harbor PD to make sure all known panhandlers were accounted for.

  “I heard it was the fourth person burned to death in this town this summer.”

  No to that one, as well. I thought about correcting the speaker, but there had been a murder and a fire on my family’s island in the spring. Those events might have caused some of the confusion. I wasn’t up to telling that story for the umpteen hundredth time, so I kept my mouth shut.

  At quarter after nine, Lieutenant Binder and Sergeant Flynn came through the pancake line. Activity in the tent had slowed and they sat at a table away from the crowd. I poured myself a coffee, piled three of Vee’s dreamy pancakes on a plate, two blueberry, one plain, doused them in syrup, and went over to say hello.

  “Julia.” Binder popped up as I appr
oached.

  “Ms. Snowden,” Flynn mumbled and stood as well.

  “Sit down, sit down.” I sat with them, though I hadn’t been invited. We dug into our pancakes. Man, they were good. The tart blueberries contrasted perfectly with the sweet maple syrup. We chewed quietly until I summoned the courage to ask, “Was it Stevie?”

  “Yes. Thanks to you, we’ve identified the victim as Noyes. The dental records match,” Binder said. Flynn concentrated on mopping up syrup with his pancakes.

  I pushed my plate away. “He wasn’t, umm, alive, when—” The rumors had gotten to me.

  “No, no, no,” Binder reassured. “He was definitely dead when he was put under your brother-in-law’s clambake contraption. No smoke in his lungs whatsoever. But the medical examiner hasn’t confirmed how he died. The damage to the body from the fire—” He looked at my face and said, “Sorry.”

  I was shocked by how much hope I’d held onto, even in the face of increasing evidence. Stevie Noyes was a funny little man, bald, with what gray hair he had worn in a skinny ponytail. Despite his small frame, he had a distinct potbelly. Ridiculous, really. But he was so full of life, so enthusiastic. He loved every idea anyone had for Founder’s Weekend so much, we called him, “I-second-the-motion Stevie.” He’d worked tirelessly to make this weekend happen.

  I couldn’t imagine who’d want to kill him.

  “Please keep the victim ID quiet,” Binder requested after he swallowed his pancakes and took a swig of black coffee from his cardboard cup. “We haven’t announced the identity yet, pending notification of next of kin. We’re having a little trouble in that area. Nobody seems to know much about Noyes before he arrived in Busman’s Harbor nine years ago. You served on that committee with him, right?”