“So it was back over the mantel at what time?”
“He was back in at five-thirty, and we had supper at six, so probably by five-fifty or so.”
“He went back out after supper?”
She nodded. “Said he was off to do an errand, and then out in the skiff, to patrol the area. I told him not to, and he usually listens, but yesterday …” She slumped.
“He didn’t take the cutlass, then?”
“I never looked,” she said. “Stupid of me.” The needles clacked angrily. “It’s gone now, that’s for sure.”
He hadn’t taken it right after supper, but that didn’t mean he didn’t come back and retrieve it. “Were you at home the whole evening?” I asked.
“I went over to Emmeline’s after supper,” she said. “I brought her a skein of wool I’d dyed for her—kind of a pale gray-blue. We had a couple of cups of tea and talked about all the goings-on. I walked home around 10 o’clock, but Eleazer wasn’t back yet.”
“Was the cutlass still over the fireplace?”
She gave me a tortured look. “I didn’t look. I never thought …”
“Don’t blame yourself,” I said gently, reaching over to touch her arm. “How were you to know what would happen? And even if it was gone, there was no way to know who took it.”
“I suppose you’re right,” she said, but the anguish in her face didn’t ease.
“At least we know that if someone took it, it had to be after six,” I said. “And since the door was unlocked, anybody could have gone in and taken it. Assuming it was there.”
“That’s true,” she said.
As Claudette’s needles clacked, I thought back to the previous evening. All of the guests had attended dinner, but had any of them left the inn later that evening? I seemed to remember the front door opening and closing a few times, but I had never bothered to see who was coming or going. The bigger question, really, was whether anyone staying at the inn knew where the Whites’ house was—or that the cutlass was kept above the mantelpiece. Eleazer might have mentioned it to one of the university archaeologists; but only Eli or Carl could tell me if that had happened, and Eli wasn’t available.
The teakettle started whistling, and as I got up to fix the tea, I glanced at the clock. Dinner was coming up, and I needed to know if I was going to have extra mouths to feed—namely, the detectives in my dining room. I added a few cookies to the tray, along with some cups, cream, and milk, and pushed through the door to the dining room.
“He was waving the cutlass around,” Audrey was saying as I pushed through the door. “Told Gerald he was nothing better than a pirate. Then he threatened to kill him!” Her eyes were bloodshot, and her face puffy from crying, but her voice was venomous.
I moved quietly, hoping they would continue to talk, but the detectives broke off the interrogation as I set down the tea tray.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but will you be staying for dinner?” I asked.
“Would that be possible?” asked the younger of the two, a rather nice-looking young man. “We’d be sure to reimburse you for the expense. Not a lot of restaurants on the island.”
“Of course,” I said, mentally adding two to the tally. I was hoping they’d continue the interrogation as I laid out the tea things, but not another word was spoken until I was back in the kitchen.
I glanced up at the clock; I had two hours before dinner, and I was dying to talk with Tom Lockhart. John, I knew, was going to be busy with the investigation—but since the menu was fairly simple, Gwen would be able to do most of the prep work. I hated to leave Claudette, but I was sure she’d understand.
I made a few phone calls, and within ten minutes, everything was arranged. Gwen, who had just finished cleaning the upstairs rooms, set to work chopping vegetables for the salad, and a few minutes later, Charlene arrived in her battered pickup truck. Visitors were always a bit surprised when Charlene stepped out of the hunk of 1950s-era steel she drove around the island. The truck, whose original color was indeterminable, gave the general impression of a junkyard refugee held together by duct tape. In contrast, Charlene usually looked like she’d stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine. Today, she wore a hot pink trench coat that hugged her curves, and her hair was swept back in a stylish updo.
“Ready?” she asked.
“Let me just finish loading this container, and we’ll be out.” I tucked three more frozen cookies into a big plastic tote and snapped the lid shut. Charlene snagged one of the cookies—double chocolate chip, her favorite—and pulled Claudette into a warm hug.
