by Leslie Meier
“I’m going in for my interview now. Of course, I’m an eyewitness, like you are, or maybe more like an earwit-ness, since the lights were out when the shot was fired.” Clyde shifted his weight from one foot to the other and continued to muse.
“In that sense, I’m not only a witness to the event, I’m something of an expert witness.” He paused so I could take that in. Of course he was. He went on. “I’m an expert on firearms. I shoot at the range every Saturday, and I’ve trained my ear to recognize every gun that’s fired. I could tell you the caliber, the make and model, sometimes even the type of bullets.”
“I’m sure Sergeant Flynn will be grateful.” I wasn’t going to mention the ballistics report was already in, or the slug pulled out of Spencer Jones by the medical examiner.
“In this case,” Clyde said, “I can state positively the weapon was a Glock, a nine-millimeter.” He gave me a self-satisfied smile.
So help me, I took the bait. I shouldn’t have, but I did. Flynn had mentioned lots of numbers, but none of them had been a nine-millimeter. “That’s funny,” I said. “Sergeant Flynn told me not five minutes ago the ballistics report said the gun was a Smith and Wesson revolver, twenty-two caliber.”
Clyde looked nonplussed, if only for a second. “Well, well. A revolver. There was only the one shot, so I couldn’t be expected to . . . A twenty-two, huh. It’s a miracle it killed him. Though if it was a tour member who shot him, we were at quite close range. Well,” he said, recovering, “I wouldn’t have heard many twenty-two revolvers at the range because it’s a lady’s gun.”
That did it for me. I might not know a soldier’s gun from a soldering gun, but a lady’s gun. Really? “Bye, Clyde. I’ve got to run.”
He, however, wasn’t deterred. “Still, it was a lucky shot.”
Or a very skilled one. I didn’t bother to say it.
Finally, he was done. “Bye, Julia. Wish me luck. I’m off to the firing squad. Ha, ha, ha.”
Clyde disappeared through the glass door to the station, and I took off down the street.
Chapter Nine
Gus was in the restaurant when I got back there, mumbling as he removed spoiled food from the walk-in. The trapdoor was closed and what blood there had been was on the underside. There hadn’t been much that I remembered. Spencer must have died instantly. A lucky shot, Clyde had said. A highly skilled shot, Flynn believed. Either way it was shot in the dark.
I got to work right away, throwing away the leftover pumpkin bread and cookies, pouring the cider down the sink and scrubbing the pot. I had starting moving the tables back to their regular positions when Chris arrived.
He gave me a side hug and a kiss on the cheek. “I’ve come from signing my statement,” he said.
“I did mine about an hour ago.”
“I still have to go down there,” Gus called from across the room. “I wanted to get my place put together and ready for tomorrow before I went.”
“It’s too late for us to open tonight,” Chris said to me. Harley had removed our stop from the tour, permanently, though he was determined to go on with the rest of it. Chris and I had agreed we’d reopen the restaurant as soon as we were allowed.
“I know. I’ll put a sign on the door.”
We went back to work. I finished with the tables while Chris got out Gus’s toolbox and nailed the trapdoor shut. Gus stood over him as Chris worked. “Good riddance,” Gus said as Chris banged the last nail in. “I am never opening that door again. Every time we do, it’s trouble.”
Chris nodded and stood, dusting off the knees of his jeans. Together the three of us moved the bar and backbar into place and everything was back to normal. Sort of.
I started to put on a pot of coffee when Gus said, “You got any cold beer?”
We did and we all agreed we’d earned one. We sat at the counter and relived the day before. It was a way of processing what we felt, bonding over a shared experience. I was so grateful to have these two wonderful men in my life.
“Flynn said the gun was a twenty-two-caliber revolver,” I told them.
“You don’t say,” Gus said. “A twenty-two.”
“Have they found it?” Chris asked.
“No,” I answered.
“It must’ve been ditched somewhere,” Gus said.
Chris agreed. “The killer has to know that with only sixteen people present, aside from the deceased, the police will zero in on a suspect soon and get search warrants for homes and cars.”
