Sealed Off

by Barbara Ross

  I climbed the front steps and rang the bell. After a few moments Pru opened the door. She wore a shapeless dress. Her hair was hidden by a kerchief and she had deep circles under her eyes. “Julia.”

  “Hello, Pru. I wonder if I could come in.”

  “Sure.” She gave me a curious look, backed up so I could enter, and led me to her big new kitchen.

  The living room, dining room, and kitchen were spotless. The other lobstermen’s wives would never have left her with a mess to clean up. “What can I do for you?” She sat at the dining room table in front of the sliding doors to the deck.

  She didn’t offer me anything to drink, but I could hardly blame her. She looked terrible. I was the intruder. I sat across from her. “Are the kids here?”

  “I sent them to my sister’s. I hope their cousins can distract them. They were getting pretty antsy sitting around here and I couldn’t cope.” She pulled a cigarette from an open pack but didn’t light it. “I quit seven years ago. The urge was gone until all this happened.” She ran her fingers down the length of the cigarette. “I pull them out and stare at them.”

  “Don’t do it.” I meant it as a caution, not a nag.

  She seemed to take it the right way and returned the cigarette to the pack. “I couldn’t stand the kids bugging me about it. That’s what got me to quit the last time. What do you want?”

  It was a reasonable question. She knew I wasn’t there to offer my support. She had closer friends and a sister for that. “I want to ask some questions about Jason.”

  “You’re helping that Terry Durand.” She said it as if it was a fact, not an accusation.

  “Trying to.”

  “The police asked me directly if I thought he did it. They worked up to it. Did Jason have any enemies and so on. I didn’t name Terry, but they already knew about him and they asked me.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “I said I didn’t know. That Terry and Jason had history. And, of course, Terry had been in prison. He’d already shot someone. How much more of a step is killing a person?”

  “You knew Terry and Jason were friends.”

  “Of course. Buddies. When I first took up with Jason they were hanging around together and for years after that. I never liked Terry. I thought he was bad for Jason. Got him into trouble.”

  “I heard they broke into summer places.”

  Pru worked a hand over the kerchief on her head. “If they did, I never saw any of what they got.”

  “Do you know why they fell out?”

  “Jason was a married man with kids. He needed to grow up and take responsibility. Terry went to prison. Not much in common.” Almost exactly what Howland had said.

  “And when Terry got out?”

  “I’m sure it was awkward for both of them. And then you went and hired Terry for the same job on the same tiny island.”

  I waited a moment before I added, “And they both seemed to have a weird thing for Emmy.”

  “Two middle-aged men showing an interest in a pretty young woman? That is not a ‘weird thing’ in my experience.” Pru took the cigarette out of the pack again. I thought she might light it, but she didn’t.

  I smiled. “No, I guess it’s not weird. You and Jason had been divorced for a while, but Jason’s flirtation with Emmy did seem to bother you.”

  “Flirtation? Is that what we’re calling it now? Believe me, no part of our divorce was more of a relief to me than that Jason’s sex life was no longer my concern. That man sent me to Hades and back for more than a decade. Not only wasn’t he faithful, he wasn’t a good provider. Or at least I can say little of what he made found its way home. Perhaps that’s more accurate. But the last two years, things had really changed. He fixed up the house, bought me a car. It wasn’t completely unselfish, mind you. He said he wanted the best for his kids, but he still owns half the house. Any improvement he’ll eventually get out of it.” She stopped dead. “Owned. He still owned half the house.” She paused. “And then that woman thought she was going to waltz in with her two brats and take what was owed me. Just because Jason started making real money after our divorce doesn’t mean I didn’t deserve it. I earned every penny that came my way.”

  Emmy had said her relationship with Jason was casual. Pru thought Emmy and her kids were going to live off Jason’s money. “Emmy told me she and Jason weren’t serious. They went out a couple of times,” I said.

  “Hah!” Pru snorted. “That’s a lie. She was meeting him secretly on his boat. Sleeping with him there. There was plenty of hanky-panky on the Money Honey, I can tell you.”

  “You saw them?”

