Boiled Over (A Maine Clambake Mystery)

by Barbara Ross

  “It’s nice that those older kids came to Cabe’s defense.”

  “That’s not the way the cops saw it. To them, confirmation of Jensen’s cruelty gave Cabe motive.” She looked at me to make sure I understood. “But the case unraveled before it could begin. Cabe was never formally charged. The state’s own blood spatter expert’s opinion was that Cabe’s explanation for the blood on him was probable and the killer was likely a larger individual.”

  “How do you know all this?” I asked.

  “The bare bones of it was in Cabe’s file when he came here. Bit by bit, he told me the rest. And then I checked it out independently. I need to know who’s living here. Mrs. Jensen told the cops her husband had a gambling problem and owed money to some bad people.”

  Emily noticed my quizzical look and said, “I know. Stabbing seems like a messy and unprofessional way to settle gambling debts. But it was enough. There just wasn’t the evidence to put together a case against Cabe.”

  “Was Mr. Jensen’s murder ever solved?”

  “Never,” Emily answered. “Not to this day.”

  “How many times was Jensen stabbed?” The state police hadn’t, as far as I knew, released the cause of Stevie’s death.

  “I used to know, but I can’t remember exactly,” Emily said. “Lots though. More than a dozen.”

  The same MO as Stevie’s death. “And after his foster father’s murder, where did Cabe go?”

  “Obviously, he wasn’t going to another foster family. Ironically, he ended up at the same juvenile mental health facility where he would have been sent if he’d been arrested, tried, and found not guilty by reason of insanity, although in a different wing. He hated the place. He ran away repeatedly and stayed on the streets of Portland for months at a time. But he was always found and returned. When he was seventeen, they sent him here.”

  “He spoke to you about—all of it? What happened? His feelings?” It was hard to imagine the reticent young man I knew talking about his feelings.

  “We talked all the time. He seemed to understand the challenges of my job and he supported my work with the other kids. Honestly, he was a godsend. He told me seeing the kids in that place, the facility where he was sent, hearing the stories of the lives they’d lived, made him grateful for the life he’d had with the Stones. He decided to focus on what he’d been given, rather than on what he’d lost.”

  “Why did he leave here?” I asked.

  “He graduated from high school and aged out of the system. I can’t have people here once they’re legal adults.”

  How would I have felt at eighteen if I’d been cast out into the world without family or support? I was relieved Cabe couldn’t be Stevie’s son. He’d been known to the Maine child welfare and justice systems for years. The horror of his life, the repeated losses, and the nature of the crime he’d been suspected of—a stabbing, just like Stevie’s—must be what Binder and Flynn knew and why they laser-focused on Cabe.

  “Where did Cabe go when he left here?”

  “I don’t know. If you’re his boss, you know more about where he ended up than I do. Last summer he worked in Columbia Falls up in Washington County in the blueberry camps. You know, with the Mi’kmaq Indians who come down from Canada to pick the crop? I heard from him a few times while he was there. After that, I lost track. It’s not like he had a laptop or a cell phone for keeping in touch.”

  “Did you tell the police what you’ve told me—including the part about the blueberry camp?”

  “They asked if I knew where he was now. I answered honestly, I did not.” So Emily, too, was reluctant to give the police more information than she had to about Cabe.

  “Do you think he’d go back to the blueberry camp?”

  Emily gave me a hard stare, assessing. “You really want to help him, don’t you?”

  “I do.” I held her gaze.

  “Yes, I think he might go back. He seemed at home there. Happy. And if you’re his boss, you know he’s not afraid of hard work.”

  “Is there anything else you think might help me? Any place Cabe might go? Anything he planned to do?”

  She looked down at the table and said in a low voice. “He told me he wanted to find his birth parents.”

  Chapter 23

  Outside Moore House, I started my car and opened the windows. The sun had heated the car to oven temperatures. I sat for a moment and thought about what to do. On the one hand, it was at least a two and a half hour ride north and east from Rockland to Columbia Falls. On the other, I was part way there, I had a car, and I didn’t know when I could steal another day off. If there was any chance Cabe was at the blueberry camp, I had to find out. I drove north and east on U.S. 1.