“How are you doing, sweetheart?” she asked.
“I’ve been better,” the older woman said, still looking shell-shocked. She declined my offer of a cookie—despite her bulk, she was a strict advocate of a sugar-free regimen—and let Charlene lead her out to the driveway. In no time at all, the three of us were packed into the truck’s front bench seat, jouncing up the road toward town.
_____
The town pier looked as it always did, the weathered dock lined with stacks of lobster pots, the long, low building that housed the island’s tourist shops stretched along the wooden walkway. The plate glass windows of Spurrell’s Lobster Pound were dark this time of year, but lights still shone in Island Artists, where one of John’s driftwood sculptures was on display: a dolphin leaping from the sea. To the left were a few of the brightly painted toy boats he built every winter; they were snapped up by the dozens in summer, by the tourists who day-tripped to the island on the mail boat. In the next window, a sea glass mobile dangled, the gray-blue shards of cloudy glass mirroring the sullen sky.
Charlene dropped me off just past the pier, in front of a low-slung building, its walls covered in colorful, weathered buoys: the Cranberry Island lobster co-op.
“Half the island’s in there,” she said, “and the other half is at the store, swapping gossip.”
“Let me know if you hear anything good.”
“Don’t I always?”
“And find out anything you can about Ingrid’s son,” I added.
“You think he might be involved?”
“Evan’s the one who called Iliad in the first place,” I said.
“So? If he’s the one who called them, why would he want to kill Gerald McIntire?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But he’s mixed up in all of this, and you never know what he might have seen or heard.”
“What does Adam think of all of this?” Charlene asked.
“I haven’t talked with him yet. Gwen told me he’s coming by the inn tonight,” I said. “I’ll ask him what he knows then.”
“Do you really think we can save Eleazer?” Claudette asked, a tremble in her normally authoritative voice.
Charlene and I exchanged swift glances. “We’ll do everything we can, sweetheart,” Charlene said, reaching over and patting Claudette’s broad knee. “Now, let’s get to the store and get a cup of coffee. It’s cold out there!”
As if on cue, an icy gust swept off the water. Charlene hit the gas, letting out a plume of gasoline-scented exhaust, and the truck roared up the road. I hurried to the door of the co-op, hoping Tom would have good news—or failing that, at least not tell me anything that would incriminate Eleazer further.
The interior of the lobster co-op was dim and smoky, and smelled strongly of fish—not all of it fresh. A half-dozen men were ranged around a rickety table in the corner, all with grave expressions on their weathered faces. They lightened slightly when I produced the cookies. Adam, I noticed, was not among them. “They’re still a bit cold, but they’ll thaw quickly,” I said.
Tom reached for a cookie, and several other lobstermen followed suit; they were disappearing fast, and I received several gruff thanks. “Tom got you in the soup this year, didn’t he, young lady?” asked Mac Barefoot, a grizzled old-timer. “Judging the bake-off and all.” I knew his wife, Dottie, had passed away twenty years ago, and from all reports, he wasn’t much of a cook. At least on
e person on the island wouldn’t hate me when it was done, I thought.
“That’s what Charlene tells me,” I replied. “But I’m going to be completely objective. I’ve got a score sheet I’m using, and the entries are anonymous.” In theory, anyway; I doubted there would be multiple cranberry chutney recipes—or sugarless cranberry pie, for that matter.
“Good luck with that,” he grunted, obviously thinking the same thing.
Tom rescued me by changing the subject. “I heard the inspectors were over at the inn.” He was a tall, well-put-together man, with a natural charisma that had kept him at the helm of the lobster co-op for years.
I nodded. “They’re questioning the archaeologists at the inn right now.”
“I don’t know why they’re bothering, since they’ve already locked up poor Eli,” one of the lobstermen said.
“Just because he’s been arrested doesn’t mean he’s guilty,” Tom said.
“That’s part of what I came to talk to you about,” I said, addressing Tom. “We need to find a good defense attorney.”
