by Leslie Meier
Lucy chuckled to herself, remembering Bill’s mom Edna’s hilarious account of how the first thing she did upon arrival every year was to fill every pot with water, bring it to a boil for ten minutes, and then load all the pots into the refrigerator. Lucy doubted it was really necessary but you couldn’t convince Edna, who wouldn’t even make coffee with unboiled water.
“What’s so funny?’ asked Bill, waking up when she turned into the driveway.
“I was thinking about your mother,” said Lucy, braking.
“My mom is funny?”
“Sometimes,” said Lucy. “It’s been a while since you spoke with her. Why don’t you give her a call tomorrow?”
“I will,” said Bill, stumbling on the porch steps.
“Take it easy,” said Lucy, taking his arm and guiding him inside. She doubted he’d remember much about the evening tomorrow morning, least of all his promise to call his folks.
Bill wasn’t the only one with a thick head on Sunday morning—Corney complained of a hangover when Lucy called to check on her.
“I couldn’t sleep, so I had some brandy,” confessed Corney. “I finished the bottle.”
“It wasn’t full, was it?” asked a horrified Lucy.
“I don’t remember,” admitted Corney. “All I know is that it’s empty now. It’s sitting on the kitchen counter, mocking me.”
“My father used to swear by something called a prairie oyster,” said Lucy. “I think it’s a raw egg with Worcestershire sauce and something else. Maybe tomato juice.”
“That sounds disgusting,” said Corney.
“The hair of the dog, that’s the thing,” said Bill, pulling a beer out of the refrigerator.
“Try a beer,” advised Lucy. “That’s what Bill is doing.”
“I think I’ll just throw up and go back to bed,” said Corney.
“No sign of Trey?” asked Lucy.
“No.” Corney paused. “You know, I think I probably overreacted. It’s just been so long since I was with a man I think I forgot how they are.”
Lucy didn’t think using handcuffs and trying to strangle your partner were typical male behaviors, but she didn’t say anything for fear of upsetting Corney. She’d been through a traumatic experience and it would take time for her to process it. In the meantime she would need sympathy and support. “I’ll stop by later,” promised Lucy. “Just to make sure everything’s all right.”
“Thanks, Lucy,” said Corney, her voice a bit shaky.
Hanging up, Lucy dialed Fern’s Famous, where Flora answered the phone.
“How’s Dora?” she asked.
“About how you’d expect, if you were innocent and accused of killing two people and sitting in a stinky jail cell,” said Flora, in her matter-of-fact tone.
“I heard you hired Bob Goodman,” said Lucy. “He’s the best.”
“He’s charging enough,” said Flora, adding a little humph.
Lucy knew Bob’s rates were extremely fair, but doubted Flora knew that many lawyers charged hundreds of dollars per hour. “Maybe they’ll catch the real murderer before it goes to trial,” said Lucy. “I’m following up on something that might help. Do you know when Max was in Mexico?”
“Well, it was when Dora got pregnant with Lily. He got her pregnant and hightailed off. I had to go down and bring him back and make him do the right thing.”
“So that was about twenty years ago, something like that?”
“That’d be about right.”
“There’s another thing,” said Lucy. “Do you know anything about the tuition money Max promised for Lily?”
“Promises, promises,” snorted Flora. “Max was always making promises.”
“Do you have any idea where he was going to get it?”
“I do not,” said Flora. “As far as I know, he was broke, he was always broke.” She paused. “Maybe his rich old uncle died and left him a bundle. Maybe he was blackmailing somebody. Maybe he won the lottery. I really don’t know. What I do know is that if he got a dollar, he spent it.”
Lucy was thoughtful. Flora had meant it as a joke, sort of, but blackmail could be a motive for murder. “Do you really think Max was blackmailing somebody? Where’d you get that idea?”
