Steamed Open

by Barbara Ross

  “Okay. I’ll be right behind you.”

  Jamie got in the patrol car and Will in his truck. They both pulled out of the lot in a cloud of sand and dust. I watched them go.

  Lieutenant Binder had said Bart Frick had bled out from a puncture wound in his carotid artery. Now the detectives were looking at the equipment of everyone who’d gathered at the gate across the beach. They must suspect the hole had been made by a clam rake, or something like it.

  I stood in the deserted parking lot, worrying about Will, and Nikki and their kids, and wondering what had happened to Will’s old clam rake.

  CHAPTER 13

  We’d started clamming so early it was eight o’clock, my usual start-work time, when I pulled the Caprice into Mom’s garage. I gave Mom a wave as I walked by, headed for the back stairs. I went up to my office and did the normal stuff, ordering food and supplies, finding coverage for an employee who’d called in sick. She was a college sophomore on her third case of “Morning-after-Saturday-nights,” which meant she wouldn’t be coming back next year. I checked in with our ticket kiosk on the town pier. We were sold out for both lunch and dinner.

  I finished up, called good-bye to Mom, and headed out the front door. If I kept moving, I could get back to my apartment, grab a quick shower, and change before I had to meet the boat. I was down the walk when I heard a familiar, “Yoo-hoo!” Vee Snugg stood in her high heels on the porch of the Snuggles Inn, waving madly. I crossed the street. “Good morning, Julia. What a surprise to see you.”

  “Really? Because I come out of Mom’s house this time pretty much every day.” I wrinkled my nose at her. What was she up to?

  “Since you’re passing by, would you like to come in for tea and sour cream coffee cake?”

  “Passing? I’m not passing, I’m on my way to my apartment. Why are you shouting?”

  Standing above me on the porch, Vee shook me off with a quick gyration of her head. “We thought, since you’re passing by, you might like to come in,” she repeated at the same volume. “We have another visitor, Ida Fischer. Perhaps you know her?”

  Light dawned. Ida hadn’t so much agreed to meet with me as been tricked into it. “I’d be delighted to see her.”

  Vee rolled her eyes. “About time,” she muttered. Then louder, “Come in, come in.”

  Mackie ran to greet me when I entered. I bent down and scratched him behind the ears. As Vee passed through the swinging door to the kitchen, I caught a glimpse of Ida Fischer slumped in a chair at the table. “Julia Snowden’s just dropped by,” Vee announced. “From across the street.”

  I followed Vee. “I can only stay a minute or two. I’ve got to get dressed for work.”

  Fee looked at me, taking in my denim cutoffs, faded Snowden Family Clambake T-shirt, and flip-flops, and said, “Indeed. Do you know each other?”

  “We met the other day,” I answered.

  Ida Fischer fixed me with an unwavering stare. “We did. I had no idea that it would be the last time either of us saw poor Mr. Frick.”

  Poor Mr. Frick? That was rich. Ida had said she couldn’t stand him. And, was I mistaken, or did Ida go out of her way to say “the last time we saw him.” I knew it was the last time I’d seen Frick, but I couldn’t vouch for her.

  I sat at the table. Fee poured tea while Vee divided the coffee cake left over from their guests’ breakfast. I was starving after my exertions of the morning. I accepted my piece gratefully. Like everything Vee baked, the coffee cake was delicious, a mouthwatering combination of sour and sweet.

  “We’re so sorry for your trouble,” Fee told Ida. “First Lou, and then this . . .”

  “And my job. It’s been a bad run.” Ida paused while she gathered herself. “Lou was over a hundred. I knew I’d lose her sometime, unless I went first. I miss her terribly, but I was prepared. But a murder in Herrickson House, my home for all these years?” She shuddered. “That takes all.”

  Fee and Vee made sympathetic noises.

  “The police won’t let me get my things. Not that I want to go in there.”

  “Remind me, how long have you lived at Herrickson House?” Vee asked.