“If it was ditched, it probably was around here,” I said. “In the confusion, as everyone ran out.”
“Are you suggesting we look for it?” Chris asked.
“The cops have been all over this place,” Gus said. “They were still searching outside when I got here earlier.”
“Did they search under the restaurant, around the pilings?” I asked.
“Ayup, a bunch of ’em were down there.”
“What about the cave?” There was a cave and a tunnel, partially natural and partially man-made that went from the rock under Gus’s to the Busman’s Harbor Yacht Club nearby. During Prohibition smugglers had used it to drop off booze for the rich men who belonged to the yacht club, a kind of protection that ensured their work didn’t get too much scrutiny. Probably Ned Calhoun had used it.
“Told ’em about it,” Gus said.
That appeared to be that. We got back to work, but I admit, whenever I went outside, I looked around. After I took the last garbage bag out to the Dumpster in Gus’s small parking lot, I stood on its seaward edge. The tide was dead low. In a few minutes it would turn and start coming in. Daylight savings time hadn’t yet gone, but winter was coming. The sun was low in the west and cast a golden glare, throwing deep shadows from the exposed rocks and boulders.
I saw a glint in the distance. Could it be? I stepped to the kitchen door. “Chris, can you come out here?”
“Do you see that, glistening in the mud there?” I pointed, and his eyes followed my finger.
“You don’t think that’s . . .”
“Could someone have thrown it that far?”
Chris picked up a rock and pitched it, not specifically in the direction of the glinting object, but out over the harbor. The rock landed several yards beyond it.
“Hey, Gus!’ Chris called, bringing the old man to the door. “Did the police have divers here, do you know?”
Gus shook his head. “Not today. I imagine they will tomorrow if they don’t find the gun before then.”
Before Gus finished speaking, I dialed Flynn’s number.
Chapter Ten
The next morning I woke up in my own bed. The murmur of voices, clanging of dishes, and the smell of bacon told me Gus was open for business. I leaned over and shook Chris’s shoulder. “Pancakes,” I whispered.
He opened a sleepy green eye. “Breakfast,” he agreed.
By the time we were showered and dressed, Gus’s was pretty crowded. The lobstermen were gone and the working folk had taken their places. “Our” booth was taken, but Chris and I slid into an open one.
There was less talk around us about the murder than I expected. What snippets of conversation I did overhear seemed to follow along the theme that the victim was an outsider, the suspects were outsiders, and it was nearly none of the town’s concern. I was glad Harley, Gus, Chris, Sonny, and I were not considered to be suspects according to the wisdom of the town. Nor were the four teenagers, or Clyde. But then, that was easier, wasn’t it? If it was some dastardly person From Away.
We had our coffee and had placed our orders, blueberry pancakes for me, eggs over easy and hash for Chris, when Sergeant Flynn walked down the stairs into the restaurant’s front room.
Chris’s back was to him, but I saw Flynn and he saw me. I motioned him over. “Join us.”
He looked around, taking his time to decide. “Don’t mind if I do.” Gus’s menu hadn’t changed in half a century and Flynn knew what he wanted. “Two eggs, soft-boiled,” he told Gus when h
e came to take the order.
“Toast?” Gus asked, though he surely must have known the answer.
“No, thanks.” Ordering accomplished, Flynn turned his attention back to Chris and me. “That was a lucky thing, you spotting the gun.” He’d said as much to me the evening before when he’d interviewed each of us thoroughly about how we had found it.
“It was a lucky thing,” I agreed. “The tide was dead low, and the sun happened to catch a glint off it.”
“It could easily have gotten buried in the mud in the bottom of the harbor,” Chris added. “Not many guns are silver these days. Most are the exact same color as the mud.”
“Aluminum alloy with stainless steel,” Flynn corrected. When the gun had come out of the water, not only was it silver colored, it had a robin’s egg blue grip.
A lady’s gun. Indeed.
