Charlene considered this for a moment. “Were all the words spelled right?” Despite the pit in my stomach, I laughed. “Honestly, though,” she continued. “I can see the rock, but I’m not sure she’s smart enough to think of the brakes.” She sighed. “It’s a good thing all the islanders aren’t like her, or I’d be out recruiting mainlanders to move here. She doesn’t know what to do about the group Murray Selfridge is trying to put together. If she joins it, she’s encouraging people to come over from the mainland, and if she doesn’t, she’s helping you.”
“What group?”
“Oh, Murray’s got a lawyer to make sure the Shoreline Conservation Association can’t get the land even if the evaluators say the beach is critical nesting habitat. He’s been out drumming up supporters.”
“I didn’t realize it was that important to him.”
“He’s been buying up land for years, and I think he’s scared he won’t get a return on his investment.”
“I wonder why he didn’t organize the group when Katz was alive?”
Charlene shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he thought it was in the bag.”
The lights flickered, and thunder crashed almost directly overhead. We both flinched and glanced at the radio. It flared for a moment, then continued its eerie hiss.
I shifted on the couch. “I noticed Ingrid wasn’t around. Is she still making herself scarce?”
“Yup. She’s been back and forth to the mainland a lot, though. I don’t know what she’s been up to.” She munched on a cookie. “Or Barbara. How much research can you really do in the Somesville library?”
“If they have an Internet connection, probably more than you’d think,” I said. “So Barbara’s still back and forth too?”
“She’s on the ten am mail boat, every day.”
Suddenly the radio crackled, and a rough voice spilled out of it. “I’m headed up to Shag Rock.”
“Murph Hoyle,” Charlene murmured.
“No sign yet, but I’m still looking,” the voice continued. “It’s pretty rough out here.”
“Aye,” another voice answered. “Just had a fifteen-footer. Almost flipped us.”
“Watch out there,” the rough voice answered. “Don’t want two boats lost.” Charlene and I stared at the radio, listening to the ghostly whine of radio silence. After a long moment, Charlene turned back to me.
“I forgot to tell you something earlier today. Now that you’ve got a boat, there’s something you might want to check out.”
“I thought you told me to leave the investigating to the police.”
“Well,” she said, “the problem is, the person who saw something was in a bit of a compromising position when he saw it.”
“What are you talking about?”
Charlene pursed her lipsticked lips for a moment. “Natalie, did you notice how those red and green buoys disappeared the night of the storm?”
I hadn’t thought about it, but she was right. “Somebody was out cutting gear the night of the storm?”
Charlene eyed me sideways. “That’s one way to phrase it. I might put it a little differently if I were talking to the police.”
“What did they see?”
Lightning flashed again, and Charlene waited for the long roll of thunder to fade before she answered. “Somebody was in Smuggler’s Cove that night.”
“The night Katz died?”
Charlene nodded.
“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“What could you have done about it? You didn’t have a boat. Besides,” she said, “Gwen was going to tell you.”
“Gwen?” I put two and two together. “You mean Adam was out there that night? I thought you said he had good judgment.”
Charlene turned pink under her Mary Kay pressed powder. “I stand by my statement. He’s a good seaman.”
“But a risk-taker.” I stood up, furious. “And now he’s out there God-knows-where with my niece.” I glared at Charlene. “Don’t tell me she was out with him that night, too?”
“Oh, no.” Charlene looked stricken. “Nat, I’m so sorry. No, she wasn’t with him that night. I should have told you about it earlier, though.” She swallowed hard. “I really did trust him on the water. Do trust him, I mean. He thinks so much of Gwen—I didn’t think he’d ever dream of putting her in harm’s way.”
“Well, she’s there now.” I buried my head in my hands. Charlene said nothing, and we sat in silence as the rain lashed the windows.
Finally, I looked up. “I never thought anything like this would happen, Nat,” she whispered. “I should have told you. I just never thought . . .”
