Death by Chocolate Frosted Doughnut

by Sarah Graves

  She didn’t like that idea any better than I did. But there we were: “I’d have followed us, wouldn’t you?” I asked.

  She sighed in silent agreement, then changed the subject. “Sam’s getting quite a collection.”

  On the lawn, she meant—all the yard machinery. “He sure is. I’m going to try getting him to move some of it, but—”

  Her car was parked out on the street because our driveway was so full. We went down the porch steps and out the front sidewalk, and she got into the vehicle. “That’s not the only extra room he’s going to be needing soon,” she said, getting behind the wheel.

  She smiled up at me. “Bella was correct, that poor girl looks seasick. And Jake, just think about it, when was the last time you ate plain saltines for a late-night snack?”

  I didn’t have to think long. Before Sam arrived I’d bought those bland, lightly salted crackers by the carton, washing them down with flat ginger ale on the days when I could eat anything at all.

  “Yeah, you’re probably right.” I sighed, looking back up at the porch. By spring, we’d be setting up bunk beds on it.

  From somewhere downtown came the whoop of a squad car siren, reminding me unpleasantly of my date with a cop in the morning.

  “Anyway, good luck tomorrow,” said Ellie. She patted my hand. “Now go in and put ice on that forehead of yours before Bella sees it.”

  Good advice, I realized, touching my temple gingerly; with each minute that passed, now that the evening’s excitement had died down, my skull felt more like I’d tried stopping a freight train with it.

  “Thanks,” I said, but she was already driving away down the fog-blurred street.

  * * *

  The next morning dawned cool and bright, the fog whisked away by a breeze blowing from the north. In the Waco Diner, the fishermen had finished breakfast hours earlier and were out on their boats, leaving the booths and counter mostly empty.

  So she was easy to spot: curly brown hair cut very short, red lips, high cheekbones and deep-set eyes, carefully made up . . .

  I walked between the diner’s long Formica counter and the red leatherette booths running along the wall to the last one.

  “I’m Jake Tiptree. You wanted to talk to me?”

  I stuck out my hand. She held it briefly, her gaze taking in my face assessingly. “Hi. I’m Amity Jones.”

  “Short for calamity?” I didn’t know what made me say it— nerves, maybe. It wasn’t every day I got interviewed by someone who, when the conversation is over, might arrest me for murder.

  But I regretted the remark when she looked rueful. “Actually, it is. Don’t ask me why they named me that, though, I’ve never been able to get a straight answer about it.”

  She waved at the seat across the booth’s table. From behind the counter the waitress eyed me, nodded, and brought coffee.

  “Parents, you know?” Amity Jones went on as I sat. “Can’t live with ’em, can’t sell ’em for parts.”

  One of mine had been a federal fugitive and the other one was a murder victim, so I understood. But it didn’t create any warm bonds between this police detective and me. She got out her badge wallet, flashed the badge, and showed me her ID.

  “Before we start, you should know that I’m not here to arrest you, or even to question you officially, and I’m not recording you, either.”

  I sipped coffee. None of what she’d just said sounded likely. My face must’ve expressed what I thought: cops can lie to you.

  She let a smile curve her mouth. “Look, I understand why you’d be skeptical. But Bob Arnold says that you didn’t kill the victim.”

  “Oh, really.” I’d been expecting a barrage of questions, not a demonstration of Bob’s stand-up-guy qualities.

  The smile widened. “Really. Want to know what else he said?”

  Just then the waitress brought the check. Amity Jones lay some money on top of it and got up. “So, do you?”

  Oh, of course I did. But more than that, I wanted to know what game Amity Jones was playing with me.

  And I hadn’t really wanted that coffee, anyway. She pulled on an expensive-looking black leather jacket over her outfit of black turtleneck, gray tailored slacks, and heeled leather boots. “Come on, let’s take a walk.”

  Outside, vendors’ carts pumped out tantalizing aromas of candy floss and sausage rolls, pizza and popcorn, and fried dough. Among the booths selling pirate-themed accessories ranging from eye patches to toe rings with silver skulls welded onto them, we walked along Water Street toward the boat basin.

