Clammed Up: A Maine Clambake Mystery Part 21

I looked back at Gabrielle holding Jean-Jacques's inert body. He was a big man the last time I'd seen him and it looked as though his wandering years hadn't changed that. I pumped up and down on my knees a couple times and got ready to spring.

My G.o.d, what was I doing? Was I crazy? I couldn't go through with it. But then I remembered. No one was coming. It was all down to me. I crouched down again.

"Kee-yah!" It was a weird, cartoony karate yell, but I figured noise would help me. I grabbed Jean-Jacques by the shirt and he flew from Gabrielle's lap.

Flew? Jean-Jacques weighed next to nothing.

In the confusion, it took several seconds for me to realize it wasn't Jean-Jacques at all, but a dummy dressed in clothes like the ones Binder and I had seen in the room. The moment I realized this, Gabrielle's wiry arm closed across my neck and she dragged me to my feet, screaming in French at the top of her lungs. "Tu as tue. Tu as tue!"

"What?" My French wasn't good but I got the gist, you killed him. "Gabrielle, it's me. Julia. Let go. It's okay."

I slithered around to face her, her arm still around my neck. My back was to the doorway. Gabrielle let go, then put both hands on my clavicle and pushed. I thought I might go over backwards. I shouted, "No! Gabrielle! No!" and took a giant step back to regain my footing. She came after me again, and before I knew it, we were out in the hallway. I kept backing up in the face of her shoving, trying to fight her off without hurting her.

I screamed in English. "I didn't hurt Jean-Jacques, Gabrielle! I would never hurt him. Please believe me. You and Etienne are like my own parents. Please!"

My backside hit the railing of the open balcony just as Etienne let out a sound so loud I heard it despite his gag. I looked back toward the doorway and saw flames. When I'd tossed the dummy into the air, it must have landed on the candles. Its clothes were a ball of fire and soon flames would reach the bed where Etienne was tied.

"Gabrielle, Gabrielle, let me go! We have to save Etienne!"

But the face that looked back at me didn't care or comprehend. She was mad. She threw herself against me, bending me back over the rail. It came to me in an instant. Something like this had happened to Ray. It was how he broke his neck!

I screamed at her and pushed back with all my might, but physics was on her side. I felt sure I would topple over the railing. Smoke poured out of the room and swirled above us, collecting in the high, coffered ceiling. I pleaded, "No, Gabrielle, no. Please, please. It's Julia."

But she didn't stop.

I couldn't straighten up, so I grabbed Gabrielle and pulled her toward me, just as she moved forward for a vicious shove. I thought for a split second that both of us would go over the balcony, but her momentum carried her forward and she sailed by me, over the railing, screaming as she went down. There was a sickening thud in the hallway below.

I was so shocked I couldn't move. Then, I looked over the rail and in the dim light made out Gabrielle's broken body below.

Etienne was shouting against the gag. I ran to the door. The room was almost fully engulfed in flame. The window had exploded open, feeding oxygen to the fire. Flames licked toward the bedding. I had to get Etienne out.

I ran into the room, then retreated, coughing and sputtering. No one is coming, no one is coming, no one is coming. There was only one person who could save Etienne. I went in again, crawling toward the bed on my belly, breathing the freshest air in the room.

Etienne strained frantically.

"Keep still," I hissed. I didn't think I was going to get another chance. His arms were secured to the headboard by two short lengths of rope. Once I got him to lie still, the knots were easy to untie, despite my shaking hands. I didn't even untie the gag. I put his arm around my shoulders and the flames chased us from the room.

At the bottom of the stairs, he stared at Gabrielle's body. He made a mewling sound around the gag.

I pulled him from the house and fought to keep him outside. "You can't go back in! Too dangerous." Above us, flames leaped out of the fourth floor windows toward the night sky.

"The radio!" I yelled. "Etienne, we have to get back to your house." I undid the gag as he fought me off.

"Non, non, non." He ran back into Windsholme.

I stood there for a moment, too shocked to move. No one is coming.

I charged through the door and was greeted with such a whirl of smoke I nearly ran out. No one is coming. I called to Etienne, but in the roar of the fire, I couldn't even hear myself. I knew he'd gone to the bottom of the staircase where Gabrielle's body lay. I fell to my knees and crawled toward the spot.

