Killer Crab Cakes

by Livia J. Washburn

  “I’d say you’re right about that.”

  They reached the municipal complex a few minutes later and found a parking place without any trouble. The rest of Rockport and Fulton might be crowded, but the police station, fire station, and city hall weren’t. When Phyllis and Sam went inside, the dispatcher on duty directed them to the office of Assistant Chief Abby Clifton.

  “I think she’s waitin’ for y’all, honey,” the woman said. “Just knock and go right on in. We don’t stand much on ceremony around here.”

  Phyllis had spent enough time in the police station and sheriff’s office in Weatherford in recent years so that she wasn’t as uncomfortable about being here as some civilians might have been. The same was true of Sam, she supposed, or maybe it was just the fact that he was one of those men who was comfortable wherever he happened to be.

  They went down the hall to Abby Clifton’s office and found the young woman sitting in front of her computer. The monitor was turned so that Phyllis couldn’t see the screen, and even though she was curious, she didn’t think Abby would appreciate it if she leaned over the desk to take a look.

  Abby smiled at them and said, “Mrs. Newsom, Mr. Fletcher. Please have a seat and I’ll be right with you.” She clicked the mouse a couple of times as Phyllis and Sam sat down, then turned away from the computer. “Thank you for coming in like this.”

  “We’re glad to help,” Phyllis said. “I want this matter cleared up as quickly as possible.”

  Abby nodded. “So that it doesn’t damage the reputation of your cousin’s business too much, I’d expect.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Having guests drop dead can’t be very good for a bed-and-breakfast. That’s one reason right there to think that you didn’t have anything to do with Mr. McKenna’s death.”

  That was pretty blunt of her, Phyllis thought, but undoubtedly true.

  Abby went on, “Then there’s the fact that you and your friends didn’t even know Ed McKenna until you got here a few days ago. I suppose a motive for murder could have developed in that amount of time, but it seems unlikely.”

  “We appreciate you givin’ us the benefit of the doubt,” Sam said.

  “Just trying to be reasonable about things,” Abby said. She opened a desk drawer, reached inside, and took a small digital recorder. As she placed it on the desk, she continued. “What I’d like for the two of you to do is simply tell me in your own words what happened yesterday morning. Include everything that you can remember, up until the time that the police arrived on the scene. I’m going to record your statements, and then they’ll be transcribed so that you can sign them. Does that sound agreeable to both of you?”

  “Fine by me,” Sam said.

  “Do you want one of us to step outside while the other gives their statement?” Phyllis asked.

  Abby smiled again. “Oh, I don’t really think that’s necessary. For one thing, I don’t think either of you are going to lie, and for another, if you wanted to tell some phony story, you’ve already had plenty of time to work it out between you, haven’t you?”

  “I guess that’s true,” Phyllis admitted. If there was anything she and Sam wanted to conceal about Ed McKenna’s death, they could have agreed to it in the time they’d waited for the police to arrive the previous morning and solidified all the details in the more than twenty-four hours since then.

  Abby poised a slender, graceful finger over the recorder. “Ready?”

  Phyllis and Sam both nodded.

  Abby turned the recorder on and said, “This is Assistant Chief of Police Abby Clifton.” She gave the date and time. “These statements are being given by Mrs. Phyllis Newsom and Mr. Sam Fletcher. Mrs. Newsom and Mr. Fletcher, will you each give me your name and place of residence?”

  They did so, Phyllis fighting the temptation to lean forward and raise her voice. She knew those little recorders were sensitive enough to pick up her words just fine if she sat normally and spoke in her usual tone.

  “Thank you,” Abby said. “Now, I’m going to advise you of your rights and ask you if you understand those rights.” At the look of surprise on Phyllis’s face, Abby clicked the recorder off and added, “This is just a formality. Don’t worry.”

  “It’s just that I thought you only had to advise people of their rights if you were arresting them,” Phyllis said.

  “No, we do it every time we take a statement from someone, too, just to cover all the bases.”