“Already contacted the top attorney in Bangor—she drove in today. The co-op is taking a collection to help Claudette with the costs.”
My heart warmed. The islanders were looking after one of their own. “Count me in, too,” I said. “I’ll tell Claudette when I see her in a few minutes. She’s down at the store with Charlene right now. We’re trying to keep her spirits up.”
“That shipwreck is cursed,” someone grumbled.
“Haunted, too,” another said. “ ‘Always stay clear of Deadman’s Shoal,’ my dad used to tell me. ‘Strange things happen out there.’”
“I know it’s supposed to be an old wives’ tale, but I thought I saw a ship there once,” said Mac. After Eleazer’s careful admission the other day, I expected the others to scoff, but there was only a tense silence. A few of the lobstermen exchanged cryptic glances as Mac continued. “The fog was just starting to roll in, and though I usually go round the long way so as not to get too close to Deadman’s Shoal, I was trying to make port before nightfall.”
“What did you see?” I asked.
“Well, I don’t really know. It may have been the fog playing tricks on me, but I swear there was a ship out there, reeking of tar. I could just make out the sails on her.”
“Was there anyone aboard?” Tom asked.
“Not that I could tell. I cut the engine, went to hail them, warn them off the rocks. I yelled out a few times, but nobody answered.”
“Maybe they were below decks,” someone suggested.
Mac shrugged. “Maybe. At first I thought it was one of those historical dress-up ships they float sometimes, or the Margaret Todd, out of Bar Harbor, gone astray.” The Margaret Todd was a four-mast schooner popular with the tourists—but as far as I knew, it never went more than a mile from shore, and Deadman’s Shoal was three miles out, in the wrong direction. “But it wasn’t a schooner,” he said. “It was too big for that.”
“Could have been a clipper,” someone piped up.
“Or a brig. Jonah Selfridge’s ship was a brig, wasn’t it?”
“Matilda would know. And Eli, of course.”
“Can’t ask him now, can we?”
“Could have been either,” Mac said, shrugging. “I barely got a glimpse of it.”
“What did you do?” I asked, anxious to get back on topic, since I had no idea what the difference was between a brig and a clipper, and didn’t much care at the moment.
“I tried to get closer, but a big bank of fog rolled in, and the damn thing just up and disappeared.”
“Did you try the radio?”
“Ayuh. No answer, and no other boat reported seeing a ship in the area. Had gooseflesh all over me; I’ve never run my boat so hard, especially not with fog.”
“The ghost ship,” someone murmured.
“Probably too much rum in your mug,” a young lobsterman snorted. There were a few uneasy chuckles, but not much mirth. An uneasy silence descended on the smoky room, punctuated by the howl of the wind off the water and the occasional crackle of static from the weather radio.
“Any word on the Lorelei yet?” I asked, looking at Tom. He shook his head.
“Probably went down to the bottom with the Black Marguerite,” Mac said. “Comes from messing with the dead.”
“I doubt it was a ghost who sank a blade into McIntire’s back,” Tom said.
Mac bristled, and the tension in the room rose. “Stranger things have happened.”
“I wasn’t discounting your story,” Tom said quietly.
“I heard it was Evan who called that Iliad outfit in the first place,” I said.
“Double-crossed young Adam, is what he did,” said Mac. “It wasn’t his place.”
“What do you expect from Ingrid’s son?” the young lobsterman—his name was Brad, I thought—snorted. “Thinks he’s better than the rest of us.”
“And short on cash, to boot.”
“Even with all the Sorensons’ money?” I asked.
“His allowance isn’t big enough to cover his extracurricular activities.”
“Drugs?” Mac asked with a knowing look, which surprised me. I had no idea Evan’s addiction was public knowledge; I knew he had been in rehab, but had promised his mother, Ingrid, not to say anything. Then again, in a community the size of Cranberry Island, there aren’t many secrets.
“I don’t know much about that, but I do know he likes a wager from time to time,” Brad said.