  “No, no, no. After the storm last week I wanted to check on the boat. I knew Jason had made it back to port in the nick of time, because he had the grace to call and tell me and the kids he was okay. After the storm, I called him and called him. No answer, which wasn’t unusual. Another reason I’m glad he’s not my responsibility anymore. You’d think a man with kids . . . Well, never mind. He never did call me back, so I went down to the marina to check things out for myself.”

  “Does Jason live aboard the Money Honey?” It was a beautiful boat, but it was a lobster boat and the marina prohibited liveaboards.

  “Good heavens, no. He has a place in town. But like Jason owns half this house, I own half the Money Honey. I was checking on my investment.”

  “Was Emmy there?” That’s where this tale was going, right? The discovery of Jason and Emmy in flagrante delicto.

  “No, but her stuff was. Jason wasn’t there, so I went aboard to investigate. In the cabin I found a little carryall with her stuff in it. Intimate stuff. Right out on the bunk for anybody to see.”

  The “anybody” Pru spoke of would have had to look pretty hard to have found Emmy’s undies. Boats like the Money Honey were working boats, not cabin cruisers. The area belowdecks on most lobster boats was used for storage with maybe a bunk for the occasional overnight run. The quarters were cramped, uncomfortable, and rarely had windows, so anything inside wouldn’t have been visible from the dock. Pru hadn’t been inspecting the Money Honey for damage. She’d been doing some pretty deep snooping.

  “Are you sure the carryall was Emmy’s?”

  “Who else’s would it have been?”

  “You said yourself your ex-husband was a dog. You can imagine there might be more than one woman. Emmy told me she couldn’t rule it out. And it happened during your marriage.”

  “They were hers.” Pru spoke through gritted teeth. “Cheap crap, too.”

  I doubted Pru was in a position to call Emmy’s underthings crap. I would have bet a million dollars that Pru’s unmentionables came from Reny’s, Maine’s deep discount chain. But she did sound absolutely positive about Jason and Emmy.

  “What did you do when you found the stuff?” I asked.

  “Forbid my kids from going to the marina for one thing. I didn’t want to be responsible for whatever they would see if they looked for their dad on his boat. And then, I gave Jason a piece of my mind.”

  I remembered how on the Saturday of the clambake I’d thought Pru was more aggressive with Jason than usual. I’d had the sense she was scolding him.

  “I told him what I told you,” Pru continued. “I was not having him divert money to that woman. He told me she was nothing to him. He was ready to end it. That’s what I think happened. She thought she was set for life. He broke up with her. Emmy Bailey killed him.”

  This was too much. According to Emmy, they had hardly begun a relationship. “She strangled him with her bare hands and hid him under the woodpile?” I challenged her. It was more than fifty yards from where the police thought Jason was murdered to where his body was found. “If Emmy weighs a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet I’d be surprised.” But didn’t that same logic eliminate Pru as the killer?

  “That’s where Terry Durand comes into it. He has such a weird fixation with her. He’d do anything she asked him to.” Pru slapped her hands down on the tab
le, triumphant.

  The conversation had started off badly and then veered to terrible. “Did you tell the police this story?” I hoped not.

  “I didn’t think of it until just now while we were talking. But maybe I will.”

  Great. This was all Terry needed, an alleged accomplice. All I’d accomplished was to give Pru the idea to accuse him. I turned the conversation to the reason I’d originally come. “Where did Jason’s money come from?”

  “Lobstering. You know as well as I do it didn’t come from the Snowden Family Clambake.” She seemed surprised, not by my boldness in asking the question, but by my need to.

  “But how all of a sudden, after all these years?”

  “Landings have been good these last seasons. And the new boat made a huge difference. Once he had it, it was like he was pulling gold bars out of the sea.”

  Did Pru truly believe what she was telling me, or had she somehow convinced herself it was true because she loved the newfound family fortune and wanted to keep it coming? Or was she flat-out lying? I couldn’t tell. “But where did the money for the boat come from in the first place?” I persisted. “Did your parents buy it?”

