by Barbara Ross
“Plus, we had the gift certificate that had to be used by today,” Henry added.
I had handed them their menu books with the paper inserts that Chris and I changed daily.
“Oh, pea soup,” Caroline said when she looked at her menu. “How appropriate. For the fog.”
“We couldn’t resist. It’s hearty—full of pea flavor and ham. I tasted it this afternoon.”
“Your beau is a great cook,” Henry said.
I took their wine order. Merlot for him, chardonnay for her. I’d been selling the gift certificates only since the week before we’d opened, and none of them had an expiration date. But who was I to contradict a good customer, particularly one who had just driven in terrible weather? I’d kept mum on the whole gift-certificate-deadline topic.
* * *
I just finished telling this part of the story to Gus and Chris when a thunk and a bump echoed from inside the walk-in, and we all turned our heads to stare. “Now you know why I don’t allow strangers in my restaurant,” Gus said.
It was true. Against all laws—of the United States, capitalism, and common sense—you didn’t get food at Gus’s unless he knew you or you arrived with someone he did know. When I first moved back to Busman’s Harbor, I’d viewed Gus’s rule as a characteristic, if extreme, example of the native Mainers’ feelings about people From Away. But during the high season last summer, with day-trippers clogging the streets, I’d come to treasure the refuge of Gus’s, where not only did everybody know your name, everybody knew everybody’s name.
Chris and I had ignored Gus’s policy. If you wandered into our restaurant for dinner, you got served. And though I knew Gus hadn’t created his rule to prevent strangers from dying in his refrigerator, I was having a bit of a rethink about our position vis-à-vis the whole strangers thing when Dr. Simpson walked back into the room, trailed by Jamie and Howland.
* * *
“You call the state police. I’ll call the State Medical Examiner’s Office in Augusta,” Dr. Simpson said to the officers. It sounded like she was repeating instructions to a reluctant student.
“But you said you don’t know how he died,” Howland protested.
“Exactly,” Dr. Simpson confirmed. “I don’t know how he died. I’m a part-time ME. I can sign off on unattended deaths with obvious causes, and accidents. But you’ve got a guy who looks like he’s in his middle forties, who’s not where he’s supposed to be, with no obvious cause of death. I need an autopsy and tox screens, and until we know what’s going on here, you need to treat this like a crime scene.”
“Can we at least roll him over and see if he’s got a wallet or a phone in his back pocket?” Howland asked.
Simpson shook her head. “Absolutely not.”
“Wait a minute. How long am I going to be closed?” Gus demanded.
“As long as it takes.” Jamie’s mouth was a grim line. He’d had, if anything, less sleep than I had, and he appeared to be fraying a bit around the edges.
There was a banging on the restaurant door. I scooted to answer it.
“Hello, darlin’.” It was my brother-in-law’s father, Bard Ramsey, and three of his lobstermen cronies. The local lobstermen gathered at Gus’s most days for breakfast, especially now that winter was closing in and most of them had their boats out of the water. “What’s goin’ on?”
Bard looked pointedly at Jamie and Howland’s cruiser parked on the street and Dr. Simpson’s navy blue compact SUV next to it.
“Gus is closed,” I explained, reluctant to say more.
“No, he isn’t. Everyone knows Gus only closes for February when he and Mrs. Gus go to visit their kids out west.” Bard craned his thick neck, attempting to look down the stairs into the restaurant. “Something happened to Gus?”
“Gus is fine.” I wasn’t sure what else I should say, but Bard and his friends didn’t budge, so I added, “There’s a bit of a situation.”
Which was like opening Pandora’s Box Full of Questions. The lobstermen bombarded me with plenty, until I finally announced I had to go. I shut the door, wondering what kind of rumors I’d just started.
As I reentered the dining room, Jamie clicked off his cell phone. Dr. Simpson finished her call too. “They’re on the way,” she said to Jamie. He turned toward Chris and me. “You’d best cancel any reservations you have booked for tonight.”
“Gus is open every day, but Julia and I don’t serve dinner on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings,” Chris informed him.
