Wedding Day Murder

by Leslie Meier

  “Good,” said Bill.

  “Send him home too tired to eat,” added Lucy.

  “I’ll do my best,” said Geoff. “I haven’t forgotten some of the stunts I pulled when I was his age. It’s amazing no one got hurt. Why, I remember one night when I went over to Gideon with some other guys to buy booze. The idea was nobody’d recognize us over there so they’d sell it to us, and then we’d bring it back and have a party at Chuck Swift’s house because his folks were away. Problem was, we started drinking on the drive home and got so drunk we never did find our way back. We ended up parking and sleeping it off in the woods. I caught hell for that one.”

  “Nowadays, you’d probably end up spending the night in jail,” said Bill. “They’ve really cracked down on underage drinking.”

  “Good thing, too,” said Geoff. “I saw Chuck at the harbor. He’s pulling lobsters for a living and he’s married to Carrie Eldredge. They have a little girl.”

  “I typed up the birth announcement for the paper,” said Lucy. “One of the few we get these days. Most of the kids leave as soon as they graduate from high school.”

  “Frank Wiggins is still here,” said Geoff. “He’s the harbormaster.”

  Lucy rolled her eyes. “He’s one of the ones who should have left, if you ask me.”

  “What’s the matter with Frank?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough. He’s not making a lot of friends in his new job.”

  “Really? He seems like a natural for the job. Wasn’t his dad the harbormaster?”

  “Sure was. And his uncle’s chairman of the waterways commission,” said Lucy.

  “And the rest of the members are his cousins,” added Bill.

  Geoff laughed. “Small-town politics. Some things never change.”

  “I love Tinker’s Cove,” said Lucy. “It’s been a great place to raise a family, but I hope our kids will follow your example and move on to a place with more opportunities.”

  “I dunno,” said Geoff. “I’m really not a city person. It’s awfully nice to be back. Besides, with computers and high-tech communication, people can live just about anywhere and have great careers.”

  “Talk about great careers—have you heard about Sidra Finch?”

  “What about Sidra?” asked Geoff in a carefully casual voice.

  “She works on the Norah Hemmings TV talk show. She’s a producer in New York.” Lucy remembered something. “Didn’t I hear you two were dating?”

  “I saw her once or twice,” admitted Geoff.

  “Then I guess you know she’s engaged.”

  For a moment, Geoff looked as if he’d been punched in the stomach, but he quickly recovered. “How wonderful for her,” he said.

  “Her folks are really excited,” continued Lucy, who counted Sidra’s mother, Sue Finch, among her closest friends. “Especially Sue, of course. They haven’t even set the date yet, but she’s already planning the wedding.”

  “Is that so?” asked Geoff, standing and walking over to the railing, where he stood for a moment, apparently admiring the view. “I’d love to stay longer, but I’ve really got to go. Thanks for everything.”

  “Anytime,” said Bill.

  Together, he and Lucy walked Geoff to the driveway, where they saw him off in his aged Toyota.

  “He’s a great guy,” said Bill. “I hope Toby doesn’t let him down.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Lucy.

  “Oh, kids today, they’re not used to physical work. Don’t have much backbone.”

  “Toby’s a hard worker. Besides, this job is bound to be interesting. It’s a research project, after all.”

  Bill looked at her. “Sometimes I don’t know what’s come over you,” he said, scratching his beard. “When we moved here, we agreed we wanted to live simply. Remember? We were going to work with our hands and be as self-sufficient as possible? Now, it seems all you can talk about is sending the kids to college so they can have fancy jobs in some crowded, filthy city.”

  “Don’t you want them to go to college?” Lucy was shocked.

  “Sure. But you seem to have the idea that they’ve got to have big, important careers. There’s nothing wrong with living right here, you know. Working with their hands or something.” He looked down and started working at the gravel in the driveway with his foot.

  “I never said there was anything wrong with working with their hands.”

  “You want them to do better than us. To make more money. You think I’m a failure.”