  “Bob says that if you killed Hadlyme, he’d be buried by now in a place where nobody would find him.”

  I glanced sharply at her. Bob Arnold had gotten chatty with this woman, apparently. And I wasn’t at all sure that I liked it.

  The black sailboat still floated at anchor just inside the boat basin. “Not sure if I should be flattered or insulted,” I said.

  We strolled out onto the fish pier, its surface constructed of railroad ties spiked to wooden support beams, the whole thing held up by steel pilings driven into the granite bedrock below.

  “Yeah, me neither, actually.” She eyed the black vessel with a frown as movement appeared on deck. The bright glint of sunlight on binocular lenses flashed briefly, then vanished.

  “He meant that if you’d done it, you’d have done it better,” she said, turning toward the boat basin, where a couple of lobster boats were coming in, their crew dressed in yellow rubber overalls and boots.

  “Do those boats just sit out like that all the time? No guards or watchmen?” she wanted to know.

  She referred to the ones still tied up at their slips, and the rest that would be coming in; I guessed she hadn’t yet seen the dock lights on the breakwater, bright enough to read by.

  And even without them . . . “You don’t need guards for the fishing boats,” I said. “Some fool starts messing with one of those, he’ll be lobster bait.”

  Behind us on the street, a couple of cherry bombs went off, and then a pennywhistle began tootling. I faced her impatiently.

  “Look, if a walking tour is what you want, that’s fine,” I said, “but enough dancing around.”

  We started back, past the long metal gangway leading down to the floating docks alongside the fish pier.

  “Why don’t you just ask me what you want to ask,” I said. “And I’ll either answer you or not.”

  We’d reached Overlook Park, a small amphitheater-shaped area with a view of the water. Curved rows of flat white granite blocks, each set a little higher than the one in front of it, served as the amphitheater’s seats.

  “Bob Arnold’s my third cousin,” Amity Jones offered out of the blue as we sat.

  I found my voice. “Oh, really?” I uttered stupidly.

  On this bright morning, the boat basin was nearly empty. Only the Coast Guard’s big gray patrol boat sat at her berth, two young Coasties busily sweeping, swabbing, and polishing, inside and out.

  “Mm-hmm,” Amity Jones replied absently. She was looking in the other direction, toward the black sailboat—the Jenny, I recalled now—which had begun coming around so her stern, or the boat’s rear end, in case you’d forgotten, faced the shore.

  “How’d they do that?” she asked puzzledly. “Move, I mean, when their sails aren’t even—”

  “Engines,” I replied. Inboard; the propeller’s bubbly turbulence showed below the stern’s waterline. But even if it hadn’t—

  “Has to be,” I went on, “because on a boat you need power, wind or engine—or even oars, in a pinch—to steer.”

  Even Ellie’s boat was out, I noticed now, but I knew she had promised Lee a boat ride and it was a beautiful day, so probably they were doing that.

  “So did you already know Bob Arnold was a distant relative of yours when you came here?” I asked as we got up.

  It explained why he’d confided in her, I thought, and it wasn’t even particularly surprising that the two of them were related;
in Maine, just about everyone is if you look back far enough.

  “My mom’s a genealogy nut,” Amity Jones said, nodding. “But he didn’t, I guess. Or anyway, he didn’t know until I told him.”

  We walked uphill past the tall red-brick buildings that housed the pet supply shop, an art gallery, and some high-end gift shops.

  “Smart guy, your police chief,” she went on. “He deserves more respect than he gets from our department, I’m guessing.”

  She glanced back again at the Jenny, still nosed out toward the bay. Someone was hanging halfway out over the transom at the boat’s rear, doing something with some mechanism or other.

  “Yeah,” I said, “he’s smart, all right.” But privately a needle of doubt began poking me; was he smart enough to resist her flattery?

  Because maybe she was sincere. Certainly he deserved the praise she’d offered. But when you added it to a family connection. . . well, I just hoped he hadn’t told her much about me, was all. Who knew which innocent detail might end up being my undoing?

  At the corner in front of the post office building, a guy was selling sausages out of a cart. “Red hots! Getcha red hots!”

