Clammed Up (A Maine Clambake Mystery)

by Barbara Ross

  Fiona or “Fee” was a plain woman bent over with arthritis, always in a skirt and sensible shoes. She was forever calling out, “Walkies!” and taking the dog, currently a friendly Scottish terrier, for a rigorous tramp up and down the harbor hills. With her bent back, she looked like a question mark bustling along the road.

  Viola or “Vee” was something else entirely. In her seventies, she was still glamorous, with a beautiful head of coiffed snow-white hair. Even on days when she didn’t plan to leave the house, she wore full makeup, a tailored dress, nylons, and pumps.

  In the dead of winter, she wore boots with lambs wool cuffs around the ankles and high spiked heels. As she grew older, the boots caused no end of arguments with Fee, who feared Vee would fall and break a hip. The whole town feared Vee would fall and break a hip. But she never did.

  When their parents died, the sisters took their inheritance and bought the Victorian gingerbread house across the street from my parents and created the Snuggles, one of a dozen bed and breakfasts in the harbor. My dad fixed various things around the inn, mowed the lawn, and shoveled their snow. They, in turn, lay out and cared for the beautiful English gardens at our house. The sisters always felt a special bond with Livvie and me, two sets of sisters, and treated us to tea and scones whenever they got the chance.

  “Julia!” Fee cried through the screen door as I made my way down their walk.

  “Hello, Fee. I’ve brought you our new brochures.” Though, at their insistence, I’d been calling them by their first names for almost a decade, the names still stuck in my throat. To me the sisters would always be, “The Misses Snug.”

  Before I knew it, I was sitting in their old-fashioned kitchen, drinking tea, eating scones, and accepting the commiserations of both ladies about the clambake’s recent troubles. I knew if I were patient, the conversation would inevitably turn to Ray Wilson. I didn’t have to wait long.

  “We were shocked, just shocked by the murder of that young man on your island. And the bride and her attendants stayed right here in this house,” Fee said.

  “Julia, didn’t you recommend us to Michaela?” Vee asked, eyes narrowing.

  I admitted I had. “Did anything seem unusual to you about Michaela and her bridesmaids?”

  “Not at first,” Fee answered. “They seemed like ordinary bride and attendants.” Busman’s Harbor was a popular wedding destination, so the ladies had a strong basis for comparison.

  “But then?” I asked.

  “But then, they came back from the rehearsal dinner and all hell broke loose.” Vee was always the more outspoken.

  Fee blushed a little at the swear word, but after more than seventy years together, they’d learned to tolerate each other’s foibles. She picked up the thread. “They went out to Crowley’s after the rehearsal dinner. It was quite late when they got back. Vee and I were in our bedroom, listening to that nice Jimmy Fallon on the television, waiting for the group to come in.”

  The ladies had their own bedrooms in the winter, but during the season they stayed together in a little room off the kitchen, so they could rent out all the upstairs rooms to maximize their income. Like most B&Bs in the harbor, they didn’t give guests keys, so the ladies had to wait up to lock the door after whomever was the last one in.

  “I got up to lock the door when I heard the most terrific row coming from upstairs.” Fee leaned over the kitchen table and lowered her voice. It wouldn’t do if current guests heard her gossiping about past customers. “It was the bride, Michaela, and the other one, Lynn, the maid of honor.”

  “What were they fighting about?”

  “The maid of honor yelled, ‘Leave him be. Why do you care about him so much? He’s nothing but trouble.’ Then that Michaela shouted, ‘How can you be so uncaring? Something was really wrong with him tonight.’ Then the other one shouted, ‘The same thing that was wrong with him every night not so long ago. He was drunk off his . . .’ uh,”—Fee searched for the correct word to substitute for the one the maid of honor had undoubtedly used—“posterior.”

  “So then what?” I prompted.

  “Then Michaela said, ‘I don’t care. I’m going to find him.’ And the other one shouted, ‘Are you crazy? Are you trying to sabotage your marriage before it even starts? Stay away from him.’ Then that nice Michaela came down the stairs, talking on her cell phone. She said to whoever it was, ‘I’m coming over right now.’ And she banged open the front door and marched out into the night.”