  Lucy was stunned. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “That’s not true. You’re an artist—just look at the gazebo. I wish I had a tenth of your skill and talent.”

  “Skill and talent don’t count for much when there isn’t any work.”

  “You lost one job, Bill, and that was last fall. You’re working now; you’ve got contracts lined up for the future. We’re doing fine financially.”

  “Then why are you working full-time?”

  “The day camp is expensive. . . .”

  “Why do they have to go to day camp? Why can’t they spend the summer swimming and boating and picking berries, the way they used to?”

  “I wish they could,” said Lucy, “but times have changed. All their friends are at day camp and that’s where they want to go, too.”

  “I don’t like it,” said Bill, shaking his head. “We’ve lost something here and it’s really too bad.”

  Lucy stood in the driveway, watching as he walked back to the house. His step lacked its usual spring. He wasn’t getting any younger, she thought. His temples were touched with gray and his beard, once a rich chestnut color, was now grizzled. Maybe he was feeling his age. Maybe it was that male midlife crisis she’d heard so much about. Whatever it was, she hoped he’d get over it soon. She started to follow him, then remembered the dirty dishes in the gazebo and went on around the house.

  It was still too early for the sunset, but a few pink clouds were hovering above the dark, shadowy mountains. Lucy paused to admire the view, then started stacking the dishes on the tray. She had finished and was starting back to the house, carrying the tray, when she remembered the pie.

  They’d only eaten three pieces; there was at least half a pie left. But where was it? Not on the table where she’d left it, that was for sure. Noticing movement out of the corner of her eye, Lucy turned and caught a glimpse of Kudo’s bushy tail as he disappeared into the woods. On the ground a few feet away was the empty pie plate.

  “Bad dog!” she yelled, venting her frustration. If she were keeping score, she thought, she’d have to admit she was on a losing streak. In just one evening she’d failed to hold the family together for one complete meal; she’d tactlessly questioned her son’s boss about his love life; she’d apparently alienated her husband; and it was only a matter of time before she had a very sick dog on her hands. If this kept up, it was going to be a very long summer.

  Chapter Two

  As Lucy zipped up the last of five lunch bags, she wondered why they called it summer vacation. It certainly wasn’t a vacation for her. This morning, for instance, she had pulled on her khaki slacks but hadn’t yet had time to take off her nightgown before Kudo began demanding to be let out. Considering the amount of pie he’d devoured the night before, she didn’t think she ought to make him wait. Then she’d been caught up in a whirlwind of small tasks: making lunches, finding missing articles of clothing, coaxing Elizabeth and Toby out of bed.

  Come to think of it, Sara and Zoe were the only ones enjoying a vacation this summer, whiling away the long days at day camp. But as far as Lucy could tell, day camp was turning out to be a lot like school, except for the fact that public school was free and day camp cost money and didn’t provide bus service. The way things were turning out, she was spending an awful lot of time chauffeuring the kids around.

  Toby and Elizabeth both had driver’s licenses, but they didn’t have cars of their own. Every penny that they earned from their summer jobs was neede
d for college expenses. Lucy had the Subaru wagon and Bill had a pickup truck, and they both needed their vehicles for work. There was no such thing as public transportation in Tinker’s Cove, so that meant the kids had to be driven to their summer jobs. Lucy glanced at the Regulator clock on the wall, took a quick slug of coffee, and dashed upstairs. She had five minutes to finish getting dressed before she had to be on the road.

  First stop was the Friends of Animals day camp, then on to the Queen Victoria Inn, where Elizabeth would be ten minutes late for work.

  “Mom, I really don’t see why you can’t drop me off first—Mrs. McNaughton always gives me a hard time about being late.”

  “Because it would mean backtracking five or six miles, that’s why. Listen, Elizabeth, I can’t be in two places at once. You have to be at work at eight; the girls have to be at camp at eight. It’s as simple as that. Just explain the situation to Mrs. McNaughton. I’m sure she’ll understand.”

  “You don’t know what she’s like, Mom.”

  “I’ll give her a call and explain.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes widened in horror. “Don’t do that—promise?”