  Being alone in the car, a rarity between family and work, gave me plenty of time to think, and my thoughts were much darker than the shimmering summer day outside. I’d thought Lieutenant Binder had made me an unofficial part of his team after I’d proved to him I could solve a murder last spring. I’d been sure all Sergeant Flynn’s glowering and harrumphing was because he objected to Binder taking me into his confidence.

  But clearly, Binder had been playing me. Telling me things he wanted me to know. Using me to find out stuff, but keeping an awful lot from me. He must know about the previous murder that had touched Cabe’s life. That seemed like a pretty big thing for him to leave out of our conversations accidentally. The more I thought about it, the madder it made me.

  Anger kept my right foot pressed down on the gas pedal, though my mother’s old car didn’t have much of its original power. Within the hour, I’d passed the stately homes of Rockport and Camden, and sailed over the beautiful Penobscot Narrows Bridge, which looked like twin schooners racing over the river hundreds of feet below. I stopped at the Dunkin Donuts in Bucksport to use the restroom and buy coffee, but didn’t think to eat. I fidgeted as I waited in the line to pay. I needed to press on.

  I roared into Washington County, called “Sunrise County” because it’s the first place the sun hits the continental United States. On my right, tantalizing views of the Gulf of Maine appeared and disappeared as the road twisted.

  By four in the afternoon, I was starting to lose steam. Blueberry fields appeared on either side of the road. I saw farm workers off in the distance. What now? Why had I thought I could find Cabe in this vast expanse?

  I saw a barn-sized geodesic dome painted bright blue. It was surrounded by dozens of round marine buoys that looked like perfectly round boulders, a round water tower, and a fence with round post toppers the size of basketballs, all of them painted bright blue. WILD BLUEBERRY LAND the sign said. It seemed like the place to stop.

  Inside Wild Blueberry Land, my mouth began to water. The shop was full of souvenirs—T-shirts, mugs, pie plates, with blueberries all over everything—but I was interested only in the goods behind the glass counter. I didn’t know what to choose—blueberry muffins, scones, pies, cookies, smoothies, milkshakes, ice cream.

  “And they’re good for you,” the cheerful woman behind the counter said. “Loaded with antioxidants.”

  I smiled back at her. Sure, they were good for you if they weren’t surrounded by pounds of butter, flour, and sugar, but I was way too hungry to point this out. I finally decided on a muffin and a cup of coffee to go with it.

  “These berries are wild, right?” I asked, while she served up my coffee and muffin.

  She cocked her head. “They’re not planted by the farmers. If you clear a field around here, it will fill in with blueberries. But the fields are rotated, harvested one year and burned the next. Fire kills the weeds, but not the bushes, which are mostly underground. The part the berries grow on is only six to eight inches high. That’s why they’re called low-bush blueberries. The cultivated ones are called high-bush.”

  I nodded to show I understood. Maine blueberries were a lot like Maine lobsters. A native resource, not farmed, but carefully managed. I sat at one of the high tables in the shop. It was everything I could do not to
gulp down the muffin. The sweet and tangy taste of the blueberries was delicious. I closed my eyes and focused on it, determined to savor their flavor, despite the rumblings in my stomach.

  After I finished the last bite, I handed the woman a five to pay for my snack. “Can you give me directions to the Mi’kmaq camp?” I asked as she made change.

  “The Mi’kmaq work Passamaquoddy land. There are five camps. The nearest one is about ten miles from here.” She drew a map on a napkin.

  I needed to go back the way I’d come for a few miles, then turn inland. “Great. Thanks.” It was already late afternoon. I had a lot of searching to do before I headed back to Busman’s Harbor.

  When I left Route 1, the scenery changed. Large fields of the low-bush berries were broken up only by single rows of tall trees and the tops of boulders that occasionally broke through the topsoil. Here and there, I saw clusters of cars and trucks and pickers working. I scanned for Cabe’s familiar form, but didn’t see him.