  The bases weren’t what they were trying to cover, Phyllis thought, but she didn’t say it. She just nodded and said, “All right.”

  Abby turned the recorder on again and Mirandized them, reading the rights from a laminated card she picked up from her desk. When she was done, Phyllis and Sam both stated that they understood and were giving their statements of their own free will.

  It didn’t take long. Phyllis went first, telling about their brief, earlier encounter with Ed McKenna as he was leaving the bed-and-breakfast with his fishing gear, then explaining how shocked she was when he fell in the water. She explained how Sam had jumped in, brought McKenna to the surface, and then towed him to shore, where Phyllis had helped pull him out of the water.

  “I knew he was dead when I got a good look at his face,” she said. “It was horrible. Then I went back across the road to the house, where I ran into Nick and Kate Thompson, two of the guests who are staying at the bed-and-breakfast. Kate took me in the house while Nick called 911 and went to wait with Sam until the police and the ambulance arrived.”

  Abby nodded and looked at Sam. “Mr. Fletcher?”

  “Well, it all happened just the way Phyllis said it did.”

  “In your own words, please, Mr. Fletcher.”

  Sam went through the story, too, adding a few things from his point of view that Phyllis couldn’t have known, such as his reaction when he saw Ed McKenna topple face-first into the water.

  “It surprised the heck out of me,” Sam said. “My first thought was that I’d knocked him in, but I knew good and well I hadn’t hit him hard enough to do that. I didn’t really hit him at all, just slapped his shoulder friendly-like, you know. When I got underwater and started feelin’ around for him, it took me a minute to find him. When I did, I could tell by the way he felt that it wasn’t good. There’s a reason they call it deadweight. I got him to shore as fast as I could, and me and Phyllis hauled him out. But I knew it was too late.”

  “Did you think that he had drowned?” Abby asked.

  Sam shook his head. “I knew he wasn’t under long enough for that. That’s why I thought right away that he might’ve had a heart attack or a stroke.”

  Abby looked at Phyllis again. “Mrs. Newsom, you mentioned earlier that Mr. McKenna said something about not feeling well when you and Mr. Fletcher spoke to him?”

  “That’s right.” Phyllis thought back to the conversation. “He said he hoped getting out in the sun might make him feel better. Poor man. I suppose it was already too late by then for anything to help him.”

  Abby nodded. “I’m no doctor, but I’d say so.” She turned off the recorder and went on, “If you don’t mind waiting, I’ll have this transcribed and then you can sign the statements. It’ll only take about fifteen minutes or so.”

  “That’s fine,” Phyllis said. She didn’t think it would hurt anything to ask, so she continued. “Did the rest of the autopsy turn up anything else?”

  Abby looked a little surprised by the question, but she said, “Oh, yes, I’d forgotten that you’re used to doing a little detective work of your own. But I’m afraid I really can’t discuss any details of the case.”

  “Of course. I understand.”

  The young woman picked up the recorder and said, “I’ll be right back.”

  She left Phyllis and Sam alone in her office. Phyllis eyed the computer. She was willing to bet that the autopsy report was on there somewhere. She was also sure that she wasn’t just about to start poking around in the assistant chief of police�
��s computer. That would be a good way to get thrown in the slammer, as Sam might say.

  “Reckon we convinced her that we’re not guilty?” he asked.

  “I don’t think she believes that we are. She’s just trying to be thorough. I’m glad she didn’t ask me about—”

  She stopped short and looked around. There was no two-way mirror in the office, no mirror of any sort, in fact. But the room could be bugged, she supposed. She was glad she hadn’t said anything about Tom Anselmo, as she had been about to do.

  What she had said, though, might be enough to arouse suspicion in Abby Clifton if she had indeed been listening in on their conversation.

