by Barbara Ross
The blond kid shook his head, no. But the brown-haired one recognized my description. “Oh, that dude. The cops have already been here, yo.”
The cops had no doubt been there because someone had told them Cabe had lived in the house. What the cops couldn’t know, because they hadn’t talked to Cabe, was that he’d slept there the night Stevie was murdered.
“He moved out,” the brown-haired kid said. “He was weird. Paranoid.”
“Paranoid? How?”
“He kept accusing people of going through his stuff. We don’t want your crappy stuff, weirdo. Didn’t seem like he had anything worth taking anyway. So he moved out, like I said.”
“After he moved out, did he ever stay here? Like when he needed a place to crash in town?”
The brown-haired kid shrugged. “How would I know?”
I tried one more time, because I had to. “Did Cabe Stone sleep here the Friday night of Founder’s Weekend?”
Blank looks.
“The night before the fireworks.” They couldn’t have missed those.
More blank looks.
“The night before the guy was found burned up on the town pier.”
“Oh,” Brown-hair said, comprehending. “Dunno.”
“Are we playing this game or what?” the blond kid asked, indicating the TV screen.
I wandered through the rooms of bare mattresses, piles of laundry, and half consumed bags of chips. I found a girl asleep in a back bedroom.
“Mom, go away,” she said when I tried to wake her.
On my way back to the front door, Brown-hair called out. “I remembered something.”
I walked into the front room and looked at him.
“Like I said, the kid was paranoid. Always asking if people had come to the door looking for him. Then after he left, someone did come.”
Who could that have been? “Did he leave a name?”
“It was a lady.”
A woman? “What did she look like?”
“Old.”
“Old like your mom, or old like your grandma?”
“Yeah,” the kid said, “old like that.”
Chapter 30
Back at the house, I asked Mom for her car. The rain was lightening up. It looked like Sonny was right and we might be able to run the clambake for dinner. I had to get as much done as I could before I went back to work. I wanted to find Zach and ask what he was doing on the pier the morning Stevie’s body was found. I was still mad at myself that I hadn’t recognized him at Crowley’s the night before until it was too late.
After going through the “Can I have the car?” ritual with Mom, which Richelle watched with interest, I drove over to Camp Glooscap.
At Camp Glooscap, I signed the guest book, then got back in my car and drove through the gate. I found my way to Zach’s old pop-up trailer easily. It was closed up tight, and the little red Toyota I’d seen the first day I’d been at the camp wasn’t anywhere in sight.
“Damn.”
I drove along toward Reggie’s motor coach, hoping he might know where Zach was, or could at least tell me something about him. I passed the Kelly’s RV, then drove down along the shore and looped back, heading for Reggie’s place.
Reggie stood outside the Parker’s trailer, red-faced and screaming. I rolled down the car window and understood why he was yelling.
There was a party in full swing at the Parkers. Heavy metal music blared at ear-bending decibels, even though it wasn’t yet noon. There were motorcycles and ATVs littered across the wet dirt that served as the dilapidated trailer’s front yard.
Reggie stopped yelling and paced back and forth on the muddy road. He was soaked to the skin. I wondered how long he’d been out there.
“Do you believe this?” he demanded when I pulled up beside him. “Camp Glooscap has always been a family place, each of the nine summers I’ve lived here. And now,” his face turned even redder as he struggled to put his anger into words. “Now this!”
I looked at the old trailer. The sounds escaping it were no more sinister than people having a good time, but it was undeniably disruptive for the other residents of the RV park.
I started to speak, but didn’t even squeeze out Reggie’s name before he picked up a baseball-sized rock and whipped it toward the trailer. It hit a screen, shredded it, and continued on its trajectory through the window.
The music stopped. A mountain of a man dressed in motorcycle garb banged through the trailer’s screen door. “What the hell!” He stood, arms tensed at his sides, ready for combat. Behind him, partiers peeked out the door and windows. “Swinburne!” he roared.
“Parker!” Reggie shouted back.
