Clammed Up: A Maine Clambake Mystery Part 3

I focused on lining up the salt and pepper shakers, the sugar, syrup, and catsup bottles in a row and managed not to cry. "But what about you? The state police want to see you again?"

"Two hours yesterday. More today. You heard I drove the victim back to his hotel Friday night in my cab? Of course you did. Everyone in town knows it."

In a bigger town, it might be considered a conflict of interest for the bouncer in a bar to have the power to take away a patron's keys and then load that person into a cab the bouncer owned. But in Busman's Harbor everyone wore multiple hats and we thought nothing of it.

Gus dropped a huge plate of blueberry pancakes and a side of bacon in front of Chris. "Thanks." Chris was genuinely surprised. Gus didn't believe in table service.

"Don't get used to it."

Chris picked the plastic maple syrup dispenser out of the little formation I'd created and applied its contents to his pancakes.

"Tell me, from the beginning," I said.

He dug into his pancakes and ate. The moment stretched and I wondered if he was going to say anything. Finally, he spoke. "They all came into Crowley's about ten, a little after. Since it's so early in the season, I was the only bouncer on, working just inside the door, checking IDs. From there, I can keep my eye on the bar and the dance floor, pretty much the whole place."

"And by 'they all' you mean . . . ?"

"The bride, the groom, the best man, and three bridesmaids."

The entire wedding party, except Michaela's teenaged brothers, who were too young to go out to a bar after the rehearsal dinner. By three bridesmaids, Chris meant the maid of honor and the two others. I didn't correct him.

"Were they drunk?"

"Not when they arrived. A couple of the bridesmaids were a little silly, but I've seen people come in a whole lot worse. The bride wasn't drinking-she had seltzer and lime-and the groom nursed one beer the whole time he was there."

Made sense, the happy couple would have wanted to be bright-eyed for the big day.

"And Ray Wilson?"

"I'd have sworn he was stone cold sober when he came in, but I must be losing my eye, because after a couple drinks, he was completely gone. And you know the drinks at Crowley's."

Over-priced and watered-down, especially for tourists. And more watered-down later in the evening. "So what happened?"

"The best man and the bridesmaids all got pretty happy. There was a lot of dancing, initially as a group, but later with some of the other customers."

"Many local people there?"

"Aside from the employees? Just a few." Crowley's is mostly too expensive for the natives. "Any of my people?"

"Your people?" Chris grinned, but he knew what I meant. "I don't think so."

But then, he paused. I sensed there was something he wasn't telling. "What? Who?"

"Sarah came in about 10:30."

"Sarah Halsey?"

"She works for you."

"Yeah. I'm just surprised. A schoolteacher with a kid at home-"

"She's not allowed to blow off a little steam?"

"Sure, I guess." I indicated he should go on.

"The groom left after about half an hour."

"Wait. Tony left?" It seemed odd for the groom to leave his own party so quickly. "Why?"

Chris shrugged his shoulders. "No idea. I didn't think about it at the time. Anyway, not too long after that, the best man started drinking heavily, getting handsy with the women on the dance floor, stumbling. At a little before one, the bride and bridesmaids wanted to leave. The bride told Wilson to go back to his hotel and go to bed. He refused. She was pretty mad. They were both yelling. So I stepped in and told her I'd take care of him."

"And?"

"The ladies left. It was almost closing and the place had really emptied out, so I left the bartender to close up, put the best man in my cab, and drove him to the Lighthouse."

The Lighthouse Inn was a large hotel about five minutes from Crowley's. It was called the Lighthouse because, rumor had it, from one of its thirty-eight rooms, if you leaned as far over the balcony as was humanly possible, you could see d.i.n.k.u.ms Light. Ray and a number of the wedding guests were staying there.

"Did you walk him inside?"

"Nope. Now I wish I had. I wish I'd tucked him into bed, to tell you the truth. I thought he could make it on his own. Last I saw him, he was stumbling out of my cab toward the lobby." Chris rubbed a hand over the stubble on his chin. The chin with the dimple. "That's all I got."

He glanced over my head at the big clock over the threshold between Gus's dining room and the counter area. I've always felt the clock was Gus's way of saying, "You've finished eating. Now get the h.e.l.l out of here."