  “Goodness. What happened next?”

  “I went into the parlor to wait for Michaela to come back. I figured at least then Vee could get some sleep.” Vee had to be up extra early because she cooked the Snuggles’ wonderful English breakfasts.

  “I sat up reading until a little before two,” Fee continued. “No sign of Michaela, though I overheard the maid of honor leave her several messages, saying how sorry she was and to please come back.”

  “What time did Michaela return?”

  “I don’t know.” Fee looked sheepish. “I fell sound asleep in my chair. Vee woke me when she got up to make breakfast.”

  Vee took up the tale. “When the girls came down in the morning, Michaela was with them. They all seemed to be the best of friends. It was like everything from the night before was forgotten.”

  Fee’s eyes widened. “Imagine, me snoring away in my chair with the door unlocked while a murderer was on the loose.”

  “Have the police interviewed you?”

  “Oh yes, dear. That nice Lieutenant Binder came along with his handsome sergeant. They asked all sorts of questions,” Fee said.

  “They only came the once.” Vee sounded slightly disappointed. “We told him everything.”

  Binder and Flynn knew from the maid at the Lighthouse Inn Ray hadn’t stayed in his room the night he died. They knew from the Snugg sisters Michaela had gone out. I just hoped the cops were paying attention and weren’t completely distracted by the fire.

  Chapter 23

  I stood on the sidewalk outside the Snuggles with my even lighter tote bag of brochures. It seemed pretty obvious to me who had called Ray Wilson when he’d been in the lobby of the Lighthouse Inn and caused him to turn around and go outside again. Clarice had said that Ray merely glanced at the display on his phone while he was in the lobby. He must have called Michaela back once he got outside and then gone somewhere to meet her. But why would a bride go off on a middle-of-the-night rendezvous the day of her wedding?

  I was certain Michaela hadn’t killed Ray. I didn’t believe that a girl from New Jersey who didn’t know Busman’s Harbor could have taken Ray out to Morrow Island in the dark. Nor did I believe she had the strength, at least by herself, to hang his body from the staircase at Windsholme. Most compelling, she’d been next to me when we discovered the body. Unless she was the best actress I’d ever seen, her distress was genuine.

  Before the fire, Binder had theorized that the body was left at Windsholme to upset Michaela, so the police didn’t think Michaela killed Ray, either.

  If Michaela was responsible for Ray leaving the Lighthouse Inn after the wedding party’s celebration at Crowley’s, who was responsible for him never going back?

  I swung my tote over my shoulder and headed across the footbridge to the other side of the harbor.

  Tony had spent the night before his wedding-that-wasn’t in the honeymoon suite at the Bellevue Inn. As far as I understood, he and Michaela lived together in New York, but like a lot of couples, they’d observed the traditional separation on the eve of their wedding.

  Unfortunately, the desk clerk on duty at the Bellevue was a kid I didn’t know. I introduced myself to him and did my usual spiel about the brochures. He raised an eyebrow when I said, “Snowden Family Clambake,” so he’d heard about the murder, but just pointed to a rack in the lobby and said, “Put ’em over there.”

  “Do you work nights or just days?” I asked as conversationally as I could.

  “Just days.”

 
“Who works nights?”

  “Wally.”

  Thanks, very helpful. “He around?”

  “He. Works. Nights,” the desk clerk answered as if I weren’t very bright—which perhaps I was not, I realized when I thought about the question.

  “I meant, does Wally live on the premises?” Lots of the bigger hotels like the Bellevue had small attic rooms and dormitories where they put up summer help.

  “Nooo,” the desk clerk answered slowly, so poor dim me could take it in.

  “Thanks.” What was I doing there anyway? Binder and Flynn would have covered all this ground already.

  Outside, I gathered my thoughts. The groom was the obvious person who might have had a motive to kill Ray. I had to find out if Tony had slept in his room the night of the murder.