He nodded. “That’s a break. Did you lock both outside doors last night?”
“Yes,” Chris and I said at once.
“Which one of you did it?”
“I locked the kitchen door.” Chris raised his hand.
“What time was that?”
“About eleven.”
“I locked the street door,” I said. “At around twelve forty-five.”
The layout of Gus’s restaurant was quirky. The old former warehouse sat on pilings on a boulder that thrust out into the harbor. The harbor walls were steep at that point, so Gus’s public entrance, which was at street level, led to a staircase that customers took down to the restaurant level. The front room housed a lunch counter and a few small tables. An archway opened to a second, much larger dining room, which had faux-leather red booths along the walls and tables at its center. The dining room offered one of the town’s best views of the back harbor, the working part of the waterfront.
The second exit, the kitchen door, was at the back of the first room, behind the lunch counter and the open kitchen area where Gus cooked. The passageway to the walk-in refrigerator and the little hallway that led to the door to my apartment stairs were also back there. The kitchen exit opened onto a flat area of asphalt that offered a few parking spaces and a Dumpster. From there, a steep driveway climbed back to street level.
“Did you lock the refrigerator?” Jamie asked.
Gus glanced at the old walk-in with something that looked like affection. “Wouldn’t even know how. Bought it used in ’84. Never had a key.”
“Right.” Jamie addressed Chris, Gus, and me. “You all can go. We know where to find you.”
“The hell I will,” Gus said.
“Can I stay upstairs in my apartment?” I asked.
“Better not,” Jamie answered. “And we’ll need your permission to search it. I’ll get you the form.”
“You don’t think the dead man was up there?” I couldn’t keep the alarm out of my voice.
“I don’t think anything yet.”
“Who was at the door?” Gus asked.
“Bard Ramsey and some of the other lobstermen,” I answered. “I told him you were closed.”
Gus sighed. “I’d best phone Mrs. Gus before someone calls to ask her if I’m dead.”
“Officer Howland will stay to secure the scene,” Jamie said. “I’m heading over to the Snuggles Inn to see if we can find out who this guy is.”
“You should bring me with you,” I said.
“Why?”
“So the sisters aren’t alarmed when they see you.”
“They’ve known me all my life, Julia, just like you.”
That was true. I’d grown up across the street from the Snuggles Inn. Jamie, who was my age—thirty—had always lived, still lived, in the house next door to my mother’s.
“You’re in your uniform, on their front porch at, what?” I looked at my phone. “Seven in the morning.” My, how time flies when you’re not having fun. “You know it will go better if I’m standing next to you.”
Jamie hesitated. He was well acquainted with Vee Snugg’s love of the dramatic. “Okay,” he finally said. “Get your coat. Hurry.”
I ran upstairs; put food and water in bowls for Le Roi, my Maine coon cat; grabbed my coat; and called good-bye. Le Roi lifted a lazy head out of the folds in the duvet, blinked, and went to sleep again.
Chris was waiting at the bottom of the stairs when I came back down.
“It’s de
finitely the same guy,” he whispered.
“Yup. I saw the, uh, scar,” I responded.
“Me too. How the heck . . . ?”
“I don’t know.” I inclined my head in the direction of the cops and the ME. “Let’s talk soon. Where are you headed?”
“At eight thirty I’ve got to take Mrs. Deakins to the supermarket. I’m going back to my cabin to trade my truck for my cab.”
During the busy season, Chris had three jobs. He worked at his landscaping business, drove a cab he owned, and was a bouncer at Crowley’s, Busman’s Harbor’s most touristy bar. Now that the summer was over, short cab hops were as good as it got. He and I were still working out the logistics of having two places to live. It seemed like his truck, or his cab, or my car was always in the wrong place.
“Okay,” I said. “Call me soon. We need to talk.”
His lips brushed my cheek and he was out the door.
Chapter 3
Jamie left the squad car at Gus’s, and we walked out of the back harbor and up the hill toward Snuggles Inn. The day was overcast, and a fierce wind cut through my coat. Jamie was a good deal taller than my paltry five-foot-two, and I had to push to keep up. Nothing was very far from anything else in Busman’s Harbor proper, and soon we were on the Snuggles’ front porch. Jamie rang the bell, and a deep bong echoed inside.