  Lucy pulled up in front of the inn and braked. “Whatever.”

  Elizabeth got out of the car, slammed the door, and ran up the porch stairs. Lucy drove on.

  “What was that all about?” she asked Toby, who was slumped beside her in the front passenger seat.

  “Whuh?” he grunted, rubbing his eyes.

  “How do you do it? How can you sleep in the car with the radio going and your sisters talking?”

  “I dunno.”

  Lucy shook her head. She remembered touring the Coburn University campus with Toby and reading the words inscribed on the library doors: “You are the hope of the world.”

  The world, she decided as she pulled up at the wharf, was in trouble.

  “Have a nice day,” she told him as he unfolded himself from the car.

  “Yo,” he said.

  Lucy sped off across the parking lot and stopped at the corner of Sea Street. It was then she noticed his lunch, forgotten on the car floor. Sighing, she made an illegal U-turn and headed back to the waterfront. Toby was gone, of course, so she had to park the car in order to look for him.

  Walking back across the parking lot to the wharf, lunch bag in hand, she enjoyed the warmth of the sun on her face. It was a beautiful summer day, but she’d been too busy to notice. She sniffed the distinctive scent of saltwater, fish, and diesel fuel and resolved to slow down and smell the . . . well, maybe not roses, but it was still summer and she was lucky enough to live in one of the most beautiful spots in the whole world. She stopped in her tracks and looked out across the little round harbor, where the colorfully painted boats bobbed at anchor, to the pine-covered hills on the other side. There was absolutely nothing lovelier, she decided, than the dark-green color of a pine tree meeting a clear blue sky; there was no sound wilder and freer than the call of a soaring herring gull.

  Lucy was about to step onto the town dock when she noticed the “Authorized Persons Only” sign and paused. This was something new, and she didn’t like it. She’d never had to get authorization to go on the dock before. She’d always been able to just walk out and get to whatever boat she needed to get to. And who exactly was she supposed to get authorization from? The sign went on to say “By Order of the Harbormaster.” Was she actually supposed to go all the way over to the harbormaster’s shack and get permission to walk out a few yards on the dock to Geoff’s boat, the Lady L?

  She didn’t think so. Squaring her shoulders, she marched right past the sign and on out to the Lady L’s berth. There she saw Toby bent over the engine.

  “You forgot your lunch,” she yelled.

  Toby looked up, eyebrows raised.

  “Your lunch.” She held up the bag.

  Recognition dawned.

  “Thanks, Mom.” He straightened up and leaned across the small gap between boat and dock, taking the bag from her.

  “So this is the boat,” she said, taking in the Lady L from stem to stern. It was just an ordinary Down East lobster boat with a three-sided wheelhouse and a winch for hauling lobster pots up from the sea bottom. “Somehow I thought a research boat would be bigger or something.”

  “Nope. It’s just for catching lobsters. Geoff has a lab on shore, at the college.”

  “Oh. Makes sense.”

  “Yeah. Well, thanks, Mom. I’ve got to get back to work.”

  “Right. See you tonight.”

  She started back toward the parking lot, taking care on the floating walkway that rocked under her feet, when she heard voices. She looked up and saw Geoff and Frank Wiggins, the harbormaster, standing at the end of the walkway by the new sign. She raised her arm and waved, but the two men didn’t notice her. They were too busy arguing.

  “That’s ridiculous,” she heard Geoff say in an exasperated tone. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Listen here,” said Wiggins, pausing to spit in the water, “you may be some big shot in the city, but around here I’m the boss.”

  He blinked a few times for emphasis and twisted his face into a leer.

  As she approached, Lucy couldn’t help thinking that Wiggins was a remarkably odd-looking man. He was stick-thin and his blue harbormaster’s uniform hung on his boney, hunched frame. His overlarge head was perched on a skinny neck, where his Adam’s apple bulged out. It seemed to have a life of its own, twitching and bobbing about in his poorly shaved neck. His face would have been unremarkable enough, except for the fact that he had decided to embellish it with a luxurious gunfighter’s mustache, which drooped several inches down on either side of his mouth. The mustache did help to cover his discolored and uneven teeth, but it was hardly a thing of beauty in its own right, stained as it was with nicotine and coffee and whatever the man had eaten at his last meal.

