Death by Chocolate Cherry Cheesecake

by Sarah Graves

But Sarabelle wasn’t having any of that, either. “Sorry?” she drawled out sarcastically. “Sure you are.”

  She yanked the door open as if readying herself to slam it on her way out. But at the last moment she hesitated; her face lost its smooth beauty and her extraordinary dark eyes filled with something ugly and real.

  Grief, maybe. Then the door did slam hard and her slim shape flitted past the window, ghostly white in the summer evening.

  Good riddance, I thought as I gave the kitchen a thorough wipe, and not much later I headed home myself, setting the CLOSED sign in the window and turning the new key in the lock. Its sharp click! reminded me of the scratches I’d noticed on the door frame earlier, but I’d told Bob Arnold about them and alerted the state cops, too, so there was nothing else for me to do about that.

  Outside, the kids from the movie had gone home and the rising moon cast a silver stripe on the flat-calm water of the bay.

  Lingering tourists wrapped sweaters around themselves, and from the boat basin came the clank of the heavy chains holding the finger piers to the dock and the gush of bilge pumps working.

  “Hello, Jacobia.” I caught a whiff of citrus cologne just as Miss Halligan’s voice came from the shadowy doorway of her shop. “Cleaning up, were you?”

  She stepped out onto the sidewalk. “I do enjoy being here in the early evening. So peaceful.”

  Across the bay, the land was a dark, low shape with here and there the faint glow of a car’s headlights moving on it.

  “Really.” I’d intended to hurry away, eager to get home to my dad and to Ellie, still working there in my kitchen.

  But now I paused. “So . . . by any chance, were you here late last night, not just in the evening like now?”

  The jewel-toned embroidery on her T-shirt shone under the nearby streetlamp. “When Matt Muldoon died? No. Too bad, I might have noticed something useful. Or—”

  A small boat moved through the moon’s searchlight beam on the water, then vanished into the darkness again. The bay was a trap for the unwary mariner, but local boaters knew their way around it blindfolded, practically, and were often out after dark.

  “Or I could’ve stopped it, maybe,” Miss Halligan added. Then: “What did Sarabelle want?”

  What, indeed? Random spewing of venom hardly seemed like a good-enough reason for her visit. “I don’t know,” I said truthfully.

  A flock of kids on skateboards swooped by us. When they were gone, “I guess she could’ve just wanted company,” I continued.

  “I mean, she’s got a funny way of showing it, and under the circumstances it seems pretty unlikely she’d come to me, but I get the feeling she has no one else to talk to.”

  Miss Halligan nodded sagely. “If she weren’t such a rhymes-with-witch, though, she wouldn’t have that problem, would she?”

  She turned to me, her thick-lashed eyes glittering with some emotion I couldn’t identify. But when she spoke again, I could:

  “In fact, as far as I’m concerned,” the elegant little owner of the Second Hand Rose vintage clothing emporium finished, “the widow Muldoon can go piss up a rope.”

  * * *

  My big old house at the top of Key Street shone bluish white in the moonlight, its three redbrick chimneys thrust up against the twinkling stars and its old double-hung windows, each flanked by an antique pair of forest-green shutters, warmly aglow.

  Climbing the hill toward it after leaving Miss Halligan in her shop, I tried coming up with a reason why she might dislike Sarabelle Muldoon so much. But my mind turned worriedly instead toward Wade and Sam.

  The coming storm really is delaying Sam’s homecoming, I told myself firmly. His latest stretch of sobriety had lasted for more than two years; I needn’t be concerned about that.

  Or no more than I always was. Meanwhile, Wade was as safe on the water as he was in his own bed, or so he often insisted; reminding myself of this, I paused in the summer night.

  Fireflies glimmered in the shadows among the lilacs in the yard, a breeze rustled the maple leaves half-hiding the porch, and from behind me in the distance, the foghorn on Cherry Island let out a long, two-note honk.

  Climbing the steps, I brushed through a clutter of June bugs bopping themselves silly against the porch light; inside, Ellie called out from the kitchen.