“Same place I got the idea about the rich uncle and the lottery ticket. Where do people get money if they don’t work for it? Trust me, Max wasn’t much of a worker. Maybe he was going to sell something, maybe he had a buyer for that snowmobile of his. Like I said, I really don’t know where Max thought he was going to get twenty thousand dollars for Lily. All I know is that he never did.”
“Right. Well, thanks Flora. Say hi to Dora for me. Let her know I’m thinking of her and doing everything I can to catch the real killer.”
Flora didn’t reply immediately and Lucy suspected she probably didn’t think much of her investigative abilities, so she was surprised when Flora finally spoke. “You be careful, Lucy.”
“I will,” promised Lucy, touched by Flora’s concern. “I surely will.”
Turning to her morning chores, Lucy loaded the breakfast dishes into the dishwasher, wiped the counters, and swept the floor. She was just finishing running the vacuum around the family room when the girls appeared, looking for rides.
“Can I take the car?” asked Sara.
“What for? I thought your job ended with Valentine’s Day.”
“I’ve got a study group meeting at Jenny’s house. It’s a group project on women’s suffrage.”
“And I’m going to Friends of Animals,” added Zoe. “I’m filling in for Laurie—she went on that ski trip.”
Lucy thought for a minute. Bill was under the weather now, but he’d probably want his truck later. Besides, he didn’t like anyone to drive it except himself. She could let Sara take the Subaru, but that would leave her without transportation and she had promised to stop in at Corney’s. “No. I’m going to need the car,” she said.
Sara wasn’t happy with her decision. “What about the truck?”
“Don’t push it,” said Lucy, laughing. “Your father’s not in a mood to share this morning.” She wrapped up the vacuum cleaner cord. “I’ll take you.”
Lucy made the familiar trip, first dropping Zoe at Friends of Animals and then letting Sara off at Jenny’s house. She went on to the Quik-Stop for gas, feeling guilty about adding to the nation’s thirst for foreign oil and resentful that she didn’t really have a choice, and picked up a sports drink for Bill’s hangover. When she was leaving the store, a man with a buzz cut and a decided military bearing held the door for her. She thanked him and hurried to her car, but when she started the engine a little hunch popped into her head. She waited until the man left the store and watched as he strode off down Main Street, observing that he appeared to be in his early fifties and extremely fit. She was certain she’d never seen him in town before.
Acting on the hunch, she drove slowly until the car was alongside him, then rolled down the window. “You’re new in town, aren’t you?” she asked. “Can I help you with anything?”
He turned, an amused expression on his face. “I know this is a small town but... .”
Lucy interrupted him. “I’m Lucy Stone. I’m a reporter with the local paper. I really do know everybody in town,” she said, handing him her card. “And I’m thinking you might be Tamzin Graves’s ex-husband.”
“You must be a really good reporter,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “I’m Larry Graves and I was married to Tamzin for a couple of years.”
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” said Lucy, in a serious tone.
Graves’s expression hardened. “She didn’t deserve this.”
“I know.” Lucy paused, thinking that survivors often wanted to talk about their lost loved one. “You know, I’m going to have to write an obituary for her and I don’t know much about her. Maybe you could help me?”
Graves hesitated a moment, then nodded.
“How about a cup of coffee?”
“Sure,” he sa
id, reaching for the car door.
When he was seated, Lucy continued driving down Main Street, toward Jake’s. Graves sat beside her, large and silent, and she remembered hearing he was in Afghanistan.
“You must have some case of jet lag,” she said. “How long is the flight from Afghanistan?”
“Actually, it was only a short hop, from Cape Cod. There’s a training facility at Camp Edwards—a little village and a lot of sand—it’s to give the troops a feeling for what they’ll encounter in the Middle East. I’m one of the instructors.”
“Oh.” Lucy pulled into a parking spot in front of Jake’s and braked. “But you were in Afghanistan?”
“Yeah.” He fell silent, climbing out of the car. “I’ve been back stateside for six months or so,” he said, as they climbed the steps and went inside the coffee shop.