My anger ebbed, and I moved to sit next to her on the flowery couch. This was my friend, my friend who had put her business at risk defending me that very afternoon. “Listen,” I said, “I’m sorry. I overreacted. Even if you had told me, what could I have done about it? It’s not your fault. Gwen is old enough to make her own decisions, good or bad.” Charlene bowed her head and made a snuffling noise. I patted the soft green cashmere stretched across her back. “Besides,” I said, “They could turn up at any moment now.” An image of Gwen floating among the waves, long hair streaming through the water like seaweed, came to my mind unbidden. I banished it with a shudder.
As Charlene hunched beside me, wiping her eyes, my stomach clenched. Seeing Charlene so upset made me realize how grave the situation was. We sat together for a long time, listening to the rain and the thunder and the hiss of the radio.
As the night progressed, the searchers continued to comb the dark waters and come up empty-handed. We would sit up straight, craning our ears at every explosion of sound from the radio, only to sink back into the cushions in disappointment, struggling to hold onto the fraying edges of hope.
Finally, just before 2:00, a voice crackled out of the radio. “We got something!”
Charlene and I leapt from the couch as another boat responded. “What is it?”
“There’s a light buoy out by Flower’s Island. Hang on a minute.” The silence stretched out into what seemed like hours before the radio crackled back to life. “We got it! We found the Carpe Diem!” My body tingled with relief, and I sank back into the cushions.
“Anyone on it?”
“They’re not on the boat,” he said. My throat seized up. They were gone, lost at sea. Then the voice crackled out of the radio again. “They’re all on the island.” On the island?
“Everyone okay?”
“Looks like it. We’ll bring ’em on in.” Charlene and I let out a huge whoop and hugged each other.
As we dashed through the rain to Charlene’s truck, I couldn’t help but laugh. The Carpe Diem? You can take the boy out of college, but you can’t take the college out of the boy. I had a hunch Adam’s was the only lobster boat on the entire Maine coast with a Latin name.
• • •
It was a bedraggled threesome that staggered through the doors of the co-op a half hour later, accompanied by Murph Hoyle and Clyde White. Gwen’s hair looked like limp seaweed, and her face was waxen.
“Gwen!” I rushed over and gave my niece a huge hug. She was still shivering despite the layers of blankets wrapped around her.
Gwen’s voice was faint. “Hi, Aunt Nat.”
I turned to the young man standing close behind her. He was pale under his mop of brown hair, and his young face looked haggard. I opened my mouth to tell him what I thought of him, but before I had a chance, he reached out and hugged Gwen fiercely, as if he were afraid to let go of her. “You’re not coming out with me anymore, Gwen. Not after tonight.” Well, at least we agreed on that point.
“You must be Adam,” I said. He released Gwen and held out his hand; it was ice cold, and trembled as I shook it. “I’m so glad you made it back in okay,” I said. “What h
appened? We’ve been worried to death.”
“We were out hauling traps, and the radio wasn’t working. I thought we’d just pull a few more up, then head back in, but the storm came up too quickly. Then I was having trouble with the motor, so I anchored in the lee of Flower’s Island.” He glanced at Gwen, who carried on from there.
“To make a long story short, Aunt Nat, we dragged anchor and ran aground on Flower’s Island. We couldn’t radio for help, so Adam put out a distress buoy and we waited it out on the island. We figured they’d come out looking when Adam didn’t show up at the co-op.” Adam had stayed out at sea with a broken radio, and he didn’t know how to fix the engine when the storm came up? So much for being a stellar seaman. I glanced at Charlene. She was studying her nails.
I turned to Murph. “Thank you so much for finding them, and bringing them back in. I don’t know how I can repay you.”
Murph’s dark eyes twinkled. “Well, first get these kids into some hot water.” He eyed Adam. “The bath kind, I mean, not the clinging to a rock kind.” Adam’s lips twitched into an embarrassed smile, and Gwen laughed. “But I wouldn’t say no to a pan of your brownies,” Murph continued. “And maybe the recipe, if you don’t mind.”