  Ida’s angular face squeezed in on itself with concentration. “The first time, I was there for three years.” She turned to me, “I was a maid for Mrs. Herrickson, the late Mr. Herrickson’s mother, back in the days when they kept a full staff in the summer. Since I returned, I’ve been there more than thirty years.”

  “Where were the Herricksons from?” I asked

  “Why here, of course. I’m surprised, a local girl like you wouldn’t know that.”

  “I know Herrickson Point Light is named for them, and they have an ancestor who was the keeper.”

  Vee nodded. “Cyrus Herrickson. He bought the land from the road to the point so when his job at the lighthouse ended he wouldn’t have to leave.”

  “Did he build Herrickson House?” If Ida knew something about the history of the house, Wyatt Jayne would be thrilled.

  “No, no,” Ida answered. “The money came later, from manufacturing shoes.”

  That was news to me, but at one time over half the shoes sold in the United States were made in New England, so it made sense.

  “They had a place about a hundred miles inland in the town where their factory was,” Ida continued. “The house on Herrickson Point was built in the 1890s I think. When I was in service, old Mrs. Herrickson came here with her daughter and grandchildren for the summer, every year without fail. The men, old Mr. Herrickson, Francis, who later became Lou’s husband, and Mr. Frick who was married to the daughter, came for the weekends.”

  “The daughter was Bart Frick’s grandmother.” I remembered what he’d told me during our first and last conversation.

  “He was the grandnephew of Francis, yes,” Ida affirmed. “He inherited it all. Lou thought he should, since the land and house came from the Herrickson side. I just wish he’d been a nicer person.”

  “The money, however, came from Lou,” Vee put in.

  I raised an eyebrow at her. This was new information.

  “The shoe company fell on hard times,” she explained. “As they all did. First, they moved the factory to the South, and then abroad, but they couldn’t hang on. The famous Herrickson Moccasin brand disappeared. Francis was the only one left at that point. He’d left the family business to practice law in Portland. He sold the big house in western Maine for pennies on the dollar and moved to Busman’s Harbor full-time. He still had a lot of wealthy friends though. After his mother died and he gave up his law practice, he was visiting a friend in Palm Beach when he met Heloise Jameson.”

  “Where did Lou’s money come from?” I asked.

  “Her parents. It was mining money. Pennsylvania,” Fee answered.

  “And she’d married well,” Vee added. “A few times before she met Francis.”

  “She was nearly fifty when they married,” Ida took up the tale. “When he brought her here, after a whirlwind courtship, no one thought it would last. He’d never been married. Hard for a leopard to change its spots at sixty years of age. Herrickson House is beautiful, of course, but Busman’s Harbor isn’t Palm Beach. But she threw herself into the community. Gave to every charity, belonged to every service organization. She loved the town and it loved her back.

  “They kept the house in Palm Beach and spent the winters there until Frank passed away twenty-five years ago. By then Lou was getting on, and moving back and forth every year was too much. She had to choose one place or the other. Everyone thought she would choose Florida. Everyone except me. I knew how much she loved that place.”

  “So there were no other heirs, besides Bart Frick?” The question of Bart’s will and what would happen now was pinging around my brain.

  “He was the only one left,” Ida sighed. “And now he’s gone. They’re all gone.”

  “It’s interesting that you returned to your old job after so much time away,” I said.

  “When I left Herrickson Hous
e the first time, I married and left town with my husband. He turned out to be, well, not a nice man. When I came back to town many years later, I was desperate. I was in my forties, with no skills and not much education, living with my sister whose house was already overflowing with her husband and five kids. Lou heard about me from my sister’s husband’s cousin who did some carpentry for her. She told Francis, ‘If she was here before, we must have her back.’ I don’t think he agreed, but he loved her so much, he would do anything she asked.

  “So I moved into Herrickson House for the second time. I was the only live-in staff by then. Gardeners and cleaners came and went, but otherwise it was me. When Frank was alive, I watched over the place while he and Lou were in Palm Beach. You’d think it would get lonely out there on the point. All the other houses on the road were closed up for the winter. But I loved it.”

  “Who will inherit now?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I hope, whoever it is, they will leave the house as it is. That’s what Lou wanted.”