The morning crowd had gone and Norine, the waitress, was busy clearing tables and tidying up. “Sit anywhere you want,” she said.
Lucy chose a booth at the back. “This is on me,” she said, as Norine set two menus down in front of them. “Have whatever you want.”
“Just coffee, regular,” he said, pulling off his hat and shrugging out of his jacket. His buzz cut was sprinkled with gray, Lucy noticed, and the skin was stretched tightly over his cheekbones. His eyes were very blue.
Lucy ordered a black decaf for herself, then pulled out her notebook. “I hope you don’t mind if I take notes?”
Graves shrugged.
“First of all, I need your full name and rank... .”
He raised an eyebrow and slid a business card across the table. “Not my service number?”
She smiled back, taking the card. “That won’t be necessary.”
“It’s major. Major Lawrence Graves, United States Army, currently stationed at Camp Edwards in Massachusetts.” Norine set the coffees in front of them and he busied himself adding cream and sugar.
“And you were married to Tamzin?”
“Yeah.” He nodded, stirring his coffee. “For three years, back in the nineties. She was in her early thirties. Beautiful. I never knew such a beautiful woman.”
Lucy nodded, wondering how to broach her next question. “She made quite an impression here in town... .”
Graves laughed. “I bet she did—especially with the male half of the population.”
“Well, yes,” said Lucy. “Was she always so ... ?”
“Promiscuous?” Graves took a long drink of coffee. “She was.”
“Is that why you divorced?”
“Yeah.”
“But you stayed in touch?”
“Sure. It was a lot easier being her friend than being her husband.”
“So what was she really like?”
“She grew up in Troy, it’s one of those towns in New York State that have fallen on hard times. She couldn’t wait to get out and joined the army; that’s where we met. She’s the only person I ever heard say she loved boot camp, but she thrived on physical challenges, she just loved the workouts, the obstacle courses, the runs. And she really liked being with all those guys.”
“How come she left?”
He shrugged. “She was stuck in Texas and didn’t like it much, so when she got twenty years—enough for a pension—she didn’t reenlist. She always loved New England so she came up here to Maine. She loved this town, she said she’d never been happier.”
Lucy felt the pull of a great sense of guilt. “I’m so sorry... .”
“It’s not your fault,” said Graves. “You didn’t kill her, did you?”
“I could have been nicer to her.”
“It’s okay. She never had a lot of girlfriends,” he said, signaling Norine for a refill. When she’d filled his cup and he’d gone through the rigmarole of tearing open the little paper pouches of sugar and poured in the cream, he made eye contact with Lucy. “So what do you know about this guy she was working for? This Trey Meacham?”
Lucy shifted in her seat, uncomfortably aware that the situation had changed and she was now the interviewee instead of the interviewer. “I don’t know him very well,” she said, feeling that the incident with Corney was something she shouldn’t talk about. Corney deserved to have her privacy protected.
“But you told me you know everybody in town,” he said, challenging her.
“I may have exaggerated,” she said, attempting a chuckle.
Major Lawrence Graves was not amused and Lucy had the feeling she was up against a skilled questioner, someone who was able to get information from toughened Taliban fighters. “How big is this chocolate operation of his?”
“Oh.” Lucy was relieved. This was something she could talk about. “There are four stores: Kittery, Camden, Bar Harbor, and here. The chocolates are made in Rockland, in a converted sardine factory, and there’s a shop there, too. I haven’t seen the corporate balance sheet, but Trey himself seems quite prosperous—he drives a Range Rover—and the chocolates have won prizes.”
“Is he a local guy?”
“You mean, did he grow up here?”
“Yeah.”
“No. He left a high-powered career in public relations, I think, and started Chanticleer Chocolate about a year ago.”
“Did he and Tamzin have a relationship?”
“That’s open to debate,” said Lucy. “They certainly seemed friendly.”
“What about this woman they say killed her? Dora Fraser?”