“Gambling debts, eh?” Mac asked.
“Ayuh. He’s been a regular at a game in Bar Harbor, ever since he got back a couple of months ago. Word is, he’s in the hole for 10K, and some folks have started asking him when he’s going to pay up.”
“A nice bit of pirate treasure would help with paying that off,” Mac said.
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Brad said.
“After all Adam’s done for him, too,” someone said, shaking his head.
“Addiction can be a harsh taskmaster,” Tom said. “But this is all speculation.”
“I do know one of ours is locked up just because that outsider came and tried to steal Davey Blue’s treasure,” Brad said.
“Could be Selfridge’s ship,” someone suggested.
“Maybe, maybe not. Either way, it ain’t theirs to take,” Mac said, to grunts of assent. “It belongs to us.”
“It’s out of our territorial waters,” Tom said reasonably. “And most of it will probably end up down at the university in Portland.”
“Better than paying off young Evan Sorenson’s gambling debts—or funding a rich outsider’s retirement home in Florida,” Brad said.
“Paying his funeral expenses, more like.”
Brad shook his head. “I never thought Eli had it in him,” he said. “I know he was crazy about those old ships, but stabbing that treasure hunter in the back …”
I felt like I had been punched; the last thing I expected was for the lobstermen to turn against Eli.
“Do you really think Eli killed that man?” I asked, still reeling.
“Not saying the man didn’t deserve it, and since I wasn’t out on the water that night, I can’t say as he did or he didn’t,” Brad said, shrugging. “But the last time Tom saw him, he was heading out toward Deadman’s Shoal in his skiff, wasn’t he? And it was his cutlass what did the job.”
“Well, if he did kill that man, he was just protecting what’s ours,” Mac said. “And I can’t say as I blame him for it. Should have taken out Evan while he was at it.”
“How do you know it was Eli who did it?”
“You saw him last, Tom,” Brad said. “When he came by your place last night, spouting all that stuff about modern-day pirates and protecting our heritage. Didn’t he have his cutlass on him?”
“No,” Tom said. “He didn’t.”
Hope flared in me. “What time was he there?”
“He showed up at nine,” he said. “Lorraine and I se
nt him home at around eleven—or tried to. I didn’t know he would go back out to the wreck site. Madness.”
“But he didn’t have the cutlass on him,” I confirmed.
I was about to heave a sigh of relief when Brad piped up. “Just because he didn’t have it with him don’t mean it wasn’t in his skiff.”
“True,” someone chimed in.
“Do you really think he’d toss his precious cutlass in the bushes by the dock?” asked Mac.
“If he’d just murdered someone with it, don’t you think he’d want to get rid of it?”
“Why not just drop it in the water then?”
The man shrugged. “Folks do funny things in the heat of passion.”
“What I want to know is, what was that Iliad guy doing out there in the middle of the night?”
“And what happened to the Lorelei?”
I wanted to know all of those things, of course. But my curiosity was also piqued by Evan Sorenson. I knew of him, but I’d never met him; he’d been off the island in college—or rehab—since I arrived a few years ago. Could Gerald McIntire’s death have something to do with his gambling debts? Had he cut a deal with Iliad—only to have it revoked?
“Has anyone seen Evan since Gerald McIntire died?” I asked.
“He hasn’t shown his face around here, I can tell you that,” Brad said.
“Did he know enough to drive a boat?”
“Course he did. He grew up here, didn’t he?”
“Then, just maybe, when they find the Lorelei, they’ll find Evan.”
“Better on the Lorelei than in Davy Jones’ locker,” Brad said.
“Who says they’re not both there?” Mac suggested, and a brooding silence fell over the co-op.
The talk died down after that, and I left the co-op a few minutes later, deep in thought about Evan Sorenson—and determined to talk to Ingrid about her son. She and I had never gotten along, but my heart went out to her; as much as she loved him, he always seemed to be in trouble. And one death on the island was more than enough.
_____
Berried to the Hilt Page 7