The motorcycle man walked down the steps and he and Reggie faced off in the yard like a couple gunslingers in the Wild West. I couldn’t imagine what was going to happen next. For one thing, though this particular Parker had forty pounds on Reggie, I was astonished to see that the men were the same age. Somehow in my mind, the partying Parkers were my age or younger. Though the man’s age made sense, when I thought about it. The Parker parents, who’d ignited this whole conflict when they went off to the assisted living place, were in their eighties, so their children would be closing in on senior citizenship.
Reggie made the first move, lunging at the larger man who grabbed him by the shirt. There was a lot of scuffling and shoving and some very bad words, though neither of the men had Bud Barbour’s creativity in that department.
“This is a family place!” Reggie yelled, swinging ineffectively at Parker.
“And that’s what I’m doing. Enjoying my vacation with my family.”
“And preventing everyone else from enjoying theirs.”
The members of the Parker clan spilled out of the trailer and crowded into the little yard. Other residents of Camp Glooscap filtered out of their RVs and gathered on the road. It looked like we were set up for the oldest gang fight ever seen.
“If Stevie Noyes were alive, you wouldn’t have a site in this camp!” Reggie screamed.
“That’s a lie,” the huge man sneered. “He told me the night before he died he’d decided we could stay on this site. And when he left, he went to inform you. I saw him go into your place.” Parker hauled off and slugged Reggie.
As Reggie went down, he kicked out a leg and took Parker down with him. They rolled in the mud, each trying to get a grip on the other.
“Stop!” I yelled. “Stop this instant!”
The big man had already stopped, as if startled by what he’d done, so by yelling, I hadn’t actually stopped anything. But I had called attention to myself. Everyone in the crowd stared at me.
“You are neighbors,” I insisted, saying the first thing that came to mind. “You are neighbors and adults.” I stared down at the two mud-covered men.
Reggie picked himself up and rubbed his jaw. Parker got up and moved off. As the circle of onlookers backed up, I put my shoulder under Reggie’s arm and helped him back to his RV.
Inside, I sat at the dinette table in Reggie’s RV, unable to avoid the sounds of him showering and changing in the bedroom just beyond. The inside of the camper was luxurious, with granite countertops, leather banquettes, and wide mechanical window bays that expanded its narrow footprint. The decor was exactly what I would have expected for Reggie. A locked gun cabinet was large enough for rifles and shotguns and a frame on the wall held mounted trout flies.
The RV couldn’t have been more different in style, but the motor coach reminded me of Chris’s sailboat in its tucked-up, everything-in-its-place efficiency. Outside, big drops fell from the trees. I couldn’t tell if it was still raining, or just the aftermath.
“Do you believe the nerve of those Parkers?” Reggie asked as he came out of the bedroom wearing a clean version of his outdoorsman uniform—camp shirt and shorts—a purple towel around his neck.
“Is it true Stevie came here on the night before he died to tell you he’d given the campsite to the Parkers?”
“Balderdash!” Reggie pr
otested. “You only have to look at those people to see they’re lying snakes.”
Who did I believe? If the Parkers were telling the truth, I was in a confined space with possibly the last person to see Stevie Noyes alive. I put my hand on my chest to register my heartbeat. Nothing extraordinary. Just the slow, familiar thump-thump. I wasn’t afraid of Reggie Swinburne. But I could be underestimating him.
“Tell me about your friend Zach,” I said.
Reggie rubbed the towel across his gray hair. “Nothing much to tell. He turned up here in the spring, just a little after I got here for the season. He started coming by, asking me the names of various birds, plants. I had the impression he was a city kid. Didn’t seem to know much about nature. From there, we became friends. I took him on some day hikes and some overnights, tried to teach him a few things.”
“Didn’t it strike you as odd, a young man alone in a campground full of retirees and families?”
“I’m here on my own.”
“But you’re retired. How does Zach live? Does he have a job?”
“It’s inexpensive to live here if you own your own rig. Both his car and the pop-up are older.”
“Does he have any connection to this part of Maine? Family in the area?”