  We were silent for a moment after that. I felt badly for Ida, who had lost her job and her home. My previous suspicion of her felt silly.

  “Did Lou . . . take care of you?” Fee asked softly. A blush rose to her already ruddy cheeks. Mainers rarely asked others about money.

  “She did,” Ida answered. “I’ll be okay. I won’t live out my life at Herrickson House, as I’d hoped, but I wouldn’t have even if Mr. Frick were still alive. We didn’t get on, as you saw, Julia. I am sorry for my outburst the other day.”

  She’d dropped the pretense of “poor Mr. Frick,” and was being more honest. Now we were getting somewhere. “No need to apologize,” I said. “You’ve been through a lot.”

  “It’s just that,” she clenched her fists on the table, “when someone disrespects Lou, or Herrickson House, I get so mad. It’s my home, or it was, and that kind woman took me in when no one else would give me a chance.”

  “Ida, did you know Julia has helped several people in town who’ve run into trouble with the police?” Vee asked. The question felt out-of-the-blue, though I knew what the sisters were up to.

  Ida squinted her blue eyes at me, obviously reassessing. “I didn’t know that,” she answered, a note of caution in her voice.

  “She has,” Fee said, “and Vee and I thought, perhaps, Julia could help you, too. If you think you might need help, that is.”

  Mrs. Fischer drew her brows together, taking in what they’d said. She nodded, not rejecting the offer, but not accepting it, either. The three of us waited, looking at her.

  “I doubt you need any help,” I told her. “The state police know you left the house before Bart Frick was murdered. You didn’t like him, but not many did. I don’t think there’s cause for alarm.”

  Another silence followed, heavier than the last. Mrs. Fischer broke it. “My dear friends think I have cause for concern because they know something about me you don’t. I killed my husband, you see. For most of the years I was away from Herrickson House, I was in prison.”

  My astonished reaction was unfortunately obvious to all of them. I consciously closed my gaping mouth, giving Mrs. Fischer a tight grin.

  “So if you could help me, dear, I would appreciate it,” she said. “When a crime is committed, the police love to look no further than at the criminals.”

  From the harbor came the three familiar deep calls of the Jacquie II. Ten minutes to the boat. There’d be no time for a shower now. I jumped up from the table, nearly knocking over my chair, and thanked the ladies for the tea and cake.

  Vee walked me to the door. “You’ll help Ida, won’t you?”

  “Of course,” I said, “but she’ll have to tell me everything. The whole story.”

  “I’ll tell her,” Vee said.

  CHAPTER 14

  Mom was coming out of her house as I ran out of the Snuggles Inn. “Ready for work?” She looked me up and down—salt splattered cutoffs, T-shirt, flip-flops and all. She didn’t have to say anything.

  “Maybe Livvie has something I can wear.”

  Mom nodded curtly. Between my sister’s tall, broad-shouldered swimmer’s body and my petite size, we hadn’t been able to share clothes for a decade and a half.

  We passed the police station as we fast walked toward the town pier. The parking lot was full of pickup trucks. The clammers who’d protested at Herrickson Point bringing their clam rakes in for voluntary inspection, no doubt.

  The double glass doors of the building opened and Jamie walked out with Glen and Anne Barnard. He shook hands with each of them, taking his time, looking each in the eye and saying something before he let the hand go. They came across the parking lot toward Mom and me.

  “We’re headed the same way you are,” Glen said when they reached us. “We have tickets for your lunchtime boat.” Glen was smiling, but Anne looked mad or sad, I couldn’t tell which. She wore a knitted sweater vest with a lighthouse blazing up one side of it. Glen’s navy pants were covered in tiny red and white lighthouses. I introduced them both to Mom.

  “We’d better keep moving,” Mom said. “The whistle has already sounded.”

  Once we were on the Jacquie II, I forgot to be self-conscious about what I was wearing. The day was gorgeous and the crowd, clustered in family groups, was excited. There were more children than usual, and while the adults were always appreciative of the seals, the kids were even more enthusiastic, crowing and cheering as Captain George pointed them out.