“I’ll make a pan of brownies for you every day of the week if you like!”
“Don’t start offering—I might just have to take you up on it!” he replied.
I laughed and hugged Gwen again. “Well,” Murph continued, “all’s well, that ends well. I guess we’ll be headed home.”
I felt I could float through the rusted roof of the truck as Charlene and I jounced back down the road to the inn, my shivering niece wedged between us. Gwen didn’t say much, and I didn’t either; I was just happy she was back. We could talk about Adam tomorrow.
The power was still out when we got back to the inn, but fortunately my hot water heater ran on propane. I lit candles and drew a hot bath for Gwen, then left her with a plate of cookies and a glass of milk. I wished her good night, and for the first time in a week, curled up under the covers and slept without waking up once.
Until the alarm went off three hours later, that is. I pried open an eyelid and slammed my hand down on the alarm clock, praying that the power was restored. I flicked the switch of my bedside light.
It wasn’t.
I staggered down the stairs in a daze, racking my brain for a way to cook breakfast without the benefit of my stovetop or oven. I fumbled for the coffee scoop, realizing the magnitude of the problem only when my finger pressed the button of the coffee grinder and nothing happened.
No power meant no coffee. Short of building a fire out in the backyard, there was no way to cook anything. I glanced outside. The rain had abated, but the world still looked pretty soggy.
I sat down at the kitchen table and stared at the freezer. Was there anything in there that I could use for breakfast? I knew I had tossed some extra blueberry muffins in a few weeks ago, and there were a few dozen bagels and some smoked salmon from Charlene. I could lay out lox and bagels with blueberry muffins, and maybe make a fruit salad with fresh whipped cream. The absence of coffee or tea would be a problem—at least for me—but there was plenty of milk and orange juice. It wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be passable. If the power came on, I could whip up eggs and sausage or bacon.
I dug what I needed out of the freezer and set to work cutting up melon and strawberries. I’d whip the cream later; maybe the power would be back on and I wouldn’t have to whisk it by hand.
I was no more awake when 8:30 rolled around. The power wasn’t back yet, and neither was the phone. My bleary eyes turned to the kitchen window. The waves had calmed, and the clouds were breaking up; now that the storm had passed, with any luck they’d get the repair crews out fast. I remembered the fierce waters of last night and said a quick prayer of thanks that Gwen was safe, sleeping upstairs in her bed.
As I laid out a cold buffet, I reflected that if power outages were going to be a regular occurrence, I’d have to either switch the appliances to gas or invest in a camp stove. Fortunately, all of my guests—even Ogden—were understanding. “Lox and bagels?” Mrs. Bittles exclaimed when she came into the dining room. “How lovely! I haven’t had that in ages!” The Bittles were leaving the next day, and as I stopped by their table to see how they’d fared last night, Mrs. Bittles asked if I’d been by to see her paintings.
“No,” I said, “but since you’re leaving tomorrow, I’ll have to get down there today!”
• • •
Fernand’s studio was at the end of Seal Point Road, in a yellow wood-frame house with lavender shutters and pale blue trim. Lots of people on the island painted their houses bright colors, but Fernand was the only person to include lavender in his palette. The first floor of the two-story house had been converted into a studio with a commanding view of the lighthouse and the ocean. I glanced at the beach beyond Fernand’s house; the ground was littered with egg-shaped granite rocks. I wondered if the rock that had come through my window had originated on this part of the island.
When I rapped at the pale purple door, I was relieved to hear movement from inside the house. I had walked instead of riding my bike, and didn’t relish the thought of making the long trek home without having seen Fernand.
The door swung open to reveal a short, trim man with a neatly kept brown beard and small, wire-rimmed glasses. His eyes were a piercing blue behind the glass lenses.