“Not that he ever said. He does go off, occasionally. Usually during the day. I thought he was sightseeing on his own. Why the third degree anyway? What’s Zach to you?”
I sat back on the banquette, trying to convey casual interest. “No reason, really. I noticed him the first time I came to Camp Glooscap. I didn’t recognize him right away last night because he’d cut his hair and shaved.”
Reggie smiled. “He was going for the mountain man look. I finally persuaded him only bugs and nettles love it. It’s not comfortable for a human male in August, even in Maine. He just shaved and got his haircut yesterday morning.”
“You said you’re here on your own, but that’s not strictly true. You’re with Bunnie. I just came from having tea with her.”
He cocked a bushy eyebrow. “So you finally had your tea. I’m glad. Bunnie likes you. She said you were a joy to work with on the committee. She thinks you’re both cut from the same cloth. Natural leaders.”
Bunnie likes me? She had an awfully funny way of showing it. I tried to think of one word of praise she’d given to my work on Founder’s Weekend.
“Bunnie doesn’t have many friends,” Reggie continued. “She’s had a hard life. Her late husband lost all their money. She was one of those trusting wives who never asked her husband how he was managing their investments.”
That explained a lot. The tiny Cape house. And Bunnie’s warning not to be too trusting in my relationship.
“After he lost the money, Bunnie’s husband jumped off the Empire State Building. Poor girl, she’s had such a rough time of it.”
Jumped off the Empire State Building? Hadn’t one of T.V. Noyes victims jumped off the Empire State Building?
I wrapped up the conversation and hurried home to do more searching on the Web.
Chapter 31
I put Mom’s car back in our garage and hurried up the front walk to the house. The rain had stopped. I was sure the clambake would be open for dinner, so I wanted to do my research before I had to run down to the pier.
“Yoo-hoo, Julia!” Vee Snuggs called from across the street. “I need to speak to you.”
“Can it wait? I’m kind of in the middle of something.”
“No, dear. The time is now.”
Viola and her sister Fiona had run their bed and breakfast, the Snuggles Inn, in the gingerbread Victorian house across from my parents’ house for as long as I could remember. Though a generation older, they’d been close friends of my parents, and unofficial great-aunts to Livvie and me. The Snuggles had been a sort of second home, where I could always find Vee’s delicious scones along with the sympathetic ear of a grown-up who wasn’t my parent.
A few years ago, the sisters asked me to call them Vee and Fee instead of Miss Snuggs. I’d agreed reluctantly, but it didn’t make us equals. When Vee said, “Come over now,” I went.
I took off my muddy boots for the third time that morning, and Vee led me to her old-fashioned, homey kitchen, one of only two rooms off-limits to guests at the Snuggles. The other was the small former sitting room at the back of the house the sisters shared as a bedroom in the summer, so they could rent out all the rooms on the second and third floors. I sat at the familiar table with its cream-painted legs and red linoleum surface. Vee didn’t offer me food. I was grateful, because I’d just eaten. Consuming Bunnie’s delicious scones made me feel a little bit like I was cheating on Vee.
“I know you’ve been keeping company with that young man, Chris.” Vee opened the conversation.
I tried not to look too stunned. First Richelle, then Bunnie, now Vee. Why was today the day everyone wanted to counsel me about my relationship?
“Yes,” I admitted, and stopped there, wary of what was coming.
“I just wanted to say, I think it’s wonderful.” Vee smiled beatifically.
Well that made a change. But I was still suspicious. Why was this conversation so urgent?
“I’ve been wanting to say that to you, and I wanted to say that when my sister wasn’t at home.” She took my hand. “I wasn’t always on the road to becoming an old maid. I had a great love once, and I let him go. It’s my biggest regret.”
Her declaration didn’t surprise me. Her sister Fee was a plain woman, far more interested in her succession of Scottish terriers than in any male. But there’d always been rumors about the glamorous Vee, with her masses of white hair and her proper hose and high heels. The kind of rumors talked about among the grown-ups, which a certain type of big-eared child, like I had been, was bound to hear.