“Coming!” Viola Snugg, called Vee, opened the front door. At seventy-five years of age and slightly after 7 AM, Vee cut an elegant figure. Her luxurious snow-white hair was swept up in a perfect coif, and she was wearing, as always, a tailored dress, hose, and high heels. As I’d predicted, her eyes took in Jamie in his uniform and she immediately stepped backward, clutching her hand to her ample bosom. “Oh my. How can I help you?”
“May we come in?” Jamie asked.
“Of course, Jamie, er, Officer Dawes. And Julia.” She threw me a quizzical look.
The Snuggles was, as always, tidy and inviting. Vee directed us to the front parlor. “You’re here about our guest,” she said to Jamie before we sat down.
“Why do you say that?” Jamie asked.
“He didn’t come back last night.” We all settled into our seats—Jamie and I on the Victorian settee the Snugg sisters had inherited from their grandparents, Vee in the straight-backed, upholstered chair opposite. I had the feeling Jamie sat down only because he didn’t want Vee to think she had to remain standing.
“How did you discover he didn’t return to his room?” Jamie asked.
“He arrived a little after five last evening. He had a reservation for two nights. Fee and I greeted him and suggested he might like to have his evening meal at Gus’s Too.” Not a hard recommendation to make, considering we were the only place open on weeknights during the off season, except for Hole in the Wall Pizza, about which the less said, the better.
“He went off about six o’clock. Fee and I watched a little TV. At ten, I went up to bed. Fee stayed up to let him in.”
Like most B&Bs in town, the Snuggles gave their guests keys to their rooms but not to the outside door. Since Vee got up early to make the guests the full English breakfasts for which the inn was renowned, it was her sister, Fiona, called Fee, who stayed up late to let in any stray guests.
“I found Fee sound asleep in her easy chair at six o’clock this morning,” Vee said. “I woke her up and sent her to bed. She said our guest never came home.”
“Which room is his?” Jamie asked.
“Four,” Vee said. “I’ll get you the key.” She disappeared through a swinging door and reappeared before it had stopped moving. I knew she’d grabbed the key off a board in the kitchen that held spares for all the rooms.
Jamie stood. “I’m going to look at his room. Alone.” He threw me a look that told me to stay put. “Miss Snugg, can you come upstairs with me and wake your sister? Tell her I need to speak with her as soon as I’m done.”
They bustled out of the room. Vee raised an eyebrow in my direction, forming a silent question, as she followed Jamie up the winding stairway.
I stayed in my seat and looked around the room. It was high Victorian and should have been heavy, dark, and uncomfortable, but it was one of my happiest places. I was suffering from a lack of sleep and normally the warm room would have made me woozy, but my nerves were wound up tight from the events of the morning.
Jamie must have finished searching at the same time Vee got the rousted Fee out of her room. All three trooped down the stairs. Fee was covered from head to toe in a high-necked, plaid flannel gown, a matching flannel robe, and slipper socks. Behind her thick glasses, she blinked at the interruption to her sleep.
“Now, Jamie Dawes, you tell us what this is about,” she demanded. I rose and met the three of them in the foyer.
Jamie glanced at me and inhaled deeply. “Your guest passed away last night. At Gus’s restaurant.”
Both sisters’ mouths dropped open. “How terrible,” Fee said. “Julia, were you there when it happened?”
I didn’t answer. I undoubtedly had been, if being behind the restaurant bar or upstairs in ignorant slumber counted. I noticed Jamie hadn’t given any of the details. Like that the body hadn’t been found until this morning. Or its location.
“We heard the sirens last night,” Fee added.
Again, Jamie didn’t contradict or clarify, so I stayed mum. The sirens had been about something else entirely.
“Right now, what we really need is your guest’s identity,” Jamie said. “I didn’t see anything in his room to help me. Just a clean shirt and underwear on the bed. No wallet or phone. Not even a suitcase.”
