Sealed Off

by Barbara Ross

  The air whooshed out of my lungs. “They think Jason was in the store?”

  “More likely driving the getaway car,” Jamie answered. “There were no video cameras at Hudson’s eleven years ago. There are none there now, either.”

  “But there’s a big sign on the window behind the cash register that says, THIS LOCATION IS MONITORED, with a line drawing of a camera.”

  “Fake,” Jamie said. “Anyway, the old-timers think Jason was waiting in the car and he got scared when he heard the gunfire and took off, stranding Terry. You see where this is going, right?”

  I didn’t answer right away while I tried to process this new information. “It gives Terry more motive to hate Jason if he ditched him at Hudson’s to face the cops.” Howland had said Terry had his hands up when he entered the store and didn’t resist arrest. Maybe that was because he was stuck. “Is there any evidence Jason was there?”

  “No,” Jamie admitted. “Supposition.”

  “Has anyone told this story to Binder and Flynn?”

  “Not that I know of. Like I said, it’s speculation based on Jason and Terry being suspected of doing all their crimes together up to that point, and the way the friendship ended when Terry was arrested.” He paused. “I’ve got to get going. Pete’s waiting. I thought you’d like to know what the scuttlebutt is. Who knows what really happened?”

  Who, indeed? “What was the name of the clerk again?” I asked Jamie as he headed out the door.

  “Christopher Gray.”

  Christopher. The same name as my boyfriend. It hadn’t struck me the first time I’d heard it. “You don’t know where he is now by any chance?”

  “No idea.”

  Chapter Twenty

  I drove to the marina to confront Terry with this new information. Whether Jason had been at Hudson’s that night or not, the story was kicking around the Busman’s Harbor PD and it wouldn’t be long before it made it to Binder and Flynn.

  The Dark Lady was at her mooring, but Terry was nowhere around. It was weird that he didn’t have a cell phone. Or rather, it made perfect sense he didn’t have one, but it was weird to be dealing with a person who didn’t. I scribbled a note on a Dunkin’ Donuts bag I found in my car, left it secured on the Dark Lady, and drove back to my apartment.

  Downstairs, Gus’s was full and loud. The smells made my stomach growl. Upstairs in my apartment, I got out my laptop.

  The World Wide Web told me that a Christopher Gray, who was about the right age, lived in Raymond, Maine, about an hour and a half away. Without Terry, my only path forward was to talk to the only other person who’d been in that store.

  I drove down Route 1 from our peninsula and flew over the Wiscasset Bridge, empty of summer traffic. Almost to Bath, at the peak of the Sagadahoc Bridge, I looked down at Bath Iron Works and the US Navy ships at their docks being built or refitted.

  I had no plan except to find out what had happened. I had Gray’s address from the Web, nothing else. He could be at work. He could be away. He could be the wrong Christopher Gray. The trip started to feel desperate. I stayed on Route 1 all the way to Freeport, where I began the trip west.

  Route 95 was the major artery in Maine. A superhighway, it took you from the New Hampshire border to Canada, traveling roughly northward with a few zigs and zags to accommodate natural barriers and pass through or near our major cities, Portland, Augusta, and Bangor. Route 1, the scenic route, also took you from New Hampshire to Canada, but along the seacoast. Though your definition of “scenic” might vary. In the more populated parts of the state it was lined by the same strip malls, service stations, discount centers, snarled traffic, and stoplights found along the rest of US 1.

  Traveling east to west in Maine was a different matter. Highways were scarce and most of the routes were two-lane roads through small towns. The seacoast was my Maine, but Maine was a big state, especially by the standards of New England, and it didn’t take many miles to feel the sea recede behind me as the lakes and mountains came into focus.

  I had stumbled into this trip at absolute peak foliage. If the storm the previous week had been a few days later, it would have taken most of the leaves with it, disappointing the tourists who came in cars, buses, and cruise ships to see the colors. Last week most of the leaves had been supple enough to cling to their branches. The road was uncrowded and gave me the time to enjoy the bright reds, vibrant yellows, and different shades of orange as I drove.