“Natalie Barnes,” he said in a clipped Canadian accent. “Come in, come in.” I walked into his studio, which was empty of furniture save for an easel set up by the wall of windows overlooking the ocean. The walls were hung with canvases, mostly oils of boats and houses, with neon blue and pink skies, and stacks of canvases leaned up against the walls. I walked closer to inspect a huge oil of a purple-orange sunset, and noticed the flourish of Fernand’s signature on the bottom right-hand corner. I looked at Fernand in his creased khakis and button-down blue plaid shirt, amazed that someone so neat and tidy was the creator of such wild explosions of color.
“What brings you to this part of the island?” Fernand asked.
“Gwen and the Bittles asked me to come by and have a look at their work.”
He nodded. “Your niece is a talented artist. Come on back, I’ll show you some of her paintings.”
“What about the Bittles?” I asked as we walked toward the back corner of the studio.
Fernand looked at me for a moment, then gave me a brittle smile. “They’re having a good time.”
I laughed. “That bad?”
“You can see for yourself,” he said, pointing to a group of blotchy watercolors featuring crudely rendered boats and some grayish blobs that might or might not have been birds.
I bent down to inspect them, wincing as I flipped through the paintings to a particularly painful rendering of the Gray Whale Inn. “I was going to ask you if you’d be interested in putting together an artists’ retreat package with me, but I’m afraid the Bittles might have put you off the idea.”
He laughed. “They’re very nice people, and they’re having a good time. Anything I can do to help fund my life here on the island, I’m happy to do. And besides,” he said, pointing to a small but exquisite watercolor of a lobster boat, “students like Gwen make dealing with the Bittles worthwhile.” I walked over to the painting and squatted down for a closer look. The green-gray humps of the mountains on the mainland framed a solitary lobster boat steaming across the deep blue water. A gull wheeled behind the boat, tipping its wings in the breeze, and the man at the wheel wore a jaunty red cap. I’d seen many paintings of similar subjects, but this one was so crisp I could almost hear the slap of the water on the bow of the boat.
“Wow,” I breathed. “She is good. I had no idea.”
Fernand leafed through a folder and pulled out another one. “She did this one of yo
ur inn,” he said, and I sucked in my breath at the golden light reflected from the windows, and the vibrant spill of the roses against the weathered gray shingles. I could definitely put that on a brochure. The drawing I had commissioned for the first one was child’s play compared to this. He handed me the folder, and I leafed through scene after vivid scene of Cranberry Island. “If she’s interested in staying on, I’d love to have her,” Fernand said as I picked up a watercolor of one of the island’s lupine fields. It looked like the one near the cranberry bog, but I wasn’t sure; wherever it was, she had captured the beautiful blues and purples of the majestic spikes perfectly, as well as the tender green of their leaves. “She’s mainly done watercolors,” Fernand continued, “but she’s interested in trying out oil and acrylic.”
“It’s fine with me; I’d love it if she stayed. It’s up to her, though . . . and to her mother.” I handed him the folder. “She really is an artist.”
“I hear she had a close call last night,” Fernand said, his clear eyes clouded with concern. “Is she going to be all right?”
“She did, but thank God she’s okay. I’m not sure the same can be said for Adam’s boat, though.”
“I ran into Tom down the road this morning.” Fernand smoothed his beard with his hand. “He said they’ll tow her in today, and that she’ll probably be back in the water in no time.”
“I hope so. As long as Gwen isn’t with him.” Fernand’s mention of running into Tom reminded me of something. “Tom saw somebody out with a flashlight the night Bernard Katz was killed,” I said. “I’ve been meaning to ask you; did you notice anything unusual that night?”
His face remained expressionless as he shook his head. “No, I didn’t, but then I wasn’t really paying attention; I was touching up one of my canvases. Besides,” he said, “I’m at the end of the road.”
I decided to push a little further. “What do you think of the whole business with Bernard Katz?”
He paused for a moment before answering. “Well, they say things like this are usually family affairs.”
Murder on the Rocks Page 16