  “What I say goes,” he asserted, thrusting his face at Geoff’s. “Got that?”

  Geoff sighed in frustration. “I’m trying to help you out here, you know. I’m not the only one who’s affected by this. When the other guys hear about this you’re going to have a mutiny on your hands.”

  Lucy’s reportorial nose sniffed a story. “Nice day,” she said, and both men turned toward her. Geoff took the opportunity to get back to his boat, giving her a nod as he passed her on the walkway.

  “What’s he all steamed up about?” she asked Wiggins.

  “That’s between him and me,” said Wiggins, turning his red-rimmed eyes on Lucy. “Didn’t you see the sign?”

  “I was just taking my son his lunch,” she explained. “He’s on the Lady L with Geoff.”

  “That happens again, you come to me first. You gotta get authorization, see?”

  From the sound issuing from his throat, Lucy was pretty sure he was going to spit again.

  “I’ll do that,” she said, hurrying past him.

  When she arrived at the Pennysaver office, no one else was there. No wonder, she thought, it was only eight-thirty. Phyllis, the part-time receptionist, usually arrived around nine, and Ted, the publisher and editorin-chief, rarely made it in before nine-thirty. Lucy got the coffeepot started and booted up her computer. As she reviewed her story budget for the week, she decided to ask Ted if he’d be interested in having her write a story about Geoff’s lobster research project. He was always encouraging her to come up with “in-depth” stories, and the lobster project seemed ideal, especially considering the impact lobsters had on the local economy.

  She poured herself a cup of coffee and sipped it, wondering what Geoff and Wiggins had been arguing about. Considering Wiggins’s penchant for thinking up new regulations and posting them on signs which he promptly nailed up on the nearest piling, it could be almost anything. Pretty soon, she thought with a little chuckle, he’d run out of pilings.

  The bell on the door jangled and Lucy looked up. It was Phyllis.

  “Mm-mmm, that coffee sure does smell good,” she said, dropping
her purse and lunch on the counter. “It’s sure nice coming in and having the coffee all made. I’m going to get spoiled.”

  Making the morning pot of coffee had been one of Phyllis’s duties before Lucy started working full-time.

  “Better not get used to it,” said Lucy. “It’s just for the summer.”

  “Famous last words,” said Phyllis.

  Lucy smiled and answered the phone. It was Howard White, chairman of the board of selectmen.

  “Hi, Howard,” said Lucy, picturing his sparse white hair and his long, distinguished face. “What can I do for you?”

  “Now, Lucy,” he began, clearing his throat. “I know that your reporting is usually very reliable, but I noticed an error in last week’s paper. It was in your story about the cemetery commission.”

  “Really?” Lucy was puzzled. The cemetery commission was hardly controversial, and their last meeting had been typically uneventful.

  “I believe you quoted Henry Abbott at some length. . . .”

  “Well, he is the chairman, isn’t he?”

  “He was chairman.” White paused. “He’s dead.”

  “What? He was there. I saw him myself.”

  “You saw Bill Cranshaw, the new chairman. He took the job after Henry died last month.”

  “I got his name from the town report,” said Lucy, feeling her face redden. “It’s only a few months old. I never dreamed . . .”

  “It’s quite understandable. Henry’s death was quite sudden and unexpected. You will write a correction, won’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  Lucy hung up the phone and dropped her head on her desk, groaning.

  “Correction?” inquired Phyllis.

  Lucy nodded.

  “Ted won’t be happy.”

  “Don’t I know it,” said Lucy, recalling the last time she’d had to write a correction. That time she’d misstated a vote of the school board and Tim had insisted she apologize personally to all five board members. She could still taste the crow she’d eaten that day.

  The phone rang again and Lucy reached for it.