  In an hour and twenty minutes I was in Raymond, Maine, bumping down the side road where Christopher Gray lived. Raymond was a tourist town, like Busman’s Harbor, only profoundly different. At the head of Sebago Lake, it was a homing point for people who loved another Maine. Not lighthouses and whale watches, but swimming and boating in fresh water, hiking, camping, air that smelled piney not salty. It was a Maine I loved, but since their season overlapped almost entirely with our own, one I rarely got to visit.

  Christopher Gray lived in a small house deep in the woods. A one-door garage was on the ground floor along with a slider that might have led to a finished basement. A set of wooden stairs, stained white, led up one story to a large deck and the front door. There was an old blue hatchback in the driveway and I dared to hope Gray might be at home.

  I climbed the stairs. There was no view of the lake, but the woods were peaceful. There were enough leaves down I could catch a glimpse of a yellow house, similar in size and shape, about a hundred yards away through the trees. I pressed the bell.

  A woman about my age opened the door and spoke to me through the screen. She was plainly surprised to see me. “Yes?” She kept the screen door between us as I would have done if a stranger turned up on my deck.

  “Is Christopher here?”

  “He’s at work.” Her shoulders relaxed a little when I mentioned Christopher’s name, like I wasn’t a total stranger, but her guard went up again the moment she realized she’d told me she was likely the only person at home. Or she was the only adult, though I didn’t see any toys on the deck or scattered around the yard. “He’s on his way home,” she said quickly. “I’m his wife. Can I help you?”

  “I’m Julia Snowden from Busman’s Harbor. Christopher worked there when he was twenty.” Both sentences were true. I hoped she would fill in the blank in some meaningful way.

  “I’m Rosalind.” She smiled but kept the screen between us. “Topher—that’s what my husband’s called—his grandparents had a house in Busman’s Harbor, so he could afford to live there while he worked summer jobs when he was in school. They’re both gone now. I never met them. He and I met four years ago. I don’t know much about his time there. Except—”

  She didn’t say it and I mentally filled in the blank. Except that he was shot. He would have told her that. “Do you mind if I wait?” I pointed to a pair of Adirondack chairs, stained white like the deck, each with a few dead leaves caught along the joint where the back met the seat. After my drive I would have liked to go in and use the restroom, but I wouldn’t have let me had the situation been reversed.

  “Suit yourself.” So he really was on his way home. She started to swing the wooden door closed, then stopped. “You’re not here to announce you’ve been raising his love child or anything, are you?” She laughed when she said it, but it was a reasonable question in the circumstances.

  I rushed to reassure her. “Nothing like that.”

  She smiled again and closed the door. I brushed the leaves off the nearest chair and sat down to wait. I was sure Rosalind was calling her husband that very minute. It was certainly what I would have done. The afternoon was cool but not cold. A low sun filtered through the colorful leaves.

  Topher Gray arrived in fifteen minutes exactly. Rosalind had been right about that. He parked an older Camry behind his wife’s car and got out, taking time to retrieve a briefcase and thermos. He wore a short-sleeved shirt untucked over navy pants, the definition of “business casual.” I wondered what he did for a living.

  He squinted as he
came up the stairs, trying to place me. He hadn’t recognized my name when Rosalind phoned him, but I bet he thought he would remember me once he saw me. He didn’t and I couldn’t place him, either. He’d worked at Busman’s Harbor several summers, according to Rosalind, so it wasn’t impossible I’d seen him. I was in college myself at the time, but I’d worked at the clambake, twelve hours a day, seven days a week. During those summers we’d lived on Morrow Island, so Topher and I wouldn’t have had much chance to meet.

  I stood and stuck out my hand. “Julia Snowden. Thank you for seeing me.” Rosalind could have ordered me away.

  He shook my hand. “Christopher Gray, but you know that. Call me Topher. I admit to being curious. We’re a long drive from Busman’s Harbor. What brings you here?”