  I walked partway down the footbridge and looked back. The Bellevue was the largest and most popular hotel in Busman’s Harbor, the one that was full when the others still had VACANCY signs outside. Nonetheless, it had a slightly ramshackle appearance. Part hotel, part motel, it had been built onto during boom times and left alone during busts. If there had even been architects involved with the various additions, none had paid attention to stylistic or historical continuity.

  I knew from long familiarity with the Bellevue’s brochures that its honeymoon suite had a distinctive balcony with a gorgeous harbor view. Scanning its helter-skelter facade, I eventually spotted the balcony. It was three stories up on the far right side, away from the dining room and other public areas.

  I scouted for an entrance to that part of the building. When I found it, the outside door was unlocked, not an unusual thing in the daytime when guests would be coming and going and the maids would be hard at work cleaning rooms. I climbed the stairs to the third floor, angling down the twisting hallways toward the part of the building where I thought the honeymoon suite must be. Partway there I caught a break. A sign for the honeymoon suite pointed down a long hallway toward the front of the building. There was only one room at the end. Its double doors were open, a maid’s cart parked in front of it.

  Before I could lose my nerve, I walked up and knocked on the doorjamb. “Hello!”

  The maid poked her head out of the bathroom. She had on rubber gloves and held a toilet brush. “Hello?” She was Chinese and spoke with a heavy accent. I had no doubt that, like the Russian girl at the Lighthouse, the maid was on some kind of “educational” exchange—which meant she’d paid a middleman an exorbitant fee for a visa and transportation to the States. For that, despite whatever might have been advertised, she’d gotten a minimum wage job. In the worst cases, and I had heard the Bellevue was worst case, “students” were charged virtually every dime they made for room and board. It really was a scandal. I worried what she was most likely “learning” on her educational exchange was what incredible slobs, not to mention poor tippers, Americans could be.

  “I’m thinking of staying here for my honeymoon,” I lied. “The guy at the front desk said I could look around.”

  “Yes,” she answered carefully. “Very nice room. You like it?”

  I understood that this was an opportunity she probably wasn’t getting enough of, a chance to practice her English.

  “Beautiful,” I said. And it was. A spacious room with expansive views of the harbor islands and the yachts at their moorings, high enough up that it would be absolutely private even with the curtains open. For form’s sake, I opened the French doors, stepped out onto the balcony, and took in the view, looking across the harbor at the backside of the Snuggles and my parents’ house, solid as a rock, on the top of the hill.

  “I heard there was a murder here,” I said to the girl when I went back into the room.

  “No, no. Not here.” She shook her head. “The friend of the, the . . . person who dead stay here.”

  “A friend of the victim.” Might as well help her with her vocabulary. “How interesting. Did the police question you?”

  She nodded yes.

  That must have been scary for her.

  “I tell them everything they ask.”

  “What did they ask?”

  “Did he, the friend, sleep in this room that night?”

  “Did he?”

  “I think so. His clothes all around. He shave in the sink. I’m certain. But he sleep on top of the bed. Not under covers. There was a . . . a . . .” She struggled to find the word. “Like this.” She went to the bed and lay on top of the bedspread. Then she got up and pointed to the slight dent her body made. “See—where he sleep on top.”

  So Tony had been in the room, at least for a while. But he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep. Prewedding jitters, or because something had caused him to leave the room before he got into bed? I wondered what Binder and Flynn thought of the maid’s answers. A dent in a bedspread and some whiskers in the sink weren’t evidence that the groom had slept there through the night, as far as I was concerned.

  I pulled a twenty-dollar bill from my wallet, handed it to the maid, and said I would strongly consider the Bellevue for my honeymoon.

  As I tossed my empty tote bag on my shoulder, my stomach rumbled. Lunchtime . . . actually almost past it. I crossed the footbridge and headed straight to Gus’s.