“He had a backpack when he arrived,” Vee said. “I’m sure of it. I noticed it particularly because it seemed too large for a couple of nights. I thought he might be on an extended visit along the coast.”
Jamie looked at me. “Did he have a backpack at the restaurant?”
“No. I’m certain.”
Jamie turned back to the Snugg sisters. “Do you remember if he had the backpack when he left for dinner?”
“We didn’t see him go out. We were back in our den watching the news on TV. I heard the door slam. That was it,” Fee answered.
“And it definitely was him leaving?”
Fee looked mystified. “Who else could it have been?”
“He’d have his wallet and probably his phone with him, wouldn’t he?” The remarkably smooth skin over Vee’s nose pinched in suspicion. “He’d have to pay for his dinner.”
“Do you know his name?” Jamie asked.
The sisters looked at one another. “I’ll fetch the guest register.” Vee took a few steps to the table in the center of the room.
“I’ll get the reservation book,” Fee said, shuffling toward the kitchen in her slipper socks.
Vee held out the guest register to Jamie and me. “Here we go.”
Jamie squinted at the opened page, taking the register from Vee and holding it closer. “What do you think that says?” he asked me, tipping the book one way and then another, hoping to read the scrawl of a signature.
“I think it begins with a Q,” I said. “Or maybe that’s a J?”
“Can you make out the last name?”
To me, the last name looked like nnnnnnnnnn. “I got nothing,” I told him. We stood together, turning the register from side to side as if it were a kaleidoscope that would suddenly reveal a discernible pattern. It was hopeless. The man’s signature was a cipher.
Fee bustled back with the reservation book—a simple calendar on which they wrote guest names with arrows going through the days they were staying. “What does this say?” she asked. Her handwriting was no better. The four of us stared at the calendar.
“Justin?” I suggested.
“Or Jason,” Vee said. “Maybe Jackson?”
“Or Jacob?” Fee said. “What did he say his name was?”
Jamie sighed. “I take it he didn’t pay with a credit card.”
“No,” Fee answered. “He paid in cash,
up front for two nights.”
“In the high season we require a deposit in full on a credit card to hold the room,” Vee explained. “But in the off season . . .” She trailed off, gesturing around the silent house. Justin or Jason or Jackson had been their only guest.
“Did he have a vehicle?” Jamie asked.
“No,” Vee answered. “He told me he came on the bus. And there’s no car parked anywhere around.”
Jamie sighed again. “Maybe he paid for the bus with a credit card.” He straightened up. “I’ve got to go. Someone else will be around with more questions,” he told the ladies. “Julia, where will you be?”
“Mom’s, I guess.”
“Stay and have tea with us,” Vee urged.
I could tell they wanted to ask a lot of questions I either couldn’t or didn’t want to answer. “I’d love to, but maybe later.”
I kissed Vee’s powdery cheek and Fee’s unmade-up one, and I slipped out the door behind Jamie.
We stood on the Snuggles’ wide front porch, empty of furniture for the coming winter.
“Maybe the ME will roll him over and his wallet will be in his back pocket,” Jamie said.
“Maybe they’ll do an autopsy and find he had a heart attack,” I responded.
“Maybe,” Jamie said.
“Maybe.”
Neither of us spoke with any conviction.
* * *
Jamie walked off in the direction of the back harbor and Gus’s. I crossed the street to my mother’s house and let myself in the unlocked back door.
The kitchen of my childhood home was oddly comforting, even though the overcast day let in a gloomy glow and the room was chilly. My mom had recently taken a job at Linens and Pantries about a half an hour away in Topsham. On days when she was out of the house, she turned the heat down low. The job was a new thing for her, and in the beginning it had been a rough transition, but she’d stuck with it. She’d survived Black Friday and the rest of Thanksgiving weekend and was back at work today.
I sat at the kitchen table with my coat still on, pulled my phone out of my bag, and called Chris. “Where are you?”
“Parked outside Hannafords, waiting for Mrs. Deakins.” Instead of driving off and returning, he was saving gas by waiting for his fare in the supermarket parking lot. Also, that way he would be there to help her as soon as she came out of the building.