  She guffawed, a real belly laugh this time. “Who in the world told you that? My mom and dad live on Social Security over in Waldoboro. I send them money.”

  “I heard something about Jason’s dad.”

  “Dead for ten years and worthless when he was alive.”

  “Then where did the money for the boat come from?” I wasn’t going to give up.

  “Jason made it lobstering. Hid it from me all those years, even during the divorce. But he made it right in the end.”

  “Did he have life insurance for the kids?”

  “Not that I’ve heard.”

  I wasn’t surprised. Most lobstermen were fatalists. That’s why they didn’t learn to swim. But that also meant Pru was worse off with Jason dead. I didn’t think that would have escaped her, no matter how angry she was.

  “When the cops asked you if Jason had enemies, what did you tell them?”

  She pulled another cigarette back out of the pack. She’d worn the previous one down to its component parts. A pile of unburned tobacco, a curl of white paper, and a filter sat on the dining room table. “I told ’em there might be some husbands around town carrying a grudge because my ex-husband had seduced their wives, but I couldn’t think why now or why on Morrow Island.”

  Those were the questions. Why now and why on Morrow Island? It was time to go. She’d given me more time than I deserved. She walked me to the door. “One more thing,” I said. “Why didn’t you come to work the day Jason died?”

  Pru hesitated for a moment. “I might as well tell you. I’ve told the police. Jason called me. He told me not to go to work. I thought he was sore about the fight with Terry, worried I’d start something with Emmy. The truth is, I was feeling bad about fighting with him. I was happy to have an excuse not to face any of them that day.” A tear formed in the corner of her eye. She shook her head, flicking it away. “Now I’ll never get to apologize to him.”

  Her grief wiped away the other stuff—the what and where of the murder, the question about whodunit—and exposed the core of the tragedy. Jason was dead.

  I turned back to her on the porch. “Pru, I really am sorry.”

  “Honey, I know you are.” She closed the door.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I walked back to Mom’s house to pick up the Subaru. Pru was convinced Emmy’s relationship with Jason had been much more serious than Emmy had led me to believe. Would Emmy lie to me? She was a friend. But she might if she knew what Jason was mixed up in and thought she was in danger. If she thought her kids were in danger, she would lie her head off. I was convinced of it.

  “Hullo, Julia.” Emmy seemed surprised to see me at the trailer door. She was dressed in the white button-down shirt and black pants she wore to waitress at Crowley’s. “I’m dropping Luther off at Gran’s and going to work. Lunch shift at Crowley’s.”

  “That’s tough.” Lunch at Crowley’s on a weekday at the end of the season wouldn’t earn her much.

  “I know, but I’m lucky. In exchange they gave me nights for the whole long weekend.”

  Not everyone would think it was lucky to spend three days running her tail off waiting on tables at the clambake and then spend her evenings serving the noisy crowd at Crowley’s, but Emmy was one determined mom. At least she could have her kids with her on the island. I imagined Vanessa would be sleeping over at Livvie’s for the next three nights.

  “This won’t take long.” I stepped inside.

  In the tiny living space, a diaper bag was packed for Luther. He sat at the table munching apple pieces, already in a bright red corduroy jacket for the short trip across the lawn to his great-grandmother’s.

  “I try to feed him before he goes to Gran’s to keep things simpler for her. Vanessa can help when she gets home on the school bus.” Emmy dug through her bag for her keys. “What did you want?” she asked.

  “I’ve come from Pru’s.”

  Emmy pulled her keys out in triumph. They jangled and Luther reached his arms out, grunting that he wanted them. “How’s Pru getting on? She wasn’t nice to me, but I do feel sorry for her.”

  “She’s having a hard time of it. So are the kids. How are you doing?”

  Emmy bent down and moved the strap of the diaper bag onto her shoulder. “I’m okay. It’s weird, you know. To know someone who was murdered, but as I explained, we weren’t that close. My life will go on as before, unlike Pru and her kids.”

  “That’s not what Pru says.”

  Emmy, who was cleaning Luther’s face, stopped abruptly. “What do you mean?”

  “Pru says you spent a lot of time on the Money Honey.”