  Phyllis worried about that while Abby was gone, but when the assistant chief came back, she didn’t seem any more suspicious than she had been when she left. She was carrying the transcribed statements. She handed them to Phyllis and Sam and said, “If you’d just look these over and make sure that they’re correct …”

  When they had done so and agreed that the statements were accurate, they signed where their names were supposed to go and Abby collected the papers, reminding Phyllis a little of when she had taken up tests in her eighth-grade history class.

  “Thank you so much,” Abby said. “That’s all we need from you right now. We’ll be in touch if we need you to come in again. In the meantime, I’m sure I’ll be seeing you when my father and I come over later to serve that search warrant.”

  “You’ll be there today?” Phyllis asked.

  Abby nodded. “Dad’s seeing the judge right now.”

  They stood up to leave, and Abby showed them out. When they were back in Sam’s pickup, heading away from the police station, he said, “That wasn’t so bad. That gal seems friendly enough.”

  “Yes, she’s very nice,” Phyllis agreed. “But that won’t keep her from doing everything she can to find the murderer.”

  “Nope. I expect it won’t.”

  On the way back they drove past Rockport Beach and the large, parklike area where the SeaFair would take place in a couple of days. Big tents with brightly colored strips on them were already being set up, and there were signs along the road announcing the SeaFair and pointing toward parking areas. A carnival with a Ferris wheel and midway rides had already arrived, although everything was still packed onto the trucks parked near the boat basin. When the SeaFair actually began, throngs of people would be everywhere, Phyllis thought.

  And she was running out of time to come up with a good recipe for the Just Desserts contest. Already it was too late for her to do much experimentation.

  Sam veered off onto Fulton Beach Road, and a few minutes later they approached the bed-and-breakfast. As they came around one of the bends in the road as it followed the water, Phyllis spotted a couple of police cars parked up ahead. She put a hand on the pickup’s dashboard and leaned forward as she asked, “Are those police cars at the bed-and-breakfast?”

  “Looks like they are,” Sam said. “I reckon the assistant chief didn’t know for sure what her daddy was doin’ after all. I think he’s already here servin’ that search warrant.”

  “Or maybe she did know and lied to us,” Phyllis said. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

  Her worries were confirmed a moment later when Sam parked the pickup behind the police cars and they got out. Phyllis heard loud, angry voices coming from inside the house.

  It sounded like quite a crowd had gathered … and all of them were unhappy.

  Chapter 11

  Phyllis hurried up the walk with Sam close behind her. Not surprisingly, she was able to pick out Leo Blaine’s booming tones as he gave voice to a litany of complaints. He wasn’t the only one, though. Everybody sounded mad.

  “Hell’s a poppin’,” Sam said as they reached the porch.

  “And then some,” Phyllis agreed.

  They went inside to find more than a dozen people gathered in the parlor. The Blaines, the Forrests, and the Thompsons were all there, along with Carolyn, Eve, Consuela, Theresa, and Bianca. A medium-sized man with graying hair and a narrow mustache stood next to Consuela with his arm around her shoulders. Phyllis hadn’t met him yet, but she was confident he had to be Tom Anselmo. In other words, all the guests and staff of the Oak Knoll Bed-’n’-Breakfast.

  In addition, Frances Heaton and her brothers, Oscar and Oliver McKenna, were there. Frances had her arms crossed and wore a pinched expression on her face as the toe of one shoe tapped angrily on the floor. The twins were red-faced and competing with Leo Blaine in complaining. The man at whom those complaints were directed rounded out the gathering in the parlor.

  Chief Dale Clifton stood in the center of the room with his hands in the pockets of his uniform trousers and a placid expression on his weathered face. Obviously he had plenty of experience at letting complaints from angry citizens roll right off his back. Phyllis could tell that he wasn’t going to let them get in the way of him doing his job.

  She didn’t see anyone else, but she didn’t have to wonder where the other officers from those police cruisers were. She knew they were probably spread out through the house and over the rest of the property, conducting the thorough search that Chief Clifton had promised.

  The chief turned, smiled, and nodded to Phyllis and Sam as they came into the parlor. “Hello,” he said. “I wondered when you folks would get back.”