  “Is that you, Jake? Good, I’ve been waiting for you. Listen, we have to—”

  From the sunroom I heard Bella and my dad talking quietly together. So all was well on that front; I peered past Ellie to where she’d been piling a lot of things on the kitchen table.

  Flashlights, a compass, two life jackets . . . not baking items, I realized with sudden foreboding. They were boating items.

  “What’s all this?” But I’d already guessed the answer.

  In my opinion, dry land is the best possible anti-drowning precaution. But we lived on an island, where purchasing things in quantity could be a bit of a project.

  And that went double for ecologically sustainable, gourmet-quality, fair-market-produced, and (one hoped) halfway reasonably priced—

  “We’re out of chocolate,” Ellie said.

  Three

  “Ridiculous,” I grumbled, backing out of the driveway with Ellie beside me in my car’s passenger seat.

  Looking south down the bay, the little town of Lubec seemed so near that you could practically touch it, especially at night. Getting there from Eastport, though, meant a long drive to the mainland, twenty miles due south on narrow, winding Route 1, and then another ten miles out a peninsula to its tip.

  The round-trip could take a couple of hours. “Completely . . . ,” I emphasized.

  That is, it takes hours unless you happen to have a boat, which Ellie did: a twenty-four-foot Bayliner with a big outboard engine and a snug two-berth cuddy. Her husband, George, had bought it for her birthday present the previous year, and I enjoyed having picnics on it when it was tied up at the dock.

  But otherwise not so much. We pulled up into a rough gravel parking area overlooking the water. “. . . outrageous,” I finished.

  The dock at the end of Summer Street, on the opposite side of the island from downtown, lay at the foot of a steep metal gangway that rose and fell with the area’s massive twenty-foot tides.

  Right now it was low tide, so the gangway was nearly vertical; after I donned my life jacket, I descended by clenching the railings in a death grip while slowly and deliberately bracing my feet on the wooden blocks placed runglike on the metal surface.

  “Careful,” said Ellie, who’d already scampered down. And have I mentioned that it was a floating dock? And that it was dark out, and a stiff breeze had sprung up now, too, so the whole structure felt even more precariously unstable?

  Not that it wasn’t pretty. The night was thick with the rich, rank smell of seaweed and mud flats exposed by the low tide. The moon, bannered with fog wisps, cast silvery luminescence over the half-dozen other small vessels tied up alongside Ellie’s.

  In short, it was spectacular, and if only I hadn’t wondered if it was my last night on Earth I’m sure I’d have appreciated it even more. I am not, in case you haven’t figured this out by now, the world’s bravest mariner.

  But there was no backing out at this stage. As I stepped from the dock to the boat’s foredeck, Ellie was already going through her departure drill:

  Battery on, engine down, running lights on, and our lines cast off; finally came a hard shove that pushed the boat’s bow decisively away from the dock. Then we were off in a roar of the big outboard, bound for Lubec and the chocolate maker, Marla Sykes, who was our regular supplier.

  I gripped the rail as around us the water spread out like a sheet of aluminum foil. Behind us our engine’s wake spewed up; cold spray smacked my face.

  “She’ll meet us at the boat landing,” called Ellie over the engine noise.

  “Great,” I managed through clenched teeth. On our way down to the dock, Ellie had explained that if we wanted those cheesecakes baked
and decorated the way we’d promised—that is, loaded with lusciously dark, mouthwatering chocolate inside and out—then this trip was a requirement, and driving would take way too long.

  And of course I couldn’t let her go alone. As soon as she got the boat, she’d begun taking every navigation and boating-safety course she could find, and practicing boat handling with the kind of energy ordinarily reserved for aspiring sea captains.

  So it wasn’t as if I were out here with Woody Allen or anything. But as a matter of principle I was nervous about cold seawater, and I was already beginning to regret my decision when a small open boat appeared suddenly out of the darkness ahead.

  Zooming in toward us, the little watercraft’s feeble running lights crossed our bow about thirty yards distant. Soon we were thudding through its wake, our bow diving and lurching violently. Then the other boat vanished into the darkness once more, while I hung on and waited for our voyage to end.