Gus chose that exact moment to bring Chris and me our breakfast. He set down the steaming plates in front of us. I pushed around the butter on the pancakes so it would melt evenly and then drenched them in Maine-made maple syrup, the only kind Gus served. I always felt self-conscious eating in front of Flynn, and never more so than with a plate full of pancakes.
“You’ll be interested to know,” Flynn continued, “we traced the owner of the weapon. It is Mrs. Joyce Bayer of Montclair, New Jersey.”
I fell against the back of the booth in surprise. “Have you arrested her?”
“The gun was reported stolen five weeks ago. Of course, she could have reported it stolen when it wasn’t, preparatory to committing premeditated murder.”
Suddenly I wasn’t so hungry. “That’s awful. I could have sworn it wasn’t her. She seemed genuinely horrified by what her boys had witnessed.”
“I agree,” Flynn said. “She appears quite credible. But there’s more. Not only had she drawn up divorce papers for the victim so she could pursue another relationship, through his union Mr. Jones had substantial life insurance policies.”
“She’s the beneficiary?”
“Her boys.”
Which brought up the thing I was trying not to think about. “If you arrest her, what will happen to those boys?”
“I haven’t arrested her, but I have asked her to stay in town to ‘help us with our inquiries.’ Her live-in boyfriend is on his way here. Depending on how long she stays, he’ll either remain here with them or take the boys back so they can go to school. Mrs. Bayer wants everything to be as normal as possible for them.”
“Hard for it to be normal when you’ve seen your father shot.”
“Heard him shot,” Flynn reminded me. “None of you saw it.”
But the boys had seen the aftermath, as had we all. “Did you find the other woman from the tour yet, Carla Santiler?” I asked.
“Not yet,” Flynn answered. “The local police in Saint Petersburg have a patrol car outside her house, in case she shows up there. She hasn’t used her credit card yet. Harley had a cell number for her. It’s turned off.”
“That seems like a loose end.”
“It’s one of those loose ends that’s keeping Mrs. Bayer out of jail.”
Chris excused himself. It was another beautiful day and he had to get as much outdoor work done as possible before autumn turned nasty. Gus brought Flynn’s eggs in two little eggcups on a plate. I sat with him while he ate. I asked if he was dating. My friend, Genevieve, had broken his heart and then sailed off to be a chef on a superyacht. He’d been slow to get back out there.
Flynn carefully tapped an egg with his spoon, then flipped the top off when the shell cracked. He studied the runny yolk, longer than I thought necessary. “Nobody special. I’ve been on a few fix-ups, but nothing I’ve wanted to pursue. How about you and Chris? Any announcements there?”
The path for Chris and me had been long and complex. Flynn knew some of the story but not all of it. “No announcements,” I answered. “I’ll keep you posted.”
“Do that.” Flynn finished his eggs, pulled a ten out of his wallet and left it on the table. “Back to the salt mines.” He left me sitting alone.
* * *
After breakfast, I went back to my normal fall routine, which was work in the clambake office at Mom’s house in the morning and then at the restaurant in the afternoon and evening.
When I got to Mom’s, the upstairs carpet was in a heap near the arch between the front hall and the living room. I couldn’t imagine my mother walking by without picking it up, so either she’d been very late to work, or the ghost of Sarah Merriman had replayed her fatal fall sometime between when Mom left and I arrived.
With the season over, the clambake work was about completing the accounts, getting ready to pay the taxes, and figuring out how much profit was left to distribute to Mom, Livvie, and Sonny, and me, as well as Quentin Tupper, our silent partner. It was tedious, but it had to be done, and I worked away, squinting at the little numbers in the spreadsheets open in my computer monitor. There was work being done on our island as well. Windsholme, the mansion built by my mother’s ancestors, was to undergo a massive renovation in the spring. Working on that involved phone calls and decisions, some of which I could make quickly and some that had to be deferred until I could circle up with the rest of the family.
No matter what I was doing, I couldn’t keep my mind entirely on my work. The events of the past two days constantly intruded.