  There was no point in dancing around it. “I want to talk to you about the night you were shot.”

  He took a small step backward. He hadn’t expected that. I thought he might tell me to go away. He seemed to weigh the possibilities in his mind. “All right. Let me put my things inside. Do you want something to drink?”

  “Water would be great.”

  He was gone about five minutes. The sun had sunk lower and he flicked on the outside lights with his elbow as he carried two water glasses from the kitchen. Unlike Rosalind, he’d left the door open when he went inside. Evidently he’d decided I was harmless.

  “Can I ask, what is your interest in what happened to me?” he said.

  There was no point in evading that question, either. “Did you know Terry Durand got out of prison five weeks ago?”

  He took a sip of water and nodded. “I knew it was around now.”

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “I don’t think you finished answering my question.” His tone was neutral, not hostile.

  “Terry Durand is my boyfriend’s brother. My family runs the Snowden Family Clambake on Morrow Island. There’s been a murder there. The police may be looking at Terry for the murder. My boyfriend is convinced his brother isn’t involved and Terry denies it. But he has always denied shooting you, too. I want your perspective.”

  Topher nodded. “I get it. I think. But I’m not sure I can help.” He shifted forward in the Adirondack chair, bringing his face closer to mine. “I grew up in Westbrook, Maine. My grandparents had a place in Busman’s Harbor. It was nothing to brag about, a two-bedroom cottage in the woods, but I loved it. My favorite memories from being a kid were the weeks my sister and I spent with them in the summer. So when I was in high school, I looked for summer jobs in town. My second year I got lucky—a good job at Lawson’s Lumberyard. It didn’t offer the kind of money kids got from tips working in the nice restaurants, but it was steady and they gave me plenty of hours. I went back four summers in a row.

  “The summer between my sophomore and junior years in college, I decided not to go back to school in the fall. I was going to stay at the cottage after my grandparents left. Since it was only heated by a wood stove, it was kind of nuts, really. I knew they’d cut my hours at Lawson’s once the season was over, so I took a second job at Hudson’s, six p.m. to closing, five nights a week. I’d be the only one there after eight.”

  “Were you scared when you were there alone at night?”

  “Not really. Sometimes when I’d closed up and turned off the outside lights and had to walk to my car, it was a little creepy, but otherwise, no. I never thought about it. It’s Busman’s Harbor, right?”

  “Right,” I agreed.

  “I saw Durand come in that night. I’d seen him before. I didn’t like the look of him. He went to the back, to the cooler. He was the only customer in the store. I watched him in this convex mirror we had over the checkout counter. He took a six-pack out of the cooler, calm as you please, and stuck it under his jacket.”

  Topher paused and took another sip of water. I wondered if this was getting too intense, but he gave no sign of it.

  “So, like the twenty-year-old great, big idiot I was, I decided to confront him. He started to run and I grabbed his shirt, and next thing I know we’re rolling around on the floor. And then bang! The loudest noise I’ve ever heard. I tried to get up but I couldn’t.”

  “You saw him shoot you?”

  “Nope. Never saw it. My memory is a little swiss-cheesy around the incident. The way it is in my head, we’re fighting and then I’m shot.”

  “You didn’t see him shoot you?”

  “I don’t remember him shooting me.”

  “But you testified he did in court.”

  “I did not. The prosecutor never asked me that question. He knew I couldn’t remember. He only asked me questions like ‘Was I working at Hudson’s on the night of . . . etc.?’ Most important, he asked me if I could identify Durand as the man I fought with. Which I could.”

  “As the man you fought with, not as the man who shot you? He was convicted of armed robbery and aggravated assault with a firearm.”

  “The first cop on the scene testified when he arrived I was bleeding on the floor and Durand was the only other person there, the gun was in the next aisle and so on. That was enough.”

  “What else do you remember from that night?”