  Which it did, finally. As we approached the town of Lubec, the water around us smoothed eerily, the flat swirls on its surface barely hinting at the jaggedness of the granite lurking below. Ellie let up on the throttle, easing us through a floating maze of brightly painted buoys, each marking a submerged lobster trap.

  “Jake! Get forward all the way out on the bow, will you?” she called to me.

  To watch for more lobster buoys, she meant, and as first mate I couldn’t very well refuse. Swallowing hard, I crept forward up and around the cuddy cabin along the bow rail, until I reached the Bayliner’s foredeck. There I found a low, flat seat thoughtfully equipped with a foam-filled cushion.

  A wet foam-filled cushion, and personally I thought it should have safety straps like the ones that race car drivers belt themselves in with. Never mind, though, I got out to it and I sat. And I’ll admit it was gorgeous there, tasting the sharp salt spray under a hazily moonlit sky with the dark water foaming and churning.

  “One o’clock,” I called out as a yellow-striped wooden buoy bobbed up ahead of us; Ellie veered to avoid it.

  Ahead, the bright white dock lights at Lubec’s boat landing beckoned welcomingly.

  “Ten o’clock,” I said as another buoy appeared; she steered starboard. Then: “Hey, who’s that?” I gulped, startled.

  Coming up fast, an open boat like the one we’d seen earlier rushed in at us again, then swung away. This time its wake slammed us broadside, drenching me with spray and loosening my grip on the seat I’d been clinging to.

  Startled and slippery-handed, in an instant I slid helplessly toward the bow rail and through it, half-dangling over the water with my arms hooked precariously around the rail’s metal uprights.

  “Ugh,” I gargled through a mouthful of salt water as Ellie dropped the engine into idle and scrambled out to me.

  “I can’t let go,” I managed when she reached for me. “If I do, you’ll be fishing me out with a net.”

  Ignoring me, she grabbed my life jacket in both hands, hauling me up like a cat dragging a kitten by the nape of its neck.

  Spluttering, I slid back up onto the bow and scrambled to my feet. “Where is he?” I spat. “Where’s that little—”

  We were nearly to the dock. Boats tied up to mooring balls floated around us, their shadows rippling. A line creaked and an anchor chain rattled; a fish jumped with a splash. But no other sound broke the watery silence.

  The little boat that had buzzed us was gone, back out into the watery dark. “Jerk,” said Ellie, sprinting to the wheel once more. “Thought we were messing with his lobster traps, maybe.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” I stepped down into the boat’s small cuddy, a below-deck cabin with a low table, a pair of cushioned berths, and a small cabinet-and-sink unit.

  “Dry clothes in the bin under the berth,” Ellie called to me. Pulling a rough towel from a cabinet, I rubbed my wet hair.

  Through the hull I could feel the engine’s slow, steady vibration. When I got back on deck, we were ready to make our landing.

  “Toss the bumpers over, please,” said Ellie, her eyes on the pier we were pulling up to. I threw the rubbery inflated cylinders over the side to act as cushions between us and the dock pilings.

  The pier was a lot closer, and coming on fast. Too fast, I thought anxiously, but just as I began feeling that a whole lot of smithereens were about to be spectacularly created, Ellie put the engine in neutral, swung the wheel hard toward the pier, and dropped us into reverse.

  Whereupon the boat’s stern swung smoothly and as if by magic, nestling itself against the dock. “There,” she pronounced, satisfied.

  “Right,” I croaked, gazing around. Under the glaringly bright marina lights, small boats crowded the inner basin. From the bars and restaurants overlooking the harbor, music floated.

  Shedding my life jacket, I stepped up onto the pier just as a tall, jeans-and-sweatshirt-clad woman with curly black hair and a ruddy complexion came striding toward us.

  It was our chocolate maker, Marla Sykes. And although all we had planned was to pay her and take our purchases, making the transfer of the dark, gourmet-quality sweet stuff right there on the dock like a trio of culinary smugglers, Marla had other ideas.

  “Come on.” She urged us both uphill toward the music. “I’ve already ordered us some Irish coffees.”

  Ellie looked doubtful, and fatigue hit me, too; it had been a long day, and those cheesecakes weren’t going to bake themselves. But then looking out across the glittering black water, I spotted a faint set of running lights moving away from the shoreline.