A loud crack sounded above and a long, flaming span of the banister careened down, nearly hitting me. I wanted to call out, but knew I had to conserve my breath. I crawled on in the dark and the noise, waving an arm in front of me with each movement. Just when I thought I would have to turn back, I hit something. Etienne's strong calf. I pulled on his pants leg, shouting, "We have to go!"

With Gabrielle in his arms, he took a step toward me.

For a moment, I feared I'd gotten turned around in the fire and wouldn't be able to find the door. I decided I had to back out on my knees, exactly as I'd come in. I pulled on Etienne's ankle. Step this way, step this way. Slowly, so slowly, we moved back across the room. Etienne coughed continuously in the smoke-filled air. The moment my foot hit the threshold of the doorway, he staggered to a stop.

"We have to go!" I screamed. "We have to go out. Now." I pulled myself up, hugging Etienne and the still body of Gabrielle. The stairs burned around us, flames leaping. I gasped, even the few feet I gained by standing made it more difficult to breathe. I put my arms around his waist and pulled him the last few steps out the door.

Outside, breathing heavily, I moved behind Etienne, pushing him down the steps and then down the lawn away from the burning building. Finally, when we were at the midpoint between the house and the pavilion, he laid Gabrielle gently in the gra.s.s and we turned and looked back.

The inside of Windsholme was an inferno. The stone walls that had protected the house from the porch fire now had the opposite effect. Inside, the flames built and roared as if they were in a giant, stone oven. As Etienne and I stood and watched, flames leaped out the windows toward the wooden gables and up into the roof.

"Is Jean-Jacques somewhere in there?" I asked Etienne.

He shook his head. "He never was. He never has been."

A noise like a freight train barreling through the night sounded as a third of Windsholme's roof caved in. Slates fell into the house and flames shot thirty feet into the sky.

Etienne fell over the broken body of his wife and wept.

I heard a shout behind me. It was Quentin Tupper, running up the lawn. "I saw the flames," he panted. "From my house. The Coast Guard's on its way."

And soon they all were there. The Coast Guard, the Busman's Harbor Fire Department, the harbormaster, along with Lieutenant Binder and Detective Flynn.

Chapter 51.

When it was almost dawn, after we'd been questioned separately for hours, they loaded Etienne and me onto a Coast Guard ship. We sat together in the stern, both of us covered in soot. My eyes still blinked from the irritation.

Lieutenant Binder went off to attend to something, calling to Detective Flynn who'd been watching us. I had the feeling Binder left Etienne and me alone on purpose. It wasn't like either of us could go anywhere, and there was so much to be said.

"Etienne, what happened?" I had to know. I wouldn't be able to make sense of anything that had happened to us until I did.

Even through the grime, I could see his sadness. "Gabby did not do well with . . . with what happened with Jean-Jacques. You have noticed this?"

"Yes," I said.

"No one has understood how badly it has gone for her. I talked to your father about it, back when it began. But soon, he was sick with cancer and had troubles of his own. Gabby just got worse." Etienne was another person who was missing my father. His best friend, his confidant.

"But I don't understand-"

"This spring, someone cleaned up the playhouse. I don't know who it was. I thought perhaps Sonny had done it for the kids, but he said no when I asked him. Gabrielle took this as a sign Jean-Jacques was back. She became convinced he was living here on the island." Etienne's voice caught.

I attempted to imagine what he was going through at that moment, but could not.

"I tried to reason with her. I took her everywhere on the island. But wherever we were, she claimed Jean-Jacques was somewhere else. Gabby left food in the playhouse. She went into town and purchased the clothes you saw, which she lovingly washed and folded." Etienne paused, then regained control. "I didn't know what to do. I talked to her doctors. They prescribed medications. They said it was an obsession, but I knew it was something else. I believed she really saw and heard him."

When Etienne saw the puzzled look on my face, he added, "In her mind, Julia. It was all in her disturbed mind."

"Oh, Etienne." I felt terrible about what he had been coping with. And how I hadn't known. Because I hadn't been there. And then, even after I returned, I hadn't taken the time to see.

We stared silently back up the hill to Windsholme for a moment. The fire had almost died, but not completely.