  Emmy dropped the diaper bag on the Formica table with a thunk. “I’ve been on that boat exactly one time, when Jason gave me and the kids a lift home from the clambake. You know Pru was jealous. She reacted all out of proportion to what was truly going on.”

  “She says you spent enough time on Jason’s boat that you left things there. A carryall filled with clothes. Intimate things.”

  Color flooded into Emmy’s face. “That is one hundred percent not true. She’s making it up. She’s crazy!”

  I took a deep breath so I would remain calm. One person flying off the handle in the little space was enough. “Emmy, do you know where Jason’s money came from?”

  “What do you mean?” The angry flush in her face receded. “He was a highliner. Everybody said so.”

  “Everybody except the people who would know. The lobstermen at Gus’s don’t think much of his skills.”

  She knit her brows. I couldn’t tell if she believed me. “I’ve explained this. Jason and I went on exactly two dates. If you think we discussed our personal finances, you’re wrong. I have no idea where his money came from if it wasn’t from lobstering.”

  “Did you ever go to his apartment? Do you know where it is?”

  Emmy had lost her patience with me entirely. “I told you we had two dates. I never went to his apartment.” She put the diaper bag back on her shoulder and picked Luther up. “Jason lived within walking distance of the marina. That’s all I know. I really have to get going.”

  I walked out with her. She handed Luther to me as she locked the door to the trailer. He put a sticky hand on my chin. I’d distracted Emmy enough she’d washed his face but not his hands. I walked with her over to her gran’s house and waited while she reported on the state of Luther’s diaper (clean) and his tummy (full). Then we walked to our cars.

  “You don’t have any idea who the underwear on Jason’s boat could belong to.” I tried one last time.

  Emmy shook her head. “If it’s even true. I wouldn’t put it past Pru to make the whole thing up.”

  * * *

  I thought about trying to find Jason’s apartment and maybe even the mystery woman who’d left a bag full of undies on the Money Hon
ey, and who had the physical strength to hide Jason’s body under the woodpile.

  The police would know where the apartment was and would have already searched it. The idea of a female killer seemed far-fetched given the distance the body was moved. The odds were Jason was killed by a man, and that left Dmitri, who had disappeared the day of the murder.

  I drove back to town and parked in the municipal lot. Perhaps I could get a read from Binder or Flynn about whether they were looking at Terry or Dmitri.

  When I got inside the police station the door to the multipurpose room was shut tight.

  “They’re-in-a-meeting,” Marge the receptionist rat-tat-tatted before I could ask.

  “Will you let the lieutenant and the sergeant know I’m looking for them?” I said.

  “Sure. When they come out.”

  Jamie’s head poked out from around the partition. “I thought it was you.”

  I walked back into the bullpen. It was empty except for Jamie. “Where is everyone?”

  “Out on patrol or at lunch,” he answered. “I was about to leave for Gus’s.”

  Inclining my head toward the multipurpose room, I asked, “What’s going on in there?”

  “Who knows? They don’t tell the local yokels much.”

  “Binder and Flynn aren’t like that.”

  “The state cops are the least of it.”

  I remembered the two extra tables set up in the multipurpose room. “Who’s the most of it?”

  “Feds, mostly. More arriving every day. It’s a regular alphabet soup around here.”

  “For the murder of a lobsterman who worked at a clambake?” Lots of different agencies coordinating. That was probably why Binder had kept me on hold so long the other day.

  “I know. We don’t get it either, and it looks like no one is going to enlighten us. Sometimes it feels like they don’t care about Jason’s murder at all.”

  Binder and Flynn were dedicated detectives. It didn’t add up. “What do they care about?”

  “Search me.” He looked around the bullpen as if to make sure it was empty, though clearly it was. “Listen, I’m glad you came by,” he said. “I heard something this morning I think you should know.” He paused. “Pete and the chief were going back and forth about the night Terry robbed Hudson’s. Trading stories, you know how it is. I heard something I’d never heard before. The cops here in Busman’s, they assumed, in fact they still believe, Jason was with Terry at Hudson’s that night.”