  “We’ve been at the police station giving our statements to your daughter,” Phyllis said. She felt rather irritated herself. She didn’t like being lied to. “She did a good job of delaying us until after you got here.”

  A slight frown creased Clifton’s forehead. “Now, why in the world would she do that?”

  “I don’t know, but she told us you’d be here later to search the place. She said you were getting the judge to sign the warrant this morning.”

  “That’s what I did.” Clifton shrugged. “Once I had it, I didn’t see any reason to wait. Abby didn’t know I was coming straight here.” He chuckled. “When she finds out, she’s liable to be a little put out with me herself. She expected to be here for the search.”

  Leo said, “But you just couldn’t wait to bust in with your gestapo tactics—”

  Clifton shook his head. “Now, I don’t take kindly to that comparison, Mr. Blaine. I’m old enough to remember the real thing. You’re not.”

  Phyllis doubted that Chief Clifton was old enough to have firsthand memories of World War II, although he might have been a child then.

  “You don’t have any right to search our stuff—”

  Again, Clifton didn’t let Leo finish. “That warrant I showed all of you says different.”

  “My lawyer will be here later today. He’s driving from Houston. You’re gonna be sorry you tried to bulldoze me, mister. You’re about to have the biggest law firm in Houston on your ass.”

  Frances Heaton said, “My brothers and I have spoken to our attorneys, too. They think we may have grounds for a harassment suit. You’re violating our civil rights.”

  Those were empty threats, and Phyllis knew it. As long as Chief Clifton had a proper warrant, he could conduct the search when and how he saw fit, and no judge was going to find fault with that. A jury might, but any lawsuit like the one Frances was threatening would be tossed out of court before it ever got that far. They would all be better off just to sit down, be quiet, and let the police get on with their work, which was what was happening anyway despite all the bluster.

  While Leo and the McKennas continued complaining and Chief Clifton continued ignoring them for the most part—except to shake his head and smile at some of their more outrageous threats—Phyllis and Sam moved around the room to join Carolyn and Eve.

  “Are you two all right?” Phyllis asked them quietly.

  “Of course we’re all right,” Carolyn answered. “I may not like having a bunch of small-town cops pawing through my things, but I have nothing to hide.”

  “Neither do I,” Eve said. “Although considering how handsome the chief is, I
might not mind if they found something that would justify him interrogating me.”

  Carolyn blew out her breath in an exasperated sigh. “Do you really enjoy being a living, breathing stereotype?”

  “I enjoy almost everything about my life, dear. It’s my nature. You can look for the joy in life, or you can look for the disappointments. I choose to look for the joy.”

  That was about the most profound thing Phyllis had ever heard Eve say, and it took her a little by surprise. Thinking back on the numerous husbands Eve had lost through either death or divorce, it was obvious that she had had her share of disappointments. No wonder she tried to concentrate on the things that gave her pleasure.

  Phyllis slipped on over next to Consuela. She held out her hand to the man who stood with the cook and housekeeper. “Hello, I’m Phyllis Newsom. I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  “Tom Anselmo,” he introduced himself as he shook hands with Phyllis. “I’m glad to meet you, ma’am. I just wish it was under better circumstances.”

  She smiled. “That goes for me, too, Mr. Anselmo.”

  “Please, call me Tom. We’ve always been sort of like family around here with Dorothy and Ben.”

  Phyllis nodded, feeling an instinctive liking for this man. He didn’t look like someone who had once done time in the penitentiary for selling heroin. That had been almost a quarter of a century earlier, she reminded herself, and people could change dramatically in that time, especially when their criminal behavior had been caused at least in part by the hellish situations in which they found themselves.

  While she had a hard time believing that Tom could have poisoned Ed McKenna, she wished she could ask him about his late-night visit to the house a couple of evenings earlier. He might have seen something while he was there, something that had seemed innocent at the moment but might take on new importance now.