"At some point, she became convinced he'd moved from the playhouse to Windsholme," he continued. "She was worried to death about the work you had done there, the electrical work and so on. And the fact that you encouraged the bride to fix herself up in the house. Gabrielle believed if you could save the clambake, you were going to start using Windsholme as a part of it, and Jean-Jacques would have no place to go.

"She also worried about the island, if the clambake failed you would have to sell. I tried to keep the financial worries away from her, but she was always here on the island. She overheard a lot. Things you said. Things Sonny said."

I'd never thought about the effect all our discussions that spring had on Gabrielle. I was careful around my mother, and around Page, but I never had been around Gabrielle. She must have been scared to death. "And then Ray came and said he and Tony wanted to buy it."

Etienne closed his eyes, remembering. "Yes. He said he wanted to scout the island to set up a prank on his buddy the groom. I invited him into our house. I had no idea who he was or where the conversation would go. Right in front of Gabrielle, he talked about buying the island. She panicked, as I knew she would. But I was able to convince her you'd never sell."

I nodded. "And then Ray arrived on the island on the night of his death to set up his trick on Tony."

"He came out while Gabby and I were still in the harbor. When she saw the little boat tied up at the dock, you can imagine how excited she was. 'He's here! He's here!' she yelled. She ran straight up the lawn. Wilson had left the mansion door wide open."

"He had the dummy in the camp trunk." I had only just worked that out.

"Yes, and he was about to hang it from the landing. I suppose it was meant to be funny."

A "you're doomed" sort of message for Tony. Not funny at all. But those who'd hated Ray Wilson, and even those who'd loved him, had talked about his adolescent, frat-boy sense of humor. Ray Wilson had brought the rope he was hung with to the island as a joke.

"Gabrielle attacked him," I said.

Etienne nodded that was true. "It was the last thing Wilson expected. A crazed woman running at him. She was furious, convinced he planned to hurt Jean-Jacques."

I began to realize what had happened. Ray's reaction times would have been slowed as a result of the alcohol and the drugs Sarah gave him, making it difficult to put up much of a fight.

"Before he knew what happened, before I knew what happened, she pushed him over the railing."

"He broke his neck."

Etienne nodded sadly.

"But why, Etienne, why did you hang him from the staircase?"

"Gabby insisted. And I did think it might accomplish what she wanted. It would get you to stop renovating Windsholme and convince Wilson's partner to stay away from the island. I wanted to go on as before."

Instead, the effect had been the opposite.

"I was trying to do the best I could, to keep Gabby together. I knew she was mad. Maybe I became a little mad as well."

"What did you do with the camp trunk-and the boat?"

"I filled the trunk with rocks, put Wilson's jacket in it, towed his little boat out into the ocean, and sunk it all. I recognized the boat. He'd stolen it from one of the yachts by the town dock. I knew the owner wouldn't miss it for months."

"And the porch fire?"

"Gabby. By that point she was desperate for everyone to go away. She did not mean to hurt Windsholme. Not as long as she thought Jean-Jacques was living there. She knew the mansion wouldn't burn."

"But tonight, how did you end up tied up?"

"We'd been keeping vigil, waiting for Jean-Jacques every night this week. We hadn't slept in days. I tried to refuse to let her go to Windsholme tonight. You saw what she did to our kitchen. Going to the mansion was the only way to calm her. I must have dozed off on the bed as we waited. I was so exhausted. Gabby had been paranoid for days that I would try to scare Jean-Jacques off, or turn him in. I think she tied me to the bed in order to make sure I wouldn't interfere."

Etienne put his head in his hands and wept. "She was completely mad at the end, Julia. Please forgive her."

Chapter 52.

Three weeks later, I waited on Morrow Island to greet our special guests as they disembarked from the Jacquie II. It was a beautiful evening for a clambake.

Livvie and Sonny had moved out to the island for the summer. Page could have the same island childhood Livvie and I had, and our mother before us. Sonny took over Etienne's job as the bake master, which meant he and I had different spheres, different responsibilities, which cut down a lot of arguments. We'd both been reminded recently how critical our health was, physical and mental, and how important family was. It taught us to compromise when the situation called for it. Livvie loved being on the island and tended Gabrielle's vegetable garden every day.