  Chapter 24

  Tuesday was one of the days I’d been eating lunch at Gus’s regularly with Chris Durand. It wasn’t something we ever talked about or planned. I was always there Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday at 1:00 and so was he. It was a little later than most working people in the harbor ate, so by the end of the meal we usually had the place to ourselves.

  I’d expected that by the start of clambake season our lunches would have been over, I’d have been spending every day on Morrow Island, and Chris’s landscaping and cab businesses would have been going full swing. But that Tuesday, I wasn’t on the island, so I was thrilled to see Chris’s cab parked outside Gus’s door.

  Chris was already in “our booth” with his food when I walked in. “Hey, beautiful,” he called.

  Once again I looked down at my work boots, sweatshirt, and jeans, and grimaced. “Let me order,” I said.

  Gus was grilling a burger and had his back to the counter, so I waited. You didn’t talk to Gus’s back. He had us all trained to wait until he turned around. And he didn’t turn around until whatever was on the grill was perfectly cooked and in its little checkered cardboard boat.

  “I’m sorry about the fire, Julia,” Chris said when I finally sat down. “What did Ditzy say?” Chris had sat across from me and listened to me rant and scheme about our financial situation for months, so leave it to him to cut right to the important question.

  “What could he say? We have five down days built into the schedule. We’ve only had two so far.” I said it with far more confidence than I felt.

  “Still . . .” Chris let it hang there. We both knew the down days were for bad weather, not for murder. The bad weather would still come.

  “How about you? Has Lieutenant Binder let up any?”

  “I haven’t seen him yet today. Makes a nice change.”

  “Before the fire, Binder told me he didn’t think the murder had anything to do with Morrow Island. He thought the body was put at Windsholme to upset the bride.”

  “Upset? More like terrorize. But that’s good news. I mean for you. Not for her.”

  “For you, too. Why would you want to hurt a woman you never met? Anyway, with the fire, I’m afraid Binder may be back to thinking Wilson’s death has something to do with the island.” Talking about the fire reminded me about the cleaned-up playhouse, which reminded me, I wanted to ask Chris—

  “Julia Snowden!” Gus shouted, his usual method for letting people know their food was ready. As I walked into the front room to retrieve my lunch, I saw a car pull up behind Chris’s cab. An official Maine state police car. Binder and Flynn. What are they doing here? If ever I wanted Gus to invoke his “no strangers” rule, it was right then.

  Binder and Flynn made their way down th
e steps and came through the door.

  “Christopher Durand,” Flynn yelled.

  The few other diners in the booths looked around.

  “Here.” Chris jumped up from our booth.

  “We’ve got a warrant to search your vehicle.”

  “Sure.” Chris fished in his pocket for his keys.

  “Let me open it for you.”

  “Not here,” Flynn said. “State lab. We want to search it micro-scop-ickly.”

  “Oh.” Chris looked confused. “You want me to drive it there?”

  “No. We’ve got a tow truck coming.”

  “Sure.” Chris stood tall, but the color had drained from behind his tanned face and his hand shook ever so slightly as he gave Flynn his car key.

  I could tell by the flicker of his eyelash that Binder hadn’t missed the slight tremor, either. I realized both my hands were clenched at my sides. So unfair. First they’d taken away my livelihood by closing down the clambake. Now they were taking Chris’s by impounding his cab.

  Chapter 25

  A tow truck came and took Chris’s cab away. Binder and Flynn said they’d drop Chris at the parking spot where he kept the pickup he used for his landscaping business. When they left, I felt a little dizzy. Chris had nothing to do with the fire at Windsholme. He had no reason to want to upset Michaela. He didn’t fit into either theory of the case Binder had said they were pursuing. Why would they take his cab?

  I wanted to call out to Chris to get a lawyer, but I didn’t want to say anything in front of Binder and Flynn. Besides Chris was a grown-up. He’d know what to do.

  Gus cleared his throat and I looked over at the counter where my clam roll and fries sat in their cheery paper boats. I shook my head. I couldn’t eat anything now. Gus quietly threw them into the trash. “No charge today.”