  “Like I said, swiss-cheesy. I remember after I was shot Durand had this horrified look on his face. He ran to the housewares aisle and got a bunch of dish towels and tried to stop the bleeding. I was in shock, both by what had happened and physically. I was in and out after that. My ears were ringing. I couldn’t hear a thing. I don’t remember the paramedics or the ride to the hospital.”

  “Did you testify to that in court, that he tried to help you?”

  “Yes. His attorney asked me what happened after I heard the shot and I told it. Later, the prosecutor told me that it probably made the jury more convinced he did it.”

  “Why was that?”

  “Because he showed remorse. The jury put themselves in his position. They would have been horrified if they’d done it. But Durand did shoot me during the commission of an armed robbery, so they convicted him.”

  “Did you know Terry Durand has always claimed he was innocent? Didn’t plead guilty, wouldn’t admit guilt to get parole?” I asked.

  “I did. But someone shot me, and there was no one else in that store.”

  “Did you see anyone else that night?”

  “Durand was the only one I saw in the store.”

  “What about out by the gas pumps? Was there anyone in a car, anyone you would recognize?”

  “No. Sorry. I always told the cops, Durand was the only one I saw. The only one I could remember.” We sat in silence for a moment after that. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help,” he finally said.

  I stood and he did, too. “Don’t apologize.” I shook his hand. “It was good of you to see me at all. What happened after you were shot?”

  “I was lucky. He hit me in the shoulder. Missed the bone. I went back to school that winter semester. I was done with taking time off.”

  “Do you still think about it? Often, I mean.”

  He shrugged. He seemed to have full movement in his shoulder. “Not so much anymore. It’s been ten years.”

  The screen door slammed and Rosalind was on the deck. She was heavily pregnant, something I hadn’t been able to see when we talked through the screen door. “He has nightmares,” she said. She must have listened to the whole conversation. “Not often, but he does, and they are terrible. He wakes up screaming.”

  He put his arms around her. “I’m okay,” he said. “We’re okay.”

  I thanked them both and returned to the Subaru.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  It was after seven and almost fully dark by the time I hit the main road heading east. The few cars coming toward me lowered their brights as they passed. The rest of the time it was the Subaru’s headlights on the road and a line of ghostly trees on either side, like driving through a tunnel.

  There wasn’t a big dinner at Mom’s house planned for that evening and I was g
rateful. Mom, Marguerite, and Tallulah were taking a night off, eating leftover pot roast. The magnet that had drawn us, Lilly Smythe’s journal, was done. It had left Lilly perched on a rock overlooking the channel between Morrow Island and Westclaw Point, contemplating ending her life. Had she gone through with it? I felt for her, so scared and alone. I longed to reach out to her across the century and tell her it wasn’t her fault, she had nothing to be ashamed of.

  I drove on, shoulders tense, hands clenched on the steering wheel. The cozy, domestic scene at the Gray’s house had made me . . . angry. The fact that he shared a name with my boyfriend seemed to mock me. Topher and Rosalind were my age and they had a house and a baby on the way. I was in love with a man whose genes might hold a horrific disease, whose brother might return to prison, who was estranged from the rest of his family. Why couldn’t I have a white picket fence and a couple of kids like all those women who had gathered in Pru’s living room? Why did life have to be so complicated? It seemed like a modest desire, to be like the Grays, a small house, a small family.

  I’d driven all afternoon, and for what? Out of some desperate need to keep moving, because I couldn’t think of what else to do. Chris sometimes observed that I’d failed to leave my New York City pace behind. Maybe he was right. Maybe I was a workaholic nutcase.

  Chris had asked me to help his brother. So far I had discovered that Jason might have left Terry high and dry at Hudson’s, driving off and leaving him stranded to face a felony charge. That was a good reason for a long-simmering hatred of Jason Caraway. I’d mentally eliminated Emmy and Pru as suspects. Not motivated enough and not physically strong enough. The same probably went for the mystery woman who belonged to the bag of undies aboard the Money Honey.