  “Mmm,” Amity Jones remarked appreciatively, “snappers.”

  The long bright-red sausages were a Maine favorite, encased in a substantial skin that popped juicily when you bit into it.

  “Mmm is right,” I said, as the tantalizing aroma of sizzling fat drew me in. “Here, my treat,” I added, pulling out my wallet.

  I guessed a couple of sandwiches and a soda wouldn’t count as attempted bribery, and as it turned out I was correct. We sat on the post office’s curved granite steps, balancing the food on our knees and watching the pet parade go by, the mostly cooperative animals all tricked out in capes, bandannas, and eye patches.

  “Oh, this is heaven,” she remarked, washing down the last of her hot dog with a swallow of Moxie. “I was over here last week, just by coincidence, but nobody was selling anything as good as this stuff.”

  “You like Moxie, do you?” I think it tastes like tree roots stewed in crankcase oil and filtered through an old boot.

  I hadn’t missed her remark about being here the previous week, either, but that wasn’t a big deal. Lots of people come to Eastport in summer.

  “Moxie? It’s like mother’s milk,” she said, crumpling the hot dog wrapper and getting up. “And I don’t care how recent breakfast was, this made for a great snack, thanks.”

  She was young, maybe in her late twenties, I thought, and still able to eat all day long without gaining an ounce. But she was right, those red hots were delicious.

  “Listen,” I said finally, “isn’t this a little unorthodox? No probing questions, no . . .”

  She shrugged. “What, getting a sense of what people are like before I charge at them, start accusing them of things?”

  She gathered up her bag, shrugged her jacket straight on her shoulders, and looked me in the eye. “Don’t worry, I’ll get to that part when I’m ready. And with who I’m ready for.”

  A troop of Scouts scampered up to the red hot cart and began clamoring for hot dogs and sodas. She watched them with a smile.

  But somehow, it wasn’t a convincing smile. “Besides,” she said, “I’ve got a few people to talk to. You’re not the only one with a reason to have done it.”

  It was the first time she’d even mentioned Hadlyme’s murder. “The young people who were with him, you mean?”

  Amity Jones looked wise. “Maybe. But telling you that would be unorthodox, too, wouldn’t it?”

  I could see in her face that she was getting ready to go, that her goal for meeting with me this morning had been accomplished.

  And maybe she’d meant it, maybe I really wasn’t her main suspect in Hadlyme’s murder; not yet, anyway. But I’d never felt less sure of anything in my life.

  Still, there was no sense in letting her know that. “I’ve got to get going, too,” I said, the sight of The Chocolate Moose sign down the block reminding me that it was time to open the shop.

  Cookies, cakes, chocolate doughnuts . . . sure, they were all baked, thanks to Mika and Ellie, but they weren’t going to sell themselves, were they?

  I took my and Amity’s hot dog wrappers to a trash bin nearby and dropped them in. A pink pig in a pirate costume trotted by, his curly tail quivering, and a donkey followed wearing a straw hat with his long ears poking through two holes.

  Amity Jones looked over at me, smiling and opening her mouth as if to say something, and then the explosion happened.

  * * *

  After the blast, a lot of screaming and shouting broke out. Car alarms honked and building alarms wailed; children bawled, although I didn’t see that any of them had actually been hurt.

  Thick black smoke rose from the middle of Water Street, between Overlook Park on one side and The Chocolate Moose on the other. I ran toward the shop as people milled around me, some carrying youngsters and others frantically searching.

  The Moose’s front window was miraculously intact, although the crater in the pavement in front of it, still smoking, was at least a foot wide. As I stared, Bob Arnold swung in and jumped from his car, his eyes scanning the crowd for injuries while he spoke into his radio, summoning help.

  “What should I do?” Amity Jones had caught up with me and wanted to make herself useful, but she knew better than to interrupt Bob.

  Heck, right now a Sherman tank would probably think twice about interrupting him. “Just walk down the street,” I told her, “and watch for people who need help. And if you end up needing any help with what you find—”

  Flying glass wounds, fractures, even heart attacks . . . so far I didn’t see any bodies lying around, but it had been a big explosion.