"Can't keep the cops waiting." Chris stood and I did, too. I wanted to go with him to the police station, but figured that wouldn't look good, what with him being the last to see Ray and me finding the body. I wanted to give him a hug, but we'd never actually touched. So I walked him to the front door and wished him good luck.

"Earth to Julia."

I realized I was standing in the front room of Gus's, my mind a million miles away, while Gus refilled the saltshakers and the catsup bottles and got ready for the post-church rush. I grabbed a gallon jug of syrup from behind the counter and helped out. Preparing to feed a big crowd was something I knew how to do.

We worked in silence for a while, then Gus said, "I'm sorry for your trouble. Is it bad?" He knew the murder was bad. He was asking about the business.

"I don't know when they're going to let us open. Every day that goes by is killing us financially." And increasing the chances the bank would call our loan. "That's a.s.suming anyone will want to come party on an island where there's been a grisly murder."

"Don't worry. You'll probably get so many of those rubberneckers out to see where it happened, you'll make more money than ever."

"Maybe." I wasn't comforted. I didn't like the idea of profiting from Ray Wilson's death.

"The police know who did it?"

"I don't think so. From the questions they asked her yesterday, Livvie thinks it's got something to do with the people from New York who hired us to do their wedding reception."

"The state police think people from New York City took a man out to your island in the middle of the night and strung him up on your staircase?"

"Absurd, isn't it?"

"State cops. They don't know this harbor." In Gus's opinion n.o.body from out of town knew much of anything, but he had a point. Busman's residents knew how hard it would be to take someone out to Morrow in the dark, but would state cops know?

"I think this murder will finally bankrupt the Snowden Family Clambake," I said. "And the worst part is, there is not one thing I can do about it."

That did seem like the absolutely worst part. I'd put my career and my life in New York on hold. I'd worked like a dog all spring and battled with Sonny. And none of it was going to matter. We were going to succ.u.mb to something completely beyond my control.

Gus wasn't having any of it. "Now Julia Snowden, I don't want to hear you talk that way. Your business is too important to this town. We can't be losing any more employers. You say there's not a thing you can do? Do you know these people who hired you to do the wedding, the ones from New York?"

"Vaguely."

"Do you know them better than the state cops do?"

"Maybe, but-"

"And do you know Morrow Island better than the state cops do, and who might have business there?"

"Of course, but-"

"And aside from the dead man's family, is there anyone who has more interest in getting this murder solved than you do?"

"Probably no, but-"

Gus wagged a finger at me. "'Not a thing you can do about it.' We don't talk that way in Busman's Harbor, Maine, missy. I'm sure you if think about it, you'll know exactly what you have to do."

Chapter 10.

I climbed the steps from Gus's restaurant to the street. Gus was right. n.o.body in town cared as much about solving the murder of Ray Wilson as I did. But that didn't mean I knew what to do.

I did absolutely know what I didn't want to do. Yet, inescapably, it was the thing I had to do next.

A couple months earlier when they booked the reception, Michaela and Tony had given me a deposit for half the wedding costs. Yesterday morning, before the whole day exploded, they'd given me a check for the balance. Depositing the second check would be wrong. Our contract gave me the right to, but Michaela and Tony hadn't, at the end of the day, had a wedding. The circ.u.mstances were so extraordinary I didn't think it was the right time to be a stickler for legalities. But I was already out of pocket for more than the original deposit check covered.

I needed to have a conversation with Tony and Michaela about money, and much as I didn't want to have it on the day after their best man was found murdered and their wedding spoiled, I did want to have it in person. That meant catching them while they were still in town.

I dialed their hotel room from my cell.

Michaela picked up and told me they'd just returned from another interview with the state police. They'd meet me in the hotel dining room for coffee.

Michaela and Tony had stayed overnight in the honeymoon suite at the Bellevue Inn, a rambling wooden structure on the other side of the harbor from the hotels and B&Bs where their guests were staying. I'm sure the isolation had seemed like a great idea when they made their reservation, though I wondered how they were feeling about it now.