“She’s a local woman, her family owns a fudge shop so she was a competitor with Chanticleer. Also, Tamzin had a relationship with Dora’s ex-husband and she may have been jealous.”
“I don’t buy it,” said Graves. “I don’t think a woman could take Tamzin. She was into martial arts, she taught hand-to-hand combat.”
Lucy brightened. “That’s what I think, too. I don’t see Dora as a double murderer.”
Graves’s eyebrows shot up. “Double?”
“Dora’s ex-husband was killed last month when he was ice fishing. Knocked on the head and tangled up in fishline and shoved through the ice. They’re charging Dora with that, too. Or trying to. I’m not sure of the status of the investigation.”
“Wow, this is some nice town you’ve got here.”
Lucy decided not to respond. “Are there any funeral arrangements yet for Tamzin?” she asked.
He drained his cup and set it down. “Her family is still back in Troy. They’ll have a service and she’ll be buried there.”
“Thanks for your help,” said Lucy. “I guess you’ll be heading off to Troy?”
Graves caught her in his gaze. “Oh, no. I’m staying right here until I find the bastard who killed her.”
The cool, calculated way he said it took her breath away. “Oh,” she said, her voice a whisper. “Good luck.”
“Luck will have nothing to do with it,” he said, reaching for his jacket and pulling his watch cap over his head. “I have a mission and I intend to complete it. Thanks for the coffee.”
Lucy watched as he left the coffee shop, feeling a bit like a bystander in a superhero movie. Graves, it seemed, was no ordinary mortal, he was battle ready and itching for a fight. She was convinced he had the skills and the mental preparedness to fight his enemies and even kill them.
Reaching for her purse, she picked up the check and went over to the cash register. “Who was that guy?” asked Norine. “He looks like one tough customer.”
“That was Tamzin’s ex-husband,” said Lucy, handing her a five-dollar bill. “He’s a soldier.”
“Well, I’m glad he’s on our side,” said Norine, giving Lucy her change.
But as Lucy left the coffee shop and hurried to her car, she wondered if Graves was really the avenger he said he was. As a reporter she’d covered a number of murders and the sad fact was that most of the victims were women who’d been killed by their husbands or lovers. Graves said he wanted to find Tamzin’s killer but was that nothing more than a smoke screen to hide his own guilt?
She climbed into the ca
r and started it, thinking that the more she knew about Tamzin, the less she knew. Here she’d thought she was nothing but a trashy sexpot and now she had learned she was a soldier for twenty years and even taught hand-to-hand combat. It seemed crazy. Yet in spite of all that, somebody had overpowered her and killed her. Who could have done it? And why? This was one story she couldn’t wait to write; it was going to upset a lot of people’s preconceptions about Tamzin, that was for sure. And it was going to blow a very big hole in the case against Dora.
Lucy was already composing sentences as she headed for home, detouring along Shore Road to stop by Corney’s place.
When Corney opened the door, Lucy saw that Corney had definitely had a tough night. Her eyes were puffy, her face was blotchy, and there were faint bruises on her neck and wrists. Her short blond hair hadn’t been brushed and was sticking out all over her head. “Oh my goodness,” Lucy exclaimed, wrapping her friend in her arms and giving her a hug.
“I feel awful,” said Corney, “and I look worse.”
“You had a bad time,” said Lucy. “Trey’s bad news.”
“You can say that again.” Corney sat on one of the stools at the breakfast bar. “A lot of it’s my own fault. I never should’ve drank all that brandy. I always try to sleep on my back, but when I woke up this morning my face was squished into the pillow.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” said Lucy. “You’re the victim here. Those are terrible bruises on your neck You’re lucky to be alive.”
“No, Lucy, you’ve got it wrong. He’s just a big guy. He doesn’t know his own strength—and I bruise easily.” She got up and went over to a mirror that hung on the wall, examining her face and running her fingers beneath her eyes, smoothing out the bags. “Do you happen to have any Preparation H?”