  I couldn’t tell whether it was the boat that had charged us or not. But either way I still had to survive the return voyage, didn’t I?

  Those dark waves, those granite ledges, and so on. “An Irish coffee,” I told Marla Sykes, “sounds good.”

  * * *

  The Salty Dog was an old-fashioned dockside tavern with a long, scarred wooden bar and a dozen ramshackle wooden tables and chairs scattered about on the unfinished pine floor. At the booth Marla had already claimed for us, the coffees were arriving.

  “I’ve got your chocolate in my car,” she said after taking a hefty swig. “We’ll drive it down to the boat when you’re ready to go.”

  My unscheduled soaking had sent a deep chill into my bones, and the thought of all we still had to do tonight was exhausting. But the Irish coffee, hot and loaded with enough whiskey to cure whatever ailed me, jump-started my energy.

  “Good, huh?” Marla grinned mischievously, downing more of her own drink.

  Only a year earlier she’d been a guidance counselor in a Connecticut high school, urging students to pick work they were good at and could love. Then, she’d told us, she woke up one day knowing that the advice she was giving also applied to herself.

  Weeks later she’d bought a house here and started importing high-end cocoa paste from fair-trade co-ops whose workers weren’t treated like slaves, and almost at once found plenty of demand for her product.

  Two houses, actually; she’d bought the first one quickly, but like many newcomers to downeast Maine, she’d changed her mind once she got here and looked around a little. Now she worked here in Lubec, staying over on nights when her chocolate cooking demanded it, but the house she lived in most of the time was in Eastport.

  “I hear you had some excitement today,” she prompted now, so I described finding the body and what happened afterward.

  Marla’s eyes widened. “You mean they think maybe it was you who killed him?” she asked Ellie.

  “I’m afraid so,” Ellie sighed. “And his wife is all, ‘Oh, my poor dead husband,’ and she’s accusing me, too.”

  “Huh. I’d have thought she’d be out celebrating,” said Marla.

  Ellie and I glanced at each other. “Really? Why?”

  Marla shrugged. “From what I’ve heard, he was no bed of roses, is all. Or maybe . . . maybe she found out he had a girlfriend.”

  Ellie let out a low whistle at this as Marla went on:

  “The two
of them even came in here together a few times. But someone recognized her one night and said hello to her, I heard, and after that they never came in here again.”

  Muldoon and the girlfriend, she meant. Ellie frowned. “But how could they expect not to be—”

  “Recognized?” Marla laughed. “Right, you can’t do much around here without somebody knowing, can you? But she wasn’t.”

  She ate two peanuts from the bowl of them on the table and washed them down with a swallow of coffee. “Too bad I never saw her myself, maybe I could ID her for you.”

  I got up. The Salty Dog might not have been fancy, but it was pleasant. I had a feeling the restroom would be clean, too, and it was. By the time I returned to our booth, I knew what I wanted to ask Marla.

  “Who was it that said hello? To the girlfriend.” Because if I could find that person, I’d just ask him or her who she was, easy-peasy.

  Marla, however, looked regretful. “Guy named Wally Pryne. You’re not going to be talking to him, though, ’cause see that monument out there?”

  The Dog’s windows faced the dock; through the nearest one I glimpsed a low granite pyramid near the dock ramp.

  “That’s the Lost Fisherman memorial and his name’s there among many others,” said Marla, and at her words I recalled the most recent accident: four men and their boat, the Helen Marie, demolished when a fuel tank exploded. A pang of sorrow went through me as I remembered; that stone pyramid represented a lot of broken hearts.

  “There was a birthday party here that night,” Marla said suddenly. “The night when Muldoon and his lady friend were in here, I mean. I’d left early, but I heard about it later.”

  I felt Ellie’s ears prick up as she pretended to drink some spiked coffee; she took her boat-captaining duties seriously.

  “What was there to hear about?” she asked.

  Marla set her own cup down empty. “The interesting part was when Muldoon tried to deck Wally for saying hello to the woman.”

  “Ha!” said Ellie. In this part of the world, throwing a punch at a local fisherman was a fine way to get decked. Still, something didn’t add up: