Murder Most Maine

by Karen MacInerney

  “Good,” he said.

  The kitchen was silent except for the bubble of the water as I put the rest of the lobsters into the big pot and then dropped the corn into the smaller pot next to it. When everything was in, I set the timer and turned to look at him. “Why did they arrest you?” I asked.

  “They found sawdust in Boots’ room,” he said. “Caterina put it there. She knew I was a suspect—she was trying to frame me.”

  I nodded, then took a deep breath. “I need to know, John,” I said, focusing on his deep green eyes, his familiar, weathered face. “If you want to be with Vanessa, that’s fine. But tell me the truth.”

  “I want to be with you, Natalie,” he said, and I could hear the urgency in his voice. It pulled at something deep inside me.

  “I want to believe you,” I said. “But I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’ve seen you together. You hugged her, in the doorway of your house that night—when you argued with Tom.” I looked away from him, at the grain of the wood on the floor. “And you called her ‘sweetheart’,” I whispered.

  He let out a long, deep breath. “Many years ago, we had a summer together. It was fun, but … we’re not right for each other. We both know that.”

  I said nothing.

  “After Dirk was found dead, Vanessa came to me with a problem—she asked me not to say anything about it.”

  “What problem?”

  “Nat,” he said. “If I tell you, you must promise not to breathe a word.”

  I swallowed. What could it be? Everyone knew she was having an affair with Tom. “Promise,” I said.

  “Vanessa is a bulimic,” he said. “Her entire business is built on her ability to stay thin—and she’s suffered from an eating disorder for years.”

  I blinked. “She eats and throws up?”

  He nodded. “After every meal. Sometimes she takes laxatives, too—but she left them home on this trip. She’s taking in almost no calories, and she’s destroying her throat—that’s why her voice is so rough sometimes. From the acid.”

  “You’re kidding me,” I said, trying to grasp the fact that beautiful, totally together Vanessa was actually spiraling out of control.

  “She was going to try and get over it on this retreat, but she’s been stealing food since she got here. She’s so distraught she’s almost suicidal.”

  I thought of the disappearing chocolate, the missing cookie dough—and the shifty look on Vanessa’s face when she’d come into the kitchen the other day. “I never would have known,” I said, leaning against the counter.

  “She was struggling when she got here. She was getting so much attention for her program—book deals, attention from Oprah—and the whole thing was based on a lie. It was getting harder and harder for her to keep things together. Then, when Dirk died, she kind of went over the edge.”

  “So you’ve been counseling her,” I said. “All those times she went to visit you, you were counseling her.”

  He shrugged. “She didn’t have anyone else to talk to. And then there was this business with Tom, and that reporter following her around and asking all kinds of questions, on top of everything else. I wanted to tell you, but I’d promised not to.”

  “Why tell me now, then?” I asked.

  He stood up and closed the distance between us. “Because I was afraid if I didn’t, I’d lose you,” he whispered.

  As the corn bobbed in the pot next to me, he leaned down and kissed me gently. Warmth spread through me at his touch, and for the first time in days, I felt myself truly relax.

  When we came up for air, I said, just to be sure, “There’s really nothing between you and Vanessa?”

  “No,” he said. Then he reached for the pocket of his shirt. “I was planning on waiting awhile to do this, but I think this may be the time.” As I watched, he pulled a little box out of his shirt; then he dropped to one knee in front of me and lifted the lid.

  A small diamond glinted up at me from a bed of dark blue velvet.

  “Natalie Barnes,” he said, his voice husky with emotion, “will you marry me?”

  At that moment, Gwen pushed through the kitchen door. She took in the scene and gasped—then, blushing, hurried back the way she had come.

  I looked down at the man kneeling before me, his dark blond hair, the smile lines on the corners of his deep green eyes, the hopeful look in his face. I believed what he had told me about Vanessa; there had been no lie in his eyes.

  And he had just asked me to marry him.

  “I know it’s kind of sudden,” he said, the hope in his eyes starting to dim a little. “If you want to think about it …”

  I thought of Vanessa, and the way he’d distanced himself from me after her arrival. I shook my head slightly, just thinking of it.

  He seemed to deflate. “No?”

  “No … it’s not that. It’s just …”

  “You want to think about it?” he asked, looking hopeful again.

  “Yes,” I said, staring down at the ring he held in his hand. A small stone winked up at me from an antique silver setting.

  “It was my grandmother’s,” he said.

  I closed his hand around it and kissed him on the forehead. As much as I was yearning to say “yes,” I couldn’t. Not yet.

  “Thank you for asking,” I said. “Give me a little bit of time, okay?”

  “As long as you need,” he said. He rose to his feet, touching my chin gently, then tilted my head toward him and kissed me. I don’t know how long the timer had been going off when he finally let go. And to be honest?

  I really didn’t care.

  Four months later …

  As I poured a creamy tarragon dressing—full fat, thank goodness—into a bowl filled with chopped onion, walnuts, and chunks of cooked chicken breast, I glanced out at the maple tree near the kitchen window and realized that the leaves had started to turn dusky red at the edges. It seemed that summer had begun just a few weeks ago. Now, too soon, it was almost over.