  “Look, Mom, a sea gull!” A little girl pointed toward the bow, awestruck. Her happiness made me smile. Normally we call the pesky birds “dump gulls,” because there always seemed to be more of them at the dump than on the water.

  I found the Barnards on the open top deck. “There are great views of all three lighthouses on this trip,” I told them. “We’ll pass Dinkum’s first, which is on a harbor island. Then Herrickson Point Light, which you know. We’ll see it from the water, looking across Sea Glass Beach. The third one is Gray’s Light, which you’ll see from the distance when we’re almost to Morrow Island.”

  “Thanks,” Glen said. “And thank you for recommending your clambake to us. We’re making the best of a bad situation.”

  “It’s not the same as staying overnight at the keeper’s cottage,” Anne complained.

  “But still—” her husband chided.

  Over the ship’s sound system, Captain George pointed out Dinkum’s Light just ahead.

  Anne rallied, clapping her hands. “First lighthouse in the State of Maine.”

  “A technicality,” Glen added. “Maine didn’t become a state until the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Until then it was a colony of Massachusetts. Dinkum’s was built in 1821, thus the first light in the new state, but not the oldest along the Maine coast by any means.”

  “I’ll give you a heads up when we get in sight of Herrickson Point,” I said. “That won’t be until we’re through the mouth of the harbor.”

  They thanked me and I went to the pilothouse. Captain George was in a fine mood, like everyone else on board. He’d worked for my father, and then for my brother-in-law Sonny when he ran the clambake, and now, technically, he worked for me. But I didn’t fool myself I was in any way his boss. He knew more about the harbor, the Jacquie II, and the crew than anyone. I couldn’t imagine a situation in which I would second-guess him.

  I was surprised to find my mother on the bridge along with George. Since she’d come back to work at the clambake in the spring, she normally sat on the lower deck and read a book, treating the boat ride like a daily commute. I raised an eyebrow at her, a signal she either didn’t see or chose to ignore.

  “What a beautiful day!” I said.

  “That it is,” George confirmed. “Enjoy it while it’s here. Rough weather tomorrow.”

  One of the many things I always did was check the weather forecast, but I hadn’t done it that morning.

  “They’re expecting a blow,” George added.

  “George thinks
we’ll be closed tomorrow,” Mom told me.

  I looked at George, who nodded yes. He knew having the clambake up and running every day of the summer was important to us financially. He wouldn’t have even considered closing unless conditions were going to be dangerous.

  I pulled out my cell. “Let me see if I can reach the ticket kiosk before we leave the harbor. At least I can tell them to stop taking reservations for tomorrow.”

  But it was too late. I had no reception. The Jacquie II slipped out of the harbor’s mouth and turned west toward Morrow Island. I excused myself to go back to the Barnards.

  They were still where I’d left them, smiling broadly.

  “Herrickson Point will be visible right . . . there.” I pointed as the lighthouse came into sight.

  “It’s even more beautiful from the water than it is from the land,” Glen said.

  He was right. Because the lighthouse sat on a rocky ledge at the far point of the beach, from the land it looked protected. But from the water it looked thrust out of the rocks, on its own. At high tide, which it was, the sliver of sand that led to its rocky perch was all but invisible from the water. The lighthouse and rocks looked like they were about to float out to sea.

  Herrickson Point Light was a beautiful building, forty feet tall, painted white with a distinctive red strip about a third of the way from the top. The keeper’s house was also white, and small, only four rooms. It snuggled next to the light tower on the small outcropping.

  Captain George slowed down so people could enjoy the view and take lots of photos. I stared across the water. There wasn’t a soul in the parking lot, by the lighthouse, or up at the mansion. All wrong for a gorgeous summer day.

  “They say the keeper’s house is haunted,” I told the Barnards.

  “We know the story,” Anne replied. Of course they did. “One day in the winter of 1901,” she said, “the keeper hiked from the light over to Westclaw Village to collect his mail. The village in those days had a post office, general store, and Baptist Church.”

  “As it does today,” I said.