Page adopted Le Roi. When she hugged him to her chest, his back legs fell below her knees. He was obviously annoyed, but let her do it, anyway. He was still the king of the island. The human beings came and went, but he remained.

We reopened the clambake with Quentin Tupper as our "very silent" partner. He continued to resist, protesting that investing in the clambake sounded, "too much like work." I finally convinced him he didn't need to be involved at all and buying a third of the business was hugely preferable to having a resort, complete with helicopter pad, across from his property. So far he'd been next to invisible, which was the way he wanted it. I actually would've liked having a partner to talk to about the big decisions.

One of the biggest decisions was what to do about Windsholme. In the end, with the building inspector's blessing, we erected a chain-link fence around its perimeter and left the mansion as it was. It looked awful, and sometimes I thought we should have sold the property to Tony Poitras and let him build one of his beautiful resorts on the ruins. But then I looked around and saw the happy families at the clambake, most of them people who could never enjoy Morrow Island if it was a high-end resort, and I knew we had done the right thing. In the fall, when the clambake closed for the season, we would decide what to do about the building.

Marie Halsey brought Tyler out to the island with her almost every day to play with Page. The kids had a little moneymaking enterprise where they sold sh.e.l.ls and sea gla.s.s to the guests. Sarah's lawyer thought he could negotiate the charge against her down to something called criminal misadventure. She didn't kill Ray, though she may have been a party to impairing his judgment to the point where he went out to a little island in a big ocean in the middle of the night. She'd probably only get probation. The plea deal would clear the way for Tyler to inherit Ray's money with Sarah remaining as his legal guardian.

A rumor floated around that Sarah had told the cops who'd sold her the Rophynol.

"Gee, I wonder who that could have been?" Sonny said.

I knew he meant Chris. I wasn't naive. Chris worked as a bouncer, owned a cab and a boat. An almost perfect setup for a drug dealer. There had always been rumors about him. But I didn't think it was him. If Sarah had informed on Chris, why was he still walking around? Not that I'd seen him, but I would've heard if he'd been arrested.

Binder must have believed Etienne's story and my account of what happened the night Windsholme burned. He persuaded the prosecutor to charge Etienne with misuse of a cadaver for hanging up Ray's body, the least serious offense available. Etienne would pay a fine, but nothing worse. He was staying with us until it all got straightened out. He came to Morrow Island one last time, to scatter Gabrielle's ashes off the little beach. Afterwards, he said he'd never set foot on Morrow Island again. My heart broke for him.

We'd invited everyone we knew in town out to the island for a clambake. It seemed like the best way to show people we were back in business and it was safe to recommend us. I stood on the dock, welcoming Mr. and Mrs. Gus, Fee and Vee Snuggs, Clarice Kemp, Quentin Tupper, and even Bob Ditzy. Bygones needed to be bygones. I'd invited the Chinese maid from the Bellevue and the Russian girl from the Lighthouse Inn. And Lieutenant Binder, Detective Flynn, Jamie, Officer Howland, and anyone who had helped us along the way. I'd seen Jamie around town a few times. We'd each gone out of our way to be polite. Neither of us had said a word about the kiss or the fight.

When the Jacquie II emptied out and the crowd moved up the lawn, I stood for a moment, hoping.

Even with Livvie and Sonny living there, my mother still hadn't come out to the island. I finally understood why she hadn't returned in the five years since my father died. I thought the island represented her happiest childhood home, and the place where she met my father. She didn't want to color those memories with her grief. And now, she had the grief of Gabrielle to deal with, as well. It was my hope, and Livvie's, with Page as a lure, my mother would someday return to the island. But not today.

I knew my mother wasn't coming, but someone else was missing.

I hadn't run into Chris around town. It didn't strike me as odd, necessarily. The season was in full swing and I'd always known our lunches together would end then. Besides, as he'd told me on that awful day when he was arrested for something he didn't do, I'd misunderstood our relationship. One thing I was sure of, though. He'd been the one who cleaned up the playhouse. Everyone else denied it. I shuddered thinking about how two small acts, Chris cleaning the playhouse and me having a couple rooms in Windsholme rewired, had hastened Gabrielle's descent into madness.

Finally, Captain George came down the gangplank. He crooked his arm at the elbow and c.o.c.ked his thumb back toward the cabin. "There's someone onboard who wants to see you."