  I had just finished scraping out the measuring cup when John came up and wrapped his arms around me, smelling of fresh wood from the boats he’d been carving down in his workshop. My heart, as always, skipped a few beats at his touch. “What are we cooking for dinner?” he asked, kissing the top of my head.

  “I picked up some crab on the mainland yesterday,” I said. “How do you feel about making crab cakes?”

  “Sounds good to me,” he said. “With a little remoulade sauce … delicious. How many guests?”

  “Ten for lunch,” I said. “If I’d known how good that lighthouse renovation would be for business, I would have pushed for it last year.” The full meal service had helped too, I knew. Not long after our engagement—and after everything on the island had settled down—John and I had decided to turn the inn into a full-service establishment. I handled breakfast and lunches, and John, who was an excellent cook, took care of most of the dinners. And despite my fears that the murders at the inn would quash bookings, the opening of the lighthouse—and the still-unsolved mystery of the disappearing keeper and the skeleton in the hidden room beneath it—had caused a spike in tourism on Cranberry Island.

  “Megan and Greg will be here this weekend, right?” he asked.

  “On their honeymoon,” I said. Evidently the two had continued to hit it off after leaving the island in the spring, and had recently celebrated their nuptials. Carissa was still warming up to the idea, but she was starting to come out of her shell—and even drop a few pounds—now that her biological father was out of the mix. Apparently Megan’s ex-husband hadn’t just been having affairs, but had been emotionally abusing both Megan and Carissa for years. “I hope Carissa warms up to the idea of a stepfather.”

  “She’ll be here the second half of the week,” John said, “so I guess we’ll see how it’s going.”

  “I still can’t believe all that happened just a few months ago,” I said.

  “Things have changed a lot since
then.”

  He was right. Not only had John and I gotten engaged—and taken the inn to a whole new level—but Vanessa had come clean about her bulimia and checked herself into a treatment facility.

  It wasn’t good news for Elizabeth, who had been planning to break the news—and a bunch of other dirt on the program—in a big article for the Boston Globe. Fortunately for Elizabeth, though, she instead got to do an exclusive on the murders at the inn, along with Dirk’s shady past, and now she was a regular contributor.

  To Vanessa’s surprise, the announcement of her eating disorder had been more of a boost than a detriment—her story had landed her a six-figure book deal and guaranteed her a spot on several of the major morning talk shows. I’d seen an article about her in a magazine a few weeks ago, at the Somesville library. She was a bit plumper than the Vanessa I remembered, but just as beautiful—if not more.

  I, on the other hand, had somehow managed to lose a few pounds over the hectic summer. Not enough to appease my doctor, of course, but since my numbers were in better shape, he couldn’t complain too much. I hadn’t been very successful cutting back my food intake, but the long walks John and I had been taking every evening after dinner had helped.

  “It’s different without Gwen here, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. Gwen had gone back to UCLA to finish her degree just two weeks ago, and although she’d be back to the inn—and to spend time with Adam—next summer, I already missed her. As did Adam, who was evidently running up a huge phone bill calling her twice a day.

  “I ran into Adam yesterday, down by the pier. He was still mooning over Gwen—but when I managed to get him off the subject of your lovely niece, he told me Tom seems to be coming around.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” I said. Now that Vanessa was off the scene, Tom and Lorraine were working hard to put their marriage back together, and they seemed to be making progress. I’d seen the entire family down at the store the other day; Tom had regained his customary twinkle, and even Lorraine had had a bit of a smile. They weren’t out of the woods yet, but they were headed in the right direction.

  I sighed, leaning back into John’s arms. “All’s well, that ends well. But duty still calls; I need to finish getting lunch ready,” I said, although I was reluctant to separate from my handsome fiancé. The term was still an exciting one, even though I’d been using it for three months. We hadn’t set an official date yet, but were thinking about tying the knot next spring.

  “You can’t spare just a few minutes?” he asked, nuzzling my neck in a way that made me forget all about the ten guests who would be heading to the dining room expecting lunch in just a few minutes.

  I was about to surrender when someone hammered at the kitchen door. We both jumped; John released me, and I turned to see who was knocking. It was the town historian, her eyes bright with excitement.

  “Hi, Matilda,” I said, opening the door. She burst in, clutching a letter in her hand.

  “Remember my friend up in Yarmouth?” she asked breathlessly.

  I stared at her blankly.

  “You know,” she said. “The one who was going to look into the shipping records for me?”

  “Oh, yeah.” I focused on the letter. “Did you hear from her?”

  “She just sent me the documentation,” she said, showing me the pages, which were photocopies of what appeared to be a log of sorts, with archaic, faded handwriting. I squinted at the page, but it was hard to make out. “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s hard to read, I know. But apparently there was a boat that ported in Halifax several times, up from Maine, during the 1830s and 1840s. It was called the Stalwart.”

  “And?” I asked.

  “Well,” she said. “The last time it docked was 1841, a few weeks after Harry disappeared. And do you know who was on it?” she asked, eyes sparkling.

  “Who?”

  “Three young African-Americans and a man named Harold Atherton.”

  “Harry,” I said.

  She nodded. “She’s spent the last few months trying to track him down—found out that he bought a house in a small town called Lubeck.”

  “So he didn’t die that night. He just escaped.”

  “And he married,” she said, flipping through to another copy of an official document, dated 1842. “Here’s the certificate. A woman named Emma Jones. And the church records show that they baptized a girl named Sadie Atherton, age eight, six months later.”

  “You’re kidding me,” I said.

  “There’s no way to be sure, but she probably took the surname ‘Jones’ to fit in. And here’s the best part. The family stayed in Lubeck—one of the only families with African-American blood in the area. My friend went and talked with them, to ask them if they had heard any stories about their heritage. And you’re never going to believe it … but they did!” she said, cheeks flushed pink.

  “How did you find all this out?”

  “My friend was so intrigued by the story that she tracked down Harry’s great-great-granddaughter … she’s in her late eighties now, but she remembers a story that her mother used to tell her, about how one of her ancestors escaped a black slave-catcher—that he’d almost caught them, but that they’d gotten away just in time.”

  “Did they say where it happened?”

  “She didn’t say it was in Maine, but there was a story about a lighthouse—how they escaped in the middle of the night, in a storm, in a boat that almost went aground … and barely made it to freedom.”

  “What about the other slave? James?”

  “Apparently, he headed west to find work after they landed in Nova Scotia. The family doesn’t know what his name was, and I haven’t managed to track him down yet, but I’m working on it. I thought he might have been Sadie’s biological father, but the way the family story goes, they weren’t able to get her father out; he was sold to another plantation before they could make their escape.”

  “How sad,” I said, feeling my heart tug for the little family. “Still, at least Emma and Sadie made a life for themselves.” I thought about the drama that had happened so many years ago—and the still unsolved mystery on Cranberry Island. “Nothing about the body in the lighthouse, though?”

  “No,” she conceded. “But if you’d murdered someone—even if it was a slave-catcher—would you pass that information on to your children?” she asked.

  “True,” I said.

  “The shipping records show them landing in Halifax a few weeks after Harry disappeared—and his name was on the register, along with three unnamed African-Americans. I think we can put the rest together.”

  “So?”

  “The slave-catcher was chasing three slaves. After showing up on Cranberry Island looking for them, he was never seen again.”

  “You mean?”

  “One of them must have killed him and hidden him in the room below the lighthouse, and then they all fled north. They must have been in a hurry if they left the doll and the log.”

  “And the manacles,” I said, shuddering.

  “Why would Harry leave?” John asked.

  “Well, there was a murdered man on the premises, of course,” Matilda said. “He could easily have left because of that. Or maybe it was because he fell in love with Emma,” she said. “After all, records indicate they married. Also, if Otis Ball had found the way station, there was a risk that Harry’s secret was out. He could be punished for harboring runaways, you know—in addition to murder, if they found the body.”

  My eyes strayed to the window—and the lighthouse in the distance. I thought of the mystery that had lain hidden under the floorboards for more than a century. “We never will know exactly what happened, will we?”

  “Not for sure,” she said. “But I think we know as much as we can.”

  “What are you going to do with the doll?” I asked, thinking of the well-loved little calico figure with the crudely drawn face.

  “We’re going to set up a little exhib
it at the lighthouse,” she said. “As one of the northernmost way stations on the Underground Railroad. We’ll tell what we know of the story of Harry and Emma.”

  “Including the murder?”

  She smiled coyly. “That, I’m afraid, we’ll have to leave unsolved. Although we will report the finding of the body in the lighthouse. Maybe some folks will put it together … but I don’t want to cause trouble for the family.”

  A shiver ran down my back at the thought of those three people hiding in that underground room, over a hundred and fifty years ago. And the man who had died there. “Did you ever find out anything else about Hatley Cove?” I asked, thinking of the name that had come up several times in the log.

  “I found one reference to it being on the west side of the island,” she said, “but nothing exact.”

  “Smuggler’s Cove is on the west side of the island,” John said. He was right; the small, treacherous cove was carved into the cliffs not far from the inn.

  “Again, we’ll probably never know,” Matilda said. “But it’s a good bet that’s where some of the slaves hid, at least some of the time.”

  Another mystery that would never truly be solved, I thought. I’d never found out the source of the light that had flashed the night before Dirk died, either, I realized. Some things, I supposed, would always remain like that; half-hidden, lost in the mists of time.

  At least we knew what had become of Harry and the fugitive slaves, even if we would never know for sure who had killed the slave-catcher.

  I thought of Caterina, who had murdered the man who had killed her daughter. A mother’s love can be an incredibly powerful force—women will often sacrifice anything for their children’s sake. Had the little girl’s mother killed her would-be captor rather than see her daughter returned to slavery?

  Only the little doll we had found would be able to tell us, I realized. And she would be forever mute.

  Matilda sighed. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? The stories that have happened on this island.”

  John looked up at the clock, then at me. “Lunch is in twenty minutes, Nat. Why don’t I set the table?”