I had to admit things looked bleak for Joyce Bayer. Her estranged husband was killed with her gun. As Flynn had said, she could have reported it stolen as a part of a plan to kill Spencer, though not a very good plan. Which brought on an even worse thought. What if one of the boys had taken the gun? Joyce suspected her son Will had discovered his father would be in Busman’s Harbor, which is why he’d lobbied for the trip. What if his purpose wasn’t a loving reunion with an absent father, but something much darker?
How could Will have known his dad would be in town? Our little Halloween pantomime wasn’t like a show in a theater. There was no program, no list of the players anywhere. None of the stories in the local paper or the publicity the tourist bureau sent out would have contained the names of the actors.
Will and his dad could have been in touch without Joyce knowing about it. Spencer could have sent Will an e-mail or a text, or even made a phone call to say he’d be in Busman’s Harbor. How much did mothers know about what their thirteen-year-olds were up to? But would Will, who seemed like such a nice boy, have murdered his father? Thirteen-year-olds could kill. That was a fact. Although I’d only met him briefly twice, nothing about Will had raised the palest pink of red flags.
Which left Kieran. He was older. More capable of taking on his neglectful father, perhaps. More angry? Had Will told Kieran he found their dad? Or had it been Kieran who found him? Joyce had guessed it was Will, but she wasn’t sure. And most important, when had this been? Was it more than five weeks earlier, when the gun was reported stolen? Because that would certainly demonstrate intent—on someone’s part.
Every time I heard a car door slam in the street, I got up and looked out the office windows toward the Snuggles, discommoding Le Roi whose preferred spot was purring in my lap whenever I worked on the office computer. The first several times, it was nothing—people parking to walk downtown, the Snugg sisters returning from the supermarket. Le Roi was clearly annoyed by all the back and forth, though he jumped back on my lap each time.
Finally, when my morning work was done and the computer powered down, I heard a car door slam. Dashing to the window, I saw a Saab parked on the street. A middle-aged man with curly black hair ran toward the Snuggles front porch. The door of the inn burst open and Joyce Bayer fell into his arms. Kieran and Will followed closely behind their mother and the four of them moved in for a group hug. The man glanced back at his car as the rest of them hustled him into the house. Even from my perch on the second floor, I could see the look of loving concern on his face.
* * *
As I closed my mother’s front door, my phone pinged, indi
cating a text. It was from the police station. My statement from the day before, telling how I’d spotted the gun, was ready to be signed. It was a good time for me to stop by, since my clambake work was done and Gus was still serving lunch at his restaurant.
When I got to the station, the door to the multipurpose room was open and all the lights were off. “Is Sergeant Flynn here?” I asked the civilian receptionist.
“Flew to Virginia.” Jamie’s voice came from somewhere behind the partition that separated the receptionist area from the bustle of the office. Then he appeared.
“Virginia? In the middle of an investigation?”
Jamie cocked his head toward the doorway of the empty multipurpose room and we went inside. “Carla Santiler walked into a police station in Arlington, Virginia, this morning. She told the officer on duty there that she thought the police in Maine might be looking for her as a witness. She told him she was so terrified by the murder she got in her car, drove off, and kept driving. She spent yesterday with a friend in Virginia, calmed down a bit, and realized she was a witness to a crime and police here for sure wanted to talk to her. Her friend talked her into going to the local station and accompanied her there for support.”
“So Flynn’s down there? He couldn’t interview her on the phone, or have the local police do it?”
“He took off for the Portland Jetport almost as soon as he got in this morning. In this case, we have a limited number of witnesses and a limited pool of suspects. Every one of you sat in a slightly different place at Gus’s and may have heard different conversations and observed different things during the tour. Flynn wanted to interview her in person, and it was faster to get him to her than to wait for her to get back here.” Jamie glanced at the wall clock in the front of the room. “He may even be there by now. The Arlington police said they’d pick him up at Dulles.”
“I guess. Anything else going on?”
Jamie shrugged. “Nope. Aside from this, it’s a typical off-season. Pretty quiet.”
Chapter Eleven