  Farther on, the fields were posted with huge yellow signs. I stopped the car and read PASSAMAQUODDY WILD BLUEBERRY COMPANY. NO TRESSPASSING. ACCESS BY PERMIT ONLY.

  What was I doing?

  The paved road turned sharply to the left and in front of me was a dirt track. Beside another yellow NO TRESSPASSING sign was a smaller, hand-lettered sign with an arrow pointing to the camp. My car idled while my natural law-abiding, rule-following tendencies warred with my desire to find Cabe.

  I’d always thought of myself as a good person. Someone who’d never lie to the cops or keep things from them. I never parked in handicapped spots. As a kid, I’d never filched so much as a pack of gum, and to this day I grew uneasy in conversations where it was assumed, “everybody did it.”

  The NO TRESPASSING sign freaked me out. I would never, ever have passed it to get something for myself. But I had to help Cabe. I’d come so far. What if he was just beyond that sign? The story Emily Draper had told me about Cabe’s life pushed me forward. Someone should do something for that boy.

  Finally, I depressed the gas pedal and pulled forward onto the dirt track, my heart pounding. I passed more fields and considered turning around several more times before the camp came into view.

  A dozen or more rough wooden bunkhouses, looking like something out of the Depression, were clustered on a grassy verge. Children chased one another in the space between the houses, laughing and shrieking. Men played cards at tables on the grass. When there were more ruts than road, I steered into a space among the pickups and cars parked at the camp.

  I got out of my car into the late afternoon heat. Even just a little bit inland, it was much warmer than on the coast. Was it too much to hope that I would spot Cabe in the crowd? He would stand out, for sure. Though I did see an occasional white person, and black person, and Asian person, almost everyone around me was Native American. The crowd hummed with the sounds of English, French, and another language I assumed belonged to the Mi’kmaqs.

  A powerfully built, middle-aged man with a thick thatch of silver hair detached himself from a card game and came toward me. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m looking for someone.”

  “Aren’t they all?” he muttered to himself. To me he said, “What’s your friend called?”

  “Cabe Stone,” I answered, giving the only name I had, though I doubted Cabe was using it if he was here. “He’s about five foot ten, thin, dark blond hair, blue eyes. Nineteen years old.”

  “What do you want with this Stone?”

  “He’s my younger brother.” The lie slipped out almost before I knew I’d formed it. The Mi’kmaq man’s question gave me hope. Why ask, if my description of Cabe didn’t ring any bells?

  “Will this brother be happy to see you?”

  “Yes. I think so. I’m sure so,” I said with more confidence. Cabe had called, asking for my help.

  “C’mon,” the man said. “Only the younger men are still out in the fields. The rest of us have quit for the day.” He headed toward a pickup truck so high off the ground, I wondered if I’d be able to climb into it. Sometimes I hated being short. But after the man opened the passenger side door, I boosted myself onto the running board, grabbed the frame of the open window, and swung myself inside. Despite a lifetime of lectures about stranger danger, I didn’t hesitate, even a little bit, to get into the man’s truck. He must know where Cabe was. My heart beat wildly.

  “Joe Manion, by the way.”

  “Julia Snowden.” We drove out of the camp back along the two-lane road through the blueberry barrens. In the far-off field of another farm, I spotted a hulking mechanical harvester moving slowly down a row of blueberries.

  “We have a handshake agreement with the Passamaquoddy. As long as we come to pick, they won’t mechanize. Mi’kmaqs have migrated from Canada to pick blueberries for as long as anyone can remember. The last few years, your Feds have given us trouble at the border. Worried we’re illegal immigrants. ‘You’re the illegal immigrants!’ I tell them.” He laughed. “Though I’m sure it doesn’t help matters.”

  We pulled to the side of the road. Large yellow plastic boxes of tiny blueberries, twigs, and leaves were piled at the edge of the field. “The trucks will be along to pick those up soon,” Joe said.

  Only about half a dozen people were still working, all fit, young men. “We set our own goals. Number of boxes, dollars per day. When we’re done, we head back to camp. We’re independent, work for ourselves, make our own rules. That’s what we like about working for the Passamaquoddy. They understand our work ethic.”