  “If you need anything, just ask for it. Someone will help you,” I said confidently, because in Eastport someone will. Then a second blast went off somewhere near the boat basin.

  This time the already-shocked glass in The Chocolate Moose’s front window dropped out, crashing to the sidewalk. Next came the dull thud-thud-thud of a lot of secondary explosions, and the siren on the Coast Guard headquarters’ roof began droning.

  Ellie, I thought. And her little girl . . . They could be in the boat basin right now. Or what was left of them....

  “Go,” I told Amity Jones, and took off in the other direction.

  Shoving through the crowds surging off the breakwater, I tried peering past them down the slanting metal gangway and out along the finger piers. But all I could see was smoke; at the boat ramp I skidded down seaweed-slimed concrete to the water’s edge, still not seeing Ellie.

  Then I spied an orange life vest bobbing nearby. But it didn’t bob quite enough, as if it was weighed down by something. Swallowing hard, I waded in, then reached out and snagged the vest’s straps with my fingers and pulled.

  Stuck. But on what? With my heart in my throat, I hauled mightily on the thing with both hands, hoping against hope.

  A navy blue uniform shirt with the life jacket wrapped around it lurched unwillingly to the water’s surface. The shirt had a torso and two arms inside; more pulling revealed a belt and a pair of pants.

  All dead weight. My feet slipped crazily on the wet ramp, but at last a man’s head emerged from the water, pale and drenched.

  “Come on, come on . . .” As I hauled on the limp, wet body, I became aware that a stream of curses was coming out of me, every bad word that I could think of and some that I hadn’t realized I knew.

  “Don’t you dare die on me . . . open those eyes . . . take a breath, dammit . . .”

  Everyone on the breakwater was too far away to know what I was up to, or too involved in getting their kids to safety to do anything about it. I knew that even once I got him out of the water, no way would I be able to do effective CPR on this kid all by myself.

  So instead I hauled him up into a sitting position, yanked his loosened life jacket up above his shoulder blades, and slammed my open right ha
nd into the middle of his upper back so hard that his long-dead ancestors probably felt it.

  Again. “Come on . . .” But he still didn’t breathe, and he looked so very dead at this point that I might’ve given up if he hadn’t also looked so much like Sam at that age, with his long eyelashes and soft, inexpertly shaven jawline.

  So I kept smacking him, and I was swinging my arm back to deliver yet another blow when the limp lifeless-seeming body I was supporting coughed, lurched, and puked up about a gallon of seawater. Clambering to my feet I waved frantically at one of the Coast Guard guys now sprinting toward me, and when he arrived I left the young Coastie to his care.

  Because I still hadn’t spotted Ellie. . . . At the foot of the metal gangway, a crowd of other Coast Guard personnel had converged on what was left of their big gray patrol boat. Twisted metal, burnt plastic, and shattered safety glass, all polished and shipshape just a few moments earlier, was now burnt, melted, or simply gone—

  The oily smoke hanging in the boat basin, although chokingly thick, had spots thin enough to see through. But no pretty little blue Bayliner floated in Ellie’s spot by the finger pier; on the other hand, it didn’t look as if one had sunk there recently, either.

  So where was she? I trotted back up the gangway and scanned the water: under the deceptively clear blue sky, nothing that looked like her little Bayliner showed on the bright waves.

  All the fishing boats were hurrying back, though, their rumble coming distantly from every direction on the bay; dark puffs of diesel engine exhaust spewed urgently from their stacks.

  Suddenly Bob Arnold was beside me. “Jake.”

  I turned wildly to him. “Ellie went out with Lee earlier, and now I can’t—”

  He put his hands up, trying to calm me. “No. No, Jake, they’re okay. Both of them, I just got a call.”

  The first crazed rush of people off the breakwater had thinned. Vendors stood by their souvenir tents and food carts, wondering aloud whether to wait for further developments or just close up and go home.

  “What?” I demanded confusedly as another bad thought hit me. Suddenly I was terrified that Mika might’ve taken Ephraim downtown to watch the pet parade. Or Mika and Bella might’ve . . .