The breakfast crowd had almost cleared out of the dining room by the time I got to the Bellevue. I spotted Michaela and Tony in a quiet corner and rushed toward Michaela to give her a hug. She stood and returned it. Even more than I had with Chris, I felt like she and I were comrades who'd been to war together, and talking about money seemed even more uncomfortable. But once I'd sat down and poured a cup of coffee from the carafe on the table, Tony leveled his gaze at me and said, "You're here about the bill."

I knew they were paying for the wedding themselves, and I'm not sure why, but I had the impression Tony was the source of most of the funds. I nodded, indicating I was, indeed, there to talk about the money.

"How much are you out of pocket over and above our original deposit?" Tony asked.

"The lobsters are alive, stored under our dock," I said. "If the police give us permission to open tomorrow, I can use them. And I can resell the liquor. But the rest of the food, the flowers, and the fuel for one roundtrip on the Jacquie II . . ."

I gave a figure and, to his credit, Tony didn't flinch. Across the table, Michaela remained silent, though she did sigh softly when I mentioned the flowers. I was sure she was thinking about her hopes for a beautiful day and all she'd lost.

"And the labor cost?" Tony prompted.

That was the part of the conversation I dreaded. People were the biggest expense of running the clambake. True, most of the employees hadn't actually worked. But they'd lost the day and most couldn't afford to lose the wages. I gave Tony the amount.

"And the gratuity?"

A service charge would have been added to the bill to be pooled and split by the employees. But that was the problem. There had been no service. I hesitated.

"Just tell me how much." Tony sat, pencil poised over the paper napkin he'd been taking notes on. "I want to pay it all. There's no reason for your employees to suffer because of what happened."

I named another figure. Tony wrote it down. As he added up the numbers, I studied him and Michaela. If long-term couples grow to look alike, they had a significant head start. Both were dark-haired and dark-eyed, and each possessed a pair of perfectly arched eyebrows. His were not in the least feminine, and hers were not at all masculine, but both pairs were striking in their shape. Each had a gender-appropriate version of the same long-limbed body, and they moved with the kind of casual grace the rest of us noticed and envied. As I watched them, Tony reached across the table without even looking at Michaela and grabbed her hand as if he always knew by some sort of built-in sonar where every part of her body was in relation to his own.

I genuinely liked Michaela, but something about Tony caused me to keep my guard up. I was relieved he was willing to pay the employees. It would be much harder to manage the clambake if word got around we'd stiffed people. But he was being too agreeable. Too generous. Why? Did he want to get this sad business over and done? Or did he have some other reason to care whether the citizens of Busman's Harbor thought well of him?

"What are you planning for the rest of your day?" I asked.

"The police said we could leave, so we're headed to Bath to spend time with Tony's parents." Michaela's dabbed at her eyes with her napkin.

I looked at Tony. "You're from Bath?" That was a surprise. Bath was just a twenty-five minute drive south along Maine's jagged coast.

"Both Ray and I are. Were," Tony replied. "We grew up together."

How could I not have known? I could've sworn when Tony introduced me to his parents on board the Jacquie II, he said they'd just flown up from Florida. Then again, that wasn't an unusual migration for an older Maine couple.

"That's why we chose your place for the wedding," Michaela said.

"I thought it was because you knew me in New York."

Michaela shook her head. "No, no, no. Tony picked your place."

Tony signaled for the waitress and signed the bill for our coffee. "We've got to get going and pack the cars," he said to Michaela.

"Cars?" I said. "You didn't ride up together?"

"Michaela came up early to meet her family," Tony answered. "I was supposed to drive up with Ray, but when he came to pick me up, he had a big camp trunk taking up the whole backseat of his Porsche. There was no way his little car was going to fit me, Ray, his luggage, and all my luggage for the wedding and the honeymoon. So I drove myself up." Tony shook his head and smiled. "Freakin' Ray."

Big camp trunk? Wasn't that a little odd? "What did he say was in the trunk?"

"He didn't. Some stupid thing would be my guess." Tony smiled again indulgently. "Some prop for the best man speech or some other prank."

"Did you tell the police about the trunk?"

"They didn't ask. But they took all the stuff from his hotel room into evidence and towed his car from the lot at the Lighthouse Inn, so I guess they've found the trunk by now."