  Picking low-bush blueberries looked like unimaginably hard work. Wielding a blueberry rake that looked like a dustpan with a comb at the end, the pickers pulled their rakes through the bushes. The tines of the comb cleaned the berries off the bushes. Every few minutes, when the rake’s scoop was full, the pickers dumped the berries into a plastic tote. Then they moved up their row.

  I looked for Cabe among the bent-over figures. The sun was hot, the air still. Sweat formed along my hairline, even though I wasn’t moving.

  “Want to stand in the bed of the truck, see if you can spot your brother?” Joe asked.

  I almost responded, “What brother?” but caught myself in time.

  I climbed into the truck bed and scanned the field, searching for Cabe. Nothing. Something drew my eyes to a tall, well-built Native American man. In one fluid motion, he put down his blueberry rake and pulled a camera with an enormous lens from his bag. Pointing it in my direction, he began snapping pictures. In that moment, I was sure it was the photographer from the morning of the murder.

  “Hey!” I jumped out of the bed of the pickup and ran. “Hey!”

  Chapter 24

  The good-looking photographer stood, smiling politely, as I made my way through the blueberry field toward him. “Walk where the berries have already been picked,” he called, indicating a row marked with string.

  Finally, I made it to the man’s side. “I’m so glad I’ve found you. I’m Julia Snowden.”

  He shook my hand without hesitation, though he was clearly trying to place me. “Phillip Johnson. You’ve been looking for me?” He was in his late thirties or early forties, dressed in faded jeans and a sweat-soaked white T-shirt. The cut of his slightly long, black hair looked expensive to my Manhattan-trained eye and I couldn’t begin to guess the cost of his photographic equipment. Why was a man like this doing the backbreaking work of raking blueberries?

  “That depends,” I responded. “Were you on the balcony of the Lighthouse Inn in Busman’s Harbor last Saturday morning, taking photos of the activity on the pier for Founder’s Weekend?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  “I am. I’m trying to help a friend.”

  Johnson bent over to put his camera and lens back into their cases. “I think we’d better go somewhere to talk.”

  I nodded, relieved that he wasn’t inclined to blow me off. He handed me his camera case and said, “Be careful. I have to finish my row. Once
you start, you’re committed.” He indicated an area marked off with string.

  I watched, fascinated, as he bent and dragged the big rake across the ground under the blueberry plants. “They’re beautiful,” I said, looking in the plastic tote at the tiny, glistening dark berries and soft green leaves.

  “There are naturally fifty to a hundred varieties of blueberry plant in a field. That’s why there are different colors from black to light reddish-blue or even albino. They peak for harvest at different times, as well. It’s the variety in the type of berry and ripeness that packs them with so much flavor. The ones I’m picking now will go off to be cleaned and frozen tonight. Ninety per cent of them are sold frozen.”

  He finished his row and picked up the plastic totes containing his blueberries, depositing them at the end of the row. A hundred yards away, two men in a flat bed truck moved along the road picking up the bins.

  “Give us a ride back to camp?” Johnson asked Joe Manion.

  Manion nodded and the three of us crowded into the front seat of the pickup. “How many boxes today?” Manion asked Johnson.

  “Seventy-five,” Johnson grunted. “Got a late start and my shoulder’s been bothering me.”

  “Not bad,” Manion allowed. The boxes were enormous, twenty or thirty pounds. I couldn’t imagine filling ten of them, let alone seventy-five. I thought the work at the Snowden Family Clambake was physically challenging. I wouldn’t have lasted an hour in these fields.

  “How much do you get per box?” I asked.

  “Two-fifty,” Joe Manion answered.

  I did a quick calculation. A hundred and eighty seven dollars and fifty cents. A lot of money to many of the people in the camp, by the look of them, but I wondered if it was enough to even pay for Phillip Johnson’s haircut.

  Back at the camp, Johnson, who asked me to call him Phil, sat me at a table in front of one of the bunkhouses and excused himself to get cleaned up. I still hadn’t told him why I was there, exactly. A moment later, the screen door slammed and Phil, towel slung over his shoulder, went off in the direction of the communal shower house.