What did surprise me was what came next. Vee burst into tears.
I reached across the table with the hand she wasn’t holding and patted her arm. “Don’t talk about it, if it’s too painful.” I truly did not want to talk about it.
Vee let go of my hand and took a perfectly pressed handkerchief, embroidered with tiny pink flowers, out of the pocket of her apron. “I wanted to spend my life with this man, but there would have been scandal. He was married, you see. My parents disapproved. My sister disapproved. I listened to them. I never should have.” Vee snuffled into her handkerchief. “I sent him back to his wife. For my trouble, I got to see them have three children together and bring them up, while I sat on the sidelines and watched my life go by. They were never happily married, and he and I never stopped loving one another.”
This was new information. The proper Vee involved in a scandal. I could imagine the pressure her parents and sister applied.
“Vee, do you know why my mother objects to Chris?” I knew why Sonny objected. That was history. And why Livvie objected—because she was fiercely loyal to Sonny. But I couldn’t figure out what my mother’s problem was. I worried the rumors about Chris’s supposed criminal activity had reached her. It was true Mom didn’t have girlfriends per se, but if she’d confided to anyone about the heart of her issue with Chris, it would have been Vee.
“She hasn’t told me, and I haven’t asked. I’ve just sensed her reluctance to embrace him. And I’ve sensed something holding you back as well.” She grabbed my hand again. “Do not make my mistakes, Julia. Don’t be an observer of your own life. I regret it every day.”
Chapter 32
I stayed with Vee until she was calmer. She wiped her eyes for the last time just as Fee walked in the door with an armload of groceries. Then I hurried across the street to my house, hoping I could still get in an hour or more of Web searching before I had to be on board the Jacquie II.
Mom and Richelle were in the kitchen.
“You’re home! Perfect timing,” my mother called.
“Come join. Richelle has prepared a delicious late lunch for us.”
Oh please, not more food. Bunnie’s scone still sat heavy in my gut. I started to
refuse, but my mother glared at me, so I sat down. “I’ll just keep you company.”
Richelle put a bowl of tomato salad on the table, along with a bowl of tuna and white beans and a loaf of crusty bread. I watched while they each spooned the salad into bowls, the tuna onto their plates, and took slices of the bread. The smell of the tomatoes was overwhelming. It brought back memories of childhood when Livvie and I, playing in the vegetable garden on Morrow Island, had eaten tomatoes straight off the vines.
“What’s in this?” I asked.
“Tomatoes, garlic, salt,” Richelle answered.
“That’s it? No oil?”
“The salt causes the tomatoes to create their own juice. Try it. It’s good for you.”
I rationalized that I needed to add vegetables and protein to the crazy amount of carbohydrates I’d consumed that morning. I helped myself to the tomatoes and the tuna, and I ate. The tuna was deliciously simple—canned tuna, white beans, onion, salt and pepper. It had a clean, cool taste. The burst of flavor from the tomatoes knocked me over.
“I had no idea you were such a good cook.”
Richelle smiled, pleased by the compliment. “I’m hardly ever home, so when I am, I eat in. I like dishes that are simple and seasonal. I love to improvise, though these are two of my standbys. When there are tomatoes at the farmers market, I cannot—”
There was a sharp knock at the screen door on the porch. I peered through the front hall. Binder and Flynn. Great. “Come in!” I called. “It’s unlocked.” I stood to greet them. “Can this wait? We’re eating, and I have to go to work soon.”
“We’re not here to speak to you.” Binder’s voice was abrupt, not his usual calm tone. “We’re here to ask Ms. Rose to accompany us to the station.”
Richelle stood, too.
“If it’s another witness interview, Lieutenant,” my mother said, “perhaps you can wait a few minutes for us to finish? You’re welcome to some—”
“Ms. Rose knows what this is in regard to. I’m sure she’s been expecting us. Will you come along?”
I turned to Richelle, who moved toward the door, regal as ever.